Six Australian Heroes. Margaret Way
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did you feel?’
It angered her even further, that coolly speculative look in his eyes.
All the distress of the last week welled up inside her, goading her tongue to strike out at him.
‘How do you think I felt?’ she snapped. ‘You don’t think that I wanted your baby, do you? Good God, I’d have to be insane to want that! It’s bad enough that I let myself be seduced into a disgustingly futile affair with a man who offered me nothing of himself but his body—if it turned out I was pregnant, I think I would have jumped off the harbour bridge!’
‘You don’t mean that,’ he ground out.
‘I do indeed,’ she returned fiercely, all reason abandoned with her loss of temper. ‘What decent woman would want your baby? You’d make a terrible father. Why, you are the most selfish, self-centred, screwed-up man I’ve ever known! Even Mario was a better man than you. And that’s saying something!’
He just stared at her for a long moment, his eyes haunted. And then he nodded. Slowly. Sadly. ‘I couldn’t have said it better myself,’ he agreed.
The horror of her words finally sank in to Laura, bringing with it an almost unbearable shame. She had no right to hurt him like she just had. No right at all. As she’d said to Alison, she’d been a willing partner in all this. Besides, not wanting marriage and a family didn’t make Ryan a bad person. He had every right to live his life as he saw fit, and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t been honest with her.
But it was too late now. The words had been said and she couldn’t take them back. Though, heaven help her, she wanted to, wanted to throw herself back into his arms and beg him to forgive her. Instead, she took a shaky step backwards, her fingers curling over into fists by her side lest her arms moved without her brain telling them to.
‘I do apologise if I have behaved badly,’ he said bleakly. ‘I honestly never meant to hurt you. I think you are an incredible woman and I’m sure that some day your Mr Right will come along and give you what you want. Please tell your family I’m sorry things didn’t work out between us but I wish them well also, especially your gran.’
His mentioning her gran tipped Laura’s emotions into dangerously weak territory.
‘Ryan, I …’
‘No, Laura,’ he cut in, whipping up one hand as a quite savage stop sign. ‘You’ve said quite enough. Let’s leave it at that. Bye, Rambo,’ he added when the cat suddenly appeared at his feet. ‘Look after your mistress for me.’ And, whirling, he was gone.
Laura stood in the open doorway, staring at the empty path for what felt like an eternity. This time her tears were silent, spilling over and running down her cheeks, dripping from the end of her nose onto her top. No doubt it was being ruined, yet she didn’t care. Laura suspected she would not care about anything for a long time to come.
The sound of her phone ringing and ringing eventually forced her to turn and walk down the hallway towards the kitchen, a disconsolate Rambo trailing behind her. Probably a telemarketer, Laura thought wearily; they always rang when people got home from work. Sighing, she snatched a handful of tissues from the box which she kept on the counter, wiped her nose then reached for the phone.
‘Yes?’ she said in a decidedly dead voice.
‘Oh—Laura,’ Aunt Cynthia choked out down the line. ‘Oh my dear …’
Laura’s already breaking heart shattered into tiny pieces, for she knew immediately what had happened. And there she’d been, naïvely thinking nothing could possibly make her feel worse.
But she hadn’t bargained on this.
Life wasn’t just cruel she realised as her insides crumbled in despair—sometimes it was downright sadistic.
‘What happened?’ she asked in hollow tones. ‘A heart attack, I suppose?’
‘Yes, we think so. Jane had gone to lie down after lunch, as she always did. I went to wake her around five and she was just lying there, unconscious. We called the ambulance but there was nothing they could do. She was already dead by the time they arrived. She didn’t suffer, Laura. She looked very … peaceful. Happy, even.’
‘That’s good,’ was all Laura could manage to say, tears threatening once more.
‘You know, I thought I wouldn’t be this upset when she went,’ her aunt said with a sob. ‘But I can’t seem to stop crying.’
Laura knew how she felt.
‘I’ll have to ring you back, Aunt Cynthia. I can’t talk any more just now.’
Hanging up, she sank down on the floor, put her head in her hands and began to sob.
RYAN could not remember the drive back to the city; his mind was in total disarray. That he made it back to his apartment building without incident was a minor miracle. It was a struggle to concentrate on the road when his head was full of such distressing thoughts, the main one being that he would never see Laura again. Never hold her in his arms again. Never make love to her again. Even worse was the physical distress which accompanied these thoughts. His stomach was churning, and his chest muscles were so tight around his heart he imagined he might go into cardiac arrest at any moment.
As soon as he closed the door behind him, Ryan headed for his drinks cabinet and poured himself the largest straight whisky he’d ever had in his life, downing it quickly before pouring himself another. Before long, the alcohol did what his normally strong will could not, calmed his body and shut down his brain.
The following morning he rang his PA and told her he wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. Then he turned off his phone so that no one could bother him. For the next three days, he watched movie after movie, eating delivered pizzas and drinking himself into oblivion until he fell asleep in the lounge. Same thing on Saturday. By Sunday morning, he couldn’t stand his own company any longer, or the way he looked when he happened to catch a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror.
A shower and a shave went some way to brightening him up, plus a litre of orange juice and a couple of aspirin for his hangover. Afterwards he went for a long walk around the nearby botanic gardens, during which time he thought and thought, mostly about the past, the kind of thinking Ryan was not well acquainted with. He put such activities in the same category as psychological analysis or, even worse, group-therapy sessions. He’d survived so far without the help of anti-depressants and in-depth counselling, well aware that people in this modern day and age would think him something of a dinosaur regarding his attitude to mental health.
Ryan had no doubt that if he went to a doctor and confided the truth about his childhood he or she would be amazed that he’d lasted this long without cracking up entirely. His grandmother had actually taken him to a psychiatrist not long after his mother’s death—or perhaps it was a psychologist; he couldn’t be sure now, it was so long ago. But Ryan hadn’t liked the man. He certainly hadn’t wanted to tell him all the shameful details of his mother’s life—and death—and hadn’t wanted to keep reliving any of it.
He’d decided then and there to survive his own way. Of course, if it hadn’t been for his grandmother’s support and love, he would not have survived at all, let alone become a success. Ryan could also see that shortly after her death he’d been in real danger of losing it for a while. Only by hardening his heart even further against emotional attachment of any kind had he managed to continue living.
And it had worked for him up until now …
As Ryan walked endlessly around the garden pathways, he forced himself to face the astonishing fact that Laura had somehow stolen past his defences and melted his cold heart. His pretending that it was just lust he felt for her was just so much rubbish: it was love, pure and simple. Well, perhaps not so pure