For His Baby′s Sake
For His Baby's Sake
Jessica Hart
About the Author
JESSICA HART was born in West Africa, and has suffered from itchy feet ever since, travelling and working around the world in a wide variety of interesting but very lowly jobs, all of which have provided inspiration on which to draw when it comes to the settings and plots of her stories. Now she lives a rather more settled existence in York, where she has been able to pursue her interest in history, although she still yearns sometimes for wider horizons. If you’d like to know more about Jessica, visit her website www.jessicahart.co.uk.
For His Baby’s Sake
Jessica Hart
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader
I don’t know about you, but I waste a lot of time wondering ‘what if…’ I know it’s pointless, but it’s impossible not to speculate about how differently things would have turned out if I had said ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’, if I’d stood firm instead of compromising, if I’d made that phone call, or not sent that email. Perhaps it’s just me, but whenever I make a decision, however trivial, there’s always that niggling feeling that I might have made the wrong choice.
Rose, the heroine of this special story has to make a difficult choice of her own: stay with the man she loves or make a new life for herself with the chance of having a baby. Either way, she loses something very special.
Luckily for Rose, she gets a second chance and this time, if she and Drew can make the right decision, they can have everything…
Best Wishes
Jessica
CHAPTER ONE
SHE couldn’t afford it. Rose threw down her pen with a sigh. No matter how many different ways she tried it, the figures just didn’t add up. Which left her with a problem.
‘What,’ she asked her small son, ‘am I going to do with you?’
There was no reply from Jack, but Rose hadn’t really expected one. At twenty months, his vocabulary was too limited to suggest the practical solution she needed, but he looked up at the sound of her voice and offered her instead a smile of such sweetness that Rose felt her heart contract. Jack might not be able to deal with her current childcare crisis, but his smile was all she needed to reassure her that somehow, some way, she would manage.
Leaving the depressing bank statements on the kitchen table, she went to sit on the floor beside him while he returned his attention to the brightly coloured bricks that were scattered around him. Absently, Rose piled three on top of each other, showing him how to make a tower.
‘I need that contract, but I can’t take you with me to the studio,’ she said, as Jack instantly reached out to knock the precarious tower over. ‘Peter and Peter are lovely, but their place is much too perfect for toddlers. There are too many sharp edges and antiques, and anyway, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on work if you were there.’
She quite often talked to Jack, knowing that he couldn’t understand. He was happy to listen to her voice, and it made her feel less alone to be able to talk things through, even if the conversations were inevitably rather one-sided.
Jack was looking aggrieved at the disappearance of the tower, and Rose quickly built another one, higher this time, and his face lit up as he realised that he could demolish that, too.
‘Perhaps I should have married your father when he asked me,’ she went on guiltily.
Thinking about how sensible it would be to marry Seb always made her a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t that she had any problem with being sensible normally, but it was a big step to marry someone you didn’t really love, no matter how practical an option it seemed, and Rose still hadn’t been able to commit herself further than saying that she would think about it.
‘But that wouldn’t have solved the problem of what to do with you now,’ she reminded Jack quickly, setting a blue brick precariously on top of the pile. ‘He’d still have had to go to Bristol for that job, and I would still be here wondering how I can afford someone to look after you. I can’t do that unless I start work on this contract, but I can’t work unless I can find someone to look after you.’
Sitting back on her heels, she smiled as Jack destroyed the second tower with a shout of triumph. ‘It’s a problem, isn’t it?’
‘Ya!’ yelled Jack delightedly.
‘That sounds like a yes to me.’ Rose sighed as she looked at her watch and levered herself upwards. She had better start making Jack’s supper. Perhaps some magic solution would occur to her when he was in bed and she had some quiet time to think.
Leaving Jack trying to build his own towers, she went over to the kitchen. She loved this room. Apart from the narrow hallway leading up to the stairs, the whole ground floor of the Victorian terraced house had been knocked through to make a bright, open-plan living room, with comfortable sofas towards the front, and a kitchen with a big table and French windows opening onto her little garden at the back.
Although, strictly speaking, it wasn’t her garden at all. It was Drew’s. Not that he had ever lived here, or would have done anything to the garden if he had. Whenever Rose thought of the absurdly low rent she paid, she felt quite dizzy with relief and gratitude. Without Drew she really wouldn’t have been able to manage since Jack had been born. He had always been generous.
Irresponsible, restless and ridiculously scared of commitment, but undeniably generous.
Her gaze fell on an old photo clamped to the front of the fridge with a Snoopy magnet. It showed her squinting slightly into the sun, and Drew with his arm around her. They were both smiling, both radiating happiness and confidence in the future. Both looking very young.
It seemed right to keep a picture of him up since this was his house, although Rose always felt a pang when she looked at it. Drew, with his crooked smile and his dancing eyes and that odd, distinctive pale star-shaped splodge in his dark hair. She had always known that she loved him. She just hadn’t realised how much until he had left.
Drew. Where was he now? ‘I’m off to Africa,’ he had said cheerfully the last time she’d seen him at some awful party she’d gone to with Seb. ‘I’ve been seconded to an aid project, putting in water supplies to remote villages.’ Rose always forgot exactly where he had gone—one of those sub-Saharan countries whose capitals she couldn’t pronounce. All she had really taken in at the time was the fact that he was leaving.
That he would rather go and work in the heat and the dust and the danger than stay at home and have a family with her.
Her eyes rested on his face in the photo. She could imagine him so clearly, standing under the African sun, sleeves rolled up, eyes screwed up against the light. He would be loving the tough conditions. There had always been a reckless, restless side to Drew, and he had a wonderful capacity to turn even the direst situations into good fun.
How long was it since she had had fun? Rose tried to remember wistfully.
Not since she had handed Drew that ultimatum. Settle down with me and start a family, or let me find someone else who does want children, she had told him.
And Drew had chosen to let her find someone else.
‘But we’ll still be friends,’ he had said, and he had meant it. When Rose had asked if she could rent the house he had bought as an investment while he was away, he hadn’t hesitated. ‘You’ll be doing me a favour,’ he had said. ‘I couldn’t ask for a better tenant than you, Rose.’
Rose stopped the sigh that threatened just in time. Drew had moved on, and so had she. Firmly, she opened the fridge so that the photo was out of sight, and put Drew out of her mind as she made herself think about feeding her small son instead.
Pulling out a piece of chicken and a bowl of fresh tomato purée that she had made earlier, she decided to cook some pasta, as well, and see if she could sneak in some peas. It was amazing how early Jack had come to regard certain green vegetables with suspicion.
She was filling a saucepan with water for the pasta when the doorbell went. Jack looked up, and Rose saw his surprised expression mirroring her own.
‘Who do you think that is?’ she asked him as she turned off the tap. ‘We don’t usually have visitors at this time.’ Jack was so mobile now that she was wary of leaving him on his own even for a moment, and she bent to pick him up. ‘Let’s go and see who it is.’
Balancing him on her hip with the ease of long practice, Rose squeezed past the pushchair that blocked the narrow hallway. She could see a man’s shape through the opaque glass panels in the front door, and she frowned slightly. If this was someone doing a survey it was really inconvenient timing, and so she would tell him.
But the words died on her lips as she opened the door and saw who was standing there.
Drew.
Drew!
With a baby.
Drew shifted the baby awkwardly in his arms. She was heavier than he had thought, but at least she was still asleep, he thought gratefully. What a day this was turning out to be! He had had no idea when he’d set out to see the Clarkes after lunch that he would find his life completely changed by teatime.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he had assured Betty Clarke. ‘I’ve got an old friend called Rose. She’ll help me.’
He should have called, Drew realised, but the situation was much too complicated to explain on the phone. He had just known that Rose was the person he needed, and he’d wanted to get to her as soon as possible. He hadn’t let himself think about anything but finding her.
It was only when he stood on the doorstep, ringing the bell to his own house, that Drew wondered if he should have checked after all. What if Rose were still at work? What if she had decided to go out for the evening? Would she still have the same mobile number?
Then, to his immense relief, he saw through the glass panels that someone was coming towards the door, and for a moment he even forgot the baby in his arms as a rush of anticipation at the thought of seeing Rose again swept through him. It was nearly a year and a half since they had last met, and then she had been with some colourless guy that Drew hadn’t liked at all. With any luck she would be on her own this time, and they could talk properly, the way they had always used to talk.
Drew had hoped that going to Africa would get Rose out of his system at last. That had been the plan, anyway. Rose had moved on, and so would he. Not only would he move on, he would move somewhere so different that he would never even think of her.
But it hadn’t worked like that. All those crushingly hot nights when he lay on his makeshift bed and listened to the relentless shrilling of a million million insects, the memory of her had been as cool and refreshing as iced water.
