Jared's Love-Child

by Sandra Field

  Yet everything in her cried out against abortion. In the early days at her job, when she’d been based in Ottawa, her friend Judy had had an abortion, and had then regretted what she’d done; Devon could remember the floods of tears, the long months of depression that had followed. Besides, despite her own appalling situation, she already felt ferociously protective of her unborn child: a bone-deep reaction that had taken her by surprise. Was this what was meant by the mothering instinct? She didn’t know. But she was sure that, for her, abortion would violate her conscience in much the same way that Jared’s revenge had violated her soul.

  But if she had the baby, she couldn’t keep it a secret. Jared would know whose it was, just from the timing. If the child resembled its father, which was all too likely, so would her mother and Benson. Perhaps she could give the baby up for adoption? But how could she hide a pregnancy from Alicia for seven more months? She’d be bound to see her mother and Benson during that time.

  Then, with a nasty jolt, Devon suddenly realized the obvious. She was carrying the grandchild Alicia and Benson had been waiting for: one more strand in the noose so inexorably tightening around her. How could she tell her mother and stepfather she was giving up their grandchild for adoption?

  There was no way out. No way at all.

  She was nothing like a hamster in a cage. She was like a wolf in a steel leg snare. Trapped, and knowing itself trapped. Desperate only for escape.

  The telephone rang. Convinced it must be Jared, Devon stared at the phone in horror, let it ring four times and then reluctantly picked it up. “Hello?” she mumbled.

  “Darling? Is that you?”

  “Hello, Mother.”

  “When did you get home?”

  “This morning.”

  “Darling, you sound awful…did I wake you?”

  Devon made a valiant effort to put some energy in her voice. “I picked up some kind of bug while I was away,” she lied. “I’m not feeling the greatest.”

  Alicia went on at some length about Devon’s job and all the reasons why she should quit it. Then she said, “We’re having a birthday dinner for Benson next week; you’ll be better by then, darling, won’t you? I thought we’d have it in the city just so you’ll be sure to be there. I don’t think Jared can make it, he’s down south somewhere, so I’m depending on you. Although Patrick—remember him?—he’ll be in town.”

  Face Alicia and Benson next week, knowing she was carrying Jared’s child? Out of the question. “I don’t know, Mother, I’ll have to see how I’m feeling.”

  “You’ve got to come, Devon. It’s so important to me that my family and Benson’s grow together, spend more time with each other…I’m so happy, darling, it’s frightening.”

  Devon suppressed a quiver of laughter that could all too easily turn into hysteria. The family already was growing together. Right here in her own body. “I’ll see how I feel,” she temporized. “You could always bring the photos from your honeymoon.”

  As she’d thought, this set Alicia off on a string of reminiscences. Five minutes later Devon put down the receiver, still without committing herself to the dinner.

  The living room wall was as blank of solutions as it had been all evening. She couldn’t avoid her mother indefinitely. Get it over with, Devon. Take the bull by the horns, jump in the deep end, just do it. Go to the dinner. After all, it was too soon for the baby to show.

  And Jared wouldn’t be there.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE following week, Jared flew home two days early from the Exumas, where he’d been inspecting the completion of a new luxury resort. Stripping off his tie, wishing New York wasn’t as hot as the Caribbean with none of its charm, he checked the messages on his machine. Lise, of course. She was in Toronto doing a one-woman show for a couple of weeks. The other message was from Alicia.

  No messages from Devon. No reason why Devon would phone him and every reason why she wouldn’t. Quickly he dialed “The Oaks.”

  Alicia always sounded as if she was face to face with a starving grizzly when she was talking to him, he thought impatiently. Then his attention sharpened. “…a dinner party for your father’s birthday. In Toronto on Friday, at Verdi’s. Could you come, Jared? I hadn’t expected you to be back in time, and I’d love to have the family all together.”

