Nikki Logan - Maybe Baby - One Small Miracle

She waited, her heart pounding hard. After long moments, he spoke without emotion. ‘It’s nothing I’m not used to. And I’m still here.’

Anna blinked, blinked again. What did that mean? The cold, emotionless Jared West, the King of Jarndirri, had actually felt like a failure at some point in his life?

A little wail came from behind as she tried to work out what he was trying to tell her. As ever, his verbal economy hid a wealth of secrets, but she didn’t have the tools to dig for it.

The baby’s wail grew in decibels. She sounded frightened. Relieved to have something to do, she unbuckled her seat belt and moved to Melanie. She picked her up and cuddled her, crooning to the baby, but Melanie’s cries grew stronger. As Anna sat in a back seat, Melanie began head-butting Anna, screaming now, pulling at her ears and staring at Anna in pleading and indignation combined.

Helpless, she said out loud, ‘What’s wrong with her? She seems really upset. Maybe she’s hungry, or her nappy needs changing?’

She didn’t really expect an answer—so she started when Jared said, ‘The unfamiliar surroundings probably confused her, and cabin pressure in planes often upsets babies. They don’t know how to pop their ears, so the pressure grows until it hurts. Give her a bottle, or a pacifier. The sucking motion will pop her ears, and stop the pain.’

He was right. The moment Anna unwrapped the warmed bottle from the foil—a makeshift warmer—and put the teat in Melanie’s mouth, the baby sucked frantically, and the mottled colour in her face faded. She left off pulling her ears, and grabbed at the bottle, sucking hungrily. Then she smiled at Anna around the teat, making a milky mess of her face, and Anna’s heart nearly exploded with joy and love. Beautiful, darling girl.

‘Give her a teething rusk when she’s finished with the bottle. Chewing or sucking relieves the pressure on her ears,’ Jared called back a minute later.

Anna didn’t even want to question his authority—a course of wisdom proven right when Melanie grabbed at the hard-baked bread called a teething rusk with a gurgle of happiness.

‘Thank you,’ she said much later, as the baby sat back in the adapted car seat, nappy changed, making a gruel-mess all over her face with the rusk. ‘How did you know?’

‘Dad taught me to fly when I was twelve,’ he said briefly.

‘And?’ she pushed, when he didn’t embellish. Jared so rarely spoke of his father, who’d died when he’d been fourteen.

‘Nicky was about that age. Mum asked me to take him up with Dad and Andie one day when he was teething, and she needed an hour’s sleep. She loaded us up with bottles and teething rusks for the cabin pressure—but though she packed one, she forgot to tell us to change his nappy.’ Jared chuckled. ‘She gave us all a serve about his nappy rash that night.’

Taken aback by the unexpected intimacy of the memory shared, Anna couldn’t help wondering why he’d told her—he’d never once shared anything meaningful or joyful about his childhood with her. ‘So who grovelled to her the most?’ she teased, keeping it light, hiding her intense curiosity. She knew so little of him outside the work yards and bedroom.

‘Dad.’ That was it, no embellishment. She ought to have known he wouldn’t say more—and yet the single word held cadences in all shades of the rainbow: resignation, bitterness, anger and a world of pain unhealed. The numbness of endless loss—

Maybe he’d understand how she felt more than she’d assumed?

She’d heard the rumours that his father had killed himself when he’d lost the West property, Mundabah Flats … but Jared had never said a word about it to her, either in denial or confirmation. As if it hadn’t happened … or it hadn’t affected him in the least. He’d just come to Jarndirri, found a new father, a new property to run, and he’d gone on with life as if nothing had changed.

No. They stood looking at the same rainbow, but from opposite ends. He kept digging for the pot of gold when she’d long ago decided there was nothing left to find.

‘How’s your mother?’ Such a mundane question, but she had to start somewhere. And when she saw his face shut down before he spoke, it felt as if she’d used a key to a door she hadn’t known existed.

‘Fine. She’s getting married.’

‘Oh,’ she said, feeling blank. Though she was a very attractive woman, Pauline West hadn’t even seen a man since Jared’s father’s death sixteen years ago. ‘When?’

‘Six weeks.’ Jared’s voice was flat. ‘His name’s Michael Anglesey. He’s another failed farmer—she must have a thing for them. They want to marry at Mundabah Flats, and take up running the place again. She wants me to give her away—and she’s asked for enough money to start the place going again.’

‘Well, what’s the problem? We can afford it,’ she replied without thinking. Reverting to thinking of them as Jared and Anna, King and Queen of Jarndirri, was just so easy.

In the tic at his jaw she saw another multi-hued silence, resonating like glass about to shatter. Resisting the urge to touch his hand—so much tension in him, he’d never returned to the West property of Mundabah since his father had died, even though he’d poured money hand over fist to make the property thrive—she stuck to the simple questions. ‘How do you feel about her marrying, and them running Mundabah?’

‘I don’t want the place. Someone might as well run it.’ He shrugged. ‘We land soon.’ Shutting the door on her again, as always.

‘Fine,’ she said tightly. ‘I’ll go sit in the back with Melanie.’

Jared made a harsh sound as she unbuckled her seat belt again, needing distance. ‘What do you want me to say, Anna?’

‘Nothing.’ She forced blandness into her tone, as if she wasn’t burning with the betrayal of his unconscious rejection. ‘I don’t want anything from you but a few lies.’ Nothing you’ve ever been willing to give. ‘We pretend we’re back together until Melanie’s either back with Rosie or the adoption has gone through, and then I’m gone.’

‘That’s not the deal.’

She sighed, standing between the two front seats. ‘You’re not going to say it, are you? You want me to say it for you, make life easy, just as I always have?’

‘I want you to talk, Anna,’ he said quietly. A double-edged sword in six words. Saying everything and nothing at all.

‘Yeah, well, we all want someone to talk to us,’ she mocked, ‘and some of us had it, and some of us got nothing.’ Silence greeted her taunt, and she snapped. ‘Fine, I’ll talk, but I doubt you’ll want to hear it. You want me back in your bed until I leave. You want me to pretend for the sake of the workers and our neighbours I’m back for good, that I’m madly in love with you, and we’re going to make a family with Melanie. Okay, whatever.’ She snorted out a laugh, and shrugged. ‘I can put on a show—I might even enjoy the sex, it always was a good stress relief when you drove me crazy with your silence—but that’s all it will be. If you’re expecting to make me love you again, forget it. It’s dead, Jared— dead.’

She forced her gaze to stay on him, her chin up. Did her hammering heart show the truth: the lady doth protest too much? She might not love him any more—only heaven knew how she felt about anything but Melanie right now—but on a purely physical level she still wanted him, ached for his touch. She hadn’t wanted it at all after the hysterectomy—it felt too much like a farce, trying to pretend she was a normal woman still. But some time in the past five months since she’d left him, her body had awoken again.

Probably with that first kiss he’d planted on her when he’d come to Broome.