Eve Langlais (10 page)

First, he’d try the direct approach. Maybe now that she had a new suitor she could be persuaded to give him the children, or at least the boy. His heir. The girl child he didn’t really care about. Females were stupid, vapid creatures whose only use was to serve the needs of men. But while in prison, it had occurred to him that a daughter might be useful. Alliances through marriage were still common and a great way of increasing one’s power base. His first objective, though, remained the boy.

Rage twisted inside him like a demonic beast that kept burrowing deeper and deeper into his body, darkening his heart and clouding his mind. He’d finally achieved what he’d been trying so long to do.

Create an heir. Someone he could teach, who would stand by his side when he set out to conquer the Realm first, then the world. Someone to carry on his legacy once he died, although that hopefully would not happen for a long time. And that bitch, that stupid cow that had birthed his children, had stolen his son, his most valuable treasure. No one stole from the Dragon!

The time had come for him and his brood mare to have a talk. Once her suitor was gone, of course.

He’d make her see reason, his reason. And if she refused, well then he’d just have to do things the hard way, which he preferred anyway. How evil! How dastardly, you say. Why that was what he did best. They didn’t call him the Dragon for nothing.

37

Suzie woke the next morning feeling lethargic—gee, could it have been because she only got about three hours of sleep? Jessica had gone back to sleep after a drink of water and a cuddle, but sleep had eluded Suzie for quite some time. Between the kiss Hunter had given her—she could still feel the heat—

and the fright she’d gotten from the stranger in the park yesterday, she’d tossed and turned all night.

Her mind spun in circles thinking about Hunter, unable to decide. Her body wanted him, no question about that. The kids loved him. She really enjoyed his company, and while she appreciated his offer of friendship, could they be friends considering their attraction for each other? And as for being romantically involved, he didn’t seem ready yet for the kind of commitment hooking up with a single mom would entail.

And what about the stranger from the park? Was it the twins’ father?

Sure, she’d taken precautions each time she’d moved—not leaving forwarding addresses, ensuring everything was unlisted, and the utilities that were in her name used her initials only. Even her mother didn’t have her new address.

Anybody would be paranoid, too, if they’d been through what she had, but had she done enough?

God, it all seemed so long ago now. A lifetime ago, when life had seemed so full of promise and when she’d still naively believed the best of people. How stupid she’d been.

She’d started university later than most kids, at twenty, having had to work to save for tuition first because her mother, as promised, refused to help. What did she need an education for? Her mother would say. A good girl should get married and have babies like God intended. Kind of ironic considering her mother’s youthful marriage ended up in her husband—Suzie’s dad—leaving when she was only two. Needless to say, her mother never remarried, and Suzie ended up an only child. Made her wonder, though, if her mother had always been a bitch and made her husband leave, or if her husband leaving became the catalyst to bitchdom. Dear old Mom, a bitter, tight fisted, religious woman who’d made Suzie’s life hell.

Suzie had always been made to feel she could never do anything right, and according to Suzie’s mother, she never did. According to her, Suzie was a stupid, lazy slut who was easily swayed by the Devil. Never mind the fact she’d always been a straight A student who never drank, didn’t do drugs and didn’t lose her virginity till well after she left home. Nice childhood, huh? Forget having friends over, and God forbid Suzie should date. When she’d come home in grade twelve all excited over being asked to the prom, her mother quickly made her regret it. She spent that whole weekend on her knees with her mother, praying. Of course, she didn’t attend the prom. Although, in retrospect, Suzie wondered how the hell her mother expected her to find a husband if dating was such a no-no. She stopped speaking to her mother once she left home.

The day she’d gotten accepted by the furthest university she could find from her mother, she’d walked on clouds. Nothing her mother could say burst her bubble. Finally, she would escape!

She still remembered the elation she’d felt when she walked onto that campus the first time, the sense of freedom quickly followed by the intimidation of seeing all those busy scholars bustling to and from class, the large campus always in motion.

