Victoria Pade - From Boss to Bridegroom p.04

“Why not?”

He laughed again. “Because you ruffle me up inside.”

“Remember you’re under oath,” she reminded, her tone dubious.

“I remember,” he assured. “The whole truth and nothing but the truth. The truth is that you ruffle me up inside.”

“How do I do that?”

“Just by walking into a room. Or looking at me with those big blue eyes. Or giving me a run for my money intellectually. Or by smiling, or laughing or tilting your head the way you do when you’re intent on something. You ruffle me up inside just by being you.”

“What does that mean exactly? That I ruffle you up inside?”

“It means that my heart beats a timpani. That my blood runs faster in my veins. That I’m suddenly aware of every nerve, every sensation, every smell and taste and touch in ways I’ve never been aware of before. Sometimes I think you’re spiking my coffee with love potion or something.”

“You’ve found me out,” she said to make light of what was actually the same reaction she had to him.

His eyes met hers and they suddenly seemed somehow darker, deeper than normal. And when he spoke, his voice was more solemn, too. “What are you doing to me, Lucy Lowry?”

“The same thing you’re doing to me,” she admitted in a near whisper.

“Do I ruffle up things inside you?” he asked almost as quietly. “Terribly.”

“I haven’t been the same since the day I met you.”

“Neither have I.”

“Maybe we should do something about it,” he said on a breath that heated her ear before he raised his head to look down at her again. “Like what?”

He just smiled. A warm smile that said she could trust him. That opened him up to her in a way she’d never seen before, that let her know he was as vulnerable to her as she was to him.

He kissed her bare shoulder. Then the sensitive L of shoulder into neck. Then the side of her neck.

Soft kisses that enticed, that entreated, that gave her the opportunity to tell him to stop before he reached her mouth.

But Lucy didn’t tell him to stop. Instead she angled her head to one side to allow him free access, and lifted her chin when she knew her mouth was what he sought.

They were still swaying there in her living room as his lips took hers, swaying and kissing and holding each other.

And Lucy knew where this was going. She knew it as surely as if he’d drawn her a map. But tonight she didn’t care about getting hurt or about incompatible lifestyles. Tonight Rand was hers and she was his and for that moment in time that was all that mattered. He was all that mattered. And that she wanted him. That she wanted to let this take her wherever it might. Just this once.

“I promised myself I’d be careful,” she confided when one kiss ended and before another began.

“Does that mean I have to leave or that you’ll just let me protect you?” he asked between nibbles of her earlobe.

Leave? Oh no, she didn’t want him to leave and she told him so.

“Then trust me,” he said in a voice that had grown gravelly, kissing her again.

Wisdom went out the window at that moment and nature took over.

Wide-open mouths were hungry, urgent, as tongues did a mating dance that replaced the swaying that had drawn to a close. Both of Rand’s hands were in her hair, cradling her head against the onslaught of kisses she was returning with equal force.

Lucy’s hands were busier, loosening his tie and taking a firm tug of both ends to hold him close while they kissed before she slid it from his collar and unfastened the top button of his shirt.

Without ending the play of mouths and tongues, she kicked off her shoes. Rand followed her lead, doing the same as his hands moved to her back so he could pull her closer.

She was thinking about taking him upstairs, about the fortuitousness of Max being gone for the night, when out of the blue something else occurred to her.

“Frank!” she said, breaking away from their kiss.

“You should never call out another man’s name, Lucy. It’s poor form,” Rand deadpanned without missing a beat.

“He’s outside waiting for you.”

“Yes, he is,” he agreed. He searched her eyes with his and then said, “Shall I send him home?”

He was giving her one more chance to opt out of what was happening between them. But Lucy didn’t need to think about it again. She’d made her decision and now her body, her emotions, her needs, were in control.

“Yes,” she answered in a breathy voice caused by Rand nuzzling her neck. “Send him home.”

Rand let go of her only to take her hand in his and bring her with him to the phone on her corner desk. After punching in a number and waiting a moment he said, “That’s it for tonight, Frank,” and hung up.

There was something slightly embarrassing—and deliciously wicked—about taking that step. And now that they’d gone that far Lucy thought she was ready to take one more.

Without saying anything she led Rand up the stairs to her room.

Of course there really wasn’t anything she needed to say. Or could say once they got there and Rand swung her back into his arms to recapture her mouth with his.

If there was hunger and urgency in those kisses before, it was nothing compared to this. All inhibitions, all hesitancy, all timidity seemed to vanish as wild abandon sprang to life.

That abandon made Lucy bold enough to yank at his shirttails to free them from his slacks. Bold enough to unbutton his shirt completely and then slide her hands inside of it to slip it off, to discover the glory of his bare skin.

And glorious it was. She let her palms travel over broad shoulders, down iron-hard biceps. She explored the steely expanse of his back, the rise and fall of muscle, the tautness of tendon.

That was when he started to lower the zipper down her spine and she was only too willing to have it done. Only too willing to let the little black dress fall around her ankles.

Their pace picked up even more then and off went what remained of Rand’s clothes and then hers, until they were both unfettered by anything.

His hands came to her breasts, teasing, toying with them. Hands that felt new and familiar at once, lighting embers inside her that made a moan of pleasure echo in her throat.

Then as quickly as those hands had reached her breasts they were gone again as Rand scooped her up into his arms and took her to the bed. He laid her down on it, lying beside her to capture her mouth with his once more, to cover one straining orb with one blissfully adept hand again in a kneading, thrilling caress.

He abandoned her mouth to leave a trail of soft kisses along the side of her neck, on the sharp ridge of her collarbones, down to that same burgeoning breast his hand had made ready for more.

Her back arched and there was no hiding the fact that he’d just lit fire to those embers inside her as his tongue circled the tight kernel of her nipple. As his teeth tugged. As he drew it farther into the warm wetness of his wonderful mouth.

While he was at that his hand went on traveling. Down the flatness of her belly. To her hip. To her thigh and back up again to stop at the juncture of her legs.

Lucy’s shoulders rose completely off the mattress and her head fell back at that first touch, that first tender entry of stroking fingers.

But in this, too, she would not be outdone and so she let her own hand follow a path down his lean, hard body, grasping the hot, thick, sheathed length of him, savoring the power, the feel, the intimate knowledge of this man who had awakened so much in her.

He rose above her then, insinuating himself between her welcoming thighs, finding just the right spot and slowly pressing himself into her with agonizing care until she held him fully.

All on their own her hips reached up to him, accepting, relishing the union of his body with hers, eager for every sensation, every nuance, every flex of his muscles above her.

When he pulsed those first few pulses, Lucy gave herself over to him entirely, matching his pace, his rhythm, meeting him thrust for thrust on a magic carpet ride of the most perfect pleasure. Pleasure that grew and grew, that swelled within her like a beautiful balloon, filling her, completing her, lifting her higher and higher until every nerve, every muscle, was stretched to its limit. Until the balloon reached its holding power and burst into glittering glory that held her suspended for one timeless, extraordinary moment.

Only as she began to float back to earth by tiny increments did Rand tense above her, within her, melding them together in one final climax that was as magnificent to behold as it was to feel.

And she did behold it. She watched his bulging biceps and massive shoulders strain as they lifted his striking upper body skyward. She watched his handsome face freeze in a mask of pleasure that almost looked like pain. She watched him held in that moment of ecstasy as powerful wave after powerful wave washed over him, engulfed him, satiated him just as he had satiated her.

Then he, too, relaxed, muscle by muscle, settling atop Lucy in an exquisite weightiness, breathing heavily into her hair.

Minutes passed but she didn’t have any idea how many before he propped himself up with a forearm on either side of her head and kissed her again, a rich kiss that threatened to start everything all over again for her.

Except that the kiss didn’t last long before he ended it to look down into her eyes, to study her face as if committing it to memory.

“Tell me you’re okay,” he said in a passion-raspy voice.

“I’m definitely okay. I’m better than okay.”

That made him smile a satisfied smile. “Good. Me, too,” he said on the gust of a sigh.

He rolled to his back then and pulled her to lie close beside him, to use his chest for a pillow.

“You’re not like anyone else, Lucy,” he said quietly and she could tell he was drifting off to sleep.

“Neither are you,” she whispered back, unable to fight the lure of slumber herself, held there in the perfect cocoon of his arms.

But as drowsiness began to drug her, Lucy realized that the trouble with allowing herself this night was that she knew it would be over when she woke up.

And this one night had opened a floodgate of longing for more than just one night.

More of Rand and more of the things she knew she couldn’t have…

Nine

Rand was awake before dawn the next morning as usual. What was different was that Lucy was beside him, that it felt like paradise, and that he had no desire to get up and charge into his day the way he did every other morning.

No, all his desires were aimed in another direction, but she was sleeping so soundly, so peacefully, he couldn’t bring himself to disturb her.

What he could let himself do, though, was enjoy the sight she presented.

Sometime during the night she’d rolled to her other side, away from him. Now she was lying with her back to him, her head resting on his outstretched arm.

The top sheet and blanket had slipped down to offer him a peek at her smooth porcelain skin, perfect shoulders and the beginning dip in the small of her back, a spot he wanted badly to kiss right at that moment.

He resisted, knowing that would surely wake her, and instead pulled the covers up around her shoulders to keep her warm.

Her hair was a wild mass of curls all around her head, spilling over onto his biceps, and he reached his free hand to a mahogany coil of it, caressing it as if it were satin, committing the texture to memory, letting it coil from his knuckle to his fingertip.

He wasn’t sure how long he was lost in that simple study of her hair. But it was long enough to make him wonder at himself.

It wasn’t like him to be content with something like that. Content with lounging in bed. Content with watching someone else sleep. But he was content and he began to realize that the reason for it was that the someone else he was watching sleep was Lucy. And even when he told himself he should probably slip his arm out from under her, ease himself out of bed and go home, he couldn’t make himself do it.

Sure he should. After all, it was Sunday. He usually called the ranch to talk to his family then. This Sunday he was particularly curious to learn if his father had received the anonymous note he and Lucy had sent about Emily. Curious to know the reaction his mother—if she really was his mother—had to the note.

But not even curiosity and family obligations could budge him out of that bed. Not when he was so happy just lying there, picturing what other Sunday mornings must be like there in Lucy’s homey little town house.

He imagined that Max probably got up pretty early, too. That the little boy would be itching to wake Lucy, just the way Rand was—although for entirely different reasons. He pictured Max climbing into bed with his mom in hopes that he might jostle her out of sleep. Or maybe bringing his dinosaurs in and playing with them until he accidentally-on-purpose roused her.

She’d be patient with her son, Rand was certain of that. She’d probably grab him and hug him and laugh about him not letting her sleep in. Then she’d go downstairs and make him breakfast and the two of them would begin their day together.

But what would that same scenario be like if he was in it? Rand wondered, letting his mind wander a step further. What if he was in bed with Lucy when Max came in, holding her as she slept after a night of lovemaking like the one they’d just shared?

Maybe he and Max would nudge Lucy from slumber, teasing her, playfully ganging up on her until she opened those beautiful blue eyes of hers and bathed them both in that smile that was as sweet as warm honey. And maybe he and Max would go downstairs ahead of her and set the table, waiting for her to join them so that the three of them could begin their day.

Rand was astonished by how appealing that second fantasy was. All the more astonished because it wasn’t something he would consider appropriate unless he and Lucy were married. And he wondered what had gotten into him to think such a thing.

But in truth he knew.

Lucy had gotten into him. Into his blood. Into his heart. Into his images of the future.

And that gave him pause.

Lucy and a future together? Was that really what he was thinking about?

It was, he realized.

She might not be a permanent fixture in his office, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be a permanent fixture in his life.

Although he had to question whether or not it was a good idea.

Sure, it felt good to mentally place himself in Lucy’s home, in Lucy’s bed, in Lucy’s and Max’s Sunday mornings. But what about the rest of the time? he asked himself. What about Monday through Saturday when he was working abnormally long hours and preoccupied with cases and clients and trials? That was a whole different story.

That was the reason he’d avoided making any commitment to any woman, let alone to a woman with a child. The resentment and neglect he’d felt during his father’s single term in the Senate when Joe had been away from home so much was something Rand had never allowed himself to forget. Something he’d sworn he would never inflict on anyone.

So what was he thinking now? That he would?

No. He wouldn’t take on a wife and child the way things were. He still believed that was unfair.

But there was another possibility that occurred to him: he could make adjustments.

Wary of that notion, Rand mentally tiptoed around it.

Was he ready to make an adjustment like that?

He wasn’t sure. But if he wasn’t, if he didn’t, what was the alternative?

Losing Lucy. And that wasn’t easy to swallow. Especially not when lying there with her, wanting her again, wanting not to leave her, also made him realize that he didn’t want to lose her.

It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment just how much his life before Lucy had been lacking. How increasingly empty, shallow and unsatisfying it had seemed. That that was why he’d felt the way he had.

Yes, he’d been as busy, as harried as he had been since he’d set out to be a lawyer in the first place, but where early on that had made him feel fulfilled, somewhere along the way it had stopped accomplishing that.

Then Lucy had walked through his office door and he’d fallen victim to her beauty. To her special charm, her keen intelligence, her wit, her confidence. And he’d been rejuvenated. Not to mention turned on.

Now the thought of having her walk back out was unbearable.

So that left him with a choice, he thought. Either return to the way things were, to the ruthless determination to succeed without finding any joy in it when he did, or make a change. A big change. A change in favor of family.

Was it possible that after all these years of a high-powered, high-speed, workaholic lifestyle he had arrived at a point where family—having a family of his own—could suddenly be what he wanted? Could it be the key to his happiness?

That idea took some getting used to.

But once he had, he decided that it wasn’t just any family that was the key to his happiness. It was the family that included Lucy and Max. The family in which Lucy would be his partner. Making the change was worth it for her.

Because the bottom line was that being with Lucy, making a life with Lucy and Max, had somehow become more important to him than work or money or acclaim or power. How else could he explain that when he weighed the life he’d been living and the discontent he’d been feeling against the contentment he felt at that moment, against the way he felt about Lucy, about Max, there wasn’t a question that being with them won out?

Suddenly he knew that he was willing to do whatever it took to accomplish that.

Being a part of their lives would be better than any day’s work, better than winning any high-profile case, better than anything he’d ever done before.

No wonder his father had been willing to give up a Senate seat to come home to his family, Rand thought then. As a child he’d been glad about it but had taken it for granted. As an adult he’d wondered how his father had done it, how he’d given up something he’d worked so hard to accomplish, something that meant so much to him.

But now he understood it. He understood what was genuinely of value, what he genuinely valued, and that was family. That was Lucy. That was Max.

