Topspin (40 page)

“No, I didn’t
let
him!” Spittle landed on his face as she moved to within mere inches of him, rage rendering her features temporarily ugly. “And I cannot believe, have never been able to understand, how you could think that I did. He overpowered me and tied me up. Did you not see the blood on my face where he hit me?”

Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He knew what he saw. He’d relived the bloody day a million times since then. He thought for a moment. Had he really missed the obvious? He shook his head. Of course he hadn’t!

“No,” he said tightly, “I missed that. I guess I had something else on my mind at the time.”

“That’s because you were too busy jumping to conclusions.” She waved a hand to prevent him interrupting. “This is not easy for me to talk about, but you wanted to know and now you do. He knocked me down and raped me,” she said, and this time he recognized the emotion in her eyes. Searing pain and humiliation, tempered by defiance and a modicum of shame. “Or he would have if you hadn’t arrived before he finished what he’d started. But it didn’t matter. You saw what you wanted to see and the damage was done.”

“But how?” Jack ignored the niggling doubts that were edging their way into his mind. She told a compelling story, but Jack still thought he knew what he’d seen. He refused to be swayed. Accepting he’d got it wrong would force him to confront all sorts of unpalatable truths about himself. “Your legs, your hips, everything. You were encouraging him.”

“Oh, Zac, think about it! I was trying to fight him off. I didn’t want him inside me.” She paused, tears in freefall. “That was your place, no one else’s, and I kept moving as much of my body as I could to stop him from getting there.”

“Jesus!” Jack ran his hands through his hair and fell back into his seat, feeling the air rushing out of his lungs in a fierce swoosh. His heart was beating double-time. Could that really have been it? Could he really have misjudged the situation as badly as that?

“It’s as true as I am sitting here,” she said, resuming her seat opposite him. “I swear it on Dimitri’s life.”

Jack knew when she spoke those last words that she must be telling him the truth. He’d already seen how fiercely she loved their son and knew she would never swear something on his life if it was untrue. She was fiercely superstitious and would never take a risk like that.

“But why, Tania? What did he have on you?”

“That’s what I didn’t want you to find out.”

“Just tell me,” he said in a jagged voice. “What difference does it make now?”

“All right.” She took a deep breath but didn’t speak for a long time, concentrating her eyes on a geranium, absently picking off the dead leaves as she gathered her thoughts. “When we met, you thought I had come over from Russia to live with my uncle.”

“Yeah, I met him.”

“For a man of the world you were very naïve, Zac. But then so was I. When I was told that I could start a new life as a waitress in England, I couldn’t wait to get out of Russia. There was nothing for me there and I wanted to make a fresh start. It was only when I arrived in London that I realized I had been, how do you say, duped?” Jack nodded, feeling numb. “I was told that I owed the people who’d brought me over much money and would ’ave to work as an escort to pay them off.”

Jack sat bolt upright in his chair. “You were a whore?”

“As good as.” Tania’s gaze was distant and unfocused. “I had no choice but to do as they asked, but I dreamed all the time of getting away, having the better life I’d always wanted. A man to love me. A home. Children.” She shrugged. “Then I was introduced to you, Zac, and I knew right from the beginning that you were the one for me.”

“But you didn’t tell me?”

“I couldn’t. You told me so often how violent and dirty your life was and how tainted you felt by it. I was the only pure thing in it, according to you, and being with me gave you the will to get away from it all. How could I do that to you, Zac?”

“You should have found a way. I would have understood.”

She quirked a brow. “Would you?”

“You were my life, Tania. I—”

“Precisely! I know how highly you thought of me. That was part of the problem. Even so, I tried many times, but I was so scared you’d send me away that I made excuses for putting it off. I didn’t think I could bear to be parted from you, you see,” she said, meeting his gaze with transparent honesty. “Anyway, whenever I decided that I couldn’t put off telling you any longer, something always happened. Things were going wrong for you and Cyril, or you went away for days just when I’d found the courage to make my confession. When you came back you always seemed so drained, like something inside you had died, and you took such pleasure from being with me that the time never seemed to be right to tell you.”

“Jesus, Tania, how did we let this happen?”

“I don’t know.” She sighed. “What I do know is Calvin knew my secret. He’d seen me once in a club with some men, before I met you. He knew what I was, but even though he said he’d tell you, still I wouldn’t let him have me.” She shuddered at the memory. “But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was like a man demented, and the more I fought him the more determined he became.” She turned away from him. “And the rest you know.”

Jack’s mind was reeling. “And Dimitri. Did you know about him when we were still together?”

“Yes, I had a special dinner planned for that night. The night when you came home and found Calvin there, I was going to tell you then.”

Jack dropped his head into his splayed hands. “Oh, Tania, what a bloody mess!”

He stood and looked into her face. He could see the strain in her eyes and knew what reliving the nightmare she’d long ago buried had cost her. He felt guilt creeping past his guard when he thought of the way she’d suffered at Calvin’s hands. That wouldn’t have been necessary if she’d felt she could be honest with him.

The urge to take her in his arms and make everything better was almost overwhelming. But something prevented him—the thought of all those men she might have given herself to. He knew it wasn’t her fault and, crucially, knew now that she hadn’t cheated on him. But could he put all those faceless bastards who’d paid for her services out of his mind and pretend it had never happened? He wasn’t sure that he could.

“How many women have you had in your time, Zac?”

He looked up sharply. Her ability to read his mind clearly hadn’t diminished in the intervening years. “That’s different.”

“Is it? How?”

Jack didn’t know. And suddenly it seemed unimportant anyway.

