Enchanted Heart (28 page)

Viv was pregnant with his baby?

When the true realization of her last words hit him, Lance stumbled backward, stunned by the revulsion he'd seen on her face and heard in her voice. Then with a rush like a tornado bearing on him, everything around him focused in sharp clarity. The sounds of a car horn, people laughing, the tread of tires on the street. And he saw Vivienne running down the street, awkward but steady in high heels, the yellow of the sheer duster she wore trailing behind her.

In a full-out run, he took off after her. “Vivienne!”

 

 

Jack Spencer leaned against the doorjamb, smiling at Sonja. “I thought you could use some company about now.” From behind his back he pulled a flower, a single dahlia. “You know, a variation of these grow along the banks of an unnamed river in Belize.”

“I wish you'd leave.”

“No, you don't.” He pushed past her and into the house. “You look like hell.”

“Aren't you the gentleman.”

Sonja shut the door behind him. “Cole isn't here.”

“I know.” Jack glanced at his watch. “He should be on the way to New York right now.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I told you. I thought you could use some company.”

“I'm not sleeping with you.”

His gaze raked over her, lingering at her breasts then her hips. “Though I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about just that, I'm not here to have sex with you.” He stroked his temple. “Tempting though that may be.”

Sonja folded her arms across her chest. She hadn't moved from the door. “Then why are you here?”

He held out his hand to her. “You have no reason to fear me, Sonja. I need to tell you a story.”

Something in his tone convinced her he didn't mean to do her any harm or ravish her. That part, she had to admit, at one time had been a pleasant enough thought. But not now.

“Jack, I'm in no mood to play games.”

His eyes softened. He took the steps that put him right in front of her. “I know, Sonja.”

She looked at him and tried to stop the telltale tremble at her mouth. He said the words so quietly, so earnestly, that she knew Jack, too, was sorry that his friend's marriage had come undone.

All the mourning that she'd held bottled inside for fear that it might overwhelm her in its intensity, all the pain of failing at this most sacred of contracts that mattered more than any she'd ever done in her professional life, all of her hopes and dreams and goals for the two of them, all of it merged into a maelstrom of despair and emptiness. When the floodgates opened, Jack was there to soothe her. His arms wrapped around her as she wept. Her tears, long bottled up, seemed a never-ending rain of misery and desolation.

Enveloping her in his arms, he let her cry.

After a while, Sonja pushed away from him, embarrassed at her display, but grateful he hadn't murmured hollow words of placation in an awkward attempt to ease her or stem the flow of her tears. He'd simply let her cry.

She dashed at her eyes. “I'm sorry.”

He shrugged. “It's a catharsis.”

Sonja looked up at him, struck by the fact that unlike many men, Jack Spencer didn't get freaked out by a woman's tears.

“It'll take a strong woman to bring you down, Jack.”

His gaze assessed her. Frankly. “You're a strong woman.”

“But I'm married to your best friend.”

“There is that.”

“And you're not my type.”

He shrugged in a win-some, lose-some motion.

“Come on in,” she said, then realized the pointless invitation. “I was in the study packing.”

“Already.”

Sonja led the way toward the great room. “Cole is gone for three weeks. There's no need for me to linger here.” She settled in the corner of a sofa and pulled a throw pillow into her lap.

Jack looked around the room as if he'd never been there before. “You'll miss this house.”

She nodded. “I will. But you didn't come here to talk about that.”

He smiled, but the gesture didn't reach his eyes. Sonja wondered if he ever truly smiled. She also wondered if this hard man had ever been in love. Jack didn't seem the type. No woman could tie him down, at least no woman that Sonja could envision. She'd have to be a warrior, just like him.

“No,” Jack conceded. “I didn't come to talk about your real estate. As a matter of fact, I have a flight leaving in a couple of hours.”

The mention of flight sent Sonja's thoughts winging back to Cole. She blinked several times, fighting back the tears. “I have a lot of work to do tonight. So if you don't mind . . .”

