The Baby Dilemma

“When we took our vows, we promised to love each other for better for worse,” Philippe said slowly.

“We do! I do!”

“I never intended there to be a ‘for worse’ in our marriage.” His voice grated. “This afternoon I had a visitor. It was a woman I rescued from an avalanche, months before I met you.”

Kellie didn’t need to hear another word to feel as if she’d been dropped from a high building.

“She must have had a good reason to visit a married man at the end of his workday.” Kellie couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice.

“All I know is, she’s eight months pregnant and claims it’s my child.”

Rebecca Winters, an American writer and mother of four, was excited about the new millennium because it meant another new beginning. Having said goodbye to the classroom where she taught French and Spanish, she is now free to spend more time with her family, to travel and to write the Harlequin Romance^® novels she loves so dearly.

Readers are invited to visit Rebecca’s Web site at www.rebeccawinters-author.com

Look out for The Tycoon’s Proposition

by Rebecca Winters

on-sale December (#3729)

The Baby Dilemma
Rebecca Winters

MILLS & BOON

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To Jo—someone who believed in my writing, cheered me on, let me explore to my heart’s content and guided me to greater heights. I will always be grateful.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

September 29

To My Darling Philippe—

In honor of that unforgettable moment in the meadow below Mount Rainier when you proposed to me.

These gold cuff links contain the tiniest petals of the wildflowers you gathered for me. They’re very precious because they represent your love. No woman ever felt more loved by her husband than I do. Happy one month anniversary, sweetheart.

Kellie

Putting her pen aside, Kellie Madsen Didier slid the card inside the envelope and taped it to the present she’d wrapped in black with red, green and gold foil ribbon. It had required painstaking work to arrange the petals in a design which would fit beneath the oval glass overlays trimmed in gold. But the result had pleased her.

Philippe would be walking through the door of their elegant Neuchâtel penthouse apartment any second. The windows gave out on a magnificent view of Lake Neuchâtel, one of Switzerland’s most beautiful scenic sights. Truly he’d brought her home to paradise.

She hurried out of the bedroom to the living room where she’d wheeled in the tea cart for a special dinner.

It was set with their best lace cloth, china, crystal and silver. In the cut crystal vase she’d placed a bouquet of fall flowers backed by an ornate candelabra. She put his gift next to his goblet, then rushed to the kitchen to finish up last minute preparations.

As soon as he’d left for the office that morning, she’d laid her French studies aside to work on a fabulous gourmet meal. After cooking and cleaning most of the day, she’d stopped long enough to shower and wash her hair.

Now that it was dry, it fell over one shoulder, partially hiding the capped sleeve of her new figure-hugging black crepe dress. Philippe had often remarked that with her green eyes and long caramel hair streaked by natural blond highlights, she looked stunning in black.

Wearing dainty black high heels to add a few inches to her five-foot-six frame, she hoped to dazzle him all over again tonight.

She glanced at her watch. Seven-thirty. He was almost a half hour later than he said he’d be when he’d called her that afternoon. It wasn’t like him not to phone again if he’d been detained by a client.

Earlier in the week he’d told her the ambassador from La Côte D’Ivoire had been in to order a fleet of limousines. Maybe there’d been a glitch during shipment from the Didier luxury automanufacturing plant in Paris.

Philippe could still be in the process of ironing out any number of problems. He was meticulous about his work. However until she heard his key in the lock, she didn’t want to light the candles.

Kellie went back to the kitchen to check on everything. Ten minutes slipped by, then another ten. Starting to get worried, she rang him on his cell phone, but she reached his voice mail asking the caller to leave a message.

Growing more anxious she phoned his personal secretary, Marcel, at home. The other man told her he’d last seen Philippe at his desk talking long distance to New York when they’d waved good-night to each other.

Marcel suggested her husband might be discussing something with the night security guard or the custodial staff before he left the showroom office. He urged her not to become alarmed. There could be a dozen reasons why he was late. Perhaps he was entertaining a businessman.

