NIGHT OR day, moonlight or sunlight or storm, the Pacific rolled in untamed waves from horizon to horizon. Usually the simple magnificence of the sea cleansed Travis of impatience and anger, but not this time. He had lost track of how many days he had been on the water.
He knew only that it hadn’t been enough time.
Cat hadn’t called his cousin’s house. She hadn’t called his lawyer.
She will, Travis told himself with bitter certainty. She doesn’t have enough money to support a baby. If she’s too coy to talk to an answering machine, she’ll get the number I left with Harrington or he’ll patch her through to the ship on a radio link.
Cat’s a big girl. She’ll figure it out. She was going for the lifetime ride, but she’s shrewd enough to cut her losses and take the cash instead of the gold ring.
Sterile.
My God, how could I have been taken in so easily?
Like the waves rolling beneath the ship, Travis kept going over and over his relationship with Cat, from its rocky beginning to its brutal end. He needed to figure out where he had gone wrong, how he had been so completely fooled by her.
It wasn’t as though he had ignored the possibility of getting Cat pregnant. He had asked her outright.
I’m not contagious, but I have to know if you’re protected against pregnancy.
She had answered with a reluctance that set off warning bells.
I won’t get pregnant.
He had pressed her hard, needing to know the truth.
Are you certain?
I’m very certain. But it doesn’t matter.
Like hell it doesn’t. I was caught in the baby trap once. Once was more than enough.
Not to worry, Mr. T. H. Danvers. I’m fresh out of baby traps.
What does that mean?
I’m sterile!
Cat’s rage had been so real, her pride so vulnerable, that Travis hadn’t pushed beyond her words to real proof of sterility.
She had lied to him, beginning to end. He had believed her.
Beginning to end.
Spray lifted past the bow, brushed across Travis’s hands like cool, salty kisses from a passionate yesterday. He tightened his grip on the railing and kept replaying scenes as he had done day and night since Cat betrayed him. He tore each memory apart again and again, seeking . . . something.
Some truth. Some answers.
Something to make him feel more alive, less a fool.
She had been so convincing, so proud, so strong and yet so vulnerable.
When Billy found out I was the reason we weren’t having kids, he was furious. He wanted to know how I would earn my keep since I couldn’t have babies. I wasn’t educated, my mother was broke, and I was sterile. What damn good was I to a man?
Even in memory, Cat’s words squeezed Travis’s heart. The knowledge that she still could reach inside him made him want to scream in raw fury. Because underneath it all, the pain and the memory and humiliation, he was hungry for her. He couldn’t sleep for remembering how it felt to push into her tight, wet body and listen to her rippling cries of pleasure.
Travis didn’t want to remember Cat’s surprise and passion when she climaxed that first time. And he had believed it was her first.
What an actress. Shit, why didn’t she go onstage? Money would have been the least of her problems.
Hot memories sleeted through him, sex better than he had ever had before, so damn good he never questioned the truth of Cat’s response. He knew women could fake climax—and he also knew there were some things that couldn’t be faked. Wet sheets were one of them.
All right. So she enjoyed it. So what? She lied about the rest and I went for it all, hip-deep and buried to the hilt.
Furious with Cat and with himself, Travis spent his waking moments balanced on the razor edge of self-control. It had never been this bad. Not even with Tina.
He couldn’t go back to shore yet. He was still too vulnerable. He was still haunted by the sight of Cat’s hand in the flames and the ice in her eyes when she told him to take his money and go to hell.
But most of all he was consumed by something he called himself a fool for even thinking.
What if she wasn’t lying? What if she really thought she was sterile?
The possibility teased him, taunted him with all that he wanted to believe, all that he hungered to believe, with an intensity that left him shaken.
He needed her.
She only needed his money.
He had to remember that. Women and money was a lesson that had cost too much to learn. He couldn’t allow himself to forget that.
Travis’s hands squeezed the cold railing hard enough to leave marks on his palms.
“Captain?”
