The scenario had been so classic, but she still ached for her mother whenever she thought about it. Her mother had been seventeen and afraid, but, she’d assured Joanna, she’d loved her from the first moment she knew she was carrying her.
When Joanna had been a great deal younger, she’d fantasized that her father would just show up one day, begging their forgiveness. He’d ask her to be a flower girl at their wedding. When Joanna was nine, her mother had heard from a friend of a friend that her father had died in an automobile accident, and that was the end of that fantasy.
But even though she’d had no father, she counted herself extremely lucky to have had her mother in her life. Besides, what if her father had turned out to be a man like Rick’s father? She was convinced she was better off this way.
There was no way Rick wanted Joanna to think that he pitied her. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
“No, I was just commenting on the fact that you always saw the glass as half full and about to be filled to the top no matter what. I always thought that was one of your best attributes.”
“That, too, was a gift from my mother.” Her mother had been the most upbeat person she’d ever known. And she’d always liked Rick, Joanna remembered. “A positive attitude is what gets you through life.”
Rick nodded. He could remember sitting in Joanna’s kitchen, hearing her mother saying that. He looked at Joanna. “How long…?”
When he hesitated, she knew what he was asking. “Has she been gone? A little over thirteen months.”
The loss of Joanna’s mother filled him with a great deal more sadness than the loss of his own had. “I’m sorry she couldn’t have lived to see her namesake.”
That was probably her biggest regret, Joanna thought. That her mother wasn’t there to share all these things with her. She saw motherhood from a whole new perspective now that she was one. There was so much she would have wanted to tell her mother.
“Yes, me too.”
He had to ask. “Why did you decide to have a baby now?”
It had come to her one evening, sitting alone in her empty house. “Well, after my mother died, I just felt I needed someone to love. I had all this love to give, and there was no one around to take it. So, I decided to have a baby.”
He could understand that part of it easily enough, it was the way she went about it that didn’t make any sense to him. It wasn’t as if Joanna was hearing her biological clock ticking loud and clear. She was only twenty-eight. There was plenty of time left.
“Why that way, though? Most women would have tried to find the right man first.”
There was no point to that. She raised her eyes to his. “I’d already found him.”
Was she trying to tell him there’d been someone else in her life? That she’d broken it off with someone else as well? “Who?”
Sometimes, she decided, men could be very, very dense. Even intelligent ones. “Fishing for a compliment? You, you idiot.”
The words came out before he could stop them. “If that was true, then why did you do what you did?”
There it was, the white elephant in the dining room. They’d acknowledged its presence. She supposed it had to come to that sometime.
She looked away. The terrain was painful, even after all this time. She supposed it always would be. “I did it for you.”
“For me?” he echoed.
His tone was cynical and it rankled her. Anger rose up in her chest. “Well, I didn’t do it for me. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.”
“Was it? Was ripping out my heart really hard for you? Or did accepting the bribe make you forget all about that part of it?”
“Bribe?” Her appetite gone, she pushed her plate away. “What bribe? What the hell are you talking about?”
He could taste his anger as it rose up in his throat. All those years, wasted, because she didn’t believe in him, didn’t believe that he could rise above anything his father threw his way and take care of both of them. “Don’t act dumb, Joanna, it doesn’t become you.”
She drew herself up, her eyes flashing. All the emotion that had been pent up for so long threatened to come pouring out. “Don’t you dare tell me how to act. I can be dumb if I want to, especially when I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She was lying to him. After all this time, she was lying. How could she? Didn’t she think he knew? “My father told me all about it.”
She just bet he did. Joanna crossed her arms before her. “Enlighten me. What did he tell you?”
He had the urge just to get up and walk away. And keep walking.
But he’d done that once and it had brought him back here. This time, he was going to confront her, get it all out. And defy her to talk her way out of it.
“That he told you if you married me, he’d disown me and there wouldn’t be a penny for us, but that if you left me, he’d give you a check for fifty thousand dollars. And you took the money.”
Joanna’s mouth dropped open. Did he actually believe that? “I did what?”
“You took the money,” he repeated. It took effort not to shout at her, not to demand to know why she’d thrown everything away like that. “I saw the check with your endorsement on the back. I refused to believe it until then, until he showed me the proof.”
For a second, Joanna was just too stunned to speak. It never occurred to her that people would go to such lengths to pull off a deception. Never occurred to her because she would have never done anything like that herself. She didn’t believe in lying.
Shaking her head, she blew out a breath. “I guess your father can add forgery to his list of talents. Forgery as well as lying.”
“You’re telling me it never happened?” It was a challenge, even though he knew better.
Her eyes held his for a very long moment. “I’m telling you that not all of it happened. Yes, your parents came to me, and yes they told me that if I married you, they’d disown you. And yes, there was an offer of a check.” Her eyes darkened. “But that’s where the story changes. I tore the check up in front of them. That was when your mother took me aside and painted a very vivid scenario of how you would grow to hate me because you had to face an existence without all the things you were accustomed to. And that it would be because of me.”
