by Nalini Singh
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Contents:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Epilogue
© 2006
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One
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"I'm pregnant."
Caleb Callaghan's heart rocked to a standstill. "What?"
"I said I'm pregnant. Three months along—the doctor just confirmed it." Shoving her fingers through her shoulder-length blond hair, Vicki sat down in the chair across from his desk.
His entire mind restarted with a kick—this was the chance he'd been waiting for, for two long months. He would not let it slip away. Rising, he moved around the desk to kneel beside her chair. "You're carrying our child." Wonder held him in its grip. Within the space of a few seconds, the hell of his life had turned into heaven.
Vicki can't divorce me if she's pregnant.
As if she'd heard him, she shook her head. "It doesn't change anything." But her voice held the tiniest hint of uncertainty.
He seized the moment. No way was he going to fight fair, not when this was the most important battle of his life. "Of course it does." He took her fine-boned hand, delighting in once again being able to touch her.
"No."
"Yes." In the months since their separation, he'd tried everything he could think of to win his wife back. And failed. But this, this would not allow Vicki to so easily justify a divorce. "How can it not change everything? That's my baby you're carrying."
Her hand tensed in his. "Don't bully me, Caleb."
Warned by her tone, he rapidly recalculated his approach. Though he had no intention of letting her shut him out any longer, he knew that if he pushed too hard, he might lose her. But his Victoria had always had a soft heart. "I have a right to experience this with you. This is my first baby, too. Maybe my last."
Emotions he had no hope of understanding flickered across her face at the speed of light. "You want to move back in," she said, referring to their restored villa above St. Mary's Bay, not far from Auckland's city center.
"I am moving back in." That was non-negotiable. "I'm not letting you divorce me while our child is in your womb." That gave him six months in which to convince her that their marriage was worth saving, that five years of commitment shouldn't be thrown away so quickly.
She'd asked him for space when they'd separated and he'd given her that as far as he was able—limiting himself to a phone call a day and a couple of visits a week to ensure that she was okay. But that was all ending as of this moment. He wanted his wife back. "This baby is a gift, Vicki—our chance to make it. Don't throw that away."
Her eyes seemed to soften.
Standing, he tugged her up and into his embrace, her slender body a perfect fit against his larger frame. "I'll get my stuff delivered from the hotel this afternoon." He hated the damn place because it wasn't home, would never be home. "We'll be all right." He'd ensure it. No matter what, he wasn't going to lose her.
She was his everything.
Vicki let Caleb hold her and knew she was making a terrible mistake. But God, she'd missed being in her husband's arms. For two months she'd missed him every single day. Each time he'd invited her to lunch, each time he'd dropped by for coffee, she'd known she should back away but instead had always agreed. Now that dangerous pattern threatened to continue. "You don't need to be at home to share this with me."
He loosened his hold enough that she could look up into those hazel eyes, shades lighter than his dark brown hair. "Hell yes, I do. You want to raise our kid like you were raised? Barely knowing his—or her—father?"
She sucked in a breath. "You know exactly where to aim, don't you?" If there was one thing she didn't want, it was for their child to grow up feeling unloved by either parent.
Letting her go, he put his hands on his hips under his suit jacket. "I'm not going to sugarcoat the truth—if you insist on this separation, it's going to lead to divorce and eventually to a child shuttled from home to home."
"You think it's better for our baby to grow up in the middle of a battlefield?" She would not bring an innocent soul into the wreckage that was their marriage right now.
"Of course not." His voice rose. "But, Vicki, you can't have it both ways. Either you let me in and we start working on things, or you accept the alternative."
"This is moving too fast—I need time."
"You've had two months." His jaw was set. "More than enough time."
It was nowhere near enough, she thought. They'd seen each other several times a week during the separation but had yet to talk, really talk. "Caleb, look at it from my point of view. I just found out I'm pregnant. Having you back on top of that is going to be too much to cope with."
"And the longer you keep me away, the less time we'll have to fix things before the baby arrives," he responded. "I'm not backing down on this, so you might as well say yes."
If she hadn't already made her decision before walking into this firm that he'd built with sheer determination, his statement might have rubbed her raw. But though so much of him was a mystery to her, this she'd predicted. From the second she'd discovered her pregnancy—though she'd had every intention of trying to convince him otherwise—she'd known that Caleb would refuse to keep his distance.
With that in mind, she'd thought long and hard about the conditions under which she'd allow him to move back into the house. "All right." Even as she said those words, she was regretting them—give Caleb an inch and he'd take a mile. But this was no longer just about the two of them.
"That's the right decision, honey," he said. "You'll see. We'll be okay."
Frowning at his tone, she started to point out that things were going to be a little different this time around. "Look, you can move in, but—"
"Sh." He smiled and put his hand on her abdomen, startling her with the gesture. It made her pregnancy feel real in a way that even the doctor's announcement hadn't. "Don't want the kid to hear us arguing, do you?"
