The Baby Deal
That she was acting like indignation personified had Reb seeing every shade of red. ‘Well, I’m sorry all ends up to offend your sensibilities, sweetheart. But I just assumed since it was so easy to get you in the sack that night that I wouldn’t be the only guy who’d managed it.’
As much as Amanda-Jayne hated him for the comment she could well understand why he’d think as much. ‘I…I was drunk that night,’ she muttered, desperate to regain her dignity in her own eyes if not his.
The laugh that broke from him was scathing. ‘Now there’s an ironic defence for one’s morals if ever I’ve heard one. But in my defence I have to say that you didn’t seem all that drunk when you darted out of bed and adroitly rounded up your clothes in the dark.’
‘What would you know?’ she challenged. ‘You were sound asleep.’
‘Was I?’ He smirked as the realisation dawned on her face that he’d been awake the whole time she’d been executing her soundless escape. ‘If you’d asked me,’ he said, ‘I could’ve told you where your knickers and left shoe were.’
The announcement initially threw her, making her feel an even bigger fool than she obviously was, but the smug amusement on Reb Browne’s face quickly prompted her to go back on the offensive. ‘Really? Then why pretend to be asleep? Why didn’t you say something?’
‘Like what? Suggest you stay? Was that what you were hoping I’d do?’
‘No!’ she gasped. ‘I was mortified by what I’d done! I’d never done anything like that in my life!’
‘No?’ He grinned. ‘Then, honey, you must be a real quick study ’cos your inexperience sure didn’t show.’
‘You… I… How…?’
Amanda-Jayne would have liked to believe her stuttering incoherence was due entirely to outrage at the insult, but her mutilated feminine ego insisted on seizing upon the implication that, unlike her philandering ex-husband, Reb Browne hadn’t found her lacking in bed. And he should know! For, while Anthony had taken great delight in telling her she’d not possessed a tenth of the sexual prowess of the dozen or so lovers he’d taken during their seven-year marriage, it was common knowledge that Reb Browne probably slept with more women than that in a fortnight. There—
Oh, Lord, what was she thinking? Browne’s reputation wasn’t a bonus, it was a serious cause for concern. Hell, it was the only reason she’d decided to advise him of the pregnancy.
When her obstetrician had asked if she knew of any genetic medical problems on the baby’s father’s side of the family, she’d almost passed out from dread. Not even his assurances that it was only a routine question and that even at this early stage of her pregnancy everything was progressing normally could alleviate her fears. Given that her own medical history put this pregnancy in the realms of a miracle even before one took into account the malfunctioning condom, the idea of her losing this baby was something she couldn’t contemplate. No matter how embarrassing the circumstances of the conception were or how humiliating it was to have to confront this man again, she had to know of any and all possible conditions that might put her pregnancy at risk.
‘Look,’ she said, grateful for an upbringing which allowed her to summon poise, confidence and decorum even when her mind and emotions were reeling out of control. ‘I’m not going to deny that I’m ashamed of my part in creating this situation. I am. Mortified, in fact. However, you have to assume some responsibility and—’
‘I’m not going to marry you if that’s what you’re—’
A horrified shriek was the only way Reb could have described the noise that erupted from her.
‘Never!’ she spat. ‘Not if I had to kill myself to stop it happening.’
He grinned. ‘My sentiments exactly. But since I’ve never dodged my responsibilities in the past I’m not going to start now. So you prove I’m the father and naturally I’ll pay child support.’
‘I’ve never dodged my responsibilities in the past…’ Amanda-Jayne’s heart ceased beating as the words echoed in her head.
Dear Lord, was it possible her child would have a half-sibling living in Vaughan’s Landing? Of course it was! Given Reb Browne’s popularity with women it was entirely feasible he’d sired more than one other child. It was something which hadn’t occurred to her. But it should have because the Brownes’ history in this part of the state was almost as long as the Vaughans’. Her grandmother had once told her that in just eighty years the Browne men had probably sired more children outside marriage than the Vaughans had had hot dinners.
‘Y-you’ve fathered other children?’
‘No!’
‘You haven’t?’
‘No. Like I told you, I always wear a condom. So if the reason you’ve turned chalk-white is because you’re worrying about something besides being pregnant, you don’t have to.’
‘What? Oh! Oh, no. No, I wasn’t worried about that.’ At least she hadn’t been since the doctor had given her the all-clear a week ago.
