no need to give him unvarnished adulation any longer. “All those years I needed you so badly, I waited, hoping you’d forgive me.”
“It was a hard thing to forgive, Asher.”
He rose, too, realizing his daughter had grown stronger. He wasn’t sure how to approach the woman she had become.
“It was a hard thing to accept,” she countered in the calm voice he remembered. “That my father looked at me as athlete first and child second.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Turning, she fixed him with a level stare. “You turned your back on me because I gave up my career. Not once when I was suffering did you hold out a hand to me. I had no one to go to but you, and because you said no, I had no one at all.”
“I tried to deal with it. I tried to accept your decision to marry that man, though you knew how I felt about him.” The unexpected guilt angered him and chilled his voice. “I tried to understand how you could give up what you were to play at being something else.”
“I had no choice,” she began furiously.
“No choice?” His derision was sharp as a blade. “You made your own decision, Asher—your career for a title—just as you made it about the child. My grandchild.”
“Please.” She lifted both hands to her temples as she turned away. “Please don’t. Have you any idea how much and how often I’ve paid for that moment of carelessness?”
“Carelessness?” Stunned into disbelief, Jim stared at the back of her head. “You call the conception of a child carelessness?”
“No, no!” Her voice trembled as it rose. “The loss. If I hadn’t let myself get upset, if I had looked where I was going, I never would have fallen. I never would have lost Ty’s child.”
“What!” As the pain slammed into his stomach, Jim sank into the chair. “Fallen? Ty’s child? Ty’s?” He ran a hand over his eyes as he tried to sort it out. Suddenly he felt old and frail and frightened. “Asher, are you telling me you miscarried Ty’s child?”
“Yes.” Wearily she turned back to face him. “I wrote you, I told you.”
“If you wrote, I never received the letter.” Shaken, Jim held out a hand, waiting until she grasped it. “Asher, Eric told me you aborted his child.” For an instant, the words, their meaning, failed to penetrate. Her look was blank and vulnerable enough to make him feel every year of his age. “A calculated abortion of your husband’s child,” he said deliberately. When she swayed he gripped her other hand. “He told me you’d done so without his knowledge or permission. He seemed devastated. I believed him, Asher.” As she went limp, he drew her down to her knees in front of him. “I believed him.”
“Oh, God.” Her eyes were huge and dark with shock.
Her father’s fingers trembled in hers. “He phoned me from London. He sounded half mad—I thought with grief. He said that you hadn’t told him until after it was done. That you had told him you wanted no children to interfere with the life you intended to build as Lady Wickerton.”
Too numb for anger, Asher shook her head. “I didn’t know even Eric could be so vindictive, so cruel.”
It all began to make horrid sense. Her letters to her father hadn’t been answered. Eric had seen that they were never mailed. Then, when she had phoned him, Jim had been cold and brief. He’d told her that he could never resolve himself to her choice. Asher had assumed he meant her rejection of her career.
“He wanted me to pay,” she explained as she dropped her head on her father’s lap. “He never wanted me to stop paying.”
Gently Jim cupped her face in his hands. “Tell me everything. I’ll listen, as I should have a long time ago.”
She started with Jess, leaving nothing out, including her final stormy estrangement from Ty. Jim’s mouth tightened at her recounting of the accident and the hospital scene with Eric. Listening, he cursed himself for being a fool.
“And now, Ty . . .” As realization struck her, she paled. “Ty thinks—Eric must have told him I’d had an abortion.”
“No, I told him.”
“You?” Confused, Asher pressed her fingers to the headache in her temple. “But how—”
“He called me a few nights ago. He wanted to convince me to see you. I told him enough to make him believe the lie just as I’d believed it.”
“That night when I woke up,” Asher remembered. “Oh, my God, when he realized it had been his baby . . . The things he was saying! I couldn’t think at the time.” She shut her eyes. “No wonder he hates me.”
Color flooded back into her face. “I have to tell him the truth and make him believe it.” Scrambling up, she dashed for the door. “I’ll go to the club. I have to make him listen. I have to make him understand.”
“The match must be nearly over.” Jim rose on unsteady legs. His daughter had been through hell, and he had done nothing but add to it. “You’ll never catch him there.”
Frustrated, Asher looked at her watch. “I don’t know where he’s staying.” Releasing the doorknob, she went to the phone. “I’ll just have to find out.”
“Asher . . .” Awkward, unsure, Jim held out his hand. “Forgive me.”
Asher stared into his face as she replaced the receiver. Ignoring the hand, she went into his arms.
***
It was nearly midnight when Ty reached the door of his room. For the past two hours he’d been drinking steadily. Celebrating. It wasn’t every day you won the Grand Slam, he reminded himself as he searched for his keys. And it wasn’t every day a man had a half dozen women offering to share their beds with him. He gave a snort of laughter as he slid the key into the lock. And why the hell hadn’t he taken one of them up on it?