Drew suspected that he had romanticised Rose’s image in his memory, but when the door opened at last, his first impression was that she was as lovely as ever. She had the same straight silvery blonde hair, the same wide grey eyes, the same sweet curve to her mouth that had haunted his dreams.
But she wasn’t on her own. All those long African nights, and he had never once pictured her with a toddler on her hip.
Which was funny, really, when he had known all along that what Rose really wanted was a baby.
And now it seemed that she had one.
Drew’s carefully prepared speech evaporated from his mind as he looked at her. Rose. He had been planning to cajole her and charm her—to beg her for her help, if necessary. But now all he could think was that he was too late.
Much too late.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he said simply, unable to think of anything else to say, but his smile felt stiff and he had the oddest sensation of stumbling and falling into a deep, dark pit.
Rose’s expression was almost cartoon-like in its astonishment. ‘Drew!’ she gasped, finding her voice at last, although it sounded quite unlike her own. ‘Drew…what…what…?’ She was stuttering with surprise, bewildered by so many questions that it was impossible to decide which to ask first. ‘What are you doing here?’ she managed at last. ‘I thought you were in Africa!’
‘It’s a long story,’ said Drew, realising that he had the advantage. At least he had been expecting to see her, even if he hadn’t been prepared for the shock of realising that she had a child, or for the way his heart had slammed into his throat at the sight of her. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes…of course…’ In a daze, Rose stood back, and Drew edged awkwardly past her in the narrow doorway. For a devastating moment they were very close, and she was overwhelmed by the sudden realisation that this wasn’t a dream. This was real, and Drew was right there, bare inches away from her. Browner than she remembered him, tougher somehow, but otherwise exactly the same.
Apart from the baby in his arms, of course.
Rose felt very strange. She didn’t know what she wanted to say or do or know first.
‘Sorry about the pushchair,’ she said breathlessly, for want of anything better to say until she could make up her mind. ‘There’s nowhere else to keep it.’
‘That’s OK.’
Drew made it past the pushchair and into the living room. He looked around him, recognising the house he had bought as an empty shell, but barely. The furniture was his, but Rose had made the room unmistakably her own. She was a designer, of course, and she had always had the gift of making a house stylish with just a few carefully placed pieces.
The brightly coloured bricks scattered over the floor didn’t belong in any style scheme, though, and nor did the plastic highchair at the table or the rest of the unmistakable baby paraphernalia. Rose’s life had changed.
Without him.
Drew made himself smile again as she followed him into the room, and he looked properly at the little boy in her arms for the first time. Grey eyes identical to Rose’s stared back at him.
‘Who’s this?’ he asked. He was trying to sound jovial, but he was uncomfortably aware that his tone wasn’t quite right.
‘This is Jack,’ said Rose, holding Jack a little more tightly than normal.
‘Is he yours?’ said Drew, then cursed himself for a fool as she nodded. Of course Jack was hers. He had known that as soon as he looked into the little boy’s face.
‘Hello, Jack,’ he said, but Jack, overcome by shyness suddenly, hid his face in his mother’s neck.
Drew could remember just what it felt like to bury his face into the curve of her throat like that. He knew exactly how her skin smelt there. He looked away, ashamed to find himself jealous of a small child.
‘He’ll come round,’ Rose said. ‘Just give him a minute or two.’
Drew put his smile back in place. ‘Well…congratulations,’ he made himself say. ‘I know how much you wanted children. You must be very happy.’
‘I am. Jack’s everything I ever wanted.’
No, not everything, Rose, she corrected herself, remembering how many times she had ached to rewind time and unsay that ultimatum. But then she wouldn’t have Jack, and how could she wish that?
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were having a baby?’
Rose lowered Jack to the floor, where he clung to her legs. ‘I didn’t think you’d be that interested, Drew. You’ve always gone out of your way to avoid babies.’ She looked at the sleeping baby in his arms, but avoided the obvious question. ‘Why should you care if I had one?’
A dull flush spread along Drew’s cheekbones. ‘I thought we were friends,’ he said. ‘Of course I’d care about something so important to you. Maybe it wasn’t my business, but…’ He paused, and then shrugged. ‘I wish I’d known, that’s all.’
‘You’ve been out of touch,’ Rose reminded him, trying for a lighter note. ‘You can’t expect to keep up with all the news when you take yourself off to the middle of nowhere for years on end!’
‘Just under eighteen months,’ said Drew, not sure why he was feeling so defensive. ‘I’ve been out of e-mail contact, it’s true, but there’s a postal service. You could have written.’
‘Yes, I could have,’ she conceded. Walking awkwardly, with Jack clinging to her leg, she went over to one of the sofas and gestured to Drew to sit down on the other one. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s just that you seemed a long way away.’
She should have told him about Jack. Especially since they were living in his house. She just hadn’t been able to find the words.
‘I did mean to write, in fact, but…’ She lifted her shoulders hopelessly. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to tell you.’
‘Well, there’s no reason why you should have done,’ said Drew after a moment. ‘It’s just strange seeing you with a baby.’
‘I could say the same about you.’ Rose looked meaningfully at the baby, still sleeping peacefully in his arms. It was obviously a little girl, and someone had dressed her carefully in a dress and little coat, with a cute striped hat, although Rose guessed that someone hadn’t been Drew. He was holding her as if she were an unexploded bomb. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Molly.’
‘Nice name,’ said Rose, puzzled by the expression on his face. ‘Whose is she?’
Drew hesitated. ‘She’s mine,’ he said after a moment. ‘Molly’s my daughter.’
There was a long, long silence. Even Jack seemed to sense the tension, pausing in the middle of scrambling up onto his mother’s knee to look up into her face.
‘Your daughter?’ Rose said in a frozen voice. It was the last, the very last thing she had expected.
‘I’ve only just found out myself,’ said Drew. He swallowed. This was much more difficult than he had imagined when he had gaily assured Betty Clarke that he would be able to look after Molly. ‘Rose,’ he confessed, ‘I really need your help.’
Rose stared at the baby. At Drew’s daughter. After everything he had said about not wanting children, he was a father. Another woman had had his baby. Rose was unprepared for how much that knowledge hurt.
Mechanically, she lifted Jack onto her lap. Swallowed. Dragged her gaze from the baby to look right into Drew’s eyes.
‘I think you’d better explain,’ she said.
CHAPTER TWO
DREW raked a harassed hand through his brown hair, making the distinctive Pemberton streak stand up on end. ‘I don’t really know where to start…’
‘There’s usually a pretty obvious point when babies start,’ said Rose.
He acknowledged that with a twisted smile. ‘Yes, but you usually get a few months’ warning that a baby is going to appear in your life, too. I had none at all. Molly is just as much a surprise to me as she is to you.’
She frowned. ‘How long have you known about her?’
‘About two and a half hours,’ he said, with a glance at his watch. ‘I had no idea of her existence until then.’
‘What? Not even a suspicion?’
‘Of course not,’ he said indignantly. ‘I would never have gone off to Burkina Faso if I’d known. What do you think I am?’
‘I think you’re a man who never wanted a baby.’
‘I didn’t. That’s what makes this all so…’ Drew looked down at the baby. ‘I feel like I’ve been in a car crash,’ he admitted a little helplessly to Rose. ‘One minute I’m a bachelor, fancy-free, with no responsibilities, and the next I’m a father. I can’t really take it in.’
He did look shell-shocked, Rose had to admit. Almost as shocked as she felt. Her heart was still bruised and fluttering with shock from its plummet the moment Drew had looked at her and told her that he was a father. Drew, who had always ruled out the possibility of babies with her.
Jack, settling into her lap, stuck his thumb in his mouth and stared at Drew and the baby as if fascinated by them, and she put her arms around him and hugged him close, not sure if she was giving reassurance or taking it.
‘How old is Molly?’
‘The Clarkes told me she was nearly eight months old.’
‘The Clarkes? Who are they? And where’s Molly’s mother?’
‘She’s dead.’ Drew heard Rose’s sharp intake of breath at the bald statement, and he rubbed his hand wearily over his face. ‘Look, you’re right. I need to start at the beginning.’
‘When you slept with Molly’s mother?’
‘Yes,’ he said, flinching slightly at her directness. ‘Her name was Hannah and she was a technician at the office. She’d do the technical drawings and…Well, it doesn’t matter what she did. I’d known her for a few years, ever since I went to work there, and we’d always got on well. Hannah was attractive, I suppose, but I never really thought about that much. She was just a friend.’
She wasn’t you, he wanted to say to Rose, but didn’t.
‘If you had a baby together you were clearly more than friends,’ Rose said crisply.
Typical Rose, thought Drew with rueful affection. She looked so sweet, but there was a refreshing and sometimes uncomfortable astringency to her, as well.