The sun was barely up and he knew it was still too early to wake Lucy but he couldn’t resist anymore. He couldn’t just lie there having had the revelation of his life and not share it with her. He couldn’t just lie there and not put into motion what he now knew was the answer to everything.

But what he could do was slip out of bed, go downstairs and make a pot of coffee, he told himself. Then at least he’d have a nice way to lure her out of her dreams.

And when he did, he had no doubt that she would fulfill all of his….



The smell of hot coffee was not something Lucy usually woke up to, and her first thought was that Max had done something he wasn’t supposed to.

Her second thought was that maybe her aunt had come over.

It was only her third thought that recalled last night and the man she’d spent it with. She couldn’t help the Cheshire-cat smile that stretched her lips even before she opened her eyes.

“Good morning,” Rand said softly, beckoning her from sleep.

“It feels awfully early,” she responded, still with her eyes closed.

“It is awfully early.”

“Why aren’t you asleep?” she asked much the way she might have inquired of Max.

“Couldn’t sleep anymore,” Rand answered with wholly adult mischief in his voice.

Lucy finally opened her eyes as Rand sat on the edge of the mattress. He was definitely a nice sight to wake up to. His hair was sleep-tousled, his face was shadowed with beard, he’d put on his slacks but left his incredible chest bare, and he looked so sexy it was hard for her to think about anything but pulling him back under the covers with her.

“How are you doing this morning?” he asked then.

Holding the sheet across her bare breasts, Lucy eased herself up against the headboard. “Any day that I have someone serve me coffee in bed I’m doing pretty well,” she said, accepting the cup and taking a cautious sip. “How are you doing?” she countered, setting the cup on the nightstand to let the coffee cool.

“I’m doing stupendously.” He nudged her over and sat beside her on top of the covers. “I’ve just had the revelation of a lifetime and I couldn’t wait any longer to talk to you about it.”

“The revelation of a lifetime, huh?” she said as if playing along with a joke. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

But maybe she should have waited. Forever, she thought as he laid out for her what he’d been thinking. Because the further he got into explaining that he thought he’d come to the point where he was ready for a family, for her and Max to be his family, the more panicky Lucy felt.

“No!” she said before he had finished.

“No what? I haven’t asked you anything yet.”

“No, don’t go on. I don’t want to hear this.”

“Why not?”

What he’d said had agitated her so much she couldn’t remain sitting still. Taking the sheet with her to wrap around her naked body, she scooted off the opposite side of the bed and put as much distance between them as she could manage.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she insisted.

He was perfectly calm in the face of her storm, the preeminent attorney waiting to hear her argument. “I always know what I’m saying,” he said reasonably.

“I know you’re attracted to me as a novelty—”

“A novelty? You’re putting yourself in a category with blow-up dolls?”

“I’m putting myself in the category I belong in—single mother. Those women you avoid, remember? Those women you don’t even want as your secretary.”

“Lucy—”

“No,” she repeated, stopping him before he could go on because she didn’t want to hear his reasoning. “You said yourself that you weren’t sure you’d ever want to be a father because you can’t give the kind of time and attention to a child that it deserves. You live a child-free life. A fast-paced, high-pressure life that has no place in it for kids. Look at your apartment, your clothes, your car—it’s only a two-seater. Being around me and Max is nothing if not a novelty. But that doesn’t make it something you could do with any kind of longevity.”

“You think you know me better than I do?”

“I know that a man ensconced in his own life—a life that makes the world adapt to it rather than adapting to the world—is not a man who would ultimately be happy with the demands of a ready-made family. It’s not a man who can take on a ready-made family without that family sacrificing everything to him. It’s a man who would eventually want out, want back into his well-ordered life.”

“We’re not talking about me, are we? Now we’re talking about the law professor who left you pregnant and in the lurch rather than alter his agenda in the slightest.”

“We’re talking about what I know from experience with Max’s father and with you.”

“I’ve adapted to several changes while we’ve been working together.”

“No, you haven’t. You’ve juggled and rearranged my life to get what you’ve needed out of the bargain. I’m not complaining, I agreed to it all. But only because it was temporary. I can’t have a whole lifetime of that. I’ve only spent a fraction of the time I should have with Max since the moment I met you. That’s not the kind of parent I want to be to him. It’s not the kind of parent I will be to him. I’ve set our course and it’s a course where Max comes first and I won’t let anything or anyone distance me from him.”

“The last thing in the world I would want is to distance you from Max. I’m not talking about taking you away from him. I’m talking about adding me to the mix.”

“Why? So he can start to see you as his father, fall in love with you, depend on you and then watch you bolt back to your office, to your other life when you tire of the demands of a family and want out?”

“Let me see if I have all this straight. You think I’m some kind of male prima donna who, on nothing more than a whim, would swoop in, take you away from your son while insinuating myself into his affections, and then drop you both like a hot potato at the first sign of a scheduling conflict or a smear of peanut butter on the arm of the sofa?”

The cool, calm lawyer was showing signs of anger. He was on his feet now, too, facing off with her in a dauntingly arousing sight.

“My view of you is hardly that disparaging,” she said, trying not to stare at the magnificence of his naked chest. “You’re a good man, Rand. A great one. But you’re a man who lives a life so completely different from mine that we might as well be on separate planets.”

“I’m not from another planet, Lucy. I grew up in a household full of kids and family. I know what it involves. I’ve avoided it myself because I know what it involves and I knew I couldn’t have the kind of career I’ve had and a family, too. But I’ve had the career I wanted and it’s falling short for me lately. It’s not enough. Then you got dropped into my lap and I suddenly found myself feeling good again. Happy. Content. What I realized is that I’ve devoted enough time to my job and now I want to put it second to my private life. Now I want to make whatever changes need to be made to accomplish that.”

A part of her would have liked to believe that. To believe that he could actually pull it off. But she was afraid—no, terrified—that it was the same part of her that had believed Marshall would welcome the news of her pregnancy with Max, ask her to marry him and give her happily-ever-after.

But she’d learned that happily-ever-after was too good to be true, that she couldn’t listen to that part of her that wanted to believe otherwise, no matter how much she might want to. That it only got her hurt and in trouble.

“No,” she repeated once more.

“No what?” he said again.

“I know you mean what you’re saying right at this moment. I really do. But I can’t trust it. I have Max to think about and I can’t take the risk with him, with his feelings. He already likes you too much and—”

“I wouldn’t hurt Max. I wouldn’t hurt you,” Rand said in a deep, quiet, sincere voice.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t do it on purpose. But I truly believe that even if you put effort into cutting back on work, little by little it would creep in and take over the way it ended up taking over since I became your secretary. And Max would suffer. He’d suffer every time he expected you here and something came up at the office to keep you away. And he’d suffer more when you finally admit that cutting back isn’t something you can actually do. That you thrive on the constant work, the pace, the world you’ve built for yourself, and that that really is where you belong.” And she would suffer, too. Just the way she had when Marshall had turned his back on her.

“I’m not a boy, Lucy,” Rand said very, very seriously. “I know myself. I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I want. And what I want is not just a novelty or some passing fancy. It’s you.”

“But I don’t come alone. That’s the problem.”

“I want Max, too.”

She shook her head, fighting the sting in her eyes. “It just wouldn’t work out.”

“I’ll make it work out.”

It was so tempting to trust in that. And if it had been her heart alone on the line she might have. She might have thrown caution to the wind the way she wanted to and just hoped that he honestly did know himself well enough to know he was capable of taking such an about-face with his life.

But she wasn’t a woman alone. She was a woman with a child. A child she loved too dearly to ever put into any kind of risk at all.

“No,” she said yet again, firmly and with finality.

“You won’t even give us a chance?”

“No.” She brushed the wetness from her cheeks with the back of one hand, wishing Rand was anywhere but there so she wouldn’t have to fight to keep herself from running into his arms, from giving in to that naive, younger self who still yearned to believe everything he’d said and take the chance after all.

“I think you should go,” she whispered, her voice cracking traitorously and letting him know how close she was to breaking down completely.

“Lucy,” he said, taking a step toward her.

“No,” she said one final time, holding up a hand to stop him from coming any nearer. “Go,” she added, but just barely because her throat was so full of tears she could hardly speak.

And then the phone rang. Of all the bad timing, the phone rang.

Lucy pressed a hand to her mouth in an attempt to gain some control, but before she did, Rand answered it.

She could tell by his clipped, curt questions that something was wrong. Very wrong. And another, different sort of panic took hold of her careening emotions and made the tears evaporate.

“What?” she demanded the moment the phone left Rand’s ear.

“Max is hurt,” he said, his own face blanched white. “He fell off the top bunk bed and hit his head. He’s unconscious and on his way to the hospital in an ambulance right now.”



Rand insisted on going with Lucy to the hospital, on driving her car because she was in no shape to be behind the wheel. They arrived at the emergency room twenty-five minutes later, both of them in clothes they’d thrown on without regard to anything but decency so they could get out in a hurry.

Max had already been taken for a CAT scan and before Lucy located the parents of Max’s friend, one of the emergency room doctors came out to let her know what was happening.

Max had regained consciousness in the ambulance and exhibited no signs of concussion. But the CAT scan was for safety’s sake. Of more concern was the fact that his left arm was badly broken and would need surgery to set it properly. Beyond that, he had a few bumps and bruises but he was fine and his prognosis was good.

Still, the mention of even the remote possibility that he might not come out of this with full use of his hand and the ominous tone of the surgery release forms did nothing to allay Lucy’s panic. It took Rand’s calming, logical reasoning to keep her from becoming hysterical.

When the doctor left, Rand guided her into the waiting room where Max’s friend’s parents were nearly as distraught as Lucy was. The couple apologized profusely for what was clearly more the boys’ fault than theirs. Apparently the two had decided to play cliff diver off the top bunk bed and, being the guest, Max had gone first. In four-year-old reasoning, they’d been certain that the pillows they’d put on the floor would cushion their landing.

Lucy assured the other parents that she understood but she was in such an emotional state herself that it wasn’t easy to deal with their remorse. She was grateful for the buffer Rand provided, and even more grateful when he convinced them to go home.

But that was only the beginning of the services Rand provided. Throughout the entire day he stayed by Lucy’s side. She was all nerves and he was the calming force she relied on to get through. He brought her coffee. He repeatedly reminded her that her son was going to be all right, and he did it with such confidence she believed him until her own fear crept in again, and then he would reassure her all over again.

He got her to eat a small lunch while Max was being operated on by Washington’s leading pediatric surgeon, a man Rand knew and had called in personally. Rand held her hand. He even managed to make her laugh a time or two. He called Sadie to let her know what had happened and when Sadie arrived at the hospital with a small bag of things for Lucy to use to clean up, comb her hair and stay the night with Max, Rand treated Sadie’s worry as tenderly as he continued to treat Lucy’s.

By late that evening Max was sleeping peacefully in a private room that Rand had arranged for. The little boy had come through the surgery with flying colors and had awakened long enough to prove he could move all five fingers without a problem before drifting off to sleep again.

When visiting hours ended, Sadie kissed the sleeping Max. Then Lucy, Sadie and Rand went out into the hall.

“Anything you need, darling, just call,” Sadie told Lucy, kissing her, too. “Otherwise I’ll see you in the morning when you get our boy home.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lucy answered, accepting her aunt’s hug and letting Sadie know she finally did feel certain things really were going to be okay.

Then Sadie headed for the elevator, leaving Lucy and Rand alone.

“I’m taking your car back to your place,” he explained in a hushed tone so as not to disturb Max through the open door. “I’ll have Frank pick me up there and he’ll be back here first thing in the morning so he can drive you and Max home as soon as Max is released.”

Lucy was weary and worn out by then but more herself. “You don’t have to do that. You can have Frank pick you up here and I can just drive my own car in the morning.”

Rand shook his head firmly. “No. I don’t want you driving. And if you need anything when you get home—prescriptions filled, groceries, anything—send Frank.”

She didn’t have the energy to argue so she just said, “Thank you. And thank you for everything today. I’m not sure I could have gotten through this without you.”

“Don’t thank me. It felt good to be needed. To take care of you. If you’d let me, I’d devote my life to doing just that.”

It was the first reference he’d made to what had been going on between them when the phone call about Max had interrupted them. Lucy had almost forgotten about their fight, about the fact that she’d been in the middle of ending things with him.

But now she remembered it all. Sadly. But with no less resignation. “It would make for a pretty boring life compared to what you’re used to,” she reiterated.

“I think it would be a pretty great life.”

Lucy shook her head. “I meant what I said before,” she whispered solemnly.

“Rethink it, Lucy,” he commanded. “We make a good team.”

“I do all right on my own,” she said stubbornly, even as she knew she wouldn’t have gotten through the day’s ordeal without Rand. But she especially wouldn’t admit that. It was too dangerous to acknowledge that she might need him or anyone else when the last time she’d felt that need she’d been left high and dry by a man so similar to Rand.

“Wouldn’t do any harm to just give some consideration to letting me into your life permanently,” Rand said.

But again she shook her head. “I don’t have to think about it. I know what I’m doing and Max and I are better off alone.”

Inside the hospital room Max stirred and Lucy rushed to his bedside while Rand looked in after her.

But Max hadn’t actually awakened and after a turn of his head on the pillow he settled back into deep sleep.

Lucy didn’t leave her son’s bedside to return to Rand, though. She merely looked his way and said, “Thank you for everything,” just as she might have said it to any stranger.

Rand seemed to get the message and left.

After all the time and distance from the emotions of the morning, after all the other things that had replaced them during the day, Lucy didn’t understand why she felt tears well up in her eyes as she watched him go.

Tears that had nothing to do with Max and everything to do with the feeling that her own heart was breaking in a way no amount of medicine could mend.

Ten

Monday dawned bright and sunny in California and the woman known as Meredith Colton was pleased to have an early morning phone call from the third private investigator she’d hired to locate her sister. She was also pleased to find herself alone in the house for a change so that there was no worry of being overheard.

“Well, what did you find?” she said eagerly into the receiver once the amenities were passed.

“I’m in Monterey. I spent the whole weekend buttering the palm of one of the nurses at the St. James Clinic here and following every lead I could find,” the detective began.

“And?”

“I’m afraid the trail goes cold after the clinic.”

“I hired you to tell me something I don’t know.”

“I can only tell you what I found out and it isn’t much,” he said. “Patsy Portman—who appeared from out of nowhere on the grounds of the clinic in 1992, disheveled, disoriented and mumbling about a car accident—was released after six months. At the time of her release she was still suffering from amnesia. She was, however, having frequent and vivid dreams and fragments of memories that led her doctors to be encouraged that the amnesia might resolve itself before too long. But due to the fact that she’d made a dramatic recovery from her years of anxiety, depression, mood swings, psychotic episodes and anti-social tendencies it was judged to her benefit to leave the clinic and pursue treatment of her amnesia as an outpatient. The trouble is, after her release she never returned to the clinic and there was no current address available,” the investigator concluded.

