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The flashbulbs exploded again, temporarily dazzling him. Blinking, he waited a moment for his vision to adjust, aware of nothing but the woman in his arms.
“I’m a long way from perfect, sweetheart,” he said, as the music slowed to a stop and a smattering of polite applause rippled around the room. “I’ve made my share of mistakes, just like any other man.”
“I’ll find a way to make you pay for them.” Laughing, she pulled away from him. “And you can begin by dancing with Mother.”
Reluctantly, he let her go. “Can I make it your grandmother, instead? Felicity’s more my type and she’s already admitted she likes to jive.”
She pressed her forefinger to his mouth. “Behave! Amma’s bad enough, without your encouraging her to be worse! As it is, she’s probably going to arm wrestle all the unmarried women out of the way when I toss the bouquet. Haven’t you noticed how outrageously she’s flirting with every man in the place?”
“No,” he said, both captivated and a little alarmed at the way she clung to her childhood name for Felicity. For all her sophistication and professional success, in many ways she was a very young twenty-three. Sometimes, he’d caught himself wondering if she was too young—for him, and for marriage—but then she’d surprise him with her maturity and he’d forget his reservations. “I’ve only got eyes for you.”
“Just as well, my darling husband, otherwise I’d scratch them out!”
He loved the way she leaned against him when she said that, the intimate smile she turned on him as they walked back toward the head table. It was how he’d always imagined marriage should be: the private jokes, the exchanged glances that made words unnecessary, the silent communication of body language that said I love you from across a room packed with other people.
“I’ll remember that,” he said, as he handed her over to her father for the next dance, and prepared to square off with her mother.
Stephanie Montgomery perched on her chair as if it were a throne and she the reigning monarch. When she saw him making his way toward her, she lifted her head and flared her aristocratic nostrils, the way a queen might when being approached by a particularly smelly stable boy.
Refusing to let her spoil any part of such a special day, Ben did his best to live up to her impossible standards, practically bowing as he said, “May I have the honor of this dance, Stephanie?”
“I’d be delighted.”
She didn’t look delighted; she looked resigned, and as mightily offended as if he had horse manure clinging to his clothes.
Not deigning to accept the hand he extended, she stalked ahead of him onto the floor. Exasperated, he followed, keeping a respectful ten paces behind. “I’d like to thank you again for everything you’ve done to make today so memorable,” he said, trotting her sedately around the floor.
“No need. You already did when you made your little speech. And I can’t imagine that you’d have expected anything less than the absolute best. Julia is our only child, after all.”
“Of course.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I give you my word I’ll make her happy. She’ll never have reason to regret marrying me.”
“Actions speak louder than words, Benjamin. Let’s wait and see where things stand a year from now.”
Over her head, his glance connected with Julia’s. The pride in her eyes gave him the wherewithal to put aside his urge to throttle her mother and to try, one last time, to strike some sort of truce instead. “The renovations at the house should be finished by the time we get back from the honeymoon. I hope you and Garry’ll both come to visit us, once we’re settled.”
“Unlikely,” she said. “If you really wanted Julia to remain close to her family, you wouldn’t have chosen to live practically in the United States of America. If she wants to see us, she can come to us. Our home, after all, will always be hers and our door always open to her.”
The woman should have been left out on the hillside at birth! Grinding his teeth, Ben gave in to temptation and spun her around with enough vigor to almost knock her clean out of her spindle-heeled shoes.
Punishment followed swiftly, in a way he never, in his worst nightmare, could have anticipated.
“Who is that person and why is she intruding on a private function?” she suddenly squawked, raising her eyebrows so far they almost disappeared into her hairline. “Is she one of your guests whom you’ve neglected to introduce to me?”
