In the Arms of a Stranger (13 page)

But Jake didn’t stop, he couldn’t.
  Draping her legs over his shoulders to allow him even greater access, he pummeled her body relentlessly.  She was hot and slick, and he took it as proof she was enjoying it in spite of the protests that had now dwindled to little more than whimpers.

He loved her and hated her at same time
; the two emotions swinging back and forth like a pendulum.  She was the one, the
one…
he knew it in his heart.  Without Bri he would never be whole, never again feel the indescribable joy that filled him when he woke to find her curled up beside him.  With Bri, he’d found happiness in the simplest of things; holding hands, taking a walk, sitting together on the sofa watching old movies. 

And yet he couldn’t rid himself of this deep seeded resentment because she’d given herself to Chad when he knew she didn’t love
him.  Maybe it was unreasonable.  Chad was her fiancé, after all, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t fought him off before.  Then again, he’d seen the bruises Chad left on her so maybe she was too afraid to say no or…or maybe, she had been taken against her will.  Was that what had happened? 

Jake looked down at her, his stomach clenching at the sight of her pale skin.
  His movements slowed then stopped altogether as it finally sank in just how still and quiet Bri had become.  Her palms were pressed against his chest as if she’d been trying to ward him off, but he’d been so lost in his own world of self-pitying anger that he hadn’t even noticed. 

There were other things he hadn’t notice too; like the
fact that her lips were trembling and her eyes were squeezed shut…and the trickle of tears that had glided past Bri’s temples to pool in her hair.  She looked so small and helpless. 
God, what had he done?

Bracing himself on his elbows, Jake tenderly kissed her lips then moved on to her cheeks, her eyelids, the tip of her nose, then worked his way back to her mouth.
  He didn’t know what to say or do to let her know how sorry he was, so he simply showed her the only way he could.  He kissed away her tears, then eased himself out of her and gathered Bri in his arms and just held her. 

She didn’t try to move away from him, but neither did she mold herself to his side as she usually did.
  It hurt like hell, but it couldn’t possibly compare to the way he’d hurt her.  Only after Bri finally drifted off to sleep did the tension leave her body, but Jake didn’t loosen the tight hold he had on her, partly because it helped ease his own pain but also because he was terrified she would slip away from him if he did.

Brianne woke in the night, instantly aware of the tenderness in her muscles and an urgent need to use the bathroom.  She was also aware of the death grip Jake had on her and wondered if there was any chance at all she could sneak out of bed without waking him.  Keeping her movements slow and steady, she managed to shift one arm off and was able to inch her way from beneath the other but barely made it to the edge of the bed when Jake’s hand clamped around her wrist.

“Don’t go,” he pleaded hoarsely.
  “Please, Bri, don’t leave me.  I know I hurt you, and you have every right to despise me for what I did…”

“Jake, it’s okay.
  I was just going to use the bathroom.”

“Really?”

“Really.  I’ll be right back, I promise.” 

He was slow to loosen his hold on her and
must have thought she would bolt and run as soon as he did.  Which was why Bri purposely kept her steps measured as she made her way in the dim light to the bathroom.  After relieving herself, she washed her hands and splashed water on her face then toweled off and came back into the room. 

They’d fallen asleep with the hall light on and though the door was only open a crack she could see Jake sitting on the edge of the bed.
  Was he really so afraid she was going to run out on him that he felt he needed to be ready to stop her?  As she approached the bed, Jake reached out and took her hand. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she assured him.  In truth, she was still feeling the sting of his harsh treatment, and it wasn’t just the physical punishment he’d meted out.

“Are…are you coming back to bed?”

“Jake, it’s four in the morning.  I’m an early riser, but not that early.”

She was teasing him,
which took Jake by surprise.  Surely that was a good sign, wasn’t it?  When he’d felt her trying to creep out of bed, he’d been scared as hell Bri despised him for the way he’d treated her.  But she hadn’t left him, as he expected.  And she didn’t hesitate to climb back into bed or tense up when he gathered her in his arms.  The binding around his heart loosened a little more when Bri nestled her cheek against his shoulder as she always did right before she fell asleep.  He closed his eyes, thankful that he’d somehow dodged the bullet when Bri’s next words drove a stake of fear clean through his heart.

“I love you, Jake.
  But as you once told me, if you don’t tell me what the problem it, I can’t fix it.  Unless…you don’t want to fix what’s wrong between us.”

“I do, you know I do
.  Why else would I hold you to the bet?  I’m just not sure I want to talk about it until I’ve had time to sort out my feelings.” 

