Operation

by Barbara Bretton

  “You should have left when you had the chance,” she said to him as she sat on the chair. “You’re a foreigner. You shouldn’t have to see this embarrassing American ritual.”

  “Don’t pay her any mind,” said Jo Marie Albright, Wilde & Daughters’ best saleswoman. “Nothing wrong with this ritual.” She winked broadly. “Not if you’re lookin’ for someone to love.”

  “I’m not looking for anyone to love,” Sam proclaimed in a loud, clear voice.

  “Everyone knows that about you, Sammy,” Jo Marie said, shaking her head. “But I still like to think miracles happen.”

  “Looks like you’re out of luck,” Ted Di Mentri said, elbowing Duncan in the ribs. Ted was one of Martie’s old high school pals. “She’s not buyin’ what you’re sellin’.”

  Duncan didn’t say anything, but the deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face spoke volumes.

  “I refuse to feel sorry for you,” Sam said as they urged her to lift her skirt to the knee. “You’re only slightly embarrassed. I, however, am totally humiliated.”

  “Oh, be quiet, Sam,” Martie called out, “and let the man do his job.”

  Duncan’s dark brows drew together in a scowl. “And what would that job be?”

  Ted’s grin was wolfish. “You get to slide that little honey of a garter up this pretty gal’s leg.”

  “C’mere, darlin’,” Sam said, playing for the crowd. “I want to give you a little incentive.”

  Duncan leaned forward. She looped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his ear.

  “Just do it,” she hissed, “and I’ll give you the ten thousand dollars.”

  If this whole miserable experience went on any longer, she would leap headlong into the remains of the wedding cake.

  Duncan felt a fool as he knelt in front of her, dangling the blue garter from his right index finger. Music swelled, the kind of music he’d heard in strip joints and cheap pubs.

  “Go for it!” someone yelled. A burst of wild applause crashed over him.

  She extended her right foot. He encircled her ankle with his left hand and her eyes widened. Beneath the sharp-tongued anger was a vulnerable—and very beautiful—woman. She sat stiffly on the wooden chair, her posture ramrod straight, as if she were waiting for the firing squad to aim their rifles. She didn’t belong there any more than he did. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, only that it was a fact.

  I’m not going to hurt you, lassie.

  He slid the garter over her foot, her arch, her ankle, then snaked it slowly up the curved muscle of her calf. Her legs were long and slim and beautifully shaped. A work of art made flesh and blood. He remembered how those legs had felt, wrapped around his hips, as he—

  “Duncan!” she exclaimed.

  He realized his hand was skating over her knee and up her thigh. “Bloody hell!” he muttered then pulled away as she let her skirt drop.

  The din around them was deafening. He felt foolish, surrounded by these laughing, happy Americans who had no idea who he was or what he was about. He wondered if they knew anything at all about Samantha, the woman who’d grown up in their midst.

  “This is your dance,” the emcee called out. “Everyone, let’s hear it for next year’s happy couple—” He paused, aiming a pointed look in their direction. “Your names?”

  “Sam,” Sam mumbled.

  “Harvey,” Duncan said.

  “Harvey?” Sam started to laugh.

  “Nobody noticed, lassie,” he said as he took her in his arms. “Nobody cares.”

  They took a few tentative twirls around the floor and then everyone else joined them. He couldn’t draw a breath without bumping into another dancer.

  “I thought I—” Samantha stopped and he felt her sway against him. “The heat,” she murmured. “Too crowded…”

  He danced her quickly across the room, past the curious glances and stage whispers, and out onto the terrace.

  “You have to stop doing this,” she said as she breathed deeply of the cool night air. “That’s twice tonight you’ve saved me from making a fool of myself.”

  “Do you feel better now?”

  “Absolutely.” She smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  He turned and started toward the stairs.

  “Duncan!” She grabbed the hem of his jacket. “Where are you going?”

  “Go back to your family, lassie. You were right. I don’t belong here.”

  “Wait!” What’s your problem, Sam? Isn’t this what you wanted? In another minute he’ll be out of your life for good. “I mean, how will you get back to your hotel? Did you rent a car or—”

  “I’ll call for a taxi.”

  “Where are you staying? I’d be happy to—”

  “I’m going home, Samantha. To Glenraven.”

  She felt as if the air had been knocked out of her. “At least let me drive you to the airport. It will take forever to get a cab way out here on a Sunday night Besides, you probably don’t have any idea when the next plane leaves. You might be stuck at the airport for hours and hours. I can’t let you do that” Why can’t you let him do that, Sam? What possible difference can it make to you?

  His survival instinct, honed to a fine point since his divorce, told him to ignore the gleam of tears in her cornflower blue eyes, warned him to leave while he still could. He was a sophisticated man of thirty-seven years. They both knew he would have no trouble making his way to the airport.

  It was time he left.

  She fainted into your arms twice tonight Will you leave her here to drive home alone?

  He wasn’t her husband or her guardian. Where she went and how she managed to get there were no business of his.

