The Ruthless Caleb Wilde by Sandra Marton

Author:Sandra Marton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781408974742
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2012-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

SAGE slammed the bathroom door.

She was breathing hard. She was breathing fire!

She wasn’t sure which of them was the worst fool, she or Caleb.

It had never occurred to him to ask the slightest question about that night. About whether maybe, just maybe he’d read things wrong.

But then, why would he? She’d met him at, what, nine o’clock? Brought him home with her at ten. Slept with him at whatever unholy hour she’d gone sashaying into the living room, figuring he was asleep …

Or maybe hoping he wasn’t asleep.

Not that it mattered.

She’d had sex with him. Sex, plain and simple. It hadn’t meant a thing to him and it certainly hadn’t meant a thing to her….

Liar. Liar. Liar! It had meant everything. At least, she’d believed it had.

Now, she carried his baby.

God, what a mess!

Twenty-four hours ago, when she’d walked into the hotel room and found him waiting, she’d figured things couldn’t get much worse.

What a joke. And it was her fault.

Why had she told him the truth? Yesterday, when he’d asked if he’d made her pregnant, she hadn’t so much as hesitated. The lie had come as easily as breath.

No, she’d said, you didn’t.

So, what had changed?

Not a damn thing, except for her sudden inability to keep her mouth shut. Telling him the truth only complicated things. Nothing good would come of it, she of all people knew that.

She was repeating her mother’s story, meeting some guy, having sex, getting pregnant—”knocked up,” to use her mother’s blunt terminology.

Sage stared at herself in the mirror.

That she, of all people, should bring a baby into this world bearing the stigma of illegitimacy …

She knew that was an increasingly old-fashioned attitude. Not for her. Illegitimacy had defined her childhood, growing up in a small, very conservative town with a mother incapable of leaving the past behind.

Was that was why she’d admitted the truth to Caleb? Had part of her hoped he’d hear the news and say …

What?

That he’d acknowledge the baby as his own? Assume a father’s role? A part-time role, at best. Alternate weekends, two weeks in the summer? Father-daughter dances, or father-son camping trips? Show up once in a while so that when other kids said, “This is my dad,” her child wouldn’t have to stand silent?

Sage sank down on the closed toilet seat.

All these weeks, she’d kept from thinking about things like that. She’d concentrated on the day-to-day stuff. Finding a place to live. Finding a job.

Had it been deliberate? Had she been trying to avoid remembering her own childhood? No father. Not even a name or a picture, only her mother’s never-ending references to how her life had been ruined by a man.

“He was a liar,” she’d say, “just like all men, sayin’ and doin’ whatever would get him into my pants. Any woman puts her trust in a man is a fool and deserves whatever she gets.”

It was a blunt, harsh recitation of the facts of life, but it was effective.

Sage had seen its validity all around

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