He clasped her face. Raised it to his.
“No,” she said sharply, but it was too late.
His mouth was on hers and he was kissing her, kissing her with weeks of pent-up desire, with passion and yet with tenderness.
His tongue sought entry into the sweetness of her mouth and she moaned, parted her lips and let him in.
An eternity later, he raised his head, but he didn’t let go of her.
“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?” He knew there was an edge to his voice. So what? What he’d just done wasn’t logical but surely this question was. “You were going to go through with a paternity test rather than tell me the truth?”
“Let go of me.”
“Answer the question. Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”
“You weren’t much interested in the truth three months ago. Why would you have wanted to hear it yesterday?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You walked out of here that night. No questions, nothing. You just—you just slugged David, told me what you thought of me, and you were gone.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, and? That was how things ended between us. Now you’re saying that when I found you waiting for me in that hotel yesterday I should have stuck out my hand, smiled and said, ‘Hello, Mr. Wilde, it’s nice to see you again and oh, by the way, I’m carrying your child?’” She jerked free of his hands, eyes flashing with defiance and anger … or was it pain? “What a fantastic conversation-starter that would have been!”
He wanted to tell her she was wrong—but she wasn’t. He would never have believed her. He wasn’t even sure why he believed her now.
Except, he did.
The events of the morning had changed everything.
She was, once again, the woman he’d met that night almost three months ago, a heart-aching combination of vulnerability and courage, and she touched something in him no woman ever had.
“I shouldn’t have stormed out of here that night,” he said quietly. “God knows, I was in no position to make moral judgments.”
“Nobody’s in a position to make moral judgments,” she said tightly, “especially without asking a couple of questions first.”
A muscle in his jaw flickered. “What was there to ask?”
“Never mind,” she said wearily. “It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
She looked up at him, weighing his words. Then she flashed a bitter smile. “Okay. How about, Were David and I lovers?”
“Are you saying you weren’t?”
“Would you believe me if I did?”
Something stirred inside him. “Try me.” Time slipped by. Caleb cursed, clasped her shoulders again. “Dammit, Sage, I want the truth. Were you lovers?”
“No.” Tears rose in her eyes. “He was my friend. My best fr—”
Her voice broke. Caleb wanted to draw her against him and offer comfort but he couldn’t.
Not yet. Not until the images of her with Caldwell were blanked from his mind.
“It was the worst day of my life,” she whispered. “Losing him.”
He nodded. Searched for words of solace … and instead heard himself say, “Why were you living together?”
She gave a snort of disbelief.
“Is that all you and your oversized ego can worry about?”
“Answer the question,” he said coldly, knowing that the ghost living inside him, the Agency operative who’d been trained to trust no one, to reject answers when they weren’t the answers he expected, had suddenly taken over.
“We weren’t living together. Not the way you mean. David needed a place to stay. I said he could stay with me until he found something.”
“So, you’re saying you were roommates?”
There it was again, that quick narrowing of her eyes.
“I’m not saying it, I’m stating it. We were friends. Period. Full stop. End of story.”
Caleb nodded again. One more question. He hated himself for needing to ask it—but he had to know. Dear God, he had to know if he needed to be jealous of a dead man, and if that wasn’t pathetic, what was?
“And where did he sleep?”
The breath hissed from between her teeth.
“Damn you, Caleb! I don’t know why I bothered with this. You’re not interested in the truth!”
“Where?” he demanded, because, sure, he had female friends, he knew men and women could like each other without sex ever entering the equation, but how could a man be near this woman and not want her, not need to touch her?
“He slept where you did,” she said, her voice tight. “We joked that it was the guest bedroom.”
“‘We,’” he heard himself say.
She turned her face up to his. Were her eyes bright with tears or with anger?
“We,” she said. “Absolutely. Because David was more than my friend. He was—he was my family, the brother I never had. He was always there for me, always, until he stepped off a bus one dark night and a car ran a light and—and—”
“Dammit,” Caleb said in a rough voice. He reached for her, but she pulled away.
“David and I didn’t have a sexual thing going between us. We never did, never would, never could. He was gay!”
Gay. The word seemed to echo through the sudden quiet.
“Gay?” Caleb said.
“Gay,” Sage said. She swiped at her tears and gave him a look he knew he’d never forget. “And you—you are a one-hundred-percent gold-plated jerk!”
She whirled away and marched into the bedroom. The door slammed shut.
Caleb didn’t move.
He couldn’t have, not even if a fire truck had materialized in the center of the kitchen.
David Caldwell was gay. He’d never been Sage’s lover.
And he, Caleb Wilde, was … Yeah. Okay. He was a gold-plated jerk.
But he was more than that.
He was—he was—
That was the instant it really hit.
Forget polite phrases about how he had willingly admitted he’d made Sage pregnant, how he was responsible for the life in her womb. All those lofty bits of philosophy were true, but they skirted the real issue.
Caleb sank into his chair.
He was—holy hell!
