AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Rafe’s breathing staggered, and despite everything, Jane smiled. His reaction to seeing her naked had never wavered, no matter how much time or how many bitter words passed between them.
From the moment they’d first declared their love for one another, he’d never hidden from her how much he desired her. How much she affected him.
It was nice to know some things never changed.
“So beautiful,” he whispered, trailing his fingertips down her side, skirting the edge of her small breasts and making her shiver more than the cool air ever could. But when he reached her stomach, his touch grew hesitant.
Like a bomb disposal expert.
“It won’t explode,” she murmured.
He snorted and his body shook for a moment before he shut down his laughter.
Tentative fingers spread across her stomach. To the untrained eye, she merely looked like she’d eaten a large meal, the slight bulge of her waistline barely noticeable. But as Rafe’s fingers stroked back and forth against the hard lump of her belly, it finally hit home.
Jane waspregnant.
Of course, she’d known she was pregnant for weeks—the endless vomiting made it hard to miss—but between organising the wedding and the move to Melbourne, plus putting together a business plan and the hundred and one day-to-day things she had to take care of, processing her changing state of womanhood kept being pushed further and further to the back of her mind.
But now that she’d been unceremoniously dumped and robbed blind, her schedule had suddenly cleared right up and she had nothing left to doexceptthink about her baby.
Rafe’s baby.
Theirbaby.
Rafe chose that exact moment to press his firm lips against her stomach and whisper, “Hello, little one. I’m your dad.”
The tenderness in his voice had tears leaking from Jane’s eyes at an exponential rate, and a longing to reach out and run her fingers through his dark silky hair, to cup his cheek in her palm and feel his breath caress the sensitive skin at her wrist.
“I can’t wait to meet you.” He pressed another kiss to her belly, his lips warm as they lingered on her skin, then sighed softly. “The truth will come out eventually, Jane. You know that. But until it does, I’ll keep your secret.” Then he rose and turned towards the window, shoving it up as high as it would go and swinging one long leg after the other over the sill. He didn’t look at her as he snuck out the way he’d obviously snuck in, and in that deep, sensual voice, he said, “If you need anything, ask.”
Then he was gone.
And her tears fell in earnest.
Rafe squinted against the rain as he trudged through town, around the back of the pub, up the hill and through the scrub to Bennett’s Road.
It wasn’t a shortcut as such, considering the twenty minutes it took to walk home that way as opposed to the five minutes it would have taken by car, but the well-worn bush track that led to The Forge had been used by the Bennetts for decades.
Rafe knew it like the back of his hand.
And a good walk, uphill and facing into the storm that had cracked open the skies five seconds after crawling out Jane’s window, was exactly what he needed.
His thigh muscles burned as he made his way up the hill, his boots sinking into the muddy ground and his jeans soaked through. The wet denim clung to his long legs and restricted his movements, and his T-shirt stuck to his skin, but there came a point where he stopped noticing how wet he was and could focus on only one thing.
I’m going to be a father.
At least he hoped he was. Hoped with a desperation he never knew he owned.
But years of listening to people tell lie after lie to avoid the consequences of their actions blended with the anxiety gnawing away inside him, begging him to look at the situation objectively. Yes, there was every possibility Jane’s baby was his, but just as much of a chance that it wasn’t.
And it was the latter option that had his stomach in knots.
Rafe exited the scrub edging the road, The Forge looming large before him. Crossing the dirt road in front of the house, he jumped over the tiny stream forming in the gutter and a moment later was through the front door, down the hall and standing in the welcoming warmth of the lounge room.
“Your sister will have your guts for garters when she sees the mud you’ve tracked in here.”
Ulysses Bennett stood by the fireplace, warming his weathered hands. A tall, slim man with piercing blue eyes, scruffy silver hair and a neatly trimmed silver beard, his father struck an imposing figure, even at the age of seventy-two.
