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Yet he must have been a wanted child. His mother had chosen to have him in her late thirties. Nina figured his parents had probably been disappointed and alienated from Jack when he’d chosen to do manual work rather than follow them into their highbrow profession.
In any event, Jack had no money problems.
He had an attitude problem.
And Nina didn’t believe in overnight transformations, however much she might want to. She had seen Jack look benevolently upon babies before, even speak to them benevolently. She knew it to be an act, a social pretence. They were anathema to him.
“Good sleeper, isn’t she?” Jack commented, warm approval in his voice.
“She’ll probably turn into the baby from hell once I take her home,” Nina predicted.
“Well, we’ll meet that problem when it comes,” he said, clinging to blind optimism.
“Why, Jack?” she demanded. “Why are you even thinking of taking this on? I didn’t imagine what you said to me about babies.”
His eyes were pained. “Nina, if I could take that back…if I could take back these past eight months, I would. There’s been one hell of a hole in my life since you took yourself out of it.”
Her heart flipped over. She tore her gaze from his and attacked the lettuce in the Caesar salad. However much he wanted it to be, this was no longer a one-on-one situation. She couldn’t answer his needs. She concentrated fiercely on what she was eating. The dressing on the salad was superb. She loved the tangy taste of anchovies.
Jack pulled up the visitor’s chair and sat down. “I meant what I wrote on the card with the roses, Nina,” he said quietly.
“Sorry.” She choked the word out. “I should have thanked you for the flowers. They’re very nice.”
She kept shovelling the salad down her throat so it wouldn’t tighten up. Her stomach wasn’t receiving it so well, but she hoped it would soon settle down if she piled enough food into it. She was not—not going to let Jack Gulliver twist up her straight thinking or her carefully organised plans or her stomach.
“I’ve missed you. More than I can say,” he went on, undeterred by her lack of enthusiasm. “You were the best thing that ever happened to me, Nina. I don’t want to lose you again.”
He was remembering how it was. That was forever gone. No point in thinking it could be recaptured, not with Charlotte in the picture. Nina relentlessly crunched some croutons. They were more substantial than lettuce.
“You disappeared so quickly,” he complained. “One week. Just one week, and you were gone. No forwarding address from where you’d been living. You didn’t even work out your notice on the job you left. No one had a clue to your new whereabouts.”
Pure luck, she thought, seeing Sally’s advertisement for a seamstress in the Herald the day after the critical argument with Jack. She wondered briefly if it had been good luck or bad luck.
“You made your stand, Jack,” she reminded him, her eyes sharply scanning his. “You said last night I didn’t give you a choice. I didn’t think you gave me one. Can you honestly say, if I’d confronted you with my pregnancy one week after that argument, you would have reacted as you seem to be reacting now?”
He hesitated, searching his mind for an honest response. “I love you, Nina. I would have done whatever you wanted of me.”
A weight lifted off her heart. At least he wouldn’t have suggested an abortion. The hope squiggled again. Love sounded good. Love sounded wonderful. On the other hand, his response was entirely concentrated on her, which left out the baby.
Nina shook her head sadly. “It doesn’t work like that, Jack. It’s too one-sided. We had a lot of joy together….”
“Yes, we did,” he said eagerly, his eyes simmering with memories.
Sex, Nina thought. Wild, uninhibited, stupendous, passionate sex. Total absortion in each other. That was what he was remembering and that was what he wanted back. She took a deep breath and deliberately dashed the highly distracting ardour emanating from him.
“I don’t want to live with every bit of joy being whittled away by your resentment of the baby, Jack.”
He raised a hand in solemn fervour. “Nina, I swear to you I can accommodate the kid.”
Nina gritted her teeth. Accommodate the kid! How dared he talk about Charlotte like that? It was hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. She picked up a strawberry and bit the fruit off its stalk, seething through its juice. Jack Gulliver might be the sexiest man alive, but he wasn’t worth a father’s bootlace. She shot him down with her eyes.
“If you’re thinking of hiring a nanny—”
“A nanny! Who said anything about hiring a nanny?” He looked upset, frowning belligerently. “No kid of mine is going to be brought up by nannies. If that’s your plan, Nina, I’ve got to say right now I disapprove of it.”
Nina was so stunned, she popped another strawberry into her mouth, and the question, “You do?” became something of a gobble.
“I most certainly do. My parents left me with nannies until I was seven years old and then they turfed me off to boarding school.”
