Until a couple of days ago, she’d been the cliché of all clichés, tossing her cookies every morning.
And she was tired—from her pregnancy and from working double shifts at the Greek diner near her apartment in Brooklyn.
“You work double,” the owner had told her bluntly, “or I get different girl.”
So she worked double shifts.
She needed the money. She’d gone back to the club to collect her things and her pay, and to tell the owner she was quitting, but she didn’t get the chance.
“I heard you made a scene last night,” he’d said, almost as soon as she came through the door. “I don’t tolerate prima donnas, Dalton. You’re fired.”
It would have been funny but nothing had seemed funny that day, or any day since.
She was, to put it nicely, a mess.
And she worried. A lot. The fact was, she worried all the time.
She had to find a safer place to live. That was priority numero uno. The second was to build up her savings. The pitiful amount she’d stashed away would never cover the expenses of the baby...
The baby.
Her baby.
When had those words gone from making her sick with fear to filled with hope?
She’d found out she was pregnant the old-fashioned way. First, no menstrual period. Then mornings spent bowed over the toilet.
Finally, she’d bought an early-pregnancy test kit.
“No,” she’d said when she saw the results.
Half a dozen tests later, she knew there was no sense in denying reality.
The man she despised most in the world had left her with a parting gift.
Her own fault: A, for sleeping with him—not that they’d done much sleeping, she thought, her throat constricting at the memory, and, B, for not realizing you couldn’t take a birth control pill on, say, Monday morning and then not take another until Tuesday late afternoon no matter how busy you were with auditions and work and classes...
But then, she hadn’t been on the pill for sex, she’d been on it to regulate her cycle.
And she had certainly done that.
Sage gave a strangled laugh, saw the attendant’s face in the mirror and changed the laugh to a cough.
“Summer cold,” she said.
The woman didn’t look convinced but then, she didn’t look convinced someone like Sage should be in these plush surroundings in the first place.
Once she’d known she was pregnant, she’d paced back and forth, night and day, a caged tiger searching desperately for a way out.
She couldn’t have this baby.
She had no money. No defined future. No plans beyond how to get through tomorrow.
That was the reasonable approach.
The unreasonable approach was that this tiny life was hers. It meant she’d never be alone again, meant she could bring up her child as she wished she’d been brought up, with love and hope instead of bitterness and despair.
Decision made.
She was going to have her baby.
Her baby. Only hers.
The child, the decision, had no connection to the stranger who’d made her pregnant.
Her knight-errant had turned out to be a vile, judgmental stranger, willing to think the worst of her, not even taking the time to let her explain.
Not that she’d owed him an explanation.
What had happened between them had been just—just a one-night adventure. Never mind that she’d never had a one-night adventure before, never mind that she’d hardly ever had sex before.
She was a grown woman.
And he—he was a sperm donor.
Except his “donation” had not come from a test tube but from time spent in his arms, from caresses and sighs and pleasure....
Sage glared at herself in the mirror.
Pathetic to think about any of it. Stupid and pathetic, and proof, if she needed it, that the books she’d been reading were right.
Pregnant women were often at the mercy of their hormones and their emotions.
She took her lipstick from her purse. She was going to need more than lipstick. Good thing she’d brought blusher and a compact of pressed powder.
It was time to disguise the pallor, the dark circles, and to transform herself into a woman Thomas Caldwell could not intimidate.
She might be stupid about men and sex but she wasn’t stupid about everything else. She knew why he’d chosen the St. Regis for their meeting.
In a city of elegant hotels, the St. Regis was in a class all its own. The place damn near smelled of arrogance and money.
If you were a one-percenter, it reminded you that life was good. If you were stuck with the rest of the world in that ninety-nine-percent slot, it humbled you. Put in your place.
No question, David’s father was certain he knew where she belonged. To him, she was a scullery maid straight out of a bad nineteenth-century novel: broke, unwed, pregnant and desperate.
Well, three out of four wasn’t bad.
But she wasn’t desperate.
Things would be difficult but they’d be doable. Everything was doable, if you tried hard enough.
Bottom line? Caldwell didn’t know her at all. He hadn’t known his own son, not the real David, or he’d have admitted that he could never have fathered her baby.
Thomas Caldwell wasn’t big on truth.
She had no idea how he’d found out she was pregnant, either.
She suspected he’d had private detectives doing their best to dig up dirt about her, once he saw how close she and David were. Maybe he’d kept them on, after David’s death. And they’d followed her. Tapped her phone. For all she knew, they could have dug through her trash, found the discarded pregnancy tests.
It didn’t matter.
She knew only that Caldwell had started phoning weeks ago, demanding she admit she carried his grandson—God, what a terrible thought!—and that she agree to sell the baby to him.
Of course, he wasn’t fool enough to phrase it that way.
