private health insurance she was going to be facing an enormous medical bill in just over six months’ time.
The idea of having her baby under the public heath scheme terrified her, not because she didn’t believe it was more than adequate, but because she wanted her own ob-gyn. Dr Geermaine knew her complicated medical history, he knew how important this pregnancy was to her. He was the one who’d said it may well be her only chance at motherhood. Maybe if she explained her predicament when she went to deliver the medical records Reb Browne had sent he’d agree to keep her on as a private patient.
After all, it’s not as if I’m a welfare case, she thought with bitter irony, tossing the letter of demand onto the desk already scattered with a host of other bills with ‘URGENT ATTENTION REQUIRED’ stamped in red. Oh, no! I’m too ‘asset-rich’ to qualify for any social security!
After days of hanging out at the unemployment office and attending countless interviews, which had only highlighted her total lack of employment skills, she’d today swallowed every last vestige of her pride and made an appointment at the local social security office. It had turned out to be the most humiliating and humbling experience of her entire life. It had never occurred to her not to dress well for what in her mind was a business appointment, but the way her expensive clothes had contrasted against those of most of the other welfare applicants had consumed her with guilt. Had she been able to think of any other way to solve her immediate cash problem, she’d have walked straight back out of the office the moment she arrived. Which would have at least saved her two and a half wasted hours and achieved the same results.
After presenting the required copy of her tax return from the previous year, bank statements and evidence of all stock and property in her name, they had been shoved back at her by a teenage clerk with too much make-up and no manners.
‘Ms Vaughan, I can understand how someone like you would be ignorant of the social security system,’ she’d said, making little effort to hide her amusement. ‘But the Government isn’t in the habit of giving money to people who clearly don’t need it.’
‘But I do need it,’ Amanda-Jayne had protested, swallowing even more pride by admitting, ‘I’ve got bills coming out of my ears—’
‘Then I suggest you do what the rest of us do—get a job.’
‘I’ve tried! For your information there’s an unemployment problem in this country.’
‘I can assure you, Ms Vaughan, I’m in a better position than you are to know about that. However, government assistance is only granted on the basis of a means test. It’s not given out to wealthy women with more assets than brains.’
‘Excuse me!’
‘Gladly,’ the girl quipped. ‘Next, please!’
When Amanda-Jayne had demanded to see a supervisor, she’d had to wait twenty minutes for a harried-looking man in his late thirties. After complaining firstly about his junior clerk’s attitude and then pleading her case, the man had quickly scanned the documents she’d brought, then slid them back in the folder and grinned at her. ‘Lucky you, Ms Vaughan. Stop wasting both our time.’
It had taken every bit of her resolve not to dissolve into tears on the spot, but in the wake of the letter of demand from the car dealership they now flowed freely, blurring her scenic view until the harbour seemed to swallow up everything—everything except her fears. What was—?
She jumped as her front door reverberated from a series of loud thumps. Followed by an incessant ring on her doorbell.
‘Let me in, A.J.! I know you’re there!’
Reb Browne.
Her heart had dropped into her shoes, but all her brain could assimilate was that after the day from hell she really should have been expecting that the devil himself would pay her a visit.
CHAPTER THREE
REB hastily ‘pulled his punch’ when the door, towards which his fist was again heading, was reefed open and Amanda-Jayne stepped into its path.
‘How on earth did you get in here?’
Her tone implied people wearing jeans and carrying leather jackets and bike helmets were usually shot on sight by the doorman, but what gave Reb pause was her face. There was no question she was every bit as beautiful as he remembered, but despite her cool, controlled expression and regal poise there was also no question she’d been crying. A lot.
For some reason the notion of Amanda-Jayne Vaughan crying was as incongruous as it was disturbing and it took him several seconds to refocus on what she was saying.
‘…security block. Now how did you get my address and who let you in?’
‘The guy on the door seemed to think this qualified as a pass key.’ Grinning, he handed her the business card she’d previously given him. ‘It was the back that impressed him most,’ he added as she frowned at the card.
“‘Hoping to hear from you soon,’” she read, the pitch and disbelief in her voice rising with each word. “‘Drop in and surprise me. A.J.!” This isn’t my writing!’
‘Lucky for me, the doorman didn’t know that,’ Reb said, stepping around her to stroll into the centre of her living room.
‘Mmm, nice view you’ve got here. Although I don’t go much on this bleached decor—’
‘How did you get my address?’ she demanded. ‘I didn’t give it to you.’
‘No, and neither would your mother, so—’
‘Stepmother.’
The force of her correction was telling. ‘Ah,’ he said sagely, ‘so that’s the way the wind blows. Well, that’s something we have in common; I wasn’t real taken with the woman either.’
‘I’m not interested in your opinion of Patricia,’ she said, her eyes flashing with rage. ‘I asked how you found out where I lived.’
‘Just a matter of posting off those medical records you wanted and waiting until you went to the post office to pick them up.’
‘You’ve been following me?’
‘Not personally. But if you ever need a good P.I. let me know.’
‘How dare you? You have no right to invade my privacy that way.’
‘Sweetheart, you’re carrying my child, which as far as I’m concerned gives me a whole heap of rights. So as of right now you can forget any ideas you’ve got about cutting me out of its life. You mightn’t have much of an opinion of me or my gene pool, but you’re way off base if you think I’m going to walk away from my own flesh and blood.’
Amanda-Jayne felt herself teetering on the brink of hysteria and immediately her stomach started acting up again. Taking a steadying breath, she tried to assimilate the fact that Reb Browne had tracked her down and was actually in her living room. Nothing was working out as she’d envisaged; all her hopes of an uncomplicated pregnancy were going from bad to disastrous. Her morning sickness was never-ending, all the money she’d expected to have she didn’t and the father she’d counted on fading into the background hadn’t. This wasn’t the way things were supposed
