Seduced and Betrayed (9 page)

Ariel moaned and lifted her hips, instinctively offering herself for his most intimate possession.

Zeke groaned and clenched his hands against the sheets, reminding himself of the importance of taking things slowly, of treating her gently, especially now. "Ariel," he murmured, his voice guttural with need and the terrible strain of holding back, when what he wanted to do was plunge himself into her to the hilt. "Ariel, sweetheart, open your eyes and look at me."

Ariel complied, slowly, lifting her lashes to reveal eyes made even more intensely blue with the heat of her passion.

"This might hurt a little," he warned her in a gritty whisper. "Tell me if it hurts too much and I'll try to stop."

"I don't want you to stop. Ever," she said fiercely, and lifted her legs to wrap them around his hips.

He sank into her with a ragged moan. She gasped softly and stiffened but her arms and legs were tight around him and her face was pressed into the curve of his neck.

"Don't stop," she whispered, urging him on with the instinctive undulation of her slim hips. He gave in to her urging then, mindlessly driving toward his own release, unaware that she achieved a second explosive climax as he exploded into his own burning version of sublime ecstasy.

And, later, when they were both calmer and breathing more normally, Zeke lifted his head and looked down into her shining, worshipful eyes. "It
is
better when you're in love," he whispered, awestruck.

Chapter 5

"Dinner's going to be
a little earlier than you're used to, Dad," Cameron warned him several days later, having tracked him down via telephone.

"How early?"

"Six. Michael's parents drove up from La Jolla this afternoon and they're driving back tonight. And Michael's on the night shift at the hospital for the next month because he's pulling double duty to make up for the two weeks he's taking off for our honeymoon. So he's going to have to leave early, too. Mom said to tell everyone that she'll be serving the hors d'oeuvres at precisely five-thirty."

"Precisely, huh?" Zeke said sourly.

"Precisely." Cameron mimicked his tone. "So don't be late, okay?"

"Jeez, a guy's late one lousy time and—"

Two soft clicks sounded in his ear.

"That's my other line," Cameron said. "Gotta go, Dad. I'll see you tonight. Bye."

Zeke couldn't help but grin as he placed the receiver of the phone back into the cradle. Cameron had always been a bundle of energy, none of it suppressed. Even as a little girl, she'd invariably had three or four projects going at once. She was very much his daughter in that respect; he always had his fingers in half a dozen different pies, too. She'd gotten her eyes from him, as well, and a certain determined set about her chin. But the rest had come directly from Ariel; the pale gold hair, the delicate bone structure, the instinctive tact and diplomacy.

Mom said to tell everyone that she'll be serving the hors d'oeuvres at precisely five-thirty.

He'd bet the gross receipts from his next picture deal that Ariel hadn't said anything of the kind.
Tell your father not to be late again
was probably closer to the truth.

He had half a mind to call his ex-wife and tell her to deliver her messages herself from now on, except that he knew it wouldn't do any good. She'd be exquisitely polite, exceedingly gracious and subtly disdainful, like a maitre d' at a very trendy restaurant dealing with some epicurean philistine who'd had the audacity to complain about the food—all of which would put him squarely in the wrong without her having to utter a word of condemnation. That was supposing he even got her on the phone, of course. Ariel had always had a whole phalanx of people insulating her from the ill-mannered riffraff inhabiting the outside world, starting with her mother. Now there was her housekeeper Eleanor, her secretary, her lawyer, her agent and who knew who else.

In the last twenty-five years, Zeke doubted he'd spoken to Ariel directly more than a handful of times—and one of those times had been when they'd exchanged vows at their wedding. The announcement of his daughter's birth had come through a high-priced celebrity lawyer, three days after the fact and in the same plain manila envelope that had been used to serve him with the divorce papers. And hidden among all the legal mumbo jumbo had been a one-paragraph clause stating that he was voluntarily giving up all custody rights to his newborn daughter....

* * *

"It's completely out of the question. Completely! Dammit, I'm
not
giving up my daughter!" Zeke shouted, slamming his fist against the wall for emphasis. It made the framed New England seascapes hanging behind the lawyer's desk quiver on their hooks. "What the hell kind of man does she think I am?"

"The kind, apparently," the lawyer suggested, "who wouldn't think twice about giving up custody of a daughter he's never seen. It says here—" he indicated the documents on the desk in front of him "—that you haven't shown any interest in the child, either before or after her birth."

"That's been Ariel's doing, not mine. Ariel's and her mother's," Zeke said bitterly. "I would have been right by her side through the whole thing, beginning to end, if I'd had any say in it. And I tried to see the baby as soon as I found out she'd been born, but they wouldn't even let me in the front door. They've got her in a private clinic and my name isn't on the list of approved visitors. I'm her father, dammit! I have a right to see my daughter." The look he turned on the lawyer was almost pleading. "Don't I?"

"Yes, of course. As the child's father you have a legal right to see her."

"But?" Zeke demanded, fearing from the lawyer's expression that there had to be a
but.

"You and your wife have been estranged since shortly after you were married, according to what your agent told me when she called to set up this appointment. Is that correct?"

Reluctantly Zeke nodded. The estrangement had started well before the wedding but if Ariel and her mother wanted to pretend it had come after, he would let them. As long as doing so didn't interfere with his right to see his daughter.

"Then is it also correct to assume that you only married Miss Cameron to legitimize the child she was carrying?"

