by Неизвестный
"I can’t do that!" she protested. "I won’t. Women don’t coerce a man into marriage these days because there’s a baby on the way."
"And Rossi men don’t let their children be born bas-tards, nor do they leave them to be farmed out while their mothers scrub floors to keep them in diapers." She cringed and pressed her palms to her belly, as if to shield the lives she carried from the savage brute con-fronting her. "No!"
"I don’t understand your reluctance, my dear," he said bitterly. "You claim you still have some feelings for me. You’re expecting my children. You need my help. And all I’m demanding by way of collateral on my investment is that you become Mrs. Dante Rossi. What’s so difficult about that?"
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE couldn’t think of a reason in the world to refuse him. Everything he said was true. But sensible though all the other reasons were, the one that mattered most was that she loved him. Unreasonably, perhaps, given his brutal assessment of their relationship, and certainly irrationally. But when had logic ever entered the picture where he was concerned?
The bottom line was that she wanted him and she needed him. She was tired of swimming against the tide; tired of carrying her own and other people’s burdens alone.
And if he didn’t return her feelings in equal measure?
Could she live with a husband who saw her only as a financial venture and the mother of his children?
She looked up and found him staring at her, his eyes the cool inscrutable aquamarine of a hard-driving busi-nessman pressing to close a deal and not about to give an inch in the process. Yet the magnetism which had drawn her to him at their first meeting and which had continued to rage despite their efforts to conquer it, charged the atmosphere now, palpable as the crackling electricity before a summer storm and just as inescap-able. Given all that, didn’t it make sense for her to agree to his terms? Wasn’t it best for the babies to have a home with both parents? And if, meanwhile, she could love enough for both of them, might he not, in time, find himself falling in love with her again, this time for keeps?
Quickly, before conscience or reason could counter-mand the yearning conviction in her heart, she said, ‘‘All right, Dante, we’ll do things your way. We’ll be mar-ried." She forced herself to match his tone, making her re-sponse sound flatly contractual, as if such calculated matrimonial agreements were the norm. She had to; it was the only way she could cope with the fact that, unlike his first impassioned proposal, this one amounted to nothing more than a corporate merger.
He continued to pin her in that cool, unfathomable gaze and let the seconds spin out between them in ag-onizing, judgmental silence. When she thought she could bear it no longer, he said with a contempt made all the more potent by his gentle tone, "So, you are to be had, if the price is right."
The accusation broke her heart, mostly because, from his viewpoint, it was justified. They’d lost so much--the spontaneity, the joy——and it was her fault. She had not intentionally deceived him when he’d asked her, in those early days, if there was another man in her life, but she had not been fully honest, either. Meeting Dante and falling headlong in love with him had consumed her to the extent that nothing she had known before—not Anthony, not her father’s suicide and not her mother’s straitened circumstances-had seemed relevant.
But even an innocent past caught up with a person sooner or later, as she was learning to her cost, and facts withheld took on a darkness they might not have as-sumed had they been revealed voluntarily at the outset, before emotions complicated matters.
Without ever intending to, she and not he had de-stroyed the trust they’d tentatively begun to establish. But if the fault was hers, so was the remedy. She would grasp at what was left of her relationship with Dante and cling to it in whatever way presented itself. Because for all that it bore the scars of their disenchantment, it was too precious and too rare to abandon; and because, if she did not hold it fast, it, too, would slip away and they’d never find their way back to each other.
"I’m not doing it for the money, Dante," she said.
"I’m doing it for us because, despite everything, I still think we can make our marriage work if we try hard enough."
"You’ll have a hard time persuading me of that, honey," he said, "but you’d better make damn sure you convince everyone else. Because understand this: you’ve made a fool of me for the last time and I will not have people sniggering behind my back, or pitying me for being the one left to clean up the mess when the other guy walked away."
His words shot arrows in her heart. Remember why you’re fighting to keep this man with you, she told her- self. Remember not only that you love him but that, deep down, you believe he still loves you.
She did not anticipate adhering to those beliefs would take such a toll. Could not, in her wildest imaginings, have foreseen the nightmare of what followed.
It started as early as the next morning. She was in her office, clearing out her desk, when her door burst open and Gail rushed into the room.
"Leila!" she exclaimed. "I’m so thrilled for you!’’
Leila blinked, taken aback. "Why?"
"Oh, you can stop pretending-not that it was much of a secret to begin with, mind you!—but it’s official now and I wanted to be the first to wish you well. Dante’s a real hunk and could have taken his pick of any one of a hundred women, but he was smart and
chose you. It’s nice to know there’s a heart as well as a brain under all those good looks."
"I gather," Leila said faintly, when the spate of com-pliments finally ran dry, "that you’ve heard about our...?"
"That you and Dante are engaged. Yes! Everyone read about it this morning? Gail stopped suddenly and clapped an exaggeratedly astonished hand to her mouth at Leila’s blank amazement. "Except you, it seems!
Good grief, you haven’t checked the interoffice e-mail this morning, have you‘?"
"No," Leila said, refusing to believe Dante would choose such a coldly impersonal way to announce the news.