But she adapted. Unlike many girls, she didn’t go boy and party wild. Her strict upbringing still had a hold of her in many respects. She made herself some friends—finally—and studied hard. Her third year, she finally narrowed her career path—computers—and she selected courses on that subject—

programming, graphics, animation. But on a whim, she’d added something completely off the wall—

Fairy Tales and Other Myths. As a child, she’d always been fascinated by the Grimm brother’s tales and anything to do with magic and fantasy, especially the happy endings.

The first day of her fairy tale course still remained vivid in her mind. It was the day that changed the rest of her life. Arriving to her new class early, she’d sat at the back and watched the other students 38

come in, talking and laughing as they took seats of their own. When
he
arrived, the buzz of dozens of voices died off, stunned into silence. Apparently, many of them, Suzie included, had preconceived notions of what a man teaching children’s stories would look like—short, geeky, probably bald with glasses. That’s not what they got, though.

Their professor was striking, not a classically gorgeous man, but attractive in a dark, dangerous way.

He had thick, black hair that hung in waves to his shoulders with a high widow’s peak. The angular face of a poet, all hard planes and shadows, his lips surprisingly full, and his grey eyes like mirrors of the soul.

The girls in his class all to a certain extent fell in love, Suzie included. He had a presence about him, a dark radiance that fascinated Suzie. Kind of like the forbidden apple, the bad-boy your mother warned you about. In other words, every girl’s fantasy.

Suzie sat there, entranced, the whole class. The timbre of his voice and the somber intensity of his face attracted her like no one else ever had.

She had his class twice a week, and as the weeks passed, she inched her way down in the seating till she sat in the front row, head propped on her hand, watching him as he analyzed the fairy tales of her youth.

It was just before the Christmas break that he first asked her to see him in his office after classes were done for the day. She’d knocked on his office door nervously, wondering what he wanted. Was she flunking his course? She thought she’d done well on her term paper.

His smooth, tummy tingling voice told her to enter, and she drifted in to stand in front of his desk, chin down.

“Suzanne, thank you so much for coming.”

“No problem, Professor Draco.” Even his name sounded dark and mysterious.

“Please, when it’s just us, call me Damian. Professor Draco sounds so old and stodgy. You don’t think I’m old, do you?” he’d asked, his mesmerizing grey eyes boring into hers as if the answer was of the utmost importance. Unable to hold his gaze, Suzie dropped her head.

“What? No, of course not Pro—Damian.” Despite his years, mid thirties to her bare twenty-three, he definitely couldn’t be considered an old man. On the contrary, his entire being exuded strength and virility. Standing across from him, Suzie felt drawn to him like metal to a magnet.

“I’m sure you’re wondering what this is all about?”

“I failed my exam, didn’t I?” she replied in a little voice, still looking at her toes.

His rich laughter filled the room. “Failed? By no means. You passed with flying colors, my dear Suzanne. That’s why I called you in here. See, I’ve selected you to be my assistant in a project I’m doing.”

“Really?” she exclaimed, her head coming up, an incredulous look on her face.

“Yes. It will have to be done after school hours, of course, as this is an extra project. Will that pose any problems with your boyfriend or family?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, and my mom lives back east. I’ve got plenty of time to help you. What’s the project about, and when do we start?”

“Why don’t I tell you over dinner?”

That became the first of many dinners—first, out in public places, where he fed her a web of lies on this supposed project. Then, the dinners and meetings started happening at his condo.

In retrospect, she realized he’d been grooming her, easing her into the relationship. Cutting her off from her few friends, consuming all her time till her only focus became him.

The first time they had sex, a painful experience due to her virgin state, he’d put on a great act afterward.

“Oh, Suzanne, how I love thee. Alas, our love is doomed. I shall be cast from my job at the university. Will you still love me when I am penniless and shamed before my peers?”

39

Rushing to reassure him she’d said, like an idiot, “No one has to know. I’ll never tell. In another year, I’ll graduate, and we can be together then. I don’t mind hiding our love for now.”