“You guys have been married for a year. But I've known Cole for more than twenty years,” Jack said. “He puts on a good show. He's a real kick-ass-and-take-names kind of guy. But you know what?”

Sonja sniffled. “What?”

“Inside”—he thumped his heart with a closed fist—“inside, he's just as scared and confused as the rest of us.”

Snorting, Sonja settled back in the sofa, a leg propped under her. “Cole's not afraid of anything.”

“Then why do you think he ran away to Brazil?”

She was quiet for a while. “I told him the same thing. And he blew up in my face.”

“Uh-huh.” Jack slapped his thighs and got up. “Something to drink?”

“I'll get it.”

“You sit still. I know where it is.”

He went to the bar and poured two fingers of Jim Beam in tumblers. “Ice?”

From the sofa she shook her head.

“You know why he blew up on you?”

“It went along the general idea that I didn't respect his work.”

Jack nodded as he handed her her drink. “Yeah. That sounds like Cole in full denial.”

“Denial about what? He's gotten everything he's ever wanted—with the exception of the stores. I admit, that was a blow to him, but hardly a fatal one. You may have known him for twenty years, but we went through hell together from the moment we met.”

Sonja filled him in on how the Heart family had unjustly accused her mother, and later Sonja of theft and malfeasance, and how all her life, Sonja's single and all-encompassing goal had been to get revenge on the Hearts and bring them down. Every last one of them. She did it all right, in the sweetest way—a way even she hadn't anticipated: She'd fallen in love with Cole. She'd let her foolish heart rule her wise head, and look what it got her.

The Hearts would get the last jab in, because here she was just as she'd begun. Alone.

“You made him complete, Sonja.”

“You didn't even know he'd gotten married.”

“But I know how marriage—how you—changed him. Cole and I started out on a pretty even keel. But Cole always played by the rules. He'd push things to the limit, but he never colored outside the lines.”

“And you were the maverick?”

He smiled, and this time Sonja knew it was a genuine one. He seemed faintly amused and Sonja could only wonder what thoughts went through his mind. Jack Spencer was an enigma. A tall, sexy one, but a puzzle nonetheless.

“Yeah,” he said. “Something like that. I tried it for a while. Thought I would lose my mind, or kill somebody.”

Sonja sipped from her drink, letting the alcohol and his voice warm her. “So instead of a corporate raider or CEO, you became an international man of mystery.” He gave her a blank look, and Sonja shook her head. “You know, from the
Austin Powers
movie.”

“Never mind,” she said. “You were saying?”

“I left. I walked out and never looked back. And so far, I haven't regretted the life I've lived.”

“But Cole regrets his life? Is that what you're trying to say?”

“Cole never got to choose, Sonja. He always did what was expected of him. Yeah, he enjoyed it. And yeah, he's good at it. But there's a whole big world out there and now, maybe, he sees this as his last chance to live a little.”

She put her glass down, the clink of the tumbler on the table loud in the otherwise quiet room. “Are you saying I've been a burden, that he shouldn't have married me?”

Jack knocked off the rest of his Jim Beam. “Not at all. I'm just saying that when Heart Federated was sold, for Cole, it was like a part of him was hacked out of his body. If you woke up tomorrow and didn't have your legs or your eyes or your fingers, how would you feel?”

Sonja folded her arms. “At the moment, I feel like I'm under attack.”

Jack sat on the sofa cushion next to hers. Sonja didn't move. “That's not my intent at all. What I'm trying to tell you is that what Cole is doing is living the life he would have had all those years ago if he hadn't picked up the Heart mantle and become Heart Federated.”

Sonja ran her hands through her hair, then propped her elbows on her knees. “He's having a freaking midlife crisis a few years too early.”

Jack nodded. “Something like that.”

“So this isn't about me?”

Jack shrugged. “It could be. You're in his life, so you're a part of it.”

Sonja closed her eyes, the tears she'd thought she'd had under control slipping out again. “I thought we'd be forever.”

Jack slid over and folded her in his arms. “Come on, Sonja. Don't cry again.”