‘That really was all we were until my leaving party,’ he insisted. ‘But that night I was…Well, the truth is that I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing in going to Africa, but I didn’t want anyone to know that I was having doubts, so I did my best to cover it by having a good time. Drinking too much, in fact,’ he added dryly. ‘Hannah was in a strange mood, too—almost wild. I didn’t realise at the time, but her parents told me today that she had decided that she really wanted a baby.’
‘And she’d picked on you as the father?’ Rose raised her brows in disbelief.
‘I know what it sounds like…but she definitely didn’t want a relationship. She told her parents that she liked me, and thought I’d have some healthy genes to pass on, but that I’d be a disaster as a father.’
‘Hah!’ snorted Rose, thinking that Hannah had obviously had no illusions about Drew. Sensible woman.
‘I’d told her about why we’d split up, so she knew I didn’t want children myself, but she didn’t care about that. She just wanted to get pregnant.’
Jack was beginning to squirm. He had evidently decided that Drew and Molly weren’t going to do anything alarming, and was ready to go back to his toys. ‘It takes two to get pregnant,’ Rose pointed out, putting out a protective hand just in case Jack fell as he scrambled down from the sofa. ‘Didn’t you take any precautions?’
Drew shifted in his seat. ‘The thing is, I wasn’t expecting to sleep with anyone that night. I thought I was just going out for a few drinks, but one thing led to another, and then Hannah was inviting me back to her flat, and…When things started getting a little…you know…’
‘I know,’ said Rose expressionlessly.
‘I think I did say that I didn’t have anything with me, but Hannah was insistent that she was on the Pill and…’ He glanced at Rose’s face. ‘Don’t look like that! I know it was irresponsible, but it wasn’t as if she was a total stranger.’
‘Hannah lied to you?’
‘She wanted a baby. That’s what her parents said, anyway. It was just luck, from her point of view, that she managed to get pregnant that night, but apparently she knew that she was ovulating and all the signs were good. It even suited her that I was going away a couple of days later, as I wouldn’t be around to put two and two together.’
‘She told her parents all this?’ said Rose in disbelief. Her own parents had died in an accident when she was nineteen. She had loved them dearly, and missed them still, but she certainly couldn’t imagine telling them that she was ovulating and hoping to become pregnant by a man she knew didn’t want to be a father. It would have been hard enough to tell them about Jack.
‘Hannah was a very strong personality. You’d have liked her,’ said Drew. ‘No, you would,’ he insisted, when she looked sceptical. ‘Her parents told me that she’d been completely straight with them about wanting to do it on her own. All she would say about me was that I worked at the office and that she liked me, but that I was the last person she wanted to get involved with.’
He didn’t add that Hannah had told her parents that he was still in love with Rose, and that she knew that any attempt at getting together for the baby’s sake would be doomed to disaster.
‘So you went off to Africa none the wiser?’
‘Exactly. Hannah was very casual about it when I saw her the next day. She said it was just a fling for both of us, and that as far as she was concerned we were just friends. And that was a bit of a relief, to be honest.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ said Rose acidly. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted to have to take any responsibility for your actions, now, would you?’
A dull flush crept up his cheeks. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘And I’ve taken responsibility now. When I heard that Hannah had died, I wanted to see her parents and say how sorry I was, how much I’d liked her…it seemed like the right thing to do somehow.’
It had been. Rose studied him, a little frown between her brows. She had been so staggered to see him, and so thrown by the news that he was a father, that she hadn’t had a chance to look at him properly yet. Now she looked at him more carefully. He was browner, yes, and leaner. There were more lines around the green eyes, but otherwise he looked just as she had remembered him.
But something had changed. He seemed more solid somehow. His face was still humorous, with that long, curling mouth and the glinting amusement in his eyes, but there was a new assurance to him now, a thoughtfulness that hadn’t been there before. Africa had changed him. His time there seemed to have made him responsible rather than reckless.
He was different. Rose couldn’t quite put her finger on why or how, but she knew that it was true. And it wasn’t just to do with the baby sleeping in his lap.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t looking forward to it,’ Drew said. ‘I didn’t know what on earth I was going to say, but in the event I didn’t really have to say anything. As soon as Mrs Clarke opened the door she just stared at me, and then stood back to let me inside. I couldn’t understand what was going on, but she showed me into a sitting room and there was a baby in one of those bouncy chair things.’
‘This is Molly,’ Hannah’s mother had said.
‘Is she Hannah’s?’ he had asked, and she had nodded with a wavering smile as Drew approached the baby. His tentative smile had been wiped off his face as he’d looked at her properly and seen the telltale splodge in the baby’s soft dark hair. Dumbly, he had raised his eyes, and Betty Clarke had nodded again.
‘And yours,’ she had said.
Now Drew pulled the cap off Molly’s head, and Rose saw for herself. It hadn’t taken her long to get so used to Drew’s hair that she hadn’t even noticed it after a while, but she vividly remembered how startled she had been to meet his father and see exactly the same pattern on his head.
‘It’s a form of vitiligo,’ Drew had explained to her once. ‘It’s an auto-immune thing. For some reason melanin isn’t produced, and in our family it’s inherited, a sort of genetic quirk, because if we get it at all, it always shows up in exactly the same pattern.’
Molly was dark-haired, with a distinctive star-shaped streak of pale hair above her right eyebrow. Exactly like Drew.
There was no doubting whose daughter she was.
Rose watched Drew tentatively smooth Molly’s hair, and something painful—jealousy? Bitterness?—gripped her heart so hard that she had to look away.
‘Didn’t Hannah’s parents try and find you when she died?’ she asked after a moment.
Drew shook his head. ‘She’d been very careful not to give any information away, but they’d noticed that she’d smiled when she’d seen that streak when Molly was born. “Just like your dad,” she’d told Molly. So at the funeral they hoped that someone with that hair would turn up, but of course, I was overseas. They didn’t have much choice but to carry on looking after Molly themselves, but they’re struggling. Betty—her mother—is due a hip operation soon, and her husband has a bad heart. They were just wondering whether they would have to call in the social services when I turned up at the door. It seemed like providence. There’s no need to do a DNA test with that hair—all the babies in my family have that.’
‘I remember,’ said Rose slowly.
Drew looked down at Molly and then straight at Rose. ‘I couldn’t just walk away when they needed help. It takes two to make a baby, as you pointed out, and I had to take some responsibility, so I said I would look after her at least until after her grandmother’s operation, and then if that goes well we would try and sort something out.’
‘But you don’t know anything about babies,’ Rose protested. ‘I can’t believe they just handed her over to you.’
‘Betty was a little reluctant at first, but there didn’t seem to be any option, and I…I told them you would help me,’ he confessed in a rush.
Rose drew a sharp breath of exasperation. That was typical of Drew. He had always taken her for granted, always believed that he could charm her into doing whatever he wanted. ‘You hadn’t even told me that you were back in the country, Drew!’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I only got back yesterday. It all happened so suddenly. Everything was going well on the project when we had word that insurgents were making their way towards us. We were ordered to withdraw to Ouagadougou, and then the decision was made to repatriate us until the situation became clearer, and who knows when that will be?’
‘So you suddenly found yourself back in London?’
He nodded. ‘I’d been seconded to the project in Burkina Faso from my company, so I reported back to head office to see what I should do in the meantime.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They told me to take a couple of weeks’ leave, and if I’d heard nothing by then they’d find me another job. I could probably go back to the team I was working with before I left. I went to see them, and that’s when I heard about Hannah…’
Drew sighed. ‘You know, there’s part of me that wishes I’d never gone to see the Clarkes.’ He glanced down at his daughter. ‘Molly has changed everything,’ he said, sounding almost baffled.
‘Babies have a habit of doing that.’
Rose tried to imagine what it had been like for him, arriving back in London from Africa. Working in a dusty rural village one day, checking in at swish City offices the next. Believing himself to be as irresponsible and free as ever, then discovering that he was a father. She wasn’t surprised that he still looked faintly shell-shocked. He must be reeling from jet-lag and cultural shock, let alone the terrifying and unexpected responsibility of fatherhood.
But, dammit, she didn’t want to feel sorry for him! How could he turn up here with a baby, after all he’d had to say about not wanting to be a father, and just assume that she would drop everything to help him?
‘So you thought of me?’ she said, her voice hard.
‘I was going to come and see you anyway,’ said Drew. He wanted to tell her that the thought of seeing her again had been the one thing he had held onto in the muddle and chaos of leaving, but this was clearly not the time. He hadn’t really thought about how she would feel when he turned up with a baby, but it had clearly been a tactless thing to do.
