The Daddy Decision

by Donna Sterling

  “You barely even know Fletcher!”

  “I can see what’s on his mind.”

  “No, you’re blinded by what’s on your mind. And you’ve already admitted that you know little or nothing about me.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” His voice lost its cutting edge, but none of its heated fervor. “But I do know how you make love, Laura. How you put your whole heart and soul into it...even when it’s only a ‘silly infatuation.’” His eyes darkened with some new anger before he battled it away. “I will never believe that you’ve changed that much. If you have, it can’t be good for you.”

  “Oh, you’re so noble, worrying about what’s good for me. I suppose you’re even willing to make love to me to help liberate my suppressed ‘inner woman.’”

  “I suppose I am.”

  Once again, she realized she did have an unresolved issue to face. Anger! She was deeply, ferociously angry with him, and not only because of the nonsense he was spouting. She’d been living with that anger, trying to deny it, rid herself of it, protect innocent men from it, for fifteen long years. This was what she’d been afraid of—waking the beast within her. But the beast had finally opened its eyes and raised its ugly head.

  “You hypocrite!” she seethed. “Don’t talk to me about fear of intimate relationships. You’re the one who used me. Scorned me. Humiliated me!” The truth of her words fanned her wrath. “And then you took off. Abandoned me. Not one phone call, not one letter. Not even a postcard. You forgot I existed!”

  “I never forgot you.”

  She shoved against his chest, furious that even now, she wanted to believe him. “And now you think you can stroll back into my life, murmur pretty words, flash a little cash in my direction and pick up where we left off.” The audacity of the man filled her with a rage so sharp and pure, it almost felt like elation. “Then you have the nerve to say you’re doing it for my own good!”

  She grabbed the nearest weapon—a pillow—and hit him with all her might.

  “Laura!” After the first whummp! across the face, he dodged and parried with upraised forearms as she wielded the pillow again. Whummp! “I’ve already said I’m sorry.” Whummp! “You said you forgave me yesterday.”

  “I lied.” Whummp!

  “Settle down, damn it.” He caught hold of the pillow, and she tried to wrest it from him. “You′ll have everyone running in here if you don’t stop shouting.”

  “What are you afraid of? That Steffie will realize her saintly brother is a low-down, sorry, bastard son of a bitch?”

  He yanked the pillow out of her grasp, threw it aside and captured her arms. “This is good,” he reasoned, sounding winded, his hair sticking up at odd angles from her attack. “New territory for us, Laura. We’ve never fought before.”

  “I hate you,” she raged through clenched teeth.

  “I can see we’re going to have to work through that.”

  She struggled in vain to pull away from his iron-strong grip on her arms. “I suppose you’ll withdraw your offer,” she remarked between angry pants of breath, “now that you know I’d rather die than go to bed with you.”

  “Die? You’d rather die?”

  “Yes, die.” She finally shook free of his imprisoning hands and backed out of his reach. Pointing a finger at him, she railed, “If you withdraw your offer now, I’ll know you were trying to buy me.”

  He pressed forward, alarming her, though she refused to show it. “Does that mean you’re taking me up on it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “If you turn down my offer—” he drew ever nearer “—I’ll know you don’t trust yourself to be alone with me.”

  She whirled for the door and flung it open.

  A multitude of faces confronted her in the corridor. Steffie stood nearest the bedroom with her fingers fanned across her open mouth. Tamika, a short distance behind Steffie, was frozen in the act of wincing. Rory leaned against the corridor wall, chewing gum and watching with lively interest. Hoss loomed beside him, looking ready to launch into action if necessary. Fletcher hovered in the far distance, his face ashen and anxious.

  They’d obviously heard her shouting.

  “Today, Laura,” Cort called out hoarsely from behind her. “I want your answer today.”

  Curling her hands into fists, she stalked past her blessedly silent friends and strode to her room.

  Cort, meanwhile, closed the door on the several pairs of curious eyes peering in at him. So...Laura hated him, did she? Would rather die than go to bed with him. At least she was finally being honest. Or thought she was.

