Ultimatum: Marriage / For the Sake of the Secret Child

“Have you ever had a habit you couldn’t break?”

“Is that what I am to you—a bad habit?”

Pulling her closer even as she fought to resist him again, he gripped her arms hard. But just as he brought his mouth down to hers and she thought she would soon be lost on a wild, dark tide, he froze.

For a long moment he stood as immobile as a statue. He stared down at her as if he were struggling as hard as she was for control. Then he cursed low under his breath and pushed free of her.

Feeling hurt and rejected, which made zero sense, she jerked the edges of the robe together and spun away.

Hot color flared in his cheeks, too; a savage muscle was jumping along his jawline. His devouring gaze flamed with a fierce blue light.

“Sorry,” he finally muttered in an edgy, unapologetic tone. Then he rubbed his jaw where the muscle twitched. “I don’t know what … happened. I … I just lost control there for a second. Sorry.”

He looked down at the floor and raked a hand through his mussed dark hair. Then he clumsily jammed the edges of his shirt into his waistband. “If I can’t trust myself around you, even knowing what you are, I’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

One minute he’d been out to prove she desired him; in the next he was running as scared as she was. And all because he’d lost his precious control.

She clenched her teeth and then unclenched them. “But we have to decide what to do.”

He took a deep breath. “First we have to find out if we have a problem or not. You need to call your doctor, make an appointment as fast as possible.”

“I need a place to stay tonight. Because of you, the feds took my apartment, all my furniture … and my car. I have no friends left in Louisiana.” She paused. When he didn’t say no immediately, she said, “I’d need a litter box and litter for Gus.”

“Okay. Of course, you can stay here if you like. But if you do, I’m moving out.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“You mean I’ll be here alone?”

“Just for tonight. Trust me. You’re better off with me gone. I don’t know what just happened between us or why. But I’ll be fine once I get off to myself, do some thinking and get a grip. I don’t like feeling trapped in this situation with you.”

“And you think I like it?”

“I’m not a mind reader, so I can only take your word for how you feel.”

She envied the way he could compartmentalize, the way his deep voice sounded almost cool and contained now when her heart was still racing.

Trying to copy him, she took a deep breath and tried to push down her emotions. It was probably better that they spend the night apart.

“Okay then,” she said. “Sounds like a plan.”

“I’ll give you my cell number. Call me after you make that appointment with your doctor.” He pulled a set of car keys out of his pocket. “I want to know when and where it is.”

“You’re leaving now?”

“I’ve got to get back to my office. Like I told you before—because of you, cher, I’ve got a lot of nice people to fire.”

“I’m sorry about that.” She truly was.

He hesitated. “Just so you know where I’ll be … Tonight I think I’ll drive out to Belle Rose and spend the night in a friend’s houseboat in the swamp. I need to be by myself—to think.”

She arched her brows. Poor guy. If it hadn’t been for his part in her father’s downfall, she might have felt sorry for him.

He’d been having a bad day even before she’d showed up on his doorstep and announced they might be pregnant. And what had he done—he’d given up his house for the night, so she’d have a safe place to stay.

Four

When the sagging roofline of Bos’s houseboat loomed out of the steamy gloom of shadowy dwarf palmettos, bald cypress trees and water tupelo, Jake cut the motor and sprang toward the bow. He’d hoped he’d experience at least a slight lifting of his mood once he was out of the city and had returned to his boyhood refuge. Despite the familiar roar of bull alligators, locusts and frogs, he felt like a stranger in a foreign land. His leaden heart kept him alienated from all that should have been familiar and dear.

Images of a big-eyed, pale Alicia in the patrol car, the dull stares of his employees after he’d let them go, Cici’s and Logan’s radiant smiles at their wedding bombarded him in a never-ending loop. The thick heat of the swamp pressed too close, making him feel trapped by business and personal problems—and most of it was the Butlers’ fault.

The air was dank with the stench of rot and mold. He would have preferred to be rock climbing in Utah or Alaska rather than hanging out in the swamp. Still, this was the wild and life was always simpler in the wild. He kept a cabin south of Denali National Park in Alaska that he visited every summer. Too bad he didn’t have time to go there now. It was the one place that was far enough away from his real life so that he could count on solitude there clearing his mind.