He spun toward Diego. “I told you I didn’t want—”
“There is a call for you,” the first mate interrupted quickly. “Very urgent.”
A savage combination of triumph and despair twisted through Travis. The triumph he understood.
Cat got my number from Harrington and called.
Travis ignored the despair. He didn’t want to examine why being right about what Cat really wanted from him should make his gut twist.
Nobody was standing around the radio phone when Travis got there. Every crew member had vanished. No one wanted to be within range of their captain’s hair-trigger temper.
“Yes?” Travis said into the transmitter.
“Well, if it isn’t Hell-on-Women Danvers. Finally. Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get this call through?”
“Harrington,” Travis said. Disappointment made his voice rough.
“That’s me, boy-o. Mind telling me why you aren’t picking up your phone messages?”
“I am.”
“Delightful,” Harrington said sarcastically. “Then why in hell haven’t you returned just one of my ten calls?”
“Eleven.”
“But who’s counting, right? Talk to me, Travis. Tell me why I shouldn’t hire a boatload of thugs and beat you into a thin paste.”
“Nice to know who my friends are.”
“You’re lucky to have any.”
“Am I to assume Cat told you the heart-wrenching—or is it gut-wrenching?—tale of her sterility followed by her miraculous fertility?” Travis asked.
“I talked to Cochran.”
“Then you know what kind of a fool I’ve been.”
“I know what kind of a fool you’re being. Cathy isn’t a lying, scheming piece of ass like Tina.”
“The proof is in the pudding. Or isn’t Cat pregnant?”
“That’s up for grabs right now.”
Travis felt as though the ship was sliding down the side of a wave as tall as the sky. “Are you telling me that she’s going to have an abortion?” he asked savagely.
“An abortion? Are you on drugs? Get it through the rock that passes for your brain: This isn’t Tina. Right now Cathy is flat on her back in bed, doing everything she can to hang on to your baby.”
“Yeah yeah yeah,” Travis said, not believing a word of it. “You’re breaking my heart.”
“I’d rather break your head,” Harrington snarled.
“Just because I don’t think old Fire-and-Ice is an innocent little angel? Hell, Harrington. You’re the one who’s always telling me that a man can’t really know a woman until he sleeps with her. I’ve slept with Cat. Have you?”
“Of course I haven’t. She’s my friend.”
Travis told himself he wasn’t going to ask. It was none of his business.
But it would explain why Cat hadn’t called him or his lawyer.
“Did her Big Check from Energistics come through?” Travis asked.
“No,” Harrington said curtly. “And it won’t. Energistics is tits-up. Hardly enough left for the lawyers to snarl over.”
Then why hasn’t Cat called? Travis demanded silently. She’s dead broke and the twins’ tuition is due.
“So how much did you give her?” Travis asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Cash and Cat.”
“I tried to help her. She refused.”
“Playing for keeps, isn’t she?”
“Listen, you muleheaded son of a bitch,” Harrington said, spacing each word so there could be no misunderstanding. “Cat isn’t playing at all. She’s honest to a fault. She has more integrity than any ten people and more stubbornness even than you!”
“So says the man who hasn’t slept with her. Watch it, pal. Next thing you know she’ll have you in front of a minister.”
Silence stretched. Then Harrington spoke, his voice all but purring. “What a wonderful idea. Thank you. Should I send you an invitation? It will be a small ceremony, of course. Do RSVP at your convenience.”
Before Travis could get his voice back, Harrington broke the connection.
Travis stood there, staring at the radio phone, for a long time. He knew his friend wouldn’t be getting married. Not to Cat. If she had wanted to marry Harrington, she would have by now. But she hadn’t even been his lover.
The thought transfixed Travis. He had been assuming that Cat wanted him for his money, but Harrington was richer than Travis.
What if Harrington is right about Cat’s integrity?
Then, like ice water, came the second question: What if he isn’t?
Travis didn’t know the answer to either question. He did know that nothing was being solved at sea.
