Til Death Do Us Part (44 page)

“Simon, you won't leave me, will you?”

“What?”

“Just because I'm pregnant, you won't leave me.”

“No, Cleo, I won't leave you.” Not now. Not yet. Not until I know that you and our…your child are out of danger.

She smiled contentedly. “I knew you'd change your mind. Everything is going to be all right for you and me and our baby. We're going to be so happy.”

Now wasn't the time to tell her that nothing had changed. That as soon as she was safe and they had her would-be killer behind bars, he was going to leave. There could never be a happily ever after for Simon Roarke.

C
LEO DUG HER
bare toes into the soft love seat cushions and lifted her knees. Hugging the cream knit afghan to her, she draped her arms around her legs. Alone in the solitude of her sitting room. Ah, home sweet home. But since Uncle George's death this house hadn't seemed like home. Not even here in her own suite did she feel perfectly comfortable. Knowing that a member of her own family had tried to harm her—four times—created a morbid air of suspicion and hostility. She didn't want to believe that someone hated her enough to want her dead. But since Aunt Beatrice's close call with death after drinking the poisoned tea and her own riding accident yesterday morning, she could no longer delude herself. Someone wasn't just trying to scare her—someone was trying to kill her!

Simon had wanted her to stay another day in the hospital, but since Dr. Iverson had said she would be as well off at home, she'd insisted on leaving. Simon hadn't liked bringing her home, but he hadn't argued with her about it. In fact, since their heated disagreement about their leaving River Bend and his announcement that she was pregnant, her husband hadn't said much of anything. Every time she'd tried to talk to him about their marriage and their child, he had changed the subject.

Yesterday, she had chalked up his moodiness to his fear for her life and his ridiculous guilt over not foresee
ing the accidents that had occurred. She'd tried to tell him that he was a bodyguard, not a mind reader.

Simon had stayed by her side at the hospital all night, sleeping in the chair beside her bed. Whatever she wanted, he was one step ahead of her, waiting on her hand and foot, with gentle patience. He had kissed her good-night and held her hand until she'd drifted off to sleep. And when she had awakened this morning, he'd been sitting there staring at her.

Cleo knew that something was wrong, something that had nothing to do with the threats on her life or with McNamara Industries. Simon was worried. She hadn't known her husband long, but they had become so close, so intimately connected, that she could sense the change in his mood.

She wasn't sure what was wrong, but she suspected the worst. Her greatest fear was that he hadn't been completely honest with her when he'd told her that he wouldn't leave her. She had assumed that he was beginning to feel for her what she felt for him. Maybe he didn't love her—not yet. But she was certain that he cared deeply for her. Did he care enough to stay with her, to be a father to their child and a real husband to her for the rest of their lives?

When she'd tried to broach the subject this morning, he'd cut her off sharply, mumbled something about getting Kane to keep an eye on her while he went out for some fresh air. A couple of minutes later, Morgan Kane told her that he'd be right outside her door if she needed him.

Simon had been gone for hours. Something was definitely wrong. The massive oak grandfather clock in the hall struck twice. Cleo jumped. Her nerves were shot, and her husband's mysterious need to be alone had increased her anxiety.

She glanced at the lunch Pearl had brought up for her around noon. She'd taken a couple of sips of the iced tea, nibbled on the potatoes and taken a bite out of the yeast roll. The remainder of the meal lay untouched on the tray atop the round end table.

She glanced up when she heard the outer door open. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Simon enter. Kicking the afghan off onto the floor, she stood up and walked to the open French doors that connected the sitting room to the bedroom.

“Simon?”

He looked at her, his face hard, his eyes cold. She shivered, apprehension spreading through her like wildfire.

“You shouldn't be up,” he said. “Go back and sit down and rest.”

“Where have you been? You've been gone for so long I'd begun to worry.”

“I'm sorry, Cleo, if I worried you. That's the last thing I wanted.” He moved across the room, taking slow, cautious steps, as if he had to be careful not to come too close. “I just needed time alone, to think things through.”

“What things?” Her heart raced madly. She clutched the sides of her satin robe.

“You're recovering from a pretty bad fall, and you've just found out that you're pregnant. This can wait, Cleo.”

“Wait until when?”

