Silver Miracles (14 page)

"You’re carrying my baby, and that makes it very much my business!"

"No, it’s not!" Trinity pulled her hand from Chase’s grasp and put it back over her stomach. "This baby is mine, and no one else’s. And if you’ll just go away and leave us alone, I promise you that we will never make any demands on you or that great fortune you’re always so busily amassing, if that’s what you’re worried about."

"Damn it, Trinity, that’s not what I’m worried about, and you know it!"

No, Trinity hadn’t known it, and she eyed Chase measuringly, wondering what he was up to.

"What I am worried about is you and the fact that you’ve been having a rough time of it. However, now that I’m here, I’ll help in every way that I can . . . and after we’re married—"

Trinity’s legs gave out from under her, and she had to grab Chase to prevent herself from falling. "Are you okay?" Chase asked with concern as he led her to the lawn chair where he had been sitting.

As soon as her equilibrium returned to what was passing for normal these days. Trinity sputtered, "What arrogance! Whatever led you to believe that I would marry you? Did you think that you would come home and poor little Trinity would be so grateful for your offer of marriage that I would just fall into your arms?"

"Actually, you did," Chase pointed out dryly from his kneeling position in front of her. "And it never entered my mind that you would be so stubborn and so stupid as to turn me down."

"I’m smart enough to know better than to marry you," Trinity returned indignantly. "Get this straight, Chase Colfax. I’m going to raise my baby alone, with plenty of love and without you or your money."

Chase straightened up with an impatient gesture, forcing Trinity to have to look up at him. "Larry and I just spent about thirty minutes agreeing on how stubborn you are. Not once did we ever seriously question your intelligence, but I’m beginning to suspect that you haven’t got the sense to pour rainwater out of a boot with the directions written all over the heel."

Trinity glared at him. "For a damn Yankee, you sure are quick with those colloquialisms."

Chase smiled easily. "Since I’m going to be living here, I’m learning the language."

Trinity rubbed her forehead. She felt absolutely terrible, and getting into a mud-slinging match with Chase was only making her feel worse. He couldn’t be serious about wanting to marry her. This all had to be some sort of ploy on his part.

Deciding to change tactics, she tried to reason with him. "Chase, you can’t mean that you’re thinking of living here permanently. As a matter of fact, you are one of the most impermanent people I have ever known. I distinctly remember your telling me that you traveled very fast through life and that you didn’t want or need a lot of excess baggage as you went along."

Chase gave a short, rueful laugh and squatted back down to her eye level. "You have a way of throwing my words back in my face that is awfully uncomfortable." He picked up her hand and kissed the palm lightly.

"You’re not listening to me, Chase!"

"Oh, yes, I am. I’m listening to every word. And what you’re saying is that you think you’re going to raise this baby alone, just like you have Stephanie. It’s just that you’re wrong, Trinity."

She opened her mouth, but she never got the chance to say anything, because Chase continued quickly. "I’m not saying that you haven’t done a beautiful job with Stephanie, because you have. But from now on, you’re going to have help, not only with Stephanie, but with the new baby, too. My child is going to have a father."

His presumptuousness made Trinity want to hit him. The nerve of Chase to think that he could just come back into her life and act as if their last night together had never happened.

"What makes this baby so special?" Trinity taunted cruelly, trying to hurt him.

But Chase answered her with a disconcerting unruffled ease. "Because the baby is yours and mine, Trinity Ann Warrenton, and it was conceived in love."

Totally astounded, Trinity couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He appeared to be very serious, but Chase was up to something, and she knew it. He was too cold and too hard a man to be saying something like this without an ulterior motive.

"Love!" she scoffed. "Why don’t you save your pretty speeches for someone who’s a little less gullible than I am. I don’t know why, Chase, but you’re lying. A man like you will never open himself up enough to allow love to enter his life."

"Maybe that was true before I met you," Chase agreed slowly, "but while I was away, I came to the realization that I’m very much in love with you. I nearly tore London apart after our telephone conversation. I felt so frustrated. I had never heard your voice sound so cold, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it until I could get home. I’ve been through hell these last few weeks, trying to finish my business up and at the same time wanting to be here with you."

