“I ran the test myself,” Nicole said drearily. “I thought I was all right. Then a little while ago, it just hit me— the enormousness of it all.”
“It does that,” Synnamon agreed. There was an irony in their similarities, which under other circumstances would have been deliciously funny, she thought. Well, maybe someday she’d have enough distance and detachment to enjoy looking back on it all. But in the meantime…
Synnamon counted back. A month. Maybe a little more. About the time they were in Fargo, she thought.
Conner had sounded so happy when he’d called her from Fargo.
Conner.
There was the tiniest bit of comfort in knowing that when he went to Fargo, he hadn’t yet known about Synnamon’s child. And he hadn’t known about Nicole’s baby when he announced that he and Synnamon would stick to the vows they’d made.
Synnamon could feel sympathetic about the trap he was going to find himself caught in. Committed to a woman he didn’t love because of an accidental pregnancy, while the woman he cared about was also carrying his child.
Almost sympathetic, she thought dryly.
She asked, half-afraid of the answer, “Have you told Conner?”
Nicole shook her head. “Not yet. I can’t. He’s already so—”
She stopped, leaving Synnamon wondering exactly what she’d intended to say before she’d thought better of it.
Synnamon could think of half a dozen possibilities. Busy. Upset. Angry. Miserable. Maybe it didn’t even matter which word Nicole would have chosen.
Nicole said, “He’s been under so much stress…” Her gaze met Synnamon’s, and she gulped. “With this trip, I mean.”
“And everything else,” Synnamon said bleakly. “I know. Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. Just the same, he’ll have to know.”
Nicole nodded. “Of course. But I need to think it through myself first. I only found out for sure this morning.” Something close to panic flared in her eyes. “You don’t mean to tell him, do you? Synnamon, please—promise you’ll let me handle it.”
Synnamon wanted to scream. This was hardly a secret she wanted to share, but now that she was in the middle of it, there weren’t a lot of options—and all of them were bad ones. She could make the promise Nicole asked for and trust that the woman would carry through. She could tell Conner herself, and let the fallout rain over them all. Or she could pretend she’d never walked into the ladies’ room this morning.
Right, she thought. And while I’m at it, I’ll pretend the sky is chartreuse, too.
She knew better than to give her word. And yet she knew just as clearly that no matter what Nicole did, she herself wouldn’t be the one to tell Conner. Synnamon couldn’t bring herself to barge into the middle of what should be a sensitive and private and happy moment.
Poor Nicole, she thought. It was nightmare enough, this situation they were all caught in. But if Synnamon was the one to break this news to Conner, it could only get worse. She wouldn’t do that to any of them.
“You’ll have to tell him soon,” she said.
Relief gleamed in Nicole’s eyes. “I will. I promise I will. But I need a little time to think first.”
Synnamon could understand that. She’d felt the same need herself. And look at where it got me, she thought.
Still almost in a daze, she retreated to the little office she’d adopted. It was down the hall from her old one and around a corner, close enough to be handy if Annie needed her, but out of the way otherwise. She’d never been so glad to be away from Sherwood’s bustle. She closed the door behind her and sank into her chair.
“How could he do this to me?” she whispered.
The words seemed to echo in the room and in her brain.
How strange it was, she thought, for her to react that way. After all, wasn’t this—in a convoluted and painful sort of way—going to bring about exactly what she’d wanted?
There was no question in her mind that Conner would want to be free now. Offered a choice between building a family with a woman he cared about and one he felt only duty toward, there could be no doubt what his choice would be. And that would leave Synnamon with exactly what she wanted—her freedom, her child… and probably no interference at all from Conner.
But that wasn’t what she wanted.
She stared across the room, not seeing her surroundings as the kaleidoscope in her mind slowly turned, shattering her long-held image of herself and bringing into focus a new and unfamiliar reality.
She didn’t want her freedom. She wanted what she had glimpsed in Phoenix, that night in Emilio’s bar—a marriage that might not be passionate but was calm and peaceful and caring. A relationship that might not be precisely loving but that included friendship and companionship. A family that took in mother and father and child.
Why don’t you stop lying to yourself? she accused. The truth was, she wouldn’t begin to be content with that. Even more than she wanted her child, she wanted Conner. His friendship, his passion… his love.
Had her love for him sneaked up on her in the few weeks since they’d made this feeble effort to reconcile? Or had she always loved him and hidden the fact from herself?
She looked hard into the hidden corners of her heart and saw a painful truth that she had been trying for weeks to ignore.
Her pregnancy had been purely accidental. She was not calculating or cruel enough to plan to bring a child into the world to serve as a bargaining chip. But the seduction that night in Phoenix—and it had been a seduction, she admitted now—had not been an accident. On some level, she had been trying to prove that there was still something between them, that Conner still desired her, that it wasn’t all over, after all.
She had been trying to win him back because deep inside, she had known even then that she loved him.
Synnamon propped her elbows on the desk blotter and put her face in her hands. Her head throbbed worse with every heartbeat.