  He, on the other hand, had been less than honest with her.

  He’d scoffed at the idea that he would spend half a million dollars to “buy” her. He stared at the far wall, his muscles clenched, his chest tight with reactions too complex to understand. If he thought he could buy her—simply buy her—he would. In a heartbeat. Even if it cost him much, much more than half a million.

  NEVER IN STEFFIE’s LIFE had a Thanksgiving dinner felt as dismal as this one—except, of course, that terrible year when their mother had been seized and deported to Greece. Cort had been sixteen; Steffie, twelve. They’d dined on cold canned goods in a shabby rented room.

  The food this year was superb. The turkey had turned out moist and succulent; the stuffing spicy and delicious; the cranberries, sweet potato casserole, rice, peas and gravy the best she’d eaten in a long time. Even so, she’d almost sighed in relief as dinner drew to a close and she served the pumpkin pie.

  It should have been a happy occasion—the fifteenth Thanksgiving dinner shared by the Hays Street gang. But no one seemed to be in much of a celebratory mood. The conversation in her elegant new dining room seemed stilted, the cheerfulness forced.

  The tension had started with the quarrel that morning between Cort and Laura. No one really knew what the fight had been about, but they’d heard Laura shouting.

  Laura. Shouting!

  The rest of them had gaped at each other in disbelief. Laura had called Cort a few choice names that had come through the walls loud and clear. Other than that, they couldn’t make out many words. Afterward, Laura had resisted confiding in anyone. So had Cort. And Fletcher.

  Poor Fletcher! He looked pale, nervous and miserable, sitting there beside Laura and sneaking surreptitious glances across the table at Cort. Steffie couldn’t tell if Fletcher was suspicious about the offer Cort had made, or concerned that Laura’s quarreling had endangered that offer, or hurt by the realization that no one but Rory approved of him fathering Laura’s baby.

  Friction among the Hays Street gang was a new phenomenon. Steffie didn’t like it.

  She was tempted to pull Cort away from the table and ask him to call off the scheme they’d discussed last night to make Laura and Fletcher break their appointment at the clinic. As much as she wanted time to talk them out of their parenting plan, she suddenly felt uneasy about Cort’s involvement. What if Tamika was right, and the time Laura spent with him made matters worse?

  She supposed she shouldn’t worry. After that quarrel, Laura probably wouldn’t go to Cort’s house, and he probably wouldn’t go through with the investment deal.

  Steffie almost sighed again as she dug her fork into her slice of pumpkin pie. She’d hoped Cort and Laura would become friends again. Or more than friends. It seemed unlikely now that they’d ever even speak to each other again. Laura had clearly been avoiding him since this morning, spending all her time with Tamika’s baby, or decorating the table with little pumpkins, stalks of wheat and horns o’plenty that she’d brought with her in her suitcase. Cort hadn’t made a single move to engage her attention.

  A silence had fallen over the dining room while everyone concentrated on pie and coffee. Steffie almost dropped her fork when Laura suddenly broke that silence.

  “Cort,” she said in her low, soft voice that Steffie had never heard raised in anger until that morning. “Fletcher and I have made up our minds regarding
your investment offer.”

  Fletcher turned his head so fast he choked on a mouthful of pie and coughed into his napkin, still gaping at Laura.

  Cort stirred a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee, took a long, leisurely swallow, then set the cup back down. He didn’t act nearly as interested in their decision as everyone else seemed to be. “Yeah?”

  Laura angled her chin. Steffie knew that meant she was nervous, but somehow the tilt to her chin always made her seem serenely composed. “If you’ll draw up the contract, we’ll have our attorney look it over.”

  Cort reached for the serving bowl of whipped cream and spooned a dollop of it onto his pie. He didn’t even glance in Laura’s direction. “Does that mean you intend to decorate my house?”

  She raised her chin a little higher. “Yes.”