  But he remembered the way she’d felt in his arms when she passed out. The languid grace. The extreme vulnerability. Where were her family and friends? Didn’t anyone know she needed help?

  “You’re right,” he said, against his better judgment. “Would you let me make some calls from your house?”

  “Of course,” she said. “And I’ll write out your check while you’re there.”

  Just so they both understood what was important.

  Chapter 6

  Duncan insisted on doing the driving, which to Sam’s way of thinking was one of the more ridiculous things she’d heard all night.

  “That’s absurd,” she said. “You don’t know the first thing about Houston. It will take us two hours to go twenty miles.”

  “I’m a quick study.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” she said. Then a thought occurred to her. “I’m an excellent driver, in case that’s what’s worrying you.” For all she knew, the American prejudice against women drivers might be a Scottish pastime, as well.

  “I don’t doubt that you are.”

  “You think I’m going to faint again, don’t you?”

  “The thought had occurred to me.”

  “I got along just fine for thirty-two years before you showed up, Duncan Stewart. I’m sure I can manage to get myself home in one piece.”

  “I’m driving,” he said, taking the keys from her. “I won’t argue the point any longer.”

  She wasn’t sure if he sounded protective or hostile. Either way, she didn’t like it. He had no right to either emotion, not when it pertained to her.

  She directed him out of the parking lot to the highway. “You’ll get off at the third exit,” she said, “then take the first right.”

  “Bloody hell,” he muttered as he shifted into gear. “I canna get used to driving on the right.”

  “You’d better get used to it in the next five seconds or I’m jumping out of this car no matter what you say.”

  She directed him street by street toward her condo while he concentrated on his driving. Every time a car whizzed by in the opposite lane, he found himself flinching. Didn’t they know they were on the wrong side of the road?

  “You really should have let me drive,” she said. “We’d be there by now.”

  “I’m
enjoying myself,” he lied.

  “I’m not,” she said. “Your driving stinks. Pull over and let me get behind the wheel.”

  Her request only made him more determined to see it through. He was a proud Scotsman, and that meant seeing a job to completion. Forty minutes later, they pulled up in front of her two-story town house.

  She was out of the car in a flash and on her way up the curved walkway by the time he turned off the ignition. He joined her at the front door.

  “I have a security system,” she warned him. “Once I put my key in the lock, we have thirty seconds to get inside so I can deactivate the alarm.”

  “This is a dangerous place?”

  “Every place is dangerous,” she said. “Don’t you know that?”

  He hated the thought of her barricaded behind alarms and wires and high fences. There was no need for that where he came from. He told himself that it was not his business, that this was her life and she was free to live it any way she chose. Still, he found himself shielding her body from view as she inserted the key into the lock.

  Sam wondered why he was standing so close to her. “Could you move a little?” she asked politely. “You’re blocking out the light.” She also wondered why, all things considered, she wasn’t more annoyed with him.

  She turned the key.

  Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…

  She stepped inside.

  Twenty-seven, twenty-six, twenty-five…

  So did Duncan.

  Twenty-four, twenty-three, twenty-two…

  He stood so close to her that she was practically in his arms. She’d have to take him to task about that when she had a moment.

  Twenty-one, twenty, nineteen…

  She had to deactivate the alarm before the entire Houston police department showed up on her doorstep.

  Eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen…

  “There!” She finished pressing in the code and waited for the green light to flash in recognition. “See? It wasn’t so terrible. We weren’t captured by terrorists. You can give me a little breathing room now.”

  He didn’t seem inclined to do it, so she stepped around him and dropped her beaded purse on the Parsons table in the foyer.

  “The telephone is in the kitchen,” she said. “The directory is on the bookshelf near the desk in the corner. I’ll be right back.”

  Duncan watched her disappear up the staircase in a swirl of pink satin and lace. Beautiful and unreachable. He knew the combination well. He also knew to avoid it at all costs. Why was he going along with this charade about the ten thousand dollars? He didn’t want or need her money. If he had the brains he was born with, he would be long gone by the time she came downstairs.

  He saw a formal room to the right of the stairs and a dining room to the left. He followed the narrow hallway to the back of the apartment where it opened up into a large, high-ceilinged kitchen with paddle fans and every modern convenience he could imagine and a few he couldn’t. The directory was where she said it would be, and he flipped quickly to the section marked Taxicab Service and chose a number.

  “I need a ride to the airport,” he said. “As soon as you can get here.”

  “We’ll need your address.”

  He swore, then hung up the phone. He didn’t know the address. He wasn’t even sure he was still in Houston proper, for that matter. He was trapped until she returned and gave him the street number.

  * * *

  SAM CONSIDERED the wisdom of locking herself in her bedroom and waiting for him to leave, but decided that was the coward’s way out. Not that she had anything against being a coward. It was just that the man was so stubborn, he might take a week or two before he took the hint.

  No, the best way to go about this was to be forthright and honest. And if that failed, lie through her teeth.

