The Pregnancy Bond

At last it was over and she flung herself down beside him, feeling as though she could laugh with the gods.

One thought pervaded her. He might think he’d reclaimed her, but in truth she had reclaimed him, and with him, her freedom.

Now she could let him go.

The room was brilliant with the light of morning, and she sat up sharply, awake, cold, clear-headed and exasperated with herself. The sight of Jake’s sleeping form beside her made her groan.

What had she done? She might have guessed he’d try a trick like this. He was piqued that she’d divorced him, so he’d set out to prove he could carry her back to bed anyway. Now she was a scalp on his belt.

It didn’t matter that she’d just enjoyed the best sex with him that she’d ever known. It had been blinding, ecstatic, wonderful. Of course it had. Last night he’d seen her as a new woman, in demand among men, and the predator in him had jumped to the head of the queue.

She slipped out of bed, put on a robe and went into the kitchen, seemingly occupied, but actually straining her ears for the sound of him, and at last she heard him pad barefoot across her front room. She looked around, smiling brightly.

‘Breakfast coming up,’ she sang out. ‘Have this to be going on with.’ She pressed a mug of coffee into his hand.

‘How are you?’ he asked, watching her carefully.

‘Wonderful, considering that party. I thought I might have a hangover, but I’m fine.’

‘I don’t think you drank very much.’

‘Just a little bit tipsy,’ she said untruthfully.

‘Then you’ve changed. You never used to drink much.’

‘I never used to go in for one-night stands either, but for you I made an exception, for old times’ sake.’

‘That was nice of you,’ he said quietly.

‘Well, you owed me some fun after sending Carl and Frank away before I made up my mind about them.’

Jake took a swift breath. ‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘Hey, lighten up,’ she chided. ‘It was great. And it was the perfect way to end our marriage. No hard feelings and a good time was had by all.’ A horrid thought seemed to strike her. ‘Jake, you did have a good time, didn’t you?’

‘I had an incredible time,’ he said quietly. ‘I hadn’t realised you’d grown so—skilled.’

He seemed to be trying to read her face, but Kelly blocked his enquiring eyes with a bland smile that concealed how hard her heart was beating.

‘You’re right, Kelly,’ he said at last. ‘You’re a new woman. I hadn’t quite understood that. I suppose I still saw you in the old way, but not any more. Your life’s your own now. You took it back, and you’re going to make it whatever you want.’

‘Best for both of us,’ she said.

‘Yeah! Best for both of us. It’s just that I—’

She held herself tense for what he would say next. Almost as though it mattered. He seemed to be struggling with the words, but soon he would say them, and she would know…

Then his face changed as he saw something over her shoulder, and everything vanished from his expression but horror. ‘Oh, ye gods!’ he yelled, his eyes on the clock. ‘The time! Look at the time.’

‘It’s just past ten. Why?’

‘I need a cab ten minutes ago. Who can I call?’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘I have to catch the midday flight or my name will be mud.’

She would never know now what he might have said. The next few minutes were taken up with calling the cab, while he dressed frantically. He finished just as her doorbell rang.

‘’Bye,’ he said, kissing her cheek on the run. ‘There’s a present for you on the bed. Combined Christmas and house-warming.’

The gift was a watch, made of platinum and studded with tiny diamonds. It was the sort of thing a man might buy in the duty free shop at an airport when he was running out of time. Kelly was an expert in that sort of gift because Jake had always bought her one when he returned home from the other side of the world, and she’d never told him how lonely she was when he was away, because it would have been churlish to complain to a man who’d bought her a costly gift. Besides, she’d been almost as lonely when he was there.

But this was different. There was no need for him to have bought her anything, and the gesture touched her. Smiling, she looked around at the room where he’d so lately been.

Then her smile faded as she saw how empty it was, a bleak emptiness that seeped into her heart until it felt like a stone crushing her.

CHAPTER FOUR

KELLY had approached college prepared to discover that her brain was rusty, and she’d been fooling herself for years. Instead she found the course fascinating and easy to follow. The tutors praised her work and she was popular with them and her fellow students. In many ways this was the ideal college life of her dreams.

The only fly in the ointment was the need to work to make ends meet. She’d taken a bank loan to cover most of the fees, and worked three evenings a week in a small café. It was proving more tiring than she’d thought. At the end of the day she longed to return to her little home instead of spending the evening inhaling greasy odours and being rushed off her feet.

Perhaps she should have taken up Jake’s offer of financial help so that she could leave the job and never again have to smell cooking oil, which was making her nauseous these days. Working at the café hadn’t been so terrible before, but meeting Jake again seemed to have left her in a strange mood. Her normally equable temper had been replaced by an irritability that could flare into annoyance without warning.