“Until you're better.” He turned around, removed his jacket and tossed it on the bed.

She stood there in the doorway, looking at his broad back and his wide shoulders. He removed his hip holster and laid his Beretta on the nightstand by his side of the bed.

“I want to know now,” she told him. “This mood you're in is all about my being pregnant, isn't it? About the bar
gain we made and the contract we signed when we got married.”

“I said this can wait!”

When she gasped, he turned sharply and saw the stricken look on her face. Dammit, why was she pressing him so hard? Why couldn't she just leave it alone for now? He was going to have to tell her the truth; she was going to force the issue and make him hurt her. He hadn't planned for this—for her wanting them to stay married. In the beginning, he'd been sure she'd be able to handle ending their marriage without any messy emotional displays. Now he wasn't so sure.

“You're going to leave, aren't you?” She looked at him, all the pain and disappointment showing plainly in her misty green eyes.

“Eventually,” he admitted. “But not yet. Not until I know you aren't in any danger. I'm going to stay as long as it takes for us to catch both our problem maker and our would-be killer.”

“I see.” She sighed deeply. “You still think they're two different people, don't you? Well, if that's the case, you might have to hang around longer than you'd intended. You wanted to be gone before my pregnancy became advanced, didn't you?”

“You knew from the beginning that this marriage was temporary,” he said. “You hired me for specific reasons, and once I've done my job I'll move on. I have plans for my future that don't include a wife or a child.”

Cleo could not control her tears. They gathered heavily in her eyes and spilled over, running down her face in torrents. “I—I don't mean anything to you, do I? What we've…these three weeks together, making love, sharing our days and nights, learning to truly like and trust each other. Has it all been a lie? Was being my passion
ate lover just a little something extra you threw in for no extra charge? Dammit, Simon, have you been pretending to care about me?”

Why was she doing this? Why couldn't she just accept things the way they were? Why did she have to analyze their relationship to death? Because despite her cool, levelheaded, businesswoman demeanor, Cleo was a loving, giving woman. A woman who felt things deeply. A woman who, when she gave herself fully and completely to a man, gave him her heart.

But he didn't want her heart. And he had no choice but to give it back to her, broken into pieces.

“I wasn't pretending,” he said truthfully. “I do care about you, Cleo, just not the way you want me to care. And not enough to stay with you and be a father to your child.”

She doubled over with the pain of understanding. She loved Simon Roarke. He did not love her. What could be more simple?

When he saw her double over, he rushed across the room and reached out for her. She jerked up and spread her hands in front of her, warning him off.

“Don't touch me.” She spoke the words in a low, calm, chillingly frosty voice.

“I want you to understand.” He dropped his outstretched hands to his sides. “I owe you that much.”

“You don't owe me anything, except to finish your job.” She turned around and went back into the sitting room.

Roarke followed her. “Don't walk away from me, Cleo. Even if you hate me right this minute, give me a chance to explain.”

She sat down on the love seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “What's there to explain? I thought that there was something between us, something strong enough to
build a real marriage on, but obviously I was mistaken. You want to finish this assignment and then you want out.”

Roarke entered the sitting room. “Yeah, you're right. I want out. I don't want to be married. And I do not want to be a father.”

“Fine. Good. We understand each other perfectly. Enough said.” Cleo clenched her teeth, trying not to cry. A lump the size of Texas formed in her throat, threatening to cut off her breathing.

Roarke sat down in the wingback chair across from Cleo. “You know that I was married once, a long time ago.” Why are you doing this? he asked himself. What good will it do to bare your soul to her? It won't change anything.

“Married and divorced,” Cleo said. “Yes, I know. That information was in your files.”

“What the files didn't tell you is why my marriage ended and why, sixteen years after my divorce, I'm still taking care of my ex-wife.”

Cleo uncrossed her arms and sat up straight, staring inquisitively at Roarke. “What do you mean you take care of your ex-wife?”

Leaning forward, he rested his arms on his thighs and dropped his clasped hands between his legs. “My mother died when I was too young to remember her, and my father got killed in a tractor accident when I was nine. He'd been a good guy, treated me okay, but wasn't much on affection. His sister and her husband raised me. They treated me like a hired hand on their farm. I couldn't wait to get away, so I joined the army at eighteen and never looked back.”

