Jack's Baby

“I was going to say moppets,” he corrected her loftily.

“Huh!”

“Well, the thing is,” Sally said swiftly, “Nina doesn’t have to travel anywhere. Everything is very handy. The business is run from my home, and Nina has a completely self-contained granny flat at the back of the premises. She can bring the baby into the house with her when she has to do fittings. There’s really no problem. She’s got a solid income, good accommodation and nothing to worry about.”

“You see? I’m self-sufficient,” Nina declared triumphantly.

“Except for a man,” Sally muttered.

Nina glared at her.

Sally shrugged and flirted with her eyes at Jack. “Well, you must admit, Nina, he is superb lover material. Why not have him? You can always get rid of a husband if it doesn’t work out.”

“Excellent reasoning.” Jack leapt in eagerly. “If she’d just give me a chance—”

“I am not going to marry him,” Nina interrupted.

“There’s a lot of advantages to it, Nina,” Sally argued. “Where would I be without my husbands? I got a car out of the first, a house out of the second and the capital to set up the business from the third.”

Sally had it the wrong way round. Nina didn’t want a sales pitch directed at her, but Sally had the bit between the teeth and was in full spate.

“Husbands can be very handy. You have a built-in escort, sex on demand, someone to look after you if you get sloshed at a party, financial backing, the muscle to stand over tradesmen and make sure they do the job right, and in your case, a no-cost baby minder when you want a break from mothering.”

“That’s where it falls down,” Nina pounced. “Jack hates babies.”

“It’s different with my own kid,” he defended staunchly.

Nina swung on him. “What’s different about it? You think Charlotte won’t cry? That she won’t dirty her nappy and wake up in the middle of the night and take attention away from you?”

“I can adjust.”

“Ingrained attitudes do not disappear overnight, Jack Gulliver.”

A nurse came in and looked disapprovingly at the late visitors. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you people to leave. Hospital rules, you know.”

Sally hopped off the bed. “Sleep on it, Nina,” she advised, her eyebrows waggling suggestively. “It’s very easy to get a divorce these days.”

Jack rose reluctantly from his chair. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Nina,” he vowed, a challenge burning in his eyes. “I’m not going to be shut out again.”

Then he turned to look down at the baby in the bassinette, giving her a salute as he moved past. “Good night, kid. This is your dad talking, and don’t let your mum tell you any different.”

“Her name is Charlotte!” Nina shouted after him.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE roses arrived just before the midmorning feeding time. One of the nurses carried in the huge arrangement, grinning from ear to ear. “Three dozen!” she crowed, eyeing Nina with speculative interest. Being given so many was clearly a notable achievement.

“For me?” Nina asked doubtfully.

“It’s your name on the envelope,” came the ready assurance.

They could only be from Jack. Which meant he really would be coming back today, bringing with him all the conflicts she had tried to keep out of the life she had planned for Charlotte and herself. With her heart aflutter with apprehension and her mind clogged with a host of desires she shied away from examining, 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.