‘I was looking forward to seeing you,’ he persevered, ‘but I thought you’d be working until the evening, and when I heard about Hannah I felt I should go and see her parents straight away rather than keep putting it off.’
He hesitated. ‘When I saw Molly and understood the situation…you were the first person I thought of, Rose.’ He couldn’t explain how strong his feeling had been that she was one person he needed, and that if he could only find her and show her Molly that everything would be all right. ‘You know what my mother’s like. She was never exactly hands-on with her own child, so I can’t imagine she would be much help, even if she could be persuaded back from Spain. My father might have helped, but he’s ill, and my stepmother is taken up with him at the moment. I could only think of you.’
‘You didn’t think that I might be busy? That I might have my own child to look after?’
‘No,’ said Drew. ‘I never thought of you having a baby. I thought you’d be just the same, and that I could rely on you the way I’ve always done before.’
His green eyes looked straight into hers. ‘There’s nowhere else I can go right now. I knew you would know what to do with a baby, and I had to bring Molly somewhere.’
‘And this is your house,’ Rose added for him in a dull voice, her gaze sliding away from his. ‘Don’t forget that bit.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten, but I don’t want to use that to threaten you. You live here, and nothing’s going to change that. You can tell me to leave if you want to, and I’ll go, but I’m begging you, for Molly’s sake, to help me. I’m a water engineer, Rose. I don’t know the first thing about babies. I’ll get a nanny for Molly tomorrow, but for tonight I really need your help.’
Rose looked at Molly. She was just a baby. How could she refuse to help her? Drew had known that she wouldn’t be able to do that. Her grey eyes lifted to meet his green gaze once more.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you tonight, but then we need to talk about this, Drew.’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Drew, unable to hide his relief.
As if she had been waiting for some signal, Molly’s face puckered and she began to squirm. Rose saw the relief in his expression wiped away by panic.
‘Oh, God, she’s going to wake up,’ he said desperately, sitting rigidly still, as if he could will the baby back to sleep. ‘What shall I do?’
The words were barely out of his mouth before Molly began to wail, startling Jack, who looked up from the box of toys he was emptying.
‘Ga?’
‘It’s all right, Jack, it’s just the baby,’ said Rose, getting up to take Molly from Drew, who looked frankly terrified. ‘Let me take her.’
Lifting Molly against her shoulder, she held the warm little body close and rubbed her back soothingly as she bawled. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart…Shh, now…you’ll be all right…’ she murmured, swaying in a comforting rocking motion.
Drew watched them both nervously. ‘Is she OK? Why’s she crying like that?’
‘She’s woken up in a strange place with strange people, Drew. Wouldn’t you want to cry if you were Molly?’
Out of the corner of her eye, Rose could see that Jack had stopped what he was doing and was regarding her with a scowl, jealous of the attention she was giving the baby. She badly wanted to tell Drew exactly what she thought of him, but that was going to have to wait.
‘Jack needs his supper,’ she told Drew, ‘and Molly will need something to eat, too. Did her grandmother give you food for her?’
‘I’ve got a whole car full of stuff.’
‘Why don’t you go and bring it in?’ she suggested, resigning herself to the inevitable. ‘We need to get both these children in bed, and then, Drew, we’re going to have to talk.’
CHAPTER THREE
BY THE time Drew had struggled in with the last of Molly’s stuff, the front half of the living room was crowded, but Jack’s supper was almost ready. Rose had made it largely one-handed, while inviting Jack to patronise Molly for being so small and helpless that she couldn’t do half the things that he could, like pick up his bricks. Showing off about that kept him occupied for a while, but she could tell that resentment at the attention Molly was getting wasn’t far off, and she was very glad when Drew had finished and she could hand his daughter back to him.
‘Here—you take her,’ she said.
Before Drew had a chance to protest, she had laid the baby in his arms. Molly stared up at him, and he stared back, suddenly overwhelmed. His daughter. Her eyes were the same colour as his. She had the same streak in her hair. His throat seemed to close with an emotion he couldn’t name, a mixture of terror and love.
And then Molly began to wail and the moment had passed.
‘Hold her against your shoulder and walk around with her,’ Rose told him. ‘Talk to her. She doesn’t know where she is or who we are or what’s going on. Try and comfort her.’
Gingerly, Drew did as he was told while Rose put Jack in his highchair and set his supper in front of him. She offered him a plastic spoon, as well, but without much hope that he would use it. Jack hated being fed but, while he would occasionally have a go with the spoon, generally he preferred to use his hands. He loved his food, but there was no denying that he was a messy eater. By the time he had finished, half his meal seemed to have ended up garnishing his hair or ears. It was never a pretty picture.
Rose was used to Jack’s eating habits, but she noticed that Drew averted his eyes. ‘Better get used to it,’ she told him. ‘I don’t suppose Molly’s table manners are much better! And, talking of which, we’d better find her something to eat…’
He wouldn’t have known where to begin, Drew realised, feeling horribly inadequate but profoundly grateful at the same time that Rose seemed to know what she was looking for as she dug through the pile of stuff the Clarkes had sent with Molly, emerging eventually with a bib, a jar of prepared food and a smaller version of Jack’s highchair.
‘OK, we’re in business.’ Rose carried the chair over to the table and set it next to Jack’s as she pretended to marvel at how much he had eaten. ‘Do you think you deserve some pudding now?’ she asked him, and Jack shouted an enthusiastic reply and banged his plate on the plastic tray.
Drew liked watching her with her little boy. She was so relaxed and natural with him. Would he ever be like that with Molly? he wondered, glancing down at his daughter. It was hard to imagine. All he had to do was hold her at the moment, and he felt much, much more tense just doing that than he had done when he had heard that rebel troops were closing in on the village. Insurgents he could deal with; an eight-month-old baby was a much more alarming proposition.
‘Shall we just get Molly settled first?’ Rose was still chatting to Jack, wanting him to feel pleasantly superior rather than resentful. ‘She’s just a baby. She’s not a big boy, like you, and she probably doesn’t know about puddings, does she?’ She glanced over her shoulder at Drew. ‘Do you want to put her in the chair?’
‘Um…Rose…’ Drew held Molly away from him with a grimace.
‘What is it?’
‘She…smells.’
Rose couldn’t help it. She started laughing at his expression. ‘I should have thought of that! Time for your first lesson: changing a nappy!’
Digging out the changing mat, she laid it on the kitchen floor and talked Drew through the whole process as she gave Jack his pudding and encouraged her son to condescend to Molly. She could have changed and fed the baby in half the time it was obviously going to take Drew to do it, but she would have to be careful not to make Jack jealous—and besides, Drew had to learn. She had only promised one night.
One night with Drew.
How different this night would be from all the others they had spent together, from all those long sweet nights when they had tumbled, laughing, into bed, and woken cosily entwined the next morning. Rose could still remember the smell of his skin, the heart-cracking feel of his arm holding her close into the curve of his body. The warmth of his breath on her shoulder, the touch of his lips at the nape of her neck, sending that telltale shiver of response down her spine no matter how hard she tried to pretend that she was asleep…
Hastily, Rose yanked her mind back on track. This night wasn’t going to be like that. Drew wasn’t here because he had changed his mind. He wasn’t here because he wanted her. He was here because he needed her help, that was all.
Because he had had a baby with somebody else.
Think about Jack, Rose told herself with a kind of desperation. Think about Molly. Think about anything other than what it’s going to be like lying in bed tonight, knowing that Drew is at the other end of the hall—there, but not with her.
‘Whew!’ Drew screwed up his nose as he pushed the dirty nappy into a plastic bag. ‘Who would think something so small could make such a stink?’
Rose pushed the thought of the night to come aside, and got up from her chair next to Jack’s to dispose of the nappy. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said.
After the nappy-changing, learning how to feed Molly would be relatively painless—or at least that was what Drew thought, until he discovered that there was a lot more to it than simply popping a spoonful of food into her mouth every now and then. Molly turned out to have a will of her own, and if she didn’t feel like having what he offered she would close her little mouth firmly and avert her face, batting the spoon away with an imperious hand. Drew ended up with more food on him than in the baby, but Rose didn’t seem to think it mattered.
‘She’s had something to eat, that’s what’s important,’ she said, wiping Molly’s face with the deftness of long practice and lifting her out of the highchair. ‘Now, what about a bath?’
‘That would be great,’ said Drew, looking down at his smeared shirt. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Not you, dummy! Molly and Jack.’
Drew was exhausted by the time Molly was finally ready for bed. ‘Do you mean to say you have to do this every day?’ he asked, appalled.
‘But this is the best bit,’ said Rose, unable to resist cuddling the warm, clean baby who snuffled into her neck.
