Contract with Consequences (5 page)

Exactly one month and one day later

I
T HADN’T
worked. Again.

Despair clutched at Scarlet’s already cramping stomach as she hunched over the toilet seat. There had to be something wrong with her. Because it didn’t make sense. The clinic had tried a different procedure this time, putting the sperm right into her womb instead of just on the cervix. It was a more expensive procedure but was supposed to give her a better chance of conceiving.

A total waste of money as it turned out.

She dreaded telling her mother. Yet, she would have to. Scarlet wished now that she hadn’t confided her plan in the first place. She should have just gone to the clinic on her own, in secret. That way, she could have handled her disappointment in private, without the added pain of watching her mother’s disappointment. Her mum sometimes pretended that she didn’t mind not having grandchildren but Scarlet knew that wasn’t the case. She’d often said how she’d wanted to have a bigger family herself.

Scarlet frowned at this last thought. If her mother had wanted more than one child, then why hadn’t she had some more? Scarlet’s Dad hadn’t died till she was nine. Scarlet sucked in sharply at the possibility that her mother had
been unable to conceive more babies. But if that were so, then why hadn’t she mentioned it to her? It might be an important clue over why she was having such trouble conceiving herself.

Not that she could go out and ask her right now. They were both at the salon, working. Wednesday was always a busy day. It would be impossible to question her till they were on the way home late this afternoon.

Janet knew, the moment she saw Scarlet’s pasty face and dull eyes, that her period had arrived. The poor darling, she thought sadly as she watched her daughter put on a smiling face for a client.

‘You know, don’t you, Mum?’ Scarlet said the moment they were alone in the car on the way home. She’d seen the sympathy in her mother’s eyes when she’d come out of the powder room a couple of hours earlier. The sympathy and the sadness.

‘Yes,’ was all Janet could bring herself to say. She was close to tears. Not for herself but for her daughter.

‘Mum, I’ve been thinking, was there any physical reason why you didn’t have more children?’

Janet swallowed. She’d been expecting this question for ages.

‘Not that I know of,’ she answered truthfully. ‘I was thoroughly checked out, the same way you’ve been. One doctor said I wanted to fall pregnant too much. He said stress and tension can sometimes be the problem.’

‘Yes, I’ve read about that,’ Scarlet said. ‘That’s why couples sometimes fall pregnant after they’ve adopted a child.’

‘Your father and I were going to adopt a child,’ Janet confessed. ‘But then he was …’ She broke off, unable to continue.

‘Oh, Mum. I’m so sorry. I know how much you loved
Dad.’ After the funeral, she’d listened to her mother cry at night for months and months. It never surprised Scarlet that her mother hadn’t ever dated again, or remarried. She’d been a one-man woman.

Scarlet knew she’d never find that one true love like her mother had. But she was going to become a mother, come hell or high water. All afternoon, she’d been thinking about the letter John had left for her a month ago. When she’d first read it, she’d been incredibly touched, especially with his intuitive observations about her fragile nervous state. She’d almost changed her mind about going back to the clinic and rung him straight away. But, in the end, she simply hadn’t had the courage to take what would have been a really big step for her. It seemed so much simpler not to involve other people, and to not face the problem of actually having sex with John. Scarlet understood that sex for men was not the big deal it could be for women. For her, anyway. She’d become more edgy about it as she’d got older. Less confident. More … nervous.

But the time for being Nervous Nelly was long gone. If she didn’t take John up on his offer she would always regret it.

Of course,
he
might have changed his mind by now. God, she hoped not!

Well, if he had, she’d just have to persuade him otherwise, Scarlet vowed with renewed resolve. If he waffled, she’d remind him how much he’d always wanted to have sex with her!

Scarlet might have been shocked at herself if she hadn’t been so fired up.

‘Mum, I think that I might go away for a while. On a holiday.’

‘Oh? Where to?’

‘Somewhere warm. In Australia, of course. I don’t want to go overseas.’

‘Cairns is nice at this time of year,’ her mother suggested.

‘I was thinking of Darwin. I’ve never been there. And I’ve always wanted to see Kakadu.’ A total untruth. Scarlet had seen one or two documentaries about the Northern Territory and was not at all interested in vast wetlands filled with biting insects, wild buffalo and crocodiles.

‘Really?’ her mother said, sounding surprised.

‘I could go on some organised tours. That way I’d have company. You could manage without me, couldn’t you, Mum? Lisa would be happy to do more hours. Joanne, too.’

‘Of course I could manage. I managed when you left to be an estate agent, didn’t I? When were you thinking of going?’

