Nine Months

by Beverly Barton

  “Do you suppose we can still be friends?” he asked. “For Angela’s sake?”

  “We can try…for the baby’s sake.”

  He didn’t offer his hand to her for the traditional deal-making handshake, nor did she offer hers. Jared had come to realize that it was dangerous for them to touch, and he suspected that she had come to the same conclusion. Paige might be faking her reluctance to marry him and her disinterest in his wealth, but the one thing he knew she wasn’t faking was her desire for him.

  He took her to breakfast at Ellynton’s in the hotel before they headed back to Grand Springs. Their return trip, if a bit strained, was pleasant enough. But she seemed as relieved as he was when they arrived at her apartment.

  “You go on in,” he told her. “I’ll unload everything.”

  Smiling, Paige nodded agreement. She needed rest, especially after not sleeping more than a few hours last night. It had been sheer torment to reject Jared, to sleep alone in her bed, knowing he was only a few steps away. Had she been wrong to deny them both the pleasure they so desperately wanted?

  Jared gathered up an armful of packages and followed her into her apartment. She held the door open for him.

  “Where do you want all this stuff?” he asked.

  “Just put it down in here,” she said. “I’ll unpack everything later.”

  He stacked the boxes in a corner of her living room, then returned to the Jeep for a second load. After he brought in the remainder of their purchases, he hesitated in the doorway.

  “Take the rest of the day off from work and get some rest.” He surveyed her from head to toe. She was so beautiful. So desirable. So tempting.

  “Thank you. I am tired.”

  He hovered in the doorway, looking at her with hungry eyes, and she knew what he wanted. What they both wanted.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jared said.

  “In the morning, at the office.”

  “Call me if you need anything.”

  “I’m sure I won’t need…I’m fine.”

  “Take care.”

  “I will.”

  He walked away. She closed and locked the door. Wrapping her arms around herself, she bit down on her bottom lip in an effort not to cry. But tears filled her eyes. She had put herself in a no-win situation. No matter what she did about her relationship with Jared, she couldn’t be happy. She could never be happy unless he loved her. Truly loved her for the woman she was.

  * * *

  The next day Paige arrived at the office wearing one of her new maternity dresses, a hunter green woolen sheath, adorned with brass buttons. The dress was a bit sophisticated for her tastes, but Jared had insisted it was perfect for her.

  Kay asked her a dozen questions about the trip to Denver the minute she entered the employees’ lounge. Paige removed her coat, hung it on a rack and retrieved a carton of orange juice from the minirefrigerator.

  “We’ve agreed to be friends,” Paige said.

  Kay eyed her skeptically. “You two are kidding yourselves if you think you can be nothing more than friends. Anyone who sees the two of you together can sense the tension between you. It’s thick enough to cut with a knife.”

  Kay’s statement proved prophetic. With each passing day, the tension between Jared and her intensified to such a degree that everyone else in the office steered clear whenever the two were together. Although they were both polite to the point of nausea, they were not becoming friends. If anything, their relationship became more strained, so that by the end of the week following their Denver trip, they were barely speaking.

  If she didn’t need her job so badly and the company’s good insurance plan even more, Paige would quit and end this daily torment. How long could she and Jared go on this way, tiptoeing around their real feelings? Was it going to be like this for the next four months? And what about after the baby was born? When would it stop, this hungry, desperate need? Would she go on loving Jared forever, even after he married someone else? Someone truly worthy of being L. J. Montgomery’s wife.

  The row of figures on the computer screen blurred together as Paige gazed at them through misty eyes. She was so absorbed in her own misery that she didn’t hear the two men enter her office, until one of them cleared his throat.

  “I’m Detective Jack Stryker,” the tall blond man said.

  Blinking several times to clear away her tears, Paige looked up into a pair of blue eyes. “Yes, we met once, years ago. How may I help you, Detective Stryker?”

  “Paige Summers?” the other man asked. He, too, was blond and attractive, but seemed less rigid than his partner.

