The Pregnant Bride (4 page)

Of course, what they’d shared wasn’t love. It couldn’t be. Because she loved Mark.

Didn’t she?

Of course she did! But he’d deserted her and left her at the mercy of self-doubt and a hurt so deeply wounding that she’d wanted to crawl into a hole and never again come out. Instead, she’d turned to Edmund and, miraculously, passion had flared between them with scorching intensity. Because of him, she’d begun the long process of restoring her confidence in herself as a woman.

Recognizing that was a blessing she’d never expected to find. She knew now that, in time, she would recover. The rest of her life would not be blighted because Mark Armstrong had reneged on his promise to marry her. A whole different world from the one he’d offered waited to be discovered. And one day, when she was ready, she would find a better and a truer love. In the meantime, there was Edmund, and today, and perhaps even tonight.

Sliding her legs to the floor, she reached for the robe and was securing the belt around her waist when a knock came at the door.

“Well,” she said, a rush of anticipation warming her cheeks as she ran to open it, “there’s no need to be so polite! It’s your room, after all!”

A uniformed busboy stood outside, holding a tray. “Your breakfast, ma’am,” he announced pleasantly. “May I come in?”

Breakfast for one, she noticed with mild dismay, waving him across the threshold.

Placing the tray on a table by the window, he drew up a chair and removed the fluted paper cover from a tall glass of orange juice. “Another lovely morning, ma’am. A number of our guests are already enjoying the beach.”

Of course! And Edmund was probably one of them.

“May I pour your coffee?”

“I’ll wait a while, thanks.”

“In that case, I’ll leave you to enjoy your meal. No,” he insisted, backing toward the door when she reached for her purse to tip him, “that’s already been taken care of, ma’am. Have a very nice day.”

She thought it entirely possible that she would—an amazing concept, all things considered. The rich aroma of coffee underscored by the delicate scent of the single bud rose which completed her breakfast tray, added to the stunning view from the window and the stream of sunlight slanting over the polished wood floor surely made for a great start to the morning.

Buoyed with sudden optimism, she picked up the glass of juice and silently toasted the bright morning. Life really did go on, one day at a time. Trite, perhaps, but true. The secret was to look forward, instead of back.

She did not find Edmund on the beach, nor in the lounge where guests were taking morning coffee when she returned to The Inn two hours later. The Navigator was not in the parking lot. The message light was not blinking on the phone in her room.

“Mr. Delaney checked out early this morning,” the clerk told her when, with a growing sense of unease, she inquired at the front desk.

“Checked out?” But he’d told her he was staying for a week. He’d slept with her the night before. He’d ordered breakfast for her. She’d thought…she’d thought…

What? That a new love could be so easily born to replace the one she’d lost? In fairy tales, perhaps—or the mind of a self-delusional fool!

Still, she looked for a reason that at least hinted of a happy ending. “And you’re sure he left no message?”

“He was in a hurry,” the clerk said kindly. “I was already on duty when the call came through. Normally, we don’t intrude on our guests when they’ve specifically requested us not to do so, but his wife insisted he be contacted right away—some sort of emergency, I understand. Fortunately, he happened to come into the lobby just then—he’d been down at the pool for an early swim, I believe—and I was able to convey the message right away.”

Wife?
She’d spent the night in the arms of another woman’s
husband?
No wonder he’d phoned the front desk the minute he’d closed his door behind them, and asked not to be disturbed! Risking a call from his wife while he was in bed with another woman would have seriously hampered his performance!

Jenna thought she was going to be sick, right there on the floor in full view of whoever happened to be passing by.

The clerk seemed to think so, too. “Are you feeling unwell, ma’am? Shall I send for a doctor…?”

“No,” she said, somehow managing to articulate a response even though her insides were shaking. “Thank you for your concern but I’m perfectly fine.”

Dazed with shock, she reeled toward the front door and the cool fresh air outside.

I come with too much excess baggage,
he’d said, the night before, but she’d never for a moment supposed he was talking about a wife. He’d seemed too straightforward for such arcane half-truths.

