Fortune's Cinderella (21 page)

“So…what does that mean?” Scott asked.

“That they’re going to keep her for a few days instead of sending her back home tomorrow. Just to be sure.” Then he gave them a weary smile. “Thanks for everything, but you guys don’t have to stick around.”

“She’s my sister, believe me I don’t mind—”

“I know you don’t,” Marcos said, getting to his feet. “But hopefully she’s going to stay asleep for a while now and keep that baby inside. So please. Go.”

Scott stood as well, holding out a hand to help Christina up. “You call me, though, if anything changes?”

“You got it.”

However, he waited until they were in the van and out of the hospital parking lot before he said, “So what were you saying before Marcos showed up? About being in the hospital bringing up memories?”

Her gaze fixed straight ahead, Christina forked her fingers through her bangs, then folded her hands in her lap, and for a moment Scott thought she was going to clam up again. Before he could call her on it, however, she said, very quietly, “Seven years ago, I was in that maternity wing. Only, that time, there was nothing anybody could do.”

Scott’s breath caught in his throat. “You lost a baby?”

“I wasn’t as far along as Wendy. Only four months. But, yes.”

“Damn, honey…being around Wendy—”

“And you can stop that right now. For one thing, you didn’t know. And for another, it’s not like I can avoid pregnant women for the rest of my life. Besides, I’ve always believed God puts us where He needs us to be. And that we don’t always get a vote in the matter. This wasn’t about me, it was about Wendy and MaryAnne.”

“Well, now it is about you.” Scott’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. “Why didn’t you tell me about the baby?”

“For what it’s worth, I was going to earlier, only Wendy called and somehow that didn’t seem like the right time for a stroll down memory lane.”

“When has it ever been?”

He sensed her eyes cut to his profile, then back to the taillights a hundred feet in front of them. “You said it didn’t matter.”

“As to how I feel about you? No. But it’s obviously coloring how you feel about me.” He gave her a brief, hard look. “In which case, yeah. It matters. Because whether you want to admit it or not…it’s holding you back.”

“I know,” she whispered, then sighed out a breathy laugh. “It’s like…my head’s that closet crammed to the gills with all that stuff you simply do not want to deal with. Which is kinda funny, when I think about it, considering how much I detest clutter of any kind…”

She did that raking her thumbnail across her bottom teeth thing for a moment…then, with a sigh, finally yanked open that closet door.

They’d been high school sweethearts from their sophomore year on, she said quietly, steadily, as Scott drove, focusing on the headlights piercing the darkness in front of them. Chris and Chris, joined at the hip, homecoming king and queen. The perfect couple who never had a single fight.

Even though he came from money and she didn’t.

“Not that it made a lick of difference to us,” Christina said as a sick knowing-where-this-was-going feeling shuddered through Scott. “Or so I’d convinced myself—but his folks weren’t exactly thrilled. Especially since Christopher was their only child, and they had Big Plans for him. Which did not include little ol’ me. So I guess we had that whole Romeo and Juliet thing going on.

Although that story didn’t end too well, either, did it?”

Scott hesitated, then said, “Since you’re still here, I take it there was no poison involved?”

“Not the kind you drink, no. But thoughts can be a kind of poison, too. Even if it takes a long time to take effect. In any case, right after graduation we eloped, because it was rebellious and romantic and proved we were adults who could make our own decisions.

Only then he brought me home—his home, I mean—as his wife and all hell broke loose.”

“I take it his folks didn’t come around?”

Her laugh sounded raw. “You might say. His father pointed at me like I was a stray dog who’d followed Chris home and said,

‘You’re old enough to marry that piece of white trash, then you’re damn well old enough to pay your own bills.’”

“Crap,” Scott said softly, realizing. “Then my father—”

“Yeah, that was definitely one of those déjà vu things. At the time, however, I was still caught up in the dream and determined to make it work. We were both working crappy jobs, but the plan was he’d go to college and get his degree, then I could get mine.

Except…” She paused. “Except then I got pregnant. And Chris freaked. Told me no way could we deal with a baby right then, that I had to get…to get rid of it. And…I told him I would.”

