The Mogul's Maybe Marriage (8 page)

“Let's just say that my grandmother ended up on a first-name basis with the principal.” Sloane's lips quirked in amusement. “At all five schools I attended.” She grinned. “And the Coast Guard commander who tracked down my sailboat when I tried to run away from home.” She laughed. “For the third time.”

He'd gone too far there. Told too much. Sloane wasn't a fool; she obviously heard the darker story beneath his joking. She immediately seemed to grasp that no boy caused
that
much trouble unless there was something very wrong in his life. A frown ironed a crease between her eyebrows. “Why so desperate to get away?”

He still could laugh it off. It wasn't too late to make up something ridiculous about being a bad boy, about playing a rogue-in-training. He had planned to keep things light, to make everything easy, for another three weeks at least, until the prenatal testing could be done.

But Sloane would remember this conversation when he finally told her the truth. She would recall all the things he'd told her, and the huge, important things he'd left unsaid. She would conclude that he had lied to her, by omission, at the very least. He took a deep breath, wishing that it was late enough in the day to break out a bottle of Scotch, to fortify himself for this conversation that he absolutely did not want to have, that he'd never wanted to share with anyone.

Sloane felt Ethan's mood shift, as if a cloud had scudded across the sun. Even though he didn't move, she felt him withdraw from her. For just a heartbeat, she thought that he was going to slip beneath the mask of Bachelor of the Year, to shift back to the good-times-guy she had read about in the paper, the one who belonged at AFAA charity auctions every night of the year.

Instead, he reached for her hand, folding his fingers around hers with an urgency that sent her heart leaping into her throat. “Sloane,” he said. “We have to talk.”

She forced her lips to turn up at the corners even though the fake grin made her throat ache. “No good conversation ever started that way.”

She tried to pull her hand away, but he wouldn't let
her go. Instead, he took a deep breath, then exhaled on a count of five. “I wasn't an only child, Sloane. I had a brother and a sister, but they both died, before I was five. That was what pulled my parents apart. That was why I spent so much time acting out.”

She heard the sorrow behind his words, still raw after all those years. She blinked, taking in the grand kitchen, the fine mansion that surrounded her. Of course, money truly couldn't buy happiness. It hadn't been able to spare the Hartwells from tragedy. “What happened?” she asked, her mind skirting over a dozen terrible accidents.

“My brother and sister were born with a genetic mutation, trisomy. She lived for almost three years, but he survived only a few days.” Genetic mutation.

The words were ugly, frightening—all the more so for the irony that Ethan's company was Hartwell Genetics, a forerunner in creating cures for terrible diseases. No, Sloane realized. It wasn't ironic at all. Those poor siblings were the reason that Hartwell Genetics flourished. Ethan had devoted his life to saving other families the agony that his own had suffered. Ethan, and his grandmother, too. How long had the company been in existence? How long had they fought to find a cure?

Sloane suddenly realized what Ethan was going to say next. Her fingers clutched at her blouse, closing over the delicate life that grew inside her.

No. She had to be wrong.
Ethan
was fine. He didn't have…what was it? Trisomy? It couldn't kill every child in the family. It couldn't put an end to the entire Hartwell line. It absolutely, positively couldn't affect the baby she had already come to love so much.

She forced herself to ask, “It runs in your family, then?”

He nodded, his hazel eyes nearly black. When he spoke, he sounded as if he were making a solemn vow. “Sloane, I never meant for this to happen. I never intended to have children at all. You know I took precautions—” His throat closed around that last word, and all she could do was clutch his fingers where they still grasped hers. He steadied himself with another deep breath, and then he squared his shoulders. “There are tests now. They can do amnio at fourteen weeks.”

“Fourteen,” she said, trying to absorb everything he had told her. That left three weeks hanging in the balance. Three weeks of not knowing.

He nodded, raising his free hand to her cheek. “That was why I told you I wanted the paternity test. That is what I really need to know.”

