Separate Beds (3 page)

He let her go this time and stood there with one hand on his hip in the dark, thinking to himself that she was the singularly most irritating woman he'd ever met. It was all the more frustrating to think he'd made love to a wasp like that! Then, with a rueful grin, he corrected himself, making it, had “sexual intercourse” with a wasp like that. He listened to her footsteps fading away, thinking, Good riddance, lady! But in the end he couldn't let her go.

“Catherine, don't be an ass!” he admonished, hurting her ego further as she hot-footed it down the gravel road. “You're at least three miles from my house, and God-knows-how-many miles from yours. Get back up here!”

The fragrant night resounded with her response: “Up yours, Clay Forrester!”

He cursed, returned to his car and twisted the key so violently it should have broken off in the ignition. The headlights flashed on, arced around, and the Corvette went roaring down the hill, picking out Catherine's belligerent back as she continued to stalk. He roared past her, spraying dust and gravel.

About fifty feet in front of Catherine, at the bottom of the hill, the brake lights flashed on, followed by the interior light as Clay got out again and stood leaning an elbow on top of the open door, waiting. She would have ignored him, but he wouldn't allow it. When she was abreast of him, a hand shot out and detained her. “Get in, you little spitfire,” he ordered. “I'm not leaving you out here whether I want to or not. Not at this hour of the night!”

The light from the car limned her angry face as she thrust her lower lip out, beetling her brows in curled distaste. “I must have been crazy to come to your house in the first place. I should have known no good would come of it.”

“Then why did you?” he insisted, holding her easily by a forearm, but well enough away so she couldn't punch him again.

“Because I didn't think your parents deserved the likes of my old man. I actually thought by going along with him I could save them from some unpleasantness they didn't deserve.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I don't care what you believe, Clay Forrester! Let go of my arm, dammit!” She yanked herself free, then whirled like a bantam rooster, unable to keep explanations mute. “You've gotten a dose of my old man. It doesn't take very long to get the drift of how he operates. He's mean and vindictive and lazy, and an alcoholic to boot. He'll stop at nothing to get whatever he can out of either you or your parents. I think he's stark, raving mad to go shoving his way into your house the way he did, badgering your family.”

“And what does he expect to get out of it?”

Catherine debated, decided she had nothing to lose by being frank. “A free ride.”

She could tell he was surprised, for he studied her in the vague light cast from the car, then exclaimed, “You admit that?”

“Of course I admit it. It'd take a fool not to see what he's up to. He smelled money, which he's never had enough of, and it brought out his every greedy instinct. He thinks he can use this situation to make life a little easier on himself. I don't kid myself one bit that it's my reputation he's concerned about. He can harp all he wants about his little girl's loss of innocence and her ruined future. But it's really his own future he's looking out for. He wants to feather his bed till it's as soft as he thinks yours is. I don't really think he believes for one minute he can get you to marry me. I don't even think he
wants
you to. He'd rather have your guilt money, and he'll do everything in his power to get it. I warn you, he's a dangerous man. You see, he believes his ship just came in.”

“And none of those thoughts entered your head?”

“I didn't know you from Adam last July. How could I possibly have smelled money?”

“Your cousin, Bobbi, lined us up. She's Stu's girl, and Stu is an old friend of mine. It follows.”

She threw her hands up and paced agitatedly back and forth. “Oh, sure! First I ran a financial check on you, then got myself lined up with you on the
perfect
night to get pregnant, then I seduced you and sent my father in after the pickings.” She snorted derisively. “Don't flatter yourself, Forrester! It may surprise you to learn that not every girl who finds herself pregnant wants to marry the man. I made one mistake last July, but that doesn't mean I'm going to make a second by forcing you to marry me.”

“If you're innocent, tell me just how in the hell your old man knew who to come to. Somebody pointed him in my direction.”

“I did not
point!”

“Then how did he choose me to come after?”

She suddenly clammed up, turned her back on him and walked around the car, saying, “I believe I will take a ride home after all.” And she got in.

