Dear heaven, she had the moral fiber of an alley cat in heat! Was this what the hormonal upheaval of pregnancy did for a woman—turn her into a raving nymphomaniac? She blinked and gave herself a mental shake. “I’m not for sale, Dominic.”
Surprisingly, his shoulders slumped. “I never thought you were,” he said tiredly, “and if that’s the impression I’ve given you then I’m sorry.”
So am I, she thought, because the real problem here is that you and I have never been able to communicate except for one memorable time when, although we shared our bodies, we never bared our hearts or souls to each other. “What I’ve already got is good enough for me,” she said, the hollow untruth of her statement ringing in her ears.
Did he hear it, too? Or was it possible that he also regretted the dearth of emotional closeness between them? Was that what made him ask so gently that he verged on tenderness, “But wouldn’t you like something better for the baby?”
Small wonder he was so successful in business if he always pinpointed his opponent’s weak spot so accurately! “And if I do, where am I supposed to live while all these miracles occur?” she whispered, her resistance crumbling into dust.
“With me, naturally. I have a place downtown and it’ll only be for a month or two. We’ll be well settled in the new house before the baby arrives.”
In a flash, her opposition resurfaced. “Did it ever occur to you that I might not be the type who believes in living with a man before marriage?”
The silent scorn with which he countered that feeble argument spoke for itself: Where were your lofty moral principles the day you fell into bed with a stranger?
And he was right. Her layers of deceit were building faster than even she could count. When had she slipped from attraction so covertly disguised that she could pretend it didn’t really exist, to this contagious madness? When had he gone from shadowing her waking fantasies to possessing her nighttime dreams?
She couldn’t bear the gnawing hunger ripping at her, the feeling that she’d lost control of her life and been tossed into an emotional whirlpool.
“Would you really feel more comfortable staying with your parents until after the wedding?” he asked, his voice as neutral as his expression.
And try to hide from their observant eyes her morning sickness and her heartsickness, and heaven only knew what else?
She shook her head. “No. They have only one bedroom in the apartment and a pull-out sofa in the den for overnight guests. We’d be falling all over one another.”
“Then you don’t have much choice. It’s my place or a hotel, and if you think your father’s suspicious now, wait until he discovers you’re camping out in a rented room.”
He’d won again, the way he always did, Sophie thought wearily.
“So that’s where we’re at,” she said, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes and grimacing at Elaine, who was helping her empty her kitchen cupboards into cardboard boxes. “The wheels have been set in motion and all of a sudden not only am I pregnant and engaged, I’m about to become homeless.”
“Hardly that! You’re moving into a pretty plush apartment with Dominic Winter, Palmerstown’s most eligible bachelor.” Elaine breathed his name on the same awestruck breath that other people mentioned sightings of Elvis.
“You’re beginning to sound like a broken record, Elaine,” Sophie said irritably. “Yes, with Dominic Winter, and it’s all your fault. If you’d had the chicken pox when you were a child like the rest of us, instead of waiting until you were pushing thirty, Barbara Wexler would be alive today, probably married to him herself, and I’d feel less like a woman heading down a mountain in a car whose brakes have failed.”
Not in the least perturbed by the implication that she’d brought about one woman’s death and condemned another to life imprisonment, Elaine continued to go about her work, saying only, “Don’t blame me if you’ve fallen in love out of your league. I didn’t twist your arm and force you to leap into bed with the man the first chance you got! You managed that all on your own.”
“Fall in love?” Sophie’s voice rose to a near shriek. “Don’t be ridiculous! How could any right-minded woman fall in love with a man who’s arrogant and overbearing and secretive—not to mention in mourning? He’s giving me his name, but Barbara Wexler’s the one who has his heart and she took it to the grave with her.”
Elaine sat back on her heels, a smug grin inching over her face. “Deny it all you like, old friend, but the signs are unmistakable. You’re definitely well on the way to falling in love with him.”
“Elaine, I don’t even like the man!”
“And I can quite understand why you don’t. From everything you tell me, he’s not a very nice person. So why don’t you just call his bluff and invite him to take a hike? Why assume a lifetime punishment for one little sin?”
Sophie was spared having to answer by the sound of the front door opening and the clump of several pairs of heavy boots coming down the hall. “That’ll be him,” she whispered. “He said he’d stop by with a couple of his workmen to go over the demolition plan.”
“You mean I get to meet him?” Elaine could barely contain her delight. “Oh, be still my heart!”
“Shut up and behave yourself,” Sophie hissed. “Things are bad enough without your making them any worse. Do you realize we’ll be living together after today and I don’t even know his birthday?”
“Try asking him. I’m sure he’d be only too glad to tell you.”
“Tell you what?” he inquired, appearing in the doorway. “What do you want to know, Sophie?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled. “I don’t believe you’ve met my friend, Elaine.”
“Hi, nice to meet you.” He grinned with that special other-people charm. “How’s the packing going?”
“As well as can be expected,” Sophie announced primly.
The grin faded and he made the kind of face a man might make if he bit unexpectedly into a lemon. “I see. Do you think you’ll be finished fairly soon?”
