The Child They Didn't Expect

by Yvonne Lindsay

  Her heart swelled at the sight of him. His business shirt was open at the throat, his tie seemingly long since discarded, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up, exposing strong forearms dusted with dark blond hair. She hurried from the car. Her briefcase and the quotes she needed to work on tonight would have to wait. Right now she had another priority.

  “Good evening,” she said with a smile as she slid her hands around Ronin’s waist and lifted her face for his kiss.

  “It is now,” he murmured.

  His lips were firm against hers, and Ali let herself revel in his caress, every fiber in her body firing to instant life at his touch. As much as they’d pleasured one another all the nights that she’d spent in his bed, she still wanted more. She thanked her lucky stars that Ronin felt the same way. Each day, each hour, each minute in his company had grown more precious than the last, and Ali had forced herself to admit that she was hopelessly and irrevocably in love.

  Ronin pulled away and, taking her hand, led her through to the kitchen.

  “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll pour you a glass of wine.”

  “You don’t need to tell me twice,” she said, walking through to the sitting room.

  She sat on the sofa and slipped off her shoes before tucking her feet up underneath her. Ronin brought two glasses of red wine through and sat next to her, passing her one and then putting his arm around her shoulder to tug her closer. Outside, it started to rain. The northeasterly wind picked up and spattered droplets against the glass.

  Ali snuggled against him, enjoying the solid feel of his strength and warmth at her side. It would be so easy to dream that this could be a forever thing. Despite the risk, she chose to ignore the fact that she was on borrowed time. Instead, she reveled in the here and now, savoring each precious memory and experience with Ronin, and with Joshie. She wasn’t going to waste this moment, right here, right now.

  “I saw my parents today,” Ronin said, after taking a sip of wine. “They’d like to come out and visit on Sunday. You okay with that?”

  “Sure, why wouldn’t I be? How’s your mum doing today? I’m amazed with her recovery.”

  Ronin had been in touch with his parents daily, visiting them at their home when he wasn’t snowed under with work. His mother, Delia, had been making steady progress, which had been a great relief after all the family had been through. It reminded Ali again of how precious life was—of how you had to make the most of each moment, each opportunity presented to you, because it could be snatched away just as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Going stir crazy stuck at home. Dad’s doing his best, but I think they’d both benefit from an outing.”

  “Then let’s plan a special lunch,” Ali suggested.

  “You sure you’re okay with that?”

  “Is there any reason I shouldn’t be? I’ve met your father before and we got along okay.” Another thought sprang to mind. “Are you worried your mum won’t like me? Or that she’ll disapprove? We haven’t known each other long and she’s bound to wonder about me living here.”

  Ronin squeezed her shoulders in response. “Not at all. She knows we’re together. And for that, if nothing else, she’ll love you.”

  * * *

  His words didn’t prevent Ali from being hopelessly nervous when Ronin’s parents’ car pulled up outside the house at eleven thirty a.m. on Sunday. As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. Both Delia and her husband, Neil, were warm and friendly. Delia had gone so far as to envelop Ali in her arms and whisper a fervent “thank you” to her for being there when they needed help.

  “I was only too glad to be able to,” Ali replied.

  “We’ll be forever in your debt,” the older woman whispered fiercely, tears springing to her eyes. Delia dabbed at the moisture with a tissue. “Oh go on, look at me. This is a happy occasion. Now, where’s my grandson?”

  “He’s in the sitting room, waiting to see you,” Ronin said with a smile. As his mother went into the house he bent his head to Ali’s. “See? I told you she’d love you.”

  Ali just smiled as they followed his parents through to where Joshua lay sleeping in his bassinet.

  “Oh, my,” Delia cooed, “hasn’t he grown? He looks so much like you and your sister did at that age. Don’t you think so, Neil?”

  Neil’s expression said he pretty much thought all babies looked the same at a month old, but he murmured something indistinct in response. Ali watched him as he observed his wife. So much love and devotion shone from his eyes—Delia could have said the moon was made of blue cheese and he would have agreed, if it made her happy.

  It was lovely to see their enduring affection, but it made her a little envious, too. After her divorce, she’d convinced herself she would never be the recipient of such steadfastness. And, until recently, she’d managed to convince herself that it didn’t matter. That she had her growing business, her family—really, what more did she need? But, as she watched Ronin with his parents and his nephew—three generations gathered together, like so many of her own family’s gatherings—it made her realize that she wanted so much more. That she wanted what they had.

  If only it were possible.

  Joshua chose that moment to wake up, delighting his grandmother with the opportunity to spoil him with attention until it was time for their lunch at one. The nanny came to take him back upstairs and Delia reluctantly let him go. They sat at the kitchen table to dine and Ali very proudly served up the meal she’d concocted after several hours of research on the internet yesterday. She’d been determined to follow as heart-friendly a menu as she possibly could, and her hard work had paid off.

  It was as they were enjoying a coffee in the sitting room after lunch that Delia suddenly rose from her seat.

  “Oh, heavens, I can’t believe I forgot!” she exclaimed.

  “Forgot what, Mum?” Ronin asked, rising also.

