The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss (19 page)

From that night on, the distance between them grew. Tess became quiet and shy around him. At night he had to reach for her. She

140 Diana Palmer never went to him voluntarily, never teased him or played with him or looked at him with love in her eyes as she had months before. The baby began to kick, and she longed to share it with him, but she was too subdued to invite that intimacy. He never touched her these days. He talked about the future sometimes, but the conversation was always about the baby, never about Tess and himself.

Tess grew depressed. They seemed not to be able to communicate anymore. Tess helped Beryl work in the flower beds during the warm afternoons, but Dane soon noticed that she seemed to do nothing strenuous at all. She never exerted herself. That disturbed him, because exercise, he’d been told, made the delivery all that much easier.

“You don’t do enough,” he said one evening after he’d come home from work. “You sit around all day. I want you to start walking. No arguments,” he said firmly when she started. “This inactivity isn’t healthy for the child. Tomorrow when I get home, we’ll take a nice turn around the ranch.” “Dane,” she began nervously.

He glanced at his watch. “I’m on stakeout tonight. We’ll talk later, Tess. Don’t stay up too late. It isn’t good for the baby.”

She could have screamed. Everything he said or did was with the baby in mind. She was only the incubator, it seemed. Not that she wasn’t concerned about her child; she was all too concerned. She hadn’t told him the truth, and now things were going to get dangerous if he insisted on her walking. It could cause the bleeding to come back again.

She’d felt a revival of good health since she’d been with him. The pain had stopped, and the bleeding had stopped, too. She felt optimistic for the first time. But what he proposed could cost her the child. She worried all night about how or if to tell him the truth.

Fortunately, his stakeout extended for the next several days, and Tess learned to lie. Beryl went to help out an elderly neighbor an hour a day, and during her absence, Tess told Dane, she made sure that she walked.

He froze up, disturbed that she seemed to be making sure that he spent no time at all with her. “Is my company that distasteful to you?” he demanded coldly,

The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss 141 his smile no smile at all. “You can’t bear having me near you, so you go walking when I’m not around, is that it?” “No!”

“Well, don’t sweat it, honey,” he said icily. “It’s the baby I’m concerned with, not you.”

He’d lashed out in a moment of fury, but Tess didn’t know that it was because she’d hurt him. She winced at the anger, at his flat statement that she didn’t matter to him. It was no more than she’d expected, but it left a deep wound.

She turned away, her face lifted proudly. “I’ll make sure the baby isn’t harmed by my lifestyle.” “See that you do. Mrs. Lassiter,” he added with venom.

She looked up at him, her eyes quietly accusing. “If I hadn’t been pregnant, you’d never have married me, would you?”

“Didn’t you know that already?” he agreed unsmilingly. “You’re treacherous, Tess, like the rest of your sex. My mother drove my father away. She broke him, because he loved her. Jane very nearly did the same damned thing to me with her obsession to become pregnant, her distaste for my job. You were the last person in the world I’d have expected to put a knife in my back. My mistake. You won’t get a second chance. Just be sure you don’t harm my child,” he said with cold authority. “I didn’t hide it from you to hurt you,” she blurted. He ignored that. “I’ll be late for work.”

“Why won’t you talk to me?” she ground out. “You can’t even be bothered to come home at night anymore. You’re always gone.”

He couldn’t admit how hungry he was for her. He stayed away because the mask slipped sometimes when he looked at her, because he cared too much. “What is there to say?” he asked evasively. “You seduced me into your arms the night we made the baby. I gave in, because I wanted you. But it was only desire. You understand? Only that. Nothing more.” A light went out in her. “Yes, Dane,” she said. “I understand.”

She left the room, tears blinding her. He couldn’t have made it any more plain than that.

He slammed his fist down on the dresser top in impotent rage. He hadn’t meant to say that, to belittle the exquisite loving they’d

Diana Palmer

shared. He didn’t trust her. He couldn’t. She was like his mother, like Jane. She was going to sell him out. In fact, she already had, by hiding her pregnancy. She didn’t love him now. She avoided him, never looked at him. The baby was all she seemed interested in. He had to remember that and not weaken again. But it was hard. He adored her, never more than now, as she blossomed with his child. It should have been a time of sharing, of unequaled closeness. But he withdrew, because she pushed him away. Nothing had ever hurt quite so much.

