Читать книгу Sweet Deception - Rochelle Alers - Страница 10

The reason you’ve been feeling so tired is that you’re pregnant.

The doctor’s diagnosis played over and over in Zabrina Mixon’s head until she felt as if it were a mantra. Warm tears spilled down her face, blurring her vision, but she could still see the indicator wand that came with the home pregnancy test. She was pregnant. She, a registered nurse, who hadn’t believed her ob-gyn, had stopped at a local drugstore and bought a kit to conduct her own test.

Her gynecologist had changed her contraceptive three times, the third being a lower-dose pill. The other two had adverse side effects: headaches, nausea and tender breasts. Apparently the lowest dose was too low, because she was now among the one percent of women who’d gotten pregnant on the pill. She and Myles Eaton had talked about starting a family, but at twenty-three Zabrina had wanted to wait at least two years. Two years would give her time to adjust to married life.

She’d been counting the days before she would exchange vows with the man she’d fallen in love with after they’d only dated a month. He’d waited a year to propose marriage and she’d accepted. It was now two weeks before her wedding and she would walk down the aisle with a new life growing inside her. It wasn’t how she’d planned to start married life.

Discarding the pregnancy kit in the wastebasket, Zabrina washed her hands. She walked out of the bathroom, stopping when she heard voices coming from the living room. She recognized her father’s voice and another that was vaguely familiar. A third voice, this one deeper than the others stopped her mid-stride. This voice she knew. It belonged to Thomas Cooper, her father’s protégé. Alarmed, she made her way into the living room.

“What’s going on here?”

Isaac Mixon turned when he heard his daughter’s voice. “When did you get home?”

Zabrina’s gaze shifted from her father to the other two men. It was obvious they’d thought they were alone. “I got here about twenty minutes ago.” She glared at City Council President Thomas Cooper, who, it was widely rumored, had aspirations to become Philadelphia’s next mayor. “Were you threatening my father?”

Thomas Cooper flashed a smile, the one he’d perfected for the media and his constituents. “Zabrina, please come and sit down.”

Zabrina’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re inviting me to sit down in my own home?”

The practiced smile vanished quickly. “Mixon, I think you’d better convince your daughter to listen to what we have to tell her, or she’ll read about your arrest in tomorrow’s Philly Inquirer.”

Isaac crossed the room and cradled his daughter to his chest. “Please, Brina, let me handle this.”

Light brown eyes flecked with hints of green studied the face of the man who’d protected her since her mother had died the year Zabrina had celebrated her seventh birthday. Isaac Mixon had become father and mother, refusing to remarry because he claimed he didn’t want to subject her to a dreadful stepmother. She knew he dated women, but he’d never brought one home.

She nodded. “Okay, Daddy.” Isaac pulled out a straight-back chair for Zabrina to sit in, and she watched as her father walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows to peer out at the Philadelphia skyline.

It was the third man in the room who spoke first. “Miss Mixon, your father has been misappropriating monies from Councilman Cooper’s campaign contributions.”

A heavy silence filled the room as four pairs of eyes exchanged glances, and Zabrina wondered how many more shocks she would have to endure in one day. First there was the news that she was carrying a child, and now the threat that her father was facing arrest for stealing money from the man whose political career he’d shepherded from political analyst to city council member and now city council president.

She didn’t believe it, she couldn’t possibly believe it. Her father didn’t have financial problems. In fact, she knew for certain that he was solvent. It was she who reconciled his bank statements because Isaac Mixon didn’t want to have anything to do with money. He was an ideas person, not a numbers guy. In fact, he was a political genius when it came to political campaign strategies.

“I don’t believe you,” she told the well-dressed man with a sallow pockmarked complexion. It was almost impossible to discern the color of his eyes behind a pair of thick lenses perched on a short nose that gave him a porcine appearance.

“Perhaps Councilman Cooper and I should leave you alone with your father for a few moments so he can bare his soul. Perhaps then you’ll believe me.”