“Diego!” he yelled up the stairway.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Set course for Dana Point.”
Travis listened to the creak and snap of sails as the ship came about. Automatically he shifted his weight, adjusting to the different feel of the sea. Something close to calm stole over him. Cat needed his money. No matter how stubborn she was, she couldn’t get past that fact.
She would see his ship returning, know that he was back, and call him.
Lying in bed, watching a restless dawn, Cat saw the Wind Warrior sail back out of the night, heading down the coast to Dana Point. Her heart beat so fast that it frightened her as much as the cramps gripping her body. She would have given anything but her baby to get up and look through a telescope, to see Travis again, if only at a distance, if only for an instant.
He came back, she thought, dizzy with relief. He thought about it and now he knows it wasn’t the money I wanted. Just him.
Soon he’ll call me, hold me, trust me, love me as much as I love him.
Tears burned behind Cat’s eyes. In an agony of hope, she waited for the phone to ring.
She waited all day.
She endured another dream-haunted night.
Sometime during the second day, Cat finally understood that Travis wasn’t going to call her. He wasn’t going to see her. She was no more to him than spindrift torn from a storm wave.
Sometime during the second night, Cat realized that even good swimmers could drown.
Finally she slept, only to wake up shaking, breathing brokenly, sweating, bolt upright in bed. Just a dream, she assured herself frantically. Wake up. It’s just that damned dream.
But being awake didn’t end the nightmare. It was there in the blackness beyond her window, in her shallow breaths, in the fear that made her body rigid. Silently she endured it all, the sweating and the cramps, the darkness and the nightmare, the blank emptiness that awaited her with such terrifying patience.
I’ll be better in the morning.
The bleeding will stop. The baby will be fine. This will all be worth it, every bit of it, when I hold our baby in my arms.
Motionless, Cat watched color seep into the starless arch of sky beyond her window. She lay on her side, trying to ease the cramps that held her lower body in a vise. She could feel the dampness between her legs.
After three weeks of bed rest, the bleeding wasn’t better. If anything, it was worse.
Like the pain of not hearing from Travis.
Below Cat’s bedroom window, surf exploded over black rocks beneath a slate-colored sky. The ranks of storm waves were enormous, rhythmic, almost reliable. Almost. The ocean was like a person, never truly predictable. Sometimes a larger set of waves would sweep in without warning, booming and tumbling onto the shore, making the house tremble with the power of the unleashed sea.
Cat held her breath, waiting for the beautiful violence of the biggest waves, waiting for the clash of fluid force and stone. Eagerly her eyes searched for the telltale dark lines of the larger waves looming out of the brightening day. And when the huge breakers came in their fives or sevens, bringing their own vicious thunder, she smiled triumphantly, glorying in the violent sea.
It was like having someone scream for her when she was too proud to scream for herself.
She made a low, pleased sound when she finally spotted another dark line looming on the horizon, the first of another series of smooth-backed monsters leaping up out of the sea.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she caught a slight motion partway down the cliff. Cold horror drenched her when she saw Jason darting down his stairway to the beach, coming to visit her as he had on so many dawns. He was too young to understand the danger of the big waves humping up on the horizon, rolling toward shore with lethal power.
Cat screamed even though she knew Jason couldn’t hear. “No! Jason, go back!”
Still screaming, she raced for the back door. She yanked it open and sprinted across the deck to the stairway that went down to the beach.
“Jason, go back! Jason!”
But even Cat’s screams couldn’t cut through the relentless roaring of surf and wind. Cataracts of water smashed over rocks, burying the lower quarter of her stairway in a deceptively creamy froth.
Jason paused on the beach, but not to go back. He was waiting for the pause between waves. When the pause came, it would be shorter than he expected and the following wave would be larger, the first of the big ones Cat had seen leaping darkly on the horizon.
Bruising her bare feet without feeling it, she bolted down the stairs. Her whole being was focused on the distance between her and the boy who was even now dashing over the foamy beach.