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Jessica Hart
About the Author
JESSICA HART was born in West Africa, and has suffered from itchy feet ever since, travelling and working around the world in a wide variety of interesting but very lowly jobs, all of which have provided inspiration on which to draw when it comes to the settings and plots of her stories. Now she lives a rather more settled existence in York, where she has been able to pursue her interest in history, although she still yearns sometimes for wider horizons. If you’d like to know more about Jessica, visit her website www.jessicahart.co.uk.
For His Baby’s Sake
Jessica Hart
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader
I don’t know about you, but I waste a lot of time wondering ‘what if…’ I know it’s pointless, but it’s impossible not to speculate about how differently things would have turned out if I had said ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’, if I’d stood firm instead of compromising, if I’d made that phone call, or not sent that email. Perhaps it’s just me, but whenever I make a decision, however trivial, there’s always that niggling feeling that I might have made the wrong choice.
Rose, the heroine of this special story has to make a difficult choice of her own: stay with the man she loves or make a new life for herself with the chance of having a baby. Either way, she loses something very special.
Luckily for Rose, she gets a second chance and this time, if she and Drew can make the right decision, they can have everything…
Best Wishes
Jessica
CHAPTER ONE
SHE couldn’t afford it. Rose threw down her pen with a sigh. No matter how many different ways she tried it, the figures just didn’t add up. Which left her with a problem.
‘What,’ she asked her small son, ‘am I going to do with you?’
There was no reply from Jack, but Rose hadn’t really expected one. At twenty months, his vocabulary was too limited to suggest the practical solution she needed, but he looked up at the sound of her voice and offered her instead a smile of such sweetness that Rose felt her heart contract. Jack might not be able to deal with her current childcare crisis, but his smile was all she needed to reassure her that somehow, some way, she would manage.
Leaving the depressing bank statements on the kitchen table, she went to sit on the floor beside him while he returned his attention to the brightly coloured bricks that were scattered around him. Absently, Rose piled three on top of each other, showing him how to make a tower.
‘I need that contract, but I can’t take you with me to the studio,’ she said, as Jack instantly reached out to knock the precarious tower over. ‘Peter and Peter are lovely, but their place is much too perfect for toddlers. There are too many sharp edges and antiques, and anyway, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on work if you were there.’
She quite often talked to Jack, knowing that he couldn’t understand. He was happy to listen to her voice, and it made her feel less alone to be able to talk things through, even if the conversations were inevitably rather one-sided.
Jack was looking aggrieved at the disappearance of the tower, and Rose quickly built another one, higher this time, and his face lit up as he realised that he could demolish that, too.
‘Perhaps I should have married your father when he asked me,’ she went on guiltily.
Thinking about how sensible it would be to marry Seb always made her a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t that she had any problem with being sensible normally, but it was a big step to marry someone you didn’t really love, no matter how practical an option it seemed, and Rose still hadn’t been able to commit herself further than saying that she would think about it.
‘But that wouldn’t have solved the problem of what to do with you now,’ she reminded Jack quickly, setting a blue brick precariously on top of the pile. ‘He’d still have had to go to Bristol for that job, and I would still be here wondering how I can afford someone to look after you. I can’t do that unless I start work on this contract, but I can’t work unless I can find someone to look after you.’
Sitting back on her heels, she smiled as Jack destroyed the second tower with a shout of triumph. ‘It’s a problem, isn’t it?’
‘Ya!’ yelled Jack delightedly.
‘That sounds like a yes to me.’ Rose sighed as she looked at her watch and levered herself upwards. She had better start making Jack’s supper. Perhaps some magic solution would occur to her when he was in bed and she had some quiet time to think.
Leaving Jack trying to build his own towers, she went over to the kitchen. She loved this room. Apart from the narrow hallway leading up to the stairs, the whole ground floor of the Victorian terraced house had been knocked through to make a bright, open-plan living room, with comfortable sofas towards the front, and a kitchen with a big table and French windows opening onto her little garden at the back.
Although, strictly speaking, it wasn’t her garden at all. It was Drew’s. Not that he had ever lived here, or would have done anything to the garden if he had. Whenever Rose thought of the absurdly low rent she paid, she felt quite dizzy with relief and gratitude. Without Drew she really wouldn’t have been able to manage since Jack had been born. He had always been generous.
Irresponsible, restless and ridiculously scared of commitment, but undeniably generous.
Her gaze fell on an old photo clamped to the front of the fridge with a Snoopy magnet. It showed her squinting slightly into the sun, and Drew with his arm around her. They were both smiling, both radiating happiness and confidence in the future. Both looking very young.
It seemed right to keep a picture of him up since this was his house, although Rose always felt a pang when she looked at it. Drew, with his crooked smile and his dancing eyes and that odd, distinctive pale star-shaped splodge in his dark hair. She had always known that she loved him. She just hadn’t realised how much until he had left.
Drew. Where was he now? ‘I’m off to Africa,’ he had said cheerfully the last time she’d seen him at some awful party she’d gone to with Seb. ‘I’ve been seconded to an aid project, putting in water supplies to remote villages.’ Rose always forgot exactly where he had gone—one of those sub-Saharan countries whose capitals she couldn’t pronounce. All she had really taken in at the time was the fact that he was leaving.
That he would rather go and work in the heat and the dust and the danger than stay at home and have a family with her.
Her eyes rested on his face in the photo. She could imagine him so clearly, standing under the African sun, sleeves rolled up, eyes screwed up against the light. He would be loving the tough conditions. There had always been a reckless, restless side to Drew, and he had a wonderful capacity to turn even the direst situations into good fun.
How long was it since she had had fun? Rose tried to remember wistfully.
Not since she had handed Drew that ultimatum. Settle down with me and start a family, or let me find someone else who does want children, she had told him.
And Drew had chosen to let her find someone else.
‘But we’ll still be friends,’ he had said, and he had meant it. When Rose had asked if she could rent the house he had bought as an investment while he was away, he hadn’t hesitated. ‘You’ll be doing me a favour,’ he had said. ‘I couldn’t ask for a better tenant than you, Rose.’
Rose stopped the sigh that threatened just in time. Drew had moved on, and so had she. Firmly, she opened the fridge so that the photo was out of sight, and put Drew out of her mind as she made herself think about feeding her small son instead.
Pulling out a piece of chicken and a bowl of fresh tomato purée that she had made earlier, she decided to cook some pasta, as well, and see if she could sneak in some peas. It was amazing how early Jack had come to regard certain green vegetables with suspicion.
She was filling a saucepan with water for the pasta when the doorbell went. Jack looked up, and Rose saw his surprised expression mirroring her own.
‘Who do you think that is?’ she asked him as she turned off the tap. ‘We don’t usually have visitors at this time.’ Jack was so mobile now that she was wary of leaving him on his own even for a moment, and she bent to pick him up. ‘Let’s go and see who it is.’
Balancing him on her hip with the ease of long practice, Rose squeezed past the pushchair that blocked the narrow hallway. She could see a man’s shape through the opaque glass panels in the front door, and she frowned slightly. If this was someone doing a survey it was really inconvenient timing, and so she would tell him.
But the words died on her lips as she opened the door and saw who was standing there.
Drew.
Drew!
With a baby.
Drew shifted the baby awkwardly in his arms. She was heavier than he had thought, but at least she was still asleep, he thought gratefully. What a day this was turning out to be! He had had no idea when he’d set out to see the Clarkes after lunch that he would find his life completely changed by teatime.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he had assured Betty Clarke. ‘I’ve got an old friend called Rose. She’ll help me.’
He should have called, Drew realised, but the situation was much too complicated to explain on the phone. He had just known that Rose was the person he needed, and he’d wanted to get to her as soon as possible. He hadn’t let himself think about anything but finding her.
It was only when he stood on the doorstep, ringing the bell to his own house, that Drew wondered if he should have checked after all. What if Rose were still at work? What if she had decided to go out for the evening? Would she still have the same mobile number?
Then, to his immense relief, he saw through the glass panels that someone was coming towards the door, and for a moment he even forgot the baby in his arms as a rush of anticipation at the thought of seeing Rose again swept through him. It was nearly a year and a half since they had last met, and then she had been with some colourless guy that Drew hadn’t liked at all. With any luck she would be on her own this time, and they could talk properly, the way they had always used to talk.
Drew had hoped that going to Africa would get Rose out of his system at last. That had been the plan, anyway. Rose had moved on, and so would he. Not only would he move on, he would move somewhere so different that he would never even think of her.
But it hadn’t worked like that. All those crushingly hot nights when he lay on his makeshift bed and listened to the relentless shrilling of a million million insects, the memory of her had been as cool and refreshing as iced water.
Drew suspected that he had romanticised Rose’s image in his memory, but when the door opened at last, his first impression was that she was as lovely as ever. She had the same straight silvery blonde hair, the same wide grey eyes, the same sweet curve to her mouth that had haunted his dreams.
