by Неизвестный
"You’re losing too much weight," her mother said at dinner that night. "Good heavens, Leila, except for around your middle, your clothes are hanging on you."
‘‘Small wonder," Cleo said. "Look at her plate. She’s hardly touched her food. When was the last time you ate a proper meal, sweet child?"
"I don’t know," she said irritably. "Quite frankly, even if I weren’t pregnant, the situation with Dante would be enough to kill my appetite?
Her mother tut-tutted with disapproval. "If you’d just tell him about the baby, I’m sure the two of you would work things out. You caught him at a bad time with the news about Anthony, dear. He’s not normally an unrea-sonable man, I’m sure. He was charming to me." Indeed he was, but there was another side to him, a mulish obstinacy her mother had not seen, and trying to explain it took more energy than Leila could spare just then. Affecting a nonchalance she ‘didn’t feel, she said,
"I’m sure we’ll work something out so stop worrying. As for my not eating ... " She looked down at the piece of chicken on her plate. It looked back at her, glistening moistly next to its bed of peas and new potatoes. Trying not to gag, she pushed it aside. "Well, I guess it’s all a normal part of being pregnant?
"No, it isn’t," her mother replied very firmly. "The way you’ve been feeling—so dragged out and sick-isn’t normal at all. I think you should see your doctor again."
In fact, Leila already had an appointment booked for early the following morning because, when she’d gone in the previous Friday, Margaret Dearborn, the obstetri-cian had had a cold. Not wanting to chance infecting her patient, she’d confirmed the pregnancy by using a test kit and had asked Leila to come back for a complete physical within the week.
"Hmm," she said, when Leila described her symp-toms the next day, "I’m not sure I like the sound of all this. Hop up on the table and let’s have a good look at you."
The concentration with which she conducted the ex-amination and the fact that she took so long over it did nothing to improve Leila’s general sense of well-being. Recognizing the fine mist of perspiration that heralded another about of nausea, she took a deep breath and tried to relax.
Finally, the doctor stepped back and picked up her clipboard. "It’s too bad l wasn’t able to check you out more thoroughly when you first came to see me," she said, scribbling furiously.
Not until that precise moment did Leila realize how badly she wanted Dante’s baby. Nothing that had taken place between them since his return from Europe-not the disagreements, the disappointment or the heart-ache—could compete with the intense surge of protec-tive maternal love she felt for the life growing within her. "Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Tell me!" she begged, more frightened than she ever remembered be-ing. Margaret stroked the bell of her stethoscope consider-ingly. "For a woman only ten weeks into her first preg-nancy, your uterus is considerably larger than it should be. Add this to your other symptoms, and it’s my opin-ion that you’re carrying twins."
"Twins?" Leila repeated as blankly as though the word had been plucked from a foreign language and meant nothing to her. `
"Two babies," the doctor supplied, with a flash of humor no doubt brought on by Leila’s stunned disbelief.
"But we won’t know for certain until we do an ultra-sound which I’ll get my nurse to arrange for later on today."
"I have to go to work right after I leave here. I’ve already missed too much time at the office."
"My dear, if my diagnosis is on target—and I’m ninety percent sure it is—missing time at the office is the least of your worries. The risk of premature delivery with twins is significantly higher than with single births and you’re already operating under far too much stress. You’re clearly exhausted and I can tell you now that if you seriously want this pregnancy to go to term, you’re going to have to quit work."
"But I can’t!" She’d been depending on at least an·
other six months’ salary to pay off the last of her father’s debts. "I need the money."
"What about the father of these babies, Leila? Why isn’t he coming forward and offering to help out with the financial end of things?"
‘‘I’m sure he would," she said miserably, "if he knew I was pregnant." `
"You mean, you haven’t told him?" The doctor looked shocked. "Why on earth not? Is he married to someone else?"
"No. We... I... just haven’t found the right time—"
‘‘When you yourself first found out was the right time, Leila, so what’s really going on here? Are you afraid to tell him? Would you like me to talk to him?"
