Tangled Web (20 page)

Chase leaned his forehead against hers and drew a long breath. In a voice racked with guilt, he closed his eyes and whispered in a low, tortured voice, “But we can't.”

What they couldn't keep doing, Hope thought, was denying the powerful wellspring of feelings within them. She held tight, refusing to let him go, refusing to step back into the past.

“Chase, my marriage to your father is over.”

She knew Chase was leaving again, but it no longer seemed to matter. If she let this moment go, she would regret it forever. Some chances, like the chance to be with Chase, were meant to be taken.

He wanted to be practical, but the ache inside him was spreading, demanding assuagement, telling him it was now or never and he damn straight wanted it to be now. He inhaled deeply, searched her eyes. “You're sure?” It was important that there be no regrets later. No reprisals. For either of them.

She knew she could offer him the kind of concrete answers he needed about her relationship with Edmond. But she also knew, if she did that, she would be opening up a whole other Pandora's box. “I'm very sure. But we can't think about the past, Chase,” she whispered softly, reassuring him with her gaze and the gentle
touch of her hands. “We just have to look to the future. It's the only way. Help me move on.”

Chase took her hand. She clasped it firmly. And then they were kissing again, moving slowly, inevitably toward his bed in the adjoining room.

His heart pounding, he slowly lowered his mouth to hers once again. He wanted this to be good for her, as much as he wanted it for himself. And yet he knew all too well what was at stake here. If he rushed her, she might never know just how wonderful their love could be. She might never give him a second chance.

She had plenty of time to change her mind as he invited her into his bed, but like a moth drawn to the flame, found herself unable to. And once she'd experienced the first precious feel of his hard body draped against the length of hers, she knew she would never want to change her mind. She combed her fingers through the feathery softness of his hair. As she kissed him, she made a soft unconscious sound and arched closer to him, wanting to feel the muscular planes of his chest against the softness of her breasts. He groaned at the innocent expression of her desire, slid his hands beneath her waist and draped a leg across hers. He drew her even nearer.

The kiss deepened until Hope could no longer tell where her mouth ended and his began. She only knew no matter what happened in the future, no matter what separate paths they followed, she would always have the memory of this night.

Chase had never known he could be so tender, but his love for Hope gave him patience and skill. “You'll have to tell me what you like,” he whispered as he slowly unfastened the buttons on her blouse, undid the front clasp of her bra and slipped his hand inside.

She gasped as he touched the warm supple curves of her breasts. “You like that,” he whispered softly.

Eyes wide with pleasure and wonder, she nodded. In all her adult years, she had never imagined lovemaking could be like this, so wonderful and filled with rapture.

Slowly Chase's hands slipped lower still, letting her get used to the feel of them on her body. With the same patience, they undressed each other and slid beneath the sheets. Fearing what would happen next, she tensed. And again he helped her through it. This
time, when she overcame her fear, there was only wonder and fulfillment waiting for her and for him.

Afterward, he held her tightly, clasped against him. She clung to him tenaciously. A tiny tear slipped down her cheek. “If you only knew what you made me feel,” she whispered. As long as she lived she would never forget his tenderness.

“Good, I hope,” he whispered gently.

“Good,” she affirmed, her voice quavering. “And whole.” I'm a complete woman, at last, she thought. And if the two of us just stayed together we could have everything.

“I'm so glad.” He held her close.

And she clung to him, wanting never to let go again.

 

T
HE NIGHT
soothed Chase's soul, but not completely. With the morning, his memories of the past returned. He still felt very confused and hurt about his father's behavior. He didn't understand what his father could have been doing in Cleveland, or why Hope would pretend to know nothing about it when he could tell by the look on her face that she did.

Clearly, Hope thought she was protecting his father; why she felt that still necessary, was less clear. Especially when it hadn't stopped her from making love to him. More determined than ever to find answers, he stuck with his earlier plans to visit the clinic personally. He told Hope nothing about his plans.

