Kitabı oku: «Prim, Proper... Pregnant»

Chapter One

After ten minutes of furtive searching, Amelia Enderling was about to give up. She paused near an open door, hoping for a fortifying glance at the bay, and that was when she finally spotted him. He was standing near the rock wall that skirted the terrace of the Bayview Country Club, looking toward the sea.

She couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. After all, he was alone. Now was the moment to rush forward, blurt out the truth, then disappear from Seaport, Oregon, forever. So why did she stand as still as one of the cement planters overflowing with lilac petunias and white alyssum, just staring?

It had been four months since she’d last seen him. Four months, two weeks, three days. He was still outrageously good-looking—slender, yet with broad shoulders and obvious strength beneath the fine fabric of the tuxedo he wore as best man at his older brother’s wedding. His hair was as dark as a moonless night, slightly wavy, brushed away from a high forehead. His lashes were long, his brown eyes deep pools, his nose and chin perfectly formed and absolutely masculine. Standing as he was, thoughtful and reposed, he looked aristocratic and yet sensual, like a seductive monarch in a fairy-tale land awaiting the arrival of a beautiful consort.

He was a lawyer.

Amelia glanced down at her cornflower blue dress, wishing suddenly she’d thought to wear a concealing sweater no matter how warm the July day promised to be. Too late. She was stalling.

It wasn’t until she felt his eyes on her that she looked up and met his gaze. Her breath caught in her throat. She’d always known she was physically attracted to him—it was one of the major reasons she’d put off this encounter for so long—but she’d assumed that after what he’d done to her, knowing what she knew of him, the effect would be minimal. Ha!

It was as though a million invisible wires pulsed between them, sending signals from his body to hers, reliving the past, speculating on the future. In that glance was the feel of his skin, the taste of his lips, the heat of his mouth, the desire. It was all she could do to make herself take a step in his direction when every fiber in her being urged her to turn around and run.

She told herself that Ryder was like a vase of cut flowers, all show, rootless, and over an extended period of time, sure to wilt. She told herself he was a mannequin, not a man, that he was selfish and if she allowed it, he would hurt her again and not even know it.

He smiled at her as though this was their first meeting, as though the past didn’t exist. No matter what Ryder the man was like, no matter how deceiving he could be, his smile seemed to spring like well water from the depths of the earth, pure and simple and damn near impossible to resist.

She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs, and resisted.

He now looked puzzled. Well, in a few moments, she’d replace his expression with shock. Her step faltered as she approached him, but her resolve remained. It was now or never.

“Hello,” he said in his deep voice that still made her tingle, a knee-jerk reaction she thoroughly resented. His greeting was like a caress, intimate, somehow hinting that fate had designed this moment. Not for the first time, Amelia found herself thinking that Ryder had missed his calling—he should have been an actor.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

Despite her abrupt response, a smile lingered on his beautiful lips. Leaning against the rock wall, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes full of life, he said, “Of course.”

She stared at the white rosebud pinned to his lapel. Her mouth felt dry. “This is difficult,” she said.

He furrowed his brow, as though confused as to why she would find talking to him awkward.

“Remember last March?” she mumbled.

His elegant eyebrows inched up his forehead. Amelia, whose face was already hot from the memory of the passionate night the two of them had spent stormbound in his apartment, felt even more flushed as he said, “Last March? Hmm…let me think.”

The twinkle in his eye told her all she needed to know. He was teasing her, winking internally, letting her know his life was full of romantic interludes that involved fervent lovemaking and promises never meant to be taken seriously. There were just so many women last March, he seemed to say with that smile. Give me a second to sort through them all.

But she didn’t give him a second. She placed her hand on his arm, a mistake she tried at once to rectify but which he halted by firmly placing his hand over hers and gently squeezing. As in the past, in fact, even more profoundly now, the touch of his warm fingers resounded through her body like a shout in a closet, and she involuntarily trembled.

She said, “Please. Please, just let me say this.”

He nodded. “Go for it.”