She thanked Marcel and hung up, but she was not reassured. Philippe would have asked her to join him if he’d planned to take a buyer out to dinner.

One of his good friends and climbing buddies, Roger, had dropped by night before last. Was it possible he hadn’t gone back to Zermatt and was still in Neuchâtel? When they got talking about their favorite subject, they forgot anyone else was in the room.

She ran to the study to look up Roger’s number. Before she could find it on the card Philippe kept at the side of his desk, the phone rang.

Pouncing on the receiver, she put it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Madame Didier?” came a serious sounding voice.

A sense of foreboding set her on the verge of panic. Her mouth went dry. “Yes? This is she.”

“I’m calling from the emergency room at Vaudois Hospital. Your husband is going to be fine, but he was in an automobile accident and is asking for you.”

Oh Dear God.

“I’ll be right there!” she cried.

After hanging up, she rang for a taxi.

Kellie could have taken the new little sports car Philippe had bought her for a wedding present. It was sitting in the apartment garage. But she didn’t know the location of the hospital, and didn’t want to worry about finding a place to park. In truth, she was shaking so hard she didn’t know if she’d be able to drive.

Another dash through the rooms to get her purse and turn off the oven, then she left the apartment on a run. Too impatient to wait for the lift, she hurried down the four flights of stairs to the main floor in her high heels and rushed outside, oblivious to the nip in the air.

When she saw a taxi turn the corner, she ran out to the street and waved him down. After climbing in she said, “The Vaudois Hospital, please, monsieur.”

“Oui, madame.”

She hugged her arms to her waist anxiously. If he’d sustained serious injuries, the person on the phone wouldn’t have said Philippe was all right. Still, she wouldn’t be able to breathe normally again until she could hold him and see him with her own eyes.

“Please hurry. My husband has been in an accident. Let me off at the entrance to the emergency room,” she said in French to the driver. He nodded, but didn’t accelerate that much through the moderate nighttime traffic. Switzerland was a very dignified, civilized country with few drivers who took dangerous risks.

She couldn’t say the same for Philippe who was French born. According to his family with whom she’d lived for a month near the Bois de Vincennes in Paris, he’d been a daredevil from birth.

Apparently he’d raced cars in his early twenties and drove at speeds that terrified most people. His sister, Claudine, Kellie’s dear friend, had confided that though he may have abandoned that pleasure once he’d discovered his great love for mountain climbing, he could still let it rip once in a while testing out one of the new sports models fresh from the plant. If that’s what he’d done tonight, then it was too high a price to pay.

When she thought she couldn’t stand it any longer, they reached the hospital where she could see several ambulances outside the doors. The sight of them enlarged the pit in her stomach.

“We’re here, madame.”

“Merci, monsieur.” She climbed out of the taxi, handing him several bills of Swiss francs without bothering to count how much she’d given him. Then she raced inside the entrance.

The reception room was packed with friends and family of casualty victims talking quietly. Their anxiety-ridden faces revealed their stress. As she approached the woman at the desk, Kellie happened to see herself in the glass and knew her expression was no different.

“Excuse me. I’m Madame Didier. My husband, Philippe, was brought in tonight. Where can I find him?”

“Through there on the left. He’s been put in cubicle four.”

“Thank you,” Kellie whispered before hurrying through the swinging doors to the E.R. Again she was struck by the amount of activity going on. Medical staff, paramedics, even police came and went from the busy room. It looked as if every cubicle was in use. Behind the curtain of the first one she could hear a woman wailing in pain.

Full of gratitude it wasn’t Philippe in that kind of agony, she ran to number four and parted the curtain to reach her husband. He was awake, thank heaven! She flew to his side where he lay in a hospital gown beneath a pristine white sheet.

“Philippe?”

“Mon amour— I thought you’d never get here.”

His deep voice sounded so shaken, it astounded her. Philippe was the kind of man whose intelligence and strong personality inspired confidence in everyone around him. Not only physically powerful, he exuded an inner male strength and drive that made him seem invincible.

