The Fatherhood Affair

It was early. She had time to catch him at home before he went to work. Natalie dressed at top speed, rang for a taxi, and was on her way to Damien within twenty minutes. Again she spent the trip to his home planning what to say to him, how best to put it. She couldn’t burst out with the simple fact she was pregnant. She needed to tell him much more. Or did she? Announcing their child-to-be might be the best ice-breaker.

Natalie was still in two minds about what approach to take as she stood outside Damien’s door, waiting for him to answer the button she had pressed. She doubted she had ever felt quite so nervous in her life. Not even on the day she had married Brett.

The door opened.

Damien looked at her in blank surprise.

She stared back, choked by the memory of the intimacy she had rejected. He wasn’t dressed. The short wrap-around robe he wore left a deep V of chest bare, as well as his forearms and lower legs. Whether he was completely naked underneath the robe or not was irrelevant. Natalie remembered him naked, and she was swept by a desire so strong that any words she might have spoken were completely jumbled in her mind. Her heart pumped a flood of heat through her body.

‘Natalie?’ The need to know what had brought her here sharpened Damien’s eyes.

‘I...I wanted to see you,’ she said, struggling to regain some composure.

To her consternation, he didn’t ask her in. An expression of tense reserve set on his face. He stepped outside the apartment, pulling the door almost shut behind him. It was such an unwelcoming stance, it froze Natalie into silence.

His body language was all wrong, stiff and off-putting and reserved. Didn’t he want her any more? Was he in a hurry to go somewhere? His hair was damp from a shower. She picked up the smell of his after-shave lotion, except it wasn’t quite the same. It seemed to be mixed with some other scent. But she couldn’t afford to be distracted by that. The important point was he obviously didn’t want to give her much of his time. Which was a total turnaround from his attitude of last week.

‘Is there some reason for coming to me at this early hour?’ he asked.

The impulse to share the news of her pregnancy was shrivelled by his aloofness. ‘I came back home yesterday,’ she temporised. ‘I was thinking of you. We...we didn’t part very well.’

He grimaced. ‘It was...difficult...for both of us. If you think I misled you after your accident...’

‘No...no...’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘You were fair. If anyone’s to blame for anything, it’s me. I hope you don’t think too badly of me.’

She searched his eyes anxiously. Had she lost him?

‘What you asked was reasonable, Natalie,’ he said flatly. ‘I apologise for my outburst at the time. A month is not long, considering all that’s gone before.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t have to be a month,’ she suggested hopefully, trying her utmost to reach into his mind and heart. Surely he realised she did want him. She wouldn’t have come otherwise.

The suggestion made him uneasy. ‘I can wait.’

It was like a slap in the face. Was he giving her a taste of what she had dealt him? Was he savagely thinking, Let her wait, too?

She was seriously rattled by the distance he was keeping between them. ‘Well, I guess I wanted to be sure of that,’ she said slowly, letting him know she had not wiped him out of her life. If he wanted to know.

He nodded, not giving her any extra reassurance. It dawned on her that his nod was a dismissal. He wanted her to go. She stepped back, desperately wanting him to say something to stop her, to keep her with him.

He didn’t.

‘I wanted to know how you were,’ she said.

‘I’m fine.’

The brusque answer gave her no opening to go on with the conversation. She nodded. Too many times. Feeling hopelessly foolish, she dropped her gaze to his bare chest. She wondered whether or not it would break the dreadful barrier he had slid between them if she reached out and touched him. She couldn’t find the courage to do it.

The thought came to Natalie that he didn’t trust her any more. She had acted on impulse in directing him to Merlinmist. He probably thought this early morning visit was another impulse that could all too easily go wrong.

We’re going to have a baby, her heart cried, but it was impossible to tell him under these circumstances. Pregnancy could feel like a trap. She had known that feeling once. She couldn’t give it to someone else. Maybe Damien had endured enough of her. He might even now be balancing what he felt for her against what Lyn offered him.

Natalie could not bring herself to throw their unborn child onto the scales. It was wrong. Terribly wrong. She was mad to have thought of it.

‘I’m sorry for interrupting your dressing,’ she said stiffly, chilled by the paucity of his response to her. ‘I’ll go now.’

‘I hope you have a pleasant day,’ he said with formal politeness.

‘You, too,’ she returned, then hurried away from him, miserably embarrassed by the whole scene.