Sleeping Partners

by Helen Brooks

  ‘Right.’ Robyn could tell Cass wasn’t convinced but then another contraction gripped, stronger this time, and within moments all her sister’s concentration was focused on her breathing exercises as she battled with the clamp on her belly.

  By the time Clay brought Beryl in the front door Robyn and Cass were sitting waiting in the lounge and the contractions were coming every six minutes. As the three of them went to leave, Cass groaned. ‘Oh no, not another’, she said, and went to lean against the door stanchion, but Clay whisked her up in his arms, his voice not quite his own as he said, ‘Come on, come on, we need to get you to the hospital. Do that panting thing or whatever it is you do.’

  He was panicking. The knowledge was so surprising that Robyn almost dropped Cass’s overnight bag. He was actually behaving like a normal human being for once. She had never thought to see the cool, smooth, controlled Clay Lincoln running to his car like a greyhound with a very rotund Cass in his arms, but she was seeing it now.

  In the moment that Clay bent down and slid Cass into the back seat Robyn caught her sister’s eye, and she saw by the wry expression on Cass’s face her sister’s thoughts had been parallel with her own. And in spite of the dire circumstances—for herself as well as Cass—Robyn found herself smiling as Cass winked at her. This was very different to his business world.

  They shot through the streets again but this time Robyn was sitting in the back of the car with Cass. Her sister’s fingernails were biting into the flesh of Robyn’s hands with each contraction but Robyn scarcely noticed. All her energy was directed at encouraging Cass along and keeping her eyes off the dark figure in the driving seat.

  She couldn’t believe it was over. She suddenly wanted to cry, hot tears pricking at the back of her eyes, and she forced her mind back to the matter in hand, namely her sister. She had to help Cass through the next few hours, nothing mattered beyond that. She could think about Clay and the way it had ended later. She was going to have a lot of spare time in which to think now.

  When they arrived at the hospital Clay had everyone jumping around as though they were on springs, until the sister in charge of the maternity unit—a large lady with a face like a sergeant major—ascertained that no, he wasn’t the father and yes, Mrs Barnes would like a bit of peace and quiet, and banished him to the waiting area while they examined the mother-to-be. ‘Please pipe down, Mr Lincoln,’ she said pleasantly but very firmly. ‘I can assure you we will look after your friend’s wife to the very best of our ability and we have been doing this job for quite a while. I can understand you feel responsible for Mrs Barnes until her husband gets here, but panicking won’t help the patient, now will it?’

  Robyn was witness to this little exchange and accompanied Clay to the waiting area whilst Cass was admitted and found a bed in one of the delivery rooms, her head still trying to take on board that someone had actually had the temerity to tell Clay Lincoln to pipe down. All things considered this really wasn’t his night, was it? she told herself with a touch of silent hysteria.

  Thankfully there were one or two other people in the waiting area which had comfortable chairs and tables, plenty of magazines and a couple of machines serving hot and cold drinks and snacks. It made the frozen silence emanating from Clay easier to ignore.

  Within a few minutes Sister Robinson was back to inform them that Cass was doing fine and would like Robyn to join her in the delivery room if she so wished? Robyn did so wish and, after receiving directions to the appropriate delivery room, she left the sister being quizzed by Clay on exactly what was happening concerning the birth. The sister seemed to be taking this in good part and answering him patiently and concisely, but it was clear she wasn’t in awe of her interrogator.

  As luck would have it Cass’s daughter hung on to be born till five minutes after Guy had arrived, and so it was that Samantha Robyn came into the world with her father and her aunty in attendance as they urged her mother on.

  She was a beautiful baby, very small at exactly four pounds but with a healthy pair of lungs that were exercised until the moment she was placed at her mother’s breast whereupon she settled down with a contented sigh as though to say, This is all I wanted; I’m all right now. Robyn fell in love with her on sight.

