A Natural Father

by Sarah Mayberry

  Dom moved closer and took both her hands in his.

  “You like me,” he said. “That’s what you’re trying to tell me. We can both feel this thing that’s between us.”

  She looked into his beautiful eyes. At any other time, she would be ready to throw caution to the wind to be with a man who moved her as easily, as readily as he did. But he was an impossible dream.

  “I can’t afford to like you, Dom,” she said quietly.

  He frowned. Then, abruptly, his expression cleared.

  “You don’t think I’m serious.”

  She closed her eyes. At last, they were on the same page. “Yes.”

  “I’m not a kid, Lucy. I’m thirty-one years old. I know what I want.”

  “You hardly know me.”

  “I know enough.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not for the kind of journey I’m about to go on.”

  “But isn’t that what this is about?” he said, gesturing back and forth between the two of them. “Getting to know and understand each other, exploring the attraction?”

  She shook her head slowly. She thought back to the terrifying sense of loneliness she’d experienced when she’d realized that Marcus wanted nothing to do with his daughter.

  “I can’t afford to explore. I’m about to become a single mother. I don’t have time for dead ends and experiments.”

  “This is because of Marcus. Because he didn’t show up.”

  She wasn’t sure how he knew about that—Rosie?—but it didn’t matter. He took a step closer and lifted a hand to her face. She closed her eyes for a long moment as his fingers slid into her hair and his thumb caressed her cheekbone.

  God, it felt good when he touched her. Made her feel like a teenager again, as though everything was hot and new and untried.

  “This is real,” he said. “This isn’t a game, or me killing time or you indulging in a flirtation. This is real, Lucy.”

  He lowered his head toward her. Her gaze fixed on his lips. She wanted his kiss so much—too much.

  “You don’t know that,” she whispered, as much to herself as to him. “You can’t know how real this is, how long it will last. A week, two weeks, a month.”

  He shook his head, denying her words.

  “You. Don’t. Know,” she said again.

  He hesitated, his mouth so close she could feel the heat of him.

  Very deliberately, she turned her head to disengage from his hand and took a step backward.

  “I’m incredibly flattered,” she said, “but this isn’t going to happen.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment, then he nodded.

  “Okay. I told you the other night that I wouldn’t put any pressure on you, and I won’t. You know how I feel, the ball’s in your court.”

  She eyed him uneasily. “There is no ball,” she said. “No court, for that matter, either.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Lucy. And my feelings aren’t going to change. What you do with that information is up to you.”

  She frowned.

  “And in the meantime, it’s strictly business. Okay?” he added.

  He held his hand out to seal the deal. She stared at it for a long moment before taking it.

  “Nothing’s going to change,” she warned him.

  “I know.”

  She looked away from the certainty in his eyes.

  The important thing was that she’d done it. Cleared the air, created some boundaries.

  There would be no more kissing, no more hot looks. From now on, they were about nothing but business.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TWO WEEKS LATER, Lucy sat in the van and watched as Dom exited the rear of The Lobster Cove restaurant, their last delivery for the day. His jeans rode low on his hips, and his face was dark with the beginnings of five-o’clock shadow. His hair was pushed back from his forehead, and he looked big and strong and beautiful as he strode toward her. She didn’t realize she was staring until he caught her gaze and held it.

  She broke the contact well before he reached the van.

  Today had been her first day back at work since the doctor had given her the all-clear to resume duties. To say it had been awkward driving around with Dom beside her all day was an exercise in gross understatement.

  Things had been weird between them since her clear-the-air conversation. Nothing she could put a finger on, but they were both being too polite, too careful with what they said and where they put their bodies, as though any false word or move might upset the status quo.

  It was exhausting, and she wished she knew how to fix things but she didn’t. She’d been protecting herself and her baby, but she’d made things weird between her and Dom.

  “Okay, that’s us for the day,” Dom said as he slid into the passenger seat. They’d had a very civilized, bloodless battle this morning about who would drive. She’d won, and she planned to continue to win until she couldn’t squeeze behind the wheel and reach the brake pedal at the same time. He was already doing so much; she needed to know she was pulling at least some of her weight.

  “What did John say when you explained about the tomatoes?” she asked.

  “He was fine. More than happy to take the romas over the beefsteaks.”

  “Good,” she said.

  She started the van and pulled out into traffic. As it had all day, the silence stretched between them. She racked her brain for something—anything—to say but all she could think about were the long legs in her peripheral vision. She wished like hell she was less aware of him, but she wasn’t.

  She punched the radio on out of desperation. An old Guns ’n’ Roses song was playing and she tapped her hand on the steering wheel in time to the beat, doing her best impersonation of a woman at ease.

  She pulled up at the lights and caught Dom eyeing her curiously.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just never pegged you as a Guns ’n’ Roses fan,” he said.

  “Well, maybe you don’t know me very well.”

  “Hmmm.”

  She gave him a challenging look.

  “What kind of music are you into?” she asked.

