A Debt Paid in Passion

by Dani Collins

  Because she didn’t want to get his hopes up? The baby was here, the moment of truth at hand. He shouldn’t be so stunned given the nature of the call or the time it had taken to fight traffic to get here, but the swiftness of the procedure surprised him. At the same time, he was aware of a gripping need to see the infant and know she was his.

  A girl. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted one. And safely delivered. The abruptness of the call and lack of details had unsettled him, but they were fine. Everything was fine.

  “Good,” he heard himself say, finally able to breathe. “I’m pleased to hear they came through all right.” He gestured for her to lead the way, assuming she’d show him to their room.

  Molly didn’t move. “Premature babies always have certain hurdles, but the pediatrician is confident she’ll progress as well as the best of them.” She seemed to ponder whether to say more.

  “And Sirena?” he prompted. Some unknown source of telepathy made him brace even as the question left him. A kind of dread that was distant but gut-churningly familiar seeped into his bloodstream like poison, unwanted and tensing him with refusal and denial before he even knew what she would say.

  Molly’s eyes became liquid. “They’re doing all they can.”

  For a long moment nothing happened. No movement, no sound, nothing. Then, from far off, he heard a torn inhale, like a last gasp of life.

  No. Her words didn’t even make sense. He suddenly found himself bumping into a wall and put out a hand to steady himself. “What happened?”

  “I wondered if she had told you about her condition.” Molly moved closer. Her touch was a biting grasp on his upper arm, surprisingly strong and necessary as he wondered if he’d stay on his feet. “It’s been a risky pregnancy from the start. High blood pressure, then early-onset preeclampsia. She’s been managing that condition these last few weeks, trying to buy the baby more time. Today they couldn’t wait any longer without risking both their lives, so the doctors induced. After she had a seizure, they stopped the labor and took her for surgery. Now she’s lost a lot of blood. I’m sorry. I can see this is hard for you to hear.”

  Hard? All his strength was draining away, leaving him cold and empty. Clammy with fear. Her life was about to snap free of his and she hadn’t even told him. She might as well have swallowed a bottle of pills and left herself for him to find when he got home from school. Suddenly he was nine again, barely comprehending what he was seeing, unable to get a response out of the heavy body he was shaking with all his might. Not there soon enough. Helpless to make this right.

  “Why the hell didn’t she say something?” he burst out, furious that she’d given him no indication, no warning, just left him tied to the tracks to be hit with a train.

  Molly shook her head in bafflement. “Sirena didn’t talk about the custody agreement, but it’s been my impression things have been hostile.”

  So hostile she kept from him that her life was on the line?

  “I don’t want her to die!” The word was foul and jagged in his throat. He spoke from the very center of himself, flashing a look at Molly that made her flinch. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like, but his world was screeching to a halt and everything in it was whirling past him.

  “No one does,” she assured him in the guarded tone developed by people who dealt with victims. It was the same prudent nonengagement with explosive emotions that the social worker had used as she had steered his young self from his father’s body.

  “Take me to her,” he gritted out. A horrible avalanche of fear like he’d never known crushed him. He wanted to run shouting for her until he found her. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.

  “I can’t. But—” She seemed to think twice, then gave him a poignant smile. “Maybe they’ll let us into the nursery.”

  He forced one foot in front of the other, walking as if through a wall of thick, suffocating gelatin as he followed Molly to the preemie clinic, ambivalence writhing like a two-headed snake inside him. Was it his fault Sirena hovered on the brink? Or another man’s? He adamantly wanted his child, but the idea that one life could cost another appalled him.

  He came up to the tiny, nearly naked being in the incubator, her bottom covered in an oversized nappy, her hair hidden by a cap. Wires extended from her bare fragile body and her miniature Sirena mouth briefly pursed in a kiss.

  He couldn’t see anything of himself in her, but a startlingly deep need to gather and guard the infant welled in him. Pressing his icy hands to the warm glass, he silently begged the little girl to hang on. If this was all that would be left of Sirena...

