The Bridesmaid's Baby Bump. Kandy Shepherd
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four-by-four into gear and headed for the Captain Cook Highway to Port Douglas. Why they called it a highway, he’d never know—it was a narrow two-lane road in most places. To the left was dense vegetation, right back to the distant hills. To the right was the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, its turquoise sea bounded by narrow, deserted beaches, broken by small islands. In places the road ran almost next to the sand. He’d driven along this road many times, but never failed to be impressed by the grandeur of the view.
He didn’t look at Eliza but kept his eyes on the road. ‘I’ll cut straight to it,’ he said. ‘I want to apologise for not getting in touch when I said I would. I owe you an explanation.’
‘Fire away,’ Eliza said.
Her voice was cool. The implication? This had better be good.
He swallowed hard. ‘The divorce eventually came through three months ago.’
‘I heard. Congratulations.’
He couldn’t keep the cynical note from his voice. ‘You congratulate me. Lots of people congratulated me. A divorce party was even suggested. To celebrate my freedom from the ball and chain.’
‘Party Queens has organised a few divorce parties. They’re quite a thing these days.’
‘Not my thing,’ he said vehemently. ‘I didn’t want congratulations. Or parties to celebrate what I saw as a failure. The end of something that didn’t work.’
‘Was that because you were still...still in love with your wife?’
A quick glance showed Eliza had a tight grip on the red handbag she held on her lap. He hated talking about stuff like this. Even after all he’d worked on in the last months.
‘No. There hadn’t been any love there for a long time. It ended with no anger or animosity. Just indifference. Which was almost worse.’
He’d met his ex when they were both teenagers. They’d dated on and off over the early years. Marriage had felt inevitable. He’d changed a lot; she hadn’t wanted change. Then she’d betrayed him. He’d loved her. It had hurt.
‘That must have been traumatic in its own way.’ Eliza’s reply sounded studiously neutral.
‘More traumatic than I could have imagined. The process dragged on for too long.’
‘It must have been a relief when it was all settled.’
Again he read the subtext to her sentence: All settled, but you didn’t call me. It hinted at a hurt she couldn’t mask. Hurt caused by him. He had to make amends.
‘I didn’t feel relief. I felt like I’d been turned upside down and wasn’t sure where I’d landed. Couldn’t find my feet. My ex and I had been together off and on for years, married for seven. Then I was on my own. It wasn’t just her I’d lost. It was a way of life.’
‘I understand that,’ she said.
The shadow that passed across her face hinted at unspoken pain. She’d gone through divorce too. Though she hadn’t talked much about it on the previous occasions when they had met.
He dragged in a deep breath. Spit it out. Get this over and done with. ‘It took a few wipe-out weeks at work for me to realise going out and drinking wasn’t the way to deal with it.’
‘It usually isn’t,’ she said.
He was a guy. A tough, successful guy. To him, being unable to cope with loss was a sign of weakness. Weakness he wasn’t genetically programmed to admit to. But the way he’d fallen to pieces had lost him money. That couldn’t be allowed to happen again.
‘Surely you had counselling?’ she said. ‘I did after my divorce. It helped.’
‘Guys like me don’t do counselling.’
‘You bottle it all up inside you instead?’
‘Something like that.’
‘That’s not healthy—it festers,’ she said. ‘Not that it’s any of my business.’
The definitive turning point in his life had not been his divorce. That had come much earlier, when he’d been aged fifteen, angry and rebellious. He’d been forced to face up to the way his life was going, the choices he would have to make. To take one path or another.
Jake didn’t know how much Eliza knew about Dominic’s charity—The Underground Help Centre in Brisbane for homeless young people—or Jake’s involvement in it. A social worker with whom both Dominic and Jake had crossed paths headed the charity. Jim Hill had helped Jake at a time when he’d most needed it. He had become a friend. Without poking or prying, he had noticed Jake’s unexpected devastation after his marriage break-up, and pointed him in the right direction for confidential help.
‘Someone told me about a support group for divorced guys,’ Jake said, with a quick, sideways glance to Eliza and in a tone that did not invite further questions.
‘That’s good,’ she said with an affirmative nod.
He appreciated that she didn’t push it. He still choked at the thought he’d had to seek help.
The support group had been exclusive, secret, limited to a small number of elite men rich enough to pay the stratospheric fees. Men who wanted to protect their wealth in the event of remarriage, who needed strategies to avoid the pitfalls of dating after divorce. Jake had wanted to know how to barricade his heart as well as his bank balance.
The men and the counsellors had gone into lockdown for a weekend at a luxury retreat deep in the rainforest. It had been on a first-name-only basis, but Jake had immediately recognised some of the high-profile men. No doubt they had recognised him too. But they had proved to be discreet.
‘Men don’t seem to seek help as readily as women,’ Eliza said.
‘It was about dealing with change more than anything,’ he said.
‘Was that why you didn’t get in touch?’ she said, with an edge to her voice. ‘You changed your mind?’
Jake looked straight ahead at the road. ‘I wasn’t ready for another relationship. I needed to learn to live alone. That meant no dating. In particular not dating you.’
Her gasp told him how much he’d shocked her.
‘Me? Why?’
‘From the first time we met you sparked something that told me there could be life after divorce. I could see myself getting serious about you. I don’t want serious. But I couldn’t get you out of my head. I had to see you again.’
To be sure she was real and not some fantasy that had built up in his mind.
* * *
Eliza didn’t even notice the awesome view of the ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see. Or the sign indicating the turn-off to a crocodile farm that would normally make her shudder. All she was aware of was Jake. She stared at him.
‘Serious? But we hardly knew each other. Did you think I had my life on hold until you were free so I could bolt straight into a full-on relationship?’
Jake took his eyes off the road for a second to glance at her. ‘Come on, Eliza. There was something there between us. Something more than a surface attraction. Something we both wanted to act on.’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
Of course there had been something there. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit to it. Not when she’d spent all that time trying to suppress it. Not when it had the potential to hurt her. Those three months of seeing his divorce splashed over the media, of speculation on who might hook up with the billionaire bachelor had hurt. He had said he’d get in touch. Then he hadn’t. How could she trust his word again? She couldn’t afford to be distracted from Party Queens by heartbreak at such a crucial time in the growth of her business.
The set of his jaw