The thought that something else might be wrong with her, something serious, was gnawing in Travis’s gut.
“Don’t look so worried,” Cat said, giving him a chocolate-mustache smile. “I’ll go back to eating normally as soon as I’m on land.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” he promised.
And he did. As soon as the Wind Warrior anchored in Dana Point Harbor, Travis drove Cat to her house, dropped her off, and gave her a level look.
“I’ll be back with a five-course meal,” he said. “You’re going to eat every bite of it.”
“Oh. Goody,” she said without enthusiasm.
He kissed her hard and headed down the beach stairs to his house.
Cat stood in the kitchen, watching Travis dodge between the big winter waves and sprint along the wet sand to his own stairway. Then she sat at her little table and wished food had never been invented.
She stayed there, just sitting, until sunset light sent scarlet shadows over her hands. Occasionally she wondered what Travis would bring back with him. Every food that occurred to her sounded either uninteresting or outright disgusting.
Even the thought of food made her stomach jerk.
She flattened her palms on the cool table, breathed sharply through her nose, then gritted her teeth and let the breath hiss out. It helped, but not enough.
“Damn,” Cat groaned, her head in her hands. “I forgot that it takes me as long to get used to being on land as it took me to get used to the sea.”
Even though she had been off the Wind Warrior for several hours, the room still swayed gently when she closed her eyes . . . and her stomach swayed a good deal less gently whether her eyes were open or closed.
The idea of dinner defeated her.
Tired.
God, I didn’t know what the word meant until now. I’m too tired even to yawn, and I spent the last three days dozing in Travis’s arms.
Cat shoved away from the table, went to her workroom, and slumped into the chair next to the answering machine. The message light was blinking.
How much energy can it take just to listen? she asked herself, yawning.
Sighing, Cat hit the play button. The chair wasn’t as comfortable as leaning against Travis had been. A tingle of longing and memory went through her. She wished she was back in the arms of her pirate, listening to a deep east Texas drawl that caressed her more warmly than California’s bright winter sunlight.
The first message roused Cat from her lazy, sensual memories.
“Cathy-baby, where the hell are you? Just wanted to say that the pictures are great, babe, really great! Just what I wanted, all soft and warm and creamy. I knew you could do it if someone just showed you how.”
Cat let the words flow past her. It was like the arrogant Crown Prince of Treacle not even to identify himself. But then, no one else she knew was insensitive enough to call her Cathy-baby.
At least Ashcroft was happy with the slides. That meant money, pure and sweet and desperately needed. The last half of the advance for Ashcroft’s book wouldn’t cover her siblings’ final tuition payment or her mother’s monthly expenses, much less her own photographic expenses; but the money would help her hang on until the Big Check from Energistics came.
The Big Check simply had to come. Soon. She had already spent fifteen hundred dollars on lawyers to pry out the thousands Energistics owed her. Without that check she wouldn’t make it to January. In the past few weeks she had maxed out her credit cards and borrowed heavily on signature loans, knowing she could pay them off the day the Energistics check arrived.
Cat closed her eyes. Her stomach quivered. She forced her eyes open. It would be better in a few hours. It had to be. It couldn’t get much worse.
The second message clicked on.
“Stoddard Photographic. Your slides are in.”
She sighed. More processing to pay for. More slides to sort and duplicate, mail and file. Which reminded her, she had to buy film soon. She had only enough for a few days of shooting.
Money and more money, dollars disguised as light-sensitive emulsion coated on a perforated ribbon of film. But there was no choice. No film, no slides. No slides, no income.
“Hi, this is Sue from Custom Framers. When are you going to come in and select mats and frames for the prints Swift and Sons needs? You did say your show was in December, didn’t you?”
Cat took a very deep breath and hissed it out between her teeth. Yes, her show was in a few weeks. Yes, she had to select mats and frames to go with prints she hadn’t even paid for yet. Thirty-five images left to do, ten prints of each.
