by Carole Buck
In the meantime…
The witch’s little bookshop—the business she’d chosen over her maternal duties—was up ahead. Maybe he should take a few minutes to scope it out before he headed for her house.
Then again, maybe not. He didn’t want to tip his hand.
Still, the notion appealed to him. Going in. Giving the place the eyeball. Buying a couple of things with his brand-new credit card.
Anthony Stone laughed to himself. Well, no. Not his credit card, exactly. He’d had his lawyer acquire it using the name Nicholas Marchand. The gutless weasel had opposed the idea, but Stone had insisted. It wasn’t exactly the same as spitting on Saint Nick’s grave, but it was a nice little touch.
A beat-up station wagon was easing away from the curb directly in front of the bookstore. Former Federal Prisoner No. 0394756 took that as a sign he could visit the shop without endangering himself.
He’d taken the pale silk nightgown Suzanne Whitney had worn for him the night he’d come calling on her as a sign, too, he recalled suddenly. She’d pretended otherwise, of course, but he’d known. She’d wanted him.
He always knew everything. After all, he had the power.
John Gulliver stared at his computer screen without really registering what was on it.
You promised you’d leave Leigh alone, he reminded himself. You’ve got to keep your word and let her work things through for herself. She’s trusting you to do that.
He would do his damnedest to live up to that trust. But it was hard. God, it was so hard!
Plowing his fingers through his hair, he expelled a weary sigh. He wondered fleetingly if this was what Lucy Falco had had in mind when she’d spoken of admiring his decision to “stick around” rather than run away. He seriously doubted it. Instinct told him that his office manager wasn’t a big fan of passivity.
He sighed again. Maybe he could phone the bookstore. He wouldn’t say anything. He would hang up as soon as he heard Leigh’s voice. Or maybe he could drive by and—
Someone knocked on his door. John stiffened, catching his breath.
“Who is it?” he called after a moment, telling himself it had to be Edith from housekeeping.
“It’s me,” a soft female voice answered.
He was on his feet after the first syllable and across the room a second later. It took him a few frantic moments to unlock the door and yank it open. His pulse had kicked into a full gallop by the time that was accomplished, sending his blood stampeding through his veins.
“Leigh,” he breathed, devouring the woman standing on the threshold of his room with his eyes. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to make certain that she was really there, but something about her expression warned him against it.
“John,” came the quiet reply. While she looked as weary as he felt, she exuded an air of determination. It was obvious she’d come to a decision about her future.
Pray heaven, that decision included him.
“Come in.” He gestured awkwardly with his disfigured hand. “Please.”
She did so. He caught the scent of her hair and skin as she moved by him. Clamping down on his immediate and inevitable physical response, he shut the door behind her.
He turned. So did she. They faced each other without speaking for what seemed like an eternity.
“This is…hard…for me,” Leigh finally said, meeting his eyes squarely for an instant then glancing down toward the floor. She began worrying her lower lip with the edge of her upper front teeth.
“It’s Nick, isn’t it,” he blurted out, finally voicing the fear that had been building within him since he’d left her on Saturday.
“N-Nick?” She looked up at him once again, clearly shocked.
He nodded, thinking of the scarred visage he’d seen reflected in the bathroom mirror that morning when he’d shaved. He’d confronted a few truths as he’d done so. A few ugly truths. “You’ve realized that while you trust me, you love…him.”
Leigh opened and shut her mouth several times, her sky-blue eyes very wide. Under different—very different—circumstances, her expression might have struck him as comic.
“No,” she said at last, her voice raw with emotion. The color in her cheeks fluctuated wildly as she shook her head back and forth. “Oh, no. Whatever Suzanne Whitney felt for Nicholas Marchand, it’s nothing compared to what I feel for John Gulliver. I love you, John. I love you with all my heart.”
“You…do?”