She sniffled. He was doing it. Playing the role of the pla-cater. She wanted to hate it, but she wanted even more to know that someone found her attractive, intelligent, beguiling enough that he didn't need to run off to Brazil to get away from her. Her emotions were too on edge, too close to the surface.

She turned and came face-to-face with him. Jack's eyes never left hers. His breathing, shallow and steady, reminded Sonja of a heartbeat. His mouth, like the warm hardness of his body, was there for her. Sonja told herself it would be okay. She told herself she simply needed assurance from another living, breathing person. She told herself that she'd been doing nothing but fighting the attraction to Jack Spencer.

And she told herself that now was the time to do something about that mutual physical awareness. A moment later, her lips closed over his.

23

F
or a moment, an eternity, Jack let himself revel in the sweet ecstasy of Sonja's hot mouth. But he knew too well the recrimination that would come if he didn't put a halt to this right now, right now when he could still control his body, right now before things really got out of hand. Before she did something they'd truly regret.

“Sonja, no.”

“Yes,” she murmured against his lips.

“No.” This time, he said it with a measure of uncompromising conviction—though he felt anything but. Jack had never turned down a willing woman, though in truth in the desolate plains he'd traversed and in the rain forests of South America, he'd had scant opportunity to take advantage of any willing women.

He seized her arms and pulled them away from him, then wrenched himself free. Up and away from his best friend's wife.

Jack wanted to be a man of honor. Maybe in this one, small moment, he could be—for a change.

From safely behind the sofa where she sat, he watched the realization dawn on her, of what she'd done, what she'd tried to do. Jack wanted her and couldn't allow himself to take what she offered. Not while she was vulnerable, hurting, and not in control. He did the honorable thing and could live with that choice. At least all that would remain long after this moment was the embarrassment she might feel.

Sonja put her hands over her face and moaned. “God, please tell me I didn't just . . .”

“Let it go, Sonja. Nothing happened.”

“But I . . .”

“I said, let it go.”

The words, ground out and biting, shut her up.

He paced the length of the sofa and tables, his hands locked behind his back. “I told you I needed to tell you a story. It's one you need to hear. One day I was between jobs a few years ago and back in the States stocking up on supplies. Cole met me in New York and we went carousing in Times Square. This was long before Rudy Guiliani's big cleanup. We picked up some—” His words abruptly cut off, as he remembered just who he was talking to. “Well,” he said, picking up a piece of pre-Colombian pottery, probably Anazasi, from the looks of it. “Just say it was a long night of men behaving badly. When we finally got back to the hotel, we were both pretty plastered.”

“Cole doesn't get drunk.”

He looked at her and snorted. “Lady, Cole was beyond drunk. We finished off a bottle of premium Russian vodka I'd picked up in Tallinn, and then we talked.”

“Where's Tallinn?”

Jack smiled, remembering the time and the place. “In Estonia.”

Sonja nodded. “You do get around. I can see why Cole might envy your freedom.”

“Hmm,” was all Jack said about that. “Back to New York.”

“You and Cole were drinking. He does get talkative after he's had a drink or two. Maybe that's why he doesn't do it very often.”

“Yeah,” Jack said, placing the pottery back on the sofa table. “Maybe. But you know what he told me that night?”

“What?”

“That he envied me. Me. Who had no permanent home except a tent in the savannah or a tree hut in a mosquito-infested godforsaken jungle. No home. No family. No possessions. Nothing tangible to call my own. But Cole, he had everything I sometimes wished I'd never turned my back on. And he envied me.” Jack shook his head, still not believing the irony of it all.

“There were incredible demands put on him by his family, by his mother and his Heart legacy. He had to be a better man than his son-of-a-bitch father. He had to outperform and outgun and outrun so many negatives that he never had a fair chance.

“Cole ran away to Brazil, Sonja. But he wasn't running away from you or your marriage. He's a kid running away from home for the very first time.”

She leaned back, gave a weary sigh.
“That's
supposed to make me feel better?”

He stared at her for a moment, not saying anything at all, yet managing to convey a vague disappointment. “I thought you were sharper than that.”