  After hugs and kisses and more hugs and kisses, Robyn left Cass and Guy with their new baby daughter after promising them she would go straight to their home and take care of the boys until Cass was home again. ‘Drew and Fiona will hold the fort for a couple of days,’ she said airily as though the mountain of work that was ever present was of no account at all. Which, after the miracle she’d seen that morning, was quite true. ‘And Mum and Dad have already booked their flight out and will be here on Friday to look after things for a couple of weeks, which will give Guy time to arrange to bring his holiday forward.’

  ‘Bless you, Robyn.’ Cass’s eyes had been full, and the two sisters had hugged again before Robyn had let herself out of the room in order to send Clay to see the baby before they left.

  She stood for a moment, the joy and happiness contained in the room behind her at stark contrast with what she was going to have to face in a few moments. And then she squared her slim shoulders and walked along to the waiting area which was now quite empty apart from the tall, lean man lying dozing in one of the big chairs, and several empty paper cups which had clearly contained coffee on the table beside him.

  She walked quietly across to the side of Clay’s chair, her feet making no sound on the thin cord carpet, and stood looking down at him for a moment.

  The harsh male face was younger in repose, softer, the hard cynical lines that cut through the tanned skin when he was awake barely visible.

  He would look like this in the morning before he was awake, Robyn thought despairingly as her love for him welled up in a flood. Had she made the worst mistake of her life by refusing to stay last night? Could it have been the start of something that would have lasted despite everything he had said to the contrary? Maybe she would have grown on him, woven herself into the fabric of his life until he couldn’t have done without her? Perhaps he might even have come to love her?

  And then she caught the pain and regret and panic that had her heart thudding and her stomach churning. There were too many maybes and perhaps, she told herself wearily. Far, far too many. Reality was that he had made his choice years ago on how he wanted to live his life and it would take someone very special, someone with far more experience of love and life than she had, to break through the steel casing he’d erected round his heart. Perhaps such a person didn’t exist. If nothing else Clay was not a person who changed his mind lightly on anything, and this was a fundamental part of what made him him. She had done the only thing she could in the circumstances. Anything else would have been emotional suicide.

  ‘Goodbye, my darling.’ She whispered the words on the lightest of breaths, her eyes stinging with the tears she had kept at bay for so long. ‘I love you, I’ll always love you, and I pray one day you’ll be happy, that you’ll find the peace of mind you need so badly. I wish I could have been the one to set you free.’

  She had to go and wash her face before she woke him to tell him Cass and Guy were waiting to show him the baby. She stumbled out of the room, her face awash, but after a minute or two in the ladies’ cloakroom and with a gallon of cold water splashed on her face the red blotches were gone and she looked pale but normal.

  When she braced herself to return to the waiting area Clay was gone, and after retracing her footsteps she found him in the delivery room with Cass and Guy and the baby.

  ‘Here she is.’ Guy’s voice was hearty as Robyn popped her head round the door. ‘We wondered where you were.’

  ‘I went to the ladies’ cloakroom,’ Robyn said, adding quickly, ‘I was going to come and tell you about the baby, Clay, afterwards but you were already in here.’ She didn’t want him thinking she bore him some grudge and out of spite hadn’t fetched him. The way he had looked at her earlier she feared he w
ouldn’t put anything past her, and his track record with women hadn’t exactly led him to assume that finer feelings dominated their thinking!

  His eyes had been on Cass and the baby nestled in her arms when Robyn had opened the door, but now he glanced up from his position of sitting at the end of the bed, and she saw he was looking positively stunned. It touched her more than words could say. He was clearly bowled over by the tiny new life in front of him, and as he just nodded in answer she saw he was at a loss for words.

  ‘We’ve just said to Clay that we want you two to be her godparents,’ Cass said eagerly, and then, without waiting for a response from Robyn, she said to Clay, ‘Come on, then, have a hold before Sister Robinson comes back and whisks her away. She’s going to spend the night in an incubator just to be on the safe side because she’s so tiny, although they’ve said everything is absolutely fine and there are no problems.’

  Seeing him with that tiny little bundle cradled in his arms would be too much to cope with. Robyn knew her limits, and her suddenly weeping and wailing wouldn’t exactly add to the wonder of the moment.

