CHAPTER EIGHT
IVORY’S LIFE TOOK on the semblance of a dream. She went to work each day with a light step and a smile, overjoyed to be doing what she loved most and getting paid for it. With Virginia Raines gone, the office was more relaxed and even more productive. The girls on the line were sewing clothes that they really liked, and they tried harder to do a good job.
The suit she had designed turned out even better than Ivory had expected. She added pleated puff shoulders to it, to emphasize the smooth line from shoulder to waist. Although the change was an extra expense, Curry didn’t say a word about the cost; he was so pleased with the improvement.
Ivory had no intimate contact with Curry on the job, although he spent a lot of time in the building, overseeing production. They had coffee in her office from time to time, and his quiet gaze lingered longer and longer on Ivory, who noticed and became painfully shy. He had a way of looking at her that made her toes curl up in her shoes, and the attraction between them became more intense every day. She couldn’t forget the warm hunger in his kisses, and she dreamed of him at night.
There were long conversations when he came to her office, or when she went to his, about work and politics and the world at large. She found him easy to talk to, and despite the excitement he engendered in her, she felt more comfortable with him than she’d ever felt with anyone else. He shared that contentment, it seemed, because often he sought her out for no more important reason than to share a cup of coffee with her.
He didn’t see her away from work, however, and he didn’t invite her to go out with him. He’d said that he didn’t want complications. Obviously he meant it. But he spent enough time with Ivory that she didn’t mind so much. They grew closer every day, in ways far removed from any physical attraction.
Belle was chosen to model the new suit. Ivory fitted it on her the morning of Christmas Eve, before the noontime closing. It was disturbing to Ivory to see the woman here now and to remember her connection to Curry, who had become so very important in her own life. She was jealous and insecure, especially when the gloriously beautiful redhead mentioned that she’d been to an art gallery showing with Curry just the night before.
Although Ivory had already made so much progress, she hadn’t made her mark yet and was still a long way from affording designer clothing and the kind of accessories she’d need for a high-society night on the town. She realized that quite suddenly. Curry couldn’t take her to an art gallery show because she dressed like a street person and he’d be embarrassed. Why hadn’t she thought of that until now?
The model frowned as she studied the other woman’s bent head. “You look worried. Doesn’t the suit fit me the way you think it should?”
“You know very well that it does,” Ivory replied calmly. “You’re lovely. The suit really was designed for a brunette, you know, but you have the flair and height that add elegance. And I think it would look almost as good on a blonde.”
“I love it,” Belle said with a smile. “It’s the most dramatic outfit I’ve ever modeled for Kells-Meredith!”
“Thank you.”
She finished her minor adjustments and left Dee to run it up on her machine. The other seamstresses were very good, but Dee had a special touch.
Belle’s fitting left Ivory depressed and sad. She hadn’t seen Curry for two days except at a distance as he was passing through the building. She supposed that she’d read too much into the Christmas tree, a few light kisses and sweet words and the extra time he spent with her on the job. He wouldn’t have taken Belle on a date if he’d had any real feelings for Ivory. She had to remember her place. She was just a member of the staff, after all, not his lover. He liked being with her, but that didn’t mean he wanted a permanent relationship. He was an attractive, worldly man. She couldn’t expect him to be a monk.
Besides, she’d been so busy designing and dreaming of fame and fortune that she’d forgotten her real status here. She wasn’t what people thought she was. Her carefully modulated voice and good manners had been acquired at design school. The Ivory who’d presented herself at the front door of the Paris Design Academy in Houston had been an oddity and even something of an embarrassment her first few days there. She was literate, but her clothes came from yard sales and she did not know how to use makeup, how to dress, even how to behave in civilized company. She spoke with the kind of drawl that was the mark of the uneducated, and the pronunciation of some of the basic fashion words was almost beyond her. If it hadn’t been for the kindness of one of the female instructors, who taught Ivory speech and social graces, she might never have made the grade. No one knew that the scholarship she’d won had been the only opportunity in her deprived, and abusive, childhood.
She’d always had the gift of being able to draw what she saw; but her drawing and studying weren’t encouraged by her mother. Marlene was too busy with her own life to consider what Ivory could achieve in hers.
After her husband’s death, she’d used the insurance money to buy expensive clothes and cosmetics. Her investment in her looks had led to several dead-end love affairs, the last of which was with a rich landowner named Larry, who’d paid the bills for her and given Ivory a job working in the fields—at Marlene’s insistence. She needed the extra money to pay liquor bills she didn’t want Larry to know about.