The fancy rehearsed words were gone, lost in a maelstrom of anxiety. She heard herself stammer, “I’m…well, I’m pregnant.”

The relief! The words were finally out in the open air where they were free to sink or soar. She chanced a look at his face, expecting to see the beginnings of anger as her statement and all its implications struck home, but instead he looked wistful.

Wistful?

His gaze sweeping her fuller-than-ever bust and the bulge that was there in her midsection if you knew to look for it, he said, “Congratulations.”

“What!”

He shook his head ever so slightly. “Congratulations. Isn’t that what one says? You look radiant. Luminous.”

He finally let her reclaim her hand and she held it to her cheek, momentarily stunned by his reaction—or lack of it. “Congratulations?” she repeated.

“Sure.”

“You’re not…upset?”

“Disappointed perhaps, but upset, no. Why? Should I be?”

“Well, no. I mean, I thought you might be. You always said you never wanted children.” Relief flooded her overloaded emotional system and she babbled on, almost oblivious to his increasingly astounded eyes. “I thought you’d be shocked, that you’d think I had purposely let myself get pregnant. Let me assure you I didn’t. It was all a mistake, but now that it’s happened, now that I’m used to the idea and have felt the baby kick and the nausea isn’t so constant…well, now I’m happy about it. Excited. In awe…”

“I—”

“No, let me finish.” Biting her lip, attempting to put the past behind them, she added, “Whatever you and I had together died the night I discovered your marriage proposal was just part of an elaborate scheme. I’m not here to discuss the other women, I’m not here for more accusations. That’s in the past. We’re in the past. I’m not trying to get you to marry me. I wouldn’t, even if you asked again, even if you meant it this time.”

She stopped for a breath, her mind racing, wondering if that last part was true, hoping it was, afraid it wasn’t. For months, in her mind, she’d downplayed her attraction to him, and now here it was again, stronger than ever, scary and forbidden. She had to keep her head. The stakes were too high to fall back into temptation. She was thinking for two….

“You know my dad left me a little money,” she continued before he could interrupt. “If I’m careful, it should last me and the baby for a couple of years. I’m moving back to Nevada so my aunt and uncle can help. When I saw your mom yesterday, I realized I couldn’t leave without telling you about this, Ryder.”

She took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking.

He looked as though she’d finally made sense and she momentarily wondered what part of her disclosure had pierced his slick veneer. Actually, considering his disposition, it was something of a miracle that he was still standing there, that he hadn’t bolted.

“Are you finished?”

“Well…yes. Yes, I’m finished.”

He stared directly into her eyes, projecting a laser-like beam that seemed to melt everything in the path between her irises and her heart. He said, “I can see how hard this…revelation…was for you to make. I hate to have to tell you this, but I’m not Ryder.”

For a second, his declaration was like mud slung at a brick wall. Amelia stood transfixed, staring, unbelieving, and then it hit her. Memories came racing back, pictures on top of the television, family stories told by Mrs. Hogan of twins, one of whom Amelia had never met. Ryder’s brother, the one who practiced law in California…

“Oh my God. You’re Rob,” she said woodenly.

He touched her arm. “If it’s any help, I’m delighted I’m going to be an uncle. I know I’ll be very good at it.”

“I can’t believe this. I’ve confessed to the wrong man!”

He nodded. For a moment, she wondered if Ryder was playing some elaborate ruse, but now that she reviewed this man’s reactions, she could see that he might look like Ryder, but he didn’t act like Ryder.

So what explained that intense sensual burst that had occurred between them? Had he felt it, too, or was it all in her head, a product of knowing she’d been intimate with him? Except she hadn’t. He wasn’t Ryder.

His voice gentle, he said, “What’s your name?”

“Amelia. Amelia Enderling.”

He offered her his hand and she realized he wanted to shake, as though this blundering encounter had been a formal introduction. The situation was so absurd and so embarrassing that all she wanted to do was vanish.

After they shook, he said, “I’m sorry I’m not Ryder.”

She rubbed her temples with fingers that were still trembling. “I can’t imagine anyone being sorry he isn’t Ryder,” she told him.

