Running Wild (37 page)

The grin melted. Her eye twitched. “I can’t see that we have
anything to discuss on that matter.”

“Sure we do. We can start with why you didn’t tell me about
the flowers.”

She shrugged, shifted to lean against the headboard and
crossed her arms defensively. “Why would I? Of what significance is a bouquet
of flowers?”

“None on their own,” he admitted. “But they were black, and
when you add that to everything else, they become important, especially with
the note saying you belong to him.”

She stared straight ahead. “It is scarcely different from
any of his letters. The implication is always there.”

“Implying it and sayin’ it are different. You ought to have
told me.”

“What difference would that make?” she snapped. “You can’t
do anything about it.”

He inhaled and pulled hard on the reins of his temper. How
could she be so obstinately naive? “It’s a threat.”

“He never said he’d do something about it. He loves me.”

Nick clenched his teeth.
Keep a cool head, Nick
.
“Star, he cut up your clothes.”

“That was months ago,” she said, bending forward to pull a
sheet over her lap. And to hide her expression, Nick guessed. “He’s done
nothing since.”

“It’s only been two months and he
has
done something.
He sent you
black
roses,” he ground out. “It’s a threat and he’s already
been violent.”

She laughed cheerlessly and turned to face him. No more
soft, naked skin next to his. Damn, maybe he ought to have waited until she was
ready to leave . . . except that this was just the first of two subjects he
wanted to talk to her about. “Violence?” she asked. “Oh no, now I must reject
that assessment, for all he’s done to indicate violence is to tear up some
dresses. Now, if there’d been a fur coat I might be fearful,” she joked in a
tight voice.

Nick shoved his hand through his hair in frustration. And to
prevent himself from reaching for her, pulling her against him and ending the
argument with a long, wet kiss.

“You weren’t so certain in Saratoga. Besides, he used a
blade; he didn’t just rip ’em up and throw ’em to the ground. It was
cold-blooded and premeditated. I don’t like the roses and I don’t like him
telephoning you, either. You promised that you’d tell me if he did anything
else.”

“And I will,” she said, “if there’s anything worth reporting.”

“The telephone calls and the flowers were worth reporting,”
he insisted.

“I never received a call myself. We’ve no notion of what he
wanted to say to me. Perhaps he meant to apologize. As for the flowers, why,
don’t they indicate a direction away from violence instead of toward it? The
note is rather sweet if you think about it. He’s afraid of losing me.”

It was a point. A good point. But it didn’t make Nick any
less worried. “You should have told me, anyhow.”

“Well you know, now.”

“When did he send the roses?”

She paused. “Almost three weeks ago.”

He quickly calculated and the muscles in his neck knotted.
“Right after I moved into the hotel.”

A crease appeared between her brows. “Yes, that’s true.”

“He said, ‘you belong to me’. He knows about us.”

A thin smile crossed her face. “Nicholas, everyone knows
about us.”

He frowned. “How? Have you said something? I thought we were
trying to keep it secret.”

“I’ve told no one, but some things cannot be kept quiet and
you and I—well I suspect people ‘knew about us’ before we even did.”

Rubbing his neck, Nick leaned against the headboard. “Even
your parents?” His stomach flipped queasily. Had Ward been colder to him
lately? He thought Morgan had—

“I doubt they know
every
thing, but they’re no fools,
Nicholas. And now,” she said glancing at the clock, “I ought to return home.”

He looked at the clock. Half past twelve. She never left
this early. Lately, she’d taken to staying until dawn—risky but worth every
last second. Sonuvabitch, he’d pressed her too hard, and still more to talk
about. His heart jerked, and then settled into an uneven gallop. “Can you give
me a few more minutes? I’ve got something else I want to discuss.”

“You sound grave,” she said as she leaned forward to grab
her chemise, thrown to the end of the bed in a moment of excitement. He watched
her pull it over her breasts, mourning the loss. “Don’t tell me you have more
heavy matters weighing on your mind. Do you harangue all your lovers this way,
or am I especial?”

He jerked. His jaw stung as if she’d slapped him.

