She stroked her thumb over her pale pink nail polish. Twisted the pearl ring on the third finger of her right hand. And said in a voice so hushed he had to strain to hear it, “Nobody interviewed us. Todd heard through a colleague that there was a woman in Los Angeles desperate to find a home for her unborn child. We went to meet her, and the three of us worked out an arrangement.”
“Worked out an arrangement?”
“There was nothing fishy about it, if that’s what you’re implying,” she said sharply. “We undertook to pay her medical expenses and help her make a fresh start after the birth, and she agreed to let us take her baby. Todd drew up the necessary documents and the three of us signed them with two of his law firm partners acting as witnesses. You already know all this, Michael, so I don’t know why you’re bringing the subject up again.”
“Yes. And I still have a hard time believing it never occurred to you that there should have been more to it than that.”
“Why should it have, when everything was perfectly in order?”
He threw up his hands in disbelief. “Because from what you’ve told me, it’s plain that the only thing you signed was an agreement for sale. You bought a black market baby, Camille.”
A delicate flush rode over her face. “That’s absurd! I did no such thing. And what gives you the right to sit in judgment of my actions, anyway? Just who do you think you are?”
Oh, sweetheart, if you only knew! But he couldn’t tell her now. He’d put her on the defensive and there was no way he’d get her to receive the truth kindly at this point. Furthermore, he was too steamed to try.
Biting down on the urge to pound his fist on the table and bellow, That commodity you bought happened to be my son and I’d have seen you all in hell before I’d have let you have him, if I’d known, he mustered the dregs of his composure and said, “I’m trying to be your friend, Camille.”
“I fail to see how.”
“Then that makes us equal, because I fail to understand how a woman as educated and sophisticated as you appear to be can take at face value everything that’s handed to her.”
“Maybe because I’m too trusting and a little bit naive.”
“You adopt a baby knowing your husband’s a lush and your marriage is on the skids. You swallow wholesale his story of just happening to find a pregnant woman living in a flea-pit motel in L.A. and—”
“How did you know he found her in a motel? I never told you that.”
“If she’d been living in luxury, she wouldn’t have needed rescuing,” he said, breaking out in a fine sweat. Many more slips like that, and he wouldn’t have to admit a thing. She’d figure the whole story out for herself. “It could have been a mansion, for all I care. The point I’m making is, he comes up with a woman conveniently waiting for a couple with money to pick her up, clean her off, pay her bills and buy her baby for a princely sum. And you don’t raise a peep of protest when neither a judge nor a social worker is involved in the arrangement. You never once ask to see both parents’ consent to the adoption.” He shook his head in disgust. “I don’t call that trusting and naive, Camille, I call it stupid. And perhaps a little too self-serving. I think you used an innocent baby to try to shore up your sinking marriage.”
Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears, but they stemmed as much from anger as hurt. Spots of color burned on her cheeks. Her breasts rose and fell in agitation. “I did nothing of the sort,” she said, the pulse at her throat racing so hard he could see it. “I thought my marriage was back on track. And we didn’t just go shopping one day and come home with a baby, you know! We spent the last four months of the pregnancy with the birth mother, in part to give her the chance to be sure adoption was the route she wanted to take, but mostly to prepare ourselves to become parents.”
“And a fat lot of good it did you! The so-called father takes off within weeks of the kid’s birth, leaving you to do double duty as a single parent. Not what you’d call an ideal arrangement, is it?”
The hurt won out over the anger. “Don’t you think I already know that?” she cried softly, the tears rolling down her face. “Don’t you think I lie awake at nights, worrying about how much my son’s missing by not having a father around—of how much he’s been cheated? Of course I do! Maybe I’m every bit the fool you say I am, Michael, but I love my son with my whole heart and I’d give anything—anything!—not to have had things turn out the way they did. But I don’t know what you expect me to do about it at this late stage. I might have bought a baby, according to the way you see things, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to run out and buy a husband, just to fulfill your idea of what a family’s all about!”
“Oh, jeez, Camille!” He shoved his napkin at her. “Here, dry your eyes. So help me, I didn’t bring you here to ream you out and make you miserable. It’s just that every time I think about your scheming bastard of an ex-husband, I see red. It’s not just Jeremy who deserved better. You did, too.”
She opened her mouth to reply, and let out a sob instead that had half the diners in the room looking their way.
He clapped a hand to his forehead. The way things were going, he’d have a lynch mob after his hide before long. “Please, Camille, stop crying.”
To her credit, she tried. She bit her lip until he thought it would bleed. She swallowed as painfully as if she’d got an orange stuck in her throat. She turned to stare out of the window so that he couldn’t see her face. But the tears kept coming, sparkling from the ends of her lashes and splashing onto the fancy beadwork on her dress.
The waiter reappeared. “Your wine, sir,” he began, then stopped with the bottle poised in midair. Concern furrowed his brow and sent wrinkles chasing up his shiny dome of a head as Camille pressed her napkin to her mouth and pushed away from the table. Strangling on another sob, she made a dash for the open door to the patio.