  Paige studied him quickly, his short, no-nonsense haircut, his cool gray eyes and his broad, rugged body. “Stone? Stone Richardson?”

  “Yeah,” Stone said. “I thought that was you, Paige, but I wasn’t sure. I haven’t seen you in…what…three or four years?”

  “Not since Kevin and I broke up,” Paige said. “Do you ever hear anything from Kevin now that he’s living in California?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. We lost touch. The last I heard he was working for some big marketing firm out in L.A.”

  “Look, I hate to break up old home week,” Stryker said, “but we’re here on official business. Maybe you can take Ms. Summers out for lunch one day.”

  “Sorry, Jack.” Grinning, Stone winked at Paige. “We need to see L. J. Montgomery.”

  “Concerning what?” Paige asked, an uneasiness quivering inside her stomach.

  “An official matter,” Stryker told her.

  Paige announced the two detectives and showed them into Jared’s office. Just as she started to leave the room, Detective Stryker asked Jared a question that stopped Paige’s exit.

  “What do you know about Olivia Stuart’s death, Mr. Montgomery?”

  “Only what I read in the paper,” Jared said. “Why are you asking me? What could I know about the woman’s death? She was killed on my first day here in Grand Springs. The day of the power outage.” Jared glanced across the room at Paige, who stood silent and unmoving just inside the open doorway.

  “Don’t you think that’s an odd coincidence, that Mayor Stuart was murdered on your very first day in town?” Stone Richardson asked.

  “A coincidence, perhaps,” Jared admitted. “But hardly damaging evidence that I know anything about the woman’s death. Besides, it’s my understanding that the police have the murderer in custody.”

  “Joanna Jackson is awaiting trial,” Stryker said. “But she was just a hired hand. We’re looking for her boss. Someone with a motive to want to see Olivia Stuart dead.”

  “And you think I have a motive?” Jared grunted. “I didn’t even know the woman.”

  “Mrs. Stuart’s last word was coal,” Stone said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Absolutely nothing.” Jared shook his head.

  “We realize that we might be grasping at straws, Mr. Montgomery,” Stone admitted, “but in trying to find a connection between the mayor’s last word—coal—and her murderer, we discovered that your real estate and land development company has been buying up land and making inquiries into Grand Springs’s past mining history.”

  Jared laughed heartily. “Hell, boys, don’t you think that’s stretching it a bit to make a connection between me and the mayor’s death?”

  Turning sharply, Paige took several tentative steps into Jared’s office. “Montgomery Real Estate and Land Development has made it a policy to look into the past mining history of all the areas in which they invest. One of the reasons is because Mr. Montgomery thinks it makes sense to always explore alternative energy sources,” Paige told the police detectives. “For you to imply that his actions have any connection to Olivia Stuart’s death is ludicrous!”

  “It’s all right, Paige,” Jared assured her. “These men are simply doing their job, following every lead and exhausting every possibility.”

  “The very idea that anyone would think Jared capable of hiring someone
to commit murder is outrageous.” Paige glared at Stone Richardson. “You’re wasting the taxpayers’ money harassing an innocent man when the real killer is still out there loose somewhere.”

  “Paige, we aren’t accusing Mr. Montgomery of anything. We just—”

  Storming across the room, Paige pointed her finger in Stone’s face. “You don’t have a clue as to who hired Joanna Jackson, and with everyone, from the governor on down, demanding results, you have to do something to earn your paychecks. So what do you do? You malign a fine, upstanding businessman, whose plans for Grand Springs can create new jobs and give our community’s economy a real boost.”

  Coming up behind her, Jared grabbed Paige by the shoulders. “Thank you for coming to my defense, Ms. Summers. I appreciate your loyalty.”

  Paige’s cheeks flushed. She glanced from Stone, who smiled sheepishly, to Jack Stryker, who looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry. I overreacted,” Paige said. “It’s just that I know what sort of man Mr. Montgomery is.”

