Ultimatum: Marriage

by Ann Major

  “He didn’t want to. And he promised to fly over and check on me tomorrow.”

  “Well, you’re not giving the orders from now on. You’re not to go outside—not without me—ever. Especially not at night, even though it only gets dark for an hour…and not completely dark even then.”

  “Bears?”

  “This is wild country.”

  Alicia’s confidence soared. He was obviously glad she was here and he was being so protective. Maybe he didn’t love her, but he definitely felt something.

  “Come here,” he whispered.

  She hesitated but only for a moment. “Aren’t you starving? You’ve been fishing all day. And you walked…”

  “We’ll eat later. After…”

  “After what?” she teased.

  “I’m hungrier for you than for anything else. The past two days felt like the longest in my life. You’re becoming a habit.”

  “Is that all I am?”

  “Withdrawal was hell.” His laugh was husky and tinged with desire. “Worst of all, I think you’re beginning to know your power over me.”

  “Is it so hard to trust me?” Would her father always be between them?

  Jake didn’t answer.

  When he took her in his arms, she closed her eyes at the surge of joy that filled her. With calloused fingers rasping across her silken skin he slowly removed her clothes. First he unbuttoned her blouse and then reached inside her waistband and unsnapped her jeans and pulled both jeans and satin panties down. Last he unhooked her lacy black bra so that her breasts swung free. Then it was her turn to strip him. She couldn’t tear off his clothes fast enough, tossing them in heap on top of hers.

  She swept her hand over his flat stomach and pectoral muscles. Sinking to her knees she began to use her mouth.

  He sucked in a savage breath when the tip of her tongue stroked the length of his erection. “Not yet,” he whispered raggedly, dragging her down onto a low cot draped with his sleeping bag.

  “Still scared of losing control?” she teased.

  “Who me? No, I just want to take my time…and make you happy, too.”

  “I am happy.”

  “Happier then.”

  But in the end, he couldn’t wait any more than she could. When he plunged inside her, she wrapped her legs around him and held on tight. As he began to move in that rhythmical dance as ancient as time, she grew hotter and wetter until finally she couldn’t bear it and they exploded together, waves of passion crashing over them.

  The second time he let her please him with her mouth. The third time he took her hard and fast again. After the fourth, they were so tired they slept curled against each others’ bodies. When they woke up, it was still light.

  “I’m starving,” he said. “Time to clean the fish and build a fire. Time to feed you.”

  “I brought a jar of peanut butter and jelly and two loaves of bread,” she whispered. “Just in case…”

  “Cheater.”

  “Appetizers,” she amended.

  He laughed. “Smart girl. Let’s make sandwiches. Who wants to clean fish when I can lie in bed holding you?”

  He wasn’t professing love, but he wasn’t indifferent. That was something, wasn’t it?

  “Alicia! Wake up! You’ve got to see this!”

  At first she was so groggy, she was afraid something was wrong, but when he crashed back into the cabin without bothering to shut the door, her worry dissolved.

  Wrapping her in a blanket, he led her by the hand across the rough planks of the floor to the porch. Once there, he put his arm around her and hugged her close.

  “It’s the northern lights,” he said. “You almost never see them in the summer. The sky isn’t dark enough for long enough.”

  Undulating ribbons of light shimmered against the horizon. Streaks of green, orange, yellow and dark red danced like flame.

  Together, in silence, they enjoyed the miraculous display that seemed like it had been designed for them alone.

  “I feel like we’re the last man and woman on earth,” she finally said.

  “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise?”

  “Sort of. But since they were naked, I always imagined their paradise as being tropical.”

  “We got naked.”

  “In a cabin.”

  When the display ended, he took her back to bed and made love to her again.

  Then it was over and he held her close, caressing her hair and silken skin.

  “I wish we never had to go home,” she said.

  “Me, too. But we do, of course,” he murmured.

  “Like Adam and Eve thrown out of paradise?”

  “So I did make you happy.”

  “Very happy. So happy.”

  And yet some part of her still felt unsure when she thought about their future.

  It was midnight. Except for a sliver of brilliant silver light fringing the horizon, low, dark clouds wrapped Fairbanks International Airport. Since their jet to the lower forty-eight was late, Alicia had had time to charge her cell phone, its battery having run down up at the cabin. No service.

  When she checked it after charging it and saw that her father had called repeatedly, leaving several increasingly urgent messages begging her to call him, alarm made her heart pound.

  “Jake, I’ll just be a minute,” she said, pointing toward the ladies’ room.

  He nodded absently and went back to his newspaper.

  When her father didn’t answer any of the numbers he’d left and his home phone indicated that his home number had been disconnected, she tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Had the stress gotten to him? Had he had a heart attack or something? Even though it was the middle of the night in Louisiana, wouldn’t he have answered his phone if he was okay?

  Reluctantly she slipped her phone into a pocket of her purse and returned to Jake.

  “What’s wrong?” He looked up from his paper and studied her much too closely.