Sloane felt light-headed. She had been so worried that Ethan didn't trust her. She had tried to convince herself that his insistence on a paternity test was to protect himself, to protect the Hartwell family fortune. Now, her heart leaped at the notion that
trust
wasn't the issue at all. Ethan
did
believe her.

But any relief was crushed by darker thoughts. Their child could be in the worst kind of danger. She pulled away from his caress, extracting her hand from his grasp. “Why didn't you tell me before?”

“I didn't want to worry you. I didn't want you to be afraid.”

“Ethan, I think this is something worth worrying about! This disease has destroyed your family! I had a right to know!”

“How was that supposed to work?” he snapped. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Marry me? And by the way, our babies might all die'?”

She heard the self-hatred behind his words, recog
nized the emotion for what it was. Nevertheless, she said, “You could have held off on the ‘marry me' part! At the very least, you could have told me the truth!”

“You don't understand! I watched this thing ruin my parents' marriage! I watched it tear them apart! I wanted to prove that I could do this. That I could be better than they were.”

“All the more reason that you should have told me, Ethan.” He started to interrupt, but she pressed on. “You're right, you know. Our story can be different from theirs. I'm not your mother. You're not your father. Our baby isn't your sister or your brother.”

She saw that his immediate reaction was to fight. As she watched, though, he swallowed one retort, then another. He spread his fingers across the granite countertop, as if he were seeking strength from the cool stone. He nodded slowly, and then he said, “You're right. I should have told you. And in the interest of full disclosure now, you should know that I've made an appointment with Dr. Morton for three weeks from tomorrow. I'll need a copy of your obstetrician's reports from your other visits. I want to get those to Phil tomorrow morning.”

“Phil?” She could think of about a dozen things wrong with Ethan's request, but the first word to splutter from her lips was the unfamiliar name.

“Phillip Morton. He's the leading obstetrician in D.C. He knows my family history. He'll take over your case now.”

She wanted to say that she was perfectly content with her own doctor. She wanted to say that she had everything under control.

But she didn't.

She'd only been to the doctor once since finding out
she was pregnant. That was all she'd been able to afford. She swallowed hard and met Ethan's eyes, fully aware of the fact that she was about to make her own uncomfortable disclosure. “Fine. I'll switch to Dr. Morton. But there aren't a lot of records. I've only been to the obstetrician once.”

He couldn't have been more surprised if she'd slapped him. “What?” he asked, half expecting to find that he'd misheard. A woman as fiercely devoted to her unborn baby as Sloane… Only going to the doctor once in her entire first trimester? “Standard medical protocol—” he started to recite.

She cut him off. “Standard medical protocol has insurance. At the very least, it has a job. I've been doing everything that I'm supposed to do,” she said. “I've read all the books, and there are all sorts of communities online. I was very active in one of them before…”

He barely smothered his sigh of frustration when she trailed off. “Before what?”

“Before my computer died.” She looked away, as if she were confessing infidelity. “I've been going down to the public library, though. Everything I've experienced with this pregnancy has been textbook perfect. They could write a book about me.”

He heard a suspicious brightness behind her tone, and he wondered if she was trying to convince him, or just herself.

He had a choice. He could push her about the doctor visits, about the limited care that she'd provided for their child. He could lambaste her for managing her life so poorly that she had nothing in reserve, no savings to fall back on. He could vent some of the fierce possessiveness that clenched his fists, the driving need to keep her safe, to protect her, to ease her way. He could take out
on her all of his fear about the Hartwell genetic curse, all of his anxiety about the unknown state of their baby.

Or he could let it go.

There wasn't any way to change the past. No way to pick up the missing appointments. Besides, who was he to say that
she
had been irresponsible? She'd managed to keep a roof over her head for nearly three months, without a job. She'd done the best she could under challenging circumstances. He exhaled slowly and forced himself to release the tension that torqued his shoulders. “Okay,” he said. And then, because she was sitting there, obviously nervous and clearly still processing the bombshell he had dropped in the middle of their Sunday brunch, he asked, “Did you bring your computer from your apartment?”

