by Cindy Dees
Her gaze locked on his back in horror. She watched as, in extreme slow motion, he half-turned and looked over his shoulder at her, accusation written in every line of his face. Terrified, she lifted her gaze to look him in the eyes.
The crowd was shouting too loud for her to hear a thing, but as clear as day, she saw him mouth the words, “It is true, isn’t it?”
Dear God.
Now what was she supposed to do?
Panicked, she mouthed back to him, “Help.”
Thank God, he appeared to put aside his personal fury and nodded grimly at her. Squaring his shoulders, he turned briskly and faced the crowd, the picture of the professional he was. Politely, but firmly, he announced, “Picture time’s over boys. Let us through.”
When the wall of cameras didn’t budge, and the din of shouted questions only got louder, Austin called to her over the din, “Grab my shirt and don’t let go!”
She barely managed to catch the soft polo knit before he plunged into the crowd, his hands moving in a blur in front of him. She caught only glimpses of whatever he was doing, but the paparazzi fell back from him like magic, forming a narrow passageway that Austin wasted no time diving through. Flashbulbs exploded inches from her face, but she put her head down and hung on grimly as Austin dragged her through the gauntlet. Then, all of a sudden, his back dipped down and strong, familiar hands reached out to drag her into the dark interior of their limousine.
“Go, Jimmy!” Austin called.
The car lurched into motion beneath her. It took her a couple of minutes to catch her breath and collect herself. Her brain whirled in frenzied circles as she tried to make sense of what had just happened.
How in the world had the press gotten wind of her pregnancy? Dr. Harris had sworn his staff was the soul of discretion and had promised her that professional medical ethics prohibited him or his staff from speaking about her pregnancy to anyone without her permission. Who then? Nobody else knew!
“Here. You look like you need this.”
Austin shoved a can of orange juice from the limo’s tiny refrigerator into her hand. She opened it gratefully and sipped its contents. Thankfully, her stomach was still behaving itself, and the juice went down without problem.
“We need to talk,” Austin announced gruffly.
She squeezed her eyes shut in dismay. Oh, God. Here it came. He was going to blow his stack at her and dump her the way they all did. Her heart felt as if it was breaking in two already. And suddenly she was terribly sick to her stomach, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with her pregnancy.
Aiming for a flippant tone and failing miserably, she said, “Gee. It seems like I’ve heard that line out of you before.”
“Yeah, it does seem to be a recurring theme with us, doesn’t it?” he replied dryly.
She risked a glance up at him. His expression was completely unreadable. “Can we at least wait until we get back to your place? Privacy for this conversation would be a good thing.”
He glanced in surprise at the closed partition behind him. No way was she talking where anyone else had even a chance of overhearing them. Not for this talk. He glanced back at her and must’ve caught the stubborn tilt of her jaw, because he nodded tersely and sat back, his arms folded across his chest.
The limo rolled along for several minutes in stony silence.
Too nervous to stand the strain of the tense silence any longer, she ventured, “Thanks for getting me out of there. You’re really good at clearing a path through a crowd.”
He didn’t bother to reply. Rather he threw her a look that communicated a loud and clear, “Duh.”
Okay, so she’d stated the obvious. The least he could do was acknowledge her attempt at breaking the ice between them. She tried two or three other innocuous comments, but he steadfastly refused to bite on any of them and maintained his silence. Harold would’ve been screaming his head off by now. Which, by comparison, would’ve been easier to put up with than this.
Betrayal and anger emanating off of Austin was made all the more palpable by his refusal to give vent to either. Maybe control wasn’t always all it was cracked up to be. At least once Harold blew his stack he usually calmed down relatively quickly. She had no idea what to expect out of Austin. And that scared her to death.
So terrified she could hardly walk, she followed him through the usual routine up to his suite, waiting just inside the front door while he checked the place out. But this time he added a twist. He went into his room and emerged with some sort of handheld electronic device about the size of a cell phone. He ran it quickly over the walls and furniture before finally speaking.
“No bugs. We can talk now.”
Well, she’d wanted complete privacy. The guy had certainly delivered it in spades. But she wasn’t even close to ready to deliver on her end of the deal. How could she ever explain it to him?
“Are you hungry?” she asked in transparent desperation.
“Nope. Talk now. Food later.”
Great. He wasn’t even communicating in complete sentences with her. In resignation, she trudged over to one of the fawn-colored leather sofas that faced each other on the far side of the room. She sat down glumly, her gaze downcast. She felt him sit down across from her, but as always, he moved in uncanny silence and she heard nothing.
She took a deep breath. The only way to begin was to just start talking. The story would come out one way or another. “You understand that everything I’m about to tell you is in strictest confidence.”
One eyebrow cocked at that, as if her saying it aloud was some sort of insult to his honor.
“Okay, fine. I know. You promise not to tell anyone anything.” She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Yes, it’s true. I’m pregnant. But I don’t have the faintest idea how the press found out about it. Nobody knows. And I mean nobody. Me and my doctor and his nurse.”
She flinched, waiting for Austin to blow.
