Every Breath You Take (50 page)

“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.”

“I plead guilty to that one,” Mitchell said with an absent smile, because it was finally sinking in that the delightful, irate redhead who was confronting him now was the same Irish girl who’d spilled a Bloody Mary down his shirt, drugged his senses, and stolen his heart. And borne his child. From the very beginning, they’d been meant for each other. They still were. It was so obvious that he had simultaneous impulses to laugh and to pull her into his arms so he could start proving it to her. He wisely decided against doing either when he realized she now looked extremely unhappy with him.

“It doesn’t really matter that you can’t explain about Zack Benedict,” she said, twisting around and trying to pick up his glass from the table.

“I can explain,” Mitchell said quickly, touching her arm. She hesitated and then straightened. “As I recall, I experienced a twinge of something that made me not want to tell you right then, but I intended to take you aboard the
Julie
the next day.”

“‘A twinge of something’?” she repeated, her eyes lighting up with reluctant laughter.

“I think it was jealousy. It felt like jealousy.”

Her lips trembled with laughter, and Mitchell grinned. “I hadn’t felt it since I was a grown man, but I remembered it.” Since she was smiling at him and relaxed now, Mitchell tried to make her understand what had really happened the day they were supposed to meet at the wharf, but the more he told her, the more she seemed to recoil. “Right after you left for the Island Club, my nephew called me and told me my brother’s body had been found. I checked out of the hotel, because I had to leave for Chicago, but I made arrangements with Zack for you to cruise the islands on his yacht during the day. I intended to fly back and forth every night to wherever
the yacht was docked so we could spend the nights together. I waited for you at the wharf in Philipsburg until it got dark; then I called the vet and he told me that you and another man had picked Max up hours before. I couldn’t believe you’d left me waiting there. When I saw you at the fund-raiser, I felt exactly like the heartbroken, jealous lover I announced to you that I
wasn’t
. How do you think that description happened to come out of my mouth?”

“Mitchell, it doesn’t matter anymore really—”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Let’s just say that I find it much easier to forgive you than believe you. And let’s leave it at that.”

Mitchell was dumbstruck, but not angry. “Would you rather believe that Evan told you the truth than believe what I’m telling you?”

Kate turned her face away, unable to look at him. The picture he’d painted of what happened that day was too unbearable to fathom. The possibility that he’d actually planned to fly back and forth every night to join her on that boat made her stomach ache; the possibility that he’d loved her as much as she’d loved him while he waited for her at the wharf made her cringe inside; the thought of how he would have felt at that fund-raiser when she showed off her engagement ring to him was unendurable.

Her overburdened emotions sent her reeling precariously close to hysteria. In the last twelve hours, she’d already endured the torment of Danny’s kidnapping and the turmoil of Mitchell’s reentry into her life. The idea that, by trusting Evan, she had been the cause of all the misery and missed opportunities for Mitchell and her was just too much bear.

Mitchell watched the color drain from her cheeks, saw the tears sparkling on her lashes, and realized exactly why she was reacting that way.

He tipped her chin up and said with a grin, “You’re exhausted; so let’s just step back from this conundrum and then move around it.”

“What did you just say after ‘you’re exhausted’?”

“I’m suggesting that you get some sleep and we deal with the other things tomorrow. In the meantime, we need to arrange for you and Danny to stay somewhere with limited access.”

Dealing with mundane details was a welcome reprieve from other thoughts, and Kate rose to the occasion. “My friend Holly lives in a high-rise that has a guard at a security desk in the lobby.”

That was not the solution Mitchell had in mind, so he threw in as many complications as he could think of. “Does she have room for Calli and Danny’s nanny, too? You may need to stay there for weeks until Billy is captured.”

“She only has one spare bedroom.”

“Good,” Mitchell said before he could catch himself. “I’ll make all the arrangements. All you have to do is pack what you need and be ready to leave with Calli by ten in the morning.”

“All right,” she said with a weary, grateful smile.

“Let’s find something to write on,” he continued, taking her arm and pointing her toward the bar. He wrote down his cell phone number and the Farrells’ home number on a cocktail napkin for her, and then he wrote down the numbers she gave him.

“What about your meal?” Kate said, her brain snapping into focus now that she understood that he was about to leave. “I can’t imagine what happened. Let me go see—”

“The waiter brought it and left when he saw us. I’ll get something to eat at the Farrells’.”