Not all of the prints had to be framed, of course. Just a few of each, and a few more of the ones the gallery owner expected to sell most quickly. Three hundred fifty prints costing her between $60 and $200 each for the enlargement, depending on size and special instructions. Then the framing. Another $150 to $800 each, depending on how fancy the gallery wanted to get.
Cat groaned. Thousands of dollars. Money she didn’t have. Money Energistics owed her.
“Damn damn damn!”
Frustration didn’t help her nausea one bit. Only the thought that somewhere on the tape there might be a call from her green angel kept Cat from quitting and hanging her head in the toilet.
Sure enough, the next call was from Harrington.
“Hi, Cochran. Glad to see you have the damn machine on for a change. Energistics is now returning my calls, but they aren’t saying anything very interesting. I’ll keep you posted on that one. I know tuition and Mum’s check are due pretty quick. Ashcroft called to tell me that he loves the postcards you took for him. Swear to God.”
Cat grimaced and kept listening.
“Unfortunately the Crown Prince of Treacle has developed poet’s block. Or is it simple constipation? The last section of poetry just isn’t coming along. Naturally the publisher won’t pay your part of the contract until Ashcroft fulfills his part.”
Cat’s stomach flipped. She swallowed hard. And then she had to swallow again before she could concentrate on the rest of Harrington’s message.
“. . . that guy who wanted the pret-ties? He decided to redo his image along other lines. Chartreuse hair, black fingernails, and safety pins in unlikely places. I’m sending the slides back to you. Sorry. Better news next time. Swear to God it can’t get worse. Say hi to In-the-Wind for me.”
Cat looked at the readout on the machine. One message left.
For a second of pure cowardice she almost turned off the answering machine. She had had all the bad news she could take for a while. On the other hand, maybe a fairy godmother had died and left her a pile of gold dust. . . .
Smiling thinly, Cat waited for the last message to begin.
“Cathy, this is Dr. Stone. I hope you’re sitting down. This time the reason your period is late is that you’re pregnant. If you hope to stay pregnant, come in and see me immediately.”
Stunned, disbelieving, Cat simply sat in the chair and listened to the surf growling along the beach below.
I must have heard wrong. Wishful thinking. Sheer wish, soul-deep and wild as the ocean.
With a trembling hand she hit the replay button and advanced to the last call. She listened to it again. And then again.
And again.
Then Cat simply stared at the answering machine in dazed fascination, hearing over and over the impossible word.
Pregnant.
Laughing softly, Cat pulled herself to her feet. She went to her bedroom and stared at herself in the full-length mirror. Pregnant! A world of possibilities growing inside her, another heartbeat, another mind, another living being.
Travis’s baby.
Her baby.
Their baby.
Cat was still laughing softly, hugging herself, when she heard Travis come in the front door.
“Cat?” he called out from the kitchen. “Where are you?”
“Travis!” she said, laughing and running to him.
He was putting gro
cery bags on the kitchen counter when he heard her behind him and turned around. The joy on her face made him grin.
“What is it?” he asked, lifting her in a big hug. “Did the Big Check finally come?”
Unable to speak for the happiness overflowing her, Cat simply returned Travis’s warm hug.
“You look like you swallowed the sun,” he said, kissing her lips, smiling at her because it was impossible to see her joy and not share the delight.
Cat smiled in return, her eyes huge and brilliant with emotion, looking at him as though she had never seen him before: Travis H. Danvers, the man she loved, father of her child.
“Do you believe in miracles?” she asked breathlessly, then kissed Travis before he could answer. “I do,” she said, kissing him quickly after each word. “I do! I’m pregnant, my love. I’m pregnant!”
At first Travis thought he hadn’t heard correctly.
And then he was afraid he had.
“What did you say?” he asked carefully.
She caught his face between her hands. “A baby! Travis, my man, my lover, my love. Our baby!”
