HER SECRET, HIS DUTY

by Carla Cassidy

  Cecily was more than ready to step in as a supportive wife and partner and there was no question that she would be an asset to his career. She had money, connections and the personality that would serve him well.

  Yes, everything was falling nicely into place. So, where was his happiness? He’d assumed he’d be euphoric at this point in the process, but his happiness seemed to be sadly absent.

  He glanced back at Debra’s house and frowned as he saw a faint red glow coming from someplace inside, a glow that hadn’t been there minutes before.

  Was Debra awake? Had she turned on some kind of light? If so, it was a strange red light. A lick of flame danced before the front window.

  Fire! It was fire.

  His mind screamed the word as he fumbled with his cell phone and called 911. As he gave Debra’s address to the dispatcher he got out of the car and raced for the front door.

  With the call made, he tossed his cell phone in the grass and pounded on the door with his fists, calling her name at the top of his lungs.

  The odor of smoke drifted through the door, making his blood freeze. Was she unconscious? Already overcome by smoke that had risen to her upstairs bedroom?

  Panic seared through him as he rang the doorbell and then pounded once again, screaming her name as the flames at the window grew bigger and more intense.

  Vaguely aware of lights going on in the houses around hers, conscious of the distant sound of sirens, he picked up a flowerpot that was on her stoop and raced around to the back of the townhouse.

  His heart thumped painfully fast with every step. He finally made it to the kitchen windows where just inside he’d sat at the table and had coffee with her. He raised the heavy pot and threw it through one of the windows, shattering the glass and allowing him entry.

  The air in the kitchen wasn’t bad, but when he entered the living room the smoke tickled the back of his throat and obscured his vision.

  The curtains at the windows blazed and dropped malicious imps of flames onto the carpet below. Although his first impulse was to race up the stairs to Debra’s room, instead he ran to the front door, unlocked it and pulled it open so that the arriving firemen could easily access the house.

  Swirling cherry-red lights announced the arrival of the emergency vehicles as Trey raced up the stairs, the smoke thicker now, causing him to pause as he was overcome with a spasm of coughing.

  He clung to the banister until the spasm had passed and then continued upward. There were three doors upstairs and thankfully all of them were closed, hopefully keeping most of the smoke in the narrow hallway.

  A night-light shone in a wall socket, guiding him forward despite the thickening smoke. The first door proved to be the guest room.

  Across the hall was a bathroom where he quickly wet a hand towel with cold water. He entered the door at the end of the hallway and saw Debra unmoving in the bed.

  His heart stopped beating for a second. Was she dead? Overcome by smoke? But the smoke was only now just drifting faintly into the room.

  “Debra?” He ran to the side of her bed, but she didn’t move at the sound of her name. “Debra!” He shook her and gasped in relief as she roused.

  “Trey?” She sat up in obvious confusion and shoved a tangle of hair off her face. “Trey, what’s happening? Why are you in my bedroom?”

  “Fire. There’s a fire downstairs. We’ve got to get you out of here.” He didn’t wait for her to get out of the bed. He handed her the wet cloth. “Put this over your nose and mouth,” he said and then he scooped her up in his arms and rushed down the hallway toward the stairs.

  On the lower level he could hear the sound of firemen at work and when he reached the living room the fire was out and only the smoke and soot remained.

  Trey carried Debra directly out the front door, where emergency vehicles had been joined by news vans. It wasn’t until he tried to lay her down in the grass that he realized she was crying.

  “It’s okay,” he said, shouting to be heard above the din. He was aware of a familiar reporter standing nearby, but his focus was solely on Debra. “You’re safe now,” he said in an effort to comfort her.

  She shook her head and clung to him, her sobs of fear breaking his heart. “You saved my life,” she said, the words coming out in deep gasps. “You saved our baby’s life.”

  In the glow of the headlights around them he saw the horror on her face as the words left her lips. Everything else faded away...the lights, the people and the sound. The entire world shrunk to just him and her and the words that had just fallen from her lips.

  She released her hold on him and instead wrapped her arms around herself as she shivered, refusing to meet his gaze.

  “Our baby?”

  She looked up at him. Her tear-filled gaze held his as she slowly nodded her head and then began to weep once again. He stood, his head reeling with the information that the baby she carried was his. Not Barry’s, but his baby.

  He helped her to her bare feet as the fire chief approached them. “There’s not a lot of damage,” he said. “It looks worse than it is, mostly smoke. We didn’t even have to use our hoses. We got it out with fire extinguishers. It was intentionally set, an accelerant used. I’m guessing gasoline by the smell of things,” he said to Trey and then turned his attention to Debra. “We’ll do a full investigation but I’m afraid you’ll need to find someplace else to sleep tonight.”

  “I’ll take you to Mom’s,” Trey said. He took Debra’s arm and looked at the fire chief. “You’ll see to it that a guard is posted for the duration? I broke a window in the back to get inside.”

  “A police officer is already standing by. We’ll make sure everything is secure before we leave here.”

