The Walk of Fame

by Heidi Rice

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He took her shoulders, massaged the chilled skin. ‘You’re not to blame for this. I am.’

  He’d always known he couldn’t risk fathering a child. He stared at the backs of his hands, so large and rough against her delicate frame. His father’s hands.

  She stiffened, making the tremor in her shoulders more pronounced. ‘You’re right, a pregnancy would be a disaster,’ she said. ‘But I’d rather not talk about it now.’

  Why did she sound so formal, so polite?

  ‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice even as he kissed the top of her head. ‘A good night’s sleep is what we both need. And we’ll sort this mess out in the morning.’ If he could just hold her, he could make it right.

  She turned, shrugging off his hands. ‘I’m really tired. I think I’ll sleep in the guest suite.’

  And with that she was gone.

  He took a step forward, determined to get her to come back, then stopped himself.

  Where the hell did he think he was going?

  He had to get a grip, to ease off, to give her some space. To give them both some space.

  They’d been living in each other’s pockets for close to two weeks and somehow he’d let the company, the sense of companionship get to him. Which was exactly why he’d lost leave of his senses in the shower. If this was going to work, he’d have to learn to start backing off. And that meant not giving in to every damn stupid urge where she was concerned.

  One night without her beside him wouldn’t do any harm. In fact it would probably do them both a great deal of good.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  MAC had revised his opinion a fair bit by eight the next morning, having spent a sleepless night tossing and turning in his empty bed.

  Something about the way they’d parted had niggled constantly at the back of his mind. He’d been thoughtless and overbearing and she’d had every right to call him on it. But why hadn’t she been more angry, more upset with him? She’d been so calm, so controlled, and the more he thought about it, the more it unnerved him.

  He had the definite feeling he’d missed something vitally important.

  Juno sat at the table, finishing a bowl of muesli as he walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said, sounding heartier than he felt. ‘You sleep well?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, so politely it made him wince. She didn’t look up.

  Undeterred, he placed his hand on her shoulder, pressed a kiss to her cheek.

  And she shifted away.

  Damn it, what was this now? Was she mad with him after all?

  He braced himself for the tirade he’d expected the night before, but she kept her head bent over the bowl and carried on scooping up the cereal in careful, precise spoonfuls.

  Was she waiting for him to say something first? He sighed. Best to get it over with.

  He grabbed the box of cereal, poured himself a generous helping while trying to figure out what to say without making an ass of himself.

  ‘I’ll apologise again for treating you the way I did last night. We both got carried away and then I overreacted and went off on one. I’m sorry.’

  Her spoon stayed in the bowl. But she still didn’t look at him. The niggling got worse.

  ‘There was no need for you to sleep alone,’ he pointed out, rather reasonably, he thought.

  Her hand lay on the table. He reached over, covered it with his. ‘How about we forget it ever happened? A pregnancy’s a long shot with you so close to the end of your cycle. And if there is one, well, then we’ll deal with it.’

  He’d examined the possibility from every angle during the night—as he’d had more than enough time to think about it—and had decided to leave it up to fate. With his past, his heritage, he would never have planned to become a father, but he hadn’t been able to get the memory of Connor cradling his baby son out of his head.

  In the end he’d come to the conclusion that if by some miracle he’d got Juno pregnant last night, the thought of a little boy or girl with her eyes, her sweet, practical temperament and his tenacity didn’t seem like such a terrifying prospect.

  She pulled her hand out from under his and it disappeared beneath the table. He felt the tug of annoyance. Surely he’d eaten enough humble pie? He couldn’t keep apologising for ever.

  ‘How about we go sailing today?’ he said lightly. ‘I’ve a yacht up at the marina and it’s a beautiful day for it.’ Just the thought of her in that skimpy yellow swimsuit lying on the polished teak of the bow had his mood improving.

