Everything but the Baby (Harlequin Superromance) (7 page)

“I won't take more than ten.”

Still he hesitated. She felt her blood rising, and she had to fight down her fury. But really, it was unbelievable that he'd dare to take such a dismissive attitude. He'd
adored
her. Loved her laugh, her eyes, her fingers. One Sunday morning in Cape Cod, after their first night together, he'd spent half an hour listing the charms of her left kneecap.

Now she was getting all the respect of a door-to-door magazine salesman who wouldn't take a hint.

She realized she was even more disgusted with
herself than with him. He had
fraud
written all over his face. How could she ever have believed anything he said?

“Ten minutes,” she repeated, banking her anger. “It's not too much to ask, is it? After that, if you still want me to leave, I will. But I'm hoping you won't. You see, I really do understand why you didn't show up at the wedding. And I know how to make it right.”

Finally, she'd reached him. She saw the flicker of cautious interest behind his blue eyes. “What do you mean? Why do you think I didn't show up at the wedding?”

Okay, this was the moment. She needed an Oscar-caliber performance. Too much, and he'd smell the trap. Too little, and he'd never bite at all.

“Because I insulted you. I see that now. I betrayed you, by asking you to sign the prenup.” She blinked, hoping it would imply that her eyes were burning. “I know how it must have seemed to you. You must have thought it meant I didn't trust you at all.”

He cocked his head. The sunlight caught his silky blond hair and made it gleam like gold. “What else could it have meant?”

“It meant that I'm a fool. A weak-minded fool. I let my father's lawyer talk me into something I knew was wrong.” She dug into her purse and pulled out the sheaf of papers. “I brought the wretched thing with me, Lincoln, so that you could see me tear it up. I love you. I trust you with my life. If you'll have me back, I'll—”

She broke off again, letting the quaver in her voice hint at a breakdown to come.
Weak. Think weak
. She
bowed her head low, as if she couldn't even look him in the eye.

The silence stretched several seconds. She fought the urge to glance up at him, to see if he was buying it. She kept her chin tucked, staring down at her chest, right into the big glassy eye of her diamond pendant.

It was one of her nicest pieces and fairly impressive. Not golf-ball big, not actually vulgar, but substantial and sparkly enough that even the untrained eye could see it was special.

She'd added it to her suitcase at the last minute, the way you might pack carrots for a horse or candy for a baby.

Darn it. The silence was going on too long. She decided to make a small sobbing noise, although it came out kind of like a cross between a hiccup and a burp.

But it worked.

“Hey, don't cry,” he said. His, slender hand stretched out and cupped her chin. “Come on in. We'll talk.”

 

A
FTER
A
LLISON LEFT
for Lincoln Gray's house, Mark spent a little while talking to Tracy, who had insisted he update her every day.

Then he headed for the mainland. A new chain of banks headquartered in Fort Lauderdale had approached his firm recently about representation, and, since three would definitely have been a crowd in this phase of Allison's plan, he figured he might as well get some work done.

He didn't get back to the Hideaway until dusk. He
was surprised Allison hadn't called his cell to report on how the first assault had gone. But if she'd been with Lincoln all day and too absorbed to make a phone call…well, maybe that was all the report he needed.

He felt a small ripple of distaste at the thought, which surprised him. He didn't give a damn whether Allison's strategy included doing the hoochie-koochie with Lincoln in a Roman tub full of gold coins and Vaseline. He wasn't here to guard her chastity—a fortress he suspected Lincoln had breached weeks ago anyhow. He was just here to make sure she didn't tip Lincoln off and scare him back into hiding.

And, if the jewelry gods were with him, to snatch back the real peacock and replace it with the fake.

The Hideaway's front lobby was almost empty. On a mild night like this, with a nice breeze whisking away the heat of the day, most of the guests were probably out back, drinking sangria and daiquiris in the courtyard that overlooked the ocean. Through the picture window he could see twinkling white lights swaying on palm fronds, and a glimpse of a glowing turquoise pool.

Danny O'Hara manned the front desk. The kid seemed as surly as ever while he checked in a young couple that were in a big hurry to get to the honeymoon suite.

“Hey,” Mark said with a smile. “Is Ms. Cabot in her room?”