"No, that is
not
correct," Zeke said firmly, his tone harsh. He thought he saw where his line of questioning was going now and he didn't like it. "I asked Ariel to marry me before I knew she was pregnant. And then I asked her again after I found out about the baby. She was the one who—" He stopped abruptly.

Even now, after everything, he couldn't betray her, or say anything that might put her in a bad light. He was as much to blame for the sorry mess their lives were in as she was. More really. Four years her senior, he was older and, supposedly, wiser. He should have been more patient and understanding of her fears and uncertainties. Less hotheaded and demanding. Maybe things would have worked out differently.

"This is all confidential, isn't it?" he asked. "You can't repeat anything I tell you to anyone unless I say so, right?"

"Whatever you say to me is protected by client-lawyer privilege. It goes no further than this room."

"All right." Zeke sighed and pushed both hands through his hair, thinking how best to explain what had happened when, in truth, he only half understood it all himself. "Ariel and I met last summer while we were filming
Wild Hearts
and we—"
fell in love, I thought
"—got involved. It turned out we were all wrong for each other." He gave a harsh bark of humorless laughter. "Ariel's mother was right on about that," he admitted. "Anyway, just about the time everything was falling apart, Ariel found out she was pregnant. She felt... trapped, is the best way to describe it, I guess." At least, that was the way Ariel's mother had described Ariel's feelings to him; Ariel had refused to speak to him about it at all. "But she finally agreed that getting married was the only way to avoid a big scandal."

"Scandal over an out-of-wedlock pregnancy? In this day and age? In Hollywood?"

"Yeah, well... Can't have America's reigning sweetheart becoming an unwed mother, now can we?" Zeke said sarcastically. "According to her mother, people might still talk some and count the months, but once we were married, who'd really care? It'd be old news by then. The baby would have a name and Ariel's career wouldn't be adversely affected by bad publicity because she'd have already done the right thing by marrying the father of her child." He shrugged. "Lots of people sleep together before the wedding date so it's no big deal. And we agreed—" Ariel and her mother had
insisted,
actually, and he had gone along with it because he couldn't see what else to do "—that after the wedding we'd both go our separate ways and, after the baby was born, she'd initiate divorce proceedings."

"And when you made this agreement, was giving up your parental rights part of it?"

"No, never. We
never
discussed the possibility that I might give up the right to be a father to my child. In fact, I distinctly remembering telling Ariel's mother—" but not Ariel because she had cut off all direct communication with him "—that I fully intended to be part of my child's life."

The lawyer nodded and made a note on the yellow legal pad in front of him. "Is there anything in your background your wife could use to have you declared unfit or dangerous to the well-being of a child?" he asked. "Alcohol or drug abuse, for instance? Bouts of violence? Sexual depravity of some kind?"

"No, nothing," Zeke said firmly, then added, "Oh, hell, I've smoked pot a few times. Who hasn't? But Ariel wouldn't—"

He broke off, aghast. Ariel might not use it against him but Constance would. And Ariel was sufficiently under her mother's thumb to let her. Well, they wouldn't get away with it.

"I'm that baby's father and I intend to stay her father," Zeke said passionately. "And if Ariel or her mother want to fight me on that, then I'll show them scandal," he vowed. "I'll turn America's little sweetheart into a scarlet woman if I have to."

* * *

Ariel hadn't fought him on it. Instead, the lawyers had gotten together and hammered out an agreement for joint custody. At first, when Cameron was an infant and still nursing, Zeke was allowed access to the nursery floor of Ariel's Beverly Hills mansion three times a week for an hour at a time.

It was there, in the cheerful yellow-and-white room decorated with checked gingham and gamboling baby farm animals, under the watchful eye of a uniformed nurse, that he'd first held his daughter in his arms. She'd been tiny and bald, with big, dark, serious eyes and a rosebud mouth. She'd stared up at him with owlish intensity, her tiny mouth pursed, her little brow furrowed, as if she were trying to figure out who this new person in her life was. And then, apparently satisfied with whatever she'd seen, she'd trustfully closed her eyes and fallen asleep. And Zeke had fallen irrevocably, completely, utterly in love.

As Cameron grew older and more independent of her mother, Zeke's time with her increased. Hours became full days, and days, weekends, and then entire weeks. With his movie career in full swing after the success of
Wild Hearts,
Zeke bought the beach house in Malibu and had it remodeled to accommodate the needs of a child. He taught Cameron to swim and then to surf in the blue Pacific outside the front door. He learned to braid her hair, helped her with her homework, vetted her boyfriends, disciplined her when she needed it. And he marveled that he and Ariel were somehow managing to raise a happy, well-adjusted, self-confident child—despite the fact that they were never in the same room together and rarely spoke, even on the telephone.

Cameron had apparently accepted the odd arrangement as perfectly normal. It never seemed to bother her that her mother and father took turns attending her school functions or that holidays were alternated, or that she had two homes, each of which ran on different time schedules, with rules and rhythms that were slightly different from those at the other. She accepted with equanimity that, if her date picked her up for the prom at her mother's, then, of course, he had to drive across town so her father could take pictures of her in her prom dress, too. She registered no protest or disappointment when her parents arrived separately at both her high school and college graduations, sat on opposite sides of the auditorium and left without speaking to one another.

Cameron never made a fuss. She never whined or pouted or tried to make her parents feel guilty for the way things were. She had only ever asked that they come together and cooperate for one special function.