  Yeah, he thought, one big happy family, and with brutal force subdued the memory of Devon’s tangled blond hair on his pillow. If he went to Toronto, he’d see her again. And would that rid him of this never-ending compulsion to be with her? Breathing in the perfume of her skin, watching laughter lift the corners of her delectable mouth? Enjoying her swift intelligence, her warm contralto voice? He hadn’t even been able to swim at the resort’s private beach without thinking about the mysterious depths of her sea-blue eyes.

  Or the pain in them when he’d told her why he’d taken her to bed that night in the penthouse.

  “What time?” he rapped.

  “Seven-thirty. Devon’s coming with Patrick; isn’t it nice that he’s in town?”

  Subduing a murderous flare of jealousy, Jared said smoothly, “Would it be all right if I brought Lise? She’s also in Toronto, as it happens.”

  “Of course,” Alicia said. “The more the merrier.”

  After a further exchange of meaningless pleasantries, Jared rang off. Merriment wasn’t high on his list. Not if Devon was going to the dinner with Patrick. Did that mean she was dating him? It probably did. Devon had liked Patrick from the start. And why not? They had a lot in common, and his cousin was a decent guy who—Jared would be willing to bet—had never in his life taken a woman to bed to teach her a lesson.

  The lesson had sure as hell rebounded. He’d made a major miscalculation in assuming that if he took Devon to bed on his terms in New York, he’d be done with her.

  Done with her? That was the laugh of the century.

  Jared and Lise were five minutes early arriving at Verdi’s, a trendy restaurant with an excellent small band and a much-touted Italian cuisine. Lise looked stunning in a dove-gray suit with a plunging neckline; she was clinging to his arm in a way that already made him regret inviting her. He wasn’t worried about her feelings; it had taken him only one or two dates with Lise to realize her emotional life was reserved for the stage and her ambitions were two-fold: to get to the top of her profession and to marry a rich man. No, Lise could look after herself. The problem was his own fierce impatience to see Devon again, and the need to conceal that impatience from everyone else.

  Devon and Patrick were ten minutes late, minutes that felt like an eternity to Jared. He was making small talk—very small talk—with Alicia when he had his first glimpse of Devon in well over a month. She was wearing a teal-blue tunic lavish with gold embroidery over the briefest of teal-blue skirts; her legs seemed to go on forever. Her hair was a mass of curls and her make-up dramatic. Her slender ankles, the sway of her hips, even the carriage of her head, filled him with a chaotic mixture of hunger, rage and pain.

  Just as she left the foyer, one of the waiters, a young man with carrot-red hair, passed near her. She stopped him, briefly resting a hand on his arm. The young man’s face lit up. They exchanged a few animated words, wide smiles, and then the waiter kept on his way. As Patrick said something to Devon, Alicia glanced up at Jared and said gloomily, “Another of Devon’s lame ducks.”

  “What do you mean?” he said sharply.

  “She worked at a hangout for street kids for a couple of years. Before that she used to stay overnight at a battered women’s shelter.” Alicia gave a delicate shudder. “It used to worry me to death. And I’m always so afraid when she’s overseas she’ll interfere in something she shouldn’t. She can’t stand to see anything mistreated…whether it’s a chicken or a child.”

  Devon’s not after my money. She never was.

  Jared’s jaw dropped. For a moment, so clear were the words in his head, he was convinced he’d said them out loud. But Alicia was still gazing at her daughter, an
d no one else was paying him any attention. Feeling as though he’d been hit on the head with a two by four, he watched Devon weave her way through the tables. Benson stood up to greet her. Automatically, Jared did the same.

  From a distance she’d looked as brilliant as a butterfly. Close up, she looked godawful, Jared thought; shadows under her eyes that no amount of make-up could disguise, her skin so pale it was translucent. She kissed her mother on the cheek, hugged Benson and greeted Aunt Bessie, Uncle Leonard and Lise with a polished social ease. Then she turned to him. “Good evening, Jared,” she said with as much feeling as if he were a cardboard cutout.

  “Are you ill?” he demanded.

  Her chin tilted. “I picked up a tropical bug of some kind in Papua New Guinea. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “I already have a mother,” she seethed. “I don’t need another one.”

  He pulled out the chair next to him, the chair he’d made sure would be empty. “Sit down before you fall down.”

