Almost Mine (18 page)

‘Well, that’s obvious. It’s a real credit to him. Before I interviewed for the job I asked around town, you know, just for some background. I heard that it’s regarded as one of the best drops of Merlot in the country, the world. I had to check it out just to see if the locals weren’t just a little biased.’ He winked conspiratorially.

I leaned back the chair with an air of confidence as if the answer was obvious. ‘And?’

‘And, they were not wrong. But you know what they say, ‘behind every good man is a good woman’ or something like that.’

‘I hardly think that’s true in this case.’

‘I doubt that,’ he winked again. ‘Anyway,’ he continued after a brief quietness that was only made more unusual by the way Blake’s eyes lingered on me, ‘I’d better let you get back to your own important work. I guess I’ll be seeing you around?’

‘I guess you will, and I’ll get these sorted now.’ I patted the envelope.

When he left I finally placed the letter opener back in its position within reach beside me. I blew a few stray strands of honey hair out of my face in frustration. How could someone that was barely in my life still have so much control over me?

‘Nick! Come and see what I’ve found,’ I called from the home office. I’d been trawling the internet for most of the evening, but with little success in finding what I had been searching for. I was engrossed by the encouraging words on the wide screen of my VAIO when I felt Nick beside me.

‘Looks a bit invasive,’ he commented warily.

‘What? Taking a few natural tablets?’ I glanced up at him.

‘Tablets?’

I looked at the screen and chuckled. ‘Oh geez, not that.’ I closed off a window showing a picture of an infertile man during an operation. ‘Read this.’

It was a short article explaining the ins and outs of natural remedies for infertile men, plus it also showed what I wanted to hear most. The percentage rate of success was phenomenal; almost ninety five percent of couples taking the tablet being able to conceive. What I liked most about it, other than the fact that I was one step closer to becoming a mother, was that it was all natural and Nick wouldn’t have to go through difficult procedures that he’d just witnessed with undeniable panic.

‘We can order online. It’s a daily dose of a fertility vine that grows deep in an Indonesian jungle. Did you see the success rates?’ I reread the article. Nick pulled up a chair beside me.

‘Well it is a believable piece of writing, but any numbskull could have written it and then proceeded to charge two hundred and fifty dollars for a month’s worth of the “natural remedy” and claim to the desperate-to-become-a-mother that it would be the answer to all of their prayers. But that hardly means that it would be. The article is pretty vague. It doesn’t even explain how it works, exactly.’

‘I guess it doesn’t…’ I peered closer at the screen. ‘But look at these results. Read some of these customer reviews. It’s very positive, Nick.’ I beamed with the excitement of a child on Christmas morning, begging to open the biggest present because I knew that it was everything that I had ever wanted.

‘Very convincing.’ He diplomatically gave in.

I looked across him, my finger poised on the left click of the mouse. ‘So, should I order it?’

‘Whatever it takes.’ He leaned in as he stood, kissing the crown of my head. I clicked on ‘add to cart’, and now I was a tiny step closer than a second a go to becoming a mother.

I turned back just as he was about to leave the room. ‘Where are you going?’

‘It’s late. I’m off to bed.’

‘Ok, I’ll be there soon.’ I turned back to the order form now downloaded on the screen.

So I ordered a month’s worth of miracle, and, honestly, I did try to stop there, but then I found more sites promising more miracles and I found that I just couldn’t help myself. By three o’clock I’d ordered five different natural remedies, each one promising more success than the other. So how could I not give them a go? They were not all tablets, though. Some of them were creams for me to apply to various zones over my body. Apparently the problem with Nick’s lack of sperm could be related to the fact that maybe his
body didn’t find my body enticing enough. The cream released amounts of pheromones that would encourage Nick’s little guys go into overdrive to make the journey to the egg.

As I settled quietly into bed, I found it difficult to switch my brain off. Just think of it, in a few months my dream may come true; I may have a little Nick or a little Cate growing within me. I subconsciously found my hand rubbing my belly, as if by doing so, it would encourage the universe to give me what I wanted; a baby, just one, just the chance to experience my definition of happy, of fulfilment…but then something monumentally moved within my core. My centre of gravity, my centre of being — or of purpose — shifted. My eyes flung open and I turned my head in Nick’s direction in the dark, or was it pulled in his direction? My heart pummelled under my rib cage, beating harder than it ever had, and before I could control myself, my body, as if on its own accord, jolted upright as my lungs ached for air.

