by Maggie Cox
He shrugged his shoulders—the wide, impressive kind that any woman young or old would love the opportunity to cry on—his whole demeanour denoting frustration and anger. Just as though he’d resigned himself to never expecting any kind of softness or tenderness from Sorrel ever again. The sorrow that created in his wife’s heart was immeasurable.
‘What are you implying?’ she asked, unable to keep her resentment at bay despite her sadness. ‘That I might do something to hurt myself or my baby just to get back at you in some way?’
‘Stop being so paranoid! I’m not saying that at all. I simply want to remind you that we’re in this together, and I don’t intend to stand on the sidelines and see you struggle through it on your own.’
‘Oh? Since when did you care about me doing things on my own?’ Sorrel’s mouth twisted with unhappiness. ‘Let’s get one thing clear from the start, Reece. I’ve no illusions about having to cope with this pregnancy on my own. You’ll be away working, just like you’re always away working, and I’ll simply have to get on with it like I usually do. Don’t pretend that it’s going to be any different because you’ve just found out that you’re going to be a father!’ Her slender shoulders slumped a little and a shadow of pain seemed to pass across the dazzling blue of her irises. ‘And I’ve no doubt that when the baby comes not much will change for you there either. Except this time there’ll be two of us waiting at home for you to deign to remember we exist.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous! OK, so neither of us actually planned this baby, but now that it’s clear we’re going to be parents I fully intend to be as good a father as I can be to my son or daughter. I can’t believe that you’d think otherwise…but then I obviously give you far more credit than you deserve.’
He had a way of looking at her sometimes that could make her feel very small, and every time he employed it Sorrel was crushed. Unfolding her arms, she dropped them down by her sides. The situation was impossible. Her leaving had done nothing but make matters worse. Her husband was clearly harbouring massive resentment that she had dared to walk out on him because she was so unhappy, and now that she was expecting his baby he saw it as the perfect opportunity to bring her back into line again and make her pay for her actions. Sorrel really didn’t think she had it in her to survive mentally or emotionally under such acrid circumstances.
‘I want you to know that I’ve moved back here completely reluctantly and totally against my better judgement. I’m here because I can’t risk you being so bitter and twisted that you’d seriously take me to court to gain custody of our child. I also want you to know that I will fight for my baby’s happiness and my own. So don’t think that just because I’m home again you’re going to have it all your own way!’
‘Are you quite finished?’
Employing a look of boredom and disdain, Reece barely tolerated Sorrel’s impassioned words, and for a moment his glance threatened her ability to proceed. But then she swallowed down the horrible aching cramp in her throat that was making it so difficult to give full vent to her feelings and stared back at him defiantly.
‘You’ve got your work…you’ve always had your work…and I know perfectly well that that’s always going to come first. And, just so that you’re aware, I have other opportunities apart from modelling in which to earn money—and I’ll certainly be taking advantage of them while I live in this house. I don’t expect you to keep me. I never have! It was you who suggested I take fewer and fewer modelling assignments, so that I could travel around with you and keep you company while you pursued your own career. So don’t think you hold the trump card just because you’re the one who pays the bills!’
‘This is crazy.’ She saw the disdain in his eyes swiftly replaced by rage. ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to work at all, so you can put that idea right out of your head this instant! You’re pregnant, remember? Naturally you’re going to need as much rest and relaxation as possible in your condition. So don’t be stupid about this, Sorrel. It won’t solve a damn thing.’
It was clear that Reece was in no mood for examining solutions to their seemingly escalating animosity towards each other. And Sorrel too was in a space where calm logic and cool reason were nowhere to be found. How could she apply any such reasonable behaviour when her emotions about Reece and the baby were dominating her every thought?
‘If you want to keep yourself occupied,’ he continued, ‘you can resume your yoga or Pilates classes, go to the spa, take up cross-stitch or any damn thing you like to keep you busy, if that’s what you want, but there’s no need for you to work. I’ll double your allowance and you can do what the hell you like with the money—you know damn well you’ve never had to report back to me about what you spend! Let’s just try and make things as bearable as possible while we’re waiting for the baby to be born. After that…’ Reece shrugged again, his handsome face looking suddenly weary. ‘We’ll see.’
As he turned towards the open doorway Sorrel’s chest grew tight with anxiety. ‘What do you mean “we’ll see”?’ she demanded, her blue eyes flashing. But Reece was already gone and her indignant retort went ominously unanswered.
Melody had not professed instant happiness that Sorrel was pregnant.
‘This is probably the last thing the two of you need when you’re already in such a mess!’ she declared in her usual forthright tone on the other end of the phone.
Sorrel had a brief flash of her driving her fingers through the thick wavy fair hair that could never be easily contained with undisguised exasperation. Of the two sisters, Melody had always been the practical, reliable one. A true lynchpin in the little Suffolk village community where she lived—the first to help sort out a neighbour’s problem or run half a dozen of her friends’ children to school as well as her own at the drop of a hat—nothing fazed her. Whether it came to baking her own bread, or changing a tyre on her dusty well-used Renault, Melody simply got on with the task at hand and didn’t make a fuss. Apart from her sister being her closest friend, Sorrel had gone to her when she’d left Reece because Melody was bound to know what to do.
