The Ruthless Caleb Wilde

by Sandra Marton

  It was a little damp.

  The rain, which had ended in late afternoon, had started again when they were a block from the hotel.

  They’d walked back from the theater.

  Caleb had started to flag a taxi. She’d stopped him.

  “Let’s walk,” she’d said.

  “It’s a long walk, honey.”

  “I know. But I’ve always loved walking in the city.”

  He couldn’t think of another woman who’d say such a thing about doing a couple of miles of pavement.

  “Okay,” he’d said, talking her hand. “Let’s walk.”

  They had, taking it slow, pausing to peer into shop windows, talking, laughing, two people learning more and more about each other.

  When the rain started, they were only a couple of blocks from the hotel. It came down lightly, more a soft mist than rain, and Sage had turned her face up to it and Caleb had kissed her.

  Now, her hair was curling.

  Worse.

  It was becoming a wild tangle.

  Should she use the dryer? Or would Caleb like it this way?

  She thought of him coming into the bedroom. Taking her in his arms. Kissing her. Stripping her out of her dress, a shimmering column of pale peach silk, out of her bra and panties, leaving her only in spiked gold heels, her hair tumbling down her back.

  The perfect end to what had been a perfect night.

  The restaurant. The theater. But most of all, Caleb. Her lover. More than her lover.

  The man she loved.

  A little tremor of delight danced down her spine.

  She’d felt him watching her tonight. Felt something different in his eyes. In his touch. He was so wonderful, so tender, so good to her that it seemed wrong, maybe even dangerous to want more.

  But she did.

  She wanted his love—and tonight there’d been times she’d felt—she’d felt as if he might feel some deeper emotion for her …

  “Stop,” she whispered.

  Caleb liked being with her. He liked taking her to bed. He’d asked her to become his wife.

  Those things were enough. And if someday a miracle happened …

  “Dammit, no!”

  His voice carried clearly from the sitting room. Sage looked at the door, which stood ajar.

  “Caleb?” she said.

  He didn’t answer. She could still hear him talking but she couldn’t make out the words. His voice was low now, the tone urgent.

  She walked slowly to the door and looked into the sitting room.

  He was standing before the windows, the telephone at his ear. He was upset; she knew him well enough by now to read the signs. Head up. Spine even straighter than usual. Broad shoulders taut. Long, muscled legs apart.

  A little smile curved her lips.

  Her lover was the most beautiful man she’d ever known.

  You weren’t supposed to call a man beautiful but there was no other word to describe him. He was beautiful, inside and out.

  If only her mother had lived to meet him. To see how wrong she’d been.

  Not all men were selfish. Not all of them were liars.

  Caleb wasn’t.

  He was good and kind, generous and honest, and she loved him, loved him, loved him …

  “What?” he said, his voice harsh.

  Sage frowned. He’d gone from upset to angry. She wondered if she should go to him, let him see that she was there for him …

  “Goddammit,” he growled, “Jake shouldn’t have said anything to you. This is my business, not his.”

  Sage’s frown deepened.

  Maybe what she ought to do was shut the door. Give Caleb some privacy …

  “Addison. Listen to me.”

  Addison. His sister-in-law. His law partner.

  “No, I am not going to discuss this now. Because I’m not alone, dammit, that’s why. Is that so hard to understand?”

  Sage jumped back guiltily as Caleb turned from the window. She used the door as a shield but he hadn’t seen her. He was too furious to see anything, she realized, as he began pacing through the room.

  “Okay. I get it. Jake only told you because you asked him if he knew how you could reach me when I didn’t return your calls, but—”

  He cocked his head, listening to his sister-in-law, every now and then muttering a harsh curse under his breath.

  “Are you done?” he finally said. “Good. Now listen, and listen well. This woman, Sage Dalton, this situation, isn’t anyone’s affair but mine.”

  Cold fingers danced along Sage’s spine.

  This woman? This situation?

  “I’m dealing with it. That’s all you need to know.”

  Dealing with it. Oh God, he was dealing with—

  “Yes. I do see that. The legal ramifications as opposed to anything else. Well, of course. A paternity test. Right. After the child is born. That’ll eliminate any possibility of later claims.”

  A whimper rose in Sage’s throat. Caleb, she thought, oh Caleb!

  “Goddammit,” he snarled, “no, I have not married her!” He ran his hand through his hair. “Do I seem that much of a fool? I know what has to be done and when to do it.”

  Sage fell back, her hand clamped over her mouth. Do not throw up, she told herself fiercely. You haven’t done that in weeks and, dammit, you’re not going to start again now!

  “I understand.” His voice quieted. “Yeah, you’re right. I shouldn’t have left you in the dark. The personal issues are one thing but the legal implications … Look, can you deal with this? Good. Excellent. Draw up something. Make it clear that the child will be mine. Only mine.”

  Sage looked around, frantic. She’d left her handbag somewhere …

  There it was. A tiny silk evening purse. Not that it really was hers. Caleb had bought it for her. He’d bought everything she was wearing.

  She wanted to tear it all off, fling it into the corner, but she had to hurry. She could hear the murmur of his voice, calmer now, steadier, and why wouldn’t it be?