  Twisting a strand of her hair, she glanced away uneasily. For the first time in days, she thought about the pin her father had slipped into her shopping bag and that she’d hidden. She hadn’t tried to return it because she hadn’t wanted to get him into more trouble. Or complicate her situation with Jake. Now she wished she’d marched back to her father’s house, sans scarves, and had handed it over to the guard the same day she’d discovered it.

  If her father was okay, she’d do that as soon as they got back to New Orleans. From now on she wanted to be honest with Jake about everything. He was her future.

  “What’s this little worry line between your brows?” Jake asked, gently touching it. “Why won’t you look at me?”

  When she pulled back, his hand fell to his newspaper.

  She bit her lips. “It’s about my father. He tried to call me—repeatedly. I just tried to call him back, but he doesn’t answer. I know it’s the middle of the night in Louisiana, but he should be home. I’m afraid something’s happened to him.”

  Jake’s gaze was hard and piercing as he pulled his own cell phone out of his pocket and snapped it open. “I’ll call Logan. Maybe he knows something.”

  “Okay,” she whispered tightly.

  Their time in Alaska had been the next best thing to a honeymoon. They’d spent days hiking and fishing and exploring. He’d shown her all his favorite fishing holes and vistas. At night they’d cooked outside and then had made love in the cabin before a glowing fire until all hours. She’d given herself to him completely, hoping that he’d break down and do the same. He’d come close a time or two, but somehow he’d always held some part of himself in check.

  Even so, she hadn’t wanted their special time to end, but now it had—with a bang.

  As she watched him punch in Logan’s number, her throat felt dry. Suddenly there was a bad taste in her mouth.

  Shortly into his call to her brother, he shot her a dark look that told her the news wasn’t good. Jake’s face grew increasingly tense as h
e listened. His own replies were so cryptic and terse, she couldn’t tell what was going on. Something was definitely up. Then he said goodbye and shoved his phone into his breast pocket.

  She inhaled a long breath. “What’s going on?”

  “Your father has violated the terms of his parole and fled to Brazil. Apparently he’d distributed lots of valuables to people he was close to.”

  “Valuables?” she repeated in a croaky voice. Her first guilty thought concerned her mother’s pin.

  “Jewelry. Diamonds. Cash. He went to certain people before he left and asked that his property be returned. When they complied, he left the country. For good. Of course, the feds consider the money and diamonds theirs.”

  “Oh, no! Not before his trial! This makes him look…so guilty.”

  “Yes. It does. You’ve got to face the fact that he ran because he’s guilty. He intends to sell the diamonds and live in Brazil. The last thing he’s ever wanted is justice! Or you!”

  She shut her eyes, but she could not shut out the horrible truth. If her father wasn’t guilty, who else could have done what he’d been accused of? Why had he run?

  “Did he give you money? Or diamonds? Did he? Because if he did, you’d better call the feds and tell them right now.”

  Watching him, she chewed her lips, feeling torn and uncertain about Logan’s news. Slowly the last illusion about her father that she’d clung to dissolved. He had to be guilty.

  “Jake, I just need to sit here quietly and digest this.”

  “Fine. You do that.”

  He turned his back and pretended to read his paper. She knew he was pretending, because he never turned a page. He just sat there, statue still, his spine rigid, fighting to ignore her.

  She’d been fooling herself. They’d never had a chance. There was too much between them. She was Mitchell Butler’s daughter, and therefore doomed forever to be his enemy.

  As soon as they got home, she would call that awful agent who’d evicted her from her apartment and tell him she had her mother’s pin.

  Jake would never believe that she hadn’t taken it on purpose.

  He would never forgive her.

  She would face that when they were home in New Orleans.

  Sixteen

  Alicia was anxiously unpacking in her downstairs bedroom when the doorbell chimed. She rushed out into the hall, but Jake was already stomping down the stairs ahead of her, taking them two and three at a time, with Gus trotting behind him.

  “I’ll get it,” she said.

  “No, I will,” he replied, not looking at her.

  “But it’s for me,” she whispered.

  They’d barely spoken on the long flight home or on the shorter taxi ride to the house. She was dead with exhaustion, sick with worry about her father and her relationship with Jake. On top of all that, she dreaded this interview that she’d set up with the federal agent from Seattle when they’d landed to change planes.

  Gus’s silken tail curved around her legs as she stood in the hall and waited as Jake opened the door.

  “FBI,” said a familiar voice. “Is Mrs. Claiborne home?”

  “What do you want with her?”

  “I’m here to question her about her father, Mitchell Butler.”

  “She’s been in Alaska on a honeymoon with me, so she’s not involved with his flight to Brazil.”

  “She did call us and set this appointment up herself.”

  “What?”

  “From Seattle,” she whispered, walking slowly to Jake’s side. “As soon as I heard the facts about my father, I knew there was something I had to tell this man. And you.”

  Jake stood where he was, statue still, his face blank and cold.

  Her heart sank. He would never believe that she hadn’t taken the pin deliberately because she’d intended to help her father escape.

  “I’d prefer that she have an attorney present,” Jake said, surprising her.

  The self-righteous FBI agent who’d evicted her lifted his bulbous nose and stared at her so accusingly through his wire-rimmed glasses, she began to feel a little faint.