“That’s it?” the woman shouted.

“I told you the trail is cold after that. I can keep looking if you want but frankly I think it’s a waste of your money. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence. A lot of mentally ill or unbalanced people who improve in the hospital environment see a resurgence of their problems once they’re out in the real world. If they don’t return for care, some even end up as one of the homeless. That would account for the fact that there’s no record of Patsy Portman from the time she left the clinic on. Those kind of people don’t fare well on the streets. And even if they manage somehow, they don’t last long. A high percentage of them end up dying as a Jane or John Doe and being buried in a pauper’s grave. I can’t guarantee it, but if I were betting on it, I’d say that’s what we have here. Too many years have gone by without leaving a trace of her.”

That calmed down the woman known as Meredith. In fact it was so comforting to her that she latched on to the explanation as if there were evidence to prove it.

“You’re probably right,” she agreed, taking a swift turnaround from her earlier outrage. “And if that’s the case, there’s no reason for you to look any further.”

“Like I said, I can if you want me to, but I think it would be a waste of money. This Patsy Portman is long gone.”

“No, you’re right, there’s no sense spending more money looking for a dead woman. Send me your bill and go ahead and call it quits.”

And with that she hung up the phone, letting a smile play across her face as she allowed herself to believe she was out of the woods, that she no longer needed to worry about her sister cropping up to ruin things for her.

Which meant that now she could concentrate on the more pressing matter of that vile Emily….



Lucy didn’t get Max home until noon on Monday. The recuperative powers of the child were amazing and by then he was bright and alert and, with the exception of the cast on his arm, showing almost no signs of the previous day’s trauma.

Lucy, on the other hand, felt as if she’d been through the wringer. And it didn’t help matters when she discovered on her coffee table a large wrapped package from Rand to Max.

Sadie came out from the kitchen at about the same time and said, “That arrived about an hour ago.”

Once he’d determined it was for him, Max tore in to the wrapping and exclaimed delightedly over the treasure trove of dinosaur movies, picture books and coloring books and crayons.

“Did you see this?” he enthused to his mother and great-aunt. “Did you see what Rand got me? How come he did that?”

It was clear the present meant all the more to Max because it had come from his hero. A stab of pain went through Lucy to think that her son was already so attached to the man that he would miss him when Rand didn’t come around anymore.

But she fought it and said as evenly as she could, “It’s a get-well gift. When people are sick or have accidents and get hurt, other people send them presents.”

“Cool!” the little boy said, his newest word since becoming friends with Mikey, the boy he’d been spending the night with when he’d decided to dive off the high bunk. “Can we call Rand and tell him to come over and play?”

The stabbing pain just got worse for Lucy. “No, we can’t do that. I’m sure he’s working.”

“Then can we call him to come over tonight when he’s not working?”

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing any more of Rand for a while, Max. But you can send him a thank-you picture, maybe one of the dinosaurs you color in the coloring books.”

“But I want to see him myself and tell him thank you,” the little boy insisted. “Why won’t we see any more of him for a while? Is he going away on a trip or something?”

“Something,” Lucy confirmed, distracting her son by pointing out that the plastic dinosaurs had come complete with their own rain forest for him to set up.

But Sadie was not so easily thrown off the track and once Max was occupied with his new toys she said, “Come into the kitchen with me, Lucy, and see if I made Max’s Jell-O the way he likes it.”

Since Max liked his Jell-O plain, Lucy knew it was a ploy but she had no choice, so she followed her aunt into the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” Sadie asked without preamble.

“Right now I’d just like to take a shower and a nap,” Lucy answered, pretending she didn’t know what her aunt was referring to.

But Sadie would have none of that. “I don’t mean what’s going on here and now. I mean what’s going on with you and Rand. Don’t think I didn’t notice at the hospital yesterday that Rand was dressed in the same clothes he picked you up in Saturday night—yes, I saw him, he was arriving just as I was leaving. And you said yourself that the two of you rushed to the hospital at six-thirty Sunday morning. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out he spent the night. Which, by the way, I approve of since Max was out of the house. But then last night in the corridor outside Max’s hospital room I could tell nothing good was going on. Now you tell Max that Rand won’t be coming around anymore. Something happened and I want to know what it is.”

Sadie had always been the person Lucy confided in, even as a child. It was only natural for her to do that now despite some reluctance to rehash what she would rather have been able to put behind her. So she told her aunt the entire story, beginning to end, and waited for Sadie to lend the unfailing support she had in the past.

But that wasn’t what Sadie did.

“You’re wrong, Lucy,” she said instead. “You’re so wrong.”

“About what?” Lucy asked, surprised, defensive, confused.

“About Rand. You’re right that he lives a different life than you do. You’re right that he’s put off having a family because it would interfere with that life. You’re even right that he lives in a place that looks more like a modern art museum than a house and that Max would level it in a week. But Rand is a man who knows himself. He’s a man who says what he means and means what he says. And if he says he’s ready to cut back on work, to have a family, ready to put that family first, that’s exactly what he’s ready to do.”

“He’ll regret it,” Lucy contended, repeating part of the reasoning she’d already given her aunt.

“He doesn’t make decisions he regrets. And he also doesn’t bail out of things because he can’t handle change. You may be talking about Rand but I think it’s Marshall you have in mind.”

“That’s what Rand said. But they’re very much alike.”

“Maybe on the surface. But while Marshall liked a life that didn’t accommodate having kids and wasn’t willing to change, if Rand says he’s willing to change to accommodate having a family, he is. Only you’re not giving him the chance because you’re projecting too much of your past onto the present. Onto him.”

“He didn’t even want a secretary with a child,” Lucy reminded her aunt.

“And he probably still won’t. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to come home to a woman with a child. Or to that child.” Sadie paused a moment as if to let that sink in and then said, “I know things have been hard for you since you got pregnant with Max, darling. I know you’ve made a lot of sacrifices for him. But I honestly don’t think Rand is one of the things you have to give up for Max’s sake. Or for any other reason. I think with Rand you can finally let down your guard and have what you want—and you do want him or I need my eyes checked. With Rand you can have what you deserve. What Max deserves. Trust me, Lucy. Trust Rand. You can, you know.”

Trust Rand…

That was just what he’d asked her to do the night before. And she’d done it. Without regret.

But could she do it again, in the larger scheme of things?

Sadie left Lucy alone in the kitchen then, returning to Max with a bowl of the Jell-O she’d made him. Lucy didn’t follow. Instead she crossed the kitchen to the window above the sink and looked out at the courtyard all four of her aunt’s town houses shared.

But it wasn’t the autumn-bare gardens or the tall cherry trees she saw out there. Her focus was all internal, all on what Sadie had said, all on thoughts of Rand.

It wasn’t easy to shake the sense of how similar Rand and Marshall were on the surface. They were both well-respected, feared, high-powered movers and shakers in their own professions. They were both workaholics. They had both reached a point where concessions were made to them rather than them making concessions to anyone else.

Except that maybe that last part wasn’t entirely true of Rand, she admitted to herself a little belatedly, feeling guilty for assigning something to him that might not be strictly true.

Yes, she’d done more adapting to him and his needs during the week she’d worked for him but he’d done some adjusting himself—working at her place, having Max to his, suspending work time while Max was with them so she could be with her son and see to his needs.

No, they hadn’t been big alterations but they had spoken of more flexibility than Marshall would have ever shown.

And maybe there was another difference between Marshall and Rand, too, she realized as she thought about it. Rand wasn’t a selfish man, the way Marshall had been. Rand had been perfectly willing to share her with Max, which was something Marshall had told her point-blank he would never be willing to do. He’d said he had to be the center of the universe for whatever woman he was involved with and a child would only corrupt that. But Rand hadn’t had any problems in that area. In fact he’d joined in when it came to Max. In some ways he’d taken over. It was part of why her son was so enamoured of him.

And Rand did know what being a part of a family entailed, she couldn’t deny that. Not only had he come from a large one but he was so clear about the role a father needed to play in a family that he’d denied himself parenthood rather than come up short the way he’d felt his own father had at one time.

But on Sunday at the hospital he’d done just what a good father, a good husband, would have done, she had to admit. He’d suspended his own concerns to care for her and for Max. He couldn’t have been more selfless, more compassionate, more caring, more helpful, even though they’d come from the discussion they’d had and the rejection she’d dished out.

So Rand had certainly proved that he could be there for her and Max when she needed him, which was definitely different from Marshall.

But could Rand make such a huge change in his lifestyle on a permanent basis?

She didn’t know for sure.

But then, how could anyone know for sure?

Which was where the trust part of her aunt’s lecture came in.

If she was going to allow Rand into her life, into Max’s life, she would have to trust that he did know himself and what he wanted and what he was ready for.

And what he’d said he wanted was her. And Max.

That he’d said he was ready for was a family.

When she came down to that, a bubble of elation sprang to life inside her.

Rand wanted her…

Rand wanted Max…

Should she take the risk for them both?

She wanted to. More than she’d ever wanted anything.

She wanted Rand, and a family with him. She wanted Max to have him as his father.

If that had been what Rand had been proposing the morning before…

It occurred to Lucy that she wasn’t exactly sure what Rand had been proposing. Suddenly that bubble of elation inside her lost some of its air.

What if he had only been proposing that they have some sort of other, uncommitted relationship?

That could put a whole new spin on things. A whole new spin that would put herself and Max more at risk than she was willing to.

But she’d never know unless she talked to Rand.

So talk to him.

She didn’t want to do it over the phone and she couldn’t leave Max right then, when she’d just gotten him home from the hospital.

“But there’s still tonight,” she whispered to herself.

Once she got Max to sleep, she could have Sadie baby-sit while she went to Rand’s apartment.

Tension washed through her.

What if she’d misunderstood what he’d been leading up to the previous morning before she’d stopped him? What if she went there tonight and made a huge fool out of herself?

There was only one way to find out. So tonight she’d talk to him, she vowed.

If she could keep her courage up that long.



The doorman for Rand’s apartment building recognized Lucy when she arrived at nine that evening but he wouldn’t allow her to go up until first calling ahead.

That didn’t help her nerves as she stood in the lobby waiting and imagining that Rand had another woman with him and had left orders with his doorman not to be disturbed.

Within moments she got the okay but the anxiety remained with her on the elevator. She hadn’t only rejected Rand once yesterday, she’d rejected him twice. And now she couldn’t help worrying that, even if he had intended something permanent, maybe after twenty-four hours of thinking about it, he’d gotten angry and would tell her to take a hike.

But she’d come this far and she wasn’t going home without knowing exactly what he’d been suggesting the day before, even if her heart was in her throat and her knees felt as if they were made of jelly.

When the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor, Rand was standing in his open doorway, which cut short the idea of retreating back to the lobby, so she willed her legs to hold her up and stepped off the elevator.

“Is everything all right? Is Max okay?” Rand asked in greeting, clearly concerned that something bad had happened to bring her here.

“Everything is fine. Max is doing amazingly well,” Lucy assured quietly, wanting to allay any worry as she crossed the outside hallway. She appreciated that he cared enough for that to be his first concern, though. It bolstered her decision to do what she was there to do.

From her pocket she took out a page torn from one of her son’s new coloring books and handed it to Rand. Max had colored the picture and had her show him how to write thank you and his name at the top.

“Max wanted you to have this,” she said. “He was about as excited as I’ve ever seen him to get home and find that gift from you. You’ve done enough. You didn’t have to do that, too.”

“I wanted to. But you didn’t need to hand-deliver his thank-you. Especially not tonight.”

Rand’s expression was inscrutable and it didn’t make this any easier for her, particularly since he hadn’t so much as invited her into his apartment. Again she worried that he might have female company. Female company who might have been helping him off with his clothes because he was down to just navy blue suit pants and an untucked, unbuttoned shirt that exposed a mind-numbingly sexy strip of chest and belly.

But again she summoned her courage to go headlong into her purpose for being there.

“I didn’t just come to bring Max’s picture. I wanted to talk to you,” she finally admitted. “But if you aren’t alone…”

“I’m alone,” he said with an edge to his voice that let her know he was reading her thoughts and didn’t appreciate the implication.

He stepped out of the doorway then, though, and made a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate invitation.

Lucy went in, swallowing hard along the way and praying she was brave enough to go through with this as they stood facing each other in the entryway.

“Did you get a temp in today to work?” she asked, curious and trying to ease some of her own stress with small talk when he seemed inclined to have them remain in the foyer.

“The service sent over a pretty good one, actually. Sheila. She’ll be back tomorrow and I may offer her the job.”

“Young? Beautiful?” Lucy didn’t know where that had come from and she wished she could call the words back the moment they were out.

“She’s about fifty, slightly plump, not attractive at all. But she’s a great secretary.”

“Good,” Lucy said in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

Rand must have taken it to mean that she wasn’t happy to have been replaced because he said, “I didn’t think you’d be back. Between Max and—”

“No, it’s good you found someone else. You’re right, Max needs me at home.”

Silence fell then as Lucy’s courage flagged.

But after a moment Rand said, “Now tell me why you’re really here.”

There was no hostility in his tone. In fact there was a conservative sort of compassion that helped her to face him and say, “Sadie says I was wrong, and after thinking about it I’ve come to agree with her.”

“What are you wrong about?”

“You.” She took a deep breath and pushed herself to go on. “I’m sorry, Rand. It’s just that Sunday morning when you started to talk about changing your life, I panicked. I had you all mixed up in my mind with Max’s father and… Well, I was just wrong. I know that if you say you want to change your life you do. That you will. That you won’t regret it. That you’ll accomplish that as well as you’ve accomplished everything else.”

“This sounds like an endorsement from an objective third party apologizing for not giving credit where credit is due. But is the punch line that you still don’t want any part of it?”

“I don’t know. That depends on what part of it you had in mind for me. I didn’t let you get far enough to find out.”

“I was casting you as the leading lady.”

“What role exactly does the leading lady play?

Steady girlfriend? Significant other?”

“You’re still thinking of me as that other guy, Lucy. I’m talking about you being my wife.”

Relief washed over her and she smiled for the first time since her arrival. “Oh.”

“That’s all you have to say? Oh?”

“Is the offer still good?”

He took her hand in both of his and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe she was asking that question. “If you’ll recall, I told you to think about it. So yes, the offer is still good. I’m in love with you, Lucy Lowry. I don’t know how you could have missed it, but since you did—”

“A girl just likes to hear the words.”