  Jared was both startled and touched by Paige’s adamant defense of him. Recently, he’d begun to think she hated him. Obviously, she didn’t.

  “Well, boys,” Jared addressed the detectives, “have you ever thought that Mayor Stuart’s last word might not have been c-o-a-l, but c-o-l-d? If she said the word as she was dying, it’s possible that she felt cold, and her last word had nothing to do with her murderer.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Stone said. “We have to admit that all our c-o-a-l leads have hit a dead end.”

  “I don’t think we need to take up any more of your time.” Stryker offered his hand.

  Jared shook hands with both detectives and saw them to the door, then turned his attention to Paige, who tried to ease past him. He grabbed her wrists.

  “Look at me, Paige.”

  Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Releasing her left wrist, Jared lifted his hand to her face and stroked her cheek. Jerking free of his hold, she ran into her office. Jared followed her, cornering her behind her desk.

  If he could trust what his senses told him, if he could believe his own eyes and ears, then he could accept Paige at face value for the romantic, loving, sweet innocent she appeared to be.

  Dear God, would he be a fool to continue doubting her? Or would he be a fool to think that she truly loved him?

  “You lit into those detectives like a spitting, clawing she-cat.” Grabbing her chin, he tilted her face, forcing her to look at him. “Thanks for jumping to my defense, honey. After the cold shoulder I’ve been getting from you this past week, I’d just about decided that you hated me.”

  “I don’t hate you.” I love you, you big dope, she wanted to shout at him. I love you so much it hurts.

  He skimmed his thumb tenderly across her bottom lip. “Maybe we’d both be better off if you did hate me. The way things are…”

  She closed her eyes, accepting the inevitability of his kiss, longing for and yet dreading the sweet agony. Intense desire spiraled up from the depths of her trembling body when his lips covered hers. Paige melted against him. Jared tensed. Ending the kiss abruptly, he released her chin.

  She was pregnant with his child. She wanted him. He wanted her. No matter how many problems marriage wouldn’t solve, it could, at least, give him two things he wanted. Legitimacy for his daughter. And Paige in his bed every night.

  Of course, theirs wouldn’t be an ideal marriage. But he was more than willing to give it a try—if Paige would ever accept their relationship for what it was and not what she wished it could be. She was putting them both through hell, and for what? Because she wanted him to love her? Or because she thought if she denied him long enough, he’d marry her without a prenuptial agreement?

  He had always pictured his wife as a tall, cool, sophisticated blonde from a wealthy family. Someone who, like him, would consider marriage a mutually satisfying business arrangement. But the woman carrying his child was a voluptuous, earthy redhead, who said she believed in romantic love. Was he overly optimistic to think he could change this woman, make her over into his ideal?

  “I promised that I wouldn’t ask you again,” he said. “And I won’t. But you could ask me, honey. All you’d have to say is, Jared, will you marry me?”

  If only it were that simple, Paige thought. But no matter how wonderful being Jared’s wife might be for a while, sooner or later, the marriage would fall apart. The hot sex would bind them together at first, and later their child would unite them, but eventually Jared would look at her and see that she wasn’t the woman of his dreams, the wife he had wanted at his side, the accomplished, sophisticated, socially prominent partner he had planned to share his life with. And when the day came that he realized he couldn’t change her, he would resent Paige, perhaps even grow to hate her.

  And eventually, his inability to love her would break her heart and she would hate him.

  “Ask me, honey,” he repeated his request. “Ask me to marry you.”

  “I can’t.”

  She ran from him, not daring to look back. She didn’t slow her pace until she entered the ladies’ room. Leaning against the wall, she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

  * * *

  When Paige returned to her desk, eyes dried and face washed clean of her smeared makeup, she found Kay waiting for her.

  “Are you all right?” Kay asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Why?”