“No, Stephanie,” he said, his patience at an end. “Surprising though it might seem to you, I’m not such a boor that—”
But the reply fizzled into horrified silence as his glance latched on to the woman hovering at the double doors leading out to the foyer where he’d stood at the head of the receiving line not two hours earlier. Flaming red-gold hair caught in the light from the chandelier behind her, she peered at the crowd, clearly searching for someone.
He shook his head, as if doing so would bring him out of the sudden nightmare in which he found himself. This was his wedding day; a day that belonged to Julia and him and the future. His past had no place here. She had no place here.
In his panic, he stepped on Stephanie’s foot, then compounded the sin by ditching her completely. “Just where do you think you’re going?” she exclaimed, outrage lending an unpleasantly shrill edge to her voice.
Loath though he was to give his mother-in-law any more ammunition than she thought she already had, Ben had more pressing concerns on his mind just then than appeasing her, the most immediate being to whisk the newcomer out of sight before Julia noticed her.
Weaving a hasty path among the guests impeding his progress, he finally reached the doors. “What the devil do you think you’re doing here, Marian?” he asked roughly, grabbing her by the elbow and hustling her across the foyer to the private suite reserved for the bridal party. The luggage he and Julia would need for the honeymoon was stowed there, along with their passports and travel tickets. Her going-away outfit, something the color of wild orchids, hung on a padded hanger from a brass coat stand.
“I had to see you,” Marian whimpered. “We need to talk.”
“What?” He stared at her incredulously. “We haven’t spoken in months. And in light of our last conversation, I can’t imagine there’s anything left for either of us to say.”
“You’ll change your mind when you hear what I have to tell you.”
“Marian,” he said, hurriedly closing the door to prevent anyone witnessing the conversation, “I got married today. You just gate-crashed my wedding. Have you lost your mind?”
Tears glazed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. When I went looking for you at the address they gave me at your old apartment, the workmen at your new house just said you were here at a wedding. They didn’t tell me it was yours.”
She sort of crumpled onto the little gilt sofa next to a full-length mirror and sniffled into a tissue she fished out of the big quilted bag slung over her shoulder. For all that he wished she were a million miles away, she made a pathetic sight and Ben couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. “What happened, Marian? Didn’t the reconciliation with your husband work out?”
“Sort of. But it won’t last, unless you agree to help me.”
He rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Why do I feel as if I’m speaking in foreign tongues here? I just got married! My wife is probably wondering where the devil I’ve disappeared to. As for the conclusions my mother-in-law’s arrived at…” He clapped a hand to his forehead. “Hell, they don’t bear thinking about!”
She glared at him through her tears. “If you think you’ve got problems now, wait till you hear what I’ve got to say! And you can take that look off your face, Ben Carreras, because in light of the relationship we once had, the very least you owe me now is—”
“Don’t go there, Marian,” he advised her tersely. “Our relationship, if it could ever have been called that in the first place, is over. It never really began.”
“You didn’t feel that way when you slept with me, though, did you?”
“Are you here to blackmail me?” he asked, his voice sliding to a dangerous whisper.
She shrank into the corner of the sofa. “No. I wouldn’t be here at all, if there was any other way out of this. But there’s more at stake here than just your future or mine, Ben. There’s the baby’s.”
He’d spent most of his thirty-two years facing reality, knowing firsthand that even the most fleeting happiness always came with a price. Over the last five months, though, he’d grown complacent; had woken up every morning marveling that life just kept getting better.
But with Marian’s last words hanging in the air like an ax waiting to fall, he knew he’d been lured into a fool’s paradise. “What baby?” he asked, guessing ahead of time what her answer would be.
“Yours,” she said.
Of course, it was a trick, a lie. One she was more than capable of perpetuating. After all, she’d kept a husband hidden away in the woodwork for the better part of two months.
So why was dread creeping over him like a shroud? Why did the only part of his mind still ticking along recognize that, in this instance at least, she was telling the truth?
Still, he tried to deny it. “I don’t think so. If I’d gotten you pregnant, you’d have mentioned it long before now.”
