by Kate Hardy
‘Sure,’ Jane fibbed.
Hannah sighed. ‘No, you’re not. You wish the baby’s dad was here with you, don’t you?’
Just like her other housemates, Hannah refused to use Mitch’s name. Though at least she’d kept a neutral version. Charlie’s name for him was much, much ruder. Jane forced herself to smile. ‘You swapped your shift to be here with me today. And I really, really appreciate that.’
‘Even so. Maybe you should have another word with this Harry person. She might make him face up towards his responsibilities.’
‘It’s not going to happen,’ Jane said, ‘and there’s no point in setting myself up for disappointment. I’ll be fine.’
But a few minutes later, when the radiographer spread the radioconductive gel over Jane’s abdomen and then showed her the reading on the screen, tears welled in her eyes. ‘My baby,’ she whispered.
‘Here’s an arm, here’s the other one, here are the legs, and here’s the spine,’ the radiographer said with a smile. ‘All looking good.’ She made a few measurements on screen. ‘And from this I’d say you’re bang on twelve weeks. The baby’s due in the second week of January.’
‘A late Christmas pressie,’ Hannah said with a smile. ‘One definitely worth waiting for.’
‘Would you like a photograph?’ the radiographer asked.
‘Oh, yes. Please.’ Jane beamed at her. ‘Is it possible to have more than one copy, please?’
‘No problem.’
Armed with half a dozen copies of the scan photograph, she went back to work. She scanned in the picture during her lunch break and sent a copy by email to Charlie, who she knew would pick it up at work, and another to Shelley’s phone.
Should she send one to Mitch?
She suppressed the idea immediately. He’d made it clear he didn’t want to know. So she wasn’t going to brood and wish that things were different; she was just going to enjoy her pregnancy. She could relax, secure in the knowledge that everything was fine. And now she had dates and confirmation that all was well, she could ring her parents and her brother tonight—if she could actually get hold of them in the remote area where they were working right now—and break the news to them.
Charlie rang her straight away. ‘Congratulations! Jane, that’s an amazing picture. We’re toasting you in champagne tonight.’
‘That’d better be iced water for me.’
‘No worries. I’m sure the three of us can cope with your share of the bubbly,’ Charlie said, laughing. ‘Hey—guess what? I’m going to be an aunty! Yeehah!’
Three days.
It had been three days since Jane had been due to have the scan.
And she hadn’t contacted him. Hadn’t told him if everything was all right.
Nausea coiled in Mitch’s stomach. He wasn’t supposed to feel like this. He’d walked away and she’d told him she wanted nothing from him. He was supposed to be getting on with his job, his life. Not thinking about the baby.
But the memories crowded back. Memories of when his world had crashed, broken into tiny shards, two years before. And he couldn’t shake the fear that it was about to happen all over again. That Jane—Jane, who’d managed to make him forget for a whole day and night—would…
No.
He couldn’t bear this.
Not again.
‘Are you OK?’ Brad, one of his colleagues, asked, poking his head through the open window of the pick-up.
Mitch’s head jerked back so fast that he cracked it against the back of his seat. ‘Sure,’ he lied.
‘I don’t know if you’ve been having a nap or something, but I’ve been trying to patch someone through on the radio.’
His mother, about to break the same news to him that she’d had to break two years ago?
No, of course not. She didn’t even know Jane existed.
He really had to get a grip and stop being so paranoid. What had happened to Natalie was rare. Really rare. It didn’t automatically mean that the same thing would happen to Jane.
But the fear and the nausea wouldn’t go away.
If anything, the coils were getting tighter. To the point where it was a physical pain.
‘Are you sure you’re OK? You look a bit—’
‘I’m fine,’ Mitch said curtly. ‘Patch whoever it is through.’
He relaxed when he heard a voice he recognised. Work. A simple question. Nothing to worry about. He dealt with it, but then he slid back into brooding.
Was Jane all right?
Was there something wrong—with her or with the baby?
Eventually, he pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and typed in a brief message.
How did the scan go? You OK? M.
He ignored the fact that he didn’t even have to look up her number—despite the fact that he hadn’t programmed it into his phone.
And then he slid the phone back into his pocket and tried to get on with some work. She’d answer soon enough.
But she didn’t.
When he caught himself glancing at his watch for the fiftieth time, he scowled. ‘Get a grip,’ he told himself. Of course she wouldn’t reply immediately. Right then it was eleven in the morning in Kansas. London was six hours ahead, so Jane was probably still at work. There wouldn’t be any reception for her mobile phone on the tube, so she might not pick up his text until she got home. He shouldn’t expect to hear anything until at least two o’clock, his time.
But two came and went, and still his phone didn’t beep.
No messages.
It got to six. Midnight in London: Jane would be asleep, by now.
Maybe his message hadn’t got through.
Maybe he should try again.
Or maybe he shouldn’t.
Three hours later, he cracked and texted again. It was three in the morning, her time, so he wouldn’t hear before midnight, his time, at the earliest.
But there was nothing at midnight.
