“When we took our vows, we promised to love each other for better for worse,” Philippe said slowly.
“We do! I do!”
“I never intended there to be a ‘for worse’ in our marriage.” His voice grated. “This afternoon I had a visitor. It was a woman I rescued from an avalanche, months before I met you.”
Kellie didn’t need to hear another word to feel as if she’d been dropped from a high building.
“She must have had a good reason to visit a married man at the end of his workday.” Kellie couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice.
“All I know is, she’s eight months pregnant and claims it’s my child.”
Rebecca Winters, an American writer and mother of four, was excited about the new millennium because it meant another new beginning. Having said goodbye to the classroom where she taught French and Spanish, she is now free to spend more time with her family, to travel and to write the Harlequin Romance® novels she loves so dearly.
Readers are invited to visit Rebecca’s Web site at www.rebeccawinters-author.com
Look out for The Tycoon’s Proposition
by Rebecca Winters
on-sale December (#3729)
The Baby Dilemma
Rebecca Winters
To Jo—someone who believed in my writing, cheered me on, let me explore to my heart’s content and guided me to greater heights. I will always be grateful.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
September 29
To My Darling Philippe—
In honor of that unforgettable moment in the meadow below Mount Rainier when you proposed to me.
These gold cuff links contain the tiniest petals of the wildflowers you gathered for me. They’re very precious because they represent your love. No woman ever felt more loved by her husband than I do. Happy one month anniversary, sweetheart.
Kellie
Putting her pen aside, Kellie Madsen Didier slid the card inside the envelope and taped it to the present she’d wrapped in black with red, green and gold foil ribbon. It had required painstaking work to arrange the petals in a design which would fit beneath the oval glass overlays trimmed in gold. But the result had pleased her.
Philippe would be walking through the door of their elegant Neuchâtel penthouse apartment any second. The windows gave out on a magnificent view of Lake Neuchâtel, one of Switzerland’s most beautiful scenic sights. Truly he’d brought her home to paradise.
She hurried out of the bedroom to the living room where she’d wheeled in the tea cart for a special dinner.
It was set with their best lace cloth, china, crystal and silver. In the cut crystal vase she’d placed a bouquet of fall flowers backed by an ornate candelabra. She put his gift next to his goblet, then rushed to the kitchen to finish up last minute preparations.
As soon as he’d left for the office that morning, she’d laid her French studies aside to work on a fabulous gourmet meal. After cooking and cleaning most of the day, she’d stopped long enough to shower and wash her hair.
Now that it was dry, it fell over one shoulder, partially hiding the capped sleeve of her new figure-hugging black crepe dress. Philippe had often remarked that with her green eyes and long caramel hair streaked by natural blond highlights, she looked stunning in black.
Wearing dainty black high heels to add a few inches to her five-foot-six frame, she hoped to dazzle him all over again tonight.
She glanced at her watch. Seven-thirty. He was almost a half hour later than he said he’d be when he’d called her that afternoon. It wasn’t like him not to phone again if he’d been detained by a client.
Earlier in the week he’d told her the ambassador from La Côte D’Ivoire had been in to order a fleet of limousines. Maybe there’d been a glitch during shipment from the Didier luxury automanufacturing plant in Paris.
Philippe could still be in the process of ironing out any number of problems. He was meticulous about his work. However until she heard his key in the lock, she didn’t want to light the candles.
Kellie went back to the kitchen to check on everything. Ten minutes slipped by, then another ten. Starting to get worried, she rang him on his cell phone, but she reached his voice mail asking the caller to leave a message.
Growing more anxious she phoned his personal secretary, Marcel, at home. The other man told her he’d last seen Philippe at his desk talking long distance to New York when they’d waved good-night to each other.
Marcel suggested her husband might be discussing something with the night security guard or the custodial staff before he left the showroom office. He urged her not to become alarmed. There could be a dozen reasons why he was late. Perhaps he was entertaining a businessman.
She thanked Marcel and hung up, but she was not reassured. Philippe would have asked her to join him if he’d planned to take a buyer out to dinner.
One of his good friends and climbing buddies, Roger, had dropped by night before last. Was it possible he hadn’t gone back to Zermatt and was still in Neuchâtel? When they got talking about their favorite subject, they forgot anyone else was in the room.
She ran to the study to look up Roger’s number. Before she could find it on the card Philippe kept at the side of his desk, the phone rang.
Pouncing on the receiver, she put it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Madame Didier?” came a serious sounding voice.
A sense of foreboding set her on the verge of panic. Her mouth went dry. “Yes? This is she.”
“I’m calling from the emergency room at Vaudois Hospital. Your husband is going to be fine, but he was in an automobile accident and is asking for you.”
Oh Dear God.
“I’ll be right there!” she cried.