Grabbing the bowline, he spread his legs so that he stood in the middle of the eight-foot aluminum flatboat as it drifted silently through the mirror-black swamp water toward the houseboat.

A night to himself even in this wild place wasn’t long enough to sort it all out, but it was a start. If Alicia was pregnant, he couldn’t abandon his kid—even if she was Mitchell Butler’s daughter.

He thought about the families still living in three-room trailers to whom he’d promised homes before the funds to build them had vanished—because of her father.

Wrapping the line around a rusting cleat, Jake made sure the flatboat was snug against the used tires Bos had nailed as crude fenders along the side of the houseboat. Then he ran his gaze over the shabby structure.

The houseboat had two tiny bedrooms, a kitchen, no bath. Surprisingly, the place didn’t look any worse for wear. It must’ve been a good ten years since he was last here. Bos had been ill of late, but when Jake had visited him a month ago, he’d told him he’d managed to do what was necessary to maintain it.

“Not that I get out to the houseboat much these days,” Bos had said. “You’re welcome to it—just like always, anytime. The fishin’s still pretty good even if the water in the swamp gets saltier every year.”

Bos was another man who felt the need to get away from civilization upon occasion.

With a frown Jake set his gear down beside Bos’s stacked crab traps. After opening the door to the cabin, he pitched his backpack inside.

This fish camp was located between the Claibornes’ ancestral mansion, Belle Rose, and Bos’s less developed properties to the south of Belle Rose. Pierre, Jake’s grandfather, had never approved of Jake hanging out at Bos’s camp in the swamp when Jake had been a kid. The truth was, his grandfather had detested Bos with an irrational passion. The old man had considered Bos, who’d run a bar and fought cocks, a bad influence, so most of the time Jake had chosen to sneak off, willingly risking the consequences of Grand-père’s rage later.

A rebel from birth, Jake had been as fascinated by Bos’s bad reputation as his grandfather had been repelled by it. Not that Bos was really such a bad sort once you got to know him. Bos had adopted his orphaned niece Cici, hadn’t he? He’d understood what it was like not to feel you fit into your family, and he’d taken Jake hunting and fishing and crabbing without even so much as asking a single prying question about his need to escape his domineering grandfather and cocky older twin.

Bos had encouraged him to learn to fend for himself in the wild, so as soon as he’d been old enough, Jake had explored the endless marshes and bayous on his own, hunting doves and ducks and swimming off forested islands.

Back then Noonoon, his nanny, used to fuss at him, saying she couldn’t keep a glass jar in the house because Jake was always borrowing them to house his crabs and frogs and minnows and turtles.

Jake smiled briefly at the memory of Noonoon’s dark face until concern about Alicia alone in his house intruded.

She was fine, he told himself. She was a big girl. He’d showed her how to set the alarm. Hell, he’d even sent Vanessa over to his house to make sure Alicia had everything she needed.

Alicia was fine.

Why couldn’t he forget how pale and shaken she’d looked in that patrol car?

His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t brought any groceries.

Forget her.

He was hungry. If he was going to eat, he had to shoot something or catch something.

Whatever she’d expected when she’d come to Jake’s house, it wasn’t kindness and concern.

“If you don’t need anything else, I really do have to get home to my boys.” Vanessa’s voice was crisp and hurried and yet there was a maternal compassion in her dark brown eyes that reminded Alicia of her own mother.

Alicia caught herself. This woman was a stranger. She had a life and didn’t have much time to deal even briefly with her boss’s personal crisis. Mothering her sons was her top priority.

“I’ll be fine,” Alicia whispered. “Thanks for sending that man over to board up the window.”

“You could spend the night with me and my boys if you’re afraid to stay in such a big house all by yourself.”

“What a sweet offer, but really, I’ll be fine,” Alicia said. “It’s just the night.”

“I’d enjoy some adult companionship,” Vanessa coaxed.

Alicia shook her head.

“Okay, then. He told me to tell you to set the alarm. And if you get lonely—call.”