  He brutally refused to entertain such a thought, turning his mind to sending a deep imperative through the walls of the hospital to the unknown location of this baby’s mother. Hang on, Sirena. Hang on.

  * * *

  Sirena had the worst hangover of her life. Her whole body hurt, her mouth was dry and nausea roiled in her stomach. In her daze, she moved her hand to her middle, where the solid shape of her baby was gone, replaced with bandages and a soft waistline.

  A whimper of distress escaped her.

  “Lucy is fine, Sirena.” His voice was unsweetened cocoa, warm and comforting despite the bitter taint.

  “Lucy?” she managed, blinking gritty eyes. The stark ceiling above her was white, the day painfully bright. Slowly the steel-gray of Raoul’s gaze came into focus.

  “Isn’t that what you told Molly? That you wanted your daughter named for your mother, Lucille?”

  You don’t mind? she almost said, but wasn’t sure where the paternity test was. When she had signed the consent forms, they’d told her the kind of proof he’d requested, the kind admissible in court, was a more complex test that would take several days. She wondered if waiting on that had been the only thing keeping him from whisking Lucy from this hospital before she woke.

  She didn’t ask. She could barely form words with what felt like a cotton-filled mouth. It took all her concentration to remain impassive. Seeing him gave her such a bizarre sense of relief she wanted to burst into tears. She reminded herself not to read anything into the shadow of stubble on his jaw or the bruises of tiredness under his eyes. The man was a machine when it came to work; he could have been at the office late and dropped by on his way to his penthouse.

  Still, that scruff of light beard gave her a thrill. She’d seen him like this many times and always experienced this same ripple of attraction. The same desire to smooth a hand over his rough cheek. He would be overworked yet energized by whatever had piqued his ambition, his shirt collar open, his sleeves rolled back and soon, a smile of weary satisfaction.

  But not today. Today he was sexily rumpled, but his demeanor was antagonistic, making a shiver of apprehension sidle through her as he spoke in a rough growl. “You should have told me you weren’t well.”

  The harsh accusation in his tone was so sharp she flinched. All she could think about were those harrowing moments when they’d told her the baby had to come out. Not for Lucy’s sake, but her own. The fear in her had been so great, she’d been on the verge of begging Raoul to come to her. The Raoul she had once imagined him to be anyway. He was so strong and capable and she’d instinctively known she’d feel safe if he was near.

  He hated her, though. He wouldn’t care. Like always, she’d been on her own.

  She’d gone through the induction and the beginning of pains without anyone at her side, only calling Molly when the nurse confirmed that yes, labor was properly started. That was when she’d been required to notify Raoul. She had been explaining that to Molly when something went wrong.

  She didn’t even know what had happened. Having a huge blank like that was frightening. His blaming her for not advising him it was a possibility added insult to injury, putting her on the defensive.

  “Why would I tell you anything?” she challenged from her disadvantaged position, flat on the bed, tied down with wires, voice like a flake of yellowed onionskin. “You can’t be happy I pulled thr
ough.”

  “You haven’t yet,” he said, snapping forward in a way that made her heart jump. He set his big hands on either side of her and leaned over her, promising reprisal despite her pathetic condition. “And don’t ever accuse me of anything so ugly again.”

  Sirena tried to swallow and couldn’t even feel her dry tongue against her arid lips. “Can I have some water?” she begged in a whispered plea. “Please? I’m so thirsty.”

  “I don’t know if you’re allowed to have anything,” he said with a scowl, something avid and desperate flickering through his eyes before he bent with the sudden swoop of a hawk going for a kill.

  His mouth covered hers for the briefest second. His damp tongue licked into the parched cavern of her mouth to moisten the dry membranes. The relief was incredible, the act surprising and intimate beyond measure.

  “I’ll tell the nurse you’re awake.” He walked out, leaving her speechless and tingling with the return of life to her entire body, mind dazed and wondering if she was still unconscious and hallucinating.

