Well, Mirabella had apparently been listening, he thought, but something else was bothering him at this point.
There was obviously something wrong.
Since she wasn’t turning around to look at him, he circled the small table for two until he was able to face her. Mirabella quickly lowered her head, but it was too late, he’d already seen what she was clearly attempting to hide from him.
Still holding the unopened packet of cookies in his hand, Zane sat down opposite her. Cocking his head, he peered into her face.
And then he understood why she was trying to avoid him.
“Belle,” he addressed her gently, asking a question he already knew the answer to, “have you been crying?”
“No,” she mumbled, still attempting to keep her head down.
Reaching across the table, Zane crooked his forefinger under her chin and raised it until he was able to get a better look at her face.
“If you haven’t been crying, then why are your cheeks wet?”
“Allergies,” she told him evasively. “I’ve been sneezing.”
“Oh? Then where’s your handkerchief?” Zane challenged.
“I used tissues,” she answered stubbornly. “They’re disposable.”
“Also apparently invisible,” he commented. Reaching into his pocket, he took out his handkerchief and handed it to her. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it. “Talk to me, Belle,” he requested.
Wiping her eyes, Mirabella raised her head to look at him. “Why do you call me that?” she asked, trying to distract him. “Everyone else calls me by my full name.” Although, if anyone had asked her, she had to admit she rather liked the nickname he’d given her.
“Your name’s too long,” he told her matter-of-factly. “And I’ve already wasted enough time. Now, what happened?” he asked.
His tone was kind, but at the same time, he was making it very clear to her that he wasn’t about to tolerate any lies. He wanted the truth.
Mirabella felt stupid having to explain herself. He had too much to handle already without having to listen to her. But he was waiting, so she finally told him in a small, lost voice, “I was disinvited.”
“Disinvited?” he questioned, not sure what she meant.
Mirabella sighed. He wanted the whole story, so she gave it to him.
“All right.” She raised her head and looked at him, allowing her complete distress to show through. “If you insist on knowing, I was fired.”
He still didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“No, you weren’t,” he contradicted. “You work for me. That means no one can fire you from here except for me—and I haven’t.”
“Not from here,” she told him, obviously struggling not to cry again. “I was fired from the Clothe the Children Foundation’s annual benefit party. I was on the planning committee,” she explained. Mirabella pressed her lips together to keep her voice from cracking before continuing. “The chairwoman called to say she’d been ‘made aware’ of ‘certain goings-on’ and they don’t need that sort of attention drawn to their organization. She thanked me for my past efforts and told me that I was no longer needed there.”
Mirabella raised her eyes to his again. “I’ve been part of that foundation for almost five years now. Working on it meant a great deal to me. And they let me go just like that. Tossed me away like a used envelope,” she added, crushed.
Zane had never seen anyone looking as disheartened, as distressed, as Mirabella did right at this very moment. His heart went out to her, wanting to protect her, to make things right.
“What’s her name?” He wanted to know. “The chairwoman, what’s her name? I’ll make a call.”
But Mirabella shook her head. She didn’t want him fighting her battles for her.
“I doubt it would do any good,” she said. “But thanks for the offer.” Handing him back his handkerchief, she did her best to smile at him. The effort was weak and heart tugging.
“I thought all this had died down,” Zane said, tucking away his handkerchief.
Her lips twisted in a smile that didn’t even come near reaching her eyes. But rather than bitterness, all he saw there was sorrow.
“Oh, it hasn’t,” she assured him, then amended, “At least, not for me. Whoever is behind this, what do they get out of it?” she wondered for the umpteenth time. “What does he or she get out of making me feel so miserable?”
“You shouldn’t feel miserable,” Zane told her. “You’re still the same person you were before whoever it is started spreading all these lies.”
But Mirabella just shook her head. He was wrong. This had left a mark on her. A dark mark.
“Not to hear the way other people talk,” she confided. “They think I had this coming for putting on airs.”
He looked at her, at a loss as to what to make of what she’d just said. She was the most unassuming person he knew. “What airs?”
Mirabella merely shrugged in response. “I don’t know,” she said honestly, “but that seems to be the prevailing opinion around here lately. Everyone thinks I’m having your baby and bilking your father’s bank account to finance my decadent life from here on in. When I overheard one of them say that and pointed out I’m still here, working, I was told it’s just for appearances—until after the baby’s born.”
Mirabella pressed her lips together, staring at the top of the tea in her container, watching the overhead light break up on the surface of the hot liquid and become distorted.
It was a metaphor, she thought, for her life.
She let out a long, shaky breath before telling him, “I don’t want to hand in my resignation.”
Zane looked at her sharply. Where had that come from? “Who said anything about handing in your resignation?”
Her eyes shifted to his. There were fresh tears shining in them again. She struggled to keep them from falling.
“It’s the only way I can get this to stop,” she explained. “The only way I can get everyone to stop gossiping and spreading lies about me—about you,” she added in a small voice.
