Читать книгу My Baby, Your Son - Anne Peters - Страница 11

April was lying down with an ice pack on her head when the phone rang. Even though she had set the volume control at the lowest setting, the whirring sound reverberated through her head with all the force of one of Mozart’s cres- cendos. Not since the collapse that led up to this prescribed rest period had she suffered a migraine of this magnitude. She had felt it coming on in the aftermath of her encounter with Jared O’Neal and Colleen Simpson. The stress, her overwrought state, all were like poison to her constitution. Only the hope that the call might be about Tyler motivated her to pick up the phone. Indeed, it was the only reason she had not unplugged it.

Gagging back nausea, she kept her head as still as pos- sible as she groped for the handset on the low table next to her with her eyes closed. “‘Lo?”

“Hello, er…April?”

Jared. April tensed. Pain lacerated her skull. It seared both of her eyes like a hot poker and drove an involuntary groan from her lips.

“What’s the matter?” Something like alarm sharpened Jared’s tone. It assaulted April’s ears and head like a ham- mer blow. “April?”

“Please,” she croaked. “Not so loud.”

“Are you sick?” Jared asked in a more moderate tone that—incongruously to April—held an unmistakable note of concern.

“M-migraine,” April whispered hoarsely. “But never mind that T-Tyler?”

“Yes.” Jared cleared his throat. “He’s, uh…. Well, he’s the reason I’m calling. But look, it can wait until—”

“No…” Heedless of her head, dizzy with pain, April rose up on one elbow as though that would lend force to her whispered plea. “Please. Is it all right? Are you going to let me see him? Talk to him? When?”

“Well, it can’t be right away.”

Not right away? Gasping, her disappointment an even more devastating pain than the one in her head, April col- lapsed back against the pillows.

“You see, he’s gone camping with my sister Leslie’s family for a couple of days.” There was a pause that gave April time to realize—and appreciate—the fact that Jared was trying to establish some sort of rapport. His next words bore that out.

“You remember Leslie,” he said with a strained, self- conscious little chuckle. “She’s the one who was always practicing the clarinet in the hayloft and spooking the cows.”

“Yes…” April also recalled that Leslie was two years older than Jared, the second oldest, after Conan, of the six O’Neal offspring.

“They’ll be back Wednesday or Thursday.”

Two more days, maybe three. It seemed like such a long time. Though she knew it was foolish—she had waited this long, what did a couple more days matter?—April felt tears of disappointment sting the backs of her eyes.

She refused to let them fall, even when Jared added to the devastating letdown by saying, “And I’ll also need some time to talk to him. I need to prepare him. I mean, he knows you exist, but we can’t just spring your imminent entrance into his life on him out of the blue.”

“I understand.” The suppressed tears constricted her voice. “You’ll, um…you’ll let me know?”

“Right.”

“Thank you,” April whispered, but Jared had already severed the connection.

With a tremulous sigh, April let the phone slip out of her hand. She lay perfectly still, letting the fact that Jared had decided not to fight her soothe her like a balm.

Not till a pool of water had collected in each of her ears did she realize that holding back the tears hadn’t worked.

At his end, Jared, too, was distraught. It had been a dif- ficult phone call to make on all levels. He put down the phone and, with his elbows propped on his father’s desk, cradled his head in his hands, thinking, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t want to do this.

He didn’t want to trust April. Didn’t want to risk Tyler getting hurt. But most of all he didn’t want to get sucked in once again by April Bingham and her problems. He didn’t want to care.

“Damn.” Pinching the narrow spot between his eyes, he bowed his head and sucked in a number of ragged breaths.

So she still got those headaches. Was he to blame for this one?

Jared dug his nails into his scalp, remembering the first time he had seen her with one. He had been looking for her to ask her to go swimming. Her aunt had come to the door.

“I don’t know, Jared,” Marje had said in that elegant British way of hers. “April is terribly upset.”

“What happened?”

“Her mother rang. From England. She announced her imminent arrival—she’ll be here two days from now—and I’m afraid April isn’t taking it well. She was so enjoying her holiday, poor lamb.”

And now it’ll be back to the salt mines, Jared had thought. “Where is she?”

“April? She fled upstairs to her room, white as a sheet.”

