faithful?”
“I said yes already!” she snapped. “Did you really spend the night alone last night?”
He smiled. “So you care a little, too?”
She shook her head much too vigorously, because his quick white smile, the beautiful smile that had seduced her, broadened, causing her blood to heat.
“Were you really alone?” she persisted, furious at him for being so attractive to her just because of a smile and at herself for being so susceptible to his virile brand of sexiness.
“I was. So, when you’re my wife, a wife who, for the record, refuses to sleep with me, will you expect me to answer questions like that if I choose not to come home some night?”
“Look … I shouldn’t have asked about last night. Forget I did it! I don’t care what you do ….”
“Okay.” Grinning, he held up his hands in a gesture of mock innocence. “But just in case you do care … a tiny bit … I spent the night alone like I said. I was in a houseboat in the swamp behind Belle Rose that I told you about. The only time I left it was when I built a fire on a muddy bank and cooked out.”
“What did you cook?”
“A squirrel. There’s not much to a squirrel. So it was a long, hungry night spent alone.”
She frowned. “You killed a little squirrel?”
“I threw my knife. He died in a flash.”
“I can’t believe you’d be so cruel!”
“What? Do you think I like killing animals? I like to eat. Do you think you’re morally superior because your meat comes in plastic-covered packages in the grocery store?”
Unable to refute his logic but not liking the thought of him eating a helpless, little squirrel any better than she originally had, she began to twirl a strand of her hair and fume as she stared into the distance.
“Look, I had to get away,” he said. “Firing everybody … you showing up saying you might be pregnant … was too much for one day. I didn’t want to be with you … or any other woman. I know it sounds unusual, going off alone into the wilderness on the spur of the moment, but it’s something I do fairly frequently when I need to chill. I’ll probably do it again during our marriage—if we’re married any time. Happy now?”
“I wish.”
“Okay. Back to the plan. We marry. At some point after our child is born, we go our separate ways. No settlement. Just custody arrangements.”
“Fine,” she agreed, feeling dismal at that prospect.
“That’s all you really want?”
“I don’t want any of this!”
“You wanted me that night,” he reminded her.
The memory of it, plus the knowledge that she still wanted him, was not her favorite fun fact.
“You knew how desperate I felt that night … because my father had just told me he was caught in a credit crunch and was on the verge of losing everything, including the bank, if the merger between his shipyard and Claiborne Energy didn’t work out.”
He nodded.
Knowing that she’d had a date with Logan that night to his grandfather’s eightieth birthday, her father had ordered her to do everything in her power to charm Logan and lull his suspicions that anything might be amiss with the Butler empire. But Logan had been interested only in Cici.
“I felt shy that night at Belle Rose when Logan abandoned me to dance with Cici. I didn’t know anyone. Then you started smiling at me from across the room. I smiled back and you came up to me and were so nice, I began to enjoy myself and open up. When you said you were involved with my father in that charity, I told you how worried I was about him. I had no idea you were planning to gang up with Hayes Daniels and accuse him of all those crimes or that maybe the only reason you took an interest in me was to get more information out of me.”
“I wasn’t planning anything. I had no idea your father was guilty of anything that night. Cici simply wanted to spend time with Logan, and she asked me to take care of you. Hayes didn’t clue me in about Mitchell until the next morning. But after the credit problems you’d hinted your father was having, I thought you must have known everything your father was doing and that you were involved. So I was furious at you for deceiving me … and seducing me. I thought maybe you did all that in an effort to buy my silence where your father was concerned. I called you because I wanted to give you a chance to defend yourself. When you wouldn’t take my calls, I took that to mean you were guilty.”
She hadn’t answered the phone because she’d thought him the most treacherous human being alive for seducing her to gain information about her father.
“I was very lonely that night, too,” he said. “Being with my family always makes me feel like I don’t know my place in the world. Then Logan abandoned you. And you were very, very beautiful.”
She blushed, feeling shyly pleased.
“You weren’t what I was expecting,” he said. “I thought you’d be more like your father but you were nothing like him. You swept me off my feet, as you probably know.”
Had he felt the same incredible rush of thrilling excitement in her presence she’d found in his? She wanted to believe that so much.
“Later I wondered if you’d been setting me up,” Jake said, killing the softness she’d been feeling toward him. “What about this pregnancy? Did you get pregnant on purpose? Maybe to buy me off?”
“You have to know I didn’t. I would never deliberately bring a baby into a mess like this! You seemed so nice that night, and idiot that I was, I trusted you enough to confide in you … and sleep with you.”
He stared into her eyes for a long time.
“Okay,” he muttered as he finally put the SUV into gear and pulled out into traffic. “Okay.”
“The morning after we slept together my father called me and told me about the missing money from the Houses for Hurricane Victims. He said you took it, and that you set him up.”
“Well, I didn’t. So do you always believe everything your father says?”
“I try to see his side of things … because he’s my father and the only parent I have left.”
“Look,” he growled, “I was nice to you that night because … Hell, I already told you why ….” He swore under his breath. “If I’m already damned in your eyes, why should I bother to defend myself?”
After that final question, the thick silence that fell between them grew increasingly strained.
Her mind drifted, and she remembered all too well how Jake had coaxed her to confide in him their first night together. He’d pretended to listen to her fears concerning her father and to understand; pretended to care about her, and, she, as always, too eager and made happy by any kindness, however small, had ended up in his bed.
But