  She must have whitened, because Jake slid a protective arm around her. Then he suggested everybody sit down in the living room. Flat-eared, Gus hunched down on all fours and watched the agent with wary yellow eyes.

  The agent leaned toward her. “Why don’t we get to the point? Why exactly did you call us?”

  She felt Jake tense beside her.

  “On the morning of my birthday my father called me and said he wanted to wish me a happy birthday. He invited me over, so I went. While I was there, he tried to give me a birthday gift, a pin I’ve always loved that belonged to my mother. I refused to take it, but somehow, I don’t know how, he managed to hide it in one of my shopping bags. I didn’t discover it until I got home.”

  Jake’s hand on her shoulders fell away. She was aware of him stiffening rigidly beside her.

  “As you may remember,” the agent said, his eyes on both of them, “when your father agreed to the terms of his house arrest, he signed papers saying he would give no assets of any kind away. Not to you. Not to anybody.”

  “I really think she needs an attorney present,” Jake said.

  “Our sources think he gave you diamonds,” the agent persisted.

  “He gave me an heirloom pin that had belonged to my mother. I’ve been trying to figure out how to return it to him without making things worse for him.”

  Jake sucked in a breath and stood up. Then he strode to a far corner of the room, where he stared coldly out the window.

  “Your father was in no position to give you anything—as I’ve explained to you repeatedly, in some detail. Isn’t that right?” the agent demanded.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “So you knew you should have called us immediately,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I see it—the gift?”

  Slowly she got up and went to her room. Within minutes she returned with the lacquered box. The agent took it and opened it. He removed the pin and then tossed it to her impatiently as he continued to manhandle the box.

  Turning it over, he shook it.

  “There’s nothing in it,” she said just as he opened a secret drawer and removed a small envelope.

  “Nothing, you say?” He began unfolding the tissue paper. As he pulled back the last bit of paper, hundreds of diamonds caught the light and shot sparks.

  “Nothing?” The agent whistled. “Investment grade, if I’m not mistaken,” he said, lifting his hard gaze to hers.

  Slowly he rewrapped the tissue around the diamonds and returned them to the envelope. He replaced the envelope in the box. Last of all, he took her mother’s pin from her and put it in the top drawer.

  She turned to Jake, but his back was to her as he stood frozen at the window.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have kept the pin, Jake, and like I said, I didn’t intend to keep it. But I didn’t know those diamonds were there. I didn’t!”

  “I’m sure your father would say the same thing.” The agent snapped the lid of the box shut.

  “Don’t say another word to this man, Alicia. Not without my attorney present,” Jake said.

  “Good day, Mrs. Claiborne. We’ll be contacting you very soon.” He nodded in Jake’s direction. “Mr. Claiborne, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you knew nothing about this.”

  Jake’s icy gaze swept over her.

  “Of course, he didn’t,” Alicia said. “He wanted me to have nothing to do with him.”

  “You should have listened to your husband.”

  Her heart full of pain, Alicia stared into those cold blue eyes she no longer recognized.

  “Jake, I swear I didn’t know the diamonds were there,” she said.

  “Save your breath,” he said in a low, hard tone.

  “All my life I wanted my father to love me. I wanted to believe maybe he’d softened…that maybe the birthday gift
really meant something. Just like I thought Alaska meant something.”

  “You’re unbelievable! You know what? You almost had me believing that Alaska meant something, too. Now I don’t know. Funny, when people lie to you, it’s hard to know where the lies end and the truth begins. All I know is that I want out of this marriage.”

  “My father knew how much I loved my mother and how much I would treasure that pin,” she said brokenly. “I really was planning to take it back.”

  “Your father wanted to use you to hide portable wealth, and you went along with him. You let him use you.”

  “You’re right. I did. I should have returned that pin that day.” Her stomach knotted in pain. She bit her lips. “Maybe…deep down…I knew his having hidden that pin showed how dishonest he was, but he was my father. I’ve spent my whole life trying to believe in him.”

  “I’ll do what I can, hire you the best lawyers to help you get out of this mess he’s caused. But I’m moving out.”

  “When?”

  “Now.” Without looking at her again he turned and headed for the stairs.

  A rising tide of pain enveloped her. He was leaving her. Forever. She didn’t want Jake to go, but how could she stop him?

  When he came back down the stairs, he was carrying a suitcase.

  “Until our marriage ends officially, we live apart,” he said. “I should have listened to you. You were right about us not having a real marriage.”

  He turned his back on her then and headed toward the kitchen. Silently she watched his broad shoulders disappear down the hall. Their marriage was over, and it was her fault.

  A door opened and closed. Then she was alone.

  For a moment as she thought of a lifetime without him, her throat was so tight she felt like she might strangle.

  “I can’t think about that now,” she thought, hugging herself. “I have to think about our baby. I have to be strong for our baby.”

  Suddenly there was tiny movement like the wings of a butterfly in her abdomen.

  The baby. She’d felt their baby.

  When their precious child kicked her again, she smiled.