The Stud (23 page)

"Did you want to leave?"

"That's not the point. The point is that I had a right to know the truth!"

His eyes drilled hers. "So did I!"

"You'd have known the truth when I missed my period, " she said, feeling suddenly defeated. Her stomach was starting to churn again. "All along I knew I'd be telling you then. So when did
you
plan to tell
me?"

"Long before now, I gotta say. " He smirked. "I never thought you'd last here. I thought you'd be tearing your hair out after a week. I thought you'd be sick of the sand, sick of the bugs, sick of the heat. You've been a trooper, angel. " He held out the food. "Take this. "

"I don't want it!" She turned away. "I feel sick. " Not knowing what else to do, she walked down the beach to the same rocks she'd sat on that very first day. She'd been feeling highly emotional then. She was feeling highly emotional now. And nauseous.

Spencer came up from behind and reached around to offer her a handful of crackers. "I should have known what was up when you were munching on these things, " he grumbled. "How many days have you been feeling sick?"

"Two. "

Swearing under his breath, he nudged the crackers at her hand until she finally took them. Then he went back to the plane.

For several minutes, Jenna stared at the crackers. She felt miserable. They would help her stomach, but she didn't know what would help her mind. She didn't have to look back to know that Spencer was packing the plane. He was taking her home. Their time together was over.

Tucking her face to her knees, she began to cry. Deep, soft sobs welled from within. She wanted to stop—Spencer hated tears—but the emotion behind them was too strong. So, hugging her legs, she let them come. In time, they eased. Hiccuping, she turned her cheek to her thigh and looked out to sea.

It would be good to go home, she told herself. It would be good to have a hot bath, to brush her hair until it was smooth, to put on real clothes. But Lord, she'd miss Spencer. All along, she had known love might be a problem, but she had underestimated its scope. Forgetting him was going to be impossible. She would see him every time she passed the room he'd slept in at her house, every time she watched a movie on television, every time she read a book or ate a piece of steak or saw an airplane, every time she kissed his baby good-night. Letting him go was going to be like severing a part of her heart. Already she felt the pain.

Her throat tightened into another knot. She swallowed, forcing its release. Taking a full breath, she straightened. Crying wouldn't accomplish anything. She was an accommodator. Life went on. She would survive—more than survive—do well. After all, she had a baby coming.

Who wanted an adventurer, anyway? Adventurers might be exciting, but they wouldn't be around when you wanted them most. They'd be off chasing dreams of their own. Besides, they were scheming, bald-faced liars.

Slowly she ate one cracker, then a second. Crumbling the remaining few in her hand, she tossed them toward the water for the terns that dove nearby. She pushed herself from the rock and went to the water's edge to cleanse her face of the ravages of her tears. Then, knowing that the next few hours would be the most painful of her life but that they had to be endured, she went to join Spencer at the plane.

He was nearly ready. The tarp was down, the towels and blankets stowed, those personal effects that had been lying on a makeshift table of driftwood cleared off and packed. The beach that had been their little home looked so tragically bare that Jenna felt the threat of tears yet again, but she refused to let them flow. Life was full of heartache, she told herself. She'd get past this. She would.

"Are you less nauseous?" Spencer asked with a scowl.

"Yes. "

"Then eat these. " He handed her a banana and a single-serving bag of granola.

She didn't want to talk or argue or do anything that would prolong the agony of their parting. The sooner she was back in Rhode Island, the better. So, though she had no intention of eating, she took the food.

He stood watching her with his hands on his hips, seeming to know exactly what she had in mind. "Go on. "

"I'll eat while you pack. "

"I'm done. Eat before we take off. "

He was nagging. She didn't like it. "Have you eaten?"

"I'm not hungry. "

"Well, neither am I."