She rubbed her temple. “Maybe I am under different circumstances. Tonight's not that night.”

Regarding her for a moment, he carefully weighed his words. The Cole he knew and the Cole Sonja knew were shades of a different man. Jack knew the Cole who longed for something more, the man who stood on the inside wondering what it might be like to be outside.

Sonja had married the powerful and confident executive who never made a wrong decision or missed a step. Jack wasn't at all surprised that her plan to bring him down ended up with her falling in love with him. For the right kind of woman, a strong woman, Cole would—and did—fall hard. But that didn't mean the other part of him had stopped longing for adventure.

What Jack knew, and what Cole would discover in Brazil was that adventure isn't all it's cracked up to be. But that lesson Cole would have to learn for himself.

“Cole never got to choose his path, Sonja. He went to Bahia because there he'll find history and culture and a sense of place.” He shrugged. “He'll also make a ton of money, but that's just a fringe benefit. The main thing is he's there, on his own terms. The only expectations or limitations are the one's he sets for himself.”

Sonja looked genuinely perplexed. “I'm still not following you. The man you're describing isn't my Cole.”

Jack noticed the circles under her eyes, the strain at her mouth. And he thought about what had almost happened between them. Both Sonja and Cole were vulnerable right now, and neither wore it well.

He expelled a long breath. “I've been to the places he'll go to. I've walked the path he's taking right now. In Brazil, Cole will choose, Sonja. It's up to you to decide just how many options he has.”

She looked at him but didn't say anything. After a moment Jack sighed then he let himself out of the house. Sonja remained on the sofa, her knees at her chin and her arms locked around her legs.

It would take her a long time to figure out just what he'd meant and a longer time to decide her course of action.

 

 

Lance caught up with Vivienne a moment before she wrenched open the door to Guilty Pleasures. He backed her against the facade.

“Let me go!”

He ignored her. “What did you say back there?”

Vivienne wrestled with him, then broke free and ran into the store, Lance hot on her heels.

“Call the police.”

Dakota and the salesclerk both looked up from what they were doing. The clerk headed toward the register, where the closest telephone was and reached for it.

“I wouldn't pick up that phone if I were you.” Lance's words, though calm, seemed deadly in the stillness of the store.

Dakota stepped into the fray. “Cassandra, put the phone down. Nothing's wrong here. Hi, Lance.” Her easy tone, as if nothing at all were amiss, convinced the clerk to step away, though she continued to look a bit uncertain.

“There are some phone orders that need to be filled,” Dakota told the clerk. “Why don't you go take care of those?”

The girl jerked as if she'd been pinched. “Oh, yes.” Her eyes never left her boss and the tall gorgeous man who stood just behind her. “You're Mr. Heart. It's so nice . . .”

“Cassandra.”

She looked at Dakota and then at Viv. “I'm leaving. Are you sure everything's all right?” The question was directed at Viv.

Vivienne managed a small, tight smile. “Everything's just fine, Cassie. I didn't mean to alarm you. I was just messing with Lance.”

“If you say so.”

With a final glance between Lance and Viv and a glare in Dakota's direction, she moved toward the back room. “You holler if you need some help, all right, Viv?”

Vivienne nodded. “I will. But nothing's wrong.”

With the floor cleared, Dakota turned toward the couple. “Vivienne, you need to stop being so melodramatic. This isn't a soap opera. And, may I remind you both, that this is a place of business, not the stage for your personal drama. Thank God we didn't have any customers in here.”

Lance rubbed his arm, but didn't comment. Muttered words from him and from Viv could have been “Sorry.”

Dakota didn't wait around to hear their explanations. She went to the office and returned with Viv's handbag and keys.

“No matter what you say, the two of you need to do some talking. Without the police,” she added. “And this is not the place for that conversation.” She handed the purse to Vivienne and the keys to Lance. “Why don't you go find someplace private to hash this out?”

“Give me my keys.”

Lance ignored Vivienne.

“I have work to do,” she said. “As Dakota noted, this
is
a place of business.
My
place of business.”

