Jared's Love-Child

by Sandra Field

  Whether Jared had any intention of seducing her made no difference. She was going to stay in control of the evening. She. Not he.

  The roof garden, bounded by an ivy-covered brick wall, had blue and cream hydrangeas in glazed Chinese pots, and was shaded by cedars and weeping birch trees: an oasis of privacy in the very heart of the city. Smoked pheasant, pasta salad and fresh brioches were laid out on a spotless linen cloth. Jared had stripped off his jacket and tie. Averting her eyes from the tangle of dark hair at his throat, Devon began to eat with frank enjoyment, the distant roar of the traffic oddly soothing. As casually as if he were a chance acquaintance, she described some of her experiences in Chile, and was fascinated by the intelligence of his questions, the speed with which he could reach conclusions. Then, all too soon, it was time to get dressed.

  Devon showered quickly, leaving her hair loose on her shoulders. Her dress, rose-pink, was artfully simple, long-sleeved, hugging her breasts then falling in graceful folds to the floor. A quartz necklace shimmered against her skin. Her shawl was cream, of finely woven wool with a silk fringe.

  She looked like the heroine of a Jane Austen novel, she thought wryly, and not at all like the sexy maid-of-honor at her mother’s wedding. This dress wouldn’t get her into any trouble.

  But what Devon didn’t see was the way the dress clung softly to her body as she moved, nor the glow of excitement in her cheeks as she left her suite. Jared was waiting for her, formidably attractive in a tuxedo. He said flatly, “Ready?”

  She should be pleased he hadn’t complimented her on her appearance, Devon thought, as they drove the short distance to Carnegie Hall, the blare of taxi horns accompanying them the whole way, the sidewalks a jostle of pedestrians. But she wasn’t pleased. She hated being treated like a maiden aunt. Or like Aunt Bessie. And how was that for inconsistency?

  Jared had the best seats in the house. Trying to look blasé about this, Devon sat down and buried her nose in the program. Then the lights dimmed slowly. Unable to help herself, Devon gave Jared a childlike grin of pure anticipation and turned her full attention to the stage.

  Just over two hours later, the concert ended; Devon, however, couldn’t have said how long it had lasted. Transported, she got up after the encore and the storm of applause, scarcely aware of Jared offering her his arm, or of their slow progress out to the street. She always needed to be quiet after any kind of music that had deeply moved her, whether Bach or Les Miserables, and was grateful to him for respecting this.

  In the restaurant, which was just around the corner, the maître d’ knew Jared, and their table was secluded. For Devon, the music had done away with anything petty or small-minded; in the soft flicker of candlelight, she leaned toward her companion and said, “Jared, thank you. That was—well, I can’t find any words. Just thank you.”

  He looked at her broodingly. “You mean it, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do—you think I’d tell you anything but the truth after that glorious music?”

  As if the words were wrenched from him, he said, “You keep taking me by surprise, Devon…I never know how you’re going to react.”

  “Why don’t you try taking me as I am?” she said impulsively. “What you see is what you get.”

  “You think it’s coincidence I date an actress? What you see isn’t what you get. Lise is open about it, that’s all.”

  Devon said steadily, “But it was me you took to the concert.”

  “Yeah…” He detached her fingers from the leather menu, staring at them as if they could tell him something. Then, abruptly, he put them down. “Let’s order.”

  “Jared, did a woman hurt you when you were young?” Devon hadn’t meant to ask that. Her heart beating uncomfortably fast, she waited for his reply.

  His jaw clenched. “I recommend the brandied duck.”

  She didn’t want to quarrel with him, and was somehow sure she had her answer. When the waiter reappeared, she gave her order and switched to other, safer topics, again discovering him to be a witty and knowledgeable conversationalist who brought out the best in herself. They drank a bottle of full-bodied Bordeaux with the duck, after which Devon ate a concoction of Viennese chocolate and heavy cream with enormous pleasure. Looking up, she found Jared watching her; brooding again, she thought with a shiver of unease, his midnight-blue eyes inscrutable. Dabbing her lips with her napkin, she said abruptly, “We should go…I have to be up early tomorrow. Unless you want coffee?”

