The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss

by Diana Palmer

  He only looked at her, his eyes narrow and probing. That had been true, until he’d made such long, sweet love to her. After that, she’d become his world. The baby was a bonus, a big one, but it was her he’d wanted. He hadn’t wanted to marry her and have her grieve for lack of a child. Jane’s obsession to get pregnant had left deep scars on his emotions. They’d influenced his attitude toward Tess. Now, all he wanted was Tess. He wanted his child, too. But she’d meant to keep her conception a secret, and he didn’t think it was because of the flimsy reason she’d given him. Did she hate him now—was that it? Had his treatment of her killed what she’d once felt for him? Uncertain, he withdrew behind a camouflage of anger.

  “Whether or not I wanted to remarry is a moot point now, isn’t it?” he asked, more harshly than he’d intended. “The child has to have a name. We’ll get by, somehow.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted him to say that he loved her desperately, that he’d want her even if she wasn’t carrying his child, that he’d missed her and needed her. None of that was realistic, though. The truth was that he’d done very well without her. If not for the baby, he’d never have come near her again.

  His presence in the restaurant that day was puzzling, though. Why had he been there? Kit had hinted that he’d wanted to see Tess. She didn’t believe it. Dane knew where she lived. He could have seen her anytime. No, Kit was wrong. It had only been a coincidence. She’d looked bad and he’d felt sorry for her. She drooped a little, worn out from the emotional strain of the day.

  “I want you to change clothes, if you can manage. Then we’ll get your things together and go down to the ranch. I guess morning sickness can be pretty debilitating.”

  “Yes,” she said evasively. “It can. I’d like to have a bath first,” she said weakly.

  “Are you up to it?”

  She nodded. “The nausea is the worst when I first wake up. I’ll be all right.”

  “Tell me what to pack and where to find it. I’ll take care of that. If you need me, I’ll be within earshot.”

  She did, amazed at how quickly he’d taken over. It was nice to have everything arranged, to be looked after. She was too weak and sick to take care of herself. She wouldn’t think about his motives. If she did, she’d go crazy.

  An hour later, bathed and dressed, she let Dane lead her out to the black Mercedes. He’d already talked to the landlord—God knew what he’d said—and her bags were packed and in the car.

  She worried all the way to Branntville about what Beryl was going to say. Dane talked to her about work, about Helen and the staff, but she barely heard him. She was too upset to listen.

  She needn’t have worried. Beryl came out to the car to meet her, looking motherly.

  “You poor child,” she said gently, opening the door for her. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” she said sternly. “It’s going to be all right. When Dane can’t be here, I will. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  It was too much, after all the worry. She broke down, letting Beryl cuddle her while she cried her heart out.

  “Here, this won’t do,” Dane said finally. He drew her away from Beryl and lifted her against him. “I’ll carry you inside. You need to rest. It’s been a long day.”

  “I’ll warm up some of the nice chicken soup I made,” Beryl promised. “You’ll like it. It will be good for the baby,” she added, her eyes twinkling as she went ahead of them.

  “You told her?” Tess asked Dane.

  “Yes.” He searched her eyes. “Everything’s all right. All you have to do is rest.”

  She nodded. But she was thinking that life wasn’t that simple. It seemed suddenly very much harder than it had been, with the man she loved most in the world both so close and so far away, and her baby under constant threat. She wondered if she might go quietly mad.

  Chapter Ten

  DANE HAD HIS EVENING meal in the room with Tess. Beryl had helped her into a pair of clean pajamas and a matching robe, and had tucked her up in the big antique four-poster bed, sympathizing with Tess’s incapacitating nausea. Tess felt guilty letting Beryl and Dane believe it was only that. But she’d have felt worse telling them the truth.

  This wasn’t the same bed she’d slept in the last time she’d been at the ranch, and it was in a different part of the sprawling house. She hadn’t asked Beryl why she was in here, or if it was near Dane’s room. She’d been too shy.

