Nina cleared the top of her bedside cabinet before she was aware of what she was doing.
The nurse set the vase down just as Nina realised she should refuse the extravagant gift. It was weak to give Jack any positive signals. But the deep red buds had a glorious scent, and they were so heart-liftingly beautiful, it seemed unnecessarily churlish to direct them elsewhere. It wouldn’t make any difference in the long run, she argued to herself. The roses would die, just as Jack’s interest in wooing her would die when the crunch of actually having to deal with a baby came.
Having spent a restless night brooding over Jack’s reappearance in her life, Nina remained unpersuaded there was any real hope of a happy future with him. All she could see ahead of them were endless disputes, damaging to everyone, especially Charlotte.
Recollections of her own childhood were still painfully vivid. Her parents had finally separated when she was ten, and she’d been shunted off to live with her grandmother, who was prepared to shoulder the burden. Despite being tolerated, rather than loved, by her grandmother, Nina had found it an enormous relief simply no longer being a bone of continual contention between her parents.
The nurse unpinned the envelope and gave it to her, still grinning. “Red roses for love. Some guy wants to make an impression.”
“He already has,” Nina muttered darkly, and Jack had a lot of winning over to do before she’d change her mind about his fitness to be a father. “Thanks for bringing them in.”
“My pleasure.”
Nina opened the envelope and withdrew the card. It read, “For the woman who’s given me more than anyone else in the world—Love, Jack.”
A lump filled her throat. She had to swallow hard to ease the constriction. The truth of it was Jack had given her more than any man she had ever met, but that did not make him right for Charlotte. Clinging to the conviction he could not be trusted to love their daughter as she should be loved, Nina opened the top drawer of her cabinet and dropped the card in, denying herself the indulgence of reading it over and over again, making more of it than it meant.
“Looks like your Jack is making up for lost time.”
The optimistic comment from Rhonda, one of her room-mates, struck a sensitive chord. Had she done wrong in denying Jack knowledge of her pregnancy? At the time she had imagined a horrified reaction from him. She had believed he would suggest an abortion and do his utmost to harass her into it. Maybe she had done him an injustice.
Nevertheless, the situation last night had been a very different one. A baby who was already born could not be as easily dismissed as an unseen fetus. It was a reality, a living, breathing human being, who was definitely a little person in her own right, one who couldn’t be ignored or discarded as of no account.
Jack might want to diminish her importance, but no way was Nina going to let him relegate Charlotte to some distant place in their lives. Calling her the kid was so offensively impersonal. Nina still burned at the offhand attitude it typified. And corrupting their daughter’s name to Charlie…No doubt if he had to have a child, he would have preferred a boy.
“Three dozen hothouse roses don’t come cheaply,” came the knowing remark from Kim, her other room-mate.
“He can afford them. It’s not money that worries him,” Nina said dryly, niggled by the unsubtle approbation both women had displayed towards Jack since his dramatic appearance on the scene last night. They couldn’t seem to comprehend her reservations about accepting his volte-face on wanting a child in his life.
They were younger than Nina, and the course of their lives had run with conventional smoothness so far. They had every reason to cling to their romantic illusions, not having run into any serious snags themselves.
Kim, at twenty-three, was a rather plump but pretty blonde who’d married the guy she fell in love with at high school. The only career she wanted was being his wife and the mother of his children. Her husband had a permanent job on the railway, and she felt absolutely secure.
Rhonda, at twenty-five, was more sophisticated, a professional hairdresser who intended to keep working until she and her husband had their house paid off. He was a sales representative of a major food company, and their goals had been meticulously planned—their wedding, the baby, the house, their car traded in for a family station wagon.
Rhonda’s catalogued milestones had driven Nina to reflect that none of her own goals had been achieved. She’d worked her way through design school, dreaming of making a name for herself in the fashion industry. Clinching an apprenticeship with a successful designer had seemed a helpful step, yet it had very quickly punched home to her that she’d never have the capital to launch her own brand name in such a highly competitive field. The closest she’d got to establishing her own business was this partnership with Sally.
As for her love-life, there had been no-one of any deep significance until Jack. She’d been twenty-eight at the time of meeting him, Jack thirty-two, and it truly seemed as though Mr. Right had finally come along. The shock had been totally shattering when he’d revealed how anti babies and children he was. Even if she hadn’t been pregnant, it would have made her think twice about continuing their relationship.
Charlotte stirred, giving one of her little mewing cries. Nina swooped on the bassinette, eager to pick up her beautiful baby daughter and cradle her in her arms. She was so tiny and perfect, like a miracle, and Nina still marvelled at the way she latched instantly onto a nipple and sucked.
Having stacked the pillows on the bed for a comfortable position, Nina settled back against them, unbuttoned her nightie and smilingly watched her daughter home in on what she wanted. A rush of deep maternal love reassured Nina of the decisions she had made, despite the situation with Jack.
Although she had never felt a pressing need to have a baby, it had always seemed to her a natural thing to do somewhere along her lifeline. She would have wanted the choice to have a child and would have felt cheated as a woman to be denied it. Maybe it was some subconscious response to not having been wanted herself, but from the moment Nina had learnt she was pregnant, however unplanned it was, all her protective instincts had been aroused. This baby would be wanted and loved and cherished.
She might have been a failure as a daughter, a failure at making a name for herself with her own fashion label, a failure at picking the right man to love, but she was not going to be a failure as a mother. On that Nina was fiercely resolved.
“If your Jack doesn’t worry about money he must have a great job,” Rhonda remarked, obviously interested in the financial angle. She had a budget worked out for everything.
“He runs his own business,” Nina explained.
“Doing what?” Kim pumped.
Nina sighed and gave in to their natural curiosity. “Mostly French polishing. He restores antiques and makes cabinets and other bits and pieces. He’s very good at it.”
A perfectionist, she thought. Like her with her sewing and dress designs. They both enjoyed making something beautiful. Their mutual understanding of the pleasure and satisfaction in creativity was one of the shared bonds that had made their relationship so good.
She wished she could believe in Jack’s turnaround. Maybe she should risk the hurt of giving him a chance. If he persisted. The roses were a heady reminder of Jack’s sensuality. A convulsive little shiver ran over her skin. She had missed the enthralling intimacy of his lovemaking. Sally had a point there. The nights were very lonely by herself.
“I wish my husband was a handy man,” Rhonda said ruefully. “He can’t even change a tap washer.”
“You can always get in a plumber. You can’t hire a doting and devoted father,” Nina pointed out, reminding herself to be very, very wary of where she was heading with Jack, if indeed she was heading anywhere. There would inevitably be a lot of interrupted nights with Charlotte. Jack’s groaning and grumbling wouldn’t exactly be music to her ears.
“Give him time to feel like a father,” Kim advised. “Does Charlotte