by Natasha Tate
Cate couldn’t think. Despite her rehearsed explanation, despite her carefully planned words, her mind was blank. Scared witless, she nervously bit her lip while blinking away a sudden sting of tears.
Ethan’s focus dipped to her mouth, and his nostrils flared on an inhale. “Damn it, Cate, out with it already.”
Cate dropped her gaze, too much a coward to meet his eyes. She inhaled. Exhaled. And then stacked her hands against her abdomen while speaking to the floor. “I lied to you, too, Ethan. I still love you. I don’t trust you, but I love you. I always have. With all my heart. And I’m willing to try again if you are.” She closed her eyes, fear winnowing through her. “And I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I don’t just want you to be happy. I want to be happy, too.” Her stomach quivered beneath her palms as she confessed, “I’ve discovered I’m miserable without you, so I’m willing to risk being unhappy with you if it means we have the chance to be happy together.”
The muffled sounds beyond Ethan’s door blended with the silence, dropping in volume until there was no sound in the room beyond the beating of her pulse. She inhaled, feeling raw and scared and exposed. Knowing full well that her admission had made her vulnerable in a way she’d never been before, she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. With a single, curt word, he could annihilate her, and the knowledge terrified her.
Ethan made a suffocated sound and moved toward her, breathing as if someone had knocked the wind out of him. “You love me?”
The tortured question caused her chest to tighten painfully. “Yes,” she mumbled desolately.
Ethan leaned forward, his anger now tempered by anguish. “Of course I’m willing to risk it, Cate.” His trembling hands cradled her cheeks, his glittering eyes wet and grieving. “You’re a part of me,” he confessed raggedly. “The best part. And I want to spend the rest of my life convincing you of that fact.”
Obviously, he didn’t understand why she was scared. Gripping his wrists, she inhaled sharply and blinked hard. “It’s not going to be easy.”
He glared at her with fervent concern. “Who the hell wants easy?” He dragged a thumb over her quivering lower lip. “I want you, Cate. Easy. Hard. Happy. Scared. I don’t care, as long as I have you.”
Feebly, Cate twisted her face from his hands and stepped sideways, trying to gain space to think. “We’ll probably fight, and disappoint each other on occasion, and you know with my accident, I won’t be able to have children. You might regret being with a woman who is damaged, a woman who can’t give you sons.”
He cursed under his breath and tracked her retreat, reaching to grip her head between his wide, warm palms. Tipping her throat back, he forced her to meet his eyes. Savage, ardent intensity colored his voice. “I’ve wanted you for my whole life, and I’ve lived in unrelenting torment because I thought I could never have you. I love you for a million reasons that are anything but easy. I want you simply because you’re you. Flawed, imperfect, scarred, damaged, I don’t care. I love you. I want to spend my days and nights and all the minutes in between with you. I want you at my side at all those awful charity functions, I want you when your hair is messy, when you cry at a romantic movie and when you’re too tired to make love. I love your face, your humor, your smiles, the way you care for others and how you somehow manage to be both feminine and strong. Damn it, Cate, don’t you see that? If I have you, then we can work through everything else.” He stopped to suck in a breath, his bleak eyes as tormented as those of a condemned man. “Cate,” he whispered, “don’t you know what my life is like without you in it?”
“I do.” Tears overflowed, trailing messy wetness down her cheeks. “It’s mine without you.”
“No. It’s worse. Because I broke your trust in my love. And because of it, I almost condemned us both to a lifetime of pain.” His mouth twisted in agony. “I’m so sorry, Cate.”
“It’s okay.” Her voice broke. “I’m sorry, too.”
“You’re forgiven.” He slanted his damp mouth over hers, assaulting her with rough, feverish kisses. “You’re my soul,” he breathed against her skin, dragging his lips to her chin, her cheeks, her brow. “Every day I’ve had to live without you has been hell. Every woman I’ve tried to replace you with has been wrong, each one more unsatisfying than the last—”
“Don’t—” she moaned.
“But I couldn’t stop,” he continued savagely, “because I needed something to stop the memory of you in my arms. I’ve had no peace, no rest. No matter where I turn, it’s you. You, Cate.” He broke off to devour her with raw, ravenous kisses. The taste of their mingled tears made Cate shudder with heat. Disoriented and reeling, she trembled beneath the jolts of pleasure his touch ignited. Ethan held her with a passion tinged with violence, his chest moving in hard, shallow breaths and his fingers gripping with enough force to leave bruises on her sensitive flesh. “Jesus,” he blurted, with the exasperation of a man who’d suffered beyond his ability to endure. “Do you know what these last few days have been like? You’ve put me through hell, Cate.”
Suddenly, Cate felt his arms across her back and upper thighs. Before she realized what had happened, he’d lifted her within his arms and spun toward his desk. “Ethan!” she squeaked.
“Hush. We’re just going to make love.”
Dangling over his arms, her linen skirt rucked high against her thighs and one shoe already gone, Cate squirmed to reclaim her dignity. “No! We’re in your office! Please. There are people, your employees for God’s sake, right outside that door!”
“Then we’d better be quiet, don’t you think?”
“I can’t,” she answered frantically. “Everything’s happening too fast. We still haven’t discussed—”
“Cate,” he interrupted tightly, “I don’t give a damn about who does or doesn’t hear, and I’m done talking. I’m making love to you now, and nothing is going to stop me.”
Shaking, Cate felt a resurgence of heat claim her limbs. “But—”
“Shh.” Ethan dipped his head to brush his mouth over hers. “We can be quiet,” he whispered. “I promise.”
