Mine Until Morning (38 page)

“I’m not.”

He wouldn’t face the truth. She remembered it all too clearly. “You were ashamed of me thirty years ago and hid me from your parents. Now you want to hide me from your daughters.” But was that the complete truth? She’d never asked to see photos, never asked his children’s names, closed her ears when he said them. She’d never really let him talk about them. Heat suffused Royce’s face, his skin reddening. “You were the one who cut and run when we were teenagers.”

Her temples throbbed. She was a woman now, self-confident, sure. Yet he so easily thrust her back to those years, to being that girl, all the doubts, all the anger. “My leaving had nothing to do with your family. I would have stayed. I would have fought—” She stopped. The real reason she’d left wasn’t pertinent. She might have engineered that last argument, but she’d used an issue that was already between them.

“You didn’t stay; you didn’t fight. I was wrong, too, but you didn’t give me a chance to fix anything. You sent me a goddamn letter from L.A., then disappeared again.”

244

No Second Chances

She closed her eyes. What was the point? They were too different then, too different now. It was wrong to make it all his fault. His parents had been an excuse so she didn’t have to tell him the truth. She didn’t realize how long she’d stood there with her eyes closed until the ticking of the grandfather clock penetrated the silence.

“Why did you really leave?”

She’d waited too long, given him time to think. “I was tired of fighting.” She turned, crossed the carpet, picked up her shoes.

“You’re lying.”

She stood there, her back to him, chill bumps rising on her skin. The heating was still set at sixty-two. She hadn’t turned it up when she came in; neither had he. He’d warmed her so fast, she hadn’t needed it. She knew why she hadn’t told him back then. But why keep on lying about it?

He hadn’t accepted her when she was seventeen, and despite what she’d let herself believe this past week, he didn’t accept her now. He never would. So what fucking difference did it make if she told him the truth?

She turned to him. The standing lamp lit his face, and behind him the city was aglow with lights. Maybe she even owed him the truth. He could let go of his guilt. Maybe she could let go of hers.

“I left because I was pregnant.”

Not a single muscle twitched on his face nor in his entire body. Every inch of her skin turned icy. She didn’t think about that time except the passing regret that it had been her one and only chance to feel a living being inside her. Though of course she hadn’t felt that way until years later, when she’d realized the chance would never come again. He breathed, a long inhale, an equally long exhale. “We used a condom.”

“Yes, we did.” She prayed he wouldn’t ask. But there were times in her life when God had left her to her own devices. This was one of them.

“Then I don’t understand how.”

He wasn’t a stupid man. He hadn’t been a stupid boy. He’d just been so trusting. “It wasn’t yours.”

HER FLAT WAS SUDDENLY SO SMALL, THE WALLS CLOSED IN ON HIM. There were certain things that he believed in. They gave him a foundation to stand on. He believed in his daughters, that they loved him as much as he loved 245

No Second Chances

them. That if ever he had to, he would lay his life down for them. That if he worked hard, life would reward him. That at seventeen, Isabel had loved him and only him.

If you took away a cornerstone of the foundation, the whole thing crumbled.

“Who?” His voice croaked. Someone he knew? A friend? One of the guys on the team?

“Harley.” She didn’t blink, didn’t move, didn’t change one inflection. He couldn’t think. “Who the hell was Harley?” She said it as if he were supposed to know.

They stood five feet from each other on opposite ends of the world.

“My mother’s husband.”

Everything fell out of the bottom of his world, straight down through the three floors beneath him, and he dropped right into the hole. “You slept with your stepfather?”

Her blue eyes turned glacial, her gaze covering him with a layer of frost that chilled his bones.

Then she turned, padded down the hardwood hall, her bare feet not making a sound. Then he heard what he’d said, recognized the accusation.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he whispered to the empty room. His voice echoed, bouncing off the wall right back at him.

“It makes perfect sense.” Her voice floated down the hallway to him. “I snuck out. To be with you. He caught me climbing back in the window.”

He couldn’t see her at the end of the darkness, the words quiet, yet they reverberated from one wall to the next to the next.

“He said I smelled like sex.”

Royce covered his ears. He heard his own thoughts. Tonight. How much he’d hated the scent yet how it crazed him with lust. Just before he tore her dress and shoved his cock in her mouth.

He couldn’t remember moving, yet he was at the open door of her bedroom. By her closet, she shrugged out of the ruined dress, kicked it, then pulled on her robe, a thick terry cloth.

“He raped you after we ...” He couldn’t even finish the thought. It tore a layer of flesh from his bones, exposed his heart. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She tipped her head and smiled. It was as cold as her eyes. “What would you have done?”

246

No Second Chances

“I don’t know. Beat the shit out of him. Taken care of you.”

She laughed. “Right. You wouldn’t tell your parents about me even before that. So, like, I was supposed to think you’d suddenly say, Hey, Mom and Dad, here’s my white trash girlfriend Isabel who’s pregnant with her stepdaddy’s kid?”

She chuckled, shook her head. “Give me a break.”

This was the woman she’d become. Cold. Brittle. Emotionless. He’d had a hand in it. They’d made love that one glorious time. Then everything had gone to hell. Now he knew why she hadn’t let him touch her again. She was right. Her running away had had nothing to do with him hiding her from his parents. And everything to do with it. Because if he’d acknowledged her publicly, she would have believed in him enough to come to him with the truth about Harley.