When that money wasn’t enough, Marlene became proficient at shoplifting around town. It was easy to blame Ivory for it and then put on her martyred face, so that people felt sorrier for her and agreed not to have Ivory arrested. Those charges had hurt, because Ivory was honest. Marlene had never been.
Ivory had to fight her mother to get to finish high school. Then, two years of hard labor went by before the design scholarship contest was announced in one of the state newspapers. Ivory had entered, secretly. When she won—to her astonishment—she spent every penny she had on a bus ticket to Houston and promised to reimburse her mother for her room and board when she found work.
What a laugh—to be asked to reimburse her mother for raising her own child. But it was no joke. Marlene Costello was vicious and unpredictable. She seemed to have no scruples, and she’d spent her life creating trouble and scandal for the people around her. Before Ivory’s father died, Marlene had been a little more stable, sometimes even kind.
After her husband died, Marlene’s kind periods grew further apart until they all but vanished. Marlene had allowed Ivory to go to design school only on the understanding that she would begin repaying her debt to Marlene from the minute she got her first paycheck. Ivory would have agreed to anything to get away. And once in Houston, she’d changed her name legally to Keene in a half-hearted attempt to escape her mother. But she’d been too intimidated to run away completely. She sent small checks home, cashier’s checks from the bank, and tried to put the past behind her.
One incident, however, was impossible to forget—or forgive. Not too long after Larry had died, Marlene found a new boyfriend. She and her new man got roaring drunk the same week Ivory was accepted to design school. Marlene decided then on a ménage à trois. She helped her boyfriend hold her daughter down, laughing all the while. Fortunately, he was too drunk to do much. Also fortunately, an off-duty policewoman who had been passing by, heard Ivory’s screams and rushed to her assistance. After Marlene’s cursing, drunken boyfriend was taken away in a squad car, Marlene became hysterical and claimed to be the victim. She blamed the whole episode on her daughter’s attempts to seduce the man. Because Marlene had built such a tissue of lies to belittle her daughter, she was believed again. That was the last straw for Ivory. She accepted the scholarship by letter and when she received the paperwork, she announced her plans to leave despite all of Marlene’s threats. Perhaps Marlene realized that she’d crossed the line during her last drunken spree, because she didn’t really try very hard to deter her daughter.
Ivory had escaped and nothing on earth would make her go back. Still, the thought of her mother kept her sleepless some nights. Ivory had built a good life for herself here in New York. People accepted her as someone with a decent background, as a person in her own right. Marlene could ruin it with her lies. To keep her away, Ivory had no choice but to split her check with Marlene. The threats came by mail, regularly. Pay up or else. She knew that her mother wasn’t bluffing.
Marlene blamed everyone, especially Ivory, for her lack of wealth. She could have had a career if it hadn’t been for her ugly daughter keeping her in prison, she raged. It was Ivory’s fault. She wished the girl had never been born. Once, she pulled her father’s old shotgun out of the closet in one of her drunken bouts and threatened to kill Ivory. Fortunately, there were no shells for it. The pale blue eyes staring at her down that long barrel had screamed murder.
There were no social services offices in Harmony and no close family to report the mistreatment of her child. The school officials knew nothing of Ivory’s home life, and Marlene made frequent trips to PTA meetings and activities to show everyone what a good mother she was. Early on, she’d learned how to convince people that Ivory was a pathological liar. The small Texas community was full of people who only shrugged when Ivory ran out in the road from time to time crying that her mother was hurting her. Marlene had told them that Ivory did it frequently, for no apparent reason. She made sure that the bruises didn’t show. By the time Ivory was in her teens, Marlene had destroyed her credibility.
Even today, if she were to go back to Harmony, Texas, people wouldn’t think any better of her. She’d heard from the one friend she had that Marlene told everyone how ungrateful her only child was, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed that Ivory never even came to see her.
