Roarke's Kingdom

It was such a simple question, but the answer to it was beyond possibility.

She wanted everything.

Her pride.

Her child.

And, most of all, Roarke’s love.

A miracle. That was what she wanted.

Jennifer’s glance slipped past Roarke to the window and the flowers nodding on the ledge outside.

The flowers had endured despite the fate predicted for them. But that had not been a miracle.

It had been survival.

She was a survivor too. Hadn’t she proved that time and time again? She’d lost Roarke. Lost her child. Maybe she could, at least, recover her honor.

“Well?” Roarke was watching her impatiently, his hands on his hips. “What is it you want now?”

She took a steadying breath. “I want my self-respect,” she said quietly.

He laughed. “Amazing. You’re just full of touching sentiments today.” His face hardened. “I can’t help you. You gave that up when you gave away your child.”

“No.” She snapped out the word, hurling it at him like a stone. “I never gave her away, not the way you mean. I loved my baby despite the fact that I—I despised her father.”

His expression darkened. “I’m not really interested in hearing about your tawdry little affair. You did what you did, and you paid the price.”

“Yes.” Her eyes met his. “I did. I was—I was just a fool, that’s all. I thought Craig cared for me when all he wanted was to use me.”

Roarke’s eyes were cold; for a second, she wanted to retreat into silence and let him walk off without hearing the rest. But she had gone too far to stop now. She turned slowly and walked to the window. Maybe if she didn’t have to watch the hatred in his eyes she could summon the strength to finish what she’d begun.

“I was raped,” she said flatly. “Date-raped, I guess you’d call it. When I found out I was pregnant…” She paused, fought for control. “My mother was sick. She was dying. I was all she had. How could I tell her that I was repeating the pattern of her own life?”

“What a story,” Roarke said sarcastically. “You ought to write it up and sell it to Hollywood.”

“And there was the child I was carrying to consider. I had no money. No future. What could I offer her? I’d been raised like that. No father. A mother who spent her days scraping by. I didn’t want to condemn my baby to that kind of existence.”

“What you mean is, you realized you were carrying valuable cargo.”

Jennifer spun around. He had come up close behind her.

“Damn you,” she sobbed. Her hand flew through the air and she slapped him. He caught her wrist and she hissed and struggled against his grasp. “You don’t understand anything. You have no idea what it’s like to live in the real world and to have to make decisions you know will haunt you forever.”

“That sounds good, but how about the truth? Ronald offered the perfect out. You could tell yourself you were doing the right thing while you picked up more money than you’d ever dreamed of.”

“You idiot!” Jennifer’s voice shook, not with despair but with anger. “I told you, I never even knew money changed hands until Alexandra told me. That was between her and Dr. Ronald.”

His face bore a look of cool disbelief. She jerked her hand from his. She wanted to slap him again, but what good would it do? Instead, she tore the check in half. In half again. She kept tearing it until the tiny pieces lay on the floor like flakes of snow.

“There,” she said fiercely. “That’s what I think of your money, Roarke Campbell. And if you don’t believe me, you can—you—”

Sobs burst from her throat. She buried her face in her hands, weeping as she had not permitted herself to weep since she’d left him.

“If you didn’t want money from me, why did you come to Puerto Rico?” His hands clasped hers, pulling them away from her face. “And why did you worm your way into my life if not to blackmail me?”

“I told you. I came because I was going crazy wondering if my baby was all right. I didn’t even know Susanna was mine until you told me the story of her birth that last night.”