“Probably,” she said, aware of Elaine rocking with silent laughter at her side. “Why?”
“Because I’ve got the truck outside and a couple of my men to help move things. Once I’m done going over next week’s work schedule with them, I thought we’d load up all your stuff and haul it away to storage for you.”
“I’m quite capable of taking care of it myself, Dominic,” Sophie said.
“No doubt. However, those cartons are pretty heavy and I don’t want you lifting them,” he told her flatly. “We’ll be ready to load up in about half an hour, so try to have everything ready to go by then, okay?”
Sophie glared after his retreating back. “See what I mean?” she said through clenched teeth as the door swung closed.
“Oh, yes,” Elaine murmured dreamily. “I see very well. No wonder you’re in over your head. Sophie, he’s gorgeous! He can impregnate me any time!”
She wasn’t serious, of course, but that didn’t prevent a totally irrational flash of jealousy streaking through Sophie. “Hardly gorgeous!” she scoffed. “He’s too tall and lanky.”
“Sleek and muscular,” Elaine insisted.
“Bossy,” Sophie snapped.
Elaine subsided into giggles again. “Masterful.”
“Coldly impersonal.”
“Sexy.”
“Hateful.”
“Irresistible,” Elaine said, sobering. “Admit it, Sophie. We’ve been friends too long for me to let you get away with fooling yourself a minute longer.”
Sophie looked away, appalled as the truth of Elaine’s words found its mark with the deadly accuracy of an arrow. For weeks there had been such a yearning inside her, such an ache. One born of wanting and dreaming. And loving. Long before those few days on St. Julian, she’d been fighting the attraction, telling herself it was wrong, immoral, unhealthy.
Like an oyster, she’d learned to live with the irritation and been so busy hoping it would simply go away that she h
adn’t noticed when it turned into a pearl. But now, with her soul stripped bare like her house, she saw it for what it really was.
Her agreeing to marry Dominic had nothing to do with his threats to claim custody of the baby, nothing to do with coercion. And everything to do with her wanting to be the woman he called his wife.
Once she’d admitted it, there was no going back, no more deluding or denying. Hopelessly, she recognized it for the kind of love that perhaps only a woman could know, something that transcended time or logic. It simply was, and like a pervasive and thoroughly hypnotic disease, it had taken control of her.
“Irresistible,” she admitted, and burst into tears. “Elaine, what in the world am I going to do?”
CHAPTER SIX
“MARRY him, of course,” Elaine said, as if that would solve all the problems.
“You seem to be forgetting he’s still in love with Barbara,” Sophie wailed. “How can I compete with a ghost?”
“Just because you can’t make him forget her completely doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time trying. And you might even succeed, if you’d stop treating him as if he’s something that crawled out from under the nearest rock.”
“I don’t!” Sophie protested, swabbing indignantly at her tears.
“If what I just witnessed is any indication, you certainly do. Good grief, Sophie, he’s doing the best he can. He hasn’t disowned the baby, he hasn’t walked away from you, he’s trying to do the decent thing. What more would you like?”
“For him to want me for who I am, not for what I’m bringing to his life and not because he feels responsible or guilty or anything like that.”
“Then I suggest you change your tactics,” Elaine replied, adding sagely, “Ever hear about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar?”
“If you think I’m going to grovel for his affections...!”
“Who said anything about groveling—although it strikes me that’s exactly what you’d like him to do.” Elaine heaved the last box onto the counter and dusted off her hands. “No, I think a bit of simple honesty might work wonders.”
Sophie stared at her in horror. “I couldn’t possibly tell him I’m in love with him!”
“Perhaps not, but you could stop behaving as if you find him repulsive.”
“Lie down and play dead, you mean? Fat chance!”
Elaine sighed, pure exasperation written all over her face. “What’s with you, Sophie? What’s happened to the nice, reasonable woman I used to know, the one who always tried to see the other person’s point of view?”
“She got buried under the mess her life’s turned into.”
“So start sorting it out, and do it soon, before the other half of this proposed partnership decides he hasn’t struck quite the bargain he first thought. And while I’m dishing out home truths, here’s another for you to chew on. Stop laying all the blame for this pregnancy on him. It took two, kiddo.”
“I don’t blame him.”
“Not consciously, perhaps, but you’re looking for someone to lambaste for what you call ‘the mess her life’s turned into’, and he makes a convenient whipping boy.”
Sophie bristled. “Well, I’m human, too, you know. And I don’t like finding myself up to my ears in deceit—having to lie to my parents, to him, to myself. It’s just not my style, Elaine.”
“Then put an end to it. Stop letting yourself be manipulated by circumstances it’s too late to change. He’s willing to take a chance on marriage. Do your part to improve the odds in your favor.”
“I hate you, Elaine Harrison,” Sophie muttered, subsiding into a reluctant laugh. “Will you be my bridesmaid?”
“I’d already planned on it and on being the baby’s godmother. They’re two things you don’t have any choice about,” Elaine said, giving her a hug. “Now go and find that man of yours and invite him to take you out for dinner tonight. It might make going home to his place afterward a bit less strained if you both relax first over a meal and a bottle of good wine.”
