A Daring Proposition (2 page)

He stared at her. “I think,” he said grimly, “you’d better sit down.”

At least he was taking her seriously now, but his reaction didn’t seem promising. “There’s really no reason to take up much more of your time,” she said, and then, at his silence, added swiftly, “If the money isn’t enough… I work because I like to work, Mr. Hathaway. I have money of my own—I could offer you more. And your anonymity is probably even more important to me than it is to you. You would have my word, and the contract would absolve you of any future financial, moral or legal responsibility for the child—in fact, you wouldn’t even have to see me beyond this single instance. If—”

“I need a minute to breathe, Red. Do you mind?” The caustic note stilled whatever urge she had to attempt any further persuasion. She could feel him considering in the silence that followed. A frown etched parallel lines on his forehead. “You’re actually serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes. If it’s more money…”

“I don’t need money, Red,” he said tartly. “You should know that. You worked on the books.” He stood straight, shoveling his hands into his pockets. When he spoke again, the sharpness in his voice was gone. Thoughtfully, he said, “I take it there’s some medical reason you can only have a child this way?”

She swallowed.

“I…I…”

More gently, he probed, “Is it that you have a husband who can’t have children? I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

She glanced down at her hands and then determinedly out the window.

He tried one more time. “You’ve drawn some very personal conclusions about me, Red. Perhaps I should feel flattered that you’ve chosen me to be the father of your child. But you seem at least partially motivated to do so because you think I could care less about a child of my own blood. Not very flattering. In fact, insulting,” he said dryly, and then added more encouragingly, “I’m not asking for your life history or any personal details that might embarrass you. But there must be
some
reason—”

“Mr. Hathaway,” Leigh broke in, “I’m in every way prepared to support a child, and if necessary I’m willing to prove that.”

“That doesn’t exactly answer my questions.”

“No,” she agreed, and added very softly, “I won’t answer any questions. I’ll pay you whatever you want and agree to whatever legal terms you think best, but…no questions.”

She saw his jaw tighten. Clearly he wasn’t used to a “no,” either in his public or private life. Tentatively, she touched trembling, damp fingertips to her temples. She was losing the single chance she might ever have, and she was losing her poise at the same time. “Mr. Hathaway,” she said desperately, “sometime there might be someone else I could ask. I don’t think so. You see, the way the newspaper said you feel about marriage and family ties…it seemed perfect. Your lifestyle would be a guarantee for both of us that it wouldn’t mean anything to you, just an hour in a doctor’s office.” From her purse she drew out a small slip of paper and slid it to the far edge of his desk. “My number’s unlisted. Perhaps you would at least think about it, and if you should decide…”

He reached the door in long, easy strides before she possibly could. The potential was all there, suddenly, the intrinsic power of a man over a woman. The throbbing in her temples increased. She had known it was going to be worse with him because of the kind of man he was, but still she was unprepared for her reaction to his proximity. The scent of him, so blatantly male; the hint of a shadow on his chin; the hardness of his chest accented by the stretch of shirt fabric across it; and their mutual consciousness of the scene that had occurred only moments before, when he had tried to kiss her and she had fled from his embrace. His hand was on the doorknob. She was imprisoned until he opened the door. The memory of David Hines suddenly took shape next to him, like a ghost, not nearly so overtly masculine, nor with the physical or intellectual sort of strength inherent in this man. David was by far the lesser image…and that in itself made the blood drain from her face, increased a hazy, dizzy sensation that the floor was tumbling beneath her.

Lightning-fast, she felt him reaching out to support her arm. His fingers seared the flesh of her shoulder, shocking her brutally back to the present. Leigh jerked awkwardly away with her palm protectively out in front of her. “I…thank you. I’m sorry for the initial misunderstanding, sorry if I’ve affronted you. You’ve been very kind.” And she was gone, before he had a chance to say a word.

“It’s about time you got home,” Robert grumbled affectionately. In an Old World gesture of courtesy, the short white-haired man rose from his rocking chair when he saw Leigh coming through the kitchen doorway.

