Web of Deception (15 page)

It struck her that he was serious. This hadn’t come out of nowhere. He’d been
thinking about this for a while. Regardless of whatever he’d said before about not being the marrying kind, he wanted a wife and a family and a life together, after all.

“I can’t believe you’re saying all this,” she said.

“Kate, we’re so right together. And you’re more open-minded than you think. I’ve seen it in you.”

Her stomach twisted into a knot. Something was amiss. She just didn’t know what.

“No, I’m not that open-minded,” she said. “I can be very one-eyed about some things. I want the same thing most women do. Commitment.”

“There are different types of commitment.”

No, this wasn’t what she wanted. This wasn’t what she’d thought was coming.

This was something else.

“That sounds like a cop-out,” she said. “Like you’re trying to weasel out of something.”

“No, I’m
trying to be honest with you. You know what you want and you’re smart but you’ve only been looking at things one way. The traditional way. There are other ways of doing things.”

Kate slid her hands out from his, folding them carefully in her lap. “One thing’s for sure. I told you I want commitment and I’m not going to settle for second best.”

“Commitment comes in different forms. We can work out what suits our personal circumstances.”

He sounded more like a lawyer putting up an argument for the defence than a man in love. This couldn’t be happening.

“You mean what suits
you
best,” she said. “You’re used to getting your own way.”

“No, I’m thinking of you, too. I want you to be part of my future.”

“And how long is this future going to be? For the rest of our lives?”

“I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep. How many men would be that honest with you?”

Kate felt her face growing hot. “So if we’re going to divorce or break up or whatever somewhere down the track, you think we shouldn’t even try. Not even aim for something longer, deeper, more worthwhile. Is that it?”

“We can still make this work. For both of us. Not just fo
r me. I can be good to you. I can certainly be a good father. You’ll never have to worry about money again–”

“I
don’t
worry about money,” she said dryly. “Right now, that’s the last thing on my mind.”

“I can provide for you, take care of you, support you. I’d be behind you whatever you wanted to do, whether it was keep worki
ng or take care of the children.”

She looked him
in the eye. “Ever since I met you, you’ve been saying you’re not cut out for marriage.”

“I’m not.”

Daniel was matter-of-fact, like there was nothing even remotely unusual in what he was saying.

“So how do you plan on having all these children?” she asked.

“Not on my own, obviously. I thought we’d do it together. Forge a relationship that works for both of us and have a family. There are many different kinds of families and I know we can be a good one. Together. Me and you.”

“I don’t understand. What kinds of relationship? What kind of family?”

“I can be a good father.”

He hadn’t answered her question.

“Can you be a good husband?” she asked.

Daniel shook his head. “I’d
never be a good husband. Not in the traditional sense. Not until death do us part. That’s the one thing I can’t promise you.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying we can still be a family. Me, you, and the children we have together.”

“You want to set me up as some kind of mistress? Isn’t that a bit old fashioned, even for you?”

“Not a mistress. I’d never keep you hidden away from the rest of the world like some sordid secret. I think of it as more of a partnership. We’ll have a family and live together for as long as it suits us, for as long as it works. It’ll be a relationship between two equals.”

“What kind of relationship?”

“A new kind. One that we construct ourselves to suit us.”

“What? So you can see other women?”

“I don’t want to see other women. Not now. Not in the foreseeable future. But I can’t give you a written guarantee now on exactly what I’ll want in ten or twenty years time. And I don’t think you can either. It’d be a lie. A lot of people tell each other those things and then they get divorced. I’m different. I don’t want to lie to you in the first place.”

“No, you just want to have me while I’m young. While I’m still good for some hot sex. While I’m still in my prime childbearing years. Then when you’re sick of me, you’ll move on to someone else.”

He slid his hand across her thigh. She flinched and he pulled back.

“I want to look after you,” he said.
“I don’t want to lie to you.”

“Let’s get this clear. You
don’t
want to marry me.” His expression remained unchanged so she added, “You just want me to have your children.”

Daniel pleaded with his hands. “I want children and I want you. Is that so bad?”

“You want to use me.”

“You’re stuck on this marriage thing. That’s it, isn’t it? I don’t want to marry you so you’ve jumped to the conclusion that I’m using you. Kate, marriage isn’t the only way. Maybe it’s not the honest way.”

“Not for you because you don’t believe in it.”

“What works for other people won’t necessarily work for me. And it doesn’t work so well for most of them either but people convince themselves they did the right thing because they got married.”

Kate couldn’t believe it had come to this, couldn’t believe they were having this argument.

She hadn’t seen it coming.
She thought about Daniel’s hints about how she was different, about how she wanted to do things her way. It all started to make sense. She just hadn’t seen where it was headed at the time.

She could have stayed with him for weeks,
months, perhaps even years until the passion faded.
His
, that is, because she knew her feelings weren’t going to disappear. Damn it, she’d have stayed with him on
his
terms because that was the only way she could have him.

