Читать книгу My Baby, Your Son - Anne Peters - Страница 10

April was proud of the steadiness of her voice. Inside, she was aquiver with nerves. These past two days at Cliff House had been as much heaven as hell. Heaven was find- ing it as warmly familiar as a cozy old blanket. Hell, the fact that Marje was no longer there to make it home.

Heaven had been the nostalgia, the memories of glorious summers that seemed so much more real and immediate here, now. Hell were those selfsame memories for they in- cluded—no, prominently featured, Jared O’Neal.

Thinking of him had invariably started her agonizing once again about how to approach him about Tyler. Should she go with her feelings, those of outrage and hurt at his betrayal, and coldly demand an accounting? How could you not have let me know that our child is alive? And living with you? Should she corner him, pin him down? Insist he give her an answer, demand access to her child?

Or should she go with the advice of her attorney, which was to keep past grievances out of it and negotiate?

Her legal position, short of a messy lawsuit, was shaky. Her signature was on the document giving the child up for adoption. Jared O’Neal was the name she had declared as the child’s father on the birth certificate. He had every right to the boy, whereas she….

“I have every right, too,” she had exclaimed. “I didn’t know….”

“Which is why in this instance ignorance just might be an excuse under the law,” her attorney had mused. “If it should come to a suit But be warned, the cost in terms of publicity and emotional trauma will be high for all con- cerned.”

By this morning, April had made up her mind to ap- proach Jared with an olive branch in hand. After all, he had always been a reasonable, a most compassionate, person.

Now, however, confronted by the mask of ice that was Jared O’Neal’s face, and raked by a gaze that was clearly intended to freeze her out, April wanted nothing so much as to turn tail and run, to let her lawyer have at him.

But through years of performing before an audience, pre- ceded by a lifetime of the strictest discipline, she had per- fected the ability to appear poised and serene in even the worst of circumstances.

And so she managed to maintain a pleasant smile as the postmistress said, “We were just talkin’ about you, Miz Bingham. Weren’t we, Jared?”

Jared’s reply was a noncommittal mutter. He still hadn’t returned April’s greeting.

When April realized that he had no intentions of ac- knowledging her presence at all, the stab of hurt this caused both angered and surprised her. She would have thought her defenses stronger than that. She had worked so hard to shore them up. As an entertainer, having her work con- stantly scrutinized and torn apart by fans and critics alike came with the territory. She’d had to develop an elephant’s hide or perish as an artist.

So why would the rudeness of this one man cause her even a moment’s discomfort?

The answer was as obvious as it was immutable—the man was the father of her child. That made him, if no longer special, at least different from every other man in that he had once possessed her heart and body. They had been in love.

Or, at least, she had been—if indeed that fairy-tale state existed. In those glorious days that long-ago summer, sev- enteen years old and incredibly naive, she had believed it did.

But now, at twenty-eight, she knew better than to put her faith in fairy tales. First Jared O’Neal and, later, Montgom- ery Cedars, had shattered her girlish illusions.

Still, she had hoped that the bond between Jared and herself, tenuous though the events of the past might have made it, would enable them to deal with each other civilly. At least where Tyler was concerned.

And so, maybe the twinge of pain Jared’s barely veiled contempt was causing her was merely disappointment at having that hope dashed. Not that she would let him see he still had the power to wound her.

“I’m glad to run into you here,” she told him, keeping her tone civil, though it took some effort. “I was going to call you later today.”

“Really?” His tone was one of complete disinterest. “A sick pet?”

“No, of course not. I—”

“In that case, you’ll excuse me.” Brushing past her, Jar- ed strode out the door without a backward glance.

Stunned, April almost let him get away with it. But then she recalled the promise she had made to herself, the prom- ise to take charge. “Jared!”

Leaving the postmistress looking intrigued, April hurried after him. She caught him out on the sidewalk. “Jared.”

He neither turned nor stopped walking.

April half ran to come abreast of him. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“There’s not a word you can say that I want to hear.”

“Oh, really?” April snapped, his scorn blasting the last of her good intentions to smithereens. Gritting her teeth and blessing her long legs, she grimly matched his stride. “How does the word ‘conspiracy’ strike you?”

No response.

“Or maybe the term ‘kidnapping’ would be more appli- cable.”

That stopped him in his tracks.

