For The Babies' Sakes

Dan began to worry as reality kicked in. It would be unbelievably tough on her. She’d need a lot of support. Now what?

“I can be here with you from now on,” he offered, before he could stop himself.

She froze. “What?”

And then she looked up with such an unhappy face that he found himself saying, “I mean it, Helen. I helped get you into this. I think I ought to be here with you, whenever you need me.”

Shining eyed, she stared at him with such naked trust that it made his heart turn over.

“You—you mean you’re coming back to live here…now?” she breathed.

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, Dan!” she sighed. She seemed to wiggle and stretch with pleasure. Whatever it was, it had a startling effect on his hungry body.

For The Babies’ Sakes

Sara Wood

For Lorna and Karl and their prem babies,

Daniel and Rebecca, who inspired this story and

provided so much personal information. My thanks also

to Heidi for asking them all the right questions!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

WAS her husband having an affair?

Pale with horror, Helen stood motionless in the hall, so shocked that she didn’t notice the mud oozing from her sopping wet suit or the dirty puddle of water that was soaking into the new carpet.

Slowly she closed the front door, her appalled eyes fixed on the very pink, very minimal pair of briefs, resting on the first step of the stairs. She felt too scared to move, in case other intimate items of underwear decorated the rest of the stairs, which disappeared from view in a curving sweep of highly polished oak.

Helen’s heart pounded. The briefs were very feminine, and definitely not hers. It was the sort of underwear worn by well-endowed women on the front of saucy magazines. Somehow it had fetched up in her home. But how?

Grey eyes wide, she stared blankly at the ridiculous fringe that decorated the scrap of silky material. Who could own something so uncomfortable and impractical? And what was it doing there in the first place?

Suspicions crowded in on her. Too many things were adding up. She found herself almost incapable of breathing at all. Each gasp of air only increased the choking, bruised sensation in her chest.

Heck, she felt awful. With a small moan, she squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the nausea and weakness of the flu which had plagued her all morning.

Cocking her head on one side, she listened nervously for the tell-tale sounds of an orgy—or female giggles at the very least. Yet with the builders absent for the next two weeks, there was nothing to be heard except the torrential rain, mercilessly battering away at the porch roof. Was this silence good or bad?

Helen shivered and raised a shaking hand to pluck the saturated clothes away from her body. It wasn’t the flu that was making her feel so wretched, but a sense of dread. It was sending icy fingers crawling over her skin and chilling her to the marrow.

The facts were beginning to frighten her. One. A sexually active female had dropped those briefs. Helen bit her lip, realising why she’d come to that conclusion. She wasn’t sexually active. She and Dan were so exhausted from working so hard that they rarely saw one another, let alone found time for making love. And so she wore practical underwear, cotton knickers not men’s magazine stuff.

Two. She’d been struggling to put on her wellington boots in the car—a Must Have item with all the rain they’d had that June—when she’d seen that the curtains of the master bedroom had been drawn, even though it was the middle of the day.

She’d been so startled by this that she’d jumped out in disbelief, leaving her umbrella on the passenger seat. The torrential rain had beaten down on her unprotected head while she’d stood looking at the window like an idiot, trying to understand what was going on.

Burglars! she’d thought. And then she’d grinned wryly at her wild imagination because surely burglars wouldn’t bother to draw the curtains in one room only while they ransacked the house.

That had led her to fact three. Just one other person had a key to the house. Her husband. Almost in slow motion, she’d turned to look at the barn, where Dan usually parked his car. It was a relief to see it there, rather than a burglars’ getaway van with a burly type in a balaclava riding shotgun.

Then she’d realised that Dan must have come home because he’d caught the same flu bug that had laid her low. That was why she had rushed to the house, recklessly scrambling over the huge lumps of soil that had been churned up by the builders’ trucks and lorries during the renovations.

Her haste to comfort him had made her careless and she’d fallen flat on her face in the mud, cursing the day they’d moved into the country. Nothing new there. But of course she’d hauled herself up, anxious to provide a bit of TLC, dreaming of cuddles by the fire and nose-blowing in unison.

