Entry-Level Mistress

chapter 20



In the first week of October I was still pregnant. Only now, it wasn’t just my secret. Leanna knew and my mother knew. I still wasn’t talking to my father, and I hadn’t decided what to do about Daniel, even though my mom was adamant that waiting longer wouldn’t make anything easier. And with each day that passed, it was entirely possible that he would feel differently about me.

I knew she was right but I felt everything so intensely. How could such a brief relationship hurt three months after its end? There should be some rule of breakups, that the pain is equal to or lesser than the length of the relationship.

That Wednesday, late in the morning, I walked down the path to the studio. I’d been sleeping in a lot the last few weeks, and according to my mother and the doctor that was normal. But as normal as it might be, it made me feel guilty that I was wasting this time when I could work on my art with no limitations. After all, when I left here in three months, I would be on my own: no job, no home, and of course, pregnant.

I stopped still at the threshold of the studio, staring at the open door and the familiar silhouette within. Not only was Daniel the last person I expected to see, but also he was in my studio, mid-week, when no one except the housekeeping staff should be there.

Which was probably how he had gotten in. Of course.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. He turned to me and my eyes stung. I blinked quickly. No. I would not cry.

I scanned the room, searching for incriminating evidence, as if some symbol of my insidious feelings for him were stamped upon everything I touched. An open sketchbook in the corner gave me a sudden jolt when the dark slashes of ink reminded me of my fanciful attempts for a logo for Daniel’s new venture. Our affair had been less than two months in length. A span of time even a high schooler would consider short.

“I love you.”

My gaze snapped back to him.

Those three words. They’d been in my dreams ever since he’d first said them. As he’d said, they seemed to obliterate everything else. Almost everything. I wanted to scream and cry at the same time.

In all my youthful fantasies those words had held power, could transform everything. But now here Daniel was, looking heartbreakingly handsome and saying them again. Those three words changed nothing.

“So what?” I demanded, a cool anger at the injustice of it all filling my voice. “So you can come stalk me? Isn’t that what that model from the Ukraine did to you? I heard you had her thrown out of the club. Maybe I should have you thrown out.”

But I wasn’t certain why I was so angry, why I couldn’t accept that he clearly still wanted a relationship with me, and that since I admittedly loved him, and was carrying our child, it would make the most sense to be with him.

Except the past was still the past—one we didn’t talk about. And I didn’t want to be with a man as ruthless as my father.

“Emily.” Just my name, but he was walking toward me. So I stepped back, toward the open door, the outside. Where I could run. “Emily.”

The way he said my name that second time, it sounded the way he had said, “I love you.” It sounded the way my heart ached in the dark of the night. It felt tantalizingly right. Maybe I didn’t have to run. Maybe I could simply tell him I loved him too. That I hadn’t stopped loving him. That he was in every fiber of me all the time, influenced everything I did.

After all, he was here. Again. And he didn’t have any other reason to be. Maybe something had changed.

I couldn’t step back anymore anyway because suddenly he was around me. Holding me, breathing me in. Touching me. His hand on my belly in a way that stopped me cold.

No. Nononono. How did he know?

“Why are you here?” I forced the words out again, colder this time. He seemed to sense my shift in mood but his arms tightened around me, as if he could hold me captive.

“Because I want to be there for you.”

I pushed out of his arms and turned, furious, desperate. The guilty, wary expression on his face confirmed my fear. “You’re here because you think I’m pregnant. Who the hell told you that? Leanna?”

“No, your father.”

I stopped again, stunned. “Why would he do that? Why would he say that to you?”

“Emily, aren’t you?”

But I couldn’t get past what he had said.

“You spoke with my father?” And Daniel was still alive? My father hadn’t killed him? Daniel hadn’t trapped him into committing another crime?

“He came to see me. He didn’t think I should have to go through what your mother put him through. Not knowing you. I want to know our child.”