He got in, too, leaving one foot out on the gravel so the light would remain on while he grilled her.

“Don't avoid the issue,” he demanded. “How?”

“I did
not
give him your name. I refused to tell him anything!”

“I don't believe you. How did he find out then?” Clay saw how she worried her lower lip between her teeth, refusing to look at him.

Catherine willed her mouth to stop forming explanations for his benefit, but she was not the cunning woman he thought, and it galled her to be accused this way.

“How?” he repeated, waiting.

Her nostrils flared, she stared straight out over the dash, but finally divulged, “I keep a diary.” Her tone was quieter and her eyelids flickered slightly.

“You what?”

“You heard me,” she said to the window on her side.

“Yes, I heard, but I'm not sure I understand. You mean he found it?” It was beginning to dawn on Clay just what kind of unscrupulous bastard her father really was.

“Leave me alone. I've already said more than I wanted to.”

“There's a lot at stake here. I deserve to know the truth if that baby is really mine. Now answer me. Did he find it?”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

She sighed, laid her head back against the seat but continued staring out the window away from him. Then from the side he saw her eyelids slide shut wearily, almost resignedly. Her voice lost much of its agitation.

“Listen, none of this has anything to do with you. Leave it be. What he is and what he did was never supposed to enter into it. I only wanted to keep your parents from paying his demands. That's why I came along.”

“Don't change the subject, Catherine. He found the diary and found my name, right?”

She swallowed. “Right,” she whispered.

“How did he find it?”

“Oh, for God's sake, Clay, I've kept a diary since I was in pinafores! He knew it was there someplace. He didn't just
find
it, he ripped my room apart until he found the evidence he was always accusing me of. You wanted the truth, there it is.”

Something coiled in Clay's gut. His voice softened. “Didn't anybody try to stop him?”

“I wasn't there. My mother wouldn't try to stop him if she could. She's scared of her own shadow, to say nothing of him. You don't know my old man. There's no stopping him when he gets something in his head. The man's insane.”

Clay pulled his foot inside and slammed the car door. He sat brooding, putting it all together, then cradled the steering wheel in both arms, clasping a wrist behind it. At last he looked back over his shoulder at her. “I'm almost afraid to ask . . . what was in it?”

“Everything.”

With a small moan he lowered his forehead to the steering wheel. “Oh, God . . .”

“Yes,” she repeated quietly. “Oh, God . . .”

“I take it you remembered that night more clearly than I did?” he asked, embarrassed now himself.

“I'm no different than any other girl. It was my first time. I'm afraid I was quite explicit about my feelings and the events of that night.”

The silence lengthened and Catherine's composure slipped. It was far more disconcerting having him even remotely sympathetic than having him angry. After some time he sank back against his seat, shuddering a sigh, leaning an elbow high on the window ledge and rolling his face aside to knead the bridge of his nose. The long, strained silence became painted with provocative images that flickered through their minds until at last Clay forced his thoughts back to the present and the unpleasant aspect of her father's threats.

“So he wants reparation.”

“Exactly, but whatever he says, whatever he threatens, you must not meet his demands. Don't pay him anything!” she said with sudden passion.

“Listen, it's not just up to me anymore. He's brought my father into this, and my father is . . . my father is the most exasperatingly honest man I've ever known. Either he'll force me to pay, or he'll pay whatever your father demands before this thing is over.”

“No!” she exclaimed with an intensity that brought her near to clutching his arm. “You must not!”

“Listen, I don't understand you. You've spent the night convincing me you're carrying my baby. Now you beg me not to pay your father anything. Why?”

“Because my father is the scum of the earth!” Her words were as sharp as knives, but the knives were double-edged, for the words she was forced to utter cut her deeply. “Because I've hated him for as long as I can remember, and if it's the last thing I do, I want to make sure he doesn't cash in on any good luck due to me. He's been waiting for years for something like this to happen. Now that it has, it almost thrills me to be responsible for his coming so close, then foiling him!”