Huh! He probably didn’t have flu at all! Her eyes glowed with resentful anger. Perhaps something else was laying him low! Someone else.

She winced, a rush of emotion bringing tears to her eyes. She loved Dan. Adored everything about him. As usual, she was jumping to dramatic conclusions when there was probably an innocent explanation.

But… Female knickers on the stairs. Her husband home. Curtains drawn. It all seemed horribly damning.

A scouring fear washed through her and she felt her legs begin to shake uncontrollably. With a trembling hand she pushed back her hair, smoothing its muddy strands back till it stopped dripping down her face and blurring her vision. She had to investigate.

Hardly aware she was still wearing her muddy boots, she stumbled over to the foot of the stairs and grabbed blindly at the newel post to prevent herself from sinking to the floor in a boneless heap.

Tears dammed up in her throat, choking her. She felt so shocked and weak that she could hardly collect her thoughts to make sense of what was happening.

But she knew there must be a rational explanation. He wouldn’t betray her, not Dan. She racked her brains desperately.

Perhaps he was ill. And some time before he’d felt really sick and had come home, he’d bought some sexy underwear to spice up their non-existent sex life, and had accidentally dropped something from his shopping foray as he’d staggered up the stairs to bed.

Her brain stalled, her headache intensifying, and she waited for a moment of dizziness to pass. Illness was so debilitating. She had crawled back from London after nearly fainting on the way to work. The trip had been draining: a long walk, two tubes, an hour’s journey on the train and a twenty-minute drive.

Normally she was out all day. Dan would expect her to be furthering her career as the financial executive for the ‘Top People’s Store’ in fashionable Knightsbridge. But she’d come home instead.

And she wished with all her heart that she hadn’t because the doubts were building up, terrifying her with the possibility that Dan could be upstairs in their bedroom with another woman.

Her head lifted in despair and, to her horror, she suddenly noticed something else, a few steps further up. It was a nylon stocking in a very fine denier, its twin casually twined around the banister.

‘Oh, Dan!’ she breathed, tragic-faced, desperately hoping against hope that there was some simple, obvious answer to this. ‘Don’t be there,’ she pleaded. ‘I couldn’t bear it!’

He was everything to her. She had even agreed to live in this awful house, with its wall-to-wall mud outside and an attic full of crazy squirrels who thundered about all night in clogs. She’d even tried to ignore the spiders who leered at her from every conceivable corner of the house and who waggled their spindly legs at her in a horribly menacing way. Anything, she’d thought, if it made him happy.

And they’d been happy, hadn’t they? He’d pledged un-dying love, had carried her over the threshold of the huge, thatched Deep Dene farmhouse after their marriage two years ago and had proudly pointed out its wonderful potential when all she could see was dereliction and isolation.

But for him she’d put up with the dilapidation, the constant presence of the builders, the temperamental boiler and scowling Aga stove.

City-bred, she had longed for decent pavements, traffic-filled tarmac and frequent inhalations of carbon monoxide. But Dan adored Deep Dene with its ancient beams, inglenook fires and five acres of landscaped gardens, so she had curbed her horror.

They had handed the place over to the workmen and had begun their hectic commuting to London from their future Dream Home in the Sussex Downs. Though it was more of a nightmare to her.

Her stomach churned as she stared blankly into space. Perhaps the commuting was the problem. They hardly saw one another nowadays. It was ages since they’d hugged, and weeks and weeks since they’d made love. She got home late and flung something in the microwave. Dan turned up at all hours, sometimes too shattered to speak.

Her face paled. He was too virile, too intensely masculine to be celibate.

That was when men strayed.

‘Dan! Don’t do this to me!’ she whispered, appalled.

The awful feeling in her stomach became unbearable, though whether that was due to her illness or to fear of what she might find, she didn’t know.

Tentatively she lifted a booted foot, vaguely registering that it was thick with clay goo, and put it on the first step of the stairs. As she did so her hair swung forwards in a silky black arc. When she returned it to its proper place behind her ears, she found that perspiration was standing out in beads on her skin. She was sicker than she’d realised.

