Blind-Date Baby (14 page)

This was her baby.

Well, at least Noah’s reaction had an upside.

Now she knew how she felt about being pregnant. She wanted this baby more than anything. She wanted to feel its kick, to feel it moving inside her. She wanted to hear its first cry and feel that total rush of love when they first met.

She stood up and went in search of underwear. Noah would show his excitement sooner or later, wouldn’t he? Perhaps Dani was right and he was just poleaxed by her announcement. Whatever the problem was, she hoped he would be in a better state of mind when he came back from his run.

Noah’s feet pounded on the hard paving slabs. He glanced up the road, saw there was a gap in the traffic and sprinted across and onto the cricket pitch. Grace was pregnant. With a baby.
His baby. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to jump up a tree and do a Tarzan yell or go and buy cigars.

At least you’re feeling something.

Shut up.

But this changed everything. What about the trips all over the world? The parties and awards ceremonies? He hadn’t ever envisioned doing that with a pushchair in one hand and a nappy bag over his shoulder.

You’re being selfish.

I know. Shut up.

He ran faster, harder, until the breath sliced cold in his lungs and his thigh muscles burned. He’d never considered becoming a father. Although his own had been a poor example, at least the comparison with friends’ dads had given him an idea of what a father
should
be. He should be able to interact with his son, praise him, talk to him, teach him about life. Not freeze him out and act as if he didn’t exist most of the time, even when the boy did his very best to make him proud.

Noah stopped running and rested his hands on his thighs, panting. But the feeling that he was pounding, churning, moving stayed with him. It was as if darkness were coming up from the inside of him, threatening to overtake him. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. This feeling was darker than the one he’d felt when Grace had told him she was expecting his child. Whatever this feeling was, he’d better outrun it.

Fear. What you’re feeling is fear.

Well, he had good reason to be afraid. When that baby was born and Grace expected him to be all those things a father should be, she was going to find out. He wouldn’t be able to disguise the emptiness any longer. She’d know. And then she wouldn’t want him any more. Neither of them would.

And, with that thought ringing in his ears, Noah started sprinting again, even though he hadn’t really caught his breath.

It did, didn’t it? Then why didn’t it
feel
right? Why were her alarm bells clanging? Why had the cold spread from her toes up to her knees?

Oh, flip! Tears were dropping on the keyboard of the laptop. Daisy would kill her if she fritzed this thing.

Grace logged off and wiped her eyes. She would just have to give Noah some room. She knew without a doubt that if she pushed him to open up he would just push back harder. So she’d wait. They had over seven months until the baby came. Surely they’d make some progress by then.

O
VER
the next few weeks a truce developed. Grace stayed on the fringes, gave Noah room. Noah took the room she offered, but it never seemed that he came any closer to making a step in her direction. Not really.

The hormones really started to kick in, though. Her pregnancy with Daisy had been a bit of a breeze, but her body was older and crabbier now and it protested loudly at being stretched and changed and fed upon by an invader. Noah tried hard, but he was struggling to keep up with the mood swings, his new wife one minute sweet and affectionate, the next snarling and crying. The waists of some of her trousers and skirts were already tight and she’d woken up one morning to discover she’d gone up a cup size—one change that hadn’t flummoxed Noah, quite the opposite, actually.

It was just as well she didn’t have to go to work, because even getting out of bed before ten made her want to heave. It got better in the afternoons, but she was suddenly so picky about her food. One minute she wanted something with a ravenous craving, the next thing she’d go green at the sight of it.

She crawled down to the kitchen one morning and slumped on the big oak table Noah had told her they’d had to hoist in through the windows when he’d bought it. It wasn’t long before Noah appeared from his study, looking
disgustingly well-groomed, even if he did have the largest scowl she’d ever seen on his face. He came over and kissed her on the cheek, anyway. She knew it wasn’t personal, that his head was trapped somewhere between his book and the real world.

‘Problems?’ she said, yawning in the middle of the word.

Noah nodded. ‘It’s my maddening hero. He just won’t behave.’

Grace lay her forehead on the table. Know how that feels, she thought. ‘What’s he up to now?’

Noah sat down at the table. ‘Are you feeling okay? Do you want me to get you something?’

She shook her head very slightly and it squeaked on the surface of the table. ‘No. Tell me about Karl the rebellious hero. It’ll help to have something to distract me. Why can’t you get him to work?’

‘It’s the love sub-plot. You know…where he gets involved with the woman who’s a double agent. It’s just not convincing.
He’s
not convincing.’

Grace sat up slowly. ‘Can you take that bit out?’

‘No.’ Noah shook his head. ‘The betrayal aspect, when she turns him over to his enemies, is important to the central plot.’

‘I’m no expert at spy novels, Noah. But perhaps you need a woman’s perspective.’

He looked so boyishly hopeful she would have run round the table and kissed him if she’d been able to move that fast without throwing up.

‘Would you?’