  “No. I’m ready to leave.” He signaled for the bill, dealt with it swiftly, and got up.

  Not to her surprise, Hubert was waiting outside the restaurant; they drove home in complete silence. She’d eaten too much, Devon thought moodily. And one thing was certain. She wouldn’t need to shift the desk. Jared had scarcely touched her the whole evening, and had made absolutely no move to kiss her.

  In the elevator she stared absorbedly at the control panel. Jared unlocked the door to his apartment, waiting for her to precede him. As he bolted the door, she turned to him and said politely, “That was a lovely meal, Jared, thank you. Now I’m—”

  He pulled her to him, running his fingers over her face like a blind man who needed reassurance that she was real. Then he kissed her softly parted lips with the fierceness of a predator.

  In a swirl of relief and sheer pleasure, Devon knew this was what she’d been longing for all evening. She then stopped thinking altogether as she kissed him back, clasping the hard bone of his jawline in her hands, running her fingers over his ears, into his thick, dark hair. His mouth left hers to slide down her throat and bury itself in her cleavage; her nipples hardened, her body bonelessly surrendering itself to him.

  Afterward, she had very little recollection of how they’d got from the hall to his bedroom. She did remember the first sight of him naked, his lean, muscular body both utterly familiar to her and powerfully, dauntingly other. And she remembered him muttering against her breast, “You are protected, are you, Devon? Last time I didn’t even think to ask.”

  “Yes, of course…oh, Jared, do that again. Again…please.”

  “So you like what I’m doing? Tell me you like it, Devon.”

  “Yes, yes, I love it, can’t you tell?” she whimpered, and opened to him as a rose to the sunlight.

  They made love the night through, as though neither of them could get enough of the other; in brief interludes they slept, awakening each time to the heat and hunger of flesh on flesh. At dawn, exhausted, Devon fell asleep in Jared’s arms, and woke to the jarring voice of a radio announcer. Her eyes flew open.

  Jared was leaning over her on one elbow, watching her. She smiled at him drowsily. “It can’t be morning…not already.”

  He didn’t smile back. The grey light sifted through the curtains, shadowing the angles of his collarbone, the implacable line of his shoulders. His eyes, those night-sky eyes, were unreadable. Smothering a quick unease, Devon added, “What time is it?”

  “You’d better get up. Hubert will be outside in half an hour.”

  He looked like a stranger, cold and distant. Devon pushed herself up against the pillows. “Jared, what’s wrong?”

  “This time you didn’t leave in the middle of the night.”

  An ice-cold knife slid between her ribs. “I don’t understand…what are you getting at?”

  “This time was on my terms. You in my bed for as long as I wanted you here.” His deep baritone roughened. “How dare you leave ‘The Oaks’ without as much as saying goodbye?”

  The point of the knife had found her heart. In an appalled whisper, Devon said, “All our love-making last night—you were out for revenge?”

  “Lovemaking? We don’t love each other, Devon,” he snarled. “So don’t dress up what we do in bed with sloppy, romantic claptrap.”

  With an incoherent cry of distress, she pulled away from him. “The concert, the dinner, the whole evening was a set-up?”

  “I wanted you here. In my bed. And that’s what I got.”
>
  “On your terms,” Devon repeated numbly. She felt as though she was bleeding to death internally, as though the wound he’d dealt her was mortal. For a crazy moment she wondered if she was dreaming, a nightmare from which she’d waken to find herself sheltered in Jared’s embrace. And then she took another look at his hostile gaze and knew this was real.

  He’d tricked her. He’d taken her to bed out of anger. And then she remembered something else. In a faraway voice she scarcely recognized as her own, she said, “Is this what you call taming me, Jared?”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “You’d better hurry—you wouldn’t want to miss your plane.”

  Pain had coalesced along every nerve in Devon’s body; her eyes burned with unshed tears. Determined not to cry in front of him, she took refuge in an anger to match his own. “Of course not—I’d hate for you to have to bother the president of the airline again. What a manipulator you are, Jared! Cold-blooded, throwing your position and your money around to get whatever you want…I hate your guts. And I despise myself for having been taken in by you. For spending any time in your bed. On anyone’s terms.”