April stalked past him, then spun around. Folding her arms across her chest, she met his glare without waver. “I will have you charged with either or both,” she said. “If you force me to.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Maybe.” She angled her chin in a gesture of challenge.

Jared ground his back teeth.

Neither blinked as they stared coldly into each other’s eyes. April was damned if she was going to give him even a glimpse of her shattered nerves because she knew she’d be lost if she did. He would emotionally flatten her like a steamroller for the simple reason that he could. After all, she was the vulnerable one in the showdown to come. She wanted what he already had.

“Kidnapping what?” he finally demanded, as though he didn’t already know the answer, ludicrous though it was. “Or who?”

“Tyler.” The name came out of April’s constricted throat in a croaky whisper. Angry with herself for the innate cowardice that even now made her want to retreat from this confrontation, April cleared her throat. “I want Tyler.”

“Tyler is nothing to you,” Jared growled, doing his ut- most to control a burgeoning rage he knew was caused by fear as much as anything else. “Nothing.”

“He is my son.”

“Your son?” The harshly whispered pronoun was laced with such bitterness and suppressed rage, April instinctively shrank back.

But not far enough. Jared gripped her arm. Jerking her out of the path of other pedestrians, many of whom were eyeing them with avid curiosity, he all but dragged her into the relative privacy of a recessed store entrance. There, his formidable bulk shielded April from inquisitive glances. She doubted, however, that he’d arranged it that way out of chivalry. He was clearly livid.

“Now you listen to me,” he snarled, impaling her with his eyes. “That boy is mine. Only mine.” His face was as close as a lover’s, but there was nothing in the least lov- erlike in his expression. “You gave away any claim you had when you got rid of him like so much excess bag- gage.”

“No!” With a strength fueled by desperation, April yanked her arm out of Jared’s grip and raised her hands beseechingly. “Jared, for heaven’s sake. You know I never did that. My mother—”

“Ah, yes,” Jared interjected with a grimace of distaste. “Your mother.”

“Did what she thought was best,” April defended out of habit. Certainly not out of conviction. “But believe me, I knew nothing about any of it.”

“Yeah, right.” Jared averted his face so he wouldn’t have to look at her to see the distress that could almost make him believe she was telling the truth. Almost. “Poor April, always the innocent victim.”

“No!”

“Damn straight, no!” Jerking his face back toward her, Jared spoke through clenched teeth. “As in no way. No way do I believe you, and no way are you getting your hands on my son. He is not a thing you can keep or reject like the ring you tossed back in my face.”

“The ring?” April stared at him, bewildered. He could only mean his fraternity ring. She’d been on cloud nine the day he had given it to her as a token of his love. And she had sunk into the depths of despair the day it had disap- peared.

Which had been the same day she had confessed to her mother that she was pregnant. Her last day at Cliff House. Because the very next morning, her mother had put her on a plane to London. Marjorie had written in her journal that day.

I think Grace is overreacting. And my little April is so distressed that I telephoned Joshua in London and pleaded with him to intervene on his daughter’s behalf. I am heartbroken but not really surprised that, as usual, my brother shirked his responsibilities and refused…

Reading it all these years later, April had cried. Her fa- ther was dead and could answer no questions, but she had often wondered why he’d been so seemingly content to give her mother free reign.

Perhaps if he’d taken a stand, she would not now be in this untenable situation with Jared O’Neal.

“What are you talking about?” Biting her lip, April blinked back the moisture that had risen into her eyes. In his present frame of mind, Jared would probably see her tears as a sign of weakness and guilt. “I never tossed that ring—”

“Of course you didn’t. That would have taken courage.” Jared’s jaw flexed, remembering. “No, you had your mother do it for you.”

“You’re wrong.” April felt as though she were in a quagmire of misunderstandings and trickery, and sinking fast. What was he talking about? When would her mother have done this? Why? Grace had sworn to her that she hadn’t seen the ring.

And she had also sworn, as she’d hustled the heartbroken and hysterical April to the airport, that she hadn’t seen Jar- ed. More lies?

Oh, Mother. April’s shoulders sagged beneath the weight of so much treachery, so much manipulation. “Jared…”

“Spare me.” Jared didn’t want to hear her excuses, her lies. “I don’t give a damn, about you or the ring. Though just for the record, it’s in my desk drawer. Come by and check it out. Or, better still, I’ll mail it to you since I can’t stand the sight of it.”

Or of you. Though he didn’t say it, it was there in his face for April to see. She shivered. “Then why do you keep it?”

