by JoAnn Ross
“But you chose not to tell me.”
Unable to bear the coldness in those eyes that had only ever looked at her with warmth, Dani looked down at her hands. “I didn't know where you were.”
“You could have asked my mother.”
“I didn't think you'd want to know,” she said softly. Miserably.
He slammed his hand down onto the table beside the chair. “Goddammit, look at me when I'm talking to you.”
She lifted her chin and returned her gaze to his. “I didn't think you'd want to know,” she repeated with a bit more strength. “After all, you were certainly there when the condom tore. But instead of sticking around to make sure everything would be okay, you took off right after I'd told you that I loved you.”
“You know why I left.”
“Now.” The part of her who'd survived being deserted by the man she loved, then given birth to a child, only to have it die, the person who'd gone on to endure a passionless marriage and not crumble when publicly humiliated in front of the entire country, rose to help her deal with this latest personal disaster. “At the time I had no way of knowing that my father had blackmailed you into leaving.”
“Did Maman know?”
“Yes.” The pain that shot into his eyes echoed within her. Dani knew that what he was obviously viewing as his mother's betrayal must hurt nearly as much—if not more—than what she'd done. “Your mother supported my father's decision that I go away, have the baby, adopt it out, then go on to college.”
“What a nice, tidy little plan you all worked out,” he said dryly. “Interesting that no one thought to ask my opinion.”
“How could I have known what you wanted?” she asked on a flare of heat. “You never said anything about loving me, or wanting anything more than just sex. You have to understand how things were. I was seventeen, Jack, a naive and in many ways a very immature seventeen. I didn't have any legal rights, and when my father and your mother began pressuring me to give up my child—”
“Our child.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgment of his gritty correction. “They convinced me that my desire to keep our child was a schoolgirl's romantic fantasy. That giving it up for adoption would be the right thing to do. For everyone involved, especially the baby who deserved to be raised in a loving family with a mother and a father.”
“She had a mother and a father.” He drew in on the cigarette, exhaled smoke on a long, frustrated breath. “Or could have, if everyone hadn't decided to keep my daughter a secret.”
“I'll admit that was horribly wrong. I didn't see it then, but I do now. There was just so much pressure coming from all directions. My father found a home for unwed mothers, and Marie drove me there. There were forty of us living in the house, and while I'm sure it wasn't nearly as harsh as that camp you were in, the rules were horribly strict—we weren't allowed to ever use our last names, have phone calls or visitors, except for our parents, and we were only allowed to go outside for three hours on Saturdays, and even then we had to always be with another girl.
“We had weekly counseling sessions, which were a joke, because they all centered around how trying to raise a child would ruin our lives, that we weren't emotionally prepared to be mothers, and how there were all these wonderful, loving parents just waiting for our babies.
“I've blocked some of that time out, but I do remember lying in bed, night after night, hoping that you'd come and rescue me—”
“Which would have been a bit difficult. Since I had no idea where you were. Or why.”
“I know. As I said, I was naively romantic back then. I also had these terrible dark days when I'd think that they were right, that if I was foolish enough to get pregnant, I didn't deserve to have a child. Because I wouldn't be able to take care of it, and keep it safe.”
Dani pressed a hand against her stomach as old feelings of shame she'd thought she'd overcome twisted inside her. “It wasn't until I was pregnant with Matt that I realized I'd undergone some sort of brainwashing. . . .
“Really,” she insisted when he arched a mocking brow. “Not one minute of our prenatal training had ever offered a single piece of information on how to take care of our babies after they were born. Because adoption was a foregone conclusion. We were nothing more than a business to them, part of a profitable, child-procurement process.”
“Maybe you ought to be the one writing stories,” he suggested. “You could write this one as the heroine being a pregnant Oliver Twist character.”
“That isn't a very nice thing to say.”
“Perhaps you haven't noticed, chère, but I'm not exactly in any mood to be nice.” The endearment was as frosty as his gaze.
“I was honestly going to tell you, but things kept happening. . . . No,” she admitted on a soft, shuddering sigh, “that's not the truth. I kept putting it off because things were going so well and I was afraid when you learned the truth, you'd hate me.”
“So you thought that would be an appropriate response?”
She could see the trap. “It might have been, if you didn't understand—”
“What I understand is that you lied to me, Danielle.”
“It wasn't exactly a lie. More a sin of omission.”
“You lied. Hell, why should I believe you ever would have told me if it hadn't come out? If she hadn't shown up at Beau Soleil?”
This was what Dani was finding more confusing about this entire horrible event. “That's impossible,” she insisted. “She couldn't be at Beau Soleil.”
“Why not?”
“Because she died, dammit!” Dani leaped to her feet. “Before she was a day old. Which broke my heart and is one of the reasons I put off telling you. Because there was nothing that could ever be done to set things right, and from how you were when I first saw you, along with the nightmares, I just kept telling myself that you'd already had enough death in your life!”
Nerves had her shouting at him when what she wanted was for him to hold her, and for her to told him back, while they figured out some way to get through this pain together.