Nodding at the older woman, who Jake had paid to take care of her, Alicia held on to the two sacks of groceries as Vanessa shut the front door and then locked it firmly behind her.

Clutching the grocery sacks to her breasts, Alicia walked back to the kitchen. Mechanically she removed the lunch meat and cereal boxes, a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk and set them on the counter. It was nice of Jake to send food.

The last rays of the setting sun gilded the edges between the shades and the windowsill. Soon it would be dark outside. She had the rest of the evening to think about her problem. At least Jake had listened and said he would assume his share of the responsibility. He hadn’t thrown her out.

She wished he was here, and that confused her. She’d felt so wonderful when he’d held her and kissed her. That perplexed her, too. How could she feel this powerful connection to a man who’d made love to her and then had turned her father in to the feds?

Maybe it was being in this house, where they’d talked and laughed and made love. They had so much fun together that first night.

Don’t think about it!

Okay, enough! I have things to do. I’ll make supper, clean the dishes, get ready for bed, hunt for Gus, watch some TV, set my alarm.

Is it really so important to set an alarm when my doctor’s appointment tomorrow isn’t until noon?

Just do it.

She called to Gus, who for once came running. Slathering mayonnaise on two pieces of bread, she made herself a turkey sandwich. When she sat down at the table, Gus hunkered over his bowl and ate his tuna.

Her thoughts turned to Jake and what she’d said to him before he’d left.

“But why do you have to go away?” she’d whispered. “I feel guilty running you out of your own house.”

“Don’t. It’s what I do sometimes—when I need to think.”

“Think about what?”

“About what the hell we’re going to do if you’re pregnant.”

“What are you saying?” she’d asked.

He’d stopped slinging fishing gear into his backpack and had walked over to her. Cupping her chin with blunt, tanned fingertips so that she was forced to stare up into his blue eyes, he hadn’t spoken until he was sure he had her full attention.

“If there’s a baby, I want it,” he said softly. “Do you understand me?”

But he didn’t want her. She’d nodded and after a long moment he’d freed her chin.

“Okay then,” he said.

“I could lock myself into the downstairs bedroom and not come out until morning. You wouldn’t even know I was here.”

He’d turned and smiled at her. “Trust me. It wouldn’t be the same. I need to be completely alone.”

“But I wouldn’t bother you.”

“The hell you say. Every fiber in my being would know you’re nearby. You bother me by existing.”

“Oh.”

She must have looked hurt because his expression had gentled.

“But not always in the worst possible way.”

Not always in the worst possible way. Was that a compliment?

Before he’d left, he’d locked his office and his bedroom upstairs. She’d stiffened at those final clicks as the bolts shot home and he’d withdrawn his key.

When she’d been a little girl, she used to follow her father everywhere when he’d packed for a trip. She’d lingered, watching him lock all the doors that kept her out of entire wings of their houses and apartments too.

The servants, of course, had had keys so they could clean. But his only daughter had had no access.

All her father’s homes had been furnished with valuable antiques and art collections worthy of museums. He’d said he didn’t trust the servants to keep her from sitting on the chairs and spilling drinks or food on the furniture or tainting one of his precious sculptures or paintings with oily fingerprints.

How different her mother had been. Their homes had previously been filled with sunlight and flowers and friends. She’d always had time to sit on the floor and play with her daughter or read to her or chat.

After Alicia finished her sandwich, she sat in silence sipping her milk. Finally, she rose and washed the dishes.

Feeling too restless and lonely to shower and get ready for bed, she began to pace, calling to Gus, who had disappeared again.

Climbing the floating stairs, she lingered outside Jake’s locked bedroom and remembered the night he’d carried her inside and kicked the door shut. The walls of his bedroom were either floor-to-ceiling bookshelves or tall windows with views of his large backyard and pool.

They’d made love on his bed and then on the thick woven rug by his bed. Then they’d lain in bed talking. When she’d noticed that only books filled his shelves, she’d asked him why he didn’t have a single photograph of his friends or family.

“I left home when I was very young. I traveled light. This house is rented, like all the houses I’ve lived in. So—no pictures.”