“Okay. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you so much that nothing is as important to me as being with you, as making you my wife, as making my life with you, as being a father to Max. I’d like it if you’d agree to marry me. And if you do, I promise you that I will never hurt you intentionally, and that I will always put you and Max and any other kids we might have first and foremost.”

“And you’re sure?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure. I’m positive. I’m absolutely certain. So what do you say?”

She didn’t have to think about it. She said, “Yes. I say yes.”

He stared down at her for a moment and she honestly thought he was going to pull her into his arms and kiss her. But instead he said, “I have one condition.”

“You do?”

“I want you to let me be the breadwinner so you can go back to law school. You don’t have to take a full load, just a few classes a semester while Max is in school. But I want you to go. I don’t want to see that mind of yours wasted. And then, once you pass the bar, we can be partners in that, too.”

Lucy laughed. If she’d had any lingering doubts about how different Rand was from Marshall, they disappeared in that instant because there wasn’t a hint of the resentment for her ambitions that Marshall had always shown.

“I think you’re just looking for a way to lighten your caseload,” she joked.

“I’m looking for it all—wife, mother of my children, law partner, lover.”

He finally did take her into his arms, kissing her a few playful, short kisses.

“Is Sadie with Max?” he asked between them.

“Yes.”

“Is Max asleep?”

“Yes.”

“So he wouldn’t miss you if, say, it takes an hour or so for us to get back to him?”

“I don’t think so,” Lucy said, her voice growing deeper and more breathy as his kisses grew deeper and more passionate.

“Think Sadie would mind?”

“She figured out that you spent Saturday night with me and said she approved, so I don’t think she’d mind.”

Rand smiled. “That’s my girl.”

He kissed Lucy’s neck then, just below her earlobe at a spot she’d never realized was so sensitive, so arousing.

“And what about you? Any qualms about sticking around here for a little while?”

“Depends on what for,” she teased, tilting her head to allow more of the feather-brush of his lips against her skin.

“For this,” he said in a husky voice as he slipped off the coat she was still wearing and reached beneath her sweater to massage her bare back while his mouth returned to hers in open, hungry kisses that wiped away all other thoughts.

Even though Lucy had believed she’d given herself over to Rand when they’d made love before, she learned then that she hadn’t. Not the way she did now.

Now, when his hands grazed her flesh, shedding her clothes and his.

Now, when he led her to his bedroom and laid her on the downy comforter, lying beside her, capturing her mouth and claiming her breasts with his wondrous hands. Now, when her own hands claimed him in return.

Now, when she opened to him, accepted him fully into her and rode the wild ride with him that sealed the union they’d finally made, that celebrated it and bound them together for all of eternity.

And when they lay spent and exhausted and holding each other, Lucy finally said the words she’d thought she might never again say to anyone but Max. “I love you.”

Rand chuckled slightly. “I was wondering if I was ever going to hear that from you.”

“I like to keep you guessing. It stokes the fires.”

“I don’t think you’ll have any problem stoking my fires. And by the way, in case you’ve forgotten, I love you, too.”

She knew that. But it was still good to hear again. In fact, she couldn’t imagine ever hearing it enough.

“I should get home,” she told him on a reluctant sigh.

“We should get home,” he amended and it sounded incredibly good to her.

Still she didn’t hurry to move. She allowed herself just a little while to savor being there in Rand’s arms, reveling in his love for her, in her love for him, in the fact that she’d found him just when she’d been certain there wasn’t anyone out there she could trust again.

But there had been. There had been just one man who was perfect for her, who would be perfect for her for the rest of her life. Perfect for Max, too, whom she knew would be thrilled to welcome Rand into their small family.

And a family was just what they’d be, she thought.

A wonderful, loving family.

A family that really could have that happily-ever-after she’d thought was too good to be true.

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Victoria Pade for her contribution to THE COLTONS series.

Victoria Pade - From Boss to Bridegroom p.03

After all, she wanted lots of things she didn’t indulge in. Like banana splits for breakfast or brownies for midnight snacks or five-hundred-dollar shoes.

Or like men who could mess up the order she’d finally gotten her life into, distance her from her son and hurt them both.

So no, she would not indulge in any more kisses with Rand Colton, and that was all there was to it.

She just hoped as she put the key in the lock that the entire night before was nothing but a blur to him.

As Lucy went in she called, “It’s me.”

She half expected there to be no answer or to hear a weak hello from the bedroom. But instead Rand’s deep voice called back a strong, “I’m in the kitchen.”

Lucy took off her coat and set her purse with it on the art-deco wrought-iron hall tree in the corner of the entryway. Then she smoothed the red turtleneck sweater she had on over her black slacks.

She hadn’t known exactly how to dress but had assumed that a workday spent in Rand’s apartment didn’t call for the business suits she wore to the office, so she’d opted for casual attire.

But when she reached the kitchen to join Rand she felt overdressed as he stood there in pajama bottoms and his bathrobe left open down the front.

Lucy’s mouth went dry at that first glimpse of him, standing at the sink filling the coffeepot with water. Drier still when he finished and turned to face her.

He did it carefully, pivoting his whole body while keeping his torso and head ramrod straight, but it gave her a glimpse of what was beneath the bathrobe. A glimpse of a stomach that was a flat six-pack rising to a massively muscled chest spattered lightly with hair and shoulders so broad they were like a grand explosion of Old Faithful.

And it didn’t help matters that his profoundly handsome face was shadowed in ruggedly masculine beard or that his dark hair was mussed as if from a night of lovemaking.

No secretary should be presented with such a sight and be expected to perform.

At least not to perform secretarial tasks.

Lucy knew instantly that keeping her vow was going to be the hardest thing she did all day because what she really wanted was to cross the space that separated them, slide her arms inside the flaps of his robe and start up where they’d left off the previous evening.

It took some doing not to succumb to that impulse, to hold her ground and say, “Good morning.”

“Morning.”

He gave her the once-over and there seemed to be approval—maybe even appreciation—in his expression as he did. Until he reached her upswept hair and then the slight smile on his provocative lips twitched just enough to make her think he didn’t like the do.

She didn’t know why that would be the case. It was the way she’d worn her hair every day since going to work for him, but even the faintest hint of displeasure from him made her want to reach up and unfasten the clip that held the spray of curls at her crown and shake her hair free.

But she steadfastly resisted that urge, too.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I’ve been better. The pills make me too foggy so I’m only taking half the dose, just enough to blur the edges of the pain to get me by.”

He didn’t seem to want to discuss it further because then he launched into work-mode. “I’ve dictated some letters into the tape recorder that will need to be typed but I’d like for you to work up the anonymous note to my family about Emily so we can get that out. I thought if you wrote it there really wouldn’t be any indication that it came from me. If you would, you can do that while I shower and then go on to the letters while I write the summation I have to get done. That’ll also need to be proofread and typed. I doubt if we’ll finish before noon but I thought we might devote the afternoon to the Internet search into my mother’s background. I don’t want Emily calling to check with me and not have something to tell her. Plus I’d like for you to be on the clock for that. I don’t expect it to be a freebie. We can put off the rest of today’s work until tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Lucy agreed, grasping onto thoughts of work to help distract herself.

“I’m going to have to lie on the sofa in the office to do my part. Sitting is an exercise in agony.”

“Can I fix you breakfast while you shower?” she offered.

“Thanks but I ate some toast to cushion the pain pills. Just pour us some coffee when it’s done, if you would.”

And with that he left to shower.

Lucy tried not to think about that as she went into his home office. Not to picture him dropping that bathrobe and those pajama bottoms. Not to think about the fact that he would be stark naked only a room away. Not to imagine thick-muscled thighs and well-honed calves, or a backside to die for, or a front side…

Oh, boy. This was not going to be an easy day at all.

She forced her mind off Rand and turned on one of his computers, laying out in her head the jobs of the hours ahead, picturing Max’s cherubic face to remind herself of her own priorities.

It helped. By the time Rand returned, shaved, combed and dressed in sweatpants and a Harvard sweatshirt that still made him look all too good, Lucy had his coffee waiting on a TV tray in front of the couch and had already printed out the note for his family, informing them simply and succinctly that Emily had not been kidnapped, that she was alive, well, not in danger and would return home as soon as she could.

“Great,” Rand judged after reading it.

“I called my friend so she knows it’s coming and what to do with it. I’ve also called FedEx to pick it up this morning. I didn’t think you’d want to waste any time getting it to its destination.”

“You read my mind,” he assured her as he oh-so-carefully lowered himself onto the couch, his head and back elevated only enough to sip his coffee and write on the legal pad he set on his lap.

And with that they went to work as usual, spending the morning as Rand had instructed. Which was fine with Lucy. But it wasn’t as much fun as the afternoon when she began to search into Meredith Colton’s—nee Meredith Portman’s—past.

“Some things are directly accessible,” Lucy explained to Rand as they got started, sitting at the computer while he continued to lie on the sofa that ran the length of the wall beside it. “Things that are a matter of public record are basically there for the asking, but that doesn’t mean I can just tap into the computer systems and bring them up myself. But I can e-mail a request for copies of things, which I did the night before last after you left. Last night when I got home I checked to see if any of my requests had been answered and when I found on your mother’s birth record that she was a twin, I e-mailed for everything that was a matter of public record on her twin, too. I hope that wasn’t out of line. I just thought that with your sister making claims to have seen two—”

“Twin?” Rand said, cutting her off. “What are you talking about?”

“Your mother was one of a double birth. You didn’t know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that. No one knew that. Are you sure?”

Lucy pulled up the e-mail and printed it out for him to see. Along with the birth information for Meredith Portman was documentation for a person named Patsy Portman, born on the same day, at the same hospital, to the same parents, five minutes later than the time of birth for Meredith.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this right away?”

“I assumed you knew. Your mother didn’t mention a thing like having a twin?”

“Never. Are you sure the twin didn’t die shortly after birth? Or wasn’t given up for adoption or something? Maybe my mother doesn’t even know.”

“I asked for everything that was a matter of public record on both Meredith and Patsy Portman. They both got driver’s licenses when they were sixteen and the same address is listed on them. So your mother had to have known about her.”

“What happened to her?”

Lucy wasn’t crazy about being the one to inform him of this next part. She’d thought it was something he knew and had purposely not talked about because his family wasn’t proud of it. “Patsy Portman has a criminal record, but I haven’t delved into that yet. I thought you were aware of it and might not want me poking around in what was a skeleton in the closet, that that’s why you hadn’t mentioned the twin.”

“A criminal record? No, I didn’t know about that either. What did she do?”

Lucy felt very much the burden of being the bearer of bad news so she answered quietly, “She was convicted of murdering someone named Ellis Mayfair when she was eighteen.”

“I need to know everything you can get on that.”

“Old newspaper articles are the best but they’re on microfiche. I might be able to persuade the library to fax us copies.”

“Try,” Rand said.

Lucy spent the next hour doing just that, luckily connecting with a helpful librarian in California who was willing to go to the trouble of looking for all the articles on the long-ago killing.

By the time the faxes began to come in, Rand had fallen asleep, and since the sound of the machine didn’t wake him, Lucy read the articles herself.

It seemed that Patsy Portman had had a troubled youth wrought with mental instability, anxiety, bouts of depression and severe mood swings, all of which had been dealt with unsuccessfully by a caring mother who had tried to get her daughter help. Patsy had dropped out of high school and had been reported as a runaway several times.

Apparently in 1967 she’d become pregnant by Ellis Mayfair who was considerably older than she was and married.

Ellis Mayfair had wanted her to have an abortion but she had refused, hiding her pregnancy even from her family. She’d given birth to a baby girl in a motel room with only Mayfair in attendance, naming the child Jewel. But while Patsy had slept postpartum, Mayfair had taken the baby away.

When Patsy had awakened and asked for her baby, Mayfair had at first told her the baby had died. Patsy hadn’t believed that and after pressing Mayfair was told that he’d sold the baby to a doctor for a secret private adoption.

Patsy had flown into a rage and attacked Mayfair, breaking a table lamp over his head and ultimately stabbing him in the chest with the scissors used to cut the umbilical cord, killing him.

Meredith had arrived at the scene shortly after the murder. But because of her presence before the police arrived, Patsy had tried to claim on the witness stand that Meredith had instead arrived during Patsy’s fight with Mayfair and had killed him in defense of Patsy.

But Meredith had denied it and since there had been absolutely no evidence or witness testimony to support it, Patsy had been found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty-five years in the state correctional facility for women in California.

Lucy glanced up from reading the faxes to see if Rand was still napping. He was so she went on to the follow-up article that had been done on the anniversary of the murder.

The anniversary article began with a jailhouse interview of Patsy, who was clearly obsessed with the loss of her child. The obsession seemed to the reporter to have pushed Patsy’s delicate psyche over the edge. She was insanely angry with her sister for not having taken the fall for her. If only Meredith-the-honor-student and model citizen had said that she had killed Ellis Mayfair by accident while trying to defend Patsy, neither Patsy nor Meredith would have been put behind bars. But no, goody-goody Meredith wouldn’t do that, Patsy had raved.

Patsy was also furious with their mother, Edna Portman, for not forcing Meredith to help. “But of course my mother wouldn’t do that,” Patsy was quoted as saying. “My dear mother wouldn’t risk anything happening to her little pet, to the good daughter. But she couldn’t care less if I molder away in a jail cell.”

The reporter clearly doubted the credibility of Patsy’s claims and upon investigation pieced together a timetable that put Meredith at the scene of Ellis Mayfair’s murder only after the fact. The reporter had also learned that Mrs. Portman had done everything humanly possible in Patsy’s defense, nearly to the point of bankrupting herself.

Additionally, the reporter had discovered that at Patsy’s request of her family to find her lost baby, Jewel, Meredith and Edna—with almost no money left—had done their best to locate the child. But from reports by the prison guards, when Meredith and Edna had informed Patsy of their failure, Patsy had yet again flown into a rage, screaming profanities and telling them she never wanted to see them again.

After that Patsy had refused their repeated phone calls and visits, returned their letters unopened, and effectively cut herself off from them.

When questioned about this in a subsequent interview by the reporter, Patsy had admitted, “I washed my hands of both of them. I can’t think of anything but my lost baby. My Jewel. I believe with all my heart that she’s alive and I can only hope she’s found a good home and knows somewhere in her heart that I’m just waiting for the day when I can find her myself.”

Concluding the last article was an interview with Edna Portman in which she conveyed that while she was heartbroken over Patsy’s tragedy, she was deeply concerned about what kind of impact this scandal was having on Meredith and what it would do to her future. In view of that she let the reporter know that she would no longer speak on the subject.