But she couldn’t stay with him after this…insult. She wasn’t a baby machine. She was a human being with goals and desires of her own. Not to mention feelings. Daniel didn’t seem to be taking that into account. He thought he could manipulate her into doing whatever he wanted.

And he nearly had.

She’d been willing to put her life on hold for her passion, for a man. She’d been ready to put aside her own aims in life to fritter away some time with him, knowing there would be no substance behind the relationship, knowing he
wasn’t in it for the long term.

There
was no way she could stay with him after this.

She loved him. It
wasn’t enough, though. Not when he didn’t love her. He’d all but told her he didn’t. If he loved her, he couldn’t have talked to her that way and made her that offer.

It was ironic, but that was exactly what gave her the strength to fight her addiction.

To stand.

And to walk to the door.

Because that was exactly what she
did.

She
stood by the door and looked down at her suitcase, still sitting exactly where she’d left it earlier.

Daniel followed her and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Kate, I’ve done this all wrong. I assumed too much and started in the wrong place. I care for you and I want to share part of my life with you.”

He cared for her
. She’d worked that much out for herself but caring wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

She turned and looked up at him. “But not
all
of your life.”

“I don’t plan on making promises I can’t keep. I won’t lie to you and pledge the rest of my life to you because I don’t know if I can live up to that.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t force you to marry me.”

“Let’s start over again. We can work this out. I don’t want to lose you over a misunderstanding.”

Kate shook her head. “There’s no misunderstanding.”

She should have known better than this. She’d been fooling herself, believing what she wanted to believe.

This man was so cutthroat in business that he was willing to ruin good people like her parents, not to mention countless others. That sort of person was always no-good. That side of his personality was always going to surface sooner or later.

Time to stop lying to herself.

“I’ve muffed this up completely,” Daniel said. “You want some romance in your life and that’s fair enough.”

She felt strangely calm. “I don’t want romance. I want the one thing you can’t give. Yourself.”

“I can’t promise that you and I will last forever. I can’t say that in ten or twenty years time I’ll still feel this strongly about you.”

But Kate could.

She pulled open the door and picked up her suitcase.

“Goodbye Daniel,” she said.

Daniel walked up the plank leading into the building
and in through the open doorway. A labourer with a wheelbarrow full of rubble walked past him. As the man turned a corner in the corridor, a half-brick slipped off the top of the pile to land on Daniel’s toe. The man apologised immediately.

Daniel looked down at his Italian leather shoes, covered in dust, the leather toe on one shoe
dented from the brick which had landed on it. Leaving his office in a hurry, he’d forgotten to take the steel-toed boots he wore on building inspections and now his new shoes were ruined.

Not that it mattered. They were only shoes.

“Don’t worry about it, mate,” he said to the labourer, and kept walking.

The smell
of concrete dust filled the air. As a property developer, Daniel had been on many building sites and the smell reminded him of the excitement of seeing projects in progress. But that wasn’t why he was here.

Kate
Henry stood at the far end of the central corridor that ran through the building. Wearing tailored sage coloured pants and a matching jacket over a simple tee shirt, she looked like she’d pulled on a pair of work boots to come to site.

Her blond hair brushed against her shoulders, peeking out from beneath a hard hat.
Daniel wondered how it was possible for a woman to look so damn good wearing a bright yellow construction hat.

She seemed to have spotted him through the corner of her
eye but kept talking to the tradesman with whom she was dealing. The man appeared to be arguing with her but she pointed to the plans in her hands, her expression firm. Seconds later, the workman raised his hands as though giving up, nodded and walked away.

It was clear this was her playing field, her area of expertise, and she meant business.

She looked Daniel in the eye as soon as he neared her. “This is a construction site.”

“I go on site all the time,” he said.

“I’m at work.”

“I know. That’s why I came. It was the only way I could catch you when you wouldn’t return my calls.”

“There’s a reason for that. There’s nothing left to discuss. We’re through.”

“No we’re not.”

She turned, walked away and opened a steel framed glass door leading to an internal courtyard. Swinging the door open and closed repeatedly, she appeared to be checking the hinges. Whatever she was doing, she was avoiding him.

How many times had she told him she’d made mistakes in her past? Now, he’d made a big one. He’d thought he could play by his rules, have everything his own way, and it was painfully obvious he’d been wrong.

Daniel hadn’t realised how much Kate meant to him until she’d walked away. It was such a cliché. It was also the truth.

In the last ten years he’d got everything he wanted. Every woman. Every business deal. Each interaction made him more experienced, more accomplished, better equipped to handle the next challenge.

He’d been called arrogant more than a few times, but so what? As far as he was concerned, he had reason to be.

It hadn’t helped prepare him
for this. Women didn’t walk away from him. Damn it, they came to him, not the other way around. He had an ego and plenty of pride but that wasn’t what this was about.

He loved Kate.

It was as simple as that.

He just hadn’t known it before.

Daniel leaned against the wall behind her, his arms crossed. “I can wait until you’re ready.”

Planting her hands on her hips, she
turned to face him. “I’m never going to be ready.”

“I’m not leaving until
you talk to me.”

She frowned. “I’m busy. You can see that.”