None of them was Asher. He shook away the thought as he struggled to make the doorknob function. No, he simply hadn’t wanted a woman, Ty told himself. It was because he was tired and had had too much to drink. Asher was yesterday.
The hotel room was dark as he stumbled inside. If he was right about nothing else, he was right about having too much to drink. Through glass after glass Ty had told himself the liquor was for celebrating, not for forgetting. The kid from the Chicago slum had made it to the top, in spades.
The hell with it, he decided, tossing his keys into the room. With a thud they landed on the carpet. Swaying a bit, he stripped off his shirt and threw it in the same direction. Now if he could just find his way to the bed without turning on a light, he’d sleep. Tonight he’d sleep—with enough liquor in his system to anesthetize him. There’d be no dreams of soft skin or dark blue eyes tonight.
As he fumbled toward the bedroom, a light switched on, blinding him. With a pungent curse Ty covered his eyes, balancing himself with one hand on the wall.
“Turn that damn thing off,” he muttered.
“Well, the victor returns triumphant.”
The quiet voice had him lowering the hand from his eyes. Asher sat primly in a chair, looking unruffled, soft and utterly tempting. Ty felt desire work its way through the alcohol.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“And very drunk,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. Rising, she went to him. “I suppose you deserve it after the way you played today. Should I add my congratulations to the host of others?”
“Get out.” He pushed away from the wall. “I don’t want you.”
“I’ll order up some coffee,” she said calmly. “We’ll talk.”
“I said get out!” Catching her wrist, he whirled her around. “Before I lose my temper and hurt you.”
Though her pulse jumped under his fingers, she stood firm. “I’ll leave after we talk.”
“Do you know what I want to do to you?” he demanded, shoving her back against the wall. “Do you know that I want to beat you senseless?”
“Yes.” She didn’t cringe as his fury raged down on her. “Ty, if you’ll listen—”
“I don’t want to listen to you.” The image of her lying exhausted on the bed raced through his mind. “Get out while I can
still stop myself from hurting you.”
“I can’t.” She lifted a hand to his cheek. “Ty—”
Her words were cut off as he pressed her back into the wall. For an instant she thought he would strike her, then his mouth came down on hers, bruising, savage. He forced her lips apart, thrusting his tongue deep as she struggled. His teeth ground against hers as though to punish them both. There was the faint taste of liquor, reminding her he had drink as well as anger in his system. When she tried to turn her head, he caught her face in his hand—not gently, in the touch she remembered, but viselike.
He could smell her—the soft talc, the lightly sexy perfume. And the fear. She made a small, pleading sound before she stopped fighting him. Without being aware of what he did, he lightened the grip to a caress. His lips gentled on hers, tasting, savoring. Mumbling her name, he trailed kisses over her skin until he felt the essence of her flowing back into him. God, how he’d missed her.
“I can’t do without you,” he whispered. “I can’t.” He sank to the floor, drawing her down with him.
He was lost in her—the feel, the taste, the fragrance. His mind was too full of Asher to allow him to think. Sensation ruled him, trembling along his skin to follow the path of her fingers. It was as if she sought to soothe and arouse him at once. He was helpless to resist her—or his need for her. As if in a trance, he took his lips over her, missing nothing as his hunger seemed insatiable. Her quickening breaths were like music, setting his rhythm.
The air grew steamier as his hands homed in on secrets that made her moan. Her body shuddered into life. No longer gentle, but demanding, she tangled her fingers in his hair and guided him to sweet spaces he’d neglected. Then ever greedy, ever giving, she drew him back to her mouth. Her tongue toyed with his lips, then slid inside to drink up all the flavors. His head swimming, he answered the kiss.
The need for her was unreasonable, but Ty was beyond reason. Without her there’d been an emptiness that even his fury couldn’t fill. Now the void was closing. She was in his blood, in his bone, so essential a part of him he had been able to find no place of separation. Now there was no will to do so.
Under him, she was moving, inviting, entreating. He whispered a denial against her mouth, but his pounding blood took control. He was inside her without being aware of it. Then all sensations spiraled together in an intensity that made him cry out. And it was her name he spoke, in both ecstasy and in despair.
Drained, Ty rolled from her to stare at the ceiling. How could he have let that happen? he demanded. How could he have felt such love, found such pleasure in a woman he had vowed to amputate from his life? He wondered now if he’d ever find the strength to stay away from her. Life with her, and life without her, would be two kinds of hell.
“Ty.” Reaching over, Asher touched his shoulder.
“Don’t.” Without looking at her he rose. “Get dressed, for God’s sake,” he muttered as he tugged on his own jeans with trembling hands. Who had used whom? he wondered. “Do you have a car?”
Sitting up, Asher pushed her hair out of her face. Hair, she remembered, that only moments before he had been kissing. “No.”
“I’ll call you a cab.”
“That won’t be necessary.” In silence she began to dress. “I realize you’re sorry that this happened.”
“I’m damned if I’ll apologize,” he snapped.