  “A bit of everything. Coldplay, Nina Simone, Fat Freddy’s Drop—”

  “Fat Freddy’s who?”

  “They’re a New Zealand band. Kind of a new take on reggae. Very cool,” he said.

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  He shrugged.

  “I’ll bring them along tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “You should bring something, too,” he said. “It’ll be like a cultural exchange.”

  “My heavy metal for your reggae?” she said as she stopped at a light.

  “Why not?”

  She smiled and glanced at him and caught him looking at her. Their gazes locked for a heartbeat too long before both of them looked away. Successfully killing the only decent conversation they’d had all day.

  It has to get better. We’re both mature adults. Once this stupid physical awareness fades, it will all be good.

  Still, she was exhausted by the time she parked the van in front of Rosie and Andrew’s place later that evening.

  She let herself in and decided she couldn’t face cooking. She wondered if Andrew and Rosie were up for pizza and wandered through to the house to find out. She tracked her sister down in her study and found her frowning over a chunky legal text.

  “Hey. Feel like pizza for dinner and listening to me moan about Dom?” she asked, propping her hip against the door frame.

  Rosie looked up from her book, her reading glasses balanced on the end of her nose. She looked deeply troubled, maybe on the verge of tears.

  “Rosie! What’s wrong?”

  She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d seen her sister cry. Lucy was the sook, not Rosie.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Lucy shut the door and hooked the leg of the guest chair with her foot
and pulled it toward herself. Then she sat and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Rosie took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She sighed and let her hands drop heavily onto her thighs.

  “Andrew and I have been trying to get pregnant for the past few weeks, but I got my period this morning and we were both disappointed. No biggie, really. It’s just the first month. Stupid to think it might happen so quickly. It’ll happen soon, I’m sure.”

  “Oh my God! That’s fantastic,” Lucy said. “If you get pregnant soon, our kids can grow up together.”

  “Yep. It’s all good.” Rosie smiled with her mouth but not her eyes.

  Lucy frowned. Her sister had always been a hopeless liar.

  “Okay. What’s really going on?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Like I said, it’s just a bit disappointing.”

  Lucy simply stared her sister down. After a few seconds, Rosie sighed and rubbed her eyes again.

  “You know Andrew has always wanted to have kids. He’s been talking about it ever since we got together. It’s not like this is out of the blue.”

  “But?”

  Rosie’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m scared.”

  Lucy shifted her chair closer to her sister’s.

  “Having a baby is scary. But it can’t be that hard, right? There are billions of people in the world. I figure if other women do it every day, I can probably pull it off.”

  Rosie stared at her, her face pale with misery.

  “I don’t mean I’m scared of childbirth. Although I’m not exactly thrilled about it. I’m scared about everything.”

  “Everything. Could you narrow that down for me?”

  Rosie held up a hand and started counting things off on her fingers.

  “Okay, first, what if I can’t get pregnant? All these years I’ve been sitting around thinking it’s my choice, but it might not be. Maybe my body isn’t even capable of getting pregnant. Then there’s actually being pregnant, having something growing inside you. Is it just me, or is that supremely weird? I know there are all these pictures of glowing women with their big bellies and you make it look so easy, but I’ve seen Alien and that’s all I can think about when I think about having a baby growing inside me. Which is not natural, right?

  “Then there’s childbirth itself. You probably don’t need me to explain that one. Watermelon, garden hose—we’ve all heard the jokes. Then there’s afterward. The no sleep and the learning to breast-feed and the being tired all the time. You know how cranky I get without my eight hours. And what if there’s something wrong with the baby? What if it needs special help or treatment? What if it gets sick? What if we have a child that will never really grow up and will always need us our entire lives?”

  Lucy blinked and opened her mouth to respond, but her sister was just getting started.

  “Then there’s my body. I know I’m no supermodel, but I like my boobs and I know once I’ve breast-fed they’re going to be hanging down around my knees. It’s horribly vain, I know, but I don’t want to lose my one good feature. And what if I put on weight during the pregnancy and can’t take it off again? I don’t ever want to be big again, Lucy. I’ve had my fat years and I won’t go there again.

  “And sex. It’s supposed to be different afterward, right? Again, watermelon, garden hose. How can it not be different after that kind of wear and tear? What if it’s not good anymore? What if I’m so tired from all the breast-feeding and sterilizing bottles and pureeing fruit that I never want to have sex again, anyway? Then Andrew will get resentful and frustrated and we’ll turn into one of those horrible married couples who are always sniping at each other. I’ll be angry with him because he’s always at work, and he’ll dread coming home because I’ve been stuck with the baby all day and the moment he walks in the door I’ll start nagging him. Pretty soon we’ll forget why we ever liked each other in the first place and the only reason we’ll still talk to each other at all is because of the fact that our genes are joined together in another human being.”

  Lucy waited to make sure her sister was really finished this time. When Rosie just stared at her expectantly, she figured she had the floor.

  “You’ve thought about this a lot,” she said.

  “Yes. All the time.” Again Rosie’s eyes brimmed with tears.

