‘I do not recall asking you for your opinions, Mr White.’ Leaving London. When? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Maybe she was already packing her bags and climbing into the taxi right now, on her way to God knew where. Somewhere far away from him.
A surge of panic rushed over him and he could feel himself perspiring slightly. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘’Less she changes her mind, but don’t think that’s going to happen, somehow.’
‘When? When is this going to happen?’
‘No date set. Least, not that I’ve been able to find out.’
‘Not that you’ve been able to find out? Isn’t that why I pay you, Mr White? To find out things I would not be able to find out for myself?’
‘Look—’ he drained his glass and declined the offer of another ‘—there’s nothing more I can do. I’ll take my week’s pay and if you don’t mind I’ll call it a day on this.’ He stood up and waited while Nick riffled through his wallet and extracted a wad of notes. ‘My advice to you is that you sort out whatever problems you and this lady are having.’ He inclined his head and stuck the wad of money into his pocket, keeping it all together with a thick rubber band. ‘Good luck, and if you ever need me again, well, you have my card.’
Nick watched him weave his way towards the exit, then he sat back in the chair, frowning.
So Robert was no longer around. Even the most suspicious part of him could not foresee her concealing a partner in crime with enough cunning to fool an experienced private detective, especially considering that she would not have had the slightest idea that she was being followed.
She was on her own and she was leaving London, probably for good.
And it was time to make some decisions. He had wasted weeks having her spied on, which had proved what? It certainly hadn’t sorted out his problem. He was still obsessed with her. Dammit. And what was going to happen when she left? Would she still be in his system?
He sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs. She would always be in his system. Who had he been kidding when he had confidently assumed that out of sight was going to be out of mind? He still wanted to see her, hear her, talk to her, make love to her, even if she had betrayed him.
And that was the bitterest pill. The fact that he still wanted her with every ounce of his being, even though she had exploited him.
He wanted her and he had to speak with her. Before she left.
He thought of her flinging her few possessions in a bag, looking around the poky flat to make sure that she hadn’t forgotten anything, while outside the taxi waited with its meter running. He pictured her locking the door behind her, sticking the key in an envelope and shoving the envelope under the door for the landlord to find. Lugging her cases down the stairs, panting and resting on every other stair because the pregnancy would make her tire quickly. Then driving away, to the station to catch a train that would take her out of his life for good.
He swallowed down the last of his beer, stood up, and then his feet were taking him outside, making him wait for a taxi, and every shred of pride that he had possessed disappeared as he heard himself giving her address, then sitting back and impatiently waiting for the car to take him to his destination.
He might have guessed that she wasn’t going to be in when he arrived outside the converted Victorian house twenty-five minutes later, but now that he was finally here he had no intention of going. In fact, he hadn’t felt so good since the whole mess had taken place weeks ago and he had slung her out of his office.
There was a coffee shop attached to the supermarket just by the underground. Nick bought himself a cappuccino, positioned himself on the most convenient stool at a long counter that faced the side-street, and waited.
He would wait until the cows came home.
He watched the ebb and flow of people hurrying into the tube station, and scurrying out of it. He had managed to make his way through three cappuccinos and was considering a fourth when he saw her emerge. She was carrying three bags and shifting them from one hand to the other, and she looked tired.
He left the coffee shop, hurrying outside and only slowing up when she was in front of him, then he began to gain speed from behind her. She wasn’t even aware of him.
‘You should not be carrying those bags in your condition.’
Lucy froze. Literally. To find the bags removed from her as her startled eyes took in Nick’s broad, tall body as he stepped in front of her.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘These things weigh a ton. What the hell have you got in here?’
‘Vegetables,’ she babbled, barely blinking in case the vision in front of her vanished. ‘It’s cheaper to buy them at the market than… What are you doing here?’
‘I need to talk to you.’
Memories of their last little talk sprang into her mind with disabling clarity and she flinched back.
‘Haven’t we done that already, Nick? May I have those bags back, please? I’m quite capable of making it to my flat with them in one piece.’
He ignored the request, instead falling into step with her until they were at the house, at which point she turned to him again.
‘Look, Nick, you said everything you had to say the last time…the last time we were together. Now, just please go. Go and leave me alone. I’m getting on with my life and I don’t want you coming here so that you can shout at me again.’ Getting on with her life! Getting on with existing would be closer to the truth.
‘I won’t shout at you. I just want to talk.’
‘What about?’ Lucy asked antagonistically. She had stretched out her hand for her bags and he had ignored the gesture, until she clicked her tongue in irritation and stuck her key in the lock, letting him follow her up the stairs to her flat.