  Her chin jerked up and she met his eyes at last. ‘I need to leave in an hour. I’m booked on the two o’clock flight from LAX. I’ve checked out the bus times and I—’

  ‘Whoah.’ He leapt up, the chair crashing onto the floor as her words registered. ‘You’re… What?’

  She stood, picked up her bowl. ‘I should get back to work,’ she said quickly, efficiently as she walked to the sink. ‘The weekends are our busiest time. I arranged the flight when I woke up so I could be back on Friday morning.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to un-arrange it,’ he said, sure his head was about to explode.

  He’d let her go last night. Let her have the time she needed. But he wasn’t having this. She wasn’t leaving. He wouldn’t let her.

  ‘I know it’s a few days sooner than we’d planned, but it—’

  He crossed to the sink, pulled her round to face him. ‘If this is about last night, I’m not apologising again.’

  He was beginning to wonder why he’d apologised at all. It seemed she wasn’t at all cut up about what had happened. Why did that worry him more?

  Her chin came up in a gesture of defiance. ‘This has nothing to do with last night. We always agreed this would be temporary. I’m leaving a little sooner than planned, that’s all.’

  ‘I know we said that, but …’ He trailed off. But what?

  She stood in front of him, rigid and unmoved, and yet he could feel his insides roiling like a ship at sea. They had said it would be temporary. But somewhere along the line he’d begun to believe it was more. He’d thought she felt something for him. But what if he’d been wrong? What if she felt nothing for him at all?

  And as she stood there, unblinking, her chin poking out and her back ramrod straight, he knew with a startling clarity what it was that hadn’t been right last night.

  He’d told her a pregnancy would be a disaster—and with barely a hesitation she’d agreed with him. The realisation felt like an arrow shot straight through his heart.

  He pulled his hand away as if he’d touched a live flame.

  What a fool he’d been. Somewhere in the last ten days, he’d come to believe she thought well of him, that she thought more of him than he’d ever thought of himself. But she didn’t.

  He stiffened, the pain an echo of the crushing feeling of rejection that had dogged him throughout his childhood. A bitter reminder of all those people who had taken him in, but had never wanted to keep him.

  ‘If that’s the way of it, I guess I can’t stop you,’ he said as placidly as possible. ‘I’ll have my PA arrange transport for you to LAX. There’s no need for you to be taking the bus.’ He put just the right note of indifference into his tone.

  He was an actor. He could do this. He had his pride. And that was all that he had now.

  She said nothing, her eyes downcast.

  ‘It’s been fun, Juno.’ And that was all it was ever meant to be. When had he lost sight of that? ‘Have a wonderful life.’

  He threw her own words back at her as he made himself walk away.

  For if there was one lesson he’d learned as a lad, it was simply this.

  Never let them know you care.

  ‘Are you all right, honey? You don’t look too good.’ The check-in woman’s pristine make-up hid a homely face full of concern.

  ‘I’m fine, really.’ Juno managed a weak smile as she took the boarding pass in trembling hands.
If she could just get on the plane before she broke down, she knew she’d be able to survive this. ‘But thank you for asking.’

  She boarded in a daze, desperate not to think about anything. But the horror of her final moments with Mac kept replaying in her head.

  There’s no such thing as love.

  That was what he’d told Gina. And he’d meant every word. He’d never needed her. That had all been some infantile fantasy that she’d created to justify needing him.

  He’d warned her not to make him into something he wasn’t and yet she’d insisted on doing just that. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have fallen in love with a man who could never have loved her back?

  She’d wanted to tell him how she felt. Had even harboured some foolish, last-ditch fantasy during the long restless night that if she told him of her feelings he would declare his undying love in return. But optimism had never been her strong suit and his cold dismissal once she’d told him of her plans had doused the last flicker of hope.

  Her heart wasn’t just broken, it was shattered, humiliated. Telling him she loved him this morning—and hearing what he’d told Gina—would only have humiliated her more and made it that much harder to pick up the pieces and move on.

