The Promise (4 page)

He tugged at his tie, freeing the red silk from its knots so that it hung loose. They should have stayed in the damned restaurant, he thought. Her apartment bothered him. It was overwhelmingly feminine with a touch of the whimsical, and it reminded him too much of Sharon as a young girl—or, rather, what he had thought she was.

Undoing the top buttons of his shirt, he cast his mind back to the time he had been twenty-two, just finishing Harvard, and she had been a sweet, fresh, lovely eighteen, working in a men’s clothing shop near the college. He had gone into the shop to buy a sweater and had walked out with a date with her.

From the first he had been wild about her, and she had seemed to reciprocate the feelings. Their relationship had quickly escalated to a sexual one with an almost mystical ease and naturalness.

They had known each other just a few weeks when his friend, Mark Bretton, had begun to whisper stories in his ear about Sharon. He had laughed off the stories, believing that Mark wanted Sharon for himself. But as the days passed, Mark continued telling him tales. Then one day, after he and Sharon had been seeing each other for a few months, she had come to him and told him she was pregnant. He remembered the hope and the hesitancy in her eyes, and most of all he remembered the fear. And that was when everything Mark had been telling him came rushing back.

He went to his parents. Visibly distressed, they reminded him that his bout with the mumps had been so severe, the possibility existed he was sterile.

His test results had confirmed their fears and his. He had left the doctor’s office in a daze.

Back then, he had never looked far beyond the present. There was no reason to. Because of his name, because of the fortune he would inherit on his next birthday, his way was made in life. The future, he had thought, held only possibilities.

Accustomed as he was to this mindset, the knowledge of his sterility devastated him—almost as much as having to face the fact that Sharon had been unfaithful to him and was carrying another man’s child.

He had gone back to her and told her he wasn’t the father of her baby, that it was impossible. She had stared at him, completely without expression. Then she had turned and run out the door. Shortly afterward he heard she lost the baby.

Since that time, all thoughts of her had been relegated to an unlighted place in his mind beyond his conscious awareness. But his response to her after her sudden reappearance in his life clued him to the fact that his unconscious mind had kept her memory close.

He looked up as she carried in a tray with two steaming hot cups of coffee on it. She placed it on the table in front of the couch, then chose to sit on the comer opposite him.

While she poured the coffee, she cast surreptitious glances at him. He still wore the dark blue suit she had seen him in at his office earlier, but by unknotting his tie and unbuttoning his shirt, he had managed to add a strongly dangerous quality to his already powerful sexuality. She could cope, she told herself; her interest in him wasn’t personal. She handed him a cup and picked up her own.

“I was sorry to hear that you lost the baby.” Her hand faltered, and coffee spilled onto her saucer. She blotted the liquid up with a napkin. “Then you knew. I wasn’t sure since you never tried to see me again.”

“How did you expect me to react, Sharon? It wasn’t my baby.”

She turned her head away, but right before she did he caught a glimpse of her expression. The hurt and bitterness he saw gave him pause. Had those feelings made it difficult for her to come to him today? Or had they made it easy for her?

She put a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee and stirred. “Have you made up your mind about what you’re going to do?”

To give himself an extra moment before he answered, he took a sip of the steaming liquid, found it too hot, and set it on the table. “There’s nothing to decide, Sharon. I cannot make you pregnant. It would be physically impossible.”

She tried to bank down the anger that instantly flared. “You sound so sure of yourself. You’re not even willing to acknowledge the possibility that I could be telling the truth about the baby being yours.”

“If you’re right, why didn’t you argue with me back then? Why did you run out into the night like you did?”

“I was incredibly hurt that you didn’t believe me when I first told you. I thought we loved each other, and I knew I’d done nothing to deserve your suspicion. Then waiting for the results of the test shredded my nerves. The final denial from you just about destroyed me.”

“Destroyed you? Lord, Sharon, you were the first girl I’d ever loved. What do you think the knowledge that you had been unfaithful did to me?”

