by Janet Dailey
‘Do you care?’ he jeered.
‘That will be enough of that,’ J.D. reprimanded. ‘We aren’t here to trade insults.’
Tanya had lowered her chin nearly into her chest, breaking free from Jake’s look of scorn and contempt that slashed at her heart. She heard the click of a lighter and smelled the subsequent aroma of burning cigarette tobacco.
‘Exactly why am I here?’ Jake demanded, sending a cloud of smoke into the centre of the room. ‘Are we supposed to be discussing the divorce settlement or what?’ She felt the half-closed, hooded gaze piercing her flesh. ‘Because if so, I want you to know that I won’t give you one penny of alimony and I intend to fight you every inch of the way for custody of my son.’
The bitter vengeance in his voice brought Tanya to her feet, her hands twisting together like the knots in her stomach. How he despised her!
‘Tanya,’ J.D.’s gentle voice reached out to her, reassuring and warm, promising her all his support. Her beseeching gaze sought out the craggy features of the still handsome older man.
‘I don’t think I can do it,’ she whispered as hot tears scalded her eyes.
‘Tears,’ Jake scoffed with cynical amusement. ‘Now that is very touching!’
‘Of course you can, Tanya.’ J.D. sent a sharp, reproachful dart at his son. ‘That is if my arrogant son will keep his mouth shut long enough to listen.’
‘Why do you insist on butting into this?’ Jake nearly exploded. ‘You don’t even know what’s going on.’
‘I know more than you do!’ his father retorted just as angrily. ‘And if you’ll shut up and listen you might find out something, too!’
‘Stop tearing at each other!’ Tanya cried, unable to stand the angry bickering between father and son. ‘I won’t have you yelling at each other because of me!’
‘You’ve been a strain on my relationship with my family since the first day I married you. Why should it suddenly be different now?’ Jake’s sarcasm lashed out at her with the fury of a cat-o’-nine-tails. But he didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Now tell whatever story it is you have to tell. I’m getting tired of all this melodramatic suspense.’
Tanya looked helplessly at the man behind the desk, praying that he would speak up and make the onerous explanation. But her father-in-law only nodded for her to go ahead.
‘I don’t know how to start,’ she hedged weakly.
‘For God’s sake, just say whatever it is you’re going to say so I can get the hell out of here!’ Jake snarled, viciously stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray beside the chair.
‘You’re not making it easy, Jake,’ Tanya replied, sending him a slightly angry glance of her own.
‘When have you ever made my life easy?’ he asked coldly.
There was a moment of silence as her retaliatory anger faded at his harsh reminder of her own past treatment of him. She took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her cheek. Her feet put more distance between them as she stared down at her tightly knotted fingers.
‘The other day wh-when we were talking,’ she began quietly, ’you said you admired my honesty. I haven’t been honest with you, Jake — in fact I’ve led you to believe something that isn’t true at all.’
She glanced at him apprehensively, seeing his reaction to her statement. He was watching her, his gaze cold as he impatiently waited for her to continue.
‘It’s about John.’ Her teeth bit into her lip to keep the choking sobs from rising out of her chest. The taste of blood mingled with her pain.
‘What about John?’ he prompted her.
From the corner of her eye she could see the grim, uncompromising line of his mouth. She forced herself to meet his gaze, unconsciously squaring her shoulders as she made the half turn towards him.
‘He is not my son.’
The words had barely been spoken when Jake loomed to his feet, gliding across the distance separating them like an avenging angel. His hands closed over her soft upper arms, his fingers digging into the bone as he drew her up on tiptoe until she was inches away from his enraged face. Round amber eyes stared into his anger, mutely accepting his right to hold her so violently.
‘What utter piece of nonsense is this? What are you saying?’ he demanded, shaking her roughly. ‘Are you trying to make me believe that John isn’t my son?’
‘No,’ she murmured, the tears running down her cheeks again. ’He is your son. I’ve never lied about that.’
‘Then what are you talking about?’
