Dedicated to Deirdre

by Winston, Anne Marie

  It might be more than a few more years if what you suspect is true.

  With a weary sigh she laid her head on the edge of the cabinet that housed her sewing machine. There was no use in ignoring her fears; they intruded into everything she did.

  She hadn’t had her period since that first time with Ronan. Six, almost seven weeks ago. In the bathroom cupboard, a home pregnancy test lurked, staring her in the eye every time she reached for her toothpaste. Twice this week she’d gone so far as to take it from the shelf and read the directions.

  And twice she’d put it back again. Maybe her period was just late because she’d been so upset recently, out of her routine. And maybe the unrelenting nausea she’d been fighting really was just a flu bug hanging on. She’d lost eight pounds, which thrilled her, but she had no appetite. She noticed everything she ate tasted like chalk—when she could force herself to eat it at all. Sleep came sporadically, and even when it did, the dreams came with it, and she’d wake with the pillow soaked with tears, hoping she hadn’t awakened the boys by crying aloud.

  She was getting a tremendous amount of sewing done, though, with the frequent midnight-to-dawn work sessions. And Murphy was in seventh heaven, being invited into the house almost every night rather than sleeping in his kennel.

  But she couldn’t put it off any longer. Her conscience wouldn’t let her. If she was pregnant, she needed to go to a doctor, take vitamins, stop drinking coffee. If she was pregnant, then the baby deserved the same careful nurturing her other pregnancies had received.

  The next morning she tiptoed into the bathroom before the boys were up. Even the sun was just waking. She hadn’t gone to bed until 2:00 a.m., and her eyes were gritty and her senses dull.

  Her fingers trembled as she took down the package, fumbling with the wrapping so badly that she nearly dropped it. Quickly she followed the directions, eyes on her watch until time was up. She looked at the little stick. And her heart stopped.

  No! Oh, God, please. No.

  What was she going to do?

  Adrenaline was pouring through her system as if she’d run a fifty-yard sprint. She realized she was gulping air like water, and she forced herself to breathe slowly, as a wave of dizziness eddied through her and the edges of her vision grew dark. Her stomach rolled, and she realized she was going to throw up.

  Afterward, she wiped her face with a damp cloth. The pregnancy test kit still lay on the counter, and she shuddered. Dropping the whole awful thing into the trash can, she stumbled back to bed.

  She couldn’t pretend anymore. She couldn’t make up stupid excuses for her body’s failure to do its normal things, couldn’t pretend she had the flu dead smack in the middle of the summer.

  She was going to have Ronan’s baby.

  At the thought of telling him she was pregnant, she moaned aloud. How could she bring a child into the world, knowing that its father hated its mother? And its mother...well, she didn’t hate him. She just hurt.

  But even as the thoughts crossed her mind, she knew that bearing this child wasn’t a choice. Not for her. Not ever. She would love this baby, no matter what mistakes she might have made in her brief relationship with the child’s father. Being pregnant again was definitely not the best news she’d ever had, especially if she got as sick as she had both other times in the first trimester, but she refused to allow it to become the worst. A life was precious. A child was precious, a gift parents should cherish.

  When she remembered the last time she’d thought that, tears came to her eyes again. It had been the night the boys were kidnapped—a term she hated, but there was no pretty way to say it. Ronan had shown her with his actions since he’d met her sons that they enchanted him, and that night she’d sensed his fear as surely as she knew her own.

  Ronan might not be happy when he found out he was a father, but at least she knew their child would never be neglected, never be unloved.

  Ronan looked at the calendar again. He should have had the first six chapters finished by now. Hell, he should have had it finished last week. He was due to start the script for Among the Cold at Heart in six months. At the rate he was going, he’d still be in chapter five.

  Work was—for the first time since he’d started writing—work. He felt like he was slogging through knee-deep mud in every scene. Every sentence, every word, bore the blood he’d sweated trying to produce them.

  It was just no fun. Not even writing a script for a movie made from one of his books, which should have been a thrill, appealed to him.

  It was her fault. He tried to dredge up the rage that had carried him through the first week, but it had long since drained away, leaving him hollow, emptied of venom and, though it galled him to admit it, lonely and sad.

  He’d had a good reason for what he did, dammit. Like he’d tried to explain, he hadn’t lied to her on purpose. It had been a generic, cover-all-the-bases reflex at first, and he simply hadn’t figured out how to fix it.

  And then it blew up in his face.

  How come she hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt? How come she’d condemned him without even a trial? She was a witch, and he was glad he didn’t have to see her anymore.

  And pigs flew.

  So what? So what if you miss her so damn bad you’ve nearly gone over there and shaken her until she listened to you.

  His body hadn’t forgotten her; it reminded him of her on a regular basis. Even when he’d been six thousand miles away, meeting starlets and sweethearts in Hollywood while his agent negotiated the contract for the screenplay, his body’s reaction had been markedly unenthusiastic...until night came and Deirdre slipped into his dreams.