“What does your childhood history have to do with your ex-wife?”

“No one had ever loved me. Really loved me.” He bowed his head, hesitant to make eye contact with Cleo. “I met her when I was on leave, on vacation, in Florida. She was blond and beautiful and she smothered me with love.”

“Your ex-wife?”

“Hope. Hope Allister. We had a wild fling. I thought we were both in love. Before my leave ended, we got married. That's when things changed.”

Part of Cleo wanted to know more, to know every detail of Simon's life, then maybe she could make some sense of what was happening to them. Another part of her wanted to tell him to stop talking, that she didn't want to know any more about Hope, the beautiful woman he'd once loved.

“How did things change?” Cleo asked.

“She wanted me to leave the army. She didn't want me going away on assignments. She didn't understand that I was doing what I wanted to do. That being in the Special Forces was my life. It's what I'd trained for, what I'd gone through hell to achieve.”

“So you got a divorce because she wanted you to leave the army and you wouldn't,” Cleo said.

“I wasn't quite that simple. It might have been if…if Hope hadn't gotten pregnant.”

Cleo felt as though someone had hit her square in the stomach and knocked all the breath out of her. “Pregnant?” Suddenly her lungs filled with air. She gasped. “You have a child?”

Not answering her question, Roarke continued, knowing if he deviated from the linear retelling of his past history, he might not be able to tell her everything. And Cleo had a right to know. Then maybe she'd be able to understand and someday forgive him.

“Even though the relationship was doomed, I stayed married to Hope until Laurie was nearly two years old. Looking back, I've wondered why the hell, if I'd stuck it out that long, I couldn't have just hung in there a few more years. Long enough to realize what was happening with Hope.” Roarke rubbed the palms of his hands up and down his thighs, then gripped his knees. “I was gone a lot. Off on assignments around the world. I thought our being apart would make things easier for both of us. It did for me, except I missed Laurie. But it didn't help Hope. As a matter of fact, it made things more difficult for her.”

“You have a daughter? She must be nearly grown now.” Cleo laid her hand over her tummy, the gesture purely protective maternal instinct. Her child had a half sister, one that she'd never know.

“Dammit, Cleo, will you stop interrupting!” Roarke shot out of the chair, every muscle in his body tense, his back ramrod straight, his big hands clenched. “If I didn't think I owed you this much—this truth about myself— I wouldn't relive the past. I wouldn't reopen all my old wounds. I wouldn't do this for any other reason, for any amount of money.”

Cleo slipped off the love seat and walked over to where Roarke stood gazing sightlessly out the windows, his back to her. She raised her hand, holding it over his back, but didn't touch him. Knotting her hand into a fist, she lowered it to her side.

Suddenly she knew, as if the truth had been staring her in the face all along, and someone had just now removed the veil from her eyes. Something terrible had happened to Roarke. Something so unbearable that it had changed his life forever and sealed off his heart, made it impossible for anyone's love to ever reach him again.

Something had happened to Laurie. Roarke's little girl
hadn't grown up. She had died and Roarke had buried all his love along with her.

“Go on, please,” Cleo said. “I won't interrupt again.”

His wide shoulders lifted and fell as he breathed deeply. “I found out later, from a distant cousin, that Hope had suffered from depression for years. Ever since she was around twelve and her father committed suicide. Hope had found his body. Her mother had a nervous breakdown shortly after that and died in a mental hospital.”

“Oh, how awful.”

“Anyway, when Laurie was two, Hope and I got a divorce. She even agreed to it. Of course she got custody of Laurie, and I got visitation rights. But I didn't see much of Laurie that next year. I was away most of the time. My career was very important to me.”

Cleo longed to put her arms around Roarke and comfort him, but she knew he wouldn't welcome her embrace. Not right now.

“Hope started drinking, but I didn't realize how bad the problem was until it was too late.” Roarke fingered the moiré drapes, then shoved aside the sheers and looked down into the yard. “One evening she got in the car with Laurie. According to the police, Hope was so intoxicated—” Roarke paused. His body jerked several times. “It was a one-car wreck. Laurie was thrown through the windshield. When the ambulance arrived, she was dead. Her neck was broken.”