Separate Beds Read Online Free PDF Page B

thinking ahead a little bit, an experienced stud like you?”
    “That's the second time you've called me a stud, lady, and I don't like it!”
    “And that's the second time you've called me lady, and I don't like it either, not the way you say it!”
    “We're getting off the subject, which was your neglect.”
    “I believe the subject was your neglect.”
    “The woman usually takes care of precautions. Naturally, I assumed—”
    “Usually!” she croaked, throwing her hands in the air, then flopping back exaggeratedly, talking to the ceiling. “And he calls me promiscuous!”
    “Now just a minute—”
    But this time she interrupted him. “I told you, it was my first time. I wouldn't even have known how to use a contraceptive!”
    “Don't hand me that! This isn't Victorian England! All you'd have had to do was open the phone book to find out how and where to learn. Or hadn't you heard—women have come of age? Only most of them prove it by showing a little common sense with their first fling. If you'd have done the same, we wouldn't be in this mess.”
    “What good are all these recriminations? I told you, it happened, that's all.”
    “It sure as hell did, and it was just my luck that it happened with an ignorant girl who doesn't know the meaning of the words birth control.”
    “Listen, Mister Forrester, I don't have to sit here and be preached to by you! You're equally as guilty as I am, only you're blaming me because it's easier than blaming yourself. It's bad enough I have to tolerate your inquisition without defending myself against ignorance! It took two of us, you know!”
    “Okay, okay, just relax. Maybe I came down a little heavy on you, but this could have been avoided so easily.”
    “Well, it wasn't. That's a fact of life we have to live with.”
    “Clever choice of words,” he muttered.
    “Listen, would you mind? Just take me home. I'm tired and I don't want to sit here arguing anymore.”
    “Well, what about the baby—what are you going to do with it?”
    “It's none of your business.”
    He bit the corner of his lip and asked quickly, before he lost his nerve, “Would you take money for an abortion?”
    Her preliminary silence nearly made her reply redundant. “Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you? Then your conscience would be clear. No, I wouldn't take money for any abortion!”
    Long before she finished, he felt like a confirmed pervert.
    “All right, all right, sorry I asked.” He couldn't tell yet if he was worried or relieved by her answer. He sighed. “Well, what are we going to do about your father?”
    “You're so smart, you figure it out.” Catherine knew that after tomorrow, when Herb Anderson's pregnant little trump card disappeared, his ship would lose the wind from its sails. But she was damned if she'd tell Clay Forrester that. Let him stew in his own juices!
    “I can't,” he was saying almost contritely, “and I'm not that smart and I'm sorry I called you ignorant and I'm sorry I called you promiscuous and I shouldn't have gone flying off the handle like that, but what man wouldn't lose his temper?”
    “You might be justified if I were making demands, but I'm not. I'm not holding a gun to your head or forcing you to do anything. But neither am I going to sip from your tarnished silver spoon,” she ended sarcastically.
    “And what is that supposed to mean?”
    “It means that maybe my father was right to resent you because you're rich. It means that I resent your thinking you can sweep it all under the rug by an offer of a quick abortion. I'd have respected you more if you'd never suggested it.”
    “It's legal now, you know.”
    “And it's also murder.”
    “There are conflicting views on that too.”
    “And obviously yours and mine conflict.”
    “Then you plan to keep the baby?”
    “That's none of your business.”
    “If it's my baby, it's my business.”
    “Wrong,” she said with finality, the single word stating clearly that it was useless for him