“Damn, honey…”

“Oh, I had no intention of going through with it. But I would’ve said almost anything to get him to stop yelling at me. To buy me some time. Lord, Scott, I was scared out of my gourd. Yeah, he’d begun to snap at me now and then, but I chalked it up to his being tired all the time. That night, though…it was pretty bad. But by that point, I couldn’t give up. Couldn’t let on I was in over my head, that my mother had been right all along—”

“About what?”

“That I had no business being with somebody like him. That he’d get tired of me eventually, realize he’d made a mistake. Same as my daddy had done, apparently. Because, you see, he’d come from money, too. So the last thing I wanted was to hear her I told you so. Not that I had clue one what I was going to do, but I guess I hoped once the shock wore off Chris would adjust to the idea.

Because we were a team, right? As we had always been. Only…”

Crossing her arms, she snorted. “Here’s what I didn’t realize until much later—while I was all about the romance, apparently Chris’s primary goal was to piss off his parents. So he married me.” She shrugged. “Why it never occurred to him they’d cut him off, I do not know. But they did. And…I guess he felt pretty trapped.”

Scott glanced at her. “By what? And please don’t say ‘me.’”

“By circumstances, then.”

“Of his own making.”

“True, but…we did have some good times, Scott. I swear. A lot of good times.”

“As long as things were easy?”

Her shoulders bumped again. “As long as he got his way. Then again, maybe I was expecting too much of him—”

“Don’t defend him, Christina. Or make excuses. He was your husband, for crying out loud.”

Several beats passed before she said, “In theory, yes.” A long breath hissed from her lungs. “In any case, suddenly I was four months gone, no closer to knowing what I was going to do than I had been when that little plus sign showed itself…right about the time Chris pulled his head out of his butt long enough to realize my body was changing. We had another fight. A big one. He grabbed his keys and stormed out of our second-floor apartment, yelling that that I’d broken my promise and that he should’ve listened to his parents, should’ve…” She shook her head, her hand fisting in her lap. “I ran after him. But my heel caught on one of the steps and I fell.”

Even though he already knew the outcome, Scott felt his heart turn over. “And Chris?”

Christina tucked her hair behind her ear. “To give him some credit, when I screamed he turned back, looking scared out of his wits. He called 911, stayed with me the whole time. And even though I was devastated about the baby, I truly thought he’d had his come-to-Jesus moment, that we’d be fine.

“But we weren’t. Not by a long shot. He refused to let me talk about my feelings, acting like it’d never happened…” She shook her head, then sighed. “Eventually I had to admit that our relationship had miscarried long before the baby. Especially since…since I realized I couldn’t stay married to somebody I no longer respected. And I h-hated him for what he’d asked me to do.”

Scott’s jaw hurt from the effort to not say what he was really thinking, what he’d be sorely tempted to do if the little weasel ever crossed his path. Instead he said, “Why wouldn’t you?” and she shrugged again.

“We got a no-fault divorce a few months later. At least, it was called no-fault.”

“It sure wasn’t yours.”

“I didn’t shoulder the entire blame, of course not. But…” They pulled up in front of her apartment, but she didn’t seem in any hurry to get out of the car. Instead, she shifted enough to face him, her forehead pinched.

“My mother and I have issues aplenty, God knows, but in this case she was right. I should have known better. Heck, I’ve always prided myself on being a realist, even as a kid. But I was so, I don’t know…flattered, I suppose, when Chris picked me. Out of all the girls in school. Me. He seemed so confident. So in charge. Like he could make anything he wanted to happen. And it wiped common sense clean out of my head. Because when the chips were down we were obviously looking at life through different lenses.

And all the wanting in the world for things to be different wasn’t going to change that.”

Dread swamped him even before she started to twist the ring off her finger.

“Christina—”

“I can’t accept this, Scott. No matter how much I want to, or how much I love you. And I do love you, you’ve gotta believe that.

