Pregnancy Of Convenience

An irony he could do without.

The vehicle was a small white car. Bad choice, he thought trenchantly. And damn lucky the car hadn’t slid completely into the ditch, in which case neither he nor anyone else would have seen it.

There was a brief lull in the wind. His heart skipped a beat. Someone was slumped over the wheel. A man or a woman? He couldn’t tell.

Forgetting his knee, he lunged forward, adrenaline thrumming through his veins. The engine wasn’t running; how long since the car had gone off the road? He scrubbed at the window with his gloved fist, and saw that the driver was a woman. Hatless, he thought grimly. Didn’t she know better? Also, unless he was mistaken, unconscious. He grabbed the door handle, and discovered that it was locked. So were all the other doors. He pounded on the glass, yelling as loudly as he could, but the figure draped over the wheel didn’t even stir.

Cal raced back to his vehicle and grabbed the shovel from the back seat. Then he staggered across the road again. Once again he banged on the window, but to no effect. Grimacing, he raised the handle of the shovel and hit the glass in the back window with all his strength. On the third try it shattered.

Quickly he unlocked the driver’s door and pulled it open. Taking the woman by the waist, he lifted her awkwardly, trying to pillow her face in his shoulder. Once again he made the trip across the ice and drifts back to his vehicle. He eased her into the passenger seat, supporting her as best he could as he anchored her in place with the seat belt. Then he hurried back to her car, picked up her briefcase and threw it on the back seat of his four-wheel-drive. Clambering in on the driver’s side, he turned the fan up to its highest setting, dragged off his parka and draped it over the woman’s body, then tucked the synthetic silver emergency blanket around her legs. Only then did he really take a look at her.

The blizzard, the cold, the loud whir of the fan all dropped away as though they didn’t exist. Cal’s heart leaped in his chest. He’d never seen a woman so beautiful. So utterly and heartbreakingly beautiful. Her skin smooth as silk, her hair with the blue-black sheen of a raven’s wing, her features perfect, from the softly curved mouth to the high cheekbones and exquisitely arched brows.

He wanted her. Instantly and unequivocally.

Cal swallowed hard, fighting his way back to sanity. Sanity and practicality. There was a bruised swelling on her forehead, where presumably she’d struck the windshield when the car had swerved into the light pole. Her face was as white as the whirling snow crystals, her skin cold to the touch, her breathing shallow. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen? Was he crazy?

She was lucky to be alive. Besides, he didn’t believe in love at first sight. A ludicrous concept.

So why was the hand he’d touched to her cheek burning as though it were on fire?

With an impatient exclamation, he checked the odometer. Less than three miles to the Strassens’. His best bet was to take her straight there. The sooner she was in a warm house and regained consciousness, the better. Unless he was mistaken—and he’d picked up a fair bit of medical expertise over the years—she was just concussed. Concussed and very cold.

He eased into first gear and out into the middle of the road, forcing himself to focus on staying between the ditches. He’d expected to arrive at the Strassens long before this; he hoped they weren’t worried about him. His errand, after all, wasn’t the most pleasant.

Dusk was falling, making the visibility even poorer. Snatching occasional glances at his passenger, whose head was now lolling on her chest, Cal shifted into third gear. A lot of the snow was being whipped from the fields, for there was nothing to stop the wind but the occasional line of trees along a creek. He’d always had plenty of respect for heights; he’d have more for flatness from now on, he decided with a wry twist of his mouth that simultaneously acknowledged he was concentrating on the weather so he wouldn’t have to think about the woman.

She was probably married to a local farmer and had a clutch of raven-haired children. Why hadn’t he checked to see if she was wearing a wedding ring?

What did it matter whether she was or she wasn’t? The Strassens would know her name, they’d make the necessary phone calls, and she’d vanish from his life as precipitately as she’d entered it.

He’d seen lots of beautiful women in his life. Been married to one for nine years. So why had the startling purity of a stranger’s profile, the elegance of her bone structure, affected him as though he were nearer his thirteen-year-old daughter’s age than his own age of thirty-six?

Swearing under his breath as the gale flung snow across his path, Cal strained to see the poles along the road. He’d covered nine and a half miles since he’d left the main highway; if the Strassens’ directions were right, he had another half a mile to go. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering about them, this elderly couple whose only son Gustave, a fellow mountaineer, had met his death on Annapurna just three months ago.

He, Cal, had come all this way to bring them their son’s climbing gear and the few personal effects Gustave had had with him on his last expedition. An errand of mercy he’d be glad to have over and done with. His original plan had been to stay a decent length of time and then head back to the city tonight. But the weather was putting paid to that; he’d probably have to stay overnight. Not what he would have chosen, particularly as he’d never met Gustave Strassen.