  In a lithe movement she got to her feet, fiercely unashamed of her nakedness. “I’ll never do it again. Never!”

  “All I’d have to do is kiss you, and you’d do it again.”

  “So is that how you get your kicks—making love with women who loathe you?”

  He surged to his feet. “I don’t believe in love!” he blazed. “Love makes the world go round? Don’t make me laugh! Do you know what love is, Devon? It’s commerce, it’s cold, hard cash. It propels an industry of flowers and perfumes and romantic retreats—just ask me; I own some of them and they make me big bucks. But it’s all based on a myth. Lust is what brought us together—for God’s sake, quit dressing it up as anything else!”

  Too angry to bother guarding her tongue, Devon flared, “Just to set the record straight, I’m not—repeat not—even the slightest bit in love with you. For which I’m practically down on my knees with gratitude. But when I get into bed with a man, I expect to be treated with some consideration. As a woman with feelings. Not like some kind of Barbie doll. Or a chunk of stock you can buy or sell according to your whim.”

  “When I take a woman,” Jared rasped, “I damn well do it the way I want to.”

  “Then you’re not a rich man at all,” Devon said with icy clarity.

  His jaw tightened. For a split second she was sure she saw raw agony flicker across his face, as though she’d struck him. But before she could even consider responding to it, his face had closed against her into a contemptuous mask. “You don’t have a clue in hell what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Yes, I do—you just don’t want to admit I might be right.” In spite of herself, the words burst out, each one seared with pain. “How could you kiss me, caress me…when all you wanted was revenge? That’s a terrible thing to do! How could you, Jared?”

  “It was easy,” he said.

  Devon said bitterly, “It was me that was easy. All I cost you was a concert ticket and a fancy dinner. I hope you got a bargain, Jared—I hope you got value for money. It’s just too bad you’re not getting a repeat, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe I don’t want a repeat.”

  Why would he? she thought. He’d proved his point. Suddenly Devon had had enough. Exhaustion washed over her and her anger vanished. Perilously close to tears, holding her voice steady with an effort, she said, “You know what I hate the most? That I was so gullible. Don’t bother getting dressed; I’ll see myself out.” Not even deigning to see if any of her clothes were lying on the bedroom floor, she walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  You’re not a rich man at all…

  Jared stood very still. It wasn’t true. Of course it wasn’t. He had more money than he knew what to do with, along with all the power that money brought; his business empire, moreover, was endlessly interesting to him. And he could have any woman he wanted, when he wanted her.

  Including Devon.

  He’d wanted Devon. She’d spent the night in his bed, and this time she’d left when he’d been ready for her to leave. What more did he want than that?

  How stricken she’d looked when he’d finally gotten through to her that it had all been for revenge. Stricken. Devastated. As hurt as though he’d stuck a knife between her ribs and twisted the blade.

  That had been his aim, hadn’t it? To hurt Devon, as he’d been hurt when he’d woken at “The Oaks” to an empty bed.

  Through the closed door, he heard her unbolt the door into the lobby. He could have pulled on his trousers and gone after her. Stopped her from leaving. He didn’t. Like a statue, Jared stood by the bed, remembering how generously she’d given herself to him, her throaty laughter, her frantic breathing and broken cries in the moments of climax.

  Lust. Sex. Dammit, there was nothing wrong with either one. But he and Devon hadn’t made love. To make love, Jared thought viciously, you had to know something about love. To be in love. He’d never once fallen in love in all his thirty-eight years. As for why he hadn’t, any Manhattan shrink—for an exorbitant sum of money—could have told him he was angry because his mother had died when he was only five, abandoning him, and that he’d lost all trust in women after Beatrice had dazzled his bereaved father into a hasty marriage. Beatrice. How he’d hated her.

  Add to that years of being chased by everything in skirts because he was filthy rich, and you had a man immune to that charming fallacy called love.

