The Wife He Couldn't Forget

by Yvonne Lindsay

  So, he hasn’t wasted time, Olivia thought as she acknowledged the lawyer’s request. “No, I still have the originals.”

  “All you need to do is sign them, put them in the enclosed envelope and post them today. Or I could arrange a courier to collect them from you if you’d prefer. It seems Mr. Jackson is in somewhat of a hurry.”

  Olivia closed her eyes against the burn of tears. Her voice shook as she spoke. “I see. I’ll get the papers back to you. There’s no need to organize a courier.”

  There was a brief silence on the other end before she heard her lawyer clear his throat. “Thank you,” he said. “And, Mrs. Jackson? I’m so very sorry things didn’t work out for you.”

  “I am, too, Mr. Clement.”

  She hung up without saying goodbye, and the phone fell from her hands to the floor. She wrapped her arms around her waist and bent over as uncontrollable sobs racked her body. It was over and it was all her fault. If only she’d been up front with Xander from the beginning, he might have been receptive to starting again. But now, with the stupid decisions she’d made, with her inability to face the pain of the past, she’d ensured they had no future together at all.

  Eventually she dragged herself back up the stairs and into her en suite. She pulled open the drawer where she’d stowed the papers and reached inside, her hand hesitating as it hovered over the sanitary products stored there. Something wasn’t right. She reached into the drawer and grabbed the little pocket-size diary she kept a record of her cycle in and counted back the days. She was two days late. Nothing really to worry about. Unless you factored in the minor detail that her periods always came every twenty-eight days without fail.

  Her hand trembled as she shoved the diary back in the drawer and slammed it shut—leaving the folded envelope exactly where she’d put it, forgotten now in light of what she was dealing with. She’d been under a lot of stress, hadn’t been eating or sleeping properly. No wonder she was out of kilter, she tried to tell herself. But all the while she knew her excuses were a waste of time. She knew the signs as well as she knew her face in the mirror each morning. The lack of appetite, the need to nap at odd times of the day, not to mention her reaction to the coffee she’d made this morning. And then there was the metallic tang that had been in her mouth the past couple of days. A tang she remembered vividly from when she’d become pregnant with Parker. She’d been ignoring each and every sign. Choosing oblivion over reality—which was what had led her to this situation in the first place.

  Pregnant. With Xander’s child. What the hell was she going to do now?

  * * *

  Three days later Olivia had her confirmation. The nurse at her doctor’s surgery had been filled with quiet excitement on her behalf. An excitement that Olivia was hard-pressed to feel. She had to tell Xander straightaway. This wasn’t something she could, or would, withhold from him.

  The minute she got home she called his cell phone. It rang only a couple of times before switching to his answering service. Olivia disconnected the call. He must have diverted her call the moment he’d seen her number on the caller display. The knowledge that he wasn’t even willing to speak to her on the phone was a blow she hadn’t expected. Not prepared to give up at the first hurdle, she dialed again. This time it went immediately to the service and she left him a message.

  “Xander, I need to see you. It’s urgent. Meet me tomorrow, please.” She named a café in Devonport, a short ferry ride for him across the harbor, and stated what time she’d be there.

  Now all she could do was wait.

  Sixteen

  Xander arrived before the time Olivia had indicated, but she had still gotten there ahead of him. She saw him the minute he came through the door, and he watched as her cheeks suffused with color and her eyes grew bright.

  “I got your message,” he said unnecessarily as he sat down opposite her at the table. “What do you want?”

  “I’m glad you came. I didn’t want to tell you this in a message.”

  “For two months you’ve held things back from me and now you want to tell me something? What is it?” he asked, not making any effort to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  He wasn’t prepared for what came next.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He stared at her in shock. Pregnant? Silence grew between them. A waitress came over to take their order, and he waved her away. Finally he found his tongue.

  “What do you mean, pregnant?”

  “What it usually means.” Olivia gave him a smile, no more than a twist of her lips really and certainly not the fulsome smile he was used to seeing on her face. It made him look at her more sharply and note the dark bruises of sleeplessness beneath her eyes and the pale cast of her skin. Concern for her swelled inside him, but he ruthlessly quashed it. It shouldn’t matter to him if she slept or ate or looked after herself. Unless what she’d just told him was true.

  “We’re having a baby,” she affirmed.

  Every cell in his body rejected the words. A baby. No. Not again. Never again. They’d used protection. Even in his amnesiac state he’d followed the protocol he’d instigated after Parker’s birth.

  “But how—?”

  “The condoms we used were expired,” she said by way of explanation, her eyes not leaving his face for a second.

  “Did you know that before we used them?”

  “No! Of course I didn’t. I’d forgotten all about them, to be honest. You must have bought them well before...” Her voice trailed off.

  Before Parker died. And, yes, their purchase had been made well before then. There had been little intimacy between him and Olivia during Parker’s last year. Their son had been plagued with virtually every cold and flu known to man after he began preschool and was exposed to germs from the other children. Olivia had said his immune system would strengthen eventually. However, it had meant she’d spent more nights curled up in bed with Parker, trying to soothe him back to sleep, than she had with Xander. Their lovemaking had become sporadic at best as she’d poured all her care into nursing Parker to health.

