Having Nathan's Baby (13 page)

The doorbell rang again. This time his curse practically singed the air. “Who the hell is this? No one knows I’m
here except you,” he grated.

I
laid my head back on the pillows and blew out some breath, as though trying to deflate the tension in my body. He was already easing away from me. With all of my might I wanted to cajole him into staying, but I realized the moment was lost. He was distracted, sitting up and gathering his wits. I let my arms fall to my side, my body becoming slack.

I
sat up as he padded over to the bathroom, watching him. His naked body was glorious in motion; I could have lain here all day and watched the wonderful warring of the lean muscles and firm skin. I took in his distracted profile as he pulled on a pair of shorts from a drawer; I felt an overwhelming urge to cry again. It wasn’t a sad feeling at all. I was happy. Happiness was pouring through me and over the edges and streaming all across my consciousness. It slipped in through the cracks and ridges and the places I’d long forgotten existed. It seemed to revitalize my whole being: mind, body and spirit. I stared at him, helpless.

He stood and exhaled as he considered
me. His gaze was dark and yet luminous at the same time. There was a predatory hunger at its core. “Don’t move a muscle.” His low tone was warm but serious. “I want you exactly there, like that, when I come back.” His eyes ran the gamut of my relaxed pose, the sheet only just covering one breast. “I haven’t even remotely finished with you yet.”

I
took an involuntary breath.

His grin was slow, but abruptly replaced by a frown as the doorbell sounded again. “Goddamn it
... I’ll get rid of them and be right back.”

I
lay back as he paced from the room. Closing my eyes, I reveled in the moment; the warm sheets; the quiet sound of Nathan’s bare feet on the wooden stairs as he ascended. I had a sudden urge for coffee. In fact, I was ravenous! I wanted freshly squeezed orange juice, and eggs! I wanted a shower. Strike that – I wanted a long, leisurely soak in that massive tub, and I wanted Nathan in there with me. I smiled. I wouldn’t do any work today, I decided. Today was about Nathan, and about exploring this strange new development in our relationship.

He loved
me. I covered my face with my hands like a hysterical teenager. He loved me! There had been no mistaking the kind of love he’d been referring to. It hadn’t been similar in sentiment to the steady and loyal emotion we’d shared for so long – or at least, until recently. It hadn’t been a flighty, lust-filled declaration, either. It had been pure, and raw, and his voice had trembled with the power of it. My hands slid to my side as I contemplated this. My heart beat like a bass drum in my chest. I had no idea what this meant. It was bound to be an emotional rollercoaster if Nathan had anything to do with it, but I planned to cling on for dear life until we worked it out.

A noise on the stairs alerted
me someone else’s presence. Disquiet erupted in my chest like disturbed sediment. I heard heels clicking on the wood. A woman? Was she coming up the stairs? I sat up and clutched the sheet to my shoulders. I looked around the room for something to put on, but all I could see was my red dress lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. My eyes fled to the open doorway as the sound of heels rapping came closer. Surely Nathan wasn’t going to let someone into the room while I was in here, naked? What was he thinking?

I
heard his voice over the rapping sound. “Jennifer, don’t go in there.” His voice was so sharp it sliced through the air, clear and threatening. He sounded as angry now as he’d been yesterday in the park when we’d quarreled. The sediment mushroomed again, billowed and obscured my mental clarity. My body went into red-alert.

Yesterday he’d been at the end of his wits.
I realized that now. So who the hell was this Jennifer person and why had she elicited that response from him?

“Jennifer, I’m telling you: if you go into that room-”

Like a deer caught in the headlights, I froze as a dark-haired woman rounded the doorway. She was tall, slim, and pretty. She wore a thick wool coat in black, and heeled boots. Her hair was down, and long. She looked … a bit like me. That bizarre thought swirled around with another million disjointed and random observation and questions in my head.

Who was this woman and why was
she standing in the doorway staring at me as though she’d seen a ghost?

Chapter Nine

I decided to have a shower. I wasn’t sure what awaited me downstairs but I had no illusions about spending the rest of the day in bed anymore. I dried my hair and dressed carefully, keeping an eye on the clock. My stomach felt like it was in the middle of a gymnastic workout. It was only when I was satisfied that I looked fully composed that I exited the safe confines of the bedroom. I paused at the door to give the rumpled bed a final glance. My chest constricted.

I
could hear Nathan’s voice in the kitchen when I arrived on the downstairs landing. He was sitting at the island counter. He seemed to be alone. My eyes did a discreet one-eighty, taking in the late morning mist outside in the decked garden and the empty breakfast table. The surfaces gleamed, untouched. The place still seemed like a show house, as though everything was part of a set from a movie. I wondered for a second if I’d imagined that woman bounding up those stairs and crashing into the bedroom.

I
turned to stare at Nathan again. He was wrapping up his call, his words flowing over me like clear, bubbling water. I couldn’t quite contain them in my hands. I felt like everything was slipping through the fingers of my concentration.