‘Of course. I’m no good to anyone at the moment. I might as well curl up on the sofa and read a good book.’ And get to see how your mind works before the manuscript has been meticulously polished and made presentable, she silently added.

He jumped up, kissed her cheek and then rushed out of
the room. ‘I’ll print it off!’ he yelled from somewhere down the corridor.

Grace spent the most wonderful day in the high-ceilinged drawing room, lying on the sofa with a throw over her. It was blissfully sunny outside and Noah opened the French windows for her so the warm air blew in the scent of flowers from the garden. She read his whole manuscript—well, apart from a bit in chapter twenty, where it stopped mid-sentence in the middle of a fight scene and then carried on a few days later. Apparently Noah needed to do some more research on a certain gadget before he could write the rest of that.

Noah had been pacing in the doorway too much so she’d shooed him away, sent him in to town to get some food for dinner. She’d discovered he was a much better cook than she’d imagined, but that was hardly surprising. He liked to use all the wonderful fresh organic ingredients. She’d hardly been able to get creative with the food on her budget over the years. There was a limit to the amount of things you could do with baked beans.

By the time Noah returned home with bags of groceries, Grace was sitting in the kitchen sipping tea, feeling considerably perkier.

‘What did you think?’ he said, looking a little nervous.

‘What did you buy?’ she replied with a mischevious wink. ‘I’m famished.’

‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’

‘Yes, it is. You tell me what you’re cooking me for tea and I’ll tell you what I think of Karl the spy.’

‘Minx,’ he muttered as he opened the fridge and started shoving vegetables inside. But he dived into a carrier bag and produced a whole chicken. ‘Yesterday night, you were waxing lyrical about old-fashioned roast dinners…’

Grace screwed her face up and made a gagging noise, which turned out to be a really bad idea, because thinking
about the pink, dimpled, slightly cold, slightly pink chicken in its packaging was making her feel queasy.

‘Thought so,’ Noah said and shoved it back in the bag, out of view. ‘That’s why I got this…’ And, with a flourish, he pulled a bag of fresh pasta and a handful of ripe tomatoes out of a different bag.

Grace jumped up. ‘I love you!’

Noah stuttered.

‘I mean…I love what you chose for dinner.’ She shrugged, the fake smile on her face making her feel just as iffy as the chicken had. What a stupid thing to say. And the look on his face—pure horror—as if she’d jumped up and said,
I want to cut your left leg off!

She had to pull things back, pretend she hadn’t said it and that everything was normal between them. Although normal for them wasn’t quite like any other marriage she knew. She made her voice light and breezy.

‘It was just what I wanted. How did you know?’

His face relaxed slightly and she breathed out. ‘I don’t know. I just did.’

‘How about you start chopping and I’ll tell you my thoughts on your book over dinner?’

‘Oh, no. That wasn’t the deal.’

‘Well, I’m so hungry I’m feeling a little nauseous so, if you want to do this now, you may have to break off to hold my hair back—’

‘Okay! It’s a deal. That’s all I need to know.’

Noah watched as Grace twirled linguine onto her fork.

‘I think I know what your hero’s problem is.’

‘You do?’

She popped the pasta in her mouth and chewed. When she’d swallowed, she said, ‘He’s too concerned with protecting himself, staying close to what he knows. He’s been trained
to deal with the situation he faces with the girl, hasn’t he? And he always stays within the boundaries of that training, within his comfort zone.’

Noah put down his fork and stared at her. ‘But if I make him forget his training, he’s bad at his job and that makes him unsympathetic as a hero.’

She shook her head and put her own cutlery down so she could wave her hands. ‘I’m not saying he should be bad at his job. I’m saying that he needs to have a good reason to
ignore
his training, make himself vulnerable. You need to dig deeper.’

Noah snorted. ‘You sound like my editor.’

‘You know I’m right.’

Yeah, yeah. He did. His inner Rottweiler was in a frenzy, trying to get him to listen. Dig deeper. He’d been living with this character for months now. He wasn’t sure there was any ‘deeper’ to go. What did he do if Karl the spy turned out to be just like his creator?

Well, just like him, Karl would be stuffed.

Noah was being ratty with Martine and he knew it. She also knew it, and had no problems letting him know she knew. He snapped at her while she went through the diary for the next couple of weeks with him and reminded him of the details of his speaking engagement that evening in Manchester.

But Noah was too busy playing with Post-it notes stuck to a whiteboard on his office wall. Laying his story out visually on coloured squares of paper helped him get a feel for its shape, its rhythm. He was flexing his mental shovel and trying to dig deeper into his hero. Unfortunately, Karl, who had first appeared in his previous book,
Silent Tundra
, was living up to his heritage and appeared to be frozen solid beneath the surface.

‘Both you and Mrs Frost are booked into the Manchester Royal tonight,’ Martine said, breaking his concentration.

‘Thanks,’ he muttered. ‘What?’

Martine looked at him cross-eyed. She slapped a folder onto the desk in front of him. ‘Since I’m obviously invisible, I’m going to make myself a cup of coffee. All the info you’re not absorbing is in that file. Don’t lose it!’