‘Not sure yet. Possibly the end of next week.’ Scarlet knew exactly when she would ovulate. She’d been charting her cycle for months. Two weeks after her period started was the beginning of her peak days for conceiving. No point in going to Darwin much before then. At the same time, she had to make it seem like she was going on a real holiday. She could hardly just go for a few days.

‘For how long?’

‘Um. A week or so. Maybe ten days,’ she added for good measure.

‘So you won’t be going to the clinic for another procedure next month?’

‘No, Mum. I’ve decided to have a break from that for a while.’

Her mother actually looked relieved. ‘I think that’s a good idea, love. And so’s this holiday. Who knows? You might meet a nice man.’

‘You never know, Mum,’ Scarlet said, then deftly changed
the subject onto the traffic and the never-ending roadworks. She’d always been good at making conversation, but underneath her breezy chit-chat Scarlet was beginning to feel anxious about what John would say when she rang him. Which she fully intended to, at the first available moment. For if she procrastinated, her courage might falter.

As soon as they arrived home, Scarlet made the excuse that she needed to lie down for a while. When her mother offered to make her a cup of tea, she declined, saying she was going to take some pain killers and have a short nap before dinner. Fortunately, it was her mother’s turn to cook. Also fortunately, Scarlet’s bedroom was at the back of the house, some way from the kitchen. Once her mother turned on the television, she would not hear Scarlet talking on the phone.

Scarlet’s hands were literally shaking as she drew John’s letter out of the bedside drawer where she’d put it over a month ago. He’d given her two numbers, one for a regular mobile, one for a satellite phone. She sat on the side of her bed and tried the mobile number first. It rang, thank heavens. She would have hated for it to be engaged. As it was, she’d already worked herself up into a right state.

‘For pity’s sake, John, answer the damned thing,’ she muttered under her breath after it had rung several times.

But he didn’t, and the phone eventually switched to his message bank. A despairing Scarlet didn’t leave any message, choosing instead to try the satellite phone first. She actually prayed as she punched in the numbers.

J
OHN
was putting a few more pieces of wood on the camp fire when he heard the distinctive ring of his satellite phone. Frowning, he crawled into his one-man tent, picked up the phone and carried it back out into the moonlight, where he stared at it briefly before sweeping the phone up to his ear.

‘Hello, Scarlet,’ he answered, trying to sound cool when inside he was anything but.

John had been relieved at first when she hadn’t contacted him. Once he’d cleared his head, he’d told himself that it had been a crazy idea anyway. But as the days had crawled by, John’s every waking moment had been haunted by the thought of going home at Christmas and seeing Scarlet with a stranger’s child growing in her belly. Once again, he’d been repulsed by the idea.

After several particularly restless nights, he’d been tempted to ring her. But what could he say that he hadn’t already said? It was obvious she didn’t want him to father her child. To have pursued the matter would have made him look foolish.

So in the end, he’d done nothing. Literally. He hadn’t tried to find work with any of the mining companies. He hadn’t gone fishing, either, the way he usually did when he was holidaying in Darwin. Hadn’t done a damned thing. He had just moped around the place, watching endless movies
on TV and doing way too much thinking. And way too much drinking. Bianca would have said he was running away from real life. Again.

In the end, he’d had his heli-fishing mate drop him into this isolated spot for a few days and had been camping out alone. Nothing cleared the head better than communing with nature, he’d found.

And it had worked, to a degree. He’d finally begun to see the sense of Scarlet’s decision not to accept his offer. Finally found some peace of mind over the situation. Or so he’d believed.

It had only taken one little phone call to shatter that illusion.

‘How did you know it was me?’ she asked, clearly taken aback.

‘The caller ID said you were from New South Wales,’ he explained. ‘You’re the only person in that state who has my satellite number.’

‘Oh. I see.’

John suddenly had the most appalling thought. What if she was ringing to tell him she was finally pregnant? It was possible, he supposed. She might think he would like to know.

‘Why are you ringing, Scarlet?’ he asked abruptly.

Scarlet’s heart sank at his brusque tone.

‘You’ve changed your mind about your offer, haven’t you?’ she said.

The tension in John’s gut immediately melted away.

‘Not at all,’ he replied.

‘Really?’
she gasped, renewed hope flooding her heart.

‘Yes, really. So what happened, Scarlet? Given the time lapse since we last spoke, I presume you went back to the clinic for another go and it didn’t work.’

‘I got my period today,’ she confessed with a sigh.

‘Like I said in my letter, my offer is open.’