He could feel the hostility rippling off her in waves as he ascended the staircase in her wake. A month ago he would have been enraged at the thought that she could be hostile towards him when he had every reason to be the one dishing it out. Now things were different.
‘So. You’re here. Now, do you mind explaining what you want?’ Lucy turned towards him with her hands on her hips and her lips drawn into a thin, straight line. The cold night breeze had ruffled her hair, giving her that tomboyish, elfin appearance that he loved with such maddening desperation.
‘How are you?’
‘I just told you, I’m fine.’
‘And aren’t you going to ask me how I am?’
‘I don’t care how you are.’ She removed her hands from her hips and folded them mutinously across her chest. The man had a nerve. The last time they had been together he had battered every emotional defence she possessed and, not content with that little performance, here he was again, larger than life, prepared to dole out more of the same.
‘Well, I am bloody awful, just in case you were a little bit curious.’ His black eyes clashed with hers and he stood where he was, not moving an inch.
‘Good. I have no doubt you deserve it.’
‘You are not making this any easier for me.’
‘In which case you’re tasting some of your own medicine.’ She gave a bitter little laugh that stuck in her throat and threatened to turn into a sob. A stupid, self-pitying sob. And there was no way she was going to give him the satisfaction of seeing that sort of response.
‘You look too thin. You haven’t been eating properly.’
‘And since when is my health any of your business?’ She couldn’t face him. It was too much. She headed towards the kitchen, regretting the impulse the minute she was there because he had followed her in and dwarfed the small room with his presence. ‘I’m nothing but a conniving gold-digger, after all, in cahoots with my lover.’
‘I know you have not seen him since you returned to England.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’ Nick sat down on one of the small wooden chairs and rested his elbows on the table.
‘And how do you know that?’ She tried to inject an el
ement of scorn and indifference into her laugh, but it emerged as a bewildered croak.
‘Because,’ Nick said calmly, ‘I have had you followed.’
‘You what?’
‘Why do you keep asking me to repeat what I have said, when we both know that you heard perfectly well the first time around?’
‘You had me followed? How dare you?’
Nick looked down at his long brown fingers. ‘I needed to find out…’
‘You needed to find out.’ The tenor of her voice had dropped into the Arctic sphere. ‘And would you mind telling me exactly what you needed to find out?’
‘Whether you were still seeing that man.’ Discomfort made his face darken.
‘By that man I take it you mean Robert? My fellow con-man? And why would it have made a difference whether I had been seeing him or not? Surely it wouldn’t have mattered to you, since you had managed to expose our evil little plan.’
‘Have you any idea what it took for me to come here?’ Nick demanded as self-righteous anger crashed into place. ‘You used me and, believe me, you deserved every accusation I flung at you!’
‘I knew you couldn’t just come up here and talk! I knew sooner or later you would start again on the tired old gold-digger road!’
‘You’re having another man’s baby! How do you think I feel? Do you think it’s easy for me to sit here and tell you that I just don’t give a damn whose baby you are carrying just so long as I am in the picture? Do you think I feel happy at finding myself in the position of needing to employ a private detective because I could not bear the thought of not knowing what was going on in your life?’
Lucy’s mouth dropped open and she struggled to make sense of what he was telling her. What was he telling her? Surely not that he loved her? She could barely breathe.
‘It’s your baby,’ was all she could find to say.
‘That is impossible.’ Nick’s jaw hardened. Lord, but he wanted to move, except the kitchen was so restricting that his only option was to remain where he was, pinned into the chair by the woman staring at him and lying through her teeth.
‘How? How is it impossible? We had sex. We weren’t using protection at the time. Tell me why it’s so impossible for me to get pregnant. Did your mother never tell you about the birds and the bees?’
Nick gritted his teeth together and inhaled deeply. ‘It is impossible because I cannot father children.’
Lucy opened her mouth to speak but nothing emerged, while he continued to stare at her, his body absolutely still.
‘You’ve had…had a vasectomy?’
Nick laughed harshly. ‘A vasectomy? Me? I would never have a vasectomy. I have always wanted a family of my own!’ He’d never thought that he would confess to anyone this secret that he had carried around with him for such a long time, and the feeling of being utterly and completely at someone else’s mercy was so alien to him that he literally didn’t know where to look or what next to say. But, lord, he adored this woman, and he would adore her child, even if it wasn’t his, even if it had been conceived with all the wrong intentions. And she would love him back; he would teach her how.
‘Then how do you know that you can’t have children, Nick?’