“You’re dressed,” he said when the call had ended. His tone held a note of surprise, maybe regret.

I nodded. My heart beat in my throat. “Who was that?” I asked.

He tossed the phone into an empty crystal fruit bowl. It clattered but didn’t break. “My lawyer.”

“Not on the phone,” I said. “I mean – who was that upstairs. The woman?”

His eyes narrowed.
I could see that he was reacting to the thread in my tone; it was a metallic thread and it left a taste in my mouth like blood. He got up and moved towards me. To his credit, he was sensitive enough to my mood to stop a good meter away and lean against the counter. He was wearing sweatpants now but his chest was still bare, and he crossed powerful arms in front of it. “Her name’s Jennifer Gandy. She’s a music executive. Her family owns Gandy Records.”

I
processed this information, even if it didn’t answer my question. I knew Gandy Records – they had been around for a long time and had represented many famous acts. This woman had to be like royalty in Nathan’s world; I could only imagine the power a label like Gandy had over even a longstanding and best-selling band like Nathan’s.

I
could feel my limbs stiffening like they were being slowly filled with liquid concrete. I could feel a sense of the solidifying process to come. A nerve in my neck jangled like a bell.

I
swallowed. “Who is she to you?” I asked.

He exhaled roughly and rubbed his face with his hands. When he looked back at
me, the tension in his features made him seem like he was constructed of steel. “We had a relationship. A few years ago. Recently, too.”

The words were like weapons and they struck an effective blow to
my consciousness. I’d known this was true, but I realized I’d still be holding on to a final shred of hope that there was some kind of misunderstanding.

He held
my gaze as though he were challenging me. I bucked from it instinctively. Moving to the table, I sat down. The mist swirled outside in the garden. “How recently?”

He sighed. “Last year.”

“Is it still going?”

“
Chloe, until yesterday afternoon, you and I had barely spoken in two months. We only ever saw each other a few times a year before that. I was seeing other people.” I heard something like impatience in his tone. “You know as well as I do that our relationship has always been casual. We haven’t committed to anything-”

Except a baby,
I wanted to throw back at him. Except to the rawest level of intimacy two human beings can share. I stayed silent. The concrete was hardening all the while. I had no rights here, not when it came to Nathan, and I knew that. He was right that we hadn’t spoken for months on end even during the busy parts of our relationship. Even now … I had all but relegated him to the role of estranged father of my child until yesterday. Everything he said was true.

How could one day have changed everything so dramatically? Pain sliced through
me and I winced.

“So, yeah, I was seeing
other people,” he continued.

I realized he’d been talking all the while, but I tossed the realization aside and focused on what I needed to know.
“Is it serious?”

“Is what serious?”

I wanted to turn but the nerve in my neck made me smart at just the thought of it. I kept my eyes narrowed on the white wall of mist outside. “Is your relationship with Jennifer serious?”

“No.” He paused. “
We don’t have a relationship anymore,” he said, as though he were stating the obvious. “Not since year. I told you that.”

I
got up. At first I thought that I might be ill; was the morning sickness returning? I took a deep, slow breath and then turned to face him. The sight of him standing there, so ruggedly attractive … I felt the concrete snap into place. He was lying. “I have to go-”

“
Chloe, come on,” he said. His voice was definitely impatient now. “Don’t leave like this. We need to talk. We didn’t finish deciding everything yesterday…” His voice trailed off. He sighed. “Things have happened since then. You can’t just pretend last night didn’t happen.”

“I’m not pretending it didn’t happen. I can’t pretend this morning didn’t happen,
either.” Now it was my turn to feel impatience squeeze the muscles in my jaw. “That woman barged into your bedroom. You don’t do something like unless you’re emotionally invested in someone. Even if you don’t think the relationship still exists, she does.” My tone was surprisingly even; I felt like I was giving a summation in court. “She’s obviously emotionally invested in you, and you have been in her until recently, apparently. I don’t fit into this scenario anywhere. I don’t want to be the other woman, caught in your bedroom by the girlfriend.”

“
She’s not my girlfriend,” he said forcefully. “Damn it, Chloe – I keep telling you-”

“Lover, whatever,
” I cut in carelessly. Another thought occurred to me. It took the breath from my lungs so effectively that I couldn’t speak for a moment. When I did speak, my voice sounded tinny, even to my own ears. “Does she know I’m pregnant?”

“Of course
she knows you’re pregnant.” He sounded defensive.

My
brows lifted. Obviously they were still in touch, he and Jennifer. Obviously Jennifer didn’t care that he was having a baby with someone else. How had he explained his relationship with me, to her? Had he said it was just a casual thing, and the pregnancy an accident? That was true, of course. Would he have said the same thing to me if Jennifer were pregnant?

I
had a flash of my body slotted together with Nathan’s this morning in bed. The words we’d spoken, the love we’d shared, had swirled around us as thick and enveloping as the mist outside the windows. I looked down, unable to keep his stern gaze. Had I imagined that? Had I imagined the intensity of it? I must have.

