“Maybe not, but in those days, I had additional reasons to feel that fathering children was a pointless risk for me: I knew nothing about being a father, and I had no idea what sort of genes I carried. Based on what Bartlett told you happened to me as a child, you should be able to guess why I felt that way.”
Overwhelmed that he was willing to admit so much to her now and saddened by the needless fears he’d endured, Kate looked down at her lap and decided he’d been right to insist on this conversation. Lifting her eyes to his, she said with soft candor, “I don’t have to fill in any blanks. I know everything about you. Evan only knew how the Wyatts disposed of you when you were a baby. I know everything about your life afterward.”
“Such as?”
“Let’s see …” she said with a sudden smile, eyeing him from beneath her lashes, “I know that you broke sports records at all your schools starting when you were eight. I know you excelled at all your studies except art. I know that you had nowhere to go when school closed, so you stayed with a faculty member or a custodian during the holidays, and that during the summers you went to camps. I know that students were required to write home twice a month, and so you wrote letters to a custodian at your previous school. I also know you were fascinated with religion, but no one religion in particular. You changed your religion at each new school.” Tipping her head to the side, she asked, “Were you interested in theology, by any chance?”
“No, I was interested in spending the least possible amount of time in church. Since church attendance was mandatory at all my boarding schools, I ‘reoriented’ my beliefs according to whatever church service was shortest at the current school.”
“Judaism takes up a lot of time.”
“Not when there’s no rabbi in the vicinity.”
She burst out laughing, and an answering smile tugged at Mitchell’s lips—until he realized that after three years, he was still helplessly captivated by those russet-lashed, glowing green eyes smiling into his. He doused his smile and took a quick swallow of his drink. Despite her claim that she knew everything about him, it was obvious that she knew only what was in his school records. He was wondering how she got her hands on those when she sobered and said something that made him stare at her over the rim of his glass.
“I know who Calli is, Mitchell. I wouldn’t have agreed to leave Danny upstairs with him otherwise. The Calliorosos were the closest thing you had to a family.”
“Where did you get all this information?”
“Your brother’s investigators put together a file on you.”
“He told me he had a file. How did you get it?”
“The day after I got back from St. Maarten, Gray Elliott ‘invited me’ to his office for a chat. He had a huge file on you, including pictures of us in St. Maarten, and he told me you were a suspect in your brother’s murder.”
“What the hell did he expect to find out from you?”
“He wanted to know how long we’d known each other, and what you’d told me about your brother.” Kate paused, momentarily diverted by the scowl on Mitchell’s handsome face because he suddenly looked like a formidable version of Danny when he scowled. “Anyway, four months after that, I was in the terrifying position of carrying a baby inside me whose father was a dark mystery to me. I remembered those files in Gray Elliott’s office, and so I went to see him and asked if I could look through them. Ethically, he couldn’t let me see anything the police had accumulated about you. But since your brother’s file didn’t fall into that category, he let me look through it at his office.”
“He had no business letting anyone see that file.”
“Be glad he did,” Kate said forcefully. “Before that day, I didn’t know how I was going to be able to love my baby. But once I read that file, I understood you. I understood why you needed to get even with the Bartletts and why you would have seized the chance to do it by seducing me.”
Shock and disbelief annihilated every other emotion in Mitchell’s body. Outwardly relaxed and inwardly tensed, he studied her, assessing her face, her inflections—even her logic—for indications that she was lying. But as she continued, what Mitchell heard was truth, and it was so painful to endure that he found himself almost wishing she were lying to him while at the same time he wanted everything she said to be true.
“To be fair to you,” she went on, oblivious to the havoc she was wreaking in Mitchell, “you were very straightforward the first night at the villa in Anguilla. You made it clear that you didn’t want to share anything with me except a bed—not even meaningless information, like your brother’s name and how many languages you speak. You told me straight out in St. Maarten that you didn’t want complications, and that if I went to bed with you, nothing would come of it.
“I had to have magic, though, or I wouldn’t go along, and when you realized I meant it, you reversed your attitude in a matter of seconds and told me we had magic. And then you took me to bed and made sure I believed it. I thought I loved you, and I think you knew that. Even so, you let me go to meet Evan in Anguilla, knowing exactly what was going to happen and what Evan was going to tell me. That was despicable, by the way.”
Kate paused, waiting for him to react, but all he did was nod, wordlessly accepting her condemnation and urging her to go on. So Kate went on. “I couldn’t find a way to forgive you for that—or the baby in my womb either—until I read your file. Once I did that,” she said, looking at him without rancor, “I realized that you meant me no real harm, but I was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for revenge that you simply couldn’t pass up. Actually,” she said, flashing Mitchell a wayward smile, “after I read your file, I actually felt a little bit of satisfaction that I was the tool you used to retaliate.”
Desperate for her to continue, Mitchell drew a steadying breath and said quietly, “You have a very loyal, forgiving nature, Kate.”
Kate’s hand shook at the soft caress she imagined in his voice when he said her name, and she stared hard at him, but his handsome face was composed, attentive, and nothing more. “Actually,” she said briskly, in case he’d noticed her momentary loss of concentration when he said her name, “it was a picture of you, taken at the dock in St. Maarten, the day I left with Evan, that changed everything for me.”
