The Promise (3 page)

As she took her seat, the scent of her unexpectedly rose through the air and circled him. It was a feminine, innocently seductive smell that rippled through his memory, teasing long-forgotten responses.

“Did you have any trouble finding this place?” he asked, deliberately moving away from her, rounding the table to his own chair, breaking the enticing chains of the fragrant, surprisingly threatening memories.

“I didn’t drive. I took a cab, and the cab driver knew where it was.”

"That was smart. Are you hungry? Would you care to order now or would you like to wait?"

She wasn’t fooled by this polite, courteous act of his. The shock she had given him had obviously worn off, and she was in for a grueling evening. She just hoped she would be equal to it. "Later would be fine. For now I’d like a club soda.”

 “A club soda and a Scotch,” he said to the waiter, then sat silently until the young man had left. “All right, Sharon, tell me truthfully what this is all about.”

Her gaze was direct and unwavering. “I’ve already given you all pertinent information, and I made the situation as plain as I could this afternoon. As far as I'm concerned, all that’s left is for you to give me your answer.”

“Not quite all.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was in a position to overhear them, then settled back in his chair. “Suppose we start with what this is really all about. You know that I’m sterile, so what is it you want?”

“I don’t know you’re sterile,” she said solemnly. “I never did.”

His long fingers curled into his palm until his hand had formed a fist; it was the only outward sign that his calm had altered. “What kind of game do you think you’re playing, Sharon? A lot of years have passed since we’ve seen each other, but I don’t believe for a minute that you’ve forgotten about the severe case of mumps I had when I was twelve that left me sterile.”

“How could I forget—” The waiter’s appearance cut off Sharon’s retort, and she was forced to bide her time while he served them their drinks. Surreptitiously she studied Conall. In his dark blue suit, with ebony cuff links gleaming elegantly in the French cuffs of his white linen shirt, he looked formidable and powerfully masculine, completely sure of himself and his position in the world. There were times when she thought she must be out of her mind to go up against him, and this was one of those times. But the throbbingly empty feeling deep within her pushed her on.

When the waiter had once more departed, she spoke again. “How could I forget something that had such a great impact on my life? It was because of that case of mumps that you and your parents felt you should be tested to find out whether or not I was telling the truth. Do you know what your doubts did to me?”

“I know what they did to me.”

“You.
That was all that mattered, wasn’t it? No one gave a thought to the young girl who had no social standing or money and who foolishly was claiming she was pregnant with your baby. Never mind that you’d been having sex with her for four months. With a great fortune and family tradition at stake, I’m sure your parents were extremely eager that the test results be the
correct
results.”

 “Are you suggesting my parents bribed someone to alter the results?” he asked, his voice suddenly ominous and quiet.

“I’m suggesting they might have felt they had a reason to lie. Or, for that matter, you might have.”

“You’re wrong, Sharon.”

She sighed. There was no point in arguing with him, at least on this particular point, at least not now. “Okay, I’ll rephrase what I was about to say. The doctor told you it was highly improbable that you could father a child because of an extremely low sperm count. But I am in a unique position to know better—because, Conall, ten years ago I became pregnant with your child. Your child, Conall, not Mark Bretton’s, as he claimed.
Yours.’’
 

He opened his mouth, but something in the center of his gut was hurting, preventing him from speaking. Lord help him. It had taken such a long time to get over her and what she had done to him. Now, after all these years, she had appeared, dredging up something he had worked hard to make peace with. And apparently he hadn’t done as good a job as he had thought. Just saying the word
sterile
had left a bitter taste in his mouth. He took a deep drink of Scotch and waited a moment until his emotions were once more controlled.

“As I see it, I have two options,” he said slowly. “The first is to consider that you are lying to me for some reason I have yet to discover. If this is the case, I need to find out what your reasons are and put a halt to anything that might hurt me or my family.”

“Hurt the mighty Deverells? Who would dare to try?”