“I’ve been home nearly two hours,” she replied, and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Making all kinds of noise, for that matter. Dinner’s almost ready. You’ve been catnapping, Robert. Hands any better tonight?”

He glanced indifferently at his gnarled and swollen fingers. “They’re all right. How did you meeting go?”

“Fine.” She took a breath on the short fib, and then managed to smile cheerfully at him. “Now, did you have John over for a game of cribbage this afternoon? Did Mrs. Grenalda get to the windows?”

As she spoke, Leigh continued preparing dinner. Wearing a lime-green cotton sundress, she added a splash of color to the dark red brick and chrome kitchen. At home with Robert, who was the closest thing to family she had, she cast off her CPA “disguise.” Her hair was loose about her shoulders, swirling in rich, sensual color with every movement. Barefoot and bare-legged, she moved with supple grace around the kitchen. But now, after the interview with Brian Hathaway, there was perhaps a forced brightness in her amber-flecked eyes as she tried to hide her distress from the perceptive Robert.

“Mrs. Grenalda says you’ll have to get someone else to do the windows,” Robert replied. “She says you never hired her to do the heavy work. I told her that if I was eighty-two and full of arthritis and could wash a few windows, she certainly—”

“You wash any windows in this house and you’ll find out what trouble is,” Leigh scolded. “If I ever catch you…”

“I can’t just sit all day.”

“I’ve never seen you sit all day. You wouldn’t know how to if you tried,” she retorted “But that doesn’t mean you have to take on heavy projects like windows.”

“Don’t start. It’s a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black,” he said acerbically.

“You’re getting sassier every year,” Leigh complained ruefully, and he chuckled.

Leigh thought fondly that she could not imagine her life without Robert. He’d been around since before she was born, a butler then, and uniformed in stiff black, which reflected the aura of status, wealth and influence that her mother had valued so highly. Robert had no family, but Leigh’s father had provided him with both a pension and the promise of a home for life. He lived in a two-room apartment off the kitchen, which suited his independent nature very well.

Leigh’s father had died when she was ten, and her mother and stepfather had been killed in an accident when she was just nineteen. Without any other close relatives, Leigh considered Robert as a sort of adopted grandfather, a role he assumed with gusto—scolding, disapproving, fussing over her until she came very close to exasperation. But then he would turn around and complain that she treated him exactly the same way.

“You’ve got a doctor’s appointment at two tomorrow,” Leigh reminded him suddenly. “I’ll have lunch at work, but I’ll be home to pick you up by one-thirty.”

His deeply lined face wrinkled still further. “You made the appointment, you keep it,” he grumbled.

“Robert,” she started to scold.

“I already know there’s nothing to be done, Leigh. Hearts don’t last forever, you know, and you needn’t look so stricken. I haven’t any intention of dying until I see you settled.”

“Then I shall never settle,” Leigh answered lightly, but her heart felt leaden whenever she thought of something happening to Robert. The doctor had already said that his heart was weak, but that there was no such thing as valid forecasting for a man of Robert’s age. The doctor had told her this, he said, because she struck him as the sort of woman who could face facts.

And she was. Her training and education had been her chief legacy from her mother. Andrea Sexton had wanted to raise a daughter who was perfect by her own standards—clever, capable, independent and invulnerable. She had never dried a tear, nor allowed an ounce of sentimentality in Leigh.

Leigh had been grateful for that upbringing. When she was just seventeen she’d thought her world was over, had even wanted it to be, but that independence had given her strength. At twenty-five, she was managing the not inconsiderable fortune she had inherited, had already directed her own education through the licensing as a CPA, and had been living a very private, secluded, but happy life…until the longing for a child had grown into more than a nighttime dream—had become an obsession that haunted her waking hours as well. It had intensified after the doctor had warned her of Robert’s precarious hold on life. The thought of living alone in this large house year after year, with no one to care for and no one to care for her, seemed a bleak, sterile existence to Leigh.

“I thought you were invited out tonight,” Robert said, interrupting her thoughts.

She rose from the dinner table. “Want some ice cream?” she asked as she set the dishes on the counter.

“I thought that gal Marjorie from work asked you to a party tonight,” Robert repeated obstinately.

