Chapter 10
It took every ounce of courage she possessed to keep from cowering from him. He was menacing in his anger, devastating in his very evident disdain. And she was his prey, helpless before him, possessing but one source of defense—her love. On it she relied to give her strength.
Sloane’s fury assaulted her head-on. “Why have you come?” he seethed. “I thought we settled everything that had to be settled between us. What is it you want now?”
Dressed in dark linen slacks and a light blue sport shirt, open at the neck and rolled at the cuffs, he was compelling. She recalled the first time she had seen him and knew that this was no different. Even in his anger, she was drawn to him.
“We have to talk, Sloane.”
“We’ve already talked. What more is there to say?” The force of his attack nearly crumbled her resolve. Only love kept her going.
“I was wrong,” she began softly, then spoke with the conviction she felt. “I was wrong back then. I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
There was neither gloating nor any other outward sign of triumph in Sloane. His glower persisted; her mind conjured up the image of the fox, teeth bared, ears flat back, ready to lunge given that slightest bit of provocation. But provocation was not what she had in mind. Determinedly she went on.
“You were right. I have gone through life with blinders on regarding things such as marriage, children, happiness. I only knew that I was hurt when I was a child and I would do anything to avoid a repeat of that.” When he said nothing, but merely stared sharply at her, she wondered if they were beyond the point of reconciliation. Had his love turned to hate so easily? Compulsively, she continued.
“I hadn’t planned on falling in love, Sloane. I had dated enough over the years, but things had always petered out before there was any kind of emotional involvement—maybe that’s why they did peter out, precisely because of the superficiality of the relationship. When I met you, things were different. Before I even knew what was happening, I was in love with you.”
Dropping her gaze, she studied the design underfoot, blindly tracing its bold lines, trying to gather her thoughts into coherent speech. Sloane was obviously going to be no help to her. She was on her own.
“I’m not sure what I expected to happen after that weekend in Westport. I knew that I loved you, yet I believed that I simply couldn’t marry you. You have to understand—I’ve spent a lifetime vowing to remain unattached. Suddenly, you came along. I couldn’t change those long-held beliefs overnight.”
Sloane had not moved during her argument. There was neither a blink nor a flinch; nor was there sign that he intended to react. Justine’s eyes felt the harshness of his gaze; against her will, she began to wilt. If it was all for naught, he should just tell her to leave, that he did not love her as he had once.
Hands twisted convulsively at her waist, she felt she could say no more without some sign that he was hearing her. “Say something, Sloane,” she finally cried.
Despite the bridled anger which held his features taut, his voice was remarkably steady. “Do you love me, Justine?”
Her eyes filled with hope, then flooded with fear. Was he bent on bringing her to her knees, on total humiliation? Well, she decided, tilting her chin higher, if he was, so be it. He would have the truth from her today.
“Yes. I do love you.”
“Then, what about the baby?” he demanded more vehemently. “If you claim to love me, why didn’t you tell me you were carrying my child?”
Justine froze. “How did y—you—”
“The pills, Justine. Do you remember when I saw that bottle of vitamins while we were at the cabin in Alaska? The prescription was given by a Thomas Devane, M.D. When I returned to New York, I looked up the name in the phone book. He was no internist; the letters spelled out obstetrician. And there’s one major reason a woman sees an obstetrician—and takes vitamins on prescription.”
As he talked, Justine saw his anger mix with hurt. In her own shock at his awareness of her condition, she might have missed it, had it not been for the uncharacteristic luminescence of his dark, dark eyes.
Defensively, she turned, but he was close behind her with one fluid step. “Why didn’t you tell me? It was my child, too. I had a right to know.”
He had used the past tense; obviously he knew of her miscarriage. “You know I lost the baby?” she asked in a whisper, wrenched again by the loss.
“Yes. I had called the doctor to make sure you were well. I left my name and number with him. He was kind enough to call me when you miscarried.” Again, she flinched, but Sloane was wrapped up in his own turmoil. “At least he agreed that I should know.”
Justine whirled around to face the charge he made. His towering height, crowned with sparkling silver, nearly robbed her of breath. Gasping loudly, she caught herself.
“I couldn’t tell you. You had asked me to marry you—I knew that you wanted marriage. I was frightened that—if you knew I was pregnant—you might use the child as a bargaining point. Don’t you see? I was against marriage to begin with. And to enter into it—or be coerced into it—for the sake of a child would have been even worse!” Her voice had risen sharply. Now, she lowered it, recalling that particular time when she had discovered she was pregnant.
