To Love, Honor and Betray (2 page)

Callie’s jaw clenched. She started to rise to her feet then she remembered she couldn’t let him see her belly. Trembling with fury, she glared up at him. “Rich or poor, Brandon is twice the man you’ll ever be!”

Eduardo’s eyes burned through her. Then he spoke coldly.

“Stand up.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Your sister told me two things. The first is true.” Raindrops splattered noisily into the trees above. “Stand up.”

Callie sucked in her breath. “Forget it! I’m not your secretary, I’m not your lover … I’m your
nothing
! You have no power over me, not anymore. Stop harassing me before I call the police!”

Eduardo’s dark eyes glittered as he moved closer, standing over her, so close his pant legs brushed her knees. He leaned forward. “Are you pregnant with my baby?”

Staring up at him, Callie sucked in her breath. He
knew
.

Her sister had betrayed her. She’d told Eduardo everything.

She’d known Sami was angry, but she’d never thought she’d do it. Yesterday, her sister had called to wish her good luck on her trip. Callie had been jittery and afraid she was about to make the worst mistake of her life. When she’d heard her sister’s loving voice, she’d blurted out her plan to elope with Brandon because she was pregnant by her boss. Sami’s reaction had been furious.

I won’t let you trap Brandon this way, with a baby that’s not even his!

Sami, you don’t understand –

Shut up! Even if your old boss is a jerk, it’s his baby and he deserves to know! I won’t let you ruin so many lives with your selfishness!

Callie had been shocked, but she’d never once thought Sami would go through with her threat. Her baby sister adored her. She’d trailed after Callie and Brandon every day for years with hero worship in her eyes. She might be angry, but she’d certainly never betray her. Or so she’d thought.

She’d been wrong.

“Are you?” Eduardo demanded harshly.

Callie felt another hard contraction. She tried to breathe through it, but the childbirth classes she’d attended with Brandon seemed useless. The fake contractions, which were supposed to get her body ready for eventual labor weeks in the future, were getting stronger.

“Very well. Do not answer,” Eduardo said coldly. “I would not believe a word from your lying mouth, in any case. But your body …” He stroked her cheek, and an electric current coursed through her. Callie looked up with a gasp, her lips parted. “Your body won’t lie to me.”

He removed the bouquet of wildflowers from her unresisting hand and dropped it to the ground. Taking both her hands in his own, palm to palm, he gently lifted her to her feet.

Callie stood before him on the sidewalk, shaking and vulnerable and clearly pregnant in an ugly white wedding dress. Closing her eyes, she waited for the explosion.

But when he spoke, his voice was cool. “So it is true. You are pregnant.” He paused. “Who is the father?”

Her eyes flew open. “What?” she stammered.

“Is it me? Or McLinn?”

“How can you ask …?” She faltered, blushing. “You know I was a virgin when we … when we …”

“I thought you were, though I wondered later if I’d been deceived.” He set his jaw. “Perhaps you were saving yourself for your wedding night, and the day after we made love, you went home to your fiancé, and lured him into bed. Perhaps in a fit of remorse, or perhaps to hide what you’d done in case there was a child.”

“How can you even say that?” she gasped. “How can you think I’d do something so disgusting—so low?”

“Is the child is mine? Or is it McLinn’s?” His gaze was like ice. His sensual lips twisted. “Or do you not know?”

Her heart wrenched.

“Why are you trying to hurt me?” She shook her head. “Brandon is my friend. Just my friend.”

“You’ve been living with him for a year. Do you expect me to believe he slept on the couch for all that time?”

“We took turns!”

“You are lying! He is
marrying
you!”

“Out of kindness, nothing more!”

He gave a harsh laugh. “
Por supuesto
,” he mocked, folding his arms. “That is why men marry. To be
kind
.”

She stepped back from him. Her throat throbbed with anguish. “My parents don’t know I’m pregnant. They think I’ve just given up the job hunt and decided to move home.” Her eyes burned as she shook her head fiercely. “I can’t go back there as an unwed mother. My parents would never live it down. And Brandon is the best man on earth. He—”

“I don’t give a damn about him. Or you. I care about one question. Is. This. Baby. Mine?”