An illusory gleam of lights caught his eye through the snow. That must be the Strassens’ house. Now all he had to do was navigate the driveway.

Four minutes later, he was parked as near to the front door as possible. The house wasn’t as substantial as he’d somehow expected. Leaving the engine running, he took the front steps two at a time and rang the doorbell.

The door opened immediately. A heavy-set man with a grizzled beard boomed, “Come in, come in out of the cold, you must be Mr. Freeman—what, no jacket?”

“Cal Freeman,” Cal said rapidly. “Mr. Strassen, I have a passenger, a woman whose car went off the road. She struck her head, she needs attention right away—can I bring her in?”

The older man took a step backward. “A woman? What do you mean, a woman?”

What kind of question was that? “A young woman. On her own,” Cal said impatiently, “and obviously unprepared for the weather. She ended up in the ditch. I’ll go get her.”

“But we—”

Cal, however, had already turned back to his vehicle, the snow stinging his cheeks. Trying to keep the woman covered as best he could, he lifted her from the seat and with his knee shoved the door shut. The wind seized the hood of his parka and flung it away from her face. For a moment that was out of time he saw her lashes flicker—long dark lashes like smudges of soot. Her lips moved, as though she were trying to speak. “It’s okay,” he said urgently, “you’re safe now, you don’t have to worry.” Then he headed up the steps again.

Dieter Strassen held the door open. But he was no longer smiling. He said, his accent very pronounced, “That woman is not welcome in my house.”

Cal stopped dead, leaning back against the door to close it. “What did you say?”

A strained voice spoke from behind Dieter. “Get her out of here! I never want to see her again. Never, do you hear me?”

Cal knew instantly that this must be Maria Strassen, Dieter’s wife and Gustave’s mother. Short, thin as a rail, her hair in a gray-threaded bun skewered with pins. With a gesture that might have been funny had it not been so venomous, she thrust out one hand, palm toward Cal, as though she were about to push him physically back out into the blizzard.

Him and his burden.

“Look,” Cal said, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but this woman needs help. She’s concussed and she’s cold. She needs some hot food and a warm bed. Surely you can provide those?”

With a depth of bitterness that shocked Cal, Dieter said, “Better had she died.”

“Like our son,” Maria flashed. “Our beloved Gustave.”

Cal said flatly, “How far is it to the next house?”

“Four miles,” Dieter said.

“Surely you can see that I can’t go that far,” Cal said forcefully, shifting the weight in his arms. “Not in this storm. I don’t know who this woman is or what she’s done to make you hate her, but—”

“If we hate her, Mr. Freeman, it is for very good reasons,” Dieter said with something approaching dignity. “You must allow us to be the judge of that.”

“She married our Gustave,” Maria said icily. “Married him and destroyed him.”

Cal gaped at her, the pieces belatedly falling into place. As though he had actually been picked up and moved, he found himself back in an alpine campsite overlooking the south side of Mont Blanc. Four weeks ago.

It was unseasonably warm for December, and Cal was in his bare feet, luxuriating in the damp grass beneath his toes after an arduous day hiking; he’d been testing some foot-wear for a friend who designed alpine boots. One of the guides who had just brought up a party of Germans and who had introduced himself to Cal as Franz Staebel, remarked, “Gustave always liked to be in his bare feet after a climb…did you ever meet Gustave Strassen?”

“Oddly enough, no,” Cal answered. “Our paths nearly crossed several times but we never actually met…I was very sorry to hear about his death.”

“Ah, yes,” Franz said, grimacing into the sun. “He was an excellent climber, one of the best. Such a waste.” With sudden ferocity he banged an ice pick into the ground. “A totally unnecessary waste.”

“Oh?” said Cal, leaning back against the scaly trunk of a rowan tree. “How so?”

“His wife,” Franz said, pulling the pick out with a strong twist of his wrist. “His wife, Joanna. She was pregnant, he’d just found out the day before. But there was a good chance the baby wasn’t his. She’d cheated on him, had for years.”

“Why did he stay with her, then?” Cal asked idly.

“You should have seen her. Beautiful in a way few women are. And her body…Gustave was only human.” Moodily Franz kicked at a clump of grass he’d dislodged, the pale sun gleaming in his red hair. “So Joanna and the baby were on his mind that morning, the morning he attempted the rock ridge on Annapurna 3. And died in the attempt.”

As Cal knew all too well, distractions could be fatal on the mountains, where a moment’s misjudgment could send a man to his death. “I’m sorry,” he said inadequately. “I hadn’t heard about his wife before.”

“She controlled the purse strings, too. A rich woman, who let Dieter be stuck with second-rate equipment, and forced him to beg for sponsorships for his climbs. Ah, it was bad. Very bad. How that man suffered.”