After her husband’s death, Marlene had been allowed to stay in the small house, which was owned by Larry, who had been her husband’s boss. The job Marlene had induced him to give Ivory was picking and packing fruit in the orchards with a family of Mexicans who worked on his farm. It had been hard work, but Ivory had had no choice. She wasn’t badly treated, she was away from Marlene all day and she was paid. Of course, Marlene took the money; but some of Ivory’s few happy memories were associated with that loving Hispanic family. That was where she’d learned her Spanish. It was part of the past she felt obliged to hide from Curry, although he made the lowliest profession seem noble if it involved sacrifice. His mother had been a housekeeper, and he thought her a paragon. He didn’t seem to care very much about social position, but he cared about people. Ivory smiled at that thought and then grew sad remembering that he and Belle had been out on the town.
She went home that afternoon, Christmas Eve, with her heart around her ankles, imagining Belle out at some glitzy party with Curry. He might spend some of the evening with his mother, though, considering her condition. She mustn’t be jealous of him, Ivory told herself firmly. She had no right.
Curry had mentioned that he planned to drop by on Christmas Eve for his present, but Ivory didn’t believe he really meant it. She was sure that he’d forgotten all about her, so she didn’t bother to dress up.
After she made herself a meager supper, she sat in front of her gorgeous Christmas tree with a cup of instant cappuccino and listened to Christmas music on television. She had developed a love for opera, and Luciano Pavarotti was singing arias, along with Plácido Domingo, on the educational channel.
The buzz at the intercom came just at the end of “Nessun Dorma,” from her favorite opera, Turandot, by Puccini. She grimaced at the interruption in the middle of the exquisite crescendo, and she lingered just a moment before she got up, reluctantly, to answer the signal. It must be a neighbor, she thought, offering good wishes.
“May I come up?” a familiar deep voice asked.
Her heart skipped a beat. “Y...yes! Of course!” She pressed the buzzer next to the intercom to unlock the outer door.
A minute later, there was a knock on the door and she ran to answer it. Curry was leaning there against the wall, in the sort of evening clothes she had seen only in store windows. Her heart ran away at just the sight of him. He was unbearably elegant, from his white tie to his tuxedo, an overcoat with a white silk opera scarf thrown carelessly over one arm. Even his black dress shoes were polished so brightly that they reflected the hall light overhead.
He lifted a dark eyebrow, letting his curious gaze wander down her body in the jeans and bright red T-shirt she was wearing.
“There didn’t seem any need to dress up,” she faltered. “I didn’t expect anyone...”
He smiled lazily. “Not even me? I told you a while back that I was going to stop by for my Christmas present, didn’t I?”
Of course he had, but she hadn’t really believed he would after she’d talked to Belle. “Oh!” She opened the door and let him inside, closing it gently behind him. “The tree, it’s lovely,” she rambled as she watched him drape the coat and scarf over the back of her one straight chair. He was studying the tree intently.
“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “You did a good job,” he toned, watching her closely. “Belle said that you looked worried when she went for her fitting.”
She lowered her eyes before he could read her feelings in them. “I couldn’t get the darts in the jacket straight,” she lied.
He didn’t believe that for a minute. “She told you that I took her to a gallery showing.”
She drew in an impatient breath. “Look, you have no ties to me,” she said. “It’s none of my business. I only work for you.”
He moved toward her slowly and stopped a foot away. He tilted her face up to his searching gaze, watching her color. “Don’t. I know how I’d feel if someone told me you’d been out on the town with another man.”
Her expression was fluid. Surprise finally won it over.
“I told you at the beginning that Belle and I were friends, but I think I’d better qualify the relationship. The gallery showing was all business. Belle was wearing one of the pieces from another of our collections. I wanted to show off some of our designs. I had two other models there as well, not just Belle.”
“O...oh.”
“I don’t usually bother explaining myself. It’s different with you. You’re very vulnerable. I don’t want to hurt you unnecessarily.” He traced the soft flush down her cheek to the comer of her mouth and let his finger explore the shape of her soft lips.
“We aren’t...involved,” she whispered, made breathless by his intoxicating nearness and that maddening finger tracing her mouth.
“We could be, if I were more of a roué,” he replied with a faint smile. “I’m very protective of you. Even against my own base inclinations.”
“Are they so base?”
He chuckled. “You might think so.” He bent and brushed his mouth lightly over her lips, drawing back much too soon. “Where’s my present, Ivory?”
“Mercenary man,” she accused.
“Well, I don’t get presents often,” he explained. “I told you.”
She reached under the tree and drew out the small package. The other one, for Dee, had already been given away. She placed it in his hands with trepidation.
“It’s not much,” she said worriedly. “Don’t expect...”
