The Bridesmaid's Baby Bump

by Kandy Shepherd

  In the air, somewhere over Indonesia, Dominic told Eliza in no uncertain terms that Jake was unhappy and miserable. He couldn’t understand why Eliza wouldn’t just marry Jake and put them all out of their misery.

  Dominic got a sharp poke in the ribs from his wife’s elbow for that particular opinion. He was referring to the fact that sympathies had been split down the middle among the other two Party Queens and their respective spouses.

  Andie and Gemma were on her side—though they’d been at pains to state that they weren’t actually taking sides. Neither of her friends saw why Eliza should marry a man she didn’t love just to give her baby Jake’s name when he or she was born. Nor did they approve of the domineering way Jake had tried to force the issue.

  Dominic and Tristan, however, thought differently.

  Dominic had an abusive childhood behind him—tough times living on the streets. He’d told Eliza she was both crazy and unwise not to jump straight into the safety net Jake was offering.

  Tristan, a hereditary Crown Prince, also couldn’t see the big deal. There was only one way forward. The baby carried Jake’s blood. As far as Tristan was concerned, Gemma had told Eliza, Jake was doing the correct and honourable thing in offering Eliza marriage. Eliza must do the right thing and accept. That from a man who had changed the laws of his country regarding marriage so he could marry for love and make Gemma his wife.

  Both men had let Eliza know that they saw her stance as stubborn in the extreme, and contributing to an unnecessary rift between very close friends. They stood one hundred per cent by their generous and maligned buddy Jake. The women could not believe how blindly loyal their husbands were to the bullying thug that was Jake.

  Of course Eliza was well aware that neither Andie nor Gemma had ever called Jake that in front of Dominic or Tristan. They were each way too wise to let problems with their mutual friends interfere with their own blissfully happy marriages to the men they adored. Besides, as Andie told Eliza, they actually still liked Jake a lot. They just didn’t like the way he’d treated her.

  ‘Although Jake is very generous,’ Andie reminded her.

  ‘Of course he is—exceedingly generous,’ said Eliza evenly.

  Inside she was screaming: And sexy and kind and even funny when he wants to be. As if she needed to be reminded of his good points when they were all she seemed to think about these days.

  She kept remembering that time in the ambulance, as she’d drifted in and out of consciousness and the man who had never let go of her hand had murmured reassurance and encouragement all the way to the hospital. The man who’d chartered a private boat for her because she’d said she wanted to dive on the Great Barrier Reef. The man who hadn’t needed angel wings to send her soaring to heaven when they’d made love.

  Eliza wished, not for the first time, that she hadn’t actually called Jake a bullying thug—or told Andie she’d called him that. That day she’d got all the way to the bottom of the building on the elevator and seriously considered going all the way back up to apologise. Then realised, as she had just told him she hated him, that it might not be the best of ideas.

  ‘Do you ever regret not marrying him?’ Andie asked. ‘You would never have to worry about money again.’

  ‘No,’ Eliza replied firmly. ‘Because I don’t think financial security is a good enough reason to marry—not for me, anyway. Not when I’m confident I’ll always be able to earn a good living.’

  What she couldn’t admit—not even to her dearest friend Andie, and certainly not to Dominic—was that these weeks away from Jake had made her realise how much she had grown to care for him. That along with all the other valid reasons for her not to marry Jake there was one overwhelming reason—she couldn’t put herself through the torture of a pragmatic arrangement with a man she’d begun to realise she was half in love with but who didn’t love her.

  By the end of the long-haul flight to Montovia—Australia to Europe being a flight of some twenty-two hours—Eliza was avoiding Dominic as much as she could within the confines of the private jet. Andie was okay. Eliza didn’t think she had a clue about how much Eliza was beginning to regret the way she had handled her relationship with Jake. But she didn’t want to share those thoughts with anyone.

  She hoped she and Dominic would more easily be able to steer clear of each other in the vast expanses of the royal castle. Avoiding Tristan might not be so easy.

