Husband Stay (Husband #2) (28 page)

“Yes, your mother
told me in no uncertain terms that you don’t need a flake like me messing up
your life.”

He went very
still. “She wouldn’t say that.”

I shook my head. “She
couched it more politely, but I distinctly remember her saying,
if he needs
any woman, it wouldn’t be a city girl who expects him to follow her around like
a puppy.”

He stared back at
me, and I felt the pulse inside me quicken, but it wasn’t anger. It was the way
he was looking at me, hot and hungry. Yet his body was unnaturally stiff, as if
he was holding himself in place. The combination was making me feel reckless,
as if I wanted to see how far I could push him before he let go.

“I did follow you
around,” he said, his jaw tensing. “I did a hundred things that were out of
character—”

“You told Kamal
that we had sex. Several times.” And I let myself add, “That was embarrassing.”

He nodded, not
denying it, which was points in his favor. “Cocky shit was going to shut the
door in my face. I had to say something to convince him to take the box—”

“So you could
follow him to my apartment building.”

“Correct.” He
didn’t look the slightest bit embarrassed. “I would have told lies to see you
again.”

Yet now he was
trying to get rid of me. “What changed?” I swallowed, not wanting to hear what
he was about to say.

“I don’t have time
to be selfish anymore.”

I shook my head,
feeling some of his tension bleeding into me. “I’m not a mind reader.”

“So why are you
here?” He was clearly not going to explain what had happened—what had changed
the amazing sex we were having into him being selfish.

Before I could
work out whether there was any point in asking him about that, the front door
of the house, behind me, slammed.

“
Jack!”
His
mother called, loud enough for us to hear with windows wound up and the
air-conditioner on.

He looked over my
shoulder and I turned in my seat to see his mother rushing down the stairs to my
car. For a second I expected her to tell me to leave, then I saw the expression
on her face and it made my heart lurch. It was pure panic. Nothing to do with
me.

I slapped a finger
on the button to wind down the window.

“We have to go,” she
almost shouted at Jack, hurting my ears. “Now.”

“Where’s Caitlin?”
he replied, his voice calmer than hers, but with an edge to it I’d never heard
before.

“She missed her
flight. One of us will have to stay here with the girls. I don’t want them to
see this.” Her fingers were gripping the window sill as she spoke over me to
Jack, and in that moment, as I pressed myself back into the seat, I felt
invisible.

Whatever she’d
thought of me before didn’t matter because something terrible was unfolding,
for both of them, something far more important than an Indian girl with bossy
demands.

“I’ll stay,” Jack
said, but I could hear from his voice that it was the last thing he wanted.

His quiet anguish
was so palpable; I simply couldn’t stay invisible any longer. “I’ll do it,” I
said, not thinking about the consequences. “I’ll stay here and look after the
girls.”

His mother
transferred her gaze onto me and her panic faltered. In that moment she looked
bewildered, as if I was a stranger she’d never met. “Can you?” she asked, and
the enormity of her anguish was suddenly very clear.

She didn’t approve
of me for a second. But in her desperation to get herself, her husband and Jack
to wherever they needed to go, she was willing to leave her precious granddaughters
with me. This had to be about one of her other children—the girls’ mother
Isabelle, or the son in the military. I hoped like hell that neither one of
them was going to die.

The last thing
Jack or his mother needed, however, was my anxiety, so I simply said, “I’ve got
nieces of my own that I’ve babysat. The girls will be safe with me.”

Jack butted in. “It
might be a day. Or longer,” and I turned to find him even more tense, but so
achingly beautiful as he waited for my answer, with reluctant hope shining in
his eyes.

In that second I
realized that embarrassment was irrelevant, so I nodded slowly and said, “Jack,
I’d do anything for you.”

Behind me I heard
his mother slap the windowsill. “I’ll get father.” Then there were footsteps
leading back to the house but I was staring at Jack, watching the
transformation on his face. The hope was dissolving, and a mask of control had
taken its place.