And then she heard voices. They were faint and distant, drifting down from the master bedroom. But immediately her pathetic theory of Dan’s saucy shopping spree was demolished because she clearly identified his firm, low tones and then the lighter purr from an unknown woman.

Her shocked eyes silvered with pain. ‘No! No!’ she denied futilely under her breath.

There was a strange woman in her house. Upstairs. Without knickers. With her husband. She swallowed hard. It didn’t need a genius to work out the scenario.

Something wrenched inside her, an inner agony that ripped into her heart and sucked away her very breath. She stood there, paralysed with shock, while her head grew dizzy from the manic activity of the horrid little voices, which were whispering in her brain and gleefully suggesting what was going on up there.

She couldn’t bear it. She loved him. Trusted him implicitly. It wasn’t true. There must be some mistake. Had to be.

Perhaps, she thought wildly, there was an alternative to solving the mystery. The coward’s way. She could just turn around. Slip out silently. Get into the car and make a lot of noise pretending to arrive. Then she could make believe that this had never happened.

In a stew of indecision she considered this. Pictured herself being fussed over by Dan and the mysterious woman as they fobbed her off with stories of an impromptu business meeting—or maybe pretended the planning of a surprise birthday party…

And then she imagined the questions screaming inside her, for ever silenced by her fear of facing the truth.

No, she couldn’t live with herself—or Dan—unless she knew whether he had been unfaithful. If he was cheating on her—in her own house, her own bedroom!—she must know.

Of course she had no choice but to go up. She was being a wimp. Helen sucked in a huge, rasping breath and eyed the stairs with dread, wishing she could come up with an innocent explanation. Her lower lip trembled. Nothing came to mind. Unless the woman was an interior designer or a fabric expert, who’d, who’d…drawn the curtains to…

Aware that she was floundering, Helen stuffed a fist to her mouth to stop a cry of despair. What about the briefs? The stockings? Who, or why, would anyone drop those? And…now she was peering around the curve of the stairs she could see that there were other…things further up, things she hastily averted her gaze from in case they might add up to a confirmation of Dan’s infidelity.

Surely he wouldn’t! she thought desperately. He loved her. Correction. Had loved her. She flushed, the heat flooding through her limp body. How long was it since they’d had time to be loving or even affectionate? Too long. They’d been leading separate lives.

Guilt crawled through every cell she possessed. She’d been too busy, too tired… Her eyes narrowed. It took two to tango. He too had pleaded tiredness! Tired from what? a nasty little voice asked and she bit her lip hard.

He’d always crawled in from work exhausted. It was like being married to the Invisible Man. Some days the nearest she got to him in waking hours was ironing his shirts. He wore two a day—sometimes three. After he’d burned two of them with the iron one morning, during his hectic scramble to catch the six-thirty to Victoria, she’d taken over the chore. But now she wondered if she’d merely been smartening him up for his mistress.

A wave of sickness took her by surprise, roaring its way through her. For a moment she remained motionless, waiting till the flush of heat had gone. And then she forced herself to confront Dan even though she dreaded what she’d find.

But her long legs simply refused to take another step. Sinking to her knees, she virtually dragged herself up, avoiding more than a cursory, horrified glance at a pair of discarded shoes which were bright cerise and glove-soft with courtesan heels. Tart’s shoes, she thought with unaccustomed viciousness.

A little further on, she encountered a sickly pink bra and suspender belt with a matching silk T-shirt. Beyond, she could see an abandoned navy suit, the skirt and jacket arranged almost artistically on the top step.

Her throat dried. All hope of an innocent explanation lay dead in the water. She dug her teeth into her lip till she felt the pain. Somehow she kept going, each step a mountain to climb as it brought her closer to the terrifying truth. She’d always been determined. And never more so than now.

Somewhere in the background she was aware that Dan and the woman were still talking but she couldn’t hear them properly because the blood was roaring so loudly in her ears. They could have been murmuring sweet nothings or discussing curtains to match the pink knickers for all she knew.