And she…she had only herself to blame for the guilt and regret now hemming her in on all sides. It was one thing to accept the end of a relationship, and quite another to imagine that flinging herself headlong into the start of another was any solution. New hopes weren’t built on the ashes of broken dreams. A person had to heal before she was ready to begin again with someone new.

Furious to find tears brimming yet again, Jenna drew in a shaking breath and squared her shoulders. So, okay! She’d made a mistake. But the damage was done and no amount of weeping and wailing was going to change it. At the very least, she could stop compounding her problems, instead of adding to them.

Her life, her future, lay elsewhere and this place…oh, it had provided the refuge she’d needed during those first long, dreadful hours after she’d received Mark’s letter, but at best it was a temporary reprieve only. Sooner or later, she had to go back and face the people and situation she’d left behind.

As for Edmund Delaney, in all fairness, her anger toward him should be tempered by gratitude. Unquestionably, he’d deceived her, but he’d also made her feel desirable again. And for that, she owed him a debt he could never begin to imagine.

“You know,” Valerie Sinclair said, regarding Jenna through narrowed eyes, “I don’t think it’s necessarily over with Mark. If you hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth so suddenly the way you did, I truly believe you’d be married to him by now. He’s phoned here, you know. Several times. Says he’s tried phoning you as well, but you never return his calls. From what I can gather, he got cold feet at the last minute but he came to his senses soon after.”

During the month since her return to Vancouver, Jenna had fielded an endless outpouring of sympathy and numerous offers to hook her up with a new man. She’d refused every one, not because she didn’t appreciate the concern of her friends but because she was actually enjoying being free to do and wear and eat what she pleased. Not until he was out of her life had she realized how completely Mark had tried to control it—or how close he’d come to succeeding.

But nothing stopped her mother from harping on the subject of a reconciliation. As far as she was concerned, there was only one avenue worth pursuing, one which led directly back to Mark Armstrong.

Thanking providence and modern technology for the luxury of call display and voice mail, Jenna heaved a weary sigh. “And I’ve told you, Mother, I have nothing to say to him. Nor can I imagine why you have, either. He humiliated everyone in this family, not just me. And his excuse that he got cold feet is pathetic. He’s thirty-one, for heaven’s sake, not seventeen!”

“We’d see our way to forgiving him,” her mother said magnanimously.

Only because of what you expected he’d do for you, once I became his wife!
Jenna muttered silently.

Collecting her jacket and purse, she said, “Forget it, Mother. It’s over between Mark and me. Thanks for the coffee, but I really can’t stay for lunch. I have a living to earn.”

“If you were Mrs. Armstrong, you wouldn’t need to rely on the pittance you make running that day-care outfit,” her mother persisted.

Jenna rolled her eyes in exasperation. “In case you’ve forgotten,
Mark’s
the one who dumped me! Even supposing you’re right and he’s undergone yet another change of heart, whatever makes you think I’d be interested in renewing a relationship with a man I could never trust again?”

“So what are you going to do instead? Spend the rest of your life wiping the noses of other people’s children?”

“I can think of worse things,” she said.
Like finding I can’t forget the married man I slept with, or realizing Mark’s prowess as a lover leaves as much to be desired as just about everything else I’ve learned about him!
“I love working with children, you know that.”

And they were one thing Mark’s money couldn’t buy. An attack of mumps when he was twenty-five had left him sterile. Although she’d found it difficult at first, she’d come to accept that she’d never know how it felt to be pregnant or give birth, and had pinned her hopes instead on persuading him to consider adopting a child when the time was right.

“Come for dinner on Sunday,” her mother said, walking her to the door. “The whole family will be here and we’ve hardly seen you since you came back to town.”

“Only if you promise you won’t harp on the idea of a reconciliation with Mark. It isn’t going to happen, Mother, no matter how badly you’d like it to.”

“You’re surely not going to pretend you’re over him already?”