“I think I’ve always loved you. The real you, I mean. I never believed Nick was what people said he was. What…you…said he was. There were times when I—when Suzanne—would look at him and…Oh, God, I can’t explain it—”
“Leigh.” He moved to close the space between them. To sweep her into his arms. He was dizzy with relief. Intoxicated with expectation. She loved him. She loved him! “Oh, sweetheart—”
“No!” Leigh held him off with one hand. “John, please. Stop.”
He did, but it wasn’t easy. He yearned for her to the marrow of his bones. “Why?”
“I need to tell you s-something.”
“You’ve already told me you love me. Nothing else matters.”
“This does.” Leigh took a deep, desperate breath, then said, “It’s about Andy.”
John went cold inside. A dozen hideous possibilities sleeted through his mind. “Andy?”
“He may not be your son.”
Chapter 13
At first, the words didn’t seem to register with John. He stared at Leigh as though she’d addressed him in some alien tongue. She stared back, her heart racing, her body trembling.
Having played out this scene a dozen different ways during the drive from the bookstore, she’d believed herself to be ready to cope with just about any kind of reaction to her disclosure about the uncertainty surrounding Andy’s paternity. She’d been wrong. In no way had she prepared herself to be on the receiving end of such…blankness.
“Of course, Andy’s mine,” John finally asserted. His tone struck Leigh as irrationally rational, given the circumstances. She could not say the same about the sudden flash of emotion in his eyes.
“I want him to be,” she returned, fighting to keep her voice steady. “But I can’t be…sure.”
John’s brow furrowed, the scarred skin on his temple puckering. “There was—” he swallowed “—someone else?”
She flinched from the question, both inwardly and outwardly. She tried to speak. She found she couldn’t.
Most of the color drained from her companion’s angular face. He started to reach out toward her, but apparently thought better of the gesture and aborted it. Leigh was thankful for this. For all that she loved him, she honestly didn’t know whether she could have tolerated John’s touch.
“Tell me what happened,” he said quietly, his dark gaze very intent. “Whatever it is. Please. Sweetheart. Tell me.”
The endearment almost undid her. Holding herself together by sheer force of will she asked, “How much do you remember about the night you—Saint Nick—supposedly died?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“Do you remember having a phone conversation with Suzanne?”
“I…think so.”
“It was around lunchtime. You—Nick—told her he’d be over that evening.”
John nodded slowly. “She promised to be waiting,” he recalled, his voice much more certain than it had been a moment before. “She also promised to be wearing the nightgown he’d given her.”
Leigh moistened her lips. “She…was.”
“Was—?”
“Waiting. And w-wearing the nightgown.”
“But Nick never showed up.”
“No.”
“Who did?”
Again, her voice failed her.
“Who, Leigh?” John took a half step forward, then checked himself, the price of his restraint clearly visible in the leanly powerful lines of his body.
She had to say the name, she told herself. She had no choic
e.
“Anthony Stone.”
John looked sick. “Oh, no.”
“He said he had a message from you. From Nick. I—Suzanne—knew you were friends—”
“Not friends.” The interruption was vehement, underscored by a shake of the head. “Never friends. I got close to Stone because of who he was. What he did. It was part of the job. But there were moments when it was hard to stomach being in the same room with him.”
Leigh gestured this information aside. It didn’t really matter, unless John intended to blame her for not having discerned the true nature of his relationship with Anthony Stone. And if that were the case…
“It was late,” she continued, the scene unreeling in her mind like a film. “Nick was more than two hours overdue. Suzanne was getting worried. Very worried. Nick had been in a strange mood all week—”
“The Justice Department was getting ready to move in, Leigh. Eighteen months of surviving undercover was either going to pay off in a major way or blow up in my face.”
“Suzanne didn’t know that. She was afraid when Stone came to the door. She didn’t like him. But since she thought he and Nick were—were—”
“Two of a kind?”
