The Pregnancy Secret (Harlequin Romance Large Print) (9 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

J
ESSIE
LEANED
TOWARD
HIM
, looking at him with heavy-lidded eyes.

Pretty woman...walking down the street...
The music seemed to explode into the small dressing room and waiting area. Jessica gasped and put her hand to her throat, wobbled on the high heels.

Kade was in front of her instantly, looking down at her with concern.

“Sorry,” she said. “I keep startling from loud noises.”

He cocked his head at her. The room flooded with Roy Orbison’s distinctive vocals. Kade took one step closer to her. He held out his hand, and she didn’t hesitate, not for one second. She took his hand. Kade drew her to him and rocked her against him.

And then, as if they had planned it, as if they had never stopped dancing with each other, they were moving together. Even though the tempo of the song was fast, they did not dance that way.

They slow danced around the waiting area, their bodies clinging to each other, their gazes locked. The music faded, but they didn’t let go, but stood very still, drinking each other in, as if they could make up for a whole year lost.

Holly burst in. “How cool was that, that I found—” She stopped. “Whoa. You two are
hot
.”

Kade’s arms slid away from Jessica. He stepped back. He swept a hand through his hair. “We’ll take it,” he said.

“That dress?” Holly said.

“No. Everything. Every single thing she tried on.”

Jessica’s mouth opened, but the protest was stuck somewhere in her throat, and not a single sound came out. She turned and went back into the change cubicle.

“Wear this one,” Holly suggested, following her in. She dug through the pile of clothing to the very first outfit Jessica had tired on, the jade top and skirt.

But she didn’t want to wear that one. Her world felt totally rattled by what had just happened, by how spontaneously she and Kade had gone into each other’s arms. She wanted to feel safe again.

“Where’s the dress I came in here with?”

Holly giggled. “He told me to throw it away.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he said to grab it at my first opportunity and dispose of it.”

“And you just listened to him? That’s outrageous.”

“He’s very masterful,” Holly said with an unapologetic sigh. “Besides—” she winked “—he’s the one with the credit card.”

Jessica thought of the frank male appreciation in his eyes as she had modeled her new outfits, and she contemplated how she was feeling right now.

Alive. One hundred percent in the land of the living, the life force tingling along the surface of her skin. Did she really want to go back to safety? To reclaim that familiar wooden feeling she had lived with for so long?

Why not, just for today, embrace this? That she was alive? And that her life was alight with the unexpected element of fun? And with the unexpected sizzle of attraction between her and the man she had married.

They left the store with Kade’s arms loaded with parcels, and with her feeling fresh and flirty and like a breath of spring in the first outfit she had tried on. He had paid for everything.

“I’ll pay you back,” she said. He had insisted on buying every single thing she had donned, even the evening gown.

Since the theme of the day was fun, she’d given in. But buying the gown? That was just silly. She had nowhere to wear an evening gown. Her future plans did not involve anything that would require formal wear. In fact, she needed to be stocking up on comfy pants and sweatshirts that could hold up to baby puke and other fluids associated with the delights of motherhood.

But she had been so caught up in the moment, and the dress had made her feel so uncharacteristically glamorous—sexy, even—that she had actually wanted to be silly. She had wanted to purchase that piece of silk and gossamer that had made her feel better than a movie star.

She should have protested more—she knew that when the bill was totaled—but the look in his eyes when he had seen her had sold every single outfit to her. She’d had a ridiculous sense of
needing
those clothes, though in her heart, she knew what she wanted was the look in his eyes. “Once we sell the house, I’ll pay you back,” she said firmly.

“Whatever. Hey, this stuff is already heavy. Look. There’s one of those rickshaw things being pulled by a bike. Have you ever been in one of those?”

“No.”

He juggled the packages to his left arm, put his two fingers to his lips and let out a piercing whistle. The driver, a fit-looking twentysomething guy, pulled over.

“Where to?”

“Ah, we aren’t sure yet. I think we need you for the day. Have you got a day rate?”

“I do now!”

Jessica knew she should have protested when the driver named his rate, but somehow she just couldn’t. She and Kade piled into the narrow seat of the rickshaw, squished together, all their packages bunched in with them.

“Where to?”

