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A short time later, she called him to the kitchen. He turned off the news and came to join her at her tiny table. They ate mostly in silence. She found her small appetite had fled completely. Dread was taking up what little space there was in her stomach. Still, she forced herself to put the food in her mouth, to slowly chew, to grimly swallow. The baby needed dinner. And really, so did she.
When they were through, Marcus got up and cleared the table while she loaded the dishwasher and wiped the counters. Then they went to the living room. He took a chair and she sat on the couch.
Her pulse, she realized as she sank into the cushions, had sped into overdrive. Her palms had gone clammy. And her stomach was aching, all twisted with tension. The baby kicked. She winced and put her hand over the spot.
“Are you sick?” He frowned at her. She shook her head. “Just…dreading this conversation.”
“You’re too pale.”
“I’m a redhead. My skin is naturally pale.”
“Paler than usual, I mean.”
“Can we just get on with it? Please? Tell me what you want and we can…take it from there.”
“I don’t want to upset you.”
She folded her hands over her stomach. “I’m fine.” It was a lie. But a necessary one. “Just tell me what you have in mind. Just say it.”
“Hayley, I think…” The words trailed off. He looked at her through brooding eyes.
“What? You think, what?” She fired the question at him twice—and as she did, somehow, impossibly, she knew what he was going to tell her, what he was going to want from her. It was the one thing she’d been beyond-a-doubt certain he wouldn’t be pushing for.
But he was. He did. “I think we should get married. All things considered, now there’s a kid involved, I think it’s the best way to go here.”
Married. The impossible word seemed to hover in the air between them.
Now that there was a baby, he wanted to marry her….
She unfolded her hands and lifted them off her stomach and then didn’t know what to do with them. She looked down at them as if they belonged on someone else’s body. “Married,” she said back to him, still not quite believing.
“Yes.” He gave a single nod. “Married.”
She braced her hands on the sofa cushions and dared to remind him, “But you don’t want to be married again. Ever. You know you don’t. You told me you don’t.”
Did he wince? She could have sworn he did. “It’s the best way,” he said again, as if that made it totally acceptable—for him to do exactly what he’d promised he would never do.
Okay, now. The awful thing? The really pitiful thing?
Her heart leaped.
It did. It jumped in her chest and did the happy dance. Because marrying Marcus? That was her dearest, most fondly held dream.
From the moment she’d met him—that rainy Monday, two months out of Heald’s Business College and brand-new to Seattle, when he interviewed her for the plum job of his executive assistant—she’d known she would love him. Known that he, with his piercing, watchful eyes and sexy mouth, his wary heart that was kinder than he wanted it to be, his dry sense of humor so rarely seen…
He was her love. He was the one she had been waiting for, dreaming of, through all her lonely years until that moment.
Marriage to Marcus. Oh, yeah. It was what she’d longed for, what she’d hoped against hope might happen someday.
Because she loved him. She’d known from the first that she would. And within weeks of going to work for him, she was his. Completely, without reservation, though he refused to touch her for months.
She waited. She schemed.
And then his divorce became final. She went to his house wearing a yellow raincoat, high heels, a few wisps of lingerie and nothing else.
At last, they were lovers. No, he didn’t love her. Oh, but she loved him.
God help her, she sometimes feared that she would always love him. And her love…it was like Christmas to her. It was magic. And bright colored lights. It was that one present with her name on it under a new foster mother’s tree.
“Hayley?” His voice came to her. The voice of her beloved. Dreamed of. Yearned after—and yet, in the end, no more hers than all the foster families she’d grown up with.
She pressed her lips together, shook her head, stared bleakly past him, at the shining lights of her tree.
“Damn it, Hayley. What do you want from me? You want me to beg you? I’m willing. Anything. Just marry me and let me take care of you. And our baby. Let me—”
“Stop.” The sound scraped itself free of her throat.
He swore. A word harsh and graphic. But at least after that, he fell silent.
She met his eyes. “What if there was no baby, if I wasn’t pregnant…?”
“But you are.”
