‘God, it’s true.’ Fresh shock rippled through him as he took in her swollen abdomen. The thin fabric of her red top was stretched so tightly across the bulge that he could see her belly button protruding like some sort of tiny stem. ‘You really are pregnant.’
‘Brilliant observation.’
His gaze shifted upwards when the quick breath she sighed out moved her breasts gently. He realised for the first time how much larger they were. Pregnancy had made his wife, who’d always been on the small side, positively voluptuous. Were they tender? He wanted to touch, to caress. To sink his lips onto the soft, creamy flesh. His heart skipped a beat then set an uncomfortable rhythm of hard, fast thuds.
‘Didn’t it sink in yesterday, Jack? Maybe you hoped you’d dreamed it.’
‘Dreamed what?’ He blinked, trying to clear the direction of his thoughts as he dragged his gaze from her cleavage back to her face.
Liz gave him a strange look. ‘The pregnancy.’
‘Oh, that. No. No, I just…’ He could feel heat gathering across his cheekbones. ‘It did sink in. It just didn’t really…sink in.’ God, he sounded so lame. ‘It takes some getting used to.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said, her voice flat as she turned away from him. She rinsed her plate and left it on the sink to be washed.
‘Do you want me to cook you some breakfast?’
‘No. Thanks. I—I want to get to the hospital early.’ Drying her hands, she moved away from the sink.
Jack kept his eyes fixed firmly on her face, relieved when his pulse began to level off with his mind on less provocative subjects. ‘It’s only half past seven. Aren’t you supposed to be eating for two?’
‘Only if you want me to be the size of a barn instead of a small house.’
‘Are you larger than you should be?’ His pulse jumped again this time on a surge of fear. According to his mother, he’d been a very large baby and giving birth to him had nearly killed her. Could having his baby put Liz at risk? She was such a dynamo he tended to forget she was tiny. He frowned. ‘Isn’t that dangerous? Have you been to the doctor? What did he say?’
‘Yes, I have been to the doctor. No, it isn’t dangerous. And I’m the right size, thank you for asking.’ She was very nearly pouting.
‘I’ve upset you.’ He wanted to take her in his arms, comfort her, promise her he’d fix everything. But as he was part of the problem here, she wouldn’t be impressed by words. He needed to prove he’d go the distance with her. Time was his best ally.
‘Not really.’ She huffed out a breath. ‘It’s one thing for me to feel enormous, it’s another thing for you to tell me that I look it. Especially since…’
‘Especially since I got you in that condition in the first place?’ he finished for her. But at the time he’d been looking for the simple pleasure that came with their tentative reconciliation. Nothing more. ‘I didn’t do it deliberately, Liz, and I seem to remember the occasion as mutually pleasurable.’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t. Get pregnant deliberately, I mean.’ She moved closer and poked him in the sternum to emphasise her point. ‘That’s what you think, isn’t it? That I messed up the precautions.’
With her so close, keeping his eyes away from her cleavage took a conscious effort. ‘Not deliberately, perhaps.’
‘Oh, you think I did it subconsciously? That’s so much better. How magnanimous of you.’ Her eyes narrowed as she tilted her head to glare up at him. ‘I would never bring a child into a household where one parent doesn’t want it. But if I had decided to go behind your back on this, don’t you think I’d have accidentally fallen pregnant while there was still a chance for our marriage? How dumb to wait until we’re teetering on the verge of divorce and you’re about to fly off to the other side of the world.’
‘Did you know before I went away?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Her breasts rose and fell with her sigh. ‘Though I can see that there were some signs, but I put them down to other things.’
‘But you must have known soon after I left. When were you going to tell me about…it?’
‘About…it?’ she said, arching a brow at him. ‘You mean about the baby?’
‘Yes.’ Tightness gathered in his chest as he waited for her answer.
Finally, she gave him a helpless look and slowly shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I think I hoped you’d just…stay away, go on fighting other people’s fires indefinitely. It was stupid.’
‘Didn’t you think I had a right to know?’ He should stop pushing. Sooner or later, she would say something he didn’t want to hear. But he could help himself.
‘Did you?’ She crossed her arms defensively. The action pushed the disturbing cleavage into even more prominence. ‘You’d made your position abundantly clear before you left. There didn’t seem to be any room for negotiation.’
‘But this…’ he waved a hand towards her stomach ‘…changes things.’
‘It does for me, yes.’ She tilted her chin at him defiantly. ‘I wanted a baby and now I’m having one.’
The band around his heart squeezed harder. ‘It changes things for me, too, Liz.’
She pounced as soon as the words were out of his mouth. ‘Are you saying you want this baby?’
His brain refused to co-operate. He opened his mouth, hoping the right words would be uttered magically. ‘I…I’m—’
‘Don’t bother straining yourself for a reply to placate me.’ She held up her hand, disgust patent on her face. ‘I can see the answer for myself.’
‘No, dammit, you can’t.’ He reached out to stop her as she stalked past him. With his hand circling her upper arm loosely, the backs of his fingers were nestled against the soft, warm flesh of her right breast.
She gasped, raising startled hazel eyes to his. Her pupils flared dark and deep, betraying her involuntary reaction, giving him the unexpected knowledge that she wasn’t as contained as she was trying to appear. Hope and exultation surged through him, a palpable force loosening the pain in his chest.
‘Give me a chance,’ he said, softening his voice persuasively. ‘I need time to get used to the idea. You’ve known for months. I’ve known for a bare twenty-four hours.’
‘And what if you can’t get used to the idea, Jack?’ She wrested her arm out of his grip, rubbing the skin as though trying to scrub away the evidence of his touch. ‘This is a baby. Not a ten-day trial where you get a refund if you change your mind.’
‘I know that.’ He ground his teeth. God, he probably knew it almost better than she did. ‘I’m prepared to do the right thing.’
‘That’s big of you, isn’t it? Forgive me if I don’t fall down on my knees to offer up prayers of gratitude.’ She looked at him stonily. ‘I don’t want my child to have a duty father.’
‘And I don’t want it to have an endless parade of uncles through its life when it has a perfectly good father around.’ The irony of his words blasted into the silence and he couldn’t suppress a wry grin. ‘Well, perhaps an imperfectly good father.’
Liz stared at him for a long moment. Then her lips twitched, only to immediately thin. She was obviously not prepared to let a smile escape. ‘It depends on the imperfection, doesn’t it?’
He felt his smile slip as the cold vice around his heart clenched again. ‘Yeah, I guess it does.’
‘Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere, and I really do have to go to work now. Can