by Penny Jordan
‘There isn’t even a hotel on the island, although there are plans to build a marina. I’ve often fancied buying an ocean-going yacht myself. Perhaps if we have a son I shall.’
‘A daughter could be equally interested in sailing,’ Heather told him coolly. She wasn’t sure how she felt as yet about the proprietorial attitude Race had adopted towards the baby. She had got used to thinking of the baby as hers, but Race was making it plain that he meant to have at least an equal say in anything to do with its future and upbringing. Could they make their marriage work? Heather wasn’t naïve, and when Race had said they were sexually compatible she had been forced to admit that he was telling the truth. She was also forced to concede that he was right when he said that marriages succeeded with less, and that much could be accomplished by willingness and determination.
‘Make no mistake, Heather,’ he had told her the night before they married, ‘I fully intend that our marriage will last. I don’t go along with this idea that we owe it to ourselves to squeeze as much self-indulgent pleasure out of life as we can—not where children are concerned. They don’t ask to be born, and we owe them a responsibility I’m not prepared to duck out of. I’ll do my damnedest to make this marriage work and I expect the same sort of commitment from you. You must want the child, otherwise you’d have had an abortion; what you need to ask yourself now is, do you want it enough to make the sacrifices you’ll have to make?’
Did she? Heather didn’t know, all she did know was that badly as she wanted Race’s child, she wanted Race more. The reasons behind her acceptance of his proposal were extremely complex, but the strongest single factor must surely have been the way she felt about it. That alone might not have been strong enough to make her marry him, but it had been there, unacknowledged when she made her decision.
‘Tired?’ The question was one any man might have asked his wife; brief and yet concerned, and the stewardess watched with understanding compassion as Heather shook her head. They had a long flight ahead of them, and even now she wasn’t sure she wanted to go. Race had said they both needed the break, and she wondered if he was thinking of the stir her pregnancy was likely to cause among his friends and acquaintances. Men like Race did not get their women friends pregnant by accident, nor did they rush to marry them if they did. They had ‘live-in’ lovers, and meaningful relationships, and her condition was bound to result in a certain amount of speculation. There might even be those who might judge that she had deliberately become pregnant to force Race’s hand…. Heather sighed.
‘You are tired.’ It was more of an accusation than a comment, and she shook her head again. She was too keyed up to be tired. They had spent the night at Race’s London flat; a large, expensive apartment which, in spite of its expensive furnishings, Heather had found cold and cheerless. It was a bachelor’s apartment, a show-place, and she could never visualise it as a home. ‘We’ve got a long flight ahead of us, why don’t you try and get some sleep?’
It was easier said than done. Heather had never been particularly keen on flying and the week had taken its toll on her. Her body wanted to sleep, wanted to return to that drowsy, satisfied state it had been in before Race reappeared in her life, but her mind wouldn’t let it. She had slept in the guest room of Race’s apartment, feeling more like an intruder than a wife. She knew that he was only marrying her because of the baby, but somehow after saying they were sexually compatible she hadn’t expected him to let her sleep alone.
Perhaps her pregnant body repelled him. She knew that some were affected like that, but there had been no revulsion in the way he had touched and kissed her in the garden of her aunt’s and uncle’s home.
She tried to relax in her seat. They were travelling first-class and had ample room, but somehow her body felt heavy and uncomfortable. Perhaps their child objected to flight as much as she did, she reflected wryly as she turned away from Race and tried to court sleep. It was obvious that he didn’t want to talk to her. He had some papers spread out in front of him and was frowning over them, her presence apparently forgotten.
Eventually she dozed off, only to be woken by the stewardess when she brought their lunch. Heather ate unenthusiastically, feeling heavy-eyed and dull. She refused any wine, thinking sardonically that had she always been so abstemious she might not be in the position she now was—or was she deluding herself? Would she have ended up in Race’s arms anyway?