  * * *

  Sirena had thought nothing could make her melt so thoroughly as the vulnerable sight of her premature daughter. Then she began hearing the stories of Raoul learning to diaper and feed her. Raoul, who didn’t even know for sure he was the father, had paced a path between Lucy and Sirena, talking unceasingly to Sirena when they had feared she would slip into a coma. He’d only gone home for a shower and sleep now that Sirena had woken, nearly seventy-two hours after the birth.

  She told herself not to read it as a sign of caring. If Raoul was tending to Lucy, he was only stamping a claim while trying to prove Sirena was dispensable. To some extent she was. She quickly learned she could hold her baby, but she was too sick and weak for anything else. She was pumping her breasts, but only to keep her thin milk supply going while she waited for the cocktail of medications to leave her system. She couldn’t feed Lucy or do anything else a mother ought to do.

  Dejected, she was fretting over how useless she was as she headed back to bed the next morning, wiped out by the tiny act of brushing her teeth.

  Raoul walked in on her attempt to scale the bed, finding her with one hip hitched on the edge, bare legs akimbo as she quickly tried to stay decent under her hospital gown.

  Aside from faint shadows under his heavy eyes, he looked fantastic in casual pants and a striped shirt. He brought a wonderfully familiar scent with him, too. For a second she was back in the office welcoming her freshly shaved boss, sharing coffee with him as they discussed how they’d tackle the day.

  He eyed her balefully, but that might have been a reaction to the ferocious scowl she threw at him. She hadn’t been allowed coffee since early in the pregnancy and he was sipping from a travel mug tagged with a ProZess Software logo. He was a picture of everything she couldn’t have.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, struggling to use her severed stomach muscles to heft herself onto the bed.

  He smoothly moved to her side, set down his coffee and helped her.

  “I don’t—” She stiffened in rejection, but he bundled her into his crisp shirt anyway. The press of his body heat through the fabric burned into her as he used a gentle embrace to lift her. His free hand caressed her bare, dangling leg, sliding it neatly under the sheet as he slid her into bed as if she weighed no more than a kitten.

  Shaken, she drew the sheet up to her neck and glared at him.

  He picked up his coffee and sipped, staring back with his poker face. “Your doctor said he’d have the paternity results when he did his rounds this morning.”

  Her heart left her body and ran down the hall to bar the door of the nursery.

  She wasn’t ready to face this. Last night had been full of sudden jerks to wakefulness that had left her panting and unable to calm herself from the nightmare that Raoul would disappear with their daughter.

  That he would disappear from her life again.

  Why did it matter whether he was in her life? She felt nothing but hatred and mistrust toward him, she reminded herself. But the weeks of not seeing him while she waited out her pregnancy had been the bleakest of her life, worse even than when her family had left for Australia.

  Logic told her he wasn’t worth these yearning feelings she still had, but she felt a rush of delight that he kept showing up. When he was in the room, the longing that gripped her during his absences eased and the dark shadows inside her receded.

  She couldn’t forget he was the enemy, though. And she was running out of defenses.

  He must have seen her apprehension, because he drawled, “Scared? Why?” The question was like a throwing star, pointed on all sides and sticking deep. “Because I might be the father? Or because you know I am?”

  The stealthy challenge circled her heart like a Spanish inquisitor, the knife blade out and audibly scraping the strop.

  She noticed her hands were pleating the edge of the sheet into an accordion. What was the use in prevaricating? She licked her numb lips.

  “Are you going to try to take her from me if you are?” she asked in a thin voice.

  If? You bitch, he thought as the tension of not knowing stayed dialed high inside him. The last three days had been hellish as he’d grown more and more attached to that tiny tree frog of a girl while cautioning himself that she might belong to another man.

  Just like her mother.

  “I could have taken her a dozen times by now,” he bit out. “I should have.”

