The Pregnancy Contract

“Had being the operative word,” Wade said, lifting his eyes to clash with hers.

“What? You’re blaming me? I have my own trust fund. I was never a drain on my father’s finances.”

Wade’s lips thinned and she saw a muscle clench in his jaw before he pushed a hand through his dark brown hair, sending the short cut into charming disarray. Despite her anger, her fingers itched to smooth his hair down—to feel if its texture was as smooth as she remembered it to be. Piper curled her fingers into her palms and squeezed tightly, ridding herself of the urge as quickly as it had surfaced. This wasn’t the time to be thinking of any kind of touching.

“Not everything is about you, Piper. When you calm down, you’ll see that what we did was supposed to be for the best, at the time.”

“At the time? Explain it to me.”

“Rex was single-minded about beating the disease and wouldn’t take no for an answer, not even when his situation was very clearly laid out to him by his doctors. He was determined to fight, regardless of the cost—and the cost was very high. I’ve no idea what rock you’ve been hiding under for the past eight years but there has been a global recession out there. Our business was hit just as hard as everyone else’s. Despite everything, there was a stage where we were bleeding money and Rex used a lot of his own funds to shore that up.”

“You didn’t use yours?” she asked pointedly.

“He wouldn’t let me. Mitchell Exports was always his baby, you know that.”

She probably knew it better than anyone. She’d always known that Rex’s devotion to his business came well before his devotion to her.

“So he needed money for this treatment?” she probed.

“Yes, and he wouldn’t take the money from me, even though I offered it freely. He was, however, happy to enter into a loan agreement with me, registering a mortgage in my name over the property.”

“But this place is worth millions.”

“He was very determined to live, Piper. He was prepared to pay whatever it took to beat the disease. At that stage, he never believed for a minute that he wouldn’t live to pay me back.”

“And he knew you already loved the property and would look after it.”

Wade nodded slowly. “It was a more palatable solution for him than putting it on the open market to raise the funds, and seeing the land be gobbled up by developers, or risking borrowing the money through some financial institution and watching it go in a mortgagee sale if the treatment failed. When he knew he was going to die, he signed the property over to me in its entirety, provided he had a lifetime right to stay here. I had no problem with that.”

Piper blinked back a new rush of tears. What Wade had said all sounded plausible. She knew how much her father had trusted Wade. Moreover, she knew—just as her father had known—how hard Wade’s upbringing had been, how much he had wanted to prove he was better than his roots. If he’d been given the chance to demonstrate his friendship to Rex while simultaneously establishing himself in both the home and the business he’d always admired, then of course Wade had taken it. He was right to have taken it. But knowing that didn’t take away the sick sense of loss Piper felt at the evidence that her father had given his entire legacy away to someone other than her.

If she’d been more determined to prove to her father that she was just as good as the son he’d always dreamed of having, if she’d stood by his side through the hard times instead of running away as soon as she didn’t get her way, maybe she’d have been able to help him. But with her having remained overseas for as long as she had, often without any contact until she’d run out of money, again, and needed another advance from her funds, it was no wonder her father had sought a suitable custodian not only for his business but also for the house.

It didn’t make it hurt any less, though. She’d never known another home and now she couldn’t even call it hers anymore. Hopelessness hit her with a vengeance. Here she was, twenty-eight years old, no fixed abode, no job and no prospects. Sure, she still had her trust fund, but she didn’t want to dip into that unless absolutely necessary. What on earth was she going to do?

“I meant what I said before, Piper,” Wade said, his voice breaking into her tortured thoughts. “Rex asked me to look out for you. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”

As long as she needed? How was she to know how long that was? She’d come back to New Zealand, back home, to restore the relationships she’d damaged so very badly with her selfish decisions and past behaviors. The past four years, volunteering with aid relief in less privileged countries, had been a major eye-opener. One that had systematically changed her focus and made her realize just how empty her life had been and how much she continued to owe the people who’d been a part of it. People who she’d only later realized had tried to give her the love and stability she’d always craved. People she’d cast off in her anger and hurt for not loving her the way she’d wanted, oblivious to the fact that she was hurting them with her actions, too. People like her father, and Wade. “Thank you,” she said softly.

What else was there to say? She was at his mercy. He had every right to turn her out of the house.

“If there’s nothing else, I’ll say good-night,” Wade answered.

He rose from his seat and started to leave the room, hesitating a moment at the door as if he had something more to say. But then, with an almost imperceptible shake of his head, he continued into the hallway.

Around her, Piper heard the wooden timbers of the hundred-and-sixty-year-old home settle in the cooling night air. A sound she’d never even stopped to listen to before, yet a sound that was a solid reminder of all who’d been before her and left their mark on her world. Their expectations lay heavy in the atmosphere that filled the room. What mark had she left?

The emptiness around her invaded the hollows of her body and echoed through to her soul.

Nothing. She’d left nothing.

She drew a shaky breath deep into her lungs. Then another. She’d made a conscious choice to change her life. No one ever said it was going to be easy or that she’d have all the things at her disposal that she’d always taken for granted. Maybe this was one of the lessons she needed to learn along the way. Take nothing, and no one, for granted.

Piper moved down the hallway, her bare feet making no sound on the faded carpet runner that lined the polished wooden floor. She hesitated outside the morning room, unsure of what she’d find there. What remnants of her father’s illness and care from during his last days would linger? And what of the hospital bed and equipment Wade had said they’d set up in here?