“Don’t worry about me,” he ordered. An idea occurred to him and he debated saying anything for a moment, then decided to go for it. “There is another way you can get them to stop spreading lies.”
“What other way?” she asked, her hand resting protectively on her stomach.
Was he going to tell her to get rid of her baby? No, she refused to believe that, refused to believe he could be that unfeeling.
But then, she wouldn’t have believed so many of the people she worked with could have turned on her like this, either. And they had. With a vengeance in some cases.
“You could marry me.”
Mirabella’s mouth dropped open. She stared at Zane in absolute stunned silence. And then she shook her head, certain she had misheard him.
“I am really getting delusional,” she half laughed. “For a second, I thought I heard you say I could marry you.”
Zane moved in a little closer. Now that he’d said it out loud, it just seemed like it was the right solution. He didn’t know why it had taken him this long to come up with it.
“You did. I did. You can.”
She could only continue to stare at him in utter disbelief.
“You’re serious,” she cried.
He didn’t see the problem. Why was she having so much trouble accepting this? Had he been wrong about the attraction he thought was between them? “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, for one thing,” she began to enumerate, “it’s insane. For another, you don’t love me.”
Too late, Mirabella realized she hadn’t phrased that properly. What she should have said was that they didn’t love each other. But she had isolated it to just him who didn’t love in this case. Had he picked up on the fact that she’d slipped, inadvertently letting him know how she felt about him?
Mirabella held her breath, watching his face for some sign of a sudden dawning of facts occurring.
Instead, he calmly informed her, “That doesn’t matter.”
Did he really believe that? It sounded so cold, it made her heart ache. “Love matters,” she insisted.
Zane tried again. He absolutely hated seeing her suffer like this without being able to do something about it.
His reaction had taken him somewhat by surprise, but with everything that had been going on lately—this, not to mention his father’s abduction—the state of his emotions was in an entire upheaval and he couldn’t make heads or tails of anything.
“I’m not saying it doesn’t,” Zane insisted, “but look at it logically. Everyone thinks this is my baby anyway. If you don’t marry me, you’re going to wind up being a single mother with a ruined reputation and an unhappy baby. Is that the sort of world you want to bring your baby into? The kind of life you want your baby condemned to?”
When he put it that way, she felt as if she was being selfish. “No, but—”
He overrode her protest and outlined his plan for them. “We’ll get married and then after the baby is born and it has my name, we’ll let a suitable amount of time pass, then cite that old saw, irreconcilable differences, and get divorced. After that, I’ll set you and the baby up with a comfortable monthly allowance and we’ll each go our own way. Problem neutralized.” He could see he’d caught Mirabella completely off guard. He didn’t want to seem as if he was pressuring her, but to him, it did seem like the perfect solution. “Think about it,” he urged. “It’s the best thing for everyone. The baby gets a father, you can stop fending off insults and lies—”
“And what do you get out of it?” Mirabella asked. She didn’t think of him as a selfish person, but most people didn’t just selflessly go out of their way like this, fixing what was apparently a wrong in their eyes.
“Me?” Zane answered her with a smile, something, she took note of, that didn’t happen very often. “I get back a fully functional administrative assistant I depend on possibly way too much, but it’s too late to change that. So, what do you say?”
She already knew what she was going to say, even though it pained her to do so.
“No.”
He looked at her, dumbfounded. He was considered to be one of the state’s most eligible bachelors. Getting women had never been a problem for him. Fighting them off had been the real problem. Yet Mirabella had just turned down his proposal in less than a heartbeat. Why?
“No?”
“No,” she repeated. Taking a breath, she searched for the right words. There really weren’t any, but she had to try. “Mr. Colton—”
Zane permitted himself a guarded smile. She did amuse him. “Under the circumstances, I think you can call me Zane.”
Mirabella inclined her head. “All right, Zane. I appreciate everything you’re trying to do for me, I really do,” she said without hesitation, “but I am not going to get married because it’s the practical thing to do and I’m not going to allow a bunch of catty, jealous people who have nothing better to do but tear someone down for entertainment purposes push me into a corner like this. I know you mean well, Mr.—Zane, and it’s all very kind of you. But as far as I’m concerned, there is only one reason and one reason alone that one person marries another person and that’s because they love each other.”
“A lot of monarchs throughout history might have taken exception to that,” Zane pointed out.
A small, sad smile played on her lips. “There are no kingdoms involved here, Zane. Or, at least, I don’t have one to my name,” she amended.
He failed to understand what she was driving at. “Meaning, I do?”
He had to ask? “The name Colton around here means power,” she reminded him. “Your father built an empire out of next to nothing.”
Zane thought of some of the stories he’d heard growing up, both from his mother when she married Eldridge and from the man himself later on. The road to building up that so-called empire had not been a straight one, nor had it always been a strictly honest one. There were dealings he’d heard Eldridge had looked back on with some regret and remorse, now that all was said and done.