She turned her head to look at him and the anger in her eyes
eased. “I’m sorry. That was too hard. Forgive me, but I’m not accustomed to
having my actions questioned.”

Sure she wasn’t. Nobody expected consideration from Star
Montgomery, or much of anything else for that matter. In fact, he thought
rubbing his jaw, the only people she showed any true consideration to were
women as a group, and only when they didn’t interfere with her own comforts.

And
that
, his heart said, was too hard.

“Sometimes your actions affect me,” he said. “I have a right
to ask about ’em.”

Two stubborn lines appeared between her eyebrows as she dug
for her corset under the sheets. She pulled it on and started to fasten the
front hooks. “Why then, if you insist, fire away.”

“You’ve had your monthly,” he began, trying to formulate a
way to lay it out plainly without getting her dander up again.

“Yes. That’s why I haven’t visited these three nights
passed.”

Three long nights. He’d wanted to ask her to visit, anyhow,
tell her he’d be satisfied to just lie in her arms and talk. But between them
lay an invisible chasm, one dug by feelings they refused to admit existed. They
easily moved back and forth across it, but they could not seem to fill it.

He took a breath. Maybe tonight they could start. “So the
French safes and sponge worked this time.”

She threw him a confused, sidelong glance. “Why, yes.”

“They don’t always, though.”

Finished with the corset, she focused on him, raising an
eyebrow. “Are you telling me that you have a love child, Nicholas?”

“No. Just pointing out that it could happen.”

She studied him. “I suppose it
could
,” she said, “but
as we are employing two different ways to avoid it, it seems unlikely.” Lines
formed around her eyes as she added in a tighter voice. “Are you perhaps
suggesting that we ought to sever this aspect of our . . . friendship?”

Friendship. The word cut him just as cleanly as Romeo’s
blade had sliced her clothes. He didn’t want to be Star’s friend. He wanted
more. He wanted it all.

But he couldn’t have it, not unless there was a baby. “I’m
thinking of all the contingencies,” he said, while a little voice whispered,
Marry
me. Admit that marriage to me would be worth all the risks.
“Wondering what
we’d do, is all.”

Emotion crossed her face, moved through her eyes, but what
it was he couldn’t make out. After a minute, her jaw set, and she squared her
shoulders as if preparing for battle. “Why I suppose I should handle the
situation like other women in my position.”

Situation? A baby wasn’t a situation. A baby was part of
him, part of her. “And how’s that?”
Through marriage, naturally
.

Her throat worked; his heart thudded. She slid off the bed.
“Why,” she said in a casual voice as she bent over to fetch her stockings,
garters and shoes. “I’d take a tour of Europe.”

What the hell? “Europe?”

“Yes. There are many fine facilities there, in which a woman
may pass her confinement in seclusion.”

He leaned forward as his brain fogged and he tried to
reconcile what he
hoped
she’d say with her actual words. “You couldn’t
pass your confinement in the U.S.?” Was he supposed to go to Europe with her?
Maybe marry her in Europe?

She’d backed into a chair set in front of a small table next
to the windows. She peered at him, before redirecting her attention to pulling
on her garters and hooking her stockings. Her face was taut; her voice
matter-of-fact. “Women of my station and position do not flaunt their mistakes
before the public. We take ‘extended tours’ of Europe instead.”

“And how do you explain going to Europe and coming back with
a baby?”

A flash of her eyes. They were dark. Angry. “We do not
return with the baby.”

“Until when?”

“Until never. The baby is left behind with adoptive
parents.”

His
baby? Nick crossed his arms over his suddenly
aching gut. It was like she’d balled up her pretty, little fist and drove it
straight into his belly. After a second the pain shot upwards to his heart,
then lodged in his throat. “You’d give my baby away? Sonuvabitch, Star, to
who?”

She shrugged. Stockings hooked, she slipped her feet into
her shoes. “The facility finds suitable parents.”

Their baby
. Part of him, part of her . . . created in
love. “
How
suitable? They sure can’t find parents who’d do a better job
rearing it than its real parents!” Created from his love, but not from hers.
She didn’t love him. Didn’t want him. Didn’t want their baby.

