‘It’s not your problem, Steele.’ Then she looked over to him. ‘Actually, this has helped and talking to Macey too. It makes it feel a bit more real.’
‘Keep talking, then,’ he said, but she shook her head.
‘I can’t really. I mean, I’m upset about Gerry too and I’m trying to work out how to tell his family and I don’t think getting upset about Gerry is fair to you,’ Candy said. ‘I know I felt jealous when you spoke about your wife. I got an Annie burn.’
He loved her openness and he smiled when she admitted to having felt jealous. ‘Candy, you can talk to me about that.’ Ten years older, there were some things he did know. ‘Two days before I turned thirty I found out that a woman who I had gone out with for close to six months, just after my divorce, had died. Now, she wasn’t the love of my life. She was one of possibly too many loves of my life...’ He saw her pale smile. ‘And it hurt. I was stunned and devastated. I was all of the things that you probably are now.’
‘It doesn’t make you feel jealous when I talk about him?’ Candy checked.
‘I don’t know how it makes me feel,’ he admitted, touched that even with all that was going on in her world she could be concerned in that way for him. ‘But that’s my stuff to deal with. Right now you’ve got enough of your own.’
‘Oh, I do!’
‘You know there is one teeny positive,’ Steele said.
‘Tell me.’
‘Well, there was one thing about you that was starting to get on my nerves, a potential deal-breaker, in fact,’ Steele said. ‘Confirmed bachelors are very picky and selfish, you understand...’
Candy smiled. ‘Tell me.’
‘Your ability to fall asleep. God, I knew you were tired, we both were, but I was starting to wonder if you had narcolepsy or something.’
She laughed but it changed in the middle and she fought from letting out a sob because he’d just reminded her how very good it had been between them.
‘Candy...’ He took her hand but she pulled hers away.
‘Please, don’t, Steele,’ she said. They had always been honest and she was never more so than now. ‘Please, don’t confuse me now. I miss you very much. I think we both know that it was turning into a bit more than a fling. I think we both know that feelings were starting to run deep.’ Which was milder than the complete truth but now was not the time to admit to love. She pointed out the impossibility of it.
‘You like the single life.’
‘I did,’ he said, ‘but I very much liked being with you.’
‘You’ve geared your life around not having children.’
‘I have,’ he said.
‘You start your dream job in a couple of weeks.’
‘I do.’
‘And I’m pregnant with another man’s babies.’
It dawned on him then that he had only ever known Candy pregnant. That, really, nothing had changed between them, except that they both now knew and he told her so.
‘Candy, since the moment we met you’ve been pregnant with another man’s babies. I think we—’
‘Steele,’ she interrupted. ‘I have to work a few things out myself. I’ve been raised to share everything, to discuss every decision. I don’t want to do that now. I want to think. I want to know that I can do this on my own. I have to know that I can do this on my own...’
‘I get that.’
‘And please don’t pretend this isn’t difficult for you.’
He thought back to that morning, sitting on the edge of the bath and crying in a way he never had before, but he felt better for it, clearer for it. He looked at Candy and knew she was right. She didn’t need his thoughts now. She needed her holiday, she needed space, she needed to get used to the idea that she was going to be a mother.
‘I need to go,’ she said. She was on the edge of tears—just one touch of his hand and she wanted more, she wanted his arms, she wanted the comfort of him. She felt as if she had just got off a merry-go-round as they stepped outside. She had felt like that since the news about Gerry’s death had hit, since she’d sat in Anton’s office, since...