‘Should I be?’
‘What?’
‘Worried about—’
‘Of course not! I’ve only ever slept with my husband…er, ex-husband.’
‘And me.’ His smirk was smug, suggestive and sexy, creating a heat in Amanda-Jayne’s belly which had her loins tingling even as she hovered on the verge of tears. According to the books she’d read she could expect her emotions to be at the mercy of her hormones throughout her pregnancy and possibly beyond, but there was no way on earth she was going to start crying in front of the like of Reb Browne.
‘Hey, are you all right? What’s wrong? Are you in pain or something?’ There was genuine, almost panicked concern in the male face and voice as he crouched beside her seat. ‘A.J.?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Yeah, right. You look even more shell-shocked than I feel—which means you’re nowhere near fine.’ He studied her face for moment, muttered a string of profanities under his breath, then he pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘You’re fair dinkum about this, aren’t you?’
He gave her no time to answer the grimly voiced question. ‘Look, I mean what I said. If it’s my child—’
‘It is.’
‘—I’ll meet my financial responsibilities and everything else a father is supposed to…to— Aw, hell!’ He looked skyward for several seconds, raking both hands through his hair, then sighed heavily and turned back to her.
‘You know, I’d have an easier time grasping things if you’d come here to tell me World War Three had just started, Vaughan’s Landing was at the centre of it and I had to do maintenance on the tanks. At least there’s a chance I’d have been half expecting that,’ he said dryly.
Amanda-Jayne was expecting World War Three—immediately once her stepmother learned she was pregnant. Not that she was ever going to admit to anyone who had sired her child. Belatedly it occurred to her that the man responsible was staring at her in the way people did when they were expecting a response. She frowned. ‘What?’
‘Look,’ he said wearily, ‘I understand we need to talk this through and obviously you’re here because you’re anxious to discuss the situation, but I can’t. Not now. I need time to get my head around this. I asked if we could meet somewhere tomorrow night, to talk things through. Work out where we go from here.’
He sounded so sincere, so caring, it took Amanda-Jayne several seconds to comprehend what he was driving at. When she did waves of panic began crashing through her.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! I’m not here because I want to discuss anything with you,’ she told him. ‘I’ve made my decisions and your opinion on the subject isn’t and never was an issue for me. I certainly don’t need your financial support.’
Reb didn’t mind her disregarding his financial assistance—heck, her family could buy and sell most people ten times over—but if she was carrying his child he’d be damned if he’d have her ride roughshod over his right to express an opinion of how to deal with the situation!
‘Now just a—’ he started.
‘This is my address, in Sydney,’ she said, holding out a business card to him.
Reb took the peach business card and scanned it. Apart from her name, embossed in a delicate gold script, it revealed nothing other than her box number at an Eastern Suburbs post office.
‘You live at a post office?’
She ignored his facetiousness. ‘My doctor wants details of any medical problems the baby might inherit from you. I need to know if there’s a history of things like asthma or diabetes or…er…congenital birth defects.’ Her voice cracked a fraction, but she quickly recovered herself. ‘When you get the relevant information you can mail it to me at that address. And that will be the end of it.’
At the sight of a huge motorbike speeding into the driveway Amanda-Jayne’s heart almost lurched out of her chest. Desperate to avoid being seen here and starting any possible rumours which might hint at Reb Browne and herself having had a relationship, she instantly reached for the ignition key. The noise of the bike interrupted whatever Reb had been saying and when he stepped back to shoot an annoyed look at the rider Amanda-Jayne snapped off the parking brake and flattened the accelerator. The car gave a tricky little slide as she hit the loose gravel at the side of the road at speed, but mercifully, despite her supposed bald tyres, once onto the bitumen she again found traction. A quick look in the rear-view mirror revealed an angry-looking Reb Browne staring after her as a black-clad biker stopped alongside him.
The image was a graphic reminder of exactly who and what the father of her child was, and reassured her she was doing the right thing in excluding him from her child’s future. It might have been different if he’d been a lawyer or an accountant or…even just an ordinary mechanic. But Bad Boy Browne was a hellraiser from the tips of his biker boots to his unruly raven hair and no child should have to pay for one act of bad judgment on the part of its mother.