He kissed her softly. “Hush,” he said, his deep voice tender.
He opened the package and the small box. He smiled, and with genuine appreciation.
“It’s a real pearl,” she pointed out.
Odd that she seemed to think it was, when he knew from the setting that it was cultured. Perhaps she didn’t buy pearls often. Well, she’d know the difference after tonight. And not for all the world would he have admitted that his jewelry case had a dozen or so tie tacks made of South Sea pearls set in 18-karat gold. He examined it with the same satisfaction he’d have felt if she’d given him a new yacht.
“Do you like it?” she persisted, nervous.
“Oh, I like it, all right.” He bent and kissed her again, a little longer this time, with breathless patience. “I have something for you, too.”
“But you gave me the tree! And all those decorations!”
He waved the expense away. “Hardly a proper Christmas present. Here.”
He handed her a box. It had a jeweler’s label on it, and inside was a black velvet-covered box. Her hands trembled and almost dropped it as she forced the lid open and saw what was inside. She kept looking, unbelieving.
“Great minds run in the same direction, don’t they? Try them on.”
Her fingers touched the pearls. They had the palest pink sheen, like the inside of a seashell. They felt hard, and strangely warm. “They’re...real?” she faltered.
“Yes, they are. And I mean real, not cultured.”
She had a vague idea of the expense. “But you can’t!”
So she did know the difference in price. That reassured him. A woman from her wealthy background would have to, of course, and she would hardly have spent hundreds of dollars for a tie tack on such short acquaintance.
“Of course I can do it,” he replied. “You’ll be going to shows, meeting buyers, representing the company. You can’t dress properly without a good string of pearls. Presumably you don’t like jewelry, because you seldom wear any.”
She had to agree because she couldn’t admit that she couldn’t afford nice jewelry; she was supposed to be from wealthy Louisiana society. She took the pearls reverently out of the box and put them on, uneasy at handling something so beautiful and costly. She’d never had a good piece of jewelry in her life.
“The catch is tricky, isn’t it?” she asked with an apologetic laugh as she fumbled with it.
“Here.” He fastened it for her, breathing in the faint floral scent that clung to her hair, which was almost as wavy as his own. His hands on her shoulders were heavy and warm, lightly caressing. “Do you have a mirror?”
“A handheld one, on the dresser.” Her voice sounded husky.
He let her go, reluctantly, to fetch it, and held it so that she could see the way they looked against her throat. She had a slender neck. He’d been right about the color, too. It suited her skin tone much better than a silver-gray tint would have.
“These, too,” he added suddenly, producing a second box. “I noticed that your ears were pierced.”
“Oh, no, Curry, you can’t,” she pleaded, embarrassed by how expensive the gifts were.
“Yes, I can. Don’t argue.”
She opened that box, too, and discovered a pair of pearl studs that matched the necklace. There was such a difference between these small pearls and the one in his tie tack that she felt mortified. Hers was so obviously a cultured pearl, but she hadn’t known until she’d seen the real thing. She hoped he didn’t wonder why she didn’t know the difference. She still had so much to learn about wealth.
She fitted the earrings into her lobes and then stood looking up at him with anticipation.
He nodded. “Yes. They suit you, all right. I’ll have to take you out one night, so that I can wear my tie tack. We’ll be perfectly matched, like the pearls,” he teased.
Her face fell with her eyes. “I couldn’t go out with you.”
“Why?”
“Well, look at me,” she said on a groan, indicating her clothes. “Curry, I can’t afford the clothes I’d need to go out with you! I’d be an embarrassment to you at an exclusive restaurant, without the clothes I left back home. You see,” she lied convincingly, “I wanted to start from scratch. I wanted to earn my place in the world, all the way, so I brought nothing with me.” She laughed nervously. “Why, you wouldn’t want to be seen with me at the local fast-food joint in the sort of clothes I wear...”
“Querida,” he said gently, pulling her back when she would have walked away. “You’re lovely as you are. The clothes are not important.”
She smiled. “Thank you for the compliment but you know how important clothes are—you make them.”
“And you design them. You can wear the beautiful satin dress you wore to my party,” he reminded her.
“I sold you the design...”
“And I’m telling you to wear it,” he returned.
She brightened. “You’ll have to wait for warmer weather, though.”
He framed her face in his lean hands. “What sort of coat do you want? I’ll buy one for you.”