‘What is it?’ Nick sprung beside me. He switched the side lamp on and his eyes, wide in alert, found mine.

My heart raced and I couldn’t get a word out.

‘Shit, Cate! You’re as white as a ghost.’ Nick spanned his hand over my clammy chest to feel the fierce thumping vibrate under his palm. ‘I’m calling an ambulance.’ He threw off the covers and reached for the phone beside the bed. He dialled.

‘Wait.’ I stopped him before he pressed the call button.

‘Things like this can’t wait. You need a doctor.’ He was speaking hurriedly as if taking a breath would waist precious time that we didn’t have.

As fast as the panic attack came on, it dissipated at the sight of him: of my vigilant and solemn protector. My breathing slowed, as did my heart, and the cold sweat that covered my entire body ceased. ‘I just need you close to me.’ The words seemed to take me by surprise, as if on auto pilot, as if I hadn’t planned to say them but that they were precisely what needed to be said. ‘Please, I’m ok,’ I beckoned him with an outstretched hand. He was torn between saving my life and giving me whatever I wanted.

He replaced the phone back onto its cradle and pulled me into his arms as he climbed back into bed. ‘What happened?’ he asked as he brushed my damp hair from my temple. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’

‘I don’t know. I was thinking about everything and I just—’

‘Panicked?’

A slow heart beat passed between us. ‘I think I did.’

‘About us?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ I held his hand in place on my hip when it moved away slightly. ‘Not about
us
, us, just about our past, our future, what it will be like.’

‘You’re thinking that it won’t be what you want?’

‘I’m thinking that it won’t be what I expected.’

‘And you’re overwhelmed by…?’ he prompted.

‘I honestly don’t know.’

With his finger tip he gently brushed a stray tendril of hair from my face. ‘Well then how am I supposed to remedy your worry?’

I snuggled closer to him and kissed the span of the dark hair across his chest. ‘Maybe you should trust me to do the fixing for a change.’ I reached over him and switched the lamp off. Then I straddled him. Earlier my basal body temperature indicated that I was at prime ovulation in my cycle. ‘I have an idea for you to remedy my worry, for the short term at least.’

‘I’ll give it my best shot.’

Just as he was about to do exactly that his mobile buzzed to life on the side table. I reached for it but he held my hips in place.

‘Just leave it. It’s almost midnight.’

I managed to wriggle free and grab it. ‘So, it’s probably an emergency.’

Fuck. Why did I have to look? It was only Lucy, and I immediately extricated myself from him as I handed him the phone.

‘She wants to have dinner here tomorrow night,’ he told me. ‘Apparently Tom has leave and he’s coming down for the weekend.’

‘She’s told you all about him, has she?’

‘Is he a dickhead?’

‘No. He’s actually quite a nice guy.’
Which is why I’m surprised that he’s taken a fancy to Lucy.
But of course I didn’t say this aloud.

He held his thumbs over the key pad. ‘Should I say yes?’

‘Only if you can’t say no to her.’ The words left my mouth before I could stop them.

Nick replaced the phone back to the side table without replying and cuddled into me. ‘What’s this all about?’

‘What?’

‘Has something happened between the two of you?’

‘It’s the same as it’s always been. I’ve just grown intolerant of her over the years. We are two very different people.’

‘Yes you are. You have my entire heart and she doesn’t.’

‘So you’re not oblivious to her then?’

‘I’m not stupid, Cate.’

With a rush something occurred to me. ‘Has she ever tried something on you?’

‘No. Well, not since we were teenagers.’

‘Did you…?’

‘No, angel,’ he kissed my mouth, ‘there’s only ever been you.’

‘Good.’

‘I can’t imagine how nice it would be to know that I’m the only one who has ever touched you.’

I rolled into him. ‘But you are.’

‘I’m not, Cate.’

‘You’re the first and last and I’ve forgotten all about the in between, so if you think about it, it is true.’