After lunch she slept again, losing interest in the film, and woke later in the afternoon to find that Race had pushed up the arm rest between them and that she was lying with her head on his shoulder, his arm supporting her.
‘You might have been asleep,’ he told her lazily as she opened her eyes, ‘but Junior’s been extremely active.’ His fingers splayed possessively across the tautness of her stomach, warmth radiating into her body from them, and she watched him registering the movements of the baby’s limbs, his harsh features softened to something approaching tenderness.
‘Seems like he’s practising to be a footballer,’ he commented as she pulled away, hating herself for the completely unmaternal response of her body to his touch.
‘And as I keep telling you, he could easily be a “she”. Do you particularly want a boy?’ she asked curiously.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t mind either way, as long as you’re both healthy. I thought it would do you good to get away for a while, but now I’m not so sure that such a long flight was a good idea. Still, it won’t be long now.’
Heather had an opportunity to stretch her legs when they put down at Barbados. The evening was full of the scents and sounds of the Caribbean, lush and tropical, and her skin was dewed with perspiration as the heat struck it, intensified by the cool, pressurised atmosphere of the plane.
She only just managed not to flinch when she saw the small plane which would transport them to St James’s. Race frowned when he saw her reaction, and she bit her lip, thinking that he was probably regretting bringing her. Race was the last person to understand or be patient with fear. It was something he had probably never experienced in his life, she thought acidly.
In the event, perhaps because she was so tired, the flight wasn’t the ordeal she had anticipated. It was too dark for her to see St James’s as they came in to land, and after a mercifully brief delay Race had installed her and their luggage in a comfortably padded jeep which he told her was the most common form of transport on the island. ‘With only one main road anything else is a waste of time,’ he told her as he climbed in beside her and started the engine.
Heather was too tired to pay much attention to their surroundings as they drove away from the airport. She was aware of a small town clustering round the harbour and the odd light illuminating bungalows and villas dotted through the countryside, which was lushly green and fertile, Race told her as he drove skilfully along the rutted road.
Heather felt as though every bone in her body was aching when he eventually stopped in front of a neat villa, pink-washed in the lights of the jeep, the sound of the surf the only thing to break the silence, as he climbed out and walked towards the door.
‘Stay there,’ he commanded tersely when he saw she was going to follow him, and then he disappeared inside, light flooding through the windows. He was back within seconds, opening her door and lifting her up as easily as though she weighed no more than a feather. As a teenager she had often dreamed of being held like this, knowing it to be a very forlorn wish for a girl of her height, and yet here she was in Race’s arms, his heart thudding slowly beneath her cheek.
The villa was two-storied and Race took her upstairs, kicking open a door and using his elbow to switch on the light as he carried her inside. ‘Bed for you,’ he told her, adding curtly when she protested that there was their luggage to unpack and a meal to make, ‘You’re exhausted, Heather. I can easily unpack and make us a meal, always supposing you can stay awake long enough to eat it.’
The large double bed looked extremely inviting, the curtains billowing sli
ghtly in the evening breeze wafting through the open window. Race had turned on the air-conditioning as he walked in and the muggy heat she had experienced on the drive from the airport was gradually disappearing.
‘Race, I can’t go to bed yet,’ she protested half-heartedly, ‘I want to have a shower—change my clothes….’
‘I’ll bring your case up for you, but in the meantime you can rest. It will take half an hour or so to heat up the water. No, Heather,’ he said firmly, sensing the protests hovering on her lips. ‘I’m your husband now,’ he reminded her.
‘Which doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do,’ Heather objected spiritedly.
‘No,’ he agreed softly, ‘but it does give me the right to do this.’ As he lowered her towards the bed, his lips brushed lightly across hers, the contact so tantalising that Heather wasn’t even aware of the mattress beneath her until Race withdrew his arms to place his palms flat on the bed either side of her, his mouth continuing to explore the shape of hers, his tongue stroking along the outline of her lips until she felt fluid and pliant beneath it, her eyes closing in heated pleasure as his teeth nipped gently at the fullness of her bottom lip, teasing it until she moaned a small protest and locked her arms round his neck, her fingers delving into the thick darkness of his hair, pleading with him to deepen the kiss.