“We’ve changed our minds. Maybe later….” Already on his feet, Michael waved the waiter aside and went after her.
By the time he got outside, she’d vanished. There was no sign of her on the steps leading to the gardens, but unless she’d vaulted over the lush flower beds on either side, which seemed unlikely given the cut of her dress, she had to have taken the path winding under trees strung with little white lights.
She had, but even so he might easily have missed her if it hadn’t been for her muffled sobs leading him to where she huddled on a bench in a secluded alcove formed by a ten-foot-high hedge with a keyhole entrance carved in it.
Figuring he’d screwed up enough to invalidate his hands-off promise, he dropped next to her on the bench and took her in his arms. Just to comfort her. Just so that he could stroke her back until her shoulders stopped heaving and she was feeling better.
Then he’d confess.
And tell her she had nothing to fear from him because all he wanted was to see his son occasionally and contribute to his life however she’d let him.
And hope she’d believe him and feel inclined to be generous.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE huddled in his arms, her heart going a mile a minute like a terrified, injured bird’s. And it was all his fault. What the devil was wrong with him? Was he really so unsure of his own claims that he had to trample all over hers before he found the guts to come out with the truth?
Tucking her head beneath his chin, he pressed his hand to the side of her face. Her tears scalded his fingers, but it was her hopeless efforts to get herself under control that damn near broke his heart.
“I’m not worth it, you know,” he muttered against her hair. “If you’re going to make yourself sick crying over somebody, it shouldn’t be for some fool shooting his mouth off on matters he knows nothing about.”
Another partial lie, but necessary under the circumstances. Jeremy was his son, regardless of who’d been named father on the birth certificate, but if he was looking to point the finger of blame at someone for the omission, that person was Kay. She was the one who’d robbed him of his rights, and he had
no business trying to shift responsibility for his loss to the woman whose only sin had been that she wanted his baby a lot more than Kay ever had.
So tell her that, you dumb schmuck! Quit procrastinating and lay it all out for her.
Before he could begin though, Camille drew in a breath that left her slender frame shaking like a leaf caught in the wind, and said in a waterlogged voice, “I knew.”
“Knew what, love?” he asked cautiously.
But she’d slipped into a private inner world where he couldn’t follow, and seemed not to hear him. Sitting up a little straighter, she pushed her hair back from her face and stared blindly at the tall hedge surrounding them. “I asked him, and he told me not to interfere. He said it was his job to take care of the legal end of things, and mine to learn to change a diaper. But I knew…it was all too sudden, too easy. I knew something wasn’t right. I’ve always known. And it terrifies me.”
“Unless you deliberately falsified the facts in order to cheat the mother out of her child, you have no reason to worry,” he said, finally cluing in to what she was going on about. “She isn’t going to show up at your door and demand her child back.”
That much, at least, was the absolute truth.
“But he could.”
“Todd?” He stroked his knuckles down her cheek to her jaw. “Honey, you said yourself—”
“Not him,” she said. “The other one. The real father.”
“I guarantee he’ll never make trouble for you.”
Another truth, but pitifully inadequate when stacked up against the mountain of deceit still waiting to be exposed.
She turned her head and regarded him solemnly a moment, then a small dreamy smile flitted across her face. “You sound so sure, I almost believe you.”
How many heaven-sent chances was he going to blow before he quit dancing around the subject? Even if she despised him for waiting so long to reveal the whole sad story, telling her would leave him with the satisfaction of knowing he’d put her fears to rest for good.
“Look,” he said, bracing himself for her reaction, “a little while ago, you said you wanted to know all about me—about who I really am.”
“I’ve changed my mind.” She swivelled in his lap, the better to look at him. The tears were done. Her eyes were big and luminous, and very beautiful. Her words whispered over his mouth, flavored with champagne. The tips of her breasts touched lightly against his shirtfront. When she moved, silky underthings rustled against her skin, and he remembered how she’d felt when he’d run his hands over her naked body.
“Huh?” he croaked, dizzy with the scent and sound and feel of her.
“I said, I’ve changed my mind.”
“How come?”
“Because I already know everything that matters.”
“You don’t know beans.” He touched his finger to her lips to silence her, and was caught completely unprepared when she drew the tip into her mouth. The aftershock flew straight as an arrow to his groin. Bull’s-eye!
Things were not going according to plan. Not one little bit. He was fast losing his grip. Shoving good intentions aside, his mind was doing what it always seemed to do best whenever he found himself alone with her: taking up residence in his nether regions.
“I know you’re honorable and decent and kind,” she said, removing her finger and fixing her gaze on his mouth instead. How she managed to talk rationally when he could scarcely breathe stupefied him. “I know you’ve showered Jeremy with more attention than Todd ever did and certainly brought him more pleasure. That by itself is reason enough for me to be glad I met you.”
“I think—”
“That I’m going a bit overboard with the compliments?” She gave another of those distracting little shrugs that left him squirming. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to embarrass either of us by pretending we’re anything more than the proverbial ships passing in the night. But that doesn’t alter the fact that when I’m upset, you make me feel better. You call me sweetheart and honey as if you mean it, and it’s been such a long time since anyone did that.”