The next few months, they snuck around like star-crossed lovers. He gave her a key to his place so she could come over whenever she had free time. She’d cook dinner and wait for him, like a good little wife would, not that they ever talked about marriage. In fact, he never talked about a future with her at all. But he had said he loved her. Surely he wouldn’t lie about that? And she had loved him with every inch of her being.

The budding trees signaling spring was when she started feeling ill.

After throwing up for the third morning in a row, she had to face the truth. She either had the flu or she’d become pregnant. After buying the test from a pharmacy, she smuggled it back to his place in her purse and peed on the little stick. She spent an agonizing three minutes waiting.

Double cross. Oh-oh, definitely pregnant.

She skipped all her classes that day, huddled in a ball in his apartment, dreading telling him. How would he react? Would he make her get an abortion? Would he still love her? Would they marry? The parade of questions seemed endless, the fear of losing him overwhelming.

His reaction was not what she expected.

“That’s fantastic!” he exclaimed when he finally came home and heard the news.

“Really?” Suzie said, stunned.

“I’m finally going to be a father. This is fabulous!” he said, wrapping his arms around her in an exuberant hug. “You’ll move in with me once the semester is done.”

Suzie should have asked more questions. Such as, what about marriage? And how would she manage school with a baby? But it was hard not to get caught up in his excitement, so she just assumed everything would all work out. Naive? No, blindly in love.

When they found out at her first ultrasound she was pregnant with twins, she thought he’d jump up and dance a jig in the doctor’s office.

“My beautiful fecund Suzanne,” he’d exclaimed, hugging her.

Suzie, though, found the idea of twins terrifying. She had no idea how to take care of one baby.

How on earth would she take care of two? But Damian seemed so happy, which made her happy, too, most of the time.

At his urging, Suzie didn’t register at the university for her return in the fall.

“There’ll be plenty of time to finish your degree later. You wouldn’t want the stress of exams to harm the babies, would you? And besides,” he’d said in a masterful stroke of manipulation, “think of the questions that might arise once it’s known you’re pregnant. If you’re a student still and they find out I’m the father, I’ll be out of a job. Then how could I support my favorite girl and our children?”

He played on her guilt like a finely tuned violin. Suzie would have done anything for him. What he asked for wasn’t that bad, and she could always go back to school once the babies were old enough. And at that point in time, he still treated her like a fragile princess, bringing her treats and delicacies for the babies, healthy ones, of course. He put her on a strict, very healthy diet. One with lots of red meat and protein. She didn’t care. It happened to be what she craved. Mmm, medium rare steak, baked potato smothered in sour cream and Caesar salad. When you’re pregnant, food tastes soooo good!

The one thing Damian stopped once she got pregnant was making love to her. When she asked him why, he claimed it might hurt the babies. Her doctor had told her sex was okay, but if it made Damian feel better, then that was fine. Truth be told, she hadn’t enjoyed lovemaking all that much. It tended to be kind of quick and painful. Nor did she feel especially sexy with her rapidly increasing girth. So they stopped being intimate, but even without the lovemaking, he remained solicitous in other ways.

When she hit thirty-four weeks, though, things changed. While he still brought her home things to eat, he stopped being nice to her. Oh, he didn’t start calling her names, or hitting her. No, he just stopped talking to her. Gone were the sweet compliments, the cuddling, the thoughtful flowers. Instead, 40

all of his focus and attention turned to the babies,
his
babies, as he liked to call them. His legacy. He began to talk about taking the babies home with him.

“Oh, where do you come from?” she’d asked. “I can’t wait to meet your family.”

He never did answer her, just changed the subject, and she forgot about it for a time. She should have paid more attention, as it turned out.

At thirty-seven weeks and a whopping seventy-five pounds gained, her gynecologist booked her for inducement. Damian paced, even more nervous than Suzie, badgering the nurses and doctors on the status of the babies.

Jared and Jessica were born at three o’clock on a chilly autumn afternoon, weighing in at five pound two ounces for Jared, the first born, and four pounds eleven ounces for her baby girl, Jessica.