But she wasn’t on her own. All those long African nights, and he had never once pictured her with a toddler on her hip.
Which was funny, really, when he had known all along that what Rose really wanted was a baby.
And now it seemed that she had one.
Drew’s carefully prepared speech evaporated from his mind as he looked at her. Rose. He had been planning to cajole her and charm her—to beg her for her help, if necessary. But now all he could think was that he was too late.
Much too late.
‘Hello, Rose,’ he said simply, unable to think of anything else to say, but his smile felt stiff and he had the oddest sensation of stumbling and falling into a deep, dark pit.
Rose’s expression was almost cartoon-like in its astonishment. ‘Drew!’ she gasped, finding her voice at last, although it sounded quite unlike her own. ‘Drew…what…what…?’ She was stuttering with surprise, bewildered by so many questions that it was impossible to decide which to ask first. ‘What are you doing here?’ she managed at last. ‘I thought you were in Africa!’
‘It’s a long story,’ said Drew, realising that he had the advantage. At least he had been expecting to see her, even if he hadn’t been prepared for the shock of realising that she had a child, or for the way his heart had slammed into his throat at the sight of her. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Yes…of course…’ In a daze, Rose stood back, and Drew edged awkwardly past her in the narrow doorway. For a devastating moment they were very close, and she was overwhelmed by the sudden realisation that this wasn’t a dream. This was real, and Drew was right there, bare inches away from her. Browner than she remembered him, tougher somehow, but otherwise exactly the same.
Apart from the baby in his arms, of course.
Rose felt very strange. She didn’t know what she wanted to say or do or know first.
‘Sorry about the pushchair,’ she said breathlessly, for want of anything better to say until she could make up her mind. ‘There’s nowhere else to keep it.’
‘That’s OK.’
Drew made it past the pushchair and into the living room. He looked around him, recognising the house he had bought as an empty shell, but barely. The furniture was his, but Rose had made the room unmistakably her own. She was a designer, of course, and she had always had the gift of making a house stylish with just a few carefully placed pieces.
The brightly coloured bricks scattered over the floor didn’t belong in any style scheme, though, and nor did the plastic highchair at the table or the rest of the unmistakable baby paraphernalia. Rose’s life had changed.
Without him.
Drew made himself smile again as she followed him into the room, and he looked properly at the little boy in her arms for the first time. Grey eyes identical to Rose’s stared back at him.
‘Who’s this?’ he asked. He was trying to sound jovial, but he was uncomfortably aware that his tone wasn’t quite right.
‘This is Jack,’ said Rose, holding Jack a little more tightly than normal.
‘Is he yours?’ said Drew, then cursed himself for a fool as she nodded. Of course Jack was hers. He had known that as soon as he looked into the little boy’s face.
‘Hello, Jack,’ he said, but Jack, overcome by shyness suddenly, hid his face in his mother’s neck.
Drew could remember just what it felt like to bury his face into the curve of her throat like that. He knew exactly how her skin smelt there. He looked away, ashamed to find himself jealous of a small child.
‘He’ll come round,’ Rose said. ‘Just give him a minute or two.’
Drew put his smile back in place. ‘Well…congratulations,’ he made himself say. ‘I know how much you wanted children. You must be very happy.’
‘I am. Jack’s everything I ever wanted.’
No, not everything, Rose, she corrected herself, remembering how many times she had ached to rewind time and unsay that ultimatum. But then she wouldn’t have Jack, and how could she wish that?
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were having a baby?’
Rose lowered Jack to the floor, where he clung to her legs. ‘I didn’t think you’d be that interested, Drew. You’ve always gone out of your way to avoid babies.’ She looked at the sleeping baby in his arms, but avoided the obvious question. ‘Why should you care if I had one?’
A dull flush spread along Drew’s cheekbones. ‘I thought we were friends,’ he said. ‘Of course I’d care about something so important to you. Maybe it wasn’t my business, but…’ He paused, and then shrugged. ‘I wish I’d known, that’s all.’
‘You’ve been out of touch,’ Rose reminded him, trying for a lighter note. ‘You can’t expect to keep up with all the news when you take yourself off to the middle of nowhere for years on end!’
‘Just under eighteen months,’ said Drew, not sure why he was feeling so defensive. ‘I’ve been out of e-mail contact, it’s true, but there’s a postal service. You could have written.’
‘Yes, I could have,’ she conceded. Walking awkwardly, with Jack clinging to her leg, she went over to one of the sofas and gestured to Drew to sit down on the other one. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s just that you seemed a long way away.’
She should have told him about Jack. Especially since they were living in his house. She just hadn’t been able to find the words.
‘I did mean to write, in fact, but…’ She lifted her shoulders hopelessly. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to tell you.’
‘Well, there’s no reason why you should have done,’ said Drew after a moment. ‘It’s just strange seeing you with a baby.’
‘I could say the same about you.’ Rose looked meaningfully at the baby, still sleeping peacefully in his arms. It was obviously a little girl, and someone had dressed her carefully in a dress and little coat, with a cute striped hat, although Rose guessed that someone hadn’t been Drew. He was holding her as if she were an unexploded bomb. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Molly.’
‘Nice name,’ said Rose, puzzled by the expression on his face. ‘Whose is she?’
Drew hesitated. ‘She’s mine,’ he said after a moment. ‘Molly’s my daughter.’
There was a long, long silence. Even Jack seemed to sense the tension, pausing in the middle of scrambling up onto his mother’s knee to look up into her face.
‘Your daughter?’ Rose said in a frozen voice. It was the last, the very last thing she had expected.
‘I’ve only just found out myself,’ said Drew. He swallowed. This was much more difficult than he had imagined when he had gaily assured Betty Clarke that he would be able to look after Molly. ‘Rose,’ he confessed, ‘I really need your help.’
Rose stared at the baby. At Drew’s daughter. After everything he had said about not wanting children, he was a father. Another woman had had his baby. Rose was unprepared for how much that knowledge hurt.
Mechanically, she lifted Jack onto her lap. Swallowed. Dragged her gaze from the baby to look right into Drew’s eyes.
‘I think you’d better explain,’ she said.
CHAPTER TWO
DREW raked a harassed hand through his brown hair, making the distinctive Pemberton streak stand up on end. ‘I don’t really know where to start…’
‘There’s usually a pretty obvious point when babies start,’ said Rose.
He acknowledged that with a twisted smile. ‘Yes, but you usually get a few months’ warning that a baby is going to appear in your life, too. I had none at all. Molly is just as much a surprise to me as she is to you.’
She frowned. ‘How long have you known about her?’
‘About two and a half hours,’ he said, with a glance at his watch. ‘I had no idea of her existence until then.’
‘What? Not even a suspicion?’
‘Of course not,’ he said indignantly. ‘I would never have gone off to Burkina Faso if I’d known. What do you think I am?’
‘I think you’re a man who never wanted a baby.’
‘I didn’t. That’s what makes this all so…’ Drew looked down at the baby. ‘I feel like I’ve been in a car crash,’ he admitted a little helplessly to Rose. ‘One minute I’m a bachelor, fancy-free, with no responsibilities, and the next I’m a father. I can’t really take it in.’
He did look shell-shocked, Rose had to admit. Almost as shocked as she felt. Her heart was still bruised and fluttering with shock from its plummet the moment Drew had looked at her and told her that he was a father. Drew, who had always ruled out the possibility of babies with her.
Jack, settling into her lap, stuck his thumb in his mouth and stared at Drew and the baby as if fascinated by them, and she put her arms around him and hugged him close, not sure if she was giving reassurance or taking it.
‘How old is Molly?’
‘The Clarkes told me she was nearly eight months old.’
‘The Clarkes? Who are they? And where’s Molly’s mother?’
‘She’s dead.’ Drew heard Rose’s sharp intake of breath at the bald statement, and he rubbed his hand wearily over his face. ‘Look, you’re right. I need to start at the beginning.’
‘When you slept with Molly’s mother?’
‘Yes,’ he said, flinching slightly at her directness. ‘Her name was Hannah and she was a technician at the office. She’d do the technical drawings and…Well, it doesn’t matter what she did. I’d known her for a few years, ever since I went to work there, and we’d always got on well. Hannah was attractive, I suppose, but I never really thought about that much. She was just a friend.’
She wasn’t you, he wanted to say to Rose, but didn’t.
‘If you had a baby together you were clearly more than friends,’ Rose said crisply.
Typical Rose, thought Drew with rueful affection. She looked so sweet, but there was a refreshing and sometimes uncomfortable astringency to her, as well.