He was going to be a father.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SAGE slammed the bathroom door.
She was breathing hard. She was breathing fire!
She wasn’t sure which of them was the worst fool, she or Caleb.
It had never occurred to him to ask the slightest question about that night. About whether maybe, just maybe he’d read things wrong.
But then, why would he? She’d met him at, what, nine o’clock? Brought him home with her at ten. Slept with him at whatever unholy hour she’d gone sashaying into the living room, figuring he was asleep …
Or maybe hoping he wasn’t asleep.
Not that it mattered.
She’d had sex with him. Sex, plain and simple. It hadn’t meant a thing to him and it certainly hadn’t meant a thing to her….
Liar. Liar. Liar! It had meant everything. At least, she’d believed it had.
Now, she carried his baby.
God, what a mess!
Twenty-four hours ago, when she’d walked into the hotel room and found him waiting, she’d figured things couldn’t get much worse.
What a joke. And it was her fault.
Why had she told him the truth? Yesterday, when he’d asked if he’d made her pregnant, she hadn’t so much as hesitated. The lie had come as easily as breath.
No, she’d said, you didn’t.
So, what had changed?
Not a damn thing, except for her sudden inability to keep her mouth shut. Telling him the truth only complicated things. Nothing good would come of it, she of all people knew that.
She was repeating her mother’s story, meeting some guy, having sex, getting pregnant—”knocked up
,” to use her mother’s blunt terminology.
Sage stared at herself in the mirror.
That she, of all people, should bring a baby into this world bearing the stigma of illegitimacy …
She knew that was an increasingly old-fashioned attitude. Not for her. Illegitimacy had defined her childhood, growing up in a small, very conservative town with a mother incapable of leaving the past behind.
Was that was why she’d admitted the truth to Caleb? Had part of her hoped he’d hear the news and say …
What?
That he’d acknowledge the baby as his own? Assume a father’s role? A part-time role, at best. Alternate weekends, two weeks in the summer? Father-daughter dances, or father-son camping trips? Show up once in a while so that when other kids said, “This is my dad,” her child wouldn’t have to stand silent?
Sage sank down on the closed toilet seat.
All these weeks, she’d kept from thinking about things like that. She’d concentrated on the day-to-day stuff. Finding a place to live. Finding a job.
Had it been deliberate? Had she been trying to avoid remembering her own childhood? No father. Not even a name or a picture, only her mother’s never-ending references to how her life had been ruined by a man.
“He was a liar,” she’d say, “just like all men, sayin’ and doin’ whatever would get him into my pants. Any woman puts her trust in a man is a fool and deserves whatever she gets.”
It was a blunt, harsh recitation of the facts of life, but it was effective.
Sage had seen its validity all around her, starting in high school with girls who lost their hearts to boys who lied to get what they wanted and going all the way up to young actresses who fell for the I’m-going-to-make-you-a-star lies of producers.
As for sex …
She’d tried it. Once. Her first year in New York, mostly because she was tired of hearing girls say how great it was, but it wasn’t great at all so she’d never tried it again …
Until that night three months ago, when it turned out that sex was—it was wonderful, with the right man, except he’d turned out to be exactly the kind her mother had described, out for sex and nothing else.
“Sage?”
The knock at the door jolted her.
She leaped to her feet, turned on the water, made it sound as if she were doing something useful instead of trying to stop her world from spinning completely out of control.
“Sage? Are you okay?”
She almost laughed. She was fine, aside from being pregnant, alone and baffled as to why she’d told Caleb a truth he surely hadn’t wanted to know.
“Yes,” she said brightly. “Just give me a minute.”
She clutched the edge of the sink, bowed her head, took a couple of breaths.
There was some old saying about the truth setting you free, but that was the thing with old sayings.
Sometimes, they just didn’t make sense.
Back to square one. Why had she told him?
Maybe it was the way he’d taken charge of things today. It wasn’t just that he’d supported her sudden decision not to take the test, it was that he’d flat-out said he refused to let her take it.
It had been a kind of pronouncement.
I am Caleb Wilde. And I am in command here.
The twenty-first-century woman in her should have balked, but she’d loved that he’d made her feel safe and wanted. He’d been her knight again, if only for a little while.
“Sage!” The doorknob rattled. “If you’re sick—”
She stood straight, looked her reflection in the eye, then turned to the door, unlocked it and flung it open.
“I’m fine,” she said calmly.
He didn’t look convinced. Well, why would he? She’d seen herself in the mirror. Her face was pale, her hair was lank; she looked like the “before” part of a vitamin ad.
“In that case,” he said, “we need to talk.”
“We did talk.”
“Not yet.”
Here it was. The handsome, rich, sometimes-nice, sometimes-not-nice guy she’d let turn her world inside-out was about to throw money at her in return for her promise to disappear from his life.
It was an approach better than that of her own biological father, but not by much.
“Look,” she said wearily, “let’s just cut to the chase, okay? I know what you’re going to say.”