“What did I do to you, Tania?”

He shook his head slowly as the implication of her words finally struck home. What was it that Cyril had said?
Everything’s so black and white with you, Jack.
Claire had said more or less the same thing to him, and Tania had just proved it was true. She hadn’t been able to tell him the truth about herself because he’d built her up in his mind to be something she wasn’t, and set standards for her that it would have been impossible for anyone to live up to. He’d thrown her out, too wrapped up in his own misery to give a thought to what might happen to her. If it hadn’t been for Cyril, God alone knew what she’d have been required to do to keep the wolf from the door. He owed his old boss one huge debt of gratitude.

His mind returned to Peters and he felt his temper threatening to erupt. He’d seen the way he played the women at Porchfield off against one another and had no doubt he’d already sampled one or two of them. But Claire wouldn’t have fallen for his smooth talk, just as Tania before her hadn’t, and that would have piqued his interest. So he’d offered to help her out with her problems if she repaid him in kind. Maybe she shouldn’t have done it, but he could understand now why she had. Desperate times and all that.

Jack balled his fists. He’d sworn off the violent life, but if he ever saw Peters again, if he had the gall to return to the Island, then he’d make an exception in his case. Given that he could have killed Wilf without a qualm last night in defense of Tania and his son, even before he knew the truth about the cause of their breakup, he trusted Peters would have the sense to give him a wide berth in future.

“You were almost raped,” he said, returning his attention to Tania. “You were also carrying my child, but I turned you out without giving you the opportunity to explain.” He shook his head, disgusted with himself. “God, what a hypocrite! No wonder you’ve hated me ever since.”

“I didn’t hate you, Zac. I knew how it must have looked to you. But I was disappointed, and hated myself for a long time for not having told you the truth. If I had, then no one could have hurt us.”

“What did you do when I threw you out?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t much care what happened to me. It was only the prospect of Dimitri’s birth that kept me sane.”

“I’m not surprised you didn’t want me to know about him, given the way I behaved.”

“I thought about telling you many times.”

“And now I know.”

He noticed the tears trickling down her face, and suddenly it was all too much for him. He thought of all the unhappiness he’d caused her though his inability to bend and hated himself. He covered the distance between them in two strides and stood mere inches away from her, wondering how to make her understand what he was feeling. How could he adequately describe the impotence, the anger, the regret for the masculine pride which had made him screw up their marriage seven years ago? Was there a way?

“Is there the remotest possibility of your ever forgiving me for being so insensitive?” he asked. He didn’t hold out much hope, didn’t deserve to be let off the hook so easily. But to his astonishment, when she lifted her head a tiny smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“You don’t deserve it.”

“I know.” Jack dropped his head. “I was never good enough for you.”

“Don’t try emotional blackmail, it won’t work.”

“Then what?”

She tilted her head and smiled directly at him. “Dimitri needs to know his father. Ever since he started school and heard the other children talking about their papas, he has been obsessed with knowing his own. Therefore, I forgive you.”

“Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.”

Tania had lost none of her ability to charm him with her accented English and, once again, Jack felt himself falling helplessly under her thrall. Without assessing the possibility of rejection, he pulled her into his arms. Something unlocked inside him then. Something he’d been keeping under close guard since the day he’d thrown her out. He crushed her lips, his own hard and demanding, desperate to make amends for what he’d put her through.

“I’ve wanted to do that since I walked into that room yesterday and you were about to crown me with that bloody picture,” he said in a voice thick with emotion.

“I know,” she said. “I could see it in your eyes. You can’t hide anything from me.”

“I never stopped loving you, Tania, do you know that? Even when I thought you’d betrayed me, I still couldn’t get you out of my mind. It almost drove me demented.”

“Yes, Cyril said it was so.”

Jack chuckled and brushed the top of her head with his lips. “Did he now!”

“Vhat happens now, Zac?”

“Vhat happens now,” he said, tracing the line of her lips with his forefinger, “is that we need to decide what to do about Dimitri.”

He pulled her back into his arms, his body alive to her every nuance. She must have noticed. Perhaps that was the reason for the luminous smile she quickly tried to smother.

“It would seem so,” she conceded. “You haven’t changed, Zac.”

“Come on,” he said, stretching out his hand, urgency in his voice.

They spent the rest of the afternoon in bed. At first their lovemaking was demanding, as though they were attempting to make up for all the time they’d wasted. But then it turned sweet, poignant. There was no hurry. Jack examined every inch of her in exacting detail as he slowly brought them both to the pinnacle of the most intensely rarefied passion he’d ever experienced. They rediscovered the physical alchemy that had always existed between them. It had lost none of its potency in the intervening years. And all the time Jack was alternately apologizing, telling her he loved her, and begging her forgiveness.

“I’m sorry, Tania. I love you, sweetheart. I’ve never loved anyone else. Forgive me. Say you forgive me.”

In the end Tania silenced him with a kiss of such searing passion that fire lanced through his veins. His groin responded to the challenge as he pulled her back into his arms and took them both to the brink of oblivion.

Again. And then again.

“I must shower,” Tania said, looking at the clock and gasping when she saw how late it was. “Dimitri will be waiting for me to pick him up.”

“I’ll shower with you.”

“Hmm, no, I think not. I know what will happen if you do.”

Jack grinned. “Count on it! Then we’ll go and get Dimitri together.”

“And do what?”

“Well,” he said, kissing the end of her nose as he pushed her back against the pillows. “I thought I’d buy him an enormous ice cream, and then we’ll find a way to tell him together that his papa’s finally come home. For good.”