  The tears trickled down her face as she stared out of the tiny window at the vast geometric sprawl of Los Angeles. As the plane dipped into a turn she caught a glimpse of the jagged coastline and the plateau of the Pacific beyond. She imagined Mac in his magnificent glass and steel house by the sea—no doubt ready to move on to his next conquest. She wanted to be angry with him. To shout and scream and rail against the pain.

  But as the jumbo’s engines surged, lifting it above the clouds, the anger she wanted to feel refused to come. All she felt was devastation, and a crippling sense of loss.

  He’d told her she would get hurt. Why hadn’t she listened?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘DAISY’S absolutely right, you look dreadful.’ Dr Maya Patel’s capable voice did nothing to sooth Juno’s misery, or the feeling that she’d failed herself and everyone around her. ‘Why don’t you tell me the symptoms and I’m sure we’ll be able to cure whatever ails you?’

  Only if you have a cure for self-pity.

  It had been four weeks since she’d come home. Four weeks since her ‘fabulous adventure’ had turned into a complete disaster. A complete disaster that she knew was entirely of her own making.

  So why couldn’t she snap out of her self-pity?

  She’d thrown herself into her work at the shop, making sure she had no time to dwell on the situation. She’d handled the inexplicable burst of tears when she’d had her period on her first day back. She’d deflected the flood of calls from tabloid reporters trying to persuade her to sell her story until they’d dwindled to a mere trickle. And she’d weathered the storm of emotions when a poster from the movie she and Mac had seen together had been pasted up on the huge billboard at the end of Portobello Market.

  But, despite all her best efforts, the impact of what had happened kept catching her unawares. She’d lost weight, she couldn’t sleep, she was still bursting into tears at the most inopportune moments and she’d even thrown up several times in the last few days.

  She’d turned into a self-indulgent misery guts and she was starting to hate herself.

  And, as of yesterday, she had Daisy on her case too. Once Daisy had arrived back from her honeymoon, she’d taken one look at Juno and immediately booked her a GP’s appointment.

  Of course Daisy had probed about what had happened with Mac, but Juno had been too humiliated to tell her the truth, insisting she just had a bit of a virus. In fact she’d been so convincing, she’d begun to wonder if maybe she did have a virus.

  She hoped so, because she couldn’t allow herself to mourn something that had never been real a moment longer. ‘I think I may have a stomach bug.’

  Maya nodded sagely. ‘You look exhausted. Have you been having trouble sleeping?’

  ‘Yes, a bit.’

  ‘Mood swings?’

  She nodded. How did Maya know that?

  ‘How about your waterworks? Do you need to go to the toilet a lot at the moment?’

  ‘Actually, yes, I suppose so.’ Was the woman clairvoyant?

  Maya propped her elbows on the desk, steepled her fingers. ‘Right, then, I think we should start by doing a pregnancy test.’

  Juno coloured, feeling the now all too familiar sting of tears. Of course, everyone knew about her two-week affair with Mac; it had been reported in most of the papers. But seeing the compassion in Maya’s eyes only made her feel more inadequate and more depressed. ‘I’m not pregnant, Maya. I can’t be. I’ve had a period since …’ She stared at her lap. ‘Since I got back. And we didn’t.’ She hesitated. ‘We were careful.’ Almost all of the time.

  ‘Let’s just say you’re humouring me, then,’ Maya said firmly.

  Juno sighed and nodded. What was one more humiliation to add to all the others?

  ‘It’s positive,’ Maya said gently, staring at the on-screen printout. ‘You’re pregnant.’

  Juno sucked in a breath, feeling as if an articulated lorry had slammed into her chest. ‘That… That’s not possible.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s very possible,’ Maya replied, swivelling her chair round, the sympathy in her gaze making Juno feel nauseous. ‘The period you thought you had was most likely just spotting. Was it very light?’

  ‘I don’t… Yes. I suppose,’ she stammered, her mind numb. She’d had twenty minutes to wait for the test to be administered and the results to come through, but she’d remained calm. This at least was one calamity that couldn’t happen.