Thomas nodded to Zabrina. “Mr. Davidson and I will be in your father’s study. Please, don’t get up. I know where it is.”

Zabrina felt her throat closing as a wave of rage held her captive, not permitting her to draw a normal breath. It was the second time the arrogant politician had usurped her in her home. Once she’d reached sixteen she’d thought of the three-bedroom condo as hers. It was then that she’d assumed the responsibility of mistress of the house when standing in as hostess for Isaac Mixon’s many political confabs and soirées.

She drew in a breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them and stared at her father he seemed to have aged within a matter of seconds. “What’s going on, Daddy?”

Isaac Mixon knew whatever he’d been instructed to tell his daughter was going to destroy her. But either he had to lie or go to jail for a crime he did not commit. And disclosing what he knew meant his chances of survival were slim to none. Thomas Cooper had too many connections in and out of prison.

He walked across the living room and sank down on a love seat. “I’m sorry, baby girl, I—”

“You’re sorry, Daddy!” Zabrina hadn’t realized she was screaming, and at her father no less. “You’re sorry for what?”

“I did divert some of Tom’s campaign funds.”

“Divert or steal, Daddy?”

Isaac saw fire in his daughter’s eyes, the same fire that had burned so brightly in her mother’s eyes before a debilitating disease had stolen her spirit and will to live. Zabrina had inherited Jacinta’s palomino-gold coloring, inky-black hair and hazel eyes that always reminded him of semi-precious jewels. He hadn’t celebrated his tenth wedding anniversary when he lost his wife, but fate hadn’t taken everything from him because Jacinta lived on in the image of their daughter.

“I took the money,” he lied smoothly.

“But why did you do it? You have money.”

Isaac lowered his salt-and-pepper head, focusing his attention on the thick pile of the carpet under his feet. He knew if he met his daughter’s eyes he wouldn’t be able to continue to lie to her. “I…I’ve been gambling—”

“But you never gamble!”

“But I do now!” he spat out in a nasty tone. “I bet on everything: cards, ponies and even illegal numbers.”

Zabrina’s eyelids fluttered as she tried processing what her father was telling her. “Why didn’t you use your own money?”

He glared at her. “I didn’t want you to know about my nasty little addiction.”

“How much did you take?”

“Eighty-three,” Isaac admitted.

“Eighty-three…eighty-three hundred,” Zabrina repeated over and over. “I have more than that in my savings account. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and get a bank check payable to Thomas Cooper—”

“Stop, Brina! It’s not eighty-three hundred but eighty-three thousand—money Tom gave me to pay off loan sharks who’d threatened to kill me.” Tears filled Isaac Mixon’s eyes as his face crumpled like an accordion. “I took twenty thousand from the campaign fund and borrowed the rest from a loan shark. “Right now I owe Thomas Cooper more than one hundred thousand dollars.”

“What about the money in your 401K?” she asked.

“I’ll have to pay it back,” Isaac said.

“How about selling the condo?”

Isaac shook his head. “That would take too long.”

Zabrina’s eyes narrowed. “How much time has Thomas given you to repay him without pressing charges?”

“He wants my answer now.”

“Answer to what, Daddy?”

Isaac’s head came up and he met his daughter’s eyes for the first time, seeing pain and unshed tears. “Thomas has threatened to have me arrested unless I can get you to agree to…” His words trailed off.

Zabrina leaned forward. “Get me to do what?”

“He wants you to marry him.”

Her father’s words hit her like a punch to the face, and for a brief moment she believed he was joking, blurting out anything that came to mind to belie his fear. Her hands tightened on the arms of the chair.

“Thomas Cooper wants to marry me when he knows I’m going to marry another man in two weeks?” Isaac nodded. “I can’t, Daddy!” She was screaming again.

Isaac pushed to his feet. The droop of his shoulders indicated defeat. His so-called protégé was blackmailing him because of what he’d witnessed when he’d walked into Thomas’s private office: Councilman Cooper had accepted a cash payment from a local Philadelphia businessman whom law officials suspected had ties to organized crime.