By the time the article had gone to press, Mrs. Portman and her daughter Meredith had moved to an unknown location, presumably in search of a fresh start away from Patsy altogether.

“And if I had to bet on it,” Rand said when he’d awakened from his nap and read the faxes as Lucy had, “I’d bet that’s why my grandmother and my mother moved to Sacramento, that it wasn’t only for my mother to go to college. I’d also bet that my grandmother convinced my mother never to speak of the scandal again to escape the stigma and that’s why no one knows anything about this.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Lucy agreed. “Especially since it seems as if your mother and grandmother did all they could to help Patsy Portman and she made the decision to have nothing to do with them. They weren’t abandoning her. They’d been shunned by her. But once that had happened and they needed to start over again, to make a new life for themselves, it defeated that purpose to tell people about it.”

“But the question is, does all this have anything to do with what’s happening in my family now?” Rand said.

“The articles mention more than once that Patsy and Meredith were identical twins. That, had Patsy not been wearing prison clothes, no one would have been able to tell them apart,” Lucy pointed out.

“But after all the years that had passed between the time of that last article and when my mother and Emily had the car accident, is it logical to believe Patsy would have come back and done something as outrageous as hijack my mother’s life?”

“It doesn’t seem as if anything about Patsy was ever logical.”

“Okay, granted. But even if she did impersonate—or is impersonating—my mother, how could she have pulled it off for so long? It seems so preposterous.”

“What we see is usually what we believe. If Patsy caused the car accident Emily was involved in and switched places with your mother, chances are she looked too much like your mother to trigger any suspicions. But you said yourself that there was a difference in your mother after the accident. Maybe it wasn’t a personality change at all. Maybe it was a person change, just the way Emily says it was.”

“I just can’t imagine that. But if it’s true, what did Patsy do with my mother?”

Lucy didn’t want to respond to that because the most obvious answer was the worst. If Patsy Portman had gone to such lengths, for whatever reason might have gone through her deranged mind, to take over her sister’s life, and if she had already committed one murder, wasn’t it possible she’d committed murder again? That Meredith Portman Colton had met her death in that accident or just after it at the hands of her sister?

It seemed all too possible to Lucy but she didn’t want to be the one to say it to Rand so she didn’t say anything at all.

But he was so lost in thought that he didn’t seem to notice. Instead after another moment of deep musing, he said, “You’re right, Patsy tracking down my mother and causing that accident, then doing something with my mother in the process, would explain Emily’s belief that she’d seen two mommies. But then it also means that my mother…isn’t my mother at all.”

“And that Emily is right to fear for her life,” Lucy said quietly. “She’s the only witness to the switch.”

That troubled Rand even more. Lucy could see it in the deep beetling of his brow as he eased himself off the sofa and began to pace.

“So someone really could have been trying to kill Emily.”

“I know it’s a horrible thought.”

“As horrible as the thought that all this time Emily knew the truth and none of us believed her. As horrible as the thought that something happened to my mother and for years none of us has looked into it. Has looked for her.”

There was a note of barely controlled alarm in his voice and Lucy knew how much this whole thing had rocked him. “Where will you go from here?” she asked.

Rand stopped pacing to look directly at her. “Good question. I didn’t expect to find anything. I honestly thought that the attack on Emily was a random act of a burglar or something, that when we looked into things we’d come out with nothing but ordinary background information on my mother. I figured I could use it to calm Emily’s fears when she called again and maybe convince her once and for all that she was mistaken about what she thought she saw at the scene of that accident and that everything else had just grown out of a young child’s natural confusion—including her belief that someone was purposely trying to kill her. But now…”

He started pacing again. “Now what we’ve found sheds new light on what she’s been saying. I think we’ve stumbled into serious territory that’s going to require more than just surfing the Internet to find answers.”

“I think you’re right.”

“But it has to be done carefully and by someone who actually knows what he’s doing since we could have opened up a potentially dangerous can of worms.”

“True,” Lucy agreed again, enjoying the sight of the wheels of his mind at work.

Once more he stopped pacing to stand at the window that faced the courtyard behind the building. “I have a foster cousin Austin McGrath. He used to be a cop but left the force in Portland to open his own detective agency. I think it’s time to call him into this. Maybe he can find out where Patsy Portman is now. Or at least find a trail that could let us know if she’s happily living in Cleveland and is absolutely not sitting in my father’s house impersonating my mother.”

Lucy knew that was exactly what he was hoping but she had her doubts.

“Austin is good at what he does,” Rand went on. “He knows the ropes. He’ll be discreet. I’ll feel better with this whole thing in his hands.”

“Do you want me to get him on the phone for you?”

Rand turned from the window to check the clock on the wall. It was a little after four.

“Thanks, but I’ll get hold of him at home tonight. You’ve done more than enough for one day.”

If they weren’t going to do legal work or pursue this family conundrum anymore, Lucy expected him to say she could leave early. But instead he said, “Close out the computer and let’s take a little walk. I can use some fresh air.”

“Are you up to that?”

“If we don’t go far. Walking is less painful than sitting. And I’ve been cooped up too long.”

It was obvious that all the unsettling news she’d delivered today was really the problem, but she didn’t say that. “A walk sounds nice.”

She put on her coat while he took his from a closet in the entryway.

“Want help?” she offered.

“I think I can manage.”

He managed all right. With difficulty but with the same stalwart determination that won him cases.

And while he was at it Lucy tried not to ogle him.

How could the simple task of putting on a bulky stadium jacket over a pair of sweats be sexy?

The answer was that on any other man it probably wouldn’t have been. But on Rand there was an air of sensuality to it. So much so that by the time he’d put on the jacket Lucy needed a walk in the cool November air.

There was a park directly across the street and once they were outside that was where they headed. Only a few stubborn leaves still clung to the branches of generations-old elm, oak and maple trees, while the ground was blanketed in their gold and red brothers.

The air was crisp and redolent with the scent of wood burning in a fireplace somewhere. It was nearing dusk and the park was deserted except for the occasional dog-walker.

It occurred to Lucy that every workday should end with a leisurely stroll through a park to wind down.

“How did your parents meet?” she asked when they had settled into a comfortable gait, still thinking about his family.

“Car trouble,” Rand said with a chuckle that made it seem like a story he had fond memories of. “My father and my uncle Graham were on their way to Sacramento on a business trip and my mother’s car was broken down on the side of the road.”

“So your father rescued the damsel in distress and they fell in love at first sight?”

“My father fell in love at first sight, but my mother made a date with my uncle.”

“Oh no!” Lucy laughed.

“Then my uncle stood her up.”

“And your father stepped into the breach?”

“It was more like he saw his opportunity and took it.”

“And once he had his chance with your mother, she couldn’t resist him,” Lucy guessed, thinking more about the son than the father.

“That’s about the size of it, yes. What about your parents? How did they meet?”

“At a Christmas dance. My mother always said my father swept her off her feet, literally and figuratively.” Again Lucy thought about Rand in that same regard.

“And maybe neither story had a happily-ever-after ending,” Rand mused.

Lucy regretted having led him down this particular conversational path when it seemed clear that he needed to be distracted from it. So she said, “What’s on tomorrow’s agenda?”

“Today’s work and tomorrow’s, too,” he answered wryly.

“Here again?”

Rand didn’t answer immediately. But after a moment he said, “Here. I don’t think I can make it to the office yet.”

“Okay.”

“I just realized this will be the first night this week that we haven’t spent together,” he said then, making it sound as if they’d done something much more intimate than working late or having dinner at her aunt’s house.

“You’re on your own, all right. Think you can handle it?”

“If I say no, will you stay?” he asked in a hopeful tone.

“No, I’d just give Frank a call. He said last night that if you needed a man Friday he was willing to do it.”

“What do you have planned for tonight? A hot date?” he asked then, sounding more interested than she thought he should be.

“A really hot date,” she confirmed.

“With anyone over three-and-a-half feet tall?”

“Height is no measure of the man. It’s what’s inside that counts.”

“Is what’s inside a whole lot of peanut butter and jelly?”

Lucy wondered if he was just teasing her with what sounded like a hint of proprietorship or if he had more than a passing interest in how she might be spending her off-hours. And the mischievous side of her was tempted to let him think she might actually have a hot date with someone other than her son just to see if it got a rise out of him. But she refrained.

“What’s inside the man I’m keeping company with tonight is not only peanut butter and jelly, but ketchup, too.”

Rand groaned. “Max eats ketchup on peanut butter and jelly?”

“He won’t have it any other way.” Lucy paused a moment but couldn’t resist a little probing of her own, just in case. “What about you? Are you really spending the evening alone?”

“Why do you make that sound so implausible?”

Maybe because she’d seen his personal Rolodex and the names of women outnumbered the names of men six to one.

Lucy shrugged. “You just don’t strike me as somebody who’s good at being alone.”

“I’m good at everything,” he countered with a voice full of lascivious innuendo.

“Oh, excuse me,” she joked.

“I thought about calling someone to come over,” he said then. “But I’m having a little trouble in the female companionship area.”

“Ha! Be careful who you’re talking to. Remember I answer your phone. There are four women you owe calls to just since yesterday and I’m sure any one of them would rush right over at the snap of your fingers.”

“No, the trouble isn’t in finding company. The trouble is that I’ve suddenly developed a lack of interest in any of them.”

Was she imagining the underlying message in that statement?

“Since when?” she heard herself ask before she’d considered the wisdom and the fact that she was volleying his flirtation in a way she shouldn’t have been.

“Since…” He pretended to count back the days since they’d met and then, instead, said, “Since you walked through my office door.”

It was difficult to tell if he was joking because he made that sound as if he might be. As if he was just having fun with her.

So Lucy played along. “Well, don’t worry about it. I have that effect on every man. It’s a power I try to contain but sometimes I’m just not successful at it.”

“You? Not successful at something? I don’t believe it.”

“My powers are a curse I’ve just had to learn to live with.”

They’d made a loop through the park and now came out where they’d gone in, with Rand’s building just across the street and Lucy’s car parked in front of it.

“Now you’re going to tell me that’s it for today, aren’t you?” he said, with a glance at her station wagon.

“It’s about five.”

“And you’re going to leave me for another man,” he said melodramatically.

“It’s the appeal of the dinosaur trivia. You just can’t compete.”

“Don’t rub it in.”

That brought a flash of rubbing ointment into Rand’s back the previous evening, just before she’d left. Just before he’d kissed her and she’d left.

It wasn’t a thought that helped keep her equilibrium.

Lucy checked for oncoming traffic as Rand seemed more intent on looking at her and they headed across the street.

By the time they reached her car he was more serious again. “I really appreciate all you did today.” Then he chuckled slightly. “I’m beginning to sound like a broken record.”

“It’s nice to be appreciated,” she answered flippantly because she was still fighting the memory of rubbing his naked back and kissing him.

She unlocked her car door and opened it, stepping into the lee of it but not getting in.

Rand stood on the outside of the panel, carefully raising his arms to rest on the top of the window frame.

“Can I do something before you go?” he asked.

She could see the glint of devilishness in his blue eyes but she was too intrigued—and yes, maybe too hopeful that what he was going to do was kiss her again—to refuse him.

“What do you want to do?”

“This,” he said, reaching around to unclip her hair so that it fell freely to her shoulders on a soft gust of autumn breeze. “I’ve been itching to do that since I met you. I just had to see what it looked like.”

“And?” she said, hating herself for the need to know if he approved.

“And it’s just as beautiful as I thought it would be,” he answered simply, his voice quiet, his gaze caressing her hair in a way she could almost feel.

“I should go,” she whispered, sensing that they had somehow once again stepped over that imaginary line from a work relationship to a personal one.

But Rand ignored the statement and let his eyes drift to hers, holding her gaze in a warm embrace for a moment before that same hand that had taken her hair down came to the back of her head again. Only this time it was to bring her closer so he could kiss her. Right there on the street.

But if anyone passed by or looked on, Lucy wasn’t aware of it. She wasn’t aware of anything but the feel of his mouth over hers, the wonderful return of what she’d been unconsciously craving since the moment his mouth abandoned hers the night before.

His lips parted and this time so did hers, without urging, and when his tongue traced the bare inner edge of them, they parted even more, inviting what she knew she shouldn’t.

Rand accepted the invitation, sending his tongue to test the tips of her teeth, to greet her tongue before he enticed it to play, before he explored her mouth, before he deepened that kiss to such an extent that her car door between them seemed like a brick wall she wished would crumble away so she could be fully in his arms.

She wanted his hands on her body. Everywhere on her body, not just fingering her hair as if it were fine silk. She longed to shed coats and clothes, to feel his strong, powerful hands stroking her back, her arms, capturing her breasts in the warm hollow of his palm. She longed to feel his nimble fingers circling her nipples, squeezing them into even tighter knots than they already were.

And she’d do just as much touching of him as he did of her. Retracing those honed muscles of his back the way she had the night before, filling her own palms with his pectorals, trailing a path down his flat stomach, all the way down to the greatness she could only imagine.

One quick phone call, a little voice in the back of her mind said. One quick phone call and Sadie will pick up Max. One quick phone call from upstairs. From inside his apartment. From beside his bed—

“Rand? Is that you?”

It took a moment for the female voice to penetrate Lucy’s thoughts. In fact it took a second, more insistent “Rand?”

But when it did, it was a bucket of cold water thrown on Lucy.

The kiss ended abruptly and both Rand and Lucy looked at the strikingly beautiful woman standing only a few feet away.

“Shelley,” Rand said, his voice husky and almost disoriented as he eased himself up straighter, releasing what hold he’d had on Lucy.

He regained his equanimity quicker than she did, introducing her to the tall blonde with the face Lucy had seen often on the covers of women’s magazines and in makeup ads.

It took her slightly longer to come out of the haze that kiss had left her in, to actually say hello.

But the woman didn’t seem to notice. In fact she barely seemed to notice Lucy at all, never taking her eyes off Rand to even look at her.

And Lucy felt awkward and out of place, and as if she’d been caught at something she should be ashamed of.

“I’d better get going,” she announced, too loudly, she thought.

Then she got into her car without waiting for another word from Rand and closed the door.

She started the engine, seeing him only peripherally as he peered into the car and tried to say something to her. But she pretended she hadn’t noticed and pulled away from the curb without so much as a wave goodbye.

What had she been thinking? she mentally shrieked at herself once she was on her way. Had she actually been thinking about not picking up Max? About going upstairs with Rand?

“Oh Lord,” she lamented.

How could it be so easy to lose sight of everything? To forget herself? To forget everything she’d sworn to herself just that morning?

But she had. And if that other woman hadn’t interrupted them?

