Sutherland’s Pride (22 page)

Maybe he should find out more about Pride’s plans for the future. Then he could work on convincing her that he could safely be included.

On that thought, he rose and turned to head inside. Pride, wearing only a short pink nightgown, stood in the hatchway, watching him.

“What is it, darling?” Maybe he could begin now to find out what was on her mind.

“I was just wondering when you were coming to bed.” She held out her hand to him. “Is everything all right?”

His spirits promptly shot into the stratosphere. She wanted him sexually. That was something.

“Everything’s fine, darling.” He took her hand. “I’m coming now.”

He followed her below and turned her into his arms the moment they stepped over the threshold into the master cabin.

Tomorrow he would talk with Pride about her plans and how he could fit himself into them.

Tonight, he concentrated on loving her with everything at his command. Maybe she would feel his love for her in the way he caressed and kissed her. She belonged to him, and one way or another, Flynn intended to prove it.

• • •

Pride awakened alone much later than she usually awakened. She lay still for a moment in an attempt to orient herself, but nothing helped. She felt dizzy and nauseous and could not seem to get her bearings.

She sat up, only to lie down again with a moan of misery. The virus still had her in its grip, and in order to feel better, she would probably have to die.

Either that or throw up. She flung the covers off and sat on the edge of the bed just as Flynn entered.

He wore only a pair of swimming trunks and carried a tray of food. Pride noted that he looked like everything she had ever wanted, tall and solidly male.

Then she saw the plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. Her stomach gave a mighty heave and she launched herself toward the head and prayed to make it in time.

For the next few minutes she noticed nothing except the insurrection in her stomach, but as the storm began to wind down, she grew conscious of Flynn holding her steady and patting her face with a wet washcloth.

“You’re still sick.” He lifted her in his arms and carried her back to the bed. “I’d better get you back to shore. You need to see a doctor.”

“Maybe you’d better,” she said, in a weak voice. “Johnny hasn’t been sick, so I have no idea what I’ve been exposed to.”

“You don’t feel feverish.” He pulled the covers over her. “Lie still, darling. I’ll get the boat underway. We should be back at the marina by this afternoon.”

Pride frowned and kept her eyes closed. “I’m sorry about this, Flynn. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“How do you feel now?”

“Still queasy, but better, I think.” She opened her eyes. “I’d better not try and eat that nice breakfast you cooked.”

“Don’t even think about it.” He smoothed her hair back from her face. “Don’t worry about anything, Pride. Just rest.”

At the moment, that was all she felt capable of. Flynn left the room, taking her breakfast with him. She felt marginally better, but not well enough to contemplate bacon and eggs.

A few moments later, she felt the boat quiver and heard the powerful motor kick on. Knowing Flynn, he had probably already called ahead and arranged for her to see a doctor the minute he got her back to land.

After spending about half an hour lying in bed, Pride finally rose and dressed in a pair of shorts and a loose cotton blouse. Her stomach felt a little shaky, but nothing major seemed wrong with her, so she brushed her hair out and applied a little makeup, then peered at her reflection in the mirror.

She looked completely normal. Usually, when she was sick, she looked as if she had been socked in both eyes. Maybe she needed to call Flynn’s parents for an update on Johnny’s condition, just in case Johnny began showing symptoms.

Rather than go above deck and join Flynn in the cockpit, she gathered her belongings and stowed them in her laptop tote. She felt a twinge of annoyance when her fingers touched the crackle of the envelope her father had left her. She had stuffed it into the bottom of her tote on the principle of “out of sight, out of mind.”

After avoiding the envelope for the past few weeks in favor of being with Flynn and Johnny, maybe she should go ahead and read it.

Not that she wanted to, Pride thought, plucking it from her tote with two fingers. She felt sure she did not want to read or otherwise know about whatever it contained. She extracted the old letter her mother had written to her father and opened it in the manner of one fearful of finding a poisonous snake inside.