Her stomach twisted. Already, it was starting—she spoke and he didn't listen. "Caleb, I want to tell you—"
"Later." He raised his hand to push her hair off her face. "We have all the time in the world."
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All his things were in the guest bedroom.
"What the hell is this?" Caleb turned to find his wife standing in the bedroom doorway, arms folded and eyes narrowed. No trace remained of the woman who'd let him hold her only a few hours ago.
Straightening her spine, she met his challenge head-on. "This is you not listening—you steamrolling over my objections to your moving back in just as you steamroll over everything." There was steel in that soft voice he was used to hearing murmur in agreement.
"Later, you said. Well, this is 'later.' You can stay in the house but don't expect to move back into my life like nothing ever happened. As far as I'm concerned, we're still separated."
He froze, shock acting like a narcotic in his blood. In the five years they'd been married, Vicki had never spoken to him like that. "Sweetheart—"
"No. No, Caleb. I'm not letting you push me into something I'm not ready for."
"This isn't giving us a chance," he argued. "We can hardly work on our problems if I'm banished to this room with you holding the threat of divorce over my head." Throwing his suit jacket on the bed, he began to tear off his tie, his eyes on Vicki.
"Neither is your way." Her cheeks flushed with temper. "You want everything to go back to what it was—as if you haven't been living in a hotel for the past two months … I was miserable in our marriage. Is that the wife you want back?"
Her words hurt. "You never said anything and then one day, you tell me you want a divorce. How the hell was I supposed to know you we
ren't happy? I'm not a mind reader." Giving up on the blasted tie, he shoved a hand through his hair.
Vicki clenched her fists, creamy skin taut over delicate bones. "No," she said. "You're not. But you wouldn't have to be if you occasionally took the time to listen to me instead of insisting on your way or no way."
Caleb was getting good and mad. "You never wanted to make any decisions so I made them." Since the day he'd married her, he'd done his best to take care of her, protect her, and this was his thanks?
"Did you ever stop to think I might want more from life than to call you lord and master? People grow and change, Caleb. Didn't you ever consider that I might have?"
Her sharp question brought his growing temper to a screeching halt, because the truth was, in his mind Vicki had remained the poised but still young bride of nineteen he'd carried into his home five years ago. Given the gap in their ages and life experiences, his taking charge of their marriage had been inevitable.
That wasn't to say she'd been lacking her own strengths. In fact, she'd been unnaturally mature for her age, completely willing and able to take over her role as the wife of an ambitious young litigator determined to become better than the best.
He wouldn't have been drawn to her if he hadn't glimpsed the resilient will behind her shy smiles. But while he'd already walked a hard road by the age of twenty-nine, she'd been untested by the world, cocooned in an environment where everyone behaved according to accepted rules. Used to making decisions, it hadn't occurred to him to act any other way with his wife.
For the first time in a long while, he looked at her without being blinded by memories of the girl she'd been. She was still slender, still beautiful in that graceful way with her blue eyes and that silky hair he loved to have brush over his skin. But her eyes no longer said what they had in the past.
When they'd wed, she'd looked to him for everything. Now … now there was distance in those blue depths, a world of secrets he was shut out of. To his shock, he found he had no idea who she was behind her elegant shell.
"No, I guess I didn't." He'd built his life around his self-confidence, trusting his instincts when there'd been nothing and no one else to trust. To admit he'd been wrong about something this important was a blow.
Vicki's lips parted, her eyes going wide.
"But don't blame me for everything," he continued. They'd both been in that broken marriage and if they were going to survive the rebuilding, they had to be honest. "You know what I'm like. If you'd said something, I would have tried to fix it. I don't like to see you hurting."
Which was why he'd never berated her for the one thing she couldn't give him—her passion, her desire. That absence in their marriage had stung like hell, and still did, but he was incapable of harming her, even to assuage his own pain. From the moment he'd met her, all he'd wanted to do was make her happy … make her smile.
Shoulders taut beneath the white linen of her simple shift dress, she shook her head. "That's the point, Caleb. I don't want you to fix things for me. I need…"
"What, Vicki? Tell me what you need." It was something he'd never asked. The realization stunned him, made him question exactly how good a job he'd done of loving her.
Even in bed, he'd taken the lead, confident in his ability to ensure her physical pleasure though he couldn't make her want him with the fury that he wanted her. But what if she'd needed something else, something he hadn't known how to give? What if that was the reason she'd never responded to him with the intensity he needed from her?
Her whole face softened. "I just need you to see and love me, not the idea of the perfect wife you have in your head, or the woman Grandmother tried to mold me into. Just me. Just Victoria."
It felt as if she'd struck him. "I never tried to change you."
"No, Caleb. You never even saw me at all." And that had hurt more than anything. Because no matter what she said and did, she loved Caleb Callaghan with every breath in her body. Loved his laugh, his intelligence, his stubbornness and even his temper.