Catching the first plane out the following morning, he arrived in Cleveland around noon. Needing answers, he went straight to the chief of staff at the clinic where his father had been treated. “I understand your concern, Dr. Barrister,” the accomplished physician said, “but those records are privileged information.”

Aware he was operating on far too little sleep and too much coffee, Chase fought to control his exasperation. “My father is dead.”

“Even so—”

“I'm his son,” Chase continued emotionally, blinking back sudden tears. “If my father was ill, I have a right to know.”

Silence fell as the chief of staff studied him. “I'll see what I can do,” he said finally.

He returned long minutes later, his expression grim and fore-
boding. “Don't ever let it be said I gave these to you,” he warned. “But if it were my father, I'd want to know, too.”

 

I
T WAS A LONG FLIGHT
back to Houston. Chase was in shock. He got out the records again. His father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and had never told him. According to the medical records, he'd had surgery to remove a tumor six months before he married Hope. That surgery had left him irreversibly impotent. Whatever Hope's marriage to his father had been based on, it hadn't been passion. There was no illicit affair. Nor could Edmond have fathered Joey. Yet he had pretended Joey was his son. And so had Hope.

Why? Chase wondered. He felt confused, hurt and filled with a shattering sense of betrayal. Why all the lies? Why hadn't his father trusted him enough to tell him the truth about his illness, if not when he was twenty-one, then later when he was an M.D.? Had his mother known about the battle with cancer and Edmond's resulting impotence?

Worst of all, why hadn't Hope told him last night? She knew how torn up he had been about making love to her. She could have helped him, by telling him the truth about the nature of her relationship with Edmond. She could have spared him all the anguish. But she hadn't. And for that, he wasn't sure he would ever be able to forgive her.

 

“Y
OU KNEW
, didn't you?” Chase surmised softly later that same evening as he faced Hope in the guest house. “You knew my father had been sick when you married him.”

The breath left her slowly. She had expected to see Chase again, alone. She hadn't expected this. “Yes,” she said cautiously, her insides quaking, “I did.” How much did Chase know?

“And you also knew he couldn't possibly have fathered your child.”

Hope reached out to steady herself, clasping the back of a chair. “Yes,” she said softly, looking both terrified and defensive, “I did.”

Chase studied her. It was so easy to see why Edmond would have wanted to protect her; in some convoluted way, despite everything, there was a very big part of Chase that still did, too. It
wasn't so easy to see how the two of them had ever gotten together in the first place. And Hope, with her closed mouth, wasn't doing a damn thing to help him understand. In fact, she had worked damn hard to keep him in the dark. “The two of you weren't having a torrid affair.”

“No,” Hope said, in a low voice filled with shame. “We weren't.” She had been a fool to think, even for one moment, that Chase could ever understand what she and Edmond had shared. She turned away from him. Although her fingers tensed, her voice was calm. “I told you that from the beginning.”

“But you didn't tell me my father was impotent!”

She took an uncertain step toward him, then watched as he moved away. She swallowed hard, trying hard not to let the thick, vibrant silence in the room get to her. “I had promised him I never would.”

Chase moved around the guest house restlessly, finally taking a position at the kitchenette counter several feet away from her. He leaned against it, looking anxious and distant. And she knew then that she would either prove her worth to him then, in that minute, in that instant, or lose him forever.

“I don't get it, then.” His derisive voice cut like a blade. “If the two of you weren't having an affair, why all the intimate lunches?” he prodded, looking at her in controlled frustration.

“Why the clandestine trip to Atlanta? What were you up to?”

He was acting as if she had conned his father, and that knowledge hurt.

“Hope, for pity's sake, let down your guard. Talk to me. Don't you see, I have to know what kind of person you are. I can't go on this way any longer, feeling like I'm operating in the dark about you.”