  Her eyes flickered round the table. Patrick had already claimed the seat next to Lise. “Still at your little games?” Devon snapped, and sat down.

  Jared didn’t answer. His previous emotions had changed into something far more complex. Concern? Anxiety? Outright fear? She looked brittle, he thought, as though she could snap if someone said a wrong word to her. Her fingers were restlessly toying with the cutlery; one of the things—one of the many things—he’d noticed about her, had been how quietly she could sit. He’d found it oddly restful.

  He said flatly, “What’s wrong, Devon?”

  “I’ve told you what’s wrong.” She gave the waiter the smile she hadn’t given Jared. “I’ll have a Perrier with lime, please.”

  “Glenfiddich, straight up,” Jared said shortly. “How did you know the other waiter, the one with the red hair?”

  For the first time, Devon looked straight at him. Her eyes, normally so expressive, were blank, totally remote, and this frightened Jared more than her pallor and her air of fragility. “That’s none of your business,” she said in a voice too low for anyone else to hear. “I thought you weren’t coming tonight, or I wouldn’t have come myself. You treated me like dirt in New York—like a toy you were tired of, so you smashed it. I have nothing more to say to you. Nothing.”

  “What kind of bug? Have you been to a specialist?”

  Her fingers clenched around her knife. As though, he thought humorlessly, she’d like to stick it in him and watch him bleed to death. Slowly. All over the carpet. He added, “I’ve done a lot of travel in the tropics…you’ve got to be so careful.”

  Careful, Devon thought. Right on, Jared. If she’d been more careful, paid more attention to her own body, she wouldn’t be in the mess she was in. Trying to inject some energy in her voice, she said, “Keep your advice for someone who gives a damn.”

  His intuition, for which he was famous because it had guided him so often and so successfully through the shoals of the stock market and the corporate jungle, was now yelling at him that Devon’s troubles weren’t just some tropical bug, bad though that could be. No, there was more going on. Unfortunately, his same intuition was batting zero when it came to defining what that could be. He didn’t have a clue.

  And why did he feel as though he wanted to protect her? Comfort her? Do anything within his power to relieve the lines of strain around her mouth, to make her laugh? He’d never felt this way about a woman. The first sign of deep emotional waters and he was gone. Out of there.

  Before Jared could think of anything to say—and he was rarely at a loss for words—Devon started talking to Aunt Bessie’s husband, Uncle Leonard, who was sitting across from her. Moodily Jared drank his whisky and picked up the menu, which was as heavy as a piece of slab board. The waiter returned. Devon ordered a small salad and the mildest of pastas. She hadn’t even touched her Perrier.

  Alicia, who was at the head of the table, on his other side, bravely tried to engage him in conversation. Maybe, he thought, Alicia hadn’t been after Benson’s money any more than Devon had been after his. From the little he’d seen of them, Benson and Alicia seemed genuinely affectionate and very happy together.

  You might be a whiz kid at the stock market. But you’re way off base on the personal stuff.

  This thought, too, had come out of left field. It was his night for insights, he thought sardonically. Until he’d met Devon, when had he ever needed any expertise with women’s feelings? He’d always been the one in control. Keeping any emotion firmly under wraps, where it belonged.

  “…do you think, Jared?”

  “Sorry, Alicia, what did you say?” he stumbled, and tried to pay attention.

  The first course arrived. Devon picked at her salad, keeping her eyes on her plate. Jared drank his Mantua squash soup and said, in an effort to get some kind of response from her, “I brought your dress with me, Devon.” He’d also brought everything else she’d been wearing the night of the concert, her lacy pale pink underwear and her wisps of stockings.

  Devon winced. Remembering how she’d abandoned the dress on his bedroom floor when she’d so precipitately left the penthouse, she watched a piece of zucchini fall from her fork. She’d never been fond of zucchini. Especially raw. She suddenly pushed away from the table, gasped, “Excuse me,” and fled for the washroom.

  Jared half got up, then sank back in his chair. He said urgently, “Alicia, I’m worried about her.”

