Fifteen #3
‘Oh god.’ She buried her face in her hand. ‘Just what you all need. Me moving in and becoming a complete inconvenience to everyone.’ She dropped her hands to her lap and locked her eyes on his. ‘Maybe it’s better if I go back to town and move into the hospital accommodation.’
‘What? No.’ Lachlan strode into the room then, sinking down on his knees in front of her, sliding his palms onto her legs to grasp her hands. ‘You are not an inconvenience.’
He wanted to tell her she was family, as Reggie had done, but he didn’t want to come on too strong. Lachlan didn’t know what was ahead for them, but one thing he knew for sure, he needed to tread carefully.
Rowena was skittish. One wrong move and she could bolt.
‘It’s just for now,’ he continued. ‘While you’re so fatigued. God … you look as worn out as an old boot at the moment.’
‘Gee.’ She bugged her eyes at him. ‘Thanks.’
Lachlan grimaced. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
She waved his explanation away. ‘It’s fine. I know what you meant.’ She sighed. ‘I feel like a worn-out old boot.’
‘Right.’ He gave her a gentle smile. ‘So, how are you going to be after an eight-hour shift on your feet? And it’s a fifteen-minute drive to Blairgowrie. What if you fell asleep at the wheel?’
‘Okay, okay.’ She held her hands up in surrender. ‘You can drive me. But sick or not, I am going to work. I need to work.’
Lachlan frowned. ‘If money’s an issue I can—’
‘If you’re about to offer to keep me,’ she interrupted swiftly, her face stony, her lips pressed together, ‘I’d rethink that sentence.’
Oh, crap. Good one, dickhead.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply … I just …’ Lachlan squirmed a little, trying to adequately explain himself. ‘You didn’t get in this predicament by yourself but you’re the one that’s suffering the … consequences because of it.’
Christ, was that the right or wrong thing to say? He had no clue. Maybe he needed to look for a book in the library to help him with that. Did they have a section for conversations with women after knocking them up?
‘That doesn’t seem fair.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all I was trying to say.’
She sighed. ‘I’m fine for money, Lachy. It’s not that. It’s …’ Several beats passed as she obviously searched for the right words. ‘It’s … good for me. And I love my job.’
Lachlan wasn’t sure what good for me meant, but that little pause made it seem significant and he puzzled over it for a moment until she yawned. ‘I’m sorry, I’m stopping you from sleeping. I’ll get your phone.’
Standing, he turned to go, but she grabbed his hand before he could take his first step. Lachlan’s breath hitched as their gazes met and little sparks ignited where skin met skin.
‘Thank you,’ she said, her solemn expression doing nothing for her washed-out complexion. ‘For everything.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I mean it.’
He nodded because he didn’t know what to say. He only knew how good it felt to hear her say those words. And that scared the bejesus out of him.
*
Several hours later, Lachlan turned from the dirt road onto the highway, Rowena in the passenger seat. She had looked much better after a long sleep and some soup that Reggie had made, which one of the CWA women had sworn by as an instant remedy for morning sickness.
Unfortunately it had been thrown up ten minutes after she’d consumed half the bowl. But she had been able to keep down vegemite toast, and some make-up had improved her pallor.
‘So,’ he said, now that the noisy corrugations were behind them and they could hear each other speak, ‘I was wondering if you knew how many weeks you are? If you don’t want to talk about it, fine.
But if you do, well … do you know? Or does a doctor have to figure that out?
I’m sorry, I know how it works with sheep, but I confess I’m less knowledgeable about how it works in the human species. ’
She gave a half laugh, which sounded lively and helped soothe Lachlan’s concerns about her health. ‘It’s fine, we can talk about it. And of course I’ve worked it out, I’m a midwife.’
‘Of course. Right.’ Except he didn’t know she was a midwife. There were so many things he didn’t know about her.
‘I’m eight weeks,’ she confirmed. ‘Due date is the sixth of March.’
Lachlan frowned. That couldn’t be right, surely? He squinted as he did the maths. ‘Um … how is that possible? You’ve only been here for seven weeks?’
‘I hate to break this to you but this isn’t an exact science. Unless you know your date of conception—’
‘Which we do.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘We know the date we had sex. But it’s possible I could have conceived up to a few days after that.’
‘Oh … kay.’
‘Which is why due dates are usually worked out by using the first day of the last menstrual period, because it’s the one date that is known.’
‘But … that would mean a woman would actually be less pregnant than the due date suggests, because she doesn’t ovulate until mid-cycle, right, and a period is the start of a cycle?’
She quirked an eyebrow. ‘Look at you go with your knowledge of the female fertility cycle.’
‘I aced sex ed,’ he said with a grin.
‘How very studious of you.’
Lachlan shrugged. ‘There were boobs.’
She laughed but got the conversation back on track.
‘Unfortunately for medical science, not everyone has a regular cycle. Mine is and always has been all over the shop. Which makes due date prediction a little dicier, and is why a full-term pregnancy is not actually forty weeks as most people think but anywhere from thirty-seven to forty-two weeks.’
‘So there’s like a … five-week fudge factor.’
‘Well, yes.’ She laughed. ‘Not quite the way we like to look at it, however.’
Lachlan shook his head and slowed the vehicle as they passed the first yellow blobs of wattle and the sign welcoming people to town. ‘It still seems to me like a lot of guesswork. Like … peering into a scrying bowl. Hell, even farmers use ultrasound.’
‘We do too. Pretty much everyone has a dating ultrasound in the first trimester, which works on actual foetal measurements and is much more accurate.’
Well, thank Christ for that. Ultrasound worked for him. ‘How many weeks do you need to be to have one of them?’
‘Usually seven or eight. Can be up to fourteen. But the earlier it’s done the more accurate as far as dating goes.’
‘Okay, so …’ He glanced across at her. ‘Should we get one of those?’
The light in her eyes dimmed a little. ‘No,’ she murmured as she turned to look out the window. ‘I … can’t.’
The brevity—the desolation—in her quiet words reverberated around the car as loudly as if they were back on the corrugations. She didn’t need to say she saw no point in a dating ultrasound for a pregnancy that wouldn’t go the distance. He heard it loud and clear.
‘Okay.’
Sure, it was his baby too, and Lachlan would like to know an accurate date and see a little heartbeat blipping away on a screen. But he couldn’t come in with jackboots and make a bunch of demands right now when Rowena was clearly struggling physically and emotionally.
His job right now was to support her. To be the easy part in amongst all the hard.
He wasn’t sure at what stage, how many weeks Rowena would have to be, for her to feel confident about the pregnancy, but he was damn sure now was not the time to ask.
Now was the time to start building a relationship, do the foundational work. Just be there. Show up. Make a connection outside what they’d shared in that room at The Stockman.
Be her go-to guy.
And if that meant cooling his jets on the things he wanted, then so be it. They were living under the same roof, he’d get to see her every day—that was enough for now.
Pulling up at the hospital main entrance a few minutes later, he said, ‘I’ll be waiting outside at nine.’
She reached for the handle, opened the door and threw a, ‘Thank you,’ over her shoulder before scurrying inside.
Lachlan sat for a beat or two, swamped anew by the fact he was going to be a dad, until somebody beeped him from behind and he took his foot off the brake.