“I wasn’t sure he was yours,” she whispered, the tears she’d held in check at last running free. “He might have been Wayne’s. I hoped he was.”
“I don’t see how there could have been any doubt, unless you were carrying on with both of us at the same time.”
In a desperate attempt to ward off the nightmare web closing around him, he tossed out the remark almost glibly. But the flush that ran up her face and the guilty way she avoided his eyes stripped the black humor from his words and left them revealed for the ugly truth they were.
Stunned, he lowered himself next to her on the sofa. “Tell me I’m wrong, Marian!”
She spread her hands helplessly and said again, “I’m sorry!”
“For what? For cheating on your husband? For lying to me from the day we met? For telling me you’d taken care of contraception when you’d clearly done no such thing? Well, here’s a news flash for you, Marian. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t begin to cut it!” He heard his voice, tight with anger, bouncing back from the walls and fought to bring it under control. “Tell me this is some sort of sick joke.”
“It’s no joke,” she whimpered. “I wish it were. All through the pregnancy, I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. But the baby’s yours, Ben. I know that for a fact because we just got the DNA tests back from the hospital and there’s no way he could be Wayne’s.”
Almost sick with anguish, Ben dropped his head into his hand. “Assuming this isn’t another lie, what is it you want from me now? Money?”
“No,” she said. “I want you to take the baby.”
He looked up at her, stunned. “Take him where?”
“Home with you. I can’t keep him. Wayne’s willing to forgive me having an affair, but he won’t be saddled with another man’s child. If I want my marriage to last, I have to give up the baby. That’s why I’m here. But if you don’t want him either, I’ll place him for adoption. I don’t have any other choice, not if I want to keep my husband. And I do. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved.”
“How can you love a man who forces you to give up your child?” he exclaimed.
She shrugged. “I’m not strong like you, Ben. I need someone to lean on.” And as if that explained everything, she stood, slid the bag from her shoulder and dumped it at his feet. “I could never cope alone with a baby.”
He looked from her to the bag, then back again. “What’s that for?”
“It’s got things in it that you’ll need. Diapers and formula and things like that. What did you think? That I’d stuffed the baby in it?”
“After all the other stunts you’ve pulled, I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“I’m not completely without feelings, you know,” she cried, flinching at the disgust he made no effort to hide. “He’s my child, too. I carried him inside me for nine months. I gave birth to him.” She drew in a breath and there was an air of desperation about her when she continued, “I have to do what’s best for him. I have to keep him…safe.”
Safe? Given the context of the exchange, the word struck an odd, if not ominous note.
“So what’s it to be, Ben?” she said. “Are you willing to raise him, or do I call Social Services and put him in their hands?”
CHAPTER TWO
BEFORE he could begin to sort through the chaos in his mind, let alone formulate a reply, the door opened. He heard the swish of silk and the sound of footsteps halting on the threshold. As if from a great distance, Julia’s voice came to him, warm with concern and full of love. “Honey? Is everything all right?”
And following right after, in a tone rife with suspicion and censure, her mother’s question, fired across the room like an arrow aimed with mortal intent. “I think you owe us an explanation, Benjamin. Who is this woman and what is so urgent about her business that you felt justified in walking out on your own wedding in order to accommodate her?”
Mutely, he turned and met Julia’s gaze. Tried to tell her with his look that this was not how he’d have had things turn out; that he’d have given his right arm to have spared her the hurt and humiliation about to be heaped on her. But the ability to communicate without words, which been so easy on the dance floor, deserted him when he needed it most.
He saw inquiry on her lovely face. Curiosity. Kindness. And just enough anxiety to dim her radiance to a soft glow.
“We’re waiting, Benjamin,” his mother-in-law reminded him.
“Go away, Stephanie,” he said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“If it affects my daughter—and from the look on your face, I can only suppose it must—then it most certainly does concern me.”
