Three Weddings and a Baby (7 page)

The woman he’d fallen in love with had been vivacious and intelligent and capable, a woman who took everything life threw at her in her stride. He’d respected her strength, her bravado, but maybe he’d been blinded, as the old saying suggested. He’d thought her resilience had come from inner strength, but after she’d left Paris he’d considered that maybe there was another explanation. Perhaps the strength he’d ascribed her had just been shallowness. Maybe it had been that, apart from herself, nothing really mattered to her
and, therefore, she couldn’t be wounded by anything.

He’d lived through hell for the five days he’d been away from her, and had watched a woman he’d once loved wither away in a hospital bed until someone had asked him for a decision to turn the switch off. He’d still been named her next of kin, and none of her scavenging family had been found to dispute that. But it was only after that that things had got
really
complicated. He’d needed Jennie—needed her to be her bright, bubbly, affectionate self, needed her to hold him together when he’d thought he’d been about to fall apart. The fact that she’d had a tantrum and stomped off home like a spoilt princess hadn’t gone down well at all.

After his wasted trip to Paris to find his missing bride—hours he could have spent much more productively—he’d come back to England exhausted, and had been thrust headlong back into the horrific consequences of his ex-wife’s death. One surprise had come after another as the four years since he’d last seen her had slowly unravelled themselves before him and given up their secrets. Just as well he did what he did for a living and that where his expertise wasn’t relevant, he had
friends and contacts who could point him in the right direction.

And in his spare time he’d tried to find his new wife. He’d called her office, her home, her parents’ home, but the story had always been the same: Jennie was on an impromptu holiday, having the time of her life. At first he’d wondered if they’d all been stonewalling him, but after meeting Marion Hunter earlier this evening he’d got the feeling that her family had been just as much in the dark as he had.

Eventually, he’d given up. Waited for her to stop ignoring his calls and come to her senses. Christmas had arrived soon after that, and he’d decided to wait for her stepbrother’s wedding to confront her. He had family who actually wanted to be around him, and life-changing news to break to them. Tired of searching for a wife who didn’t want to be found, he’d concentrated on that for a few days, knowing the inevitable showdown would happen soon enough.

He looked at her. She had been relaxing in the armchair, but now she was leaning forward, her eyes large, all traces of her sassy smile gone, and it gave him a terrible sense of déjà vu. Right now she looked very much like the woman he’d married. Which was very
confusing, because he wasn’t even sure if that woman was real.

But…if the Jennie he’d married wasn’t a mirage, he might have to label her differently. Could he? Could he rip off the one saying ‘problem’ and replace it with one that read ‘solution’? Did he trust her enough to even find out?

He needed time to think, and created some by walking over to the champagne bucket and hoisting out the dripping bottle. He held it up and asked Jennie a question with a tilt of his head.

‘If there was ever a time I needed a drink,’ Jennie said wearily, ‘it’s now.’ She nodded at a tray of clean glasses on the sideboard nearby, and he took his time opening the bottle and filling them. When he was ready, he handed her a glass and sat down on the sofa opposite her.

To find out the truth, he was going to have to excuse himself as prosecutor, a role he seemed to have slipped into without realising it, and remind himself he was supposed to treat what he heard, not even as if he were an impartial judge, but as if he were a jury member. He had to hear what she had to say expecting only truth and innocence, convicting her mentally of no crime until all the evidence
was in, even if the events of the last couple of weeks screamed at him to do otherwise.

So he leaned forward and looked her in the eye. They both had questions that needed answering, but he had to remember not to goad and trap as he usually did during cross-examination. These days he had enough seniority in his chambers to pick and choose his cases, and he no longer immersed himself in defence work, as he’d done when he’d been married to Becky and had believed that every underdog had deserved its day in court. Nowadays, he only took prosecution cases if he could help it. Protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves also involved punishing those who preyed on them. But he’d got used to being suspicious, of seeing the lies everyone tried to hide behind. He’d have to snap out of it now and act as if he were conducting a defence—gently guide her, lead her and hope she’d give the right answer on cue. It wasn’t so long since he’d last done that. Surely he could remember how?

