“From when?” Claiborne insisted.
“This summer.”
“This summer, when? What month?”
“I think it was July.”
“You think it was July! Hadn't you better do more than think?”
“It was.”
A look of gloating turned Herb Anderson's face more detestable than ever.
“July what?” Claiborne pressed on, facing the calamity head-on, in spite of his growing dread.
“July fourth.”
“And what happened on July fourth?”
Catherine held her breath again, embarrassment for Clay making her acutely uncomfortable now.
“We went on a blind date.”
The room grew church-silent. Catherine sensed everyone counting off two and a half months since then.
Claiborne's chin hardened, his jaw protruded. “And?”
Only the soft hiss of the fire spoke while Clay considered, his eyes briefly lighting on Catherine. “And I absolutely refuse to answer another question until Catherine and I speak alone,” he ended, surprising her.
“You, Clay Forrester, will answer my question here and now!” his father exploded, rapping a fist on the desk top in frustration. “Did you or did you not have relations with this woman on July Fourth?”
“With all due respect, Father, that is none of your business,” Clay said in a tightly controlled voice.
Mrs. Forrester put a trembling hand to her lips, beseeching her son with carefully made-up eyes to deny it all here and now.
“You say this is none of my business when this man threatens to bring a paternity suit against you, and to ruin your reputation along with mine in this city?”
“You've taught me well enough that a man makes his own reputation. As far as you're concerned, I don't think there's anything to worry about.”
“Clay, all I want is the truth. If the answer is no, then for God's sake, quit protecting the girl and say no. If it's yes, admit it and let's get it over with.”
“I refuse to answer until she and I can talk privately. Obviously we were both left out of any earlier discussion. After we've had a chance to talk, I'll give you my answer.” He gestured to Catherine, motioning her to follow, but she was too stunned to move. This was one turn of events that was totally unexpected!
“Now, wait just one goddam minute there, sonny!” Herb Anderson hissed. “You ain't gonna go skipping out on me and leaving me lookin' like some jackass don't know which end is up! I know exactly what your game is! You take her outa here and pay her off with some measly couple o' hundred bucks and shut her up and your problem is solved, huh?”
“Let's go.” Clay made a move to pass Anderson.
“I said, hold on!” Anderson stuck his pudgy fingertips in Clay's chest.
“Get out of my way.” Some grim note of warning made Anderson comply. Clay strode toward the door, curtly advising Catherine, “You'd better come along with me if you know what's good for you.”
She walked toward Clay like a puppet, even while her father continued his tirade at their backs. “Don't you get no ideas about givin' her the money to get rid of the kid either, you hear me! And just see to it you keep your hands offa her, lover boy. She better not have no more complaints or I'll have the law down on you before the night is out!”
Face scorching, insides trembling, Catherine followed Clay into the foyer. She assumed he would lead her to another room of the house, but instead he stalked to the front door, flung it wide and ordered, “Let's take a ride.” It took her off-guard and rooted her to the parquet, quite involuntarily. Realizing she hadn't followed, he turned. “We've got some talking to do, and I'll be damned if I'll do it in the same house with all of our parents.”
Still she hesitated, her blue eyes wide, mistrusting. “I'd rather stay here or go for a walk or something.” Not even the blazing color in her cheeks softened him. Her hesitation only made Clay more unyielding.
“I'm not giving you an alternative,” he stated unequivocally, then turned on his heel. From the library came the sound of her father's voice, badgering the Forresters further. Seeing no alternative, she finally followed Clay outside.
Chapter 2
A silver Corvette was parked now in the horseshoe-shaped driveway behind her family's sedan. Without waiting, Clay yanked a door open and got in, then sat glaring straight ahead while she tried to quickly measure the risk of going for a ride with him. After all, she knew nothing about him. Did he have a temper like her father? Was he capable of violence when cornered this way? What would he do to keep her from making trouble in his life?
He glanced back to find her looking balefully over her shoulder at the front door as if help would step through it at any moment.
“Come on, let's get this over with.” His choice of words did little to reassure her.
“I—I really don't care to go for a ride,” she stammered.
“Don't tell me you're afraid of me!” he taunted with a dry laugh. “It's a little late for that, isn't it?” He started the engine without taking his insolent eyes off her. She moved at last, only to realize, once she was in the car, that there was one eventuality she hadn't considered. He'd kill them both before this was over! He drove like a maniac, throwing the car into gear and careening down the brick driveway while manicured shrubbery blurred past the windows. At the road, he scarcely braked, changing gears with a screech and a lurch, then tearing at breakneck speed through a maze of streets that were unfamiliar to her. He slammed his hand against a cassette that hung in the tape deck, sending throbbing rock music through the car. She couldn't do anything about his driving but she reached over and lowered the volume. He angled her a sidelong glance, then stepped a little harder on the gas. Obstinately she wedged herself into her seat and tried to ignore his childish antics, deciding to let him get it out of his system.
He steered one-handed, just to show her he could.
She sat cross-legged, just to show him she could.
