Resisting the urge to drag her feet like a reluctant child, Sophie followed the hostess to the best table in the room. Set in a vaulted alcove overlooking the lake and secluded from other diners by marble pillars and a screen of tropical plants, it was the ideal spot to bill and coo—or engage in outright warfare.
Sophie chose the latter. “What did you do that for?” she demanded crossly as soon as they were alone.
Dominic picked up the menu and perused it at leisure before deigning to inquire, “Do what?”
“You know perfectly well what! Going on about our being engaged, as if it was a fait accompli.”
“But it is, Sophie,” he said flatly, regarding her over the top of the menu. “Make no mistake about that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t really want to marry me. The only reason you even suggested it is because you feel responsible for me and—”
“That’s not why,” he said.
The remark, dropped so coolly in the face of her simmering outrage, threw her into total confusion. “It’s not?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Offended despite herself, Sophie glared at him. “Then what is?”
“The child, of course. I thought we agreed last night that you and I—what we want, what we had planned—aren’t what matter here,” he said, his voice chill with reproof. “I am marrying you to give our child a name.”
“It will have a name,” she said. “Mine.”
“And a few others, too, if you have your way, including ‘bastard’.”
“Dominic, people don’t think like that anymore. In this day and age, it doesn’t make any difference if a child has only one parent.”
He ignored her. Or at least, he ignored her for a moment and turned his attention to the waiter discreetly hovering beyond the pillars. Only after he’d ordered a scotch for himself and a Perrier with lime for her did he resume the conversation.
“A child never has only one parent,” he pronounced, leaning back in his chair and pinning her in his sharp, intelligent gaze, “although some unfortunate children might never know more than one. Mine, however, will not be among that number.”
“I wasn’t suggesting cutting you out of our baby’s life,” Sophie exclaimed, wondering why on earth she was arguing the point with him when, logic and wisdom notwithstanding, part of her yearned simply to give in. It had always been like that where he was concerned: balancing precariously on the knife-edge of emotion, with pulsing attraction ready to engulf her on one side, and on the other its antidote, hostility.
Even at his most imperious, he was still attractive, and she wished he’d found something in his undoubtedly extensive wardrobe other than the tailored camel-hair jacket and ivory shirt that set off his tanned skin and dark hair to such advantage.
She sighed, last night’s inner war breaking out anew and raging as fiercely as ever without either side showing signs of gaining the upper hand. “We don’t have to get married for you to play a part in his or her upbringing,” she said, clinging to reason despite the insidious little voice within trying to sabotage her efforts.
Dominic continued to regard her impassively. At length, he said, “All right. We won’t.”
The most dreadful, contrary disappointment welled up and struck her solidly in the solar plexus. “We won’t?” she echoed.
He shook his head and smiled with suspect affability. “No. Since you find the idea so offensive, I’m perfectly willing to bring up the child by myself.”
“Without me?” Outrage combined with astonishment to send her voice soaring.
“Of course not. To quote you, I’m not suggesting cutting you out of our baby’s life, but we don’t have to be married for you to play a part in his or her upbringing.”
“But it’s my baby! I’m its mother!”
“It’s my baby, too,” he countered with irrefutable logic. “I’m its father.”
“What are you hinting at, Dominic?”
“Hinting?” He laughed scornfully. “I’m not hinting, Sophie. I’m telling you that I’ll assume full custody of our child and accord you generous visitation rights.”
She hadn’t expected he’d make things easy for her but never in her wildest imaginings had she anticipated this! “A man alone bringing up a baby?” she scoffed, sounding a lot more certain than she really felt. “It’ll never happen!”
“You’re wrong.” He spoke calmly and with utter, inflexible finality. “It’s a not uncommon arrangement these days. As you’ve pointed out, we’re living in the nineties. Single fathers are finally receiving their due and being acknowledged as having the same rights as single mothers to the full pleasures of parenthood. They no longer have to assume the role of powerless spectators in the raising of their children.”
“You’ll never persuade the courts to see things that way. You won’t be able to coerce a judge the way you’re trying to pressure me.”
“I won’t have to. I’ll simply provide an excellent home, hire a nanny of unimpeachable reputation and a housekeeper and, if necessary, the best possible legal representation to be had—none of which you can afford to do. I’m sure, given all that, that a judge would be quite happy to award me custody.”
“This isn’t about money, Dominic!” she whispered furiously. “You can’t buy a child.”
“Of course you can, Sophie,” he purred with a shameful lack of guilt. “Anything can be bought for a price, including a judge, provided a person has enough money—and I do.”
“You’re bluffing.”
He leaned forward as though what he had to impart next was of the utmost confidentiality. “You don’t know me very well. If you did, you’d recognize that I’m very single-minded once I decide to go after something. I don’t give up and I don’t back down as more than a few people in this town who’ve tried to cross me can attest. I can count on one hand those who’ve succeeded, Sophie, and still have five fingers left at the end of the exercise.”