But they weren’t talking about his father’s eligibility for canonization to sainthood, they were talking about something Zane viewed as the most practical approach to a very annoying problem.
“It’s called a marriage of convenience for a reason,” he told her.
“Maybe,” Mirabella allowed. “But I don’t see what you’re suggesting as a convenience. I see it as nothing more than a lie.”
It occurred to him that he had never met anyone quite like Mirabella before. Usually, everyone was just out for themselves. She seemed to be out for everyone except herself.
“Think of your baby,” he reminded her.
“I am thinking of the baby,” she told him. “And I don’t want him or her to ever discover they had been born into a lie.”
Genuinely surprised by her reasoning, Zane looked at her. “So it’s a no?” he asked Mirabella, giving her one last chance to change her mind.
“It’s a no,” she confirmed. Standing up, Mirabella squared her shoulders. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my boss wants me to track down a report and I don’t like to disappoint him.”
Zane rose from the table as well, joining her as they walked out of the break room. He was seeing her in a brand-new light, and that light was very flattering. She was a fighter. He liked that.
“I really don’t think that’s possible, Belle,” he told her quietly.
Chapter 11
Mirabella told herself it didn’t matter. That she was stronger than she’d thought and that, digging deep for inner strength, she could bear up to anything. She sought comfort in the idea that Zane was right. Everything, good or bad, eventually blew over and this would, too.
Eventually.
All she had to do was wait out the storm.
And maybe, if she was really as alone as she’d indicated to Zane, in an odd sort of way, she could just continue ignoring the whispers, the snide remarks and the barely veiled insults that kept coming her way.
But she wasn’t completely alone. While she’d told him the truth that both her parents were now elsewhere, living their lives with their spouses, there was one very dear person in her life who mattered a great deal to her. One person she would do anything to protect, to shield and do anything to ensure she wasn’t hurt—and that person was her beloved grandmother. Sofia Sanchez, the sweet, rock of a woman who had always been there for Mirabella during her childhood, had been the one who had shielded her.
When what seemed like daily battles broke out between her parents, Sofia, her mother’s mother, had been her haven. Living close by, the older woman would invite her to stay with her when things became particularly intolerable at home. During those days, the small, animated woman provided the much-needed stability missing from the life she had with her parents.
Wrapped up in their own minidramas, her parents hardly noticed her. In those rare times when they did notice her, she became the object of a tug-of-war between them, made to feel like an object rather than a person with real feelings.
Even then, her grandmother didn’t take sides. Sofia always assured her that her parents loved her. She told her that they were just two very unhappy, mismatched people who had no real idea how to live harmoniously. Instead of taking a negative view of things, her grandmother always told her to be patient, that things would eventually calm down and work themselves out.
Sofia also told her to always remember she was loved, by her parents and, very fiercely, by her.
“What would you think of me now, Nana?” Mirabella asked as she looked herself over in the mirror just before she got dressed. She still wasn’t showing, but she could well envision what she would look like, rounded out with a child. “If you knew about this baby, would you stop loving me?”
She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening, so she had been
putting off the inevitable. Putting off telling her kind, sweet, diminutive grandmother that she had gotten pregnant because one night, she had too much to drink and became vulnerable and careless.
“Would you disown me?” Mirabella questioned the woman who was there only in spirit. “Would you just walk away, shaking your head?”
Sofia Sanchez was a wonderful, kind, loving woman who had taught her to always share what she had. If her grandmother had only one loaf of bread and saw someone hungry, she would gladly give them half. It was a philosophy that was well rooted, as were all of her values.
They were also old-fashioned. And because Sofia had old-fashioned values, her grandmother believed a young woman should be married before she ever knew any pleasures of the flesh, much less before she became pregnant.
Good girls wait, Mirabella, her grandmother had told her more than once. It is not easy, Sofia had admitted understandingly. But they wait. That is why it is so much more precious when you give yourselves to one another.
“Precious” is off the table, Nana, Mirabella thought with a sigh.
Each time she picked up the telephone to call her grandmother, she could hear her grandmother’s voice in her head, talking about priorities, about saving herself until after marriage.
And each time, she let the receiver drop back into the cradle, promising herself that she would call her grandmother, soon.
Her grandmother had to know something was wrong, Mirabella silently argued. Sofia wasn’t a fool. Using one excuse or another, she hadn’t been to see her grandmother in close to two months. But with each day that passed by, maintaining the lie was becoming too huge a burden for her to bear. However, she knew that although she still wasn’t showing, something she said or did in her grandmother’s company was bound to give her secret away.
And so, she continued to put off a face-to-face meeting. Her grandmother would call, inviting her over, saying she hadn’t seen her in what felt like a very long time, and she would tell her grandmother she had to go out of town on business, or she was working overtime, helping Zane with a security overhaul, and wouldn’t be able to make it over in the foreseeable future.
The Pregnant Colton Bride Page 10