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Koshka returned to nuzzle at the shiny pool of hair flared out around her head, and discover the delicious, salty moisture at her temples, and Kate raised her head to escape the gentle rasp of her abrasive tongue, bracing herself on one arm to start pushing herself upright.
Then a big hand was there, cupping her neck, a strong arm supporting her shoulders.
‘My God, Kate—that bloody cat! I had the shutters open—I saw the whole thing. You could have broken your neck!’ Drake knelt down beside her, shooing Koshka away as he helped her sit up, curving her against his supporting chest, brushing the dirt and grass clippings from her damaged side, anxiously tilting up her white face and examining her dazed eyes beneath the damp fringe sticking to her forehead, looking rather grey-faced himself. ‘Just sit here for a moment; don’t try to get up until you feel a bit steadier,’ he said huskily. ‘A knock like that can really take it out of you. Thank God you fell on that lounger and not on your head. Anything broken, you think?’
‘No…’ It was as much an answer as a thread of protest as he gently unfolded the arm that Kate had tucked protectively across her middle.
‘Shall I carry you inside?’
‘No, I want to stand up…I need to stand up,’ she insisted shakily, hoping against hope that when she stretched out she would find that she was just experiencing a muscular spasm from the shock of the fall.
Murmuring reassurances, Drake helped her to her feet, letting her lean on him as she tested her ankles and gingerly flexed her shoulders and wrists. To her relief the pulling pain in her stomach started to fade away, just as she’d hoped it would, once the blood started pumping freely around her extremities again.
They took it very slowly going back up the stairs, and when she limped back inside the house Drake made her lie down on the couch for a few minutes with her feet propped on a cushion. She accepted an offer of sweet tea when the alternative seemed to be having him hover over her or pace up and down. When Koshka wandered back inside innocent of all the commotion she had caused, Kate petted her forgivingly as she sipped her tea, covering the little ears to block out Drake’s dark threats of discipline.
When she felt a little less fragile, she persuaded him to let her go and pull on a tee shirt over her bikini, but when she emerged from her bedroom she was white-faced again, fully dressed, wearing shoes, and carrying her purse.
‘I think you’d better take me to the doctor,’ she said thinly to Drake, who was standing in the kitchen stirring sugar into a mug of tea for himself.
‘Why? What’s the matter?’ He put the mug down abruptly and strode over. Before he reached her side she went even paler, biting her lip and blinking hard as she dropped her purse and pressed both hands to her stomach.
‘Oh, God—’ she choked.
‘What is it?’ He slid his hands over the top of hers, feeling their icy tremor, fearing she was sliding into delayed shock. ‘Come on, Kate, tell me,’ he ordered harshly, to jolt her consciousness. ‘Don’t fade out on me—do you think you’ve hurt something inside?’
‘Yes.’ She looked at him, her silver eyes wild and tormented. ‘The baby…I think something’s happening to the baby!’ She caught her breath on a frightened sob. ‘I feel this pain in my side and all around my middle, like a tearing…I think I must have hurt my baby when I fell. Oh, God, what if I’m losing it? I don’t want to lose my baby—’
‘Baby? You’re pregnant?’ He looked as if he had been hit in the face, but his stunned bewilderment only lasted a split second and then he was as white-lipped as she, his eyes burning black holes in the stony mask of his face as he made all the right connections. ‘You’re carrying a child? My child? That’s why you came to Oyster Beach?’ He read the truth in her agonised expression. ‘You want to have the baby and keep it? Damn you all to hell, Kate!’ he exploded. He spun, slamming his fist against the wall.
She put her hand on the sleeve of his polo shirt, feeling the iron muscle underneath quivering with tension as his fist continued to grind against the caved wallboard. ‘Please, can we talk about it later?’ she begged his averted profile. ‘I need to go to a doctor now and I suppose the nearest medical practice is in Whitianga—I don’t think it’s safe for me to drive. Drake?’
He didn’t move and her fingers curled into the unyielding muscle. ‘Unless you want your baby to die!’ she cried in panicked desperation, shaking at his rigid arm. ‘Maybe you’re thinking that if you delay long enough you can force me into a miscarriage—get rid of the baby and save yourself some grief!’
He tore himself from her grasp and away from the wall, his handsome features for once ugly. ‘If you believe I’m capable of murdering an innocent child for selfish gain, then what in the hell made you think I’d ever be any kind of fit father?’ he said savagely. ‘No, don’t bother to answer that—you were going to sucker me into playing Daddy to your kid and now you know better than to even try,’ he added with incandescent fury. ‘Where are your keys? We’ll take your car—it’ll be quicker.’
He stopped, not looking at her as he demanded harshly; ‘Are you bleeding?’
‘No,’ she said, breathing shallowly, ‘but I have these sharp, low-down, stabbing pains…’
This time there was no supportive arm around her shoulders. He escorted her out and into the car without touching her, or even glancing at her until she temporarily emerged from her desperate anxiety to remember, ‘Oh, could you make sure that the kitchen window’s open before we go, so that Koshka can get out when she needs to—there’s plenty of water and dry food down but no litter box inside…’
With a curse and a black look of angry incredulity, he got out of the car again with violent, jerky movements and slammed into the house. When he came back he jammed the key into the ignition and grimly started to drive.
Wrapped up in her pain and fear for her baby, and the bitter knowledge that her sins of omission had caught up with her, totally damning her in her lover’s eyes, Kate hugged herself in silent despair until Drake’s question pierced her mental anguish.
‘How pregnant are you?’ he asked with ferocious reluctance, the words seemingly torn from deep in his chest.
‘I think about eight or nine weeks by now—’
‘You think? What does your doctor say?’
She didn’t want to tell him she hadn’t seen a doctor yet. She knew her GP didn’t handle pregnancies so she would have to ask him to recommend a specialist or midwife as her lead carer. She hadn’t been ready to take any of those official steps—not until she herself had felt ready to accept the giant changes that it would immediately bring to her life.
‘I—it must have happened just before you left—’
‘Happened? A pregnancy doesn’t just happen when you take the kind of serious precautions we do! At least I thought we were both on the same page about contraception. When did you stop taking the pill?’
She had known he would accuse her of trying to trap him, but it was still a blow. ‘I didn’t—not until I missed my period the week you left, and the pregnancy test came up positive…twice,’ she emphasised, twisting to look at him and biting her lip against another sharp spasm of pain. ‘I might have occasionally missed taking a pill, but never deliberately, and you always use condoms, so tell me how I could have planned this. And why would I, knowing how you feel about children—?’