  She pulled on a pair of jeans and shrugged into a navy blue sweatshirt with frayed sleeves. Quickly she pulled the pins from her elaborate hairdo then dragged her fingers through the mass of waves. Barefoot, she hurried downstairs to see him on his way.

  She fished her checkbook out of her desk drawer then marched into the kitchen. “I’ll write you a check and then—” She stopped when she realized she was the only one in the room. Had she been upstairs long enough for him to call a cab and leave? He wouldn’t do that. Still, he had to be somewhere. She stepped into the hallway and noticed light seeping from under the closed door of the powder room. Mystery solved.

  She decided to make some coffee to fortify him for his trip. A terrible thought occurred to her as she pulled the pot from the cupboard. What had she done with the pregnancy test she’d bought? The last time she’d noticed it, it was on the vanity in the powder room. The same powder room where Duncan Stewart was right that minute.

  A sense of dread filled her but she tried to push it away with a dose of common sense. She wasn’t the kind of woman who left things lying around like that. She was orderly and precise to a fault. No, she must have put it away in the upstairs linen closet, the one with all the other things she’d never use.

  No cause for alarm, she told herself as she turned on the cold water to fill the pot. Unless he started rummaging around for extra towels or something, the odds of him stumbling over the home pregnancy kit were about a million to one.

  She heard the bathroom door open, then the sound of male footsteps approaching. She had the awful feeling that the odds had just lowered dramatically.

  “What is this?” He sounded more like a Scots warrior than ever, and her hands began to shake.

  Sam kept her back to him while she filled the pot. “What’s what?” she asked in what she hoped was a casual tone of voice.

  “Don’t play games, Samantha.”

  “I’m not play—” She stopped mid-word. Who was she kidding? She knew exactly what he meant. She put down the glass pot then turned.

  He stood in the doorway to the kitchen. The pink-and-blue box looked very tiny in his enormous hand.

  “It’s a home pregnancy kit,” she said, drawing her hands down the sides of her jeans. “But you already knew that.”

  “Is it yours?”

  She nodded. “It’s mine.” She hadn’t watched Court TV for nothing. She knew how this worked. Answer only the question posed. If he wanted more information out of her, he was going to have to pry.

  “And?” He took a step closer.

  She would have taken a step backward but that would mean climbing into the kitchen sink. “And nothing,” she said.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  “Take another look at the box, Sherlock.” Her temper was stretched to the breaking point. “It’s unopened.”

  “Do you think you’re pregnant?”

  Her eyes burned with angry tears. “I think that’s none of your business.”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “I don’t particularly care what you think.”

  “Your breasts are bigger,” he said, assessing her with his eyes. “Your face is fuller.”

  She grabbed the bag of chocolate chip cookies on the counter. “Want one?” she asked, ripping open the bag and stuffing a cookie in her mouth. “Terrible for the waistline, but what a way to go.”

  “What is this about?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Certainly nothing that has anything to do with you.”

  “You’ve slept with someone else since we made love?”

  An ugly flush moved up her throat to her face. She maintained her silence. No matter what she said, she was doomed.

  “Answer me,” he said in a tone that would unnerve a lesser woman. “You owe me that much.”

  “I owe you ten thousand dollars for the plane ride,” she said. “Answers will cost you a lot more.”

  “I’m not known for my patience.”

  “That makes two of us,” Sam said. She brushed cookie crumbs from her hands. “Why don’t I write you a check and you can run along.”

  She tried to maneuver past him, but he blocked th
e entrance.

  “Weren’t you supposed to call for a cab?” she asked.

  “When were you planning to tell me about this?”

  “Never,” she snapped. “Is that what you want to hear? I’d hoped I could live my entire life without having this conversation.” Oh, God, her voice was beginning to tremble. She sounded like she was yodeling. “I thought I might have a problem, but I was wrong. Case closed.”

  “You didn’t miss a period?”

  He wasn’t letting her slip past him, physically or emotionally.

  “It was the crash,” she said. “It disrupted my cycle.”

  “The crash was three months ago.”

  “So it’s taking me a while to get back on track.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “No!” Her voice rose in agitation. “That’s all it is.” She refused to allow it to be anything else.

  “You fainted, lassie.” His tone softened and the look in his eyes made her legs go weak. “Your breasts are larger and your belly—”

  Her hands instinctively cupped her belly and she lowered her head to hide her tears.

  “I can’t be pregnant,” she whispered. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

  “At last,” he said. “Something we can agree on.”

  She wanted to smack him but didn’t have the energy.

  “Take the pregnancy test,” he said.

  “This is my problem.” She snatched the box from him. “I’ll take care of it myself.”

  “Don’t push me away, Samantha,” he warned. “I won’t go before this is settled.”

  “I resent your tone of voice,” she said, recovering her equilibrium. “This is my home, and if I tell you to leave, you’re damn well going to leave.”

  He brushed away her words as if she hadn’t said them at all. His eyes never left hers. “Could anyone else be the father?”

  For a brief moment she considered lying to him but found she couldn’t. “No,” she whispered. “No one else.”