“I wasn’t asking you to,” she told him quietly. “I was going to say that I’m not sorry. I love you, and making love with you is only one way to show it.” She managed, after three attempts, to button her blouse. When she looked up, he was at the window, his back to her. “Ty, I came here to tell you some things you must know. When I’m finished, I’ll go and give you time to think about them.”
“Can’t you understand I don’t want to think anymore?”
“It’s the last thing I’ll ask of you.”
“All right.” In a gesture of fatigue she rarely saw in him, he rubbed both hands over his face. The liquor had burned out of his system—by the anger or the passion, he wasn’t sure. But he was cold sober. “Maybe I should tell you first that what Jess said to you three years ago was her own fabrication. I didn’t know anything about it until the other day when she told me what she’d done. In her own way, she was trying to protect me.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Turning, he gave her a grim smile. “Did you really think I was tired of you? Looking for a way out? Wondering how I could ditch you without raising too much fuss or interfering with my career?”
Asher opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. How strange that the words still hurt and made her defensive.
“Obviously you did.”
“And if I did?” she countered. “Everything she said fit. You’d never made a commitment to me. There’d never been any talk about the future.”
“On either side,” he reminded her.
Asher pushed away the logic. “If you’d once told me—”
“Or perhaps you were uncertain enough of your own feelings that when Jess dumped that on you, you ran right to Wickerton. Even though you were carrying my baby.”
“I didn’t know I was pregnant when I married Eric.” She saw him shrug her words away. In fury she grabbed both of his arms. “I tell you I didn’t know! Perhaps if I had known before I would have simply gone away. I don’t know what I would have done. I was already terrified you were growing tired of me before Jess confirmed it.”
“And where the hell did you get a stupid idea like that?”
“You’d been so moody, so withdrawn. Everything she said made sense.”
“If I was moody and withdrawn, it was because I was trying to work out the best way to ask Asher Wolfe, Miss Society Tennis, to marry Starbuck from the Wrong Side of the Tracks.”
Asher took an uncertain step toward him. “You would have married me?”
“I still have the ring I bought you,” he answered.
“A ring?” she repeated stupidly. “You’d bought me a ring?” For some inexplicable reason the thought of it stunned her more than anything else.
“I’d planned to try a very conventional proposal. And if that didn’t work, maybe a kidnapping.”
She tried to laugh because tears were entirely too close. “It would have worked.”
“If you’d told me you were pregnant—”
“Ty, I didn’t know! Damn it!” She pounded once against his chest. “Do you think I would have married Eric if I had known? It was weeks afterward that I found out.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me then?”
“Do you think I wanted to get you back that way?” The old pride lifted her chin. “And I was married to another man. I’d made him a promise.”
“A promise that meant more than the life of the child we’d made together,” he retorted bitterly. “A promise that let you walk into one of those antiseptic clinics and destroy something innocent and beautiful. And mine.”
The image was too ugly, the truth too painful. Flying at him, Asher struck him again and again until he pinned her hands behind her back. “And mine!” she shouted at him. “And mine, or doesn’t my part matter?”
“You didn’t want it.” His fingers closed like steel as she tried to pull away. “But you didn’t have the decency to ask me if I did. Couldn’t you bear the thought of carrying part of me inside you for nine months?”
“Don’t ask me what I could bear.” She wasn’t pale now, but vivid with fury. “I didn’t have an abortion,” she spat at him. “I miscarried. I miscarried and nearly died in the process. Would you feel better if I had? God knows I tried to.”
“Miscarried?” His grip shifted from her wrists to her shoulders. “What are you talking about?”
“Eric hated me too!” she shouted. “When I learned I was pregnant and told him, all he could say was that I’d deceived him. I’d tried to trick him into claiming the baby after you’d refused me. Nothing I said got throug
h to him. We argued and argued. We were near the steps and he was shouting. All I wanted to do was get away.” Her hands flew up to cover her face as she remembered again, all too clearly. “I didn’t look, I only ran. Then I was falling. I tried to stop, but my head hit the railing, I think. Then I don’t remember anything until I woke up and the baby was gone.”
Somehow he could see it as vividly as though it were being played on film in front of his eyes. “Oh, God, Asher.” When he tried to take her in his arms, she pulled away.
“I wanted you, but I knew you’d never forgive me. It didn’t seem to matter anymore, so I did what Eric wanted.” To force back the tears, she pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I didn’t want you to know, I couldn’t have stood it if you had known when you didn’t want me.” Lowering her hands, she looked at him, dry-eyed. “I paid for losing your baby, Ty. For three years I did without everything that mattered to me, and I grieved alone. I can’t mourn any longer.”
“No.” Going to the window, he flung it up as if he needed air. There was no breeze, nothing to relieve the burning that he felt. “You’ve had years to deal with it. I’ve had days.” And she’d had no one, he thought. Years with no one. Ty took several long breaths. “How badly were you hurt?”
Puzzled by the question, she shook her head. “What?”
“Were you badly hurt?” The question was rough and turbulent. When she remained silent he turned. “When you fell, how bad was it?”