"No!" Good grief, the fallout from such an event didn’t bear thinking about! If Dante had resented the way he’d learned about her relationship with Anthony, she couldn’t begin to imagine his reaction at finding out from a third party that she was expecting his baby. Or babies!
"You see, that’s just what I’m talking about," Margaret Dearborn said, slapping a blood pressure cuff around Leila’s arm. "Believe me, either you follow my advice now or you’ll wind up in a hospital bed before much longer. Unless, of course, you don’t really want this pregnancy to last."
"Well, of course I do!" "Fine. Then tell the man before he figures it out for himself and enlist his support. Because you won’t be able to keep your condition a secret much longer and he might take it amiss to discover he’s the last to find out. In the meantime, let’s get you lined up for that ultra-sound. Assuming it can be arranged for this afternoon, I want you back here before the end of the day to discuss the results."
It had been the week from hell. The South Americans had left at two that afternoon and he’d half thought he’d ask Leila out to dinner and try to set things right between them. But when he’d stopped by her office, he found she’d called in sick that morning with some vague stom-ach ailment. He’d then phoned her at home, only to dis-cover she was out.
‘‘When did a four—day week become the norm around here?" he’d growled, slamming down the receiver.
"Sick, be damned! She’s probably holding Fletcher’s hand again, if truth be known."
Well, screw her! He’d wasted enough time chasing her down. He couldn’t find his desk for the work piled up on it and he’d be a sight better employed tackling that than spinning his wheels over her.
"Hold my calls, Meg," he barked into the intercom, and waded into the mound of papers waiting for his at-tention. He didn’t lift his head again until Meg showed up at his desk at the end of the day. "Anything else I can do for you before I call it quits, Dante?"
Surprised, he saw it was past six already. "Heck, no, Meg. Go home before your husband comes after me with a shotgun. And take tomorrow off as a bonus for all the extra hours you’ve put in this week. You must be
bushed."
"You look rather drained yourself," she said, stack-ing the letters she’d prepared for signing. "It’s been a pretty intense few days and I guess we’re all feeling the effects."
"Yeah," he said, with more than a trace of sarcasm.
"Either that, or there’s something in the water around here. Apparently Leila didn’t feel well enough to make it in to work today."
"I’m not surprised?
"Something to do with an upset stomach, I’m told."
"That’s one way of putting it, I suppose." Alerted by something in Meg’s tone, he frowned.
"You mean, you noticed she wasn’t up to par‘?" he asked uneasily, wishing he hadn’t been so quick to dis-miss the idea that something might really be wrong with Leila.
"I could hardly help it. Apart from last Monday’s episode here in your office, I’ve been in the ladies’ room more than once this last week when she’s made a dash for the nearest stall, and I recognize the signs all too well."
"No kidding! You mean you’ve got the same bug?"
"Lord, I hope not! Two’s enough for me." Meg backed away from him as if he’d suddenly announced he had typhoid.
"Two what?" he mumbled, smothering a yawn.
"Children, Dante," she sa
id. "What did you think I meant, puppies?"
The yawn evaporated, but his mouth remained gaping open. "Huh?"
"Offspring. Heirs apparent. Rug rats. You know, Dante—or you should. Your sisters have produced
enough to form their own basketball team."
He must have looked every bit as dazed as he felt because she elaborated, "I’m talking about babies—of the human variety. The kind who grow into little an-kle—biters and absorb every last cent you make with their unending need for new shoes, dental braces, summer camp and whatever the kid next door has that they don’t."
"Are you trying to tell me that you think Leila is pregnant?" he said, at last finding his voice again. Except it didn’t sound like his voice. It sounded like a badly rusted engine fallen out of some abandoned old car.
"Oh, jeez!" Meg turned an uncharacteristic shade of pink, a phenomenon which, all by itself, was enough to make Dante nervous. It took a great deal to rattle Megan Norris to the point that she actually blushed, and even more to make her babble as she then proceeded to do.
