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And his wife was on her way to Africa. To an unstable city in the interior that had just come out of a period of dangerous unrest. And she had known she was pregnant. Known she was carrying his child.
By the time he’d crawled the last couple of blocks to the Taylors’ building, he knew one thing. He wasn’t waiting around for Diana to deign to tell him the news. She had taken a liberty with information, information about his child. Action was required.
The doorman of the Taylors’ building caught the keys he threw at him as he swept past without breaking stride. Barking his name at the concierge, he fixed the man with an unrelenting stare until he put the phone down and waved him through. Be civil, he told himself while stalking toward the elevator. This was not the Taylors’ fault; it was their daughter’s. He was here only to get the information he needed.
The elevator stopped at the Taylors’ tenth-floor penthouse. Wilbur Taylor opened the door seconds after he rapped on it, hard.
“Coburn,” the other man murmured smoothly. “What an unexpected surprise.”
“You can dispense with the pleasantries,” Coburn suggested tersely, walking past him into the foyer. “We all know how much you like me.”
Wilbur blinked at the open aggression Coburn usually managed to hide beneath a cloak of civility. Diana’s father closed the door and faced him, a light firing in his eyes at the opportunity to take the gloves off. “I’d like you more if you gave my daughter the divorce she’s asking for.”
“That might be wishful thinking, since she’s pregnant with my child.”
Wilbur’s jaw dropped. Diana’s mother, who had appeared behind her husband, immaculately dressed in pants and a sweater, went chalk white. “Pregnant?”
He was heartened to see it hadn’t been a conspiracy against him. “You didn’t know?”
Her mother shook her head. “She wasn’t well when she was here for dinner on Sunday but we thought it was the flu.” She shook her head, her blue eyes flickering. “She left knowing that?”
“The height of stupidity, don’t you think?”
“Now, listen,” Wilbur interjected, “You can’t talk—”
“I can,” Coburn raged, pointing a finger at him. “Right now I am capable of anything given what your daughter has done. But all I want from you is the address where she’s staying.”
Wilbur gave him a long look. “You’re going to bring her back.”
“Damn right I am.”
A long silence wrapped itself around the three of them. Wilbur scratched his head. “This may be the only time we’ll ever agree on anything, Grant.”
Coburn cocked a brow at him. “The address?”
“She’s staying at the Lione Hotel in the capital.”
He promised to update Diana’s parents when he could and left.
At home, a glass of Scotch in his hand to numb the furor in his head, he called Frankie and told her to clear his schedule for the next week. If she thought this strange given his jam-packed slate of important meetings, she didn’t comment. Next he called his pilot and had him file a flight plan for the day after next—his destination, the large, landlocked nation in the center of Africa his wife was headed to.
He dropped onto the sofa, tipped his head back and swallowed a mouthful of the Scotch, welcoming its fiery burn as it warmed his insides. Diana clearly had an idea of how she thought this was going to play out. Unfortunately for her, that wasn’t going to happen. He’d had more than enough time to think while gridlocked in Manhattan traffic, and he knew exactly how his version of events was going to unfold. It had nothing to do with choices or selfishness and everything to do with repercussions. Responsibility.
He refilled his Scotch and took it out onto the terrace with him. A rare smattering of stars dotted the New York sky. He studied them, wondering exactly how far away they were. How many light-years from his own life were they? How many light-years had his life moved today?
It had changed irrevocably with one piece of earth-shattering news. He’d always known Diana wanted children, knew he likely didn’t, but had reserved judgment for the moment he had to make that decision. And now that choice had been taken out of his hands.
The combustible way he and Diana had come together here that night three weeks ago filled his head. The premonition that making love to her in his bed was a road he couldn’t return from. His mouth twisted. How right he’d been. He was going to be a father. He was now tied to the woman he’d vowed to forget. His intuition had been telling him something and he had not listened.
