Dominic's Child

by Catherine Spencer

  After, however, when Dominic had fallen into deep, jet-lagged sleep, the misgivings Sophie had repressed rose up again, threading along her nerve endings to sound distant chimes of alarm deep in her heart. Everything was falling into place too smoothly, too easily, and it wasn’t meant to be this uncomplicated. Those things that really mattered never were.

  When, in the murky light of dawn, he turned to her again, his mind still fogged with exhaustion but his body hungry, she snatched at borrowed happiness, riding passion’s crest over and over again with a voracity whose aftermath left her weak and trembling. Because instinct warned her it might not last.

  She crept from the bed just as the sun filtered through the plum blossoms to glint on the topmost windowpanes. In the remaining hour before Dominic awoke, she had time to shower and dress, plug in the coffee-maker and walk down to the bakery to pick up fresh rolls for breakfast.

  “Something smells good,” he said not long after she returned, and she looked up from setting a vase of forget-me-nots on the table to find him leaning over the banister watching her.

  “Sweet rolls,” she said, her heart lurching at the sight and sound of him. “And homemade cherry preserves.”

  “Cherry preserves, hmm? How’d you know they were my favorite?” He ambled across the room and, looping one hand around her neck, aimed a lingering kiss at her mouth as if he surely loved her, just a little bit.

  If only he’d say so, perhaps the nagging anxiety would stop dogging her and she’d feel secure enough to tell him that she’d lied when she’d said she’d taken back her heart, that it was his to keep for the rest of time. But he’d never come close to such an admission, not even last night when, in the midst of scorching passion, he’d cried out her name and begged her never to leave him again. Why not? What hindrance deterred him from making that ultimate acknowledgment?

  She slipped out of his embrace. “I didn’t know they were your favorite. My next-door neighbor gave them to me as a housewarming gift when I moved in here.”

  “Ah, yes, the next-door neighbor! We met yesterday and were mutually unimpressed.” He passed a rueful hand over his unshaven chin and broke into a grin. “Exactly how much does she know about me?”

  So relaxed, so charming, so... un-Dominic! After the first time they’d made love, that afternoon on the island, he’d hardly been able to stand the sight of her. The second time, in his penthouse, he’d dropped her like a hot coal the minute Barbara showed up at the door. The ax was surely going to fall this time, too. The only question was, when.

  “I told her everything I know, and it isn’t very much—which brings us to the promise you made last night. I think I’ve lived with the questions long enough, Dominic. Now I’d like some answers.”

  The accusation in her voice sobered him. He sat down and gestured to the coffeepot. “Okay. Top me up with a quart of that, then fire away. Ask me anything at all.”

  Sophie filled his cup and began with the simplest. “How did you find me?”

  “It wasn’t difficult,” he said, eyes narrowing slightly when she chose to sit in the chair opposite rather than the one beside him. “I went to see your parents. I was reluctant to do that at first in case you hadn’t told them you’d gone missing, but it was obvious that they already knew and that they blamed me.”

  “That hardly explains how you tracked me down.”

  “Their attitude underwent a change when I told them you were pregnant and that I was not about to renege on my responsibilities to you or our child.”

  “You told my parents I’m expecting a baby?” Her other concerns overshadowed by this disclosure, Sophie stared at him, appalled. “Oh, you shouldn’t have, Dominic! That’s something they deserved to hear from me first.”

  He took a mouthful of coffee, then set down his cup very deliberately before replying, and she realized that the steel was still there beneath the engaging charm. “So why did you choose to leave them in ignorance, Sophie? It’s not as if you didn’t have plenty of time to fill them in on the facts.”

  She wriggled uncomfortably under his prolonged scrutiny. “I could hardly come out and say, ‘I’m expecting and I’ve run off to lick my wounds because complications have arisen that make it seem unlikely that marrying the father is going to work out quite as simply as I’d hoped’.”

  “Why not? That’s more or less how I put it to them, and they seemed to understand very well what I meant.”