“I have to go,
” I said again.

I
heard his slow sigh as I made my way into the hall. He made no move to follow me. I sensed his momentary defeat; he’d asked me to stay, but he wouldn’t beg. Is that what I wanted from him? I stood in the living room and looked around blindly for my coat and my shoes. I had no idea what I wanted from him, but right at this second, I wanted to get as far away from this house as possible. Inside I could feel a crack emerging. It was splintering my emotions. I froze, using all of my efforts to stabilize them. I couldn’t break down here.

“Your bag’s on the table.” He was in the doorway now, leaning on the doorframe.

I picked up the bag and then spotted my shoes under the large glass table.

“Let’s meet for dinner,” he suggested.

“I can’t.” The words left me of their own volition.

He paused. “Then tomorrow, for lunch.”

“Nathan-”

He cut through
my beseeching tone with a rasp in his voice. “I have to go back to L.A. on Monday, Chloe. I don’t want to leave things like this. You’re obviously upset. We need to have a grown-up discussion about this some point.”

Where
the hell was my coat? I resisted the urge to toss the cushions aside in frustration. Impatience made my voice tight. “I’m busy,” I said. I pinioned him with a glare. “I have a job. I have other responsibilities. You’re the one who’s got time to fuck around, not me. So don’t make this about me refusing to have a conversation with you.”

“I haven’t been fucking around,
” he said, his voice calm and yet grating at the same time. There was a mild threat behind it; he could clearly sense my escalating emotions and he was warning me to back off. “I was in a monogamous relationship with someone and then it ended. If you’d stop acting like a child and listen to me, you’d know that it ended before you were pregnant. There was nothing to prevent me from having sex with you-”

“It isn’t enough just to change your Facebook status to single, Nathan!”
I felt the lid fly off my control. “That woman, this morning, still clearly believes that you and she are in a relationship. You don’t barge into someone’s bedroom unless you feel you have a right to!” I had an image of myself throwing a cushion at him; the idea made the capillaries in my neck expand and I felt heat scald my cheekbones.

There
was nothing to prevent him from having sex with me? Was that what all of this had been: sex? If he’d wanted sex, wasn’t there someone else he could have turned to? I was carrying his child, for crying out loud! Why was he playing with me like this?

“
Where the hell is my coat?” I cried, visibly losing my patience.

He
pushed off from the doorway. I watched as he disappeared into the hallway. The blood seemed to rush through my veins like fuel in an engine. I felt power revving in my chest. I had to leave. This energy was going to escape at some point, and when it did, it would not be pretty. I wanted to be in the safe confines of my own apartment when that happened.

He returned a few seconds later, holding out
my heavy coat. I moved towards him and took it with stiff movements.

“You ca
n’t keep running away like this,” he said.

His tense words had a note of sympathy behind them. It was almost
my undoing. I did up my coat with trembling fingers, unsure if it was rage or sorrow I felt.

He touched
me. His hands clasped my arms, firmly but with gentleness, too. He leaned down to catch my gaze with his. “I get it if you need some space,” he said, his voice low. “This whole situation is a mess… It’s new, and neither of us knows what we’re doing. But it’s not going to get any better if we just ignore it. I don’t want things to be like this when the baby’s born, Chloe. You’re going to need support, and I can’t give that if you won’t let me.”

Then don’t make it so difficult for me,
I wanted to tell him. The words wouldn’t get past the rock lodged in my throat. I was so close to losing control of my emotions that I quaked inside. I couldn’t lean on him; I just couldn’t. He would hurt me, time and again. I’d crossed a line this morning that I shouldn’t have crossed and now I needed to focus on getting back behind it again.

I
shrugged out of his hold and stepped back. “You don’t love me, Nathan,” I said, my voice small with contained grief. “I’ve been so stupid ... I don’t know why I didn’t see it. The only person you love is yourself. That’s who you put first, and that’s who you’ve always put first.” Without looking at him, I picked up my bag. I pulled out a light scarf and wound it around my neck. I fished out my keys, the same way as I always did. I grabbed my phone for good measure and checked the missed calls.

He reacted finally, my name hollow sounding.
“Chloe-”

“I really do have to go,”
I said, my voice strangled. Despite all of my efficiency, I couldn’t hide the emotion. I turned towards the door, still without looking at him. “I’ll call you with news about the baby.” I opened the door.

The frosty air filled
my lungs. I breathed it in deeply. I closed my eyes for a second and then looked down the steps; I could barely even make out the cars parked at the other side of the street. Fortunately my apartment was only a few blocks away. The walk would do me good; the mist would hide the emotional ravages of this morning’s events on my face from prying eyes.

I
took the steps quickly, anxious to get as much space as I possibly could between that house and myself. I was doing us both a favor by leaving. Even if I tried things his way, I knew I’d only get hurt. His definition of a relationship was not the same as mine. I didn’t look back, but I could feel Nathan’s eyes watching me all the way down the street until I turned the corner.