A frown furrowed Bridget’s brow. “What did you do to her, Erik? It was her father who killed Cassie. Why would you be asking her forgiveness?”
He averted his eyes and walked from the crowd, out the door, into the dark July night, around to the back of the building. He leaned against the wall. The smell of recently fallen rain on the lush grass beneath his feet was pleasant in the air.
It was a night, just like this one, hot and humid, with fever racing through his veins that he’d kissed Michelle for the first time. His lips still tingled from the memory of that first intimate touch, and all the sweet moments of loving that followed. She had yielded, so softly and deliciously in his arms. He wasn’t aware that Bridget had followed him until she spoke.
“What did you do to her, Erik?”
His eyes burned with pain. His heart numbed with shame. He was grateful for the blanket of blackness. “I punished her. The night I found out that it was her father who’d killed Cassie, I went home, raging with a taste for revenge. Michelle was there. She was the perfect target. I wanted somebody to hurt as much as I was hurting. So I allowed my pain to blind me, and I unleashed it on the one person available, the one person I...”
“Love.” Bridget quietly finished when he hung his head in silence. Michelle was right. He did love her. He had been grieving for her all this time. This was a suffering far worse than death. At least he knew he could never have Cassie back. But Michelle? As long as Michelle was alive, he would never be over her.
Bridget finally understood what Michelle tried to tell her that day at the mall. As much as she wanted Erik, she could not settle to be second best to any woman. She deserved much more. What woman wanted to be with a man who could leave her some day? And she knew that
someday
would come when Erik discovered that Michelle had given birth to his child.
“Erik, Michelle is pregnant,” she said before she gave herself time to renege from doing the right thing. “She may have already given birth—I don’t know. I think that’s what that woman wanted to tell you.”
His head came up in slow motion, an acute pain in his chest. “What did you just say, Bridget?”
“I saw Michelle about five months ago. She was pregnant, Erik.”
He gripped her by the shoulders, a tormented, haggard expression in his eyes. “And you never told me?”
“She forbade me to tell you. She had her reasons. I was jealous of what the two of you shared and I said some nasty things to her,” Bridget added in a regretful tone.
“Like what?” He shook her. “What did you say to her?”
“I called her a ghetto rat, and told her she couldn’t offer the child anything. That she should let you and me raise it.” Bridget sighed with shame over her behavior. “She called the house the following night, but when she heard my voice, she hung up.”
“How do you know it was her?”
“Her girlfriend, um... Yasmine’s number showed up on Caller I.D.”
“God!” Erik clutched at his face as though he were in excruciating pain. It must have happened on that horrible night. Michelle...
His
child... He’d turned his back on them. God, how Bridget’s nasty words must have driven the cruel nails deeper into her coffin of despair.
He pushed away from the side of the building. “I have to find her.” He sprinted across the parking lot toward his Mercedes.
“How am I to get home, Erik?” Bridget asked in a panic.
“Whistle for a cab, Bridget.”
“I’ll give you a ride, Doll,” Erik heard a man’s voice say behind him. He didn’t care who it was. He didn’t look back. His future was ahead of him.
***
Within minutes, Erik was banging on Yasmine’s door. He pushed past her when she opened it.
“Michelle! Michelle!” He raced through the apartment, flinging doors open and searching inside the rooms.
“Where is she?” He finally came back to the living room where Yasmine waited patiently with folded arms at the open door, right where he’d left her.
“If you’d asked me that before you barged in here like Shaka Zulu on the war path, I could have saved you the trouble.”
“I don’t have time for your smart mouth, Yasmine. Where’s Michelle?”
“She isn’t here,” Yasmine said with a stiff face, jutting her chin at him.
“I can see that. Look, I know she’s pregnant. That’s my child she’s carrying.”
Yasmine raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really now? And how do you know that, Dr.?”
“Are you going to tell me, or must I choke it out of you? And I will, Yasmine. Where… is… Michelle?” He spaced the last three words out evenly through clenched teeth as he leaned in toward her, a menacing look etched on his face.
Yasmine backed away, her hands raised to ward him off. “Calm down, Erik. There’s no need to resort to violence.” She rattled off Michelle’s address and gave him quick directions.