The date on the envelope signified the letter had been written almost a year before Pride had been born, and nearly three months before the couple’s wedding. The envelope appeared to have been sprinkled liberally with water drops.

Cold with dread, Pride unfolded the enclosed letter on the coffee table. It, also, looked as though it had been left out in a rain shower.

I’ve received the money you sent,
her mother wrote.
But I can’t do it. This is our baby! Isn’t there some other way? I don’t mind leaving school and getting a job. What does it matter if we marry a little earlier than we planned? Come to me this weekend, my darling. We need to talk more before we do something so irrevocable.

Understanding, Pride closed her eyes, filled with sorrow. The few sentences in the letter explained everything that had puzzled her throughout her childhood, just as Alan Donovan must have known they would.

She slowly refolded the letter and returned it to the envelope. Her father had methodically discarded all her mother’s letters and other keepsakes, but he had held onto this one. Pride wondered why, and decided he had probably kept it for exactly this purpose.

Twenty years,
she thought, and shook her head. For twenty years, her parents had punished each other because of the termination of an unplanned pregnancy. Her mother punished her father by withholding her love and physical passion. Her father had retaliated by denigrating his wife in public and claiming Pride was not his child.

Pride realized now that her gentle mother, rather than risk standing her ground and having the child on her own, had given in to ending the pregnancy. In retaliation, she withdrew her love, even though she went ahead with the marriage.

Pride had decided early that if Flynn could not accept that he had fathered her child, she would never marry him. Maybe her subconscious had picked up on her parents’ signals and had adjusted her own outlook early.

She tried to ignore the persistent thought that Flynn knew Johnny was his, that Flynn was obviously thrilled with Johnny. What if he pretended to believe her in order to provide his parents with a grandchild?

On that note, she clapped her hand over her eyes. Flynn was no actor, and she certainly couldn’t see him putting on a pretense for any such reason. Perhaps she was losing it.

Pride left the bedroom and climbed slowly to the deck, where she sat down at the rail and stared out over the gleaming green waters of the Gulf. Her own problem remained, namely, how to convince Flynn that he didn’t have to marry her in order to have access to Johnny.

She wasn’t her mother. She could rear Johnny on her own if she had to. She did not need a husband who didn’t want her.

But Flynn did want her. Everything he said and did proclaimed that fact. All she had to do was take him up on it.

Her thoughts continued in circles for the time she sat there contemplating the water and the unending horizon.

The boat plowed across a series of waves, and Pride’s stomach protested. Rather than take any chances, she went below to stare at herself in the mirror over the sink once more.

She felt really weird. Sick, yet not sick. In fact, she remembered feeling like this once before in her life … .

Pride’s eyes rounded with shock. Electrified, she gripped the sink and counted back.

Her thoughts bounced this way and that, between disbelief and joy, then anger, then back to disbelief. Only one thing seemed clear in the morass of tangled emotions that swirled through her. She wanted to kill Flynn Sutherland.

She paced the room, alternately laughing and shaking with a strange kind of fury. Whoever had said lightning never struck twice in the same place was an idiot and a liar.

She stared down at her currently flat abdomen. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe she really did have a virus.

But before the thoughts fully formed in her mind, she knew the truth. She was not sick at all. She was pregnant.

Again.

And it was all Flynn’s fault.

She thought about climbing up to the cockpit and braining him with the nearest hard object.

She sat down on the bed. On second thought, that would be too easy. What Flynn needed was a much more serious expression of her thoughts on the subject. The only problem was, she couldn’t think of anything bad enough to do to him.

During the three hours it took Flynn to bring the boat back to shore, Pride considered and discarded about a dozen scenarios. Nothing seemed to fit the occasion properly.

This time, she told herself, Flynn would either do the right thing or she really would break her laptop computer over his head.

For some reason, that thought calmed her chaotic thoughts instantly. She went to the walk-in closet and picked through the clothing Flynn had furnished her and finally settled on a pair of navy-blue shorts and a blouse that looked amazingly similar to an outfit she had worn almost three years ago.