Avoiding his gaze, she forced herself onward, determined to tell the whole truth. “When I learned I was going to have a baby, we were only on businesslike terms. It was soon after you had manipulated my presence on your expedition. We weren’t seeing each other in a personal way; I assumed it was over.” Her eyes blurred at the thought; swallowing, she calmed herself enough to allow speech. “The baby became a substitute for you, Sloane. I couldn’t have you. You wanted marriage or nothing, and I couldn’t choose marriage. You have no idea how happy I was at the thought of having you—through your child—to live with always.”
At that point, given the poignant truth she had just confessed, Justine knew that, if she hadn’t reached Sloane yet, she never would. Her heart lurched when she looked up to see the lingering anger in his face. Cringing instinctively, she wrapped her arms about her and withdrew into herself. It was too late. There was no point in torturing herself further at the hand of his disdain. Turning to leave, his voice stopped her. Hurt had now superseded anger in his tone.
“You say you love me, yet you wouldn’t share the joy of a growing child with me. What about Tony? You had no qualms about calling him to your bedside!”
An instant flashback to that evening in the hospital brought the blurred image of Sloane to her mind. At the time she had thought it her imagination. It seemed she was wrong. “So it was you at the door to my room…?” she asked in soft wonder.
“That was quite a scene!” His nostrils flared, the grooves by his mouth deepened with his grimace. “One man comforting you on the loss of another man’s child…!”
The first buds of hope sprung to life within her heart. If his hurt was spawned by jealousy, there was perhaps something to salvage after all. A tremulous smile toyed with her lips. “You were jealous,” she stated in a soft whisper.
His answering boom shook her. “You’re damned right I was jealous! And hurt. And angry. I should have been there with you, Justine. It was my child —my loss as well as yours. Not this fellow Tony—”
“You’re wrong there, Sloane. Tony felt the loss deeply. That baby would have been a blood relative of his.” At the mask of bewilderment that covered Sloane’s face, she quickly explained. “Tony is my brother.”
His retort was fast and sharp. “You said you had no siblings—”
“He’s my half brother. He was born when I was six.”
Bewilderment had turned to simple confusion as Sloane tried to put together the pieces of the jigsaw before him. “But, your parents were not divorced until you were nine. Tony was born … before ?”
“Yes. The relationship between my parents was impossible. My father met and fell in love with another woman long before the divorce. That was one reason why it was so messy. Tony was born out of wedlock; my father married his mother when he was four.”
For the first time there was genuine softening in Sloane’s demeanor. “Did you know about … all this … when you were a child?”
She shook her head, sending ripples through the strawberry-blond curls which fell to her shoulders. “I met Tony for the first time when I was in college. He sought me out, on my father’s instructions—though I didn’t know that part until just recently. I never asked many questions of him; nor did he of me. We seemed to recognize a personal bond and clung to it as we became good friends. I knew nothing of his childhood until after the miscarriage … when we had it all out.” She blushed. “He set me straight on a lot of things.”
Sloane’s attention was now fully hers. “Such as…?”
This was the crux of her folly, the hardest part for her to accept. Pride swallowed, however, she forced herself to confess her ignorance. Wandering around his rigid figure, she approached the window, where the play of the evening lights of the city soothed her.
“Such as the fact that there was no love between my parents from the start,” she began softly. “Such as the fact that theirs was simply a marriage of convenience gone wrong. Such as the fact that my father is a warm and caring man.” Hesitating, she looked up. “I went to see him, Sloane.”
“Your father?”
“Yes. I flew out to Montana last week. I felt it was something I had to do. I had to know the truth. Twenty-one years is a long time to live a misunderstanding. And if I hoped to start over with a clean slate …”
Her thoughts had been on her relationship with Sloane; his were still on her father. “What was his reaction to seeing you?”
Tears stung the backs of her eyes, but she refused to lower them. “He was … stunned … then thrilled. It was … as though I’d given him the most precious gift …” Recalling her father’s open show of emotion, one tear escaped at the corner of her eye. “We spent the week together, just getting to know one another. He is much as Tony said he was. I liked him.” She paused for a deep breath. “And … I can believe that Tony did grow up in a home filled with love.”