Her stomach plummeted like a lift. I love you, Dan! I love you! she screamed silently to herself. Don’t do this to me!

And she prayed for this to be a bad dream, a hallucination brought on by flu, that she’d wake up and later she’d tell Dan and they’d laugh and he’d sweep her into his arms and say that he’d never look at another woman because he loved her so much and he hadn’t minded not having sex or decent suppers and that he’d neglected her shamefully…

Oh, God. She’d arrived. The top of the stairs. Still on her hands and knees, she found to her dismay that she was weeping and gasping uncontrollably.

And that she was staring straight at a naked pair of female legs.

CHAPTER TWO

THEY were very shapely, she noted hazily. With scarlet toenails. Helen’s world spun around on its axis. She daredn’t look any higher. She wasn’t ready to be confronted by the full horror of her husband’s nude paramour.

‘Good grief! Helen!’ exclaimed the owner of the legs. ‘What have you got on your feet?’

Celine’s laugh seared through her. Celine, Helen thought dumbly, her gaze fixated on the blood-red toes that seemed to be curling possessively into the landing carpet as if claiming ownership of the house as well as her husband.

This was Dan’s PA. His right-hand woman. Angrily she amended that. Include her left hand in that description, too! And both legs, torso, boobs…all of Celine was apparently part of Dan’s domain! And the woman wasn’t even embarrassed!

A sudden fury shot Helen to her feet. Brimming over with outrage, she took in Celine’s triumphant and excited air, the carelessly draped blue towel over a stunning body—her towel, she thought furiously!—and slowly advanced across the wide landing, knowing she must look like a drowned rat from a sewer but far too mad to care that she shed rainwater and muddy clay all over the cream carpet.

‘I’m wearing huge clumping, mucky boots that can do a lot of damage to bare toes!’ she choked as Celine backed fastidiously away. And hoarse with anger and misery, she grated, ‘Now explain your novel outfit, Celine!’

‘Helen!’ came Dan’s horrified tones.

Her head jerked back to the open bedroom door where he stood. She closed her eyes tightly and swayed, her energy spent.

All hard masculine jaw and blazing black eyes, he was naked but for the small towel draped around lean hips, steam rising from his fantastic body, his hair wet and appealingly tousled from the shower. A post-sex shower, she thought, with a sharp intake of breath.

It was true then. He’d been unfaithful. Oh, sweet heaven…

‘You swine!’ she yelled furiously as her world crashed about her ears.

‘Oh, my God!’ Dan groaned.

Wounded beyond belief, she looked into his shadowed eyes and saw embarrassment and sick dismay written clearly for her to see. He was white-lipped, his honeyed skin drawn tautly over his incredible cheekbones. A guilty man if ever there was. Her stomach rolled dizzyingly.

‘Dan!’ was all she could croak in reproach before her voice shattered into tiny pieces of misery.

A spasm of pain jerked at his features.

‘Sweetheart!’

Dark brows drawn together in a frown, he stretched out a conciliatory hand of concern. Helen recoiled with disgust.

‘No! Don’t touch me!’

He flinched, his glittering eyes narrowed in hurt annoyance.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s not what you think—’

‘Isn’t it? Don’t lie to me! Don’t take me for a fool!’ Helen jerked in near hysteria.

He’d even come up with the classic male response. It’s not what you think. But it always was.

‘I’m not lying!’ Grimly he folded his arms over his bare chest and she realised that, despite his defiant stance, he was having trouble with his breathing. She didn’t want to consider why that might be. ‘You’re jumping to conclusions—’

‘You bet I am!’ she wailed. ‘Look at you! Look at her!’ Violently she stabbed an accusing finger at the siren in the blue towel. ‘Wouldn’t you jump to conclusions, too?’

Dan glared ferociously at Celine as if it was all her fault he’d been found out.

‘Celine!’ he growled. ‘I told you—’

‘I don’t believe this! You can’t hold her responsible!’ Helen burst in, appalled that he was trying to wriggle out of this.

‘Why not?’ he flashed. ‘She is!’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dan!’ she stormed. ‘Don’t you have any shame, any sense of responsibility?’

