Sandra Field - Pregnancy Of Convenience

She tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness forced her back to the pillow. “Just go away,” she quavered. “Go away and leave me alone.”

If only that were possible. “You don’t like being confronted with the consequences of your actions, do you?” Cal said. “I suppose I should be congratulating you on having the rudiments of a conscience.”

“Stop! Just stop—I can’t take any more.”

She did indeed look at the end of her tether. Cal bit his lip, feeling uncomfortably like the school bully that had made his life a misery when he was seven and small for his age. Now that he was six-foot-two and entirely capable of looking after himself, he made it a practice never to throw his weight around. Especially with a woman. On the other hand, he was damned if he was going to apologize. When all was said and done, nothing could bring Gustave back to life. And wasn’t that the bottom line?

He said coldly, “I’ll be back in a few minutes. The bathroom’s through that door and if I were you, I’d stay in this part of the house. You’re not welcome elsewhere.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she retorted with a flash of spirit.

“Yet you’re the one who came here. Uninvited, I’m sure.”

“If you think I’m going to justify myself to you, you’re mistaken,” she said bitterly, turning her face away from him.

The flickering gold light illuminated the exquisite curve of her cheekbone. Dragging his gaze away, Cal strode out of the room. In the hallway he stood still for a minute, trying to subdue the turmoil of emotion in his chest. What was the matter with him? Yelling at a woman with a concussion? Thoroughly disliking her and wanting to kiss her senseless all in the same breath?

Disliking her was fine. She was, after all, a liar and a cheat, according to people who’d known her intimately. But kiss her? Was he out of his mind?

Lots of women had deep blue eyes and long black hair. Grow up, Cal. Or, as Lenny would say, get a grip.

After checking with Dieter he made a couple of phone calls, to Stephen with his change of plans, and to the airport, where he discovered all flights were canceled. Maria had set a place for him at the plain oak table in the dining room. Mechanically he ate a bowl of delicious wild mushroom soup and some homemade rolls, along with a salad of fresh greens, making conversation with her and her husband as best he could.

At the end of the meal Cal said, “Gustave’s things are in the back of my vehicle—would you like me to bring them in now, or tomorrow morning?”

“Tomorrow would be better,” Dieter said heavily. “Today, already we have been through enough.”

Maria said frostily, “I have put some soup on a tray. You will take it to her.”

“Of course,” Cal said. “That was delicious, Maria, thank you.”

“We start our day early,” Dieter added. “Living as we do so isolated, we keep to a strict routine. Breakfast at eight?”

“Thanks, that would be fine,” Cal said, picking up the tray Maria had deposited on the table. “I’ll see you then.”

He walked back along the hallway, again glancing into the parlor. The only books were thick, leather-bound tomes, the photos on the wall were of grim-faced ancestors, and there wasn’t an ornament in sight. Had the house always been this joyless? This austere? Had Gustave grown up in these stark surroundings, or were they a product of Dieter and Maria’s middle age?

Either way, Gustave Strassen was beginning to have his entire sympathy.

When Cal went back into the bedroom, his socked feet soundless on the bare hardwood, Joanna Strassen was lying flat on her back, gazing up at the ceiling. Her brow was furrowed, as though she were in pain; the white pillowslips and her cheeks were exactly the same color. A floorboard creaked beneath his heel. She gave a visible start, just as quickly controlled; the face she turned to him was empty of expression.

He said, “I’ll help you sit up.”

“I can manage.”

“Don’t be so dammed stubborn!”

Defiance flared in her eyes. But with that same superhuman control, she subdued it. Where had she learned such control? And why?

And why did he care so strongly about the answers to his own questions?

As Cal put the tray down on the bedside table, she tried to struggle to an upright position, her lower lip clamped between her teeth. He’d been concussed once, on the Eiger, and it had left him with a splitting headache. He slid the pillows from behind her back, propping them against the headboard; then he put his hands under her armpits, lifting her whole weight.

The soft swell of her breast brushed his forearm, the contact surging through his body. Unceremoniously he pushed her back on the pillows, hearing her shallow, rapid breathing. He said with unwilling compassion, “I asked Maria for some painkillers, you’d better take one.”

“They’ve probably got arsenic in them.”

“I’ll take one, too,” he said dryly, “if that’ll make you feel safer.”

“I don’t like taking pills.”

“Is that how you got pregnant?”

He hadn’t meant to ask that. He watched emotion rip across her face, raw agony, terrible in its intensity. As he instinctively reached out a hand in sympathy, she struck it away. “Just leave me alone,” she cried. “Please.”

She couldn’t possibly have faked that emotion. The pain was real. All too real. He said flatly, “So you regret getting rid of the baby.”

“Why don’t you use the real word? Abortion. Because that’s what you mean. And that’s what Dieter and Maria think I did.”

“That’s certainly what they told me.”

“And you believe everything you’re told?”

“Why would they lie to me, Joanna?” Cal asked, and found he was holding his breath for the answer.

“Because no woman in the world would have been good enough for their beloved Gustave! I was their enemy from the very first day he brought me here.”

Could it be true? Cal rested the tray on her lap and reached down to put more wood on the fire.

When he turned back, she was making a valiant effort to eat. But soon she pushed the bowl away. “That’s enough,” she mumbled, her lashes drifting to her cheeks.

He took the tray from her, standing by the bed until her breathing settled into the steady rhythms of sleep. She’d stopped shivering, and there was the faintest wash of color in her cheeks. She was going to be fine and he was a fool to stay in this room overnight. How could he lust after a woman whose every word he seemed to distrust?

First thing tomorrow he’d organize a tow truck and see her on her way. Then he’d give the Strassens Gustave’s gear and head for the airport. They’d rebooked him on a flight midmorning. Twenty-four hours and he’d have seen the last of Joanna Strassen.

It couldn’t be soon enough.

Glancing at his watch, Cal saw to his dismay that it was scarcely eight o’clock. After leaving the bedroom, he checked out the tidy ranks of books in the parlor. He’d been meaning to read the classics, and apparently now was the time for him to start, he thought wryly, leafing through a couple of volumes of Dickens. Then Dieter spoke from the doorway. “Ah, I thought I heard you in here. Maria and I are not our best, Cal, you must forgive us. You have no suitcase, nothing. Please let us give you a new toothbrush, some pajamas.”

Cal never wore pajamas. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Come through to the kitchen, and I will get them for you.”

Maria was putting away the dishes. Cal said pleasantly, “Your daughter-in-law has no nightclothes—could I trouble you for something?”

Her lips thinned. Without a word she left the room, returning with a carefully folded pair of striped pajamas over her arm. “Give her these.”