“We need a picnic lunch,” Kade decided. “And a bottle of wine. And a forest. Maybe Yan’s for the lunch. Do you feel like Szechuan?”

She thought of all those menus she had sorted through yesterday, each one representing a memory. She loved Szechuan-style Chinese food. “Two orders of ginger beef,” she reminded him.

Their driver took off across the downtown, darting in and out of traffic, getting them honked at, shaking his fist and yelling obscenities at drivers of vehicles.

It was hysterically funny, and she could not stop laughing. That wondrous feeling of being alive continued to tingle along the surface of her skin.

“You’re going to get us killed,” she said with a laugh as a cab they had cut off laid on the horn. She clung to Kade’s arm as the rickshaw swayed violently, and then their driver bumped up on a curb. “Or get my other arm broken.”

He twirled an imaginary moustache. “Ah, getting you right where I want you. Helpless. And then I can ply my lethal charms against you.”

* * *

Kade flopped down on the blanket that he had purchased. The driver had found them a quiet spot on Prince’s Island, and had managed to make himself scarce while Kade and Jessica enjoyed their picnic under a leafy tree, with the sound of the river in the background. Now, after too much food, and most of a bottle of wine, Kade felt sleepy and relaxed.

“Two orders of ginger beef,” he moaned. “It’s masochistic.”

“Nobody was forcing you to eat it.”

“You know why we always have to buy two, though.”
Always
, as if there was not a yearlong blank spot in their relationship, as if they could just pick up where they had left off. He considered where they had left off, and thought
,
despite his current level of comfort with Jessica, why would they want to?

“Yes, we always have to buy two because you eat the first one by yourself, and most of the second one.”

“Guilty,” he moaned. “My tummy hurts, Jessie.”

“And three spring rolls,” she reminded him. “And most of the sizzling rice.” Despite the sternness in her tone, when he opened one eye, she was smiling. She looked as utterly content as he could remember her looking in a long, long time.

He lifted up his shirt and showed her his tummy. She sighed, and scooted over beside him, that teeny-tiny skirt hitching way up her legs, and rubbed his stomach with gentle hands.

“Ah,” he said, and closed his eyes. Maybe it was because he had not slept well last night, or maybe it was because he had eaten too much, or maybe it was because his world felt right for the first time in over a year, but with a sigh of contentment, he went to sleep.

When he woke up, she was sleeping curled up beside him. He slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side, being careful of her arm.

“Did we fall asleep?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Is our driver still here? Or did he take off with all my new stuff?”

Kade got up on one elbow. He could see the rickshaw over by the riverbank. When he craned his head, he could see the driver tapping earnestly at his phone with his thumbs.

“I haven’t paid him yet. He’s not going anywhere.” He slid his own phone out of his pocket and checked the time. “Holy, it’s four o’clock already.”

“It’s been a perfect day,” she said.

“Agreed. What was the best part for you? The shopping? I love the long dress.”

“I don’t have a single place to wear a dress like that,” she said. “I shouldn’t have bought it.”

“Yes, you should have. I want you to accept it as a gift from me. You can pay me back for the rest of that stuff if you insist—”

“Which I do!”

“But I want to buy that dress.”

“Why do you want to buy me a dress that I probably will never wear?”

“Wear it around the house. Put a movie on, and wear it to watch it. Eat popcorn in it.”

She laughed. “That seems eccentric and foolhardy. What if I got butter on it?”

“That’s what I liked about it. You know what it reminded me of, Jess?”

“No. What?” She held her breath.

“It reminded me of those paintings you used to do, the ones that were all swirling colors and amazing motion.”

“I haven’t thought about those for years,” she said.

“Save the dress and wear it to the unveiling of your first art show.”

She laughed a little nervously. “I’m not having a first art show.”

“But that’s what I’ve always wondered. Where did that part of you go?”

“I paint murals,” she said. “That’s my creative outlet.”

“I don’t think bunnies on walls do justice to your gifts,” he said.

“I don’t care what you think!” she snapped. “Sorry. Let’s not ruin the moment with you telling me how to live my life.”

She was right. This was not any of his business, not anymore. Maybe it never had been.

“Is there any ginger beef left?” he asked wistfully.