“You’ve never built yourself a house?”

“Maybe someday.”

“My father didn’t like photographs either. He wouldn’t even let me have a picture of my mother in my room. He said photographs depressed him because they reminded him of things that were dead and over. He said he wanted to live entirely in the present.”

Jake’s face had hardened at the mention of her father, but he’d stroked her mouth with a fingertip and had said nothing. Had he known then he would team up with Hayes Daniels the next day and accuse her father? Or had Hayes approached him?

After Jake had blown the whistle on her father, Jake had called her; maybe to explain his side. Or maybe to hear her side.

Not that she’d taken his calls.

Still, how many times had she nearly picked up the phone because she’d ached to hear his voice and had wondered why he was calling?

Part of her wanted to hate him for what he’d done to her father, but he wasn’t her father’s only accuser. Serious amounts of money had gone missing. Someone was responsible. Naturally she didn’t want to believe it was her father.

Turning, wishing she could empty her mind of all her confusion concerning Jake and her father, Alicia walked back downstairs.

Her footsteps were hollow taps echoing through the house, which felt too empty without Jake.

At the bottom of the stairs she shut her eyes. More than anything she wished he was here.

What was going on?

Never had she felt more mixed up by the impossible, mysterious longings in her heart.

Five

“I told you I was pregnant, didn’t I?” Alicia said gloomily. “You should have been prepared.”

“Should have been is definitely the operative figure of speech here.” Jake gripped her elbow and hurriedly propelled her out of the doctor’s office building into the parking lot.

It was nearly one o’clock and the heat was searing. Cars whizzed past them on the busy street.

“I didn’t realize how much I hoped you were wrong about this,” he said, moving to the street side of the walkway to shield her from the traffic.

With an effort, she tried to ignore the sting of his words. She’d hated the way he’d barely looked at her or the doctor, the way he’d barely said a word during the office visit. The instant the doctor had confirmed Alicia’s fears, Jake’s tanned face had hardened into a stony mask. No matter how the doctor had attempted to get him to open up, he’d rebuffed her every question. The only sign of life in Jake’s set face now was the fiery turbulence in his grim blue eyes that hinted at the inner battle raging inside him.

“You certainly put on a happy face in the doctor’s office,” Jake muttered. “I couldn’t believe all the questions you asked the doctor, like this is a normal pregnancy and we are a normal, happy couple.”

“I’m not exactly happy,” she whispered, warier of him because of his dark mood. “But I wish I was. Just as I wish you could be, too. Any child deserves parents who want him—even ours.”

“Hell.”

“I can’t help it if I want our child to be wanted and have a normal, loving childhood. Any mother would.”

“Even a mother who despises the father of her baby?”

But she didn’t despise him. She’d liked having him with her at the doctor’s office.

“Do you want me to lie to you and your doctor about how I feel?” he continued. “Where will we be if we lie to each other about everything?”

“Where will we be if we concentrate on nothing but how much we hate each other all the time? How can we build on that?”

“What the hell could we possibly build?”

“A positive world for our child.”

“I’d say we’re off to a damn poor start then.”

“Which means we have nowhere to go but up,” she said in a whimsical voice that thankfully was too low for him to hear.

“What?”

Unable to deal with his hostile attitude, she said in a louder tone, “Thank you for at least meeting me here. I really do appreciate it. I was sick again this morning. I wasn’t so sure there for a while I’d ever be able to get out of the house.”

Her gentle, polite approach calmed him, if only a little.

“I’m sorry you were sick again. It was my idea for you to see a doctor first thing, remember? The least I could do is show up.”

“Believe me, some men wouldn’t have bothered.” Like her father.

Jake opened her door of his large, black SUV for her, and she got in. “Fasten your seat belt,” he ordered. He waited to make sure she did so before walking around to get in too. Why was his concern about even that small detail such a comfort?

She hated that his doing so registered on such a profound level with her. She was so eager for happiness she grabbed anything positive.