Leigh shook her head at him. “I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to do my own accounting lately.”

“Then come home early,” he suggested dryly. “What are you going to wear?”

“Pajamas and a robe,” she retorted.

“Fine,” he said amiably. “I’m sure you’ll be a hit.”

She chuckled with him. “Why,” she complained, “are you always trying to get rid of me? What’s wrong with spending an evening at home? I’m out all the time.”

“You’re at work all the time. Or shopping, or going to a class. But when an invitation to a party comes along,” he continued, “suddenly you’re too tired. You don’t look tired. It’s not that long since you were a teenager, you know, with all those boys hanging around. I know. My windows were off the kitchen. I used to count the minutes from the time your date parked the car in the driveway until you came in.”

Leigh leaned forward, cupping her chin in the palms of her hands. “You didn’t
spy!
” she said wickedly.

“I did.”

“Pretty wild at sixteen, was I? It seems to me that was the year I discovered for absolute certain that babies don’t come out of belly buttons. Not that I discovered that in the backseat of a car.”

Robert’s teasing expression faded slowly, and just as slowly he shook his head at her. “Damn it, Leigh, who do you think you’re fooling?” he asked sadly. “I may not know the whole story, but it’s time you were over it. I think you know that, too.”

Instantly, there was a lump in her throat, a terrible sense of guilt. A man of eighty-two with a weak heart didn’t need any additional worries, and she knew Robert was worried about her. She had tried to forget the past; four years ago, as a senior at college, she had even thought herself in love and had tried—and failed miserably—to purge the nightmare of David Hines once and for all. She couldn’t go through that again, couldn’t date and go to parties where she would meet eligible men, not even to please Robert. “You just want to be godfather to a whole host of children,” she accused him lightly, desperately trying to get the smile on his face again. “The only thing really holding me back is the thought of twins. Dad was a twin, you know, and I think his granddad—”

“Yes. It’s easy to get you on the subject of children. I had in mind that you should forget nurseries for a bit and concentrate on first things first—like the man,” Robert replied dryly.

“I’d marry you, sweetheart, if you’d ask me.” She blinked her eyelashes at him provocatively.

“Go on with you!” he chortled, but Leigh could see he was diverted. She reached over and hugged him with all the warmth of an affectionate nature that had no other outlet: just Robert, and the dream of a child. Love swelled in her so overwhelmingly that she felt tears in her eyes. In spite of Andrea’s training, Leigh was more her father’s daughter than her mother’s. She needed to love, craved the freedom to give from her soul. She wanted a child, almost more than her life.

She had tried once to love a man, but never again. She had so hoped that Peter would be the answer to her prayers for a cure. Peter—blond, serious, gentle Peter. He’d started pursuing her when they were both sophomores at the University of Chicago, and two years later she’d finally agreed to have a dinner with him. She’d had a wonderful time that night, the first of many. He was husband material, father material, so gentle and affectionate; and yet he never pushed her sexually.

She knew he loved her and wanted to make love with her. He was so good to her, and she felt such contentment just being with him—real affection, shared interests. After a time, she knew it wasn’t fair to keep insisting on a purely platonic relationship. He’d rarely stirred any real fears, partly because he never pushed her and partly because she felt no passion for him. Passion wasn’t what she wanted in a relationship, and Peter in so many ways
was.

Yet the night she agreed to sleep with him turned into another nightmare. Perhaps it was partly his inexperience, partly her own lack of sexual attraction toward him. Or maybe it was true what he had said afterward: that she was frigid. All she knew was that she found his wet kisses and clumsy groping all too reminiscent of the night her stepfather, David Hines, had tried to violate her. And yet she endured it all in rigid silence, reminding herself that this was not David but Peter—good, dear Peter who loved her and whom she thought she loved enough to go to bed with. She had tried to distract herself from what he was doing, but at his entry into her unwilling body, she had screamed out in pain and dug her nails into his back. Peter had thought it was the frenzy of passion, until afterward when she lay on the bed in his apartment sobbing and pleading with him not to touch her again, just to leave her alone.

She had seen the hurt in his eyes, and then the hardness as he ground out the words, “You might have told me you were frigid!”