They sailed around corners, up curving hills, past strange street signs until Catherine was totally lost. He took a sharp right-hand curve, gunned his way into a sharper left, flew between two stone gate markers onto gravel where they fishtailed before climbing into a pocket of wooded land. The headlights flew across a sign: PARK HOURS 10:00 A.M. to—but the lights moved too fast for Catherine to catch the rest. At the top of the last incline they broke onto a parking lot surrounded on all sides by trees. He stopped the car much as he'd driven it—too fast! She was forced to break her forward pitch with a hand on the dash or sail through the windshield!
But still she stubbornly refused to comment or to look at him.
Satisfied, anyway, that he'd managed to budge her from that damn uppity cross-kneed pose, he cut the engine and turned to her. But he remained silent, studying her dim profile, knowing it made her uncomfortable, which suited his purpose.
“All right,” Clay said at last in the driest of tones, “what kind of game are you playing?”
“I wish it were a game. Unfortunately, it's very real.”
He snorted. “That I don't doubt one bit. I want to know why you're trying to pin the blame on me.”
“I understood your reluctance to answer with our parents present, but here, between just the two of us, there's no further need to play dumb. Not when we both know the truth.”
“And just what the hell is the truth?”
“The truth is that I'm pregnant and you're the father.”
“I'm the father!” He was in a high state of temper now, but she found his shouting preferable to his driving.
“You sound slightly outraged,” she said levelly, giving him a sideways glance.
“Outraged isn't the word for me right now! Did you really think I'd fall for that kangaroo court back there?” He thumbed over his shoulder.
“No,” she answered. “I thought you'd flatly deny ever having laid eyes on me and that would be the end of that. We would go our separate ways and take up our lives where we'd lef
t off.”
Her unruffled detachment took some of the wind from his sails. “It's beginning to look like I should have.”
“I'd survive,” she said tonelessly.
Baffled, he thought, she's an odd one, so composed, almost cold, unconcerned. “If you can survive without me, tell me why you created that scene in the first place.”
“I didn't; my father did.”
“I suppose it was entirely his idea to storm our house tonight.”
“That's right.”
“You had nothing to do with it,” he added sarcastically.
At last Catherine grew upset, losing her determination to remain unruffled. She whirled sideways in her seat and let him have it. “Before you say one more thing in that . . . that damnably accusing voice of yours, I want you to know that I don't want one damn thing from you! Not one!”
“Then why are you here, picking the flesh from my bones?”
“Your flesh, Mr. Forrester?” she parried. “Your flesh is the last thing I want!”
He pointedly ignored her double entendre. “Do you expect me to believe that after all the accusations that have been hurled at me tonight?”
“Believe what you will,” she said, resigned again, turning away. “I don't want anything but to be left alone.”
“Then why did you come?” When she only remained silent, he insisted again, “Why!”
Obstinately she remained mute. She wanted neither his sympathy nor his money nor his name. All she wanted was for tomorrow to hurry and get here.
Antagonized by her stubborn indifference, he grabbed her shoulder roughly. “Listen, lady, I didn't—”
She jerked her shoulder, trying to free it from his grasp. “My name is Catherine,” she hissed.
“I know what your name is!”
“It took you some time to remember it, though, didn't it?”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Let go of my shoulder, Mr. Forrester, you're hurting me.”
He dropped his hand, but his voice zeroed in, slightly singsongy now. “Oh, I get it. The lady is feeling abused because I didn't recognize her right off the bat, is that it?”
She denied him an answer, but felt herself blushing in the darkness.
“Do I sense a little contradiction there? Either you want recognition from me or you don't. Now which is it?”
“I repeat, I don't want anything from you except to be taken home.”
“When I take you back, it'll be when I'm satisfied about what I'm being threatened with.”
“Then you can take me back now. I'm not threatening anything.”
“Your mere presence in my home was a threat. Now let's get on with what you want for a payoff . . . that is, if you're really pregnant.”
The thought had never occurred to her that he'd doubt it.
“Oh, I'm pregnant all right, make no mistake about that.”
“Oh, I don't intend to,” he said pointedly. “I don't intend to. I mean to make damn sure that baby is not mine.”
“Are you saying you really do not remember having sexual intercourse with me last Fourth of July?” Then she added in a satirically sugary tone, “You'll notice I do not mistakenly call it making love, like so many fools are prone to do.”
The dark hid the eyebrow he cocked in her direction, but it couldn't hide the cocky tone of his voice. “Of course, I remember. What does that prove? There could have been a dozen others.”
She'd been expecting this sooner or later, but she wasn't expecting the anger it evoked, the way she simply had to fight back, no matter how degrading it was to have to. “How dare you say such a thing when you know perfectly well there weren't!”
“Now you're the one who sounds outraged. Promiscuous females have to be prepared to be doubted. After all, there's no way to prove paternity.”
“No proof is necessary when it's the first time!” She smoldered, wondering why she wasted her breath on him. Without warning the overhead light came on. In its beam, Clay Forrester looked like she'd just thrown ice water on him.
“What!” he exclaimed, genuinely stunned. “Turn that thing off,” she ordered, turning her face sharply away.
