The Bridesmaid's Baby Bump

Can’t or didn’t want to be away from her job? Jake had recognised a fellow workaholic when he’d first met her.

‘So you’re familiar with the drive from Cairns to Port Douglas?’

With rainforest on one side and the sea on the other, it was considered one of the most scenic drives in Australia.

‘I planned the timing of my flight to make sure I saw it in daylight.’

‘I get the feeling very little is left to chance with you, Eliza.’

‘You’ve got it,’ she said with a click of her fingers. ‘I plan, schedule, timetable and organise my life to the minute.’

She was the total opposite of his ex-wife. In looks, in personality, in attitude. The two women could not be more different.

‘You don’t like surprises?’ he asked.

‘Surprises have a habit of derailing one’s life.’

She stilled, almost imperceptibly, and there was a slight hitch to her voice that made him wonder about the kind of surprises that had hit her.

‘I like things to be on track. For me to be at the wheel.’

‘So by hijacking you I’ve ruined your plans for today?’

His unwilling passenger shrugged slender shoulders.

‘Just a deviation. I’m still heading for my resort. It will take the same amount of time. Just a different mode of transportation.’ She turned her head to face him. ‘Besides. I’m on vacation. From schedules and routine as much as from anything else.’

Eliza reached back and undid the tie from her ponytail, shook out her hair so it fell in a silky mass to her shoulders. With her hair down she looked even lovelier. Younger than her twenty-nine years. More relaxed. He’d like to run his hands through that hair, bunch it back from her face to kiss her. Instead he tightened his hands on the steering wheel as she settled back in her seat.

‘When you’re ready to tell me why I had to read about your divorce in the gossip columns rather than hear it from you,’ she said, ‘I’m all ears.’

CHAPTER THREE (#u24efe9f9-d3d3-51b7-949b-05b771a03495)

JAKE WAS VERY good at speaking the language of computers and coding. At talking the talk when it came to commercial success. While still at university he had come up with a concept for ground-breaking software tools to streamline the digital workflow of large businesses. His friend Dominic Hunt had backed him. The resulting success had made a great deal of money for both young men. And Jake had continued on a winning streak that had made him a billionaire.

But for all his formidable skills Jake wasn’t great at talking about emotions. At admitting that he had fears and doubts. Or conceding to any kind of failure. It was one of the reasons he’d got into such trouble when he was younger. Why he’d fallen apart after the divorce. No matter how much he worked on it, he still considered it a character flaw.

He hoped he’d be able to make a good fist of explaining to Eliza why he hadn’t got in touch until now.

He put the 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.