Pregnant. The baby. Barbara.
They had yet to deal with the most serious issue of all. The realization slid into Sophie’s consciousness just about the same time that Dominic reached up to draw her around his chair and onto his lap.
“I’ve covered up the truth for a long time, Sophie,” he murmured in her ear, “but no more. I’ll never lie to you again. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted and I’ll never let you go.”
“Dominic,” she said quickly, before the imperative quiver of her thigh beneath his hand erased the more urgent question in her mind, “what are we going to do about...?”
He was kissing her, delicate, feathery kisses that stole up the side of her neck until they found her mouth. And his wicked, clever hand... oh, it had no scruples whatsoever, inching up her skirt in full view of anyone who might look in the window. “You’re going to make an honest man of me as soon as possible,” he informed her, misinterpreting her question, and kissed her again, deeply, erotically.
She snatched a shallow breath and fought against allowing her knees to fall slackly apart at the sweeping invasion of his hand. “Before I do,” she said, “there’s one very important point we’ve yet to discuss.”
He nibbled at her ear, traced its inner curve with the tip of his tongue. His eyelashes flickered seductively against her cheek, “Can’t it wait?”
“No.” She pushed away his hand, straightened her skirt. “Dominic, what are you going to do about Barbara?”
His eyes snapped wide open, simmering. with wry exasperation. “For crying out loud, sweetheart, not Barbara again—not now!”
“I have to know. We can’t go on pretending she doesn’t exist, especially not considering the circumstances.”
He looked genuinely perplexed. “What circumstances? I told you, she and I are through. Finished. Done. She’s probably got some other guy on her hook by now.”
“But what about the baby?”
The amusement in his eyes died, extinguished by an emptiness that chilled Sophie to the bone. “There is no baby,” he said.
“You mean she lied? She wasn’t really pregnant?”
His expression turned hard, cold, cruel. “Oh, she was pregnant, all right. She had an abortion.”
There it was at last, the thing Sophie had feared all along: the fatal flaw that would mar this new, too-perfect happiness. It hovered between them, a wicked, destructive thing made all the more ugly by Dominic’s bald explanation.
With blinding hindsight, his offbeat remark about not caring for some of the ideas that had occurred to him when he learned that she hadn’t told her parents about the baby, made sickening sense. That was what had prompted him to come looking for her: the fear that she’d run away to terminate her pregnancy, too, and that he stood to lose both his investments.
Sophie sprang to her feet, instinctively wrapping her arms around her middle in mute possession of her own child. “An abortion?”
“Yes. Sweetheart, you look as if you’re going to pass out. Come back here and sit down.”
“No!” Still clutching herself, she reeled away from him, around to the other side of the table, away from his beguiling, lying mouth.
Make an honest man of him?
It was enough to make her laugh!
He hadn’t changed and he never would. He wanted a child, and once again, Barbara had outwitted him. So here he was, laying claim to his other investment. And because Sophie was so desperate for his love, she’d chosen to listen only to those things he said that fed her need when, in reality, he’d spent a far greater proportion of the relationship telling her things that denied it.
She doubled over, trying to contain the hysteria bubbling up.
He sprang from the chair, his face a mask of solicitous concern. “What’s the matter, sweetheart? Is something wrong with the baby?”
She heard the sound of her own unlovely laughter. “Oh, my baby’s just fine, thank you,” she howled, clutching the back of a chair for support. “We both are. So why don’t you get the hell out of my house and go home? Because neither of us needs you.”
He rounded the table and made a grab for her. “What the devil’s gotten into you, Sophie?”
Blindly, she lashed out. Caught him squarely on the jaw with one flailing fist, curved her fingers and went for his eyes with the other. And didn’t care that in submitting to such behavior, she was violating one of her most dearly held principles. At that moment, she could have killed him.
He swung her around so that her back was to the table and bundled her unceremoniously against him, pinning her hands behind her back, plastering her breasts against his chest, trapping her legs between his. He subdued her with all the same moves he’d used to seduce her. Sexy, masculine. Deceitful, heartless.
“I don’t know what you think I’ve done or said,” he informed her flatly, “nor do I particularly care, but I’m damned if I’ll stand idly by and let you use me as your personal punching bag.”
She glared at him through the tears coursing down her face. He stared steadily back, his eyes at close range so utterly beautiful that she could hardly bear it. Why couldn’t he have been as flawed on the outside as he was on the inside? It would have made him so much easier to resist in the first place.
Anguish swept through her, dissolving her rage. She sagged against him, not the way she had the night before, full of sensual entreaty, but in complete, crippling dejection. “Let me go,” she said, her voice a pale echo of the apathy laying waste to her soul.
He released her. “Now what was all that about, Sophie?”
She turned away, amazed that the hollowness invading her hadn’t robbed her of mobility. “I know why you’re here, Dominic. Pretending to care about me, to want me.”
“For crying out loud, if this is still about Barbara, I don’t know how else to tell you that I don’t want her,”
“You don’t want either of us,” she said. “You want what we can give you. The difference is, she was smart enough to realize it a lot sooner than I was, and tough enough to know exactly how to thwart you.”