Lucy didn’t even want to think about where she might be at that very moment.

And yet she still said out loud, “You’d probably be where that other woman is.”

That other woman…

Jealousy—hot and hard and hideous—struck Lucy and nearly knocked the wind out of her.

But other women were a reality in the world of Rand Colton, and she had better not lose sight of that fact, she reminded herself sternly.

So maybe Shelley Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Was showing up had been a good thing. Maybe it had been a protective reminder fate had sent.

Because not only had the other woman arrived in the nick of time, but she was also a glaring example of the difference between the life Lucy led and the life Rand led. A glaring example to remind Lucy that she was going home to a four-year-old whose visions of grandeur were a dinosaur movie and Vienna sausages cut up into his macaroni and cheese, while Rand was no doubt riding the elevator to his art-strewn apartment with a supermodel.

And as much as it might hurt for Lucy to admit to herself that she was only one among many women enamoured of Rand Colton, as much as it might hurt to admit that two such completely opposite lives could not be melded into one, it was nowhere near as much as it would hurt to have to recall those same things after she’d done what she’d been so tempted to do while he was kissing her.

“So thank you, Shelley Whozits, for saving me from myself,” Lucy said with gusto as she pulled into the day care’s parking lot to fetch Max.

But somehow she just didn’t feel all that grateful.

Seven

Facing himself in the mirror the next morning wasn’t the easiest thing Rand had ever done. In a way he was playing possum and it ate at him.

The spasms in his back had stopped and there was no reason he couldn’t go into the office to work.

But had he called Lucy and told her that? Had he canceled their plans to work out of his apartment again?

No, he hadn’t.

Because he’d liked having her in the more intimate setting of his home. Because as much as he’d enjoyed working with her every other day in the city, working with her at home had made him feel as if he had her all to himself. And he’d liked that too much to give it up today. He’d liked it so much it had made falling off the ladder and getting hurt seem worth it.

He rolled his eyes at his own reflection as he lathered his face for a shave. It was pretty bad when he was willing to play sick to get a woman to his apartment.

Not just any woman, though. Any other woman he knew would willingly come home with him—like Shelley the day before. He’d nearly had to be rude to keep her from coming upstairs.

But it wasn’t any other woman he wanted in his apartment. It was only Lucy.

He was definitely having trouble in the female companionship arena the way he’d told her yesterday. More trouble than he’d realized if he was even willing to pretend his back was still on the blink to get Lucy up there.

But why? he asked himself.

All right, sure, Lucy was beautiful. Especially with her hair down—all those spirals of shiny mahogany. And of course there was that ivory complexion and those big blue eyes and those long legs and those full breasts. But he knew a dozen women equally as beautiful and not one of them could light his fire the way Lucy could.

It didn’t help that she had brains to go along with the beauty. And a sense of humor. And warmth and compassion and understanding to spare.

But again, he knew several women with those same attributes.

They just weren’t Lucy. Only Lucy could make his heart go light with nothing but a laugh. Only Lucy made his skin sizzle every time she touched him, no matter how innocently. Only having Lucy around made even the biggest problems seem more manageable, the air seem more pungent, food taste more delicious, music sound more incredible, life seem more worth living…

“You’ve got it bad,” he muttered to himself as he raised his chin so he could shave his neck.

He definitely had it bad. But for the wrong woman. And that was what he really needed to focus on.

Okay, she wouldn’t be his secretary forever, so his rule about not mixing business with pleasure would be a moot point before long. But that didn’t alter the fact that she was still a single mother.

And that was the real problem. That was what made beautiful, kind, compassionate Lucy Lowry off-limits to him.

Not that he didn’t think Max was a great kid. He did. He got a big kick out of him.

But he was still a kid. A child who needed and deserved to be his mother’s first priority and the priority of any man she brought into their lives. A child who didn’t deserve to be shuffled into the deck of fourteen-hour workdays and business dinners and business trips and all-night research sessions and long, absorbing court preparations and the trials themselves. He didn’t deserve to be reduced to the footnote of an adult’s too-busy life.

Which was what Rand was convinced a relationship between himself and Lucy would do.

And that wasn’t fair.

“So call Frank,” Rand told his reflection. “Have him bring the car to take us into the city to work today and keep this thing in line.”

But once he’d rinsed his face he didn’t call for his car and driver. He couldn’t make himself do it. Any more than he could make himself let Lucy go home an hour early the day before, the way he should have, the way he would have let any other secretary who had put in long hours all week and finished for the day.

But what had he done instead? He’d trumped up that take-a-walk ploy so he could have that last hour with her. So he could work up to kissing her again.

To kissing Max’s mother…

But each time he’d kissed Lucy the last thing on his mind had been that she was anybody’s mother. She’d just been Lucy. Lovely, lovely Lucy who smelled like spring breezes and felt like warm perfection and tasted like heaven…

“I’m here.”

The lilting tones of her voice carried to him just then like an extension of his thoughts, of his daydream, and it took a moment for Rand to realize he wasn’t just imagining it, that she had called to him from his front door as she’d let herself in.

“I’ll be right out,” he called back, shrugging into a chambray shirt he usually only wore when he was at the family ranch in California, tucking it into the jeans he also ordinarily saved for that same rustic environment.

He could still go out and tell her they were relocating to the office downtown, he told himself. Nothing was keeping him from putting on a suit, from telling her to go home and change—if she needed to—that he and Frank would pick her up there in half an hour. And then they’d be back in the more formal surroundings of his downtown office where maybe he’d have more luck keeping in mind that he should practice decorum rather than the subtle seduction he kept slipping into unwittingly around here.

But did he do that either?

No, he didn’t. He left on the jeans and the chambray shirt and instead went in search of Lucy.

He found her in the kitchen and stopped short just inside the doorway to drink in the sight of her. She was dressed in jeans, too, and a cropped, rolled-neck sweater that let him see the way the jeans cupped her terrific rear end. She’d left her hair down—not completely free because she had a headband holding it away from her face, but down nevertheless in loose curls that danced against her shoulders and made him want to smooth them aside so he could press his lips to her neck.

And he just couldn’t refuse himself at least having her alone there for this one more day, Max’s mother or not Max’s mother.

“How’s your back?” she asked when she caught sight of him.

“Better. Much better. Almost as good as new,” he admitted because he didn’t want to out-and-out lie to her.

“We have a ton of work to do today. We should get started,” he said more gruffly than he’d intended, overcompensating to cover the things that were going through his mind.

He saw her back straighten slightly, her chin raise a scant fraction of an inch and he knew he’d been too gruff. But all she said was a cool, “Of course. Yesterday’s work and today’s, too.”

And then she left the kitchen and headed for the office portion of the apartment and Rand wanted to kick himself for starting their day off on that note.

But what could he do? he asked himself. He had to keep this strictly business, even if he was indulging himself in working at home for one more day.

Because no matter how much he indulged himself, it didn’t change the facts.

And the facts were that Lucy Lowry was off-limits.



To Lucy there only seemed to be one explanation for the return of the aloof, arrogant Rand: that he’d spent the previous evening—maybe the whole night—with Shelley the supermodel, and as a result, now he wanted to distance himself from his temporary secretary and whatever it was that had been happening between them.

Well, that was fine. It was actually just what she needed. After all, she knew better than to have kissed him again yesterday. But she’d done it anyway.

She knew better than to have relived that kiss over and over again the whole night, taking it even further in her mind and working herself up into such a yearning, burning desire for him that she hadn’t been able to sleep. But she’d done it anyway.

She knew better than to have gotten up this morning and primped and preened, put on her tightest jeans and a sweater that would play peek-a-boo with her midriff. She knew better than to have worn her hair down just to please—okay, and yes, to entice him and compete with the exquisite Shelley. But she’d done all of that anyway.

And most of all, she knew better than to foster any kind of flirtation with Rand or any other man when she’d made her decision to put that part of her life on hold until Max was grown. But knowing better hadn’t stopped her from doing it anyway.

So if Rand could be aloof and distant and businesslike, so could she. Maybe that would finally put a stop to doing what she knew better than to do and was doing anyway.

Aloof, distant, businesslike—that was exactly how the day went. Rand never stepped out of boss-mode and Lucy never stepped out of secretary-mode. And not a single line was crossed all day long.

By four-forty-five Rand decreed them finished and Lucy closed down the computer with one eye on the clock, determined to leave at the stroke of five whether he suggested a walk in the park or not. She was anticipating a whole Rand-free weekend to get her wayward thoughts and desires under control, and nothing was going to stop that from beginning at five on the dot.

That was all that was on her mind when the doorman called up to announce a messenger.

She gave permission to send the messenger up, thinking that whatever was being delivered couldn’t possibly pertain to work so late on a Friday afternoon.

But she’d underestimated someone, and when Rand opened the envelope he’d signed for and read the contents, he threw the documents on the desk and said, “Dirty son-of-a—”

“What is it?” Lucy asked before he could get the rest of his angry epithet out.

“The Turnenbill case.”

“I haven’t come across that this week.”

“Believe me, that’s a fluke. I’ve put more hours into that case than anything I’m billing for.”

“You’re doing it pro bono?”

“I do do that occasionally,” he said defensively.

She hadn’t doubted it, she just wished it weren’t true because his handling cases for free was only one more aspect that made the man appealing. But rather than go into it she prompted, “The Turnenbill case?”

“Liz Turnenbill. Thirty-eight, mother of three small kids. She’s crippled with arthritis and can’t work. She was married to Tom Turnenbill, one of the heirs to an oil fortune. Six months ago he was killed in a car accident. Up until then they lived on dividends from a trust fund his family established for him and, surprisingly, didn’t revoke when he married Liz.”

“The Turnenbills didn’t like Liz?”

“Bingo. She’s not the debutante the family wanted Tom to marry. They said they would never accept her and they didn’t. They haven’t ever even met their grandchildren.”

“Amazing.”

“It gets worse. Tom had a will, leaving the income from the trust fund and his future inheritance to Liz and the kids. But when he died, his family revoked the trust. Liz and the kids were left penniless.”

“And no doubt her in-laws changed their own wills and she won’t inherit what her late husband would have inherited, either.”

“Exactly.”

“And since she can’t work because of the arthritis—”

“They’re destitute. In fact they were living in a house the grandmother had owned and the family even had Liz and the kids evicted. This—” he nodded toward the papers that had just been delivered “—is the latest response to our last go-round. I can’t do anything to keep them from changing their wills so that Liz and the kids inherit what Tom would have. But I’m trying to get a ruling that bars them from revoking the trust, which is enough to leave Liz and the kids with enough to live comfortably, as well as to provide college educations.”

“Sounds like a worthy cause.”

“But the bottom line is that I need to do some fancy footwork in the form of research before the hearing they’ve pulled strings to schedule for first thing Monday morning or I may lose this case. If I do, Liz and those kids will never get what they rightfully deserve.”

“And you want me to work tonight,” Lucy concluded.

Rand cracked a smile for the first time all day. “I really didn’t plan this. But if you stay and we do the research tonight I can use the weekend to prepare for the hearing.”

He held up a hand to stop words she hadn’t even opened her mouth to say. “I know. Max. So what if we call and ask Sadie to bring Max here? The four of us can have dinner. We’ll order Max’s favorite food no matter what it is. You can spend some time with him and then Sadie can take him home to bed while we finish working.”

“It just isn’t possible to keep normal hours with you, is it? No wonder my aunt didn’t want to come back to work even temporarily.”

He shrugged his shoulders and his eyebrows at once. “Nothing I can do about this. It’s part of the other side’s strategy to try catching me off-guard. But I’m not going to let them win this. There’s too much at stake for Liz and her kids.”

That struck a note with Lucy and she knew that even though another late night with Rand was inadvisable she was still going to end up doing it.

But before she fully agreed, she said, “You want Max here? He’ll be like a bull in a china shop. This place isn’t exactly kid-proof.”

“I’m not worried about it. He can swing from the rafters if he wants to.”

Lucy gave Rand her most dubious look but finally said, “You’ll have to call Sadie and ask her. I’m embarrassed to impose on her again.”

“No problem. She loves me,” he said with the debonair confidence of a man who knew his charms and the power they had. “While I do that, you can hit the books. Correction—you can hit the computer. See how much research you can do that way and if you can’t find what we need we’ll go into the office after Sadie and Max leave. I need whatever case law you can find on wills and trust funds, preferably something more recent than ‘62.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” she said with a salute, rebooting the computer and hoping the businesslike tone of the day could withstand the dark of night.



“Are you for-sure I can’t ride it?” Max was referring to the sculpture in Rand’s entryway that swung like a pendulum.

“I’m absolutely sure. You cannot ride it,” Lucy answered for what seemed like the hundredth time since her son and Sadie had arrived. She herded the little boy back into the living room where Sadie and Rand were having after-dinner coffee.

When he got there Max stopped dead in his tracks in front of an abstract painting. “When I color like that, Miss Vanessa says to stop and start over and make it look like something. She says stuff like that’s just a mess.”

“Next time she tells you that, tell her she’s inhibiting your creativity,” Rand advised.

“She doesn’t hit me,” the little boy contradicted, either hearing wrong or giving inhibiting his own meaning because he didn’t understand the word.

Rand and Sadie laughed.

“Inhibiting means she’s keeping you from doing something,” Lucy explained. “It isn’t hitting.”

But Max was on to a sculpture in the corner that looked like an abstract interpretation of a naked female torso.

“Shouldn’t this lady have some clothes on?”

Apparently it hadn’t been abstract enough.

“Would you like to see my fish, Max?” Rand said, obviously trying to distract him. “I also came across something I thought you might like to have. Come on in the bedroom and you can look at the fish while I dig out your surprise.”

Max didn’t have to be asked twice. “Where’s the bedroom?” he demanded as he charged out of the living room and across the entryway again, making sure to give the pendulum sculpture a nudge to put it into motion as he passed it.

“I’m a nervous wreck having Max in a place like this,” Lucy confessed to her aunt when Max and Rand were out of earshot.

“Rand doesn’t seem too worried so you shouldn’t be,” Sadie responded, glancing in the direction they’d gone. Then she added, “Rand is good with Max.”

“I know.”

“He seems to genuinely like our boy.”

“Luckily, since Max is crazy about him.”

“So is Max’s mom, isn’t she?” Sadie asked slyly.

“Rand is a good man but that’s all there is to it. I wouldn’t be staying to work tonight except the case is one he’s doing for a good cause. The Turnenbill case?”

“Mmm. He took that just before I left. For free,” Sadie said as if Lucy might not know that. “He does a lot of that—donating his time, his expertise. You could do worse than a man like him, you know.”

“I’m not doing anything but working. We’re too different for any kind of personal relationship.”