“Beats me.” Danny stared at the printer, which was buzzing out some kind of paperwork. “Maybe Flannery knows. She's been stuck to her like glue all day.”

“All day?” Mark frowned. How long ago had Allison returned?

Danny yanked the paper out of the printer and slid it across the counter toward the couple. He clearly did not enjoy his reception duties. Luckily, this particular couple wasn't likely to notice. “Yeah. Flannery dragged her to ballet practice and then to dinner and then to get ice cream.”

That blew Mark's mental picture of Allison's afternoon. If she'd carried out her search-and-seduce strategy and still had time for all that, Lincoln must have surrendered in a big hurry.

He was suddenly eager to hear everything, but no one answered when he rapped on the door to her room. He rapped a second time, a little louder, in case she was in the shower.

“She's not in there,” a small voice behind him said.

He turned. It was one of the twins—the one with the backpack, although he couldn't remember whether it was Fiona or Flannery. Her hair was tangled, and her green eyes were rimmed in red, as if she might have been crying.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. She went out with dad and Grampa. Everybody is out there.” Her voice quavered. “Everybody but me.”

Mark looked down the hall, hoping for rescue. Even happy eight-year-olds were outside his area of expertise. Weepy ones…forget it.

Unfortunately, the hall was empty.

“Well, then maybe we should go out there, too.” He
angled himself toward the staircase, even though the elevator was just a few feet away. He could take on ruthless CEOs and rabid investigative reporters without breaking a sweat, but the idea of getting stuck in a four-by-four box with a bawling kid was enough to give him hives.

He put his hand on the door to the stair. “Shall we?”

Biting her lips together, she shook her head mutely. Two glassy tears as fat as marbles rolled down her cheeks.

Oh, man. He cast one longing look at the stairway to freedom, then came back to the little girl. “Why not? It'll be fun. I hear music.”

More head shaking. “I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I hate Fannie.”

“Why?”

“She's a jerk. She thinks she owns Allison. She won't let anyone else even talk to her. And she told her a big lie about my backpack.”

He tugged on his earlobe and tried not to laugh. It was amazing. A big lie about a backpack? Apparently even tiny females loved drama and would cook it up out of nothing but smoke and air.

“What did she say?”

“She said my backpack is full of dead lizards and snake snot.”

He couldn't help himself—the laugh was out, echoing down the hall before he realized it. Even after only one day here, Mark knew that Fiona firmly refused to show anyone the contents of her beloved
backpack. So as a smear campaign, Flannery's accusation was damned creative. When she got about ten years older, she might have a future in politics.

“It's not funny.” Fiona tucked her thumbs under the straps of her backpack and shifted its weight on her bony shoulders. “It got me in a lot of trouble.”

“How did her comment get
you
in trouble?”

“Well, I was mad, so I hit her with my backpack, and Mom saw me.” Her lip trembled. “Now I'm not allowed to go downstairs at all tonight, not even to be with Allison.”

Mark thought it over. “That seems a little unfair. I mean, if all you have in there is snake snot, how much could it possibly hurt?”

Finally, Fiona smiled. One corner of her mouth turned up, and a dimple appeared right in the middle of a cluster of freckles. She sniffed back the tears she'd been about to shed and looked Mark over with a curiously adult and appraising look.

“Okay, I'll show you where Allison is,” she said as if he'd passed some kind of test. “Come on.”

She walked down the hall, away from the elevators, toward the end of the wing that overlooked the water. Mark followed.

“See?” She stubbed her forefinger into the windowpane. “That's Allison, right at the edge of the patio, under the last palm tree. She's all alone. I guess she finally got rid of Fannie.”

Mark's eyes took a minute to adjust. The dusk had turned to full dark and only the patio lights and the half moon were providing any light. The figures milling around were dark, almost shadow-people.

Finally he located the shadow that was Allison. Fiona was a perceptive girl. Allison did seem profoundly alone, even though the others were only a few feet behind her. She had her arms wrapped across her chest, her hands gripping her elbows.

She didn't look happy. She definitely didn't look like a woman who had just launched a successful search-and-seduce campaign. Had something gone wrong with the plan?