Once he was behind the huge wheel, the woodsy scent of pine, cypress and smoke enveloped her. Strangely, despite the heat, it didn’t make her feel the slightest bit sick as some scents did. In fact, he smelled so good, she couldn’t resist glancing at him out of the corners of her eyes.

He was so tall and broad shouldered. A lock of dark hair fell across his brow. Why did he have to be so attractive even when he wasn’t trying, like now? When he wanted no involvement with her? Dark stubble shadowed his hard jaw and chin and made him look incredibly masculine. He hadn’t had time to shower or shave or even to change out of his jeans before their appointment. Shadows ringed his eyes.

He’d obviously been in such a hurry to pick her up and rush her to the doctor’s office, he hadn’t bothered about himself at all.

“You look tired,” she said, feeling too much unwanted sympathy for him. Yet, even exhausted, he was so virile and utterly male that some feminine, idiotic part of her wanted to swoon over him, despite knowing he probably considered her his enemy.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he muttered as he leaned forward and started the SUV. He turned on the AC. “Lumpy, stinky mattress. Hot night, too. Couldn’t stop thinking about stuff.” He shot her an accusing glance and she wondered if concern for her had kept him from sleeping.

He adjusted the air-conditioning. “Is the air okay?”

She nodded.

“What about you? I mean besides the morning sickness.” He turned away and pretended to watch the traffic. “You okay? You don’t look so perky yourself.”

“Couldn’t sleep either.” Not that she was about to admit to him that she’d tossed and turned because she’d been longing for him all night—because his nearness made her feel safe and secure in ways she’d never known in her whole life. Which was ridiculous, considering the situation.

When his dark head swiveled in her direction, she shyly turned. Under his scowling gaze, her lungs froze.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. Why did being so close to him in his big vehicle make her so nervous? Why didn’t he just drive them home so they weren’t trapped in such a small space together with emotions they couldn’t deal with? At least on the way she’d have scenery to distract her from him. Now she felt as overwhelmed by him as she had that first night.

“I … I still can’t believe this has happened,” she said in a low quiet tone.

“I felt like that at first, I mean when Dr. Preston confirmed your fears, but the reality is sinking in pretty fast. You and I are going to have a baby—whether we want it or not. The question is what are going to do to resolve this situation?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“Oh, I bet you have.” His deep voice darkened. “You came running to me first thing in need of money, didn’t you?”

“No! That’s not it. I—I don’t want my baby to be illegitimate, that’s all.”

His dark head jerked toward hers, his blue eyes piercing her. “That’s all? Surely you’re not talking about—marriage?”

She bit her lips and swallowed.

“About you and me … being together … in some sort of permanent arrangement. It’s not like this is a hundred years ago and your father’s going to follow me down the aisle with a shotgun between my shoulder blades,” he said. “Hard to do that under house arrest.”

Could she help it if she saw things so simplistically? Every time a teacher at school had asked her to draw a picture of her family, she’d always drawn a mommy and a daddy and herself in the middle.

“You don’t actually see us as a couple, do you?” he said.

She shook her head because he so obviously wanted her to. “Look,” she said, “I guess I just panicked and thought when I felt so sick that I couldn’t do this alone. Maybe I would have been stronger before … but now … I have no money. No allies. No family really … other than Daddy, who’s been indicted.”

“And you’re so used to money, you don’t know how to get by without it.”

“My life hasn’t been what you think. I don’t believe I have any friends left in Louisiana. Everybody here blames me for what they think Daddy did.”

“Because of what he did! And what you helped him do in all probability. Whose fault is that?”

“Right. You think I schemed to steal millions of dollars from Houses for Hurricane Victims and his bank? And that I deliberately set out to destroy your good name?”

“Well, your father damn sure did, that’s for sure.”

“I think my father’s innocent.”

“Then where’s the money he managed? Why can’t we find any records to prove he ever invested a single dollar? Maybe you don’t know how the charity world operates, so I’ll fill you in on a little secret. At the first hint of scandal, all future funding dries up. So now poor families, who were counting on me to build them homes, won’t get them. Because of my close association to the charity, funding for my architectural projects is drying up as well. It would be financial suicide for me to associate myself with you right now. And now you want me to marry you?”