He kept his voice low, coaxing. ‘I know you were upset when I asked you to join me in London, but why did you disappear? Why didn’t you come home? ‘

‘Men,’ she muttered. ‘They never understand anything.’

‘Explain it to me, then.’

Jennie stared at him for a few seconds, then took a big gulp of her champagne. ‘You have to understand, Alex. Spending days on my own, pacing round a hotel room only to slope off back to London without my groom wasn’t exactly the fairy tale I’d pictured when I’d imagined my honeymoon.’

He knew that. Of course he knew that. But it had been an emergency. Something he hadn’t asked for and hadn’t been able to control. What else could he have done? It had broken his heart to phone her and tell her there was no way he could come back yet, that they’d have to postpone the rest of their trip. There were things he needed to tell her—things he’d really needed to say in person, not over a dodgy mobile connection.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t how I wanted it, either.’

He could imagine how disappointed Jennie had been, how much the reality had differed from her fairy tale. His reality hadn’t been any rosier, and there were memories from that time he wished he could wipe from his consciousness: Becky, grey and lifeless in a hospital bed. The awful silence after the life support machine had been switched off, much worse than the hiss of the ventilator or
the increasingly regular alarms. The clawing sense of regret over how things might have been different, if only she’d let him help her.

‘I thought I’d done the best I could, given the circumstances, Jennie. I didn’t have much choice. If it hadn’t been important, I wouldn’t have asked it of you.’

Jennie made a strange little laugh under her breath. ‘My father used to give me that excuse all the time,’ she said forlornly, then she dropped her voice to a low rumble. ‘“Not now, Jennie. This is important!”.’ She finished her impression and gave him a smile that wasn’t in the least convincing, then began talking too fast and endlessly creasing the stiff bow on the front of her dress. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever hear that excuse from you. It took me by surprise. Normally, if I know that kind of thing’s coming, I can prepare myself, cushion myself against it. But with you, there was no warning! I just. I didn’t…’

He didn’t say anything. His mind was too busy stretching to accommodate the flurry of words.

‘You want to know why I didn’t race to your side the moment I left Paris?’

He nodded. Of course he did.

Jennie pursed her lips, then nodded back
at him. ‘Well, I needed time. And I supposed you needed time, too.’

Time for what?

‘To decide what you really wanted,’ she added, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d switched a word at the last moment. Not
what
, but
who. Who
you really wanted. And suddenly he started calculating mentally, adding up hours and minutes, doing the kind of maths Jennie must have done.

The clock had never been anything but a way of carving up the day to Alex. He hadn’t realised that seconds could be as precious as gold, to be hoarded when others spent them on you, or to be considered stolen if bestowed elsewhere. His absence hadn’t just been an inconvenience to Jennie, as he’d imagined. To her, it had been a gauge of his love.

She let out a long breath and relaxed back into the chair cushions again. ‘I left because I thought—’ she broke off to look back at him briefly ‘—that finding Becky again meant that you had decided.’

She didn’t finish the sentence, just looked in her lap.

That just didn’t make sense. Becky hadn’t even woken up the whole time he’d been there with her. Jennie couldn’t possibly think he
actually … Any feelings he’d had for Becky had been those of sadness at a life wasted.

As far as he knew, he was the only person who’d ever given a damn about Becky, who had ever put her welfare first. Not even her family had given her that luxury. How could he have walked away and left her last moments to the hands of strangers?

Jennie was whispering now. ‘The longer you were away, the shorter the calls became, the more distant you were. I didn’t want to think it, but the old proverb’s right, Alex. Actions speak louder than words, and it was pretty clear where your loyalties lay. Even when she’d gone, it was her you wanted to be with.’

The rage he’d tucked neatly away surged up his throat, stinging as it went. How could she think that? Hadn’t the heady months they’d been together, all the promises they’d exchanged, been enough? Didn’t she know him at all?

