Baby In A Million

by Rebecca Winters

  “One night I got my wish. She didn’t have her car and needed a ride home. So I willingly drove her to her apartment. She invited me to come up for a drink.

  “I couldn’t believe my luck, so I went inside her place. After she put on some music and told me to get comfortable on the couch, she brought out a couple of beers.

  “Since I’d thought she meant a Coke or something, I was really excited because she was treating me like a man her own age which really built my ego. I drank beer with her. Then she asked me if I wanted to dance. Another thrill.

  “Before I knew it, we were kissing.”

  Ashley could hardly breathe.

  “She’d obviously been around and knew what she was doing. Though I’d had my share of girlfriends, I’m afraid I wasn’t as experienced. After about a half hour, she wanted to move things to the bedroom.

  “I’d never slept with a woman before. It suddenly dawned on me that my first time ought to be with a girl my own age, someone I really cared about—not one of dad’s employees who might spread tales and get me in trouble.

  “Sheila represented forbidden fruit, a conquest if you like, but my hormones rather than my emotions were involved. I remember feeling very foolish and regretting like hell that I’d gone up to her apartment.

  “She laughed at me when I told her I had to get home or my parents would be upset. Her taunts were another wound to my pride, but I got out of there before I made the ultimate mistake. Thank God.”

  The violence of his emotions reduced Ashley to a trembling lump of flesh. She had a dozen new questions. You sound like you’re telling the truth, Cord. Are you?

  “When I got home,” he continued, “my father was waiting up for me. He was livid. Apparently he’d called the office and the night custodian told him I’d left the office with Sheila some time ago.

  “Without filling in between the lines, I told Dad that I had given her a lift home because she didn’t have her car. He obviously knew much more than that had happened. He could probably smell the beer. In any event, he was angrier than I’d ever seen him in my life. He slapped my face.”

  Ashley stared at him in horror. “Your father actually hit you for that?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately Mother had heard us arguing and she came in the living room in time to witness it. On that particularly black night I grew up, putting my adolescence and innocence behind me.

  “Dad never apologized. He ordered me to stay away from the office and told me that I’d be spending the summer in Idaho, working at one of the potato chip plants.

  “For the last remaining weeks the three of us avoided each other around the house, never referring to the incident again. I was glad to be going away for the summer because it meant I didn’t have to be in his company.

  “When fall approached, I came home to tell my mother I wanted to stay in Utah and get a degree in forestry and land management. But she begged me to go on to Cornell and study finance and business. Dad had been planning that for me since my childhood.

  “Mother was afraid of him, but I never realized how serious the problem was until that time. It was then I began to see that if I didn’t go, he might take it out on Mother since he counted on her influence to persuade me. So I went away to school. But the truth of the matter was, Cornell had always been his dream, not mine.”

  The bitterness of his tone infiltrated every particle of Ashley’s being. She was devastated by what she’d just heard.

  Cord relinquished the chair and put a hand in his pocket. His solid, well-honed body paced the floor for a silent interval.

  “As I told you earlier, it was during my first year away at college that I picked up the habit of smoking. Near the end of the second semester, Mother wrote that she was going in for a hysterectomy. But what should have been routine surgery became something else. She had complications and contracted pneumonia. I flew home to spend the last few days in the hospital with her before she died.”

  The pain in his voice haunted Ashley.

  “Dad and I were speaking again, but there was a distance between us that could never be breached.

  “After the funeral I flew back to Cornell and resumed my studies, but by the middle of my sophomore year, I couldn’t lie to myself any longer. I didn’t want to be there and had no intentions of going into the family business. Throughout that period I was smoking pretty heavily.

  “Finally, I withdrew from school and flew home for the Christmas holidays with the intention of enrolling at Utah State in Logan, Utah. It was night when the taxi dropped me off in front of the house. I had no way of knowing if Dad was home because I hadn’t checked the garage.

  “I called to him—there was no answer. When I took my bags upstairs, I thought I heard laughter coming from his bedroom. So I rapped on his door and peeked inside.”

  Ashley knew what was coming and sat there in terrified silence.

  “Another woman was in the bed he’d shared with my mother. It was Sheila.”

  A moan escaped while she tried to stifle the pain she imagined he must have felt for so many reasons.

  “When it didn’t work with the son, I suppose she decided to try it on the father, who was in his late fifties and old enough to be her father. I didn’t stick around for explanations. Instead, I took off in my car and drove to Logan where I worked any number of odd jobs to pay for my tuition and board.

  “Through a friend, Dad found out where I was living and came to see me. At best, it was a pathetic meeting. He said he grieved for Mother, but the house was empty without her and he’d fallen in love with Sheila who was now his private secretary and fast becoming his right hand in the business.

  “He explained that they suited each other and were planning to get married quietly at home. He wanted me to be there. I said no and asked him to leave.

  “After that, I buried myself in schoolwork. A lot of my credits transferred from Cornell and I was able to finish up in four years time with a degree in forestry.

