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‘Why don’t we start with why you walked out on me?’ he said as he continued to bear down on her. ‘And then we’ll move right along to why you didn’t tell me about our child.’
‘Why would I?’ she said as a rage that she hadn’t even known was inside her rose up to batter her chest. ‘Why would I tell you about a child you don’t want?’
There could only be one reason he was here. One reason he’d flown all the way from LA. The sickening realisation had fear sprinting up her spine.
She tried to dash past him, trapped and desperate to escape. But he stepped into her path and wrapped an arm round her waist. Hauling her into his arms.
‘You’re going nowhere until you explain that statement,’ he said, holding her easily as she tried to struggle free.
She lifted her fists, pummelled his chest. ‘I’m not having an abortion. You can’t make me.’ Tears blurred her eyes, the fear growing like a tempest.
‘Juno, stop it, it’s nothing like that.’ He took the blows and tightened his arms until her attempts to hit him became futile and she struggled uselessly in his embrace.
‘I won’t do it. I won’t. Leave me alone. I hate you,’ she cried out.
But it wasn’t Mac she saw any more, it was Tony, the sneering contempt, the smug indifference on his face. And then the last of the rage, the fury, drained to leave nothing but bone-melting exhaustion, bitter sobs racking her body.
‘Shh, Juno, don’t take on so.’ His voice seemed to come from a great distance away as he lifted her. He took the seat she’d vacated and cradled her limp body in his lap. His hand brushed her cheek, pushed the hair back from her face. ‘I never told you to have an abortion. And now you’ve fallen pregnant, an abortion is the last thing I want.’ He covered the hand fisted in her lap.
She shifted, trying to get off his lap, but his arms held her in place.
‘You told me to take the morning-after pill,’ she said. ‘What’s the difference?’
He cursed softly and gave a heavy sigh. ‘Ah, hell. That was a stupid knee-jerk reaction, said in the heat of the moment. Don’t hold it against me now.’
‘Why would you say it if you didn’t mean it?’
His eyes flicked away.
‘I’d always believed I could never be a father. That I might have the same thing inside me, the same weakness my own father had.’ He hesitated. ‘But now I can see how foolish that was.’ He looked back at her, squeezed her hand. ‘I want to be a father to this baby. Do you believe me?’
Seeing the truth in his eyes, she felt emotion swell in her chest. ‘Yes.’ She huffed o
ut a breath, resigned to telling him the rest. ‘But there’s a good chance there might not be a baby.’
‘Tell me what happened, Juno,’ he said gently, brushing his thumb across her cheek. ‘Because I’ve a feeling it wasn’t only me you were fighting a moment ago?’
Her bottom lip trembled perilously. She supposed she owed him this much. She’d accused him of something he’d never really said. ‘I got pregnant,’ she said simply. ‘After…After the night with Tony.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘That’s not all, though, is it?’
She shook her head, wondering when he’d become so perceptive.
‘My parents were furious. They wanted me to get rid of it. Said I’d made a foolish mistake. And I had.’ She gulped the tears down, determined not to cry. This had all happened so long ago. Wasn’t it about time she got over it? ‘But I couldn’t do it. I moved out, I wanted to prove them wrong. I got a room at Mrs Valdermeyer’s. I had all these silly dreams. I would have the baby and Tony would be overjoyed and tell me he loved me and…’ She swallowed; it all sounded so idiotic now, like a little girl playing house. ‘I went to his work to tell him. He was furious, told me if I was pregnant I better get unpregnant. He picked up the phone to arrange an abortion, and I just ran off. I never saw him again.’
‘That bastard.’ She could hear the sympathy and anger in his voice, drew strength from it.
‘Two days later, I had a miscarriage. A spontaneous abortion, that’s what the doctor called it. It was for the best, I understand that now. I wasn’t mature enough to have a child. But it seemed so final, so cruel at the time. As if the baby was made to suffer for something I did.’
‘Juno.’ He sighed, threading his fingers through hers. ‘Don’t do that now. Don’t punish yourself for something that you had no control over.’ A lopsided smile tugged at his mouth. ‘It screws you up. A very wise young woman made me realise that a while back.’
As she sent him a weak smile she felt the last traces of guilt leave her heart. Until all that remained was the distant ache of grief for the child she’d lost.
He rested a palm on her midriff, warming her through the thin cotton of her dress. ‘So what does the doctor say about this little one? How careful do we have to be?’
The ‘we’ had her pulse skittering, but she pushed back the spurt of hope. One thing she’d promised herself in the last month was that she wouldn’t yearn for the impossible. Just because he cared about the baby, just because he wanted to be a part of its life, didn’t mean he wanted anything more.
‘Maya says everything’s progressing normally. She seems pretty confident. Once I get to the three-month mark, we’ll know for sure.’
