“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 leastheagreed 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 callinghimto 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 itwasyou 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.Ishould have been there with you, Justine. It wasmychild—myloss 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 hadnosiblings—”
“He’s myhalfbrother. 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.”