  “They’d have been worried sick all these weeks!”

  “They were anyway when you just upped and disappeared. Enough that it took very little persuasion on my part for them to tell me that your brother knew how to find you and for them to encourage me to come after you. Which,” he added forcefully, “I had by then decided to do in any case, even if it meant hiring a private investigator to find you. Your folks weren’t the only ones who were worried. Since speaking to them, I’ve had a few sleepless nights myself, wondering why you’d go to such lengths to keep the pregnancy secret, and I don’t mind telling you, Sophie, I didn’t much care for some of the reasons that occurred to me.”

  She didn’t know what he meant by the latter part of his remark, nor did she much care just then. It seemed more to the point to inquire rather acidly, “Really? Is that why you waited over six weeks to come looking for me?”

  He raised his eyebrows in mock confusion. “Your note stated quite emphatically that I’d rushed you into too many decisions since the start of the new year and that you needed time-out from all the pressure. If you didn’t mean that, Sophie, why did you say it?”

  “If you were all that worried about me, why didn’t you ignore what I said and start searching for me sooner?”

  “Because unlike you, my darling, I don’t profess to know what’s going on inside another person’s head unless it’s spelled out for me.” There was no mistaking the exasperation creeping into his voice. “I’m told it’s a common failing among men.”

  Sophie’s intuition clicked into high gear. “Why do I get the feeling Barbara suddenly entered this conversation?”

  “Because I apparently failed to ‘understand’ her, too.” He slapped a generous spoonful of Violet’s cherry preserve on his roll. “And I’m surprised it’s taken you so long to bring up her name. I’d have thought you’d be more interested in clearing up the mystery of her disappearance more than four and a half months ago than in quibbling over petty details of the past few weeks. Don’t you want to know the story behind her miraculous resurrection from the dead?”

  Suddenly losing what little appetite she’d mustered, Sophie pushed away her plate with her sweet roll barely touched. The truth was, she wished they never had to mention Barbara’s name again. She wished they could forget she’d ever existed. But her reappearance made it plain enough that she wasn’t about to be so easily dismissed. “Not really,” she admitted, “but not knowing is worse. So tell me, where did she spend the time and why did she let everyone think she’d drowned?”

  “With the help of her boyfriend, she set the scene of her apparent demise, then disappeared with him to some neighboring island in order to ‘discover’ herself. Spouted a lot of rubbish about ‘needing to make contact with her deep inner self before settling down’, but the bottom line is, running barefoot through the sand with a lusty young lover promised to be a lot more exciting than marrying me. Until she realized how dependent she was on Visa, American Express, and all the comforts of home, that is. At which point she decided that life as a latter-day flower child in some third world speck of a country in the Caribbean wasn’t quite her speed after all.”

  “I see,” Sophie said. And she did, very clearly, although she might have had trouble believing anyone could be so callously irresponsible if she hadn’t witnessed firsthand Barbara’s utter disregard for anyone’s interests but her own.

  Dominic eyed her curiously. “You don’t sound surprised by what I’ve told you. Care to explain why?”

  “No.”

  His gazed sharpened. �
��Don’t tell me you knew all along what she was up to!”

  “Of course I didn’t!” she exclaimed indignantly. “It’s just that her behavior before her disappearance was rather... well, unusual.”

  “Unusual?”

  “Yes.”

  “In that case,” he said when she volunteered nothing further, “don’t you think you should have passed along that information to the police at the time of her presumed death? It might have triggered a more thorough search, which in turn might have spared all of us, particularly the Wexlers, untold misery.”

  “The police knew. Everyone on St. Julian knew—except you.”

  “Knew what?”

  She sighed unhappily. “Don’t make me spell it out for you, Dominic. It—”

  He’d been resting his chin on his fist, but at her obvious reluctance he slapped the flat of his hand on the table with such force that the cups danced in their saucers, slopping coffee everywhere. “Damn it, Sophie, stop beating around the bush! I’ve got a right to know. I was engaged to her.”