She’d thought she’d made the mistake of a lifetime— but she’d been wrong. She knew now that hers had been the mistake of several lifetimes. Hers. Conner’s. Nicole’s. And that of not one but two innocent babies.
And now that the trouble had come to light, what on earth were they going to do about it?
Synnamon didn’t expect Conner to come directly to the apartment. His plane was due to land at mid-afternoon, and she thought he’d go to the office.
After more than a week in Asia, his in-basket was overflowing. Synnamon knew what it looked like because several times in the past few days his secretary had asked her advice on how to handle the more pressing concerns. And Conner had to know what it would look like, too.
But he had come home instead.
Synnamon knew he was there the moment his key clicked in the door, even though she was at the far end of the apartment in her office alcove, too far away to hear the tiny noise.
He’s home, her heart sang. He came straight home!
Then the still-sane part of her brain kicked into gear, reminding her that he might live here for a few more days, but it was not his home now, and it would never be again. All she could do was to treasure those last few days.
Or maybe it wouldn’t be days. Perhaps he had come straight to the apartment to tell her that he’d talked to Nicole already. Maybe in a matter of minutes he’d break the news to Synnamon that it was all over.
And she would have to hold up her head and smile, and try not to gasp for breath as if she’d just finished a marathon.
She hadn’t seen Nicole since they’d parted in the ladies’ room four days ago. But Conner’s secretary had his itinerary. If Nicole had braced herself to tell him, all she’d have had to do was make an excuse about why she needed to call.
Synnamon could almost feel his footsteps coming closer down the carpeted hall. It was funny, she thought, how quickly she had become sensitized to his presence— and how long it had taken her to become fully aware of it. That fact alone should have warned her that she wasn�
�t indifferent to him, after all. If she’d only had enough brain to wonder why she felt that way…
Conner had shed his jacket and slung it over his shoulder, and he was loosening his tie when he appeared in the doorway of her office.
Synnamon put down the telephone, checked another name off Morea’s list of possible Valentine’s Ball ticket buyers, and looked at him.
Trying to appear pleasant but unexcited at the sight was one of the hardest things she had ever done. Just looking at him sent tiny darts of painful pleasure through her body. She’d never seen him in quite this way before, with the knowledge that she loved him coloring her vision.
He looked tired. The lines in his face were deeper, and there was a blue shadow under his eyes, so faint that only her newly sensitized gaze could have picked it up.
She wanted to reach up to him, to stroke the lines away, to hold him and force him to rest.
“Hi,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d be at Sherwood today.”
The low voice reached straight through Synnamon and twisted her heart. She had to force herself to look away and shrug. “I didn’t feel like it. I’ve been in most days.”
“I know. Carol told me you’d helped out with some details.”
She tensed. “Carol asked for help, so I did what I could. That’s all.”
“You’re a bit touchy today, aren’t you? I didn’t accuse you of interfering with my job, you know. In fact, I’m damned grateful you stepped in on a couple of those things.”
Synnamon forced herself to relax. “You’ve been to the office already, then?”
“No, I called Carol from the airport.” He rubbed the back of his neck and yawned.
“Then…” She knew she shouldn’t say it, but the words slipped out before she could stop herself. “Then you haven’t seen Nicole.”
“No. Why?”
She hesitated, and then prevaricated. “Nothing I can put my finger on.”
“But you obviously have a reason—and I’m interested in why you brought up Nick, because she left an odd message for me.”
Synnamon’s heart felt hollow.
“Something about a crisis at her other job keeping her away from Sherwood this week. I’m starting to wonder, myself, if she really wants to make the change.”
“I couldn’t possibly judge that.” Synnamon toyed with the stack of tickets.
Conner didn’t press the point. He reached for one of the bits of heavy bright red paper instead. “What’s this?”
“Tickets to the Valentine’s Have a Heart Ball.”
“Do we really need a dozen of them?”
“Of course not,” Synnamon said tartly. “In fact, I didn’t plan on going at all, since we’re hardly an advertisement for lovers. I’m selling them for Morea.”
“Of course,” he said. “I should have known.”
She wished she could find even a hint of irony in his voice—a bit of sarcasm that she could twist into a belief that he cared—but he sounded perfectly straightforward.
The silence grew. She stacked the tickets neatly and didn’t look at him. “How was your trip?”
“Just a business trip—pretty much like all of them. Got a few problems solved and discovered some new ones. Made one good deal, but a couple of others I’d hoped for didn’t come through.” His hand went to the back of his neck again.
Synnamon’s hands ached to rub his muscles till the tension faded away and he was soothed into the rest he so obviously needed. But she no longer had the right to do that…
In fact, she told herself curtly, she’d never really had that right. Even in the early days, the best days, it had never been that sort of marriage, and it would be folly to forget it now. It would only cause more pain in the long run if she were to start editing her memories.
“You’d better get some sleep,” she said. She knew her voice was curt, but she couldn’t help it.
I’m glad he won’t be here long, she told herself. I hope Nicole doesn’t waste any time.
But that didn’t ease the dull ache deep in her chest.