“It's okay, you can go,” Fiona said. “I know you want to talk to her. But you'd better hurry. Everybody in the family wants to be with her. And Dad said Mr. Jensen in number six has already got her in his crosshairs.”

Mark smiled. “Thanks. Will you be okay?”

“Yeah. I have to go to bed anyhow. But will you do me a favor?”

“Absolutely. What?”

“Tell her…” She chewed her lower lip and shifted her backpack again. “Tell her Fannie is a big fat liar. Tell her there isn't any such thing as snake snot.”

E
ARLY EVENINGS
at the Hideaway were traditionally spent ocean-side, Kate had explained to Allison as they finished their meal in the hotel's small restaurant. The gathering started slowly, growing as guests trickled in after golf games and seafood dinners. By eight or so, the courtyard was overflowing. The children leaped around like dolphins in the lighted pool, while their parents yawned on the loungers, lulled to a blissful indolence by the rhythm of the tide, just thirty yards away.

Many of the guests seemed like old friends, as if they'd been coming to the Hideaway for years—in a way, more
family
than Allison herself. They were handsome people, with refined voices and charming white smiles. The women all wore pastel dresses that fluttered in the evening breeze, mismatched, but somehow the same, as if someone had plucked the prettiest long-stemmed wildflowers and arranged them in clusters around the pool. The men wore shorts that showed off their bronzed calves and, between clinking sips of cocktails, they rehashed the day's bogeys and birdies and the marlin that got away.

Allison hadn't felt much like socializing, but she'd stayed a while, to be polite. She'd just decided that it was time to say good-night and head upstairs when Mark arrived.

Though she was slightly removed from the others, staring out toward the white foam of the moonlit surf, the noisy O'Hara welcome committee gave her plenty of warning.

As hosts, the O'Haras had great instincts. When any guest first showed up, he was welcomed with a boisterous enthusiasm. However, the minute someone hinted at a preference for solitude, as Allison had, the family backed off and left their guest in peace.

Mark's arrival caused quite a stir, especially from Flannery. The little girl loved to be the center of attention. She immediately clamored for Mark—or Matt, as she knew him—to “watch this, watch this.” A ripple of laughter passed through the crowd, followed by a messy splash and more laughter.

And then, just a few seconds later, Mark came up behind Allison and touched her shoulder. “Hi, stranger.”

She turned and gave him a smile. “Hi,” she said. “I was looking for you earlier. Did you just get back?”

“Yeah. Business. It took longer than I'd expected, but it went well.” He raised his eyebrows. The moonlight silvered the whites of his eyes. “How about your day? That went well, too, I hope.”

“I'm not sure,” she said. She hesitated. “Not as well as I'd hoped, to tell you the truth.”

He gazed at her a minute. Then he tilted his head toward the beach. “Want to take a walk?”

She glanced toward the pool, where Kate was hanging on to Flannery's arm, clearly restraining her from following Mark. Several other guests seemed to be eyeing them curiously, too. “We're supposed to be strangers, remember? You don't think people will talk?”

“Too late to worry about that.” He grinned. “Fiona just caught me trying to sneak into your hotel room. You're probably going to have some explaining to do in the morning.”

She groaned. Already Stephen and Kate were taking a very protective attitude toward their newfound granddaughter. She wondered what they'd think of such goings-on. Maybe nothing. Owning a hotel probably gave you a good education in human behavior. She suspected that Kate in particular might be hard to shock.

“Okay, then, let's go.” She reached down and pulled off her sequined flip-flops. Mark kicked aside his boat shoes and stepped off the small ledge and onto the sand. He held out a hand to help her.

The sand was still warm from the long day and fine enough to sink like an overstuffed cushion beneath her toes. It was very different from the New England beaches she was used to—she felt clumsy and slow, as if she needed snowshoes to keep her balance. They didn't talk until they reached the harder-packed sand at the water's edge.

Once there, they turned north instinctively, away from the bright lights of the southern end of the island. He took the side next to the water, in the protective way a man might walk next to the traffic on a busy city sidewalk.

Even so, the foaming breakers sometimes caught the hem of her long skirt. Within fifty paces, the cotton clung to her legs, held in place by sticky saltwater and tiny grits of sand.