She refused to meet his gaze. ‘I know we told each other we weren’t rushing into things, that we knew what we were doing, but I started to wonder…if maybe you realised you’d made a mistake, that I wasn’t the one you wanted.’

He closed his eyes. He’d hit the nail on the head. She really
didn’t
know him if she
thought he was capable of being that fickle, if she thought he could make those promises one week and then take them back, like unwanted gifts, the next. He just wasn’t like that. And he had a wardrobe full of ghastly Christmas jumpers he never wore to prove the point.

But her reaction, while not particularly logical, had at least been honest. For days now he’d been worried about exactly the same thing. He’d wondered whether her departure was a sign that marrying him had been a whim, an impulse she’d regretted. He was relieved, he realised. Relieved that she’d left Paris because she’d been hurt, because she really
did
care, not because she didn’t give a hoot.

Just knowing that turned everything he’d been stewing over on its head. Something liquid and warm flowed inside him, something he thought had hardened into anger and disappointment. He wasn’t sure he wanted to feel it, but feel it he did, and he couldn’t help the next words that left his mouth.

‘That’s not true, Jennie. Of course I wanted you.’

He heard the little gasp in the back of her throat. She blinked furiously and then her lip wobbled. All her bravado drained away, leaving her looking young and very fragile. In his imagination he could see her leaving the
hotel in Paris—large dark glasses covering her swollen pink eyes, refusing to look back as the taxi pulled away because it would be too painful.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said simply. ‘I didn’t realise you felt that way.’

Now the tears spilled over and coursed down her face, but she didn’t make a sound.

‘Thank you,’ she said in between sniffs, and went to fetch a tissue from a box on the small table. She sat back down and blew her nose loudly. ‘I appreciate you saying that—but it’s not enough. I need to know
why
, Alex. Why was she more important to you than I was?’

There. She’d said it, turned the fear that had been hiding round a corner in her heart into sounds and syllables. For a large chunk of her life, the people who mattered most to her had had more important things than her to tend to. She hadn’t been neglected, after all. She’d wanted for nothing, been to the best schools, had everything handed to her on a silver platter. And she’d seemed happy enough. Why would anyone have thought she’d needed anything more?

Jennie realised that this was the first time she’d ever had the courage to ask why. Why were other things, other people, always more
important than her? Her normal tactic in this kind of situation had been to persuade her loved ones to move her up their list of priorities by being the most dazzling creature possible. And if that hadn’t worked, she’d got just naughty enough to bump herself up to the number one slot.

It was odd. She thought that if she’d ever let the words out to match what she felt, she’d crumple under the weight of them, but it wasn’t like that. She felt strangely light, almost ready to hear his answer—no matter what it was.

She met his gaze.

He didn’t blink, just pulled his shoulders back and heaved in some air. He kept his eyes on her as he stood up and walked round the coffee table to sit opposite her on the sofa. This obviously wasn’t going to be a quick chat.

‘The history Becky and I had. It’s complicated.’

She raised her eyebrows and mirrored his own response back to him. ‘Explain it to me, then.’

His eyes glazed slightly, and she guessed he was cataloguing memories, trying to find the best place to start. Knowing Alex’s ordered brain, he’d start at the beginning, lay a foundation, before he got on to the juicy stuff.
She almost wanted to tell him to forget all of that, to put her out of her misery. There was a shift in his features, and she knew he’d found his ‘in’.

‘I grew up in a happy home,’ he said.

Okay, if they were going to go that far back, this was going to take all night. She didn’t say that, though.

‘My parents wanted more children after they had me and my brother, but it just wasn’t to be… By the time I’d started at university and Chris was studying for his A levels, I think my mother looked at her rapidly shrinking nest and decided to do something about it. So Mum and Dad decided to foster.’

She sat up straighter. He’d never mentioned that before, even though she’d heard plenty of stories about the happy-go-lucky Chris.

‘What has this got to do with your first—’ she couldn’t quite bring herself to use the same title she now occupied ‘—with Becky?’