He ground the cigarette out in a little crystal dish and pushed himself out of the chair. “There's no point in keeping this farce up, Danielle. Unless you've got an identical twin out there you didn't tell me about, who got knocked up the same summer you and I were goin' at it, there's no denying the girl is yours.”
“It's impossible,” she repeated through lips that felt like stone. She'd seen the death certificate. And had cried her eyes out for weeks afterward. “I'd changed my mind. An hour after she was born, the lawyers arrived at the hospital with the consent forms. But I realized, after having carried her for all those months, after having brought her into the world, there was no way I could ever give her up.
“I was exhausted from nearly twenty hours of labor, confused, and more scared than I'd ever been in my life, even more than when I first realized I was pregnant and I had no idea what, exactly I was going to do. But I did know I was going to take her away with me!” She slapped a hand against his chest, angry and aching and nearly as shaken as she'd been that long ago day.
“Sure you were.” She felt the spike of his heartbeat beneath her fingertips. “The same way you were going to tell me.”
“I was.”
Their eyes clashed. A sizzle of electrical charge zapped through her, and as she watched the black of his pupils widen, like molten obsidian flowing over topaz, she knew that Jack felt it, too.
“Goddammit, what is it about you?” His face could have been chiseled from granite. His jaw was clenched, his mouth a hard grim line. “You've kept my child from me, lied through those pretty white teeth, continue to deny the truth, even when I've confronted you with irrefutable proof, and in spite of all that, I still want you.”
Dani felt another moment of dizziness. If any other man had looked at her the way he was looking at her now, with such lust-edged anger she'd be terrified. But as a familiar warmth curled through her, she didn't fear Jack. She
loved him. And wanted him. Desperately.
She knew he'd seen the answering hunger on her face when his hold on her tightened, like a black velvet bond and he drew her closer, so close she could feel the heat rising off his body. His very aroused body. The short robe had loosened and the feel of denim against her bare skin was unbearably erotic.
“I want you, too,” she whispered.
His curse, in French, was vicious as his mouth swooped down, crushing hers, demanding retribution, capitulation, fueling the flames that had been smoldering beneath all that ice. He splayed his hand against the back of her head, refusing to allow her to escape the plundering kiss.
Her breath was nearly knocked out of her as they fell onto the couch, his body pressing her deep into the pretty flowered cushions.
His mouth ravaged hers, his lips sped over her face, his teeth scraped the cord in her neck as she twisted beneath him. His fingertips, roughened by work, scraped against her nipples, drawing a ragged moan; her teeth nipped his bottom lip, making him curse.
Jack wanted to hate her. Needed to love her. The dual hungers burned through him as they rolled off the couch and onto a needlepoint rug blooming with soft pastel flowers. Lifting himself above her, he looked down into her flushed face. Her eyes were emerald with passion, her shallow breath was coming in quick pants, her perfumed body slick.
“Jus' so we don't have any misunderstandings about what's happening here afterward, tell me again. That you want me.”
“I course I do. I always have.”
If the way she arched against his roving hand was any indication, about this, anyway, she was telling the truth.
“Say it.” He skimmed a hand over her, from her breasts to the soft folds of flesh that were hot to the touch. She was warm and wet and ready for him. “Say ‘I want you to fuck me, Jack.’ ”
“Jack, please, don't make me—”
“Say it.”
He could see her heart in her moist green eyes, and if he hadn't been trying so hard to hate her, the hurt he'd inflicted would have broken Jack's own heart.
“I want you, Jack.”
“The rest.” He pressed his hand against her, drawing forth a long, throaty moan. “Say the rest.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
When the words were torn from her on a stifled sob, Jack discovered that an attack of conscience didn't necessarily diminish rampant lust. Having gotten his answer, he yanked down the zipper on his jeans and surged into her.
She cried out, then wrapped her long legs around his waist as he pounded into her like a man possessed. The ripe scent of passion filled the air as mouth to mouth, hot flesh slapping against hot flesh, they moved together, driving each other to the brink of sanity. Then beyond.
She came first, with a strangled cry, the climax shuddering through her. As the inner orgasmic tremors surrounded his cock, clutched at him, a red haze shimmered in front of Jack's eyes. He gave one last deep thrust, then, clenching his teeth to keep from calling out her name, he flooded into her.
Afterward, he lay sprawled on her limp body, feeling as if the air had been sucked from his lungs. The sex, as always with Dani, had been hot, but this time, instead of leaving him feeling as if he could outrun speeding bullets and leap skyscrapers in a single bound, Jack was overcome by regrets too numerous to calculate while his body was still throbbing inside her, his mind was covered in thick dark clouds and his heart still felt as if it had been shred to ribbons.
Because he wanted to stay here with her, to gather her into his arms and try to understand what she'd been thinking and feeling back then, as well as her reasons for having deceived him this summer, he levered himself off her.
“I'll let you meet her,” he said as he refastened the jeans he hadn't bothered taking off. Hell, Jack figured he'd probably had more finesse in his teens than he had just now. “Since she deserves to know her mother. And you're going to have to pretend to care. For her sake.”