"Hey, I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth, Dante. I mean, I thought you knew...if—if there’s anything to know, that is. I mean, everyone’s aware the pair of you are an item, even if you aren’t broadcasting it around the office. On the other hand, maybe she’s just got the flu—there’s a lot going around. Or something.”
"Or something," he repeated slowly, and wondered how he’d managed to avoid seeing the obvious, because Meg was right. Over the last ten years or so, he’d wit-nessed a total of eleven pregnancies pretty much from start to finish and become such an expert on detecting the signs that, half the time, he’d figured out he was about to be made an uncle again before the mother-to-be had known for sure. So why hadn’t he recognized what was wrong with Leila, for Pete’s sake?
More to the point, why hadn’t she come right out and told him herself?
Because it wasn’t his baby?
"Dante?" Megan hovered at the corner of his desk, ready to bolt if need be. "Are you okay?"
"Sure," he said, pulling the stack of letters toward him.
It had to be his baby. If she was to be believed, she hadn’t seen Fletcher in months until a week ago.
"Aren’t you ready to pack it in for the day?" If she was to be believed.
"As soon as I’ve signed these. But you go on home, Meg. You’ve done enough."
It was his baby! She’d been a virgin when they’d made love the first time. Which brought him back to full circle to the most crucial question: why hadn’t she said something before now?
Granted, he’d been away for a month and last Monday morning might not have been the best time to spring the news on him, given the explosive atmosphere, but what about later that same afternoon, when they’d been so caught up with need and desire that they’d had leaped at each other all over her desk?
Or why not after that, when he’d offered her a ring?
Why the hell would she have continued to keep quiet?
She must know, for crying out loud! Even though this was her first, the symptoms were too classic to go un-recognized.
"If I spoke out of turn, Dante——" Meg said, refusing to get the hell out and leave him alone with his evil thoughts, "I really——"
"You didn’t," he said shortly. "Good night, Megan." He seldom addressed her so formally. She took the hint and scurried out of the office.
He waited until the door snicked quietly closed behind her before taking out a framed snapshot of Leila which he’d rammed into the top drawer of his desk almost a week ago. "So," he muttered, staring down at the per-fect, guileless face, "you think you don’t want my ring and you don’t want me. Well, honey, if you’re pregnant, you aren’t going to have any choice. To paraphrase a line from a well-known movie, I’ll make you an offer of marriage you can’t refuse. Because no kid of mine is growing up a bastard."
Stuffing the picture back into the drawer, he reached for the phone and punched in her number again. This time, her mother answered on the third ring.
"I’m afraid she’s not here," she said when he asked to speak to Leila.
"Really‘? I understood she was ill, but she’s obviously feeling better."
"Er...yes." Poor woman, she sounded distinctly ill at ease. "I’m expecting her very soon, Dante. Would you like me to give her a message?"
"Yes," he said. "Tell her there’s a small matter I’d like to discuss with her over dinner and I’ll be by to pick her up in about an hour. And if you happen to speak to her again and she decides she has other errands to run before she comes home, please tell her not to worry about running late. I’ll wait—all evening, if I have to."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dinner with Dante? Out of the question!
"No, Mother," she said. "I just can’t face him, not tonight."
"I don’t think you have much choice, Leila. He sounded very determined. And you can’t go on avoiding him forever."
"I can call and put him off."
"Save your energy, sweet one," Cleo advised, peer-ing through the lace curtain at the parlor window. "He just pulled up at the gate."
Why was she surprised, Leila wondered. Her world had started spinning out of control weeks ago. The trou-ble was, she hadn’t realized it until today when, sud-denly, the simplest task had become too much for her. Her thoughts were scattered, incomplete, veering wildly from one problem to the next without resolving any. How would she manage to pay off the last of the debts if she couldn’t work? Where would she live? Cleo’s house was barely big enough for three, let alone five. And most disturbing of all, how was she going to face Dante and tell him he’d fathered twins?