“I came the second they phoned me, darling,” she cried, utterly thrown by his vulnerability. “I’ve been home waiting hours for you to arrive.”

Beneath his beautiful olive skin there was an unnatural pallor, but the devilishly handsome face with those black-brown eyes and black hair she loved was still the same.

“Mon Dieu. You’re so beautiful, it hurts.” In a swift motion he lifted his right arm to draw her head down, but she noticed he didn’t try to use his left one at all. She was so preoccupied about that, she wasn’t prepared for his kiss which was almost savage in its intensity.

Since they’d been married, they’d made love day and night, under every circumstance and condition. But her husband had never embraced her as if it were going to be their last.

“Philippe, sweetheart—” she whispered after he’d unwillingly relinquished her lips. “I can tell your left arm is hurt.”

“My elbow got banged. It’s nothing.”

Her anxious eyes played over him. “What else is wrong with you?”

“A bump on my left kneecap.”

“Oh, darling,” she moaned. “Let me see.”

“There’s no need. From what the doctor told me, neither is broken, just bruised. They’ll take some X rays in a while to be certain. I’m waiting my turn. Before they come for me, there’s something we have to talk about.”

Again she felt this sense of foreboding. After taking a shuddering breath she said, “All right.”

She heard him invoke God’s help before he murmured, “Maybe you’d better sit down.”

With those fateful words, Kellie needed support. She saw a stool by the shelving and moved it next to the bed where she could prop herself. Grasping his right hand which she kissed and held to her cheek she said, “What’s this terrible thing you have to tell me?”

His expression grew bleak before his eyes filled with pleading.

“Sweetheart?” she begged, unable to stand the suspense another second.

He cleared his throat. “When we took our vows, we promised to love each other for better or worse.”

“We do! I do!”

“I never intended for there to be a ‘for worse’ in our marriage,” his voice grated.

“But there is?” She swallowed hard.

“Kellie, I don’t know how to say this.”

“Say what?” she demanded in agony, freeing her hand to run her fingers through his dark wavy hair. “Don’t you know you can tell me anything?”

His eyes looked haunted. “Late this afternoon while I was finishing up some work at the office so I could get home to you, I had a visitor. It was a woman I rescued after an avalanche in Chamonix months before I met you.”

Kellie didn’t need to hear another word to feel as if she’d been dropped from a high building.

“Her name’s Yvette Boiteux.”

It didn’t sound familiar. According to Claudine, until Kellie had come along, her brother had left a trail of broken hearts that stretched from Paris to Neuchâtel.

“She must have had a good reason to visit a married man at the end of his workday.” Kellie couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice.

“All I know is, she’s eight months pregnant and claims it’s my child.”

Kellie bit down so hard on her knuckle, it drew blood.

“Darling—” He gripped her free hand tightly, not knowing his strength. “Please hear me out.”

She averted her eyes. “I’m listening.”

“We only slept together once, and I took precautions. It was a mistake from start to finish. I realize my reputation precedes me, but in reality, there’ve only been a few women. Yvette wasn’t one of them.”

It was hard to breathe. “I believe you.”

By now he was gripping her hand so hard, it hurt. But she invited it to counteract this other pain which had penetrated the core of her being where there could be no earthly relief.

“When she came to my office, she didn’t look well to me. She told me she’d come by bus because she didn’t own a car. At that point I told her I’d drive her home.

“Before I said anything about having a paternity test done, I was praying she would admit that one of her lovers had turned his back on her. Knowing I was good for the money, it would explain the reason why she’d come to me at the midnight hour for financial help.”

Kellie’s eyes closed tightly for a moment. What if the test came up with a match?

“On the way to the apartment where she told me she lived with her mother, a tourist ran into us. He received the citation for driving out of control. Under other circumstances I might have been able to see him coming to avoid a collision.”

She shook her head. “After news like that, I don’t know how you could even function.”