“Frankly, I don’t care, because, you see, I know what I suffered when you turned your back on me.”

He rubbed his eyes with a thumb and finger, and then raised his head and looked at her. “Don’t you understand I would love for you to be right? The fact that I’m sterile has affected my whole life.”

Just for an instant something opened in him, and she caught a glimpse of private torment. Surprisingly, she felt a pang of sympathy; she promptly squelched it. This man didn’t need anyone’s sympathy. He was a Deverell. He had only to lift a finger and whatever he desired came to him. “You keep using the word
sterile.
But as I recall, what the doctor said was that you had a low sperm count. There’s a big difference between those two things."

His jaw tightened. “In this case, semantics don’t change the meaning. The percentage chance he estimated for me was and is negligible.”

The sign of his stubbornness strengthened her determination. She put aside her cup and clasped her hands together. “Haven’t you ever once considered that you could have been wrong?”

“No.”

“No,” she repeated, indignation rising. “A Deverell decree. It is said, it will be.” She sat forward. “All right, Conall, just for the sake of argument, let’s say you are absolutely right. You are physically incapable of fathering a child. Then tell me, what do you have to lose by doing what you have to do for two weeks to make me pregnant? It’s my understanding that most men enjoy it.”

His head snapped around. “Men enjoy it? Are you saying you don’t think women do? Or you? What about you?”

She shrugged, extremely uncomfortable with the sudden turn of the conversation, and she had no one to blame but herself for not watching her words more carefully. “It doesn’t matter about me.”

She didn’t want to admit to him that his love-making had given her great happiness and pleasure. It was a matter of pride, plus she was aware of the possibility that he might in some way use the knowledge as a weapon against her.

“Sharon, you can’t tell me I didn’t satisfy you. There were too many times when—” He bit off his words and shook his head, disgusted with himself for remembering.

She nearly groaned aloud. She didn’t want to think about sex with Conall. This time she tried to select her words more cautiously, and at the same time she inadvertently ended up telling him at least part of the truth. “Look, don’t let your ego get in the way here. I enjoyed the act because at the time I loved you, or, rather, I thought I loved you. When we were together it was emotionally satisfying. That was all that was important to me.”

He stared at her. “The
act?”

“Conall, I didn’t know any better. If you’ll remember, you were my first lover. I was very young, and, as a matter of fact, so were you. But none of this is important. We need to get back to the subject at hand.”

She was right, it wasn’t important. But his memories of that time were about how immensely she had satisfied him. “What was the subject?”

“I asked you what you have to lose by being with me for two weeks.”

“Being with you,” he repeated. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard as many euphemisms in the space of such a short time. You have the oddest way of putting things, but I assume you mean ‘being with me’ in a sexual sense.”

A hint of color slowly climbed her neck. She nodded. “You know I do.”

The blushing was a habit he remembered from long ago. He had always found the trait intriguing, but now he had other things on his mind. Emotions and memories of the past and present were colliding, making him feel as if he were standing in the middle of a battlefield. Except the battle was taking place inside of him. Shots were being fired. Blows were being landed. And they hurt.

He sighed. “I don’t know what I have to lose, Sharon, but I’m sure if I think long enough, I’ll come up with something. You see, I have no reason to trust you.”

Her backbone stiffened. “And I have even less reason to trust you, but I suggest we overcome our mutual distrust. I’m not asking much.” “That’s a matter of opinion. As you have somehow managed to observe—how did you put it?—

I don’t engage in indiscriminate sexual affairs.” He was half angry with her, wholly frustrated, and most definitely suspicious. But
no one
could have gotten him to leave, not just yet, at any rate. “What about artificial insemination? For what you want, it would be much more cut and dried, much less messy. And best of all, you wouldn’t have to try to force a man into your bed who doesn’t want to be there.”

Her lips firmed. “I told you in your office today, artificial insemination wouldn’t suit my purposes. Aside from the reason I’ve already stated, when my child asks where he comes from, I don’t want to have to say a syringe. I also don’t want to leave the choice of my child’s father to a lab technician.”