  * * *

  The day after she’d landed in Montovia, Eliza sat in Gemma’s exquisitely decorated office in the Crown Prince’s private apartment at the castle. A ‘small’ room, it contained Gemma’s desk and a French antique table and chairs, around which the three Party Queens were now grouped. Under the window, which looked out onto the palace gardens, there was a beautiful chaise longue that Eliza recognised from her internet video conversations with Gemma.

  What a place for three ordinary Aussie girls to have ended up for a meeting, Eliza couldn’t help thinking.

  The three Party Queens were more subdued than usual, with the future of the company they had started more as a lark than any seriously considered business decision now under threat. It was still considered the best party planning business in Sydney, but it was at a crossroads—Eliza had been pointing that out with increasing urgency over the last months.

  ‘I thought it would be too intimidating for us to meet in the castle boardroom,’ auburn-haired Gemma explained once they were all settled. ‘Even after we were married it took me a while before I could overcome my nerves enough to make a contribution there.’

  Andie laughed. ‘This room is so easy on the eye I might find it difficult to concentrate from being too busy admiring all the treasures.’

  ‘Not to mention the distraction of the view out to those beautiful roses,’ Eliza said.

  It felt surreal to be one day in the late winter of Australia, the next day in the late summer of Europe.

  ‘Okay, down to business,’ said Gemma. ‘We all know Party Queens is facing some challenges. Not least is the fact that I now live here, while the business is based in Sydney.’

  ‘Which makes it problematical when your awesome skills with food are one of the contributing factors to our success,’ said Eliza.

  ‘True,’ said Andie. ‘Even as Creative Director, there are limitations to what I can do in terms of clever food ideas. Those ideas need to be validated by a food expert to tell me if they can be practical.’

  Gemma nodded. ‘I can still devise menus from here. And I can still test recipes myself, as I like to do.’ The fact that Gemma had been testing a recipe for a white chocolate and citrus mud cake when she had first met Tristan, incognito in Sydney, had been fuel for a flurry of women’s magazine articles. More so when the recipe had become the royal wedding cake. ‘But the truth is both the time difference between Montovia and Sydney and my royal duties make a hands-on presence from me increasingly difficult.’

  Eliza swallowed hard against a dry throat. ‘Does that mean you want to resign from the partnership, Gemma?’

  ‘Heavens, no,’ said Gemma. ‘But maybe I need to look at my role in a different way.’

  ‘And then there’s your future as a sole parent to consider, Eliza,’ said Andie.

  ‘Don’t think I haven’t thought of the challenges that will present,’ Eliza said.

  ‘Think about those challenges and multiply them a hundred times,’ said Andie, and put up her hand to stop the protest Eliza was already formulating. ‘Being a parent is tough, Eliza. Even tougher without a pair of loving hands from the other parent to help you out.’

  Eliza gritted her teeth. She was sure Andie had meant ‘the other parent’ in abstract terms. But of course she could only think of Jake in that context.

  ‘I understand that, Andie,’ she said. ‘And my bouts of extreme nausea showed me that even with the best workaholic will in
the world there are times when the baby will have to come before the business.’

  Andie raised her hand for attention. ‘May I throw into the mix the fact that Dominic and I would like another baby? With two children, perhaps more, I might have to scale down my practical involvement as well.’

  ‘It’s good to have everything on the table,’ said Eliza. ‘No doubt a royal heir might factor into your future, Gemma.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Gemma with a smile. ‘We’re waiting until a year after the wedding to think about that. I need to learn how to be a princess before I tackle motherhood.’

  ‘Now we’ve heard the problems, I’m sure you’ve come armed with a plan to solve them, Eliza,’ said Andie.

  This kind of dilemma was something Eliza was more familiar with than the complications of her relationship with Jake. She felt very confident on this turf. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘The business is still very healthy, so option one is to sell Party Queens.’