She crossed the room to pick up her skirt, abandoned in a
rush of passion. She pulled it up. “Except that the child would have two
parents instead of one. Have no fear, Nicholas. It’s done all the time.” Her
voice was cool, unemotional.

“Not with my kid, it’s not!” Damn it. Damn it! If she didn’t
love it, he sure as hell did!

“It’s best for the child to have two parents.”

“It’s better for the child to know its real parents!”

She buttoned the skirt in cold silence, the kind that told
him that the conversation was over, that she’d made up her mind and didn’t care
a lick what he thought.

“I’ll take it,” he snarled. “To hell with adopted parents,
you give it to me if you don’t want it.” The pain in his heart transformed into
anger, rage, scorching his voice, turning it harsh and rasping.

She jerked. Drawing a breath, she turned the skirt around so
that the buttons faced the back. “I never said I didn’t want it. It merely does
not fit into my life’s plans.”

“Then you change your plans,” he spat out. “That’s the way
we handle these ‘matters’ where I come from!”

“Life is simpler where you come from.” She walked to the end
of the bed and pulled the bedclothes up, searching. Her voice came back
muffled. “You have no responsibility to Society.”

“This
is
simple. You have a baby, you raise it,” he
said through gritted teeth. “Nothing else,
nothing
else, is more
important.”

“Without adoption, it would be a bastard and a pariah, and I
should be ostracized, which would destroy all that I’ve worked for.” Shirtwaist
in hand, she straightened and slid her arms into the sleeves.

“Your
work
is not more important than
my
baby!”

Her body jerked. She stopped dressing to glare at him. “And
if it were a baby girl? I am working to insure that it and every other baby
girl has a better life, better opportunities and better
treatment
than
all who have gone before them. Don’t tell me it’s not
important
,
Nicholas. We, sir, are all that stands between your daughter and the brutality
of men!”

For a second his mind created Minnie’s image, crying and
bruised. The image became his daughter, with Star’s dark curling hair and his
blue eyes. Nick’s hands formed fists and his voice shook with the effort to
keep from hollering. “You are
not
!
I
will stand between my
daughter and the ‘brutality of men’ and if anybody harms a hair on her head,
I’ll make them regret it for all eternity.”

“The law forbids such action.”

“I don’t give two hoots in hell what the law says when it
comes to my children.”

“Why then,” she said, buttoning her shirtwaist. “It’s just
as well that you don’t have any children. Nor shall you get one from me. Any
child that I accidentally bear will be raised by
two
parents!”

“It will grow up with
me
, Star Montgomery. I’ll raise
it. And you don’t have to bother yourself about mothering either, ’cause
Melinda, at least, is a natural female. She’d love it and cherish it just the
way it ought to be.”

Star’s head snapped up. “Are you implying that I am
unnatural?”

“Hell woman, I’m not implying it, I’m sayin’ it. There’s not
a natural female urge in your body.” She jerked, her face registered pain.
About damned time! “You know what, I’m glad you don’t want our baby. I wouldn’t
have you raise it up for all the tea in china!”

She sucked in her breath. Her eyes gleamed. “Why then. . .”
she stuttered, and blinked. “Why then. . . ” Another breath, several more
blinks. “I wouldn’t tell you about the baby. I wouldn’t tell you where it was,
and I sure as
hell
would not hand it over to you! If you have so little
regard for its mother, you would be a most wretched father!”

He threw himself out of the bed and advanced upon her.
“You’d keep my child from me out of spite?” he asked, stabbing the air with a
finger. “If you aren’t the most selfish woman I have ever had the misfortune to
meet. Damn it, Star, the only person you’ve ever really cared about is
yourself. I knew it when I first met you. All that talk about women’s rights
stuff bamboozled me, but you know what? The only real reason you do it is to
hide your own selfishness!”

“I do it to help other women!”

“You do it for
yourself
! If you did it for the sake
of other ‘brutalized’ woman you’d have gone to Sara—” He stopped. She took a
step back, her face stricken as she put a hand to her heart. Sonuvabitch he
hadn’t said that. How could he—

“Finish it,” she demanded in a hard, rasping voice.