His Sugar Baby(70)

He took two long strides and wrapped his arms around her. With one hand he cradled her head against his shoulder. The other hand moved slowly, soothingly, up and down her spine. “Hey! Hey, everything’s all right.” He didn’t know what GVHD was. It didn’t matter. Her reaction was enough to tell him all he needed to know.

Michael picked her up and carried her over to the sofa, settling her in his lap. He murmured to her, holding her gently while she wept a storm of tears. Her whole body shook. Her hands tightly clutched his coat sleeves. He recognized on some instinctive level that she was releasing a pent-up maelstrom of grief and fear.

When she quieted at last, she just laid her head down against his shoulder. He remembered the napkin in his coat pocket, and he pulled it out for her. She murmured her thanks. She leaned back, wiping her nose, sniffing several times. She kept her gaze averted, not looking up. “I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t tell you.”

“I understand.” Michael did, too. He had made it all too plain from the beginning that he would not tolerate any kind of emotional drama between them. He had seen it as a weakness to the smooth conduction of their arrangement. He kept his voice under tight control even as his gut churned. “I was just the * in your secret life.”

“I’m sorry, Michael,” she whispered.

That was more than he could stand. He released her, sliding her onto the sofa. He stood up, retreated a few paces before he turned to look back at her. “Where does that leave us, Winter?”

Slowly, she got up off the sofa. Her clear gaze never wavered, her eyes studying him as though she was trying to look into his soul. “Cathy. My name is Cathy.”

“Yes, I know that now. But I can’t easily make my mind adjust to everything I’ve found out about you lately.” He spoke more sharply than he intended. He took a deep, grounding breath. Michael thrust his hand through his hair. “Look, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s all right. It’s a lot to take in.” She worried at her bottom lip. “About my sister and brother-in-law…”

“Don’t worry.” He was quick to reassure her. He smiled his cold-bastard smile. “I won’t tell them anything about our relationship. Your friend Vicky was in the hospital parking lot, by the way. She overheard us talking.”

Her beautiful eyes widened. She stared at him, obviously trying to restructure the details of their conversation.

“All she heard was that I didn’t know anything about Chloe.” He was silent a moment, feeling again his strange hurt over that fact. “She asked how we met. I told her that we met through e-mail and then made a date for coffee.”

“Oh. Good. Thank you.”

“Your sister said that you and Chloe might return to Singapore with her.” He said it with an inflection of cool indifference, but he closely watched her for her reaction.

Cathy gave a tiny laugh. She gestured dismissively with one hand. “That’s Pam for you! She’s always making plans. We haven’t discussed anything like that. There hasn’t been time.”

“Winter—Catherine. I realize that things can’t remain the same between us. Later, after Chloe is better, I want to discuss our options.” Michael didn’t say so, but he wanted an opportunity to persuade her not to move herself and her daughter halfway around the world. It wasn’t the right moment to launch what was, in essence, a sales pitch, he thought.

“Discuss our options?” She repeated what he had said as though she was mouthing foreign words. Her eyes had narrowed. He felt like he was caught in a laser. He could see the train wreck coming, and he tried to stop it.

“We’re good together. You have to admit that.”

“You want to renegotiate?” There was a peculiar expression on her face.

He was relieved that she understood. He smiled, pleased. “Yes.”

She looked at him. Then she shook her head. She picked up her coat, where she had thrown it over one of the overstuffed chairs, and slid her arms into it. She picked up her purse. Finally, she looked at him again. There was an unfathomable expression in her hazel eyes. “I’ll see myself out, Michael.”





Chapter Twenty-Three



Days later, Cathy was still brooding over the last conversation with Michael. She didn’t think about him all of the time, of course. She had Chloe to think about, and she spent much of her time visiting with her daughter. She had her work to catch up on. Yet always in the back of her mind, there was the reality that she had broken it off with Michael. She wasn’t certain how she felt about it. Whatever else, it didn’t seem finished.

“You’re so apathetic, Cathy.” Pam was hovering again. Her face was filled with concern. She gestured at the chicken salad on the plate that Cathy had barely touched. “You’re not taking care of yourself. You don’t remember to eat. You don’t sleep. Now you’re telling me that you’ve been sick. What are you going to do about it?”

Cathy shrugged. She pushed the chicken salad with her fork. “As long as Chloe continues to improve, it doesn’t matter.”

Pam tightened her lips and looked pointedly at her. “You and Michael…you’ve broken up, haven’t you? That’s part of it, isn’t it?”

Cathy’s gaze flew to her sister’s face. “How did you…?”