  She had never been his lover, she had been his—his plaything. His toy. Sex and a baby, in one neat package, though he wasn’t convinced about the baby, he’d require a paternity test first and then, once he knew the DNA matched, he’d demand sole custody of his child.

  That, at least, would make her baby’s life different from hers.

  Her child wouldn’t be raised by a single, bitter, poverty-stricken mother. Her child would be raised by a wealthy, arrogant, self-important father who’d hand him over to nurses and nannies …

  The hell he would.

  This was her baby. Nobody else’s.

  Caleb Wilde might be congratulating himself on a game well played but the game wasn’t over yet.

  “Addison,” he said, “I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow, once I’ve—”

  “Talk to her now,” Sage said, as she stepped into the sitting room. “You’ll have all the time you need, I promise.”

  She knew she would always remember the look on Caleb’s face. The dropped jaw, the open mouth, the stunned expression on his deceptively beautiful face.

  “Sage?” he said. “Honey?”

  She wanted to tell him what he could do with all those honeys and sweethearts, but it might take too long.

  Instead, she flung open the door.

  “Goodbye, Caleb.”

  “Sage! What the hell are you—”

  The door slammed shut.

  Caleb stared at it while he tried to figure out what was happening.

  Addison was still talking, but who gave a damn?

  “She’s leaving me,” Caleb said. “Sage is—”

  He dropped the phone, ran for the door, pulled it open … Too late.

  The carpeted hall seemed to stretch into infinity.

  And Sage was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CALEB reached the elevators in time to see one going up and the other going down.

  He ran for the fire stairs, took them two at
a time, burst through the doors into the lobby …

  Too late.

  There was no one there except the clerks at the reception desk, who stared at him.

  He knew how he must look.

  Hair on end. A wild look in his eyes, as if the world had just ended.

  The doorman saw him coming. It was a new guy, one Caleb had never seen before, and though he smiled politely, his eyes were full of caution.

  “Sir? May I help you?”

  “Did a woman just come through here?”

  “Sir?”

  “A woman,” Caleb said impatiently. “My …” His what? What did he call her? What was she? Not his wife. His girlfriend? His fiancée? Dammit, none of those was right. “Blonde. Tall. She came in with me a little while ago.”

  “Oh. Yes, sir, she did. I offered to get a taxi for her but—”

  Hell. Caleb looked through the glass doors. It wasn’t just raining, it was pouring.

  “Where did she go?”

  “That way. Toward the corner of—”

  Caleb took off, running.

  He was in good shape. He always had been. He’d ridden horses since he was a kid; in high school and college, he’d played football. He’d completed the requisite twelve weeks of Marine Corps training before joining The Agency—he could still do a hundred push-ups, run a four-minute mile, no sweat.

  He was grateful for it now because the rain was heavy, the wind had come up …

  And, dammit, Sage was nowhere in sight.

  Maybe the doorman had it wrong.

  Maybe he was heading in the wrong direction—except, this was the way to the nearest subway stop and only his Sage would be pig-headed enough to ride the subway, alone, at this hour of the—

  There she was.

  The rain and wind made vision difficult but how many other women would be hightailing it along the street in a thin dress and skinny heels on a night like this?

  Didn’t she know enough, at least, to take off those shoes? If she slipped on the wet sidewalk and went down …

  Caleb was already running at full speed.

  Somehow, he ran harder.

  Half a block away, he did something amazingly stupid.

  He shouted her name.

  She glanced back, and went from walking fast to running. Great.

  “Sage, goddammit,” he shouted and his heart jumped straight into his throat because she was approaching the corner, not slowing down, another couple of inches and she’d be stepping off the curb …

  A big-ass delivery truck was hurtling into the intersection.

  “Sage,” Caleb yelled, and on one final burst of speed he wouldn’t have imagined possible, he reached her, closed his arms around her and dragged her back against him.

  For a heartbeat, they remained just that way, him holding her, she wrapped safely in his arms.

  A wave of water big enough to have swamped the Titanic billowed over them.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Caleb snarled, and then he spun Sage around, saw her face awash with a mix of rain and tears, and he cursed again and kissed her.

  Her lips clung to his just long enough to give him hope. Then she jerked back in his arms, slammed her fists against his shoulders and called him a name that might have made him laugh if his heart wasn’t trying to claw its way out of his chest.

  So, instead, he grabbed her wrists, pinned her hands between them, and took refuge in anger.

  “What the hell were you thinking? Didn’t you see the red light? Didn’t you see that frigging truck? Another couple of seconds and you might have—you might have—” The rush of words stopped; the enormity of what had almost happened shot through him, left him shaken. “I almost lost you,” he whispered.

  “As if it matters,” she said, her voice trembling.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Or maybe it does. Maybe you really do want your child—”

  Her teeth started to chatter. Caleb yanked off his suit jacket and wrapped it around her.

  “I don’t want anything from—”

  “Taxi,” he yelled, as a cab approached, but it shot by.

  “Caleb. Do you hear me? I said, I don’t want—”

  “Taxi!”