CHAPTER TWO
THOUGH the coolness of the marble entrance foyer provided respite from the early evening’s heat, it did little to stem the nausea, which had hit Amanda-Jayne at the garage. Feeling that at any moment she might join the ranks of the generations of deceased Vaughans, who peered down at her from the walls, she hurried towards the staircase, desperately swallowing back the acid bile rising in her throat and hoping to reach her bedroom without throwing up.
‘There you are!’ Amanda-Jayne stifled a groan as her stepmother’s gleeful disapproval caught her at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Where on earth have you been?’
‘Out,’ she responded, continuing up the stairs without turning.
‘Don’t be smart with me, Amanda-Jayne. Have you forgotten we’re expected at the mayoral ball in a little over an hour?’
Amanda-Jayne had, but it was a moot point now since it was eminently feasible that within the hour she’d be dead from terminal morning sickness. ‘I’m not going, Patricia. I’ll call Mayor Bur—’
‘What do you mean, you won’t be going? You most certainly will be!’
Since dealing with her stepmother could turn her stomach even on its good days Amanda-Jayne had no intention of lingering for a lecture now, so with her mouth firmly shut she continued on up the stairs, dogged by dizziness, nausea and, worst of all, Patricia.
‘I expect you to be ready in forty-five minutes. I also expect that you’ll show more style in your choice of evening wear than you did when you chose your current attire.’
‘Patricia,’ she said wearily. ‘The only evening wear I’ll be putting on are my pyjamas.’
‘Now you listen here, Amanda-Jayne… This family has a tradition of being guests of honour at the New Year’s ball and I will not tolerate you snubbing your nose at it. You hear me? You always attended when your father was head of this family so don’t think you can embarrass me by not going now I hold that position.’
‘I don’t need to embarrass you, Patricia; Joshua is managing to do that on his own.’
‘You leave my son out of this. He’s only a child.’
The sheer absurdity of that remark couldn’t go unchallenged. ‘He’s eighteen—hardly a child. Although given the way he almost ploughed down an elderly couple outside the post office a few minutes ago then hurled four-letter words at them, the term juvenile delinquent would be pretty accurate.’
‘Telling tales again, sis?’ Her half-brother’s amused voice rose from the foyer.
‘Darling, you’re home!’
Patricia’s singsong delight at her son’s appearance was the last straw for Amanda-Jayne’s stomach. With one hand sealing her mouth she sprinted down the hall to her room, where she used the other to defy Patricia’s, ‘Don’t you dare lock that door, Amanda-Jayne! I want to speak with you.’ Then, with the bedroom swirling around her, she dashed to her private bathroom.
She was dimly aware of her stepmother thumping on the bedroom door, but she had no idea what she was shouting at her. Considering Patricia’s vocal-amplification abilities, she could only assume that hearing impairment was a side effect of heaving one’s heart out.
Dear God, how much longer would this last?
For over a week now she’d been getting up close and personal with the commode at varying and multiple times each day. Morning sickness? Ha! She hoped whatever idiot had named it that had been exiled in disgrace from the world of medical science and was at this minute eyeballing Satan!
‘My doctor wants details of any medical problems the baby might inherit from you… When you get the relevant information you can mail it to me… And that will be the end of it.’
For the thousandth time, Reb’s mind replayed the scene at the garage.
‘Like hell that’ll be the end of it,’ he said, rolling the beer bottle he’d emptied nearly an hour ago between his palms. ‘If I’ve fathered a kid, Ms I-didn’t-need-your-financial-assistance Vaughan, I’m sure as hell going to contribute more than just a medical report to its future.’
Reb wasn’t yet sure what exactly he was going to say or precisely what demands he was going to lay on Amanda-Jayne when he fronted up at the Vaughan house tomorrow morning, but one thing was sure: she wouldn’t want to count on her New Year getting off to the start she’d planned. He might have been too shell-shocked to entirely comprehend what she’d said prior to speeding out of the garage earlier this evening, but he wasn’t giving her the satisfaction of thinking she was calling all the shots for much longer. First thing tomorrow morning he was going to be on her doorstep ready to set a few ground rules of his own and she’d better be ready to listen.
‘Hoy, Reb! Since when have you got so antisocial?’
