Pursued by the Playboy (21 page)

It was as good an explanation as any.  Certainly better than the truth.

What a time to realize that she, the ultimate cynic when it came to relationships, had fallen in love.

Chapter 21

Marc opened his eyes ten minutes before the alarm clock was due to go off.  Not enough time to roll over and go back to sleep.  Or to do anything particularly useful like squeeze in a workout before heading to the hospital.  Or to indulge in a bit of spontaneous pleasure with Kate, who was still sleeping soundly beside him and probably wouldn’t thank him for nudging her awake for a quickie.  

Especially after he’d kept her up late the night before, bringing her to the brink of climax time and again, before finally plunging them both over the edge.   Kate had drifted off almost immediately after that, but Marc found himself uncharacteristically restless.  When he finally did fall into an uneasy sleep, he dreamt he was in an empty house, running through endless echoing hallways, flinging open door after door in a fruitless search for something that always remained just beyond reach. 

He woke up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, blinking into the darkness.  Kate slept on her side, curled away from him, unaware of his turmoil.  He breathed deeply, trying to quell an unaccountable sense of anxiety. 

In the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror.  He looked older than he remembered:  frown lines more deeply ingrained between his brows and around his mouth, gray eyes ringed in darker shadows.  And was it his imagination, or was his hairline starting to recede just a bit?  

He’d never thought of himself as vain.  Then again, as his sisters were always quick to point out, he had been blessed with more than his share of good looks, and that fostered a certain sense of entitlement in a man.  He’d never had to work to get whatever women he wanted.  More often than not, they simply fell in his lap at the least hint of interest from him.  Sometimes they even pursued him, in a reversal of roles he initially found amusing, but which eventually turned aggravating when some women refused to take no for an answer.  

Not that it was all about looks, he acknowledged wryly.  He could have been five-foot-three with the body hair and manners of an ape, and he still would have found himself the object of avaricious females.  Background, education, money, and the ever-alluring title of “Doctor” were like a lodestone to certain women. 

Kate, however, was different.  She was a first for him in many ways, not the least of which was how hard he had to work to attract her attention and keep it focused on him.  In part this may have been because she was as smart and ambitious as he was, concentrating on her career almost to the exclusion of all else.  She wasn’t cowed by anyone, certainly not him and his credentials.  “Let me tell you about degrees,” she said shortly after they met, her eyes twinkling.  “You know what B.S. stands for?  Well, the next step is an M.S.—‘More of Same’.  After that comes the Ph.D.  ‘Piled higher and Deeper.’”

Despite the irreverent attitude and bravado, there was also something skittish about her, which made her throw up barriers almost faster than he was able to tear them down.  For a while it was like a game, trying to figure out how to maneuver around her objections. 

The rewards were obvious.  When they came together, it was like a conflagration:  fire so intense, so consuming, that they both went up in flames.  And despite her prickliness when it came to their relationship, she was remarkably easy to be around.  Unlike many women he had known in the past, she didn’t engage in senseless chatter, didn’t seem to need constant reassurance about her looks, and didn’t dissect their relationship or obsess over her role in his life. 

Perhaps that was because she wasn’t nearly as vested in their future together as he was.  He quashed that depressing thought, and turned on the shower.  But the niggling worry wouldn’t go away. 

Kate had been in a strange mood the last few days, almost as if she were pulling back from him, withdrawing into herself.  Sometimes he caught her watching him, expression unreadable, as if she were searching for answers to some unvoiced question, and he was afraid that whatever she saw fell short of her expectations.  It was an uncomfortable feeling, one he wasn’t used to, and he didn’t know how to broach the subject without appearing insecure or paranoid.

Perhaps she was simply tired.  She worked sixty-plus hours a week, often bringing work home with her.  Between the teaching, research, laboratory, committees, technical writing, and pursuit of grant money, there wasn’t much time or energy left over.  Add to that her parents’ situation and the tireless efforts she had been expending on her mother’s behalf in the last few weeks, it was no wonder she seemed exhausted and cranky lately.

What she needed was a vacation, he decided.  A few days away from the frenetic pace of life on campus.  A cozy bed and breakfast in the
Hamptons
might be just the thing.  He would check his schedule to see when he could clear the time for a romantic weekend away. 

Unfortunately this Labor Day weekend was out.  Not only was he on call, but this was also the weekend of his parents’ wedding anniversary, and there was no way he could skip out on that.  Especially since he was looking forward to finally introducing Kate to his family.  Hopefully he wouldn’t get paged in to the hospital during the party, though his father would of course understand.  Joseph DiStefano had missed his share of family festivities over the course of his career.   It was only now, at sixty-five, that he was beginning to pass on the mantle of his obstetrics practice to his younger colleagues.  And Sophia would simply do what she always did:  sigh and mutter tongue-in-cheek about inconsiderate patients. 

The following weekend, then.  He’d make some calls and see what was available.  And much as he liked the idea of surprising Kate with a fait accompli, he should probably clear the timing with her beforehand.  Or at least sneak a peak through her electronic datebook to make sure she hadn’t already scheduled something that weekend, and that she had no major deadlines coming up.

Maybe he would even use the weekend away as an opportunity to finally hash things out with her regarding their living situation.  It annoyed him beyond belief that she still insisted on keeping to her original plan of moving back to her apartment once her mother was settled elsewhere.  Where was the sense in that?  Their work schedules were hectic enough that the amount of time they had available to spend together was already quite limited.  Moving out would just restrict that time even further, and create the unnecessary inconvenience of having to shuttle back and forth between his place and hers. 

