A Man's Promise. Brenda Jackson

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      Seven

      Shiloh spun around, recognizing Caden’s voice immediately. And he stood there in her cellar as if he had every right to be there. The shock of seeing him was replaced with anger, and she raised her chin and narrowed her gaze while trying to ignore how good he looked in his business suit. When he performed he wore casual attire—a nice shirt with either jeans or slacks. Seeing him standing there looking as if he had stepped off the pages of a GQ magazine almost took her breath away. Almost...but not quite.

      And why did he look more handsome than ever? His neatly trimmed beard might have something to do with it. Did he have to look so sexy standing there and staring at her with those gorgeous light brown eyes of his? And his nutmeg-colored features appeared creamy smooth against the whiteness of his dress shirt.

      “What are you doing here, Caden?” Her tone was sharp, and she meant for it to be.

      “I came to see you.”

      Her eyebrows shot up. He had to be joking. “Why would you do that when you told me just last month that you couldn’t stand the sight of me?”

      “I was wrong, and I came to apologize, Shiloh. I said a lot of things that night that I had no business saying. I know the truth now, and I should have listened to what you had been trying to tell me.”

      She wondered who’d told him anything, but it truly didn’t matter. “Yes, you should have listened to what I had to say, but you didn’t. Not only that, you showed me how much faith and trust you had in me, Caden. A whole lot less than I had in you.”

      “What was I supposed to think, Shiloh?”

      It infuriated her that he would have to ask. “That nothing short of death could have kept me from marrying you that weekend. But you didn’t think about that. You thought I would lie around on the beach with another man. So much for what you thought of my character.”

      “But there were pictures, and when I tried calling, a man answered the phone. Of course, I now know all of it was arranged by your father.”

      “And that made you believe the worst about me?”

      He didn’t say anything for a minute and then said, “I was wrong. I’m apologizing. Like I said, I thought—”

      “I know what you thought. I get it. Now, will you please leave?”

      He shook his head at that request. “And I know about the baby. Our baby,” he said instead. “I wish I could have been there with you,” he said softly.

      A pain sliced through her heart. Caden was forcing her to remember a period in her life that had been so painful. She didn’t want to recall that she had wanted him there. The pain of broken bones had been bad enough, but then to be told she had lost their child had been an agony no one should go through. Even now, an ache still remained inside of her. And she often wondered if her child had survived whether it would have been a boy or a girl. It would not have mattered to her. She would have been a better parent to that child than her parents had ever been to her.

      And she had cried every night for Caden to come, refusing to believe her father when he’d said he’d contacted Caden. Her father had told her that Caden didn’t want her and that he couldn’t have cared less about her pregnancy.

      “What about you, Shiloh? It’s been four years. If you had so much faith in me, why didn’t you contact me and tell me about the baby?”

      His words made something inside her snap. “I did try to contact you. For months, while I lay in that hospital bed, broken up and in pain, I didn’t believe any of the things my father was telling me about you. He even showed me newspapers that listed where you had gone on tour and the women the tabloids claimed you were sleeping with. I didn’t want to believe it. I refused to believe it.”

      She paused a moment. Later, when she’d been released from the hospital, she had discovered that he’d been sleeping around with those women. “And when I could travel, I found out where you were. I wanted to know why you had betrayed me and why you hadn’t come to me when I needed you. I believed there had to be a reason, and I needed you to tell me that reason. But when I attended your concert, you had Security escort me out. Again, you didn’t want to hear what I had to say.”

      Caden cursed himself, shamed by the memory. Yes, after he had received those photographs and had believed the worst, he had begun having affairs, hoping she would hear about them. He had wanted to hurt her the way she’d hurt him. Seeing her in the audience at one of his concerts had been a huge distraction and he’d acted like a fool. He’d had no idea she had come to tell him about the baby.

      He looked over at her and saw her lips СКАЧАТЬ