But I didn’t let
that unnerve me. I was too busy reveling in the glorious feeling of liberation
that my announcement had produced. I felt freer than I ever had in my life.

“Are you in love
with me?” he asked quietly.

I nodded, then I realized
I wanted to say it aloud. I wanted to sing it, in fact. “I’m in love with you.”

He nodded back. “I
have to go now. You’ll watch the girls? They’re in the playroom.”

My soaring emotion
dampened slightly, but I told myself his family issue was more pressing than my
impulsive declaration, and it was natural that he didn’t have the emotional space
to assimilate it right now.

“I’ll find them,”
I said. I had an overnight bag in the trunk, in case I’d been stuck in a local
town overnight waiting for a flight home. I needed to get that. “You go.”

We could talk when
he got back.

But he stared at
me a few seconds longer, then without warning he reached across and captured my
face with his large hands and kissed me. Hard. As if the tension and the fear
and whatever else was churning through him could be exorcized by me.

I didn’t care. I
clung to his shoulders and kissed him back while I could, amazed that even in
midst of such drama, I could feel so instantly aroused. It was completely
inappropriate with his parents probably about to come out the front door at any
moment, but his tongue was hot and hard and demanding and I melted under the
onslaught.

And then it was
over, as quickly as it had begun, and Jack was outside the car, walking to the
house, not looking back.

Sweet Shiva.

I should be
thinking ahead to the girls, to any questions I might need to ask, but as he
bounded up the front stairs, all I could think was
that is one gorgeous ass.

It was so firm and
curved, that even through denim it was turning me on.

Get your bag.
Get in the house.

I followed my own
advice, jogging up the stairs thirty seconds behind Jack. When I got in the
front door I could see him down the hallway, so I strode straight to him,
feeling like he was a magnet, pulling me close.

When I got there,
he grasped my hand, but before I could speak he turned me to face the open room
in front of him with its big flatscreen television, boxes of toys and a bookcase
of children’s books.

“Daisy. Charlotte.
This is my friend, Angela. Can you babysit her until I get back? I’m taking nanny
and poppy to a business meeting.”

A pair of tomboys
in denim shorts and pigtails looked up from their Lego construction. The older
one—looking around six, said, “Sure thing, JB.”

He nodded and
turned back to me, saying quietly, “I don’t know how long we’ll be.”

“I’m fine. I’ve
got babysitters.” I smiled at the girls, then I turned back to Jack who just
stared at me, radiating…something. Tension? Frustration? “I’ll be here,” I
said, in case he was worried I’d leave.

He nodded again,
but it still took him several seconds to let go of my hand and leave. Then he
strode to the backdoor, and as soon as it closed behind him I felt an ache of loss
up high in my chest.

He’ll be back
.

But would
everything be different then? He needed me now, but when this emergency ended,
or Caitlin arrived, I’d be leaving. I might never see him again.

“Angela?” The
older girl called me over and put a small book in my hand. “Can you read this?
Mommy used to read to us before she went to the hospital. We’re not sure when
she’s coming back. Do you know?”

“I’m sorry. I
don’t, honey,” I said, a touch too brightly, then I settled myself onto the
lounge, insisting the girls introduce themselves—Daisy was the elder, and
little Charlotte—or Charley—was a cherubic four who insisted on sitting on my
lap while Daisy cuddled close under my arm.

“Possum Magic.
Good pick,” I said, but I was sick to the stomach about the fact that these
beautiful girls might be about to lose their mother. Still, I read the book,
then when I remembered that I needed water, I got us sorted with afternoon tea
in the kitchen.

By that point, the
girls were so used to me they were teasing me about having big brown possum
eyes. Their own were bright blue, and with their dead-straight blond hair, I was
predicting they’d grow into a pair of Glamazons.

I was starting to
relax, looking through the fridge to work out what I could make them for
dinner, when from behind me, little Charley said, “Are nanny and poppy at the
hospital with mommy? Is this the day she’s going to heaven?”

