Jones had switched on something, though. This was new. This eagerness. And the warning bells clanged ever more loudly, warning him that he should have stayed on the other side of the Atlantic until the feeling had passed.
As he turned from the window, pulled on a shirt and a pair of chinos, he heard Willow come in through the back door.
‘Mike! I’m home.’ Home. The word sliced through him like a knife-blade. He had a penthouse apartment that had cost telephone numbers overlooking the Thames, furnished by someone whose job it was to save him the bother of having to think about it. It was a showpiece. It was a declaration of his status. It was hardly a home. ‘Where are you? You won’t believe what I’ve got to tell you.’
He heard her go into the kitchen, her voice dropping as she found Mike. He shouldn’t have come. It had been a mistake, he thought, as he let himself out of the bedroom.
‘I’m telling you it’s true, Mike. There’s no mistake.’ He paused on the stairs as Willow’s voice rose again.
‘Amy’s pregnant.’
It was like stepping off a cliff.
‘Willow…’ Mike’s voice was a sharp warning, but she didn’t appear to notice.
‘Up you come, sweetheart,’ she said, picking up Ben before rattling on. ‘She had that little thing—you know, the little plastic thing from the pregnancy test. I went upstairs to change Ben and it was there…right there in a pot on the windowsill in her bathroom.’ She laughed.
‘I did that, too. You teased me about it but I couldn’t bear to throw it away. I needed to see it every day just to remind myself it was true…’ Jake wasn’t sure how he descended the remainder of the stairs. ‘The blue line was a bit fuzzy but there isn’t any doubt about it.’
‘Did you say anything to her?’
‘No, of course not. She’ll tell me when she’s ready and I’ll act as surprised as anything.’ Jake stood in the kitchen doorway and watched Willow, pink-cheeked with excitement from hurrying home with her news, blow into Ben’s neck, making him giggle. A charming scene of domesticity that he saw, but had no way of understanding. ‘The thing I can’t work out is who the father could be. She’s not a woman to make a mistake, so it must have been planned, but I didn’t know she’d been involved with anyone recently…’ She looked up, as if sensing something. ‘Mike?’
Mike was looking right at him. He didn’t need to guess who the father of Amy’s baby was. He knew.
Willow, suddenly realising they weren’t alone, spun round. ‘Jake! I didn’t see your car. Darling, how lovely to see you. Are you staying?’
‘I…um…’ He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t find his voice to say the words. This couldn’t be happening.
‘Jake’s staying,’ Mike said, helping him out. ‘But I think right now he has something he needs to do. Why don’t we go and put Ben to bed, hmm?’
Her forehead creased as she latched on to the sudden inexplicable tension, her gaze switching between Mike and Jake and then it clicked. For a moment she had trouble keeping her lower lip from hitting the floor until, with a supreme effort at self-control, she said, ‘Good plan.’
Jake pushed open the gate, paused. The garden had moved on while he’d been away. The bluebells had faded and now lilac, thick with blossom, scented the air and a blackbird was singing from a high perch in an apple tree.
A small black cat blinked sleepy yellow eyes at him from a patch of catnip. And from the rear of the cottage he could hear Amy’s voice raised in a lilting song that might have been a lullaby.
He refused to succumb to such seductive enchantment. He wasn’t enchanted. He was mad, mad as hell, and Amy was about to hear all about it. He found her wielding a spade with an easy competence that suggested long practice; her gardening skills were clearly not confined to picking flowers.
She was wearing thick cord trousers and heavy boots that contrasted with the femininity of a broad-brimmed straw hat that shaded her face. And a man’s shirt. What man?
She stopped, rubbed her sleeve across her face, leaving her cheek streaked with dirt, and he forgot about the shirt as anxiety squeezed the breath from his lungs. Should she be working like this? Digging?
‘Should you be doing that?’ he demanded harshly.
‘If I want homegrown beans on my table, then yes,’ she replied easily, no trace of surprise in her voice. ‘But if you’re volunteering, be my guest.’ She pushed the spade into the soil, stepped back and turned to look at him. He needed, wanted to see into her eyes; the hat threw shade across her face, keeping her thoughts hidden. But her voice caught at him, drawing him closer.
Jake’s voice was hard, angry. Amy had heard him open the gate, walk around the cottage, and had recognised footsteps last heard racing away from her.
She’d forced herself to carry on working, leaving him to speak first, even though she longed to leap up, fling herself into his arms and pull him inside the house so that she could show him just how pleased she was to see him, hoping he was feeling the same hot surge of excitement, desire. She felt raw, unbridled pleasure that he’d returned.
For a moment he took a step closer, as if he felt it too, but then he stopped. The sun was low at his back and his face was shadowed so that she couldn’t see his expression. Which was perhaps a good thing, if it matched his voice.
‘I thought you were still in America,’ she said, when the silence grew too long.
‘I was. Now I’m back. Should you be doing that?’ he repeated. ‘In your condition.’
Her condition? She felt the heat rise to her cheeks. He couldn’t know. There was no way on earth he could know. Yet his voice, his repeated question, suggested that somehow he did, and when she didn’t answer he turned abruptly and walked towards the rear door of the cottage, pushed it open, ducking under the low lintel as he went inside. Amy abandoned the bean trench for the second time that afternoon and, pulling off her gardening gloves, followed him.
He wasn’t in the mud room or the kitchen. ‘Jake? Where are you?’ she called, dropping her gloves, kicking off her earth-caked boots. A creak from the floor above her betrayed his whereabouts. What on earth…? ‘Jake, what are doing? What do you want?’
Upstairs, in the bathroom, Jake gripped the basin. This couldn’t be happening to him. It couldn’t be true. Fatherhood had no part in his life plan. He didn’t want this. No way. Never.
Except that it was. The evidence was apparently there, right there, before his eyes.
His hand was shaking as he reached for the piece of plastic with its telltale line of blue. He gripped it hard, wrapping it in his fist, wanting to break it, smash it, make it go away. Such a small thing. So insignificant. So easy to overlook.
He wouldn’t have known what it was but for Willow. If he’d called in to see Amy…
If!
Who did he think he was fooling? He hadn’t been able to wait to see her! All the teddies in the world couldn’t hide the truth of that. He’d have come here and made hot, sweet love with her, then they’d have
