Morgan's Child (4 page)

Quickly he adopted a neutral expression and slid the dart into his pants pocket, hoping that his head would hide the telltale picture.

"Mr. Rhett, I hate to bother you, but there seems to be some kind of emergency in the waiting room," his personal assistant, Lavinia, said, her usually dulcet tones overlaid with a patina of concern.

"Emergency? What kind of emergency?"

"A woman. She's determined to see you, but she doesn't have an appointment."

"What's her business?" he asked sharply.

"She won't say. And frankly, Mr. Rhett, I'm not sure you
should
see her. She's obviously distraught. And—and she's
expecting
." Lavinia looked worried.

"Expecting what?"

"A baby,
Mr. Rhett. She looks—unwell."

Morgan lifted his eyebrows. "You don't mean she's going to deliver the baby in my waiting room, do you?" Long ago he'd realized that his assistant was one of those people who could not say that someone had died; he had passed away. No one was ever pregnant; she was expecting. Queen of euphemisms, that was Lavinia. She was, however, a fine assistant. She protected him from people like this woman.

"I'd tell her to go, but she's deposited herself on the love seat and says she's not leaving until she sees you. She could be mentally unbalanced."

"Does she look dangerous?" Morgan asked in alarm.

Lavinia considered. "Not dangerous. Determined."

Morgan sighed. So many people tried to convince him to invest in dubious real-estate schemes that he sometimes thought he needed a bouncer, not a personal assistant. He doubted, however, that he'd find a bouncer who baked coconut cakes as good as Lavinia's.

"I'll come to the waiting room and see what this is all about," he said. He wanted Lavinia to leave so he could remove Courtney's picture from the dart board. He didn't want to give her and the other women in his office fodder for gossip.

"I don't know if you should meet her," Lavinia said. "That might not be wise."

Morgan's impatience finally got the best of him. "If you can't get rid of her, what are we going to do? Let her
pregnate
until she gives birth? I'll be there in a minute," he said, dismissing Lavinia with a wave of his hand.

Lavinia looked embarrassed. Morgan had no idea if there was such a word as
pregnate,
but it was worth inventing it just to see the shocked look on Lavinia's face.

"Very well, Mr. Rhett," Lavinia replied. She cloaked herself in self-righteousness, mistakenly thinking it was dignity, but Morgan Rhett was not fooled. He knew dignity when he saw it, which wasn't often. There was so little dignity left in the world today.

He reached for the piece of newspaper with Courtney's picture on it and crumpled it before tossing it in the wastebasket. He thought that with any luck the pregnant woman would be gone, but when he walked through the door into the waiting room, there she was, spread out across the love seat and taking up enough space for two people. Which she was, strictly speaking.

"I'm Morgan Rhett," he said smoothly. "How can I help you?"

She glared up at him. "You can talk to me.
Privately,
" she said.

Morgan was acutely aware of Lavinia and the two other women who worked in the office hovering nervously in the doorway.

"Maybe if you can give me some idea about your business," he said, for once his self-confidence starting to waver. This woman looked angry. She looked worried. And she looked very, very serious.

"It's personal," she said, and then she unmistakably lowered her eyes to her huge belly and lifted them back to his. He stared at her, dumbfounded. She was implying—she must mean—

He wheeled and shot Lavinia and the other two women a meaningful look so that they beat a hasty retreat.

After he forced himself to put on a courteous expression, he turned back to the woman, who had stood up. Now that she was on his eye level, he saw the panic behind her eyes. He still wasn't sure if she was dangerous or not.

"My office is this way," he said, wondering what was going on here. He'd never seen this woman before, and he had an idea that she was going to be trouble, big trouble.

He ushered her into his office with its deep-piled Persian carpet, its mammoth desk and its blue-on-blue view of the harbor with Fort Sumter in the distance.

"Please sit down," he said.

She sat. Here in the natural brightness of his office where they were removed from the subdued lighting in the waiting room, the woman looked prettier. Softer.

Her blond hair hung past her shoulders in sun-bleached stripes, and she was appraising him with eyes as clear and gray as the summer sea at dusk. The smooth planes of her face were agreeable to the eye, but she was clearly a person of no sophistication, and as for those clothes, they were outlandish—a huge brownish-green dress with a ridiculous flirty ruffle around the hemline and low-cut armholes that exposed more than was strictly decent.

He caught a glimpse of one rounded breast through an armhole and quickly turned his eyes away. She wore a flowing tie-dyed scarf around her neck, marvelous colors, but she must have thrown it on as an afterthought because the colors had nothing to do with those of the dress, which looked like a camouflage tent for an army tank.

"I don't believe I heard your name," he said.

"Kate Sinclair," she said. To his surprise, her voice was gentle.

"Will you state your business?" he said.

She nodded. "I certainly will. I thought about writing you a letter, but I couldn't think of any way to phrase it, and I thought about telephoning, but I was sure you'd think I was some kind of oddball. But now..." and her words dwindled away. She stared at him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and to his horror, her eyes filled with tears.

She pulled a clean white handkerchief out of her handbag and pressed it to each eyelid in turn. He would have been touched by the gesture if he hadn't been so wary.

"Ms. Sinclair, I wish you'd get to the point," Morgan said.

"I'm sure you're very busy, and I'm sorry for the way I acted in the waiting room. I had to see you, and I didn't want the people who work for you to know why. This baby—" she said, folding her hands protectively over her abdomen "—this baby is yours."

Morgan leaned back in his chair and regarded her with distaste. Then, without meaning to, he winced. He'd forgotten where he'd hidden the dart.

