Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It (13 page)

She shook her head, her eyes wild. "No. I won't do that."

He could feel his desire and passion coalescing into raging frustration.

"Why the hell not?" He asked again, this time in a near shout.

"I told Jenny I would be home by nine."

The blinking light on his dash clock told him it was already a quarter till. "You can call her from my place and tell her you are going to be late."

He turned and rebuckled his seat belt before placing his hand on the ignition key, intending to start the car.

"No." Her voice didn't waver in the least bit.

He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his hands felt molded to the leather grips. "You want me as much as I want you." He'd seen the evidence. He'dfelt her need. She couldn't convince him otherwise.

She looked haunted. "Yes."

"Then why are you saying no?" he asked from between gritted teeth, his frustration morphing into anger.

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth set in a mutinous line. "Maybe I can't stomach the thought of going to bed with a man who's blackmailing me into it."

With that she flung open her door and rushed from the car, running from it and him as if the hounds of hell were on her heels.

Cursing viciously, he slammed his fist into the steering wheel. An agonizing drive home and a long, cold shower were all he had to look forward to for the rest of the night, and he had no one else but himself to blame.

With an angry twist of his fingers, the Jag came to life and peeled off with a squeal of tires.

The sound of Marcus's less-than-cool exit from the parking lot echoed in Veronica's head as she stood outside her apartment door, trying to bring her rampant emotions under control. Her hands shook as she dug into her purse for her keys.

She would have let him make love to her right there in the front seat of his car. She'd been that far gone from his kisses. It was worse than before.

At least then she'd been conscious of their surroundings. Marcus had often kissed and caressed her in semipublic places, but she'd always broken it off before it could get embarrassing. Not so now.

Instead of their time apart subduing her ability to withstand the intense attraction she felt for him, it had seemingly increased it. She sucked in a trembling breath and let it out again. If he hadn't demanded an invitation into her apartment, she would still be out there, kissing him and most likely half naked by now.

Only the reminder of their son had had the ability to cool her body's response to Marcus enough to get her out of that car. Even then, she'd been so very tempted to take him up on his offer to take her back to his place.

She'd wanted to. More than she wanted to admit.

Whyhadn't she just called his bluff then? It had been the perfect opportunity.

'teah. Right. The point was to get him to admit he didn't mean his threat by agreeing to meet his terms and having him reject her. From the way he'd been close to losing control in the car, that wasn't going to happen. He wanted her. The thought shocked her.

His desire when they had kissed had definitely been genuine. He'd been as desperate as she.

What if hewasn't bluffing about taking her to bed or telling Kline? Had she just signed her own pink slip by refusing to return to his apartment with him?

She couldn't accept that. Marcus just was not that slimy kind of toad. He could be selfish. He could be arrogant, impossibly certain of his own-appeal to the opposite sex, and with reason. But he wasn't a blackmailer. Something else had to be going on. Something she didn't understand.

Okay. He wanted her. He truly wanted her. And that had to be about as palatable to him as a plate-ful of metal shavings. He wouldn't like wanting her, not when he considered her a thief and a liar. She'd explained her actions, but she could tell that he hadn't accepted the explanation. He did not understand why she had not come to him.

How could she explain something she did not understand herself? She'd been desperate, both with the feeling of helplessness in the face of her sister's illness and with shock at her own pregnancy. She'd regretted her choices so many times over the intervening months, but she couldn't change them.

Maybe the blackmail was his way of getting into her bed and keeping his own pride intact. Maybe the idea of a real relationship, even one of just the sexual variety, with her was so unacceptable that he had to make it something cheap and emotionless to deal with it. She shook off the depressing thoughts and unlocked her door.

She'd clearly misread Marcus's feelings a year and a half ago. He had been shocked that she hadn't shared her worries with him. What made her think she would be any better at comprehending his thoughts and motivations now?

"How did it go?" Curled up in one corner of the couch, Jenny looked up from her book.

Veronica laid her purse on the table by the door. "Fine."

She couldn't very well tell her sister that Marcus was trying to blackmail her into bed or that she'd tried to justify inexplicable actions from a lifetime ago. It may have only been eighteen months, but in some ways it felt like forever since the time with Marcus.

"Where did you guys go?"

She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. "That fish place down by the water."

"The one with the cute waiter?"

Coming back into the living room, she sat at the other end of the couch from Jenny and picked up the afghan she'd started for Aaron's bed when he got bigger. It was the same vibrant blue of his and his father's eyes.

"Yes. He was there tonight. He kept bringing things to the table. He probably hoped I'd say something about you."

Jenny laughed, her expression wry. "Oh, definitely. The guy must have a thing for girls with hardly any hair and emaciated bodies."

Veronica dropped the ball of yarn she'd been unwinding to crochet.

Scooting across the sofa, she wrapped an arm around Jenny's shoulders. "Emaciated bodies are all the rage now, don't you know? Not that yours is all that skinny anymore. And your hair is gorgeous."