After hanging up, she rang for a taxi.
Kellie could have taken the new little sports car Philippe had bought her for a wedding present. It was sitting in the apartment garage. But she didn’t know the location of the hospital, and didn’t want to worry about finding a place to park. In truth, she was shaking so hard she didn’t know if she’d be able to drive.
Another dash through the rooms to get her purse and turn off the oven, then she left the apartment on a run. Too impatient to wait for the lift, she hurried down the four flights of stairs to the main floor in her high heels and rushed outside, oblivious to the nip in the air.
When she saw a taxi turn the corner, she ran out to the street and waved him down. After climbing in she said, “The Vaudois Hospital, please, monsieur.”
“Oui, madame.”
She hugged her arms to her waist anxiously. If he’d sustained serious injuries, the person on the phone wouldn’t have said Philippe was all right. Still, she wouldn’t be able to breathe normally again until she could hold him and see him with her own eyes.
“Please hurry. My husband has been in an accident. Let me off at the entrance to the emergency room,” she said in French to the driver. He nodded, but didn’t accelerate that much through the moderate nighttime traffic. Switzerland was a very dignified, civilized country with few drivers who took dangerous risks.
She couldn’t say the same for Philippe who was French born. According to his family with whom she’d lived for a month near the Bois de Vincennes in Paris, he’d been a daredevil from birth.
Apparently he’d raced cars in his early twenties and drove at speeds that terrified most people. His sister, Claudine, Kellie’s dear frien
d, had confided that though he may have abandoned that pleasure once he’d discovered his great love for mountain climbing, he could still let it rip once in a while testing out one of the new sports models fresh from the plant. If that’s what he’d done tonight, then it was too high a price to pay.
When she thought she couldn’t stand it any longer, they reached the hospital where she could see several ambulances outside the doors. The sight of them enlarged the pit in her stomach.
“We’re here, madame.”
“Merci, monsieur.” She climbed out of the taxi, handing him several bills of Swiss francs without bothering to count how much she’d given him. Then she raced inside the entrance.
The reception room was packed with friends and family of casualty victims talking quietly. Their anxiety-ridden faces revealed their stress. As she approached the woman at the desk, Kellie happened to see herself in the glass and knew her expression was no different.
“Excuse me. I’m Madame Didier. My husband, Philippe, was brought in tonight. Where can I find him?”
“Through there on the left. He’s been put in cubicle four.”
“Thank you,” Kellie whispered before hurrying through the swinging doors to the E.R. Again she was struck by the amount of activity going on. Medical staff, paramedics, even police came and went from the busy room. It looked as if every cubicle was in use. Behind the curtain of the first one she could hear a woman wailing in pain.
Full of gratitude it wasn’t Philippe in that kind of agony, she ran to number four and parted the curtain to reach her husband. He was awake, thank heaven! She flew to his side where he lay in a hospital gown beneath a pristine white sheet.
“Philippe?”
“Mon amour— I thought you’d never get here.”
His deep voice sounded so shaken, it astounded her. Philippe was the kind of man whose intelligence and strong personality inspired confidence in everyone around him. Not only physically powerful, he exuded an inner male strength and drive that made him seem invincible.
“I came the second they phoned me, darling,” she cried, utterly thrown by his vulnerability. “I’ve been home waiting hours for you to arrive.”
Beneath his beautiful olive skin there was an unnatural pallor, but the devilishly handsome face with those black-brown eyes and black hair she loved was still the same.
“Mon Dieu. You’re so beautiful, it hurts.” In a swift motion he lifted his right arm to draw her head down, but she noticed he didn’t try to use his left one at all. She was so preoccupied about that, she wasn’t prepared for his kiss which was almost savage in its intensity.
Since they’d been married, they’d made love day and night, under every circumstance and condition. But her husband had never embraced her as if it were going to be their last.
“Philippe, sweetheart—” she whispered after he’d unwillingly relinquished her lips. “I can tell your left arm is hurt.”
“My elbow got banged. It’s nothing.”
Her anxious eyes played over him. “What else is wrong with you?”
“A bump on my left kneecap.”
“Oh, darling,” she moaned. “Let me see.”
“There’s no need. From what the doctor told me, neither is broken, just bruised. They’ll take some X rays in a while to be certain. I’m waiting my turn. Before they come for me, there’s something we have to talk about.”
Again she felt this sense of foreboding. After taking a shuddering breath she said, “All right.”
She heard him invoke God’s help before he murmured, “Maybe you’d better sit down.”
With those fateful words, Kellie needed support. She saw a stool by the shelving and moved it next to the bed where she could prop herself. Grasping his right hand which she kissed and held to her cheek she said, “What’s this terrible thing you have to tell me?”
His expression grew bleak before his eyes filled with pleading.