He let out a tortured sound. “As it happens, the impact shoved my car against a parked van. The doctor said Yvette doesn’t have any injuries, but at this stage of her pregnancy, the shock could bri—”

“Monsieur Didier?” an unfamiliar voice broke in on them. “We’re ready to take you to X ray. Madame— If you wouldn’t mind stepping out for a moment, our team will get him transferred to the gurney,” the technician said to Kellie.

“Yes, of course.”

“Darling—” Philippe’s voice sounded frantic.

“I’ll be right outside the curtain.”

She pushed the stool back in place, then lifted the flap to wait in the main room of the E.R. In a minute the technicians emerged with Philippe. Like lasers, his dark eyes burned into her soul.

“Promise me you’ll be here when I get back.”

The tears she’d been fighting spilled down her cheeks. “Where would I go?”

You’re my whole life, Philippe. Without you, there’s nothing.

When he’d disappeared through another set of doors, she realized his parents needed to be notified, then Marcel. But her body was slow to obey her brain.

As she retraced her steps to the reception area to make the calls, she heard the hysterical woman behind the first curtain crying out Philippe’s name. Kellie froze.

“Calm yourself, Mademoiselle Boiteux,” said another female voice. “Monsieur Didier will be in to visit you as soon as he comes back from X ray.”

“I need to see him. I love him. He’s the father of my baby. I’m going to have his son. Promise me he’s not hurt, that he’s all right!”

“You mustn’t get upset. It isn’t good for you or the baby. You have toxemia. Your blood pressure’s too high. We need to get it down, so you have to cooperate with us.”

“It was my fault we were in the accident. He offered to drive me home and I let him. I shouldn’t have agreed to it, then he wouldn’t have been hurt. He’s so wonderful. He saved my life once before. If anything happened to Philippe, I’d want to die.”

“No, mademoiselle. You want to live. You’re going to be a mother very soon. Think of the joy you’ll have in raising your child. We’ve called your mother. She’ll be here soon to comfort you.”

“No,” she cried out. “Without Philippe, I don’t care about anything else. Please tell him to come. This is his child. You don’t understand. He’s my whole life!”

This is his child. He’s my whole life.

Kellie felt as if someone had just walked across her grave.

A hand touched her shoulder. “Madame? You look like you’re feeling ill,” one of the nurse’s aides observed. “Do you want to lie down?”

“N-no. I’ll be all right.”

“Let me at least help you to the reception room where you can sit while you wait for your husband.”

“Thank you.”

Her limbs felt wooden as he assisted her to a chair beyond the swinging doors.

“Someone will let you know when he’s been brought back. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Kellie felt like she was in the middle of a nightmare where she was running from something, but everything was happening in slow motion.

“Could you please phone his secretary and inform him of the accident? He lives here in town. Ask him to call Philippe’s parents.” She would phone everyone later, but for the moment her strength seemed to have left her body.

He pulled a notepad out of his pocket. “What’s the secretary’s name and number?”

She gave the aide the information. Once he’d disappeared, she sat there until her terrible weakness had passed. Then she got up from the chair and went over to the woman at the desk.

“Would you call me a taxi please.”

Ten minutes later, Kellie entered the apartment. She walked straight into Philippe’s study and sat down at his desk. Withdrawing the gold pen from its holder, one of their many wedding gifts, she reached for a notepad.

My darling husband—

Never doubt that I will always love you, but Yvette loved you first. We’ve only been married thirty days. She’s been carrying your baby for eight months. The “for worse” part of our vows didn’t cover that.

I heard her call out your name. She had no idea I could follow her conversation with the doctor from the outside of the curtain. She was begging, pleading for you to come to her.

After the things she told the doctor in confidence, there’s no doubt Yvette is pregnant with your son. I don’t blame you for anything, darling. But you must see she needs your help and protection now because she’s very sick with a high-risk pregnancy.

I know you’re not the kind of man to abandon your responsibilities the way my birth father abandoned my mother and me, so I’m going back to Washington. When I get there, I’ll start divorce proceedings. Soon you’ll be free to marry her and be a full-time father to your child.

