The Pregnancy Contract

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“So you’re saying he advanced several hundred thousand dollars to my trust fund?”

Wade had been the one responsible for the money she’d used to finance schools and health clinics, food and clothing and farm supplies in the counties she’d visited in the past four years? She was struck with an urgent need to understand the conditions of the loan and expressed as much to Mr. Chadwick.

“The loans were rather open-ended. As your trustee, your father entered into deeds acknowledging the debt between the fund and Mr. Collins. Obviously Mr. Collins has the right to recall those loans, with interest, at any time.”

“So no repayments have been made to date?”

“None, Mr. Collins hadn’t requested such repayment.”

“Not at all?”

She was confused. How could anyone afford to make such huge sums of money available like that and not expect something back in return?

“No, not at all.” Chadwick hesitated a moment, his mouth twisting into a moue of regret. “Until now.”

“Now?” she gasped. “He wants me to repay the debt now?”

“Yes, Miss Mitchell, I’m afraid so. And he has specified it must be repaid in full.”

Three

In full? Piper vibrated with ill-concealed anger, earning a look of concern from the elderly man across the table from her. No wonder Wade had arranged to not be at the appointment with her, the rat.

“Thank you,” she finally managed to say through gritted teeth. “Could you tell me exactly when Wade Collins made that specification?”

“We received his instruction this morning.”

This morning? It was unbelievable. While she’d been sleeping in, or even while she’d been lazing about in her bath, he’d been demanding she clear a debt he knew full well she had no ability to repay.

Forcing a smile on her face, she stood and offered her hand to the man who’d been her father’s longtime legal counsel.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Mitchell?”

“Short of conducting a miracle, I doubt it.”

She kept her composure until she got outside the office and saw the car Wade had ordered for her waiting in the loading zone outside. Every instinct within her urged her to turn in the opposite direction and to keep walking. To put as much distance as possible between herself and the awful truth about her financial position. But where would she go?

The driver of the car got out and came around to the passenger side, opening the door for Piper and waiting until she’d settled herself in the soft leather. The drive back to the house passed in a blur. She couldn’t have said whether they’d taken one route or another but when they drove into the long driveway that led to the imposing stairs and entrance to the house, Piper found her eyes locked on the building she’d grown up in.

The immaculate white painted woodwork, the wraparound verandas on the ground and next story, the green-capped pinnacles that marked the four corners of what had begun as a two-story farmhouse. She’d taken every part of it for granted. Its history, its shelter, its place in her life.

She had thought she’d changed, but she hadn’t changed at all. Even without a home to call her own, she’d still assumed she had the money to make a new one. But now she didn’t have even that. And all because she’d been so stupidly presumptuous as to believe her security would never end.

So what now? She didn’t even appear to own the clothes on her back, and Dexter had destroyed what little she had owned.

Piper slowly moved up the stairs and let herself in through the front door. She started as a tall shadow materialized from the formal parlor on her left.

“Wade,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you here.”

“I managed to clear things up at the office earlier than I’d anticipated.”

Her eyes raked his face for any sign of the man who’d deliberately advanced money to her only to recall it when he knew she was at her lowest ebb. Just how long had he been prepared to go on making money available to her? she wondered. If she hadn’t come back when she did, how much would she have ended up owing him?

It didn’t make sense. She had no way of paying him back. Why would he want to have such a hold over her when it was outside the realm of possibility that she’d ever earn enough money to settle the debt?

“Is that right?” she replied, fighting to keep her voice level when all she wanted to do was bombard him with angry questions.

“I take it the news at the lawyer’s wasn’t good?”

“You take it correctly.”

“We should talk.”

“No kidding,” she said with an insolence she was incapable of hiding.

Wade gestured for her to precede him into the parlor and waited until she was seated before he lowered his body into one of the fabric-covered armchairs. The blowsy cabbage rose pattern on the chair was at complete odds with his controlled appearance. Not a hair was out of place on his head. His striped tie, a perfect match to the steel gray of his suit, was immaculately knotted at the equally immaculate fold of the collar of the white shirt he wore. He was altogether formidable, and he knew it.

Piper decided to take the bull by the horns.

“It would appear I owe you some money,” she said, lifting her gaze to meet his squarely. There was no way she would show him that she was quaking inside.

To her surprise, Wade laughed. His even white teeth flashed in his face, his eyes crinkled in genuine mirth and the sound, a deep belly laugh that in any other circumstance would have been infectious, rang out to fill the room.

“I have to hand it to you, Piper. You’re the mistress of understatement today.”

She refused to be drawn to respond. He could think what he liked. He knew, as well as she did, that he held all the cards very firmly in those beautiful hands of his. While he composed himself she waited patiently for the bullet to come.