This earned her a startled blink. “But you must have…cared…for him once.” When her gaze flew to his face, Rob added, “I’m sorry. I just meant that if you’re pregnant with his child—”

“I know what you meant,” Amelia interrupted. She wanted to add that she’d been with Ryder only once, that she’d been stupid and naive but that would sound as though she was making excuses for herself. She said, “Look, I know he’s your brother, a twin brother at that. I don’t want to stand here and trash him.”

His stare penetrated her. “I’m afraid there’s little you could say about my charming brother that I don’t already know,” he finally said.

She nodded. Her hands fluttered near the life contained within her body and she added, “Merciful heavens, I’m going to have to do this whole thing over again.”

Looking over her head, he said, “Sooner than you think.”

Amelia turned to face the man she’d really come to address, Rob’s twin brother, Ryder.

Ryder. The father of her child. Ryder, with the same smile as his brother, the same flash in his eyes, the same midnight hair and refined features.

“Well, well,” Ryder said, his voice slightly slurred. Obviously, he’d been drinking. “Amelia? What are you doing here? I didn’t know you knew Rob.”

Standing nose to nose, the resemblance between the two brothers was absolutely incredible, from the cut of their hair to the way they walked and the sound of their voices. Only the fraternity ring on Ryder’s hand and their boutonnieres differed, Rob’s white, Ryder’s red. They eyed each other with suspicion and hostility which hinted at a lifetime of turmoil that went a long way toward explaining why Ryder had hardly ever talked about Rob.

“We just met,” Amelia said.

Ryder grinned as he said, “You two looked awfully cozy.”

“Knock it off,” Rob said.

“I came to see you,” Amelia said, glancing up at Ryder’s face.

Ryder unpinned the red rose from his lapel and drew it across Amelia’s cheek. His eyes, so like Rob’s, were full of feigned innocence. She knew they belied a fair-weather man who wasn’t interested in the long haul. He said, “Well, now, Amelia, I’m glad to see you’ve come to your senses.”

She narrowed her eyes as she brushed the rose away. “My senses?”

“About our little misunderstanding last March.”

“Oh,” she said, her insides churning. “You mean the ‘misunderstanding’ we had when you asked me to marry you and then within a week slept with someone else.”

“Is that how you remember it?”

“That’s how it was,” she said.

“Funny, but I don’t remember it that way at all,” he continued. “Seems to me that you were the anxious one. Not that I minded, I assure you.”

Rob formed a fist which Amelia caught on the upswing and held. Though she felt the embarrassing sting of Ryder’s words clear down into the center of her heart, she knew that now wasn’t the time to acknowledge it. When Rob finally looked down at her, she said, “Please, let it go.”

As Rob slowly lowered his arm, Ryder hooked a flute of champagne from a passing waiter and toasted Amelia. “Here’s to you. Here’s to last March and all the Marches yet to come.”

Rob and Amelia exchanged a quick look. His eyes seemed to say, There’s your opening, go for it.

It was cruel that she should have to make this big confession twice in the same afternoon. Either the tension or her pregnancy or a combination of both made her feel wobbly. With a dreadful feeling of déjà vu, she looked at Ryder and said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

She felt Rob try to disengage his hand, no doubt so he could beat a hasty retreat. However, as his hand was the only thing keeping Amelia on her feet, she held on tight.

Ryder drained his glass and called out to the waiter who was making another pass with the champagne. “Over here. Just leave the tray.”

“Sir—”

“Just leave the tray!” Ryder snapped in his courtroom voice.

As the waiter skittered off without his tray, Amelia took a deep breath and announced, “I might just as well say it, Ryder. I’m pregnant, and you’re the father.”

There was a long moment of silence that seemed to encompass the whole town of Seaport, maybe the entire state of Oregon. The only realities to Amelia were the feel of Rob’s hand and the look of stunned disbelief on Ryder’s face. Then Ryder dropped the flute. Heedless of the shards of glass at his feet and the puddle of fizzing wine on the toe of his shoe, he sputtered, “This is a joke, right?”