Sadie merely cast her a knowing look and took the coffee cups into the kitchen.

“Look-it, Mom!” Max said as he ran back into the room the way he’d run out of it. “Soldiers to fight the dinosaurs!”

Lucy looked into the shoebox full of plastic soldiers and toy tanks that her son was showing her.

“Rand says they were his when he was a kid, and since he doesn’t play with them anymore, I can have them. If it’s okay with you. Is it okay with you?”

Lucy looked to Rand, who had followed Max into the living room again. “You don’t want to keep them for your own son, whenever you have one?”

“I might never have one,” he answered as if it were the farthest thing from his mind and his plans.

Coming right after her brief exchange with Sadie, his words seemed to have a message in them. As if he were letting her know that although he might be good with Max he wasn’t at all interested in parenting Max or any other child.

Take heed, Lucy, she told herself.

Sadie returned just then, carrying her coat and Max’s too. “I think we ought to go home and let your mom and Rand get back to work.”

“Na-aaww,” Max moaned.

“It’s almost your bedtime,” Lucy pointed out. “I want you to get a good night’s sleep and we’ll have all day tomorrow together.”

“With Rand?”

“No, not with Rand. Just you and me,” she said, helping her son with his coat. “Did you say thank you for the soldiers?”

“Thank you for the soldiers,” Max parroted.

“And thank you for dinner,” Lucy coached.

“And thank you for dinner. And I like your fishes but I still think that naked lady needs some clothes,” the little boy added with a giggle to let the adults know they hadn’t fooled him.

“You’re welcome for everything,” Rand said with a laugh as they all headed for the door.

A round of good-nights and Lucy giving Max a kiss concluded the small dinner party and left Lucy and Rand alone again.

“What do you think?” Rand asked as soon as the door was closed behind Sadie and Max. “Are you getting what we need off the computer or should we take this to the office?”

Back to business without preamble, Lucy thought, feeling somewhat disheartened. But she went along with it, reminding herself it was for the best.

“I have a few things to check out through that law reference program you have. Let me see how far I can get on that. For now it looks promising and we may not need to leave here.”

“Great,” he said with more enthusiasm than she understood.

In the end they didn’t have to go to the office, but it took until nearly midnight for Lucy to accumulate the material Rand needed. And even then what she considered the coup de grace required some arguing on her part to get him to see it.

“I’m telling you, if you present it like this, it will be very effective,” she insisted, giving him her interpretation of an obscure Supreme Court ruling in a 1971 case.

Rand shot out of his chair at the second computer to see the ruling for himself on her monitor when she was finished with her argument.

“Wow, your back must be a lot better,” she commented, surprised to see him move with such speed and agility.

His smile was slightly sheepish. “Oh. Yeah, it is,” he said as if he’d been caught at something.

But he didn’t offer any more than that, instead reading the Supreme Court ruling over her shoulder.

“You could be right,” he finally admitted after giving it some thought.

By then Lucy’s mind was more occupied with the intoxicating scent of his aftershave than with legal precedent, and she had to force herself to concentrate.

“Actually I think you have a good point,” he was saying. “If I use your angle, I think I can make it work for us. Print that out and let’s celebrate.”

“By calling it a day?” she said hopefully.

“I was thinking more along the lines of opening a bottle of wine.”

It was a tempting idea. But with thoughts of leaving him to the supermodel the day before dancing through her head along with the full day and evening of his aloof attitude, she managed some restraint.

“You can’t mix wine with the muscle relaxants for your back, and I have to drive home,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll open a bottle of grapefruit juice. But we’ve earned a reward. You’ve earned a reward,” he said insistently, as if he wouldn’t accept no for an answer.

Then he left her to do the printout, returning just as she’d closed down the computer for the second time that day.

He pointed with one glass to the sofa he’d spent the day before lying on and waited until Lucy was sitting there to hand her a glass. Then he joined her, angling so that he was facing her.

“To your hard work,” he said, clinking his glass against hers.

“And to the work you still need to do all weekend,” she countered.

“Yes, but you’ve made it much easier.”

They sipped grapefruit juice and then Rand said, “Has anyone ever told you you have a sharp legal mind?”

“As a matter of fact, they have.”

The expression on his handsome face let her know he hadn’t expected that answer.

“I actually had a year of law school,” she explained. “I wanted to be a lawyer from the time I was about thirteen and had my first debate in civics class.”

“What happened to stop you?”

She’d avoided discussing this subject with him once before, when he’d asked about Max’s father. But now—maybe because it was so late and she was tired and less on guard, or maybe because she’d come to know Rand better—she felt more inclined to tell him about it.

“Max is what happened,” she said. “I got pregnant by one of my law professors.”

“The father who’s out of the picture,” Rand said, repeating the very words she’d used to him before.

“Mmm. He was much older than I was, very attractive, brilliant. The dashing, serious academic who told me that I was not only beautiful but just as brilliant as he was, that I stimulated his mind and his body—”

“That isn’t far-fetched, you know,” Rand said in answer to her self-deprecating tone of voice.

“Far-fetched or not, I fell for it.”

“You were young—”

“And naive and gullible and vulnerable and dumb.”

“And you got pregnant,” Rand contributed.

“And I got pregnant. I was so naive and gullible and dumb that I actually thought it might work out. That I’d tell him about the baby and he’d whisk me off to the nearest wedding chapel and we’d live happily-ever-after, Marshall the law professor, me the attorney, and our baby.”

“That didn’t appeal to him?”

“Absolutely not. He was appalled by the pregnancy, let alone by any notion I had of us being together permanently. He said being married to one woman and having children were chains that would stifle him. That he was a scholar, not a husband and father. There was no place in his life, in the future he had mapped out for himself, for anything as stultifying, as repressive, as marriage and family. He wanted me to have an abortion,” she ended that quietly.

“And you refused.”

“I refused. He got nasty. He said he would never have anything to do with my bastard—that was what he called the baby. That he would deny being the father, that I would have to force paternity tests to prove it, that I’d never get a dime out of him in child support, even if it meant he had to leave the country to avoid it. Then he did more than threaten me, he told his colleagues that I had seduced him in an attempt to get grades I couldn’t earn any other way and he managed to have my scholarship rescinded. It was through the school itself and had an ethics and morals clause attached. That left me without tuition, room or board on top of everything else. There was just no way I could go on with school. Plus I had doctors’ bills and then a baby to support, so—”

“You had to give up your dreams.”

“Dreams and romantic fantasies. But I gained Max.”

“Did you go through with establishing paternity and making the SOB pay child support?”

Lucy set her half-empty glass of grapefruit juice on the coffee table. “No, I didn’t. After all that, I didn’t want anything from Marshall. I didn’t want anything to do with him. I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to hurt me any more than he already had. Or worse still, the chance to hurt Max.”

“What do you tell Max about his father when he asks?”

“That he lived a different sort of life than we do and so we couldn’t be together. I know later on he’ll want to know more than that, but for now he accepts it. I can see that he wonders why his father wouldn’t choose him over anything else, but for the most part I don’t believe it eats on him. I think he’s pretty well-adjusted, pretty happy with just me.”

“And you’re very protective of him. Especially when it comes to letting men in.”

Lucy laughed. “Of course. Protecting Max is my number-one job.”

Rand set his glass on the coffee table beside hers and when he settled back again he stretched an arm along the sofa back.

Lucy had been aware of how little distance separated them but now it seemed like even less, and she wasn’t sure if his arm running just behind her shoulders was the cause or if he’d actually moved closer.

Then he gave her one of those devilish smiles and said, “I could have used some of that protection yesterday.”

“How so?” she asked, confused.

“You deserted me with Shelley Whitson. That was like throwing me to the wolves.”

“Oh, sure. All men need to be protected from supermodels.”

“Maybe not all men need to be protected from all supermodels, but I needed protection from Shelley. And what did you do? You abandoned me in my time of need. And me in a weakened condition, too. I’m lucky to be alive to talk about it.”

Clearly he was trying to lighten the serious tone left by the recounting of her disastrous romantic past. But it was working because Lucy couldn’t suppress a smile. Or the lightness that came to her heart at the thought that he hadn’t been thrilled to be with the supermodel.

“How did you survive?” she asked, playing along.

“Only by my wits, since I wasn’t up for any fancy footwork. But it was a close call. She was angling to get up here and when I tried to beg off by saying I’d hurt my back she offered to act as my private nurse.”

“And you didn’t let her?”

“No, I didn’t let her,” he said as if the very thought was repulsive. “There was only one person I wanted up here and she had just dived into her car and sped off as if she were escaping a mugger.”

“So you were mad at me today,” she concluded, more to herself than to him, thinking that explained the mood that had prevailed all day and into the evening.

“I wouldn’t say I was mad. Perturbed, maybe. But I can’t seem to even stay perturbed with you for long.” He was looking into her eyes and his voice had gone quiet and extremely deep. “I can’t seem to stay any way with you that I know I should be staying.”

She didn’t know exactly what that meant, but when he took a strand of her hair between his fingers, she was hard-pressed to think much about it.

“You’re doing something to me that I don’t quite understand,” he admitted then. “Something no other woman has ever done to me.”

“I’m just sitting here,” she pointed out, although her voice was unintentionally breathy.

“And even that’s enough.”

He wasn’t making it easy for her to recall why she’d convinced herself not to enter into situations like this with him again.

“I’m trying to fight it,” he confided. “But I’m getting nowhere.”

That she understood. All too well. “I know,” she nearly whispered. “I’m doing the same thing.”

“Maybe we should stop fighting it.”

“I’m afraid of where it might go if we do,” she confessed quietly.

“We could take it just one step at a time. Carefully. Do a little exploring to see what’s really going on here. Like research.”

He said that with a half smile that made Lucy smile in return. “Research?” she repeated as if it were the worst line she’d ever heard.

He chuckled, a deep rumbling in his throat. Then he kissed her, just a peck, and said, “What would you call it?”

“Playing with fire,” she answered without having to think about it.

“But playing with fire leads inevitably to getting burned. Research just leads to knowledge and understanding.”

“Is that what you want? Knowledge and understanding?”

He kissed her again, slightly longer this time, before he said, “Knowledge and understanding of what’s going on between us, yes. Is that so bad?”

Bad? At that moment Lucy couldn’t think of anything bad about being with him on that overstuffed leather couch with his arm resting across her shoulders now, his other hand toying with her hair, his mouth dipping down to kiss hers every few minutes.

But what she said was, “I don’t know.”

“I think we should find out.”

“I don’t know,” she repeated just as his mouth covered hers again. Only this time the kiss wasn’t merely playful. It wasn’t merely a brief peck. It was a genuine kiss.

And of all the things Lucy didn’t know, the one thing she did know was that she wanted that kiss. Oh, how she wanted that kiss! She wanted to feel his arms wrapped around her, his hand caressing her face, his lips parting over hers as hers parted, too.

All other thoughts faded into the background like twilight shadows and she lost herself in that kiss. Or maybe she gave herself over to it, because she was kissing him every bit as fervently as he was kissing her, meeting his tongue with hers when it came to call, sliding her arms around him so she could fill her hands with the hard muscles of his back that seemed no worse for wear now.

She definitely wasn’t thinking about anything but that moment. About anything but the sensations alive in her. About anything but the yearnings that were rapidly awakening.

Yearnings to feel his hands on more of her body. Yearnings that brought her nipples to life, knotting them against his chest. Yearnings to be free of clothes, to feel flesh pressed to flesh, to learn the taste, the texture of every inch of him. To have him know her the same way…

They must have been of like minds because as Rand went on kissing her—hungry, openmouthed kisses—the hand that had cupped her face journeyed downward, barely brushing across her breast before coming to rest on her naked side where the cropped sweater had risen to expose her skin.

Shards of light erupted within her at that more intimate touch, surging through her with a whole new array of wants, of needs.

She sent the message with an arch of her back, with a deep inhalation that nudged her breasts more insistently into his pectorals.

Rand was nothing if not astute. He deepened their kiss at the same moment his hand coursed upward, finding the little nothing of a bra she’d worn today.

But even sheer lace was too much to have between them and when he insinuated his hand beneath it to fully clasp her bare breast, Lucy couldn’t help the moan of pleasure that escaped her throat.

An irresistible urge took hold of her and she pulled Rand’s shirt from his waistband, plunging her own hands under the softened chambray to the hot silk of his honed back, his shoulders, his chest.

The snaps that closed his shirtfront popped under her vigor and she rid them both of the garment as if it were nothing but a hindrance. Which was exactly what her own clothes felt like—iron-plated armor that served no purpose but to keep her from the pure, uninhibited freedom she craved.

His hand at her breast was working miracles, raising her desires to a fevered pitch with talented fingers that traced and teased and pinched and rolled her nipples into a frenzy of longing.

His mouth left hers then and somehow she was lying back on the sofa as he eased her sweater and bra upward so he could see what he’d only felt before.

“Beautiful,” he breathed as he did just what she’d been dying for him to do—he took her breast into his mouth, into that warm, moist, magical place where his teeth gently tugged and his tongue circled and flicked her nipple and things burst to life in Lucy that she hadn’t felt in so, so long.

But something about the thought of just how long it had been since she’d been driven nearly insane with wanting reminded her of what they’d talked about earlier. It reminded her of times gone by, of how a moment like this could change so much. It reminded her of another man, a man who might not have fraternized with supermodels but who had also lived a life she didn’t fit into.

Stop before you get hurt, a little voice in the back of her mind shrieked at her, quelling just enough of the emotions, of the desires, of the needs that were rushing through her to let the warning register.

“Wait! Stop!” she heard herself say suddenly, as if from a distance.

It didn’t take more than that for Rand to do as she’d asked, though. To stop and meet her eyes with his.

“Lucy?”

“This is more than one step at a time. We—we aren’t being careful,” she said in a voice that sounded as strained as she felt.

Rand laughed slightly, wryly, then kissed her once more and sat up. “Fair enough.”

Lucy sat up, too, adjusting her clothes and trying not to look at the splendor of his naked torso because her hands actually ached to be pressed to his steely pectorals, to slide off his wide, straight shoulders to his bountiful biceps.

“I guess I’m as bad as a hormonal teenage boy with you,” he said.

“Me, too. I mean I’m as bad as a hormonal teenage girl.” Lucy hated blundering through the words but she was still reeling from the effects of what had just happened between them, still struggling to find some control.

“It’s late,” she said then. “I should get home.”

Rand didn’t respond immediately to that and she thought he was working to regain control, too. In the end he must have accomplished it because he said, “I’d like to try to persuade you to stay but I won’t. I’ll behave myself and just walk you down to your car.”