‘John isn’t my son. I’m not his mother,’ Tanya repeated more forcefully.
‘You’re not making any sense.’ His forehead drew together in a disbelieving frown. ‘If you’re not his mother, then who is?’
She swallowed the painful lump in her throat and lowered her gaze to the curling hairs on his chest. He was so near to her, yet so very far away.
‘My sister,’ she mumbled, gasping with pain as he suddenly increased the grip on her arms.
‘That’s a lie!’ Jake snarled. ‘I don’t believe a word you’re saying!’
‘It’s the truth. I swear it,’ she whispered fervently.
‘No!’ he shouted, causing her to shrink away from him. He released her abruptly. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘She’s telling you the truth, son,’ J.D. said quietly, and Jake turned towards him.
‘What do you know about this? Don’t tell me you believe this wild tale?’ he mocked savagely.
The older man didn’t answer immediately, picking up a document from the desk and holding it out to Jake. ‘I don’t think you’ve seen this,’ he said calmly.
Tanya waited with paralysed stillness as Jake frowned over the paper. She guessed it was John’s birth certificate — her father-in-law had no doubt obtained a copy of it several years before. A suppressed anger remained in Jake’s eyes as he turned to look at her.
‘Deanna Carr is your sister?’ he snapped.
The coiled hair on top of her head bobbed in a jerky movement of affirmation.
‘Why?’ he snarled. ‘Why did you let me believe all these years that you were John’s mother?’
‘Because you were his father. You would have taken him away from me. I didn’t have any family, no decent place to live, no means to support myself or John. I didn’t stand a chance of him being awarded to me legally through the courts, not when Jake Lassiter was his father.’
‘First,’ Jake said with deadly calm, ‘I had to live with the fact that you’d borne my illegitimate son.’ Bitter anger made his voice vibrate. ‘Now you tell me his mother was some girl I don’t even remember!’
The birth certificate was crunched into a tight ball in his hand. The room became filled with an oppressive silence that pounded as loudly as Tanya’s heart. In the next instant the paper was hurled across the room.
‘You ask too much!’ his tight voice declared, every muscle in his body rippling with the violence and tension of the moment.
A tiny sob escaped as a moan from Tanya’s lips. She couldn’t face him any more, not after all the hurt she had caused him.
‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ she murmured numbly, whirling away from him to rush out of the study door.
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Chapter Ten
‘TANYA!’
Jake’s angry voice called after her, but she didn’t stop. Her steps quickened when she heard the sound of his in the hallway, following her. She couldn’t stop, not even when his commanding voice called her name again.
‘Tanya, come back here!’
Jake already despised her for rejecting his love. His loathing would have doubled after learning of the way she had used him for the last seven years. And she couldn’t find it in her heart to blame him.
So intent on reaching the safety of her room was she, Tanya nearly ran into her mother-in-law, who had hurried into the hallway at the sound of her son’s strident voice. Quickly she brushed past her, seeing the startled, questioning look on Julia’s face with uncaring
pain. Her mother-in-law’s voice followed Tanya on the flight to her room.
‘Jake, what’s going on here? What’s happened?’ she demanded.
‘Not now, Mother,’ he brushed her aside impatiently.
‘I want to know what’s going on. I have a right to know what goes on in my own house!’ Julia declared angrily.
‘Let him be,’ J.D.’s calming voice joined in.
‘But I want to know —’
A hand was raised to shush her. ‘I’ll tell you all about it. Now where is John?’
‘Out in the garden.’
Tanya heard the last as she opened her bedroom door and closed it quickly behind her, unconsciously turning the lock. An instant later she heard Jake’s footsteps at the door and saw the jiggling of the doorknob.
‘Open the door, Tanya!’
She cringed at the still angry tone. ‘Please go away, Jake. Just go away.’
‘Open this door or I swear I’ll break it down!’