  He picked up his fork, dipped it into the sweet pumpkin filling and brought a creamy mound to his mouth. That’s when he looked at her...while he filled his mouth with the pie and slowly drew the fork out empty. He locked gazes with her, as if they were the only two people in the room...the way he had back in the Hays Street house.

  Steffie hadn’t seen him look at anyone else with quite the same intensity.

  He took his own sweet time chewing that pie, rolling it around in his mouth, savoring it in a lazy, lingering way before he swallowed. “Monday,” he said. “I want you there Monday.”

  Laura indulged in a long, slow sip of her coffee, even though she hadn’t put cream or sugar in it, as she always did. Warm color had climbed into her cheeks, and when she spoke, her voice sounded throaty and breathless. “I can’t possibly make it before Friday.”

  “I’m on a tight schedule. Tuesday’s the latest we can start.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have an appointment to keep midweek.”

  His fingers tightened around the handle of the china coffee cup, and Steffie winced, remembering what had happened to the stern of her brandy snifter last night. Cort’s gaze darkened, but his voice came out softer, gentler, than it had been. “You′ll have to postpone your appointment.”

  A stubborn, willful light leaped in Laura’s eyes.

  Steffie found herself holding her breath. The appointment, as everyone at the table knew, had to do with her conceiving Fletcher’s baby.

  Fletcher seemed to be holding his breath, too. As Laura’s gaze took on a stormy look and the adversarial tension mounted, Fletcher piped up, “Uh, Cort. That starting date. Is it set in stone? You know...a deal breaker?”

  “‘Fraid so.”

  Sweat gathered on Fletcher’s forehead. “Um, Laura...” He turned to her and cleared his throat. She shifted her gaze away from Cort and trained it on Fletcher. “We can postpone the appointment,” he murmured in a near whisper. “A month, just a month. I mean, what would it hurt?”

  They exchanged a long, private, meaningful gaze. Fletcher looked as if he was silently pleading.

  With a slight tightening of her lower lip, Laura swung her attention back to Cort. Her chin again tilted in that regal way of hers. “Okay,” she whispered. “Tuesday.”

  Cort didn’t smile, or reach to shake their hands, or say anything at all. He just stared at Laura.

  She set her napkin beside her plate and left the table.

  Steffie released the breath she’d been holding and rose to dear the dishes away. Tamika and B.J. helped. Hoss and Rory ushered Fletcher into the other room to watch football, and Cort walked off toward the bedrooms.

  Steffie set the dishes aside and followed him. She had to talk to him about her concern that maybe Tamika was right. Maybe he shouldn’t stay at home while Laura decorated his house. If the tension she had felt between them was anything to judge by, someone could end up hurt.

  He hadn’t closed his bedroom door all the way, and Steffie poked her head in. He stood near the window with his back to her, talking on his cell phone. “That’s right,” he was saying. “Move everything out of the house. The furniture, the carpets, the artwork. Everything. Put it all in storage. I want the house bare.”

  Steffie listened in surprise.

  “Oh, but leave my bed. Yes, just the bed.” After a slight pause, he added in a somewhat grudging tone, “And a bed in the guest room. The one directly across the hall from mine.”

  5

  CORT REALIZED WITH an oddly remote portion of his brain that some form of insanity must have come over him.

  He’d left Steffie’s house Friday, flown home and rearranged his schedule—postponing important meetings, delegating crucial tasks, freeing up his time. He then supervised the move of his home furnishings, which took a ten-man crew the entire weekend. He’d left a few functional pieces in the kitchen, his bedroom and the guest bedroom, along with his favorite Oriental carpets and antique pieces scattered throughout various rooms—more than he’d originally planned to leave. Otherwise, he’d stripped the mansion bare.

  And all the while, he thought about her. He wondered if she’d really come, or if she’d change her mind. He wondered how she felt about their deal; about staying with him; about their heated words on Thanksgiving morning. He wondered if her anger would stop her from ever opening herself to him again.

  As he tossed restlessly in bed on Monday night, a new concern hit him. What if his interference with her clinic appointment had backfired? What if she’d decided to forgo the artificial insemination and sleep with Fletcher?

