The Pregnant Bride (6 page)

“That’s me, all right…Mr. Nice Guy!” He closed in on her and for one wild, exhilarating moment, she thought he was going to try to kiss her. Instead, he smiled and cuffed her gently under the chin. “I’ll stay in touch.”

From the third-floor balcony off her living room, she watched him leave the apartment building and cut across the lawn to the street where the Navigator was parked. He walked with a long, easy stride, a tall, dark and handsome man who exerted a powerful fascination for her above and beyond the fact that he’d fathered the child she carried.

Mark had taught her the hard way that men weren’t always what they seemed, yet she found herself wanting to believe in Edmund and to trust him. Which brought her back to the question which had been hammering to be heard since he’d told her he was no longer married: dare she risk telling him he was the father of her unborn child? Or should she play it safe and sever all connection with him?

More confused by the minute, she backed into the living room and closed the glass doors to the balcony. Her faith in her own judgment had been badly shaken by the fiasco with Mark. She needed to discuss her predicament with someone clear-sighted enough to see the big picture, and unbiased enough to offer an impartial opinion. She needed to talk to her best friend, Irene.

“What I’d do,” Irene decided the next day, while the toddlers napped in the shade of the cherry tree in the day-care center’s back garden, and the older children played in the sandbox, “is wait to see if he contacts you again. If he doesn’t, the message coming through loud and clear is that the guy’s not interested in pursuing…whatever it is the two of you have going, and you’d be asking for trouble if you’d tried to force the issue.”

“And if he does call?”

“Play it by ear. Heck, Jenna, you know the drill—ask him why his marriage failed, scope him out about having more children some day, get him to tell you more about his work, his lifestyle.”

“More?” Jenna’s laugh was strained. “I don’t know the first thing about his work or where he lives or what he does in his spare time. I don’t know how old he is, where he was born, whether he has all his own teeth, if he’s an only child or one of ten, a foundling, an heir…
I don’t know the man,
period!”

“Seems to me you’ve got some homework to do then, before you even think about springing the news that he’s going to be a daddy again. You’ve been through enough this year, Jenna, without winding up with another loser.”

“But it’s his baby! Don’t you think he has the right to know that?”

“Look around you,” Irene said. “More than half these children spend their days with us because their mothers are out working full-time, and why is that?”

“They have no place else to leave them.”

“Right. The women married deadbeats who didn’t stick around to carry their share of the load so that mommy could stay home and look after her kids herself. How often have we heard those same women say that today’s the day the father’s supposed to pick his child up after work and spend some ‘quality’ time with him? And how often have we had to phone Mom to say Dad was a no-show, and her little guy’s huddled in a corner, sobbing his heart out with disappointment?”

“Too often.”

“Exactly! So no, I don’t think this Edmund Delaney has the right to know a thing, just because he happened to get you pregnant. You’ve got to be sure he’s willing to go one step further and be a father as well, before you invite him to get involved in raising the child. If he’s not, spare yourself the possibility of unpleasant complications down the road.”

Jenna agreed with everything Irene had said—except for one part. Every child deserved to know his father if it was remotely possible, and she wasn’t willing to risk denying her baby that opportunity by leaving matters to chance. When a week passed and she still hadn’t heard from Edmund, she took matters into her own hands, looked up his number in the phone book, and called to invite him to dinner the following Friday.

She lived in an older apartment near English Bay, one with high ceilings and fancy molding around the doors and windows. The mantel over her fireplace was Edwardian, the light fixture in her dining room classic art deco, the leaded windows of a quality not to be found today. They’d immediately caught his eye, the first time he’d seen them, and were one reason he’d been happy to fall in with her suggestion that they get together again. He was interested in the history of the building and any plans that might be underway for modernizing it.

The other reason was to make sure she’d recovered from food poisoning. Nothing more. She wasn’t ready for another heavy-duty relationship and even if she were, he wasn’t the man for the job. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t engage in a purely platonic relationship.