Be assured the only alimony I want is your promise that you’ll do the right thing for Yvette and your son. No one will make a better father than you.

All my love, Kellie.

She pulled off her wedding ring and left it on top of the note, then she phoned for another taxi to drive her to the airport. She’d worry about what plane to take when she got there.

Before the taxi arrived, she changed into wool pants and a sweater. After putting the food in the fridge and straightening the kitchen, she threw some clothes and toiletries in an overnight bag. When her packing was done, she grabbed her passport out of the dresser drawer, left her car keys on top, then walked out of the apartment without looking back.

The second she got into the taxi, her cell phone rang. She ignored it and told the chauffeur to get her to Geneva as quickly as possible.

During the drive, the phone went off at least twenty different times. Evidently Philippe had come back from X ray and was wondering where she’d gone.

The ringing would stop once the doctors told him Yvette was calling for him and he realized how sick she was.

“Kellie?” Her grandfather’s gray head peered around the door of the restaurant’s kitchen. “The phone’s for you!”

“I’ll have to call them back, grandpa.”

He walked behind the huge stainless-steel island where she was preparing the salads. “It’s Claudine.”

Fresh pain stabbed her heart.

“You’ve avoided every call from Philippe since you got home a week ago. Surely you’re not going to ignore his sister, too. That’s not right, honey. I’ll take over here. You go upstairs to the office and talk to her.”

She took a deep breath, realizing this couldn’t be put off any longer. In any event, it wasn’t fair to her family.

“All right. I won’t be long.”

“Take all the time you need. You’re so bottled up, you’re going to explode one of these days. It’ll do you good to talk to her. She’s a sweetie.”

Kellie’s grandfather, James Madsen, was crazy about Claudine who had lived with them for a month during her American homestay. She was a Didier through and through. Dark good looks, intelligent, high class, charm galore.

He loved talking fractured French to her, and was hurt because Kellie’s marriage to her brother had broken up. Everyone in her family knew the reason why she was getting a divorce. She loved them for never having said a negative word or interfering.

But she was aware that they were very fond of Philippe. Kellie’s mom was still grieving over her daughter’s smashed dreams, yet they’d all honored her wishes by keeping silent.

She hurried to the sink to wash her hands. After leaving the kitchen she raced up the stairs to the next floor where their family lived above the thriving restaurant.

Her grandfather had bought the property and opened it in the late sixties. He’d named it The Eatery, a play on words because they lived in Eatonville, Washington, gateway to the Cascades and Mount Rainier.

Growing up it had been Kellie’s dream to turn it into a French restaurant one day. All her university education in French, plus her subsequent training as a French chef in Napa Valley, California, had been chosen with that end in mind.

Then her grandfather had surprised her by sending her to France on a homestay through the university to improve her French. That was how she’d met Claudine. It was there in the Didier home she’d been introduced to Philippe who just happened to be visiting his family for the day.

One look at him and she’d fallen so deeply in love, her entire world had changed. Evidently it had for him, too, because when the homestay came to an end, he’d followed her back to Washington. Before the month was out they’d celebrated their wedding.

After experiencing euphoria in her thirty-day marriage to him, she realized life would never hold that same magic for her again. Not ever.

She’d been trying so hard to put the past behind her. But she knew the second she heard his sister’s voice, the pain was going to come crashing through.

Her hand trembled as she picked up the receiver in her grandfather’s study. “Hello, C-Claudine?”

“Kellie—” her friend let out a mournful cry. “At last.”

She could hardly swallow, let alone talk. “I—I’m sorry it has taken me so long to face you.”

“Don’t apologize, chérie. I love Philippe, too, and cry myself to sleep every night for what has happened.”

“H-how is he?”

“If you mean physically, he’s recovering. The bone on his elbow was bruised, but he no longer has to wear a sling. His knee required surgery. Otherwise he would have come after you.”