  But that didn’t matter. She didn’t want him. And he didn’t want her. And he would prove it. He’d only paid that additional month’s rent to show her she couldn’t chase him away. Although she hadn’t exactly tried. He’d laid eyes on her approximately once a day since they’d ended it, and that was only from a distance when she was going to and from her Bronco. She was never on the porch anymore when he went around to get Murphy. She was rarely even close by in the kitchen. Most of the time the boys had to run elsewhere in the house to give her messages.

  Her workroom. He knew she was spending half the night working in there. He knew because midnight walks had begun to appeal to him recently. He’d just happened to notice her silhouette against the light as she moved around the room—

  He wasn’t going to let her get to him, dammit!

  Then he gave a huge sigh. Who was he kidding with his stupid denials? Not himself. And there sure as hell wasn’t anybody else around to kid. Since the day he’d found that bag of shattered cookies on his steps, his life had been shattered, too.

  He’d thought she was different from Sonja. And she had been. She hadn’t cared about his money, hadn’t wheedled or cajoled him into buying her expensive trinkets. A memory of their day at the harbor forced itself into her head. In fact, she’d been determined not to let him spoil her or her sons.

  When she’d told him she loved him, he was just a journalist to her. Okay, so she hadn’t been after his money. Maybe she’d had some other motive. He knew firsthand how women could dress up any motive as love. Maybe she really believed she loved him. But she hadn’t, not really. She couldn’t.

  If it hadn’t been just the sex, she never would have cut him out of her life over something as stupid as that misunderstanding. Not if she’d really loved him.

  High-pitched giggling, followed by the sound of little footsteps on the stairs, alerted him that Oops and I’m Sorry, as he’d privately and affectionately begun to think of Tommy and Lee, were hunting him. With a sense of relief, he hit Save and turned off his PC. Maybe tomorrow would be better.

  He met them at the top of the stairs, hurling one over each shoulder and running down the steps as fast as he could, provoking wild screams punctuated with more giggles. Outside the stable, he set them on their feet, Lee first, and then smaller Tommy. “Hey, guys, are you going swimming with
me today?”

  Two pairs of little eyes lit up. “Yeah!” Two pairs of little legs wheeled to dash off toward the house for towels. They never bothered with suits since the group was all guys—an important distinction in Lee’s eyes now that he was an old man of five—then the little rascal stopped and rushed back.

  “Almost forgot. Mom wants to talk to you. She said could you come over after supper?”

  Ronan nodded as Lee trotted away, but his voice had temporarily deserted him. What could she want?

  Maybe she wanted to apologize. He was willing to forget the whole miserable quarrel if she was.

  But more likely, he thought darkly, she wanted to tell him to quit playing with her kids. Or that his monthly lease wasn’t going to be renewed in September.

  From that point on, the afternoon stretched and lengthened until he was sure somebody was messing with his watch. After the swim they returned to the house, and he got Murphy for their daily walk.

  He ate a solitary meal of canned ravioli, while the boys went into the house for their mother’s home-cooked dinner, and retrieved his e-mail, and at last it was 7:00. Surely supper could be considered “over” at this time. At least, for anybody with little kids.

  Trying not to hurry, he took his time crossing the yard and walking around to the back of the house. The dog whined ecstatically when he saw him, and he made himself take a moment to stop and scratch Murphy’s belly before walking up the steps and knocking on the screen door.

  “Come on in.” Her voice sounded normal enough. “But let the dog stay outside for now, please.”

  He pulled open the screen door and stepped into the comfortable world she had created in her kitchen. Familiar smells assailed his nostrils: cinnamon, something floral from the vase on the table, various mild herby odors wafting down from the bundles suspended just above his head. She was standing at the sink with her back to him, and as he looked at her, he realized his palms were sweating. Surreptitiously, he wiped them on his pants.

  The first thing he noticed was that she’d lost weight. Enough weight that the rounded hips he’d loved were slender and svelte—no, actually skinny—beneath her jeans. It was fashionable, and he knew women did a lot of strange things to achieve this kind of goal but he preferred her the way she had been before.

  Then she turned around, and he was shocked anew. Unpleasantly so. Her face was gaunt. His writer’s mind flipped through, “emaciated,” “thin” and “hollow-cheeked,” but ultimately settled on the first word that had sprung to mind. Her cheeks were hollow, in keeping with the fragile appearance of the rest of her, but the rest of her face looked drawn and tired. As far as he could see she wore no makeup, not even to cover the dark circles beneath her eyes, and her lips were pale and dry. She looked like absolute, living hell.

  It was all he could do not to take her in his arms and make her rest for about a hundred days.

  “Hello,” she said quietly. “Would you prefer to sit here or in the living room?”

  “This is fine,” he said. “Where are the boys?”

  The merest trace of a smile tugged at her lips briefly. “In Tommy’s room, playing with the elaborate Lego village they’ve been building all week. At least, I hope that’s what they’re doing.”

  He nodded, but found that smiling was out of the question. “Are you sick?” He blurted out the question without thinking, then realized he’d opened with practically the same words the last time they’d spoken.

  She shook her head, eyes on the tablecloth, where her fingers were pleating and smoothing and repleating a section of the fabric, over and over and over. “Just tired. I’ve been working a lot.”