Weeks turned to months. Dane and Tess lived like polite strang-ers. He’d long since moved her into another bedroom, with the ex-cuse that he was disturbing her sleep with his late hours. It wasn’t true. Her silence, her depression was disturbing him. She looked at him with an expression he couldn’t fathom, as if she were hurting and hiding it. He felt guilty every time he saw her and he didn’t know why. Being near her and unable to touch her, to hold her, was killing him. He sat and stared at her when she wasn’t looking, like a lovesick boy. His work suffered because he couldn’t keep his mind off her. She grew bigger and paler, and one day, after she’d been to see her obstetrician, she took to her bed and stayed there. That disturbed him, and he said something about it.

“Are you all right?” he asked her that evening, his eyes concerned.

“Of course,” she replied, her face schooled to disguise her terror. She’d had a lot of bleeding and Dr. Boswick was worried. He didn’t say so, but his expression hadn’t been reassuring. She was scared and she wanted to tell Dane, but it was far too late for that. “I’m just tired. There’s so much of me to carry around,” she added impotently.

“I told you before,” he said quietly, “that I don’t want you lying around the house. You have to get enough exercise. I’m sure the obstetrician’s told you that.”

She felt near panic. It was fall now and good walking weather, but she didn’t dare! Dane was still irritable since she’d refused to go to natural childbirth classes with him. She was too afraid of the trips to and from the hospital where they were given, because what Dr. Boswick had told her about the final trimester unnerved her. He

The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss 143 had said the method might help, but he hadn’t pressured her to attend the classes. He knew how afraid she was.

Her visits to the obstetrician had been very close together lately, and fortunately, Dane didn’t know why. She’d managed to keep her secret, despite his cold indifference to her feelings. She’d protected him from the fear. She knew all too well how much a child would mean to him. She wanted him to have his son-Dr. Boswick had told her that it would be a boy.

She looked up at Dane from her reclining position on the bed, propped up by pillows because she was so big now, in her eighth month.

“I’ll go walking tomorrow,” she promised. “It’s so hard these days. I’m heavier than I’ve ever been.”

His dark eyes narrowed on her wan, pinched face. He felt guilty all over again, just looking at her. “Why is it that I never see you walk?” he asked. “You always arrange to do it when no one is here except you.” She colored and averted his eyes.

“I know you’re heavy. But, Tess, laziness is no excuse,” he said quietly. “This is for your own good. Tomorrow, you walk. I’ll make sure of it.”

“No,” she replied wearily, tired of the deception. “No, I can’t do that.” She took a deep breath. “Dane, there’s something I haven’t told you, something you need to know…. Oh!” She gasped at the wrenching pain that caught her unaware and lifted her straight up on the bed. She cried out piteously. “The baby!” he exclaimed harshly. “Tess, is it the baby?”

“Yes…!” She wept because the sudden contractions were so fierce. Even as she felt them, she felt a terrifying gush of wet warmth beneath her and her face went stark white. “You have…to get…an ambulance! Call Dr. Boswick…!”

“It may be false labor. You’re a month early. I’ll take you in the car,” he began tersely, and threw back the covers.

He froze. Every drop of color ran out of his face, every sign of life. His black eyes glittered like diamond fragments. “Oh, my God!” he exploded. “Call…an ambulance!” she cried.

He grabbed up the telephone by the bed, galvanized into action. Beryl came running while he was talking to the hospital and, seeing the situation for herself, went running to get towels.

Assured that an ambulance was already in their end of the county and could be there in five minutes, he dialed Dr. Boswick.

“I think there’s something wrong. She’s in pain and bleeding badly,” Dane said, his voice cold but unsteady. “The ambulance is on the way.”

“The placenta has detached,” came the terse reply. “When I examined her today, I warned her that it could happen any time. The baby is near enough to term that it has a chance, but we could still lose both of them,” he said, and Dane’s heart stopped. “She hasn’t been exercising today?” Dane’s fingers shook on the receiver. “No.”

“Thank God for that. I’m sure she’s told you how dangerous her condition is, so that you wouldn’t allow her to exert unnecessarily. I’ll be at the emergency room when they bring her in, and we’ll gear up for a transfusion.” He told Dane what to do, to help contain the bleeding. “Tell those paramedics that every second counts.”