“You were punishing me.”
 

It wasn’t an accusation but
a statement of fact.  Still, he owed it to her to acknowledge the truth.  “In a way, I guess.”

“For what, Jake?
  I’ve wracked my brain for the last two weeks and can’t think of a thing that would warrant cutting me off the way you did.  I understand why you didn’t want to chance having your name dragged through the mud along with mine, but…”

“I told you I didn’t care about that
,” Jake interrupted.

“Then what is it?”

He didn’t want to ask, but if they had any shot at all of making it, he needed to know why she’d slept with Chad.

“The weekend that Chad was here,” he said slowly, “did he…force himself on you?”

Bri thought of Chad slipping into her bed in the middle of the night and his refusal to leave her room, but she couldn’t honestly say he tried to force her to do anything.  And if that’s what Jake believed, why had he been mad at her and not furious with Chad instead? 

Unless he found it abhorrent to even look at her when he thought of another man touching her, regardless of whether she’d been a willing participant or not.
  That disturbed Bri a great deal.  Was Jake really so possessive that he would turn from her even though he believed Chad tried to force himself on her?  She wasn't sure what to think, but she couldn't say Chad had done anything to her that night except irritate her.   

“No,” she finally said, “he didn’t force me to do anything.”
 

Jake’s breath locked in his throat.  Suspecting it was one thing, but hearing Bri confirm that she’d given herself to Chad willingly was a heavy blow he was having a great deal of difficulty assimilating.  How could she do that without feeling at least some semblance of shame or remorse?  Was it possible that
once he’d awakened Bri’s sexual desire, she was hungry for more and didn’t care who her partner was as long he satisfied her craving?  She was a passionate woman; Jake had firsthand knowledge of that.  Maybe she’d acted on impulse because she couldn’t control it…or was it that she didn’t
want
to control it? 

Something
deep inside him died a little.  “Explain it to me,” he finally said, “because I really don’t understand any of it.”

“Don’t understand what?
  Jake, you’re not making any sense.”

“Why he was in your room with no
clothes on?”

“Oh
, God,” she gasped.  “I’m so sorry, Jake.  I didn’t realize…you must have seen him leaving my room.  I didn’t know he’d left his clothes in his own room or I would have…”

“Would have what?”
 he bit out harshly.  “Made sure you fetched them before you went downstairs so I wouldn’t run into him wearing nothing but a towel?  Wouldn’t it have been easier to unlock the connecting door so he could slip back into his own room unnoticed?  Or was that the game you were playing, Bri?  Did you mean for me to see him?  Were you hoping I would be so blinded by jealousy that I would beg you to run off with me and get married?”

Bri rose up one elbow, anger beginning to seethe beneath the layer of pain that had formed.
  “What a horrible thing to say!  Is that really how you see me?  You think I would actually
plan
something like that?”

Jake
had
been jealous, and knowing that only made his temper soar even higher.  “Well, didn’t you?”

“Of course not!”

“So it was just a stroke of bad luck that we happened to come out of the bedrooms at the same time.”

“Yes…I mean, no.
  Oh hell, Jake, I don’t know what I mean.  You have my mind so messed up I can’t even think straight.”

Jake
sat up and rubbed his face tiredly.  “I think your mind was messed up long before now.  Why did you do it, Bri?  Why did you have to go and sleep with him?”

“Sleep with…” Bri choked on the words.
 

Considering he’d seen Chad coming out or her room that morning, i
t wasn’t difficult to see why Jake thought she’d slept with Chad, but did he really have so little faith in her?  And why couldn’t he have just asked her what happened and given her a chance to explain?  An even more disturbing question was why Jake had called in the bet with the obvious intention of taking her to bed if he honestly believed she’d betrayed his trust and had sex with Chad. 

No, she knew the answer to that.
  The not too distant memory of how fierce and aggressive he’d been when they were making love couldn’t have made it any more transparent.  She hadn’t imaged the look of disgust he’d given her that morning; Jake had been hell-bent on extracting his revenge once he’d gotten her back into his bed.  With as much dignity as she could muster, Bri rose from the bed and slipped on her robe then turned to face him. 

“Congratulations, Jake, you got exactly what you wanted.”

“Really, and what would that be?”

“
To get even with me.  You should be proud of yourself for doing such a thorough job because I actually believed you loved me and that everything was going to work out.  But it wasn’t about love at all, was it Jake?  It was about hurting and humiliating me, and paying me back for what you thought I’d done.”