"Eat for the baby, then. "

"I'll eat for the baby later, " she snapped, thinking how impossible overbearing men could be. "I don't
feel
like eating now. "

"Some mother
you're
gonna make. "

"And what difference is it to you? You didn't want this baby to begin with. You didn't want the responsibility. So I'm telling you not to take it. Let
me
worry about the baby. "

He stared at her then, and his eyes shook her. She'd seen anger in them before, but she'd never seen the kind of cold fury that turned the silver in them to ice. She felt the chill all the way to her toes.

It was just as well, she reasoned, though her heart broke a little bit more. She and Spencer could never be just friends again. Their feelings were too strong for that. If they couldn't love each other, they'd have to hate each other—a tall order on her part and one she would have to work at, but it was the only way. The only way.

As though he had reached the same conclusion, Spencer gestured her into the plane with an angry toss of his head. He climbed in after her and strapped himself in, then started flipping switches. In no time the propellers started to turn.

"You bastard, " she muttered.

"Yup. "

She clamped her teeth together and stared blindly ahead. She didn't look at Spencer when he maneuvered the plane to the end of the beach and turned around. She didn't look at their camp when they accelerated past it. She was too heartsick to be frightened when the wheels left the ground and the plane slowly rose into the air.

All she wanted was to go home. It would be an hour and a half to Savannah, then two and a half to Rhode Island. She willed the time to pass quickly. After a few minutes, in hopes of helping it along, she looked out the side window.

"What's that land mass?" It extended forward and back for as far as she could see and looked suspiciously like the mainland.

"Florida, " he said tersely.

"If we're heading north, what's it doing on my side of the plane?"

"We're heading south. "

"But I live north. "

He didn't respond to that other than to clench his jaw, which made his profile even harder than it al- ready was. He was more tense than she'd ever seen him, and angry, very angry. Well, Jenna thought, so was she, and she didn't like what she was reading between the lines. "I thought you were taking me home. "

"I am. "

"To
my
home. "

He flexed a muscle in his jaw, which looked tight enough to snap.

"Enough, Spencer, " she declared, sitting ramrod straight behind her seat belt. "You decided we'd go to that island, so we went. Now it's my turn to decide, and I decide that you deliver me back to Rhode Island. "

"I'm not flying all the way up there now, " he snapped.

"Why not? You have nothing better to do until November. You told me so yourself. "

"I have to think. I need time. I don't know what to do. "

"I'll tell you what to do. Fly me to Rhode Island, drop me off and let me be. "

"I can't do that"

"Why not?"

"Because we're not finished. "

Jenna felt the slow twist of a screw inside her. The pain was unbearable. "We are—we are! You did your part. You gave me my baby. There is nothing else you have to do. I signed papers to that effect. "

"Well,
I
didn't sign any papers!" he thundered. "And you can take yours and burn them, for all I care! They don't mean squat to me!"

Jenna stared at him in disbelief.

He went on angrily. "I
told
you I was going to have trouble with this. I
told
you I couldn't father a child and not care about it. I warned you, Jenna, but you seemed to feel that those papers were some kind of protection. Well, they're not! I can't just ignore the fact that my baby's growing inside you. I can't just go off and forget it. Hell, don't you think I wonder what it looks like, too?" He drove a hand through his hair. The other was white-knuckling the throttle.

Jenna was afraid to think ahead.

"Yeah, I planned this trip, " he went on. His eyes were focused on the horizon. His tone was one of brassy self-mockery. "I thought to myself, okay, Spence, the woman turns you on. She was real easy to be with in Little Compton. She was real easy to be with in D. C. She should be real easy to be with in the Keys. Then I thought about the island, and I thought, what an adventure! She's used to marble and velvet. Let's see what she makes of seaweed and sweat. " He added softly, "I didn't fool myself too much. Sure, I wanted to see if you'd crumble, but in the meantime I wanted to enjoy you. And it wasn't just the sex. It was the being together. "

He pursed his lips. His nostrils flared when he took a breath. "That's been driving me nuts, the being together. The
enjoying
being together. The looking
forward
to being together. I've never felt that for another woman, and I didn't want to feel it for you. But I went ahead and made plans to maroon us for a couple of weeks on the island because I couldn't resist. And was it ever fun buying supplies! I felt like I'd been gathering knowledge for years and was finally putting it to good use for the very first time. Can you imagine that?"

