Flawed (5 page)

But she also expected that he'd shoulder his responsibilities, not because she needed him to and not because she'd ask him
to but because what he lacked in grace he made up for in honour. He cared about doing the right thing, and not letting people down. It was almost the only thing he had in common with Daniel. Jack Deacon was a good man. He just wasn't a very nice one.

She expected to have to repeat her news, maybe a couple of times, before she got any reaction at all. Or else that he'd respond angrily, before he had time to think, and be forever haunted by how badly he'd handled this first encounter with his child.

What she didn't expect was that his body would react to her news quicker than his mind, as if somewhere deep in his genes he'd been waiting for it all his life and the details of how and why and what next were exactly that – details. His eyes filled with wonder and then tears.

‘Jack?’ murmured Brodie, amazed and touched.

He didn't even pretend to have a smut in his eye. His voice was hoarse. ‘You're not joking?’

‘Of course I'm not. You think it's something…?’ She stopped herself from snapping at him. ‘Look,’ she said quietly, T think you need some time to take this in. Why don't we talk again later? Tonight, or tomorrow if you like?’

But Deacon shook his head roughly. ‘Just…stay where you are. You say that, and then try to throw me out? I don't think so.’ His breathing was unsteady, as if he'd been running.

Brodie spread an accepting hand. ‘I'm not trying to get rid of you, Jack, I just don't want to rush you. I know I've sprung this on you. I couldn't think of a way of telling you that
didn't
seem like springing it.’

‘How long…’ It caught in his throat so he had to try again. ‘How long have you known?’

‘Six weeks.’

‘And how long has it been on the way?’

‘About three and a half months.’

She saw him doing the math. Three and a half months ago they were already having problems, but neither of them had been ready to call it a day. Three and a half months ago…

Deacon's eyes flashed suddenly wide. ‘I suppose you're sure it's mine?’

All Brodie's instincts were to slap him. Inside her shoes her very toes clenched with the effort to remember that what she'd known for weeks he'd learnt in the last couple of minutes. Of course he was off-balance. And he wasn't diplomatic even when he hadn't just had his world turned upside down. And, in fact, he was entitled to ask.

‘Yes, I am,’ she said levelly. ‘We can get a blood-test to confirm it once the baby's born, but barring delayed implantation like you get in badgers’ – she had
no
idea how she knew that: from Daniel, probably, he was a mine of useless information – ‘it's yours. Biologically,’ she added, because she didn't want him to feel she was dumping a problem on him. ‘If you want, that can be the extent of your involvement. We don't need to put your name on the birth certificate.’

His eyes were hot. ‘I don't know how you have the nerve to say that to me.’

Patience was never Brodie's strong suit and she felt it stretching, like a rubber-band just before it pings in your face. ‘Jack, I'm not trying to upset you. In fact, I'm trying quite
hard
not
to upset you. If you insist on being upset anyway I shall stop trying.’

Struggling to control his feelings, for a moment he shut his eyes. ‘I'm sorry if I'm not doing this very well. I've never been in this position before – I'm making it up as I go along. I'm not upset. I'm – gob-smacked. You've changed my world with a couple of sentences. I don't know what you expect of me. I came here thinking we were going to talk about who keeps which CDs, and I find you've changed my life forever. How do I feel about that? Stunned. I'm sorry if that isn't what you were expecting.’

‘OK,’ said Brodie sharply, ‘two things. First, I don't expect anything from you. I've already said that, but I'll say it again as often as it takes for you to believe it. I can imagine this has come as a shock. Now
you
imagine how I felt.

‘Because secondly, this isn't something
I
did. I didn't change your life a fraction as much as you changed mine. Neither of us wanted this, and both of us thought we'd guarded against it, but the reality is that it happened anyway, and you have a choice about what you do next but I really don't. With or without you, I'll be dealing with the consequences for the next twenty years. So don't tell me I've turned your world upside down. It wasn't a case of immaculate conception, and I sure as hell didn't rape you!’

Deacon sucked in a ragged breath as if it had been a while since he'd thought to. By degrees, hand over hand up a greasy pole, he was catching up with developments. The possibility of intelligent thought and rational decision-making drifted nearer. Finally he met Brodie's gaze and held it steady. ‘Tell me,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Tell me how you feel.’

