gripped her hands together. A baby!
CHAPTER TWO
I’M PREGNANT!!!
The words appeared in large type on Ben’s computer screen and a grin wider than the Great St Bernard Pass spread across his face.
Brilliant news, he typed back. Congratulations!!!
He signed off as Uncle Ben. He frowned at that for a moment, and then hit ‘send’ with a shake of his head and another grin. It had been a month since his visit home, and now…Meg—a mum-to-be! He slumped in his chair and ran a hand back through his hair. He’d toast her in the bar tonight with the rest of the crew.
He went to switch off his computer but a new e-mail had hit his inbox: FAVOURITE Uncle Ben! Love, M xxx
He tried the words out loud. ‘Favourite Uncle Ben.’ He shook his head again, and with a grin set off into the ice and snow of a Canadian ski slope.
Over the next two months Ben started seeing pregnant women everywhere—in Whistler ski lodges, lazing on the beaches of the Pacific islands, where he’d led a diving expedition, on a layover in Singapore, and in New Zealand before and after he led a small team on a six day hike from the Bay of Islands down to Trounson Kauri Park.
Pregnant women were suddenly everywhere, and they filled his line of vision. A maternal baby bulge had taken on the same fascination for him as the deep-sea pearls he collected for himself, the rare species of coral he hunted for research purposes, and his rare sightings of Tasmanian devils in the ancient Tasmanian rainforest. He started striking up conversations with pregnant women—congratulating them on the upcoming addition to their family.
To a woman, each and every one of them beamed back at him, their excitement and the love they already felt for their unborn child a mirror of how he knew Meg would be feeling. Damn it! He needed to find a window in his schedule to get home and see her, to share in her excitement.
In the third month he started hearing horror stories.
He shot off to Africa to lead a three-week safari tour, clapping his hands over his ears and doing all he could to put those stories out of his mind. Meg was healthy. And she was strong too—both emotionally and physically. Not to mention smart. His hand clenched. She’d be fine. Nothing bad would happen to her or the baby.
It wouldn’t!
‘You want to tell me what’s eating you?’ Stefan, the director of the tour company Ben was contracted to, demanded of Ben on his second night in Lusaka, Zambia. ‘You’re as snarly as a lion with a thorn in its paw.’
Ben had worked for Stefan for over five years. They’d formed a friendship based on their shared love of adventure and the great outdoors, but it suddenly struck Ben that he knew nothing about the other man’s personal life. ‘Do you have any kids, Stefan?’
He hadn’t known he’d meant to ask the question until it had shot out of his mouth. Stefan gave him plenty of opportunity to retract it, but Ben merely shoved his shoulders back and waited. That was when Stefan shifted on his bar stool.
‘You got some girl knocked up, Ben?’
He hadn’t. He rolled his shoulders. At least not in the way Stefan meant. ‘My best friend at home is pregnant. She’s ec static about it, and I’ve been thrilled for her, but I’ve started hearing ugly stories.’
‘What kind of stories?’
Ben took a gulp of his beer. ‘Stories involving morning sickness and how debilitating it can be. Fatigue.’ Bile filled his mouth and he slammed his glass down. ‘Miscarriages. High blood pressure. Diabetes. Sixty-hour labours!’ He spat each word out with all the venom that gnawed at his soul.
His hand clenched. So help him God, if any of those things happened to Meg…
‘Being a father is the best thing I’ve ever done with my life.’
Ben’s head rocked up to meet Stefan’s gaze. What he saw there made his blood start to pump faster. A crack opened up in his chest. ‘How many?’ he croaked.
Stefan held up three fingers and Ben’s jaw dropped.
Stefan clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Sure, mate, there are risks, but I bet you a hundred bucks your friend will be fine. If she’s a friend of yours she won’t be an airhead, so I bet you’ll find she’s gone into all this with her eyes wide open.’
Meg had, he suddenly realised. But had he? For a moment the roaring in his ears drowned out the noise of the rowdy bar.
It downed out everything. Stefan’s lips moved. It took an effort of will to focus on the words emerging from them.
‘…and she’ll have the hubby and the rest of her family to help her out and give her the support she’ll need.’
Ben pinched the bridge of his nose and focused on his breathing. ‘She’s going to be a single mum.’ She had no partner to help her, and as far as family went…Well, that had all gone to hell in a hand basket years ago. Meg’s father and Elsie? Fat lot of good they’d be. Meg had no one to help her out, to offer her support. No one. Not even him—the man who’d helped get her pregnant.
A breath whistled out of Stefan. ‘Man, that’s tough.’
All the same, he found himself bristling on Meg’s behalf. ‘She’ll cope just fine. She’s smart and independent and—’
‘I’m not talking about the mum-to-be, mate. I’m talking about the baby. I mean it’s tough on the baby. A kid deserves to have a mother and a father.’
Ben found it suddenly hard to swallow. And breathe. Or speak. ‘Why?’ he croaked.
‘Jeez, Ben, parenting is hard work. When one person hits the wall the other one can take over. When one gets sick, the other one’s there. Besides, it means the kid gets exposed to two different views of the world—two different ways of doing things and two different ways of solving a problem. Having two parents opens up the world more for a child. From where I’m sitting, every kid deserves that.’
Ben’s throat went desert-dry. He wanted to moisten it, to down the rest of his beer in one glorious gulp, but his hands had started to shake. He dragged them off the table and into his lap, clenched them. All he could see in his mind’s eye was Meg, heavily pregnant with a child that had half his DNA.
When he’d agreed to help her out he hadn’t known he’d feel this…responsible.
‘But all that aside,’ Stefan continued, ‘a baby deserves to be loved unconditionally by the two people who created it. I know I’m talking about an ideal world, here, Ben, but…I just think every kid deserves that love.’
The kind of love he and Meg hadn’t received.
The kind of love he was denying his child.
He swiped a hand in front of his face. No! Her child!
‘You’ll understand one day, when you have your own kids, mate.’
‘I’m