“It’s not a joke,” Rob said.

Ryder stabbed a finger in the air at his brother. “You keep out of this!”

“Then you calm down.”

“It’s not a joke,” Amelia said.

Ryder stared at her, shaking his head, speechless. She found herself wishing she’d found a better way to tell him, a way that would have given him a chance to assimilate the news without anyone watching.

Quietly, calmly, she repeated her plans, stressing that she wasn’t asking for a marriage proposal. She had a feeling he would assume she was trying to put some kind of squeeze on him because that was the way his mind worked. Maybe in his line of work, where people tended to reinvent the past to suit their purpose, it was only natural. None of her explanations seemed to sink in, though. He just kept shaking his head.

“I felt you had to know,” she said, “so you can decide what part you want to have in your child’s life. You have to tell your folks they’re going to be grandparents.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” Ryder said firmly. He looked over her head for a moment, then back, his eyes suddenly cold and calculating. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “You’re trying to use my family to trap me. I’m warning you right now…it won’t work.”

Rob took a step forward. “Ryder, just listen to her.”

Ryder pushed his brother’s arm away and gulped more champagne. Amelia wanted to tell him that drinking wasn’t going to help, but she suddenly felt a burning desire to escape. She said, “Whether or not you want to be part of your child’s life is up to you, Ryder, but I can’t believe you would deprive your parents of knowing their first grandchild. Tell them. It’s the only decent thing to do.” With an apologetic glance at Rob, she released his hand and escaped the Hogan twins.

The tears started in the ladies’ room and continued for five minutes. After Amelia finally stopped crying, she became violently ill and lost every bite of lunch. By the time she’d mopped up her face and washed out her mouth, almost a half hour had passed. Her only desire now was to get out of the building without encountering Nina and Jack Hogan, Ryder’s parents. With any luck at all, they would never even know she’d been there.

Long ago, she’d decided to protect them from the Ryder she knew. Sometimes she wondered how they could have raised him and not understood what a manipulator he was. She’d taken the heat for their breakup, blaming a change of mind, hiding the fact that Ryder had slept with her after a phony marriage proposal and then blithely skipped off to the bed of another woman. It was too late now to change game plans, especially at their eldest son’s wedding.

Besides, she knew Jack Hogan’s heart condition was serious and she wouldn’t dream of doing anything that might make it worse. She loved Nina and Jack—it was that simple, and that hard.

She was unlocking the door of her car when a commotion at the front of the country club caught her attention.

“Ryder, don’t be a fool. You can’t drive in your condition,” Rob said as he tried to keep Ryder from entering a red sports car pulled up to the curb.

“Mind your own damn business!” Ryder snarled.

“You haven’t changed a bit since college, you know that?”

Ryder held up his fists. “You want to put your muscle where your mouth is?”

“This isn’t the time or place for these kind of antics,” Rob said. “Use your head. Philip just got married.”

Ryder shoved Rob’s shoulder so hard that Rob stumbled backward. Ryder said, “What’s wrong, brother? Chicken?”

Rob, apparently pushed to his limit, tore off his jacket and threw it on the grass. Ryder did the same. As the two of them squared off, Amelia murmured a silent apology to her unborn child. Some gene pool she’d chosen.

Before a punch was delivered, Ryder did a quick double step, and with his usual cunning and agility, bolted back to the car and got behind the wheel. Amelia watched as Rob sprinted to the passenger door and tore it open, still arguing with his belligerent brother, begging him not to drive. The engine started with a roar, the car lurched forward, and Rob flung himself into the empty seat.

The car barreled past Amelia who was stunned speechless and motionless at what she’d witnessed. Neither man seemed to notice her, but she would never forget the sight of the two of them, father and uncle-to-be, speeding away from the country club, away from her, away from her child.