  “I was going out of my mind with boredom this week, so I decided to put something together for Joshie—an album with photos of CeeCee and R.J. I know he’s still far too young to appreciate it, so I was going to hold on to it until he was a bit older, but I thought you might like to take a look. I brought it with us, but left it in the car.”

  “That sounds like a lovely idea,” Ali said with a smile as she gathered up their cups and saucers and stacked them on a tray to take out to the kitchen.

  “I’ll go and get it. Honestly, I can’t believe I didn’t bring it in with me. My memory seems to have taken quite a hit with this operation of mine.”

  “Don’t worry, dear,” Neil said, rising from the table and putting his hands on his wife’s shoulders to encourage her to regain her seat. “I’ll get it from the car. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  “He’s such a good man,” Delia said as her husband left the room. “He’s been my rock through all of this. I don’t know what I’d have done without him.”

  “Dad’s been your rock, but remember that you’ve always been his, too,” Ronin said, settling down on the sofa beside his mother. “He needs you just as much as you need him.”

  “I still can’t believe it,” she said with an audible sniff. “That they’re gone.”

  “I know, but we have to stay strong for Joshua. To keep them in his life.”

  “Yes, that’s why I want him to grow up with the album—so they’re familiar to him. So he can love them as much as we do,” Delia said, fighting to gather her emotions back under control.

  Ali felt the sting of sympathetic tears in her own eyes as she watched Ronin comfort his mother. To distract herself, she picked up the tray to take it out to the kitchen.

  “You okay with that?” Ronin asked, looking up at her.

  “I’m fine,” she said behind a forced smile.

  In the kitchen she gave Delia and Ronin a moment’s privacy and busied herself
stacking the dirty crockery in the dishwasher. By the time she returned to the sitting room, Neil had returned with the album and Delia had it on her lap.

  “There you are, dear. I didn’t want to start without you. It’s a shame you never got to meet our CeeCee, or her husband, R.J. He’d been married before, you know, but his first wife never wanted children. CeeCee said that when she met him he was dreadfully unhappy, but our girl made him smile again.”

  Before Ali could comment, Delia was opening the cover and turning to the main page. Ronin started to get up from his seat beside his mother, but Ali waved him back down and perched on the arm of the sofa next to him.

  “This is my favorite of all their wedding photos. Don’t they just look so happy?” Delia smiled in reminiscence. “CeeCee told me later she’d just whispered to R.J. that they were having a baby. He was completely over the moon.”

  Ali leaned over slightly to get a better look at the page and instantaneously wished she hadn’t. She hadn’t expected to recognize the couple smiling happily, with eyes only for one another, nor did she expect to feel the sudden pain that ripped through her chest—as if her heart was being rent in two.

  “Didn’t they just make the most beautiful couple?” Delia asked.

  But Ali couldn’t answer, couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t believe she was staring at her ex-husband and his interior decorator. The woman he’d left her for. The woman who had borne him a baby.

  Twelve

  She must have murmured something in response to Delia’s question, because Delia was now turning the pages—describing in detail why she’d chosen each picture for the scrapbook, lingering over the first ultrasound photo of Joshua, unwittingly driving a stake deeper and deeper into Ali’s heart.

  It wasn’t that she still loved Richard—he’d destroyed that when he’d walked out on her for another woman—but she’d spent twelve years of her life with him. And he’d gone straight into the arms of a woman who’d been able to give him everything he’d ever wanted. Everything Ali had failed at. That little baby sleeping upstairs who she’d learned to love practically from the start was the son she’d never been able to give her husband. The son he’d had with another woman. The woman who, with Richard, had died only weeks ago. Ali couldn’t believe he was dead. The awful finality of the word echoed in her mind. How could she not have known, not have heard somehow from anyone?

  Delia finally closed the album. “And now little Joshie is the start of your family, Ronin. I’m so glad you’re choosing to raise him yourself.”

  “It’s what CeeCee and R.J. wanted,” he said gruffly.

  “But you’ll be sure to give him brothers and sisters, won’t you?” Delia pressed.

  “All in good time, Mum. Let me come to grips with Joshua first,” he laughed.

  All in good time. Ronin’s words signaled a death knell in Ali’s mind to the relationship they’d just begun. Of course he’d want more children. She’d told herself that already. And they were the only thing she could never give him.

  Ali operated on automatic for the balance of Neil and Delia’s visit. She couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of relief when Neil noticed his wife’s energy levels were flagging and suggested they head home. After they’d waved them off, she and Ronin went back into the house.

  “Are you okay?” Ronin asked. “You got really quiet there.”

  “A bit of a headache, that’s all,” Ali deflected.

  “Why don’t you put your feet up? I’ll finish clearing up.”

  “It’s all pretty much done,” she answered. “But I think I might go and lie down for a bit.”

  His eyes narrowed in concern. “You’re feeling that bad?”

  Worse, she thought. But she couldn’t tell him. Not now. Maybe not ever. He’d clearly adored his sister. How could she tell him that CeeCee had been the other woman in the breakup of her marriage?

  “Do you need the doctor?” Ronin pressed.

  “No, I’ll be all right.”