But he had. When she called up the morning’s post-ings, there it was on her computer screen, sandwiched between a memo for all senior sales personnel to submit their latest client lists and a reminder that cars not show-ing a current company permit on the windshield were liable to be towed from the parking lot at the owner’s expense: I ’m pleased to announce that Leila Connors- Lee and I are shortly to be married. Dante Rossi. Leila stared at the monitor, stunned. If his intention had been to belittle their engagement, he’d succeeded. While she was under orders to convince the world theirs was the love match of the century, he had no compunc-tion at all about reducing it to the level of trivia.
"You don’t look exactly radiant," Gail said, inspect-ing her sympathetically. ‘‘Still feeling under the weather, are you?"
"Yes," Leila said. "And let’s not pretend we don’t both know it’s because I’m pregnant, Gail. Every other facet of my private life appears to be public domain, after all."
Gail looked uncomfortable. "It’s no one’s business but yours, Leila. I’m sorry if I’ve been intrusive."
"You haven’t." Remorse flooded her. Friends had been hard to come by since she’d left Singapore, but Gail had been her ally from the day she’d started work-ing at Classic Collections and deserved better than this.
"I’m sorry. I’m being hypersensitive—a normal thing for expectant mothers, my doctor tells me, along with a lot of other unpleasant side effects, but that doesn’t ex-cuse taking out my frustrations on you."
"Hey, what else are friends for‘?" Gail squeezed her arm supportively. "In any case, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened in this department. Having a woman take over a senior overseas buyer’s position and make such a smashing success her first time out has done wonders for female morale around here!"
"Thanks." From somewhere, Leila drummed up a smile. "I’m glad I’m good for something?
"You’re terrific and Dante obviously thinks so, too. I’ve worked here nearly four years
and in that time I’ve seen a fair number of women who’ve been smitten by that smile of his, and those incredible eyes. But it never registered with him. He was always the ultimate profes-sional, Mr. Business down to his socks! The most per-sonal thing he ever did was include a turkey voucher with the Christmas bonus cheques——oh, yes, and flowers for the office staff during Secretary’s Week. Then you came on the scene and wham! You felled him with a single shot!" She sighed happily. "Gee, getting through the rest of the day’s going to be tough after this, but I hear the phones ringing off the hook out there so I guess I’d better get back to my desk. Buzz if you need any-thing, Leila. Milk, antacids to calm an upset stomach, whatever, I’ve got them all!"
Oh, she needed something, all right, but it wasn’t to be had out of a bottle! Last night it had been Dante’s turn to lay down his terms, but today was hers. If he thought that her cultural background had predisposed her to being any man’s doormat, he was about to find out differently.
"Had we scheduled a meeting‘?" he asked, when she marched unannounced into his office a few minutes later.
"No, Dante," she said. "I don’t expect to have to make an appointment to see the man I’m about to marry, any more than I expect to find he’s broadcast word of our engagement to the entire office without first con-sulting me on the matter. Or didn’t it strike you as rel-evant that I might not want our private life made pub-lic?"
"I certainly had no idea you wanted it kept secret," he said, supremely unmoved by her obvious annoyance,
"although perhaps I should have, considering how re-luctant you’ve been in sharing other aspects of your life with me."
"I don’t care if the whole world knows we’re plan-ning to be married," she retorted. "It’s, the way you went about it that bothers me."
‘‘Really?’ ’ He tapped the end of his pen on the surface of his desk. "What, specifically, has you in such an up-roar? It was brief and to the point but in no way insulting to you."
‘‘Neither would a typed sympathy note be to a person recently bereaved," she shot back, "but it would show a marked lack of sensitivity on behalf of the sender."
"You wanted me to hire a skywriter and advertise the event to the whole city, instead?" he said scornfully.
"Sorry, Leila, but our supposedly red-hot love affair isn’t front-page news around here any longer and most people, I suspect, wouldn’t give a damn if we decided to exchange vows during a bungee jump. However, I am CEO of this company, as well as an equal partner, and common courtesy demands that my colleagues be in-formed. That being the case, I chose the most efficient way to tell them."
"But not the most romantic?
"What’s romantic about a marriage based on money and desperation‘?" He shrugged. "Face it, Leila. You’d never have come to me for help if you could have found it elsewhere. You didn’t even have the decency to tell me you’re pregnant until I had you cornered. I heard it first from an employee, for crying out loud. Come to think about it, just about everything I’ve ever learned about the real you has come from someone else. A lot of men would take that as a very bad sign in a future wife and hedge their bets with an iron-clad prenuptial agreement."
"If you feel like that, why are you so insistent on marriage at all? Why saddle yourself with a woman whom you clearly regard with the utmost suspicion?"
"You’ve just answered your own question, honey. I’m protecting my investment?
"You don’t need to marry me to do that," she said.
"I meant what I said last night. I’ll sign whatever con-tract you draw up promising I’ll pay you back every cent I borrow, with interest."