But he merely sat there. And stared at her. Yet another silence grew between them. Stretched to the breaking point. And then, shockingly, he repeated relatively calmly, “You’re pregnant?”
She nodded miserably and went back to staring at her toes, bracing herself for the explosion to come.
“Well. That certainly explains a lot.”
He sounded almost relieved. What was up with that? She looked up quickly. “Like what?”
“Like why you fainted yesterday and why you can’t eat any rich foods and why you passed up a glass of the hundred-dollar-a-bottle wine your father served at supper last night.”
“I don’t usually drink anyway,” she retorted to that one.
“You didn’t even let the butler pour you any. You didn’t want to smell it, did you?”
“Well, no.”
All of a sudden Austin lurched up, half off the sofa, before settling back, as if an intensely disturbing possibility had just occurred to him and then been as quickly dismissed from his mind.
“What?” she asked in alarm.
Austin asked, his voice dangerously quiet, “Who’s the father?”
“With all due respect, that’s not exactly any of your business.”
He all but came across the coffee table at that. As she pressed back against the cushions of her sofa, violently startled, he waged a visible struggle with himself before settling back down on his own cushions.
His voice was thin with strain. “It’s Sampson, isn’t it? This is what he’s been blackmailing you with.”
There it was. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
She had to say yes. The story was already in place. It was a done deal. Mark would take credit for being the baby’s father, and she’d avoid the embarrassment of the real story coming out. Sure, an affair with her hick bodyguard was tawdry, but it would keep the press mostly off her case.
And as soon as she admitted that Mark was the father, Austin would back away from her for good. He’d leave her to Mark, no questions asked. He was too honorable to do anything else.
He’d do his job, keep her safe and turn her back over to Sampson safe and sound in a few months. For once, she’d be the one doing the dumping and not the other way around.
Of course, he’d also walk out of her life forever and never look back, just like every guy who’d ever loved her and then left her. Of course, she’d learned not to look back, either. Sometimes pride was all a person had left to cling to. And Austin’s formidable pride wouldn’t allow him ever to forgive or forget this.
Something in her heart cracked at the thought. Pain shot through her. The kind of intense, emotional agony that few people had ever managed to cause her. In a moment of prescience, absolute certainty came over her that a whole lot of guys might have walked out on her over the years but none had ever hurt like this one was going to.
She and Austin could’ve had something really special between them, given a chance. Of that she was equally certain. In another place, another time, another set of circumstances…the chemistry was unmistakable. This was a man she could love. Deep and hard and forever.
She took a deep breath, prepared to say the words that would drive him away for good. And then she made the mistake of looking up.
The disappointment gleaming in his eyes was more than she could bear. And she was about to stab him in the gut with another lie. She so didn’t deserve him.
But then something bubbled up within her. A kernel of hope. Maybe…just maybe…he’d understand if she told him the truth.
But what right did she have to dump the whole sordid story of her pathetic life on him? He hadn’t asked for it. It was too much to ask of him.
“Silver?” he prompted. “Is this what Mark’s been holding over you? Is he the father?”
She opened her mouth. She couldn’t tell the lie. But neither could she bring herself to confess the truth. No sound at all came out.
And then Austin’s control snapped. He surged up off the sofa. “Forget it. You’re right. It is none of my damned business. I had no right to go after you when I knew you were involved with another man.”
He cursed violently as he stalked across the room and back. “You’re having his baby, for God’s sake. Hell, I’m sorry, Silver. You tried to tell me, and I was so set on having you for myself that I didn’t listen.” He shoved a distracted hand through his hair, setting it akimbo.
It was the first time she’d seen him anything other than perfectly turned out—a measure of just how upset he must be.
“I thought we—” He broke off. “Hell, I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”
He whirled and strode toward the door.
“Austin! Wait! It’s not what you think! I—”
But then the door closed behind him.
He was gone.
He’d walked out on her after all.
Chapter 13
She hadn’t been wrong. Nothing in her life even began to compare to the pain of Austin’s leaving. With the closing of a single door, her life became bleak and colorless, a sawdust-dry existence she walked through numbly.
Sometimes it sucked being right.
A tall, taciturn man named Warren showed up at the penthouse door late that evening. She was so distraught that she’d thoughtlessly opened the door to his quiet knock without even checking to see who it was. She already knew it wouldn’t be the one person she desperately wanted it to be.
“Miss Silver Rothchild?”
“That’s me,” she’d answered dully.
“My name is Warren Bochco. Captain Dearing sent me. I’ll be taking over your protection detail…”
And that had been when her heart well and truly broke. He’d left her for good. Of course, he’d never shirk a responsibility. He’d promised to keep her safe, and he’d see that promise through. But if he’d sent this tall, silent man to guard her, he had no intention of ever seeing her again.
Warren was speaking. “…briefed me on your upcoming show and the problems your family’s been having. He said you knew the drill. I’ll stay out of your way as much as I can as long as you let me do my job.”