Trinity shook her head cynically. "You don’t love me. Your pride has been hurt because no woman has ever told you before that it was over. You’ll recover from it."

"I wish you’d quit telling me what I feel or don’t feel, Trinity," Chase chided humorously. "I love you."

Trinity didn’t believe him, not for one minute. He had some brilliantly devious reason for doing this, and there was only one explanation she could come up with. Chase was telling her he loved her so that she would marry him, thus publicly acknowledging the fact that he was the baby’s father. And once that was done, he would gain control over both the baby and her. She had to stop him.

Realizing her brain was not working at full capacity, the only thing Trinity could think of to prevent it from happening was to strike out at Chase and make him angry. Then, she hoped, he would leave.

"I don’t love you, Chase. As a matter of fact, I’m very close to hating you. I know better than anyone else that there’s no room for tenderness or love in you, and you’ll never make me believe that you love me."

"We’ll see," Chase responded calmly. "In the meantime, we’ll be married."

"No, we won’t," Trinity insisted stonily.

Chase got to his feet and walked a few feet away from her. His back to her, his hands in his pocket, his gaze sweeping the pastures beyond them, he appeared to be deep in thought. Suddenly he turned and smiled at her. "All right. If you don’t want to make it legal, that’s okay with me. I’ll just move in with you."

The nausea that had been threatening all afternoon erupted, and Trinity leaned over the chair, heaving, until there was nothing left in her to come up. Gasping, she realized Chase was right beside her, holding her forehead and her hair back. A handkerchief appeared in her hand, and she held it gratefully to her mouth.

"Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you in the house," Chase whispered huskily. Picking her up, he carried her swiftly into the house and deposited her gently on the bed. He stepped out of the room, then reappeared in a moment with a washcloth, a bowl, her toothbrush and a glass of water.

Trinity gratefully brushed her teeth, washed her face and sipped some of the water. Subsiding back on the bed, she scowled weakly at Chase. "You can’t move in here. I won’t let you."

"I’m sorry, Trinity," he said gently, not sounding the least bit sorry. "I am moving in. You’ve called the shots up until now, but at the moment you’re too sick to do anything but let me have my own way in this."

Chase moved in that evening. He simply picked up the phone and gave a few terse instructions. As a result, Mangus appeared promptly on the doorstep with everything Chase had requested, and when Trinity awoke from yet another brief nap, Chase was firmly established in her home.

Efficiently and quietly hanging some of his clothes in her closet, Chase glanced over his shoulder to see Trinity struggling to get up off the bed. "I’m sorry if I woke you."

"Please don’t give it another thought." Trinity smiled sweetly. "I had to get up, anyway, to throw you out of my house."

Chase chuckled and strolled over to steady her as she stood somewhat waveringly by the bed. "I don’t think so, my love. You might as well give in gracefully, because this is one argument you’re not going to win."

Weeks ago, if he had called her his love. Trinity would have been overjoyed. Now, she could only feel an impotent rage at Chase’s obvious hypocrisy.

"Let go of me, Chase," she gritted out. "I need to go to the bathroom, if you don’t mind."

"Do you need any help?"

"This may surprise you, but I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time now, without any help from you, and I’m reasonably sure I can manage to go to the bathroom all by myself."

Chase grinned at her sarcasm, but the tone of his words was serious. "I just want to make sure you’ll be okay. If you go in there and feel faint, you could fall and hurt yourself. Promise you’ll call out if you need me."

Trinity tried unsuccessfully to pull out of Chase’s grasp. "I won’t need you—I promise. Why don’t you use this time to gather whatever things of yours that are over here and leave?"

Chase released her with an infuriating smile, and Trinity made her way into the bathroom. After attending to her needs, she washed her face, glowering at the reflection that looked back at her from the mirror. Her hair hung in limp strands around her pale face, and her green eyes appeared weak and dull. Admitting to herself that some of the corpses described in Larry’s books looked better than she did, Trinity also acknowledged the pressing need of working up some enthusiasm over fixing dinner. She dreaded it. Lately just the smell of food cooking could make her run for the bathroom.

