By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс
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not ever. And that night he had returned to the house to find her gone.
‘After I’d left there was no need to take it,’ she said flatly.
He stared at her. There hadn’t been much need before she’d left; she had hardly let him near her, even to kiss her. She had withdrawn into herself with a completeness that had baffled him. She still baffled him, but… The wonder began to dawn on him. She was pregnant. Pregnant with their baby.
As his face lit up Melanie strained away from him, her back pressing against the driver’s door. ‘No,’ she mumbled, fear in her voice as well as her body language. ‘I don’t want this—can’t you see? This doesn’t change anything between us.’
‘Are you crazy?’ he said huskily. ‘Of course it does.’ And then, as her words hit home, his eyes widened. ‘You’re not considering a termination?’
Hurt beyond measure he could think such a thing, she felt anger replace panic. ‘Of course I’m not,’ she all but spat at him. ‘I can’t believe you said that.’
There was a stark silence as she watched his face change. ‘Let me get this right. You want the baby but you don’t want me? Is that what you’re trying to say?’
Her face white, Melanie shook her head. ‘I don’t mean that.’
‘Then what the hell do you mean?’ Knowing his voice had been too loud and struggling for calmness, Forde took a rasping breath. ‘Look, let’s get out of here and go somewhere for a coffee where we can discuss this.’
‘No.’
It was immediate and again the note of fear was there. Forde could feel his control slipping. She was making him feel like some sort of monster, for crying out loud. She was his wife and this was his baby, and she wouldn’t even talk to him?
Whether Melanie realised what he was thinking, he didn’t know, but in the next instant he saw her take a deep breath before she said, ‘I’m sorry, Forde, really, but I have to have time to adjust to this myself and I need to get back to work—’
‘The hell you are.’ His face darkened. ‘You’re thirteen weeks pregnant, woman. Think of the baby.’
Baby. Just the sound of the word brought such a rush of emotion she felt dizzy. ‘Women the world over work when they are pregnant,’ she pointed out with a calmness she was far from feeling, ‘and I shall explain the situation to James and tell him I won’t be doing any lifting or carrying of heavy bags and things. But I still need to work, Forde. I want to work.’
‘You’re not well enough,’ he said stubbornly.
‘Now I know why I’ve been feeling the way I have I can eat little and often and make sure I don’t miss meals or get too tired, but normal life will continue.’ Feeling a compromise was in order, she added, ‘I’ll phone you tonight, I promise.’
‘Not good enough. I want to sit down with you and discuss this properly. You’re carrying my child, Nell. I’ll take you out for a meal tonight. Be ready about eight.’
She really didn’t want to do this. For one thing the complaint she now recognised was morning sickness tended to be more afternoon and evening sickness, and for another being with Forde was painful at the best of times, reminding her of all she’d lost. ‘I don’t think—’ She found her words cut off as his mouth took hers.
The kiss was a deliberate assault on her senses, she recognised that from the moment his mouth descended, but he’d taken her by surprise and by the time reason was back she was trembling at the sweetness of his lovemaking. He had moved to lean over her, using one hand to steady himself and the other to lightly cup her breast, but immediately his tongue had slid along her teeth and he had probed her lips open.
In spite of herself she gave no resistance as he slowly and voluptuously explored her mouth; she couldn’t. He only had to touch her—he’d only ever had to touch her—and she melted, turning liquid with desire. Her attraction to him had always been consuming, that was why she had tried to put distance between them after they’d lost Matthew. First by shutting herself away emotionally and mentally, and then by physically removing herself from his orbit. But he had forced his way into her life again, with disastrous results. But no, she couldn’t think of their baby as a disaster.
With her guard lowered and her defences down, Melanie kissed him back as she had done on the fateful night in August. His sharp intake of breath told her he’d sensed her capitulation, but his mouth was like a drug and she couldn’t break its hold on her.
It was another car drawing alongside them that caused Forde to ease back into his own seat, his mouth reluctantly leaving hers after one last long kiss at the side of her mouth.
To her shame, Melanie knew she wouldn’t have been able to show such restraint, regardless of who was around. And that was the trouble, she told herself silently as she smoothed back a strand of hair off one hot cheek. Forde had been the chink in the armour she’d worn against the outside world from the day she had met him. He had made her believe in happy-ever-after for a while, convinced her that his love was enough to protect her from anything that might come against them, from within and without. But he hadn’t been able to stop her hurting Matthew.
A young mother with a toddler climbed out of the car that had parked next to them, clearly pregnant for the second time. The girl didn’t look a day over eighteen and she was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, her long blonde hair and short miniskirt, which revealed endless legs clad in leggings, making Melanie feel like an old hag.
That was the sort of woman Forde should have married, she thought miserably. Someone fresh and sparkling without any hang-ups. Someone as far removed from herself as the man in the moon, in fact. Her thoughts gave strength to her voice when she said, ‘I have to get back to work, Forde. Now.’
He didn’t argue this time. ‘OK. But you make sure you explain this new turn of events to James, Nell. I have a spy in the camp who’ll inform me if you’re not behaving, remember that.’
He had been joking, well, half joking, she surmised, but the words were like a bucket of cold water poured over her head. Isabelle. This baby was her grandchild. The panic returned but stronger, and she felt she must know what a fish felt like when caught in a fisherman’s net with no visible source of escape.
‘Eight o’clock tonight, OK?’
Forde was looking at her and, seeing in his eyes he wouldn’t take no for an answer, Melanie nodded jerkily.
He gave her one last swift kiss, his uneven mouth quirking. ‘Stop looking as though the prospect of dinner with the father of your child is a fate worse than death,’ he murmured sardonically. ‘My ego has taken enough hits in the last months as it is.’
Afterwards, she wondered what on earth had made her say her next words. Maybe it was because the memory of the woman’s voice in the background when she’d been talking to him on the phone still rankled—more than rankled, if she was being honest. Or perhaps it was his assumption that the fact that she was pregnant sorted all the problems? Or that he didn’t understand, he simply didn’t get the torment she’d been going through since Matthew’s death because she, and she alone, was responsible for their son’s stillbirth and nothing could change that.
‘I’m sure there are plenty of willing fingers just itching to stroke that ego though,’ she said with deliberate nonchalance.
She watched the beautiful silver-blue eyes turn to crystal hardness. And immediately regretted her rashness.
‘Now that was definitely loaded,’ he said, searching her face with laserlike intensity. ‘Explain.’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing to explain. I was just saying I’m sure there are more than a few women lined up who are quite happy to keep you company, that’s all.’ Ecstatically so, no doubt.
‘And on what do you base that assumption?’ he asked