She colored furiously and tried to move away. She remembered Marlene teasing her married lover, begging for pretty dresses and coats and new shoes.
He held her securely. “I embarrass you. Why?”
“I’d feel like a kept woman,” she said. “Without honor, or pride.”
“Ah. I see.” He drew in a slow breath as he studied her. “No woman such as you has come into my life since I became wealthy,” he mused. “I don’t know how to deal with someone who wants nothing material from me.”
“The pearls are too much, already,” she said. “I’ll be able to afford a coat in a month or so.”
“The financial obligations you mentioned—are they serious?”
“Heavens, no!” she laughed, flushing a little. “I send money to a poor relation back home, that’s all.”
He watched her closely. “You do this because you choose to?”
“Of course!”
Her reply was a little too quick. He was a shrewd man, with a keen intellect, who knew when an answer was less than the truth. But he was a good poker player, as well. He smiled. “Of course.” He pursed his lips. “Since you will not permit me to buy you a coat, will you permit me to lend you one?”
She blinked. “Well...”
“Only for an evening out,” he promised.
“I suppose I could do that,” she said, yielding to his persuasion, while inside she was churning with excitement. “I haven’t been out at night since I’ve been in New York. Just to a movie occasionally.”
“New York at night is not a thing to miss,” he said. “After the new year, we’ll make a point of some evening entertainment.”
“I guess you’re busy with family this time of year, especially now,” she added gently, remembering his mother.
His face darkened for an instant. “Yes.” He touched her soft hair. “It’s a sad time for us, but we mustn’t show it. Mama gets upset if we pamper her too much. I want you to meet her.”
“In the new year,” she agreed.
He looked gently on her uplifted face. “We’re like family already, aren’t we?” he asked in a whisper. “Two lonely people who find such joy in being together that it’s difficult to keep the distance between us, even at work.” He chuckled. “My secretary remarked the other day that I spend more time drinking coffee with you lately than I do on the telephone.”
Her eyes brightened as she searched his lean, solemn face. “I’ve felt that way, too, about being close to you, I mean. I didn’t know you did. You have so many friends...”
“Not like you,” he explained gently. “I feel comfortable with you, safe.” He laughed. “What a thing for a man to admit.”
“But you are a man,” she replied quietly. “Very much a man. You don’t have to prove it, do you?”
His powerful shoulders rose and fell. “Once in a while,” he confessed. “Big business has its challengers and some are devious and bad-tempered.”
“I suppose I’ll learn about that soon enough.”
He nodded. “If you climb in the company, which I fully expect, you’ll have to learn to deal with the board of directors. I have no doubt you’ll do that quite well.”
“I’m not very assertive.”
“It comes with age.” His expression changed as he looked at her. “You’re so young,” he said softly. “And I’m thirty-seven.”
She reached up and touched his firm, warm mouth. “I’ve never known anyone like you,” she said in a voice as quiet as his. “It wouldn’t matter if you were fifty...” She hesitated. “I don’t know how to say it. It hasn’t anything to do with age. It has to do with what people are, inside.”
He held her palm to his mouth and kissed it hungrily. “Perhaps it does, but you’re very unsophisticated and I know too much about women.”
“Such as?” she asked, deliberately provocative for the first time in memory.
His gaze held hers intently while he drew her arm toward him and pressed his mouth against it, moving slowly from her palm down her wrist to the elbow and back up again. She felt shivers down her spine at the lazy intimacy. He bit softly at the mound of her thumb and then teased the thumb with his tongue and finally took all of it slowly into his warm mouth.
She gasped. She’d read about such caresses, but had never experienced them.
He drew her arm up again and draped it around his neck while his free hand slid in at her waist and brought her body in between his legs. He turned her, ever so slowly, as if they were dancing, and all the while holding her eyes with his. She felt his legs brushing intimately against hers. Even through her jeans the pressure was feverishly arousing. When his hand slid over her spine and down to move her rhythmically against his hips, she felt her knees give way.
He caught her up in his arms and held her like that, off the floor, unprotesting, shocked by her own sensuality, by his mastery of her senses. The look he gave her made her heart beat loudly but she couldn’t utter a word.
“Well?” he asked quietly.
She forced her lips to move as she stared up at him. “I didn’t realize,” she whispered huskily.
“It doesn’t make you afraid?”
She shook her head. “Not in the way you mean.” She bit her lower lip. “I’m a pushover, I guess.”