It was a week later that a strange man was ushered into Isaac’s office with a message from the businessman: forget what you saw or your daughter will find herself placing flowers on her father’s grave.

Later that evening he’d met with Thomas who had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. The confirmed bachelor talked incessantly about enhancing his image before declaring his candidacy for the mayoralty race, and then had shocked Isaac when he told him that he wanted to marry his daughter. Nothing Isaac could say could dissuade Cooper even when he told Thomas that Zabrina was engaged to marry Myles Eaton. Thomas Cooper dismissed the pronouncement with a wave of his hand, claiming marrying Zabrina Mixon would serve as added insurance that her father would never turn on his son-in-law.

Zabrina didn’t, couldn’t move. “I don’t believe this. This is the twenty-first century, yet you’re offering me up as if I were chattel you’d put up in a card game. I could possibly consider marrying Thomas if I wasn’t engaged or pregnant. But, I’m sorry, Daddy. I can’t.”

Isaac turned slowly and stared down at his daughter’s bowed head. “You’re what?”

Her head came up. “I just found out this morning that I’m pregnant with Myles Eaton’s baby.”

“Does he know?” Isaac’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Not yet. I plan to tell him later tonight.”

“But you won’t tell him, Zabrina. The child will carry my name,” said Thomas confidently.

Zabrina hadn’t realized Thomas and the other man he’d called Davidson had reentered the living room. “Go to hell!”

The elected official’s expression did not change. “Mr. Davidson, perhaps you can convince Miss Mixon of the seriousness of her father’s dilemma.”

The bespectacled man reached under his suit jacket, pulled out a small caliber handgun with a silencer, aiming it at Isaac’s head. “You have exactly five seconds, Miss Mixon, to give Councilman Cooper an answer.”

Zabrina’s heart was beating so hard she was certain it could be seen through her blouse. “Okay!” she screamed. “Okay,” she repeated, this time her acquiescence softer. There was no mistaking defeat in the single word.

Thomas smiled for the first time. “Not only are you beautiful, but you’re very, very smart. We’ll marry next week in a private ceremony. And, you don’t have to worry about me exercising my conjugal rights. Our marriage will be in name only.”

A rage she’d never known burned through Zabrina. “Does that leave me free to take a lover or lovers?”

The councilman’s smile faded. “In two years you’ll be the wife of Philadelphia’s next mayor, so I doubt that with the responsibility of raising a child and taking care of your social obligations, you’ll find time to open your legs to another man.”

She felt the overwhelming sick feeling that came with defeat, but she wasn’t going to let the blackmailing SOB know that. “One of these days I’m going to kill you.”

A slight arch in his eyebrows was the only indication that Thomas had registered her threat. “Take a number, Miss Mixon.” He motioned to his gofer to put the gun away. “I suggest you call your fiancé and tell him you found a better prospect.”

The footsteps of the two men were muffled in the carpet as they turned and walked to the door. The solid slam of the door shocked Zabrina into an awareness of just what had taken place within a matter of minutes. She’d agreed to marry a man she’d come to detest when the baby of another man she’d pledged to marry in two weeks was growing beneath her heart.

She registered another sound, and it took her several seconds to realize her father was crying. Even when they’d buried her mother she hadn’t seen Isaac cry. She stood up and walked over to her father. Going to her knees, Zabrina pressed her face to his chest. It wasn’t easy to comfort him when she was sobbing inconsolably.

It was later, much later when Zabrina retreated to her bedroom to call Myles Eaton to tell him that she couldn’t marry him because she was in love with another man. There was only the sound of breathing coming through the earpiece until a distinctive click told her Myles had hung up.

She didn’t cry only because she had no more tears. Her mind was a maelstrom of thoughts that ranged from premeditated murder to the need to survive to bring her unborn child to term. She may have lost Myles Eaton, but unknowingly he’d given her a precious gift—a gift she would love to her dying breath.