It was his turn to stare at her, not knowing whether or not to believe what she was saying. “And you believed her?”
Joanna sighed. Angry tears rose in her eyes at the memory.
“I didn’t want to, but she was very, very persuasive and I was afraid that there was more than just a germ of truth in what she was saying. I could live with struggling to make our way in the world, I’d done it all my life. But I didn’t know if you could and I didn’t think it was right for me to be the one to deprive you of all your ‘creature comforts,’ as your mother put it.”
Suddenly the walls were down and it was eight years ago. She had to tell him now what she couldn’t have told him then. “I would rather have died than to have you hate me. And in a way, I guess I did.”
“You never took the money,” he repeated slowly, letting the words sink in.
“I never took the money.” Why did she have to convince him? He’d loved her once, how could he not believe in her? “You want to hook me up to a lie detector?” she asked cynically.
He swallowed an angry retort. “Why didn’t you come to tell me all this?”
He should have known the answer to this, too. “Because if I came to you, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you all this. You wouldn’t have let me walk away.” And even if you had, I wouldn’t have been able to.
“Damn right I wouldn’t have.”
“And every day, I would have lived in fear of seeing you slowly begin to resent me, then hate me.”
Rick couldn’t believe she was saying this. “Didn’t you know me any better than that?”
Joanna shrugged. Maybe she should have trusted him, maybe she should have trusted herself. But his mother h
ad been so confident….
“I thought I did, but I didn’t want to risk it. I was twenty years old and, by your parents’ standards, very naive. You meant the world to me and I wanted you to be happy.”
He’d been everything but that. “So you left me.”
“So I left you,” she echoed. It had been the single most unselfish thing she’d ever done and it had almost killed her. “Your parents said that Loretta Langley was much better suited for you.”
He remembered his parents’ efforts to push the two of them together right after his father had dropped the bombshell about Joanna taking the bribe. “Loretta Langley was a shallow, narcissistic cardboard figure my mother could easily lead around by the nose. I didn’t want a puppet, I wanted you.”
Tears burned her eyes. She blinked them back. “Then why didn’t you try to come after me? Why did you just pick up and leave?”
“Because I was hurt.”
His parents had done a stellar job of ruining two lives, she thought. “Because you believed I could be bought. How could you?”
He answered her question with one of his own. “How could you believe that I’d actually pick my empty lifestyle over you?”
“I guess your father’s a better salesman than either of us ever thought.” She laughed shortly.
He couldn’t believe it. All those years lost because of lies. “So now what?”
Too much time had gone by for them to pick up where they’d left off, she thought, even though she wished it was otherwise. There were things to resolve, trust to rebuild. Once it was lost, trust was a very hard thing to find again. It was like learning how to walk again after a car accident had denied you the use of your legs.
Maybe, eventually…
“Now we finish our meal,” Joanna proposed, moving her plate back in front of her, “and take it one step at a time.” Her eyes widened as Rick abruptly stood up. The legs of his chair scraped loudly along the marble floor. “What are you doing?”
Taking hold of her wrist, Rick brought her to her feet and pulled her to him. “I’ve just decided what I want my first step to be.”
Six
She didn’t get a chance to ask “What?”
The question was unnecessary anyway.
She knew.
One look into his eyes and Joanna knew. He wanted exactly what she wanted, what she’d thought about, dreamed about these last long years without him.
Rick dove his fingers through her hair, tilting her face up to his. Bringing his mouth down to hers.
The torrent of emotion, secured behind dams that had been weakening these last few days broke loose, flooding both of them.
Oh, but she’d missed this, missed him.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, Joanna pressed her body against his, absorbing that old, familiar heat and reveling in it as it shot through her at the speed of Mach 8.
Who said you couldn’t recapture the past, at least for a moment? Kissing Rick erased all the years, all the heartache. She was twenty again, and in love.
Desire surged through him with a vengeance that all but rattled his teeth. She still had the power to weaken his knees and reduce him to a pile of needy ashes in the space of a few seconds. No other woman could ever do that. No other woman even came close.
But then, he’d never loved anyone but her. The others who populated his social life were there due to sheer physical attraction alone, an attraction that quickly waned, leaving as abruptly as it came. Once he slept with a woman, the pull was no longer there. He was, he knew, subconsciously searching for someone to take Joanna’s place.
But this, this was different. It always had been. The more he kissed her, the more he wanted to kiss her.
If there was such a thing as a soul mate, then Joanna had been his. Once.
Desire slammed into him, demanding release, demanding that he act on it. But even if there wasn’t Joanna’s condition to think of, this was too soon. He felt it in his bones.
You couldn’t recapture the past and turn it into the present just because you wanted to.
Could you?
Logic disintegrated, leaving only rubble in its wake. All that remained was need.