Callie took a deep breath. “Please don’t,” she whispered. She despised the pleading note in her voice but couldn’t stop herself. “Don’t make me give you an answer you don’t want. Let me give her a home. A family.”

“Her?”

She could have kicked herself. Reluctantly she looked at him. “I’m having a baby girl.”

He exhaled, setting his jaw. “A girl.”

“It doesn’t matter! You don’t want to be tied to me. You’ve made that clear! She’s nothing to you, any more than I am. You must forget you ever saw me—”

“Are you out of your mind?” he growled, grabbing her shoulders. “I won’t let another man raise a child that could be mine!” He searched her gaze fiercely. “When is the baby due? What is the exact date?”

Thunder rolled across the dark clouds hanging low over
the city. Callie felt herself on a precipice of a choice that would change everything.

If she told Eduardo the truth, her baby would never enjoy the idyllic childhood that Callie had had, surrounded by endless prairie, playing in her father’s barn, knowing everyone in their small town. Instead of parents who were best friends, her precious child would have parents who hated each other, and a tyrannical, selfish father.

If only she were the liar Eduardo thought she was, Callie thought miserably. If only she could give him a false date, and say Brandon was the father!

But she couldn’t lie. Not to his face. Especially not about something like this. Grief twisted her heart as she whispered, “September 17.”

Eduardo stared down at her. Then his eyes narrowed and the grip on her shoulders tightened.

“If there’s even the slightest chance McLinn is the father, tell me now,” he ground out. “Before the paternity test. If you’re lying—or if you are simply wrong—and this baby is not mine, I will destroy you for your lie. Do you understand? Not just you, but everyone who loves you. Especially McLinn.”

Her throat ached. She knew her ex-boss’s ruthlessness. She’d seen him use it against others for three years, and finally—inevitably—against her. “I would expect nothing less.”

“I will take your parents’ farm. McLinn’s. Everything. Do you understand?” His dark eyes glittered. “So choose your words carefully. Tell me the truth. Am I the—”

“Of course!” she exploded. “Of course you’re the father! You’re the only man I’ve ever slept with! Ever!”

Staggering back a step, Eduardo stared down at her. His jaw hardened. “
Still
? Do you honestly expect me to believe that?”

“Why would I lie? Do you think I actually
want
you to be her father?” she cried. “I wish with all my heart it was Brandon, not you! He’s the one I want—the one I trust—the best man in the world! Instead of a selfish workaholic playboy who turns on everyone in his life, who doesn’t trust anyone, who has no real friends—”

Her voice cut off as his fingers tightened into her flesh. “You were never going to tell me about the baby, were you?” His voice was dangerously soft. “You were just going to steal my child from me and put another man in my place. You were going to erase me completely from her life.”

A shiver of fear went through her, but she glared at him. “Yes! She’d be better off without you!”

He sucked in his breath then bared his teeth into a smile.

“And that,” he said, his black eyes gleaming, “is your greatest lie of all.”

They stood glaring at each other on the sidewalk, like mortal enemies. She heard the soft patter of heavy raindrops sliding from the green leafy trees above the brick town houses, and she knew he was right.

For eight months, Callie had told herself that Eduardo wouldn’t want a baby. That his workaholic bachelor lifestyle would be hampered by a child. That he would be a horrible father and she was doing the right thing for everyone. But part of her had always known that wasn’t true. After being orphaned himself, and brought to New York at the age of ten, Eduardo Cruz would want to be a father. He’d never surrender a son or daughter.

It was just
Callie
he would sweep aside and discard.

And that was what frightened her. With Eduardo Cruz’s wealth and power, if he took her to court to battle for full custody, there was no question who would win.

His dark eyes cut her to the bone. “You should have told me the day you realized you were pregnant.”

She looked up at him, her heart twisting beneath the weight of guilt and regret and the grief of broken love. “How could I,” she whispered, “after you abandoned me?”

His eyes widened. Then he glowered at her, his expression merciless. “You are clever and resourceful. You could have found a way to contact me. But you did not. You tried to hide her, as you hide everything.”

She felt another sharp pain as her belly tightened. “And now I’ve told you the truth, will you try to take her from me?”