‘I really do want this baby, Mel,’ Sorrel replied now, wanting to make it clear that, in spite of the situation between herself and Reece, her baby would be very much loved and cared for.
‘Of course you do, darling! But the fact remains that your timing stinks! What has Reece got to say about all this?’
Sorrel didn’t like to reveal that they were barely talking. Two wounded strangers sharing a stunning ‘magazine cover’ house—going through the motions of a relationship that was clearly failing at every turn. The realisation made her feel both ashamed and a failure—especially when Melody’s ten-year-old marriage to her stockbroker husband Simon was still thriving.
‘He wants to do what’s right,’ she replied quietly, catching a sudden sight of her pale, anxious reflection in the glass of the patio doors that led onto the terrace. God, she looked like a ghost!
‘Of course he does! He might be wrapped up in his career a bit too much, but the man has never lacked integrity. You walking out on him really hurt him, Sorrel. It’s only natural that he’s going to be angry with you for a while, but eventually he’ll come round. He loves you, darling…you’ll see.’
‘I wish I had your confidence.’
Running her fingers along the polished surface of the maplewood cabinet in the hall, Sorrel absentmindedly examined their tips for dust. Finding none, she let her hand drop to her side. ‘He’s been angry at me for the whole of the past year, and I don’t see any sign of it waning just yet. Even with the baby coming…’
‘Well, if it all gets too much you can always come back to me for a break. Daisy and Will keep asking, “When are we going to see Auntie Sorrel again, Mummy?” and, “Why aren’t you as pretty as she is, Mummy? Were you the black sheep of the family?”’
Sorrel laughed out loud—a genuine welling of affection in her heart for her little nephew and niece. ‘They do say the funniest things, don’t t
hey? You should tell them that Auntie Sorrel might be pretty, but their mummy is the most beautiful and accomplished woman in the whole of Suffolk!’
‘Well, as long as Simon thinks so I’m not complaining. I’m serious, though, darling. Just hang on in there, and if the going gets too tough you know where I am, don’t you?’
After speaking to her sister, Sorrel made an appointment with her doctor and then telephoned her parents in Australia with her news. Having not given them the slightest hint that her marriage was in trouble at any point—not even when she’d moved out to stay with Melody—Sorrel tried to sound appropriately elated. It was so hard. Especially when her mother’s highly emotional and happy response threatened to open the floodgates on her own emotions. And when she finally got to speak to her father, Charles Claiborne started to enthuse over plans to come to the UK in the summer for an especially long visit—to see his two beloved girls and, of course, the grandchildren that he’d been missing so much.
Instead of feeling her spirits lifted by speaking to her parents, Sorrel’s mood plummeted even lower. In the face of their apparent joy about their expected grandchild, her own deep unhappiness seemed even more heartbreaking and unresolvable than ever.
Reece was in the huge house somewhere—probably working in his office, she suspected. No change there, then, as far as his priorities were concerned. So she was left yet again to find an occupation to fill the empty hours that stretched towards the warm spring evening.
Her mind naturally turned to her future. Feeling even more defiant than ever at her husband’s insistence that he didn’t want her to work whilst she was pregnant, she went to her room and carefully extracted the large portfolio of fashion drawings she had been working on for some time now. She’d tentatively shown them to a dress designer friend of hers who had an exclusive shop in Chelsea, and Nina had been genuinely astonished at the talent she’d insisted Sorrel’s sketches displayed.
In her five years of fashion modelling—up until she’d married Reece—Sorrel had naturally made quite a few useful contacts in the world of couture fashion. Nina Bryant was just one of them. With her friend’s encouragement, she was determined to take advantage of all the contacts she could, and perhaps gain some useful employment for her supposed talents.
Her need to be independent again after the hurtful things that Reece had said to her would be the drive she needed to prepare for life after the baby came. Because, no matter how much he believed he had a hold on her—because he was the one with the wealth and she should be too scared to leave in case the courts gave him full custody—Sorrel needed to have a ‘fallback’ should the situation between them get any worse. Even if she struggled financially—and she prayed she wouldn’t have to—surely it would be better than living with a man who had clearly fallen out of love with her? His only reason for staying married to her was that they were to have a child together, and he wouldn’t rescind on his innate sense of responsibility….
CHAPTER THREE
HAVING made reservations at his favourite restaurant for dinner, Reece consulted his over-full diary as he sat at his desk in his study, and proceeded to cancel and rearrange as many appointments as he could over the next few weeks. His overriding emotion towards his young wife might predominantly be anger because of what she’d done, but he still harboured enough affection to be concerned about her.
The moment he’d seen her in the solicitor’s office he had noticed that she had lost a little weight, and there was a distinct sense of defeat about her shoulders that Reece couldn’t help but feel responsible for. He’d always been concerned that Sorrel didn’t take care of herself enough. Her job dictated that she regularly had to curtail her appetite to stay as willowy and slender as she was, and Reece hadn’t always liked that. That was one of the reasons he’d wanted her to give up modelling when he met her—his desire and hope that she would just be able to eat normally like any other healthy young girl.