Scarlet had reached the stage where she would have given anything a try. But she wasn’t so desperate that she still wasn’t slightly bothered by one thing. ‘I know I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, John, but I still can’t work out why you’re doing this for me. Aside from the sex angle, that is. Which I also still can’t fathom. I mean, if you always fancied me, then why didn’t you do something about it before this?’

They were logical questions, John accepted. He wished he had some logical answers for her. He had to tell her something, he supposed, something which would satisfy her intelligence. Scarlet was no dummy.

‘Can I be blunt with you?’ he said.

‘Please do.’

‘I didn’t do anything before this because I thought you would just knock me back,’ he said, not untruthfully. ‘Until we met again last month and I realised that the attraction was mutual. However, contrary to your belief, I also like you a lot, Scarlet, and I want to help you get what you obviously want very much—which is a baby. And, as strange as it seems, I also quite like the idea of having a child of my own. But if I’m to be brutally honest, what I want most is you, in my bed, for a good deal longer than you spend at that wretched clinic each month.’

Scarlet’s silence at the other end of the line indicated a degree of shock. Or deep thoughtfulness. John suspected the former. He had gone overboard a bit in his attempt to focus on the sex angle. But he didn’t want her questioning him further over his motives. He didn’t understand them fully himself! All he knew was that his blood was racing through his body with a surge of entirely male, powerful
satisfaction at her agreement. For a short time, Scarlet was going to be his.

Scarlet had been rendered speechless by the decidedly R-rated images which had sprung into her mind. She was seriously glad that John couldn’t see the burst of heat which flamed into her cheeks.

‘Come now, Scarlet, you must know how very desirable you are.’

Now Scarlet felt hot all over. A shiver ran down her spine at the realisation she might shortly find out just how desirable he thought she was.

‘I hope your silence doesn’t mean you’ve changed your mind about this?’ he said, his voice sounding curiously expressionless.

‘No,’ she choked out, still blushing at her earlier train of thought. Thank heavens they weren’t face to face!

‘Good.’ His voice relaxed again. ‘When can you get yourself up here?’

Scarlet swallowed, then sat up straighter. She’d always been more comfortable following a plan.

‘I thought as soon as possible,’ she said briskly.

‘How about the beginning of next week?’

‘Well, I’ll have to get stuff organised at work …’

He rode over her objections. ‘I’m sure you can sort it. Once you’ve booked your flight next week, text me your time of arrival and I’ll be at the airport waiting for you.’ He sounded equally brisk, and it was as difficult as ever to guess what he was feeling. ‘Don’t send the text to this number. Send it to my mobile. I’ll be back in Darwin by then.’

Scarlet rolled her eyes in exasperation. Why was it then men wouldn’t
listen
? ‘Where are you, anyway?’ she asked.

‘Camping out in one of the national parks.’

Scarlet had been doing some mental calculations.
‘Wait—next week is way too early. I can’t possibly fall pregnant till a week after that. I never ovulate before day fourteen on my cycle. I know this for a fact because I’ve been taking my temperature every day for the last year and—’

‘Scarlet,’ he interrupted. ‘If you want to get pregnant, then let’s try this
my
way.’

Truly, he could be as irritating a man as he’d been an irritating boy! ‘Which is?’ she snapped.

‘Not taking your temperature every day, for starters. Not caring about when you bloody ovulate either. Because, let’s face it, that method hasn’t been working too well for you up till now, has it?’

‘I guess not,’ she admitted grudgingly.

‘I suggest you leave this whole operation up to me. Put yourself entirely in my hands. No arguments, no more buts.’

‘Yes,’ she bit out.

‘Good,’ he said, smiling wryly to himself at the thought that ‘yes’ wasn’t a word Scarlet was used to saying. But she was going to say it a lot during their time together. He would
make
her say it. No, he would make her
want
to say it. For that was what he craved all of a sudden. Not just Scarlet’s compliance but her complete surrender.

The thought excited him unbearably. Was this what had been lurking at the back of his mind? Not just desire for sex, but a desire to seduce? To possess? To control?

The idea perturbed him. He’d never been into that kind of thing. Sex for him was usually just a physical release with no strings attached. He’d always steered well clear of becoming emotionally involved with the women he slept with. John could see, however, that this was a different situation entirely. If truth be told, his emotions were already involved. The problem was which ones?

He almost told her to forget it then; that
he’d
changed his mind. But it was too late. The roller coaster of destiny was already moving and he was solidly strapped in. There would be no escape till it came to rest at the end of the ride.