"I've never seen you before in my life," he said, changing positions and unobtrusively sticking his hand in his pocket. The point of the dart had maneuvered itself into a most inconvenient place and was poking into a very tender part of his anatomy.

"Courtney is an acquaintance of mine. It was the embryos, you see. She wanted to have a baby without actually bearing it, so I volunteered."

Morgan wasn't having any luck with the dart. He couldn't reach it without twisting his torso into an awkward and obvious position.

"Now I think it was the stupidest thing I've ever done," Kate continued, oblivious to his discomfort, "but at the time—at the time—" and she buried her face in the handkerchief. Her shoulders shook uncontrollably.

Now she wouldn't see, so Morgan writhed uncomfortably and plucked the dart out of his pocket.

She didn't notice,
he thought thankfully when she lifted her head. He slipped the dart into a desk drawer and accorded her his full attention. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and her skin was blotchy. Altogether she looked most unattractive.

"Am I to understand that my ex-wife asked you to serve as a surrogate mother?" he asked, ending his sentence on exactly the right note of disbelief and thinking that he was handling this well.

"Yes," she whispered, looking as though she wished she were anywhere else.

"And you claim that this child of yours is actually the result of those fertilized embryos that were given by the court into the custody of my ex-wife?"

Kate nodded miserably.

"Would you mind telling me what in God's name this has to do with me? Courtney insisted on custody, and
she
was awarded it. I have nothing more to do with the matter." His eyes blazed with fury.

"Courtney doesn't want the baby now," Kate said. "Her new husband says there's no room for a baby in their lives."

"Oh, yes, Damien the plumbing contractor. You'd think he'd have more interest in plumbing, wouldn't you? Well, all I can say is that it's no concern of mine. You'll have to work all this out with Courtney. And Damien, of course. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do." Morgan stared at her until her gaze faltered.

"It
is
your child, Mr. Rhett," she said softly. "It's part of you."

If he had let them, the words would have caught at his heart. He'd wanted a child. He came from a big family. But Courtney hadn't been able to conceive normally, and the in-vitro fertilization idea had been their one hope.

He slammed his hands down on the desk, hard. He had to do it in order to keep them from trembling. If only she would stop looking at him with her pleading gray eyes, if only she weren't sitting there looking so pathetic in that awful dress!

"That child his nothing to do with me. Nothing at all,"
he said firmly, but to his horror, his voice broke on the final word, and she blinked at him.

It was the last straw. "If you don't leave right this minute," he said, "I will have you escorted out. I mean it."

She gasped, a pained intake of breath. It startled him; she couldn't be going into labor, could she? But no, she was pushing herself to her feet, her legs splayed wide to bear the weight of the child. She looked more miserable than any human being he had encountered in quite some time, but she was moving—albeit slowly—toward the door.

She paused with her hand on the knob. "I won't trouble you again," she said clearly and distinctly, and for a split second he felt that it was he who was the interloper and she who was in the right.

And then, thank goodness, she was gone. He heard Lavinia and the other two women murmuring in the hall, but he didn't want to know what they were saying. Let them gossip, let them whisper; Kate Sinclair and her baby had nothing to do with him.

It wasn't until about half an hour later when he was trying without success to concentrate on the new condominium deal that it occurred to him that it was Kate Sinclair who possessed in abundance the quality that he so admired. She had dignity.

* * *

Kate wandered blindly along hot streets crowded with students on spring break from the College of Charleston. She pressed through queues of tourists lined up for carriage tours of the historic district. Eventually she found herself walking on the East Battery where the brisk breeze from the harbor dried the tears on her cheeks. The tears in her heart, however, were another matter. Now she thought she knew the true meaning of despair.

She leaned against the railing for a moment. Behind her rose an impressive line of great mansions painted in pastel colors, but she was blind to their picturesque beauty. She had to figure out what to do.

It was much too late to have an abortion, even if Kate were so inclined, and she wasn't. She could follow the terms of the contract, which stated that in case of default of the natural mother, the baby should be put up for adoption. But Kate felt that this baby shouldn't go to strangers. It had two parents who were capable of taking care of it, and she had no doubt that the baby would be as pretty as Courtney and as intelligent as Morgan Rhett. It would be a wonderful baby, a baby that anybody would want. Anybody but its parents, that is.

It was all her fault. This baby would not exist if she hadn't decided to follow such a foolhardy course in the first place. Now it all seemed ridiculous in the extreme, her volunteering to bear a baby for someone else so that she could have the experience. This was an experience, all right. Some experience.

Carriages full of tourists passed by on the street behind her, and she envied them. They were so carefree, so happy. Out in the harbor, people rode tour boats to visit historic Fort Sumter, the fortress first fired upon by the Confederates in the War Between the States, and Kate now felt as much under bombardment as any fortress. Courtney didn't want her baby, and neither did its father.

What are we going to do?
she whispered to the baby.
What in the world are we going to do?

She couldn't summon the effort to move. It had been a hard day, starting when she rode the early ferry from Yaupon Island to the mainland, rented a car, drove to Charleston, fought for a parking space in the downtown parking garage and then endured her disastrous meeting with Morgan Rhett. Now she felt exhausted and numb, but not numb enough to ignore the blisters on her feet, which had been caused by wearing old shoes too small for her feet now that she was pregnant.

A man broke away from a sedate group strolling along the Battery a hundred feet away or so, and she looked around in alarm. His tie was flying out behind him in the breeze, and he began to run toward her. She realized only when he was a few feet away that it was Morgan Rhett.

"Thank goodness I've found you!" he said, grabbing her arm. She stood there, too stunned to speak, too tired to move.