Amelia spent the night on the sofa, encased in a sleeping bag. It was her last night in the apartment she had rented furnished for the past three years, and as the morning light stole into the room via the big window over the table, she looked around. The place seemed bare and lonely without her personal belongings, most of which she’d packed in the car the day before. All that remained to be done was to roll up her sleeping bag and throw a few last-minute items into a suitcase.

She snuggled deeper in the folds of flannel, reluctant to get up and begin the long drive to Nevada. She hadn’t been back since burying her father the year before. But now that her student teaching job was over and she’d earned her teaching certificate, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to return to her dad’s old house and have her baby with her favorite aunt and uncle to help. This was not how she had dreamed of starting a family, but she was determined to make the best of the situation.

A little kick deep within her body brought a smile to Amelia’s lips and an overwhelming feeling of contentment. The pregnancy was unplanned, sure, but that didn’t mean the baby was unwanted. “Kick away, little one,” she murmured. The baby complied.

For an instant, Amelia thought about Rob and the disturbing physical reaction she’d had to a man who turned out to be a virtual stranger. That was the way it had started with Ryder, too. She’d met him after her father died and she needed legal advice. Later she learned that Ryder was an up-and-coming star at his firm, way too hot to handle her measly problems, but he was pinch-hitting that day for a co-worker. At first, she’d thought it was fate that threw them together.

In the beginning, he had seemed like the answer to her prayers—he’d been warm, kind, loving. It took far too long to realize that his behavior was self-serving.

Underneath the good looks and the compassionate words, down in his core, was Rob like Ryder? Did he start out irresistible and slowly turn selfish?

What did it matter? In a couple of days, she would be miles away. Ryder was history…and Rob? No doubt he was another smooth-talking Hogan intent on looking out for number one.

As she tried unsuccessfully to button slacks that had fit a few days before and were now too tight in the waist, the phone rang. For several seconds, she stared at it in surprise. She’d been under the impression the phone service had been turned off the night before. She could think of no one she wanted to talk to, but the darn thing was persistent.

“Thank God you’re home,” Nina Hogan’s voice cried.

Amelia slid a hand through her shaggy, blond hair, brushing the long bangs off her face. As much as she cared for Nina, she didn’t want to talk to her, not now, not until Ryder had had a chance to do it himself. Or maybe he already had! Maybe that was why Nina’s voice sounded so distraught.

Amelia steeled herself. “I’m sorry, I was just leaving—”

“You’ve got to come, Amelia. Say you’ll come.”

Amelia felt a stir of alarm. “Come where, Nina? What’s wrong?”

“We’re at the hospital.”

Amelia’s first thought was of Ryder’s dad. She sank down on a kitchen chair. “Is it Jack? Is it his heart?”

“No,” Nina cried. “Oh, Amelia, it’s Ryder. He’s been in a terrible automobile accident. Please say you’ll come—”

Amelia found she was standing again. She mumbled, “Ryder?”

“I saw you and him talking at the reception. I know you two were trying to patch things up.”

“Well, Nina, actually—”

But Nina interrupted with a swallowed sob. “Philip is off on his honeymoon, and Jack looks so awful he’s scaring me half to death. I don’t know who else to call—”

“Where’s Rob?” Amelia said automatically, though she was already shrugging on her blouse and searching the room with her eyes for her purse. Of course, she’d go, if not for Ryder, then for Nina and Jack.

Nina gasped. “Oh, Amelia, that’s…that’s the worst part. Ryder and Rob left the reception together. Ryder was driving…there was an accident way out of town…the car ended up in a ravine and no one found them for hours and hours and even then no one could figure out who they were because neither one of them had his wallet. They took the boys to a small clinic while they traced the car back to Ryder’s firm. Ryder is unconscious but his brother…our Robby…oh, dear God in heaven, Amelia, Rob is dead.”

Amelia stood, stunned, frozen. The image of Ryder and Rob speeding away from the reception together was so clear in her head that she could almost reach out and touch it.

And then a profound ache pierced her heart. Ryder was badly hurt. Rob was dead.

“I’m on my way,” she whispered.

“Good Samaritan Hospital. ICU. Hurry.”

“I’m on my way.”