Dane hung up, tossing orders to Beryl. He looked down at Tess with anguished realization.

“Something went wrong a long time ago, didn’t it? It’s been there all along. It wasn’t morning sickness that kept you home at all,” he ground out, his voice tormented.

Her lips were white as she compressed them, trying not to scream from the pain. “You wanted…the baby…so much,” she panted. “I only wanted…to spare you,” she whispered weakly. “Not…your fault!”

“So you took the risk and the worry all alone, and I gave you hell…. Oh, God, Tess…!” His voice broke. He touched her face with unsteady fingers, as she arched and cried out again from the force of the pain. “Where the hell is that ambulance?” he cursed.

A faint sound of sirens was barely audible as Tess caught her breath. “Hold on, little one,” he said huskily, motioning for Beryl to stay with her. He went out of the room as the sirens approached, so shaken that he could hardly speak at all.

The Case of the Mesmerizing Boss 145

Tess was barely conscious on the long drive to the hospital. Dane sat beside her in a terrified posture while the ambulance attendants kept watch on her and did what they could to stem the profuse bleeding. Dr. Boswick was waiting when they wheeled her into Branntville General.

“She comes first,” Dane told the doctor, white-faced. “No matter what, she comes first, do you understand?”

“We’ll do everything we can,” Boswick assured him. They rushed her to the operating room and, minutes later, took the baby.

She was drifting through layers of pain and drug-induced drows-iness when she heard a voice at her ear.

“It’s a boy,” Dane whispered. “Can you hear me, sweetheart? We have a little boy.”

She barely made sense of the words. “John Richard,” she whispered with difficulty.

It was the name they’d both chosen for a boy, on one of the rare evenings when he’d been home on time and they’d talked. He touched her mouth with his. “John Richard,” he whispered. “How do you feel, darling?”

That couldn’t be Dane calling her darling. She must be delirious. “Hurts,” she said weakly.

“They’ll give you something else. The nurse is bringing a shot for you. He’s so beautiful, Tess,” he said unsteadily. “So beautiful.”

Her eyes opened, glazed with pain. She looked up at him. “Love…you,” she managed. “Whatever happens…always remember.”

His eyes were wet. She couldn’t see them clearly, but she heard the rough sound he made.

“You’re going to be all right,” he said harshly. “They said so. Don’t talk like that!”

Her eyelids were so heavy. She felt them close. “Take care of him,” she said weakly. “You wanted him…so much.”

“I want you!” He leaned close, his voice in her ear. “Listen to me, you silly child, I lied! I’ve been lying all along! I didn’t think I could give you a child-that’s why I didn’t want to marry you! It was for your sake, not mine, that I let you go! Tess, it’s you I want!

146 Diana Palmer You! God in Heaven, I almost went out of my mind when Dr. Boswick told me about your condition after they took the baby. Open your eyes, Tess. Open your eyes!”

He sounded urgent, almost desperate. She forced her eyelids open again with an effort and tried to focus. His face was white. Stark white.

“Don’t you die on me!” he said through his teeth. “Don’t you dare! You’re going to live and help me raise our baby. I’m not going to try and live without you again! I can’t. Listen to me-I can’t make it without you!” “Only…the baby…you want,” she managed. “No.” Nothing he said was getting through the pain. “Yes. You said…”

He realized that she wasn’t comprehending any of it. He had to make her listen, make her understand, while there was still time! “Look at me. Tess, look at me. Look at me!” She swallowed, forcing her eyes toward his face.

“I love you.” He said each word deliberately, forcefully. His eyes were blazing like black coals in his face. “I love you!”

That was nice. She tried to say so, but darkness fell on her like a wall. She closed her eyes, and the anguished sound of his voice slowly became indistinguishable. She slept. Chapter Eleven Dane sat beside her all night without sleeping. He couldn’t bring himself to leave her, not even to see the son he’d thought he’d never have.

Her face was pale and she cried out with the pain, even with the sedatives they were giving her. He watched her suffer, and suffered with her. It devastated him to know what she’d gone through in such silence, sparing him from the worry that had haunted her all these long months. He’d accused her of betraying him, when she was in fact protecting him. She’d loved him and he’d failed her at every turn, when he loved her more than his own life.