“Sweetheart?” she begged, unable to stand the suspense another second.
He cleared his throat. “When we took our vows, we promised to love each other for better or worse.”
“We do! I do!”
“I never intended for there to be a ‘for worse’ in our marriage,” his voice grated.
“But there is?” She swallowed hard.
“Kellie, I don’t know how to say this.”
“Say what?” she demanded in agony, freeing her hand to run her fingers through his dark wavy hair. “Don’t you know you can tell me anything?”
His eyes looked haunted. “Late this afternoon while I was finishing up some work at the office so I could get home to you, I had a visitor. It was a woman I rescued after an avalanche in Chamonix months before I met you.”
Kellie didn’t need to hear another word to feel as if she’d been dropped from a high building.
“Her name’s Yvette Boiteux.”
It didn’t sound familiar. According to Claudine, until Kellie had come along, her brother had left a trail of broken hearts that stretched from Paris to Neuchâtel.
“She must have had a good reason to visit a married man at the end of his workday.” Kellie couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice.
“All I know is, she’s eight months pregnant and claims it’s my child.”
Kellie bit down so hard on her knuckle, it drew blood.
“Darling—” He gripped her free hand tightly, not knowing his strength. “Please hear me out.”
She averted her eyes. “I’m listening.”
“We only slept together once, and I took precautions. It was a mistake from start to finish. I realize my reputation precedes me, but in reality, there’ve only been a few women. Yvette wasn’t one of them.”
It was hard to breathe. “I believe you.”
By now he was gripping her hand so hard, it hurt. But she invited it to counteract this other pain which had penetrated the core of her being where there could be no earthly relief.
“When she came to my office, she didn’t look well to me. She told me she’d come by bus because she didn’t own a car. At that point I told her I’d drive her home.
“Before I said anything about having a paternity test done, I was praying she would admit that one of her lovers had turned his back on her. Knowing I was good for the money, it would explain the reason why she’d come to me at the midnight hour for financial help.”
Kellie’s eyes closed tightly for a moment. What if the test came up with a match?
“On the way to the apartment where she told me she lived with her mother, a tourist ran into us. He received the citation for driving out of control. Under other circumstances I might have been able to see him coming to avoid a collision.”
She shook her head. “After news like that, I don’t know how you could even function.”
He let out a tortured sound. “As it happens, the impact shoved my car against a parked van. The doctor said Yvette doesn’t have any injuries, but at this stage of her pregnancy, the shock could bri—”
“Monsieur Didier?” an unfamiliar voice broke in on them. “We’re ready to take you to X ray. Madame— If you wouldn’t mind stepping out for a moment, our team will get him transferred to the gurney,” the technician said to Kellie.
“Yes, of course.”
“Darling—” Philippe’s voice sounded frantic.
“I’ll be right outside the curtain.”
She pushed the stool back in place, then lifted the flap to wait in the main room of the E.R. In a minute the technicians emerged with Philippe. Like lasers, his dark eyes burned into her soul.
“Promise me you’ll be here when I get back.”
The tears she’d been fighting spilled down her cheeks. “Where would I go?”
You’re my whole life, Philippe. Without you, there’s nothing.
When he’d disappeared through another set of doors, she realized his parents needed to be notified, then Marcel. But her body was slow to obey her brain.
As she retraced her ste
ps to the reception area to make the calls, she heard the hysterical woman behind the first curtain crying out Philippe’s name. Kellie froze.
“Calm yourself, Mademoiselle Boiteux,” said another female voice. “Monsieur Didier will be in to visit you as soon as he comes back from X ray.”
“I need to see him. I love him. He’s the father of my baby. I’m going to have his son. Promise me he’s not hurt, that he’s all right!”
“You mustn’t get upset. It isn’t good for you or the baby. You have toxemia. Your blood pressure’s too high. We need to get it down, so you have to cooperate with us.”
“It was my fault we were in the accident. He offered to drive me home and I let him. I shouldn’t have agreed to it, then he wouldn’t have been hurt. He’s so wonderful. He saved my life once before. If anything happened to Philippe, I’d want to die.”
“No, mademoiselle. You want to live. You’re going to be a mother very soon. Think of the joy you’ll have in raising your child. We’ve called your mother. She’ll be here soon to comfort you.”
“No,” she cried out. “Without Philippe, I don’t care about anything else. Please tell him to come. This is his child. You don’t understand. He’s my whole life!”
This is his child. He’s my whole life.
Kellie felt as if someone had just walked across her grave.
A hand touched her shoulder. “Madame? You look like you’re feeling ill,” one of the nurse’s aides observed. “Do you want to lie down?”
“N-no. I’ll be all right.”
“Let me at least help you to the reception room where you can sit while you wait for your husband.”
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