“Coburn here.”
“Coburn?” The voice sounded confused. “Oh, hi. Sorry, Mr. Grant, Rebecca from Joanne Gibson’s office here. I was trying to reach Diana. Your number’s listed right below hers.”
“No worries. You might have trouble getting her, though. She’s out of the country as of today.”
“I thought I might catch her before she left. Has she left?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said pleasantly.
A pause. “Oh. Okay. I have some test results I need to give to her. Do you know if she took her usual mobile with her or if she’s switching over?”
“I wouldn’t know that, either.” He started to mutter a polite kiss-off, then frowned and tucked the phone closer to his ear. “What test?”
“I can’t really say. It’s just a routine check with her preg—” The woman broke off as someone said something to her in the background. “Just a routine test,” she repeated. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
His blood ran cold. “Just one second,” he ordered. “Were you about to say pregnancy? Is my wife pregnant?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Grant, I really can’t tell you—”
“Put Dr. Gibson on the phone.”
“What? I can’t do that. She’s with a patient.”
“Then, unpatient her now or I will get in my car, drive over there and do it myself.”
A pause. “Just one minute.”
He drummed his fingers on the midnight blue paint of his car, a complete sense of unreality enveloping him as he digested what he knew the receptionist had been about to say. This could not be happening. He’d worn a condom that night. He’d very definitely worn a condom that night. But condoms weren’t foolproof...
Cars whizzed by him, the height of Manhattan rush-hour traffic jamming itself onto the streets. The voice of an older female finally came on the line. “Coburn?”
“Yes,” he said tersely. “Your receptionist just called me by mistake, as I’m sure she told you, and mentioned in passing my wife is pregnant. My wife who is now on a plane bound for Africa. Could you confirm this rather important piece of information?”
“Coburn...” He heard the hesitation in her voice. “Rebecca should not have given that information out. It breaches doctor-patient confidentiality laws.”
“I understand that. But since the cat’s out of the bag, I suggest you confirm it right now so I don’t have to spend all my money suing you for the information.”
Joanne sighed. “I am so sorry this happened. I truly am. But Diana really needs to be the one to tell you this.”
He held the phone away from his ear and stared at it as if it was a toy he would like to crush. Rage zigzagged through him, singeing his skin. She had just told him everything he needed to know.
“You know what, Dr. Gibson?” he bit out, pulling the phone back to his ear. “Forget it.”
He disconnected the call, picked up his briefcase, tossed it into the car and headed uptown to Diana’s parents’ place. He was two blocks into the journey before he remembered he’d left his espresso on the roof of the car. An expletive flew from his lips. He wasn’t a violent man, but the urge to slowly strangle his wife was profound.
Traffic was filthy. He spent the first fifteen minutes crawling at a snail’s pace behind cabs that wove in and out of his lane, not helping his temper. By the time he got stuck a few blocks from the Taylors’ penthouse, his head was in total disarray. He leaned back against the seat and attempted to take it all in. Could Diana have been pregnant the night she’d been with him? Was it someone else’s baby? The shattered look on her face after he’d taken her that night sliced through his head. No way. There was no way she was dating someone else and had been with him like that. He knew his wife. It wasn’t in her DNA. Which left him with the mind-numbing conclusion that this baby was his. He was going to be a father.
And his wife was on her way to Africa. To an unstable city in the interior that had just come out of a period of dangerous unrest. And she had known she was pregnant. Known she was carrying his child.
By the time he’d crawled the last couple of blocks to the Taylors’ building, he knew one thing. He wasn’t waiting around for Diana to deign to tell him the news. She had taken a liberty with information, information about his child. Action was required.
The doorman of the Taylors’ building caught the keys he threw at him as he swept past without breaking stride. Barking his name at the concierge, he fixed the man with an unrelenting stare until he put the phone down and waved him through. Be civil, he told himself while stalking toward the elevator. This was not the Taylors’ fault; it was their daughter’s. He was here only to get the information he needed.
The elevator stopped at the Taylors’ tenth-floor penthouse. Wilbur Taylor opened the door seconds after he rapped on it, hard.
“Coburn,” the other man murmured smoothly. “What an unexpected surprise.”
“You can dispense with the pleasantries,” Coburn suggested tersely, walking past him into the foyer. “We all know how much you like me.”
Wilbur blinked at the open aggression Coburn usually managed to hide beneath a cloak of civility. Diana’s father closed the door and faced him, a light firing in his eyes at the opportunity to take the gloves off. “I’d like you more if you gave my daughter the divorce she’s asking for.”
“That might be wishful thinking, since she’s pregnant with my child.”
Wilbur’s jaw dropped. Diana’s mother, who had appeared behind her husband, immaculately dressed in pants and a sweater, went chalk white. “Pregnant?”
He was heartened to see it hadn’t been a conspiracy against him. “You didn’t know?”
Her mother shook her head. “She wasn’t well when she was here for dinner on Sunday but we thought it was the flu.” She shook her head, her blue eyes flickering. “She left knowing that?”
“The height of stupidity, don’t you think?”
“Now, listen,” Wilbur interjected, “You can’t talk—”
“I can,” Coburn raged, pointing a finger at him. “Right now I am capable of anything given what your daughter has done. But all I want from you is the address where she’s staying.”
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.