Secrets Rising (12 page)

Oh, God! It wasn't a dream. It was all real...the attack, the insinuations Charles was making about her baby, what he wanted to do to her baby.

"This isn't your baby!" she protested, finding her voice at last. "It's Ben's! Ben's and mine!" She slammed the phone down, refusing to listen to any more of his insanity.

Blood rushed past her ears in a loud roar, and cold invaded her chest. She wrapped her arms about herself to warm and protect her baby.

She curled into a ball, pulling her knees to her chest, shielding the tiny child inside her. Tears welled up from a bottomless pit, uncontrollable sobs shaking her body so hard she feared for her baby's safety.

A minute or an hour later a hand grasped her shoulder.

"Noooo!" she wailed, jerking away and rolling to the other side of the bed. Had she left the door unlocked? Had he come in?

Two arms grabbed her, hauling her upright, into the cold darkness of the room. She kicked and hit and screamed and flailed against her assailant.

She shook her head. "No." She gripped the front of his shirt with both hands and looked up at him, steadying herself against Charles' voice still reverberating inside her head. "It wasn't a dream. I tried to pretend to myself it was, but it wasn't. Charles raped me."

"Charles? Mary, listen to what you're saying. You've had a bad dream. Charles would never hurt you."

"Please, you've got to believe me!" She turned loose of his shirt and dropped her face into her hands. Of course he didn't believe her. She was acting hysterical. She was hysterical.

Taking a deep, ragged breath, she lifted her head and tried to sound rational. "I haven't been asleep. I haven't been dreaming. You know I never go to sleep until you get home." She pushed forcibly away from him and struggled to her feet then reached down and switched on the bedside lamp. "Look at me. I'm still dressed."

Ben's forehead furrowed with confusion. His eyes shadowed with concern, he rose slowly and put one big arm about her shoulders. "Let's go downstairs, and I'll make you a cup of cocoa."

Mary nodded, the movement a jerking of strained, uncontrollable muscles. Hysteria still screamed through her mind, but she had to be calm and rational. She had to convince Ben of the danger.

As she walked on trembling legs down the stairs beside her husband, for the first time his presence failed to reassure her. She wasn't safe. He wasn't safe.

Nobody was safe.

She'd prayed and begged, and still her father had died. Still her mother had left her to go into her own private world of insanity and grief. Again she'd prayed and cajoled and hoped, but her mother had never emerged except to drift quietly into death.

Mary had done what Charles had told her to do, had kept his secret, yet now he was threatening Ben and her baby.

Once again her safe, happy world had changed to one of chaos and uncertainty.

Ben guided her to a chair at the kitchen table then set about heating milk in the microwave, not looking at her or speaking to her. He didn't want to believe her, didn't want to believe the man who'd once saved his life could do something so contemptible.

Was Charles right? Would Ben choose his friend over his wife?

Of course he wouldn't. Ben loved her. He loved their baby.

Nevertheless, her heart felt as though it had turned to lead...cold and heavy and sinking to the pit of her stomach. She wrapped her arms about herself, and her fingers were icy.

"Why did you tell him about the baby?" she asked and was amazed that the words came out sounding so calm. Perhaps because, coming from inside her, they should be cold and frozen, too. "I asked you not to tell anybody."

Ben took the cup of hot milk from the microwave. "I told Charles because he's my best friend," he said in a monotone, not looking at her. "Because I want him to be our baby's godfather."

He didn't believe her. He was ignoring everything she'd said.

He added cocoa powder to the cup of hot milk, stirred and set it on the table in front of her. She wrapped her hands around the cup, trying to find some warmth.

Ben sat down beside her, and she saw that he wasn't unaffected. His pupils had contracted to pinpoints. He lifted one hand and pushed the damp tendrils of hair back from her face. His fingers on her skin were as cold as her own.

"Mary, you fell asleep in your clothes and had a bad dream, didn't you? A horrible nightmare." His voice, his eyes, the set of his mouth all begged her to say
yes
.

Ben's eyes darted from side to side as if seeking some way around her pronouncement, the deed that would forever separate him from the man who'd saved his life, the man who now shared that life as his partner.

"He raped me," she repeated dully. "Last summer. You were late coming home. He said you had to do paperwork. He came to the door. I let him in. He tore my clothes and forced me down on the floor."

Dark red suffused Ben's face as grim acceptance finally surfaced in his eyes. For a moment he sat paralyzed, then he slammed his fist onto the tabletop. "I'll kill the bastard!" He pulled her into his arms. "Oh, my God, my God, my God!"

Tears sprang from her eyes again, but now they were tears of hope, cleansing tears, washing out all the anguish she'd held clenched inside for so long. "I was afraid to tell you. He said if I did, you wouldn't come home from work one day. I can't lose you. You're my world. I love you so much."

"You're not going to lose me. Not ever."

He slid his chair back and stood, plowed a hand through his hair then began to pace.

"How could this happen? How could he smile at me and work with me and eat dinner in my home and pretend to be my best friend? I shared your chocolate chip cookies with him just today! I asked him to be our child's godfather!"

He strode to the far wall of the kitchen and punched one big fist through the sheetrock. Mary flinched. She'd known Ben Jordan since grade school, and she'd never seen him lose his temper before.