I struggled against the darkness that clouded my mind and my soul. Against the realization that my father had betrayed me again. Against the impossibility of my father and Daniel having a peaceful conversation. But most of all—

“You’re here because you think I’m having your baby,” I said, my chest aching. “I understand now. Well, that’s not a good enough reason to be together. In fact, it’s a horrible reason!”

“What is a good enough reason?”

If he was asking that question then there wasn’t a reason good enough. I couldn’t trust him. I needed to send him away, to deny anything that might tie us together.

“You’re having my child,” he said finally. Exactly the wrong thing to say. Everything was ruined. Instead of having space to figure this out on my own, he was here, crowding my thought, making all of the choices just about the mistake we made that night on the beach. How could my future end up resting on that one fateful moment?

“What do you want from me?” I demanded.

“I want another chance.”

No.

“Daniel—”

But it was his turn to stop me.

“Wait, Emily. We’ve spent the whole time we’ve known each other avoiding talking about the past.”

What? Now he brought up the past? I didn’t know I could be so angry.

“Exactly!” I raged, and I saw him flinch. “Now you’re asking me to spend my future with you. I’m saying no because we have the past standing between us. It was there from the beginning and then, when maybe we could have put it behind us, I dragged it back in.”

Silence met my impassioned speech and I searched his thoughtful expression for some sign that he understood.

“Okay,” he said finally. “You’re right. So let’s talk about it.”

I sucked in my breath. I felt strange, so light inside, abuzz with the possibility that he might actually understand.

Stared at him. Went from despair to hope in a nanosecond.

He was daring me. I felt it. And the moment was ridiculously powerful, like those midnight moments of creative brilliance just before I turned them into art. I could jump in, seize it, and if we worked it out everything could be wonderful. But what if we did this, talked about the past, and all that love wasn’t strong enough?

“I blamed your father for betraying my father,” he started, his eyes intent upon me as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, “for driving him to suicide and for guiding my mother toward an early death.”

I didn’t want to say no to him again. I wasn’t strong enough to say no. No woman should have to be. I just wanted to be loved, for him to look at me that way always.

“My father did have an affair with your mother,” I said slowly, “and he’s ultimately the reason he went to jail. Not you.”

“But my father chose to kill himself.”

“And your mother chose her pills.”

His eyes closed. I wanted to throw myself around him and take it back, pretend everything was easy and light and I could be with him without all of this. Except the words were out there.

He took a deep breath that moved his whole body and then he opened his eyes. Met mine.

“Mark Anderson has paid for his mistakes, both financially and legally. I didn’t know anything about his new deal. In fact, I told my private investigator to stop looking into your family shortly after we started sleeping together.”

I took that in. Private investigator.

“You … investigated me?” It was like we were characters on a TV drama, all of the events in our lives so ridiculous and fantastical. Surely this wasn’t real life. Real people didn’t bankrupt themselves to seek revenge, have private investigators, go to work for their enemies, sleep with their enemies, get pregnant at twenty-one by their enemies.

I shook my head at my thoughts, not sure if I wanted to laugh or cry.

“I’ve had a file on you for years. Or rather, you were part of your family’s file.”

I nodded slowly. I could understand that he would have.

“So why did you stop?”

I searched his face for honesty, stared deep into his eyes as if that part of his body was actually a window to his soul instead of just a dense collection of molecules.

“Because it was pretty obvious that you weren’t a danger to my company.” He laughed. “To me and my heart maybe, but not my company.”

My lips quirked up at that briefly but I couldn’t give in yet.

We stood there facing each other. All of it between us. All of it so final.

“We’re not that different, Emily.” As he said the words, it felt right. Felt true. “And as ugly as the past is, we understand each other.” I nodded, reached out for him. When he grabbed my hands, drawing me closer even as he pressed them against his chest, I thought I might fall from the sensation of touching him again. “I want to be a father to our children. I want to be the man who goes to bed with you every night and wakes up with you every morning.”

My breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think. I wanted too much …

“All right,” I whispered finally, breaking my hands free of him and throwing myself against him, around him, glorying in the sudden freedom of being able to do so again. My chest was pressed against his and I imagined it desirous and opening like a flower, a meeting of our two hearts, surreal and wonderful, colorful and exuberant. “I want to be open. I want to give us another chance.”

I wasn’t certain that he understood, that he had that sudden melding vision too, but he breathed in deeply, his chest seeming to expand against mine.

In the next moment he was holding me tight, his breath ragged against my ear.

Then he pulled away, captured my face in his hands and closed the space between us.

Everything was different about this kiss. This was the kiss of a man who was really, truly in love with me. The knowledge was shattering, and terrifying,

This kiss, this love, was no game.

And I was twenty-one, pregnant with his child, just beginning to discover my own purpose in life.

“Wait—”

“Make me the happiest man,” he murmured against my lips. He sounded happy, lighter, the way I felt inside, but there was more I needed to say.

“I wanted revenge. I didn’t want to make you happy.”

He laughed, kissed my ear. I turned my head slightly.

Daniel dropped his hands, held them open to me even as I stepped back.

“Emily.” My name on his lips was almost a sigh, a plea. “If you want to make me the most miserable man on earth, that would be fine too. Just … tell me you love me and tell me you’ll marry me, and tell me, please tell me, if I’m really going to be a father.”

Marry. That’s what he had meant by happy.

Marry him.

Marry Daniel Hartmann, the man I had hated. The man I now loved.

I sucked in a sob, stared at him helplessly. His eyes were alight. As if he knew what I was trying to say but he was searching my face … waiting.

“Emily?”

“I—” I hesitated. “What if I’m too young for this?”

He paled. Sucked in a breath. “Every time I said you were too young, it was me looking for an excuse to run away. Is that what you want to do?”

No. I didn’t want to run, but I needed … something. More.

“If I tell you I’m not pregnant, would you still want to be with me? Still be asking me to marry you? Even though we met only five months ago?”

He looked away, down, ran a hand through his hair. He seemed agitated and barely in control. I wanted to reach out, soothe him, but at the same time my arms were wrapped tightly around myself. I needed him to say the right thing. I needed to know that this biological accident wasn’t the only reason he loved me. The human mind was a wily thing; it could make us think all sorts of notions to force ideals and reality to match.

“When your father came,” he started finally, his lashes lifting, his green eyes focusing fully on me. I hung on his words, desperate. “All I could think was, now I have a reason to go back to Barrows. Now she can’t turn me away.”

“It doesn’t really work that way,” I murmured. He needed to understand that I did have a choice. That we did. “I … I am pregnant.”

He lit up, started to reach for me and then stopped when I raised a hand. I watched him, trembling, needing to say this last thing.

“But that doesn’t mean we have to get married. Or even be together. I would have told you, eventually … ” I dropped off.

His gaze searched my face, his body tense. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t say no and I didn’t want to.

“Daniel, I love you,” I said helplessly.

“Thank god,” he whispered and then there wasn’t any holding back. He stepped forward, took me in his arms, against the wall, my lips under his finally again. He kissed me hungrily, everywhere, and I gasped under his touch, pulling him closer.

It was some time later, sated and warming ourselves in a patch of grassy sunlight, that I curled against his side, savoring the feel of his fingers running through my hair.

“Emily Hartmann,” I said softly, playing with the strangeness of the name on my tongue. “That is not something I ever in my life imagined I’d be saying.”

“It sounds right.”

It did and I laughed. All of it was so ridiculous. “I should just tell my father this was my plan all along. To ruin your life by making you fall in love with me.” As soon as I said it, I thought maybe it was too soon to be making jokes.

But he laughed, too, and the rich sound wrapped around me.

“I like your style of revenge,” he whispered against my ear, following the words with his tongue.

I smiled against his cheek, stroked my fingers down his loosened tie before I closed my fist around the length and pulled him even closer.

“That’s good,” I said, my voice light and teasing, “because I intend to spend a lifetime making you pay.”