  “Me, too,” said Alicia. “But she hates it when I fuss. So I try very hard not to.”

  “I’ll ask her to dance when she comes back. Maybe I can find out what’s wrong.”

  Alicia said with genuine gratitude, “That’s very kind of you, Jared.”

  Feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself, for he’d been far from kind to Alicia in the past and he wasn’t at all sure that his motives toward Devon were anything to do with kindness, Jared asked Uncle Leonard about his varicose veins. His uncle loved to talk about his ailments, a tendency which drove Aunt Bessie to distraction. As he listened with one ear to all the gory details of the last operation, Jared was keeping his eye out for Devon.

  When he saw her appear at the far end of the room, he left the table and went to meet her.

  Devon watched him threading his way through the tables toward her, a tall, commanding figure who moved with the economy of a predator. She’d had warning from Patrick, when he’d picked her up, that Jared was coming tonight. So at least she hadn’t had to face him unawares. Wishing she were anywhere on earth but at Verdi’s, Devon tilted her chin and waited for Jared. No point in trying to avoid him; she knew better than that.

  He said easily, “Let’s dance, Devon.”

  At least on the dance floor she wouldn’t have to look at everyone else’s food. Morning sickness, she thought unhappily, was a misnomer. All-day-and-well-into-the-evening sickness would be more accurate. At the edge of the dance floor, she turned to Jared, gazing at the tiny seahorses on his silk tie.

  Pierced by compassion, Jared said huskily, “Devon, won’t you tell me what’s the matter?”

  Briefly she closed her eyes. “No.”

  She hadn’t denied there was something bothering her. She was merely refusing to tell him what it was. And how could he blame her? His actions toward her that morning in New York were beginning to seem considerably below the usual high standards he expected of himself. Wishing she didn’t look so goddamned breakable, Jared took her into his arms, and was instantly and treacherously besieged by memory. Her height, her perfume, the gentle concavity of her waist, all so well known to him. So strongly desired.

  He said choppily, “There’s something I need to say to you.”

  She was looking past his shoulder, and again he had that sense of her utter remoteness. Then, as his brain made a sudden horrified leap, he stumbled over his own feet. “Are you just fobbing everyone off? Have you got something really serious—like cancer?”

  “No,” she repeated in the same
toneless voice.

  His heart was still pounding as though he’d been running. He swallowed, aware of a flood of relief, aware, too, that she wasn’t lying to him. He was almost sure she never lied. The truth, for Devon, would be the shortest and least complicated distance between two points. He said, “I got dysentery once after a stint in India. No fun.”

  Devon didn’t bother replying. She was holding herself rigidly, dancing with mechanical aptitude and none of her usual grace. Jared said evenly, “When your mother told me about how you used to work with street kids and battered women—it hit me like a ton of bricks. You’ve never been after my money, Devon. I know that now…I’m only sorry I said so.”

  “My mother talks too much,” Devon said expressionlessly.

  Had he, subconsciously, figured that once he apologized, Devon would melt into his arms? He’d never apologized to a woman in his life. How would he know what came next? But if he’d anticipated an instant reconciliation, he couldn’t have been more wrong. Devon was still dancing like a plastic doll; like the Barbie doll she’d once mentioned, he thought, and said stiffly, “I misjudged you. I apologize.”

  Her lashes dropped to hide her eyes. “Fine,” she said.

  “I can stay in town until tomorrow night. Have lunch with me, Devon.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Will you for Pete’s sake look at me?”

  She stopped dead. “I’ve said no, Jared. That little word you have such difficulty with… I shouldn’t have come tonight, it was stupid of me. Now will you please take me back to our table?”

  He could start a blazing row with her in the middle of the dance floor. He could throw her across his shoulder and abduct her, a course of action that appealed to him a great deal. Jared said tersely, “So you hold grudges.”

  “Jared,” Devon said, “you and I slept together in New York. You made love to me the whole night through, and then told me it was all a set-up, a power play to teach me who was the boss. Give me one good reason why I should trust anything you say or do. Ever again.”