‘That really was all we were until my leaving party,’ he insisted. ‘But that night I was…Well, the truth is that I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing in going to Africa, but I didn’t want anyone to know that I was having doubts, so I did my best to cover it by having a good time. Drinking too much, in fact,’ he added dryly. ‘Hannah was in a strange mood, too—almost wild. I didn’t realise at the time, but her parents told me today that she had decided that she really wanted a baby.’
‘And she’d picked on you as the father?’ Rose raised her brows in disbelief.
‘I know what it sounds like…but she definitely didn’t want a relationship. She told her parents that she liked me, and thought I’d have some healthy genes to pass on, but that I’d be a disaster as a father.’
‘Hah!’ snorted Rose, thinking that Hannah had obviously had no illusions about Drew. Sensible woman.
‘I’d told her about why we’d split up, so she knew I didn’t want children myself, but she didn’t care about that. She just wanted to get pregnant.’
Jack was beginning to squirm. He had evidently decided that Drew and Molly weren’t going to do anything alarming, and was ready to go back to his toys. ‘It takes two to get pregnant,’ Rose pointed out, putting out a protective hand just in case Jack fell as he scrambled down from the sofa. ‘Didn’t you take any precautions?’
Drew shifted in his seat. ‘The thing is, I wasn’t expecting to sleep with anyone that night. I thought I was just going out for a few drinks, but one thing led to another, and then Hannah was inviting me back to her flat, and…When things started getting a little…you know…’
‘I know,’ said Rose expressionlessly.
‘I think I did say that I didn’t have anything with me, but Hannah was insistent that she was on the Pill and…’ He glanced at Rose’s face. ‘Don’t look like that! I know it was irresponsible, but it wasn’t as if she was a total stranger.’
‘Hannah lied to you?’
‘She wanted a baby. That’s what her parents said, anyway. It was just luck, from her point of view, that she managed to get pregnant that night, but apparently she knew that she was ovulating and all the signs were good. It even suited her that I was going away a couple of days later, as I wouldn’t be around to put two and two together.’
‘She told her parents all this?’ said Rose in disbelief. Her own parents had died in an accident when she was nineteen. She had loved them dearly, and missed them still, but she certainly couldn’t imagine telling them that she was ovulating and hoping to become pregnant by a man she knew didn’t want to be a father. It would have been hard enough to tell them about Jack.
‘Hannah was a very strong personality. You’d have liked her,’ said Drew. ‘No, you would,’ he insisted, when she looked sceptical. ‘Her parents told me that she’d been completely straight with them about wanting to do it on her own. All she would say about me was that I worked at the office and that she liked me, but that I was the last person she wanted to get involved with.’
He didn’t add that Hannah had told her parents that he was still in love with Rose, and that she knew that any attempt at getting together for the baby’s sake would be doomed to disaster.
‘So you went off to Africa none the wiser?’
‘Exactly. Hannah was very casual about it when I saw her the next day. She said it was just a fling for both of us, and that as far as she was concerned we were just friends. And that was a bit of a relief, to be honest.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ said Rose acidly. ‘You wouldn’t have wanted to have to take any responsibility for your actions, now, would you?’
A dull flush crept up his cheeks. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘And I’ve taken responsibility now. When I heard that Hannah had died, I wanted to see her parents and say how sorry I was, how much I’d liked her…it seemed like the right thing to do somehow.’
It had been. Rose studied him, a little frown between her brows. She had been so staggered to see him, and so thrown by the news that he was a father, that she hadn’t had a chance to look at him properly yet. Now she looked at him more carefully. He was browner, yes, and leaner. There were more lines around the green eyes, but otherwise he looked just as she had remembered him.
But something had changed. He seemed more solid somehow. His face was still humorous, with that long, curling mouth and the glinting amusement in his eyes, but there was a new assurance to him now, a thoughtfulness that hadn’t been there before. Africa had changed him. His time there seemed to have made him responsible rather than reckless.
He was different. Rose couldn’t quite put her finger on why or how, but she knew that it was true. And it wasn’t just to do with the baby sleeping in his lap.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘I wasn’t looking forward to it,’ Drew said. ‘I didn’t know what on earth I was going to say, but in the event I didn’t really have to say anything. As soon as Mrs Clarke opened the door she just stared at me, and then stood back to let me inside. I couldn’t understand what was going on, but she showed me into a sitting room and there was a baby in one of those bouncy chair things.’
‘This is Molly,’ Hannah’s mother had said.
‘Is she Hannah’s?’ he had asked, and she had nodded with a wavering smile as Drew approached the baby. His tentative smile had been wiped off his face as he’d looked at her properly and seen the telltale splodge in the baby’s soft dark hair. Dumbly, he had raised his eyes, and Betty Clarke had nodded again.
‘And yours,’ she had said.
Now Drew pulled the cap off Molly’s head, and Rose saw for herself. It hadn’t taken her long to get so used to Drew’s hair that she hadn’t even noticed it after a while, but she vividly remembered how startled she had been to meet his father and see exactly the same pattern on his head.
‘It’s a form of vitiligo,’ Drew had explained to her once. ‘It’s an auto-immune thing. For some reason melanin isn’t produced, and in our family it’s inherited, a sort of genetic quirk, because if we get it at all, it always shows up in exactly the same pattern.’
Molly was dark-haired, with a distinctive star-shaped streak of pale hair above her right eyebrow. Exactly like Drew.
There was no doubting whose daughter she was.
Rose watched Drew tentatively smooth Molly’s hair, and something painful—jealousy? Bitterness?—gripped her heart so hard that she had to look away.
‘Didn’t Hannah’s parents try and find you when she died?’ she asked after a moment.
Drew shook his head. ‘She’d been very careful not to give any information away, but they’d noticed that she’d smiled when she’d seen that streak when Molly was born. “Just like your dad,” she’d told Molly. So at the funeral they hoped that someone with that hair would turn up, but of course, I was overseas. They didn’t have much choice but to carry on looking after Molly themselves, but they’re struggling. Betty—her mother—is due a hip operation soon, and her husband has a bad heart. They were just wondering whether they would have to call in the social services when I turned up at the door. It seemed like providence. There’s no need to do a DNA test with that hair—all the babies in my family have that.’
‘I remember,’ said Rose slowly.
Drew looked down at Molly and then straight at Rose. ‘I couldn’t just walk away when they needed help. It takes two to make a baby, as you pointed out, and I had to take some responsibility, so I said I would look after her at least until after her grandmother’s operation, and then if that goes well we would try and sort something out.’
‘But you don’t know anything about babies,’ Rose protested. ‘I can’t believe they just handed her over to you.’
‘Betty was a little reluctant at first, but there didn’t seem to be any option, and I…I told them you would help me,’ he confessed in a rush.
Rose drew a sharp breath of exasperation. That was typical of Drew. He had always taken her for granted, always believed that he could charm her into doing whatever he wanted. ‘You hadn’t even told me that you were back in the country, Drew!’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I only got back yesterday. It all happened so suddenly. Everything was going well on the project when we had word that insurgents were making their way towards us. We were ordered to withdraw to Ouagadougou, and then the decision was made to repatriate us until the situation became clearer, and who knows when that will be?’
‘So you suddenly found yourself back in London?’
He nodded. ‘I’d been seconded to the project in Burkina Faso from my company, so I reported back to head office to see what I should do in the meantime.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They told me to take a couple of weeks’ leave, and if I’d heard nothing by then they’d find me another job. I could probably go back to the team I was working with before I left. I went to see them, and that’s when I heard about Hannah…’
Drew sighed. ‘You know, there’s part of me that wishes I’d never gone to see the Clarkes.’ He glanced down at his daughter. ‘Molly has changed everything,’ he said, sounding almost baffled.
‘Babies have a habit of doing that.’
Rose tried to imagine what it had been like for him, arriving back in London from Africa. Working in a dusty rural village one day, checking in at swish City offices the next. Believing himself to be as irresponsible and free as ever, then discovering that he was a father. She wasn’t surprised that he still looked faintly shell-shocked. He must be reeling from jet-lag and cultural shock, let alone the terrifying and unexpected responsibility of fatherhood.
But, dammit, she didn’t want to feel sorry for him! How could he turn up here with a baby, after all he’d had to say about not wanting to be a father, and just assume that she would drop everything to help him?
‘So you thought of me?’ she said, her voice hard.
‘I was going to come and see you anyway,’ said Drew. He wanted to tell her that the thought of seeing her again had been the one thing he had held onto in the muddle and chaos of leaving, but this was clearly not the time. He hadn’t really thought about how she would feel when he turned up with a baby, but it had clearly been a tactless thing to do.
‘I was looking forward to seeing you,’ he persevered, ‘but I thought you’d be working until the evening, and when I heard about Hannah I felt I should go and see her parents straight away rather than keep putting it off.’