Somewhere in her mind she counted off the seconds since the wave had retreated, counted the steps Jason had made along the beach, counted the stairs he had to climb before he would be beyond the reach of the combers that were rising up out of the sea to explode in blue-green violence on her stairway.
Too much distance.
Not enough time.
Cat didn’t scream again, even when she saw the next wave come apart, burying the beach in a powerful, deadly wall of surf. She simply ran faster than she ever had in her life, racing down the steps with reckless speed.
Not enough time.
Heart bursting, breath sawing, Cat reached Jason at the same instant the wave did. She wrapped her arms around him and the twisted iron railing and hung on with all her strength.
A wall of water slammed into her, over her. She held her breath and Jason and the rail until the wave reversed, trying to suck everything back down to the sea. Coughing, strangling, blind, she managed to stagger up three stairs with the boy when the force of the water pulling at her weakened.
Cat neither heard nor saw the next wave. It burst over her, burying her in a violent explosion of green and white. Before she could recover, the third big wave hammered her to her knees. With a burst of strength that came from desperation, she hung on to Jason and the railing.
The retreat of the third wave combined with the incoming power of the fourth. It was a cold ocean slamming over Cat, bruising her, crushing her, and not retreating at all. The fifth wave hit before the fourth was gone. There was no time for breath, no air to breathe. Her head was spinning from lack of oxygen, yet it was the thought of Jason that frightened her. He was a slack weight in her arms, threatening to slip away.
Half-conscious, Cat forced herself to her feet. Desperately she tried to lift Jason’s limp body above the reach of the devouring sea.
It was like trying to lift the world.
The clock in her mind ticked off the seconds between waves, telling her that it was already too late.
The sixth breaker consumed Cat, dragging her down, clawing at the boy who was too heavy for her to carry. Barely conscious, she sensed the brief second of calm while the wave was balanced between advance and retreat.
She knew that when the balance shifted, when the wall of water rushed back to the sea, it would take her with it.
I’m sorry, Jason.
But she couldn’t even say the words, nor could Jason have heard her if she spoke.
The wave hesitated, then began its powerful retreat.
Cat felt the rough railing slip away beneath her clutching hands. Before she could renew her grip, the world jumped crazily, throwing her off her feet. Dimly she thought another wave had come in, a wave so strong that it was washing her up the stairs on its crest.
Then she realized that someone was carrying her, carrying Jason, taking them both beyond the reach of the violent sea. When she saw her own deck, she struggled free and reached for Jason.
“He needs—”
It was all Cat could manage for the water choking her, strangling her. Fighting for breath, retching water, she went to her knees on the deck next to Jason. She tried to give him artificial respiration, but she was coughing too violently to breathe for herself, much less for him.
Hands crisscrossed by fine scars reached past Cat and wrapped around Jason, hands strong enough to defeat the wild sea and gentle enough to coax breath back into a small child.
Travis.
Cat closed her eyes, braced herself against the wracking coughs, and kept counting seconds in the back of her mind.
It seemed like a lifetime before Jason coughed, yet she had counted off less than eighty seconds before the child was breathing on his own.
She coughed wrenchingly again and again, clearing water from her lungs. Then she felt something break inside, felt a single searing pain. Warmth rushed out of her, taking her remaining strength. With a small cry she sank to the deck.
Travis heard, and turned to her. His face was grim, his eyes haunted, his voice ragged.
“You’re bleeding, Cat. You must have cut your leg.”
She looked down, saw the blood mixed with sea water on her legs, blood pooling on the deck.
Blood flowing out of her womb.
The scream that clawed from her throat was a savage denial that she could lose everything she had wanted out of life, that in the space of a few weeks she could be peeled like a living shell until nothing was left but a transparent, bleeding core.
And then nothing at all.
The scream was still raw in Cat’s throat when another kind of wave surged up and broke over her. She gave herself to its blackness with a passion she had once saved for life.
Travis waited for Dr. Stone to emerge from the hospital room that Cat shared with three other people.