“To remind myself never to get into a situation like that again.”

“Did it work?” April was surprised to hear herself ask. She fully expected Jared to snarl some scathing reply.

But he didn’t. He contemplated her in brooding silence for several long seconds during which April could hear every one of her heartbeats as loud as a drum. Such a ter- rible pain clouded his eyes that April couldn’t help but be touched by it. She reached out to him with her hand, un- formulated words of regret, perhaps even apology, on her lips.

But before she could either touch him or speak, Jared pivoted and walked away.

It struck her anew then, the enormity of all she had lost. And she ached. She grieved. She mourned the loss of in- nocence—her own as well as Jared’s—that inevitably was the legacy of betrayal.

“Oh, Jared,” she murmured, and her throat burned like acid from her unshed tears. To hide her emotions, she turned to stare without focus at the window display in front of which she found herself. It consisted of tools of some sort. Nothing April would have recognized even had she tried. Or cared.

There is so much I didn’t know, she thought wearily. And such a lot that Jared knew nothing of. Why couldn’t he have been reasonable? Why couldn’t he at least have given her a chance?

She closed her eyes and tried to gather strength. The confrontation had drained her, left her raw. It was exactly the kind of thing she had been told by her doctor to avoid.

Rest, rest, and still more rest was what he had prescribed after her collapse on the concert stage in the middle of her most recent tour. Exhaustion had been cited as the cause. April had been ordered to take a minimum of three months off.

It had caused a rescheduling nightmare, this breakdown of hers. Her mother had had to pull strings, call in all sorts of favors, to arrange for this inconvenient—Grace’s word— hiatus.

“We’ll lose a fortune in ticket sales,” she had fumed, pacing the floor of the Paris hotel suite. Though April was sitting right there on the brocaded settee, it was Dr. Shi- mons and Marcus Bingham she was addressing. “Not to mention the damage to April’s reputation should it get out that she’s a temperamental diva, an unreliable performer. Really, April, are you sure?”

“Positive,” the doctor had said in April’s stead.

To which Marcus, who had rushed to Paris from Beijing when he’d heard of his sister’s collapse, had added, “If you’d stop being April’s manager long enough to be her mother, Mother, maybe you’d have recognized the state of her exhaustion and this so-called calamity could have been avoided. Though personally I think it’s the best thing that could’ve happened to her.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning she’s a human being, Mother, not a robot. When was the last time you allowed her more than a one- week break?”

“When she asked for it,” Grace had snapped. “Which she is too much of a professional to do very often. April knows she is getting on—”

“Oh, yeah—she’s in her dotage.”

“And that younger talent is constantly nipping at her heels. She can’t afford to rest on her laurels.”

“Not that you’d let her….”

Even now, thousands of miles away and standing in front of a hardware store, April shivered at the harshness of the exchange between mother and son. Mark was one of the few people whom Grace couldn’t intimidate, bully or de- feat, but their arguments always made April cringe. Espe- cially when, as was often the case, she was the cause or subject of it.

Mark was her twin; but he was also her best, her only, friend. Grace—which she insisted Mark and April call her—was her mother, her manager, but more than that, her taskmaster. Relentless, unceasing, she had always de- manded everything April had it in her to give. And then just a little bit more.

Only Mark ever dared to try to interfere with Grace’s ruthless ambition. Only Mark seemed to recognize the price for it April had paid all her life. But even he had never been able to slow Grace down. Though not for lack of trying.

Dear, grouchy Marcus. Older than she by several minutes, he took his role as older brother very seriously. During her summers at Cliff House, where he had lived with their Aunt Marjorie all year round, Mark had always defended her against the teasing and taunts of some of the rougher kids in town. Kids who called the shy, bookish girl from New York who didn’t even know how to swim or play catch, dumb. Or stuck-up.

But never when Mark was around. Or Jared. Or even….

“Colleen?” Startled because it seemed as though her thoughts had conjured her up, April stared into the face of the woman stepping out of the store.

“Hello, April.” Hostility laced the voice and turned the otherwise unchanged face of her girlhood friend into that of a stranger. “I saw you out here with my brother. Haven’t you done enough?”

“W-what?” April stammered, shocked by the unex- pected attack.

“You heard me.” Obviously distraught, Colleen pressed a hand to her throat. A diamond-studded wedding band winked in the sun. “Why have you come back? What do you want?”