“How did it do that?”
“It was a police photograph with the date and time stamped on it. It was five forty-five and you were waiting for me. Until I saw it, I never imagined that you went to the dock at all that day.”
Mitchell’s expression didn’t change, but he had just registered the first flaw in her logic, a large flaw that called her other claims into question.
Across from him, she finished the wine in her glass and said drily, “You have a gift for diabolical revenge. Evan’s reaction at the villa was all you could have hoped for.”
Mitchell lifted his brows inquiringly. “Really? Do you mind telling me what happened?”
His complete imperturbability suddenly rubbed Kate the wrong way. “Yes, I think I do mind,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. That’s completely between Evan and you.”
Kate gaped at him. His last sentence absolved him from any part or responsibility for what took place at the villa, which was completely, outrageously arrogant and unfair. Without an inkling that his remark was verbal bait being dangled in front of her nose by an expert, Kate swallowed the hook, and decided she deserved the opportunity to tell him exactly how brutal he’d been. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that without feeling a little humiliated, so she stared at the empty wineglass, twisting the stem in her fingers. “The day I left you at the Enclave in St. Maarten, I went straight to the villa and packed my suitcases like a good little idiot; then I waited for Evan. When he arrived, I told him I’d met you and that I thought we had something special—”
Mitchell interrupted with a quietly spoken instruction. “Look at me.”
Kate automatically obeyed because she assumed he wanted her looking at
him while he told her something important. Instead, he nodded and said, “Go on.”
It was the first inkling she had that his relaxed pose and pleasant, dispassionate expression were feigned, and that he was weighing everything she said. It was not a pleasant realization, and her voice sharpened a little.
“Without trying to list the revelations in the order of their heartbreaking effect, Evan told me that he’d met you at Cecil Wyatt’s party, that he’d told you my name and that I was going to be staying at the Island Club with him. He also told me about your childhood and the reasons you hate his father and him. Then he asked me if I knew you were staying on Zack Benedict’s yacht, building a house on Anguilla, and living in Chicago with Caroline Wyatt.” She waited for Mitchell to respond, and when he didn’t, she shook her head at her own stupidity. “I was so insane about you that none of that mattered, except for the one thing that I couldn’t invent an excuse for.”
“What was that?” he asked quietly, but his brows had narrowed imperceptibly.
“The one thing I couldn’t ignore was that you’d let me talk about Chicago while you acted as if you’d never been here. You even asked me how long it takes to fly from Chicago to St. Maarten. As far as I know, there are only two reasons a man hides from a woman the fact that he lives in the same city she does: either he’s married or he has no intention of seeing her again when they’re both back in that city. I wanted to believe that you might have a third reason, so do you know what I did?”
“No,” he said.
“I called you at the Enclave to ask you why you hadn’t told me those things. The operator at the Enclave told me you’d checked out. Naturally, I thought that had to be a mistake, because I remembered the way you stood on the balcony and told me to ‘Hurry back.’” Trying unsuccessfully to keep her voice steady, Kate went on, “So there I was, with my suitcases all packed, standing in the villa, facing the ugly truth: you seduced me to get even with Evan; then you sent me back to the villa to break up with him, reminding me to hurry back to you. And then you checked out of the hotel.”
Drawing a shaky breath, Kate said, “I cried my heart out on Evan’s shoulder. I cried until I was so exhausted I fell asleep.”
Instead of sounding remorseful or argumentative, Mitchell sounded vaguely puzzled. “You thought you were in love with me, and yet, only a few days later, you walked up to me at a party wearing Bartlett’s engagement ring, looking very smug, and offered me your cheek to kiss?”
His impression of her feelings that night was so wrong that Kate went from being on the verge of tears to the verge of laughter, and she stood up quickly, trying to steady her disintegrating composure. “I practiced that scene for hours with my friend Holly because we knew you were going to be there, but ‘smug’ definitely wasn’t what I was supposed to convey,” she said with a quick smile as she reached for his glass. “Let me fix you another drink and then I’ll check on dinner.”
He moved the glass out of her reach, and rolled to his feet, trapping her between the cocktail table and his body. “What were you trying to convey?” he persisted so calmly and courteously that Kate assumed he didn’t realize she couldn’t step around him.
“Playful,” Kate replied, trying to sound offhanded when the collar of her green sweater was an inch from the front of his shirt and she had to tip her head way back to meet his thoughtful gaze. “You’d used me as a pawn in your game, so I pretended you hadn’t mattered to me any more than I’d mattered to you.”
“And your engagement to Bartlett—that was, what?”
“Evan brought the ring to Anguilla,” Kate explained quickly. “He put it on my finger after I cried myself to sleep. At the time, marrying Evan seemed like reparation and salvation to me. My reprieve from reality lasted for a few weeks until I found out I was pregnant. Evan and I hadn’t been intimate after my father died, and although we got engaged the same day I slept with you, we both agreed that we needed to wait awhile before we slept with each other. There was no possibility that you weren’t the father.”
“I assume he broke off the engagement as soon as you told him you were pregnant?”