“Like hell I will. Look at me.” Something had changed in his voice, but it made it even more impossible to face him.
The view outside the window was totally black but she studied it as if for answers. Suddenly a hand grabbed her cheeks, the fingers sinking into them as he forced her to look at him. She glared into his surprised face as if she hated every feature of it, gritting her teeth because she didn't.
“What are you saying?” Intense gray eyes allowed her no escape. She was torn by the wish to have him know nothing of her and the equally strong wish to let him know everything. He was, after all, the father of the child she carried.
He stared into her imprisoned face, wanting to deny her words, but unable to. He tried to remember last July fourth more clearly, but they'd had too much wine that night.
“You're hurting me again,” she said quietly, making him realize he still held her cheeks imprisoned in his grasp.
He dropped his hand, continuing to study her. She had a face that wasn't too easy to forget: shapely, narrow nose; long cheeks dusted with a suggestion of freckles; blue eyes trying hard not to blink, meeting him squarely now within long, sandy lashes. Her mouth was sullen, but memory flashed him a picture of it smiling. Her hair was shoulder-length, blond on blond, tabby-streaked, its bangs feathered back but falling in alluring wisps onto her forehead. It curled hither and thither around her long neck. She had a tall, thin frame. He suspected, although he could not clearly remember, she was shaped the way he liked his women shaped: long-limbed, hollow-hipped and not overly breasty.
Like Jill, he thought.
Sobered at the thought of Jill, he again fell to trying to remember what had passed between himself and this woman.
“I . . .” Catherine began, then asked with less acid in her voice, “will you turn out that light?”
“I think I have a right to see you during this sticky conversation we're having.”
She had no choice but to be studied like a printout from a lie-detector test. She tolerated it as long as she could before turning away, asking, “You don't remember, do you?”
“Parts of it, I do, but not all.”
“You struck me as a man of experience, one who'd know a virgin every time.”
“If you're asking me how often I do things like that, it's none of your business.”
“I agree. It's none of my business . . . but I wasn't asking. I was only defending myself, which I had no intention of doing in the first place. You are the one who seemed to be asking how often I'd done things like that, and no girl likes to be called promiscuous. I only wanted to point out that it was undeniably my first time. I assumed you'd have known it.”
“Like I said, my memory is a little fuzzy. Suppose I believe you—there could have been others after me.”
That brought her anger back in full force. “I have no intention of sitting here and being insulted by you any further!” she spit out. Then she opened the door and got out. He wasn't far behind her, but she stalked off into the dark, her shoes crunching gravel, gone before he could storm around to the other side of the car.
“Get back here!” he shouted into the dark, his hands on his hips.
“Go to hell!” she yelled from somewhere down the road.
“Just where do you think you're going?”
But she just kept on walking. He broke into a run, following her shadowy form, angered more than he could say by her stony insistence that she wanted nothing from him.
She felt his hand grab her arm and swing her around in the dark. “Dammit, Catherine, get back to the car!” he warned.
“And do what!” she exclaimed, turning to face him, fists clenched at her sides, “Sit and listen to you call me the equivalent of a whore? I've taken that kind of abuse from my father, but I certainly don't have to sit still and take it
from you!”
“All right, I'm sorry, but what do you expect a man to say when he's confronted with an accusation like yours?”
“I can't answer your question, not being a man myself. But I thought a—a worldly stud like you would know the truth, that's all!”
“I'm no worldly stud, so knock it off!”
“All right, so we're even.”
They stood in the dark, unmoving combatants. She wondered if he could be as experienced as he'd seemed that night and yet not recognize the fact of her virginity. He, meanwhile, wondered if a girl of her age could possibly have remained a virgin all that time. He guessed her to be twenty or so. But in this day and age, twenty was old, sexually. Again he strove to remember anything about that night, how she'd acted, if she'd been in pain, if she'd resisted. All he knew for sure was that if she had resisted in any way or asked him to stop, he would have. Wine or no wine, he was no rapist!
Giving up, he said cajolingly, “You must have done all right. I never knew the difference.”
His chauvinistic remark riled her so swiftly she lost good sense and swung on him, giving him a good one with her knuckles in the middle of his breastbone.
Caught off-guard, he gasped and stumbled one surprised step backward. “Ouch, that hurt, goddammit!”
“Oh, that's rich! That's so rich I could throw up! I must have done all right! Why, you insufferable egotistical goat! Telling me I must have done all right when you're the one who can't even remember clearly!”
Nursing his bruised chest, he muttered, “Christ, are you always like this?”
“I don't know. This is a first for me. How do your pregnant girlfriends usually react?”
Wary now, he was careful not to touch her. “What do you say we stop trading insults, okay? Let's just forget our sexual histories and own up to the fact that we went out on a blind date and gave each other a little refreshment for the night, and take it from there. You say you were a virgin, but you can't prove it by me.”
“The dates will bear it out. The baby is due on the sixth of April. That's the only other proof I have that it was you.”
“Pardon me if I seem dense, but since you claim you don't want anything from me, why are you trying so hard to convince me?”