Parking was tight along her street but he’d driven the convertible that night and managed to squeeze it into a parking spot better suited to a motorcycle. She’d said seven, and it was only ten to, so he took his time strolling through the gates and past lush gardens planted with old-fashioned roses to the stone portico at the main entrance of her building.

She buzzed him inside the building so promptly that he figured she must have spotted him coming up the drive, yet when she opened her door, she seemed strangely flustered. “Oh…Edmund! You’re here! Already…!”

“Hello, Jenna. You’re looking better,” he said, putting her manner down to the fact that he’d shown up ten minutes early. “Not nearly as green around the gills as you were last week.”

In fact, she looked stunning. Not that he pretended to be any fashion expert but he knew what he liked and in his view, too many women were blinded by designer labels, regardless of the clothes attached to them. But she’d got it just right in a light blue sleeveless dress belted at the waist. He liked her shoes, too. Pretty, feminine things, instead of the trench hoppers so may women seemed to go for lately. Made him glad he’d decided to wear a jacket and tie, even though his usual preference ran to something more casual.

“Do come in,” she said, massaging her ring finger nervously. “It’s such a lovely evening, I thought we might sit on the balcony for a while and…chat.” She indicated a brass tea wagon set up as a bar, with a couple of decanters, bottled water, a bucket of ice and dish of sliced lime, then scurried away from him as if he had a communicable disease. “Help yourself to a drink while I take care of a couple of last-minute things in the kitchen.”

“May I fix something for you?”

Her voice floated back down the hall. “I’ll stick with Perrier, thanks.”

He poured himself a scotch and wandered out to the balcony. She’d grouped antique wicker furniture around little stone urns filled with scarlet geraniums and some sort of blue trailing flower. A wrought iron stand about three feet high held six fat candles. At the far end of the balcony, positioned where it would catch the afternoon sun, was a padded chaise with a small fountain beside it.

Nice. Very nice—except for the tension which hung in the air like invisible fog. Something wasn’t right about the whole setup, and if he’d had any doubts about it, she put paid to them when she eventually came out to join him.

Perching gingerly on the edge of her chair like a bird ready to take flight at the first hint of danger, she launched into painful conversation, although he might as well not have been there for all the eye contact they exchanged. “Well, here we are,” she said woodenly, addressing the wall behind him.

“Indeed.”

“I made lemon chicken. I hope you like it.”

“I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to food.”

“The weather’s been wonderful, hasn’t it?”

“Wonderful.”

Her glance skittered past him and settled on the trees lining the street. “Exceptionally dry, even for July.”

“I guess.”

She sipped her Perrier, set the glass down on the low table between their chairs, and started drawing imaginary rings on her finger. Again. “They’re forecasting a long, hot summer.”

Okay, he’d had enough! “When two people can’t find anything else to talk about but the weather, it’s usually an indication that they’re not having a very good time. Are you wishing you hadn’t asked me here tonight, Jenna?”

That caught her off guard enough that she locked gazes with him and if he hadn’t known better, he’d have said she was on the verge of panic. “N-no!”

“Then why don’t you just relax and enjoy my company?”

Like a diver about to plunge into a very deep pool, she drew in a breath which made her breasts heave, and said, “Because I have an ulterior motive for inviting you. I need to ask you something.”

“So, fire away,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

He wasn’t sure what he expected—something that needed fixing in the apartment, possibly—and so was completely unprepared when she started quizzing him as if he were running for public office and might have a dirty secret in his past.

“For a start,” she said, “where do you live?”

“Near Lost Lagoon.”

“In an apartment?”

“Yeah,” he said, “but it’s nothing near as interesting as your place.”

“Have you always lived downtown?”

Without a clue as to where all this was leading, he shook his head. “Uh-uh. I owned a house in West Vancouver when Adrienne and I were together.”

“Which do you prefer?”

“A house made sense when I was married, especially once Molly was born, but an apartment’s easier now that I’m single again.” Mystified, he tossed her a quizzical glance. “What’s with the third degree, Jenna?”