Things grew hectic shortly after that, what with a couple of the work crew loading all the furniture and boxes littering different rooms, and Elaine directing traffic, but Sophie took advantage of the activity to track down Dominic and try to make a fresh start.
She came across him in the dining room, where he was poring over blueprints spread across the table. “I’ll get out of your way,” he said politely when he noticed her hovering in the doorway, and started to roll up the sheets of paper.
He looked tired and more than a little discouraged. Enough to make Sophie wonder if she’d left it too late to adopt a less adversarial approach to their relationship. Daunted, she forced herself to stand beside him and rest a hand on his arm. “Are they the plans for the new house?”
He grew very still at the physical contact. “Yes.”
She swallowed the nervousness clogging her throat. “May I see them?”
There was no reading the expression in his eyes. “If you wish, but there are still a few final details to be worked out.”
“Still, I’d like to see, though I’ll probably need you to explain things to me.” It wasn’t easy, offering the olive branch after all this time. His arm beneath her touch was iron hard, unresponsive. Dismayed, she tried to let her fingers slide unobtrusively to the sheaf of drawings on the table. “Is this how it’ll look from the outside?”
His hand came down hard on hers, sandwiching it against the blueprint. “Drop the act, Sophie,” he said stonily. “You’re not so dense that you can’t recognize the front elevation of a house when you see it, so what’s this really all about?”
“Nothing,” she said, coming as close to stammering as she had since she was about four. “I’m just...interested....”
“Really? Since when?”
Her throat ached with trepidation. He had never spoken to her so coldly, not even in the early days when he’d made no secret of his dislike of her. She swallowed and scraped together the dregs of her courage. “Since I came to see that you’ve been right all along and that we do need something bigger. My house really doesn’t lend itself to raising a family.”
“Is that all?”
“Well, I was thinking that...” She raised her chin and looked him in the eye, determined not to take the coward’s way out. But his gaze, burning into her, shrivelled her confidence to ashes. “Oh, never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters, Sophie,” he said, and this time there was a hint of velvet underlying the reserve in his voice. “What is it you were thinking?”
Was it possible that, with goodwill and effort, each might discover in the other a soul mate? Could they work together to put aside everything that had gone before? And even if they couldn’t, didn’t they have a moral obligation to try, for the baby’s sake?
...a bit of simple honesty might work wonders, Elaine had said. Do your part to improve the odds in your favor.
Sophie blew out a long breath and jumped in with both feet. “I thought we might start over again, try to get along. Work together. Make the...best of...things.”
His attention remained firmly fixed on her face, driving her to recklessness.
“I mean,” she babbled, “I know this isn’t what either of us planned, and if we had things to do over again we’d almost certainly do them differently. Not that I’m saying I don’t want the baby or anything, you understand, but having it sprung on me—well, not sprung on me exactly. I mean, you weren’t expecting it, either, and I’m not saying it was all your fault but... but... Damn it, Dominic, say something, even if it’s only to tell me to shut up!”
“Shut up,” he said.
She glared at him, stung. “Is that the best response you can come up with?”
“What else would you like me to do?”
She would never listen to Elaine’s advice again. Never. “You could be gracious enough to accept my apology.”
“Is that what you were offering, Sophie? An apology?”
No, s
he thought miserably, I was offering a whole lot more than that, but you’re not interested in accepting it. That was dangerous thinking, though, especially with his continuing to pin her in a gaze that she feared saw far more than she intended to reveal.
Drawing what was left of her dignity around her like a shield, she said, “Yes. I know I’ve been a bit unreasonable of late. Put it down to hormones if you like, because I don’t think I’m normally so hard to get along with. The thing is, I’m willing to make more effort if you are, particularly since we’ll be living under the same roof as of tonight.”
“Very well, it’s a deal. How would you like to seal it?”
“Seal it?”
He nodded and folded his arms across his chest. If his voice was a little less hostile, the expression in his green eyes remained unabashedly suspicious. “That’s right,” he said. “It’s customary in business to sign a contract when a deal is closed. What had you in mind in this instance? Some sort of prenuptial agreement?”
He really must despise her if he figured she was the type to demand that sort of matenal security, she thought, stunned at how much it hurt to acknowledge the fact. “No,” she said, turning away before he caught the sparkle of tears in her eyes. “Your word is good enough for me and I’m sorry if my behaviour of late gives you reason to doubt mine.”
She was almost at the door before he spoke again. “How about something simple, then, like a handshake?”
How could she refuse without losing credibility? And how could she pretend a handshake would suffice when what she wanted was so much more?
She heard the floor creak as he moved, felt his presence at her back, and thought he must surely sense the desolation possessing her. “If that’s not enough, Sophie,” he said, his voice rolling over her like syrup, “all you have to do is say so.”
The tears were threatening to splash down her face and all she could think, foolish, vain creature that she was, was that she looked like hell when she cried. Her nose ran and her face contorted into what her twin, Paul, had once informed her reminded him of a pickled red cabbage. Pride would not allow her to present Dominic with such a sight. She was at enough of a disadvantage as it was.
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