Dakota pushed Viv toward the door. “Uh-huh. Well, it's time you took a day off.” Lance followed. “I'll handle whatever needs to be done. And I'll close. You have more important business to see to.”

Lance looked at Dakota but questioned Viv. “She knows?”

Dakota nodded. “Yeah, I know because she's been sick as a dog for the last . . .”

“Dakota, please.”

The statuesque beauty clamped her lips, but nodded. “All right. But look, I think the two of you will make a great baby.”

“That, apparently, has already happened.”

Dakota patted Lance's back. “Yeah, well, now comes the hard part.”

Hard part, indeed.

Lance didn't know whether to hug Viv or strangle her. They got to her car, parked behind the building. Viv held out her hands for the keys, but Lance ignored her.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I want to go back to work. You can go to hell.”

“Get in the car.” He held the passenger door open for her. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then, on a half-sigh, Viv got into the vehicle.

Lance stuck the key in the ignition. “I'll rephrase. We're going to talk, Viv. We can do it here in this parking lot, or we can go someplace else.”

Viv sat there, her arms folded.

Lance heaved a sigh. “All right then.” He fired up the engine and tore out of the lot.

“Where are you going?”

He glanced at her. “I don't know. I just need to drive. And to think.”

“Well, that'll be a first.”

He didn't rise to her bait.

When he took the exit that would take them to Carolina, Vivienne squealed. “Where are you going? This is the road to Nags Head.”

“Be quiet, Viv.” With two hands on the steering wheel and his foot clamped down on the accelerator, Lance let the open road work its magic on his fractured nerves.

He was conscious of Viv at his side, ignoring him. But his concentration was on the white lines of the road and the soothing hum of the engine as it ate up the miles, miles stretching in front of him like his uncertain future and his complicated present.

Less than an hour later, they were in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Lance drove onto a beachfront lot and cut the engine. Silent, they stared at the water.

After a time, he said, “Are you really pregnant?”

“Yes.”

He turned in his seat so he faced her, his gaze on her flat stomach. “I don't know what to say.”

“There's nothing for you to say. It's my body, Lance.”

“But our child.”

Vivienne closed her eyes. “There is no us, Lance. I keep trying to tell you that.”

“There is an us. I care for you, Vivienne.”

“Pardon me if I'm not believing you.”

“Why don't you believe me?”

She looked out the window at the sand, the dunes, the saw grass, the water, but her true gaze was turned inward, toward the place where her fears lodged.

“I don't want a baby, Lance. I don't want to be pregnant. I don't want to raise a child alone. I don't even want to give birth to a child.”

“Why?”

This was the part she couldn't articulate. The part about having someone depending on you. The part about being fat and bloated with splotchy skin and swollen ankles. And mostly the part about being in a hospital, giving birth to a deformed baby, a child who would grow up ugly and ostracized.

The pain of it cut through her like the edges of a serrated knife, each puncture a wound that would never heal. Viv hugged herself and leaned forward, rocking.

“Vivienne? Viv, honey, are you all right?”

She felt his hands at her forehead, along her back, but all Viv could do was moan. If she had this baby, and something went wrong, the child would be like Vicki. And she couldn't bear the thought of that ever happening.

Vivienne's wail of pain scared Lance.

“Shit, Viv. Is it the baby? Talk to me.”

He looked around, nothing but sand and beachfront houses were to be seen. “Dammit, I don't know where there's a hospital. Vivienne? Talk to me, honey. Tell me where you hurt.”

She turned her face to the window, but not before Lance saw the tears streaming down. He didn't know what to do.

When she realized Lance was hell-bent on getting her to a doctor, Viv tried to tamp down some of the panic that clawed at her like phantom fingers in a horror movie. Lance had turned the car around and was spinning in sand when she reached for his arm.

“I'm fine, Lance. Really. Just please. Take me home.”

Instead of getting on the artery that would take them back to Virginia, Lance turned off on a side road. “Cole has a house down here somewhere. If I can remember where it is, we can go there and talk. It's not used as a rental.”