She hesitated for only a minute before reaching out with a trembling hand to unlock the door. The click sounded loudly in the sudden silence. As the knob turned in response to the sound, she moved swiftly away from the door, her eyes bright with unshed tears while she fought for the strength to make it through his inquisition. Silently she resolved not to cry nor attempt to gain his sympathy. She wasn’t entitled to it, not after the way she had abused his trust.
He was in the room. Even with her back to him, she could feel his presence in the room before she heard the closing of the door. Breathing in deeply, she looked up at the ceiling and blinked away the tears in her eyes, while she waited for him to speak.
‘Look at me, Tanya,’ Jake ordered in a ruthless tone of tightly leashed anger.
Very slowly she turned around, not knowing how completely composed her rigidly held features made her appear. She stared into his glitteringly harsh eyes, an intense shade of blue against the bronze hue of his tanned skin.
‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow, Jake?’ she asked, clasping her trembling hands tightly together so they wouldn’t betray her. ‘You’ll be late for your dinner appointment.’
‘The instant I left, you’d pack your suitcases and leave,’ he snarled, stating what had only been a half-formed thought in her mind, and her cheeks coloured in admission. ‘We’ll finish this discussion right here and now.’
‘I don’t know what more I can tell you.’ Her chin lifted instinctively. ‘I can only say how terribly sorry and ashamed I am that I didn’t tell you the truth sooner.’
‘I’ll bet you are,’ Jake mocked, his lip curling with contempt. ‘You’ve somehow managed to convince my father of the sincerity behind your actions, but you have yet to convince me.’
‘Convince you of what?’
‘Why you married me.’
‘I married you because of John. I told you that,’ she replied in a hurt voice. ‘Once I made the mistake of telling you that he was your son and realized you weren’t going to treat it lightly, I felt I had no choice. I loved him as if he were my own son.’
‘The idea of being Mrs. Jake Lassiter didn’t enter it at all?’ he jeered. ‘Not when you knew it would mean living in a beautiful home, being free of any financial worries, enjoying the status or a member of the Lassiter family, wearing clothes that you wouldn’t even have dreamt of trying on before? That had no bearing on your decision?’
Pride gleamed brightly in her gold-flecked eyes. ‘I won’t pretend that I didn’t know the Lassiters were a wealthy and respected family, because I did,’ she answered calmly. ‘But I can’t make you believe me when I say that those things mattered only because of John. They were his birthright. He was entitled to them. I knew I never was.’
‘It’s funny the way it didn’t stop you from using them for yourself,’ he murmured sarcastically.
‘If you want to brand me as a scheming, gold-digging tramp, I can’t stop you, Jake.’ She forced herself to meet the diamond sharpness of his gaze. ‘I can only tell you that my concern was for John’s future.’
Jake stared at her for a long moment, finally breaking away to shake his head in disgusted exasperation. ‘I don’t know why I believe you, but I do,’ he muttered angrily.
The constriction of her throat made it impossible for Tanya to speak for a moment. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered tightly.
Running his fingers through his tobacco brown hair, Jake turned and walked to the window, staring absently out at the gathering crimson dusk. His hands slid partially into the pockets of his trousers.
‘I could accept you as John’s mother. I could believe that. But to find out that she’s really someone I don’t remember —’ There was a jerky, negative movement of his head to the side. ‘I want to know about that night, Tanya.’
The grimness of his voice reached out and placed a cold hand on her heart.
‘Oh, Jake,’ she murmured in a weak protest at what he was asking.
‘Did she — Did your sister tell you I was the father?’ he persisted.
Tanya realized he was determined to know every bit of the story. ‘Yes, she did.’
‘Tell me what happened that night. Tell me everything you know,’ he commanded harshly, not turning away from the window.
Her eyes lovingly caressed the back of his squared shoulders and the arrogant tilt of his head. She longed to rush over and put her arms about him and take away some of his pain. But Jake had asked her to inflict more. At this point she couldn’t refuse him.