  “Precisely. And I don’t want to be the one to shatter your illusions.”

  “Do you really think I’ve got any left where she’s concerned?” he asked scornfully. “Come on, Sophie, spit it out. Obviously there were other men, but what else? Parties? Booze? Wild, antisocial behavior?”

  She crumbled her roll into little pieces and pushed them around her plate with the tip of her forefinger. “That just about sums it up, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me at the time?”

  She looked up from the mess she’d made. “You can’t be serious! Good heavens, Dominic, you were so beside yourself with grief that you blamed me for her death. You certainly wouldn’t have believed any attempt of mine to shift responsibility to her.”

  “Damn!” Abruptly, he shoved back his chair and paced the short distance to the window. For a while, he stood with his hands rammed in the back pockets of his pants and stared out at the clouds wheeling in from the west to obliterate great stretches of blue sky. She watched in silence. Finally, the unyielding line of his shoulders relaxed and he passed a weary hand down his face. “What the hell,” he muttered, swinging back toward her, “this is crazy! I didn’t come here to fight with you. I came to clear away all the garbage from the past that’s driving a wedge between us and I guess the only way I can do that is to start at the beginning.”

  “I saw the beginning,” Sophie reminded him tartly.

  “When I first started working on the Wexler project, I watched you with her, and even then I hated it. I don’t think I want to relive it now.”

  “What did you see, Sophie?” Dominic asked, coming back to the table and snagging her fingers in his.

  “A man in love.”

  He laughed dryly. “Funny how appearances can be deceiving, isn’t it?”

  She pulled her hand away. “If you’re going to tell me you weren’t smitten with her, Dominic, save your breath! It was obvious to anyone with eyes to see.”

  “You’re right,” he said bluntly. “I was in love with the whole idea of her. If I was the commoner who’d pulled himself up by the bootstraps, she was the princess. Where I’d had to claw my way to the top, she’d just floated. I was drawn to her glamour and energy and vitality, and by the time all that started to wear thin, other facets had come into play. I’d become one of the family, a son to the Wexlers, and I liked the feeling of belonging, of being needed. They knew Barbara was highly strung and saw in me a continuity of the stability they’d always provided. And without quite realizing when or how, I found myself taking over the role of protector. If it wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind when I first proposed, other things that I hadn’t expected made up for it.”

  “Are you saying you’d have married her just to please her parents and be accepted by them?” Sophie asked skeptically.

  “I don’t think I’d have recognized that was what I’d be doing.” He reached for the coffeepot and refilled both their cups. “It’s very easy to get comfortable enough in a situation to put up with its shortcomings, especially if, down the line, other things might come along to compensate.”

  “Like children, you mean?”

  “Yes.” He made no effort to dissemble. “I’ve always wanted children. That would have been a major factor in my decision to go through with the marriage, except...”

  He paused and let his gaze roam over her face.

  “Except what?”

  “Except this leggy blond woman came to work on the estate. Woman, Sophie. Called herself a landscape architect but was really just a frustrated gardener who roamed around the place in dungarees, grubbing in dirt up to her elbows half the time, alongside her hired hands. She was hardworking and conscientious, and oh, Lord, was she kind to those old folks! Never too busy to stop and chat, never so full of herself that she couldn’t spare the time to listen to their concerns.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Trouble was, the more I saw of her, the more I realized that Barbara was just a little girl playing at being grown-up, and no more cut out for marriage or motherhood than a boy is meant to shoulder a man’s responsibilities.”

  Sophie fought against the flood of pleasure induced by his confession. “But you detested me on sight.”

  “I certainly tried hard enough. You made me question everything I was doing with my life. I found myself wondering what would have happened if I’d met you first.” He raked the hair back from his forehead. “Crazy thoughts! Hell, you could have been married for all I knew.”

  “I’d never have guessed you felt that way. I found you so cold, so...suspicious. You acted as if you thought I might blow the place up when no one was looking. Every time I turned around, you were watching me.”