  Now she was pregnant again. An icy shaft of trepidation sliced through him. What on earth did she expect from him? Was she trying to manipulate him again? She said she hadn’t known the condoms were expired, but could he believe her? Maybe she’d planned to become pregnant all along, making the decision without him just like she had the first time. Binding him to her through an innocent baby when everything else she’d tried had failed, perhaps?

  “You’re telling me you didn’t do this deliberately?”

  “Of course I am. I swear I’m telling you the truth,” she said, her voice raising slightly and making heads turn toward them. She continued, “If you’ll remember, you were the one to initiate things the first time we—”

  “I remember,” he said, cutting across the words she’d been about to say.

  Words that all too easily painted vivid memories in his mind of every single exquisite moment they’d spent together. The sounds she’d made when they made love. The scent of her body. The feel of her as she climaxed around him and as he spent himself inside her. The intense sense of belonging as they came back down to earth and fell asleep in each other’s arms. He didn’t want to remember. He couldn’t risk allowing himself to feel.

  “Is this why you haven’t signed the papers yet?” he demanded.

  “No! To be honest with you, I forgot all about them.”

  “Honest? That’s a novelty for you these days, isn’t it?” At Olivia’s shocked expression he huffed out a sigh. “I’m sorry—that was uncalled for.”

  His mind scattered in a hundred different directions, but everything that passed through his thoughts settled back on one thing. Olivia was pregnant, and, if she was to be believed, they were equally responsible for this situation. The knowledge was a bitter pill t
o swallow. Either way he looked at it, another child of his would be on this earth, which meant he had responsibilities to that child. Responsibilities he had promised himself he’d never bear again.

  Xander abruptly pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “Thank you for the information,” he said and turned to go.

  He was forced to halt in his steps when he felt Olivia’s hand catch him on the arm.

  “Xander, stay—please. We have to talk about this.” Her voice rose again, attracting the same attention as before.

  “Don’t make a scene, Olivia. You asked me to come here and I did. You’ve given me your news and now I’m going. In the meantime, perhaps you could complete your part of the dissolution document and return it to your lawyer as requested?”

  He stared at her hand until she let go. The second she did so he started for the door. But the short walk to the ferry building or the ride across the harbor back to the office passed in a blur. All he could remember were Olivia’s words. I’m pregnant. They echoed in his mind, over and over again.

  He couldn’t do this again—didn’t want to ever face being a father again—but circumstance now forced it on him. There were choices to make. Tough ones. Xander reached for the phone and hit the speed dial for his lawyer’s office.

  * * *

  Olivia was working in her studio when she heard a van pull up outside her house. She walked over to the driveway to see who it was and was surprised to see a courier there. She wasn’t expecting anything. The courier handed her an envelope, got her to sign for it and went on his way. Olivia felt dread pull at her with ghostly fingers as she identified the source of the envelope. Xander’s lawyer.

  Slowly she walked to the patio at the back of the house and sat down at the table. She stared at the envelope, wondering what lay inside. She couldn’t bring herself to open the packet; she didn’t want to see in black-and-white whatever demand or dictate Xander had dreamed up in response to the news he was going to be a father again. She was still having a hard enough time coming to terms with the way he’d behaved when she’d told him the news yesterday. She didn’t know what she’d expected him to do or say, exactly, but it hadn’t been to simply get up and walk away from her—again.

  A blackbird flew down onto the lawn and cocked its head, staring at her with one eye before pecking at the ground, pulling out a worm and flying away. She felt very like that worm must feel right now, she realized. At the mercy of something bigger, stronger and darker than she was. Helpless. It wasn’t a feeling she was comfortable with, and it reminded her of all the things in her life she’d never been able to control. Control had become everything to her. It kept her world turning on its axis when everything else fell apart.

  She picked up the envelope and turned it over and over in her hands. Had she really thought for a minute that Xander would be pleased with the news that she was expecting another baby? Maybe, in a sudden rash of idealistic foolishness, she had. The news had obviously shocked him—it had shocked her, too. She hadn’t anticipated his utter indifference. So where did that leave them?

  The obvious answer lay right there, in her hands, but still she couldn’t bring herself to tear the envelope open. Instead, she placed it squarely on the table and went inside and brewed a pot of chamomile tea—taking her time over each step. Only after she’d carried her tea tray back outside to the table, poured her first cup and taken a sip did she pick up the envelope again.

  She placed one hand on her belly. “Okay, little one, let’s see what your daddy has to say.”

  With a swift tear it was open, and she pulled the contents out. She scanned the letter quickly, then read it more slowly on a second pass-through. Olivia went numb from head to foot. Xander’s feelings couldn’t have been spelled out more clearly. While he was prepared to offer generous financial support toward the child, he wanted no contact with the baby or with her whatsoever. There was a contract enclosed, setting out his terms and the sums he was prepared to pay, but she didn’t even look at it.