  “Eat,” he told her firmly, watching her toy with her spoon.

  “Sorry. I was just wondering whose room this was.”

  “It’s mine,” he said quietly, watching her start. He nodded grimly. “That’s right. You’re sharing it with me.”

  She stared at him wildly. They couldn’t be intimate, but how was she going to tell him that without telling him everything? “Dane…” she began worriedly after she’d lifted a spoonful of hot, delicious chicken soup to her mouth.

  “I know that sex can be unpleasant for a pregnant woman,” he said unexpectedly. “I want you with me at night, that’s all. If you need me, I’ll be close by.”

  His concern touched her, even as the flat statement about no intimacy reassured her. “Thank you.”

  He hated her look of relief. It made him feel unwanted, but he disguised his reaction. “Have you thought about names? Do you hope it’s a boy or do you want a little girl?” he asked.

  She’d been afraid to hope, but he couldn’t know that. “No. I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl.”

  “Neither do I,” he replied. “As long as the baby’s healthy, that’s all that matters.”

  She nodded. “You were an only child, weren’t you?” she said, desperate to change the subject.

  “Yes, but my mother didn’t really want me,” he said bitterly, his eyes going dark with remembered pain.

  “This baby will be wanted,” she said softly.

  His eyes lifted. He looked at her, sitting there so vulnerable and pretty in his bed, her blond hair soft and curling, her big gray eyes watching him. “He certainly will.”

  “Was your father an only child?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “He never talked about his family. He vanished when I was young, and I didn’t hear from him again. My mother had two brothers, but they died in Vietnam, both of them.”

  “You and your mother never got along, even when you were a child?” she asked.

  “No.” He closed up. “Eat your soup.”

  She grimaced and went back to the nourishing liquid. He had a knack for closing doors, she thought.

  They’d eaten fairly late. Dane took time to check with his ranch foreman before he came back into the bedroom and began stripping off his clothes.

  Tess tried not to watch, but she couldn’t help it. He was the most magnificent man she’d ever seen. Her eyes lingered on the deep scars on his back and shoulder before he turned, and then her attention was captured by the powerful lines of his arms and chest. She was so preoccupied that he’d taken off everything he was wearing before she became aware of it—and the fact that she was staring. She went scarlet.

  He smiled faintly as he moved to turn off the lights. “You’ll get used to me,” he said, ignoring her scarlet blush. “I wore pajamas for your sake at the apartment, but we’re married now. I’ve slept this way since I was a boy. Old habits are hard to part with.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said as he climbed in under the covers beside her. “It’s your bedroom, after all.”

  “Know where the controls are for the electric blanket? It’s spring, but the weather still turns cold sometimes at night.”

  “Yes, I found them earlier.” She lay quietly under the soft warmth of the sheet and electric blanket, her eyes on the dark ceiling, trying not to move around and disturb him. This was familiar, because she’d slept with him once before. But then it had been new and exciting and she’d slept because of exhaustion. Now, it was difficult to get used to having someone beside her in the darkness. Not only that, sh
e could feel his resentment, his displeasure.

  His hand suddenly slid over her stomach and pressed there, making her jump.

  “Don’t have hysterics. I want to feel him. Does he move yet?”

  She swallowed. The feel of his hand was comforting as much as disturbing. “Little flutters,” she managed. “He’ll start to kick soon.”

  “Are you going to nurse him, Tess?”

  Her heart skipped. She thought about it, about the advantages of it that she’d read about in magazines. “Yes. I want to, very much.”

  She held her breath, hoping that he might pull her close and cradle her in his arms while she slept. But he didn’t. He removed his hand and she felt him turn away form her. It was like a harbinger of things to come. It made her nervous.