Noah mumbled something out of the side of his mouth that sounded very much like, ‘Okay.’ Then he ripped a pink Post-it note off his board and replaced it with an orange one from further back in the timeline. The key to Karl’s character must be in his past. But where? He looked down on the desk to check his notebook and found it obscured by a file. Where had that come from? He shoved the file in a random drawer.

There was a shuffling noise behind him in the doorway. ‘Have you booked the hotel yet?’ he asked Martine.

‘No.’ It was Grace’s voice that replied. ‘Didn’t Martine already take care of that?’

He dropped the stack of Post-it notes and turned round. She looked terrible. As if morning sickness had eaten her up and then spat her out. Her skin was a strange shade of grey and there were large purple bags under her eyes. Although she said the sickness was getting better, she looked so tired.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Better,’ she said, attempting to sound chirpy and just managing to sound conscious. ‘All set for your thing tonight?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘No, what? I’m not ready? You don’t want me to go? Noah, make sense, please.’

She looked so lovely, even pale and washed out. He crossed the room and lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. ‘I think you should stay here.’

He’d bought a pregnancy book online and had hidden it inside a folder in his study. Why exactly he’d felt the need to be so anonymous about its purchase and so secretive about its existence, he wasn’t sure. He just knew he’d feel embarrassed if Grace found him reading it. She knew all this stuff,
had done it all before. He felt such an idiot half of the time, asking stupid questions.

And then he thought that if he didn’t sound well-informed, if he didn’t keep buying baby stuff, she’d think he wasn’t interested. Which he was, on a purely logical level—it was all fascinating. No wonder people called it the miracle of birth. But when he stopped to think that the miracle would be living in his house, that strange feeling happened again. And he didn’t like it. It made him feel out of control. Helpless. At the mercy of something greater than himself. So, focusing on the right things to do, the right things to say was better. He could measure his success at that.

If Grace looked pale when he showed her his dinner choices, he knew it was a no-go. In the early weeks he’d known he had to bring her dry wholewheat crackers or plain noodles before ten with a glass of water. Nowadays it could be anything from a list of a dozen weird and wonderful foods. He was busy researching state-of-the-art baby monitors. These were all things he could do without messing up.

Anyway, one of the things he did know from all his reading was that his wife would not survive a journey up the motorway. He shook his head. ‘You know I’m right.’

‘But why? I’m fine. It was part of our deal, remember? Me going to writing-related events with you.’

Ah, yes. The deal. In which stupid universe had that made sense when he’d thought it up? Certainly not this one. Certainly not now.

A shutter fell over his eyes. She’d do it for him, he knew, even if she felt terrible. But she needed to rest. And he needed twenty-four hours where he didn’t feel as if he was trying to be what she wanted and failing her all at the same time.

‘You go and lie down. Go back to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow lunch time when I get back.’

It was lonely in the manor house that night. Noah’s house. Even though she’d been living there for nearly a couple of months, it still felt a bit like a hotel to Grace. Too big. Too smart. Too perfect. It was the house she’d always dreamed of, but it wasn’t her home.

Maybe that had more to do with her state of mind—or her state of heart, to be exact—than it did the house. Her first homes with Rob had been small, faceless army quarters, but they’d never seemed that way to her because every one had been filled with happy memories, laughter, passion…

Perhaps that was why Noah’s house felt like a show home. Their marriage was legal, of course, but it wasn’t real in the sense that her marriage to Rob had been real. She couldn’t blame Noah for that. He’d given her exactly what he’d promised her—respect, companionship, more chemistry than she’d expected.

And, in return, she’d foolishly given Noah her heart. It wasn’t that he wasn’t worthy of it, just that he didn’t want it. Try as you might, you just couldn’t make someone accept a gift they didn’t know existed.

Grace stayed up late, even though it wasn’t one of her scheduled nights to chat to Dani and Marissa. It was good to have some time to herself, without her husband in the immediate vicinity, to get some perspective on her situation.

Noah, just like his wayward character, kept himself firmly inside his comfort zone. Oh, not professionally—he was good at pushing the boundaries there—but personally, he was locked up tight. And she knew, just knew, that there was more inside him, that he was selling himself short. But that didn’t mean he’d ever let the invisible barrier between them down.

Each sweet gesture, each thoughtful thing he did for her or for their growing baby, rather than filling her with joy, only reminded her that he was always at arm’s length, always out
of reach. Those things would be lovely if love was the reason behind them, but when that was all there was…

She thought of Rob and how excited he’d been all the way through her pregnancy with Daisy, how he’d kissed her stomach, talked to it, even before the baby could hear. Where Rob had shared himself, Noah brought her things.

She wandered upstairs, barefoot and in her pyjamas, and into the small bedroom they’d discussed turning into a nursery. It was a lovely room, with plenty of space, high ceilings and sash windows. It was all so perfect, but oh-so-empty.