‘Deanna and I went to the fair and the dance together. She was with some friends when you met me.’ She began the explanation hesitantly, not knowing anywhere else to begin except at the beginning. ‘I’m sure she wasn’t around those first few times you asked me to dance. You were very handsome and charming. Every time you looked at me you seemed to steal my breath away. I’d never met anyone like you before.’
‘Why did you run away from me?’
‘It sounds foolish now,’ Tanya sighed. ‘You’d kissed me several times on the dance floor, but the last time — well it was different. It frightened me. It frightened me because of the way it made me feel. I wanted you to go on kissing me. All of those warm feelings of desire made me afraid so I ran.’
‘I looked for you,’ Jake said with a strange, faraway indifference in his voice. ‘Where did you go?’
‘I went to our car. Our parents had let us use their car and I went to it with the intention of leaving. But I couldn’t go because Deanna wasn’t with me. And I was beginning to feel silly for making such a production out of a kiss, so I came back — not right back, because I argued with myself for quite a while in the car park. It was probably a half an hour or more.’ She breathed in deeply remembering the misery and confusion of those moments. ’When I came back, there was this boy I knew standing near the entrance. I asked him if he had seen Deanna and he told me she was over by the bar. I walked over there and saw her standing beside you.’
‘Are you sure she was with me?’ Jake asked sharply. ‘Couldn’t she have simply been standing next to me?’
‘No,’ she replied quietly, and swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Dennis — the boy at the door — had followed me. He said, “Isn’t that the guy who was giving you the rush a few minutes ago?#148; I don’t remember if I answered him or not. Then he said, “You’d better warn your sister. Those Lassiters play fast and loose. If a girl isn’t willing, they’ll find one who is.”’
Jake pivoted sharply around at that statement, his face angry and grim. ’Do you believe that?’
‘Not so much any more,’ Tanya shook her head quietly. ‘At the time I think I did and more so later.’
‘Which is why you despised me so much before,’ he said coldly. ’When I wasn’t successful in getting what I wanted from you, I used your sister. That’s what you thought, wasn’t it?’ There was an expression of self-disgust on his face. ‘How did you know for sure that your sister was with me?’
‘About the time I decided to walk over
to where the two of you were standing, some boy came up to ask Deanna to dance. You put your arm around her and told him hands off — she was private Lassiter stock.’
There was a heavy, almost groaning sigh from Jake as he turned swiftly towards the window.
Tanya wanted to stop, but she knew she had to go on. ‘Later I managed to see Deanna alone. I tried to warn her about you, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She told me she was old enough to know what she was doing and for me to go home. I did. It was nearly five o’clock in the morning when she came home. All she could talk about was that you were coming to see her the following weekend. Then you didn’t come or call or write. Our parents were killed in a car crash a few weeks later, and after that she told me she was pregnant.’
‘Why can’t I remember?’ His irritated muse was spoken aloud. He glanced over his shoulder with a narrowed gaze at Tanya. ‘Did she look like you? Could I have confused her memory with yours?’
‘She was dark, a brunette, and shorter than I am,’ she answered quietly. ‘You’d been drinking quite a bit when you were with me and you had a drink in your hand when I saw you with Deanna.’
A silence hushed the room, stretching out over long moments during which Tanya listened to the sound of her own breathing. Jake drew back the sheer curtains, leaning his hand against the window jamb as he watched John playing with a toy bulldozer among the rocks.
‘Why,’ he began at last, still staring out the window, ‘did you agree to try to make our marriage work? Was that only for John’s sake, too?’
‘No.’ Somehow she endured his darting cold glance. ‘I agreed at first because you said if it didn’t work then we would explore the alternatives of ending our marriage. To me that meant a divorce. I wanted that very much.’
‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ Jake snapped savagely. ‘Or was the taste of vengeance so strong that you wanted to bring me all the way to my knees?’
Tanya flinched. ‘Seven years ago I would have answered “yes” to that. Today, a week ago, even a month ago, it wasn’t true,’ she murmured. ’Lately I thought we had a chance to have a good marriage, that you might regard me with some affection, or enough to understand why I lied to you in the beginning.’