The suggestion stunned her. So did the expression on John’s face. He looked as though he were being ripped apart from the inside. That he suspected where her recitation was headed was obvious. For a moment she considered cutting straight to the bottom line. But she knew she couldn’t. She had to tell him the whole story of what had happened. Of how it had happened. She had to let him judge her culpability for himself.
“No,” she denied rawly. “Oh, God, John. No. I told you before. She never believed that you were—that Nick was—I-I never believed it! Still, when Stone showed up saying he had a message—”
“Suzanne let him in.” John’s voice was hushed, half suffocated.
Leigh averted her eyes, a bitterly familiar sense of shame burning through her. When she resumed speaking, it was strictly in the first person. Somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered how John Gulliver had shifted into the first person Saturday morning when he’d explained why Nicholas Marchand had tried—and failed—to leave Suzanne Whitney alone nearly six years ago.
“Yes,” she affirmed. “I told him to give me the message through the door but he said he’d promised Nick he’d deliver it personally. I asked him to wait for a minute. I was wearing the nightgown and something made me—I’m not sure how to describe it, but I didn’t want him to see me in Nick’s present. So I put on a robe over it. And then…I let Anthony Stone in.”
“Leigh. Please. You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do,” she disputed fiercely, forcing herself to meet his gaze once again. Her throat constricted. The bridge of her nose congested with the pressure of unshed tears. She told herself she couldn’t weep. Not yet. “I let him in. I asked him what the message from Nick was. He said…he said it was that Nick wasn’t going to be able to keep our date. That he wasn’t going to be able to keep any d-dates, ever again. And then he said that was okay because he was there to keep me company instead. He said he knew I I-liked him. That he’d seen me looking at him. That he could tell I…wanted him.”
“Sweetheart—”
“He grabbed me,” she continued, the words coming faster and faster as the memories grew more and more vivid. “He kissed me. I pulled away. I tried to slap him. He caught my hands. He ripped open the robe. He…he smiled when he saw the nightgown underneath. Like he recognized it. Or had expected to see it. I started to scream but he covered my mouth. He kept saying I didn’t have to pretend. That he knew he was the one I really w-wanted. That he’d always known. That he knew everything because he had the power. And then he tore the nightgown straight down the front.” She mimed the action with shaking hands, her stomach roiling. “It was one of the ugliest sounds I’ve ever heard. That…ripping.”
“Leigh—”
“I tried to fight him.” She was completely locked into it now, reexperiencing the horror she’d tried to repress for five and a half years. “I kicked. I bit. I scratched. Only he…Oh, God, he started laughing, as though he enjoyed my fighting him. He was so much b-bigger than I was. So much…stronger. His hands seemed to be everywhere. And his m-m-mouth. But I tried, John. I tried. Then he hit me. Once. Twice. Nobody’d ever hit me before. My parents never ever spanked me! He knocked me down. I tasted b-blood on my tongue. My blood. And he was still laughing. Still saying he knew I wanted him. Calling me slut and all kinds of filthy names.”
“He raped you.”
Blue eyes stared deeply into brown ones. “I let him.” Leigh made the admission without inflectjon. “I couldn’t stop him. I tried, but I couldn’t. In the end, I just…gave up. Gave in.”
“He might have killed you if you hadn’t.”
“There have been times when I wished he had.”
“No!”
“Yes.” She drew a shuddery breath, hugging herself with her arms. She felt so cold. “Nick Marchand always wore a condom. Anthony Stone didn’t use anything. Andy was born n-nine months after that night.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“I want him to be y-your son more than anything in the world, John,” she concluded, rejecting what she knew was likely to be a scenario predicated on the possibility of prophylactic failure. She understood the odds. “But the truth is…I don’t know who fathered my little boy.”
Although picking the lock on the back door of Suzanne Whitney’s house would have been a cinch, Anthony Stone chose to smash it open instead. He was in no mood to be subtle.