“I do care.” She'd wept while they'd made love. No, while they'd fucked, he corrected grimly since love had had nothing to do the hot coupling that had edged as close to violence as he'd ever want to feel with any woman. That it had happened with her only made it worse.
Her face was wet and tearstained as she sat up and tugged the short robe closed. “I still can't understand how this can be true, how she could have been alive all these years. But maybe there was a mixup at the hospital. . . .”
“Give it a break, Danielle,” Jack said wearily. “The bottom line is that you gave my child away—”
“Our child,” she corrected quietly as he had earlier.
“You gave her away without so much as a backward glance. Without letting her know her father. Hell, she has two uncles she's never met because of you.”
Dani was on her knees now. “My God, Jack, you know how much I missed growing up without a mother, how hard it was for me never being allowed to so much as mention her name, let alone talk about her with my father. How could you believe I'd abandon my own daughter?”
It was, he allowed, a good point. And one he'd have to consider later, after the lingering shock of today's revelation had worn off, his head had cleared, and he was able to think everything through.
“How did she find you?” Dani asked on a tear-clogged voice when he didn't respond. “How did she know? Where is she now?”
Jack didn't want to talk about this anymore. Couldn't, without risking crying himself. “She's with Nate at Beau Soleil. I'll let her answer the rest of your questions when you meet.”
“When? Tonight?”
“I don't know.” Since it was too painful looking at that beautiful tearstained face that was both wretched and hopeful at the same time, he turned and walked away. As he shut the apartment door behind him, Jack did not look back.
If he had, he would have seen Dani slump back down to the rug she'd been so excited about finding only last week, her slender shoulders shaking as she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
It didn't take Dani any time at all to figure out that it wasn't likely Jack would be so furious, or so willing to condemn her, without a very good reason. Following on that conclusion was the understanding that whatever had happened that summer, her father was behind it.
Taking a shower to wash off the scents of sex and despair, she threw on a pair of shorts, T-shirt, and sandals, and wove her wet hair into a loose braid. Not taking the time to put on any makeup, she drove straight to Orèlia's, finding the judge alone, puttering around the garden as he'd begun doing the past couple weeks since he'd begun getting a bit stronger. And, she'd thought optimistically, less negative.
Dani did not bother with pleasantries. “Father, we need to talk.”
He glanced up from weeding the flowers around the brick patio, taking in her red-rimmed eyes and puffy face. “You look terrible. Are you coming down with something?”
“No. You don't have to worry. I'm not contagious.” Dr. Ancelet had warned that a virus or infection another person might be able to easily throw off could be fatal for her father.
“I wasn't thinking about that.” He stood up, pulling off the gloves. “Believe it or not, I was concerned for you.”
“I think it's a little late for that.” Her heart was pounding in her throat, her ears, her head. “Jack had a visitor out at Beau Soleil today.”
He arched a brow at her formal tone. “Oh? Something about that foolish ghost story?” He poured a glass of iced tea from a pitcher on a wrought-iron patio table. “Would you like some tea?”
“No. I don't want anything but the truth. I didn't meet her, but apparently she was a child. A thirteen-year-old girl who amazingly, according to Jack, looks a great deal like I did at her age.”
“Ah.” He nodded.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“Did this girl happen to say who she was?”
“I didn't get her name.”
How could she have let Jack leave without finding that much out? Dani agonized. What if
her daughter ran away before they had a chance to meet? To talk? What if she left before Dani tried to find a way to explain something she couldn't comprehend herself?
“But she alleges that she's my daughter. Which we both know is impossible. Since my baby died.”
He didn't respond. He didn't have to.
“That is what happened, isn't it, Father? My baby died. You did, after all, show me the death certificate.” It had read Baby Jane Doe. Dani had wept that her father had not even consulted her about the baby at least being given the Dupree family name.
“There's no point in using that tone with me, Danielle. Since it's obvious that you already know the truth.”
“But that's just it!” she shouted, amazed to find herself on the verge of crying again when she wouldn't have thought she'd have any tears left after this horrid afternoon. “I don't know. Oh, I thought I did. But now I realize that everyone was lying to me.”
“Not everyone. Only some of the staff at the hospital, who were well paid to keep silent.”
“The adoption social worker didn't know?”
“I did what I thought best on a need-to-know basis. And she didn't need to know.”
“Who signed the consent forms?”
“The nursery room nurse. She agreed with me that it was the best thing for all concerned.”
“What about the people who took my daughter? Did they know?”
“No. I was concerned that if they knew the truth, their consciences might overtake their good sense and desire for a child and they'd back out of the adoption.”
“I see.” She pressed her hand against her stomach, which was roiling. “And Marie?”
“There was no way I was going to let her know the truth. She eventually would have notified Jack, or regretted having lost the chance to be a grandmother to her first grandchild. It was a risk I couldn't take.”
“There you go again!” Dani was trembling like a leaf.
“Putting yourself at the center of things. Pulling the strings as if people were only puppets for you to control.”
“You were my daughter. I knew what was best for you. Besides, the night before you went into labor, you told one of the nurses that you were thinking of keeping the baby.”