“I—!”
“Let me finish, please, before I lose my nerve.” She sketched a tender finger over his eyebrow. “You make me face my demons, something I was unable to do before I met you. Most of all, you’re not afraid to tell me the truth.”
“Stop it!” he ground out, closing his eyes to avoid having to witness the honesty in hers. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“I know that you’ve been my friend and that means everything to me.” She moved closer. Too close. Her breath tumbled over his face, fresh as a spring morning. “Thank you, Michael,” she said softly, and kissed him on the cheek. Then, with another rustling of silk, she slithered off his lap.
How the touch of her lips—bestowed with a guileless sincerity that was almost childlike—could translate into a kiss so loaded with sexual promise that it electrified him, defied explanation.
Nor did he waste time trying to come up with one. “Where are you going?”
“Back to the dining room. I think I’ve said enough.”
He tussled with his conscience, telling himself that if he could do nothing else right, in this instance at least he could live up to her lofty perceptions of him and let her go. To try to keep her there because he couldn’t control the hunger raging through him, was indefensible.
“Stay…!” Ignoring his pitiful attempt at nobility, the word tore loose from his throat, half command, half plea.
She paused on the brink of flight, her head tilted in such a way that her profile shone pale and perfect against the dark foliage of the hedge. Helpless to prevent himself, he curved his arm around her hips and turned her to face him again.
Just one more little kiss, he promised himself, all the time knowing that, where she was concerned, a little was never enough.
Even so, scruples still might have won the day had that damnable slit in her skirt not trapped his hand so that, as she pivoted toward him, his palm slid beneath the fabric and closed over her thigh.
If he’d had any sort of moral fiber, he’d have stopped right there and then, instead of groping around blindly, worse than a horny eighteen-year-old making out with a high school cheerleader.
Trouble was, cheerleaders wore tight-fitting drawers and panty hose to keep them decent while they flung themselves around on the football field. But Camille had on silk stockings which left three inches of bare skin at the top of her thighs, and skimpy satin panties which offered no resistance at all to his finger inching past the elasticized lace to caress the fleecy-soft hair between her legs.
He was lost, and he knew it.
And so was she. She crumpled forward and if he hadn’t held her pinned between his knees, she’d have collapsed on the gravel at his feet. Instead, she swayed toward him, her head drooping on the slender stem of her neck like a fading flower.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, on a fractured breath.
She was tight and moist and so ready for him that with one touch to the sensitized bud hidden in the sweet folds of her flesh, he brought her to orgasm—and came close to it himself.
He wanted her naked beneath him, on a bed, with candlelight glimmering over her skin. He wanted to kiss every inch of her; to put his mouth where his hand was and taste the honeydew sweetness of her release.
He wanted to remain buried inside her for long, deep minutes at a stretch, and watch her eyes glaze over and her mouth fall softly open just before she came. He wanted to move within her slowly and deliberately, surfing the waves of passion time and again until, at last, with his heart fit to burst, they hammered him into submission.
He could have done all that and more. The lodge offered overnight accommodation. For the price of a room and fifteen minutes of patience, he could have secluded her in privacy and comfort, and taken the rest of the night to pleasure her.
But she, still vibrating helplessly against him, fumbled to open his fly and reached inside to cup
him in the palm of her hand. The agony increased a notch, raking through him and threatening imminent destruction.
Fifteen minutes?
The sweat sprang out on his forehead and prickled the length of his spine. The speed with which he was losing ground, he feared he had less than fifteen seconds in which to hike up her skirt and yank down her underwear. Smothering a groan, he skimmed her dainty panties down her legs.
He thought he heard the faint tearing of silk. He hoped not; hoped he hadn’t damaged that gorgeous dress. But it was a secondary concern, overshadowed by the certain knowledge that unless he put an end to the exquisite torment she was inflicting, he’d spill into her hands long before he could enter her, and that would be the end of it.
With the slit of her skirt spread wide over her thighs, he cradled her hips and hauled her astride him. Felt the sweet, damp flesh between her parted legs settle snugly against him, and with one mighty thrust, plunged inside her as the perimeter of his control started to crumble.
She closed around him, tight and sleek. Gritting his teeth, he fought to hang on just long enough to reawaken the faint echoes of pleasure still rippling through her frame. The bench was narrow, hard, unaccommodating. Whether by instinct or design, she drew her knees up and hooked her heels behind his waist in a frantic attempt to weld herself more seamlessly against him.
Supporting her with both hands, he tilted his hips up, driving ever deeper in a fruitless attempt to lose all of himself inside her. The move destroyed him. As the distant thunder of release gained strength, relentlessly drowning out everything but the frantic beat of her heart against his, he buried his mouth at her ear and started to tell her he was sorry.
But it was too late. The dam burst and ripped through him, trapping the words in his throat and pummeling him without mercy. Caught in its fury, she clung to him, her fists clenching reflexively at his shoulders, her eyes flying wide in a sightless stare. Painful, staccato breaths puffed from between her parted lips, as if her lungs were squeezing the very life out of her.
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