A quiet gasp escaped Kellie’s throat. His injuries had been worse than he’d made out. Who had been taking care of him?

“Now he’s on crutches to keep the weight off it until it’s healed.”

Every word from Claudine’s lips tore her apart a little more.

“Kellie—you have to know that mentally my brother’s devastated you left him,” she confided in a tremulous voice.

By now the tears were dripping off her cheeks. “Did he ask you to call me?”

“No. He isn’t talking to anyone about anything. His pain is too deep. I’ve been praying you might have had time to reconsider your decision.”

“It’s all I think about.” She half-sobbed. “But no matter how I view it, divorce is the only answer. Cutting ties with me frees him to fulfill his moral obligation. You and I both know what kind of a father he’ll make. You’ve seen him interact with your nieces and nephew. It’s one of the qualities about him that made me want to marry him.”

“My brother can be a model father without marrying her!”

“Visitation isn’t the same thing as belonging to one family. He mustn’t deprive Yvette’s baby of its father. I had to live my whole life without mine, and I don’t want his son to know the same deprivation. Not only that, Philippe has wanted to get started on a family. Well, now he has one… Yvette adores him, and their child will be born any day now.”

“That’s not the point, Kellie. He’s too deeply in love with you to consider marriage to anyone else.”

“But there was a time when he cared for Yvette. Given a chance, those feelings could turn into love. He’s going to worship his child. If you were in my shoes, would you deny him the chance to raise their infant in his own household with the baby’s birth mother?”

A brief silence ensued. “I can’t answer that. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up without a father. Obviously it has scarred you much more than I’d realized.”

“Claudine— I heard Yvette confide in the doctor at the hospital right after they’d brought her in. The pain and the longing in her voice for Philippe killed me. I knew then what I had to do.”

Again there was a hesitation before Claudine said, “What about your pain and longing for my brother?”

“It doesn’t matter about me.”

“That’s what you say now. But there’s going to come a day… I hope you won’t live to regret it.”

“Please don’t hate me, Claudine,” she begged.

“I won’t dignify your comment with a response. As for Philippe, I’m sure he wishes he could hate you. It would make things easier all the way around. Have you been to an attorney yet?”

She sucked in her breath. “Yes. Philippe will be receiving the papers next week.”

“It’s going to kill him.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I have to say it because I know my brother. You think a divorce will force him to marry Yvette, but you’re wrong. He loves you. Our whole family loves you.”

“I love all of you, too,” her voice trembled. “I love you for caring so much, but Yvette and her baby are the important ones here.”

There was a pause. “Kellie?”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand. “Yes?”

“You’re the only wife he wants.”

“He’ll change his mind when he’s there for the delivery and lays eyes on his little lookalike for the first time.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

“Claudine—”

“I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t put pressure on you, and that’s all I’ve done since I rang.”

“You have no reason to apologize. I’m so awful I haven’t even asked how things are going with Jules.”

“They’re not.”

“Why?”

“Unlike my brother, I think he’s a real playboy who’ll never settle down. He’s too attractive, has too much money. He can put on a convincing act that I’m the only woman for him, but I know deep down that’s not true.

“One day he’ll get bored and move on. I feel it in my bones. He doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve had my last date with him. I’ve got to keep looking for Mr. Perfect. Unfortunately no one ever measures up to Philippe.”

It always came down to Philippe.

No one could compare to him, but Kellie did know one man who had many of her husband’s sterling qualities. It was his good friend, Roger. Ever since she’d met him, she’d thought he and Claudine might hit it off. It was a subject she’d intended to broach with her husband.

Now there was no more Philippe. At least not in her world.

“I can tell you want to hang up, Kellie. Please call me once in a while. I couldn’t take it if you cut me off, too.”

“I would never do that. You’ll hear from me soon. I swear it.”

“A tout à l’heure, chérie.”

“À bientôt, chère Claudine.”

Kellie hung up the phone, dissolved in fresh tears.

Unable to bear the pain, she ran through the house to her room and collapsed on the bed.