He whirled on her, his expression fierce, his shaggy brows almost meeting over his nose, his lips a thin line, a vein standing out on his forehead and throbbing perceptibly.

"How did you know I told him about the baby?"

"He called. Tonight. He—" Mary swallowed hard. She'd thought the worst was over, but it wasn't. She still had to tell him what Charles had said. "He thinks the baby's his. He wants me to...to get rid of it. He said he knows somebody." She looked down at her lap, picking imaginary lint off her skirt, waiting for Ben to condemn her baby.

Ben came back to the table, yanked out his chair and sat down again. "What did he say? Tell me as exactly as you can remember."

"I remember every word. I'll never forget." She swallowed again and forced herself to maintain a calm veneer in spite of the chaos roiling inside. "He said,
I'm not having any damn kid messing up my life again
—" She grabbed Ben's sleeve. "He said
again
! That means this must have happened before! I used to wonder why he came home with you instead of going back to Ohio!"

"He said his family was wealthy and wanted him to go into their business, but he wanted to be a cop, same as I'd told him I wanted to be." Ben shook his head, anguish mingling with the rage in his eyes. "I never really believed that story. He used to scream in his sleep, begging his dad and sometimes his mother to stop, not to do it again, stuff like that. I figured his parents beat him or something. I wanted to show him that not everybody was like that. And look what he did to repay me."

He shot to his feet and kicked his chair across the room. "I'll kill him with my bare hands." He spread those hands in front of him, the fingers curled upward.

Icy tendrils of fear wrapped around Mary again. "If you kill him, they'll put you in prison. He'll still win. I'll lose you. You can't kill him. He—he saved your life."

Ben's lips tilted upward in a macabre imitation of a smile. "Yeah, I've told you the story, how the two of us were ambushed by three men, both of us shot, me in the gut and him in the shoulder. I went down, but he fought like he didn't even know he was hit, not even when they shot him two more times. He killed all of them."

She nodded numbly. "I know."

"But you don't know the whole story. Charles shot those men until he ran out of bullets, then he stabbed them until their bodies were unrecognizable. When it was all over, he looked around and saw me, but I don't think he really knew who I was. He passed out, and that's how they found us. He did save my life and I've always been grateful, but I'm not real sure he even remembered doing it. I think his goal was to kill those men, not to save me. That was kind of incidental to his rage."

He returned to her in two long strides and pulled her up to stand facing him. Tears brimmed from his eyes and slid silently down his cheeks. "Mary, I'm so sorry! I brought him into our lives. I thought I could help him and look what's happened. This is all my fault."

"Don't say that! It's Charles' fault. He's the one to blame. He's the one we've got to stop before he can hurt you or our baby or some other woman."

"You're right. He's got to be stopped. First thing tomorrow I'll call the police department in his hometown and see what I can find out, see what he meant about somebody messing up his life again. Then I'll take it to the Chief." He pulled her close. "It's going to be okay," he whispered, his lips against her ear. "Everything's going to be okay."

She clutched him tightly, almost believing him, wanting to believe him. Ben could do anything. He could make it okay. He could keep her and their baby safe after all.

For an eternity of agony, he held her wordlessly, then he leaned away from her, forcing her to look into his eyes. "That's right," he said fiercely. "This baby is ours. I don't care whose eyes or hair she has. I don't care who started the process, who planted the seed. It's our baby, yours and mine."

She wanted to assure him that the baby was his, would be born with his green eyes, his dark hair, his incredible capacity for love, but she couldn't speak for the sobs of relief welling up in her throat.

It wasn't necessary, anyway. Ben understood. He understood and accepted everything. Her Ben. Her wonderful husband.

She leaned against him, and he held her close.

Ben would take care of everything. Somehow he'd get rid of Charles, and she and Ben and the baby would be safe and happy together for the rest of their lives.

Chapter 10

Jake knocked on the wall that separated his room from Rebecca's. "Pizza's here!"

He knew he was out of his mind inviting her to share a pizza with him, but she'd just received another devastating blow and didn't need to be alone.

Which was precisely why he didn't need to be with her. He couldn't pick up the pieces, couldn't put her back together.

But he'd been as powerless to stop the invitation from coming out of his mouth as he'd been to stop himself from kissing her at the cemetery. There was something about Rebecca Patterson that made him wish he still believed in Santa Claus, that he was Santa Claus and could bring her all those fantasy gifts she wanted so damned bad...someone to love her special and always, someone to fill in the empty spaces in her life, a family as defined by television in the fifties.

Of course, he didn't, and he wasn't, and nobody could. He'd be doing her a favor if he could teach her to savor the present, forget the past and the future...leave the former for dead and accept that the latter came with no guarantees.

A tapping sounded at his door.

"Come on in. It's open."

She came in wearing a white cotton shirt and khaki shorts, her long legs bare, her pale hair pulled into a pony tail with wispy tendrils curling about her face.

"I took a shower and changed clothes," she said, and he realized he was staring.

"I know. I heard the water running." And he'd seen in his mind's eye exactly how she looked with that water sluicing down her naked skin, cascading over her rounded breasts—

"Have a seat." He interrupted his thoughts before they got completely out of hand.