  “Everyone worries about all that stuff, Rosie. I worry about it all the time. Having children is a huge leap of faith,” Lucy said. “It’s like falling in love. You just have to plunge in and hope for the best.”

  “But what if the best doesn’t happen?”

  “Then you deal with it. Like you’ve dealt with every other challenge that has come your way.”

  Rosie stared at her hands where they were twisted around each other in her lap. Her lips were pressed together so firmly they’d turned white, and Lucy realized there was something else, something her sister couldn’t bring herself to say.

  “Rosie,” she said. “Talk to me.”

  Tears finally spilled down Rosie’s cheeks as she began to talk, the words coming with more difficulty now.

  “I had this client a few years ago. She was successful, midthirties, owned her own business. She was a great person, smart, funny, sharp. She got pregnant unexpectedly. Anyway, she had the baby. And it was a disaster. She couldn’t bond with it. She had no maternal feelings or instincts at all, Luce. She just felt…nothing. None of that amazing love women talk about. Nothing. She struggled for two years before she realized that the baby would be better off with someone else. So she gave him up for adoption.”

  Rosie’s face was twisted with fear as she stared at Lucy.

  “What if that happens for me? What if I have a baby and it turns out I’m a bad mom?”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say. She groped for the right words.

  “That woman is the exception, not the rule. That’s not going to happen for you.”

  Rosie shook her head, wiping tears from her cheeks with shaking hands.

  “You don’t understand because you’ve always wanted kids. Until I met Andrew, I didn’t think I’d ever have a husband, let alone a family. It never entered my head. Even when we were kids I never played mamas and bambinos. Remember?”

  Lucy dredged up a memory. “You always wanted to play shopkeeper,” she said slowly.

  Rosie nodded. “That’s right.” She paused and took a deep breath before looking Lucy in the eye. “I’ve been thinking about this so much lately. Maybe I’m like my client, Luce. Maybe I’m not meant to be a mom.”

  Every instinct Lucy had wanted to reject her sister’s words because they struck so close to the heart of things she’d always held dear—family, children, the need to nurture and create. To her, they were the stuff life was made of, as essential as breathing. But Rosie had been brave enough to bare her soul and clearly she was deeply concerned about this issue. Lucy owed it to her to consider her words as objectively as she could.

  It was possible, of course, that her sister was right, that she was missing the maternal instinct—if such a thing even existed.

  “Not every woman in the world has to have children,” she said after a short, tense silence. In the back of her mind there was a queue of ifs, buts and maybes lining up, ready to insert themselves into the argument. She’d always imagined her and Rosie’s children growing up together, a true extended family. But that was her dream, not Rosie’s, and she refused to force her own values on her sister when she was already so distressed over the choices before her.

  “Andrew wants children,” Rosie said flatly.

  “I know. Have you guys spoken about this?”

  Rosie shook her head.

  “It’s kind of important stuff, don’t you think?” Lucy said gently. “Something only the two of you can work through, at the end of the day.”

  Rosie squared her shoulders. “I always knew he wanted children. I married him knowing that.”

  “But if you don’t feel the same way—”

  “I’ll get over it,�
� Rosie said.

  Lucy stared at her sister. Rosie had just cried and wrung her hands and literally trembled with fear and doubt over the huge life change that potentially lay ahead of her. Lifting the rug and sweeping all that emotion neatly out of sight hardly felt like an option.

  “Rosie. Talk to Andrew.”

  “I can’t. I’ve stalled and held him off for too long. I love him. I want him to have the family he’s always wanted.”

  “What about you? What if it’s not what you want?”

  Rosie bit her lip, then her chin came out in a gesture Lucy knew only too well.

  “I’ll be okay. It’s like you say, everyone worries about this stuff. Once I’m pregnant, it will all fall into place.”

  Rosie turned back to her book then, picking it up in a clear signal that their conversation was over. Lucy remained where she was, deeply troubled by her sister’s confession.

  She worried about being a good mom. She worried about the future. But not to the degree her sister obviously did. The set of Rosie’s jaw, the squaring of her shoulders—she was like a novice skydiver, bracing herself for her first jump even though she’d much prefer to be safely on solid ground.

  “Thanks for listening, Luce. I appreciate it,” Rosie said.

  There was a firm, no-nonsense note to her sister’s voice. The time for heart-to-hearts was definitely over.

  Lucy stood. “Please come and talk to me if you need to. I hate the idea of all that stuff just percolating inside you all the time.”

  “I will. I promise,” Rosie said with a quick smile.

  Lucy let herself out of the study and returned to her own flat.

  Rosie and Andrew’s marriage had always seemed rock solid, an absolute certainty in a world full of uncertainty. Now, for the first time, Lucy could imagine a future where that wasn’t necessarily true. If they weren’t talking to each other about such a big issue…

  She considered what would happen if they did talk. Andrew wanted children. Rosie, it seemed, did not. At the very least she had some serious doubts. Many a marriage had foundered on smaller differences, Lucy knew.