“No.”

“How about sizzling rice?”

And then the moment of tension was gone, and she laughed and passed him the container. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to go home to his place together. And then to say good-night with unnatural formality and to go to their separate bedrooms.

The next morning, they both got up. He ordered croissants again. She came out to eat one in the too-large shirt.

“I guess I should have been shopping for pajamas instead of evening dresses,” she said.

What kind of kettle of worms would it open up, he wondered, if he said he liked what she had on—his shirt—way better than pajamas?

“Are you coming back here after you’ve finished work?” he asked her. He was holding his breath waiting for her reply.

“I guess,” she said, and he heard in her voice the very same things he was feeling. What were they reopening, exactly, by living under the same roof? What were they moving toward? Were they putting a framework in place for their future relationship? Was it possible they could be one of those rare amicably divorced couples who were friends?

He hoped things would become clear in the next few days, because he did not like uncertainty. And at the moment, his future seemed murky, like looking into a most uncooperative crystal ball.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

M
ONDAY
,
AFTER
WORK
, Jessica returned to Kade’s apartment. She was somewhat ashamed that she had not done a single thing to make new living arrangements for herself. And now here she was, aware she was waiting for the door of the apartment to open.

Why? Kade never came home at regular hours. What was she waiting for? Hadn’t this been part of their whole problem? That she waited, as if her whole life depended on him, and he had a whole life that had nothing to do with her?

Surely she’d come further than this, still waiting for him to come home! It was pathetic, and she was not being pathetic anymore. And so, instead of sitting in the apartment, she went and explored his building.

There was a good-size pool that they were conducting a kayaking class in, and beside that was a climbing wall. She went and sat on a bench and watched people climb the wall.

A good-looking man came over and introduced himself as Dave and asked her if she was going to try it.

She held up her arm. “Already did,” she said, deadpan. He laughed and flirted with her a bit, and she realized whatever had happened when she had put on all those clothes had been good. She was wearing one of her new outfits, and it seemed to fill her with confidence she hadn’t had for some time. Dave went up the wall, obviously showing off, and she was content to let him.

She watched for a while, and decided as soon as her arm got better, she would try climbing. The wall looked really fun.

After doing a thorough tour of the building and the gorgeous gardens outside, which included that impressive waterfall at the front, she wandered back to the apartments.

Kade was there. Did he look pleased when she let herself in using the code he had given her?

“Hey,” he said. “How was your day?”

“Oh, I struggled through.”

“Work late?”

“Oh, no, I’ve been back for a while. I thought I’d check out your building. It’s great. I love the climbing wall.”

“Really? I’ve never been on it. Is that one of the outfits we bought yesterday?”

“Yeah, I’ve had lots of comments on it. A guy named Dave, down at the climbing wall, stopped to talk to me. I don’t think he normally would have mistaken me for his type.”

She felt just the littlest thrill of pleasure that Kade could not hide his annoyance at Dave’s attention.

“Want to order something for dinner? I don’t have much here to cook.” He snapped his fingers. “Unless you want an omelet.”

He’d always made the best omelets.

“Perfect,” she said.

And it was perfect. After dinner they watched the news together, and it felt so utterly easy, as if they were an old married couple.

Which they were, sort of.

Of course, when they’d been a newly married couple, they hadn’t sat around watching television. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Later, when that stage had passed—or when she’d killed it, by bringing out the dreaded chart—they had played cards sometimes in the evening.

She suddenly longed for that.

“You have a deck of cards, Kade?”

“Why? You want to play strip poker?” he asked with such earnest hopefulness she burst out laughing.

“No!”

“How about a strip Scrabble game, then?”

“How about just an ordinary Scrabble game?” she said, trying not to encourage him by laughing.

“Can we use bad words?”

“I suppose that would be okay. Just this once.”

“How about if we use only bad words?”

She gave him a slug on his arm. “That falls into the ‘give him an inch and he’ll take a mile’ category.”

Suddenly, she wanted to play a bad-words Scrabble game with him. She wanted to not be the uptight one, the stick-in-the-mud. “A bad-words Scrabble game it is,” she said.

“I don’t actually have a Scrabble board.”

“That figures.”