I squeezed my eyes
shut, but a second later when I opened them, the insides of the fridge were
swimming in my vision. I blinked that back and cleared my throat before I
turned back. “I don’t know, sweetie. They didn’t tell me.”

Daisy put her half
eaten cookie back onto the plate. “I miss her.” Then she looked up at me. “But
nanny hasn’t told us how we’ll visit her in heaven. We can’t even visit her in
hospital.”

Out of nowhere,
bile rose in my throat and I realized I was going to vomit. I tried to suppress
it, but I couldn’t, so I gasped, “Toilet?” and Daisy jumped off her chair and
led me at a run down the hallway.

I only just made
it to the bowl before I vomited up all the water I’d just drunk.

“Are you sick?” Charley
whined from outside the door. “Mommy used to do that. Mommy used to sick up.”

She started to cry
and I suddenly realized I was frightening them. So I hurriedly flushed the
toilet and rinsed out my mouth before I came out, but little Charley backed
into Daisy and they hugged each other, both gazing at me with wide, wet eyes.

“I’m not sick,” I
told them, and pasted on a smile.

“Yes you
are
,”
Charley wailed. “You’re sick just like mommy.”

“No I’m not,” I
said patiently. She looked like she was about to start wailing in earnest, so I
recklessly said, “I’ve got a baby in my tummy.”

Daisy went still
with her arms around her little sister and Charley stopped crying long enough
to gaze up at me. “A baby?” She sniffed.

I put a hand over
my flat belly. “It’s very tiny still,” I said, “but it’s growing inside me and
sometimes it makes me feel queasy. That’s quite normal,” I hurried on when they
both frowned in concern. “It’s healthy, and not a problem at all.”

“Are you sure?”
Daisy let her sister go and took a step toward me.

“Of course, the
doctor told me so,” I lied. “And here!” I said as inspiration struck. “I’ll
show you what it looks like.”

I went to my
handbag and grabbed out my phone to show them some pictures on the internet,
but I had no signal. Clearly their property was too far out of range. They
would have a booster, but I didn’t have the logins for that. “Do you have a
computer?” I asked them.

Daisy ran and
retrieved a tablet, so I opened a browser window and found images of growing
fetuses. The girls were enraptured, and I even read them segments about morning
sickness and other bodily changes.

By the time I had
them bathed and sitting down to scrambled eggs and toast for dinner, they were
laughing and teasing me about what I should call the baby. Either
Tigerboy
or
Pinklewinkle
or
Blaberdab.

At that point,
with a forkful of scrambled egg on its way to my mouth, I said, “Well I think
it depends on what the daddy wants too.”

Which was a stupid
thing to say to
them
because it left me wide open to questions about who
the daddy was.

Only, Daisy said,
“Why do you need a daddy? Our mommy didn’t get one.”

I stared at her,
blinking, with absolutely no idea how to answer that. So I fluffed over it and somehow
managed to make my way through the next hour before I was tucking them into
bed, reading a story and telling them they’d see nanny and poppy at breakfast.
Which might be a bald-faced lie, but it made me feel better to see them relax.

Then I roamed the
big house and ended up curling into a corner of the lounge with the tablet to
check my emails, hoping to distract myself from the claustrophobic dread that
was growing each hour. Something bad was happening. I had no idea what. And
those little girls might wake up to a new and horrible world.

That seemed so
terrible, it put my own situation into sharp perspective, and I stopped
worrying about whether Jack would reject me and our baby. Daisy and Charley had
far bigger problems to face. So I waited for my inbox to open, hoping for
something distracting from Rosie. Instead, my eye lit immediately onto an email
from Fritha—who
never
emailed me. The subject line was HELP. I couldn’t
get it open fast enough, and when I did, I felt even sicker than I had before.

Why is your
phone going straight to message-bank? I’m hurt. I NEED YOU. Call me.

I jumped up and
dropped the tablet on the lounge, about to run to the guestroom the girls had
shown me to, only to remember that my phone had no signal.

I’d seen a phone
in the kitchen, however, so I ran there and snatched it up, dialing Fritha’s
number from memory.