“Only with me. That’s how it should be.” He drew her close and walked to the sofa, easing down to sit with her across his lap.
She clung, devastated by her intense need of him. It went so far beyond a simple physical attraction that she couldn’t comprehend it fully.
His arms were warm and comforting now, not arousing. He smoothed her golden hair and after a minute he lifted her chin. “Kiss me,” he said quietly.
She reached up to put her mouth softly to his. He gave the kiss back just as gently, savoring her warm lips as if they were the key to paradise. He paused long enough to remove his tuxedo jacket and put it aside. Then he pulled her back against him and kissed her for a long time in just that way, as if they were both adolescents, exploring the right pressure, the right contact, to give each the maximum pleasure.
He lifted his head finally, and laughed softly. “Even this is different,” he murmured. “Kissing like children.”
“It’s so sweet,” she managed, her eyes lingering upon his mouth.
“Sweet,” he echoed, and bent to kiss her again.
But he was a man, and inevitably, his arm contracted and the kiss became slow and deep and hungry. She felt his breathing change, heard the soft groan against her mouth, almost at the moment his long, elegant fingers slid under the T-shirt and up to trace the curve of her breast in its lacy covering.
She shifted to give him access, yielded completely to his lazy ardor. It wasn’t until the cool air became uncomfortable against her skin that she realized he’d bared her breasts while he kissed her.
Embarrassed, she tugged at the fabric, but he shook his head. “Only this,” he promised softly. “And it will cause me some pain. But I want you to know.”
He left her pondering the curious statement and bent to open his mouth and press it down hard over her taut nipple.
She cried out like someone being tortured. Her body arched up in his arms and shivered, and her hands caught frantically in his hair as he drew the nipple into his mouth with gentle suction.
Time dissolved in heat. She arched her body again and gave him liberty to do anything he liked to it. She was weeping and trembling all over when he finally paused to look down at her.
His hand rested on her belly, just above the fastening of her jeans. He stared into her flushed, tearstained face for a long moment, unspeaking, and she returned his gaze. He looked like a lover, his white shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his mouth swollen, his dark face drawn with lines of desire.
“You said...it would hurt you?” she managed to ask.
“And it does. Like hell,” he answered. “But it’s the sweetest hell I’ve ever tasted.” His eyes fell to her breasts. “I want you.”
“I want you, too,” she said, so emotionally out of control that her voice broke on the words and ended in a sob.
“So much.” He drew her close and held her, rocking her, as he savored her warm weight. “So much, so much...!”
Her short nails bit into his broad shoulders. Against her bare breasts she could feel the wiry thickness of the hair on his chest, and she nestled there, awash in another in a series of new and frightening pleasures.
“What...?” He lifted his head and looked, and realized. “Ah.” He chuckled softly, a wicked sound that, added to the gleam in his eye when he looked down where they touched, made her flush.
He held her upper arms and deliberately moved her against him with the sensuality of a dancer. “Who could put into words the glory of skin against skin?” he murmured huskily.
She couldn’t reply to that. Her mind was spinning. Her body was greedy, demanding more of these sensations she’d never before known. She closed her eyes, already lost in a sensual paradise, his willing conspirator, ready to yield whatever he wanted.
“Talk to me,” he whispered at her ear.
“I...can’t. It’s like...dying,” she faltered breathlessly. “I want it never to end!”
His arms slid completely around her, and he held her close without moving, his head bent over hers, his body corded with urgency. But he conquered the fierce, sharp desire after a minute and began to relax.
“No,” she groaned when he started to move away.
He caught her protesting hands and put them to his mouth. “Querida, we can’t,” he whispered huskily.
She looked at him from a daze of swirling emotion. “Why not?”
He held her palm to his hard cheek. “For half a dozen reasons. But the most important one is that I don’t have anything to use with me.” He kissed her palm. “I’m a stickler for prevention. Almost a fanatic. I told you that once.”
She searched his face. There was something he was hiding. “It isn’t only because you’re worried about diseases. It has something to do with babies, hasn’t it?” she asked hesitantly, without understanding how she knew.
Shocked by her perception, he looked straight into her eyes. Pregnancy. Ivory, pregnant with his baby. Images flashed into his mind. He thought of her body racked with pain, her voice accusing him, blaming him...
With a rough groan, he put her aside and stood up.