He was the most despicable man she’d ever known. Yet although the blood raced through her veins at twice its normal speed, heating her cheeks and sending perspiration prickling down her spine, something cold and fearful lodged in Sophie’s heart. “I will never give up my baby.”
“Then you’ll have to marry me because those are the only two choices you have.”
It was what some aberrant streak in her had wanted all along, to be left with no alternative but to marry him. That way she wouldn’t have to deal with all the uncertainties that nagged at her. Instead, she could consign herself to destiny in the shape of Dominic Winter. “Go with the flow”, as Elaine was fond of saying. And bend all her energies to creating something wonderful out of something improbable, love and happiness out of carelessness and inconvenience.
But not this way. Not because he was blackmailing or intimidating her.
Suddenly, she hated him. Hated his imperturbable confidence, his certainty that he would win no matter what obstacles she threw in his path. Hated his smoldering sex appeal, the graceful fingers curled so casually around his glass, the long, dark lashes drawn down to cover the expression in his eyes. The empty, beautiful smile on his cruel, beautiful mouth.
“Then I will marry you, and I will make your life a living hell,” she promised rashly, tears trembling in her voice.
He stretched out both his hands and pried apart her clenched fists, stroking each finger with a tenderness that, at any previous time in their association, would have reduced her to putty. But not now. Never again, after today.
“Will you?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” she said, wrenching her fingers free. “I will. I will, Dominic.”
He raised his lashes and bathed her in the cool green depths of his gaze. “No, you won’t, my darling. Because that will not be a healthy environment for our child and you will want the very best for him.”
“Her,” she said mutinously. She didn’t want a son. Sons grew up into power-hungry men with no heart.
“Her,” he
conceded, waxing magnanimous. “So, are there any more objections, or are we once again agreed that marriage is the best resolution of our situation?”
“What if I try hard to make it work and despite that you’re dreadfully unhappy with me?” she said, snatching to find straws and finding them pathetically thin on the ground.
His laughter rang out, a rich blend of amusement and exasperation. “Don’t you know that if you go looking for trouble, you’re certain to find it?”
“But we’re not in love,” she said, finally finding the courage to bare what to her was the fatal flaw in their arrangement.
He sobered. “No, we’re not. And as I pointed out last night, that improves our chances of making a success of things. When you have few expectations, you’re less likely to be disappointed.”
Oh, she really did hate him! At this rate, she’d probably murder him before the ink was dry on the marriage license!
She cast about for something with which to puncture his self-confidence, to make him question, just a little, his invincibility. “Is this the way you went about things with Barbara, railroading her into a marriage she didn’t want? Is that why she felt she had to get away from you?” she asked flippantly. And immediately regretted having done so.
His face wiped itself clean of all expression. Only his eyes glowed with a light that was almost feral. “My relationship with Barbara is none of your business and I have no intention of discussing it or her with you.”
The pain Sophie had sought to inflict turned itself on her with brutal force. How foolish of her to have thought she could hurt him! There was nothing she could do that would matter to him, neither love him nor hate him, because he didn’t care. He was too numb to feel anything she leveled his way.
Everything sweet he had to give to a woman, he’d given to Barbara. All that he had left for Sophie was his bitterness at having lost the real love of his life.
If she were truly vindictive, she would increase his misery a thousandfold. She would tell him how his fiancée had betrayed him during her fling on St. Julian. She would reduce him to the same despair that he’d invoked in her.
But she could never hurt him like that no matter how richly he deserved it. Because, of course, she could never really hate him no matter how much she wished she could.
CHAPTER FIVE
HE HAD to know he’d won. Even a fool could have interpreted the body language so clearly trumpeted by the slump in her spine, the trembling in her hands, the way she bent her head so that her hair fell forward to hide the distress on her face. And whatever else he might be, Dominic was no fool.
“You’ll feel better when you’ve eaten,” he announced blandly, nudging the menu toward her.
She would be sick all over the table if she took so much as a mouthful of food. And it would serve him right! “I’m not hungry.”
“Well, I didn’t say you were, Sophie,” he replied, all sunny equanimity now that he’d wrung surrender out of her. “I said—”
“I heard what you said! Every last, extorting word!”
“Extorting?” Laughter untouched by anything but genuine entertainment came weaving across the table to filter its way through the strands of her hair.
“Enjoy your amusement, Dominic,” she snapped, staring at the carpet and refusing to be coaxed into forgiving him. “It won’t last long.”
“Ahem,” the waiter said, and Sophie saw his wellpolished black shoes come to a halt beside her.
“My fiancée will have the cream of asparagus soup, followed by a small portion of sole,” Dominic decreed, laughter still shimmering in his voice, “but I’ll settle for something a bit more fortifying. Bring me a spinach salad and the oyster stew.”
When it was placed in front of her, Sophie wanted to throw the soup all over him. It would have afforded her delicious pleasure to watch the rich green cream drooling down his expensive camel-hair jacket. But the aroma of delicate herbs and fresh asparagus was too tempting and she wished she’d not told him she wasn’t hungry. Doing her best to pretend he wasn’t there, she spooned a little of the soup into her mouth.
“How is it?” he asked.