But it wasn't enough. Love like that could slowly destroy a person from the inside out if it wasn't returned. And despite what Caleb believed, she knew it wasn't. To her husband she was as fragile as an exotic bloom, someone who always had to be protected, even if that meant she had to be shielded from the full power of his own feelings.
Like now. His fists were clenched, his jaw taut but he kept himself under control. "If I didn't see you, then who the hell did I spend five years with? A ghost?"
The sarcastic comment fell too close to the mark. "Maybe you did."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
How did she tell him something she'd barely started to understand herself? "Who was I in that marriage, Caleb?"
"My wife." His hazel eyes were clouded with a kind of pain she'd never before seen. "Wasn't that enough?"
"Caleb Callaghan's wife," she said, swallowing the knot of emotion in her throat. "But was I really even that?"
He scowled. "What kind of question is that? Of course you were my wife. You still are. And if you'd get over this separate-bedrooms crap, we could start working on making things right."
If I'm your wife, she wanted to scream, then why did you do that with Miranda? But that wasn't something she was strong enough to face yet—four months of distance from the event hadn't even formed a scab on the wound. "This is not crap, Caleb. This is real, so start paying attention—for once in your life, pay attention to your marriage!"
Swiveling on her heel, she walked out of the room. From behind her came the harsh sounds of Caleb swearing and throwing something at the wall, but he didn't follow her. Relieved, she entered her own room, knowing she was close to an emotional meltdown. It was one thing to coach herself on how to handle Caleb when it was only hypothetical, and quite another to be faced with the full force of his personality.
She'd spent her marriage unable to say what needed to be said because she'd been too weak to stand up to the force of nature that was Caleb Callaghan. Having him home scared her—what if she crumpled again, losing everything she'd gained in the months they'd been apart, months in which she'd made herself take a critical look at her life?
What she'd seen hadn't been pretty. But at least she was facing her mistakes now, facing the mess of their marriage. Getting Caleb to do the same would be a major battle, but she'd made a beginning two months ago when she'd gambled everything on a throw of the dice and asked him for a divorce.
It had been a move born of desperation and staked on Caleb's stubborn refusal to admit defeat in any arena. She'd wanted to shake him out of his complacency, to make him see that the life they'd been living wasn't a life at all, merely an existence. Despite her hurt over what he'd done with Miranda during that business trip to Wellington, she hadn't wanted to give up on the dream that had first brought them together.
But not even for that dream had she been willing to continue hiding behind the perfect facade of their fractured marriage. So she'd thrown the dice. And waited for Caleb to pick them up.
He hadn't let her down. Though he'd moved out, he'd made sure he had contact with her almost every day. Now, the unexpected gift of their baby had given them more time, time enough for Caleb to get to know her, to begin to understand the woman she'd always been beneath the brittle shell of breeding and culture.
After he understood who she was, he'd have to decide whether or not he wanted to remain married to her, whether or not he wanted to fight to fix a marriage she wasn't sure could be fixed. Vicki had no intention of ever again donning the mask of a fashion-conscious socialite wife. The question was, what if that was exactly the kind of woman Caleb wanted?
A woman who'd go her own way and not demand anything from him but money and a place in society; a woman who'd turn the other cheek when infidelity raised its ugly head; a woman who'd never dream of destroying her upper-class lifestyle by divorcing her husband because he didn't love her.
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Two
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/> Caleb was in a foul mood. He'd fully expected to spend the night with his wife, but instead had tossed and turned in the guest bedroom while Vicki lay feet away. By the time the shrill ring of the alarm woke him, all of his nerves had been rubbed raw.
He didn't understand why Vicki was doing this to them—she'd never acted so unreasonably before. How could she expect them to pretend to be separated when they were both living in the same house and she was about to have his baby, for God's sake? As far as he was concerned, separate beds were not part of the marriage deal. And he'd missed her, damn it. Hadn't she missed him even a bit?
After a quick shower, he pulled on his suit jacket and walked into the kitchen, expecting a cold welcome from the woman he'd spent the night dreaming about. Vicki stood at the counter pouring coffee into his cup. His mood elevated. "I half expected you to tell me to fend for myself." That was what she'd done in the last weeks before their separation.
She rolled her eyes. "If I didn't feed you, you'd live on takeout."
He slid onto a stool on the other side of the counter, luxuriating in the feel of being home again. In spite of the hours he'd worked as a rising young lawyer, he'd restored this villa with his own hands. It had been his escape from the combative world in which he spent much of his life.
When he'd married Vicki, the villa had only been partially restored and he'd expected her to balk at the work remaining, but she'd lit up at the prospect. She'd done a lot of the finishing work herself—he'd often come home to a wife with paint-stained skin and scraped knuckles.
Almost a year later, they'd had a bright, airy home stamped with their personalities. Some of the happiest days of their marriage had been spent covered in paint and sawdust, with only each other's voices for company.
"Do vending-machine snacks count as proper food?" he asked, trying to tease his way back into their normal routine. The separation had been hell—he had no intention of returning to that empty existence, no matter what he had to do to convince Vicki.