He sounded as if he couldn't. Jenna pressed her fingertips to her mouth.

He swore softly and shook his head. "Hell, it was good. Everything about it was good. I mean, you didn't crumble. You didn't complain. You were having just as much fun as I was, and you were doing it in my kind of style. " His voice faltered. "I don't think I'll ever forget the way you looked sitting there in the surf with nothing on but your bikini bottoms and my baseball cap. I mean, talk about tugging at heartstrings. " He swore again, and she thought she saw something wet and glimmering in his eyes. "I could've stayed there forever. Do you know that? I don't think I've stayed anywhere for more than six months in the past twenty-three years, but I'd have stayed on that island forever. Or at least until we'd run out of food. " He grunted. "Or until you'd gotten pregnant. Boy, it didn't take long, did it?"

Jenna wanted to speak, but her throat was too tight. Her heart was wedged there, along with her hopes and dreams.

"And now I don't know what in the hell to do, " he sputtered. "Okay, so I've got you off the island and on your way back to civilization, but if that means I won't see you again, I can't do it—I just can't do it. I feel too much. I want too much. I can't just drop you back there and fly off, and only some of that has to do with the baby. Most of it has to do with you. When we were making love, I wasn't thinking of the baby. When you told me you weren't pregnant last month, I was disappointed for you but not for me. I wouldn't have been upset if we'd had to keep trying for months, because it would have given me time to figure things out. But you're pregnant now, damn it. So I don't have that time. And I don't know what to do. "

Jenna was daring to hope. "What do you
want
to do?"

He shot her a terrified look. "Marry you. Have you ever heard anything so crazy? I mean, here I am running all over the world, and I want to marry you. I want you legally bound to me. I want to know you'll be waiting when I come home. I want to send you flowers again, and rub sunscreen on you again, and carry your shoes and your bags and your books. I want to knot my tie around your hair again. I want our kid to have my name. " He shot her another look, no less terrified than the first. "But you don't want any of that, and I don't blame you. You're a capable woman. You have your own corporation, your own house and now your own baby. You don't need me. " This time when he looked at her, he scowled. "Put that back on, Jenna. "

She had unbuckled her seat belt and was climbing toward him. When her bottom touched his thigh, she wound her arms around his neck. "You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, " she whispered, and started to cry. "I do... need you. So... much. "

"Oh, God, don't cry. Jenna, please. " His voice broke. "You don't know what that does to me. " He wrapped an arm around her and held her convulsively close.

"I love you, " she sobbed.

"Oh, God. "

"I do... and I lied about something else. Back on the island... I said that the baby was... the most precious thing in the world to me. It isn't true—it was once, but it isn't anymore. You're... just as precious to me as the baby... but I can't hold you back, Spencer. If I did, you'd resent me the way you resent your parents. That would
kill
me. "

His arm tightened around her. "Oh, Jenna. "

"I love you, " she whispered. Now that she'd said it, she couldn't say it enough. "I love you. "

He let out a ragged moan. "Ahh, angel. " The hand that was wound around her pulled her hair back from her ear so that he could put his lips there. In a tortured whisper, he said, "I don't want to be living out childhood fantasies when I'm old and gray. I want life to hold more than Spanish galleons, sparkling gold and sex. "

"I was
awful
to say those things. "

"You were right to say them. "

"But your life is terrific. "

"It's not enough. I keep running so I don't miss things, but I miss them, anyway. I want warmth, angel. I want a home. "

Jenna had never thought to hear those words. Her tears came again. "What should we do?"

"Think. We should think. And you should sit down and put that seat belt back on. You're making me nervous. "

"I trust your flying. "

"Yeah, well, you may not in a few minutes if you don't strap yourself in. I'm feeling the need to do more than hold you. "

"Oh. " She drew her head back and looked up at him. "But nothing's been settled.