By looking at Jenny now, with her short brown curls framing her pixieish face, it would be impossible to guess that only a year ago she'd been completely bald. True, the curls weren't all that long, but she really did look great. "Sweetheart, you are beautiful."

Jenny laid her head against Veronica's shoulder. "You're my sister. You love me and you'd tell me I was gorgeous if I looked like a troll." Then she laughed. "But don't you dare stop saying it."

Veronica hugged her tight and then moved away, knowing that a little sisterly sympathy went a long way with her independent younger sibling.

Picking up her crochet project again, she said, 'The mirror should tell you the same thing."

Jenny shrugged. "Tell me more about your date with Marcus. Did you tell him about Aaron?"

She tensed and missed a stitch.

Unraveling and starting the row over, she blew out a breath. "It wasn't a date."

"Hmmm. Did you go to dinner with him?"

"You know I did."

"Did you pay for your own meal?"

"No."

"Was the purpose of this nondate to discuss Kline Tech's expansion plans?" Jenny asked, her expression daring Veronica to lie and say that it had been.

"No."

"Sounds like a date to me. I suppose you're going to try to tell me he didn't kiss you goodnight either."

Veronica felt her cheeks heating and cursed the pale complexion that was such a contrast to her dark hair and gray eyes. "No, I'm not going to say that."

Jenny gasped. "He did try. Did you let him?"

The temptation to lie almost overwhelmed her, but she'd had all she could take of betraying her conscience eighteen months ago. "Yes."

She didn't elaborate. Jenny didn't need to know that it had gone beyond a casual kiss to something incendiary. Concentrating on crocheting the blue cotton yarn into something recognizable, she tried to ignore the palpable look that Jenny gave her.

"You let that creep kiss you?" She heard her own earlier disbelief in Jenny's voice and something else. Concern.

Pulling a length of yarn from the skein, she said, "He's not a creep and it didn't mean anything."

"Like it didn't mean anything when he got you pregnant?"

The words acted like explosives against her conscience, forcing her to acknowledge that she had made another huge miscalculation in not telling Marcus about their child. "I think maybe it did mean something." Then.

"What are you saying? Did he say he was upset mat you took off for parts unknown? Did he miss you?" Her sister had swung from teenage cynicism to romantic melodrama at the speed of light.

What could Veronica say? He'd obviously missed her body, but he wouldn't let himself miss a spy.

She decided to focus on the past, rather than the present. "I never told him about Mom and Dad, or you and well… He acted like he was hurt by the omission, like he would have wanted to know and thought I hadn't trusted him enough to say anything."

"Did you?"

"Obviously not." She hadn't thought he was interested, but that was just a symptom of the lack of trust she'd had for him and the relationship they'd shared.

She'd gotten so accustomed to relying on herself that she hadn't considered sharing her burden with a man who saw her as nothing more than a current bed partner. But perhaps shehad meant more than that to Marcus. Then again, she'd seen him break off more promising relationships than theirs. She couldn't have been wrong.

"I thought I had cause. He doesn't see it that way. It hardly matters now. It's all water under the bridge."

"Except that bridge has a baby right in the middle of it."

"Yes." A baby she loved.

A baby she needed.

A baby she might very well lose if Marcus discovered his existence.

Chapter Eight

Marcus was lying in bed, awake and frustrated, when the phone rang.

Instinctively, he reached for it, but then he let his hand drop. It was probably Ronnie wanting to know what he intended to tell Kline about her past.

He didn't have an answer for her and it did not have a thing to do with her refusing to come home with him.

The answering service picked up the call and the ringing stopped. A few seconds later, his mobile phone started buzzing. Irritated, he threw back the covers and got out of bed.

He grabbed the small flip phone up from the top of the dresser and opened it. "Hello?"

"Marcus?"

The shock of hearing his mother's voice when he had been expecting Ronnie's left him momentarily speechless.

"Marcus! Are you there?"

"Yes, I'm here. What can I do for you, Mom?"

"Your father's had a heart attack. He's in the hospital…" Her voice trailed off into a sob while Marcus's fingers tightened on the phone.

"How serious is it?" He felt concern for his mother's emotional distress, but curiously numb to his father's illness.

"I-I n-need you to c-come!" she said, without answering his question.

"I'll be there in an hour."

"Th-thanky-you…" She was still crying when she cut the connection.

He got dressed quickly and was on the road in a matter of minutes. There was only one major hospital in the town of his youth and he went directly to it, knowing without a doubt that his mother would not have left as long as Mark was still a patient.

Sure enough, she was in the waiting room when Marcus arrived. She looked up when he walked in and a smile of gratitude crossed her features.

He crossed the room and pulled her into a hard hug. "Are you okay?"

She patted his back and nodded. "They said it was mild. They're still running tests, but it doesn't look like any permanent damage was done."

"I'm glad." And he was. He hated seeing his mother hurt and he didn't wish Mark any ill. He simply had nothing to give the man who had pretended he did not exist until his thirteenth year.