“It never occurred to me that you were. On the other hand, if you hadn’t been so bloody-minded about trying to wriggle out of marrying me, we could have spent the past hour discussing the very things you’re harping on about. Now I really have to get a move on. Have a nice afternoon.”
Talk about being summarily dismissed! Resentfully, Sophie watched his long-legged stride carry him outside and into the black Jaguar, and decided that they were in for a very rough ride indeed if this was how he intended to approach their marriage.
Her mother had gone to considerable trouble to make the evening festive. She’d put champagne on ice, and candles and bowls of flowers were everywhere in the apartment: tulips and freesia on the living room coffee table, roses in the dining alcove, and even a little crystal vase of Devon violets in the powder room.
Her father, although warm enough in his greeting, seemed a little more reserved in his pleasure. “So this is the man who’s swept my daughter off her feet,” he remarked, sizing Dominic up. “Well, although I must congratulate you on your good taste, I admit I’m a bit bowled over. It strikes me you’ve arrived at this decision rather suddenly.”
The beginnings of a blush warmed Sophie’s cheeks. Aware of her father’s glance swinging toward her, she busied herself helping her mother pass around slender flutes of champagne.
“I think I took Sophie by surprise, too,” Dominic agreed, neatly evading any sort of explanation for the unexpectedness of his proposal. “But when the time is right, there’s not much point in postponing, is there?”
“As long as you’re both sure you know what you’re doing, I suppose not,” her father admitted doubtfully. “Sophie’s old enough to make up her own mind, and it’s not as if there’s any big rush to set a wedding date.”
The flush that Sophie had just about brought under control flared up again. Noticing, Dominic relieved her of the glass she was about to offer him and slid an arm around her shoulders. “Call me an anxious bridegroom if you like, Mr. Casson, but I don’t want to wait a day longer than I have to to make Sophie my wife,” he said, gazing with every appearance of besotted adoration into her eyes.
“I see,” her father said, plainly not seeing at all. “So when’s it going to be, Sophie?”
She would have loved to land Dominic in the thick of things and say, Don’t ask me. I’m only the bride and haven’t been told yet, but all that would have done was worry her parents. “Well,” she hedged, “we... um, we thought some time around...um...”
“The first Saturday in March,” Dominic supplied.
Her mother gasped. “But that’s less than four weeks away!”
Sophie saw the sharpened speculation in her father’s eyes and her cheeks burned. She swallowed twice, knowing full well she looked like a guilty child found with her fingers in the cookie jar.
Dominic noticed and immediately took steps to effect a little damage control. Shielding her with his body, he bent his head and brought his mouth down on hers. It was a very calculated kiss, not too long, not too short, and appropriately enthusiastic.
It might have been tolerable if he’d closed his eyes for the duration, but he didn’t. He kept them wide open and stared at her. She knew because she stared right back. It was her only defense against the disconcerting urge to melt into his embrace and pretend the kiss was for real. With the possible exception of Sophie’s father, no one could have guessed that the prospective bride and groom were anything but panting to exchange their vows and plunge into happily-ever-after.
Her mother burst into tears. “I’m so happy for the two of you,” she sobbed cheerfully.
But her father, still plainly suspicious of the whole endeavor, said, “I thought weddings took a long time to plan. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us while you’re at it?”
Keeping Sophie firmly within the protection of his arm, Dominic shook his head. “Not at this time, sir,” he replied with a firmness that brooked no further interrogation.
“Well,” Doug Casson conceded, backing down, “as long as you’re happy, Sophie.”
“I am,” Sophie muttered, doing her damnedest to look radiant.
Mercifully, her mother produced a notepad and shifted the focus to the practical arrangements of putting together a wedding on such short notice. Over the course of dinner, it was settled that the church ceremony would be followed by a small but elegant wedding breakfast in the Crystal Room at the Royal, followed by a brief honeymoon whose destination had yet to be decided.
“Spring’s a busy time of year in my business,” Dominic explained. “I’m afraid I can’t afford to take off more than a few days.”
For the first time since they’d arrived, Sophie’s father showed some real enthusiasm for the topic under discussion. “I’ve read about your company and understand you run an impressive operation, Dominic. Residential construction, isn’t it?”
Dominic nodded. “With the emphasis on low-density housing. I’m not one of those developers whose first priority is to chop up a piece of land into as many building lots as is legally possible.”
At last a safe subject, Sophie thought gratefully, but her relief faded as quickly as it had arisen when her father remarked, “Well, Sophie only just got back from a holiday in the Caribbean, so I don’t suppose she’ll mind postponing the honeymoon.”
“Oh, let’s not talk about that,” her mother said. “Every time I think of that poor young woman drowning...! Of course, you must know all about that, Dominic. It was in all the papers and—”
Not daring to cast a glance in Dominic’s direction, Sophie braced herself for the worst.
Dear heaven, it was all going to come out, she thought in horror. Her father, whose memory would put an elephant’s to shame, would recall every last detail that was printed or aired about Barbara Wexler’s death. He’d put two and two together and come up with a big, fat four, and this supposed engagement celebration would be exposed for the shabby little deception it really was.
