He shook his head impatiently. “That isn’t what I meant. I want a real relationship this time. I won’t keep you from my kids again.”
“That sounds a lot like another arrangement of convenience to me, one that now includes babysitting. As much as I love Sam and Abbie, I’m going to have to pass.”
“Damn it, Jamie, that isn’t what I mean.” He wished she would turn to look at him, but she stood rigidly, offering no encouragement. He playe
d his last card with a sense of desperation. “I love you.”
She moved then, but not the way he’d hoped. She jerked away from him, taking another step toward the door.
“Jamie,” he repeated, just in case she hadn’t heard. “I love you.”
She wouldn’t look at him. “There can’t be love without trust.”
“There’s no one I trust more than you. I hurt you and damn near ruined my own life before it finally sank in, but it’s true.”
She turned very slowly, her eyes narrowed. Angry. “You didn’t just hurt me, Trevor. You devastated me. What makes you think I can ever trust you now?”
It was illuminating being on the other side. He hated it. “I—”
“I won’t spend the rest of my life trying to prove to you that I’m not like your wife,” she said flatly. “I used to worry that she had been too perfect, that I could never live up to her image. Now I’m afraid I could never escape her shadow. It isn’t fair for you to put that burden on me. I don’t know what she did to you, since you’ve never talked to me about it, but I won’t—”
“There’s a chance that Abbie is not my daughter.” The words seemed to have been ripped from his chest. He had never spoken them aloud before, and it was even more painful than he had imagined. Each syllable seemed to slice his throat as it passed through.
The effect on Jamie was dramatic. Her face went pale, her eyes huge. “Oh, Trevor—”
He forced himself to speak again. “I found out after Melanie died that she’d been having affairs. After reading her journal, I realized that even she didn’t know exactly who had fathered Abbie. While she was imitating the perfect Stepford wife for me, she was playing around while I was at work, leaving the household to the maids and nannies. I thought she was occupied with charitable activities. Her ‘charities’ turned out to be married senators. Abbie was three months old when I read that. I already loved her more than my own life, and I still do. I just don’t know if she—”
His voice broke.
“Trevor, I’m so sorry. You must have been—”
“Devastated,” he supplied, remembering the word Jamie had used earlier. “I had just lost my wife. And then I found out that I hadn’t even really known her. And my baby girl—”
She took a tiny step toward him. “You never had a blood test?”
“No. I’m afraid to,” he said simply. That cowardly streak of his again. Until Melanie had died, taking his smug illusions of control with her, he’d always thought himself a reasonably bold and confident man.
Jamie was still looking at him. “Do your parents know?”
“No one here knows. There was plenty of talk in Washington. It turned out a lot of people knew Melanie better than I did, and the word got out very quickly that she’d been with one of her senators the day she died—but I’ve managed to keep it quiet here. What happened was partly my fault, of course. I was too focused on work, too busy with my own ambitions to pay enough attention to her. We played out a predictable little script, saying and doing the right things without either of us taking them seriously enough. I was perfectly content to go on pretending we had an ideal life, without working hard enough to make sure that it really was. But for her not to tell me about Abbie—it’s very hard for me to forgive her that.”
“And so you decided that no woman could be trusted? Or was that doubt reserved for me?”
Her words were spoken lightly, but their seriousness was obvious by the pain still visible in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” He wished there were more adequate words to express his regret at what he had done to her. “You were right—it wasn’t you I was angry with. It was Melanie—and myself. And it was unfair of me to take that out on you. I let my anger and my fears take over, and I was a total jerk. I finally admitted it while I was sitting at my brother’s bedside, thinking of how fragile life is, and how much I had thrown away by turning on you the way I did.”
“I’ve suffered a few betrayals, but no one has ever hurt me the way you did when you all but called me a slut,” she said quietly.
He frowned, instinctively rejecting the word. “I didn’t—”
“Semantics, Trevor.”
He wished she would call him Trev. Or smile for him. He was painfully aware that he had taken the laughter out of her.
“What is it going to take,” he asked softly, “for me to earn your trust again? Because whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
Her reply was unencouraging. “I don’t know if you can.”