  “As a graduating senior, several government agencies interviewed me for jobs at different areas around the country, but the one I wanted was the ranger job in Teton National Park.

  “I decided to check it out first and met a guy, Art Williams, who was the chief ranger. From the start we seemed to hit it off. There were many things to admire about him, but above all he was physically fit for the work which involved a lot of mountaineering.

  “I couldn’t go far without being winded. He sized me up fast. He said that a guy who was born to live in the back country, yet still had trouble catching his breath, had to be a smoker. When I said yes, he told me there were fifty other guys applying for the job, but it was mine if I’d quit. I guess I wanted it badly enough that I stopped.”

  Ashley saw Vince cock his head and stare at Cord. “Was it difficult?”

  “No. Not really. Every day of abstention I felt better. There was too much work to do, and I enjoyed the job more than anything I’d ever done in my life.”

  “Now that you look back on it, Cord, can you see that there might have been an underlying reason why you no longer needed the nicotine?”

  Cord looked pensive. “Yes. I was no longer feeling any pressure from home and could please myself.”

  “Exactly.” Vince rose from the chair. “Think about that during lunch. After the group session, we’ll talk some more. Right now I’m going to leave you two alone and I’ll see you here at two o’clock.”

  Ashley dreaded his leaving, but she couldn’t very well call him back to provide a needed buffer.

  To her surprise, Cord headed for the door. “I’m going outside for a short walk before lunch. Is there anything I can get for you before I go?”

  Her emotions were in chaos. On the one hand, she feared being alone with him because they’d touched on so much that was new and painful. Conversely, it angered her that he would just walk out, leaving her to internalize all this information without further explanation.

  Every revelation had brought new questions. Sh
e hardly knew where to start.

  “According to the rules Dr. Drake presented, we’re supposed to be together at all times, like a buddy system.”

  His dark blue eyes glittered dangerously. “We’re hardly buddies, Ashley. I get the distinct feeling you’d like to be as far away from me as possible. Since you’re pregnant and need to rest, I’ll be the one to do the honors. Don’t worry. I’m not about to light up yet.”

  “Please, Cord. I didn’t mean to intimate that you couldn’t be trusted. Don’t go— W-we need to talk.”

  His mouthed tightened to a pencil-thin line. “That’s all I’ve been doing this morning.”

  She took a deep breath. “That wasn’t talking. You were giving Vince facts. There’s a world of difference.”

  His gaze seemed to impale her. “But you still consider it fiction.”

  “I didn’t say that!” she defended hotly.

  He folded his arms in an intimidating gesture. “Which part did you believe?”

  Ashley avoided his gaze and sat down on the chair Vince had just vacated. She needed some support at her back. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about Sheila? About what happened when you were eighteen?”

  “The truth?” he muttered thickly.

  “That’s why I’m here,” came her tremulous response.

  After a long pause, “Because I knew from the time you first met her that she intimidated you. I didn’t want to tell you anything that could feed your insecurity and contribute to your fears.”

  She fought tears. “But don’t you see? By withholding that information from me, it made everything so much worse. Whenever she baited me, she insinuated that you two had a history, one you emphatically denied until today!”

  “That’s because we didn’t have a relationship or anything remotely close to it. I didn’t sleep with her.” His voice grated. “But with hindsight, I can see I made a grave mistake in not telling you what happened at the office that night. Do you believe me, Ashley?”

  His question permeated the very air they were breathing.

  “Yes. As far as your explanation goes,” she added on a whisper.

  She knew the last remark would enflame him, but she couldn’t recall it because that wouldn’t be staying true to herself.

  He took a long time before he responded.

  “If you could believe what I just told you in front of Vince, why can’t you believe that there never was an affair, at any time?” The words came out like a low-decibel hiss. “Sheila is an accomplished liar who had an agenda from the moment Dad hired her for that secretarial job years ago.

  “It’s taken me a long time to admit that my parents’ marriage was a disaster, a merger of two families with enough money to create a dynasty.

  “Dad didn’t love Mother. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been unfaithful to her even before Sheila came along. Mother should have divorced him, but she didn’t have the courage because in spite of everything, she was in love with him.”

  “That’s tragic,” she whispered.

  Cord’s features hardened. “Dad gave himself away when he slapped me. Obviously he wanted Sheila for himself and was furious she’d shown an interest in me.” They were wading into the very core of her pain. Ashley couldn’t stay seated.

  “You admit you were strongly attracted to her, too,” she still felt compelled to remind him.

  “Not strongly, Ash. I was a typical teen, with a crush on a blonde bombshell. Like most boys my age, I was going through an experimental stage. Don’t tell me you didn’t do the same, because I wouldn’t believe you. But we’re deviating from the real point. Any interest I had in Sheila died a certain death at her apartment when she assumed I would go to bed with her. That was never my intention.”

  Ashley had no comeback for that. “If that’s true,” she continued emotionally, “then why did you quit your job with the forest service and expect us to move back in the house with her after your father died?”