  A faint grin touched the corners of his mouth. “You’d better believe I was watching you! Do you know how delectable your backside is when you’re bent over a flower bed?”

  “You never even hinted—”

  “I was scared spitless! Bad enough I was having serious second thoughts about sticking with my engagement without trying to start something with a woman I’d met through my future in-laws.” He sighed. “Is any of this making sense to you?”

  This was the man who’d once said with unshakable confidence, “I’m very single-minded... I don’t give up and I don’t back down...” but for the first time he sounded unsure of himself. Yet although what he’d told her was unexpected, it made a certain sense and it definitely made him more human. She nodded. “More or less.”

  “Barbara must have guessed I was having doubts. She became edgy, more temperamental. Started testing me, picking fights over trifles, making scenes. Her folks were afraid she was headed for a breakdown of some sort. Apparently, she’d gone through some kind of emotional crisis the year before I met her and had threatened suicide. I felt like a jerk knowing that while they worried, all I cared about was finding a way to end things gracefully with the least amount of damage to everyone concerned. And then, as if she guessed what I had in mind, she took off to the Caribbean with you. And the next thing I knew, she was dead.”

  Sophie’s heart filled with sympathy. She remembered the tortured expression on his face the day they’d driven out to the scene of the boat wreck, the agony she’d witnessed the afternoon he’d come to her hotel room to pack up Barbara’s things, and for the first time she understood. If only he’d told her the truth then, how much pain they could have spared each other. But he was so good at presenting that cold, controlled front to the world, so very good at hiding his real feelings. “You felt guilty. Anyone would have.”

  “Guilty and, in a sick sort of way, relieved. The problem had been removed. I was free. And to make matters worse,” he said, smothering a sigh, “there you were, very much alive. All sun-kissed apricot skin and warm, unselfish concern, worrying about me, trying to comfort me.”

  “You looked so torn up.”

  “I was! The idiot in me wanted to confess and throw himself on your mercy, the gentlem
an in me forbade it, and the lecher...” He shoved his fingers into his hair and ground the heels of his palms against his closed eyes. “Oh, the lecher drooled and fantasized and waited for the chance to cash in on a good thing, which happened sooner than I dared expect when you touched me that afternoon in the hotel room—”

  “I couldn’t help myself,” Sophie cried. “You were so alone, so unhappy. And after, I thought how much you must despise me.”

  “Despise you?” He shook his head. “Hardly! All I could think was that the apple never falls far from the tree and that I had behaved no better than my father, a man for whom I had nothing but contempt. Yet even under those imperfect circumstances, making love to you exceeded anything I’d known with Barbara. That I was unlikely ever to have the pleasure of a repeat experience seemed fitting punishment.”

  “If you had only told me!” Sophie mourned.

  “If you had only told me what had been going on before I arrived on the island!”

  “What sort of woman would I be to have done a thing like that? You’d just lost your fiancee and were suffering enough. I wasn’t about to make you feel any worse.”

  “No,” he said wretchedly. “Your sort of woman would open her heart and her arms and give everything she had to make a man feel whole again. Which just brought home to me what I’d suspected all along—that you were my kind of woman.”

  “Did it never occur to you that you might be my kind of man?”

  “No. What would someone like you want with a morally bankrupt jerk like me?”

  She got up and went to stand behind him. She leaned down and rested her chin against his thick, dark hair. He smelled of her soap, her shampoo. French lilac and mimosa, all mixed up with the scent of sheer masculine vitality. She loved him so much at that moment that she trembled from the force of it. It consumed her, body, mind and soul.

  “You’re not morally bankrupt, Dominic,” she whispered, sliding her arms around his neck.

  “Oh, yes, I am,” he said, tilting back his head and trapping her in his clear green gaze. “When I found out you were pregnant, I saw my chance to nab you and I did, without a moment’s hesitation. I’d been given a second chance and I wasn’t about to blow it. The baby was the means, but you were the end.”