“My poor mother?” Nic swung around with a harsh expression of astonishment, arms lowering.
“Well, yes.” Rowan shrugged, her hand imperceptibly tightening on the edge of the sheet. “Having to stay married to someone like that. He’s probably the reason she didn’t see you at school. He sounds controlling.”
“She didn’t ‘have to’ stay married to him. She chose to. She chose him over me.” His flash of rejection was quick and deep, so swiftly snatched back and hidden behind chilling detachment she could only guess how much practice he’d had at stifling it.
Rowan’s heart, ravaged by all that had happened in the last week, finished rending in two. She ached to offer him one of those ragged halves, the one beating at a panicky pace, but doubted he’d take it. No wonder he held himself at such a distance. Distance was all he’d been taught.
There weren’t any platitudes that could make up for what had been done to him, so she tried to offer perspective.
“What other choice did she have?” she asked gently. “She already had your sister and the boys.”
“One boy. She was pregnant with the other,” he admitted, one hand rasping his stubbled jaw as though he wanted to wipe away having started this conversation.
“There you go. How does a woman with three children and about to give birth to a fourth hold down a job? Who nurses that baby while she’s at work? It sounds like her choices came down to destroying the lives of all her children or just one. I’m not saying she made the right choice, but I don’t think she had any good ones. It was an awful position to be in.”
“She could have chosen not to get into that position. She married knowing I was on the way.” His eyes were so dark they were nearly black. “She could have broken her engagement and asked Olief to support her. For that matter, given they were both committed elsewhere, they never should have made me in the first place!”
Suppressing a stark pang of protest against his never being born, Rowan only said, “Because every pregnancy is planned?” She choked that off, appalled she’d started to go there. She only wanted him to see everyone was human. “It happens, Nic,” she rushed on, fixing her gaze blindly on the blurred pattern of the curtains. “Sometimes the choices you’re left with are tough ones. Judging by your reaction to my efforts toward you, you’re not interested in having a family, so what would you do?” she challenged with a spurt of courage. “Marry me anyway?”
It was a less than subtle plea for him to qualify his feelings toward her. He’d been so solicitous, holding her close all night. It made her heart well with hope that something deeper between them was possible.
He’d hardened into something utterly rigid, utterly unyielding. When he spoke, his voice was coated in broken glass. “The greater question is what would you do?”
His chilly withdrawal made her insides shrink. She wasn’t sure how to interpret his grim question, but his quiet ferocity gave her a shiver of preternatural apprehension. She was convinced he didn’t want her to be pregnant, so was he hoping to hear she wouldn’t go through with it? He would be vastly disappointed! Her heart hardened like a shield inside her. Nothing would make her give up her baby.
“It would be beyond a miracle if I got pregnant so I’d keep it, of course. But don’t worry,” she charged with barely restrained enmity. “I wouldn’t ask you to marry me. My mother’s shotgun marriage ruined her life. I’ll never repeat that mistake.”
She threw off the blankets and locked herself in the bathroom, shaken to the bone. She tried to regain control by reminding herself they were arguing about something that couldn’t even happen, but when she stood in the shower a few minutes later her hand went to her abdomen where a hollow pang of if only throbbed.
* * *
“I’d keep it, of course.”
There was no “of course” about it, but Nic was reassured that Rowan had said it. Which was crazy. The thought of making a baby with her should be putting him into a cold sweat.
He shifted in the back of the car. He had decided years ago not to have children. Partly it stemmed from spending years in Third World countries. After seeing children savaged by war and famine, their parents helpless to protect or provide for them, he’d concluded that reproducing was irresponsible.
An even deeper resistance came from his certainty that he wasn’t built for family life. Every time he’d had the hint of one it had been stripped away—most recently when Olief had flown into that storm. Nic didn’t buy into fate, but it really didn’t seem he was meant to lead the life of a domesticated man. He’d always been comfortable in that belief. What kind of father would he make anyway, incapable as he was of emotional intimacy?
Rowan would be a good mother, though. Her view of pregnancy was a bit romantic, but it thawed the frozen places inside him. He was reassured. Rowan would show him the way. She was affectionate and playful and knew how to love. His baby would be in good hands because she would love her child even if it was his.
The thought caught him by the heart and squeezed. It was such a tiny lifeline, thrown down a well—something delicate and ephemeral in dark surroundings. He wasn’t completely sure he’d discerned it. He didn’t even have the emotional bravery to reach out and see if it was real. It might not hold. But he wanted to believe it was there.
He glanced at Rowan, his ambivalence high. She’d accused him of not wanting a family and he didn’t, he assured himself quickly. The weight of responsibility, the vastness of the decisions and accommodations, were more than he could take. And winding through that massive unknown was a dark line, a fissure. Him. The unknown. The weakness. Could he hold a family together or would he be the reason it fell apart?
At the same time he was aware of his heart pounding with... God, was it anticipation? No. He tried to ignore the nameless energy pulsing in him, but he couldn’t shake the urge to push forward into the future and see, know, feel a sense of belonging after so many years of telling himself to forget what he barely remembered.
He and Rowan were both on their own and surprisingly good together in some ways. He couldn’t help wondering if that could extend to parenting a child, making a life together. He could easily stomach waking every morning the way he had today, recognizing Rowan’s scent before he opened his eyes. Something had teased at him as he had become aware of her warmth and weight against him. Something optimistic and peaceful. Happiness?
Whatever it was it wouldn’t happen, he acknowledged darkly. Her hot statement about shotgun marriages being a mistake had spelled that out clearly enough. She was right; they were a mistake. He couldn’t even argue that he was good husband material. But her flat refusal to consider marrying him still put a tangle of razor wire in his chest.
She noticed his attention and her hand went to her middle. “Sorry,” she said.
They were halfway to the helipad. It took him a second to realize she wasn’t referencing a possible baby forming inside her. Her stomach was growling.
“You still haven’t eaten?”
“You said the car was ready.”
“Ready whenever you were,” he corrected, biting back a blistering lecture on taking care of herself and any helpless beings she might be carrying. “You’re a menace,” he muttered, and leaned forward to instruct his driver that they were detouring for brunch.
Minutes later they were sitting al fresco in the weak winter sun, a little chilly, but blessedly private away from the bustle of hungry diners. He’d ordered a yogurt and fruit cup for Rowan to eat immediately and a proper entrée for each of them to follow.
“I won’t get through more than the fruit cup,” Rowan warned.
“I’m hungry enough to eat whatever you don’t.”
“You didn’t eat breakfast either? Menace!”
She had her finger hooked in a wedding ring on a delicate chain around her neck. Her mouth twitched behind the back and forth movement as she rolled the ring along its chain. He was inordinately relieved to see the return of her cheeky smile, but still exasperated.
“I’m not eating for two, am I?” he challenged.
She sobered. “Neither am I.” She dropped the ring behind her collar.
“You don’t know that.”
A belligerently set chin and a silent glare was her only reply.
Time would tell, he supposed, dredging up patience, but his hand tightened into an angst-ridden fist. The knife in his belly made a cold, sickening turn as he recalled her rejection of marriage. He steeled himself against the rebuff and ground out, “Yes, by the way, I would marry you.”
His begrudging statement made Rowan feel like he’d shaken out a trunk of golden treasures and brilliant riches at her feet. But it was all glass and plastic. All for show, with no true value. Numbness bled through her so she barely heard the rest of what he said.
“Don’t think for a minute I’d refuse to be part of my child’s life.”