  When Cord didn’t say anything for a minute, Ashley had the impression he was about to tell her something else she didn’t know. More secrets. It was a nightmare. All of it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “It was all part of a plan I conceived to get rid of Sheila, but it backfired and lost me my wife!”

  Ashley reeled from the despair in his voice, but she couldn’t refrain from asking him, “What plan?”

  “The one I put into action after Mother’s attorney, Ray Crawford, came to see me at the hospital the day Dad died. He informed me that half the house was in Mother’s name, therefore half the house was legally mine.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. Dad had drawn up his own will giving Sheila the house, but Mother’s will superceded it. Dad didn’t want me to have anything. It was his way of slapping me down again for attracting his girlfriend first, for not graduating from Cornell and spoiling all his plans for me.

  “If you recall, when you and I visited Dad in the hospital following the plane crash, I had a word with him alone first.”

  She nodded, remembering the uncomfortably long wait in the hospital lounge watching a dry-eyed Sheila pace, neither of them saying anything.

  When Cord finally opened the door and beckoned them to come in, she felt his pain, but assumed it was because his father was seconds away from dying.

  “I had the foolish hope that because he was so close to death, he and I could come to some kind of understanding about the past. But all he had to say to me was that Sheila would be his voice in the company now. He also intimated that since I had abandoned him to live in the Tetons, he was leaving the house to her.”

  “He said that!” she cried out once more. “No words of love or comfort for you?” She couldn’t fathom it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  The bleak expression in his eyes haunted her. “I was too angry, Ashley. There’d been so much ugly history from the past, I didn’t know how to deal with it, and I refused to burden you when we were already having problems in our marriage. Another mistake I bitterly regret.”

  “But that’s horrible!”

  “He was a horrible man. Evidently he didn’t think I would ever find out, but Mother’s attorney knew her wishes and made sure that I knew them. Ray and I talked it over, and I came to the decision to fight her and my father, but I had to be careful how I proceeded.

  “My first strategy after the funeral was to tell Sheila that you and I were moving back in the house so she wouldn’t have to be alone in her grief. I knew she intimidated you, but at that point in time I had no way of knowing about all the private conversations you’d had with Sheila or how much damage she’d already done to you.”

  Ashley moaned, assailed by her own guilt. “That’s true. I never told you the things she said, b-because I didn’t want to believe them.”

  “She was a past master at manipulation, but I decided to take her on. Through Mother, I still had a place on the board if I chose to be active.

  “From the time of Mother’s death to this day, the board members have wanted me back in the company. In fact, they kept begging me to give up my ranger job, but I couldn’t do that. I was too happy with my work, with you.”

  We were happy, Cord.

  “But when Dad died, I knew how they’d feel when they heard that Sheila had taken over his role and had been given his shares of stock. That’s when I decided that I had to give up my park job and come back to the family business.

  “By that point, you and I weren’t communicating as well, and I thought maybe you’d be happier in Salt Lake around your old friends. But I never intended it to be a permanent move. I despised Sheila.”

  Ashley flung her head back. “I saw how much you despised her, Cord.”

  Her body tautened. “I was playing a role, Ashley. I pretended to be civil to her and get along until the time came when the board members could legitimately oust her from the business altogether. Then I’d force her out of the house with some kind of payoff.”

  His eyes narrowed. �
��Unfortunately, I underestimated her ability to hurt you. She was and is an opportunistic exploiter who deliberately undermined our marriage by driving you away. But mark my words, one day I’m going to beat her at her own game, and she’ll be long gone from our lives.”

  Cord sounded deadly serious, but Ashley knew what she’d seen in Cord’s bedroom. It had been no hallucination.

  “She’s also an amazingly beautiful woman, and was able to captivate both you and your father.”

  His body went rigid. “You honestly think I found her attractive once I found out she’d been sleeping with my father?”

  Cord didn’t raise his voice. Rather he spoke in a deadly soft tone. It sent shivers down her spine. “Sometimes you can’t help what you feel.”

  “A fatal attraction?” he interjected with a sneer.

  She hung her head. “Yes.”

  “Give me the dates and places my supposed liaisons occurred, Ashley. Better yet, ask me to take a lie detector test.”

  “I don’t need any proof. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “When?” he demanded, his whole expression primitive.

  “Worried, Cord?”

  He stared at her for an interminably long moment without saying anything. Eventually he shook his head. “No. But it’s getting through to me that you think you saw something so damning in your eyes, you walked out on me hours after we’d made love.”

  Her heart was beating too hard. Her breathing had grown shallow. “Vince was right. Two people can recall the same event with diametrically opposed points of view.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Don’t you remember?” she reminded him. “As soon as I fell asleep, you left my bed.”

  “That’s true. If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have been able to control myself and I would have made love to you again. After what we’d shared, I had a lot of thinking to do about us and our future.”

  “You’re a liar, Cord!” she cried out. “You went straight back to your own bed where Sheila was waiting.”

  “And you witnessed all this with your own eyes?”