‘Because,’ he said, sighing heavily and staring at the tips of his fingers, ‘when I married Gina I wanted to start a family straight away, but nothing happened. Eventually she went to the doctor and was told that everything was fine with her. And I…well, I went too. I was told that I…I did not have what was necessary.’
‘The doctor told you this?’
‘Well, Gina went in to collect the letter and she reported it back to me. Very faithfully. She knew that there was no way that I would want to read it in black and white so she remembered precisely what was contained in it.’
‘She lied.’
Nick’s head shot up and he narrowed his eyes on her. ‘What?’
‘She lied,’ Lucy said simply. ‘Because I am carrying your baby, Nick, and that’s all there is to it. Robert and I have never slept together.’
A thread of hope began to unfurl in the pit of his stomach and he fought against the temptation of being seduced by it.
‘Of course, there’s only one way of finding out the truth, if you’re brave enough to do it, and that’s to go back to the doctor and have another test done.’ In the ensuing silence Lucy thought back to what else he had said and a slow smile curved her mouth. ‘You mean you would have chosen to support me, even thinking that…the baby wasn’t yours?’
Nick looked at her defiantly and his defiance took years away from his face. What she saw was an uncertain boy, holding his breath, daring to say things he would rather not have said, and her heart wanted to explode.
‘Is it my fault that I fell in love with you?’
‘You love me?’
‘There you go again,’ he muttered, and she took a few steps forward until she was close enough to touch him, and touch him she did, running trembling fingers through his dark, springy hair, tilting his face up to hers.
‘Take the test, Nick. The baby is yours and I love you back.’ The sob that had been trying to escape since she had spun around in the street an hour earlier and set eyes on him again finally found its way out. ‘I think I was born to love you and I haven’t stopped, even when you threw me out of your office and called me everything under the sun. I adore you and I don’t want you to have any doubts that this is your baby.’
Easier said than done, he thought two days later as they waited for the doctor to stick his spectacles on and read the short letter he was holding. Lucy squeezed his hand and he squeezed hers back, albeit half-heartedly.
‘Well,’ Dr Thomas said, peering over the rims of his narrow reading glasses, ‘this is as conclusive as anything you could hope for.’
‘That I am…?’
‘As fertile as any red-blooded man could hope to be. In fact, my boy, fertile enough for you to become a donor should you ever want to. I have no idea how you could have imagined that you couldn’t have children.’ He removed his spectacles and dangled them loosely from one hand. ‘You could go ahead and have dozens.’
‘Dozens!’ Nick turned to Lucy the minute they were outside. ‘Dozens! I can father dozens of children if I want!’
‘Whoa!’ She grinned at him and nestled into the crook of his arm, barely wanting to tear herself away to step into the taxi that whizzed them off to his apartment.
‘What I don’t understand,’ she said thoughtfully as they walked into his sitting room, ‘is why Gina would lie.’ She knew all about their marriage, knew that she would never be living in the shadow of a woman he could not forget.
‘Because it suited her to have this trump card to hold over me,’ Nick said grimly. It was hard to feel angry, though, because he was so bloody happy. ‘She relished being able to fall back on that final insult whenever there was an argument. She knew what my response would be, that I would walk out of the house because there was nothing to say when she accused me of being less of a man than she had hoped.’ He went to sit by her and pulled her onto his lap so that her head was resting on the arm of the sofa and she was stretched out in front of him. Just the smallest of bumps proclaimed the baby growing inside her, and he rucked up her shirt so that he could place his hand there.
‘I was crazy to believe her,’ he said, ‘and even crazier not to believe you when you told me about the pregnancy.’
‘It was understandable. Suddenly you felt you could no longer trust me.’
‘Yet I couldn’t stop loving you. I couldn’t turn that off like a tap.’ He ran his hand up to caress her breast, which was fuller and heavier now, the nipple larger and darker and more prominent. He stroked the stiffened bud and smiled when she released a little sigh of pleasure.
‘There’s only one thing left for us to do,’ he murmured, and Lucy looked drowsily at his dear face.
‘Does it involve the bed?’
‘That too. But, no, I was more thinking of marria
ge, and sooner rather than later.’
It was something she hadn’t broached, knowing how he felt about that ultimate step after what he had been through, and her heart swelled at the love darkening his eyes when he looked at her.
‘How soon, my darling?’
‘As soon as possible?’
‘I’ll get on to it right now…’
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8073-5
CONSTANTINOU’S MISTRESS
First North American Publication 2003.
Copyright © 2002 by Cathy Williams.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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