The minute the door closed, Yasmine jumped on the phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Michelle jumped at the chime of the doorbell. “He’s here,” she said to Yasmine.
“That was fast,” Yasmine said. “You can just ignore him, you know.”
“You don’t know Erik.”
“Michelle, open the door!” Erik’s voice bellowed from outside.
“I heard that,” Yasmine said. “You want me to stay on the line, just in case?”
“No. I’m fine. I’ll call you later. Bye.” Michelle hung up the phone and stared at the door.
“Michelle, I know you’re home.”
Michelle bit into her bottom lip as it throbbed like her pulse. She didn’t know if he’d come for his child or for her. All Yasmine had told her was that he knew she was pregnant, and that he was furious. Ice spread through her belly. “Go away, Erik.”
“Not until we talk.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“If you don’t open this door, I will break it down. I swear.”
Michelle wobbled across the room and yanked the door open. Her black eyes met his grey, gold-flecked ones with a blaze of fury. “What do you want?”
Erik’s eyes bulged when he saw her big fat stomach. “Oh, my God,” he whispered as he stumbled into the condo and closed the door behind him. “You’re on the brink of giving birth.”
Michelle forced herself to hold his stare. It pained her to look at him, knowing he was now with someone else. He was dressed in a grey linen summer suit, pink shirt and striped pink and grey tie. He stood tall and proud—broad shoulders, straight back, with skin like suede, eyes like a tiger, and soft sexy lips she longed to kiss again.
“I see Dr. Ashley couldn’t keep her big mouth shut,” she said tersely as she watched him take a swift assessing glance around the room. She saw his nostrils flare and his lips tighten when his eyes landed on the photo of her and Ryan on the wall.
“You’re wasting your time, Dr.,” she said. “It’s not yours.”
His jaw muscles flinched and his eyes flashed flames of anger. He took a fuming step toward her. “Then whose is it? Who’s that man with his hand on you stomach? Is that Ryan? I know you were staying with him in South Carolina. Is it his?”
“It’s mine, Erik. Mine.”
He assessed her quietly for a moment, then the muscles in his jaw relaxed. “I know you, and I know you wouldn’t have been with anyone else, especially so soon after us. So it doesn’t really matter who he is. I know he’s not the father of that child you’re carrying.”
“Erik, just say what you came to say, and leave. You’re not welcome here.”
He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over the back of a chair, making himself comfortable as if he didn’t hear her. “I hurt you. I hurt you deeply, and I’m sorry.”
Michelle trembled where she stood beside the couch and forced herself into believing that she didn’t care, that nothing he said would change the fact that he’d left her when she needed him most. She fought the need to fall into his arms and tell him how much she still loved him and how empty her life was without him.
“Michelle, when I found out about your father, I needed somebody to blame,” he said in a feeble attempt to apologize. “I needed someone to feel the same agony I was feeling. You were there with your sweet love for me so I lashed out at you. It was a mistake. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made, and I’m sorry, baby.”
Michelle remembered the ease and speed with which he’d ended their marriage, severed their relationship. She remembered how she begged for his forgiveness, his trust, his love. He’d told her to forget him, and what they’d shared, and that’s what she’d tried to do. She was trying to build a life for herself and her child. She never wanted to know hurt like that again, be abandoned again. For all she knew, he could just be here to verify the child was his, then take it away from her so he and Bridget could raise it. His moment of
déjà vu
wasn’t happening.
“Okay, Erik,” she said on the verge of fatigue. “I accept your apology. Now please go.” She turned her back to him, afraid he’d see the truth in her eyes.
“Is that all you have to say?”
Michelle whipped around, months of suppressed hurt rushing to the surface of her soul. “What do you want me to say, Erik? You expect me to fall into your arms just because you said you’re sorry? I told you I was sorry, and you still tossed me aside. I gave my heart to you, and you crushed it in your mighty strong hands. I needed you, Erik, but you abandoned me, just like my…”
The truth about Timmy Gleason was still not public knowledge. Knowing it would send the media into another frenzy over Cassie LaCrosse’s death, she and Robert had opted to keep the news to themselves, at least for now.