She waited until she felt the boat power down then watched out the port hole as Flynn guided the boat into the marina and docked at his slip. While he went through the process of docking at the other side of the boat, she rushed on deck and hopped down the boarding ladder and onto the dock.

The boardwalk of the marina had long been familiar to her. She hurried down it to the parking lot and walked toward Flynn’s Bronco, which still sat in the same spot where she had awaited him three years ago. Once she reached it, she turned back and stared at the boat.

The moment Flynn appeared on deck, obviously in search of her, she stalked forcefully across the parking lot toward Sutherland’s Pride, rocking peacefully in its slip.

Flynn stood at the deck rail watching her, just as he had three years ago. Absently, she noted that he wore a pair of khaki trousers and a white knit shirt, much as he had then.

Pride ran onto the dock, put her hands on her hips, and yelled up at him, “The problem isn’t going to go away if you run from it.”

From the corner of her vision, she noted the presence of a pair of dock workers, watching them with interest.

She waited, fuming. Amazingly, she found herself almost as angry as she had been three years ago. How dare Flynn do this to her again?

Flynn leaned over the deck rail, unsmiling. “Then maybe you’d better come aboard so we can discuss the matter.”

What was he saying? She ran the sentence through her mental computer and came up with nothing, other than the fact that this was not what he had said three years ago.

It still wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Therefore, she would have to go aboard and kill him.

He waited while she scrambled up the boarding ladder and reached out to help her step on deck. The moment her feet touched the deck, he swept her into his arms and kissed her.

“I know how to make the problem go away.” He held her so tightly, she could barely breathe. “I’m going to marry you.”

“Flynn, I hate to tell you this, but that will not make the problem go away,” Pride said with exaggerated patience.

This was better, but she needed more.

He loosened his grip slightly and gazed thoughtfully at her face. “You’re saying the problem will remain, whether we get married or not?”

“Look at Johnny.” She reared back and gave him boding frown. “Would he have gone away if we had gotten married three years ago?”

“No, thank God.” His mouth turned up in a huge grin. “But you might have had some help during those nights when he cried all night.”

She liked this, but she wanted more. “On second thought, the problem might be considerably mitigated if we get married.” She cast her gaze upwards and pretended to ponder the situation. “There’s a lot to be said for shared misery and splitting the duties of childcare.”

“I told you so. We’ll get married next weekend. How’s that? Then you can make me get up with him at night.”

“We ought to make it this weekend,” Pride informed him. “The sooner the better. People can count, you know.”

“I’m all for that. I’ll make the arrangements.” Flynn regarded her with grave attention. “May I ask what changed your mind?”

He still had no clue. Pride registered that at the same time she realized that Flynn really did love her.

She gave him a bright smile. “I knew you wouldn’t want a second unwed-father incident on your record. Your parents would be absolutely horrified.”

“A second — ?” He stopped, and a stunned look spread over his face. “Pride?”

“Like I keep on telling you, Flynn Sutherland, you need to see another doctor. I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with your fertility.”

He stared at her a moment in silence. “I think it’s more a case of finding the right, truly compatible woman.” He closed his eyes then opened them again. “Are you sure?”

“Yes and no.”

“What?”

The dawning look of disappointment on his face shook her.

She hastened to explain. “Yes, I’m sure, but no, I haven’t run any tests. We can stop at a pharmacy and buy one of those little test kits on the way home.”

Flynn lifted her off her feet and swung her around in a circle, still holding her close. “Let’s do that. I can’t wait to tell Dad. He won’t believe it.” He set her down and framed her face between his hands. “I love you, Pride. Do you believe me now?”

“I suppose I’d better,” she teased, laughing at him. “Otherwise, I’ll have to write a column dissecting how I let myself get seduced and pregnant again so my readers can take warning.”

“Be sure and put in something flattering about my manly charm and smooth approach.” He kissed her nose. “I do love you, you know. I realized within a few weeks after you left that I was a fool to let you go.”