She touched her napkin to her lips. “Excellent, thank you.”
“Good. You need to look after yourself.”
One word about my eating for two, she thought savagely, and he really will be wearing this! “I’m not in the habit of doing otherwise.”
“Have you been bothered by morning sickness?”
“A little, when I first get out of bed, but it doesn’t last long.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“No, Dominic,” she said, staring at her soup because anything was preferable to looking at him in his present solicitous mood. “I just told you, I’m feeling very well.”
“Nevertheless, pregnant women shouldn’t take any chances. I know a very good obstetrician—”
“So do I,” she said shortly.
“Then make an appointment, Sophie, and let me know the date and time.”
“Whatever for?”
“Because I intend to go with you for the first visit.”
Her spoon fell into her soup with a decided clatter. “Absolutely not!” she said flatly, abandoning her study of the tabletop and favoring him with a glare. “If you think I’m about to have you...let you...”
“What?” He raised quizzical brows.
Witness me flat on my back, with my ankles hoisted into stirrups and heaven only knows how much of me on display...! Her face flamed, giving her away.
Of course, he noticed. He noticed everything he wasn’t supposed to see, from pregnancy tests to the precise number of seconds he’d been kept waiting for his blasted lunch.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Sophie, I’m not suggesting I accompany you into the examining room!” he snorted. “I’m no voyeur. If I’m going to see you naked, I’d just as soon do so in private. All I want is to talk to the doctor and find out what I can do to make the pregnancy as pleasant as possible for you.”
Just when she’d decided he lacked a single redeeming quality, he came out with something that left her feeling smutty-minded and immature. Grudgingly, she muttered, “Well... thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “Now can we call a truce and concentrate on enjoying this excellent lunch?”
Somehow she managed, resorting to monosyllabic answers to his attempts at general conversation. But there was one subject she felt obliged to discuss more thoroughly before they went their separate ways for the afternoon.
“About our having dinner this evening with my parents,” she said. “You might as well be prepared for the fact that you won’t bamboozle my father as easily as you did my mother. She’s been itching to be mother of the bride ever since my brother got married and all she got to do was cry at the ceremony. My father’s a different proposition altogether. He’s likely to ask some very awkward questions.”
“I’ll be happy to answer them,” Dominic said calmly.
“No doubt. The point is, I’m not sure how much we should tell them—about the baby, that is.”
“I’m not afraid to come out with the truth, if that’s what’s worrying you. On the other hand, our reasons aren’t anyone else’s business but our own, so if you’d rather your parents didn’t know about the pregnancy, that’s how we’ll handle it.”
“I hate deceiving them but in this case I think it might be best if we don’t share everything with them, not yet at least. I’m afraid they’ll jump to all the right conclusions if we do, and that would worry them terribly.”
“What conclusions are you referring to, Sophie?”
“The fact that we barely know each other and aren’t the least bit in love.”
He smiled wryly. “I see. Then we’ll keep quiet and put on an act that will convince them otherwise.”
“What about your parents?”
“Parent,” he corrected her. “And he isn’t interested in my doings.”
Curiosity begged to be sa
tisfied but it was clear from the way that mask of privacy suddenly descended over Dominic’s features that the subject of his family, like that of Barbara, was closed.
“If I don’t know anything about you,” Sophie ventured, “how am I ever going to convince anyone that I want to marry you? It isn’t normal for people not to talk about their families. For instance, have I mentioned that I’m a twin, or that my brother is seventeen minutes older than I am and presently living with his wife in England, completing a research fellowship in Roman history?”
“Good God!” Dominic exclaimed, for the first time looking faintly rattled. “Does that mean you might give birth to twins, as well?”
“Not necessarily. At least, I don’t think so. But that’s not the point.”
He shot back his cuff and checked the time on his watch. “You’re quite right, it’s not,” he agreed, scribbling his signature on the bill and pocketing his credit card. “Unfortunately, I can’t take the time to exchange personal histories right now. I have a meeting with the land development office at city hall, so I’m afraid the sordid story of my life will have to wait.”
She barely had the chance to collect her purse and gloves before he was ushering her out of the dining room and into the foyer. He retrieved her cape and sent the parking valet scurrying for their cars.
“Where shall we meet tonight?” she asked as he hustled her toward the revolving doors.
“We won’t,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty. That should give us enough time, shouldn’t it?”
To get to her parents’ home by seven, perhaps, but not to fill in all the biographical blanks. She grabbed at his sleeve in an attempt to slow him down. “Dominic, I think we need a bit longer than that. Can you make it half past five instead, so that we can talk about...well, things we need to learn about each other?”
Impatiently, he swung back to face her. “No. I hear what you’re saying, and once again I admit you’re right, but it’s something that will have to wait.”
“I see.” She blew out a sigh. “Well, I can’t very well force you to tell me things you don’t want me to know. But sooner or later, you’re going to have to make a few concessions, or this marriage we’re contemplating really will be pure hell whether you like it or not. You can’t expect me to be the one who always backs down. I’m not cut out to be any man’s doormat.”
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