  It wasn’t completely true. The hospital had accommodated his visiting the baby, but only because he was the kind of man who didn’t let up until he got what he wanted. They wouldn’t have let him leave with her, though.

  If Sirena believed he could have, however, great. He wanted to punish her for the limbo she’d kept him in.

  Her hands went still and pale. All of her seemed to drain of color until she was practically translucent, her already wan face ashen. Fainting again? He shot out a hand to press her into the pillows against the raised head of the bed.

  She tried to bat away his touch, but in slow motion, her tortured expression lifting long enough to let him glimpse the storm of emotions behind her tangled lashes and white lips: frustration at her weakness, a flinch of physical pain in her brow, defensiveness that he had the audacity to touch her and terror. Raw terror in the glimmering green of her eyes.

  Rolling her head away, she swallowed, her fear so palpable the hair rose on the back of his neck.

  Advantage to me, he thought, trying to shrug off the prickling feeling, but guilty self-disgust weighed in the pit of his stomach. All he could think about was the hours he’d spent right here, telling her how unfair it was for a child to grow up missing a parent. The questions Lucy would have, the empty wedge in the wholeness of her life, would affect the child forever.

  Blood ties hadn’t mattered at that point. He and Lucy had been linked by the prospect that she would suffer his pain—an unthinkable cruelty for an infant just starting her life. The whole time he’d been urging Sirena to pull through, he’d been mentally cataloging everything he knew about her, wanting to be Lucy’s depository of information on her mother.

  While all he’d heard in the back of his mind had been Sirena’s scathing, What makes you think you ever knew me, Raoul?

  His heart dipped. She wanted her baby. He knew that much. As he’d gleaned all the details of this pregnancy that had nearly killed her, he’d wondered about her feelings for the father. Did the lucky man even know how stalwartly determined she’d been to have his child?

  If that man was him... His abdomen tensed around a ripple of something deep and moving, something he didn’t want to acknowledge because it put him in her debt.

  The specialist swept in, taking in the charged tension with a somber look. “Good morning. I know you’ve been waiting, Raoul. Let me put you at ease. You are Lucy’s biological father.”

  Relief poured into him like blood returning after a constriction, filling him with confidence and prid
e in his daughter, the little scrap with such a determined life force.

  No reaction from Sirena. She kept her face averted as though he and the doctor weren’t even in the room.

  “I don’t have plans to take her from you,” Raoul blurted. The impatient words left him before he realized they were on his tongue, leaving him irritated by how she weakened him with nothing but terrified silence.

  She gave him a teary, disbelieving look that got his back up.

  The physician distracted her, asking after her incision and leaving Raoul to face a cold, stony truth: he couldn’t separate mother from daughter.

  Her accusation when she’d woken yesterday that he would have wished her dead had made him so sick he hadn’t had words. His own father’s absence had been self-inflicted—he’d left Raoul and his mother—but it didn’t make the idea of Sirena’s baby accidentally being motherless any less horrific. Raoul wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he was the instrument that divided a parent from a child.

  “When can I take her home?” he heard Sirena ask the doctor.

  An image flashed into Raoul’s mind of her collapsing the way she had at the courthouse, but without anyone to catch her or the baby in her arms.

  “You’re not taking her to your flat,” he stated bluntly, speaking on instinct from the appalled place that was very much aware of how ill and weak she was.

  Sirena’s gaze swung to his, persecuted and wild. “You just said—”

  “I said I wasn’t so low I’d steal your baby from you. But you’re more than prepared to keep Lucy from me, aren’t you?” That reality was very raw. “You’re the one who steals, Sirena, not me.”

  A humiliated blush rolled into her aghast face.

  The physician broke in with, “Let’s get you and Lucy well first, then we’ll talk about where she’s going.” It was a blatant effort to defuse their belligerent standoff.

  The doctor departed a few minutes later, leaving Sirena trying to decide which was worse: having Raoul in the room, where his presence ratcheted her tension beyond bearing, or out of the room, where she didn’t know what he was up to.