She hadn’t been able to explain. Wanting only to escape from him, she had quickly dressed and fled back to the security of the home she shared with Robert. Fortunately, Robert had been asleep and hadn’t seen her disheveled state or her tears. By morning, she had been composed again, and a few weeks later, when he asked about that “nice fellow you were seeing,” she was able to convince him of her indifference, dismissing the break-up as “just one of those things.”

She closed her eyes, refusing to remember anymore. She’d hurt Peter, and badly, that was all. A man who’d meant her no harm, a good friend forever lost. Never again, Leigh had told herself. Yet the need to love was there, an ever-present ache. And so she had conceived the dream of a child.

***

August passed into September, bringing a measure of coolness. Autumn had always been Leigh’s favorite season; she loved the fresh crisp days, the color of the leaves just beginning to change, the early evenings that invited a fire in the hearth. She welcomed the brisk spurts of energy that lay dormant in the lazy summer months, and announced to Robert that the second week in September was perfect for fall cleaning. Robert grumbled that Leigh was washing the paint off the walls, that he couldn’t find anything in the cupboards, that he couldn’t walk into a room without stumbling because the furniture was rearranged everywhere.

“Why can’t you hire someone to do all this? It’s too much for you after working all day,” he argued. Which it was, but Robert had no way of understanding that rigorous physical work was the only thing that could take her mind off the baby that was never to be. There had been no phone call from Brian Hathaway; she had given up hope of ever receiving one. Only total exhaustion could sweep the disappointment from her mind.

But by Wednesday, she had accomplished better than a week’s worth of cleaning, from the ceilings to the silver. If Robert was mentally weary of household upsets, Leigh had been driving herself to the point of collapse. They had eaten a light dinner after she had tackled the draperies, and that was after she’d worked a nine-hour day at White’s. By the time Robert had retired to his apartment, she could barely limp upstairs for a very long soak in a scented tub. Afterward, she donned a simple white robe and padded downstairs in her bare feet, intent on doing nothing more than relaxing on the couch in the library with a good book.

It was a perfect occupation for someone who could barely move a muscle, but by the time she’d wedged some pillows behind her head and curled into a completely comfortable position, a little catnap seemed an even better idea. She had a fire going in the grate, and the only other light in the room was her reading lamp; the night was so quiet and the flickering shadows so mesmerizing…

The doorbell shattered the stillness some fifteen minutes later. Leigh’s eyes fluttered open willingly enough, but the bell rang a second time before she could rouse herself from a feeling of sleepy disorientation. She’d just put one bare foot on the carpet when she heard Robert’s “It’s all right, Leigh, I’ve got it. I was in the kitchen anyway. Though who the devil…”

“I’m in the library, Robert.” She yawned, stretching lazily, shaking herself out of that somnolent, lazy feeling. She was expecting no one, but it wasn’t unusual for Robert to invite a crony over for an evening of cribbage—and then forget having extended the invitation. She reached for the book that had fallen to the floor and was thumbing through the pages to find her place when Robert appeared in the doorway.

“Leigh,” he said brightly, “the caller is for you. A Mr. Hathaway. He says you know him.”

Her hands stilled on the novel in her lap. Robert was gloating like a two-year-old who’d been given a giant lollipop. Behind him, in the shadows, a pair of glittering black eyes stared intently at her through the softly lit room. Wearing a dark charcoal suit, with his bronzed complexion and dark hair, Brian Hathaway again reminded her of an Indian, proud and erect and silent, no expression visible on the broad planes of his face.

For a moment she couldn’t seem to move. Her heart was racing out of control; he brought it with him, the primitive, sheerly sexual apprehension she’d been unable to control in his presence before. But almost immediately another emotion overwhelmed her, a sheer burst of joy. The child could be the only reason he was here. With a little indrawn breath, Leigh put her bare feet on the floor and stood up, hurriedly brushing back her sleep-tousled hair as she did so. Barefoot, she approached him with a poise that insisted she was just as impeccably dressed as he was. Deliberately, she forced her hand ahead of her. “Mr. Hathaway,” she said formally.