Danielle Steel - Journey

“Then where were you? Try telling me the truth this time.”

“I was with Lizzie,” she whispered.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“My daughter.”

“Oh, for God's sake,” he said, shoving her away from him, as she fell backward on the couch, feeling a rush of air in her lungs with considerable relief. “Why the hell did you bring that slut here?”

“She's not a slut,” Maddy said quietly. “And I wanted to see her.”

“You're going to get yourself smeared all over the tabloids. I told you to stay away from her.”

“We need each other,” she said simply, as he stared at her in fury. It infuriated him when she didn't obey his orders.

“I told you, for your own good, you can't afford it. If you think your ratings are lousy now, wait till you see what happens when someone leaks that story. And more than likely, she will.”

“All she wants is to see me. She doesn't want publicity,” Maddy said quietly, sorry that she had lied to him and that he was so angry about it. But his rigidity about her seeing Lizzie didn't give Maddy many options.

“That's what you think. How can you be so stupid? Wait till she starts hitting you up for money, if she hasn't already. Or has she?” He narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. “You know, you're getting to be more trouble than you're worth. If it isn't one goddamn thing, it's another. Where is she now?”

“At a hotel. The Four Seasons.”

“Lucky for her. And you're telling me she's not interested in the money?”

“I'm telling you that she wants a mother,” Maddy tried to soothe him, but he looked furious as he strode across the room, and then stood looking at her, with irritation and contempt.

“You're always doing something to screw me over, aren't you, Mad? If it's not an editorial about that nutcase Paul McCutchins was married to, it's fucking up your ratings, and now this … you're going to get sucked right down the tubes with this. Watch if I'm not right on this one, Mad. And when that happens, believe me, you'll be damn sorry.” But he didn't say another word about it, he just stomped upstairs, and slammed the door to his bathroom, as Maddy sat in the living room for a little bit, trying to figure out how to explain to him how much it meant to her, and how sorry she was that she had upset him. It was all her fault, she knew, because she had lied to him about having had a baby. Maybe if she had told him from the first, he wouldn't have been so upset by it. But all she could do was apologize, and try to be discreet about it now. The one thing she knew was that she was not going to give up her daughter, now that they had found each other at last.

She went upstairs quietly, after she turned off the lights, and by the time she'd changed into her nightgown, he was in bed, with his eyes closed and the lights off. But she was sure he wasn't sleeping, and when she got into bed with him, he spoke to her without opening his eyes. “I hate it when you lie to me. I feel as though I can't trust you anymore. You're always doing something to hurt me.”

“I'm so sorry, Jack,” she said, touching his face with her hand, and forgetting totally that he had nearly strangled her half an hour before when he accused her of cheating on him. “I don't mean to upset you. But I really want to see her.”

“I told you, I don't want you to. Can't you get that into your head? I never wanted kids in the first place, and neither did you,” he said, opening his eyes and looking at her. “And I sure didn't want to get stuck with some nineteen-year-old little whore from Memphis.”

“Please don't say things like that about her,” Maddy begged him, but what she really wanted was for him to forgive her, for lying to him, betraying him, and having her illegitimate child appear seven years after they were married, when she'd never even told him about her in the first place. She realized it was a lot to ask him to swallow. But she couldn't help wishing that his reaction were more like Bill's. He had really liked Lizzie when they met.

“I want you to stop seeing her,” Jack said, looking at her with conviction. “You owe me that much, Mad. You never told me she existed, now I want her to disappear again from both our lives. You don't need her, you don't even know her.”

“I can't do that. I can't have kids. And I never should have given her up in the first place.”

“Even if it costs you our marriage?” It was a hell of a threat.

“Is that what you're saying to me, that it will?” she asked, looking horrified. He was threatening her, and forcing her to make a choice that would break her heart. But at the moment, she didn't want to leave him either. He had been so nice to her for the past few weeks that she'd been beginning to think that things were working out between them. And now this had happened. She wished she hadn't lied to him so she could take Lizzie to the theater.

She was desperate to see her daughter and didn't know what to do about it without upsetting her husband.

“It's a possibility,” Jack said, in answer to her question about her seeing Lizzie being a threat to their marriage. “This was never part of the deal. In fact, it very emphatically wasn't. You entered this marriage on a fraudulent basis, you told me you'd never had kids. You lied to me. I could have our marriage annulled for that.”

“After seven years?” She looked shocked.

“If I can prove you defrauded me, and lied to me, which you did and I can, then there is no marriage. You'd better think of that before you drag her into our lives any further. Give it some serious thought, Mad. I mean it.” And with that, he turned over and closed his eyes, and five minutes later, he was snoring, as Maddy stared at him. She didn't know what to do or say. She didn't want to give Lizzie up again. She couldn't do that to her, or herself. But she didn't want to lose Jack either. He had given her so much, and the abuses she had accused him of were beginning to seem like figments of her imagination, and Lizzie wasn't. Maddy felt as though it was she who had behaved badly toward him, and now he was the victim, just as he had said to her. She lay in bed for hours that night, thinking about it, and feeling guilty toward him.

But in the morning, she still had no answers. She explained to him that she was going to say good-bye to Lizzie at the hotel, and have breakfast with her, and then she'd be back and they could spend the day together.

“You'd better tell her you're not going to see her again, Mad. You're playing with fire here. With me, and with the press. It's a high price to pay for some kid you don't even know, and will never miss if you kiss her off now.”

“I told you, Jack,” she said honestly. She didn't want to lie to him again. It was one more sin to add to her many others, as he saw it. “I can't do that.”

“You have to.”

“I won't do that to her.”

“You'd rather do it to me, wouldn't you? That says a lot to me, about what you think about this marriage.” He looked pained as he said it. The consummate victim.

“You're not being reasonable about this,” she tried to explain it to him, but he brushed her away with a look of outrage.

“Reasonable? Are you kidding me? Are you nuts? What drugs are you on? How reasonable does it seem to you to spring your bastard kid on me after never telling me you had one?”

“That was wrong of me, I agree. But I'm not asking you to see her, Jack. I want to.”

“Then you're even crazier than I think you are. How about a family portrait on the cover of People? Would that be enough for you? Because that's what's going to happen sooner or later. And then you can kiss your ass good-bye with the public.”

“Maybe not,” she said quietly, “maybe they'd be more understanding about it than you are.”