To her chagrin Heather felt him withdraw, his fingers unlocking hers and placing them gently at her side. ‘I’ve got to unpack, remember?’ Was it just her imagination, or was there a hint of taunting mockery in his voice? Could he have guessed how she felt about him?
Shivering, Heather withdrew. That was something she could not bear. He was being considerate and tender with her because she carried his child, but he didn’t want her love and she was deceiving herself if she thought otherwise.
She fell asleep almost immediately, and woke much later to find herself alone and faintly chilled. Race had been as good as his word, she saw, because her empty case lay by the window and on the chair was a clean nightdress. He had warned her to buy cotton underwear to wear while they were away, because of the heat, and the nightdress looked oddly demure with its sprigs of flowers and dainty broderie anglaise bodice fastened with soft apricot ribbons.
She glanced at her watch, which she hadn’t altered from Greenwich Mean Time, and wondered hazily what time it was. It was still dark, and the house seemed silent. She went downstairs and found Race in the study engrossed in some paperwork.
‘I thought this was supposed to be a holiday—for both of us,’ she chided him when he looked up.
‘I thought I’d let you sleep—and you shouldn’t object, wifely duty though it may be—after all, it keeps me from your bed,’ he jeered, ‘but on this occasion not for long. The villa has two bedrooms, but only one is furnished, and I’ll be damned if I’ll sleep downstairs.’
If he knew the villa possessed only one bed, why had he brought her here, since he plainly didn’t want to share it with her? Heather wondered with an unusual snap of temper, but she didn’t say anything.
She explored the villa on her own and discovered a large and pleasant living room, with huge patio doors which opened onto a secluded courtyard. The only other room was a good-sized family kitchen, with enough space for a table and chairs. The units were spankingly modern, the floor, like all the other floors in the villa tiled, for coolness and cleanliness.
‘Will the water be hot by now?’ she asked Race when she took him a cup of coffee. Her body felt grubby and sticky from the flight, and she was longing for a shower.
‘Should be, you’ve been asleep for four hours.’ He saw her expression and laughed mockingly. ‘I told you you were tired.’
The bathroom was blissfully modern and Heather stayed under the shower longer than she had anticipated, enjoying the cool spray of the water against her skin. There was a full-length mirror on one wall and she studied herself with the objectivity she had learned as a model, wondering why she found such intense pleasure in knowing it was Race’s child she nurtured inside her.
She smiled as she touched her skin, glowing and fresh after her shower, her breasts full, the nipples darker than they had been, a woman’s body and not a girl’s. If only Race loved her the way she loved him, how perfect these months would be as they shared together the wonder of making a new life! Some women delighted in pregnancy because they were natural mothers, unfulfilled without a child, but Heather knew her intense pleasure sprang more from the fact that the baby was the living proof of how she felt about Race; an elemental, fiercely female need for the fulfilment of feeling her body ripen with the fertile seed of her lover; a thing apart from simply wanting a child, something that nature had instilled in women at the dawn of time as a safeguard against the dying out of the race, something which still persisted against all the laws of logic or modern-day sophistication. A sense of completeness that knowing their lovemaking had resulted in a baby brought her.
Shaking her head over the complexity of her thoughts, Heather was surprised to discover that she was crying, her cheeks wet with tears. She was just going to wipe them away when the bathroom door opened inwards and Race walked in, his forehead furrowed in a frown of concern.
‘Heather, are you….’ He broke off when he saw her, and Heather was suddenly acutely conscious of her nakedness. It was one thing for her to admire and take pleasure in the way her body bloomed with the baby, but Race was hardly likely to feel the same way.