“Exactly what are you saying, Sophie?” The question emerged loaded with warning.
She paid no heed. “You’re a liar. Every word you say, every move you make, they’re all calculated beforehand. You use them the same way you use money—as a disposable commodity to get you what you want.”
“And just how did you reach that scintillating conclusion?”
“I took a long, hard look at the facts.” She swiped at her tears, at the undignified dribbling of her nose. “You said it yourself not half an hour ago. You’ve been covering up ever since you met me, and you still are. No wonder you were so thrilled at how thoroughly pregnant I look! It would have been a real blow to discover you’d been robbed twice, wouldn’t it? Because you didn’t come after me. You came after your child. Well, enjoy the visit, Dominic, because I’ll see you in hell before I let you get within a mile of him or me ever again.”
With unruffled calm, he snapped one finger under the band of his watch so that the dial sat squarely in the center of his strong, elegant wrist. “You feel quite sure, do you, that you have sufficient evidence to make that decision?”
The inscrutability of his expression almost unnerved her. He had never seemed more remote, never more thoroughly veiled in that hauteur he was able to adopt with the flick of an eyelid. Then she remembered that this was all part of the disguise and that it was designed to set her off balance; to make her question her own judgment so that she’d more easily fall prey to his.
Marshaling herself to give an equally compelling performance, she said stonily, “Quite sure.”
But she turned her back on him before she spoke, because otherwise her face would have betrayed her. The tears were welling up afresh, the grief contorting her features. How she held it all in check she didn’t know.
He remained rooted to the spot, making no attempt to argue, to cajole her with a touch, an entreaty. At last, with the silence threat
ening to crack her composure to pieces, he moved.
He went up to the bedroom. She heard the creak of the floor above as he moved around. He came downstairs and opened the front door. She felt the brisk April breeze dance around her ankles.
“I hope you change your mind, Sophie,” he said coldly. “I also hope you don’t take too long to do it because I’ve just about run out of patience, and believe me, my darling, you’ll like me even less when I play really dirty than you do when you just think I’m being a perfect bastard.”
His measured stride rang out on the flagstone path of the courtyard. She heard the iron gate clang shut.
The emptiness that overflowed her heart exploded then, filling the room, the house, the rest of time.
He had gone from her life just as he’d come into it. With quiet, complete devastation. And the knowledge nearly killed her.
CHAPTER NINE
DOMINIC had known Grant Kaplan since high school. They’d played on the same football team and won identical scholarships to the same university. Circumstance had brought them together; shared ideals had made them friends.
When Grant got married the week after graduating from law school, Dominic had been his best man. Three years later, when the Kaplans outgrew the tiny apartment they’d rented shortly after the wedding, and no other landlord in town was interested in leasing to a couple with a fourteen-month-old toddler and another baby on the way, it never occurred to them to turn to anyone but Dominic to build them a house they could afford.
Five weeks after Dominic came back from England with steam pouring out of his ears and decided to set in motion the wheels of justice as they pertained to custody of his child, he naturally went to his old college buddy, Grant Kaplan, who by then had earned the deserved reputation of being one of the hottest lawyers in town.
When Dominic learned there wasn’t much he could do to enforce his paternal rights until after the baby was born and that, even then, Sophie still had the upper hand as long as she remained abroad, he did exactly what he’d promised her he would do if she didn’t change her attitude. In true bastard fashion, he instructed Grant to put the squeeze on her.
Grant chewed the end of his pen, the same disposable plastic type he’d always favored, and subjected Dominic to what he probably thought was an insightful stare. “Are you sure this is the route you want to take, pal? It’s not the sort of action likely to improve your relationship, no matter what the motivation, and what good is victory if you can’t take any pride in the way you went about achieving it?”
“Draw up the papers and stop playing pop psychologist,” Dominic snarled.
“Have you tried talking to her? Explaining—”
Dominic swore colorfully.
“Very good,” Grant commended him when the expletives finally ran dry. “Now, to repeat the question—”
“How do I talk to someone who consistently refuses to hear what I’m saying and whose sole reaction to the slightest hint of trouble is to freeze me out and put as many goddamned miles between us as possible? So don’t bother repeating that she’s legally free to live wherever she chooses and that if I want to exercise my parental rights I’ll have to wait until after the baby’s born and then go through the British court system, because I’ve no intention of sitting around on my butt waiting for her to disappear again. I want her brought back here before she gives birth, and if playing dirty is the only way I can do it, I’ll play dirty. It’ll come as no great surprise to her, believe me.”
“She could end up hating you.”
“She already hates me. I hate her. Hell, we hate each other!”
“Yes. Well, that certainly explains how the two of you ended up in the sack together and why you’ve tried so hard to coerce her into marriage.”
“Draw up the papers,” Dominic advised him darkly, “and save the funny stuff for someone who appreciates it.”