Could it possibly be? Was that why her thoughts turned so often to Edmund Delaney? “I still think about him occasionally,” she admitted.

Her mother beamed with satisfaction. “You miss him!”

The guy’s pure pond scum, sweet pea…!

“I’m angry with him.”

…
sent someone else to do his dirty work? He’s not fit to be called a man…

“And disgusted at the way he’s behaved.”

“You’re overwrought because you’re in denial, dear.”

“I’m tired because I’ve spent hours sending back wedding gifts to people, well over half of whom I don’t know. On top of that, his mother wrote asking me to return my engagement ring—as if I had any use for it, or would dream of keeping an heirloom belonging to another family!”

“Anger and denial are part of the grieving process,” Valerie said soothingly. “They’ll pass, and then you’ll feel like your old self again and see things differently.”

Was not menstruating and being unable to keep her breakfast down also part of the grieving process, Jenna wondered, staring at her pallid reflection in the bathroom mirror, one morning five weeks later. And would they, too, pass and leave her feeling like her old self?

Or should she just face the fact that nothing was ever going to be the same again. Because while contraception might not have been an issue with Mark, unless she was sadly mistaken, it definitely should have been with Edmund Delaney!

“I think I’m pregnant,” she blurted out wretchedly, when Irene, her partner at the day-care center, stopped by that same evening to see how she was coping with the summer cold she’d claimed had prevented her from showing up at work the last couple of days.

It took a lot to rattle Irene. Tantrums, toilet training, finding herself splattered with paint and food—she took them all in stride. “That’s the way kids are,” she always said. “They spit up on your best blouse and wait till they’re sitting on your lap before they wet their pants. It’s the nature of the little beasts, but we love them anyway.”

Her reaction to Jenna’s announcement would have been no less pragmatic had it not been for the spark of curiosity she couldn’t quite hide. “Well, it’s not Mark’s because we both know he was shooting blanks,” she said, fixing Jenna in a beady-eyed stare. “So who’s the lucky daddy?”

“Someone I…met.”

“Well, I didn’t think you’d received an anonymous donation in the mail, Jenna! What’s his name?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m no longer involved with him.”

“
Were
you at the time you were supposed to be getting married? Is that why Mark called off the wedding?”

“Of course not!” she exclaimed, stung. “How could you even ask such a question?”

“It’s been known to happen. One last fling before settling down, and all that sort of thing, you know. Men do it all the time, so why not women?”

“Well, not this woman,” Jenna said, afraid she was about to lose the dry toast and scrambled egg she’d forced down earlier.

Irene subjected her to another inspection. “You do look a bit off-color, I must admit, but it doesn’t have to mean you’re pregnant.”

“To what else would you attribute two missed periods and morning sickness which lasts all day?”

“Stress, for one thing. What you’ve been through in the last couple of months is enough to put any woman’s cycle out of kilter,” Irene replied, a shade more sympathetically. “But if you’re right, you’ve got to know I’m not the only person who’ll wonder if this is the reason Mark backed out at the last minute. People are going to have a field day with this one, sweet child!”

“I’m past caring what other people think,” Jenna said wearily. “I’ve got a life that I thought was sorting itself out rather well. Now I’m back at square one again and facing questions a lot more important than what’s making the gossip vine thrive.”

“Hmm.” Irene nibbled on a fingernail. “How far along do you think you are?”

“Nine weeks.”
Plus one day and nineteen hours, to be precise!

“Have you thought about what you want to do?”

“Do?”

“You don’t have to go through with the pregnancy, Jenna. There are other options.”

“I hope you’re not hinting at an abortion,” she said, shocked. “I was reconciled to never having children with Mark. I’ve accepted his leaving me standing at the altar. But this…
this
is
my
baby and I’m damned if I’ll let anyone rob me of him—or her!”

“What about the father’s rights?”

“The father has no rights,” she spat, jumping up from her chair and pacing agitatedly across the room and back. “I haven’t seen or heard from him since the night we…had sex.”