His jaw tightened. Then a smile curled his lips. Reaching out his hand, he stroked her cheek. A sizzle of electricity spun across her skin, vibrating down her spine, and she was filled with longing and desire, irrepressible need like fire. All her traitorous body wanted to do, even now, was turn toward him like a flower toward the sun.

“You will be punished,
querida
,” he said softly. “Oh, yes.”

Callie stared up at him, breathless beneath his touch, trapped beneath the dark force of his gaze. Then she exhaled when she saw a cheap two-door hatchback driving up her street. The cavalry had come to save her. She nearly sobbed with relief. “Brandon!”

Eduardo whipped around. A low, guttural word came from his lips, a word in Spanish she’d only heard him use when he’d just lost a huge deal, or the time a brokenhearted starlet had tried to break into his bedroom. Turning back, he grabbed Callie’s handbag, then her arm. “Come with me.”

Before she even knew what was happening, he’d pulled her across the sidewalk and opened the back door to his black sedan. “Start the engine,” he ordered his driver.

Realizing his intent, she desperately tried to rip her arm away. “Let me go!”

But Eduardo’s grip was like steel. He shoved her into the backseat and climbed in beside her, crowding her with his massive body that seemed far too big for the space.

Eduardo leaned over her, his eyes black with fury as he gripped her wrists. “I’m not giving you another chance to hide my baby.”

Callie breathed in the woodsy, exotic scent of his cologne, overwhelmed by his closeness, by the sensation of his thigh pressed against hers. It was just as she’d dreamed about in the years she’d worked for him, and unwillingly dreamed every night in all the months since he’d fired her. Their faces were inches apart. Callie’s heart thumped in her chest. She felt lost in a dream.

Then Eduardo closed the door with a bang behind him.

“Drive,” he told his chauffeur tersely.

“No!” With an intake of breath, she whirled around in the backseat. Her last vision through the back window was of Brandon standing by the rental car with his door ajar, staring after her with his black-framed glasses askew, his expression anguished. Beside him, their two old suitcases still sat forlornly on the curb.

Their car turned the corner, and Brandon was gone. Callie’s body felt tight with pain that seemed to emanate white-hot from her heart as she turned back to Eduardo with a choked sob. “Take me back. Please.”

His eyes were merciless. “No.”

“You’ve kidnapped me!”

“Call it what you want.”

“You can’t keep me against my will!”

“Can’t I?” he said softly.

She shivered at the look in his eyes. He turned away
as if bored, but she saw the hard set of his jaw, heard the clipped tension of his voice as he said coldly, “You will remain with me until the matter of the baby is resolved.”

“So I’m your prisoner?”

“Until my paternal rights are formalized—yes.”

“So you don’t believe I’m a liar after all,” Callie said bitterly.

“Not about the baby. But there are all kinds of lying. You lie with silence. I wonder,” he said blandly, “if there’s anything else you’ve been hiding from me? My perfect, loyal secretary.”

She wrapped her arms over her belly, which felt hard and tight beneath the polyester blend of her wedding dress. “What do you know about loyalty? You’ve never been loyal to anyone but yourself!”

“I was loyal to you, Callie,” he said in a low voice. “Once.”

Staring into his fathomless dark eyes, she was suddenly lost in memories of their days together, in the office, sharing sushi at midnight, traveling the world on his private jet.

“That was when I mistakenly believed you were worth it.” His tone hardened. “I learned my lesson.”

“What lesson?” she cried out, bewildered. “The instant I slept with you, I went from being your trusted secretary to a disposable one-night stand. After everything we’d been through together, how could you treat me exactly like all the rest?” She lifted her tearful gaze to his and spoke from the heart. “Why did you sleep with me?” she whispered. “Did you ever care for me at all?”

He stared at her.

“You were a convenience,” he said roughly, turning away. “Nothing more.”

The words felt like a knife blade in her heart, serrated, rusty, tearing through her flesh. She’d loved him with
such devotion, and the night she’d given him her virginity, she’d thought a miracle had happened: that he’d fallen for her, too.

“Every woman in this city thinks she can tame you. The rich, handsome playboy,” she choked out. She shook her head. “The truth is you’ll never trust anyone long enough to care. You desert a woman the instant you’ve had your minute of cheap pleasure!”