Warren was built like Austin, tall and crazy fit, but where Austin had been all tawny and bronze and smiling, Warren was a study in black. Black hair, black eyes, black clothing. Quintessential bodyguard material. And the guy had all the personality of a telephone pole.
The next month passed by in a blur. Grief and going through the motions of preparing for her show were all she registered.
She went along with every song Saul and her newly re-signed record label fed her. The mindless drivel they chose for her was right up her alley; she had no heart left to put into her music. A couple of the songs inspired a certain spurned-female anger in her and were pronounced her likely next hits. Probably because they were the only songs she could find any spark of emotion to relate to.
Interestingly enough, Mark dropped completely off the radar. He never contacted her, although she made no effort to unblock his cell phone number from her own cell phone, either. But he never showed up at any of her rehearsals or planned public appearances. For the first several press junkets she kept an eye out for him, waiting for him to pop up and announce that he was the father of her rumored baby. Why he hadn’t done that already, she had no idea.
At first she wondered if maybe Austin had gotten to the guy and managed to apply a little blackmail of his own. It would’ve been like the old Austin—the one who had looked at her like he wanted her for himself and who’d been fiercely protective of her. But the Austin who’d turned his back on her and walked out—would he bother to shut Mark up to protect her reputation and her privacy? Somehow, she thought not.
Her morning sickness got worse but thankfully settled down to a predictable routine. She didn’t eat before 10 a.m., scheduled her rehearsals for the afternoon, avoided all rich foods and she muddled by.
The prospect of a baby was still a miracle to her that she anticipated with immense joy, but her child’s actual arrival was still such a distant event that her current agony greatly overshadowed it.
Warren followed her around like a grim shadow, muttering occasional orders that she followed woodenly. Every time he did or said something bodyguard-like, it inevitably reminded her of Austin and piercing pain would stab through her all over again.
The one anomaly to her stoic bodyguard was the daily cell phone call he got. It had a custom ring tone that was more of a subliminal rumble than an actual ring. It usually came in the early evening, and it always made him take a quick look to clear the area around her and then turn his back on her. He’d plaster his hand over his wireless earpiece and mutter in a near whisper into his collar microphone. It was all very secretive and spooky.
It took her a few days to sidle close enough to hear what he was saying without him noticing, and she was stunned to hear him give a quick report on her day’s activities and security concerns.
Austin.
She knew it in her gut with absolute certainty. She didn’t even have to ask Warren if she was right or not. She knew.
At first she clung to desperate hope that his calls meant there was still hope for them. But after a few weeks and still no word from him whatsoever, her hope died. Eventually it turned to anger and then from anger to grief to dry-eyed acceptance.
People began to fret over her losing too much weight, but she didn’t have the energy to fake caring about anything.
She slept terribly, and Austin constantly haunted her dreams, but that was her secret. She’d moved into the spare bedroom in the San Antonio suite, where she’d asked to be moved with Warren.
Thankfully, the man didn’t insist on keeping watch on her through the night. She heard him get up conscientiously each night to prowl the suite—Austin had sent the very best to protect her—but Warren never intruded upon her privacy in any way.
The threats against her tapered off. Either that or Warren was very good at keeping them from her. And knowing the guy, that would be exactly his style. He was extremely stingy when it came to sharing information of any kind wit
h her.
About a week before her show, there was some kind of a flap over her dressing room, and Warren hustled her out of the theater in the middle of a full dress rehearsal for no apparent reason. She spent a tense hour huddled in the hot laundry room with him until a man she didn’t recognize came and declared the scene clear. Whatever that meant. Then Warren had whisked her to a regular hotel room on the twenty-third floor and told her curtly not to leave the room.
He’d come back a few minutes later with a haphazardly packed overnight bag of clothes and toiletries for her and had offered no further explanations.
In a better frame of mind, she’d have bedeviled him mercilessly until he spilled the beans and told her what the heck was going on. But as it was, she crawled into one of the two double beds, pulled the blankets up over her head and went to sleep. She didn’t hear whether or not Austin called to check on her that night.
Two days before her premiere, Saul was waiting for her in the theater when she arrived to do a last run-through of the dance sequences and a final costume change rehearsal. “Good news, Silver Girl!” he announced jovially.
“What’s that?” she asked with no great interest.
“Every show is sold out. You did it! You filled the biggest theater on the Strip for seven nights!”
She nodded. That was good news. “Now all I have to do is keep them in the seats all the way through the show.”
“Stop being such a worrywart. Your show is fantastic. You’re going to be back on top of the industry in no time.”
She gave him the smile he expected but didn’t feel it in her heart.
“Have you decided on your encore songs?” Saul asked. “If the media buzz is any indication, you’d better have several songs picked out. Maybe an old one or two. Your fans are coming out in force to see you again.”
That was going to be weird. All those stoned college kids who’d screamed their way through mosh pits at the front of her audiences were going to be here? She wondered if they had receding hairlines and office-cubicle paunches yet. Would they bring their kids? She hoped not, because her show was distinctly R-rated. It was definitely more grown up than her early material. But the record label had interpreted her request for more mature content to mean that she would do more explicit material now than she used to.