  She didn’t know that he was concealing an explosion of emotions he didn’t want her to sense. He felt like a magician when he thought of her pregnancy. He’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted this child; anything, except Tess herself. That was something he couldn’t quite admit yet. His emotional scars were hurting. He’d thought he could trust Tess because she loved him, but she’d denied him the one miracle of his life—the knowledge of his paternity. If he hadn’t gone looking for her, she wouldn’t have told him. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  He closed his eyes with a rough sigh and finally slept.

  From that night on, the distance between them grew. Tess became quiet and shy around him. At night he had to reach for her. She never went to him voluntarily, never teased him or played with him or looked at him with love in her eyes as she had months before. The baby began to kick, and she longed to share it with him, but she was too subdued to invite that intimacy. He never touched her these days. He talked about the future sometimes, but the conversation was always about the baby, never about Tess and himself.

  Tess grew depressed. They seemed not to be able to communicate anymore. Tess helped Beryl work in the flower beds during the warm afternoons, but Dane soon noticed that she seemed to do nothing strenuous at all. She never exerted herself. That disturbed him, because exercise, he’d been told, made the delivery all that much easier.

  “You don’t do enough,” he said one evening after he’d come home from work. “You sit around all day. I want you to start walking. No arguments,” he said firmly when she started. “This inactivity isn’t healthy for the child. Tomorrow when I get home, we’ll take a nice turn around the ranch.”

  “Dane,” she began nervously.

  He glanced at his watch. “I’m on stakeout tonight. We’ll talk later, Tess. Don’t stay up too late. It isn’t good for the baby.”

  She could have screamed. Everything he said or did was with the baby in mind. She was only the incubator, it seemed. Not that she wasn’t concerned about her child; she was all too concerned. She hadn’t told him the truth, and now things were going to get dangerous if he insisted on her walking. It could cause the bleeding to come back again.

  She’d felt a revival of good health since she’d been with him. The pain had stopped, and the bleeding had stopped, too. She felt optimistic for the first time. But what he proposed could cost her the child. She worried all night about how or if to tell him the truth.

  Fortunately, his stakeout extended for the next several days, and Tess learned to lie. Beryl went to help out an elderly neighbor an hour a day, and during her absence, Tess told Dane, she made sure that she walked.

  He froze up, disturbed that she seemed to be making sure that he spent no time at all with her.

  “Is my company that distasteful to you?” he demanded coldly, his smile no smile at all. “You can’t bear having me near you, so you go walking when I’m not around, is that it?”

  “No!”

  “Well, don’t sweat it, honey,” he said icily. “It’s the baby I’m concerned with, not you.”

  He’d lashed out in a moment of fury, but Tess didn’t know that it was because she’d hurt him. She winced at the anger, at his flat statement that she didn’t matter to him. It was no more than she’d expected, but it left a deep wound.

  She turned away, her face lifted proudly. “I’ll make sure the baby isn’t harmed by my lifestyle.”

  “See that you do. Mrs. Lassiter,” he added with venom.

  She looked up at him, her eyes quietly accusing. “If I hadn’t been pregnant, you’d never have married me, would you?”

  “Didn’t you know that already?” he agreed unsmilingly. “You’re treacherous, Tess, like the rest of your sex. My mother drove my father away. She broke him, because he loved her. Jane very nearly did the same damned thing to me with her obsession to become pregnant, her distaste for my job. You were the last person in the world I’d have expected to put a knife in my back. My mistake. You won’t get a second chance. Just be sure you don’t harm my child,” he said with cold authority.

  “I didn’t hide it from you to hurt you,” she blurted.

  He ignored that. “I’ll be late for work.”

  “Why won’t you talk to me?” she ground out. “You can’t even be bothered to come home at night anymore. You’re always gone.”

  He couldn’t admit how hungry he was for her. He stayed away because the mask slipped sometimes when he looked at her, because he cared too much. “What is there to say?” he asked evasively. “You seduced me into your arms the night we made the baby. I gave in, because I wanted you. But it was only desire. You understand? Only that. Nothing more.”

  A light went out in her. “Yes, Dane,” she said. “I understand.”