  As Clay rose to take Samantha Robyn, Robyn said hastily, ‘I’ll get myself a quick coffee; it might lessen the sister’s wrath if the room isn’t too crowded when she comes back. I’ll come back later tonight for a few minutes, Cass, if Beryl will babysit for an hour,’ and she shut the door quickly before her sister called for her to stay.

  It was another ten minutes before Clay joined her in the waiting area, and two cups of strong black coffee enabled Robyn to adopt a fairly neutral expression as she looked into the hard, handsome face and said quietly, ‘I can get a taxi from here, Clay, if you want to get off home and change before you go to work.’

  He glanced at her briefly as he shook his head. ‘I’ll take you home so you can pick up a few things and then take you to Guy’s,’ he said briefly as she followed him out into the corridor.

  He said nothing more as they walked through the quiet hospital most of which was still sleeping, and Robyn couldn’t bring herself to break the silence which was taut and painful now they were alone. A silence that was piercing her heart.

  She couldn’t quite decide how he had looked when he had come into the waiting area. Certainly the furious rage and contempt and bitter condemnation with which he had viewed her after their altercation at his house was gone, neither were his eyes shooting ice-cold shafts as they had done when they’d met hers in the hours at the hospital before the baby was born, when she’d visited the waiting area a few times to keep him up-to-date on developments.

  Perhaps the stunned wonder which had verged on disbelief that she had seen on his face in the delivery room when he’d looked at Samantha had mellowed him a little? Enough for him to be civil anyway? She hoped so; she didn’t think she could take much more.

  Her thoughts were so tied up with Clay and she was so tired after the long night that she almost walked into the wall of the corridor at one point, and as his hand came out to steady her and he said, ‘Careful, you must be exhausted,’ their eyes met for a moment before his hand dropped away and they continued to the big glass doors that led to the hospital car park.

  It was a cold, distant mask that she had seen. The knowledge kept her working on automatic as they stepped out of the vaguely antiseptic anonymity of the hospital into the fresh, clean beauty of the early morning. An uninterested face and indifferent eyes.

  A pale gold and mother-of-pearl dawn was banishing the last of the night sky and somewhere close by in one of the trees surrounding the car park a missel thrust was singing its heart out to the new day. The summer morning was balmy, promising a hot day, and after the wildly emotional content of the last hours the beauty was almost too much for Robyn’s fragile equilibrium.

  He didn’t care about her, he had never cared about her or else he couldn’t have dismissed her so quickly from his heart. Heart? He didn’t have a heart, she told herself savagely, the memory of the cold indifference in his face cutting her in two and making her chest ache before she warned herself not to dwell on it, not now. She had the twins to see to, chores to do, a household to run. Thinking could come later, much later.

  Once in the car she was vitally conscious of the big male frame next to her, her feelings so sensitised that every tiny movement of the muscled body brought her nerves quivering in response. She had noticed, in the lightning glance they’d exchanged, that his normally immaculate hair had been rumpled and that he had a healthy growth of stubble darkening his face. It had made him look twice as sexy and ten times more dangerous, and now she couldn’t get the image out of her mind even though she kept her gaze very firmly on the windscreen.

  Once the Mercedes drew up outside her house Robyn turned her head and looked at him, keeping her feelings under wraps as she said formally, ‘Would you like to come in for a coffee while I get my things together?’

  ‘I’ll wait here. You aren’t going to be long, are you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ And as he made a movement to open his door she said curtly, ‘I’m quite capable of opening my own door, thank you,’ and slid out of the car before he could respond.

  She inserted the key into the front door with a hand that trembled, willing herself not to give way, and then the door was open and she almost fell into the quiet, still room beyond, shutting the door and then leaning against it before slowly sliding onto the floor as the tears came.

  She had to get control, she had to. Oh, please, God, let me get control. I have to get through the next hour or so with some dignity; it’s all I’ve got left.