“Hang on,” she said. She lifted the damp fabric and bunched it into the belt at her waist, turning her dress into a makeshift miniskirt. “Okay, that's better.”

The moonlight that had been glinting against his eyes disappeared as he glanced down to check out her bared thighs.

“It certainly is,” he agreed with a smile.

She wasn't sure why she felt such a foolish rush of pleased warmth. It wasn't as if she never got compliments on her looks—especially her legs. She might not have a double-D bra, but she did have respectable legs.

Maybe it was because of Lincoln. Because of his strange reaction to her today…

“So, tell me,” Mark said as they picked up their walking rhythm again. “Did you see him?”

“I did. He was still at the house when I got there, although I almost missed him. He was about to leave for a tennis match.”

“What happened when he saw you? Was he shocked?”

“Yeah. And that's an understatement. I've never seen him so unhinged, so at a loss for words. He's very suave, you know. He always knows exactly what to say. But when he saw me standing there, he just froze, like a fish on a dock, mouth open and gasping for breath.”

Mark chuckled. “I wish I'd been there to see that.”

“It didn't last long. He pulled himself together pretty well. He asked me why I'd come.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Exactly what we'd planned. At first I wasn't sure it would work. I thought he wasn't even going to let me in. But eventually, when I started talking about what a mistake the prenup had been and how much I wanted to make it all up to him, he decided he was willing to hear me out.”

“I'll bet he did.”

Another couple slowly strolling toward them was getting near, so they walked a few steps in silence. Mark scooped up a flat shell and tossed it into the ocean. It skipped a couple of times, a pale white disc against the smoldering black water, then disappeared.

“So,” he said when the other couple's path crossed theirs and they had finally ambled out of earshot. “How did it feel? To see him again.”

She'd been thinking about this all day, wondering why it had felt so much more uncomfortable than she'd anticipated.

“Weird,” she said. “It was like—” She adjusted her skirt, tucking it tighter into her belt. “It was as if the whole thing had just been a book I read, or a dream. All of it. Meeting him, getting engaged, planning the wedding. While I was dreaming, it seemed so vivid. But now that I'm awake, it's as if it never happened. I look at him and he's a complete stranger. I can't even remember what it felt like to—”

She broke off. How could she explain how foolish
she felt, how ashamed? She tried again. “What it felt like to—”

“To love him?” He wasn't looking at her. He seemed to be scanning the wet, shadowy beach for more shells. “To make love to him?”

She winced, remembering. That dreaming woman had indeed been Lincoln Gray's lover. For a minute, she felt a flush of anger, as if someone had drugged her then taken advantage of her.

But even if that were true, the drug had been one she'd administered to herself. The narcotic of an easy fix. She'd taken it for the same reasons anyone took any drug. She'd been afraid to face her loneliness. She'd been desperate to make it go away.

“If you're asking whether I slept with him, the answer is yes. I was going to marry him, wasn't I? Why shouldn't I have sex with him?”

“No reason at all,” he said. “It was just a question, not a judgment. But I'm sorry. Perhaps it's none of my business.”

“No, it's okay. I didn't mean to snap. I guess I'm just defensive because I feel so damn stupid. And today—” She took a breath of salty air. “Today made me feel even worse. It was so strange, but there I was, holding out my heart and my money in both hands, offering them to him with no strings attached, and yet I got the feeling he wasn't really interested.”

“Do you think he sensed the trap? Do you think he didn't believe you?”

“No. He believed me. He was enjoying that part, you could tell. But behind the ego trip of seeing me beg,
there was real reluctance. It was as if he knew he'd caught a big fish, but he didn't want it, and he wished he could throw it back.”

Mark stopped. “That's crazy,” he said.

She stopped, too. Her feet sank slightly into the cool sand, and a bubble-edged wave popped around her ankles.

“Maybe not. Maybe he wasn't ever attracted to me in the first place. Maybe pretending to be in love with me was an ordeal he's not eager to repeat.”

Mark shook his head. “Impossible. He's a bastard, but he's not blind.”

It was nice of him to say so, and it helped a little—like someone touching a balm to scraped skin—but she knew he was just being polite. She remembered the rakish gleam in his eyes as he described Lincoln's new target, Janelle Greenwood.