He needed to put his foot down and insist that she give up her apartment.  He would appeal to her logic.  He did a mental tally of all the points in his favor.  One: he owned this townhouse, while her apartment was a rental.  Two: his place was large and comfortable, with three bedrooms, four baths, a spacious living and dining area, huge eat-in kitchen, separate den that he currently used as a home office, and two-car garage; hers was a cluttered walk-up on campus, with transient neighbors and crappy security.  Three: he lived on a quiet tree-lined street in one of the most prestigious old neighborhoods in
Philadelphia
; her place was
just down the street from the site of a near-fatal stabbing two weeks ago.

As far as he was concerned, it was a no-brainer.  The problem would be convincing Kate.  He shut off the water and reached for a towel. 

Within minutes, he was shaved and dressed, and enjoying his first cup of coffee.  As he passed through the living room to open the drapes, he noticed Kate’s bag on the floor beside the couch.  On impulse, he picked it up and clicked on a nearby lamp.  Rifling through the bag for Kate’s Blackberry, he found sunglasses, keys, used tissues, an open roll of breath mints, and a recent parking ticket.   He sighed, and then told himself better a parking ticket than the constant worry over Kate’s safety.  Digging deeper, he came up with several business cards, some loose change, a wallet, and finally her cell phone.   Tucked into the swivel clip at the back of leather holster was a folded paper.  Marc hesitated.  With a sense of trepidation, he eased the paper out.  His fingers recognized the thin, almost slick material before his brain caught up.  For a moment he couldn’t breathe.

The image of the first trimester ultrasound brought back memories of his residency days.  The paper fluttered, and he realized he was shaking.  Carefully, almost reverently, he smoothed the folds and gazed at the picture. 

If he had any doubt whose scan it was, the small block letters at the top laid that question to rest.  Beside Kate’s name was the date.  She’d had the study three days ago.   Which meant that she had known she was pregnant for at least that long, probably longer.  And she hadn’t said a word.

He sank down on the floor, his back against the sofa, the purse and its contents forgotten beside him. 

She’d fooled him.  The oldest trick in the book.  All those adamant protestations about not wanting kids—remarks he had taken in stride, thinking that if they stayed together, given sufficient time, she’d change her mind—had been nothing but a smoke screen.   He should have known better.  Hadn’t he been the target of grasping marriage-minded females before?  And he’d always prided himself on his ability to recognize them a mile off, and steer clear.  This time, Kate had blind-sided him.  How many times had she told him that career came first with her?  That she wasn’t interested in any long-term personal entanglements?  He’d humored her, figuring there was plenty of time to soften her up, get her to see the bigger picture. 

Wasn’t that what he’d been secretly hoping would happen when he took her to his parents’ anniversary celebration this weekend?  That she would become so enamored of his family, the whole loud boisterous exuberant lot of them, that she would want to be a part of it?  The fact was that he aspired to a relationship like his father and Sophia had:  two strong, vigorous, busy people, coming together at the end of each day to share their joys and troubles, warmth and laughter, supporting and loving each other through the years.  He had even thought that in Kate he might have found that person, the one with whom he could build that kind of life.

Could he have really been so wrong? 

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back.  Scenes from the last couple months flickered through his mind. 

Kate, at the podium, as he’d first seen her, making an impassioned plea for attention and resources to battle the silent killer that turned a woman’s ability to give birth into the agent of her death. 

Later that same evening, her face glowing beneath the ballroom chandelier, trading quips with him from Shakespeare.   “The shrew comes out at midnight,” she’d laughed, twirling in his arms on the dance floor. 

Biking along the
Schuylkill
, hair hidden beneath her borrowed helmet, grinning as she raced past him on the path.  And later, the wistful expression as she watched young parents with their children picnicking nearby, completely at odds with her terse comment about “not doing families”.

The impish gleam in her eyes when he cornered her in her office, or the shower, or the laundry room.  Her breathy cries when he was buried deep inside her. 

The scrupulous insistence on pulling her own weight when it came to household chores.  “You cook, I clean,” she’d say.  “Otherwise I’m not eating.”

Her acerbic tone on the way home from meeting Tiffani, vilifying the gold-digging girlfriend and Kate’s hoodwinked father in one breath. 

It didn’t make sense.  His radar couldn’t have been that far off.  The woman he had come to know
was not the kind of person who would deliberately get pregnant to gain herself a wedding ring or blackmail her lover into supporting her financially for life. 

So why hadn’t she told him?  Why wa
s she keeping
the pregnancy
from him, and how long did she intend for him
to remain in the dark?  
He should have insisted that she see one of his colleagues
for birth control when the issue first came up.  T
hat way
at least
he
could have been informed from the start about
what was going on with her.  On the other hand, given HIP
A
A rules about patient confidentiality, even if she
had seen
a colleague of his on his recommendation
,
he still
might not
be privy to what was going on with her health.
  And besides, if she had been on the pill, the whole issue would have been moot, since she probably wouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place. 

Now that he knew about the baby, the thought of it not existing made his gut clench.  That this was his child he had no doubt.  The only question was what Kate planned to do.  Was she thinking of having an abortion—was that why she had kept this to herself?  Everything in him screamed in protest.  If that was what she intended, he would fight her on it.  He’d make her see that they could work this out.  It might not be something she had anticipated when she envisioned her life’s goals, and this wasn’t the way he had planned on broaching the subject.  But sometimes fate threw you a curve-ball.  And sometimes that turned out to be the greatest gift of all. 

Having a child together would be a wonderful thing.  He’d make Kate see that.  Of course it would mean making adjustments.  Kate would need to significantly curtail her work hours, possibly even give up her tenure ambitions.  There was no way she could juggle the kind of work-load she had at the university with the responsibilities of raising a child.