“But I bet we can find it on the computer.”

And so that was what they did, sat side by side on his sofa, playing a bad-words Scrabble game on the computer until she was laughing so hard it felt as if she could die from it.

“So,” he said casually, after he had just played
phaut
, “tell me why you want a divorce all of a sudden.”

“I told you, it’s not all of a sudden.”

“But there’s something going on.”

And, maybe he’d done this on purpose, reminded her of what it was like to have a best friend, because she wanted to tell him. Crazily, she wanted to know what he thought.

“I’m thinking of adopting a baby,” she said quietly.

He was staring at her. “Aw, Jess,” he said, not as if he was happy for her, but as if he pitied her.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It’s the Old English spelling of
fart
,” he said. “
P-h-a-u-t.
You can challenge it if you want. But you miss a turn if you’re wrong.”

She had just told him something very important! How could he act as if the stupid word he’d made up was more engrossing?

“Not
that
. What does ‘aw, Jess’ mean?”

“Never mind. I’m sorry I said it.”

She saw, suddenly, that he was using his stupid made-up word as a way not to get into it with her. “No, I want you to tell me.”

“But then when I do, you’ll be mad,” he said, confirming his avoidance strategy.

“Will I?” When had she become that person? The one who invited opinions, but then was angry if they were not what she wanted to hear? She wanted it not to be a truth about her, but in her gut, she knew it was.

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say, but maybe I’m going to say it anyway, for the sake of the baby.”

She felt as if she was bracing herself.

“A baby isn’t supposed to fill a need in you, Jessica,” he said quietly. “You’re supposed to fulfill its needs.”

Jessica felt the shock of it. She felt as if she should be very, very angry with him. But she was not. Instead, she remembered the revelation she’d had in the change room of Chrysalis, the one she had tried to shake off.

That she was using a child to try to fight off her own pervasive feeling of inadequacy. Instead of being angry with Kade, Jessica was, instead, sharply aware she had carried a certain neediness in her since the death of her mother. The miscarriages had made it worse.

So Kade had called a spade a spade. She saw, from the look on his face, it was not a put-down at all. She had a deep sense of his courage, that he had handed her a simple truth, knowing it might make her angry, but also believing she needed to hear it. And maybe also believing she would know what to do with it.

Jessica remembered how before she had hated everything about Kade, she had loved everything about him. And this was one of the things she had loved, that he had a way of seeing right to the heart of things. He would have shrugged it off, uncomfortable, if she called it intuition, but that was exactly what it was.

It was part of what made him so good at business. He was brilliantly insightful. Before things had gone sideways between them, Jessica had loved his input, so different from her own.

“I’ve been too blunt,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, Kade,” she said, “it’s what I needed to hear, even if it’s not what I wanted to hear.”

She suspected this was why she had not wanted to tell him about the adoption, because he could shed a light on her plans that could change everything.

“You and I,” she said, “we’ve always been so different. It’s as if we each have the pieces of half of a puzzle. It’s when we’re together that we can piece together the whole thing.”

She thought of those adoption papers at home, and it occurred to her this was what he had shown her: she was still wanting a baby to fill gaps in her life.

She had probably never been less ready for a baby than she was right now.

“I’m very tired now,” she whispered, feeling as if she was holding the remnants of another shattered dream within herself. “I’m going to bed.”

“Jess, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

She smiled wanly. “Oh, Kade, I don’t think we ever wanted to hurt each other. And yet, somehow we always do.”

And yet, over the next few days it was as if something had broken free between them; a wall of ice had crumbled, and what was held behind it flowed out. As they shared his beautiful space, there were moments of spontaneous laughter. And quiet companionship. As they shared meals and memories and old connections, they rediscovered their comfort with one another. And caught glimpses of the joy they had once shared. And relaxed into that rare sensation of having found someone in the world with whom it was possible to be genuine.

And so when Jake called Kade on Thursday afternoon and told him that the house was done, Kade felt not happy that the work had been finished so quickly, but a sense of loss. He wanted to give Jake a list of ten more things to do. No, a hundred. No, a thousand.

He brought her the news after work. Jessica had arrived at the apartment before him. She was wearing one of the outfits they had bought together—a lively floral-print dress with a belt and a wide skirt that reminded him of something someone might wear to dance the jive.

