It’s for a good cause, he reminded himself. His body wasn’t so certain. “I was just thinking the same thing about you,” he told her.
She laughed, knowing that for him he’d paid her a heady compliment. “Thank you. Are you ready?”
He knew she was asking about the speech. She wanted to know if he felt prepared. And he didn’t. The hug knots in his stomach weren’t going to go until after the speech was over.
“No,” he told her honestly.
She felt for him. The last two go-rounds had been flawless, but that was because he’d delivered the speech to her. What if he came down with stage fright? In a way, it would be all her fault, because she’d been the one to get the ball rolling in the first place.
“During your speech, if you get stuck, just look at me,” she urged. “I know your speech backwards and forwards. I’ll prompt you.”
He blew out a breath, annoyed at feeling this unsettled. After all, it was only a speech, not mortal combat. Somehow, that had no impact. “Forward would be nice.”
She grinned, picking up her wrap from the back of the chair. “Okay, forward it is. Remember, look for me. I’ll be the one in red.”
Right, like he’d have trouble locating her, especially considering what she was wearing.
“No way I could miss you.” Taking the wrap from her hands, he placed it about her shoulders. His hands lingered just a moment before he withdrew them. “Neither could anyone else.” He was acutely aware of the bare back beneath the silver shawl. Acutely aware of his body reacting to her. “I could recite the alphabet tonight and no one would be the wiser. Everyone’s going to be staring at you.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “They’ve seen a red dress before.”
It wasn’t the dress, it was the woman in the dress. “Not like this they haven’t.”
Moved, she turned around and brushed her lips against his quickly. Softly. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
A woman needed to hear things, he thought. And for the most part, he wasn’t very good at that. “I guess I’d better brush up on that, too.”
That the thought even crossed Quade’s mind moved her beyond description. MacKenzie touched his cheek, feeling things within herself that were so impossibly bittersweet, she could have never put them into words, not even if she lived forever.
“Don’t change a hair for me,” she told him. Taking a deep breath, she slipped her arm through his. “Now let’s go and raise that money.”
“I just want to get this speech over with.”
Shutting the door, she locked it, then tossed the key into her purse. “That, too.”
It was the largest affair he’d ever attended. At first glance, the ballroom that had been reserved for that evening appeared endless. The functions he’d gone to while working in Chicago had been small and, for the most part, forced upon him. He didn’t socialize well.
As if sensing this, MacKenzie, he noted, never left his side, even though several times during the evening, people attempted to draw her away. She staunchly remained with him. Silently offering her support.
When it came time to deliver his speech, he did better because of her. Following her last-minute suggestion, he gave the speech to her as he had a dozen times before.
It went well. Even he thought so.
Scores of people came up to him afterward with comments and questions. He fielded them all. Even then, MacKenzie remained at his side, content to play a secondary role to his. Looking proud of him.
Was this what contentment felt like? He wasn’t sure, but he was willing to find out.
“I knew you had it in you.” Adam Petrocelli had been one of the first to congratulate him once the speech was over. “And this crowd—I don’t know how you managed it, but Wiley Labs knows how to make its gratitude known,” he promised.
“I had very little to do with it,” Quade told him honestly.
It was the only time that MacKenzie interrupted that evening. “Don’t listen to him. He’s exceptionally modest.”
“So I’m beginning to see.” And then Petrocelli’s attention was taken by a celebrity he wanted to meet and he hurriedly excused himself.
For Quade’s part, he’d never seen so many celebrities before. Of course, if it hadn’t been for MacKenzie at his side, prompting him with names he was only marginally familiar with, he wouldn’t have known that half of these people were celebrities.
They had all been corralled by Dakota, who periodically would pop up, bringing him people to meet. Generous people, it turned out, who wanted to lighten their guilt at being paid impossibly huge sums of money.
He watched and listened in disbelief as the coffers of Wiley Laboratories swelled during the course of the evening to what seemed like the near-bursting point. By evening’s end, if only half the pledges that had been given were honored, the fate of the research facility was secured for at least the coming decade, if not longer.
They remained until the last person had left the gala. Feeling exhausted but exhilarated, Quade drove home and brought MacKenzie to his apartment rather than her own, silently telling her that he wanted her to stay the night.
The thrill she felt was tempered with nerves.
“How does one person know that many people?” he asked as they walked into his living room.
MacKenzie kicked off her shoes even before Quade shut the door.
“Geometric progression,” she replied simply. She saw him raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Okay, think of it in terms of spreading a communicable disease, except in this case, that ‘disease’ is friendship. One person sneezes in a crowd. That crowd goes on to interact with small spheres of their own. By nightfall, you’ve got yourself an epidemic. Except in Dakota’s case, it’s more like a lovefest.”
She tossed her wrap and purse onto the chair, making a mental note to do something special for her friend. Good cause or not, Dakota didn’t have to do this. “Never met anyone who didn’t like her or could say no to her.”