But she had not counted on Dominic, who cut her mother off before she could elaborate further. “Yes, it was tragic,” he said impassively. “Have we covered everything to do with the wedding, do you think?”
“The dress!” Instantly diverted, Anne Casson scribbled frantically on her notepad. “If you’re thinking of white, we’ll have to get going on it immediately, Sophie, although you could probably find something from the sample rack that could be altered to fit if you had to.” She eyed Sophie assessingly. “You’re still a size eight, dear, aren’t you?”
Sophie shot a beseeching glance at Dominic. “She was when we met,” he said, for once seeming to be at a loss for the right answer.
“And when was that?” her father wanted to know.
While Dominic skated over the thin ice of judicious truth, Sophie tried not to choke on her mother’s excellent chicken Marsala. By the time the evening dragged to a close, she was a nervous wreck.
“That,” she groaned, the minute they drove away from her parents’ building, “was a nightmare. I don’t know how I managed to get through it. When the subject of Bar—um, the Caribbean came up, I was horribly afraid they’d connect you with...the whole thing.”
“That was over two months ago,” Dominic said. “People soon forget—at least, most do.”
But not you, Sophie thought bleakly. You’ll never forget.
“It was a bit like tap-dancing through a mine field, though,” he went on. “Lies of omission require some pretty fancy footwork.”
She stared at the dim outline of his profile illuminated in the lights from the dashboard. “Yet you managed very well.”
“That came out sounding like an accusation, Sophie, as if you think I make a career out of withholding the truth from people.”
“Do you?”
“Only when it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Does that mean that you’ll He to me if I persist with questions you don’t want to answer?”
“I’d prefer to be completely straightf
orward with you, but there are some things I’d prefer not to share with you at this time.”
“Like your family history?”
He shifted gear as the car approached a hairpin bend on the lakeshore road. “No. It’s not my favorite subject, but if it’s all that important to you, I’ll tell you what there is to know.”
“It’s that important, Dominic. You’re my baby’s father.”
“Okay.” Steering skillfully through the curve, he shifted again into high gear. “My mother gave birth to me when she was twenty. My father, who was thirty-eight, was her college professor, had a Ph.D. in literature and fancied himself a poet. He believed in love, especially if it was free, but wasn’t big on follow-through. When my mother told him she was pregnant, he suddenly remembered he was married and due for a year’s sabbatical leave. He gave her a thousand dollars to buy an abortion if that’s what she wanted, packed up his wife and personal possessions and was busy spouting iambic pentameters at some campus in Kentucky when I was born six months later in Vancouver.”
He spoke lightly, as if what he had to say was of little consequence, but the set of his jaw and his grip on the steering wheel told Sophie that it was what he left unsaid that counted.
“Did your mother tell your father that she’d decided to go through with the pregnancy?”
“No. He’d already made it plain he wasn’t interested in what she did.”
“How sad.”
“The only sad part,” Dominic said, his words forged from steel, “is that my mother actually loved the jerk and continued to do so for the rest of her life. She died of acute cirrhosis when she was thirty-eight.”
“Oh!” Sophie couldn’t contain a small gasp of dismay as the implication of his disclosure struck home.
Without taking his eyes off the road, he nodded. “That’s right, she was a drunk. A two-bottle-a-day woman by the time her liver gave out.”
Sophie would have liked to touch his arm, to do something that would convey her sympathy. But he had walled himself off so thoroughly that there might as well have been a pane of glass separating her from him. So she said the conventional, hopelessly inadequate thing. “I’m very sorry, Dominic.”
“Don’t be. She was a lost, unhappy woman, abandoned by my father and disowned by her family. She didn’t give a tinker’s damn about her life. It just took her a long time to end it, that’s all.”
“But she had you. Surely that must have brought her some comfort?”
“I’m afraid not. Being saddled with a child and forced to support him by taking on whatever menial job she could find fell a long way short of postgraduate studies in Paris and love in the afternoon with my father.”
“So you’re not close to your grandparents?”
His laughter ricocheted around the interior of the car. “Grandparents?” he inquired mockingly. “Don’t they belong to the same make-believe world as Santa Claus and tooth fairies?”
“But what about your father? Did he never change his mind and decide he wanted to get to know his son after all?”
“My father and I,” Dominic said, referring to his other parent so scathingly that she flinched, “have spent the grand total of forty-five minutes in each other’s company at the end of which time we parted in mutual relief. I went looking for him, convinced I could make him see the error of his having walked out on us, and he made it clear he harbored not a single regret for his decision. I was sixteen at the time, which is the only excuse I can offer for being such a bloody fool, but after, I vowed that no one would ever shove me aside again as if I was of no account. I’d be in control. And damn it, I have been.”
“Do you have any half brothers or sisters?”
“No. Children, the good professor informed me, were a scourge not to be tolerated, and I can quite see how they would have cramped his style. Imagine trying to preserve the image of dashing lover if you have to cut short the big seduction to take your kid to football practice!”