Rick could feel every fiber of his body wanting her. In another moment, he wasn’t sure if he could rein himself in.
Pulling his head back, he framed her face with his hands and looked at her.
“Damn, but you still have the ability to knock my shoes off.”
She glanced down at his feet and then raised her eyes to his. “Figuratively speaking.” Her mouth curved as she tried very hard not to tremble.
His own smile faded. He wanted her so badly, he was surprised that he didn’t go up in smoke.
“How long?” he asked. She cocked her head and looked at him, confused. “How long before you’re able to make love with me?”
Her smile, so reminiscent of the girl he’d once known, went straight to his heart. “Cutting right to the chase?”
His throat felt dry. “It’s been eight years, Joey, there’s no cutting to anything.”
Joey. It was a nickname only he used. It brought back a flood of memories. She could almost feel him whispering it against her ear as they lay in one another’s arms, enshrouded in darkness and the contented afterglow of lovemaking.
She closed her eyes as he pressed a kiss to her throat. Wishing she could go back and change things. Wishing that they hadn’t lost all the time that they had.
Joanna shivered as desire teased her very core. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Soon, I hope. Very soon. The doctor said I was making great progress and there weren’t any complications. I’ve heard some women can do it as soon as two weeks after they give birth. And I’ve always been very, very healthy.”
He brushed the hair from her face, reluctant to let her go. “Two weeks,” he murmured.
“It might be longer,” she cautioned.
“It already is.” He brushed a kiss to her forehead, holding her to him for a moment longer. He felt his body quickening, rebelling against his resolve. But he’d been without her all this time, he could wait a little longer. From a safe distance.
Dropping his arms to his sides, Rick took a step back, then moved his chair into place. If he didn’t leave now, he wasn’t sure if he could keep from touching her.
Was he leaving? In the middle of dinner? “Where are you going?”
“To take a long, cold shower. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be taking a lot of them in the next couple of weeks. Or longer,” he tacked on.
Turning to leave, Rick suddenly swung around again. His hand against the column of her throat, tilting her head back, he pressed a quick, deep kiss to her lips. One for the road. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” She looked down at his plate. He’d only half finished his meal.
Rick nodded. “It’s going to be a very long shower.” He nodded at her plate. “You’d better finish that or Mrs. Rutledge is going to take it as a personal insult. She tells me she spent a lot of time preparing your favorite meal.”
She didn’t have much of an appetite. He’d stirred things up in her, making her ache for him. “You didn’t finish yours,” she pointed out.
He laughed shortly. “She’s used to that.” And then he winked at her. “Besides, I’ve got a feeling you’d better build up your strength.”
With that, he turned and walked out of the dining room, leaving her to her meal. And some very erotic thoughts.
By the time Rick stepped out of the onyx-tiled shower, he felt almost waterlogged. He’d remained in the enclosure for a very long time, not only trying to cool off desires that felt almost insurmountable, but also to try to get a handle on his anger. Anger against his parents and especially his father. The sense of betrayal was almost overwhelming.
Had it only been his mother who had come to him with the story of bribery, he would have been highly skeptical and far more inclined to get to the bottom of it himself. He knew his mother didn�
�t approve of Joanna, that she had set her sights on his marrying “within his class,” whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.
But his father was another matter. His father had always kept clear of his mother’s machinations. He rubber-stamped a lot of things, ignored others. Rick had the feeling that his father might have even liked Joanna, at least a little. He’d never echoed his mother’s feelings about her, never looked down on Joanna because her family weren’t “people of substance.” So when the man had backed up his mother and even produced the endorsed check, Rick had felt he had no choice but to believe that Joanna had been bought off.
He’d thought they’d gotten somewhat closer these last couple of years, he and his father, shedding the roles of two strangers. He’d been at his father’s side right after the heart attack.
So why hadn’t he told him about his deception?
Was everything in his life a lie?
It was hard for Rick not to feel bitter.
Getting out of the shower, he toweled his hair furiously as he crossed to the telephone next to his bed. He tossed the towel aside and hit the speed dial for his father’s cell phone.
It rang twenty times before the metallic voice came on to tell him that his father was either out of the area, or not picking up.
“No kidding, Sherlock,” Rick muttered.
He hurried into his clothes, then, his hair still wet, Rick went downstairs to his office. He kept a phone book there of all the important numbers he might need. Taking the book out of the top drawer in his desk, he flipped through it and found the phone number to his father’s house in Florida.
It was past eleven on the east coast, but this matter wasn’t going to wait until morning. It had waited long enough.
Rick heard the answering machine pick up. Frustration flooded him as he waited for the short, utilitarian message to be over. “Dad, if you’re around, pick up. You there, Dad? Pick up, it’s important.”
Nothing. Muttering a curse, Rick had begun to hang up when he heard a noise on the other end of the line.
“Hello? Richard? Is that you? What’s wrong? Something happen to the negotiations for the new headquarters?”
A Bachelor and a Baby Page 7