  The second cab shot by, too. It was New-York-in-the-Rain, when taxi drivers suddenly went blind.

  Okay.

  No taxi. And no cell phone. He’d left it in their suite … but, hallelujah, there was a coffee shop a few feet away.

  “Come on,” he said, tightening his arm around her.

  She shook her head, dug in her heels, refused to move.

  “Sage. Come on.”

  “No.”

  “Sweetheart. We’re going to drown out here.”

  “I’m not your sweetheart. And I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Of course you’re going with me. Where else would you go?”

  “Back to Brooklyn. Back to my life. Away from you and your—your lies.”

  Caleb grasped her shoulders. Even in her soaked, still-sexy heels, she was inches shorter than he; he drew her to her toes until their faces were level.

  “I have never lied to you!”

  “You damn well did!”

  “When? What did I say that wasn’t true?”

  “You said—you said you—you wanted us to be a family. You. Me. Our baby.”

  “That was—that is—the absolute truth!”

  “You said—you said you cared for me …”

  “Yeah.” His voice roughened. “That one was a lie.”

  She started to turn away but he framed her face between his hands, locked his eyes on hers and thought, fleetingly, that he was about to make the most important declaration of his life to the most important person in his life while they both courted pneumonia.

  So much for planning, logic and the right time and place.

  “It was the biggest lie of my life because I don’t ‘care’ for you, sweetheart, I love you. I adore you. With everything I am, everything I ever will be. And if you were to leave me … if you were to leave me …”

  She stared at him. Her mouth trembled. Hell, all of her was trembling. Caleb put his arm around her, drew her close and led her toward the coffee shop.

  “I’m not going in there,” Sage said, but without conviction.

  Caleb opened the door. “Heck,” he said with a quick smile, “here’s that opportunity you were so hot for, remember? The chance to discuss the intimate details of our lives and, if we’re really lucky, get some input from a waitress.”

  She looked up at him.

  Then she laughed.

  It was quick, over almost before it began, but it was the first positive thing that had happened since she’d run away

  Still, he was afraid to make too much of it because something was definitely wrong, very wrong, and if she told him that she didn’t feel about him the way he felt about her—

  “Caleb.”

  Her whisper made him blink. And brought him back to reality.

  There were people in the place. A couple of guys at the counter, beefy hands wrapped around big mugs of steaming coffee. Two couples in one of the booths, hamburgers and fries in front of them. There was a counterman in a stained white apron, a waitress in a pink-and-white uniform …

  And they were all staring at Sage. At him. At what probably looked like a pair of half-drowned idiots, dripping water on the scuffed, none-too-clean tile floor.

  Caleb cleared his throat.

  “Hi,” he said brightly, and sent a smile in the waitress’s direction. “Okay to, ah, to take a booth?”

  She shrugged. “I guess.”

  “And, uh, and could we have a big stack of napkins? So we can dry off.”

  Another shrug. Caleb led Sage to a booth. She slid in on one side. He slid in on the other.

  “Coffee?”

  “Please. Actually, make it one coffee. And one herbal tea. My wife can’t drink coffee. She’s pregnant.”

  Sage blushed. “I’m no
t,” she said quickly. “His wife, I mean.”

  “But she’s pregnant,” he said, and her blush deepened.

  Hell, what was the matter with him? Stuff was just falling out of his mouth …

  Stuff was just falling out of his mouth …

  “Oh, hell,” he said softly.

  Because all at once, he knew exactly why the woman he loved had left him.

  “You heard that phone call,” he said.

  “What phone call?”

  She said it casually, with a lift of the shoulders, but he wasn’t buying it.

  She’d heard him talking with Addison, and when he thought back on it, he understood that every terse, angry thing he’d said could easily have sounded like an indictment.

  “Sage. Honey—”

  “Napkins,” the waitress said, dumping a stack six inches high on the table.

  Caleb nodded. “Thanks.”

  “And your coffee. And that herbal tea … Here it is. Hope orange spice is okay.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I thought we might have lemon verbena, but—”

  “What you brought is perfect.”

  The waitress eyed him narrowly. Then she went back to the counter, and Caleb leaned across the table.

  “You know what phone call,” he said. “The one I made to Addison.”

  “Your sister-in-law. Your law partner.” Sage’s voice shook. “The woman who’s drawing up the papers you think I’m going to sign that will give you custody of my baby.”

  “Our baby. And no, I don’t want custody. Why would I, when he’ll be our child?”

  “She. It might be a she.”

  “I don’t give a damn about sex!”

  “You most certainly do give a damn about sex! That’s the only reason you—you want me around.”

  Someone laughed.

  Caleb shot a furious glare around the room. Then he looked at Sage.

  “I love you,” he said fiercely. “Do you hear me, dammit? I. Love. You!”

  “You don’t. And you said you believed me when I told you the baby was yours but—but that was just another lie!”

  Caleb grabbed her hand, wouldn’t let her tug it free.

  “You heard me tell Addison we’ll want a paternity test after the baby’s born.”

  Sage nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. It wasn’t easy, letting him see only her anger and not her sorrow.

  She’d loved Caleb with all her heart.