He’d loved the notion of taking her to all the most wonderful places in the world to eat and witnessing her enjoyment, and in their first year of marriage together he had done exactly that. But that seemed like a long time ago now, and Reece could hardly bear to reflect on the happiness they’d shared then and consider in contrast what trouble they were in now.
Raising the pretty silver-framed photograph on the desk in front of him to examine it more closely, Reece studied the portrait of his wife that always made his heart beat a little faster—no matter how many times he glanced at it. There was a smaller version of the same picture in his wallet, and whenever he was away from Sorrel not a day went by when he didn’t take it out to look at it. The past three months hadn’t been any different. Her bewitching face was equal parts angel and enchantress—those distinctly almond-shaped baby blue eyes of hers unusual enough and striking enough to make you take a second glance even if the rest of her hadn’t been as equally beautiful or striking.
He’d felt so damn lucky when he’d married her—knowing that other men would always look at him with her and envy his good fortune. And besides her delightful looks there had just been so much about Sorrel to love. Even though she’d been an up-and-coming young fashion model when Reece had first met her, she had never been one of those women that needed constant high maintenance. Instead she’d been spontaneous and fun.
Make-up and fashionable clothing might have been the order of the day when she was working, but when she was relaxing at home, or had any free time at all, she’d been at her happiest in jeans and T-shirts, and had kept the make-up to a bare minimum. Essentially she was an outdoors girl. Someone who loved the rain as much as the sunshine—who’d rather go for a hike in the countryside or a bicycle ride than saunter down the Kings Road in Chelsea and have every male in the vicinity turn to look at her. That was why Reece hadn’t been able to understand her resistance to travelling with him in preference to staying at home.
But she was an emotional creature as well, and Sorrel’s moods had had a significant bearing on her appetite. When she was upset or worried she barely touched her food. And that was Reece’s main concern now. He simply had to convince her to maintain a healthy appetite—not just for her own sake but for the baby’s too.
The baby… Returning the photograph carefully to the place where he had lifted it from, Reece scrubbed his hand round the stubble on his hard jaw with a sigh. He was going to be a father. That meant he had no choice but to lessen his working commitments over the next few months, and possibly for quite a while after the baby came. There was no way he wanted to be the kind of father who was away working practically the entire time his children were growing up—in spite of his reservations about whether the role would suit him or not. Something would have to be worked out that would benefit them all—him, Sorrel, and their child.
His career might have taken precedence over everything else up until now, but Reece knew it was time to take his foot off the gas a little where his ambition was concerned. It was time to learn to be something that he’d honestly never given much thought to before…a family man. Question was…could he do it for the baby’s sake? Or was the rift between him and Sorrel simply too wide and too irretrievable for them to stand even the remotest chance of true happiness?
‘Are you going to even attempt to eat that food, or are you simply just going to push it around your plate all night?’
Reece couldn’t possibly be enjoying this agonising enforced togetherness in a smart restaurant beneath the eyes of its well-heeled patrons and attentive staff. And, as was evidenced by her singular lack of interest in the beautifully prepared linguine with asparagus, Sorrel herself certainly could not attest to enjoyment of any kind.
Frowning at her husband from the other side of the painstakingly laid table, with its white linen and shining silver-plated cutlery, she finally put down her fork and rested her hands wearily in her lap. ‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You’re not hungry? Or you’re deliberately being awkward just to spite me?’ Throwing his napkin dow
n beside his plate in disgust, Reece stared angrily back at her—his mouth a hard, admonishing line of disapproval and bitter disappointment.
So badly did Sorrel crave his forgiveness and kindness right then that she almost told him it was not so much because she wasn’t hungry that she didn’t eat—it was more because she was terrified of what food might do to her constantly unsettled stomach. He’d seen how it had been for her in the solicitor’s office. Did he really want to witness such a dramatic and ungainly spectacle again, and this time in public?
‘I told you we should have stayed home to eat,’ was all she could bring herself to reply.
‘I wanted us to come out to dinner and at least make an effort towards establishing some kind of mutual understanding. The surroundings are pleasant, the food is first-class—all you had to do was sit back, relax and try to enjoy it. I might have known I was expecting too much.’
‘It’s not that I’m not—’
‘Did you also forget that we had something special to celebrate?’
Raising his wine glass to his austere lips with deliberate irony, Reece took the smallest sip, then returned the glass to the table—the taste of the vintage Château Latour was clearly not delighting his palate in the way that fine wine usually did…not on this day anyway.
His deliberately provocative examination of Sorrel’s slightly flushed features caused her blood to suddenly surge hotly, and in spite of her tension and unhappiness she couldn’t resist the pull of the heat that radiated throughout her body. She might pretend that she was indifferent to his attention but it simply wasn’t true. Judging by her spontaneous response just now she was as fervently attracted to Reece as ever.
‘Do you really believe we have something special to celebrate? You’ve never even said how you felt about the baby.’