“Work with me here. If I wasn’t. Would you be asking me to marry you now?”
A muscle danced in his jaw. “I would, yes. I love you.”
The lie was so huge, she almost smiled. And the knot that was her stomach had eased a little. She felt better now. She knew she could hold out against him, against her impossible dream that he would someday find his way to her, that at last he would see she was the only one for him.
But he hadn’t found his way to her, not in his secret heart. And he never would.
“Marcus. Come on. You’re lying.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Please. This is not going to work.”
“The hell it won’t. I came here to see you, didn’t I, showed up at your door last night? And I had no damn clue about the baby then.”
Okay. Point for him. But hardly a winning one.
She challenged, “You’re telling me you came here because you realized you couldn’t live without me?”
“That’s right.”
“You didn’t want to go another day without me at your side? You came here intending to ask me to marry you, after all, to beg me to give our love another chance and be your bride at last, to make you the happiest man on earth, make all your dreams come true?”
He looked at her steadily. It was not a pleasant look. “Damn you, Hayley. I want to marry you now. Why does it matter what I would have done if you hadn’t been pregnant?”
“Is that a real question?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you really want to know why it matters?”
“Yes. I do.”
“All right. It matters because in all my life, except for the sister and brother I found in June at my mother’s deathbed, I’ve never had anyone to really call my own. I’ve worn other people’s hand-me-downs, lived in other people’s houses, been the extra kid, the one who didn’t really belong. The one who never had a home of her own.”
“I’m offering you—”
“Wait. I’m not finished. What I’m trying to say is that I had no choice, about the way I grew up. But I do have a choice now. When I get married, I’m going to finally belong to someone. Completely. Lovingly. Openly. And the man I marry will belong to me.”
“I will belong to you. I’ll be true to you, I’ll never betray you.”
“Well, of course you wouldn’t. You’re not the kind to cheat. Except in your secret heart.”
“That’s not so.”
“It is. You know it is. You’ll never belong to me, Marcus. You belong to Adriana. You always have and you always will.”
Chapter Four
Marcus regarded the pregnant woman on the blue couch. At least she had a little color in her cheeks now. Telling him all the nonsensical reasons she wouldn’t have him as a husband had brought a warm flush to her velvety skin.
Terrific. She had pink cheeks and he wanted to…
Hell. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, exactly. Something violent. Something loud. Something to snap her out of this silly resistance she was giving him and make it crystal clear to her that she was making no damn sense and she ought to smarten up and get with the program.
Adriana wasn’t the issue here. She’d walked away, divorced him. That part of his life was over. For good.
Hayley loved him and needed him. He was willing, at last, to be what she needed.
He spoke, the soul of reason. “I’m here, now, today, and ready to do what you wanted. You left me because I wouldn’t marry you. And now I want to marry you. I want to give you exactly what you were asking for all along. I don’t understand why you have to be difficult about this. You’re not behaving rationally. And one of your finest qualities has always been your ability to step back and assess a situation logically. I advise you to do that. Now.”
“Marcus.”
He hated when she said his name like that. So patiently. As if he were a not-very-bright oversize child. It was supremely annoying, the way she got to him, the way he let her get to him. He’d graduated from Stanford at the top of his class; he’d built a billion-dollar corporation from virtually nothing. He knew how to deal with people, how to get along and get what he wanted.
But with Hayley, somehow, since she’d decided she loved him and wanted to marry him, he hadn’t known how to deal at all. First, she left him because he wouldn’t marry her. And now that he said he would marry her, she was turning him down.
And she was talking again. All patience and gentleness, trying to make him understand. “No. You don’t want to marry me. You want to take care of your child—and the mother of your child. You think marrying me is the best way to do that, to take care of us. I admire you for that. I truly do. You are a fine man and I’m proud to be having your baby. But that kind of marriage—marriage you want because it’s the right thing? Uh-uh. That’s just not what I want. And it’s not what our baby needs, either. Our baby needs—no. Our baby deserves a loving home, a happy home. How can our baby have that if you’re resentful because you felt you had to marry me?”