“Can I see her? Please?”

Marje had considered this for a moment before tossing up her hand. “Sure. Why not. If anyone can cheer her, it’ll be you.”

As Jared bounded up the stairs, she had called after him, “Mind, you leave the bedroom door open!”

Jared knocked on the door, then right away pushed it open and stuck in his head. “April?”

No answer. A quick scan of the room revealed that it was empty. Puzzled—maybe she’d gone to the bath- room?—he’d hovered in the doorway, and that’s when he heard it. A keening sort of whimper. And it came from the direction of the closet.

Two strides took him there. He wrenched open the door. There was April. Curled into a tight little ball with her arms wrapped around her head, rocking, moaning.

“April. Honey…” Dropping to his knees, Jared reached for her.

“No…” She shrank away, curling more tightly into her- self. “The d-door…the light…oh, please….”

Jared had crawled into the closet with her, closed the door, and held her. Held her….

But who was holding her now? Who had held her all the times in between until the pain went away?

Damn you, April Bingham. Jared leapt to his feet and charged out of his father’s den as though pursued by a stampede of cattle. I don’t want this, you hear me? Not again. Never again.

He ran to the stable and, hands shaking, saddled his horse. Only one thing could get his emotions and priorities back where they belonged—a long, hard ride through the surf.

But it didn’t help this time. April Bingham stayed with him as though he were holding her in the saddle in front of him the way he had so often done in the past.

And when, hours later, he cantered past the stairs that led from the beach up to Cliff House and saw April stand- ing up on the cliff, silhouetted against the purpling sky, he knew his emotional troubles had only begun.

“He is cooperating,” April said to her attorney who had called to follow up on the letter to Jared he had copied her on. “Or, at least, that’s more or less what he indicated to me two days ago.”

“More or less?” Greg Hoskins queried. “What does that mean?”

“Well…” April quickly related details of her phone con- versation with Jared, ending with, “I haven’t seen or talked to him since.”

“Any chance he’s intending to renege?”

“No.”

“You sound pretty sure for a woman who’s been be- trayed the way you have.”

“Oh, I am sure,” April said. “And anyway, I’ve since found out that Jared wasn’t…I mean, he apparently didn’t know. Well, I’m just sure,” she said again when it occurred to her that Jared’s ignorance of the fact that she had not been responsible for Tyler’s release for adoption was irrel- evant with regard to her attorney.

“Does this newfound confidence in Dr. O’Neal mean you no longer deem it necessary to investigate him?”

“Well, no…. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to make sure we’ve covered all the bases.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Ms. Bingham. Wouldn’t want any unpleasant surprises at some future date, would we?”

“No.” Disturbed, April gnawed on her thumbnail. “Jar- ed would not be pleased if he found out we were doing this.”

“Perhaps not,” the attorney allowed. “However, there’s no reason to think that he would. Find out, I mean. These things are handled with discretion and confidentiality, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“Hmm.” April bit down on her nail too hard and, vexed with herself, jerked her hand away. She had half a mind to cancel the investigation after all. She had still been reeling from all she’d found out and girding herself for battle, so to speak, when she had authorized it initially. Discover the opponent’s weaknesses and capitalize on them, had been the rationale. The way things stood now, however…

She sighed. “Well, if you’re sure it won’t cause prob- lems?”

“Positive.”

The word went around and around in April’s head like a circling vulture for quite some time that afternoon. Maybe she should have called the thing off.

Still fretting about it as she left the post office later that afternoon—a substitute had been in for Jean Ivers, thank God—and feeling another headache coming on, she finally told herself—Enough.

If Jared had nothing to hide, he would never know she’d had him checked out. And in the unlikely event something objectionable should turn up, then, well—

Childish shouts and laughter abruptly snagged April’s attention.

“Hey, Charlie, watch this!”

“Heck, that’s nothin’, man!”

Turning her head toward the sound, she realized she was at the school yard where the Gulls played baseball. Sure enough, several uniformed youngsters were already on the field, tossing balls, swinging bats, warming up for a game or practice.

A leap of excitement quickened April’s pulse. Eagerly, wondering if Tyler would by chance be one of the kids, she looked around more closely. And there—her heart skipped a beat—there he was.