For a moment April couldn’t speak. Even you, she thought, and somehow the pain of Colleen’s rejection sliced even deeper than Jared’s had done. Perhaps because in the olden days, in Colleen’s eyes at least, April had been able to do no wrong.

“Do you have children, Colleen?” It hurt to speak.

And the non sequitur obviously took the other woman aback. “Why…yes, I…” She gestured distractedly toward the door behind her. “Ralph and I have a daughter.”

“Ah.” April nodded, her gaze briefly shifting to the sign above the door. Simpson Hardware. Of course. April re- membered then—Ralph Simpson. He and Colleen had dated that last summer, that same fateful summer when she and Jared…

“How old is she?”

“Five.”

“Do you love her?”

“Well, of course. What a question. But…look. April—” Clearly agitated, Colleen came a step closer. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?” Anger was a welcome change from the hurt. “What am I doing, Colleen, that you yourself—as a mother—wouldn’t do in my shoes?”

“Well, for one thing…” Colleen’s eyes, so much like her brother’s in their brilliant indigo blue color, sparked now with indignation and resentment. “I would never have given up my child in the first place.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t.” Defeated, suddenly, and un- bearably weary, April thought, What’s the use? Still, before turning to go, she added quietly, “ But then, knowingly, I wouldn’t have, either.”

“Confound it, Conan, that’s not what I called you to hear.”

Raking a hand through his hair and letting it rest on the back of his neck, Jared paced the narrow confines of his father’s den like one of the restless cats in his boarding kennel.

From the other end of the line, the eldest O’Neal off- spring was sounding equally incensed. “Then get yourself another lawyer and bankrupt yourself,” he shouted. “Not to mention devastate your son. My advice stands.” Click.

Jared winced as Conan abruptly broke the connection. Perching on the edge of the desk, he let out a sigh of ex- asperation. Damned hothead! Cradling the cordless phone in his hands, he scowled down at it.

“What?” his mother prompted. Knitting, she sat by the open window through which a desultory breeze was trying valiantly to cool the room. The day had been uncommonly hot.

Jared didn’t look up from his dark contemplation of the phone. “He hung up on me.”

“That’s not what Mom’s asking.” Colleen, carrying a tray of glasses in one hand and a frosted pitcher of lem- onade in the other, walked into the room. “We want to know what he said you should do about April and that letter from New York.”

“Why? So you can gossip about it with all of your friends?”

“What?” Colleen exchanged a bewildered glance with her mother and demanded, “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” Jared gestured impatiently with his hand as he belatedly realized this was hardly the time to vent his ire about the conversation between the two woman that Tyler had overheard. It would only make this miserable day more hellish still. “I’m just mad, that’s all.”

“So tell us why. What did Conan say that’s got you so bent out of shape?”

“He says, ‘Go along with it.’ Says, ‘Don’t try to fight it.’ Or her!”

Frustrated, Jared waved away the glass of lemonade Col- leen held out. Too restless to sit, he once again paced. “Can you beat that? After giving away her kid, after nine years of nothing, the woman waltzes back into our lives with the intention of staking a claim and, according to some fancy New York lawyer, it would behoove me to let her get away with it if I don’t want to find myself hauled into court.”

Gripping the window frame, he stared out into the night

“With which Conan agrees,” Maeve stated rather than asked. She put aside her knitting and caught her son’s free hand. “Jared.” Gently, she uncurled the fist he had formed. “Would it be so bad?”

“Yes.” Vehement, Jared bent and gripped his mother’s shoulders. His eyes bored into hers. “Mom, you were there.”

“Yes, I was.”

“He was tiny.”

“Not much more than a handful,” Maeve quietly agreed. She returned Jared’s burning gaze with one that was loving and true.

Because his eyes threatened to fill, Jared closed them. He hung his head. His hands spasmodically squeezed his mother’s shoulders. “He was only hours old when they gave him to you, remember? Completely helpless. Needy. Damn it, Mom—” With a strangled sound of anguish, Jar- ed straightened and turned away. His fingers speared into his hair and stayed there as he tilted his head toward the ceiling.

“How could she do it?” he asked raggedly. “Tyler needed her. He could have died. How could she just…give away her own child?”

“She says she didn’t,” Colleen hesitantly put in. “When I challenged her on it today, she told me she didn’t do it willingly.”