And she nodded slowly, and flicked him a brittle smile. ‘Gob-smacked,’ she admitted. ‘And worried sick. And kind of happy.’

When Daniel smiled it was like sunrise flooding a valley. When Deacon did, it was more like melt-water pouring off a glacier. He was megalithic in construct and craggy of mien, and there was a touch of the mountain in everything he did. ‘I'm glad. Not so much about the worried sick bit.’

Brodie grinned. She'd been dreading this. Time and again she'd got to the point of calling him and put the phone down as if it had grown hot in her hand. In the event it hadn't gone badly. They hadn't ended up shouting at one another. They hadn't sunk to recriminations. ‘Less worried now than I was an hour ago.’

‘Why did you wait so long? Before telling me?’

She shrugged. ‘A couple of reasons. Not every pregnancy goes to term. If this one hadn't there'd have been nothing to gain by telling anyone, even you. I'm thirty-three now, and you tend to hit more problems as you get older. And then, it didn't get the best start in life. I don't know what effect veterinary tranquilliser is likely to have on an embryo, but I can't believe it's good for it.’

It wasn't that he'd forgotten, more that he'd thought she'd got away with it. She'd cornered a manufacturer of designer drugs and he'd tried to kill her. But he'd failed. The chemicals had cleared her system and Deacon had thought that was the end of the matter. Now he realised he should have been more concerned. Brodie's fondness for meddling in his job had almost cost her her life. It could still cost her the baby.

‘Have you? Hit problems?’

‘Not so far. A bit of morning sickness, nothing dramatic. I feel fine. And, three months in, the odds improve. I thought it was time to let you in on the secret.’

‘Do you know what it is yet?’

Brodie blinked. ‘I think it's a baby.’

Deacon breathed heavily at her. ‘Boy or girl?’

‘Don't know. Do you mind?’

He shook his head decisively. ‘Not as long as it's healthy.’

Brodie laughed aloud. ‘People always say that. But I want to be there when the midwife hands you a little bundle of joy and says, “We don't know what sex it is but by God it's healthy!”’

Deacon didn't think that was funny. But then, this whole business was new to him. Brodie had a child already: Deacon, as far as he knew, hadn't. Had never wanted one; had never understood how you were meant to fit one in with everything else that needed doing. But a couple of sentences, and all at once finding time to wash the car and getting a bit of sleep in what his job left of the night were the last things on his mind. You make room in your life for what you want. The CPU in Deacon's brain was defragmenting in order to make space on the hard disk for a
baby.exe
file.

He realised that Brodie would have done a lot of thinking in the last six weeks, and almost certainly had an answer to any question he might ask. But he wanted to make sure. ‘Have you thought how you're going to manage? What you're going to need? I don't need to say, do I, that any problems that money will solve, I'll take care of.’

She touched his hand, the briefest butterfly kiss that left his skin tingling. ‘Thanks, Jack. That's nice to know.’

‘What about this place?’ He looked round him critically. ‘Can you keep it going
and
look after a baby?’

‘Now there,’ she said, ‘I was lucky. I've taken on staff. Daniel's going to come and work for me – keep things ticking over until I'm ready to come back. It was the most amazing thing. He came to me for a job before he even knew I was pregnant.’

Deacon went on watching her steadily. But if she'd been paying attention, had not still been enjoying the sense of relief that came with getting this said, Brodie would have heard the creak that was the melt-water turning back to ice. ‘Before he knew.’

Brodie nodded cheerfully. ‘Coincidence or what?’

‘So Daniel knows you're pregnant.’

Again she nodded. By now, though, her brows were gathering in a perplexed little frown.

‘You told Daniel Hood that you're carrying my baby before you told me?’

Perhaps that had been less than tactful. But it was too late to deny it, even if Brodie had felt the need. ‘He asked me for a job. It was a God-send – 1 jumped at it, and I told him why.’

‘And now you're telling me.’

She wasn't going to apologise. ‘Don't be like that. I had to explain the situation. I wasn't going to lie to him.’

‘Of course not,’ said Deacon, with a tiny growl like a cat who's been stroked long enough. ‘He's your friend.’

‘That's right, he is.’

‘And I'm your baby's father!’