People were already forgetting that she was tied to that case. She didn’t want Erik and Precious to live through the horror of Cassie’s death again. She just wanted to be left alone to live her life in peace. “I have just been through the loneliest, most difficult eight months of my life, and I’m really tired, okay? So, just go, Erik. Go, and leave me alone.” She pointed toward the door.
Erik’s eyes drank up Michelle’s loveliness as she stood before him in a flowery cotton maternity shift.
Barefoot and pregnant
. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. She sparkled with an inner radiance, a soft glow of warmth and tenderness. She was so sweet and gentle, like the most precious rose, subtle and fragile in the wind. How could he have hurt her so? How could he have turned his back on this delicate creature? He had hurt her more than anyone else on this planet ever could—simply because she loved him. His shame choked him into silence.
“I lay in bed, night after night,” Michelle said. “Needing you, crying myself to sleep while you were romancing Bridget Ashley, living your life as though I never existed.” Scalding tears steamed down Michelle’s face and she made no effort to stop them.
“That’s not true, Michelle. I wrote—”
“You took Precious from me although you knew how much I love her. That hurt more than everything else you did to me. I thought you would have at least left me that relationship.”
She was suddenly besieged with the memory of the night when she called Erik and Bridget answered the phone. He was sleeping with her, having sex with her in Cassie’s bed, the bed he couldn’t share with Michelle.
Michelle shuddered and ran her fingers through her hair. “Go home, Erik. I’m sure Bridget is waiting for you.” She was so tired that her nerves throbbed. Her muscles screamed from the weight of the child in her womb and from arguing with its father. She just wanted to be left alone. She fell weakly to the couch and covered her face with her hands.
Erik fell on his knees in front of her. He pulled her hands from her face. His heart ripped at the raw hurt glittering in her dark eyes. “Okay, Michelle. I’ll go home, but not before I tell you why I came here tonight. I listened to you, so now you will listen to me.”
She stiffened and pulled her hands from his grasp. Her arms went around her stomach in a protective maternal gesture.
The bewildered look in her eyes sent a chill sweeping through Erik’s bones. Dear God, she thought he was here to take her baby away from her as Bridget had threatened to do. Had her opinion of him changed so much that she’d think he could be so cruel? Think that he would take a child from its mother? She knew how he felt about his own mother not being able to raise him.
“Michelle,” he said softly, “I came here to tell you what a stupid fool, an absolute jackass, a class-A idiot, dull dimwit I am.”
She put a hand to her mouth and started giggling.
Now, that was his Michelle
.
“Yes, Baby. You can laugh at me. Just hear me out,” he said when her giggles finally faded and she stared at him with misty wistful eyes. “When Cassie lay dying in my arms, I swore I would find the bastard and make him pay. When I found out it was your father, I felt guilty. I had to punish myself, and in doing so, I punished you.”
“Why did you need to be punished? What did you do?”
Erik cupped her face in his hands. His voice was rough and thick. “Don’t you get it, Angel? I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you walking up my driveway hauling that suitcase behind you. I’ve loved you from the moment you made Precious laugh. You were a breath of fresh air, sunshine on a cloudy day. You were a better lover than Cassie. You awakened desires in me I never knew I had. You were awesome with Precious from the very first day. As I grew to know you, I realized how incompatible Cassie and I were. You are the one true love of my life. Then when the truth came out, I felt like a traitor for loving you more than I loved her.”
“Oh, Erik, I knew you loved me, but I didn’t know it was like that. I thought you came here to take my baby away from me.”
Erik placed his hands over hers that were resting on her stomach. “Michelle, I would never do that to you.”
“But you did. You knew I loved Precious like my own child, yet it didn’t matter. You hurt her, just as much as you hurt me.”
Tears stung Erik’s eyes. “I know, and I’m sorry, sweetheart. I promise that if you give me another chance, I will make it up to both of you. Just tell me that you still love me, Michelle. Please.” Erik dropped his head onto her stomach and gave in to the turbulent storm that had been brewing inside him for eight long torturous months. He’d missed her so much. He’d missed her touch, her voice, her laugh, her smell. Her love.