COUNTERPOINT
An original romantic serial

From Alina Adams the author of "When a Man Loves a Woman" (DELL 4/00), "Annie's Wild Ride" (AVON 8/98), "Inside Figure Skating" (METROBOOKS 11/00 & 9/99), "Thieves at Heart" (AVON 12/95) and "The Fictitious Marquis" (AVON 6/95)

Available weekly by e-mail from http://www.AlinaAdams.com

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CHAPTER 55

      For most women, hearing the words, "You and me. It won't work. I can't do this anymore. I'm so sorry," would have been her cue to burst into tears, turn tail, and run.
      But Victoria Morgan wasn't most women. She did none of those things. She simply cocked her head to one side, and suggested, "Care to explain what you mean by that, Robin?"
      His head bobbed up in surprise. Robin, too, had been expecting the tears, the turning tail, the running. But, then again, he should have remembered: Victoria Morgan was not most women.
      Which was why he hated doing this to her.
      Which was why he had to do this to her.
      He opened his mouth, fully prepared to lie. Lying came easily to him, and besides, he was better at it than he was with the truth. It was instinctive by now. Perfectly natural.
      Except when it came to Victoria Morgan.
      He opened his mouth, fully prepared to lie. And, instead, was probably as shocked to hear the truth as she was.
      Robin said, "Before Nicole left today, she told me she couldn't wait to see me do to you what I've been doing to her all these years."
      "I see," Victoria nodded thoughtfully, then cocked her head to one side and politely inquired. "And was treating - or should we say, mistreating - me, as I presume that was what the lovely Miss Simonge meant; somehow I can't imagine she was wishing us every happiness - And was mistreating me in the manner in which you've mistreated her actually on your To Do List for the future?"
      "God, no!" This, too, was the truth, and it ripped out of Robin's chest with the shot of a bullet.
      "Well, then," Victoria smiled, and there was no sarcasm in her voice, just conviction. "I'd say we have nothing to worry about, then."
      "You're so sure of me?"
      "Yes." She looked him straight in the eye, no hesitation. "I wouldn't be here, if I wasn't."
      "I wish I had your confidence."
      "A transplant might be arranged. If you play your cards right."
      "I don't want to hurt you, Victoria."
      "I think we've hurt each other enough by now to know exactly what we're both capable of."
      "No," Robin's voice grew deadly serious as he struggled to make her understand. He had to do this. He had to protect her. "You haven't - Not yet. You don't know what I'm really capable of. I hurt people, Victoria. I really hurt them. Not just Nicole. Not even how I treat Douglas. I hurt everyone around me. And I don't even know why, sometimes." That last part was a lie. But, she didn't have to know it. She just had to believe it. Because everything else that came before it was the God's truth.
      "You've never deliberately hurt me, Robin."
      "The night is still young."
      "So, what you're saying is - "
      "We can't be together."
      "Don't I get a vote in the matter?"
      "No."
      "I see."
      "I know what's best for us both. Please trust me."
      Victoria sighed. "You're breaking my heart so that you won't hurt me?"
      "Please don't be like that."
      "What? Reasonable?"
      "You don't know what you're getting into. I do."
      "Can I have a hint?"
      "Nicole," Robin said. "Just look at Nicole. And then ask yourself: do you want me to turn someone as wonderful as you, into something as horrible as that?"
     
      Nicole told Gabriel, "I did it."
      He was sitting on his bed, a pillow on his lap to serve as a make-shift desk while he scribbled away some notes into a patient's pile. His legs were covered by manila folders, and there were blue pen marks all up and down his arms. He looked up as Nicole walked in, still a bit dazed as he tried to shift his focus from work to whatever it was he now had with Nicole.
      "How did Robin react?"
      "Like the bastard that he is. He didn't believe me."
      "Well, we all know the story of the ex-wife who cried wolf."
      "I had to practically rub his face in it."
      "A great hardship for you, I'm sure."
      She'd been meaning to sit down on the bed next to him. She hesitated. "Are you making fun of me?"
      "No, sweetheart, I'm just having some fun. I apologize if it offended you. Come on, sit down, go ahead and tell me about it."
      Still wary, Nicole crouched on the very edge, ready to spring off at a moment's notice in case it started to seem like he was teasing her again. She looked down at her folded hands, suddenly self-conscious now that she had Gabriel's complete attention.
      "Well, I - I did it. I show him where I had signed the divorce papers. Now all he has to do is file them, and he's free of me for good."
      "Don't you mean, you're free of him?"
      "What's the difference?"
      "Nothing, sweetheart, go on."
      "I did it for you, you know."
      "I know. And I'm extremely happy. Even if I happen to disagree with you."
      "I didn't do it for myself. No matter what you say. I did it because I wanted you to believe I wanted you to believe - "
      "What?"
      "You know, about me"
      "That you're not as bad as you think you are."
      "That I'm not as bad as YOU think I am."
      "Oh, well then, there was a bit of wasted effort."
      "What?" He was teasing her again. He had to be. Otherwise, everything she'd just went through
      "I never thought you were bad, Nicole. Just a little, I don't know, confused."
      "But, you made me divorce Robin so that - "
      "I didn't make you do anything. You asked what you could do to get me to forgive you for your little role - your starring role - in my unfortunate incarceration of a few months back. I suggested you give Robin a divorce. I offered you a choice."
      "You made me."
      "You say tomato is a vegetable, I say it's a fruit."
      "Gabriel?"
      "Yes?"
      "You are very, very strange."
      He laughed. "Thank you."
      Nicole couldn't help it. She laughed too. It was utterly bizarre. Who could have ever dreamed that, on the day she signed every dream she'd ever had away, she'd be sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, in a tiny bedroom, laughing?
      "You did the right thing, sweetheart."
      She shrugged. "It doesn't matter."
      "What do you mean?"
      "You know how people always say, this marriage won't last? Well, with Robin and me, it's the opposite. This divorce won't last, Gabriel. It can't. Robin will come back to me. He always does. Divorce papers or no divorce papers."
      "I think you'd better ask Victoria about that."
      "She doesn't matter. It's not about her. It's about Robin and how no other woman can put up with him like I can. That's why he always comes back to me."
      Gabriel nodded his head to indicate that he'd heard her, but, at the same time, he shifted ever so slightly on the bed, explaining, "That's all well and good, sweetheart, but, when I said you'd better ask Victoria about that, I meant," he gingerly lifted one sore arm to indicate a female figure standing in his doorway, "You better ask Victoria about that."