He talked about Providing What David Would Have Wanted For His Child. You could almost see the caps in the air.
When that hadn’t worked, things got grim. How much did she want for the baby? One million? Two? Four? Five?
Sage dabbed blusher on her cheeks. The effect, bright pink against fish-belly white, made her look even worse. The attendant must have thought so, too, because she stepped up, silently offered a handful of tissues.
“Thank you,” Sage said, and wiped the stuff off.
She’d given up telling Caldwell how wrong he was, that the baby was not David’s. She’d stopped taking Caldwell’s calls. Ignored the messages he left.
And it had paid off.
Last week, he’d couriered her a letter.
You win, Ms. Dalton, he’d written. I’m done trying to change your mind. My attorney has drawn up a document stipulating that you absolve me of any and all present and future claims of lineage and inheritance. Sign it in his presence and mine, and in the presence of witnesses, and you will not hear from me again.
Which was why she was here today. And if Caldwell wanted the pleasure of seeing her in a setting she might find daunting, so be it.
He was in for a disappointment.
She would not be intimidated. She would only be relieved to get him out of her life forever.
A swipe of lipstick? Not bad. Adjust the pins that held her hair back from her face.
Sage turned and looked at the attendant.
“How do I look?”
The attendant hesitated. “Um, uh...”
“‘Um, uh’ is absolutely right.” Sage dug in her handbag, extracted a dollar bill, hesitated and took out another. “Thank you,” she said.
So much for looking as if she belonged here, despite her last year’s, or maybe her last-last year’s, on-sale gray suit, on-sale gray pumps and definitely on-sale gray handbag.
“I want to,” Sage said gently.
“Thank you, miss. And—good luck.”
Good luck, indeed, Sage thought, as she walked across the ornate lobby.
She had a funny feeling about this meeting. Thomas Caldwell had been so persistent. And then, wham, he’d rolled over.
She’d felt good about that until this morning, when she’d suddenly thought, Why? Why had he rolled over?
Her footsteps slowed. The elevators were just ahead. So was a house phone. She could call the suite number he’d given her, tell him he could send her the papers, that she’d have them witnessed and notarized and that he’d have to accept her doing it that way....
Did she want him out of her life, or did she want him bothering her for the rest of it?
Sage gave herself a little shake and marched straight to the elevators.
* * *
She was meeting Caldwell in suite 1740.
For privacy, he’d said, when she’d balked and said she’d prefer meeting in the lobby.
“I have no intention of running the risk of having this matter made fodder for the media—or were you hoping for the chance at publicity?”
The elevator car was as elaborate as the lounge, all marble and gold leaf, attended by a little man who looked as if he’d stepped out of an operetta.
“Your floor, madam,” he said politely, when the doors slid open.
Sage thanked him and stepped out onto gold-veined white marble. She could hear her heart pounding over the tap-tap-tap of her heels as she walked down the corridor.
The sooner this was over, the better.
She paused at the door to suite 1740. Raised her hand to knock. Lowered her hand. Raised it. Checked her watch.
She was six minutes early. So what? Get in, sign the papers, get out.
Okay. Time for one of the breathing exercise she’d learned in an acting class. Inhale, one—two—three. Hold, one—two—three-four. Exhale, one—two—three-four-five.
Better.
She squared her shoulders. Knocked. The door must have been ajar because it swung slowly open as soon as she touched it. It was like a scene in a bad movie, except the door didn’t squeak. It wouldn’t dare, not in this place.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
Sage took a step forward.
“Hello?”
Another step.
She was in a sitting room, sunlit and handsomely furnished, assuming you were a devotee of expensive funeral parlors. Ahead, to the right, a door to an adjoining room stood partly open.
“Mr. Caldwell?”
Still no answer. Butterflies were swarming in her stomach.
“Mr. Caldwell? I’m not in the mood for games so if there’s someone here—”
A figure, blurred by the sunlight, stepped through the door from the adjoining room.
“Hello, Sage,” a husky male voice said.
She knew that voice. It haunted her dreams.
“No,” she said, while her heart tried to claw its way out of her throat.
“How nice to see you again.”
“No,” she repeated, the word a papery whisper.
She stumbled back as the figure moved away from the light and became a man.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Lean.
“Caleb?” she whispered.
His smile was cold and cruel, and transformed his beautiful face into a dangerous mask.
“Smart girl,” he said.
She said his name again. Then her eyes rolled up and she crumpled to the floor.
Caleb said a four-letter word and sprang forward. He caught Sage by the shoulders just before she went down.
Had she really fainted, or was it an act? She was good at acting; she’d proved it the night he’d spent in her bed.
In another man’s bed.
No. This was real. She was limp, head rolling back as he lifted her in his arms.
Okay. He’d meant to surprise her. Catch her off-guard. Get her to admit she was after the best payoff she could get because, without question, that was her game....