“Baby,” I said as
soon as it answered, then I hurried to, “It’s me, Angela,” because she wouldn’t
recognize the caller ID.

“
Where are
you?”
She sounded shaky and scared.

“At Jack’s
property, near Emerald. I’m hours away honey. What’s wrong?”

“I’m in Sydney.
You’re not here.”

And Jill would be in
Finland by now, so I said, “Louella—”

“
She won’t
answer her phone. She probably thinks I’m trying to hit on her toyboy.”

“Let me ring her—”

“
No. Ange,”
she
cried softly.
“A guy punched me. I’ve got a bruise on my cheek.”

“Oh baby.” I
wanted to reach through the phone and pull her into my arms. “Who did it?”

“
Some fucker at
a club.”
She cried a bit more.
“He didn’t take ‘No’ very well, and he
was creeping me out. So I left and he followed me.”

Was she even safe
now? “Where are you?”
 

“
Down the road
in a park.”

“Fritha Wynde!” I
said so loudly I could have woken the girls, then I lowered my voice. “You get
your ass to a police station right this minute.”

“
I just want to
crash somewhere.”

“Wait.” It was
only a few hours after dinner. Kamal would be out clubbing somewhere. I’d get
him to pick her up. “I’ll ring my cousin. You can stay in his spare bedroom
where I used to live.”

“
Can I?”

“Yes. What’s the
nearest well-lit public place you can wait for him?”

She gave me the
address of a Night Owl Convenience Store and I made her promise to wait inside,
and care less what people thought about her bruise.

Then I quickly
rang Kamal on his cellphone, but as soon as he knew who I was, he said, “
Your
mother is here looking for you
.”

“What? In Sydney?”

“
No
,” he
said carefully,
“In my apartment. Standing next to me
.” The next thing I
heard was “
Is that Angela? Give me the phone.”

“No!” I whispered
loudly, but by that point she was probably already taking the phone out of his
hand.

“
You listen to
me, Angela Lata. I am your mother. And if I say—”

“No! Put Kamal on.
This is an emergency.”

“
You think you
are so important—”

I hung up the
phone and rang Kamal’s landline. When he answered it, I said, “Say
Hello Mary
.”

He parroted back,
“
Hello Mary. What’s up?”

“My friend Fritha
is in desperate trouble. Please pick her up and bring her back to stay with you
overnight.” I gave him the address and a description.

“
Sure honey.
I’ll come straight over and pick that up. See you soon!”

He hung up, so I
phoned Fritha back and told her to stay put. I could only hope my mother was
gone when Kamal arrived back. Then I realized I could do something about that.

I rang her cellphone,
which she answered immediately. “
Who is this?”
She sounded outraged that
someone without a caller ID should be phoning her.

“It’s me, Mummy
Ji. I’m sorry about—”

“
You will be
sorry,”
she cut straight in.
“I’ve brought a very good dentist here to
meet you, only to discover you don’t live here anymore! How does that make me
look? Like a stupid mother!”
She answered her own question.
“I don’t
even know my own daughter’s whereabouts.”

I thought about
all the things I could say, and ended up with, “I hadn’t heard from you, so I
assumed you didn’t care about me anymore.”

“
What a
thoughtless girl. When you are a mother—”

Something inside
me snapped. I pressed the phone hard against my ear. “I am a mother!” I said
savagely. “I’m pregnant to a man who doesn’t even know he’s about to become a
father, and I can’t tell him because his sister is in hospital dying. I’m at
his parent’s house right now, looking after his two nieces who are about to
become orphans, so excuse me if I don’t have the time or the inclination to
care about your whims!”

I stopped ranting
long enough to draw breath and the other end of the phone was ominously silent.
Probably just as well. I finished with, “I need to go and check on the girls,
because nothing’s more important to me right now than making them feel safe.”

Silence echoed
down the line for another few seconds, before she said,
“Good girl, Angela.
Now you sound like a mother. Call me when you can.”