“You’d get to choose physical traits, background, things such as that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d know the color of the donor’s hair and eyes, but it’s not the same as knowing the man. I assume that by the end of two weeks, I’ll know at least some of your likes and dislikes.”

“At least in bed you will. ”

He’d deliberately made a suggestive remark and was rewarded when color rushed up her neck again. What kind of modern-day woman flushed at the idea of being in bed with a man, especially when it was her idea in the first place?

“Within reason,” she was saying, “I'll be able to satisfy my child’s curiosity without once mentioning labs, test tubes, or syringes.”

“Since you seem set on trying to prove I can father a child, what if I agreed to supply the sperm to the laboratory?”

“That’s not good enough,” she said with a definite shake of her head. “Even if I got pregnant, you could say that the lab had made a mistake, switched vials, something,
anything
to keep from acknowledging the truth to yourself.”

“The truth being that I am capable of fathering a child and did so all those years ago.”

"That’s right.”

Let the subject drop, he told himself. “I have to say you’ve thought of almost everything. ”

Her chin went up a notch, the way it had in his office. This time he read a vulnerability into the defensive gesture.

"Not almost. I’ve thought of
everything.”

Get up and leave, he told himself. “No, I’m afraid there’s one thing you haven’t thought of.”

“What?”

Why in the hell wasn’t he taking his own advice? From the cradle, young girls and then women had tried to get him, his name, and his money, in that order. Many times he had walked away from far less explosive situations than this one. Why didn’t he now? He spread his arm along the back of the couch until his hand was within touching distance of her. “What if we’re not sexually compatible?”

“Sex— What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “What if there’s no passion between us?”

Her pulse picked up a beat and she frowned. “There doesn’t have to be passion. This is a business deal, pure and simple.”

The funny thing was, he really believed she meant it. “You may look at it as a business deal, Sharon, but I’m not some circus animal who can perform on command. No.” He shook his head. “You want me to perform in bed, you’re going to have to make me feel passion.”

Once more color flooded her face.

He studied the color for a moment, then said quietly, “Come here.”

“What?”

“Come here.” He took her arm and pulled her across the couch to him. When she was close enough, he cupped the side of her face with his hand.

She swallowed convulsively. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing yet. But in a minute I’m going to kiss you.” His eyes glittered as he gazed at her lips and stroked his thumb up and down her cheek. “You don’t have any objections, do you?”

Her heart was pounding loudly; her nerves were jumping out of control. Her tongue moistened her bottom lip. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

His thumb smoothed across her lip, wiping up the moistness laid down by her tongue. “Why?”

 “It—it’s just not necessary, that’s all.”

“Okay,” he said. “I guess I could skip the kiss.” Relief flooded through her. “Good.”

“And I could go right to caressing your breasts.” Her eyes widened in alarm.

He slowly withdrew his hand from her face, sat back in the corner of the couch, and eyed her thoughtfully. “I don’t know what you expected, Sharon, but I’m not going to spend two minutes having sex with a woman who doesn’t excite me, much less two weeks. I think we’d better forget the whole thing.” He crooked his arm, shot back a white cuff, and glanced at his watch. “It’s late.I must leave.”

“No, wait! Don’t leave.”

One black brow arched in inquiry, in demand. “All right, we can kiss.”

He was silent for a moment. “You sound like you’d rather I pull your fingernails out one by one. Ten years may have passed, Sharon, but I don’t remember you being this reticent."

 “I wasn’t. I’m not.” She waved a helpless hand. “This Is just all very awkward.”

"Trying to force someone to do something he doesn’t want to do always is. Surely you took that into account.”

“You really are a bastard, aren’t you?”

His face softened with a slow smile. “That’s not the way to do it, Sharon. You’ve got to make me want you.” His voice dropped to a sexy, cajoling whisper. “Come on. Try.”

She hesitated.

“You may have your schedule worked out, but I would have to do a hell of a lot of juggling before I could break away from my work for any length of time. You’ve got to make it worth my while.”