  “Because when Jared called me into his office before he left, I noticed that you were conspicuously absent from your desk.” Kay glanced down at her watch. “That was fifteen minutes ago, and it’s not afternoon break time. Besides, Jared was roaring like a wounded animal, issuing orders right and left. He couldn’t wait to get out of here. And your eyes are red and swollen. You’ve obviously been crying. So, I assume something happened between you two.”

  “Jared left? For the day?” Paige stared at Jared’s closed office door.

  “For the weekend,” Kay said. “He said he was going to Aspen.”

  “Was he going alone?” Paige asked, really not wanting to know the answer if Jared had taken along a companion.

  “He didn’t fill me in on his personal plans.” Kay laid a comforting hand on Paige’s shoulder. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  “Nothing new.” Paige slumped down into her cushioned swivel chair. “I want him. He wants me. I love him. He doesn’t love me. And despite what he’s said, he still thinks marriage will solve our problems. I know that our marriage would end in disaster and we’d wind up hating each other.”

  Paige moped around the office the rest of the day, then drove directly from work to her parents’ home and ended up spending the night. Her mother listened with loving patience, consoling Paige and trying to convince her that Jared wasn’t enjoying a cosy weekend with another woman.

  “I hope he is with someone else,” Paige told her mother. “Some beautiful, skinny model or some rich and famous movie star.”

  She said it, but she didn’t mean it. The very thought of Jared with another woman ripped her heart apart. But she might as well get used to the idea of other women in Jared’s life. After all, he wasn’t the type of man who’d stay celibate for long.

  On her way back to her apartment on Saturday morning, Paige stopped by the Decorating Center and purchased paint and wallpaper border. Then she spent the day cleaning out the small storage room that she’d filled with many dolls from her collection. Part of her collection remained at her parents’ home, but when she’d moved into her downtown apartment three years ago, her father had built shelves along one wall to house more than two dozen of her prized dolls.

  The room was small, but certainly large enough for a nursery. The baby bed, chest, stroller, car seat, high chair and bassinet Jared had purchased in Denver would arrive next week, and unless she cleared out this room, there would be no place to put them. Thank goodness, she wouldn’t have to remove her dolls. They made a perfect background for a baby girl’s room.
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  Paige would make sure that her little girl had more than enough huggable, squeezable, drag-around dolls, but she would teach Angela from an early age which dolls were toys and which were treasured untouchables.

  Angela? Now she was calling their baby Angela. She couldn’t believe it. Jared had brainwashed her. Damn Jared. Damn him for getting me pregnant. Damn him for making me love him. Damn him for not loving me. Damn him for going off on a ski trip with someone else. Paige stomped her foot. Damn Jared for everything!

  She spent Saturday evening removing the dolls from the shelves in the storage room and placing them on the floor in rows against her bedroom wall. Once the spare room was bare, she applied the first coat of pale pink paint. She finished the job on Sunday afternoon, and by the end of the day, she could envision how completely perfect this tiny space was going to be for Angela.

  Yes, Angela. Jared had named his daughter and the name had stuck. Paige finally admitted to herself that she couldn’t imagine calling her baby girl anything else.

  Just as she climbed off the ladder at the end of the day, a fluttering sensation rippled inside her. Gasping, she grabbed the ladder with one hand and placed her other hand over her tummy. Tears sprang into her eyes. Angela moved again. Slowly, cautiously, Paige stepped down off the ladder and slumped to the floor, covering her belly with both hands, as tears trickled down her cheeks. Their little girl had moved inside her. She wanted to share the moment with Jared. But she couldn’t. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t even in town.

  Exhausted, but filled with a sense of accomplishment, Paige crawled into bed on Sunday night. She couldn’t help wondering what Jared was doing right at that minute. Was he en route, returning to Grand Springs? Or had he stayed over another night in Aspen, sharing a bed with some willing woman? Groaning loudly when images of Jared making passionate love to some willowy blonde flashed through her mind, Paige pulled the covers over her head and prayed for dreamless sleep.

  The ringing telephone woke her at five o’clock the next morning. Only partially awake, she reached for the phone and knocked her alarm clock off on the floor.