“You threatened.”

“Did I?”

He exhaled heavily. “My second option is to consider that you are telling the truth. Now, if you are, which, by the way, is currently beyond my mental grasp, then I again have to consider the reasons why. Ten years have passed. You lost your baby. What is the point in rehashing it?”

 “How very businesslike, Conall, outlining your options like that. It makes everything so plain, and it’s such a chief-executive-officer thing to do. I’m truly impressed.” She suddenly leaned forward, and her eyes sparked with anger. "I’m not, however, impressed with the fact that you haven’t changed in all this time. You still refuse to see what is most obvious, most simple.”

One black brow rose. “You’re right. I left out a third option, the one that says you’re crazy.”

“I’m not crazy, Conall. All I want Is a baby. It's a perfectly normal need for a woman.”

“But you don’t want just any baby. You want
my
baby.”

She held up her hands and mimed applause. “That’s exactly right. Congratulations. I think you’ve finally got it.”

“What is this, Sharon? Revenge?”

“Revenge? Don’t flatter yourself. I haven’t been pining for you all these years. No, this whole idea came to me
after
I inherited Jake’s note.”

“Then if it’s not revenge ...”

“Vindication.”
She punched the tabletop with a finger for emphasis. "I want to prove to you that you were wrong to insist that the baby I was carrying, then lost, wasn’t yours. Once that happens, I’ll get out of your life again, this time of my own free will, this time forever.”

He stared at her, trying to analyze, comprehend, understand. Tonight her hair fell straight around her face and onto her shoulders. In the subdued light of the restaurant, a faint hint of gold seemed to gleam beneath the Ivory hue of her skin. The natural loveliness she had possessed as a young girl was still there, but it had matured, become more striking, more seductive. One thing hadn’t changed, though. She had lied to him as a young girl, and she was lying to him now. She had to want money; it was the only thing that came close to making sense to him.

With a curse he pushed back from the table and stood. “Let’s get out of here.” After throwing several bills beside his barely touched Scotch, he reached for her arm and pulled her from the chair. “We’ve changed our mind,” he told the startled waiter as they walked quickly past him. “We won’t be having dinner after all.”

Two

“This is not what I expected,” Conall said, glancing around Sharon’s apartment that was located on the top floor of an old brownstone.

Sharon followed his gaze, trying to see what it was that he found so unusual, but everything seemed ordinary to her. Though inexpensive, her furniture was comfortable and well maintained. She had invested in a good stereo system and a color television set. On one wall she had hung a blue and mauve quilt her grandmother had worked and given to her when she had been a young girl. Good prints, along with an occasional oil she had picked up from a sidewalk artist, covered the other walls. A basket she kept beside the sofa held her needlework. Mauve yam spilled over its rim and down its sides, giving an untidy appearance. She should have put the basket away, she thought, but she hadn’t known he would insist on coming back to the apartment with her.

Her first instinct had been to keep where she lived a secret from him. This apartment was the one place in the universe where she could come to be soothed when she was tense, comforted when she hurt, rest when she was tired. It was her retreat. In the end, though, since he still hadn’t agreed to what she wanted, she had given in and let him know where she lived.

But it was just as she had feared. Standing in the middle of her small living room, he exuded waves of power that seemed as if they could threaten everything breakable in her home. Luckily her heart was now inviolate to him. She reached for the afghan she had crocheted one winter, the same afghan that had warmed her earlier that day, and hugged it to her.

He watched her, disturbed, feeling an absurd urge to try to pierce through to her center to see if she matched inside as well as out. “Frankly I expected your apartment to have a great deal less charm and personality."

A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. “I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere, but it would take a great deal of ingenuity, not to mention energy to search for it.”

Her smile drew his gaze. He supposed he had been too stunned to see her earlier at his office to notice the full, generous shape of her mouth before now. Then he remembered. He had once kissed that mouth until her lips were swollen. “I wouldn’t have been surprised to find banks of calculators and computers,” he said, “maybe even profit and loss charts on the walls and the television tuned to the Dow Jones averages.”