He switched his light off but lay awake, just waiting for the quiet beep that would signal her reply. Although he dozed fitfully, he didn’t hear a thing. Just kept glancing at the dim light of the clock, watching the numbers flash by with each passing minute.
Was she OK?
Or was the whole nightmare happening all over again?
Jane stared at her phone.
Two messages from Mr ‘I don’t want to be involved’.
Had it been just one message, she could have put it down to him trying to salve his conscience—he knew that he’d behaved like a total louse but probably thought that sending a text asking if she and the baby were OK was enough.
But then to send a second text…
It sounded as if he really did want to know. As if he meant it. As if he was worried about her.
OK, so he hadn’t bothered to contact her before the scan. But maybe he’d been in some place where there wasn’t a phone signal. Despite her best efforts, a tiny flicker of hope glowed in her heart. Maybe he’d had time to think about the situation. To realise that he wasn’t the only one involved, here. And maybe the man she’d made love with—the man she’d laughed with—would triumph over the cold, bitter stranger who’d offered her financial support at a distance.
But she didn’t reply immediately.
Because how did she know she could trust him not to blow cold again? Maybe she’d be better off deleting the texts and ignoring them. Then again, this wasn’t just about her. The baby had rights, too. Who was she to deny the baby its right to some sort of contact with its father?
She thought about it all morning.
Finally, at the end of her lunch break, she replied.
The alarm beeped. Mitch slammed it off. For a moment, he pulled the covers over his head, wanting to block out the light filtering through the cheap curtains and go back to sleep.
Then again, his colleagues were expecting him. They were due on the road in an hour.
He dragged himself out of bed; a quick glance at the screen of his mobile phone told h
im that Jane still hadn’t replied. And it must be lunchtime in England.
Great.
Just great.
There was no getting away from it: he was going to have to call her if he wanted to find out how she was.
Not now. He needed coffee. He’d call this afternoon.
He showered, feeling like death warmed up, dragged on his clothes and stumbled out into the motel’s restaurant. Even the sugar rush of pancakes with way too much maple syrup didn’t help much. It took him two minutes to pack. Ten more to check out and throw his things in the back of the van. And then—he had no idea why—he checked his phone again, just before he opened the file he was analysing en route to the next rendezvous point.
He stared at the screen in disbelief.
A new text message?
When?
He hadn’t heard the phone beep. How the hell could he have missed it? He grimaced. It must’ve happened while he was in the shower or something.
He flicked into the message and read it.
All OK, due 2nd week Jan.
Well, that told him what he needed to know. He could stop panicking.
But she’d also sent him an attachment.
A photograph.
Mitch’s vision blurred as he realised what it was, and the hand holding the phone was actually shaking. He’d never seen a scan photograph before. Oh, sure, colleagues had shown him pictures when their wives had become pregnant, but he’d always just smiled politely and made the right noises. He’d deliberately altered his focus so he hadn’t been able to see the picture properly—so he hadn’t had to face other people having what he’d lost.
This was different.
A picture of the baby.
His baby.
‘You OK, Mitch?’ Brad asked.
No. ‘Yeah. Just didn’t sleep well.’ Mitch forced a smile to his face and snapped the phone shut before anyone could see what was on the screen. Right now he didn’t want any questions. Because he didn’t know what the answers were. ‘And I have the joy of data analysis all morning,’ he added, hoping to distract his colleague.
It worked. ‘Better get coffee to go, then.’
‘Double espresso. And doughnuts.’
Brad shook his head sadly. ‘You need a woman in your life.’
‘I’ve got Harry.’
‘She’s not a woman. She’s scary.’ Brad laughed. ‘And you’re not sleeping with her.’
‘No.’ Mitch made a show of opening the data files.
It was the middle of the afternoon in England. He couldn’t really ring Jane until after lunch, his time. And even then he couldn’t guarantee that she’d answer his call. After the way he’d acted, he wouldn’t blame her for not wanting to talk to him. But he’d make the effort. Today. Lunchtime.
Except at lunchtime they were tracking a storm and he couldn’t break off in the middle of things—and then it was too late to call, because she’d be asleep and it wasn’t fair to wake her. Sure, he could text—but then what could he say?
He’d call her tomorrow.
Another sleepless night. A night where he knew he was being a complete and utter bastard for not replying to Jane’s text; yet he couldn’t think how to reply, either. What to say. How could you want something and yet not want it at the same time?
A baby.
Their baby.
But if he let himself get close to her, if he took the risk—what if he lost her? What if his nightmare turned out to be a recurrent one? What if, in three weeks’ time, he got another phone call telling him news that would shatter the life he’d tried so hard to build?
He buried himself in work so he didn’t have to think about it. Thank God his wasn’t a nine-to-five job—and that this project demanded weekend work, too.
By the end of the next day, his head hurt, and he still hadn’t called Jane. Even as he called himself all sorts of coward, he couldn’t make himself do the right thing and call her.
Running scared.
Another bad night and a day that dragged. And another.
And then he pressed the wrong button and deleted a whole morning’s work on the laptop. Work he couldn’t get back because he hadn’t been careful enough to save a backup of the file and he’d overwritten it.