But that doesn’t change the fact that you and I, we look at life through different lenses, too. We can’t help it,” she said when he started to protest, “it’s just the way things are. So, here—”

“Honey…you’re tired and shaken because of what happened with Wendy—”

“Dammit, Scott—listen to me! Even if I didn’t believe, with all my heart, that we’re not suited for each other…you know that vision you had of filling all those bedrooms with little Fortunes?” She grabbed his hand and pressed the ring into his palm, closing his fingers around it so hard the stones cut into his flesh. “I can’t make that happen for you. Because the miscarriage, somehow it messed me up inside and I can’t have b-babies. That had been my only shot. And it was selfish of me to sleep with you, to let you put the ring on my finger, when I knew I could never help you realize that part of your dream—”

On a sob, she shouldered open the door and clumsily got out, leaving Scott feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him.

But only for a moment.

She was still blindly fumbling for her keys in her purse when Scott pulled her into his arms, holding on so tight she could barely breathe.

“Let me go, dammit!”

He released her immediately, only to clamp hold of her upper arms, fury thrashing in his eyes.

Christina lowered hers. “I’m sorry I made you mad—”

“Oh, I’m way past mad, honey. You say you love me, but you have so little faith in me that you couldn’t share what’s probably the most important thing about you—?”

“That I can’t have kids?”

“No! That you’re in pain! And why on earth do you think you have to lug that pain around all by yourself?”

“Because maybe it’s no one’s concern but mine.”

“Well, you’re wrong. Dead wrong.” He let his hands drop to stuff them in his jacket pockets, but his jaw was still rigid.

“Independence is all well and good, it’s one of the things I admire about you. But if I’ve learned nothing else in business it’s that nobody accomplishes squat by themselves—”

“And maybe I do! Maybe I’m the exception to your rule!”

“Nobody is the exception to that rule. Nobody. Did you even tell your mother about the baby?”

“Oh, God, no,” she said on a bitter laugh.

“Why not?”

“Because she would’ve only said the same thing Chris did, that it was just as well I’d lost it…that I wasn’t any more ready than she’d been to have a kid.”

“You don’t know that for sure—”

“Enough to know I wasn’t up for taking that chance. Scott, you’re still not getting it. You can argue your point until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t make this work anymore than I can. Because nothing you can say changes the simple truth that I don’t know how to do this!”

“Do what, for God’s sake?”

“Let myself be loved! Be part of a healthy relationship! Whatever you want to call it. Because nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever stuck around long enough for me to figure it out.” Tears streamed down her cheeks; furious, she swatted them away. “Being alone…it’s safe. And after what I went through, I’m all about being safe. Although heaven knows you came closer than anybody to breaking through those barriers. Criminy, you’re the first man I’ve slept with since my divorce. What does that tell you?”

His trembling grin would be her undoing. “That I should be honored as hell?”

“Nice try. But how about…it’s like part of me is broken and I don’t know how to fix it—”

Scott grabbed her shoulders again, gently shaking her. “And maybe you don’t have to fix it yourself, dammit! That’s what you’re not getting! Or don’t you believe my feelings for you are real?”

“Of course I do!” she said to his tortured gaze. “But…but I still can’t wrap my head around how it would work between us in the long run, any more than it did between Chris and me—”

“Sorry, honey, but that dog don’t hunt. It never did, at least not from my perspective. Sweetheart—you and Chris were kids.

We’re not. I’m not. And in an adult relationship, both partners—partners—work on that relationship together. Work out the problems together. Children…”

Closing his eyes, he let his head drop back, like he was asking for guidance, then looked at her again. “My heart breaks for you because you can’t have them. For you. Not me. Because I know,” he said, palming his chest, “I’d love a child we adopted every bit as much as I’d love one you gave birth to. I love you. And I’ve never said that to another woman. How’s that for a confession?”

Her heart shattering, Christina touched that beautiful face. “I hear everything you’re saying, I really do. But…I can’t help it—this all still feels like something out of a storybook. And I don’t dare trust it, no matter how much I want to. Especially since…”

Turning, she shakily got her key in the lock, not facing him again until the door was open and Gumbo rushed outside. The only creature, she realized, whose love she did trust. And how sorry was that?

“You know, I used to wonder, once the Prince married Cinderella? If he looked at her one day and realized…they really had nothing to talk about.”