  Whether the prayer worked or not she didn’t know, but somehow she felt able to get up off the floor and drag herself upstairs into the bathroom where she again washed her face, combed her hair and tidied it into a French pleat, before quickly changing her clothes and donning a light summer top and old jeans. That done she flung a few necessities into an overnight bag and quickly ran downstairs again, scribbling a note to Drew along with a list of instructions and her telephone number at Cass’s which she placed on her friend’s desk. Drew had her own key for use when Robyn wasn’t around, so that was no problem.

  She was out in the street again within fifteen minutes and already the city was stirring although it was still only just gone five o’clock.

  Clay leant across and opened her door for her as she reached the Mercedes and she slid into the passenger seat without looking at him, her face stiff. Okay, so she loved him more than life itself but she was blowed if she was going to beg and plead for a kind word like a whipped puppy, the rat.

  The rat glanced at her. ‘Cass’s?’ he asked succinctly.

  Robyn kept her gaze directed in front and nodded tightly. ‘Thank you,’ she said grimly.

  It was probably the worst, the most miserable few minutes of her entire life but eventually it was over and the Mercedes was outside Cass’s brightly painted little house. Robyn’s mouth was dry, her heart pounding much too fast and her tortured senses at breaking point. She breathed deeply and then, as Clay cut the engine, said abruptly, ‘Thank you for the lift. Goodbye, Clay.’ He hadn’t wanted to come in for a few minutes at her house and no power on earth was going to get him through the door of Cass’s house as far as she was concerned. ‘I’ll send Beryl out immediately; I presume you don’t mind taking her home?’

  There was a moment’s pause before he said, his voice cool and faintly quizzical. ‘Not at all. I’ll wait here, then.’

  Yes, you damn well will. She glanced at him then, just one swift look as she said, ‘She’ll be out directly.’ And then she opened her door, gathered up the overnight bag and was out on the pavement.

  He was going to let her go; it was really going to finish as badly as this. Robyn still couldn’t quite take it in even as she marched up the path and opened the door with the key Guy had given her at the hospital. As it swung open there was a split second where she almost turned round for one last look at Clay, but she mastered the desire immediately.

 
If he looked at her, if there was just a minute softening of that formidable hardness in his face, she might disgrace herself and run to the car and beg him to forgive all the things she had said. Implore him to take her on any terms he cared to dictate.

  But she had spoken the truth. And she loved him too much to pretend. And life with Clay on his terms would be one big pretence.

  She pulled the door shut behind her, took a hard pull of air, painted a bright smile on her face and walked quietly into the lounge to tell Beryl she was an aunty again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SIX days later Robyn was seated at her desk at seven in the evening eating a sandwich—which was masquerading as dinner—while she read through some draft copies of a batch of press releases Fiona had written earlier in the day. They were good, they were very good, Robyn decided with some satisfaction. Fiona was going to work out just fine.

  When the telephone at her elbow rang she picked it up and said crisply, ‘Brett PR. How can I help you?’ She had been all on edge the couple of days she had spent at Cass’s looking after the twins thinking Clay might ring. And then once her parents had arrived on Friday morning just an hour before their eldest daughter had returned home with their latest grandchild, and she had come to her own house, she had been even more jittery. But he hadn’t rung. She knew now he wasn’t going to. She was old history as far as Clay was concerned.

  ‘Is that Miss Brett speaking?’

  The female voice was American and Robyn frowned in surprise before she answered yes, ‘Yes, it is. Can I help you?’

  ‘I really don’t know, Miss Brett, but I had to call. This is Margo Bower, Clay’s aunt. I don’t know if he has mentioned me at all?’

  For a moment Robyn could only stare at the receiver, utterly dumbfounded, and then she managed to collect herself and say carefully, ‘Yes, Mrs Bower, he has.’

  ‘Oh, good; at least you were aware of my existence, then.’ There was a split second pause and then Clay’s aunt continued, ‘You are probably wondering why on earth I’ve rung you and I would be the first to admit it’s most presumptuous, but I wondered if I could call round and see you for a few moments, Miss Brett.’