I’m happy here, Tate. I’ll let you know when the baby comes,” she added quietly. “Certainly, you’ll have access to him any time you like.”
Doors were closing. Walls were going up around her. He clenched his teeth together in impotent fury.
“I want you,” he said forcefully, which was not at all what he wanted to say.
“I don’t want you,” she replied, lying through her teeth. She wasn’t about to become an obligation again. She even smiled. “Thanks for coming to see about me. I’ll phone Leta when she and Matt come home from Nassau.”
“They’re already home,” he said flatly. “I’ve been to make peace with them.”
“Have you?” She smiled gently. “I’m glad. I’m so glad. It broke Leta’s heart that you wouldn’t speak to her.”
“What do you think it’s going to do to her when she hears that you won’t marry the father of your child?”
She gaped at him. “She…knows?”
“They both know, Cecily,” he returned. “They were looking forward to making a fuss over you.” He turned toward the door, bristling with hurt pride and rejection. “You can call my mother and tell her yourself that you aren’t coming back. Then you can live here alone in the middle of ‘blizzard country,; and I wish you well.” He turned at the door with his black eyes flashing. “As for me, hell will freeze over before I come near you again!”
He went out and slammed the door. Cecily stared after him with her heart in her throat. Why was he so angry that she’d relieved him of any obligations about the baby? He couldn’t want her for herself. If he had, if he’d had any real feeling for her, he’d have married her years ago. It was only the baby.
She let the tears rush down her face again with pure misery as she heard the four-wheel drive roar out of the driveway and accelerate down the road. She hoped he didn’t run over anybody. Her hand went to her stomach and she remembered with anguish the look on his face when he’d put his big, strong hand over his child. She’d sent him away for the sake of his own happiness, didn’t he know that? She supposed it was just hurt pride that had caused his outburst. But she wished he hadn’t come. It would be so much harder to live here now that she could see him in this house, in these rooms, and be haunted by the memory of him all over again. He wouldn’t come back. She’d burned her bridges. There was no way to rebuild them.
Tate was probably on his way back to the nation’s capitol right now, she thought miserably. He would have protected her, and her child, but she’d sent him off in a fury. Great going, Cecily, she told herself. What a headline they’ll have now! Former Teenage Love Slave Killed By Vengeful Gambling Syndicate. That would give people something to read with their morning coffee!
Diana PalmerOh, do you think I broke his wrist?” Cecily asked, puzzled, as she wrapped her arms around her chest and stared at the writhing form on the floor.
“You might have,” Tate returned in a voice like steel. “But I called the ambulance because I broke several of his ribs.”
He didn’t sound sorry, either.
The milk is long since out of date, the bread all has mold and I think you could start a bacterial plague with what’s in the crisper here…”
“Order a pizza,” he suggested. “There’s a place down on the corner that still owes me ten pizzas, paid for in advance.”
“You can’t eat pizza for breakfast!”
“Why can’t I? I’ve been doing it for a week.”
“You can cook,” she said accusingly.
“When I’m sober,” he agreed.
She glowered at him and went back to her chore. “Well, the eggs are still edible, barely, and there’s an unopened pound of bacon. I’ll make an omelet.”
He collapsed into the chair at the kitchen table while she made a fresh pot of coffee and set about breaking eggs.
“You look very domesticated like that,” he pointed out with a faint smile. “After we have breakfast, why don’t you come to bed with me?”
She gave him a shocked glance. “I’m pregnant,” she reminded him.
He nodded and laughed softly. “Yes, I know. It’s an incredible turn-on.”
Her hand stopped, poised in midair with a spoon in it. “Wh…What?”
“The eggs are burning,” he said pleasantly.
She stirred them quickly and turned the bacon, which was frying in another pan. He thought her condition was sexy? She couldn’t believe he was serious.
But apparently he was, because he watched her so intently over breakfast that she doubted if he knew what he was eating.
“Mr. Hutton told the curator of the museum in Tennessee that I wasn’t coming back, and he paid off the rent on my house there,” she said. “I don’t even have a home to go to…”
“Yes, you do,” he said quietly. “I’m your home. I always have been.”
She averted her eyes to her plate and hated the quick tears that her condition prompted. Her fists clenched. “And here we are again,” she said huskily.
“Where?” he asked.
She drew in a harsh breath. “You’re taking responsibility for me, out of duty.”
He leaned back in his chair. The robe came away from his broad, bronzed chest as he stared at her. “Not this time,” he replied with a voice so tender that it made ripples right through her heart. “This time, it’s out of love, Cecily.”
Cecily doubted her own ears. She couldn’t have heard Tate saying that he wanted to take care of her because he loved her.
He wasn’t teasing. His face was almost grim. “I know,” he said. “You don’t believe it. But it’s true, just the same.” He searched her soft, shocked green eyes. “I loved you when you were seventeen, Cecily, but I thought I had nothing to offer you except an affair.” He sighed heavily. “It was never completely for the reasons I told you, that I didn’t want to get married. It was my mother’s marriage. It warped me. It’s taken this whole scandal to make me realize that a good marriage is nothing like the one I grew up watching. I had to see my mother and Matt together before I understood what marriage could be.
That night, while you were asleep, I unbuttoned your pajama jacket and looked at what he’d done to you. Afterward, I drove back to his house and very nearly killed him. If he hadn’t started crying and begging me to stop, I…” He let out the angry breath. “That was when I realized how I felt about you,” he added, his eyes meeting hers. “A man wants to protect what he considers his own. It started then, that night.”
She was surprised by what he was telling her. “You…looked at me?”
He nodded. His eyes narrowed. “You had the most beautiful little breasts,” he said roughly. “And they were covered with bruises. I wanted to kiss the bruises, take you into my bed and hold you, just hold you, all night long so that you’d be safe. I didn’t dare give in to the impulse, of course,” he added with the first touch of amusement he’d shown since her arrival. “My mother would have horsewhipped me.”
She felt waves of surprised pleasure lance through her body. “I never knew.”
“I was always known for my poker face,” he murmured. “But it was sheer agony to be around you. The older you got, the worse it was. It was inevitable that one day I’d go mad and take you.” He sighed. “The most hellish part of the whole thing was knowing that all I had to do was touch you and you’d let me do anything I liked to you.”
She traced the mouth of her coffee cup. “I loved you,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
There was a world of pain in the words. She looked up into his black eyes and saw an answering emotion in them. “You never told me.”
“I couldn’t.
So the bloodline wasn’t pure.”
He shook his head. “It was an excuse, like all the other excuses. I liked my life as it was. I didn’t want ties, especially the sort I’d have had with you.” He looked at her with pure raging desire. “I knew if we were ever intimate, there’d be no going back. I was right. I eat, breathe, sleep and dream you, especially now, with my baby growing in your belly.
It's better to keep one's mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubts.
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