At the wry question, Reb lowered his gaze from the inky sky and watched the approach of the woman who’d delivered it. Wearing ratty sneakers, cut-off jeans and a skimpy midriff top, the pint-size blonde looked barely old enough to be in high school, much less the mother of his two-year-old goddaughter. It was an illusion that vanished the moment she was close enough for anyone to see her eyes. At a glance they were a startling green…on closer inspection they were more jaded than green, making Debbie Jenkins seem decades older than the twenty-one Reb knew her to be.
It occurred to him that Deb’s background was the complete antithesis to Amanda-Jayne Vaughan’s. A runaway from a home life that was all too familiar to most of Reb’s friends, she’d spent a year in a juvenile detention centre before hooking up with a group of bikers that even he’d regarded as bad news. But in the best traditions of irony she’d got ‘lucky’ just over three years ago when her loser boyfriend had put her up as collateral in a pub card game and Reb had ‘won’ her. If she’d been surprised when he’d said he wasn’t interested in having her warm his bed, she’d near died of shock when he’d offered her a ride to Vaughan’s Landing and a full-time job working in the garage.
Reb had given her a chance and his mate Gunna had given her his heart. Neither man had ever been sorry.
‘So how come you’re sittin’ out here all by your lonesome?’ she asked. ‘Not like you to be on the fringes of a party.’
‘Just needed a bit of time to consider my New Year resolutions.’
She laughed. ‘Let me guess, you’re givin’ up smokin’…again.’
Reb grimaced, regretting that the best he could claim in his latest campaign to quit was having cut back and switched to an ultra low tar/nicotine brand.
‘Yeah, that too,’ he said. ‘Maybe this year I’ll manage to give them right away, huh?’
‘Well, I’m givin’ ’em away,’ Debbie asserted proudly. ‘And I’m doin’ it cold turkey. It’s time I set Alanna a good example.’
‘I wish I could’ve managed that. Good luck, Deb; take it from me, you’re in for a tough time.’
‘Mentionin’ tough… What’s this I hear about Savvy givin’ you the slip?’
Reb paused as a means of checking the anger the question reignited. His fifteen-year-old cousin was going to be lucky if he didn’t wring her neck first chance he got.
‘We had a disagreement about her going to some party tonight,’ he said finally. ‘As usual she holed up in her bedroom sulking. Then, while I was talking to Aman—er—a customer,’ he amended quickly, ‘she bolted. I didn’t know she wasn’t upstairs until about an hour later, after I finished working on Mrs Kelly’s FJ.’
‘Bolted? You mean ran away?’
‘No, no,’ Reb said quickly, responding to the alarm in Debbie’s expression. ‘She hasn’t taken any of her stuff. Just snuck off for the night. The brat left a note saying “Gone to party. Don’t wait up.” I’ll kick her butt into the middle of next month when I get hold of her,’ he promised.
‘I’m surprised you just didn’t go right out an’ haul her butt home.’
‘I would’ve if I’d had the slightest clue where the party was,’ Reb said curtly. ‘It’s because she wouldn’t give me any details in the first place that I said she couldn’t go. And her friends were predictably close-mouthed when I rang around trying to find out where it was. Her life won’t be worth living when I get my hands on her.’
‘Can’t be too tough on her, Reb,’ she said. ‘I mean, she’s a kid. Didn’t you do the same thing at fifteen?’
Reb hadn’t. There had been no point in sneaking out or even asking permission to do something or go somewhere when his old man had let him run his own race from the time he’d been able to walk. He hadn’t even started school the first time the cops had brought him home after finding him wandering along the highway. When his old man had died, he’d moved in with his uncle, but the then toddling Savannah was such a handful that Bill had relied on Reb’s self-sufficiency to extend to taking care of her as well. Trouble was, the teenage Savvy was proving more of a handful than the hyperactive two-year-old version had ever been.
‘Fairness isn’t high on my priority list right now,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve got more than enough problems on my plate without all the stunts she’s been pulling these last few months.’
‘Problems?’ Immediate concern wrinkled Debbie’s features. ‘With the business?’
‘No, thank God! That’s the one part of my life that’s not currently causing me headaches. Although I’ll probably jinx myself sayin—’ Reb broke off at the sound of Joe Cocker’s voice cranked to a volume loud enough to shatter ice at both poles.
Debbie cursed. ‘I just told Gunna not to connect those other two amps! We’ll have the cops out here shortly.’
