Liz Fielding - The Bachelor's Baby

Ben began to fidget and his face crumpled as he began to grizzle. Willow bent over him and picked him up. ‘Er, I think I’d better change him before you get too close, Amy.’

‘Do you need a hand?’ Had she sounded too eager? Too keen? ‘Not that I know one end of a baby from the other,’ she added quickly.

‘It’s a sharp learning curve, believe me,’ Willow said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Maybe you should start with something less demanding.’

‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should just go and put the kettle on. You know where the bathroom is. Help yourself.’

‘Jake! What a surprise. Come on in.’ Mike watched as Jake paid off the taxi and then said, ‘I thought you were still in the US.’

‘I was. Until last night.’ His bag was at his feet and he was holding a small carrier. ‘I bought this for Ben.’

‘And you’ve come straight from the airport? It must be something pretty special.’ Mike took the carrier, glanced at the contents and then looked up. ‘A teddy?’

‘It’s an American teddy.’ Jake realised that as a reason for his dash from the airport it was pretty feeble. He couldn’t think what had possessed him to buy it. Except he’d seen it sitting there, in the airport shop, while he’d been waiting for his flight to be called and he’d thought… ‘Press its paw and it plays Yankee Doodle.’

He couldn’t remember why it had seemed like a good idea at the time. He didn’t do fluffy toys. He didn’t see the point in them. He was the down-to-earth, practical man who’d given his new godson blue chip stock for his christening present. After all, what use was a silver mug? It would just make work and collect dust.

Mike took out the bear, regarded the stars-and-stripes bow tie and waistcoat and grinned. ‘It was a great idea if it brought you down to see us.’ The welcome was warm, and if he wasn’t totally convinced by the reason for the visit he kept his thoughts to himself. ‘Willow will love him.’

‘Great.’ Jake practically cringed with embarrassment. What on earth was he doing?

‘Well, don’t stand on the doorstep, man. If you’ve just flown back from the States you must be fit to drop.’

‘No, I’m intruding. I should have rung first…’ Jake stopped, suddenly unsure of himself. He didn’t do stuff like this, drop in unannounced, buy toys. Let his attention wander in meetings.

‘Nonsense. Willow’s taken Ben for a walk, but she won’t be long and she’ll be thrilled to bits to see you. And since she’ll insist you stay, you might as well take your bag upstairs right now. You know the way.’

Jake dragged a hand over his face. ‘You’re quite sure?’ He frowned as the words echoed in his head, as if someone had just said them a moment before. ‘I don’t know why I came. I should have gone straight home—’

Again Mike’s look suggested he was fooling himself. Again he tactfully kept his thoughts to himself. ‘Jake, you’re a friend, you’re welcome any time. Why don’t you grab a shower while I put some coffee on? Are you hungry? Or can you wait for dinner?’

‘A shower and coffee sound perfect.’

‘Ten minutes?’

‘Mike—’ Mike, heading for the kitchen, paused and looked back. On the point of asking about Amy, asking how she was, Jake stopped himself. ‘Nothing. Just thanks.’

‘Sure. Take your time.’

He picked up his bag, carried it up to the guest room and wasted no time getting under the shower. He should be tired. Instead he felt fired up, excited, eager as a puppy fresh from a nap. He switched the shower to cold and stood there while he counted to a hundred. Slowly. It made no difference.

He wandered back into the bedroom, towelling his hair as he gazed out over the fields at the back of the house. From the window he could see Willow hurrying along the footpath, pushing Ben in his buggy, eager to be home.

Marriage, families. He was a puzzled spectator, unable to understand why it worked for some people. It was as if he had a vital piece missing. As if, somewhere inside him, a light hadn’t been switched on.

Amy Jones had switched on something, though. This was new. This eagerness. And the warning bells clanged ever more loudly, warning him that he should have stayed on the other side of the Atlantic until the feeling had passed.

As he turned from the window, pulled on a shirt and a pair of chinos, he heard Willow come in through the back door.

‘Mike! I’m home.’ Home. The word sliced through him like a knife-blade. He had a penthouse apartment that had cost telephone numbers overlooking the Thames, furnished by someone whose job it was to save him the bother of having to think about it. It was a showpiece. It was a declaration of his status. It was hardly a home. ‘Where are you? You won’t believe what I’ve got to tell you.’

He heard her go into the kitchen, her voice dropping as she found Mike. He shouldn’t have come. It had been a mistake, he thought, as he let himself out of the bedroom.

‘I’m telling you it’s true, Mike. There’s no mistake.’ He paused on the stairs as Willow’s voice rose again.

‘Amy’s pregnant.’

It was like stepping off a cliff.

‘Willow…’ Mike’s voice was a sharp warning, but she didn’t appear to notice.

‘Up you come, sweetheart,’ she said, picking up Ben before rattling on. ‘She had that little thing—you know, the little plastic thing from the pregnancy test. I went upstairs to change Ben and it was there…right there in a pot on the windowsill in her bathroom.’ She laughed.

‘I did that, too. You teased me about it but I couldn’t bear to throw it away. I needed to see it every day just to remind myself it was true…’ Jake wasn’t sure how he descended the remainder of the stairs. ‘The blue line was a bit fuzzy but there isn’t any doubt about it.’

