Page 31 of The In-Laws

Ross covered his face and nodded.

‘Who? When … What do you mean she said she was protected?’

Ross uncovered his face. He was pale and sweating. ‘I had a stupid little thing. It meant nothing.’

‘A thing? Can you please define a thing.’

‘A brief fling, it was barely even a –’

‘A fling? How long has this been going on?’

‘A few … like, a short while.’

‘How short? Days? Weeks? Months?’ Amanda’s fear and confusion were now morphing into rage.

‘Over a few months, but only a few times.’

So this wasn’t a one-night stand. It wasn’t a drunken night that he barely remembered. This was an actual affair. Amanda breathed deep against the nausea she could feel rising in her. ‘Who is she?’

‘You don’t know her.’

‘What is her name, Ross?’ she hissed.

‘Ruby Rose.’

‘Is that a joke? Is she a hooker?’

‘No, she’s an author. I think it’s her pen name.’

‘You have been having an affair with one of your firm’s authors?’

He nodded.

‘Why are you suddenly telling me all this? What’s happened? Guilt? Remorse? Or has someone found out?’

Ross shook his head. ‘No one knows, but, she … she’s pregnant.’

Amanda recoiled. This must be what it felt like to be shot. It was as if a bullet had just ripped through her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Her mouth hung open but no words came out.

‘I’m so sorry.’ Ross began to cry.

She’d only ever seen him cry once, after the miscarriage. Ross was a rock. He’d told her when they’d first met that he had been self-sufficient and self-reliant for so long that he hadn’t cried since that first week in boarding school. Tears were pointless in the face of facts, he’d said.

Well, he had just revealed some pretty shocking facts and he was crying now. Amanda’s shock quickly turnedinto anger. She felt red-hot fury. Her husband had just come through the kitchen door and annihilated her life.

Okay, breathe. Think. Amanda needed to fix this. Some young slut was not going to destroy everything she had worked so hard for. She hardened her voice, and her heart.

‘Book her in for an abortion.’

‘She’s refusing to do that. She wants the baby.’

‘That’s not possible. You have to make her have an abortion.’

Ross threw his hands in the air. ‘Amanda, I promise you I have tried everything to get her to do that. She will not agree to it.’

‘Why in the world would you have unprotected sex with some stupid bloody author?’

‘I was very drunk … it … she said …’

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