  She left the room, tears blinding her. He couldn’t have made it any more plain than that.

  He slammed his fist down on the dresser top in impotent rage. He hadn’t meant to say that, to belittle the exquisite loving they’d shared. He didn’t trust her. He couldn’t. She was like his mother, like Jane. She was going to sell him out. In fact, she already had, by hiding her pregnancy. She didn’t love him now. She avoided him, never looked at him. The baby was all she seemed interested in. He had to remember that and not weaken again. But it was hard. He adored her, never more than now, as she blossomed with his child. It should have been a time of sharing, of unequaled closeness. But he withdrew, because she pushed him away. Nothing had ever hurt quite so much.

  Weeks turned to months. Dane and Tess lived like polite strangers. He’d long since moved her into another bedroom, with the excuse that he was disturbing her sleep with his late hours. It wasn’t true. Her silence, her depression was disturbing him. She looked at him with an expression he couldn’t fathom, as if she were hurting and hiding it. He felt guilty every time he saw her and he didn’t know why. Being near her and unable to touch her, to hold her, was killing him. He sat and stared at her when she wasn’t looking, like a lovesick boy. His work suffered because he couldn’t keep his mind off her. She grew bigger and paler, and one day, after she’d been to see her obstetrician, she took to her bed and stayed there. That disturbed him, and he said something about it.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her that evening, his eyes concerned.

  “Of course,” she replied, her face schooled to disguise her terror. She’d had a lot of bleeding and Dr. Boswick was worried. He didn’t say so, but his expression hadn’t been reassuring. She was scared and she wanted to tell Dane, but it was far too late for that. “I’m just tired. There’s so much of me to carry around,” she added impotently.

  “I told you before,” he said quietly, “that I don’t want you lying around the house. You have to get enough exercise. I’m sure the obstetrician’s told you that.”

  She felt near panic. It was fall now and good walking weather, but she didn’t dare! Dane was still irritable since she’d refused to go to natural childbirth classes with him. She was too afraid of the trips to and from the hospital where they were given, because what Dr. Boswick had told her about the final trimester unnerved her. He had said the method might help, but he hadn’t pressured her to attend the classes. He knew how afraid she w
as.

  Her visits to the obstetrician had been very close together lately, and fortunately, Dane didn’t know why. She’d managed to keep her secret, despite his cold indifference to her feelings. She’d protected him from the fear. She knew all too well how much a child would mean to him. She wanted him to have his son—Dr. Boswick had told her that it would be a boy.

  She looked up at Dane from her reclining position on the bed, propped up by pillows because she was so big now, in her eighth month.

  “I’ll go walking tomorrow,” she promised. “It’s so hard these days. I’m heavier than I’ve ever been.”

  His dark eyes narrowed on her wan, pinched face. He felt guilty all over again, just looking at her. “Why is it that I never see you walk?” he asked. “You always arrange to do it when no one is here except you.”

  She colored and averted his eyes.

  “I know you’re heavy. But, Tess, laziness is no excuse,” he said quietly. “This is for your own good. Tomorrow, you walk. I’ll make sure of it.”

  “No,” she replied wearily, tired of the deception. “No, I can’t do that.” She took a deep breath. “Dane, there’s something I haven’t told you, something you need to know…. Oh!” She gasped at the wrenching pain that caught her unaware and lifted her straight up on the bed. She cried out piteously.

  “The baby!” he exclaimed harshly. “Tess, is it the baby?”

  “Yes…!” She wept because the sudden contractions were so fierce. Even as she felt them, she felt a terrifying gush of wet warmth beneath her and her face went stark white. “You have…to get…an ambulance! Call Dr. Boswick…!”

  “It may be false labor. You’re a month early. I’ll take you in the car,” he began tersely, and threw back the covers.

  He froze. Every drop of color ran out of his face, every sign of life. His black eyes glittered like diamond fragments. “Oh, my God!” he exploded.