“Mr. Chadwick made you aware of the sum of money you owe me,” he finally said, his voice no longer holding any hint of the humor that had just consumed him.

“He did.”

“And he made you aware that the debt has been recalled.”

“With interest, no less,” she said, aiming for flippancy.

Maybe if she could make him angry she’d feel anything but the numbness that had pervaded her entire body since she’d heard the news.

“No less,” he agreed.

He sat back in his chair and rested his hands on the arms of it, his rangy body relaxed even though his eyes were sharply focused on her face.

“I need time,” she stated flatly.

“Is that a fact?”

“Of course it’s a fact,” she snapped, rising to his bait in spite of her best intentions. “I need time to find a job, get established. It’s completely unreasonable of you to insist on repayment in full when I have no means to meet that commitment.”

“Yes, indeed. Thing is—” he paused and flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his trouser leg “—I don’t feel particularly reasonable right now.”

A chill ran down Piper’s spine. “You don’t?”

“No, I don’t. You never finished university, despite every opportunity to do so. You never sought gainful employment while in New Zealand. And if your current lack of funds is any indication, I’d say you’ve never actually worked a day in your life. Why should I believe that you could find a job now? The employment market is tough, Piper. Tougher now than it ever was. Even the local supermarkets have had more than two and a half thousand applicants for each of the new stores that have opened recently. What makes you think you’re better than all those skilled, and unskilled, workers desperate to find a job?”

“I never said I was better than anyone else.”

“No, you didn’t. At least not recently, anyway.”

Piper felt hot color flood her cheeks. She remembered exactly what he referred to. She’d been an utter bitch to him when he’d refused to drop his internship with her father and travel with her overseas. She’d wanted him to prove that he loved her—that she mattered to him more than her father and his own future. When he’d refused, she’d said things that didn’t deserve remembering, let alone repeating. That he hadn’t forgotten them was quite clear.

“I’m sorry for all that, Wade. I really am. I was young, headstrong and entirely stupid. I couldn’t see past what I wanted back then.”

“And you’ve changed so much now?”

Wade watched her carefully. He didn’t believe she’d changed a bit. Not where it mattered. She could have swallowed her pride years ago. Come home before choosing to terminate the pregnancy that was the lingering proof of the love he’d thought they’d shared. But, no. She’d destroyed his son or daughter as callously as she’d cast away everything in their relationship. And she hadn’t even bothered to contact him—then, or in the eight years that had followed.

“I have changed,” she insisted, the color in her cheeks rising. The sound of her voice becoming even more impassioned. “I used that money for good purpose.”

“All of it?”

“No, not all of it. I was an idiot when I left here. I had some serious growing up to do, but I did grow up. I have changed.”

“Admitting your faults all sounds very impressive, Piper, but again, none of it solves your current problem, does it?”

“I just need time.”

“Time isn’t an option.” He put up a hand before she could protest. “I do, however, have an alternative for you. A suggestion that takes into account your lack of credible work experience and probably accommodates the one thing I do know you’re good at.”

She leaned forward on her seat, clearly eager to hear what he had to say. He doubted she’d be as eager once she knew what he had planned for her.

“What sort of alternative?”

“I worked hard for your father over the years. And with your father gone, my workload has doubled at Mitchell Exports.

“As a result, I have neither the time, nor the inclination, to devote to a relationship with the type of woman I may want as a wife. Settling down just isn’t possible for me right now. But I do have one thing, above all else, that I wish for.

“I’ve accumulated quite a legacy of my own, now, and it’ll be all for nothing unless there is someone special in my life to leave it to. You know about how my mother died when I was ten and how my father refused to support me. You know how determined that made me to have children who will receive all my love and protection. I want to be the kind of father Rex was to you. When you were a toddler and your mother died he never let you go. It would have been far easier for him to have done so. Yet, no matter what, he always provided for you—sometimes too much.”

“Our circumstances are completely different, Wade. Sure, Dad supported me, but not in all the ways that really mattered to me. I had to fight for his attention.”

“He wasn’t always the easiest of men to impress, but he never stopped loving you, Piper. Never. Have you stopped to wonder why your room was still exactly the same as you left it? Why you have new clothing in your drawers and why the things in your wardrobe have been regularly dry cleaned for when you eventually returned home? Keeping everything in readiness for you was probably the only way he knew to show you how much you meant to him. But you never came home.”

Wade sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand. “We’re diverting from my point. What I wanted to say is that family is everything to me. I want to have a child to make all this hard work worthwhile. Someone I can leave my legacy to.”

To his surprise Piper shot to her feet, coming to stand a bare meter from him.