  She was gratified at the wails of protest from Gemma and Andie.

  ‘It is a viable option,’ she continued. ‘There are two possible buyers—’

  ‘No,’ said Andie.

  ‘No,’ echoed Gemma.

  ‘How could the business be the same without us?’ said Andie, with an arrogant flick of her blonde-streaked hair. ‘We are the Party Queens.’

  ‘Good,’ said Eliza. ‘I feel the same way. The other proposal is to bring in another level of management in Sydney. Gemma would become a non-executive director, acting as ongoing adviser to a newly appointed food manager.’

  Gemma nodded. ‘Good idea. I have someone in mind. I’ve worked with her as a consultant and she would be ideal.’

  Eliza continued. ‘And Andie would train a creative person to bring on board so she can eventually work part-time. I’m thinking Jeremy.’

  Freelance stylist Jeremy had been working with them since the beginning—long forgiven for his role in the disastrous Christmas tree incident that had rocked Andie and Dominic’s early relationship.

  Andie frowned. ‘Jeremy is so talented... He’s awesome. And he’s really organised. But he’s not a Party Queen.’ She paused. ‘Actually, he’s a queen of a different stripe. I think he’d love to come on board.’

  ‘Which brings us to you, Eliza,’ said Gemma.

  Eliza heaved a great sigh, reluctant to be letting go. ‘I’m thinking I need to appoint a business manager to deal with the day-to-day finances and accounting.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Andie reached out a hand to take Eliza’s. ‘But you, out of all of us, might have a difficult time relinquishing absolute control over the business we started,’ she said gently.

  ‘I...I get that,’ Eliza said.

  Gemma smiled her friendship and understanding. ‘Will you be able to give a manager the freedom to make decisions independent of you? Not hover over them and micro-manage them? Like watching a cake rise in the oven?’

  Eliza bowed her head. ‘I really am a control freak, aren’t I?’

  Andie squeezed her hand. ‘You said it, not me.’

  ‘I reckon your control freak tendencies are a big part of Party Queens’s success,’ said Gemma. ‘You’ve really kept us on track.’

  ‘But they could also lead to its downfall if I don’t loosen the reins,’ said Eliza thoughtfully.

  ‘It’s a matter of believing someone can do the job as well as you—even if they do it differently,’ said Andie.

  ‘Of accepting help because you need it,’ said Gemma.

  Her friends were talking about Party Queens. But, seen through the filter of her relationship with Jake, Eliza saw how she might have done things very differently. She’d fought so hard not to relinquish control over her life, over her baby—over her heart—she hadn’t seen what Jake could bring to her. Not just as a father but as a life partner. Maybe she had driven him to excessive control on his side because she hadn’t given an inch on hers.

  In hindsight, she realised she might have thought more about compromise than control. When it came to giving third chances, maybe it should have been her begging him for a chance to make it right.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DINNER AT THE royal castle of Montovia was a very formal affair. Luckily Eliza had been warned by Gemma to pack appropriate clothes. From her experiences of dinners at the castle before the wedding she knew that meant a dress that would be appropriate for a ball in Sydney. Thank heaven she still fitted into her favourite vintage ballgown in an empire style in shimmering blue that was very flattering to her pregnant shape.

  Still, when she went down to dinner in the private section of the palace that was never opened to the public, she was astounded to see the level of formality of the other guests. She blinked at the dazzle of jewellery glinting in the lights from the chandeliers. It took her a moment to realise they were all members of Tristan and Gemma’s bridal party. Tristan’s sister Princess Natalia, his cousin with his doctor fiancée, she and Andie, other close friends of Tristan’s. Natalia waved when she caught her eye.

  ‘It’s a wedding reunion,’ Andie said when Eliza was seated beside her at the ornate antique banqueting table.

  ‘So I see. Did you know about it?’ Eliza asked.