  “And you’ll let us know what your investigation discovers?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Winston.” He smiled sympathetically at Debra. “We should be finished with our documenting the crime scene by midday tomorrow. If you get a good cleaning crew in here you should be able to return home either tomorrow night or by Monday.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, her voice barely audible among the other noise.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Trey said. He found his cell phone where he’d tossed it in the grass and then they started for his car.

  Before they could get there a bright beam of a camera light flashed in Trey’s face and a microphone was thrust in his direction.

  The reporter he’d seen earlier smiled like the cat that had swallowed the canary. “Mr. Winston, would you like to make a statement about Ms. Prentice’s pregnancy?”

  “No comment,” Trey growled and grabbing Debra closer to his side, he hurried her to his car.

  Once she was in the passenger seat, he slid behind the wheel and started the engine with a roar. He pulled away from the curb, a myriad of emotions racing through him and he was afraid to say anything to her until he’d sorted them all out.

  She shivered and he didn’t know if it was because she was clad only in a copper-colored short nightgown or if it was because she didn’t know what to expect next.

  Hell, he didn’t know what to expect next. There was a part of him that was filled with great joy at the idea of her carrying his child and there was also a part of him that battled anger that she’d intended to keep the baby a secret from him, to pretend that the baby belonged to her old boyfriend.

  He couldn’t begin to think about the fact that somebody had gotten into her house without him seeing them. That person or persons had set her living room on fire. He hoped the initial assessment was wrong and that it had been faulty wiring or something other than a man-made flame.

  For several long minutes they rode in silence and it was finally he who broke it. “You were never going to tell me the truth about the baby?”

  “The last thing I wanted to do was screw things up
for you,” she replied. “I figured it would just be easier to pretend the baby was Barry’s and then you get to have your shining future with Cecily and everyone would be happy.”

  The fact that she’d lied for him to keep his dream alive stole away any anger he might harbor against her. She was willing to sacrifice the Winston power and influence for his happiness, to assure that he reached his dreams.

  She’d been willing to go through all the struggles and sacrifices as a single mother to allow him to reach his own goals.

  Once again silence fell between them. His brain felt half-contused from bouncing around in his skull. Too many things had occurred in too short a time.

  “I’ll arrange a cleaning crew to come to your place as soon as the fire department releases it,” he said. “I’ll also see to it that a security system is installed.” He didn’t even want to acknowledge at this point that somebody had apparently entered her house and set fire to the curtains.

  He pulled up to the side entrance of the estate but didn’t turn off the car, nor did she make a move to leave. “That reporter, he heard what I said.” Her voice was a whisper. “It will be all over the news tomorrow.” She stared straight ahead, her face pale in the illumination from the dashboard. She finally turned to him, her eyes wide and holding a soft vulnerability. “What do you want me to do?”

  “What do you mean?” He eyed her curiously.

  “I could lie. I could say that the reporter misunderstood what I said, that I was confused by the fire and everything that was going on.”

  “That’s definitely not going to happen,” he replied. And it was at that moment he knew he wasn’t going to marry Cecily. Even if he got to be where he wanted to be in the political arena, he didn’t want the cool, absolutely perfect Cecily next to him.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “Don’t talk crazy.”

  “It’s not crazy,” he responded. “You’re the mother of my child. We’d make a family and you’d never have to worry about anything.”

  “That’s a ridiculous idea and I won’t marry you.” She opened the car door and in the dome light she looked ghostly pale and exhausted. “Right now I’m going inside to sleep and in the morning I have to figure out who got into my house and tried to burn it down with me still inside. You deal with the press however you want to. I’ll follow your lead. I just can’t deal with anything else tonight.”

  She got out of the car and slammed the door. He remained sitting in the car long after she’d disappeared inside the house.

  A baby...a fire... His head ached with the night’s events. Cecily was going to be angry when he broke it off with her, but that was the least of his problems at the moment.

  What concerned him more than anything was the fact that he believed twice now somebody had tried to kill not just Debra, but the child she carried, as well... His child.

  Tomorrow he’d deal with Cecily. Tomorrow he’d also discuss his intention to be a huge part of the baby’s life. He’d have to deal with whatever the news reports contained and he needed to speak to Thad about this newest threat against Debra.

  The one thing he didn’t care about at the moment was any ramifications this might have on his career. And the odd thing was that he wasn’t sure he cared.

  Chapter 12

  “Marry me.”

  Debra awoke with the ring of Trey’s words echoing in her head. She was in the same bedroom where she’d stayed following her car accident and as she thought of everything that had happened the night before she wanted to pull the blankets up over her head and never get up again.

  A glance at the clock on the nightstand let her know it was after ten. Obscenely late for her to still be in bed. She should be at her desk, she thought and then realized it was Sunday. She should at least be at her house finding out what the fire marshal had learned. She should be anywhere but under the covers thinking about how often she’d fantasized Trey saying those two words to her.

  “Marry me.”

  In her fantasies he’d spoken the words because he loved her, because he couldn’t imagine a life without her. In her dreams he’d held her in his arms and kissed her with love and commitment as they planned a future together.

