“Great. The baby’s great, too.”
Silence again. Lucas took a sip of his whiskey.
“Nicolo said he’d tried to call you but—”
“Yes. I got his messages.”
“I tried, too. For weeks. I’m glad you finally picked up the phone yesterday.”
“Right,” Damian said as if he meant it, but he didn’t. Ten minutes in and he already regretted taking Lucas’s call and agreeing to meet him.
At least mistakes like this one could be remedied, he thought, and glanced at his watch.
“The only thing is,” he said, “something’s come up. I’m not sure I can stay for lunch. I’ll try, but—”
“Bull.”
Damian looked up. “What?”
“You heard me, Aristedes. I said, ‘bull.’ Nothing’s come up. You just want a way to get out of what’s coming.”
“And that would be…?”
“A question.”
“Ask it, then.”
“Why didn’t you tell Nicolo or me when it happened? Why let us hear about it through those damned scandal sheets?”
“That’s two questions,” Damian said evenly.
“Yeah, well, here’s a third. Why didn’t you lean on us? There wasn’t a damned reason for you to go through all of that alone.”
“All of what?”
“Give me a break, Damian. You know all of what. Hell, man, losing the woman you love…”
“You make it sound as if I misplaced her,” Damian said, his voice flat and cold.
“You know I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that Nicolo and I talked about it and—”
“Is that all you and Barbieri have to keep you busy? Gossip like a pair of old women?”
He saw Lucas’s eyes narrow. Why wouldn’t they? Damian knew he was tossing Lucas’s concern in his teeth but to hell with that. The last thing he wanted was sympathy.
“We care about you,” Lucas said quietly. “We just want to help.”
Damian gave a mirthless laugh. He saw Lucas blink and he leaned toward him across the table.
“Help me through my sorrow, you mean?”
“Yes, damn it. Why not?”
“The only way you could help me,” Damian said, very softly, “would be by bringing Kay back.”
“I know. I understand. I—”
“No,” he said coldly, “you do not know. You do not understand. I don’t want her back to ease my sorrow, Lucas.”
“Then, what—”
“I want her back so I can tell her I know exactly what she was. That she was a—”
The men fell silent as the waiter appeared with Damian’s second double vodka. He put it down and looked at Lucas, who took less than a second to nod in assent.
“Another whiskey,” he said. “Make it a double.”
They waited until the drink had been served. Then Lucas leaned forward.
“Look,” he said softly, “I know you’re bitter. Who wouldn’t be? Your fiancée, pregnant. A drunk driver, a narrow road…” He lifted his glass, took a long swallow. “It’s got to be rough. I mean, I didn’t know Kay, but—”
“That’s the second time you said that. And you’re right, you didn’t know her.”
“Well, you fell in love, proposed to her in a hurry. And—”
“Love had nothing to do with it.”
Lucas stared at him. “No?”
Damian stared back. Maybe it was the vodka. Maybe it was the way his old friend was looking at him. Maybe it was the sudden, unbidden memory of the woman outside the restaurant, how there’d been a time he’d have wanted her and not despised himself for it.
Who knew the reason? All he was sure of was that he was tired of keeping the truth buried inside.
“I didn’t propose. She moved in with me, here in New York.”
“Yeah, well—”
“She was pregnant,” Damian said flatly. “Then she lost the baby. Or so she said.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’d never been pregnant.” Damian’s jaw tightened. “The baby was a lie.”
Lucas’s face paled. “Hell, man. She scammed you!”
If there’d been one touch of pity in those words, Damian would have gotten to his feet and walked out. But there wasn’t. All he heard in Lucas’s voice was shock, indignation and a welcome hint of anger.
Suddenly the muted sounds of voices and laughter, the delicate clink of glasses and cutlery were almost painfully obtrusive. Damian stood, dropped several bills on the table and looked at Lucas.
“I bought a condo. It’s just a few blocks from here.”
Lucas was on his feet before Damian finished speaking.
“Let’s go.”
And right then, right there, for the first time since it had all started, Damian began to think he’d be okay.
A couple of hours later, the men sat facing each other in the living room of Damian’s fifteen-room duplex. Vodka and whiskey had given way to a pot of strong black coffee.
The view through three surrounding walls of glass was magnificent but neither man paid it any attention. The only view that mattered was the one Damian was providing into the soul of a scheming woman.
“So,” Lucas said quietly, “you’d been with her for some time.”
Damian nodded. “Whenever I was in New York.”
“And then you tried to break things off.”
“Yes. She was beautiful. Sexy as hell. But the longer I knew her…I suppose it sounds crazy but it was as if she’d been wearing a mask and now she was letting it slip.”
“That’s not crazy at all,” Lucas said grimly. “There are women out there who’ll do anything to land a man with money.”
“She began to show a side I hadn’t seen before. She cared only for possessions, treated people as if they were dirt. Cabbies, waitresses…” Damian drank some of his coffee. “I wanted out.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“I thought about just not calling her anymore, but I knew that would be wrong. Telling her things were over seemed the decent thing to do. So I called, asked her to dinner.” His face turned grim and he rose to his feet, walked to one of the glass walls and stared out over the city. “I got one sentence out and she began to cry. And she told me she was pregnant with my baby.”
“You believed her?”
Damian swung around and looked at Lucas. “She’d been my mistress for a couple of months, Lucas. You’d have done the same.”
Lucas sighed and got to his feet. “You’re right.” He paused. “So, what did you do?”
“I said I’d support her and the baby. She said if I really cared about the baby in her womb, I would ask her to move in with me.”
“Dear God,