The redhead in the bookstore had really ticked him off. Who the hell did she think she was, asking him to wait while she finished ordering some damn book? Where did she get off refusing to answer his questions about the woman who called herself “Leigh McKay?” If that grease monkey with the Yankee accent hadn’t shown up, he would have let her have it.
Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, former Federal Prisoner No. 00394756 fondled the black matte butt of the SIGSauer he’d taken off one of the dead marshals. The ninemillimeter automatic pistol fit comfortably in his hand. Yeah, he thought. He would have stuck it to that skinny little slut, but good. He might still stick it to her.
But first things first.
“Hi, son,” he whispered as he stepped into Suzanne’s snug little house. He absorbed the stillness, letting his mind fill with visions of the reunion scene to come. “Daddy’s home.”
He should have guessed, John told himself, torn between anger and anguish. All the clues had been there. The odd disconnect between Leigh’s inherent sensuality and her overt behavior. The mixed-up combination of emotions he’d sensed when he’d kissed her for the first time in five and a half years. The fear she’d shown Friday night while they’d made love. Above all, her off-kilter response when he’d spoken of Andy after finally coming clean about Nicholas Marchand.
I should have figured it out!
“I’m sorry, Leigh,” he said, damning the inadequacy of the words. “I’m so…so sorry.”
“Why?” She looked at him, her sky-colored eyes very dark and distant. The skin beneath them appeared bruised. “You didn’t do anything.”
It was then that John Gulliver fully understood why Leigh McKay had held back the truth for so long. He also comprehended why she’d insisted on detailing what had happened to Suzanne Whitney the night Saint Nick had died.
He’d thought she’d been driven by a need to punish him. To make him face up to the price she’d paid for his inability to leave her alone nearly six years ago. But rather than blaming him—
“I didn’t do anything?” he echoed, his soul aching. “Dear God in heaven, Leigh! Neither did you!”
“I let him in,” she contradicted. “I didn’t stop him. Maybe—maybe I did give off some kind of s-signal that made him think—”
John closed the small distance between them and caught her by the shoulders.
“No,” he s
aid, infusing his voice with every bit of conviction he had. “No. You did nothing wrong. Nothing. Anthony Stone is, was and always will be a sick bastard and if I could get my hands on him, I’d castrate him and then I’d kill him. But you…Oh, sweetheart…Oh, my love…”
His vocabulary failed him. He drew her against him, his senses attuned to detect even the slightest hint of resistance. She stiffened for an instant, but yielded to his embrace before he could begin to release her.
“J-John…” she whispered tremulously, her arms sliding around his waist.
He tightened his hold, nuzzling his mouth against the top of her head as he repeated her name over and over again. The silken strands of her hair teased the underside of his jaw. He breathed in her warm, womanly scent.
“You never told anyone?” he finally asked, massaging the hollow at the base of her spine.
“I couldn’t.” Her tone was stark, a testament to the isolation she’d suffered for the last five and a half years. John swore to himself then and there that he would spend the rest of his life making up for what she’d endured. “I think Dee’s guessed what happened. Not the specific details. But…enough.”
“What did you do when you found out you were pregnant?”
“I considered getting an abortion. But in the end, I couldn’t.” Leigh eased back a bit, tilting her face up toward his. Her fair hair rippled back, brushing her shoulders. “I decided to give the baby up for adoption. I was afraid I’d be a bad mother to him. Because of the rape. And the not knowing. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to…love him. That I might look at him someday and see—”
“It’s all right,” he assured her quickly, stroking up and down her back. “It’s all right.”
“I would have,” she continued doggedly, her eyes filling with tears. “I would have given him away. But someone put him in my arms in the delivery room and—” the tears overflowed her lower lids and began trickling down her pale cheeks “—suddenly everything changed. I knew I had to keep h-him, John. I knew I loved him and that I would do everything in my power to be the best mother I could. Above all, I knew he was mine. What I didn’t know—what I still don’t know—is whether he’s y-yours.”