  “You look like you’re more than tired.” He couldn’t hide his concern. When he saw the quick surge of alarm that flared in her eyes before she controlled her expression, he was more than concerned; he was scared.

  “I’ll be fine.” She waved her hand, dismissing the topic, and though he wanted to demand she tell him what was really wrong with her, her distant courtesy fell like an invisible barrier between them. “I wanted to talk to you about the money you spent last month when—the day—”

  “I know when.” His voice was harsh; he was so damn disappointed he stood and turned away, staring down into the dormant fireplace. “That’s why you asked me to come over here?”

  “Yes.” It was a mere thread of sound. “I want to set up a schedule to repay your loan. With interest, of course.”

  “That wasn’t a loan,” he said through his teeth. “That was a gift.”

  “I can’t accept it. I want to repay the money.”

  “Not.”

  “I won’t accept a gift of that magnitude. I appreciate it—” Her voice stumbled. “You know how much it meant to me.”

  “Then why won’t you forget about it? It’s not like I’ll miss it.” Her eyelids flinched, and he realized that hadn’t been the most intelligent thing he could have said. “Look.” He tried again. “Those little guys mean a lot to me, too. I was glad I could help. Please stop worrying about paying me back.” God, she was stubborn. He hadn’t really believed his own conclusions until now, had thought that deep down, she could be swayed by the thought of his wealth. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  And she was still shaking her head. “Ronan, I won’t take money from you. I saw it as a loan then, and I see it the same way now. I appreciate everything you did that day—” She stopped abruptly.

  The sound of his name on her lips actually hurt, he discovered. Why did this woman have such power over him? He’d sworn he’d never be manipulated by a woman again, and yet here he was, sick with worry—and longing, too—over this one. “I’m glad you appreciated everything I did,” he said, to keep her from seeing that she was getting to him. “Although you don’t have to say it. I could tell from the way you let me appreciate you that you liked it.”

  She was silent, and he turned, anger a hard knot in his chest. “You liked it a lot, if my memory is correct.”

  “Ronan, please...” There was anguish in her voice. “I don’t want it to be like this. Not now.”

  “Not now?” he sneered, rage and pain making him want to hurt her as much as she was hurting him. “Then when? How long are you going to pretend you didn’t like it? Why don’t we just consider the loan paid off for a little ‘afternoon delight’?”

  She stood so abruptly her chair overbalanced and went crashing to the floor behind her. There were tears in her eyes. “I won’t listen to this.” She swallowed hard. “I will repay you, somehow, whether or not you—” Suddenly her eyes widened and she turned. Without another word, she rushed from the room.

  Astonished, still enraged, he started down the hall after her but stopped as the door of the downstairs bathroom slammed shut in his face. And as he stood there, seething, an unmistakable sound assaulted his ears. Deirdre was losing her dinner, retching repeatedly, over and over again until there couldn’t possibly be anything left to come up.

  “Deirdre?”

  Silence.

  “Dee! Answer me!”

  She didn’t, though the toilet flushed.

  “I’m coming in,” he warned her.

  “No.” He could water running in the sink. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “I’m timing you.” He leaned one shoulder against the wall, prepared to stay there until she came out. She was sicker than she wanted to let on, and a sense of shame swept over him as his callous words of moments ago rang in his ears.

  After another few seconds the door opened and she emerged. She looked even worse, if that was possible, than she had before, and as he moved forward he said, “You’re going to bed. And you’re staying there until this flu or whatever it is, goes away. I’ll take care of the boys.”

  “No!” She pushed at his chest, but it was a feeble imitation of the fury with which she’d fought him the day she found out who he was, and he gathered her in his arms and carried her up the stairs. “I can’t go to bed. I have too much—”

&n
bsp; “Shut up,” he said through his teeth. How much weight had she lost? She felt like a feather in his arms and she hadn’t been heavy before. “Just shut up or I swear to God I’ll put a gag in your mouth.”

  As he set her on her bed, her sons appeared, eyes wide and round.

  “You said ‘shut up!’” Lee informed him. In case he didn’t know.

  “We’re not allowed to say that,” Tommy said.

  “I’m not allowed to say it, either.” He stripped the sheets down and laid her on the mattress.

  “What’s wrong with Mommy?”

  “She’s not feeling so good,” he said. “But when she gets better, she’ll probably wash my mouth out with soap.”

  Both boys giggled, but Lee’s little face sobered quickly. “Mom doesn’t feel good all the time. Are you gonna take her to the doctor?”

  “That’s a good idea. I just might.” He made an effort to smile at them, aware that they would get alarmed if they thought he was. “I promise I’ll take good care of her. Would you guys do something for me?”

  They both nodded eagerly.

  “Go downstairs and get a big glass of ice water for Mom. Then get a washcloth and make it wet and bring it to me. Bring a towel, too,” he added.

  “Okay.”

  As they headed down the stairs, he turned his attention back to Deirdre. She hadn’t even argued while he was issuing directions, and that was possibly the scariest sign of all that something was seriously wrong. He set his hands at her waist and started to unfasten her jeans.

  Her hands came up over his and she shook her head. “No.”

  “I’m only going to make you more comfortable.”

  “No.”