‘You’re crying.’ It was an accusation, edged with anger. ‘Why? Because you didn’t marry that cousin of yours? Because it isn’t his baby you’re carrying? Heather, for God’s sake, don’t!’ he groaned as her tears fell faster, motivated by she knew not what emotion, unless it was the sheer pain of loving him and knowing her love was not returned. ‘Heather….’ His arms locked round her, his lips moved softly over her skin as his tongue caught up the damp salt of her tears. ‘You’re so very beautiful like this,’ he told her huskily, his voice thickening with emotion, ‘so very, very beautiful.’
He bent his head to her breast, gently caressing the tender flesh, his fingers cupping her roundness tenderly, as she quivered and tensed, feeling her body’s unmistakable reaction to him as his hand stroked slowly downwards, exploring her burgeoning shape, his lips warm against her breast. But there was no passion in his touch, Heather thought achingly, none of the desire and wanting she could feel within her.
‘Race,’ she protested unsteadily, longing to tell him how she felt, how much she longed for him to kiss her, to possess her as he had done before, but his head lifted from her breast, his lips stroking gently across her skin.
‘Hush, it’s all right,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m not going to hurt you. It’s just that it’s a pretty stupendous feeling knowing that’s my child inside you. Come on, I’ll help you on with this.’
He picked up her nightdress, dropping it over her head as though she were a child, firmly securing the ribbons when she had slipped her arms into the sleeves, no trace of the desire he had felt once towards her in the grey eyes that surveyed her slowly when he had finished. Heather felt then that her last frail hope had died. She had thought they might build something from their marriage based on the desire she knew he had felt for her, but it seemed she was to be denied even that. All that Race wanted from her was his child, and for her pride’s sake she would be wise to remember that.
She woke once during the night and felt the warm bulk of his body behind her, knowing a longing to turn into his arms but repressing it, only to find in the morning that she must have given in to it, because she woke to find herself curled up against him, his hand resting possessively on her stomach, the baby kicking enthusiastically against it. She thought he was asleep until she saw the glitter of grey between the narrowed lids, and a look of torment suddenly crossed his face as he said hoarsely, ‘Dear God, Heather, why did this have to happen?’
Quickly pulling back the blankets, he thrust his legs on to the floor while she blinked rapidly to hide th
e tears threatening to fall, hating herself for the agony the anguish she heard in his voice caused her. She already knew he had only married her because of the baby, because of his scruples, so why should she feel so hurt because he had just reinforced that knowledge?
* * *
The days merged one into the other. The villa had a small private beach and Heather was able to sunbathe without feeling uncomfortable. Race had brought work with him and during the mornings she learned to leave him alone while the distant sound of the typewriter reached her through the open windows. One of the local women came in to cook and clean. She was fat and jolly and chuckled loudly when she saw Heather. ‘You make one very fine baby,’ she told Race, and Heather was amused to see a faint tinge of colour darkening her husband’s cheekbones. Race embarrassed! She’d never thought she’d live to see the day.
In the afternoons Race scuba-dived or swam, Heather sometimes joining him to paddle leisurely in the aquamarine seas, but feeling too pleasurably lazy to exert herself to any great degree. The nights were the hardest of all, when she had to try to sleep with Race beside her, so close to him and yet really so very far apart. What was physical intimacy without the mental harmony to enrich and enhance it?
‘Why don’t you take your top off?’ She hadn’t heard Race approach and sat up quickly putting down the book she had been reading, her face colouring.
‘The beach is perfectly private,’ Race pointed out, ‘and it doesn’t look particularly comfortable. The fabric is cutting into your skin.’ He frowned, and Heather told herself she was being ridiculously imaginative for thinking that the thought displeased him. It was true, though, that the bikini top she was wearing was uncomfortable. Even in the week that they had been there her body had changed, and she couldn’t deny that it would be pleasurable to feel the warmth of the sun and the cool tang of the on-shore breeze on her skin.