“I’m sorry.”

She came to him then, put her hand to his cheek. Her touch had always been so warm. Now it was cold. So was her gaze. “Poor Royce. Don’t let it bother you. It was a long time ago, and it wasn’t your fault.”

“But the baby,” he whispered.

She tsked. “Lost it.” She raised one brow. “I never even showed. Didn’t need to run away after all.”

She spoke as if she felt nothing about it. Maybe she no longer did. For her, it had been over for thirty years, whereas for him, it was the here and now. She turned, headed to the bathroom, her robe flying out behind her. “It’s late. I have to take off my makeup.” Stopping, one hand on the jamb, she looked back at him. “It’s probably better if you get a hotel tonight. I’m not up to company.” She disappeared inside her white-tiled bathroom. Then her voice floated out through the doorway. “And you can leave the key on the hall table.”

HIS DRESS SHOES ECHOED ON THE HARDWOOD LIKE DRUMBEATS. IN the quiet of the night, she heard the front door close, a sound she would have missed in the daytime.

Isabel stared at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks were alabaster. Her heart was hard. She would never be warm again. Leaning over the claw-foot tub, she turned on the water, running it hot until steam began to rise, clouding the room. She closed the bathroom door. In the cool air, the steam condensed on the mirror until she could no longer see herself.

She let the robe fall, then stepped into the near-scalding water, her skin 247

No Second Chances

turning pink like a boiled lobster. She still couldn’t get warm. She curled in on herself, hugging her arms to her belly, her forehead resting on her bent knees. Honestly, she hadn’t thought the whole thing bothered her anymore. She didn’t think it could still hurt like this. Harley had dumped her mom two years after Isabel ran away. It was Melora who’d said she needed to contact her mother, close the circle. By the time she realized Melora was right, her mom was dead. Cirrhosis of the liver. Isabel closed the circle on her own and forgave her mom for marrying an asshole—two assholes if you counted Isabel’s father, who’d run out when she was a toddler. It was a hell of a lot easier to forgive the dead than it was the living. She didn’t mourn the baby, because really, what the hell kind of life would the poor thing have had? Maybe if she’d had prenatal care, a meal at least once a day, it wouldn’t have died, but on the streets, those things were hard to come by if you didn’t have a pimp to take care of you. Melora had found her bleeding in an alley. Now she mourned that she never got another chance.

Because maybe she would have been a better mother than her own had been. Maybe she would have been like Melora. Especially if she’d had a man like Royce to help her raise the child.

She cranked off the taps. Her skin pink below the water level, white above, she nevertheless began to feel the heat penetrating. Though she’d hoped, she hadn’t expected Royce would understand. His first question was a horrified You slept with your stepfather? It would have been all those years ago, too.

She was white trash. Of course she would have slept with her stepfather and had his kid. That was what all the girls in her trailer park did. Everybody knew that.

What they didn’t know was how she’d locked her door every night after that, praying he couldn’t get in again, and knowing that one day soon he would. The worst was that for a very short time, she thought about telling Royce it was his child, letting him shoulder the responsibility. That was when she’d known she had to get out.

Sliding beneath the water, she soaked her hair. It was better that he was gone. She’d been fine before. She’d be fine again. She was strong. She loved her life.

And she would never let a man look at her again like she was dirt. 248

No Second Chances

12

HE HADN’T CALLED; SHE’D GOTTEN THROUGH THE WEEKEND ANYWAY. Life was fine. Really, life was good.

Swear it. Now she just had to get rid of this ache that was like a persistent cough. It attacked when you were least prepared, assailing you until your eyes watered.

She had other things to take care of.

Like Simon Foster, one of her very special clients, who needed something to dazzle a lady. Simon was an animal in bed. At fifty, he had the stamina of a man fifteen years younger. He was always up for anything she suggested, and she’d never hesitated to ask for his help with a client if she thought he fit the bill. The times she’d seen him in the last few months, he’d reminded her of Royce: the looks, the hair, the body.

Damn. Everything reminded her of Royce. Even a simple phone call from an old friend.

She’d never thought Simon, of all men, would succumb to the mythical lure of the one.

“I’d like to arrange this ASAP,” he said. “The sooner, the better.”

“Ooh. Desperate to impress, are we, darling?” It boggled her mind.

“You have no idea.”

“Then I simply can’t fail you, can I?” She wouldn’t fail him. While always invested in making sure his partner received the ultimate in pleasure, Simon had never been emotionally invested. He was like her, not meant for deep relationships. Royce’s walking out was affirmation of that. All right, she’d suggested he leave. But he didn’t have to do what she told him. God, she sounded like such a bitch. Justifying herself. She hated it.

“Simon, if she’s the one, I hope this works for you.”

“She is the one.”

Isabel held on to the phone long after he’d disconnected. First Walker Randall had met someone, now Simon. Was it contagious? She’d have thought them both immune. Or too old to change their ways. Especially Simon. For God’s sake, Simon was too lusty for one woman. But then, he’d called to have Isabel arrange a third for his little party with the one. Perhaps he hadn’t changed at all. 249