Even as the world shattered around Travis, he fought to believe that it wasn’t true. Cat hadn’t lied to him that deeply, that finally.
She couldn’t have.
He couldn’t have been so wrong again. Trapped by a cold-blooded schemer.
Again.
A baby.
His whole body tightened until he was afraid he would break apart along with the warm world he had lived in for the past weeks. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.
And then rage came, a freezing kind of rage that numbed the scalding pain of betrayal. Rage made it possible to breathe, to move, to think.
Laughing softly, Cat turned her head to catch Travis’s lips again, but couldn’t. She was sliding down his body, no longer held in a strong hug. Her feet hit the floor so hard she staggered and grabbed his arm to steady herself.
“Travis?”
When Cat saw his face she instinctively stepped backward, out of reach. Violence and rage burned blackly in the depths of his tourmaline eyes. His body rippled with the involuntary motion of a predator poised for the killing leap, adrenaline pumping, muscles tensed.
Then Travis closed his eyes, saying more clearly than words that he didn’t trust himself to look at her.
Like his eyes, his expression was closed, his face as bleak and unyielding as the rocks lining the beach. When he spoke, chills coursed over Cat. His voice was soft, cold, vibrant with rage.
His eyes opened, watching her, measuring her.
“And your Big Check, Cat. Did it finally come?”
She shook her head, but it was as much in baffled reaction to the change in Travis as in answer to his question.
“No, but what does that have to do with me being pregnant?” Her voice was small, shaken, more poignant than tears.
“Very good,” Travis said coolly.
“What?”
“The voice. It would make a stone weep. But I’m not a stone. I’m a fool.”
“Travis . . . ?” Cat’s voice died.
She had the eerie feeling that she was talking to a stranger who just happened to look like the man she loved. Blankly she watched as he reached into a pocket of his red windbreaker and whipped out a checkbook and pen.
“You’re as good an actress as you were a lover,” Travis said carelessly. “But then, you were acting all the time, weren’t you?”
He made a savage gesture, cutting off whatever Cat might have said.
“Actress, mistress, whore, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Not anymore. But listen up, bitch kitty, and listen good.”
Cat took another step backward and wondered if she had just fallen off the edge of the world.
But it wasn’t that easy. She was still here, Travis was still here, and he was talking, flaying her alive. He was writing in his checkbook as he spoke, slashing at the paper as though it was an enemy.
“You’re going to have that baby and then it will be mine,” he said. “No running off for an abortion. No holding the child for ransom. You’ll have it, I’ll raise it, and you’ll never see either one of us again.” He tore out the check and held it out to her. “My attorney will have the papers to you in a few days.”
Cat stared at the check quivering in front of her nose.
One million dollars.
The price Travis had paid to be free of his wife.
A black, terrible kind of lightning went through Cat, burning her until she wanted to scream with pain. At a distance she understood that when there was nothing left for the fire to consume, she would be free, safe beneath an armor of ice.
But until then it still burned. She burned.
“Take it,” Travis said harshly, his voice shaking with all that he wouldn’t reveal, all that he had lost. “Take it or I’ll tear it up and write a smaller one.”
Cat’s hand moved with the speed of a striking snake. She took the check so quickly that the edge of the paper sliced through Travis’s skin. Blood welled.
He smiled with contempt. “So that was your price.” He flexed his hands as though hungry to feel her neck between his fingers. “Christ. You’d think whores would be more original and men would be less gullible.”
With quick, savage motions Cat shredded the check. “You’re right, T. H. Danvers. People should be more original. But then, ‘I love you’ isn’t the most original phrase in the universe.”
“Whores don’t love anything but money.”
She opened her fingers. Tiny, pale blue pieces of paper fluttered to the floor.
Travis slapped his checkbook on the counter again. His pen stabbed across the paper. Moments later he held out a check to her. The amount was nine hundred thousand dollars.
