Page 58 of Where the Wattles Bloom

‘No!’ she half yelled, half groaned. It was bad enough she was vomiting like it was her superpower, she didn’t need a bloody audience. ‘Get out!’ A new wave hit and she just managed to choke out, ‘Go!’, before she deposited more of her stomach contents down the loo.

*

Rowena emerged ten minutes later. She’d tried to do something about her appearance, which could be best described as wrung-out dish mop, but, apart from finger combing her hair into some semblance of a ponytail, cleaning her teeth had been all she’d been able to manage.

Red gave a low whine and a tail thump from his position on the end of her bed, where Lachlan must have sent him because he didn’t move, but he didn’t take his eyes off her either. She joined Lachlan, who was sitting at the table staring at the tests she’d laid there earlier.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said as she eased herself into the chair opposite. ‘I didn’t mean to yell.’

He shrugged dismissively as he looked up from the table. ‘You took three tests?’ He sounded as discombobulated as she felt.

‘Yes.’

The space between his eyebrows furrowed again. ‘Why?’

‘Because they were all positive.’

‘And you … wanted to be certain?’

‘No. Because they had to be wrong. A … faulty batch or something.’

A theory he’d just disproved.

He nodded like her response was perfectly reasonable, even though he was clearly struggling with her logic. ‘So you didn’t at any time think they were all positive because you might be pregnant?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Never.’ No matter how much she’d hoped they were accurate, deep down she just didn’t believe them.

‘And the whole throwing up thing didn’t clue you in?’

‘There’s a vomiting bug going around. I thought …’

Rowena let it dangle because clearly, she hadn’t been thinking very well at all. Surely any woman of her age who’d recently had unprotected sex would at least wonder?

‘But you are pregnant.’

‘Apparently.’

She must have sounded pretty miserable because his next question was unexpected.

‘And … that’s a bad thing?’

Hot tears sprang to her eyes as quickly as her vehement rejection of his question rose in her throat. ‘No.’ The tears spilled over before she could blink them away. ‘I know I assured you it wouldn’t happen and I’m really sorry about that. Truly. If I’d thought for a moment pregnancy was a possibility, I’d have been upfront about it. But, no …’ She dashed away a second wave of tears. ‘It’s not a bad thing.’

‘Then …’ He gave her a very gentle smile. ‘Why are you crying? Or are they happy tears?’

They most certainly weren’t happy tears.

‘Because …’ Rowena sucked in a breath. Even thinking the words was hard enough—having to voice them was a knife to her heart, and they clawed at her throat desperately trying to stay put. ‘I’ve been down this road and it’s not …’

Shutting her eyes, Rowena reached for that calm she and her therapist had worked so hard on achieving.

Oh god. She was going to have to call her therapist.

Rowena opened her eyes, her gaze meeting his. ‘It’s not going to come to anything.’

There. She’d said it. Spoken the quiet bit out loud.

Rowena knew, both through her work and through personal interactions, that a lot of men, confronted by such raw female emotion, might have rushed in with assurances or subject changes to avoid upsetting her any further. Particularly, she was learning, outback men, who were even worse than their city counterparts when it came to emotion.