She sort of crumpled onto the little gilt sofa next to a full-length mirror and sniffled into a tissue she fished out of the big quilted bag slung over her shoulder. For all that he wished she were a million miles away, she made a pathetic sight and Ben couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. “What happened, Marian? Didn’t the reconciliation with your husband work out?”
“Sort of. But it won’t last, unless you agree to help me.”
He rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Why do I feel as if I’m speaking in foreign tongues here? I just got married! My wife is probably wondering where the devil I’ve disappeared to. As for the conclusions my mother-in-law’s arrived at…” He clapped a hand to his forehead. “Hell, they don’t bear thinking about!”
She glared at him through her tears. “If you think you’ve got problems now, wait till you hear what I’ve got to say! And you can take that look off your face, Ben Carreras, because in light of the relationship we once had, the very least you owe me now is—”
“Don’t go there, Marian,” he advised her tersely. “Our relationship, if it could ever have been called that in the first place, is over. It never really began.”
“You didn’t feel that way when you slept with me, though, did you?”
“Are you here to blackmail me?” he asked, his voice sliding to a dangerous whisper.
She shrank into the corner of the sofa. “No. I wouldn’t be here at all, if there was any other way out of this. But there’s more at stake here than just your future or mine, Ben. There’s the baby’s.”
He’d spent most of his thirty-two years facing reality, knowing firsthand that even the most fleeting happiness always came with a price. Over the last five months, though, he’d grown complacent; had woken up every morning marveling that life just kept getting better.
But with Marian’s last words hanging in the air like an ax waiting to fall, he knew he’d been lured into a fool’s paradise. “What baby?” he asked, guessing ahead of time what her answer would be.
“Yours,” she said.
Of course, it was a trick, a lie. One she was more than capable of perpetuating. After all, she’d kept a husband hidden away in the woodwork for the better part of two months.
So why was dread creeping over him like a shroud? Why did the only part of his mind still ticking along recognize that, in this instance at least, she was telling the truth?
Still, he tried to deny it. “I don’t think so. If I’d gotten you pregnant, you’d have mentioned it long before now.”
“I wasn’t sure he was yours,” she whispered, the tears she’d held in check at last running free. “He might have been Wayne’s. I hoped he was.”
“I don’t see how there could have been any doubt, unless you were carrying on with both of us at the same time.”
In a desperate attempt to ward off the nightmare web closing around him, he tossed out the remark almost glibly. But the flush that ran up her face and the guilty way she avoided his eyes stripped the black humor from his words and left them revealed for the ugly truth they were.
Stunned, he lowered himself next to her on the sofa. “Tell me I’m wrong, Marian!”
She spread her hands helplessly and said again, “I’m sorry!”
“For what? For cheating on your husband? For lying to me from the day we met? For telling me you’d taken care of contraception when you’d clearly done no such thing? Well, here’s a news flash for you, Marian. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t begin to cut it!” He heard his voice, tight with anger, bouncing back from the walls and fought to bring it under control. “Tell me this is some sort of sick joke.”
“It’s no joke,” she whimpered. “I wish it were. All through the pregnancy, I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. But the baby’s yours, Ben. I know that for a fact because we just got the DNA tests back from the hospital and there’s no way he could be Wayne’s.”
Almost sick with anguish, Ben dropped his head into his hand. “Assuming this isn’t another lie, what is it you want from me now? Money?”
“No,” she said. “I want you to take the baby.”
He looked up at her, stunned. “Take him where?”
“Home with you. I can’t keep him. Wayne’s willing to forgive me having an affair, but he won’t be saddled with another man’s child. If I want my marriage to last, I have to give up the baby. That’s why I’m here. But if you don’t want him either, I’ll place him for adoption. I don’t have any other choice, not if I want to keep my husband. And I do. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved.”
“How can you love a man who forces you to give up your child?” he exclaimed.
She shrugged. “I’m not strong like you, Ben. I need someone to lean on.” And as if that explained everything, she stood, slid the bag from her shoulder and dumped it at his feet. “I could never cope alone with a baby.”
He looked from her to the bag, then back again. “What’s that for?”
“It’s got things in it that you’ll need. Diapers and formula and things like that. What did you think? That I’d stuffed the baby in it?”
“After all the other stunts you’ve pulled, I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“I’m not completely without feelings, you know,” she cried, flinching at the disgust he made no effort to hide. “He’s my child, too. I carried him inside me for nine months. I gave birth to him.” She drew in a breath and there was an air of desperation about her when she continued, “I have to do what’s best for him. I have to keep him…safe.”
Safe? Given the context of the exchange, the word struck an odd, if not ominous note.
“So what’s it to be, Ben?” she said. “Are you willing to raise him, or do I call Social Services and put him in their hands?”
CHAPTER TWO
BEFORE he could begin to sort through the chaos in his mind, let alone formulate a reply, the door opened. He heard the swish of silk and the sound of footsteps halting on the threshold. As if from a great distance, Julia’s voice came to him, warm with concern and full of love. “Honey? Is everything all right?”
And following right after, in a tone rife with suspicion and censure, her mother’s question, fired across the room like an arrow aimed with mortal intent. “I think you owe us an explanation, Benjamin. Who is this woman and what is so urgent about her business that you felt justified in walking out on your own wedding in order to accommodate her?”
Mutely, he turned and met Julia’s gaze. Tried to tell her with his look that this was not how he’d have had things turn out; that he’d have given his right arm to have spared her the hurt and humiliation about to be heaped on her. But the ability to communicate without words, which been so easy on the dance floor, deserted him when he needed it most.
He saw inquiry on her lovely face. Curiosity. Kindness. And just enough anxiety to dim her radiance to a soft glow.
“We’re waiting, Benjamin,” his mother-in-law reminded him.
“Go away, Stephanie,” he said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“If it affects my daughter—and from the look on your face, I can only suppose it must—then it most certainly does concern me.”
He felt cold all over. Cold and angry and afraid. In the space of fifteen minutes, everything had changed. All that he thought was his for the rest of time was seeping away, and he was helpless to stem the bleeding. “Julia,” he said tightly, “what I must tell you is for your ears alone and I’m not about to have your mother decide