Suddenly Clay prickled with awareness. “What do you mean, if it's the last thing you do?”

She managed a sardonic laugh. “Oh, don't trouble yourself, Mr. Forrester, supposing for a minute I'd commit suicide over this. That would hardly foil him anyway.”

“How then?”

“Depriving him of the payoff money will be quite enough. You don't know him or you'd realize what I mean. It'll almost be worth every time he—” But she stopped just short of being carried away by the hate she felt, by the memories she had no intention of revealing.

Clay again began rubbing the bridge of his nose, fighting against getting involved with her past any more than necessary. But the vindictiveness she displayed, the abusive way the man had treated her and spoken to her, the accusations she said her father undeservedly made to her—it was the classic picture of a physically violent man. But to involve himself in sympathy for this woman would be a mistake. Yet even while Clay refused to allow himself to delve any further into her past, what he knew of it was already festering in the dark silence while he grew upset over being embroiled in this fiasco in the first place. It was all so damn unnecessary, he thought. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Clay found he was now beginning to develop a headache.

He boosted himself up and outlined the wheel with his arms again. “How old are you?” he asked, out of the blue.

“What possible difference does that make?”

“How old!” he repeated, more forcefully.

“Nineteen.”

He emitted a single sound, half-laugh, half-grunt. “Nineteen years old and she didn't have the sense to take some precautions,” he said to the ceiling.

“Me!” she yelped. A quick, smoking anger assaulted her, making her shout louder than necessary in the close confines of the car. “Why didn't
you?
You were the one who had all the experience in these matters!”

“I wasn't planning on anything that night,” he said, still disgusted.

“Well, neither was I!”

“A girl with any sense at all doesn't go around looking for sex without being prepared.”

“I was not looking for sex!”

“Ha! Nineteen and a virgin and she claims she's not looking for it!”

“You conceited bastard, you think—” she began, but he cut her off.

“Conceit's got nothing to do with it,” he ground out, nose to nose with her now across the narrow space, “you just don't randomly go out on the make without some kind of contraceptive!”

“Why?” she shouted. “Why me? Because I'm the woman? Why not you? What was the matter with you thinking ahead a little bit, an experienced stud like you?”

“That's the second time you've called me a stud, lady, and I don't like it!”

“And that's the second time you've called me
lady,
and I don't like it either, not the way you say it!”

“We're getting off the subject, which was your neglect.”

“I believe the subject was
your
neglect.”

“The woman usually takes care of precautions. Naturally, I assumed—”

“Usually!” she croaked, throwing her hands in the air, then flopping back exaggeratedly, talking to the ceiling. “And
he
calls
me
promiscuous!”

“Now just a minute—”

But this time she interrupted him. “I told you, it was my first time. I wouldn't even have known how to use a contraceptive!”

“Don't hand me that! This isn't Victorian England! All you'd have had to do was open the phone book to find out how and where to learn. Or hadn't you heard—women have come of age? Only most of them prove it by showing a little common sense with their first fling. If you'd have done the same, we wouldn't be in this mess.”

“What good are all these recriminations? I told you, it happened, that's all.”

“It sure as hell did, and it was just my luck that it happened with an ignorant girl who doesn't know the meaning of the words
birth control.”

“Listen,
Mister
Forrester, I don't have to sit here and be preached to by you! You're equally as guilty as I am, only you're blaming me because it's easier than blaming yourself. It's bad enough I have to tolerate your inquisition without defending myself against ignorance! It took two of us, you know!”

“Okay, okay, just relax. Maybe I came down a little heavy on you, but this could have been avoided so easily.”

“Well, it wasn't. That's a fact of life we have to live with.”

“Clever choice of words,” he muttered.

“Listen, would you mind? Just take me home. I'm tired and I don't want to sit here arguing anymore.”

“Well, what about the baby—what are you going to do with it?”

“It's none of your business.”

He bit the corner of his lip and asked quickly, before he lost his nerve, “Would you take money for an abortion?”