"Stall him," she said, tiring the order at both her mother and Cleo. "I need some time to prepare myself for this."
It hadn’t helped that the first person to accost her when she got home had been a man who, although he was a stranger, she had nonetheless recognized. Whether operating out of Singapore or Vancouver, debt collectors had a sameness about them that had less to do with spe-ciflc physical features than general mien. The only dif-ference lay in how she’d learned to deal with them.
"Go away," she’d said, brushing past the man on the path leading to the house. "I’m paying off my father’s creditors as fast as possible, so please remove yourself from our property and don’t bother us again." He’d left. By law, he had to. But they’d send someone else, and sooner rather than later. They’d keep sending someone else, she thought gloomily, drying herself off after a quick shower and searching through her wardrobe for something comfortable to wear, until the last cent had been repaid. And in all truth, she had never wanted it any other way. Until this morning, it had not seemed so impossible a goal.
But her pregnancy had shifted everything to a new focus. She hadn’t needed the late—afternoon appointment with Margaret Dearborn for confirmation of the morn-ing’s diagnosis. At the hospital, when the technician had pointed to the fuzzy images on the television screen, even Leila’s untrained eye had been able to see two tiny hearts beating.
But none of that changed the fact that the happy-ever after ending she’d so blithely envisaged with Dante had disappeared like mist in the heat of a summer sun. Their confrontation last Monday had done more than wound; it had exposed major flaws in the whole foundation of the relationship.
Oh, the passion still raged between him and her, in-satiable and persistent even when things were at their worst. And she still loved him. Always would, she feared. She was indeed her ‘mother’s daughter in that respect: a one-man woman for life, no matter how rough the going might get, and she could not imagine ever experiencing with someone else the incredible meeting of body, mind and soul that she’d known with Dante. But her belief that destiny was on their side, which had seemed so entirely plausible on Poinciana, no longer held firm. The intrusion of the real, all—too-imperfect world had displaced her fanciful notions of paradise.
"Leila," her mother called, tapping on her door,
; ‘‘Dante’s growing impatient.’’
"I’ll be right down," she said, hauling clothes out of her closet and discarding them, one by one. Hardly any-thing fit properly anymore. The only thing she could find that didn’t make her look like a badly stuffed sausage was a straight-cut slubbed silk shift the color of ripe mangoes, and a matching jacket accented with satin la-pels and buttons. More glamorous than the occasion called for, the dress nevertheless slid over her hips without a wrinkle, the jacket camouflaged her thickening middle perfectly; they would have to do.
Looping a string of freshwater pearls around her neck and slipping on a pair of pale suede pumps, she drew a fortifying breath and braced herself to face the ordeal ahead. Because her mother was right: regardless of the sad state of affairs between her and Dante, she couldn’t put off telling him the news any longer.
As if waiting to strike when she was too beleaguered to fight it, the nausea attacked again and sent her fleeing for the bathroom. She hated this part of being pregnant, she thought, repelled by the indignity of it all. The house was small, the bathroom located right near the top of the stairs, and Dante waited in the parlor immediately below. Could he hear her retching?
At length the spasm passed. Straightening up, she splashed cold water over her face. Doing so wreaked havoc with the little bit of makeup she’d applied, but how much did that matter when so many other, more urgent things clamored for attention?
He sat chatting affably enough with her mother and Cleo when Leila came down, but although he rose from the high-backed horsehair sofa at the sight of her and said, "You look very nice," she knew at once that his cordiality did not extend to her. His eyes were too coldly assessing, his smile too deliberate.
"I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight," she said ner-vously, as soon as they were in the car. ‘‘What prompted you to ask me out?"
‘‘I thought it was time we talked. We can hardly leave things the way they ended on Monday or pretend they never happened. We work in the same office, after all, and it’s inevitable that we’ll run into each other. It seemed a good idea to lay everything out in the open and arrive at some sort of mutually acceptable agreement on where we go from here."