Page 45 of Nobodys Baby But Mine (Chicago Stars 3)

She couldn’t let that happen. She’d die before she’d permit her child to suffer as she’d suffered. She’d move away! She’d take the baby to Africa, some remote and primitive part of the continent. She’d educate the child herself so that her precious little one would never know the cruelty of other children.

Her eyes stung with tears. What had she done? How could God have let something so cruel happen?

Annie’s voice penetrated her misery. “That’ll be Calvin now. I told you he’d come after you.”

She heard the slam of a car door, the pounding of footsteps on the front porch.

“Jane! Where is she, dammit?”

Jane charged into the living room. “You bastard!”

He stalked forward, his face twisted. “Lady, you’ve got some explaining to do!”

“God, I hate you!”

“Not any more than what I think of you!” Cal’s eyes blazed with anger and something else that w

as now so clear Jane couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it all along—a keen, biting intelligence.

She wanted to throw herself at him and scratch that intelligence from his eyes, chop open his cranium and pluck it from his brain. He was supposed to be stupid! He read comic books! How could he betray her like this?

The last of her self-control shredded, and she knew she had to get away before she fell apart. With an exclamation of fury, she whirled around and dashed back into the kitchen, where she flew out the rickety back door.

As she began to run, she heard a roar of rage coming from behind her. “You get back here! Don’t make me run after you, or you’ll be sorry!”

She wanted to hit something. She wanted to throw herself in a deep hole and let the earth close in on top of her, anything to stop the awful pain raging inside her body. This baby that she already loved more than she’d ever loved anything was going to be a freak.

She didn’t hear him come up behind her, and she gasped when he spun her around. “I told you to stop!” he shouted.

“You’ve ruined everything!” she screamed back.

“Me?” His face was pale with rage. “You damned liar! You’re an old lady! A goddamn old lady!”

“I’ll never forgive you for this!” She balled her hand into a fist and hit him in the chest so hard the pain shot into her arm.

He was spitting fury. He began to grab her by both arms, but she had been transported into a place of vengeance and she wouldn’t be restrained. This man had harmed her unborn child, and she, who had never hit another person, wanted his blood.

She went wild. Her glasses flew off, but she didn’t care. She kicked and clawed and tried to damage him in any way she could.

“You stop this right now! Stop it!” His bellow shook the very treetops. Once again he tried to restrain her, but she sank her teeth into his upper arm.

“Ouch!” His eyes widened with outrage. “That hurt, dammit!”

The violence felt good. She lifted her knee to slam it into his groin and found her feet swept out from under her.

“Oh, no, you don’t…”

He went down with her, breaking her fall with his own body, then twisting to pinion her against the ground.

The fight had taken everything out of her, but he was a man who took hits for a living, and he wasn’t even winded. He was, however, enraged, and he let her have it.

“You settle down right now, you hear me? You’re acting like a crazy woman! You are crazy! You lied to me, cheated me, and now you’re trying to kill me, not to mention the fact that you can’t be doing that baby any good with your carryin’ on. I swear to God I’m going to have you locked up in a mental ward and shot full of Thorazine.”

Her eyes stung with tears that she didn’t want him to see, but couldn’t hold back. “You’ve ruined everything.”

“Me?” He bristled with outrage. “I’m not the one who’s acting like a lunatic. And I’m not the one who told everybody I was twenty-eight fucking years old!”

“I never told you that, and don’t you curse at me!”

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