LITMIR.BIZ

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      “By accident.”

      “I’m sorry.” She sounded as feebleminded as she felt.

      “For what?” he bellowed. “For the way I found out I’d fathered a child, or that I found out at all? And don’t try telling me it’s none of my business then try to shoo me away, because it isn’t going to happen, Imogen.”

      How he must despise her! “I’m sorry you had to find out like this,” she mumbled.

      “You could have prevented it. You could have told me yourself, at the time.”

      “I—”

      “Let me guess why you didn’t.” The contempt in his tone seared her. “Donnelly genes didn’t measure up to what it takes to be a Palmer heir. It was easier to write the whole thing off as an accident. Erase the mistake before anyone found out about it. How am I doing so far, princess? Batting a hundred?”

      Too floored to refute such a ludicrous allegation, she stared at him. She’d opened her Pandora’s box so carefully. How had this secret escaped? Who could have told him, when the only people in town who knew were her mother and the family doctor?

      “I always thought your mother was a bitch,” he said savagely, “but I never wanted to believe you were cut from the same cloth. I never thought you capable of cold-blooded murder.”

      “Stop it!” She choked the words out, stirred by the unfairness of his accusation and his unjustified attack on Suzanne.

      “What else would you call abortion? You curled your aristocratic lip last night when you realized Sean and Liz had to get married, as you so prettily phrased it, but at least they didn’t take the easy way out and flush a child, rather than have it screw up their long-term plans.”

      “I didn’t, either!” she cried, hurt beyond measure that he’d leap to such a conclusion. But the ugly fact was, he’d made love to a stranger out of pity. He knew of her—that she belonged to the richest family in town, that she vacationed in the Alps and on the Riviera, had servants to cater to her needs and rode around town in the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine. But he’d never known her, the person she was inside. How could he be expected to understand what her reaction to the pregnancy might have been? “I didn’t have an abortion,” she said quietly. “I never even considered it.”

      It was his turn to be rendered speechless. Eventually, after a silence that thrummed with tension, he said, “Then what the hell happened to my child?”

      “She died, Joe.” The words fell into the room like marbles hitting glass. Their echo seemed to hang in the air forever.

      “What?” His horrified gaze burned holes in her. “How?”

      “She was stillborn.”

      The breath rushed out of him. “Stillborn?” he repeated hollowly, slumping into a chair.

      Witnessing his shock was like reliving her own when she’d first been told. The tears welled up, and she felt again that clutching emptiness no amount of sympathy or kindness had been able to fill. How her soul had ached during those terrible days.

      And how his was hurting now! “Why?” he asked, in that shell-shocked voice.

      “Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that over and over again? Why my baby? Why me?” And because he’d judged her so harshly to begin with, she asked, “And why you? Why not a man who cared enough for me to be by my side, to share the grief?”

      If only he’d reach out to her then, how willingly she’d have gone to him. They had lost a child—surely the greatest sorrow any two people could be asked to bear—and should have been able to draw comfort and strength from each other.

      But he did not. Instead, he swung his head in a slow arc, and she saw that his eyes had turned a winter-sky blue, the kind that comes after a blizzard, so hard and remote that she wondered if there was a spark of warmth or tenderness left in him.

      “If I had known, I would have been there,” he said. “But I did not know. You chose not to let me know.”

      “You left town,” she said, “and since you didn’t bother to say goodbye first, I took that as a clear message that you weren’t interested in keeping in touch.”

      “So you thought you’d punish me by keeping knowledge of my child from me? Or was it more a case of hushing up the whole business entirely so that no one would know you’d rolled in the hay with a peasant?”

      His first question gave her pause. She had been angry with him once the initial hurt of his desertion had subsided. It had been the only way she could cope. But his second accusation made her blush with shame.

      She’d couched it in more refined terms, of course, but Suzanne’s assessment had matched his. “Word of this cannot leak out,” she’d declared. “That anyone should learn of a Palmer giving birth to a Donnelly bastard is insupportable. I will not hear of it! It would ruin our fine family name!”

      Too heartsick to fight and too afraid of what the future held, Imogen the girl had gone along with her mother’s edict. She’d packed her bags and disappeared without a trace. Why not? Joe Donnelly had long since done the same thing, heading west on his beloved Harley-Davidson and leaving nothing behind but a cloud of dust.

      Still, Imogen, the woman, had to set the record straight. “I never—”

      “Don’t bother denying it,” Joe cut in. “Your face says it all.”

      Conscience-stricken, Imogen turned away, knowing she’d left it eight years too late to expect him to believe his being the father would have been reason enough for her to have adored their child.

      Her action seemed to infuriate him. Surging to his feet, he let fly with a string of curses and strode to the French window. She held her breath, anticipating another outburst. When one wasn’t forthcoming, she ventured another look at him.

      He stood with his back to her, one hand braced against the wall. The sun, half-hidden behind the branches of a tree, haloed his bowed head and the stiff, unyielding line of his shoulders. The atmosphere hummed with anger and suspicion.

      Just when Imogen thought she could bear the tension no longer, another knock came at the door. “Bellhop, Ms. Palmer.”

      She could not respond. Could not, if her life had depended on it, have navigated the stretch of carpet between her and the door. She was shaking. Shaking and empty and sick with useless regrets.

      Finally, Joe went over and opened the door. “Take the bags,” he told the man, passing him a tip, “and have Ms. Palmer’s car brought to the front. She’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”

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