She folded the afghan and returned it to the back of the couch. “You just described an office. Why would you think I lived in an office?”

“Maybe not an office, but something a bit more austere than this would have been in keeping with the all-business way you present yourself.” “You’re the ultimate businessman. Are you trying to tell me your home isn’t as comfortable as you and probably a team of decorators plus a slew of Deverell family possessions can make it?”

“You know what I mean. ”

She should have listened to her Instincts, she told herself, and never have brought him here. He was trying to dissect her; she could almost feel the sharpness of his scalpel. “I have found over the years that appearance is very Important when you’re discussing business.”

“Business? Was that what it was? I thought we were discussing me taking you to bed and making you pregnant.”

She refused to let him unnerve her. “Actually, that’s what
I’ve
been discussing.
You
have been avoiding giving me an answer. Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes. Black, please.”

“It would never have crossed my mind to think that you took cream or sugar,” she murmured, walking toward the door.

“Sharon?”

She stopped and looked back at him.

“What have you done to your hair?”

She frowned. “Nothing. Why?”

“It used to be curly.”

Her face cleared. “Oh, it still is. I just blow-dry the curls out of it every morning. It’s my experience that men don’t take women in business seriously if they look like Shirley Temple.”

“You
never
looked like Shirley Temple, and I can’t remember ever withholding a promotion from one of my women executives because of her hairstyle.”

“Then they’re lucky. That is, if that’s the truth.” She disappeared through a door, and in a moment he heard the sound of cabinet doors opening and closing. She didn’t trust him at all,he thought, on
any
subject. But that was fine, because he didn’t trust her either.

Across the room, a shelf held a dozen or more Hummel children. Closer inspection showed a figurine of a boy going off to school, a book satchel on his back, an eager expression on his face. Another figurine showed two children on a seesaw, another, a blond-haired little girl smelling a daisy.

He reached out a finger to touch the daisy, but quickly pulled it back when he sensed Sharon’s presence. He turned to find her leaning against the dooijamb, watching him, her arms crossed beneath her breasts.

“The coffee’s perking. It won’t take long.”

“You have quite a collection,” he said, inclining his head toward the shelf.

“They make me happy.”

He threw another glance at the assortment of stoneware children. “In what way?”

She felt a sharp twinge, the scalpel again. “I don’t know. They just do.” Perhaps it would be appropriate for her to try a little dissection herself. “Isn’t there anything that simply makes you happy?”

It was a strange question, and one intended to put him on the spot. “Everything in my life makes me happy. I’ve arranged it that way.”

She stared at him for a moment, listening to the echo of what he had just said reverberate in her mind.
I’ve arranged It that way.
It was a reminder of what the Deverell power was capable of. There was nothing they couldn’t “arrange.” If one of their daughters wanted to turn the family home into the most exclusive resort in America, it could be arranged. If one of their sons wanted to be a United States senator, and then, after a reasonable amount of time had passed, the president, it could be arranged. If another of their sons decided he didn’t want to acknowledge parentage of a child, it could be arranged.

It was also a reminder of how carefully she would have to proceed if and when he agreed to honor Jake’s promise. No, she corrected herself. Not if. It had to be
when.
“The coffee must be ready. ”

She returned to the kitchen, and Conall took a seat on the sofa. Directly across from him was a false fireplace. A porcelain English spaniel lounged on its hearth, a wreath of flowers woven together by a mauve ribbon hung above its mantel. A stained-glass hummingbird hovered at a window, suspended by a nearly invisible plastic filament.

His gaze moved restlessly around the room and stopped at a small bottle of perfume sitting on a table, obviously out of place. Had she been applying it to her skin as she’d walked through the room, then, perhaps running late for their dinner appointment, set it down and walked out the door to meet him?