He felt cold all over. Cold and angry and afraid. In the space of fifteen minutes, everything had changed. All that he thought was his for the rest of time was seeping away, and he was helpless to stem the bleeding. “Julia,” he said tightly, “what I must tell you is for your ears alone and I’m not about to have your mother decide otherwise. Either get her out of here, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
“Mother?” She turned, appealing to the woman with upturned palms. “Please leave us alone.”
“With that creature?” Stephanie gestured to where Marian wilted against the back of the sofa. “Not a chance, my dear! If she stays, so do I.”
Ben’s anger turned to rage at that, burning so white hot that his vision blurred and a kind of madness possessed him. He’d never been a violent man but, at that moment, two things came to him: he was capable of murder if that’s what it took to protect those he loved; and he loved Julia more than life itself.
Fortunately, the door opened again to reveal Felicity Montgomery, perhaps the only person on the face of the earth able to stop Stephanie in her tracks with a single glance. “There’s a man with a baby waiting in the foyer,” she said. “He seems to think his wife’s in here and he’d like to know if she’s accomplished what she came to do.”
“I think we’d all like to know the answer to that, but no one’s talking,” Stephanie snapped. “Why don’t you invite him to join the party, Mother Montgomery? Maybe he’ll be more forthcoming.”
But Felicity had learned a thing or two in her seventy-nine years. She didn’t need anyone to spell it out for her to pick up on the hostility and tension muddying the air. “I think not, Stephanie,” she said. “Ben, you look troubled. Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes,” he said. “Get Julia’s mother out of here before I wring her interfering neck!”
“Consider it done, dear boy,” she replied serenely, taking a firm hold of his mother-in-law’s elbow and steering her toward the door. “Come along, Stephanie. You heard the man.”
The silence they left behind was almost worse than the belligerence that had preceded it. It spread over the room like poisonous gas, paralyzing the three remaining occupants. It seemed to Ben that the space separating him from Julia was too vast for him ever to find his way back to her.
Marian was the first to speak. “Do you want me to wait outside, as well, Ben?”
He nodded, too full of pain to trust his voice.
Leaving the bag where she’d dropped it, she made her way to the door, hesitating only when she reached Julia. “I’m very sorry to spoil your wedding,” she said. “I hope you’ll believe me when I say that was never my intention.”
“Leave it, Marian!” he barked, the thought of Julia hearing the news from anyone other than him restoring his powers of speech in a hurry.
Throughout the exchange, Julia remained motionless, her solemn gaze never once wavering from his face. “Would you like to sit down?” he asked, when they were finally alone.
“No,” she said. “I’d like you to tell me who that woman is and why she came here looking for you. And I’d like to know why she thinks she’s ruined our wedding day.”
The seconds ticked by as he searched for a way to soften the blow he had to administer, but no matter how he wished it could have been otherwise, in the end a swift, sharp thrust of the sword was the most merciful. “She claims she’s the mother of my child, Julia.”
The room tilted and, for a moment, she feared she was going to pass out. Too much excitement, she told herself. Too much champagne. I’m imagining all this.
Blindly, she reached behind her, fumbling for something—anything—against which to support herself. Her hand closed over the doorknob and she squeezed it hard, hoping it would disintegrate into thin air and prove she was dreaming.
Instead, it pressed against her palm, cool and smooth and hard as glass. So hard and unforgiving that it pinched her wedding ring against the pad of flesh on her finger. Swallowing painfully, she asked the only question that mattered. “And is she telling the truth?”
“She might very well be, yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“I just found out.”
“I see.”
But she didn’t, not at all. Pressing her lips together, she let go of the doorknob and folded both hands in front of her, knowing he was watching every shift in her expression, knowing he was waiting for her to give him some sort of sign that she understood what he’d said.
She couldn’t do that. Her mind was empty, a great barren void. The pity of it was that her heart didn’t follow suit, because the ache in her chest was crushing the life out of her.