  In reality she knew he’d said the words in an effort to begin damage control and perhaps because he wanted to be a part of his baby’s life. He’d proposed to the baby inside of her, but not to her.

  There had been no love offered from him. If she’d agreed it would have been like a business deal to him, a merger to get accomplished for the best results possible.

  She was worth more than that. The off-the-cuff proposal had stabbed through her loving heart like an arrow. She wouldn’t be his lover and she refused to be an inconvenient wife to him.

  Hopefully, despite her pregnancy, he could make things right with Cecily and continue on his way. Surely he could figure out a way to make Cecily forgive him for a single night’s indiscretion. Of course eventually there would be custody issues to deal with, weekends and holidays when the child would be with him... With them, instead of with her.

  She turned over on her back and stared up at the ceiling, reluctant to face any part of the day. Somebody had tried to kill her last night. Somebody had come into her home and started a fire in the wee hours of the morning. If Trey hadn’t been there she probably would have died of smoke inhalation long before the flames reached her bedroom.

  She frowned thoughtfully. What had Trey been doing at her house at that time of night? How had he managed to be at exactly the right place at exactly the right time when it should have been the last place he’d be? It didn’t make sense, but then nothing about her life lately had made any sense at all.

  Somebody had gotten into her house. Who? Who had crept in and started a fire that would have certainly been the death of her if Trey hadn’t rescued her?

  A knock fell on her door and Kate came in carrying a cup of hot tea. Debra wanted to hide her face in shame. Instead she pulled herself up to a sitting position and took the cup of tea that Kate offered her.

  Kate sat on a tufted chair next to the bed. “Well, my dear, you’ve created quite a stir.”

  “Kate, I’m so sorry,” she said miserably.

  “Sorry about what?” Kate smiled at her kindly. “I should be angry with you for not telling me that you’re carrying my first grandbaby, but I’m not. I understand why you lied about the father of the baby.”

  “I didn’t want to mess things up for Trey and now I’ve ruined everything,” she said, fighting back a wave of tears that threatened with every word. She set the tea on the nightstand, afraid of spilling it and making even more of a mess of everything.

  “Nonsense,” Kate said briskly. “Oh, there’s no denying that some adjustments will need to be made, but Trey is intelligent and flexible. This won’t stop him from getting where he wants to go.”

  She pursed her lips and held Debra’s gaze. “You know, somehow I’m not surprised by the news. There is an energy between you and my son that I’ve noticed every time the two of you are in the same room.”

  “It was just one night. One crazy, stupid night,” Debra replied. “Only I would be stupid enough not to think about birth control.”

  “Debra, darling, you aren’t the first woman in the world to make a mistake where that’s concerned.”

  “But...the press,” Debra protested.

  Kate gave her a look of distaste. “The news is out everywhere with such salacious headlines that one would think the two of you committed some heinous murder rather than slept together. Trey has a press conference this afternoon at four to address the issue.”

  Kate motioned to the cup on the nightstand. “Drink that before it gets cold.” Debra grabbed the cup and raised it to her lips as Kate continued. “Trey spoke to Cecily this morning. He told her that
under the circumstances he was breaking off their relationship for the time being. He told her he needed some time to figure out all the ways this will impact him.”

  Debra swallowed hard. “How did she take it?”

  Kate leaned back in the chair. “According to Trey she was a bit upset, but in the end quite gracious about the whole thing. She said she still intended on being involved in his campaign and wished him well in his personal life if they didn’t manage to reconnect. Cecily is a survivor, Kate. She’s a barracuda who will find a mate based on criteria that will make her the most successful in the endgame.”

  “But surely she’s terribly hurt and Trey has to make her understand that I don’t mean anything to him, that it was all just a terrible mistake. Surely they can work through it. She is in love with him,” Debra replied.

  Kate smiled. “I seriously doubt that Cecily is in love with Trey. She is in love with who he will become and where that would take her. If they don’t get back together she’ll move on and will be quite fine, I’m sure.”

  She stood. “I’m not sure how you and Trey intend to work things out between you, but I’ll have you know that I intend to embrace that baby with all the love I have to give. And now, speaking of Trey, he and Thad are in the sitting room and want to talk to you.”

  She moved toward the doorway. “Haley happened to have a pair of sweats and a T-shirt that you can put on. Anything I own would be too short on you. The clothes are laid out in the bathroom. Once you’re showered and dressed, we’ll see you downstairs.”

  The minute she left the room Debra set her cup down and flopped her head back on the pillow. She didn’t want to face Trey. She didn’t want to talk to Thad. She just wanted to hide for the rest of her life.

  But she couldn’t hide. Reluctantly she got out of bed and carried her teacup with her into the bathroom and set it on the counter while she got into the shower.

  She hadn’t noticed the odor of smoke that had clung to her until it was washing away down the drain. She’d spent her morning thinking about Trey and all the ramifications of her secret unexpectedly being spilled. Now it was time to think about who had been in her house and who wanted her dead.