She nodded. “It's upstairs.”

“I'll take it into the office tomorrow. Someone in the computer department should be able to fix it. At the very least, they can transfer everything from your hard drive to a new machine.”

He made the offer so casually. Just as he'd presented her with the cell phone, with the credit card. Sloane had spent weeks worrying about her failing computer; she'd wasted hours wondering what she was going to do when the thing finally refused to turn on at all. She was so close to launching the Hope Project…?.

And just like that, he could give her back all the tools she needed. He could make things right.

If only their visit to Dr. Morton resolved problems as easily… “Ethan,” she said, but then she realized that she didn't know what she wanted to ask. She smoothed her blouse over her belly, wishing that the pregnancy was already further along, wishing that she could feel the reassuring flutter of a new life inside her.

He settled his hand over hers. Strength flowed through his fingers. Strength and an iron-firm resolve. “Ask me any questions, Sloane. I'll tell you the truth, as best I can.”

She wanted numbers. She wanted absolutes. She wanted guarantees. But she knew that he could never give her those. “We'll know the test results in three weeks?”

He shook his head. “Phil will do the amnio then. It takes time for the cells to be cultured, for results to come in. Probably another ten days.”

She had to ask the next question, even though she dreaded the answer. “And if we get bad news?”

A nerve twitched beneath his right eye. She saw him withdraw, disappear into his memories, into the past of a family torn apart by
bad news.
When he answered, his voice was barely a whisper. “I can't do it, Sloane. I'm not strong enough to be a father for that kind of child. A child that we know we're going to lose, probably much sooner rather than later.”

She knew she should be grateful that he was answering her honestly. She should welcome the unvarnished truth, even though it hurt him to say the words, even though her heart pounded in her chest when she realized what he meant. She had to answer him, though. She had to tell him how
she
felt. “Ethan, I am never giving up this baby.”

“Sloane, you don't understand. You can't imagine what it's like—”

She wasn't angry with him. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't even overwhelmed by sorrow. She just knew that she was determined, that she was absolutely, one hundred percent certain. “No, Ethan. That isn't a possibility.”

He ran his hand through his hair, making the golden strands stand on end. “Let's wait and see. Let's wait until we have all the facts.”

She didn't need anymore facts.

Before she could drive home the point, though, the doorbell rang. Sloane heard James greet someone in the foyer. There was easy laughter, comfortable familiarity. She glanced at Ethan, saw his face brighten. He shot Sloane a quick glance, and she shrugged. They could finish their conversation another time. Not that there was anything left to say. Not before they had test results in hand.

“Zach!” Ethan exclaimed, as a man walked into the kitchen. The newcomer was Ethan's opposite in every way. His hair was dark where Ethan's was light; his eyes were ordinary brown instead of Ethan's complicated hazel. Zach was short, and he could easily stand to lose twenty pounds. His T-shirt was wrinkled, as if he'd pulled it out of a laundry hamper, and his jeans slouched around his hips.

“Zachary Crosby, this is Sloane Davenport. Sloane, Zach.” Zach's hand was soft in hers, but he smiled as he said hello. As Zach reached for a coffee cup, Ethan said wryly, “Make yourself at home.” The newcomer was clearly familiar with the Hartwell kitchen; he wasted no time collecting a plate and a fork, cutting himself a generous slice of the cardamom coffee cake.

He downed a huge bite, chasing it with a hefty swallow of coffee. He might act like a starved teenager, but Sloane quickly realized that there was more to the man than met the casual eye. His glance darted to the cell phone that still sat on the center island, to the silver credit card beside it. He scarcely missed a beat before
zeroing in on her left hand, on the diamond ring that glinted in the morning light.

“Then the rumors are true. I take it congratulations are in order,” he said, shifting his gaze from Sloane to Ethan.