She turned back to him. Their eyes met, hers looking as distant and disillusioned as he felt. Her chin lifted defiantly but her voice carried a thread of hurt. “I thought you already knew what kind of person I was.”

He thought about everything she had done, not everything he had thought she was, and forced himself to remain unmoved. He crossed his arms over his chest. “So did I. But I didn't count on everything I found out today, on all the lies.” What hurt worse than that, were the evasions she was still enacting. He thought he saw the first hint of tears glimmering in her blue eyes.

She shut her eyes. Her voice trembled as it rose. “Edmond made me promise not to tell.”

That much Chase could believe. He'd been a very private, very proud man. But that didn't explain his excluding his son from what must have been the most traumatic time of his life. “Why didn't he want me to know about his illness?”

“He was embarrassed, frightened.”

“But
you
knew, from the beginning, what his situation was?” Chase felt a stab of jealousy.

“Not exactly, no.”

“Then when?” he demanded roughly.

“I don't know,” she responded, her tone defensive. Her pulse jumped, but she stood firm. “It was some time after Atlanta. I had decided to keep my baby and he started talking about marrying me, to give the child a name.”

Wanting to rock her out of her implacable calm, Chase demanded tersely, “Why not Joey's father?”

The shades on her feelings went down, shutting him out again. “That wasn't possible,” Hope said coolly, her jaw beginning to take on a forbidding, angry tilt.

Chase saw the cold, calculated way she hid from him. That, more than anything she had done, told him she wasn't the one for him. And yet even as he realized that, he wondered if he would ever find the strength to stay away from her. In an effort to clamp his runaway emotions down, he asked, “Was Joey's father married, too?”

She gave him a sharp look that made his heart race. Her brow arched. “I don't have to stay and listen to this.”

Turning, he gave her a grim smile and followed her to the door. “No, you can walk away, like you always do. You can hide—”

She whirled to face him, her regal calm vanishing. “My father could have helped you,” Chase continued. “He didn't have to marry you. He didn't have to break up his marriage to do it.”

Hope sighed her exasperation, then drew another long, shaky breath. “Initially he didn't intend to,” she confided quietly. “In the beginning, we were just friends. He was a father figure, guidance counselor, business mentor and platonic friend all wrapped into one. He found out I was in trouble. He knew marriage to the father was impossible, and he wanted to help me. To that end, he was willing to do everything and anything he could.”

Chase had to admit that sounded like his father. “He could have been your friend without marrying you,” he pointed out.

Renewed color flooded into Hope's beautiful face. “Don't you think I know that?” she said softly, begging him to understand. Her voice trembled as it dropped a confiding notch. “But then he fell in love with me.” She swallowed hard, sensing how Chase would feel about what she was going to say next. “And as I grew to know him, I began to love him, too, Chase.” She turned away from his penetrating gaze, desperate to explain. “Just not the way a woman usually loves a husband. It was kind of a platonic mix.” She took a deep breath, that was part sob. “I counted on him. We were partners. And eventually we were tied together through Joey. We were parents to the same child.” And that bond had gone very deep, so deep she had been crushed when Edmond had died.

“And he agreed to accept that?” Chase asked incredulously.

The disbelief in his voice cut straight to her heart. “No, not initially,” Hope said quietly. She lifted her eyes to his, not caring if he saw the wet sheen in them. “When Edmond married me, he wasn't sure how much time he had left, or even if the treatments were going to work, but he wanted to spend whatever time he did have left happily. That's why he left your mother.” Hope paused and ran a shaky hand through her hair. “He also knew we got along. He wanted to share in the raising of a child again.” Seeing the skeptical light in Chase's eyes, she finished softly, persuasively, “We weren't sure it was going to last. We didn't think that far ahead, Chase. We just took it day by day, and it turned into something permanent and enduring.”

Her logic had gotten through to him. Chase was quiet, contemplative. “Did my mother know about Dad's illness?” he asked finally, in the same troubled voice with which he had started the conversation.