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Christmas at the Castello(11)

By:Jennifer Hayward


Wilbur gave him a long look. "You're going to bring her back."

"Damn right I am."

A long silence wrapped itself around the three of them. Wilbur  scratched his head. "This may be the only time we'll ever agree on  anything, Grant."

Coburn cocked a brow at him. "The address?"

"She's staying at the Lione Hotel in the capital."

He promised to update Diana's parents when he could and left.

At home, a glass of Scotch in his hand to numb the furor in his head,  he called Frankie and told her to clear his schedule for the next week.  If she thought this strange given his jam-packed slate of important  meetings, she didn't comment. Next he called his pilot and had him file a  flight plan for the day after next-his destination, the large,  landlocked nation in the center of Africa his wife was headed to.

He dropped onto the sofa, tipped his head back and swallowed a mouthful  of the Scotch, welcoming its fiery burn as it warmed his insides. Diana  clearly had an idea of how she thought this was going to play out.  Unfortunately for her, that wasn't going to happen. He'd had more than  enough time to think while gridlocked in Manhattan traffic, and he knew  exactly how his version of events was going to unfold. It had nothing to  do with choices or selfishness and everything to do with repercussions.  Responsibility.

He refilled his Scotch and took it out onto the terrace with him. A  rare smattering of stars dotted the New York sky. He studied them,  wondering exactly how far away they were. How many light-years from his  own life were they? How many light-years had his life moved today?

It had changed irrevocably with one piece of earth-shattering news.  He'd always known Diana wanted children, knew he likely didn't, but had  reserved judgment for the moment he had to make that decision. And now  that choice had been taken out of his hands.

The combustible way he and Diana had come together here that night  three weeks ago filled his head. The premonition that making love to her  in his bed was a road he couldn't return from. His mouth twisted. How  right he'd been. He was going to be a father. He was now tied to the  woman he'd vowed to forget. His intuition had been telling him something  and he had not listened.

A low curse split his lips as he looked up into the night sky. He  supposed his reluctance to be a father stemmed from his need to not be  tied down. To preserve his freedom at all costs. The dysfunctional  nature of his own family. But presented with the facts, he was surprised  to discover absolute clarity that stemmed from someplace deep inside  him. Maybe it was biology, maybe it was because this baby was his flesh  and blood, but he knew that no matter how bad the timing, no matter what  state his dismal marriage was in, this was a responsibility he could  not shirk. He and Diana were going to have to make this work.

A knot formed in his stomach. His wife had taken a piece of him with  her when she'd walked out of their apartment that night, proclaiming  what they had dead. Now she was about to learn what it was like to be  bound to a person forever with no hope for the future. Because that was  his plan.





  CHAPTER SIX

IT WAS STILL smoking hot at eight o'clock at night as the sun sank  behind the skyline of the central African capital Diana had been posted  to, blazing a fiery path as it scorched everything within its reach. She  put up a hand to shield her eyes as she left the hospital with her  armed escort after her second day of work and walked the short distance  to her hotel. She was normally good with heat, loved it in fact, but  since she'd arrived here, the heat wave that had racked the country had  been beyond anything she'd ever experienced. Sweltering and bone-dry, it  invaded every cell, sucking out all your bodily fluids along with it.         

     



 

Which would have been manageable if she hadn't been pregnant and losing  hydration to the ever-present nausea that continued to plague her. The  work had been even more emotionally draining and physically taxing than  she'd imagined. She'd been posted here to treat patients at the hospital  and clinic who had been directly or indirectly injured in the violence  between the rebels and the armed self-defense groups battling over the  city. Although the arrival of international forces had stemmed the  violence for now, there were still random acts of aggression taking  place on civilians, and the fallout from the hostilities had provided a  steady stream of patients through the hospital doors.

She had performed surgery today on a sixty-year-old man who'd stumbled  upon a grenade that hadn't been defused and almost lost a leg, done a  cesarean section on a young mother and helped the other doctors work  through dozens of patients suffering from everything from malaria to  respiratory and skin infections. All of it had been performed in an  emergency room that lacked much of the high-tech equipment she was used  to, requiring instinct and ingenuity on her part to make do.

She knew what she'd seen today would haunt her for a lifetime. And that  was just one day in the life of this besieged city. It was enough to  break your heart, something her supervisor had counseled her about. "You  need to keep your professional detachment," he'd told her. "Even more  so than you would normally do. You are going to see things here that  will affect your perspective forever. Which will test your belief in  your fellow man. You've got to move past it."

The gleaming facade of the Lione Hotel loomed in front of them,  sparkling a burned-gold color in the dying rays of the sun. She smiled  her thanks to her escort and arranged to meet him the next morning. If  it seemed incongruous for a five-star hotel to still be operating in  this city after what it had endured, it should be noted things weren't  working entirely as usual.

There still wasn't hot water when she went to take a shower in her  lovely whitewashed room with its four-poster bed, nor was the AC working  particularly well. Wanting only to drink and sleep, but knowing she had  to eat for the sake of the new life growing inside her, Diana went down  to the restaurant and ordered a light dinner. She managed to eat her  salad and half the chicken before she gave up and took her tea out onto  the terrace, which seemed to be cooler than the poorly air-conditioned  restaurant.

At least the air moved out here, she thought, sinking into a chair at a table by the pool.

The terrace was deserted except for a man leaning against the facade of  the restaurant smoking a cigarette. She focused her gaze on the smooth  surface of the oval-shaped pool, a jewel in the center of the perfectly  landscaped space. It looked heavenly. Almost good enough to inspire a  trip to her room to get her bathing suit, but even that was too much  energy in her current state. She sank back in the chair and looked up at  the dusky sky and the different placement of the stars on this side of  the world.

The man dropped the butt of his cigarette to the concrete, ground it  under his foot and went back inside. The night blanketed her in silence.  Her eyes fluttered shut. Exhaustion reached out to claim her with  greedy, grasping hands. She wasn't sure how much time had passed, three,  four minutes, when a sixth sense made her open her eyes. A man strolled  from the shadows of the building, dressed all in black. A bolt of alarm  zigzagged through her, penetrating the fog she was in. Move, her brain  told her. But by the time she got to her feet, her hands balled at her  sides ready to engage, the tall figure had stepped into the light, not  ten feet from her.

Her eyes widened. It was not an unknown assailant. It was someone much more dangerous.

"Coburn." The word came out half croak, her eyes moving over his tall,  lean body clad in black jeans and a black T-shirt. "What are you doing  here?"

He stepped fully into the light, moving lithely, catlike, toward her  until he was so close she could see the ominous glitter in his beautiful  blue eyes. A shiver went down her spine. She was in trouble. So much  trouble.         

     



 

His gaze locked onto hers. "When were you going to tell me, Diana? How  long did you deem it acceptable to keep from me that I'm going to be a  father?"

Her heart leaped into her mouth. He knew. Of course he knew. He was  here. She pushed a breath past her locked set of lungs. "How did you  find out?"

"Your doctor's office called looking for you. Apparently the new  receptionist hasn't yet learned the ropes because she let your big  secret slip."

Oh, God. Her knees went weak at the thought of how angry he must have been. Still was...

"And the hotel?" she asked weakly. "How did you find out I was here?"

"Your father. He was more than happy to address this insane behavior of yours."

Her heart dropped. "You told him about the baby."

His mouth compressed into a straight, forbidding line. "I did what I  needed to do. And believe me, they were just as shocked as I was that  you would travel halfway across the world pregnant and suffering from  morning sickness to take up a physically grueling position you know you  shouldn't be doing."