“Whoa.” He waited, just to be sure she was going to stop talking and listen for a moment. When she stayed quiet, he said slowly and clearly, “Don’t characterize me. Please. I’m not resentful. Not in the least. And you know me well enough by now to know that I never do anything because I have to. I never do anything I don’t want to do.”
She was shaking her head. “All right. Have it your way. You want to marry me. Because you feel that you have to.”
He stood. “Hayley.”
She gazed up at him, her expression angelic. “What?”
“I’m going to go now.” Before my head explodes.
“Oh, Marcus…”
He went to the closet by the door and got his coat. “We can…work this out tomorrow.” He’d regroup, come at this problem in a fresh, new way—true, at this point he hadn’t a clue what that way might be. But something would come to him, some way to get through to her, to make her see reason.
“There’s nothing to work out,” she said brightly. “Not when it comes to marriage, anyway—and where are you staying?”
He named his hotel. “Tomorrow, then.”
She was on her feet, her hands pressed together as if in prayer, her expression verging on tender, her eyes at that moment sea-blue. He wanted to cover the distance between them, sweep her into his arms and taste those lips he’d been missing for so many months.
But no. Later for kissing. After she realized he was right about this. After she agreed to marry him and come home with him where he could take care of her, where she—and their baby—belonged.
In his hotel suite, Marcus checked his messages. There were several, each representing a different potential disaster. He made a string of calls to his associates. They brainstormed and came up with the necessary steps to eradicate the issues before they became catastrophes. By the time he hung up from the final call of the night, he was reassured that things in Seattle were as under control as they were likely to get until he could handle this situation with Hayley and return to work.
Next, he checked his e-mail, one eye on CNN as he made his replies, keeping a couple of IM conversations going at the same time, taking two more calls and answering questions as he worked. At last, with the phone quiet and the replies made, he put on his gym clothes and went down to the guest gym to work out.
Aside from the night before, when he had learned about the baby, Marcus never touched liquor—or drugs of any kind. His father had been a hopeless and violent drunk and Marcus was determined, above all, not to follow in the old man’s footsteps. But his high-stress lifestyle demanded he find some way to relax and blow off steam. So he worked out.
An hour and a half later, dripping sweat, his legs and arms rubbery from pushing every muscle to the limit, he returned to his rooms and hit the shower. It was after one when he went to bed. By then he’d decided on his next move with Hayley and his confidence had returned.
Tomorrow, she would see things his way and agree to be his wife. They could be married in Nevada ASAP. And then she could return to Seattle with him and take it easy until the baby was born. They would have a good life, a full life.
He’d long ago accepted that he would never be a father. But now that it was happening, he was realizing he really didn’t mind at all.
At seven the next morning, when Hayley opened the blinds on the living room window, she saw Marcus sitting out there on her balcony next to the miniature tree. She was tempted, just for the sake of being contrary, to let him sit there.
But it was cold out. Even from the far side of the window, with him facing away from her toward the central courtyard, she could see the way his breath plumed in the air.
It just wouldn’t be right, to let her baby’s father freeze to death on her landing.
She went and opened the door. At the sound, he turned and looked at her. Once again, she was forced to ignore the shiver of pleasure that skittered through her, just from meeting those watchful green eyes.
“I thought you’d never get up.”
She gathered her robe a little closer around her and spoke in a tone meant to show he didn’t thrill her in the least. “How do you keep slipping through the security gate, that’s what I’d like to know?”
His fine mouth hinted at a wry smile as he stood. “Nobody keeps me out when I’m determined to get in.” His eyes said he was talking about more than a locked gate. Another shiver. She told herself it was the cold. “Make me some coffee?”
She couldn’t help teasing him, “You know, there’s a Starbucks just two blocks away on—”
“Very funny.” He asked again—or rather demanded, “Coffee. I need coffee.”
“Oh, all right.”
He followed her in, put his coat in the closet, then sat at the table and got out his PDA as she ground the beans and got the pot started. He poked at the tiny keys a mile a minute while she heated the water for her own special pregnant-lady herbal tea blend.