  And now it had. Tears flooded over her lids.

  Maya rushed around the desk and pulled her into her arms as the first sob burst out. ‘Juno, love, don’t worry. We can sort this out,’ she said, abandoning the doctor-patient etiquette and stroking Juno’s hair like the friend she was.

  ‘I can’t deal with this now. I can’t,’ she whispered between the jerking sobs, tears dripping onto the hands clutched in her lap.

  How could this have happened? Was she being punished? For making the same terrible mistake twice in her life? For falling in love with a man who didn’t really exist?

  ‘I’m calling Daisy. You’re not dealing with this alone.’ Maya framed her face in warm hands. ‘What you need is a good night’s sleep. As soon as you’ve got that done we’ll take the next step and talk through all the options. Okay?’

  ‘Please don’t tell Daisy,’ she blurted out.

  How could she face her friend? How could she face Connor with this news?

  ‘That’ll be your decision,’ Maya said carefully. ‘But you’re going to need a lot of support in the next few weeks, possibly months, and Daisy’s a fantastic person to have in your corner. ‘

  Juno nodded meekly. Knowing Maya was right. However hard it was going to be to have to admit how witless and irresponsible she’d been, she needed her best friend more than ever now.

  And then another thought occurred to her. And the lorry crushed her ribcage.

  ‘Am I …?’ She paused, tried to breathe through the fear. ‘Am I going to have another miscarriage?’

  She didn’t feel miserable any more, she felt utterly destroyed.

  ‘There’s no reason you should.’ Maya walked back to her desk and sat behind it, her doctor’s hat back on. ‘Lots of women have miscarriages and then go on to have viable pregnancies. But as soon as you’re ready we can give you a thorough examination, find out how the baby’s doing and talk through the possible risks.’ A small smile curved her lips. ‘So you’ve already decided to have this baby?’

  Juno’s body began to shake. ‘I don’t know.’

  But she did know, which only made the whole situation a thousand times worse.

  Could she really risk putting everything she was—everything she hoped to be—on the line again? And could she survive what she’d been through si
x years ago, if it all went horribly, hideously wrong a second time?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘JU, THIS is madness. You’ve got to tell Mac. Not doing so is not an option.’

  Juno stared at Daisy across the breakfast bar, her mouth firming into a stubborn line. She’d been preparing herself for this argument for the last forty-eight hours, but she still didn’t feel ready to deal with it.

  As expected, Daisy had been the Rock of Gibraltar ever since she’d arrived at Maya’s surgery two days ago armed with a comforting hug and a sturdy shoulder to cry on.

  She’d whisked Juno back to her house, insisting she stay in the guest bedroom for the rest of the week. She’d pampered her and cajoled her and calmed the worst of her fears. Then, after she’d coaxed out most of the story of Juno’s disastrous adventure in La-La Land, she’d helped her to begin rebuilding her confidence and her courage.

  Daisy had convinced her that having the baby was a no-brainer if that was what she wanted to do in her heart. She’d held her hand through the exam Maya had given her. She’d fed her, bought her enough pregnancy vitamins to stock a supermarket and embarked on a series of pep talks about not retreating back into her shell and not blaming everything that went wrong in her life on herself.

  When Juno had woken up this morning with the dappled shade casting sunny shapes onto the luxury furnishings of

  Daisy and Connor’s spare room, for the first time in a month she’d felt able to cope with everything that had happened to her and much better able to face what the future might hold.

  But the one thing Juno had refused point-blank to talk about was Mac. And Daisy had respected her wishes, until she’d broached the question that Juno had been dreading a minute ago.

  She didn’t know what to say to convince Daisy to drop it.

  Daisy as usual took her silence as a challenge. ‘I hate to do this, but I’m forced to point out at this juncture that you said the exact same thing to me when I fell pregnant with Ronan. I didn’t want to tell Connor and you said I had to. And while I hate to say this even more,’ she added with a soft smile, ‘you were right.’