‘Is it really? And if I said that I had slept with another woman, would you just write that off as meaningless?’

‘Yes.’

He punished my untruth with a squeeze of my bottom. ‘Liar.’

We were talking about sex with other people, in our bed, and still he managed to put a smile on my face. Was there no topic that he wouldn’t indulge me over?

‘Say yes to dinner.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Tom’s travelling a long way. I’m sure Lucy has the sex part sorted but we can’t leave it up to her to feed the man. He’ll starve to death.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom chuckled, ‘but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate. This place is like nothing I’ve ever seen.’ He took a deep breath of Mother Nature’s best.

‘You’ve never been to a winery before?’ Nick asked as he stretched his legs on the plush green grass.

We sipped thirty year old merlot on the lawn by the naked blossoms as the moon took its rightful place in the star-speckled night sky. It was cold, but not yet cold enough to venture inside, or perhaps that was due to the home grown wine in our warm bellies.

Lucy was being so lovely, which kind of threw me a bit, but proved to be the reason for my utter relaxation.

Tom was relaxed to as he rested back onto his elbow on the picnic rug where he and Nick sat. ‘I grew up on the beach. Basking in the sun is my ideal place to be, but now, having experienced what feels like another world, I think that maybe I’m more suited to bush and vineyards than I am to sand and surf. So, how long have you two been married?’ Tom asked Nick as he swirled his glass like a natural, as if it wasn’t the fifth glass of wine that he had ever had in his life.

‘Almost two years.’

‘No way! Up until now I could never have imagined wanting to be with anyone for more than two days!’

‘Up until now you hadn’t met Lucy?’ I pointed out because I was a gracious hostess.

‘I just couldn’t see myself settling down. I guess all it takes is the right woman.’

‘That’s right, mate. Once you meet her, the one who gives you reason to breathe, you just know it, don’t you?’

‘Cheers to that. Is that what it was like with you two? You met and it was instant?’

I wondered if Nick would take the lead with an appropriate response, but instead, he sat back with an expression of pure amusement. He held my gaze and I gave him a nod, prompting him to answer. Maybe I wondered what he told people about us. Maybe I wanted to be a fly on the wall and hear for the first time how he would explain our courtship. Because of my delay in answering, and thanks to Nick Matheson’s unwavering dedication to me, he would gladly take the bullet that I was trying to dodge.

‘For us it was instant. The first time we toddled toward each other as one year olds with arms flung open, we knew that we never wanted to be apart. The way she looked at me with a cheeky glint just before throwing sand into my face, and the way I always found myself laughing whenever she was around, made my heart ache. I was instantly addicted to the rush of adoration, or love, if a kid is capable of such a feeling, and I knew that she felt the same.’ Nick laughed, leaning conspiratorially toward Tom. ‘I was pretty cute back then, so how could she not love me too. I guess she just didn’t know it.’

‘Women,’ Tom rolled his eyes, ‘they never know what they want.’

‘I’ll drink to that.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Lucy chimed in, nipping the male superiority complex in the bud. ‘We know precisely what we want. We just prefer to keep it secret from you men as a way of weeding out the slackers and the ones with the steam to keep on rolling. Plus, why would we want to give all of our secrets away? You guys like a bit of mystery don’t you? No point laying everything out within the first five minutes. Where’s the fun in that?’

‘Actually, I’d have to agree with you there, Lucy,’ Nick amended. ‘Cate can be a bit of a closed book at times, and I kind of like it. I like the fact that I don’t know
everything
about her.’

‘Sorry to contradict you, Nicholas, but you know me better than I know myself.’

‘I do know that,’ he hushed his words conspiratorially toward me. ‘I was trying to be an obliging host.’

Tom laughed. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Why?’ I challenged him.

‘How can you ever really know someone, you know, truly know someone? It’s difficult enough to know someone as much as they’ll let you, let alone know them better than they know themselves.’

‘It’s entirely possible.’

‘You can’t be serious, Cate. You think that Nick knows the inner workings of your brain, of your heart, better than you do?’

‘Granted, there will always be things that we don’t know about each other, but the fundamentals are very well understood between us.’