‘Celine—’

‘No!’ she shouted. ‘Stop pretending it’s not your fault at all. It takes two to get to this stage of nudity! I thought better of you. It seems I was mistaken. I can’t believe you can be such a worm as to put the blame on her!’ She put icy fingertips to her hot forehead to stem the ache. ‘How could you do this?’ she cried, smoke-dark eyes awash with misery. ‘If you cared about me you wouldn’t have—’

‘Helen!’ He was frowning at her, his expression shocked.

‘What? What is it?’ she demanded brokenly.

‘You look terrible!’ he stated with cruel candour.

She winced. ‘Thanks a bunch,’ she muttered. ‘That’s all I need, right at this moment.’

Her sullen glance shot to the delectable Celine, who beamed at her and let the towel slip artfully to offer further revelations of her smoothly swelling breasts.

Celine wasn’t red-faced and blotchy from weeping. Her hair hadn’t been flattened by the rain, nor had the ends been sluiced by mud into rat’s tails.

Helen didn’t need Celine’s scathing scrutiny to make her aware of the contrast between them. Instead of being sophisticated and irresistible, Helen thought miserably, she was covered in mud and looking terminally ill. A drowned waif in wellies couldn’t compete with sex on legs.

Just when she needed to look fabulous, she had to impersonate a rugby scrum-half after extra time.

‘Well, you do look rough,’ Dan stated, frowning.

‘I reckon Cleopatra herself wouldn’t look so hot under the circumstances!’ she grumped in resentment. Her head flung up in defiance. ‘When did the Queen of the Nile ever come home to find her husband had ripped the clothes off another woman and flung them any-old-how on the stair carpet?’

‘Ripped what? Just what are you talking about?’ he demanded, a picture of righteous indignation.

‘That. There!’ she cried bitterly, her trembling finger pointing in the direction of the clothing on the stairs.

He dug up a puzzled expression and wore it convincingly, his long legs covering the ground between them in seconds, impatience in every stride.

‘Good grief!’ he said slowly, staring at the discarded items as if he hadn’t seen them before.

It was a brilliant performance. No wonder he’d successfully hidden his philandering from her, she thought waspishly. Stand back Hollywood. Make way for Dan Shaw and his impersonation of an innocent man wrongly accused.

‘Remember now?’ she snapped, glaring up at him. ‘Or were you in such a haze of lust that you never noticed at the time?’

She thought he’d explode with anger. A terrifying rage had taken hold of him, his fury directed at Celine, who put a hand to her mouth in a ‘weren’t we naughty?’ gesture.

‘You stupid woman!’ he growled savagely.

When Celine shrugged and batted her lashes, Helen feared for the woman’s safety. Dan seemed to be visibly swelling with rage, his expression black and thunderous as he sucked in a harsh breath, clearly in preparation for a stream of abuse.

‘Don’t you take it out on her!’ Helen spat, consumed by fury. ‘Look to your own failings! You caused this situation! You—’

‘No!’ he yelled, rounding on Helen. ‘How many times do I have to say it? I know nothing about this!’

Intimidated by six feet two of muscled fury looming over her, she hastily moved back. He was going to deny the undeniable, she thought in astonishment. Be offended. Make out she was doing him an injustice!

‘Really. Were you drugged? Date raped? I can’t believe you’re denying this!’ she muttered.

‘It’s true!’ he protested, but she could see from the widening of his eyes that he was beginning to panic. A nerve was quivering manically in his strong jaw and his nostrils had narrowed with an even sharper intake of breath.

‘Please!’ Helen jerked, her hand pressing her aching forehead again. ‘Save yourself the effort of protesting your innocence. I don’t want lies.’

Icy cold with hopeless despair, she lifted pained eyes to his and she almost wept when she saw his answering pity. She did not want pity, either. She wanted rock-solid fidelity.

‘I’m not lying,’ he repeated more quietly. ‘And I’ll deal with that in a moment. You need sorting out first, Helen. You’re wet through and covered in mud—’