‘I don’t think you have to worry about breaking any noise acts tonight, Deb. Apart from it being New Year’s Eve there’s not another house for miles.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ she muttered. ‘There’s at least a dozen guys here who could get busted just on sight.’ She grimaced ruefully. ‘But then what else is new, right?
‘Now c’mon,’ she urged, grabbing his arm. ‘It’s almost time to count in the New Year and I reckon you and me are the only two still sober enough to manage it!’
It was dark when Amanda-Jayne awoke with a stomach that was mercifully settled and now craving food. Rolling over, she looked at the clock and smiled; at 11:50 p.m. on New Year’s Eve even the domestic staff wouldn’t be around, but more importantly neither would Patricia. Once again she wondered why she’d been cursed with the Cinderella version of a stepmother when other girls she’d known had got ones who would have crawled over crushed glass for them.
She’d been very young when her father married Patricia and any hopes she’d held that, after being motherless for two years, the quality of her life would only be improved by the marriage had been dashed long before its first anniversary. By then she’d been whole-heartedly entrenched in competition with her stepmother for every scrap of her father’s affection. Yet youthful enthusiasm was no match for experienced scheming and Patricia had been so adept at concealing her dislike of her stepdaughter from her husband that it was Amanda-Jayne who’d invariably come out looking bad. For all her late father’s famed all-seeing business vision, when it came to seeing through his second wife’s charade of ‘loving stepmother’ Andrew Vaughan had been pathetically myopic and insensitive to how lonely and excluded his daughter had come to feel in her own home. The situation had only worsened when Patricia had given birth to Joshua.
On the rare occasions it was deemed convenient for Amanda-Jayne to spend a weekend home from boarding-school, Patricia had made her feel like an outsider. Therefore, as soon as she’d turned eighteen Amanda-Jayne had chosen to move permanently to Sydney, returning to Vaughan’s Landing for only brief command visits to please her father. Since his death, she only returned to meet the terms of his will, but all that would change in forty-four months’ time. Come her thirtieth birthday, she’d have full legal title and control over the house.
Making her way down the small staff staircase leading from the upper floor to the kitchen, she couldn’t suppress the satisfaction she felt at knowing that Patricia knew she was on borrowed time as head of the house. Thanks to Amanda-Jayne’s great-grandfather’s very un-Victorian sense of equality, his will stated that in all future generations the Vaughan Hill house must pass to the eldest child regardless of sex. So, although the income from the Vaughans’ prosperous, century-old horse and cattle stud was to be equally divided between Joshua and herself, Amanda-Jayne was the heir to the family home. A situation which peeved Patricia no end since it granted her stepdaughter the power to exile her to the small cottage at the other side of the property once she assumed full control of her inheritance. In fact if her father hadn’t unreasonably stipulated that Amanda-Jayne couldn’t take full control until her thirtieth birthday, Patricia would have been ‘slumming it’ in the much smaller four-bedroom residence right now instead of still playing lady of the manor.
Some people might think it was mean to force Patricia to move to the smaller house, but Amanda-Jayne refused to acknowledge any guilt about what she intended to do. Considering the way she kicked me into boarding-school, she thought, why should I? By her father’s own admission the decision to send her away to school at age ten had been entirely her stepmother’s.
‘Patricia feels your mother and I were being extremely short-sighted and selfish in deciding to keep you in day school until senior high,’ he’d told her the day before she’d been shipped off to Sydney. ‘Patricia did two years of an education degree at university so she’s better qualified to make this decision than I am. You’ll thank her in the end.’
Well, ‘the end’ was still out of sight in any direction Amanda-Jayne looked, especially since whatever arguments her stepmother had used to convince her husband that she was an ‘education expert’ must have exceeded their use-by date when it had come time for her son’s education. Joshua hadn’t started boarding-school until this past year and already Patricia was dropping hints—the largest being the Ferrari Josh had got the day he’d gained his licence—that he wouldn’t be returning for his final year and silently daring Amanda-Jayne to challenge her on the subject.
Amanda-Jayne had refused to rise to the bait by demanding to know how much driving a kid could do with only one weekend away from school every four weeks. She’d outgrown playing Patricia’s little games; they took more enthusiasm than she could muster for the woman. As for Josh…well, for all that he was spoilt and arrogant, deep down Amanda-Jayne actually liked him, and there had been occasions in the past when she’d suspected he felt the same way about her, despite the fact Patricia had made it her life’s work to prevent any sibling affection developing between them.