  Slow burning anger lit inside her. How dare he dismiss their baby like that? It was one thing to be angry with her—to not want anything to do with her—but to reject their child? It was so clinical and callous.

  Olivia tossed the letter onto the table and propelled herself to her feet. She paced the patio a few times and came to a halt outside her studio. Through the open door she could see the canvas she was working on—a commission she’d earned as a result of her exhibition. Painting had always been her refuge in the past—through sorrow, through loss—but she knew that she needed to work this anger out of her system before she picked up a brush again.

  With a growl of frustration she closed and locked the studio doors before she took the tea tray and Xander’s wretched communication inside. Then, after grabbing her keys and sliding her feet into an old pair of sneakers, she went out the front door and down to the beach. She powered along the sand, oblivious to the sparkle of light on the rise and fall of the sea and the growing heat of the sun as it approached its zenith in the sky.

  By the time she’d made it to the end of the beach and turned back again, she had worked the worst of her anger and, yes, her indignation, off. Olivia sat down on a park bench in the shade and waited for her breathing and heart rate to return to normal.

  What had driven Xander to such a decision? she asked herself as she tried to rationalize his stance. This cold distance he insisted on maintaining was not something she recognized from the man she loved. She knew he could be distant and independent. He could also be stubborn and insanely detailed at times. But he wasn’t the kind of man who could reject a child. Even as angry as he was about her pregnancy with Parker, he’d loved their son with an intensity that had often taken her breath away. Surely he couldn’t not love another child of his?

  She watched a lone gull as it circled on the thermals in the air before changing its direction and swooping down to the water. Was it that he wanted to be free like that gull there? Answerable only to himself? Had her lies and losing Parker the way they had made him incapable of loving ever again?

  The answer that repeated in her mind was an emphatic no. In the weeks before he’d regained his memory she knew to the depths of her soul that he’d loved her. But if he was capable of love, why then would he withhold it from this baby?

  Fear.

  The word—so small, so simple and yet so powerful—came to her with blinding insight. He was afraid to love again—certainly afraid to love their baby but maybe even afraid to love her, too. After all, wasn’t love based on trust? And hadn’t she destroyed his trust in her not once but several times over?

  Had she given him her shoulder to lean on in the wretched dark days after Parker died? No, she’d been filled with recriminations and pain and projecting her own guilt onto him. Had she tried to stop him leaving that first time? No, she’d been too numbed by grief to do anything.

  She knew a little of his family’s circumstances, even though Xander had never discussed it much and Olivia had never been close with her mother-in-law. Knew how his father had so grieved the loss of his firstborn son that he’d completely withdrawn from the family he’d had left. Understood that Xander’s mother had worked hard every day she could to support her surviving son and her husband. His mum may not have shown her love with hugs and kisses, but she’d done the best she could to ensure their family was secure.

  Was it any wonder then that Xander hadn’t known how to express his grief? Why had she never thought about that before? He’d grown up with two complete extremes of how to cope with loss. Had anyone ever asked him how he’d felt about losing his brother, let alone his son?

  She knew she certainly hadn’t.

  Where to now? How was she going to break through the armor Xander now protected himself and his emotions within? She’d already lost his trust, so was it even possible for him to forgive her and allow her back in
to his heart?

  There were no secrets left between them now. She could only try. They’d made a child together out of love; that had to count for something. She owed it to Xander, to their baby and to herself to fight for what was right—to fight for their love and the chance to start again.

  * * *

  It was late when Xander listened to the latest message from Olivia. He’d been putting it off most of the day. Once he was home, he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer. She’d been blunt and to the point. She’d acknowledged receipt of the offer through his lawyer, but she wanted to discuss it with him face-to-face first. She said that if he agreed to meet with her again, she wouldn’t delay any further. Everything he wanted signed would be signed and returned at that meeting.

  He knew he should call her back. Instead he dropped his phone on the coffee table in front of him and stretched out on the wide sofa that faced the view over the harbor. Lights sparkled in the inky darkness, like the stars of a distant galaxy. Distant, now there was a word. It described exactly how he felt when it came to just about everything in his life. Distant was safe; distant didn’t flay a man’s heart into a thousand shreds, nor did it betray a man.

  He’d thought that distance was what he needed, what he wanted, and he’d tried to throw himself back into his work to gain emotional distance the way he always had when faced with personal upheaval. But in unguarded moments thoughts of Olivia kept creeping in. Her image when she came to the hospital, and he saw the love and concern so stark and clear on her face. Her determination to see him through the physical therapy he needed to do each day to regain muscle tone and strength after his coma. The sweet, soft sigh she made as he entered her body, as if, in that moment, everything in their world was perfect. And it had been.

  And then there were the memories that went further back, to when Parker was alive, to the cute little family they’d been and how happy they were together. A visceral pain scored deep inside and reminded him anew that he’d never see Parker grow up. Pain laced with guilt that he’d been the one to leave their front gate open and that he’d been the one to throw the ball Bozo had chased out onto the road. Only two small things, each taken on their own, but put together they’d led to a tragedy of inestimable proportions.