Kicking the tyres of the pick-up did nothing to ease his frustration. All it did was give him a sore toe.
‘Right.’ Brad shoved a bag of doughnuts into his hand, and pushed a cup of coffee into his other hand. ‘Sit.’
‘What?’
‘Now, I know you don’t like talking. You Englishmen and your stiff upper lip. But something’s been bugging you ever since you came back from England. You haven’t been yourself. So either you need to talk to someone about it, or you need to go and sort it out.’
Mitch took a swig of coffee. ‘Thanks. This is good stuff.’
‘And don’t try to avoid the subject. You don’t normally go around kicking the pick-up. So what did you just do?’
Mitch blew out a breath. ‘Screwed up a whole morning’s data.’
Brad shrugged. ‘Then switch to the backup. You’ve only lost a couple of hours.’
‘I didn’t make a backup. And I overwrote the wrong file.’
‘Oh, what?’ Brad stared at him. ‘That’s definitely not like you. Look, you might be this project leader, but until you sort out whatever’s bugging you, you’re a liability. Yesterday you misread the weather system and we missed the tornado. The day before you had your camera on the wrong F-stop and your pictures were a mess. Today you’ve screwed up the data. Tomorrow, you could direct us into a core punch.’
‘I wouldn’t do anything that stupid.’ He might get them in the wrong position to see the tornado—but he definitely wouldn’t make the team drive through the bands of heavy rain and hail to get to the other side, an incredibly risky technique known as ‘punching the core’. ‘It’s cool, Brad. I just…’ The admission nearly choked him. ‘I haven’t been sleeping well.’
‘Talk to her,’ Brad advised.
Mitch played dumb. ‘To whom?’
‘Whoever the woman is on your mind. And don’t pretend there isn’t one—I’ve seen the signs too many times before.’
Mitch set his coffee on the bonnet of the pick-up, then opened the bag of doughnuts, offering them to Brad before taking one himself. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Women always are.’
‘I’m behaving like a complete idiot,’ Mitch admitted.
‘To her or to us?’ Brad asked, raising one eyebrow.
‘Both,’ Mitch said ruefully. ‘And trying to pretend nothing’s happening…’
‘It never works,’ Brad told him sagely. ‘And once it starts affecting your job, you’re sunk.’
‘Yeah.’ Mitch sighed. It was time he stopped running away and faced up to the situation. ‘I’ll arrange for someone to take my place for a week. And when I get back, everything’ll be sorted.’
Though he had a feeling that would be much easier said than done.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ON FRIDAY evening, Jane left her desk, intending to head for home—but she stopped as she walked into the reception area of the office.
No. She had to be imagining things. Of course the dark-haired guy sitting in the corner wasn’t Mitch. He wasn’t even in the country.
But then he spotted her. Stood up. Smiled.
And as he walked towards her her treacherous heart turned over, like a puppy desperate to have its tummy rubbed.
‘Hello, Jane.’
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
He lifted one shoulder in that sexy half-shrug she remembered. ‘I’ve come to see you.’
He’d sent her those texts, wanting to know if everything was all right. And then silence again, when she’d sent him the scan photo. So why on earth was he here now? Or was he just back in the country briefly on business and thought he might amuse himself for the evening? She lifted her chin and stared at him. ‘Why?’
‘Becaus
e…’ He sighed. ‘I owe you an apology.’ He brought his hands from behind his back and handed her the most beautiful bouquet of summery flowers. Not so huge that he was just being a show-off—but not a small bunch just grabbed from the nearest flower stall or supermarket, either. The perfect bouquet.
She blinked away the prickle of tears. Wretched hormones. ‘Thank you.’ But it still didn’t mean he was forgiven. She hated the way he’d blown hot and cold on her—how she never knew what to expect from him. She didn’t want dull and predictable; but she didn’t want all this uncertainty, either. She wanted somewhere in the middle ground. Someone who was reliable but exciting, too.
‘Can I take you to dinner?’
What? He’d given her the silent treatment, hadn’t replied to her text, didn’t want anything to do with the baby they’d made—and he thought he could just breeze back into her life and ask her to dinner, and a bunch of flowers would make everything all right?
She was about to tell him where to go—and what to do with his flowers, for good measure—when she noticed the deep shadows under his eyes.
He was clearly sleeping as badly as she was, right now.
So maybe he really meant this apology.
And maybe if they went to dinner he’d talk to her. Explain just what was going on in his head—because it was a complete mystery to her.
‘Please?’ he added softly.
She dragged in a breath. ‘OK. I’ll have dinner with you. But I need to ring the girls first and tell them I’ll be late home.’
‘Your housemates.’
She nodded. ‘Because I don’t want them worrying about me.’ Just in case he didn’t get the message, she placed her hand over her abdomen. She wasn’t showing yet, but she hoped the gesture made the point. They were interested in the baby and cared, whereas the baby’s biological father hadn’t shown a scrap of interest or caring.
‘No need for them to worry. I’ll take you home in a taxi.’