  ‘No. Gemma didn’t either. Apparently when Tristan knew we were coming to visit he arranged it as a surprise. He invited everyone, and these are the ones who could make it. Obviously we’re the only Australians.’

  ‘What a lovely thing for him to do,’ Eliza said.

  Gemma was glowing with happiness.

  ‘Very romantic,’ said Andie. ‘Gemma really struck husband gold with Tristan, in more ways than one.’

  It was romantic in a very heart-wrenching way for Eliza. Because the most important member of the wedding party was not here—the best man, Jake.

  Bittersweet memories of her last visit to the castle came flooding back in a painful rush. During the entire wedding she’d been on the edge of excitement, longing for a moment alone with him. How dismally it had all turned out. Except for the baby. Her miracle baby. Why couldn’t it be enough to have the baby she’d yearned for? Why did she ache to have the father too?

  What with being in a different time zone, Eliza was being affected by more than a touch of jet-lag. She also had to be careful about what she ate. The worst, most debilitating attacks of nausea seemed to have passed, but she still had to take care. She just picked at course after course of the magnificent feast—in truth she had no appetite. As soon as it was polite to do so she would make her excuses and go back up to her guest suite—the same luxurious set of rooms she’d been given on her last visit.

  After dessert had been cleared Tristan asked his guests to move into the adjoining reception room, where coffee was to be served. There were gasps of surprise as the guests trooped in, at the sight of a large screen on one wall, with images of the wedding projected onto it. The guests burst into spontaneous applause.

  Eliza stared at the screen. There was Gemma, getting ready with her bridesmaids. And Eliza herself, smiling as she patted a stray lock of Gemma’s auburn hair back into place. The images flashed by. Andie. Natalia. The Queen placing a diamond tiara on Gemma’s head.

  Then there were pictures at the cathedral. The cluster of tiny flower girls. The groomsmen. The best man—Jake—standing at the altar with Tristan. Jake was smiling straight at the first bridesmaid coming up the aisle. Her. She was smiling back at him. It must have been so obvious to everyone what was going on between them. And here she was—without him. But pregnant with his baby.

  Her hand went to her heart when she saw a close-up of Jake saying something to Tristan. The image was so large he seemed life-size. Jake looked so handsome her mouth went dry and her heart started to thud so hard she had to take deep breaths to try and control it.

  She couldn’t endure this. It w
as cruel. No one would realise if she slipped away. They were all too engrossed with the photographs.

  She turned, picked up her long skirts.

  And came face to face with Jake.

  It was as if the image of him that had so engrossed her on the screen had come to life. Was she hallucinating? With a cautious hand, she reached out and connected with warm, solid Jake. He was real all right. She felt the colour drain from her face. He was wearing a similar tuxedo as he was in the photo, but his smile was more reticent. He was unsure of his welcome from her.

  ‘Jake...’ she breathed, unable to say another thing. She felt light-headed and swayed a little. Please. Not now. She couldn’t pass out on him again.

  ‘You need some fresh air,’ he said, and took her arm.

  She let him look after her. Liked that he wanted to look after her. Without protest she let him lead her out of the room and then found her voice—though not any coherent words to say with it.

  ‘What...? How...?’

  ‘I was in London when Tristan called me about the wedding party reunion. I got here as soon as I could when I heard you were in Montovia.’

  Eliza realised he was leading her onto the same terrace where they’d parted the last time they’d been in Montovia. Not quite the same view—it must be further down from that grand ballroom—and not a full moon over the lake either. But a new moon—a crescent moon that gave her a surge of hope for a new start.

  She took another deep, steadying breath. Looked up at him and hoped he saw in her eyes what she was feeling but was unable to express.

  ‘Jake, I’m asking for a third chance. Will you give it to me?’

  * * *

  Jake prided himself on being able to read Eliza’s expressions. But he couldn’t put a label on what he saw shining from her eyes. He must be reading into it what he longed to see, not what was really there. But he took hope from even that glimmering of emotion.