  She went upstairs before he could say another word. In the master suite she walked through to the bathroom. She’d just closed the door behind her as the first sob fought its way out of her throat. Hard on its heels came another, and another. As she slid to the floor, the door at her back, she knew she wasn’t mourning for her late ex-husband. She was mourning for what they’d never had—what she could never have with Ronin, what she’d been foolish to even attempt to reach for.

  Delia’s earlier words came back to haunt her. His first wife had never wanted children. How could Richard have said that? It was such a blatant untruth. She’d wanted to refute it, to scream that nothing had been further from the reality they’d shared. Why had Richard felt the need to lie about the reasons their marriage had failed? Was it perhaps because it had painted him and his relationship with CeeCee in a less than favorable light?

  Whatever he’d been thinking, none of that mattered now. Richard was dead. Those three words repeated again and again in the back of her mind. And the bitter irony was that she now loved his son as if he were her own. The son of the woman who had inadvertently been the final chink in breaking apart the fragile armor of Ali’s marriage. The pain that scored her now made her feel as if she was being betrayed all over again.

  Richard. Married. Logically, Ali had known Richard had moved on with his life, but she’d made no effort to keep up with the details. Their friends had chosen sides, and she no longer kept in touch with anyone who was a significant part of Richard’s life. There was no one to tell her about the wedding. But seeing those photos, seeing him happy in a way he hadn’t been happy with her since the earliest days of their marriage, had been yet another blow. And it had made her current situation all the more clear.

  Yes, Ronin was deeply attracted to her, and maybe he could even come to love her the way she knew she already loved him. But she knew that she couldn’t count on that love to last, especially once her deficiency came to light. She didn’t want to face that day, or watch what they’d started to build together be stripped away, layer by layer, until they had nothing left.

  Ali buried her face in her knees and wrapped her arms tight around her lower legs, trying to make herself as small as possible. As if doing so could make the pain smaller, too. But it was useless. The pain kept on building until she knew there was only one thing left for her to do. She had to leave. She couldn’t stay with the baby who was living proof of her shortcomings, or with the man she’d never be able to make lastingly happy. She had to stop this now before she gave Ronin false hopes. Before she set herself up for the silent recriminations that she’d already borne from another man.

  She staggered to her feet and splashed some water on her face in an attempt to soothe the ravages of her misery, but the tears wouldn’t stop coming. She grabbed a fistful of tissues from the vanity and walked through to the bedroom, throwing herself down on the bed and closing her eyes. Tomorrow. She’d leave tomorrow—that way she’d still have tonight. It would have to be a night to remember, because in her future, the memory would be all she had left.

  * * *

  Ronin moved quietly into the room. Ali lay asleep on the bed, still fully dressed and with her face turned in to her pillow. He grabbed a mohair blanket from the chest at the end of the bed and gently placed it over her before leaving the room again. Something was up. He knew it in his gut the same way he knew when something was going to go wrong with a contract. That was part of what made him so good at his job—being able to anticipate a problem before it became one. Having a working solution in his mind before it was required. Some people found his worst-case-scenario thinking to be downbeat, but he just called it risk management. Since he was totally risk averse, it had worked for him so far.

  But with Ali, things had been different from the start. He had no worst-case scenarios worked out, no contingency plans in place. He’d gotten so swept up in
her and the way she made him feel that all of his usual behavior had fallen by the wayside. Instead, he’d simply reveled in the sort of relationship he’d never expected to find in his tidy, orderly life. One that made him so simply and uncomplicatedly happy that he hadn’t even considered that something could go wrong.

  And that meant he had no idea how to fix things.

  She wasn’t something he could pick apart and peer through the layers to find out what was wrong. Even so, he racked his brain for what might have happened this afternoon to upset her, because despite her doing her best not to show it, he’d seen the pain reflected in her eyes and the tightness around her lips.

  Was it something his mother had said? Was it the idea of having more children? No, it couldn’t be that, he decided. It made no sense for her to be bothered by that. He’d seen Ali with Joshie. She loved him—it was there in every smile, every caress, every moment she spent with him. Her maternal instincts were right out there for anyone to see. Maybe it had been his quick rebuttal of his mother’s suggestion that he give Joshie brothers and sisters in the near future? He tossed the thought around in his mind, examining it from every angle before putting it aside for now. Until he could get Ali to open up and tell him what she was thinking, anything else would merely be conjecture, and he knew that wouldn’t get him where he needed to be.

  He’d wait, keep an eye on her and figure out the problem. Then he’d fix it. Simple as that.

  * * *

  It was getting late when Ronin returned upstairs. The fact Ali still hadn’t risen worried him. He’d made dinner and had waited for her to join him, putting her meal in the oven for her when she hadn’t put in an appearance, then eventually wrapping it up and putting it away in the fridge. She’d even missed Joshua’s evening bath and feed, something he knew she enjoyed sharing with him. Now the house was quiet.

  He let himself into the master suite and checked on Ali. She was still in the same position she’d been when he’d left her. That must have been some kind of headache. With a faint sigh, he turned and went to the bathroom, stripping off his clothes as he went. He was standing at the vanity, contemplating a hot shower, when he saw a shadow of movement behind him in the mirror.