She shivered in nervous denial. She worried that she couldn’t contain her response, should he truly make love to her here. In public. After a lifetime of behaving as she should, always aware of her place in society and the expectation that she maintain appearances, she couldn’t help it. But the knowledge that nothing she said would sway his decision made her pulse thrash crazily as he strode toward his desk. Reaching its polished length, he lowered her buttocks to the cool, wide surface. As she regained her balance, her palms coming into contact with the sleek mahogany, he stepped between her thighs and claimed her mouth anew.
Much, much later, after he’d made exquisitely silent love to her, Cate’s limbs felt too heavy to move. Draped around him, her cheek pressed against his sweat-filmed chest, she closed her eyes. “I love you, Ethan.”
“I love you, too, Catydid.” His heartbeat gradually slowed as he smoothed her damp hair back from her face and off her neck. His voice dipped low as he bent to kiss her forehead. “Always.”
EPILOGUE
Two years later
“IT’LL be okay,” Ethan said, looking down at her with poorly-disguised worry tightening his features. “You’re just exhausted. Between the move and all our travel this past year, it’s no wonder you’re so tired. It’s nothing a good rest won’t cure.”
Cate, garbed in a paper gown and shivering beneath two rows of harsh fluorescent lights, stared wordlessly at the diagrams on her doctor’s wall, her mind whirling with worst-case scenarios. Dr. Slattery had been out of the room for nearly an hour. Surely it didn’t take that long to run a couple of tests, did it?
“Cate.”
She looked at Ethan, at the concern that pulled at his strained smile of encouragement, and tried to muster matching optimism. It didn’t work. She was scared. So scared that her hands were numb and her teeth clacked together.
Ethan moved to cup her face between his palms,
then leaned to press a comforting kiss against her chilled lips. “It’ll be okay, Cate. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay. We’ll fight it together.”
A slight rap on the door had both Cate and Ethan stiffening. Ethan’s hand dropped to hers as he turned to face the news of their future.
Dr. Slattery bustled in, dragging an ultrasound machine and shaking his head. “Well, I’ve run the tests three times and I keep getting the same result.” He lifted the lab papers between them, as if the maze of letters and numbers would make sense to either of them.
“What is it?” Ethan asked, worry lending urgency to his tone.
“I have to check one more thing before I can tell you for sure.” Dr. Slattery moved to place a hand on Cate’s shoulder. “We need to do an ultrasound. Are you okay with that?”
Cate nodded and slowly lay back on the examining table, trying to make her mind go blank. Don’t borrow trouble, she thought, just as Mrs. Bartholomew would advise. But when Dr. Slattery spread the cold gel on her abdomen and aligned the hated ultrasound wand over her abdomen, she felt her world narrow. Blackness encroached on the edges of her vision while her heart thrashed violently in her chest. What if her internal wounds had caused new complications to develop? She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the evidence of more tragedy on the grainy screen.
Soon, the silence in the small room gave way to the familiar shushing sound of the machine. Dr. Slattery cocked his head and moved the wand farther down, transcribing a slow, circular arc over her lower abdomen.
Cate pressed her cheek against the paper lining of the padded table and tried not to cry. She didn’t want to know what was wrong. Not yet. She wanted to pretend everything was okay for a little while longer. She wanted to savor her time with Ethan, to continue enjoying the lovely marriage they’d built together. Things were perfect. She didn’t want her stupid body or its flaws to change things.
“Well, Cate, it looks like the tests were right,” the doctor said.
Cate felt Ethan tense beside her and then his big body pressed against her side as he leaned forward to see. “What?” His low voice was a strained whisper. “What is it?”
“It’s impossible, that’s what it is.” The doctor angled the ultrasound wand until a new rhythm, rapid and faint, unfurled in the small room.
Cate’s eyes flew open while Ethan’s grip upon her icy fingers tightened. “Doctor?”
Dr. Slattery’s round face pleated in a smile. “You’re pregnant, Cate.”
“What?” they blurted in unison.
“It looks like you’re about twelve weeks along.”
Ethan stared at the doctor in a shocked silence that mirrored her own. “But we thought … How …?”
Dr. Slattery’s smile deepened. “I imagine it happened the usual way.”
Ethan’s stunned gaze drifted to hers while Cate’s hands lifted to hover over her exposed abdomen. “But we were told,” she said before shifting her focus back to Dr. Slattery. “You told us we wouldn’t be able to conceive.”
“I know.” Dr. Slattery lifted both palms as he shrugged. “I guess nature had a different plan.”
“But you were the fifth doctor to give us the same opinion. How could all of you be wrong?”
Again, he shrugged. “Bodies don’t always behave the way we think they will. Sometimes, that one in a million chance pays off and everyone gets surprised.” He smiled as he offered Cate a paper towel to wipe her belly. “I’d say this little tyke wants to be in the world so much, he’s willing to fight the odds.”
She and Ethan exchanged a glance and then turned back to the doctor. “He?”
“You might want to start investing in blue.”
“It’s a miracle,” Cate breathed.
“No.” Ethan turned shining eyes to Cate, a slow smile claiming his mouth. “You’re the miracle.”
Cate’s trembling lips curved while dizzying happiness winged through her chest. She reached blindly for Ethan’s hand and then pulled it to her lips. Blinking through her tears, she kissed his palm and then moved it lower to press his long fingers against her belly. “You’re going to be a father, Ethan.”
“A father to our baby. Ours, Cate.” His cheek creased with the dimple she’d never stopped loving. “And I can’t imagine loving our son’s mother any more than I do right now.”
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2011
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
© Natasha Tate 2011
ISBN: 978-1-408-92577-5