“He wouldn't have to be blind. He might just sincerely prefer another kind of woman. Maybe Janelle is more—”

“For God's sake, Allison. Don't let him do this to you. Surely you know that you are—” He took hold of her upper arms. “You are an extremely desirable woman.”

His face was very close to hers, and for a minute she thought he might kiss her. The moon was behind him, casting a glow around his dark head. The tide nudged him toward her, and the moment felt magical.

She didn't move. She wanted him to kiss her. Maybe it was just her wounded pride, needing reassurance, but suddenly she wanted it very much.

After a couple of tantalizing seconds, in which she opened her lips and tasted the salty air, he let go of her arms. The expression on his face was bland enough to make her wonder if she'd imagined the whole thing.

“Heck, you don't need any more flattery,” he said with a half smile. “Since we got here, not an hour has gone by without your grandfather and uncle bending someone's ear about the gorgeous Allison. This morning Flannery told one of the housekeepers that you look like a princess. I hear Fiona is writing a sonnet about you.”

Allison had to laugh. Though lovely, the O'Hara compliments really were over the top. And coming from family, they didn't really say anything about her sex appeal anyway. They saw her with loving eyes. More precisely, they didn't really see her at all. They saw her
mother
and their hearts overflowed.

Besides, the whole lot of them were supremely Irish. Blarney poured out of them as naturally as water from a spring.

But she didn't argue with Mark about it. She would have seemed ungrateful—which she wasn't.

It also would have looked as if she were fishing for a compliment. Which, she was ashamed to realize, she was.

“They've all been fantastic,” she said quickly to cover the awkward moment. “There's nothing like a big family, is there? I wish I'd grown up with one. Do you have other siblings, besides Tracy?”

“No, it's just the two of us. We've got about a dozen cousins, though, and they live nearby, so there's always plenty of chaos.”

“Two is enough. That's what Lincoln and I had planned. Two. A girl and a boy. Close together, so they wouldn't ever feel lonely.” She felt herself flushing again, realizing how gullible she had been. She'd really believed that Lincoln longed for children, too. “At least that was
my
plan.”

Mark didn't answer right away. He'd angled away from her and was absorbed in watching the water. She'd probably said too much, let it all get too personal.

But she couldn't stop trying to analyze the fiasco. What exactly had made her so blind? What vulnerability had Lincoln glimpsed and exploited so easily? She was a strong woman—or thought she was. Had loneliness silently eaten away at her foundations, the way underground currents bored tunnels in the sand until the seemingly firm earth collapsed in sinkholes?

She toed the foam and listened to the rumble of the tide. Its wet hiss, its dull battering against the sand, reminded her of the sound the rain made when it pummeled the windows of her father's Boston town house.

It had stormed like that the Christmas she was eight, the same age as the twins were now. That year, she'd begged for a Franny doll, which had a computer chip inside and could speak more than a hundred words.
Franny, Franny, she's your friend,
smiling little girls on the TV commercial promised.

But her father hadn't bought a Franny doll. Instead he'd given her a magnificent Lalique crystal bird, two feet tall and so expensive she was forbidden to take it off the shelf. That night, as the rain fiddled with her window, looking for a way in, the bird had stared at her
with its unblinking glass eyes. Finally, she'd climbed onto the bookcase and covered it with her pillowcase. Then she'd cried herself to sleep.

“I wonder,” she said now, “if maybe I was using Lincoln just as much as he was using me. He wanted my money. I wanted children. More than anything. I already had their names picked out. And I could see them so clearly, the clothes they'd wear, the games they'd play. I could even see their parakeets and hamsters.”

Finally Mark turned, looking at her over his shoulder. “Lots of women have those dreams. Most of them do, in fact. I've never met one who didn't.”

“I know. But I had it backward. In all those dreams, I never saw Lincoln. Not one single time. It was as if, once he'd provided the DNA, he just vanished from the picture.” She smiled feebly. “So what does that make me?”

“It makes you normal.” Mark shrugged. The movement seemed harsh and abrupt. “You know, if you're asking me to feel sorry for Lincoln Gray, you're going to be disappointed.”