Instead, he’d stunned her.
Now, he’d have to deal with high drama as well as what would undoubtedly be tears and sobs. Not that it would have any effect on him.
She felt fragile in his arms. Almost frighteningly thin. Her face was paper-white except for the dark circles under her eyes.
But the scent of her was the same.
Soft. Feminine. Delicate. And when her head drooped against his shoulder, the feel of her hair against his jaw and throat was as silken as he remembered.
How could memories of her, of that night, still matter? He knew what she was, knew she carried her dead lover’s child, knew she was trying to milk his new client for as many millions as she could get.
And now, he knew that he was a damned fool for taking on the case, that she could still affect him...
She moaned.
The sound shot him back to reality.
Caleb elbowed the door shut, carried her to a brocade loveseat and lowered her on it.
“Sage.”
No answer.
“Sage,” he said again, his tone sharp as the blade of a knife.
“Dammit,” he said through his teeth, and he stalked into the bedroom, into the bathroom, grabbed a hand towel, soaked it in cold water, wrung it out...
He had done all this before.
Brought her a wet cloth. Soothed her with it. Taken care of her, worried over her.
Yeah, but he sure as hell wasn’t worrying over her now.
He needed her conscious and fully alert.
That she looked like hell, that there was a baby in her belly, meant nothing to him.
Besides, she was tough.
Nobody had to worry about her.
Mouth set in a hard line, Caleb went back into the sitting room and squatted next to the loveseat. He wiped her face with the towel, his movements brisk and impersonal.
“Come on,” he said. “Open your eyes.”
Her lashes fluttered. Lifted. Her eyes, dark and blurred, met his.
He dumped the wet towel on a monstrosity of a coffee table, rose and stood over her, arms crossed, legs spread, and waited.
It took a couple of seconds for her gaze to sharpen. Intensify.
Then she shot upright on the loveseat.
Fear glittered in her eyes.
Good, he thought grimly. That was precisely how he wanted her. Looking nowhere but at him, and terrified.
“What—what are you doing here?”
He flashed a tight smile.
“Such an impolite way to greet an old friend, Sage.”
“What are you doing here?” Her voice had regained resonance, but he was pleased to see her hand shake as she shoved her hair back from her face. “You aren’t Thomas Caldwell!”
Caleb unfolded his arms, parodied applause.
“A brilliant deduction. No. I’m not.” He took a card from his pocket and tossed it in her lap. “Caleb Wilde. Thomas Caldwell’s lawyer.”
She picked up the card. Stared at it, then at him. Her eyes widened. A man could fall into those blue depths and drown, he thought, and hated himself for the momentary loss of focus.
“His—his lawyer? But how? How did you—”
“Just one of those lucky strokes of fate,” he said coldly.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Trust me, lady. I didn’t believe it, either.” His mouth twisted. �
��Maybe life has a bad sense of humor.”
She didn’t respond. He could almost see the wheels turning. Then she took a long, wobbly breath, expelled it the same uneven way, and got to her feet.
She swayed.
He almost drew her into his arms.
It had been an automatic response, he knew, an instinctive male reaction to a female in need, but that the thought had even crossed him mind infuriated him.
“Sit down.”
“I’m leaving.”
“You want to pass out again?” He grabbed her arm. “Dammit, sit down!”
She stared at him. Then she wrenched her arm free and sank onto the loveseat.
“Where’s Caldwell?”
“Have I spoiled your plans? Were you looking forward to a face-off with a man grieving for his son?”
“Grieving?” She gave a shaky laugh. “For a lawyer, Mister—” she glanced at his card, still clutched in her hand, “for a lawyer, Caleb Wilde, you’re not very smart.”
“Your patsy isn’t coming.”
“My what?”
Caleb sat down in one of the chairs that flanked the loveseat.
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much do you want for the baby?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Look, let’s not waste time. You told Caldwell you won’t give him his grandchild but we both know that’s bull. Tell me your number and I’ll tell you if you’re anywhere in the ball park.”
She got to her feet. So did he.
“Goodbye, Mr. Wilde.”
Caleb watched her through narrowed eyes. She was good, but then, she was an actress.
“Let’s get down to basics, Ms. Dalton. The last offer was five million. I’m authorized to up it to six, no higher. Take it or leave it.
She gave a sad laugh. “You’re pitiful. You and your boss.”
“He’s my client.”
“He can be your fairy godfather, for all I give a damn. I came here to sign something that will get him the hell out of my life. Nothing to sign? Then, we have nothing to discuss. And you’d better tell your client or your boss or whatever fancy name the man gives himself that if he bothers me again, I’ll charge him with harassment.”
Harlequin Presents January 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2: The Ruthless Caleb WildeBeholden to the ThroneThe Incorrigible Playboy Page 7