“You have that in common then.” She looked at him quizzically and he explained. “People don’t say no to you, either.”
MacKenzie laughed. She wasn’t nearly as charismatic as Dakota was. “You’d be surprised.”
“Yes, I would be.” He felt far too wound up to go to sleep. He crossed to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. “I’m having some wine. Would you like something to drink?”
“Just soda if you have it.”
At the fund-raiser, he’d noticed that MacKenzie had only had bottled water. “Don’t you ever drink anything alcoholic?” It was just a throwaway question, born of curiosity.
He had given her the perfect opening. A way to finally get rid of the guilt she was carrying around, the guilt that grew every day until it weighed too heavily on her shoulders. Panic pricked at her, but she pushed it aside. She had to do the right thing.
MacKenzie took a breath, then said, “I used to.”
He took a glass out for himself and then one for her soda. “But?”
She curled her fingernails into the palms of her hand. “But that was before I found out I was pregnant.”
The second glass slipped from his fingers, hitting the sink. The sound of glass meeting porcelain embedded itself into the vibrating silence, splintering it.
Chapter Fourteen
Quade kept his back to her. She saw it stiffen as her words sank in.
“Is it mine?”
His tone was so devoid of emotion she didn’t know if he would welcome a denial or become angry because of it. But it didn’t matter—she couldn’t lie to him. Even though to murmur yes would have been the simplest way out for her. His actions if he believed he was the baby’s father would allow her to gauge if he had feelings for her.
She was confident he was a decent man. That if there was a child bearing his genes, he would do right by it. Maybe he would even stay with her, even—
What was she thinking? As much as she realized that she wanted him, she
didn’t want him that way. Not imprisoned by lies.
The true measure of the man was going to be by what he would say when confronted with the truth. That the man who had left her with a broken heart had also left her with something else. Something that couldn’t be swept away or mended in time.
If he stood by her then…
There was only one way to find out.
She wrapped her courage around herself and said, “No, it’s not.”
Quade turned from the sink and looked at her for a long moment, his legs feeling rubbery, as if they would give way at any second.
It was happening again. The foundations of his world were being knocked out without any warning, just as they had been the first time. Everything had seemed right then, too. Had seemed to be going well and then from out of nowhere came a blow that had left him reeling.
“You’re sure,” he asked, his eyes intent on her face.
Dread drenched her. This wasn’t going to turn out well, she could feel it. MacKenzie pressed her lips together and nodded. “I’m sure.”
Like a man about to go under for the last time, he grasped at any twig that floated by. “But you could be wrong.”
“No,” she told him quietly. “I couldn’t.”
Quade’s eyes narrowed as the full weight of her words hit him with an overwhelming force. “The only way you could be sure if—”
She slowly nodded her head, knowing what he was thinking. “I knew I was pregnant when I met you. Yes, I did.”
She’d deceived him. By not saying anything, by keeping her condition to herself, she’d deceived him. Deceived him by omission. Deceived him when he would have bet anything in the world that they had an honest relationship. That there wasn’t a deceptive bone in her body.
He would have lost that bet, he thought disparagingly.
Quade didn’t know what to think, what to feel.
“You knew that you were pregnant with someone else’s baby and you still made love with me?”
It was an accusation. She stiffened. “It wasn’t something I planned to do.”
He no longer knew what to believe. Every word out of her mouth could be a lie. “I don’t remember taking you by force.”
She felt like screaming, like crying. Like asking him if they could somehow please start over. But the time for all that had past.
“No, not unless you mean by the sheer force of what was happening between us. When you kissed me the way you did, I couldn’t think of anything but making love with you.”
Without realizing it, she wrapped her fingers around the cameo at her throat. Her insides were shaking as she waited for him to say something positive. Something to reassure her that she hadn’t just stupidly thrown away this bright, shining chance at happiness that had so unexpectedly fallen into her lap.
No, she hadn’t done anything stupid, she insisted fiercely. Stupid would have been to willfully allow Quade to believe this child was his. By telling him the truth, she was preventing future heartache.
Right, and welcoming it now instead.
She blew out a shaky breath, ordering herself not to cry. “I’m telling you now because you have a right to know.”
His eyes only darkened at her words. “And I didn’t before?”
“That’s not what I meant. I didn’t know if this—” she gestured helplessly between them “—was going to go anywhere—and I didn’t know how to say it.”
His expression never changed. She was losing the battle, she thought.
“How about ‘I’m pregnant’?”
“And when was I supposed to say it?” she demanded hotly. “When we were talking about the fund-raiser? When we were at Aggie’s debut? When?” she wanted to know angrily.
“How about before I made love to you?”
What, it was all one-sided, all male-oriented? Was his ego hurt, was that what this was all about? “You didn’t make love to me, you made love with me. And I was afraid if I said something before, we wouldn’t have made love at all and I wanted that more than anything in the world.”
She’d said too much, been too honest, she upbraided herself. Why couldn’t she just walk away with her dignity intact?