She wasn’t surprised he’d chosen this room. It had purportedly been her mother’s favorite. Not that she remembered her mother beyond a vague sense of being enveloped in soft arms and being showered with butterfly kisses. Sometimes, as a child, she’d come in here and curl up on a chair with her eyes shut tight—trying to gain a sense of the woman who’d borne her. But try as she might, she had never felt any more than that elusive memory.

Her hand hovered over the brass doorknob until with a sudden resolution, she closed her fingers around the cold metal and gave it a twist. The door swung open before her revealing a room unchanged from the last time she’d seen it.

The chaise longue still resided in front of the French doors that opened onto the wraparound veranda. The side tables and comfortable furniture she remembered as far back as her childhood were all still there.

She sniffed the air carefully. No, not a hint of hospital or illness, or death, remained. It was as if her father had never been in here at all.

A solid lump of grief built in her throat as she stepped back and closed the door again. She desperately wanted some connection with him. Some proof that despite everything he’d still loved her.

Noises from the kitchen at the back of the house reminded her that Dexter and his wife were hard at work cleaning up after her father’s wake. She should go to them. Offer to help. But the need to be alone with her thoughts was stronger. She turned and made her way back along the hallway and then up the stairs that led to the bedrooms on the next floor.

Rex’s room had been at the opposite side of the house from hers. When her mother had died when Piper was three, he’d hired a nanny who’d slept in the room next to hers. But he’d kept his distance for many years, physically, emotionally and socially. It was only when she’d begun to bring certificates of achievement home from school that he’d really begun to acknowledge her existence, spurring her to do better, reach higher—whatever it took to garner his approval.

But that approval was always short-lived as his work took the bulk of his attention. She’d always wanted for him to see her as more than a child to be spoiled, her every whim indulged. She’d wanted him to acknowledge that she had a brain, that she could achieve, even that she might be worthy one day of working with him in the family business as he would have expected a son to do. Instead, no matter how high she flew academically, it was as if her achievements never really mattered to him. After that, behaving like the spoiled little princess he expected had become second nature—in fact, she’d almost turned it into an art form. For all the good it did her.

Piper bypassed her own room and headed toward the rooms that had been his. The door to his suite was open. She stepped into her father’s domain and was instantly enveloped by his personality. The room was neat and tidy, typical of the ordered way he’d liked things, but here and there were the memories she’d always associated with him. The books he had loved to read, the sweets he had kept in a porcelain jar beside the bed for “just in case.”

Pulling open his wardrobe, Piper was assailed with the faint reminder of the cologne he’d always worn. She reached for the dressing gown that hung on the hook on the back of the door and dragged it to her, burying her face in the velvet softness of the fabric and inhaling deeply.

“Is everything okay?”

She spun around to see Wade framed in the doorway, the light from the hall behind him, leaving his face in shadow. He looked as if he was in the process of getting undressed. Gone were his jacket and tie. His shirt buttons were now open halfway down his chest, his shirt untucked from the sharply creased trousers that encased his long legs, the cuffs undone and loose around his strong wrists.

Longing for what-might-have-been hit her in a surge of confused emotion. She shook her head slightly, trying to dislodge the sensations that clouded her mind. Comfort. She craved comfort, that most basic of needs. But she could no more ask that of Wade than she could ask for the moon, not after what had happened between them. Not when she still had so much making up to do. So much to prove—to him and to herself.

“I’m fine. Just …” What? It was impossible to put into words. Instead she settled for the benign. “I miss him. Why didn’t he give me the chance to come back earlier and say goodbye?”

In the doorway, Wade shifted on his feet. She sensed there was more he wanted to say but that he was holding back.

“Like I said before, he didn’t want you to have to go through it all. To have to watch him deteriorate. Maybe it was a bit of pride, too, wanting you to remember him as he was when you left rather than when he was so ill.”

“He never really expected me to come back, did he?”

Wade shook his head slightly. “No, I don’t think he ever did. Didn’t stop him wanting you here, though.”

The light from the hall shone into the room, bathing Piper in a stream of golden light. She looked so vulnerable there, holding her father’s robe to her as if it was some form of security blanket. As if it was the last remaining thing she had left in the world. Well, truth be told, it pretty much was. Still, she didn’t need to know that now. Time enough for that. Even he could see she was struggling with the reality of Rex’s death. Hell, he’d been here, through it all, and he still struggled.

He clamped down on the sympathy that came as naturally to him as breathing. The past few days he’d doled out his fair share to Rex’s friends and business associates. Offering solace to Piper should have been just one more drop in the bucket. But, he reminded himself, she’d made choices that made it difficult to dredge up any consolation for her. One choice in particular he could never forgive was that she’d chosen to end the life they’d created together before he’d ever known it had existed. He’d sworn she’d pay dearly for that choice. She owed him now in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine.

Even with that mental reminder, his hands itched to reach out to her, to touch her, comfort her. He’d been so in love with her once, and as angry as he still was with Piper, those old instincts dominated. Wade curled his hands into fists and thrust them inside his trouser pockets lest he give into them. He had no doubt she’d take what he offered—before throwing it right back in his face all over again.

She’d made it monumentally clear during their last bitter and very final argument, before she went overseas, that she needed nothing from him. Even her demeanor downstairs when she’d joined him in the library had been targeted to make him feel inferior, an outsider.