  He didn’t need a shrink. He didn’t need Devon, no matter what the expression on her face. He certainly didn’t need to fall in love. What he did need was to bring his mind round to the currency collapse in the Far East.

  Business as usual.

  It was one of his unbreakable rules never to allow a woman to come between him and the world of business. Devon Fraser wasn’t about to become the exception to that rule.

  Five weeks later, Devon flew in from Australia. She’d spent a very productive month in Sydney and Papua New Guinea, and her apartment had never looked so good.

  She’d picked up some kind of tropical bug while she was away. In Papua New Guinea, probably, even though she’d followed all her usual meticulous precautions. She felt, to put it mildly, like death warmed over. The first thing she did, even before unpacking, was phone her physician to make an appointment. Luckily she hit on a cancellation; she could get in late that afternoon.

  Unpack. Shower. Pick up a few groceries, buy flowers for her living room. Ordinarily Devon loved the routine of settling back into her condo. And this time she was home for a while; once she’d written up her report, she had three weeks of well-earned vacation.

  But as she opened her almost empty refrigerator, a pen and piece of paper in her hand, nausea cramped in her belly. She ran for the bathroom, and for the second time that day upchucked into the toilet. Last time had been on the jumbo jet. The washrooms of jet planes weren’t designed for women with upset stomachs.

  Afterward, Devon washed her face in cold water, looking at herself dispassionately in the mirror over the sink. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and her skin looked bleached. She didn’t remotely resemble the glowing creature who’d gone to a concert in New York with a man who’d attracted her as a moth to the flame.

  Maybe Jared was the reason she felt so lousy. Nothing to do with a tropical virus. Try as she might, this time she hadn’t been able to rid herself of his presence. He haunted her, awake and asleep. Her body craved his touch even as her spirit felt flayed by his cruelty.

  The worst part of the whole situation was how atrociously her radar had been off. She’d mistaken his passion, the undoubted tenderness he’d shown her in bed, for caring. But it hadn’t been caring at all. It had been vengeance. A crude assertion of his will, and she of no more value to him than a stash of bills.

  Less, probably, she thought, with a touch of his own cynicism.

  She’d misjudged Steve
and Peter. And now Jared.

  Pretty stupid of her. How could she be so smart when it came to the intricacies of mining laws and so dumb around half the human race?

  But at least she wasn’t in love with him. She knew that for a fact. Obsessed with him, yes. But not in love.

  Obsession. What a horrible word.

  Devon went back into the kitchen and grimly started her grocery list. Once she got back into a routine and caught up on her sleep, she’d feel fine. With luck she’d be back from the doctor by five-thirty. Then the evening was her own, to do with as she pleased. She’d turn on the TV and veg out, and go to bed really early.

  What she wouldn’t do was think about Jared.

  As it happened, the doctor had had another cancellation and Devon was home by quarter past five. In her cool airy living room, where the pot of scarlet cyclamen that she’d bought that morning flared against the reflections of the sun, she sat down hard on the chesterfield and stared at the ivory-painted wall.

  She didn’t have a tropical bug. She was pregnant.

  Seven weeks pregnant.

  The father, of course, was Jared. She must have conceived the first night they’d made love, at “The Oaks.”

  Her IUD was no longer in place, so the doctor had informed her, and it was then that she’d recollected the dreadful menstrual cramps she’d had in Borneo four months ago. That, she was now convinced, was when it had dislodged itself. She’d been too caught up in some very difficult negotiations to pay much attention to her body. Nor had birth control been her top priority.

  Pregnant. With Jared’s child. It couldn’t be true! What in heaven’s name was she going to do?

  Devon got up. She paced back and forth. She did a load of wash, tried to eat some pasta and lost it an hour later in the bathroom. And the whole time her thoughts chased each other round her brain like hamsters in a cage.

  Marriage wasn’t even an option. She hated Jared and he despised her. He’d betrayed her in New York, defiled her very being when he’d treated her body with such passionate desire and her soul like a piece of dirt. How could she ever trust him again? No, she couldn’t possibly marry Jared.