As far as she was concerned their marriage was over in every way there was. She had no intention of returning to England with him, living a lie. She was perfectly capable of looking after her child on her own—that had been the original intention, after all.
Her child did not need a father figure, especially one as all-fired intransigent, bloody-minded and arrogant as Jed Nolan!
First thing in the morning she would tell him to pack his bags, get out of her home. She never wanted to have to see him again.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE didn’t get the opportunity to ask him to leave. He’d already done it.
The sun had only just begun to gild the flanks of the rugged hills with new-day light when she left her solitary bed and dragged herself downstairs after a monumentally miserable and sleepless night.
Which bedroom Jed had used she had no idea, and didn’t care, she told herself as she secured the belt of the robe she’d thrown on more tightly around her narrow waist. As soon as he surfaced she would ask him to leave, announce that she’d be in touch, through her solicitor, some time in the future. Let him know that he wasn’t the only one who could make decisions and hurl them around like concrete slabs.
If he wasn’t prepared to listen to her, to believe her, then their relationship wasn’t worth keeping—certainly not the acrimonious, desolately empty relationship he had in mind. Better by far to make a clean break.
Making for the kitchen for the coffee she suddenly dramatically needed, she saw his note the moment she pushed open the door. A scrap of paper on the polished pine table top. It didn’t say a lot, just a scrawl of distinctive black handwriting. ‘I’ll be in Seville for the next three weeks. I’ll collect you for our return journey.’
The hell you will! Elena scrunched the paper up and hurled it at the wall. Frustrated by his disappearance, before she could tell him she had no intention of meekly tugging her forelock and submitting to his orders, she felt her blood pressure hit the roof.
She didn’t even know which hotel he’d be using in Seville. She couldn’t get in touch and remind him that she was perfectly capable of making the decisions that would affect the rest of her life, that no way would she be returning to England, simpering and smiling and pretending to be deliriously happy. No way!
Hot tears flooded her eyes. Had she been secretly hoping that Jed would have come to his senses this morning, found enough trust in her to believe her story? If so, she’d been a fool. Well, no more.
She’d just have to sit out the next three weeks with the rage festering away inside her, and—Suddenly the now all too familiar morning sickness struck, and twenty wretched minutes later she was standing under a warm shower, patting her still flat tummy and murmuring wryly, ‘You’re certainly giving Mummy a hard time, Troublebunch!’
Even as the tender smile curved her lips her eyes filled with tears again. Tears for Sam, who would never know he’d left a child behind, for herself, and for Jed, who had lost something wonderful that could never be retrieved.
Warm needles of water washed the tears away, and she dried herself, wrapped her long hair in a towel, dressed in cotton shorts and a halter-neck top and told herself they were the last tears she would shed for any of them.
Life went on.
She had her child to look forward to, and she would love it to distraction and give him or her the happiest life any child could want Now that she was marginally calmer she could see that, in a way, it was a blessing that Jed had taken off. That action alone told her that he’d never truly loved her. If he had. he’d have trusted her, believed her, asked for more details. It had also saved her from a demeaning slanging match, from allowing all her hurt to pour out and hit him right between the eyes.
When she next saw Jed she would be able to tell him of her own decisions, calmly and rationally. She was intelligent enough to know that no amount of rage could alter anything. He despised her now; all the love had gone and nothing she could do or say would bring it back. That was a fact. Hard to face, but not impossible.
She could handle the hurt; she’d managed before and would manage again. Certainly the way Liam had hurt her had been a mere pinprick compared to this. But then she’d had nothing, just a mother who’d wrung her hands and wailed, prophesied heaven alone knew what horrors if she insisted on skipping the country with little more than the clothes she stood up in.
But from having nothing and no one she’d made a good life for herself. At least this time round she had a successful career to fall back on, and was carrying the child she’d begun to need so desperately.
So, on the whole, she reasoned, wondering if she could manage a glass of water and a slice of dry toast without upsetting her unborn baby, everything balanced out and she could hack it.