“Wow. Such a useful talent.”
“And I can save you a lot of time. I want—”
“You told me. A place to live. A job. Now, it’s my turn.”
What she wanted was for him to go away but, okay, let him talk. She knew she’d never get rid of him until she did.
“Fine,” she said, and swept past him into the cramped living room.
Swept, Caleb decided, was the only word for it.
How a woman in jeans and a T-shirt could seem regal was beyond him to comprehend, but then, pretty much everything about this particular woman was in that category.
He’d never met a woman like her, and whether that was good or bad was still up for grabs.
She took a chair.
He took the couch.
She sat straight, knees together, hands locked in her lap. She was pale, but other than that, she seemed okay.
She’d been in the bathroom for so long, he’d started to wonder if she was sick. Didn’t pregnant women get sick easily? The queasy-belly thing?
He didn’t know a thing about pregnant women.
His three sisters were busy with their careers. Jake was a newlywed. Travis was—well, he was Travis. It would be a miracle if he ever settled on one woman, let alone decided to become a father.
Not that he, Caleb, had made any such decision. This thing had been an accident, but if he’d been looking for a woman, for one to have a child with, Sage would have been a good choice.
Maybe a perfect choice.
She was bright. Interesting. Brave. And she was fun. Well, fun when she wasn’t going toe-to-toe with him and arguing, but the truth was, he liked that about her.
Women never argued with him.
They pretty much agreed with whatever he said. His sisters teased him about it.
Must be nice to be king, Em had said, giggling, after she’d overheard one of his dates breathlessly assuring him that he was absolutely right about some political thing she’d probably never heard of until he’d mentioned it.
Added to all that, Sage was, well, she was beautiful.
Hair like sunlight. Eyes like the sea. Clichéd, but true. A rose-pink mouth that could curve into a smile or tremble with emotion, and that tasted indescribably sweet.
She was damn near shapeless within that T-shirt but he didn’t have to see her body to know it.
The rest of her, every inch, was emblazoned in his memory.
Her breasts. The delicacy of their weight in his palms. The pale pink of her nipples. The way they pebbled when he caressed them, and the taste of them against his tongue.
His gaze drifted lower.
She didn’t look pregnant, although … yes. He saw it now. That slight convexity to her belly beneath the shirt. How would that gentle roundness feel under his hand as he moved it down to the heat between her thighs …?
“Caleb?”
He looked up.
Did she know what he was thinking, what he was reliving, what he wanted now, had wanted all these past weeks?
Every muscle in his body came alive on one hot, sharp rush of sensation.
He stood up, walked to the window, jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and stood staring out at the ugly street while he fought for control.
This was not the time to get sidetracked.
She’d been in the john long enough for him to have come up with a plan, one he could easily implement.
For a couple of minutes, he’d considered not handling the details himself. A lawyer who represented himself had a fool for a client. That was what people said.
But this was straig
htforward. Simple. He couldn’t find much about it she would object to, and that was a plus. Besides, even if she objected, it was how things were going to be.
The law, and logic, were on his side.
He inhaled, hard. Exhaled the same way. Put on his courtroom face. Then he turned and found that she was on her feet, too. He frowned, jerked his head toward the chair.
“Sit down.”
Her eyebrows rose. He couldn’t blame her. He sounded like a drill sergeant.
“Sorry.” He forced a smile. “I only meant that we might as well be comfortable while we discuss our, ah, our—”
“Situation,” she said. “Isn’t that what you called it?”
He was losing ground and he hadn’t even started talking. Why was she standing there, arms folded? Why didn’t she sit down? Maybe she was waiting for him.
Okay. He went back to the couch. Sat on the middle cushion. A second went by. Then she settled into the chair again.
“Look, Caleb, I know you weren’t expecting—”
“Sage, the thing is, I hadn’t expected—”
They spoke at the same time. “You first,” he said.
She nodded.
“I don’t mean to sound hostile. In fact—in fact, I know I owe you an apology.”
She licked her lips. Nerves, he knew, but it was a disconcerting sight, that kitten-pink tongue moistening a strip of flesh he knew was honeyed and tender.
Hell.
He shot to his feet again. Took as no-nonsense a stroll as a man could take through a room the size of a shoebox.
“Yes,” he said briskly, “you do. You should have told me the truth right away, but I’m willing to forgive you.”
“How nice of you.”
So much for apologies. Still, he knew he deserved it. He sounded ridiculous, but no way was he going to admit that.
“My point is, we have—we have a problem for which we need a solution.”
He almost winced at the sound of his own words, so stodgy, so formal, so pathetically inadequate.
Sage did more than wince. She fixed him with a look he could only think of as lethal.
“I am,” she said, “going to have this baby!”
“You’re going to …?” Caleb grimaced. “Did you think I was going to ask you not to?”
“Just so we have that straight.”
She was giving him the full treatment now. Icy glare. Raised chin. Folded arms.
The Ruthless Caleb Wilde Page 10