Brodie felt her own hackles rising now. ‘Yes, but you're not my husband. You're not my partner any more. You're my ex.
You have rights in relation to the baby: you have none in relation to me. That's the reality, Jack, get used to it. When I was expecting Paddy, John and I talked endlessly about what we should do and agreed things down to the tiniest detail. This is different. I'm a single woman. I'll keep you informed, I'll listen to your opinions, but I'll make my own decisions. When to inform my closest friends of my pregnancy is one of them. I don't need your permission.’

‘And this,’ said Deacon softly, ‘is
why
we're ex-partners. Because of how you set your priorities. You want it all, don't you, Brodie? You want the relationship, but you also want the freedom of being single. You want to make all the decisions. And one of them – one of the big ones, the ones that got in the way of us being a success – was that you were never prepared to forsake all others and cleave only unto me. Not for as long as we both shall live – not for a few years – not at all.’

Anger brought the blood to her cheeks. She might have given him reason once, but she'd thought – and he'd said -they'd got beyond the brief madness of her infidelity. ‘That's not fair, Jack. I'm sorry about what happened with Eric Chandos, but I'm not going to spend the rest of my life saying so. I wouldn't have done if we'd stayed together – I'm damned if I'm going to grovel for forgiveness now!’

‘I wasn't talking about Chandos,’ growled Deacon. ‘It wasn't him who split us up. I was talking about Daniel.’

Outrage and genuine astonishment clashed in her voice like cymbals. ‘Daniel didn't split us up!’

‘Yes, Brodie,’ Deacon retorted forcefully, ‘he did. I don't think he meant to, but that's what happened. He took things out of our relationship that it needed to survive. But I don't
blame Daniel. He didn't steal those things, he was given them. You gave him parts of yourself that you owed to me. I knew from the start that you weren't a free agent. I knew you had a child who would always come first. Of course Paddy has first claim: on your time, on your love. But I expected to be next in line. I wasn't prepared to come third.’

‘I am not in love with Daniel Hood!’ shouted Brodie, furious with exasperation. ‘I never was, I'm not now, I'm never going to be. He's my best friend. I care about him, and he cares about me. None of which is any threat to what you and I had. If we couldn't make a go of it, you need to look elsewhere for the reason. Keep blaming Daniel for everything that goes wrong with your life if you must, but it isn't just me who's starting to find that pretty pathetic!’

Men in positions of power – and being senior detective in even a small town qualifies – need families. They need people around them who aren't intimidated by their status, who'll tell them when they're being stupid or paranoid or are just plain wrong. Without that reality check they start to feel self-important, cocooned from the rough-and-tumble of everyday argument, invulnerable to the forces that moderate other people's actions. It's a dangerously short step from being master under God to thinking you're God.

Before he knew Brodie, Deacon had never had that. There were arguments enough in his short marriage but it was easier to walk away than to resolve them. They finally stopped the arguments by not giving a toss, and the marriage ended soon afterwards.

There were no children, and Deacon had no close friends, so until he met Brodie he had a simple rule-of-thumb for
dealing with the world. Criminals, suspects and police officers of lower rank he shouted at; witnesses he listened to with frank incredulity; and the same for police officers of higher rank except that he tried to hide the incredulity. The system served well enough but left him almost totally ignorant of the language of personal intercourse. He spoke a kind of pidgin version, and never got enough practice to improve his accent.

He'd been called all sorts of names in the course of his career, many of them unprintable, but before Brodie no one had looked at his six-foot frame, his traffic-stopping shoulders and his riot-quelling fists, and come up with the word Pathetic.

Not that Brodie was a shining example of how to run a mature relationship. She was selfish. She admitted as much quite freely, even proudly. She hadn't always been. She'd been most men's idea of the perfect wife: attractive, attentive, admiring, clever but not too clever, an efficient housekeeper and devoted mother. She'd
worked
at being a good wife. She'd thought she had a happy marriage.

But when John Farrell fell, inexplicably but hard, for a pleasant, slightly plump librarian, the rule-book went on the fire. What emerged from the ashes was Brodie Farrell as she was today – still a devoted mother but also a sharp businesswoman, a hard negotiator, a clear-eyed pragmatist, a bit of a cynic. Someone who was quick to identify what she wanted and prepared to tread on toes to get it.