  Sharp, hot talons of anxiety clutched him. He spent the night pacing, sweating and visualizing torturous scenarios.

  She and Fletcher had returned to Memphis on Friday afternoon, according to Steffie. They’d said they had a lot to arrange before Laura left for Atlanta. They needed to utilize all of the short time they had. Did that include their nights?

  Why the hell did it matter so much to him, anyway? His world wouldn’t end if she was, at this very moment, sharing another man’s bed. Holding him in her arms. Taking him into her body. Cort’s breath wedged like a stone at the base of his throat. His life wouldn’t change if she conceived another man’s child...and spent her life tied to that man in a profoundly elemental way....

  The night dragged by, second by excruciating second.

  LAURA AWOKE with a start, her sleep disrupted by the snoring of the man next to her. She lifted her head from the pillow, startled to find herself somewhere other than her own bed.

  The plane, she realized. She’d fallen asleep on the plane. Relaxing again in the narrow seat, she turned away from the stout, dozing passenger beside her and gazed through the window at the cottony clouds below. The short nap had been the most restful sleep she’d had all weekend. She’d spent her time preparing her business for her absence, amassing the materials she would need for the job and rationalizing her decision to accept Cort’s offer.

  No matter how profound her reservations, no matter how much he had hurt her in the past, she simply hadn’t been able to walk away from the financial advantages his investment would mean for Fletcher and her. The benefits would, in turn, translate into added security for their future child. She also hadn’t been able to dismiss the exposure her work would get if she decorated Cort’s house in Atlanta. The practical side of her demanded she take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  The not-so-practical side of her had kept her awake every night agonizing over Cort. You’re afraid to be alone with me, he’d said. God help her, it was true. He had the power to affect her in ways no one else could.

  In the fifteen years they’d been apart, no one else had hurt her as deeply. No one else had succeeded in inciting her passion to a feverish pitch. No one had riled her into a rage. She’d shouted at him! Told him she hated him. Hit him, for heaven’s sake. The fact that she’d attacked him with a pillow made the assault no less shocking.

  She’d behaved in the same despicable way her parents treated each other. She’d never understood or approved of their relationship, but now she’d gleaned an uncomfortable insight. For even when she’d been yelling at Cort, her anger hot
and fierce, she’d felt more vibrantly alive than during her finest moments with any other man.

  A frightening realization. And that was why Cort scared her—he’d turned her into someone else. Someone with wild, volatile passions that secretly thrilled her. Someone she didn’t know how to control.

  You’ve tried to bury her, Cort had charged, speaking of the passionate girl she had once been. She supposed that was true. She had worked hard to make herself wiser and less vulnerable. Had she also buried a part of herself that clamored to be free?

  You have unresolved issues to face before you take on the challenge of motherhood. Did she? Were those “unresolved issues” the reason Cort wielded so much power over her? The reason she hadn’t given her heart to any other man? She’d been telling herself that she didn’t need a lover or a husband, but...did she?

  The questions shook her. They were too important to leave unanswered. So important, she suddenly realized, that she couldn’t go through with her parenting plan until she’d answered them. She had to be settled and secure within herself before she brought a baby into the world. No child of hers would be subjected to the turmoil caused by an emotionally needy parent.

  Until Cort had come back into her life, she’d felt strong, stable and secure. And alone. Wasn’t that why she wanted a baby so badly—to fill the empty place in her heart, in her arms, in her life? She couldn’t deny that she’d been lonely.

  Had she also been sexually repressed?

  Laura stared out of the airplane window and ground the knuckles of her fist against her chin. The way she’d been obsessing over Cort certainly led her to believe so. Sexual repression—or simple obsession, for that matter—were warning signs she couldn’t ignore. She needed to understand this volatile part of herself before she conceived a baby. She had to diffuse the tension that gripped her whenever Cort was near, and to learn the meaning of the power he held over her. To proceed with her parenting plan without understanding these things would be unfair to Fletcher, her future baby and herself.