Quade’s frown deepened, burrowing through the recesses of his being. Everything she was saying made sense. And yet, none of it made sense. He felt betrayed, cheated and a whole host of things he couldn’t even begin to put into words. Most of all, he felt as if his trust had been violated.
“Anything else I should know?” he demanded.
That I love you.
If she listened very hard, she could hear her heart breaking. MacKenzie looked down at the floor.
“No,” she answered quietly.
When she raised her eyes again, she saw that Quade was nodding slowly, like a judge debating the sentence he was about to pronounce.
And then they came. The words she didn’t want to hear. “Maybe we need to take a break from one another for a while.”
If he’d taken a knife and twisted it straight into her heart, it couldn’t have hurt her any more.
But if that was the way he felt, there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She certainly wasn’t going to beg him to change his mind. Beg him to hold her and tell her he wanted her in his life.
With superhuman effort, she forced an indifferent smile to her lips.
“Maybe we should,” she echoed. “Whatever you want is fine with me.”
She sounded almost relieved to have it over with, Quade thought. At the very least, she was taking it lightly. As if what she’d just said hadn’t taken a sledgehammer to his heart.
With all his being he wished he could be like the other men he knew, men who would have been relieved to hear that they weren’t the father of MacKenzie’s baby, that they could continue to have a relationship of sorts without strings for a while longer.
But he had never been the kind who welcomed superficial encounters, who embraced one-night stands with women whose names and faces faded into the dark. He believed in serious relationships. And Ellen had been his only serious relationship.
Until now.
Except that it apparently wasn’t serious, he thought. At least, not to MacKenzie.
He wasn’t saying anything. Wasn’t trying to talk her out of this. What did she expect?
MacKenzie rose to her feet, slightly surprised that her legs actually supported her. It felt as if everything inside of her was comprised of brittle matchsticks, threatening to break apart at any moment.
“Maybe I’d better go home,” she heard herself saying, her voice echoing hollowly in her head.
Not waiting for an answer from him, MacKenzie crossed to the door, then opened it. All the while praying that Quade would do or say something to stop her. Would rush up to her at the last moment, take her hand off the doorknob and turn her around to face him.
When he let her walk out without a word, she knew it was over.
Hand fisted, MacKenzie punched her pillow. How was it that there wasn’t a single comfortable shape to be derived from it? She hadn’t gotten more than ten hours sleep in the last five days.
A ragged sigh escaped her lips. It was going to be another night spent watching shadows chase each other across her ceiling, courtesy of the tree outside her window. She felt like a card-carrying member of the living dead.
For five days now she’d dragged herself through her life, trying very hard not to show anyone what was going on inside because she wanted no part of answering questions.
Dutifully, she’d reported to Dakota, telling the TV hostess of Quade’s gratitude. But when Dakota had attempted to ask her something personal about the man, MacKenzie had become evasive. So much so that Dakota had obviously sensed she needed time to work out whatever was going on and had backed off.
But there wasn’t anything going on. Absolutely nothing. That was the whole problem. Her world felt like the aftermath of a nuclear detonation that had wiped out all life-forms on the planet.
MacKenzie punc
hed her pillow again, then deposited her head in the new space. She had to snap out of it, she told herself. This wasn’t any good for the baby.
Hell, it wasn’t exactly wonderful for her, either, she thought bitterly.
To compound matters, she’d felt like a fugitive, sneaking home every night to avoid running into Quade. Secretly hoping he was waiting to run into her.
MacKenzie moaned. She didn’t know how much more she could take.
Flat on her back, she laid her arm across her eyes, closing them. Knowing it would do no good. Everything pointed to her going into work looking like a zombie. Again.
The moment she heard the banging on her front door, MacKenzie popped up in bed like a piece of toast being summarily ejected out of a defective toaster.
Quade.
He’d come to apologize.
But if that was the case, why was he banging on her door as if he meant to take it off the hinges using nothing more than his bare knuckles?
A premonition twisted the pit of her stomach.
Her baby was definitely not getting a smooth ride these days, she thought as she kicked the covers aside and scrambled out of bed. Grabbing her robe, she hurried to the door.
“Who is it?”
“MacKenzie, it’s me. Aggie.” The woman sounded distressed. “I need help.”
Disappointment was immediately shoved aside by concern the moment MacKenzie pulled open her door.
“What’s the—?”
She didn’t need to complete the question. Aggie was standing before her, holding her beloved pet in her arms. Both she and the Jack Russell terrier had blood smeared over them. A closer look told MacKenzie that the blood was coming from the whimpering animal.
Aggie looked beside herself and for the first time since MacKenzie had met her, the woman actually looked her age.
“Cyrus was attacked,” she cried. “I was walking him inside the complex and this big, black dog came running out of nowhere. He lunged for Cyrus, taking him down. I thought he was going to kill Cyrus.”
MacKenzie quickly scanned the other woman, but there didn’t appear to be any marks on her. “Where’s the dog now?”
She’s Having a Baby Page 16