“For what I
thought
you’d done?  Are you telling me Chad didn’t spend the night in your bedroom?” 

Bri squared her shoulders, determined not to break.
  “He did sleep in my room, but I…”

“
Spare me,” Jake said in disgust.  “Am I supposed to believe you slept together but nothing happened?”

She threw up her hands in defeat.
  “What’s the use of trying to explain anything when you’ve obviously made up your mind I’m some sort of nymphomaniac.  Just let me give you a word of advice and then I’ll be out of your life forever.  Sometimes things aren’t always what they appear to be and you might want to consider getting all your facts straight before jumping to conclusions.”

Bri
rushed out of the room and managed to get across the hall and close the door before raw emotion overwhelmed her and she burst into tears.  She could no longer pretend they would somehow overcome the misunderstandings and distrust to ride blissfully off into the sunset.  No matter how much her heart rebelled against cutting Jake out of her life, there was nothing she could do to salvage their relationship. 

Exhausted and grief-stricken over the events of the last few hours, she wasn’t surprised when she started feeling sick to her stomach
.  Stumbling to the bathroom, she spent the next twenty minutes leaning over the toilet bowl while her body was wracked with dry heaves and eventually threw up.   When the nausea finally subsided, Bri sank down onto the cool tiles beside the tub and pulled her knees up to her chest.  This was starting to become a habit, she thought dismally.  It seemed her body had an aversion to the early morning hours anymore because this was third or fourth time in the last week she’d tossed her cookies.

"No...oh, no,"
 a small pitiful moan escaped her lips. 

She couldn’t be…not now, not after she’d just burned all her bridges with Jake.
  But all the signs were there, she had just been too preoccupied to take notice.  Bri had chalked up the queasy stomachs and listlessness to stress, too easily dismissing her sessions over the toilet bowl as a result of the turmoil in her life. 

Bri stretched her legs out and pressed a shaky hand to her abdomen.
  Was it possible?  Could Jake’s child be growing inside of her?  Or was she simply reaching for something, anything, that would keep them bound together?  There was only one way to find.

It was barely five-thirty but she got dressed anyway.
  Surely there was an all night pharmacy close by or even a convenience store that carried early pregnancy tests.  Bri squashed the fear that was quickly rising inside of her.  There was no sense getting worked up until she knew for sure.  It was still possible stress had brought on these physical symptoms, or maybe even the stomach flu, but deep in her heart she didn’t really believe it. 

It didn’t take long to find a convenience store
.  It was a little embarrassing because they were kept behind the counter, but the clerk was obviously used to the quirky behavior with this type of purchase and completed the transaction with a plastic smile.  Bri was shaking like a leaf as she climbed back into the car and the trembling got worse as she drew closer to the mansion. 

Would Jake notice that she’d left or question where she
had been?  She wouldn’t tell him if he did, she thought resolutely.  Even if she was pregnant, it didn’t change anything between them.  It wouldn’t make him love her.

The rich aroma of coffee enticed her the moment she stepped inside the mansion, but she wasn’t about to invite another confrontation with Jake.
  With the little brown bag tucked up under her arm, she hurried upstairs to the safety of her bedroom.  Forcing herself to remain calm, she went into the bathroom and closed the door then emptied the contents of the bag onto the counter.  After reading the instructions three times just to make sure she didn’t mess it up, Bri finally pried open the top of the box and pulled out the testing strip.

“You don’t fool me,” she hissed at the plastic tube, “I know you’re not as harmless as you pretend to be.”

Five minutes later, Bri once again found herself sitting on the bathroom floor, only this time she had the results of the test in her hand.  One blue strip meant she wasn’t pregnant, two blue strips meant she was going to be a mother.  She stared at the twin lines with a strange sense of serenity and realized she wasn’t unhappy about it at all.  Maybe she couldn’t have Jake, but at least with this child she would always have a part of him.  The love he’d so carelessly thrown away would be showered on her baby and maybe the void in her own heart wouldn’t be quite so big.

Having made up her mind not to tell Jake, Brianne rose to her feet and placed the test strip in the box and stuffed it back inside the paper sack.
  She tossed the sack into the trash can then went into the bedroom to pack.  When that was finished, she called the airlines and arranged for a flight back to California.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee was still strong as she lugged her suitcases to the front door, and she wondered if Jake was in the kitchen.
  If he was, he either didn’t hear the racket she was making or didn’t care enough to come and investigate or try to stop her from leaving.  As Bri set her luggage on the porch and shut the door behind her, it felt as if another door was being closed, one that would never be opened again.