“One thing hasn’t changed—” Kate said, feeling suddenly angry, “I always end up doing all the talking and you don’t reveal anything.”
“I’ll start talking as soon as you answer two questions for me—beginning with the last one.”
“He did not want to break the engagement; he wanted me to have an abortion.”
“But you wouldn’t?”
“No.”
“And when you were four months pregnant, you saw a picture of me waiting for you at the wharf, and you thought you’d been in love with me, and yet you never thought to contact me and tell me you were pregnant?”
“Of course I thought about it, and you’re out of questions. Excuse me—” she added, putting her left hand against his chest in an agitated effort to get him to step back. To her shock, instead of stepping back, he captured both her upper arms and held her firmly in front of him, but his tone was puzzled, not threatening. “Why didn’t you take a chance and come to me and tell me you were pregnant?”
“Because I knew that even if you had cared very much for me in St. Maarten—even if you still cared for me when I told you I was pregnant—you would probably want me to get an abortion.”
“And it wasn’t worth your trouble to come to me and find out for sure?”
Kate snapped her head back, intending to glare at him, but he was staring at her intensely, no longer looking as if he were an impartial investigator. “I couldn’t take the risk.”
The minute she said “risk” an expression of dawning horror tightened his jaw. “You took that risk with Bartlett. Why couldn’t you take it with me?”
“Because,” she said brokenly, “I was afraid that if you tried hard enough, you’d be able to talk me into doing it!”
Mitchell’s hands tightened, pulling her roughly against his chest in a fierce, protective embrace. Now he understood the real reason she’d not told him she was pregnant, and he believed her. He believed everything she’d told him in the last few minutes—every heartbreaking thing—and Bartlett was responsible for it all.
He laid his jaw against the top of her head, his hand drifting soothingly up and down her spine while long-suppressed memories of their time together in the islands spun through his mind, each one sweeter and more poignant than the one before.
A waiter shouldering a tray laden with dishes walked through the doorway, saw Kate in Mitchell’s arms, hesitated, and then backed out of the room.
“Mitchell—” she said quietly.
Her voice pulled him out of his trance, and he realized her hands were flattened against his chest, gently pushing him away. Refusing to let her go yet, he touched his lips to the top her head and whispered tenderly, “Thank you for our son.”
The tension went out of her body, and she nodded, her cheek rubbing against his chest, her body relaxing against his, the fingers of her right hand spreading over his heart. Mitchell’s heart missed a beat and his thighs tightened. Startled by his body’s reaction, he lifted his chin and frowned at her shiny red hair—and then he remembered how easily she’d aroused him three years ago. His frown turned into an amused grin. Surprise turned into hope.
He loosened his arms, and she stepped back out of his reach, which disappointed him until he realized that she couldn’t possibly read his mind, no matter how tightly he held her. “Kate,” he said solemnly, “everything Evan told you at the villa was a lie. When I met him at Cecil’s party, he didn’t tell me your name, or that he was bringing anyone here. Even if he had, why would I bother to exact revenge on him? He’s a supercilious asshole with a sadistic streak he shares with his father. At least, that’s all he was to me until tonight.” Mitchell waited, fully expecting that what he’d said would be enough to remove all her doubts.
Kate shoved her hands into her back pockets, a little embarrassed by the comfort she’d felt in Mitchell’s arms,
but accepting it as inevitable, under the circumstances. She was happy he was there, but she was not willing to let him shift the blame for what happened three years ago onto Evan. In a calm, reasonable voice, she said, “Did Evan lie when he pointed out that you’d been living in Chicago right up until I met you?”
“No—”
“Did he lie when he said you’d been staying on Zack Benedict’s boat?”
“No.”
“Did you pretend you knew nothing about Chicago? Did you go so far as to ask me how long it took to fly from Chicago to St. Maarten?”
“Yes, and I had reasons for both. I have my own plane. I’ve never flown on a commercial jet from Chicago to St. Maarten, so I had no idea how many stops they make.” At the end of his explanation, she arched her graceful brows at him, and Mitchell almost smiled because she looked like a pretty schoolteacher waiting for the recalcitrant student in front of her to trap himself in his own lie. “It’s a little harder to explain why I didn’t admit I knew anything about Chicago. When I was in school, my classmates’ parents often asked me if I was related to the ‘Chicago Wyatts,’ because they were trying to assess my social connections—ergo, my worthiness to associate with their sons. I had to say no. A few weeks before we met, Cecil publicly acknowledged me and all of a sudden, I was a celebrated Chicago Wyatt. I didn’t like it,” he said bluntly. “In fact, I rather resented it.”
“You’d made it on your own, without them,” Kate speculated.
“That’s close enough. When I met you, you were staying at an exclusive hotel frequented by the very wealthy, and when you said you were from Chicago, I avoided the possibility that you’d either be ‘dazzled’ with my social connections or else want to start figuring out who we both know.”
She nodded, but Mitchell had no idea whether she believed that was the true reason for his withholding information from her.
“And the day we passed Zack Benedict’s boat? When I went on and on about what a huge fan of his I am, you let me do it without mentioning that he’s not only a close friend of yours, but that you were staying on his boat.”