* * *
Conner looked better by the time Mrs. Ogden’s turkey tetrazzini was ready to serve a couple of hours later. “Thanks for suggesting the nap,” he said as he held Synnamon’s chair. “I always did have trouble sleeping on airplanes. Even in first class there’s really not enough room to get comfortable.”
She served his portion and passed his plate across the table. “That’s the bad side of being so tall, I suppose.” Her voice was carefully casual. “You do look better.” You look wonderful, her heart said. Asleep or awake, rested or tired, sick or well—it wouldn’t matter to her, now that she knew how she felt about him. He would always look wonderful.
“I expect it’ll take me a couple of days to catch up at the office,” Conner said. “But after that, perhaps we could declare an afternoon off and start to look for a house.”
Synnamon’s hand tightened on her fork. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why not?”
She regretted letting her words outrun her brain. It had been the obvious answer, expecting as she did that by the end of the week he would have talked to Nicole and any house-hunting trip would be called off, anyway. But it might have been simpler and more sensible to agree instead of face the question. What reason could she give, really, for not wanting to go shopping?
She grasped at the first straw she thought of and said, “It’s the slow season for real estate. It’s hard to show houses in the winter, so—”
“Seems to me that makes it a buyer’s market, if the whole world isn’t looking along with us.”
“But because of that, a lot of people wait till spring to put their homes up for sale.”
Conner shrugged. “Well, if we don’t find anything we like, we’ll just keep looking. If the Hartfords are coming to Denver anytime soon, we’ll need the space.”
Synnamon couldn’t stop herself. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, either. Having them move up here, I mean.”
Conner put down his fork. “What’s gotten into you? They want to come, and we’re going to need them.” She folded her hands in her lap, trying to stop her fingers from trembling.
“Are we back to this again?” He sounded more sad than annoyed. “If the next thing you’re going to suggest is that I just get out of your life—”
She raised her chin a fraction. Why not? she asked herself. It would be far better to ask him to leave now than to wait around for him to end it. Her heart was dangling by a thread as it was—a thread that was more frayed by the moment. If she asked him to go, she could preserve a remnant of her dignity by making the split her choice, not his.
And even if he later found out that she’d known about Nicole and the baby… Well, at least Synnamon wouldn’t have to be there. She wouldn’t have to see him agonize, or hear him apologize. Or, worst of all, watch in frozen pain as he tried to hide his happiness.
She twisted her hands together till the ache in her fingers helped her deny the agony in her heart. “As a matter of fact, Conner,” she said firmly, “why don’t we just call it off right now?”
“I’d love to.” His voice was cool. “I had a good chance to think this week, too. But that’s hardly the question we’re dealing with just now, is it? The fact is that as long as we share a child, I’m in your life, and there’s no getting out. Believe me, if it wasn’t for the baby—”
Synnamon’s self-control snapped. It was bad enough to know that to him she was no more than an incubator, but for him to come straight out and say it hurt her beyond bearing. “Don’t let that affect your choices,” she snapped. “I only told you about the baby in the first place because it seemed the fair thing to do. If I’d had any idea what you’d expect me to put up with—”
“More than I should have expected, obviously, from a woman who’s so cold that every time she exhales the furnace kicks on.”
Synnamon was too furious to let herself admit the hurt that la
y buried beneath her anger. “I might be cold around you, but that doesn’t mean I never feel—”
“Synnamon, you don’t know what warm is.”
If there had been any pain in his voice—if it had been an accusation rather than a simple, flat statement—the charge might have hurt her less. But the fact that he not only found her unfeeling but so obviously didn’t care wounded her like the thrust of a dull knife.
“Obviously I made the wrong choice,” she said.
“About what? Telling me about the baby or not having an abortion? You aren’t making things any easier for anyone by treating this baby like a life sentence, you know.”
“Isn’t that what you’ve made it? And there isn’t even any chance of getting time off for good behavior!”
Conner pushed his chair from the table. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that—since good behavior seems beyond us both these days.”
Synnamon had no idea how long Mrs. Ogden had been standing in the doorway between foyer and living room, watching her. Finally the housekeeper cleared her throat, and Synnamon turned from her study of the hazy mountain range. “What is it, Mrs. Ogden?”
“I just wondered if you had any preference on the dinner menu for tonight.”
“How about arsenic soup and foxglove salad?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t like being so sarcastic, but I can’t seem to help it.”
Mrs. Ogden made a comforting click with her tongue. “Now, now. You’ll feel better once the morning sickness is all over. I remember with my first little one, I actually hated my husband for a while because it was his fault I felt so awful. But once the baby starts to move…” Synnamon tuned her out. Somehow she doubted that the Ogdens, whatever their problems, had lived in the same sort of armed camp she and Conner had been occupying for the past few days. All her fingernails were gone, and if something didn’t happen soon she’d probably start chewing her toes.
How long, she asked herself, was Nicole planning to keep the sword suspended above her head? And how long was Synnamon going to stand around and wait for it to drop?
“No longer,” she said firmly.
The Perfect Divorce! Page 14