She winced when Jared rounded on her with a snarl. “So unwillingly makes it all right?”

“Well, it certainly puts a different light on things.”

“If it’s true.” Jared leveled a finger at his sister. “And since when are you back to being her champion?”

“I’m not That is…” Averting her eyes from Jared’s accusing ones, Colleen sought support from their mother. “I guess I want to believe her, Mom. She seemed so gen- uinely…broken up. I felt—”

“Sorry for her?” Jared smacked his palm against the windowsill with a snort of disgust. “You always were a bleeding heart, sis, where April Bingham was concerned.”

“And you weren’t?” It was Maeve who asked that ques- tion, shocking Jared into swinging around to stare at her.

Erect and still formidable, Maeve stared back. “All those years when that poor little girl would come to us seeking refuge from that harridan of a mother, who was it went out of his way to comfort and amuse her when Colleen was not around?”

Maeve leveled a finger at his chest “You, Jared. You always had time for her, always understood her. Shielded her. Coddled her. There was nothing, you said, you wouldn’t do for her. And she for you.”

“Mother—”

“No, Jared,” Maeve cut short her son’s attempt to in- terrupt. “You’re my son and I love you. I stood by you and so did your father, God rest him, throughout that whole mess. But that doesn’t change the fact that you were not blameless in all that transpired. You were twenty years old. You knew what an innocent April was, for all she was seventeen. You also knew she worshiped the ground you walked on and would give you anything you asked, in- cluding…”

Too straitlaced to speak of sex, even to her grown chil- dren, Maeve faltered. With a wave of the hand, she settled for, “Well, you know what I mean. She loved you, Jared.”

“I loved her, too,” Jared flared. “And kindly remember I’m not the villain in this piece.”

“But you’re sure that April is?” Maeve had come to stand beside him at the window.

Behind them, Colleen noisily blew her nose. “You should have told her you’d marry her.”

“Oh, sure.” Jared’s short laugh was bitter. “I tried that, remember? And got tossed out on my ear.”

“You should have told her right away. And you’ll recall it wasn’t April who sent you packing.”

“Oh, no.” It was galling to realize the memory still hurt. “As always, she let her mother handle that little unpleas- antness.”

“Jared.” Taking Jared’s callused hand in her own work- toughened one, Maeve gazed down at her son with sorrow- ing reproof. “You know as well as I do that no one lets Grace Rhinegold do anything, least of all April. Grace just does, and let nobody dare try and stop her.”

She waited for Jared to meet her eyes. “It was Grace who handed me the baby, son, in that posh and private London clinic. I never told you this because you never wanted to hear the details, and anyway I thought, What was the point?”

“So why are you telling me now, Ma?” Jared didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. After all these years of blaming April, despising April, was he now ex- pected to forgive and forget?

Angry, suddenly, he shook off his mother’s hands, rounding on her and Colleen. “Why are the two of you all of a sudden working so hard to convince me that she is the victim here instead of me?”

“We’re not,” Colleen exclaimed defensively. She wiped at her cheeks. “It’s just that—”

“It’s just that there’s more to consider here than your hurt feelings or April’s,” Maeve interrupted with some im- patience. “As far as I’m concerned, Tyler’s well-being is the only thing that matters.”

“Which is exactly my point!” Jared leveled a rigid fin- ger at his mother. “What do you think it’s going to do to Tyler when after a month, two months, or three, the famous Ms. Bingham gets tired of languishing in our backwater town and bored with playing Mom, and hightails it back to the bright lights? Huh?”

He grimly forestalled the defense he saw Maeve draw breath to offer. “Which she will.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“She will.” Convinced of it, Jared stared hard at his mother in an effort to convince her, too. He noted with a pang that his father’s death had scarred his mother’s face, just as the simultaneous death of Regina had irrevocably scarred his own soul. Though not for the same reason.

“She will,” he repeated, but quietly this time. Loving his mother for all she was and all she had done for him— and for Tyler—Jared bent and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry, Ma, but I’d stake my life on that.”

“But, son,” Maeve’s hand kept him from straightening. “Don’t you see? If you fight her, it’s not your life that you’re putting at stake. It’s Tyler’s.”

They looked at each for a long time, mother and son, as the truth of Maeve’s words wrestled with the bitterness in Jared’s soul. And when, with an oath, Jared finally straight- ened and turned away, Maeve gestured to Colleen and qui- etly led the way out of the room.