Every Breath You Take Read online

  “Maybe not, but in those days, I had additional reasons to feel that fathering children was a pointless risk for me: I knew nothing about being a father, and I had no idea what sort of genes I carried. Based on what Bartlett told you happened to me as a child, you should be able to guess why I felt that way.”

  Overwhelmed that he was willing to admit so much to her now and saddened by the needless fears he’d endured, Kate looked down at her lap and decided he’d been right to insist on this conversation. Lifting her eyes to his, she said with soft candor, “I don’t have to fill in any blanks. I know everything about you. Evan only knew how the Wyatts disposed of you when you were a baby. I know everything about your life afterward.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s see …” she said with a sudden smile, eyeing him from beneath her lashes, “I know that you broke sports records at all your schools starting when you were eight. I know you excelled at all your studies except art. I know that you had nowhere to go when school closed, so you stayed with a faculty member or a custodian during the holidays, and that during the summers you went to camps. I know that students were required to write home twice a month, and so you wrote letters to a custodian at your previous school. I also know you were fascinated with religion, but no one religion in particular. You changed your religion at each new school.” Tipping her head to the side, she asked, “Were you interested in theology, by any chance?”

  “No, I was interested in spending the least possible amount of time in church. Since church attendance was mandatory at all my boarding schools, I ‘reoriented’ my beliefs according to whatever church service was shortest at the current school.”

  “Judaism takes up a lot of time.”

  “Not when there’s no rabbi in the vicinity.”

  She burst out laughing, and an answering smile tugged at Mitchell’s lips—until he realized that after three years, he was still helplessly captivated by those russet-lashed, glowing green eyes smiling into his. He doused his smile and took a quick swallow of his drink. Despite her claim that she knew everything about him, it was obvious that she knew only what was in his school records. He was wondering how she got her hands on those when she sobered and said something that made him stare at her over the rim of his glass.

  “I know who Calli is, Mitchell. I wouldn’t have agreed to leave Danny upstairs with him otherwise. The Calliorosos were the closest thing you had to a family.”

  “Where did you get all this information?”

  “Your brother’s investigators put together a file on you.”

  “He told me he had a file. How did you get it?”

  “The day after I got back from St. Maarten, Gray Elliott ‘invited me’ to his office for a chat. He had a huge file on you, including pictures of us in St. Maarten, and he told me you were a suspect in your brother’s murder.”

  “What the hell did he expect to find out from you?”

  “He wanted to know how long we’d known each other, and what you’d told me about your brother.” Kate paused, momentarily diverted by the scowl on Mitchell’s handsome face because he suddenly looked like a formidable version of Danny when he scowled. “Anyway, four months after that, I was in the terrifying position of carrying a baby inside me whose father was a dark mystery to me. I remembered those files in Gray Elliott’s office, and so I went to see him and asked if I could look through them. Ethically, he couldn’t let me see anything the police had accumulated about you. But since your brother’s file didn’t fall into that category, he let me look through it at his office.”

  “He had no business letting anyone see that file.”

  “Be glad he did,” Kate said forcefully. “Before that day, I didn’t know how I was going to be able to love my baby. But once I read that file, I understood you. I understood why you needed to get even with the Bartletts and why you would have seized the chance to do it by seducing me.”

  Shock and disbelief annihilated every other emotion in Mitchell’s body. Outwardly relaxed and inwardly tensed, he studied her, assessing her face, her inflections—even her logic—for indications that she was lying. But as she continued, what Mitchell heard was truth, and it was so painful to endure that he found himself almost wishing she were lying to him while at the same time he wanted everything she said to be true.

  “To be fair to you,” she went on, oblivious to the havoc she was wreaking in Mitchell, “you were very straightforward the first night at the villa in Anguilla. You made it clear that you didn’t want to share anything with me except a bed—not even meaningless information, like your brother’s name and how many languages you speak. You told me straight out in St. Maarten that you didn’t want complications, and that if I went to bed with you, nothing would come of it.

  “I had to have magic, though, or I wouldn’t go along, and when you realized I meant it, you reversed your attitude in a matter of seconds and told me we had magic. And then you took me to bed and made sure I believed it. I thought I loved you, and I think you knew that. Even so, you let me go to meet Evan in Anguilla, knowing exactly what was going to happen and what Evan was going to tell me. That was despicable, by the way.”

  Kate paused, waiting for him to react, but all he did was nod, wordlessly accepting her condemnation and urging her to go on. So Kate went on. “I couldn’t find a way to forgive you for that—or the baby in my womb either—until I read your file. Once I did that,” she said, looking at him without rancor, “I realized that you meant me no real harm, but I was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for revenge that you simply couldn’t pass up. Actually,” she said, flashing Mitchell a wayward smile, “after I read your file, I actually felt a little bit of satisfaction that I was the tool you used to retaliate.”

  Desperate for her to continue, Mitchell drew a steadying breath and said quietly, “You have a very loyal, forgiving nature, Kate.”

  Kate’s hand shook at the soft caress she imagined in his voice when he said her name, and she stared hard at him, but his handsome face was composed, attentive, and nothing more. “Actually,” she said briskly, in case he’d noticed her momentary loss of concentration when he said her name, “it was a picture of you, taken at the dock in St. Maarten, the day I left with Evan, that changed everything for me.”

  “How did it do that?”

  “It was a police photograph with the date and time stamped on it. It was five forty-five and you were waiting for me. Until I saw it, I never imagined that you went to the dock at all that day.”

  Mitchell’s expression didn’t change, but he had just registered the first flaw in her logic, a large flaw that called her other claims into question.

  Across from him, she finished the wine in her glass and said drily, “You have a gift for diabolical revenge. Evan’s reaction at the villa was all you could have hoped for.”

  Mitchell lifted his brows inquiringly. “Really? Do you mind telling me what happened?”

  His complete imperturbability suddenly rubbed Kate the wrong way. “Yes, I think I do mind,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. That’s completely between Evan and you.”

  Kate gaped at him. His last sentence absolved him from any part or responsibility for what took place at the villa, which was completely, outrageously arrogant and unfair. Without an inkling that his remark was verbal bait being dangled in front of her nose by an expert, Kate swallowed the hook, and decided she deserved the opportunity to tell him exactly how brutal he’d been. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that without feeling a little humiliated, so she stared at the empty wineglass, twisting the stem in her fingers. “The day I left you at the Enclave in St. Maarten, I went straight to the villa and packed my suitcases like a good little idiot; then I waited for Evan. When he arrived, I told him I’d met you and that I thought we had something special—”

  Mitchell interrupted with a quietly spoken instruction. “Look at me.”

  Kate automatically obeyed because she assumed he wanted her looking at