“I cannot imagine anyone turning his back on his only child,” Sophie said softly.
“Good. Then you should have no trouble understanding why I’m not about to stand back and let you raise our son or daughter alone. I intend to be a very immediate presence in my child’s life. And one other thing you can count on, Sophie, is that I’m not cut from the same cloth as my old man. One woman at a time is quite enough for me.”
There was no reason for the little flame of optimism that warmed her at that, but it flared up anyway.
He turned down the lane that led to her house. On the right, a pewter swath of moonlight dappled the surface of Jewel Lake.
“Will you let me come in for a minute?” he asked, drawing the car to a stop at her front door. “There’s one thing we haven’t discussed that needs to be taken care of right away.”
In light of his revelation of past rejections, it seemed unfeeling to refuse. Once inside the house, he stalked uninvited through the main floor, ending up in the kitchen. There he paused for a moment, surveying its cramped dimensions, then pushed aside the curtain covering the window in the door and stared through the darkened panes to the garden outside. Puzzled, she trailed after him.
“How much land do you have here, Sophie?” he asked.
“Just over an acre.”
“With how much lakefront?”
“About a hundred and fifty feet.”
“And you hold clear title?”
“I have a mortgage, as I told you last night.”
“Oh, that!” He snapped his fingers dismissively, as if the matter of thousands of dollars owed to the bank was small potatoes to a man of his means. “No, I’m talking about freehold title. You’re not on leased land, are you?”
“No.”
“Excellent. Given the state of this building...” He thumped the door frame, which set the glass to rattling alarmingly. “Hell, it’s about ready to fall down on its own without any help from me.”
“I’m not sure I’m following you, Dominic.”
He waved an airy hand around the kitchen, embracing its old-fashioned cabinets and temperamental plumbing. “I’m going to knock down your house, Sophie, and build you something better.”
“What if I don’t want my house knocked down?” she said, less because of her attachment to the drafty old thing than because she resented the way he dismissed it.
It seemed to occur to him that he was pushing his luck a little in taking so much for granted. Bathing her in one of those rare and charming smiles normally reserved for other people, he asked, “Wouldn’t you like something more convenient? Something with fewer stairs and higher ceilings?” With both hands, he painted broad, sweeping strokes across an imaginary canvas. “Think of a house with wide hallways and French doors that open onto patios that face the lake. Picture a breakfast nook flooded with morning sunshine, a formal dining room for parties. His-and-her en suite bathrooms with jetted tubs. Nanny’s quarters next to a bright, airy nursery. Hardwood floors and marble countertops, modern appliances and light fixtures. Space to move without bumping into things.”
The dinosaur of a furnace chose that moment to clank into operation.
“And six-zone hot-water heating that neither makes a noise nor fills the air with the accumulated dust of the past fifty years,” Dominic said, swooping in for the kill.
If he thought he could bulldoze her the way he planned to bulldoze her house, he was in for a big surprise. “This house is good enough for me,” she said, knowing it was a lie and that she’d give her eyeteeth for the kind of house he’d described.
“Well, it’s not good enough for my baby—or my wife, come to that,” he informed her. “You’re already concerned about the conclusions your parents will reach about our marriage when they find out you’re pregnant, and I’m not about to add fuel to their speculation by allowing you to remain in a hovel like this.”
He would not allow? “You—you have no right to belittle the way I live,” she spluttered, incensed.
“Don’t I h
ave the right to want to give my child the best I can afford?”
Unaccountably depressed by his reply, she turned away and stroked an affectionate hand over the worn Formica counter. Granted, the house wasn’t a palace, but she’d been happy here and she couldn’t shake the feeling that, all its modern luxuries notwithstanding, the home he planned would be sadly lacking in that one commodity.
“You think money can buy anything you want, Dominic, don’t you? You think, because you’ve got money and I haven’t, that you can just barge into my life and take it over.” She swung back to face him. “Well, I won’t stand for it.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, there’s a line in the marriage ceremony that goes something like ‘with all my worldly goods I thee endow’,” he shot back. “And if there’s one vow I can keep, it’s that.”
He was glaring at her, his eyes shooting green sparks of anger. His beautiful mobile mouth that, even without trying or really meaning to, could turn out kisses sweet enough to soften any woman’s resistance was pressed into a hard, uncompromising line. And suddenly, Sophie knew she wanted more from him than just the promise of his worldly goods. She wanted things that had nothing to do with money, things that he wouldn’t dream of giving to any other woman, that he would save for her alone.
She wanted to see him look at her across a room full of people, his eyes molten with desire—for her. Wanted his fists to uncurl now and close over her shoulders in persuasion. Wanted him to reach out in unadorned hunger and pull her so close that she could feel the proof of his arousal pressing against her, then sweep her into his arms and carry her upstairs to bed.
She had every reason in the world to despise him. He’d shown himself to be cold, bitter, judgmental, not to mention unnaturally controlled in the face of Barbara’s death. Yet he made Sophie’s heart flutter and stall and filled her wicked mind with images of his face hovering over hers, his mouth closing on hers, his body...
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