Separate Beds Read Online Free PDF

strained silence became painted with provocative images that flickered through their minds until at last Clay forced his thoughts back to the present and the unpleasant aspect of her father's threats.
    “So he wants reparation.”
    “Exactly, but whatever he says, whatever he threatens, you must not meet his demands. Don't pay him anything!” she said with sudden passion.
    “Listen, it's not just up to me anymore. He's brought my father into this, and my father is . . . my father is the most exasperatingly honest man I've ever known. Either he'll force me to pay, or he'll pay whatever your father demands before this thing is over.”
    “No!” she exclaimed with an intensity that brought her near to clutching his arm. “You must not!”
    “Listen, I don't understand you. You've spent the night convincing me you're carrying my baby. Now you beg me not to pay your father anything. Why?”
    “Because my father is the scum of the earth!” Her words were as sharp as knives, but the knives were double-edged, for the words she was forced to utter cut her deeply. “Because I've hated him for as long as I can remember, and if it's the last thing I do, I want to make sure he doesn't cash in on any good luck due to me. He's been waiting for years for something like this to happen. Now that it has, it almost thrills me to be responsible for his coming so close, then foiling him!”
    Suddenly Clay prickled with awareness. “What do you mean, if it's the last thing you do?”
    She managed a sardonic laugh. “Oh, don't trouble yourself, Mr. Forrester, supposing for a minute I'd commit suicide over this. That would hardly foil him anyway.”
    “How then?”
    “Depriving him of the payoff money will be quite enough. You don't know him or you'd realize what I mean. It'll almost be worth every time he—” But she stopped just short of being carried away by the hate she felt, by the memories she had no intention of revealing.
    Clay again began rubbing the bridge of his nose, fighting against getting involved with her past any more than necessary. But the vindictiveness she displayed, the abusive way the man had treated her and spoken to her, the accusations she said her father undeservedly made to her—it was the classic picture of a physically violent man. But to involve himself in sympathy for this woman would be a mistake. Yet even while Clay refused to allow himself to delve any further into her past, what he knew of it was already festering in the dark silence while he grew upset over being embroiled in this fiasco in the first place. It was all so damn unnecessary, he thought. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Clay found he was now beginning to develop a headache.
    He boosted himself up and outlined the wheel with his arms again. “How old are you?” he asked, out of the blue.
    “What possible difference does that make?”
    “How old!” he repeated, more forcefully.
    “Nineteen.”
    He emitted a single sound, half-laugh, half-grunt. “Nineteen years old and she didn't have the sense to take some precautions,” he said to the ceiling.
    “Me!” she yelped. A quick, smoking anger assaulted her, making her shout louder than necessary in the close confines of the car. “Why didn't you? You were the one who had all the experience in these matters!”
    “I wasn't planning on anything that night,” he said, still disgusted.
    “Well, neither was I!”
    “A girl with any sense at all doesn't go around looking for sex without being prepared.”
    “I was not looking for sex!”
    “Ha! Nineteen and a virgin and she claims she's not looking for it!”
    “You conceited bastard, you think—” she began, but he cut her off.
    “Conceit's got nothing to do with it,” he ground out, nose to nose with her now across the narrow space, “you just don't randomly go out on the make without some kind of contraceptive!”
    “Why?” she shouted. “Why me? Because I'm the woman? Why not you? What was the matter with you