“How is she?” Travis asked.
“Sleeping. I gave her something.”
“That’s not what I asked.” He met and matched the doctor’s cool, assessing look.
“Are you related to Cathy?”
Travis’s eyes narrowed. “Not legally. But we’re . . . close.”
“I see. Have you had those cuts and bruises looked at?”
“There’s nothing worth looking at.”
“Does Cathy have anyone who should be notified?”
“You’re looking at him.”
The doctor’s eyebrows rose. “Come with me.”
She led Travis to what looked like an interns’ lounge. Scarred plastic chairs, ratty tables, battered food and drink machines. The magazines were old enough to vote but too worn to make the effort.
“Sit down,” Dr. Stone said.
“I’d rather stand.”
“Did I ask?”
Travis measured the doctor’s calm determination. Then he lowered himself into a nearby chair.
“Well, you don’t limp and your legs are still flexible,” she said crisply. “How is your back?”
“It will be stiff tomorrow. Nothing that a swim or a hot tub can’t take care of. How is Cat?”
“Cat? Oh, Cathy. She lost the pregnancy.”
Travis hoped the knife turning in his guts didn’t show. He sensed that the good doctor would probably enjoy his pain.
“Nothing to say?” Dr. Stone goaded.
“Just tell me how she is.”
“I have. She’s not pregnant.”
“Are you saying she’ll never have children because of this?” he asked tightly.
“No. Cathy had a relatively simple miscarriage. No complications, physically speaking.”
Travis closed his eyes and let out his breath. The relief made him weak. “Thank God. She’ll be all right, then?”
“I don’t know.”
His eyes snapped open as relief vanished. “What?”
“My dear young man,” Dr. Stone said, yet her eyes said Travis was anything but dear to her, “Cathy has spent the last three weeks flat on her back in bed, alone, terrified of miscarriage. She described her feelings to me very well—a hole at the center of everything. She stumbles in and then she falls and keeps on falling.”
Grimly Travis fought to keep his emotions from showing. “If Cat knew she was at risk of miscarrying, why wasn’t she in the hospital?”
“No insurance. No money.”
Travis flinched as though the doctor had struck him. “Are you saying that she would still be pregnant if she had been in the hospital?”
“Odd. She asked me the same thing.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“Damn it!” Travis exploded. “Do I have to drag it out of you word by word?”
Abruptly Dr. Stone sighed. “However satisfying it would be to torment you for your callus treatment of your lover, I find I haven’t the stomach for it. I can see, despite your attempt at a poker face, that you’re already doing an excellent job of tormenting yourself.”
“Don’t stop now. Twist the knife again. Tell me about Cat.”
The doctor smiled slightly, liking the fierce-looking stranger in spite of herself.
“Mr. Danvers, no matter what care Cathy received, she was simply too physically depleted to sustain a pregnancy. Everything we did was too little, too late. Her body started trying to shed the pregnancy as soon as conception occurred. She wanted that baby. She fought for it. She is a very strong-willed woman. But in the end . . .” The doctor spread her hands, palm up, empty.
Travis forced himself to breathe past the pain he wouldn’t reveal. “Cat’s money worries are over. Move her to a private room. Get her whatever she needs that money can buy. Do it now.”
“Too little, too late.”
“Shit,” he said, closing his eyes for an instant. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m telling you that money is too small a bandage to put on a wound like Cathy’s.”
Ice settled in Travis’s stomach. “You said she was all right.”
“She is, physically. That’s less than half the battle after a miscarriage. Depression is common. The male doctors call it hormones and shrug it off. But hormones are only part of it. The rest is something fundamentally female. I doubt if a man could understand the loss.”
“Try me.”
This time when Dr. Stone measured Travis, he made no attempt to conceal his own grief. There was no need. He could see the doctor’s pain; she was talking about her own loss as well as her patient’s.
For a time she was connected in the most intimate possible way with another life. Now that is gone.
For everyone.