She had her arm out of the sling and was wiping down his counters. Once it had bugged him so much that she felt driven to wipe up every crumb.

But now, watching her, he could see it gave her a kind of contentment to be bringing order to her space, and he found he liked watching her.

She looked up and saw him standing there, and she smiled a greeting.

“Hey! You are not supposed to be out of that sling yet.”

“You know me.”

It was the most casual of statements, but it filled him with some sense of satisfaction that, yes, he did know her.

“I could not handle the mess on the counter. I needed both hands free to wring out the dishcloth.”

“You’ve always been such a stickler for tidy.”

“I know. You used to protest daily,
too many rules
.”

“Did I? I don’t remember that.”

* * *

Jessica cast Kade a look. Could he really not remember the mean things he had said to her?

“You called me the sock Nazi,” she remembered ruefully. Was she hoping he would apologize? He didn’t. He cocked his head at her, and looked at her in that way that made her stomach do the roller-coaster thing.

“I couldn’t understand the changes in you,” he said. “We said ‘I do’ and overnight you went from being this kind of Bohemian free-spirited artist to Martha Stewart’s understudy.”

“And you,” she reminded him, “resisted me at every turn. It drove me crazy. If I put out a laundry hamper, you would throw your dirty clothes on the floor beside it.”

It had driven her crazy that she had been creating this perfect little nest for them—a perfect world, really—and he’d resisted her at every turn. He’d left his socks in the living room. He’d hung his towels crooked in the bathroom. He’d left dishes in the sink, and if he’d been working outside and forgot something in the house, he’d just traipsed in, leaving a pathway of leaves and grass and mud in his wake.

“I know I could be inconsiderate,” he said, but he didn’t sound very remorseful. “I felt as if you were trying to control me all the time, I felt as if you thought the way you wanted to live was the only correct way, and what I wanted, to be a little relaxed in my own space, didn’t count at all.”

Jessica felt shocked by that. It was certainly true. She had always wanted things her way.

“And then I’d come home from working all day, and you’d have some elaborate meal all prepared and candles on the table and the best dishes out. I would have been just as happy with a hamburger and my feet up on the coffee table in front of the TV. Not that I was allowed to put my feet up on the coffee table, even though it was really a bench that was sturdy enough to have survived one war, a fire and two floods.”

She was aghast at the picture he was painting. He looked as if he was going to stop, but now that the floodgates were open, he was completely unable to.

“I wanted to talk to you the way we had always talked—about ideas and dreams and your art. I wanted to laugh with you and be lighthearted.

“But suddenly all you wanted to talk about was paint colors for the nursery and could we please get a new sofa, and did I think there was too much tarragon in the recipe.
Tarragon
, Jess.”

And so this was how their relationship had started to show cracks, she thought. She had known it was all going dreadfully wrong.

“I wanted to shake you, and say, ‘Who are you and what the hell have you done with Jessica?’”

It wasn’t until after he’d gone from her life that she realized how stupid it had been to make an issue out of the very things she then had missed.

“But you—” Jessica’s defensive response died on her lips. She considered the possibility he was right. Instead of feeling defensive, she let what he had just said sink in. Suddenly, for the first time, it occurred to her maybe she should be the one who was sorry. If she was going to move on, if she was going to be a good parent—no, a great parent—to a child someday, she had to start working on herself now. And part of that meant facing her role in the relationship going wrong.

Up until this point, had she really told herself she had no part in it? That it was all his fault?

“What happened to you?” he asked. “And worse, what did I have to do with it?”

“Nothing,” she said softly, and with dawning realization. “You had nothing to do with it. I think, Kade, ever since my mom died, I longed to have
that
world again.

“I was only twelve when she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. She went from diagnosis to dead in three weeks.”

“I know that,” he said, reminding her he knew so much about her.

“But what you didn’t know—maybe what I didn’t even know until this minute—was that I wanted my world back. After she died, it was just my dad and my brother and me. Everything went south. The house was a catastrophe. We ate takeout and macaroni and cheese. I couldn’t even invite a friend over, our house was such a disaster. I wanted my lovely, stable family back.”