"I’m not talking about dollars or cents, woman!" he snapped, planting both hands flat on the desk and glaring at her. “I’m talking about my children. You’re a
Singapore citizen, you travel on a foreign passport, and the only thing holding you here is your seventy-something mother and the debts she’s saddled with. Do you seriously think I’m too stupid to figure out what could happen, once the creditors are paid off? You could leave this country tomorrow, before you give birth, and there’d not be a bloody thing I could do to stop you."
"I would never do a thing like that," she gasped.
"Quite apart from the fact that my home is now in this country, our children are one of the chief reasons I agreed to the marriage in the first place."
‘‘It’s your other reasons that bother me, Leila, and I’m not about to let them take precedence over the well-being of my children. If, for instance, you were lying last night and your feelings for me aren’t all you cracked them up to be—"
"I wasn’t lying," she said.
"Then we’re both getting what we want out of this marriage. Agreed?"
She pressed her lips together. He was so much the proud lion, determined to hide his scars. She could only pray that her loving would heal them enough for him to relax his guard and let himself trust her again.
"Agreed," she said.
"Fine." He nodded and handed her a sheet of paper.
"In that case, you might want to look through this list of items needing attention if we’re to pull a wedding together in the next couple of weeks. Feel free to add to it as you see fit. I’ll leave the details to you and your mother, though if you choose to include my family, I know they’ll be more than pleased to help. You’ll see that I’ve made a note of our local church in case you don’t know of one in your own neighborhood?
"You surprise me," she said, scanning the page. "I’d have thought, in view of the circumstances, that you’d have preferred a civil ceremony."
"Consider it a concession to your finer feelings," he said dryly. "Don’t most brides want all the traditional trappings on their wedding day‘?"
"I’m not most brides, Dante. I don’t plan to drift down the aisle in a cloud of tulle, white satin and misty-eyed wonder. That would be ludicrous, given the fact that I’m three months pregnant."
"As you wish." He shrugged again and reaching into the top drawer of his desk, tossed the velvet pouch con-taining the diamond ring across the desk at her. "Still, I want you wearing this, at least in public. It adds cred-ibility to our arrangement, not to mention one of those visibly romantic touches you seem to think are impor-tant." She made no attempt to catch the thing. It rolled across the desk and landed on the carpet with a soft thud. Her small gesture of defiance brought the light of bat-tle into his eyes again. "Pick the damned ring up and put it on your linger! It won’t defile your dainty little hand. It’s two and a half carats of the real thing, set in platinum and gold, not a chunk of glass and brass."
"It might as well be," she said, choking back the tears. "Everything else about our relationship’s a sham."
"Not quite everything, Leila." He came around the desk to retrieve the ring himself, then slid it onto her finger, and for one dizzying moment she thought she glimpsed a softening in his expression. When he laid a gentle hand against her stomach, her heart soared at the remembered sweetness of past embraces.
But then he said, "The children you’re carrying are real enough. More to the point, they’re mine and I don’t intend ever to let you forget that, so let the ring act as a reminder."
"Will there be anything else?" she asked, afraid she couldn’t hold back the tears much longer and wanting to be as far away from him as possible before they es-caped. .
"Just a couple. I explained to my mother all about your involvement with Fletcher and assured her anything she read in the papers was misleading. I also told her we’d brought the wedding forward and why."
"She knows I’m pregnant?" Instinctively, Leila placed her own hands where one of his had rested sec-onds before, as if doing so would conceal what was pat-ently obvious.
"My mother’s nobody’s fool, Leila, even if she was bowled over by your apparent guilelessness when she first met you. She’s had six children of her own and would have figured it out for herself eventually, I can assure you, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I might have been the la
st one you chose to confide in, but I wasn’t about to insult my family with the same shoddy treat-ment. So, yes, she knows and by now I’m sure my sisters do, too."
"And did your burst of honesty extend so far as to tell them that our marriage—?"
"No," he said, cutting her off with a slashing motion of his hand. "That is not their business, nor anyone else’s, either. I meant what I said last night, Leila." He closed his fingers into a fist and held it in front of her face. "As far as the rest of the world goes, we’re as tight as this! And you will do nothing to give anyone reason to think differently?
"I see." And she did, only too plainly. His pride was on the line and he was too busy protecting it to care that hers was taking a beating. "Anything else?"
"Yes. I’ve booked a private room at the Waterfront Hotel for this evening——nothing fancy, just a quiet fam-ily dinner to celebrate. I imagine you’d like to alert your mother to the fact, and Cleo, too, if you think she’d like to be included. Also, we need to find a place to live. If you feel up to it, I’ll have an agent show you some houses next week."
"You don’t want to stay in your penthouse‘?"
"It’s not big enough. It has only one bedroom." One bedroom had been enough before, she mourned,
and the bed more than big enough for two. There hadn’t been a place on earth too small for him to hold her and make love to her. A clearing by a mountain stream, a patch of moonlit sand, the turquoise, sun—hot waters of the Caribbean-—how had those memories slipped away from him?
"I’d prefer something in the Shaughnessy area or the West Side," he went on, oblivious to her pain. "Com-muter traffic’s bad enough without fighting it all the way in from the suburbs. Also, I travel a lot and I’d like to be handy to the airport."