She found Chase waiting for her as she left the bathroom, and expelled her breath in a loud display of anger. "I . . . am . . . now . . . going . . . in . . . the . . . kitchen," she explained slowly, as if to someone who was slow-witted and couldn’t understand her.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Trinity breathed a sigh of relief. Larry must have brought Stephanie home. At last she’d have an ally!

Stephanie ran into the kitchen, with Larry right behind her. "Hi, Mommy. Did you miss me?"

"Of course I missed you!" Trinity enthused, reaching down to pick up Stephanie.

Chase beat her to it, swinging the little girl up in his arms. "Your mommy is going to have to stop picking you up. You’re just getting too big!"

"Chase!" Stephanie’s small arms went around his neck. "I’m so glad you’re back."

"Me, too, little one. Me too."

"Larry." Trinity turned and appealed to her brother-in-law, lounging casually against the door-jamb. "I have told Chase to leave, but he won’t! Just because I refused to marry him, he thinks he’s going to move in."

Larry tried very hard to suppress a grin, and, to give him credit, he succeeded to a certain extent, but he wasn’t nearly as successful at keeping the amusement out of his voice. "He asked you to marry him and you refused?"

Trinity scowled at him. "I not only refused, I told Chase I never wanted to see him again."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Chase hadn’t moved. Standing in the middle of the room, still holding Stephanie, he was exhibiting, to her mind, a totally inappropriate lack of concern, even though he was the obvious topic of conversation.

Feeling the room sway slightly, she took a firm hold on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. All the arguing she had been doing had definitely taken its toll on Trinity. She had felt temporarily better after her nap, but now she knew she was going to have to sit down soon or be sick again. Still, she stubbornly refused to show any weakness In front of Chase.

Larry launched himself away from the door and walked over to her. "Why don’t you sit down, babe? You don’t look so good."

"If one more person tells me that I look awful, I’m going to scream!" Trinity threatened, but she took the opportunity Larry offered her and sat down, not bothering to add that she agreed wholeheartedly with him.

Chase gave Stephanie a hug and put her down. "Why don’t you go look in my car and see what I brought you back from London?" As Stephanie skipped happily out, Chase turned to Larry. "I’m moving in because I feel that Trinity needs someone to look after her and Stephanie. She’s obviously not well, yet she refuses to admit it."

"Pigheaded." Larry nodded in agreement, and Trinity groaned. He ignored her. "When I took her to the doctor a few weeks back, he told both of us that Trinity was going to have a hard time carrying this baby unless she slowed down. She’s in a dangerously run-down condition." Larry’s gaze turned critical. "For a while, there, she was not only doing her usual amount of work on the farm, but running back and forth into Dallas to see you. And since you left town, she’s been working twice as hard."

"Larry!" The first chance she got, Trinity promised herself grimly, she would kill Larry for telling Chase all of that. So what if it were the truth? And right after she killed him, she would give him her best "blood is thicker than water" lecture.

Chase looked at Trinity implacably. "Don’t worry about it anymore, Larry—I’m staying. Between Mangus and myself, we’ll see that she’s well taken care of."

Trinity turned cloudy green eyes on her brother-in-law but found no support there.

"I’m sorry, babe, but I have to agree with Chase. I’ve been saying the same thing for quite some time. You need someone to help you. I figure that if anyone can get through to you, it will be Chase. He won’t let you bully him like you do me."

"I bully you!" Trinity exclaimed incredulously. Now she had heard everything. Trinity slumped dolefully in her chair.

Chase was still looking at Trinity. "It comes down to this, my love. If I don’t stay and see that you take care of yourself, there’s a very good possibility that you’ll get sicker, and then you’ll be risking the baby’s health as well as your own. I can’t believe you would be so selfish as to endanger the baby."

Trinity hunched her shoulders. He certainly had her there. Suddenly Trinity felt swamped by the enormity of everything. She had been sick for weeks now, with an endless nausea and a dull weariness. And instead of getting better, it only seemed to be getting worse.