The air was quiet between them. Justine lowered her gaze to the floor. But there was more to her confession, words that could be held in no longer. “Tony said many of the same things you did, Sloane—that I’ve allowed my life to be shaped by misconceptions and misbeliefs—ideas that I’d chosen to accept as gospel. I’ve always prided myself on being right. Clear sighted. It’s difficult to face the fact that I’ve been blinded all these years.” She hung her head in humiliation, suddenly drained of spirit. It was Sloane’s turn. If there was any future for them, he would have to help her now. Slowly, she turned and looked up at him. “I was wrong, Sloane. So wrong.”
Above her was a face filled with similar sorrow and regret. Misinterpreting it, she began to tremble. But he raised his hands tentatively to her shoulders. His hold was light; its unsureness frightened her further.
“Your brother ?” he whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. “Damn! I’ve been sick with jealousy! I thought you had lied to me—about other men in your life, about our love. I even thought …”—he faltered, his words tinged with self-reproach—“… that the D and C was … that you … that you had wanted to …”
As the gist of his accusation hit home, Justine’s tenuous composure snapped. Tears filled her eyes as she pulled away from him, shaking uncontrollably. “How could you think that? I wanted that baby! More than anything at the time, I wanted that baby !” Her sobs mingled with cries. “I needed that child, Sloane. If I couldn’t have you, I needed it !” All sound was choked off as she wept against her hands. Her resistance was down when Sloane came to hold her, drawing her quivering body against him.
“We’ll have another, sweetheart. We will. I promise you that.”
It took several moments for his promise to reach her consciousness. Was the implication there? Did he still love her? Hands splayed against the firm warmth of his chest, she raised her tear-streaked face toward his. “Do you—can you—forgive me for my stupidity? For my stubbornness?”
The glow of love in his eyes, a sight she had seen before —in Westport, in Alaska—and cherished, surged into her with its heart-talk. “Love forgives all, Justine. And I love you. Never forget that.” His lips lowered to touch hers, gently and sweetly, in slow reaquaintance. It was short but potent, a harbinger of all the fire to come. He was fully serious when he studied her face once more, searching and probing for the final solution.
“Once you believed that love, alone, was not enough,” he reminded her. “What has made you change your mind?”
Unbidden, her hands crept up the sturdiness of his chest to his neck, then into the sterling shock of hair above and behind either ear. The surging joy within gave her strength, even as it brought tears of remembered agony to her eyes. She cried openly and without shame, knowing now that she could be her true self with Sloane. All was shared; there were no more secrets.
“I can’t … live without … you, Sloane! I tried … but I can’t. I need you … I’ll always need you.”
With a deep moan at the back of his throat, Sloane crushed her to him, embracing her with a fierceness totally removed from the earlier tentative hold. She was his, wholly and forever; as he hugged her, her love escaped its bounds and exploded into full glory. His words, spoken tenderly by her ear, thrilled her.
“I never thought to hear you say that. It took you so long, so terribly long to discover what I knew from that day we first made love. God, I love you, Justine! I love you!”
For long, quiet moments, they stood, wrapped in each other’s arms, savoring the ecstasy that was now theirs. Kisses, touches, caresses were all secondary to the need to simply be close, to hold one another. It was Justine who finally broke the silence. Her eye held a ghost of humor, her lips the start of a smile.
“Did you really know it … way back then? You barely knew me then.”
“I knew enough. And I’ve seen enough in life to know when I’ve finally found the real thing.”
“You’re just older and wiser,” she ribbed him, fast growing high on his nearness.
Beneath her arms and hands, she felt the gradual relaxation of his body. He, too, was playful, almost giddy. “Not quite over the hill, my vixen,” he growled, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her in the opposite direction toward what she assumed to be his bedroom.
“Put me down, Sloane,” she giggled, offering token protest to his abduction.
“Never! You’re mine, now. All mine.”
She was given no time to examine the room he brought her to, for, no sooner had her back hit the yielding bedcovers, than he came down on top of her, blocking out all but the virile strength, the breathtaking beauty of his manhood, His kisses were more fevered, his touch more demanding. Waves of excitement broke within her, as his fingers fondled her, making short shrift of her silk blouse, then possessing the creamy fullness of her upthrust breasts. His tongue teased a rosy peak, coaxing it with little effort to hardness. In the riot of sensation which surged within her, she fought at the buttons of his shirt, finally laying his own chest open for her play. Her fingers caught in the fine dark hair, courting his flat nipple in passing, then delighting in his sharp intake of breath.