“You look like a pregnant Joan of Arc waving the rebel flag,” Paul said when Sophie paid a visit early in July. “Sit down and take a load off your swollen ankles. Screaming at me isn’t going to change anything.”
“I thought you’d be on my side,” Sophie raged. “I expected it.”
Paul, who’d taken to smoking a pipe and affecting all sorts of other donnish British customs, tamped down his tobacco and replied placidly, “It’s not a matter of taking sides, Sophie. It’s a matter of what’s best for you and ultimately for the baby. And rampaging around the West Country in your little Mini-Minor hardly fits the bill. Anyway, I rather liked your Dominic.”
Jenny beamed. “So did I.”
“He’s not my Dominic,” Sophie fumed. “I wouldn’t take him if he was the last man on earth.”
“Just as well,” Paul said, “because the way you’re going about things, you aren’t going to get him. What did you do, for crying out loud, to bring out the savage in him like this?”
“I called him a liar to his face. Which he is.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! He followed me over here and tried to convince me he wanted to take me home and marry me!”
Paul nodded through clouds of pungent smoke. “I can see why you’d find that very hard to believe,” he remarked cheerfully.
Sophie could have strangled him. It was shocking, in fact, how frequently her thoughts had turned to violence since the letter had arrived, although she supposed it was preferable to the dreadful apathy that had hounded her ever since Dominic Winter walked out on her.
She’d known that a person couldn’t go on indefinitely skipping meals and taking refuge in sleep, but she’d certainly given it a royal try. Anything had been better than trailing through the long summer days, reliving useless regrets.
Violet had been very worried. “You don’t look well, lass,” she’d said. “Are you going in for regular checkups at the clinic?”
She had been. Sort of. But the lineups were often long, and occasionally she got a peculiar sensation low down in her womb, a sort of pressure that, while it wasn’t painful, was rather disquieting. So, depending on how she was feeling, she sometimes stayed home and lay on a chaise in the back garden, reading books that were just as good as prenatal classes at preparing her for childbirth.
Besides, it was very hard being around happy expectant mothers who more often than not had doting husbands in tow. Sophie didn’t need the reminder that she was alone. She never forgot it even for a moment, and she never stopped hurting over it.
“What am I going to do about this?” she demanded, waving the letter under Paul’s nose again. “You’ve read what’s in it. What do you think?”
“That either you go home and call a cease-fire while the pair of you sort out your differences, or you’ll wind up flat broke. And in view of your condition, the latter seems a trifle inconvenient.”
He’d mastered the British art of understatement, too. He’d be wearing academic robes and keeping an old English sheepdog next! “It just goes to prove that Dominic Winter’s every bit as rotten as I thought,” she spat. “What kind of man would deliberately reduce the mother of his child to insolvency?”
“The kind you’re in love with, obviously,” Paul said to Jenny’s tittering approval. “Good Lord, Sophie, why don’t you stop working yourself into a lather and just go and talk to the guy? He didn’t strike me as all that unreasonable.”
The fact was, she’d known in her heart that she’d reacted hastily and perhaps even unfairly to Dominic. She’d been ready to cave in and try to make amends, if not for her own sake then for their child’s. Until this, his latest attempt to bend her to his will, had been delivered to her door. Now she’d rather die than give him the satisfaction!
“I should have taken his money and run with it when I had the chance,” she lamented. “He’s the one who wanted to pay off my mortgage at the bank, but I thought it’d make me feel less as if I was being bought if he became the lender of record instead. I insisted we have an official agreement drawn up—and look where it’s
landed me!”
“Up the creek without a paddle,” Paul concluded wittily. “Or, more accurately, hugely in debt and divested of your home, because there’s no doubt he can sell off the property to recover his losses on the house he custom-built for you.”
“And this is the man who swore he’d never renege on his fatherly obligations!”
“He’s not. All he’s asking—”
“Demanding! He never asks for anything.”
Briefly, Paul forgot he fancied himself as a sober academic and sniggered into his teacup.
Jenny rushed to keep the peace. “All he wants is for you to show up in person, Sophie, and sign an agreement spelling out his visitation rights and the child support payments he’s prepared to make.”
“He’s blackmailing me.”
“And managing to keep his integrity intact while he does it,” Paul said, recovering himself. “I must admit I rather admire him.”
Sophie stared at him, dumbfounded. “You’re not going to help me, are you?”
He fiddled around with his damnable pipe again. “If by that you mean am I going to meddle in something that’s none of my affair, the answer is no, I’m not. I do not relish ending up in the cross fire between a man and a woman who are being kept apart by something that, to my mind, might be easily and quickly resolved if you, my dear sister, would swallow your pride long enough to ask Dominic one very simple question.”
“Oh, really,” she said, dangerously miffed. If it hadn’t been for Jenny, who kept stroking her back as if she were an overbred cat refusing fresh cream, she’d walk out. It was the one thing she’d practiced rather often of late and she was becoming quite good at it. “And what question is that, my dear brother?”
“You know that this Barbara person was pregnant. You know she had an abortion.”
“So?”
“Did you ever bother to determine if the child she carried was Dominic’s?”
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