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'Hush,' he soothed, his warm strong arms holding her tightly but tenderly. 'I know you are. No one would make up a horror story like that, least of all you, Celeste. Least of all you .. .'
'I tried to find her,' she wept brokenly. 'I spent a fortune on private investigators, but he was far too clever. .. and in the end I had to stop or go mad!'
'There, there, don't distress yourself any further. You've found her again, haven't you? And if I know Gemma, she will have no feelings for you but love. She's a daughter to be so proud of, Celeste. One in a million.'
Celeste drew back, dashing away her tears and looking almost imploringly into his eyes.
'I. . .I'm so glad you think that, Byron. I was hoping you would, because you see ... you see ... '
'What?' he asked, an instant wariness zooming into his eyes.
But as Celeste struggled to make that final shocking confession, the penny dropped and his eyes flared with shock. 'No,' he rasped. 'No .. .'
'Yes!' she cried. 'It's true. Gemma's your daughter, Byron. Not Stefan's. She's yours!'
For a few seconds, his face far surpassed the way it had looked before, till a dark fury filled his cheeks and a wild glittering began blazing away in his bright blue eyes. 'My daughter? Gemma's my daughter?'
Oh, God, Celeste agonised. He's not going to believe me.
'Yes!' she insisted fiercely. 'I was no longer on the Pill when we made love that last time. I didn't need to be. There'd been no one else but you.'
He pushed her away, marching across the room before spinning round and glaring at her. 'And you didn't tell me? You let that mongrel bastard steal my daughter away and you didn't tell me?'
This totally unjustified slap in the face revived some of Celeste's old fighting spirit. 'Don't you take that tone with me, Byron Whitmore. You know damned well you wouldn't have believed me if I'd come to you and said I was expecting your baby. Not that I didn't think of doing it. My God, I probably still would have if I hadn't by then been overseas in the hands of a man so vicious and vile and cruel that I lived every day in fear of my life.'
'Then why go with him in the first place?'
'Because he wasn't like that at first, you stupid man! He seemed sweet and kind and gentlemanly, the complete opposite to the man I was in love with but who wanted nothing to do with me!'
Byron groaned.
'He said he loved me,' Celeste swept on. 'Said I was his ideal woman. He asked me to marry him and on the rebound from my last encounter with you I agreed. We were on our way to Sweden to visit his family when he found out I wasn't a virgin. I'd just realized I was pregnant with your child, you see, and in a panic I decided if I went to bed with Stefan he wouldn't know it wasn't his child. It was a stupid thing to do but I did it anyway. You do stupid things when you're nineteen and mixed-up and dreadfully unhappy.
'Anyway, Stefan went off his brain when he realized he wasn't the first. He beat me so badly that I had to stay in bed in the hotel room for two weeks. He didn't even call a doctor. I've never been so terrified in my life. Or so intimidated. God, I know now why battered wives don't leave their abusive husbands. You become too frightened. And you lose all your confidence. After that, Stefan decided I wasn't fit to be his wife, but by then he'd become sexually obsessed with me. Every night, I would have to submit to him or be beaten. I was so terrified I let him do whatever he liked, but even then sometimes he still hit me. It was as if I had to be punished for his wanting me all the time. Finally, when I could safely convince him it was his child I was carrying, I told him I was pregnant.'
'Did he believe you?'
She nodded. 'The beatings stopped then, although the threat was always there. He took me to this remote mountain village in Spain to have the baby, and a week after she was born he stole her from me.'
'My God, if the bastard wasn't already dead,' Byron ground out, 'I'd go and kill him with my bare hands.'
Celeste's tormented eyes flew to Byron. 'You ... you believe me now?' she choked out. 'You're not angry with me any more? You understand what happened?'
His shoulders sagged, his face full of anguish and remorse. 'Do you think so poorly of me, Celeste, that you imagine I have no feelings? No heart? No conscience? Of course I understand. Only too well. I drove you into the arms of a monster, but I'm the one who's the monster for turning my back on the only woman I ever really loved. I didn't have the courage to live what I see now could have been a beautiful dream, simply because I feared it was my worst nightmare.'