He hesitated. ‘When I saw Molly and understood the situation…you were the first person I thought of, Rose.’ He couldn’t explain how strong his feeling had been that she was one person he needed, and that if he could only find her and show her Molly that everything would be all right. ‘You know what my mother’s like. She was never exactly hands-on with her own child, so I can’t imagine she would be much help, even if she could be persuaded back from Spain. My father might have helped, but he’s ill, and my stepmother is taken up with him at the moment. I could only think of you.’
‘You didn’t think that I might be busy? That I might have my own child to look after?’
‘No,’ said Drew. ‘I never thought of you having a baby. I thought you’d be just the same, and that I could rely on you the way I’ve always done before.’
His green eyes looked straight into hers. ‘There’s nowhere else I can go right now. I knew you would know what to do with a baby, and I had to bring Molly somewhere.’
‘And this is your house,’ Rose added for him in a dull voice, her gaze sliding away from his. ‘Don’t forget that bit.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten, but I don’t want to use that to threaten you. You live here, and nothing’s going to change that. You can tell me to leave if you want to, and I’ll go, but I’m begging you, for Molly’s sake, to help me. I’m a water engineer, Rose. I don’t know the first thing about babies. I’ll get a nanny for Molly tomorrow, but for tonight I really need your help.’
Rose looked at Molly. She was just a baby. How could she refuse to help her? Drew had known that she wouldn’t be able to do that. Her grey eyes lifted to meet his green gaze once more.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you tonight, but then we need to talk about this, Drew.’
‘Whatever you say,’ said Drew, unable to hide his relief.
As if she had been waiting for some signal, Molly’s face puckered and she began to squirm. Rose saw the relief in his expression wiped away by panic.
‘Oh, God, she’s going to wake up,’ he said desperately, sitting rigidly still, as if he could will the baby back to sleep. ‘What shall I do?’
The words were barely out of his mouth before Molly began to wail, startling Jack, who looked up from the box of toys he was emptying.
‘Ga?’
‘It’s all right, Jack, it’s just the baby,’ said Rose, getting up to take Molly from Drew, who looked frankly terrified. ‘Let me take her.’
Lifting Molly against her shoulder, she held the warm little body close and rubbed her back soothingly as she bawled. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart…Shh, now…you’ll be all right…’ she murmured, swaying in a comforting rocking motion.
Drew watched them both nervously. ‘Is she OK? Why’s she crying like that?’
‘She’s woken up in a strange place with strange people, Drew. Wouldn’t you want to cry if you were Molly?’
Out of the corner of her eye, Rose could see that Jack had stopped what he was doing and was regarding her with a scowl, jealous of the attention she was giving the baby. She badly wanted to tell Drew exactly what she thought of him, but that was going to have to wait.
‘Jack needs his supper,’ she told Drew, ‘and Molly will need something to eat, too. Did her grandmother give you food for her?’
‘I’ve got a whole car full of stuff.’
‘Why don’t you go and bring it in?’ she suggested, resigning herself to the inevitable. ‘We need to get both these children in bed, and then, Drew, we’re going to have to talk.’
CHAPTER THREE
BY THE time Drew had struggled in with the last of Molly’s stuff, the front half of the living room was crowded, but Jack’s supper was almost ready. Rose had made it largely one-handed, while inviting Jack to patronise Molly for being so small and helpless that she couldn’t do half the things that he could, like pick up his bricks. Showing off about that kept him occupied for a while, but she could tell that resentment at the attention Molly was getting wasn’t far off, and she was very glad when Drew had finished and she could hand his daughter back to him.
‘Here—you take her,’ she said.
Before Drew had a chance to protest, she had laid the baby in his arms. Molly stared up at him, and he stared back, suddenly overwhelmed. His daughter. Her eyes were the same colour as his. She had the same streak in her hair. His throat seemed to close with an emotion he couldn’t name, a mixture of terror and love.
And then Molly began to wail and the moment had passed.
‘Hold her against your shoulder and walk around with her,’ Rose told him. ‘Talk to her. She doesn’t know where she is or who we are or what’s going on. Try and comfort her.’
Gingerly, Drew did as he was told while Rose put Jack in his highchair and set his supper in front of him. She offered him a plastic spoon, as well, but without much hope that he would use it. Jack hated being fed but, while he would occasionally have a go with the spoon, generally he preferred to use his hands. He loved his food, but there was no denying that he was a messy eater. By the time he had finished, half his meal seemed to have ended up garnishing his hair or ears. It was never a pretty picture.
Rose was used to Jack’s eating habits, but she noticed that Drew averted his eyes. ‘Better get used to it,’ she told him. ‘I don’t suppose Molly’s table manners are much better! And, talking of which, we’d better find her something to eat…’
He wouldn’t have known where to begin, Drew realised, feeling horribly inadequate but profoundly grateful at the same time that Rose seemed to know what she was looking for as she dug through the pile of stuff the Clarkes had sent with Molly, emerging eventually with a bib, a jar of prepared food and a smaller version of Jack’s highchair.
‘OK, we’re in business.’ Rose carried the chair over to the table and set it next to Jack’s as she pretended to marvel at how much he had eaten. ‘Do you think you deserve some pudding now?’ she asked him, and Jack shouted an enthusiastic reply and banged his plate on the plastic tray.
Drew liked watching her with her little boy. She was so relaxed and natural with him. Would he ever be like that with Molly? he wondered, glancing down at his daughter. It was hard to imagine. All he had to do was hold her at the moment, and he felt much, much more tense just doing that than he had done when he had heard that rebel troops were closing in on the village. Insurgents he could deal with; an eight-month-old baby was a much more alarming proposition.
‘Shall we just get Molly settled first?’ Rose was still chatting to Jack, wanting him to feel pleasantly superior rather than resentful. ‘She’s just a baby. She’s not a big boy, like you, and she probably doesn’t know about puddings, does she?’ She glanced over her shoulder at Drew. ‘Do you want to put her in the chair?’
‘Um…Rose…’ Drew held Molly away from him with a grimace.
‘What is it?’
‘She…smells.’
Rose couldn’t help it. She started laughing at his expression. ‘I should have thought of that! Time for your first lesson: changing a nappy!’
Digging out the changing mat, she laid it on the kitchen floor and talked Drew through the whole process as she gave Jack his pudding and encouraged her son to condescend to Molly. She could have changed and fed the baby in half the time it was obviously going to take Drew to do it, but she would have to be careful not to make Jack jealous—and besides, Drew had to learn. She had only promised one night.
One night with Drew.
How different this night would be from all the others they had spent together, from all those long sweet nights when they had tumbled, laughing, into bed, and woken cosily entwined the next morning. Rose could still remember the smell of his skin, the heart-cracking feel of his arm holding her close into the curve of his body. The warmth of his breath on her shoulder, the touch of his lips at the nape of her neck, sending that telltale shiver of response down her spine no matter how hard she tried to pretend that she was asleep…
Hastily, Rose yanked her mind back on track. This night wasn’t going to be like that. Drew wasn’t here because he had changed his mind. He wasn’t here because he wanted her. He was here because he needed her help, that was all.
Because he had had a baby with somebody else.
Think about Jack, Rose told herself with a kind of desperation. Think about Molly. Think about anything other than what it’s going to be like lying in bed tonight, knowing that Drew is at the other end of the hall—there, but not with her.
‘Whew!’ Drew screwed up his nose as he pushed the dirty nappy into a plastic bag. ‘Who would think something so small could make such a stink?’
Rose pushed the thought of the night to come aside, and got up from her chair next to Jack’s to dispose of the nappy. ‘Welcome to my world,’ she said.
After the nappy-changing, learning how to feed Molly would be relatively painless—or at least that was what Drew thought, until he discovered that there was a lot more to it than simply popping a spoonful of food into her mouth every now and then. Molly turned out to have a will of her own, and if she didn’t feel like having what he offered she would close her little mouth firmly and avert her face, batting the spoon away with an imperious hand. Drew ended up with more food on him than in the baby, but Rose didn’t seem to think it mattered.
‘She’s had something to eat, that’s what’s important,’ she said, wiping Molly’s face with the deftness of long practice and lifting her out of the highchair. ‘Now, what about a bath?’
‘That would be great,’ said Drew, looking down at his smeared shirt. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘Not you, dummy! Molly and Jack.’
Drew was exhausted by the time Molly was finally ready for bed. ‘Do you mean to say you have to do this every day?’ he asked, appalled.
‘But this is the best bit,’ said Rose, unable to resist cuddling the warm, clean baby who snuffled into her neck.
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Jessica Hart
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: For His Baby′s Sake, электронная книга автора Jessica Hart на английском языке, в жанре современная зарубежная литература