‘Did you say anything to her?’

‘No, of course not. She’ll tell me when she’s ready and I’ll act as surprised as anything.’ Jake stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Willow, pink-cheeked with excitement from hurrying home with her news, blow into Ben’s neck, making him giggle. A charming scene of domesticity that he saw, but had no way of understanding. ‘The thing I can’t work out is who the father could be. She’s not a woman to make a mistake, so it must have been planned, but I didn’t know she’d been involved with anyone recently…’ She looked up, as if sensing something. ‘Mike?’

Mike was looking right at him. He didn’t need to guess who the father of Amy’s baby was. He knew.

Willow, suddenly realising they weren’t alone, spun round. ‘Jake! I didn’t see your car. Darling, how lovely to see you. Are you staying?’

‘I…um…’ He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t find his voice to say the words. This couldn’t be happening.

‘Jake’s staying,’ Mike said, helping him out. ‘But I think right now he has something he needs to do. Why don’t we go and put Ben to bed, hmm?’

Her forehead creased as she latched on to the sudden inexplicable tension, her gaze switching between Mike and Jake and then it clicked. For a moment she had trouble keeping her lower lip from hitting the floor until, with a supreme effort at self-control, she said, ‘Good plan.’

Jake pushed open the gate, paused. The garden had moved on while he’d been away. The bluebells had faded and now lilac, thick with blossom, scented the air and a blackbird was singing from a high perch in an apple tree.

A small black cat blinked sleepy yellow eyes at him from a patch of catnip. And from the rear of the cottage he could hear Amy’s voice raised in a lilting song that might have been a lullaby.

He refused to succumb to such seductive enchantment. He wasn’t enchanted. He was mad, mad as hell, and Amy was about to hear all about it. He found her wielding a spade with an easy competence that suggested long practice; her gardening skills were clearly not confined to picking flowers.

She was wearing thick cord trousers and heavy boots that contrasted with the femininity of a broad-brimmed straw hat that shaded her face. And a man’s shirt. What man?

She stopped, rubbed her sleeve across her face, leaving her cheek streaked with dirt, and he forgot about the shirt as anxiety squeezed the breath from his lungs. Should she be working like this? Digging?

‘Should you be doing that?’ he demanded harshly.

‘If I want homegrown beans on my table, then yes,’ she replied easily, no trace of surprise in her voice. ‘But if you’re volunteering, be my guest.’ She pushed the spade into the soil, stepped back and turned to look at him. He needed, wanted to see into her eyes; the hat threw shade across her face, keeping her thoughts hidden. But her voice caught at him, drawing him closer.

Jake’s voice was hard, angry. Amy had heard him open the gate, walk around the cottage, and had recognised footsteps last heard racing away from her.

She’d forced herself to carry on working, leaving him to speak first, even though she longed to leap up, fling herself into his arms and pull him inside the house so that she could show him just how pleased she was to see him, hoping he was feeling the same hot surge of excitement, desire. She felt raw, unbridled pleasure that he’d returned.

For a moment he took a step closer, as if he felt it too, but then he stopped. The sun was low at his back and his face was shadowed so that she couldn’t see his expression. Which was perhaps a good thing, if it matched his voice.

‘I thought you were still in America,’ she said, when the silence grew too long.

‘I was. Now I’m back. Should you be doing that?’ he repeated. ‘In your condition.’

Her condition? She felt the heat rise to her cheeks. He couldn’t know. There was no way on earth he could know. Yet his voice, his repeated question, suggested that somehow he did, and when she didn’t answer he turned abruptly and walked towards the rear door of the cottage, pushed it open, ducking under the low lintel as he went inside. Amy abandoned the bean trench for the second time that afternoon and, pulling off her gardening gloves, followed him.

He wasn’t in the mud room or the kitchen. ‘Jake? Where are you?’ she called, dropping her gloves, kicking off her earth-caked boots. A creak from the floor above her betrayed his whereabouts. What on earth…? ‘Jake, what are doing? What do you want?’

Upstairs, in the bathroom, Jake gripped the basin. This couldn’t be happening to him. It couldn’t be true. Fatherhood had no part in his life plan. He didn’t want this. No way. Never.

Except that it was. The evidence was apparently there, right there, before his eyes.

His hand was shaking as he reached for the piece of plastic with its telltale line of blue. He gripped it hard, wrapping it in his fist, wanting to break it, smash it, make it go away. Such a small thing. So insignificant. So easy to overlook.

He wouldn’t have known what it was but for Willow. If he’d called in to see Amy…

If!

Who did he think he was fooling? He hadn’t been able to wait to see her! All the teddies in the world couldn’t hide the truth of that. He’d have come here and made hot, sweet love with her, then they’d have shared a shower, and with the evidence right in front of him he still wouldn’t have known.

How long would she have waited to tell him? Until it was too late to do anything about it. ‘…not a woman to make a mistake, so it must have been planned…’ was what Willow had said to Mike.

His hands bunched into fists and he banged them down on the white porcelain sink. How much had she planned? All of it? Even that dramatic last-minute entry at the christening?