“I’m interested in you, that’s all.”

“I’m flattered—I think.”

She brushed that aside as if it were of no consequence how he felt, and started off down another avenue. “How is Molly?”

“Doing well, thanks.”

“Do you get to see her very often?”

“Not nearly as much as I’d like. Adrienne’s husband owns a vineyard in the Okanagan, down near Osoyoos, which is a fair drive from Vancouver as I’m sure you know. Anything else?”

“Yes,” she said, as if she were mentally ticking items off a list. “Why did your marriage end?”

He frowned and set down his glass. He’d always fancied himself pretty good at steering a conversation in the direction he wanted it to go, but he was beginning to think he’d met his match in her. “Why do you care?”

“Well, you already know plenty about me,” she said, all big, innocent eyes and artless demeanor, neither of which had him fooled for a minute. There was a lot more going on here than she was telling! “So it seems a fair exchange that you tell me something about you. Unless, of course, you have something to hide.”

“Not a darn thing, sweet pea,” he said, adopting the same guileless expression she was working so hard to maintain. “Adrienne was from a small town not far from where she’s living now. She came to Vancouver because she thought the big city would be more glamorous and exciting. We met, fell in love, made plans, got married, and had a baby, in that order. In other words, did all the right things for what appeared to be the right reasons.”

“So what went wrong?”

“Ultimately, our goals and expectations didn’t mesh. She found it too lonely staying home with a baby all day and started making noises about us moving closer to her parents. But I had a business to run here so I suggested she go home and spend a couple of days with her family every once in a while. Once in a while turned into every second week, though, and next she started hinting that, since I was out at work Monday through Friday, she might as well just come back here on the weekends. The feelings—love, if you like—changed, eventually died, our marriage went down the tubes, she met someone else better able to give her the kind of life she wanted, and married him.”

“Just like that?”

“No,” he said, beginning to get irritated. “Not just like that. Relationships aren’t built in a day and they don’t break down that fast, either. A lot of resentment and a whole whack of guilt enter the picture, especially when a child’s involved. So if you’re asking me if I have any regrets, the answer’s yes. I regret not having my daughter live with me. I resent the fact that she lives too far away for me to see her every day, to read to her at bedtime, to take her to the park. And it drives me nuts to know she’s calling some other man ‘Daddy.’ Does that answer all your questions?”

“Not quite.”

He heaved a sigh and shook his head. “I could be home in the peace and quiet of my own apartment, doing nothing more strenuous than watching TV,” he informed the world at large. “Why did I think coming here instead was a good idea?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her face the picture of remorse. “I wish there was some other way to do this.”

“Do what, for crying out loud? Where are all these questions leading?”

She hopped out of her chair as if she’d just found herself sharing space with a pit viper, and if she’d been edgy before, she was verging on nervous hysteria now. “I’ll tell you, I will! As soon as you tell me what you do for a living.”

“I’m gainfully self-employed.”

“Doing what?”

Exasperated, he plunked his glass down and strode to where she stood. “Cripes, Jenna!” he snapped. “Is this about how much money I make? Would you like to see my bank statements? Run a credit check on me? Or are you trying to touch me up for a loan?”

She shrank away from him. “No. And I don’t mean to pry,” she mumbled, eyes downcast.

“Gee, you could’ve fooled me! If there’s something I’ve done that’s bugging you, just spit it out and have done with, instead of beating around the bush like this.”

She lifted her gaze to his at that, and he was reminded of a deer caught in the headlights of a trucker’s rig speeding down the freeway. She looked trapped and she looked terrified. “I apologize,” she said, so contritely that he immediately felt as if he’d just kicked a helpless puppy out into the teeth of a winter storm. “It’s just that I don’t know how else to go about this.”

“Go about what? What the devil’s riding you so hard that you’re almost hyperventilating? Is Armstrong harassing you, is that it?”

“No,” she said in a small voice.