“Fair is fair,” she chuckled softly, then gasped as his hand searched further, releasing her slacks and finding the warm, sweet core which craved his fullness. As though on mutual nod, each tore at his and her own clothes, satisfied temporarily to be flesh against flesh—until even that satisfaction vanished into a far greater need.
At that point, the telephone rang.
“I don’t believe it!” Sloane exclaimed huskily. “I don’t believe it!” Undaunted by the interruption, Justine continued her joy-play while her lover reached for the phone.
“Hello!” he barked darkly into the receiver. “What is it, Chad? …” Her hand traced the line of dark hair across his chest, then down with tapered directness to the point of no return. Sloane’s breathing quickened. “He wants … to meet … with us … now?” His eyes were on Justine, savoring the pleasure she received at the sight and feel of his body.
“You can’t go now!” she cried, as he quickly muffled the phone.
His retort was hoarse. “Why not?”
Her hand had found what it sought and now caressed and fondled with devastating effect on Sloane. “I need you,” she whispered seductively, moving closer to welcome him back.
His words were silent, only mouthed, and she caught every one. “Show me.”
Her lips found the most sensitive places on his lean man’s body and did just that, while Sloane struggled to cope with the telephone in his hand. “Sorry, Chad”—he cleared his throat futilely—“but either you meet with him …”—he tensed, then moaned, covering the phone to pant a hoarse-whispered “God, Justine!” before coughing a pretense of calm into his voice—“… or … he’ll have to wait … until tomorrow … What? … Yes”—he looked pointedly at her, eyes growing more devilish by the minute—“I’m fine. Handle it … for me, Chad … will you? … Thanks.”
The phone was no sooner hung up than he lunged, pinning her beneath him on her back. “That was quite some trick! How cruel can you be?”
Her broad grin dimpled her cheeks. “You asked for it, lover. ‘Show me.’ Well, I tried!”
“You did ve—ry well, sweetheart. Now, let’s take it from the top. We have a lot of making up to do!”
Making up they did, and then some. When they finally rested together, she knew the most complete sense of fulfillment she’d ever known. This present fulfillment had a past and a future from which it derived even greater enrichment.
Much, much later, with her hands wound around his muscled torso stretched lean and long beside her, she looked up at him. Her face bore the flush of passion, her eyes the emerald brilliance of love. “You do believe it will work, don’t you, Sloane?”
She had never before seen such utter confidence on his face. “I know it will. Don’t you know anything about the fox?” His enjoyment of her stunned expression was tempered by the profound implication of his words. “He mates only once, and then for life. Will you share my lair, Justine?”
Darkness permeated the room as she rolled over in the large bed and groped blindly for him. The emptiness beneath her hand alarmed her. “Sloane?” she called softly, then raised her voice. “Sloane?” With a smooth sweep, the covers fell back and she staggered from the bed, half-asleep, toward the closed door of the bedroom. Just as she reached it, it opened quickly, knocking her backward, throwing her off a balance which only Sloane’s strong hands restored.
“Are you all right?” he asked in alarm, drawing her into the warm haven of his arms, kissing the pale copper crown of her head.
“I’m fine. Up to my old calamities. But I was worried. Where were you? I didn’t hear any noise …”
“Another fact about the fox, my dear,” he crooned, holding her to his side as he moved toward the bed, “is that he shares the duties of raising the young with his mate.”
“The baby? Did he wake up?” Her arms slid around the solid column of her husband’s neck. In an endearingly comfortable move, he lifted her into his arms, covered the few remaining feet to the bed, then laid her gently down.
“All fed and changed.” He grinned in self-satisfaction. “And soundly back to sleep.”
Her eyes glowed, even in the darkness, “You’re a wonder, Sloane! And you’ve got to go to work tomorrow!”
“So do you, sweetheart.” Pride surged within him as he visually devoured the graceful curves of his wife’s body.
“Only part-time, though—”
“You need your rest, anyway. After all, you also have to contend with me and my son after hours. That’s quite an undertaking.”
Justine snuggled happily against him. “I love you!” she sighed in pure delight, breathing in the musky smell of him as though it were her sustenance.
Sloane angled up to better study her features, dim-lit by the night-light in the hall. “Are you sure? It’s been almost two years. Are you still sure?”
“More sure than ever!” she replied, free of all doubt, all hesitancy, all fear.
Smiling in triumph, she burrowed more deeply against her love, her life, her soul mate. The Silver Fox may have stolen her heart, but he had given his own in return. No vixen could ask for more.