“That little gesture cost you a hundred grand.” Rage tightened his face, making his sensual mouth a hard line.
Cat’s only answer was the sound of paper ripping and ripping and ripping again.
Cold blue-green eyes raked over her. Then Travis began writing again. “It will cost you a hundred thousand dollars every time you tear up a check.”
“Write faster and smaller until you reach zero, you bastard,” Cat snarled. “I can’t wait to see your back going out that door.”
He ignored her and kept writing.
Suddenly she snatched the checkbook out from under his pen. “My way is faster.”
With one hand she snapped on a gas burner on the stove. With the other she held the checkbook deep in the fire. She felt nothing, not even heat as flames scorched her. She watched her hand in the flames with a total lack of interest. She was too cold to feel fire. She was buried in ice as old as the world and as thick as time.
“Cat! Jesus!” Travis yanked her hand back from the fire and shut off the gas.
She turned on him, her eyes empty. “It’s my baby now. You can go out and knock up a string of women if you want kids. This one is mine. Even if I could get pregnant again, I wouldn’t give up this child to be raised by a man who can’t see love when it stands in front of him. Like me, now. I love you, Travis,” she said, each word hard and cold. “But that’s my mistake. I should have known better. My husband was such a fine teacher. Rich men just don’t know how to love. And we both know how rich you are, don’t we?”
“So that’s it,” Travis said. His lips curled in a travesty of a smile. “A million wasn’t enough.” He shrugged. “I’ll make it two million. You were worth it, lady. Really great. But,” he added casually, brutally, “if you’re holding out for marriage, you can forget it. Marrying a whore is the kind of mistake I don’t make twice.”
Cat took the smoking checkbook and crushed it into his hand, burning him.
“Thank you for my child,” she said, “even though it was an unwilling gift. I’ll take the baby. And you, T. H. Danvers, you can take your money and go to hell.”
She watched fury ripple through Travis. Distantly she wondered if he would lose control n
ow, giving in to the violence that seethed visibly through him, shaking his restraint like winter storm waves pounding against a crumbling sea wall.
“You have my phone number,” he said harshly. “When you want the money, call. The papers will be waiting for you to sign.”
“Never.”
“Why not? You earned it. Too bad you didn’t believe the final payment wasn’t marriage. Well, live and learn, kitty cat. I sure as hell have. This time.”
The back door shut softly behind Travis. Too softly.
Then a sound came back through the wood, a sound that could have been the surf or the throttled cry of a man who had been betrayed.
And then he walked down her stairs, out of her life. The set of his body said that she didn’t exist anymore, had never existed.
Cat flew at the door and hammered her fists against it as though it was alive and able to feel pain. As soon as the adrenaline storm passed, nausea hit. She barely made it to the bathroom in time.
As darkness came she kept listening for the phone or the sound of Travis coming up the stairs from the beach. She heard nothing but the wind and the sea and the taut silence between breakers.
She tried to sort slides. She found herself staring aimlessly at the white plastic frames, arranging and rearranging them in random patterns across the light table. Abruptly her hands shook, scattering slides. When she bent to pick them up her fingers were as clumsy as a child’s.
Empty-handed, Cat straightened and leaned against the light table. After a long time she realized that she was staring at the clock on the wall across the room.
Midnight. Exactly.
The second hand swept on its downward curve, marking out the first instants of the new day.
Wearily Cat pushed away from the light table and went to bed. For a time queasiness kept her awake. Eventually she drifted into a haunted sleep. There wasn’t anything truly menacing in the dream that came to her, neither monsters nor pursuits nor sleeting colors of terror. There was simply . . . nothing. A great black hole in the center of her universe, a place that was no place at all, a horrible expanding emptiness where the sun should have been.
Cat awoke in a rush. She was clammy, nauseated, her body rigid. For a few awful moments she didn’t know where she was. She reached out automatically, searching for the comfort of living warmth next to her in bed.
To the Ends of the Earth Page 26