“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.”