“No,” she said, more quickly, more loudly, more frantically than she wanted to. But she knew if he walked her down to her car he’d kiss her again. And she also knew that one more kiss was all it would take to restart what had been so difficult to end. “It’s better if I just go,” she said to explain herself. “You’re too tempting.”

That made him laugh again, a sound Lucy liked much too much. So much she decided she’d better get to her feet, get some distance between them, or she still might succumb to the man’s charms.

“Can I at least walk you to the door?” Rand asked as he stood, too.

“No. Just stay where you are,” she commanded. “I can let myself out. Otherwise I might not get out at all.”

In fact she knew that even if she stayed there devouring the sight of him any longer she might not have the wherewithal to go.

So she muttered a quick, “Good night,” and headed for the entryway.

“Lucy?”

Rand had followed her as far as the doorway that connected his office with foyer and he stood leaning one shoulder against the wall there, his massively muscled arms crossed over his still-bare chest.

Lucy grabbed her coat off the hall tree and shrugged it on. “Don’t say anything,” she cautioned, feeling her will weakening even as she buttoned her coat.

“I just wanted to say thanks.”

“Sure,” she said, snatching her purse from the hall tree, too.

Then she escaped his apartment and the essence of him that seemed to be beckoning her back.

It was only as she drove home, working hard to cool off, that she wondered what he’d been thanking her for.

Had it been for the help on the Turnenbill case?

Or had it been for what they’d done on the couch?

Or maybe it had been for ending things before they’d gone too far.

She was still so churned up inside that she knew she was never going to be able to sleep tonight, and if Rand felt anything even close to what she was feeling, she doubted he’d be thanking her for that.

Eight

Joe Colton was sitting at the breakfast table the next morning when a FedEx envelope was delivered. Overnight mail deliveries were an almost everyday occurrence at Hacienda del Alegria, but somehow this one set him on edge. He wasn’t currently doing business with anyone in Colorado.

Emily was his first thought. Something to do with Emily.

But then since her disappearance his daughter was always on his mind, and anything out of the ordinary raised hope that it had something to do with her.

“What’s that?”

Joe was in the process of tearing open the envelope when Meredith came into the dining room.

“It’s an envelope with a Colorado postmark. Do we know anyone in Colorado?”

Before his wife could answer, Joe had the envelope open and had pulled out a piece of plain white paper with only a few nondescript lines of black typeface on it.

“This says Emily is all right,” he said excitedly as he read the missive.

“Is it from her?” Meredith demanded, not sounding as relieved as Joe was.

“No. I don’t know. Maybe. There’s no signature. It only says that Emily is fine. That she wasn’t kidnapped. That she’s safe, unharmed and healthy. That we shouldn’t worry about her.”

Meredith made a derisive sound. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Joe looked up from the paper he’d read and reread already. “Why doesn’t it make sense?” he asked, wondering if he would ever become accustomed to the abrasive turn his wife’s personality had taken in that long-ago car accident.

“It just doesn’t make sense, that’s all. She must have been kidnapped. Why would she leave? Why would there have been a ransom note?”

“Why would she or someone else send word letting us know she’s all right if she had been kidnapped?” Joe countered. “It must be true.”

“Well, I don’t think it is. I think it’s some kind of hoax.”

“Let’s let the FBI decide that. I’ll get it to them and see what they make of it. But I don’t see why anyone would bother with a hoax like this. It seems to me that someone is trying to reassure us. To put our minds to rest.”

“Believe what you like,” Meredith said with her nose in the air. “But I don’t buy it.”

Meredith left the dining room then, as abruptly as she’d entered it, seeking privacy and a place to vent. The only place possible to do that was far away from the ranch, far away from the watchful eyes she always felt following her every move. When she’d driven far enough away, she stopped at a roadside pay phone and dialed the number she knew by heart.

“She’s alive and well and maybe in Colorado,” Meredith growled into the phone in answer to Silas Pike’s hello.

“Mrs. Colton? Is that you?” he said after a moment of apparently trying to put a name with the voice.

But the woman known as Meredith didn’t bother to confirm who she was. Instead she said, “I hired you to get rid of that twit Emily once and for all. I expect you to make good on that.”

“Just tell me where to find her and I’d be happy to.”

“I can’t tell you where to find her, you imbecile. I only know that an anonymous note just arrived here from Colorado saying she’s all right. But I don’t want her to be all right. I want her disposed of. Do I make myself clear?”

“Colorado’s a big place. How’m I supposed to find her with nothing more to go on than that?”

“That’s your problem. Just do your job and do it right this time.”



“I was feeling very disheartened and then last night I had a wonderful dream.”

At the same moment that Joe Colton was headed to the FBI with the note about his adopted daughter, across the country in Mississippi, Louise Smith was meeting with Dr. Martha Wilkes, her therapist.

“Tell me about your dream,” Dr. Wilkes urged.

“I was in a beautiful garden courtyard. There were bright flowers and tall trees—palm trees—like a tropical paradise. And there was a man, with dark hair. I couldn’t see his face, so I don’t know who he was. But he embraced me. Fleetingly, but it was so comforting. So comforting that when I woke up this morning my spirits were lifted and I felt as if I could go on, despite this being so difficult.”

“Therapy, you mean?”

“Therapy, yes.” That and knowing she was actually Patsy Portman. “And everything else, too. Knowing I actually killed a man, even though I can’t remember it. That I’m a criminal. That I’ve been to prison.”

“I can understand how troubling it is to learn about yourself, especially when you have no memory of any of it. But it’s all in the past. Try to keep that in mind.”

“Having a sister I wouldn’t even know existed if we hadn’t discovered that fact on the prison records isn’t in the past.”

“I’ve been thinking about that since we talked last time. I wonder if you should put some effort into finding your sister. Perhaps meeting her.”

Louise hesitated. “I’ve thought about that,” she finally admitted. “But I don’t think I should do it yet.”

“Why not?”

“I’m still trying to piece together who I am. But knowing I’m a murderess has a big impact. How do I know my sister wants contact with a murderess? Maybe I don’t have the right to inflict that on her.”

“But you’ve paid for your crime.”

“Still. Until I can be clear about everything about myself, I don’t want to face a sister I have no memory of. A sister I’ve apparently been estranged from since there were no records of her visiting me in jail, no letters from her in my belongings, since she hasn’t tried to contact me in all the time since my release. Maybe when I get myself together and can present the kind of person she might want in a sister, maybe then I can find her.”

“So denying yourself the sister you know is out there somewhere is your self-imposed penance?”

Louise thought about that before she said, “I guess in a way it is. Or maybe it’s incentive to keep working to improve myself so I can be worthy of being in my sister’s life again.”



“This is your life, Lucy Lowry,” Lucy said to herself as she stood in the open freezer door that evening. “Saturday night and you’re looking at a frozen dinner and a stack of old movies.”

She’d taken Max to the home of one of his new friends for a sleepover and that meant she was on her own, a rare occasion. Despite the facetious tone of her voice, she wasn’t unhappy about it. A few leisurely hours to herself, watching movies Max would never sit through, catering to herself for a change, was a nice break.

It was just that her thoughts kept wandering to Rand and what he might be up to on date night.

“A chicken pot pie it is,” she said to distract her wayward mind, taking the package out of the freezer and closing the door resoundingly, as if that would put an end to Rand’s occupation of her brain.

She would put the pot pie in the oven, she told herself, fill the tub with bubbles, condition her hair, give her face a mud mask, then curl up in front of the television with dinner and the pint of brownie fudge ice cream she’d bought as a treat. A night of pampering and indulgence—just what the doctor ordered after a long, hard workweek.

She was tearing open the package on the pot pie when the doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone. After all, she hardly knew anyone in Washington. She doubted it was a door-to-door salesperson at seven o’clock on a Saturday night and she knew her aunt was having dinner with a man she’d met at a fund-raiser the weekend before. So she was careful to peer through the peephole in her front door before opening it.

One peek was all it took to make her pulse pick up speed.

It was Rand. All dressed up, with a limousine parked at the curb behind him.

Lucy glanced down at her sweat suit, raised a hand to her pony-tailed hair, and considered not opening the door at all rather than face him looking the way she did.

But curiosity—and the instant rush of excitement that one glance at him sent through her—wouldn’t allow vanity to rule.

So on the second ring she opened the door.

“I knew you were here,” he said in greeting.

“I was in the kitchen,” she answered as if that explained the tardiness that had required two rings.

The view through the peephole hadn’t done him justice. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored suit cut too formally to be a work suit. It was a blue-tinged black and beneath it he wore a blindingly white silk shirt and a yellow tie that matched the pocket square that poked artfully from his breast pocket.

The clean, intoxicating scent of his aftershave wafted in to her, and unless she was mistaken, he’d had a haircut that had left his coffee-colored hair perfect and, at the same time, so natural looking.

“Are you going to invite me in or leave me standing on the stoop?” he asked then, with a crooked smile arching only one side of his oh-so-provocative mouth.

Caught ogling him, Lucy snapped to attention. “Of course. I’m sorry. I’m just surprised to see you.”

“Surprise is the point,” he whispered in her ear as he came in, striding past her into the entryway as if he owned the place. “My original plan was to whisk you and Max away for dinner to reward you both for the week I put you through. But I called Sadie first to find out if I had clear sailing, and she told me Max would be spending the night with a friend. So instead I’ll whisk just you away.”

Lucy had closed the door and was leaning against it, still fighting not to get lost in the jaw-dropping splendor of him.

“You’re going to whisk me away?” she repeated, trying to grasp what he was talking about through the haze of his effect on her.

“First I’m going to give you about an hour to get dressed and then I’m going to take you to Aux Beaux Champs for dinner,” he announced, his French pronunciation absolutely flawless.

Lucy hadn’t been in town long enough to know about many restaurants or nightspots, but she had heard about the posh, four-diamond restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel. It was Georgetown’s finest among a wealth of fine eateries.

“Aux Beaux Champs is quite a reward,” she said, thinking that it was much more than that. It was a place for very special celebrations or very fancy dates.

“You put in quite a week. And after working all day long on the Turnenbill case and coming to the conclusion that you laid the groundwork for my likely winning it, you’ve earned a sizable reward. So what do you say?”

What did she say to a Saturday night in the best restaurant in town with the man who inspired things inside her that no one had ever inspired in the past?

Before she could say anything, Rand held up one hand to stop her. “I know. You’re going to tell me you’re my secretary and that it’s inappropriate. But for just this one night let’s put that on the shelf. Let’s be two people who deserve a break, two people who enjoy each other’s company, and go out for a little fun.”

A little fun that would likely cost him what the average person paid in rent.

But how could she refuse? Especially when she wanted so much not to? Couldn’t she do as he’d suggested and allow herself to let her hair down just this one night? Just this one night couldn’t corrupt her whole life or the course she’d set it on, could it?

Okay, potentially it could.

But not if she were careful.

“Okay,” she finally agreed.

“Okay,” Rand repeated enthusiastically, as if he’d expected more of a fight. “Then point me to the remote control and I’ll watch TV while you get ready.”

“Would you like something to drink while you wait?”

“There’s champagne chilling in the limo. I’ll hold off until we can share it.”

Even if he’d anticipated more of a fight, obviously he hadn’t anticipated losing it.

Lucy didn’t argue. She just showed him to the overstuffed chair in front of the television, handed him the remote control and hurried to the kitchen to put the pot pie back in the freezer.

Then she ran up the stairs to her bedroom, wondering if she was being totally stupid for doing this.

Okay, yes, maybe she was being totally stupid. But she didn’t care. She was just too excited, too elated. Rand wasn’t spending date night with another woman, he was spending it with her.

Just be careful, she reminded herself. Be very careful….

Lucy wasted no time taking her best little black dress out of the closet and then out of the dry-cleaning bag, carrying it with her into the bathroom. It wasn’t wrinkled but there was a small crease on one shoulder that she knew the shower steam would relax.

From her hiding place in the back of the vanity where Max couldn’t get into them, she broke out her favorite and most expensive gel and shampoo. But she didn’t linger in the shower the way she would have liked, because she had too much more she wanted to do before her hour was up.

Once she was toweled off, powdered and perfumed, she blew-dry and scrunched her hair until it was a glistening riot of curls. Then she went on to makeup, using an artfully light touch with her usual blush and mascara, adding a soft pewter eye shadow and just a hint of liner, too.

She poked her late grandmother’s pearl stud earrings into her lobes even though they could only be seen when her hair was brushed back. But they always made her feel dressed up and tonight that was what she wanted. It wouldn’t do for her not to feel at her best when Rand looked the way he did.

At her best—that was what was still on her mind when she opted for the barely-there bra and panties she chose, along with the panty hose that were so sheer they made her legs look like they’d just come from a San Tropez vacation.

Then she donned her dress—a sleeveless, body-hugging length of matte jersey knit that traced every curve from the split-V neckline to the hem that ended two inches above her knees and left nothing to the imagination in between.

Last but not least, she slipped her feet into a pair of spike-heeled strappy pumps and carefully applied a plum-raisin colored lipstick too dark for daytime but just the right finishing touch for evening.

“Very nice,” Rand said in genuine appreciation as he glanced over his shoulder when she descended the stairs fifty-five minutes later.

Off went the television and he stood, facing her so he could give her a second once-over from top to bottom and back again.

“Very, very nice,” he repeated.

Lucy inclined her head to accept the compliment. “Didn’t I hear something about champagne?”

“Champagne it is,” he said, crossing to her to take her evening coat from her so he could help her on with it.

But once it was on, his hands lingered at her shoulders and he leaned in so close she thought he was going to kiss her ear. He merely took a deep whiff of her though and said, “You smell as fantastic as you look.”

“So do you,” she said since she’d been savoring the scent of his aftershave again.

He chuckled a deep, sexy chuckle. “I guess we should go out and knock ’em dead, then.”

Lucy didn’t agree with him immediately because as nice as the evening he had planned sounded, his touch, his nearness, his voice, everything about him sent a sudden flash-fire through her that almost made her want to stay home instead. With him. Alone…

Be careful, a voice in the back of her head cautioned.

“We’ll have to go out because we can’t knock ’em dead from here,” she said when she could summon her voice.

Rand took his cue, releasing her to open the front door, holding it for her.

Frank was behind the wheel of the limousine and came out as they left the town house, rounding the car to open the rear door for them.

Lucy greeted the driver and exchanged pleasantries, then slid into the plush back seat with Rand following close behind.

“What happened to the Town Car?” Lucy asked when Frank had shut the door behind them, leaving them enclosed in the expansive gray interior complete with a tinted-glass window that separated them from Frank and an open bar where the champagne chilled in a crystal bucket and two glasses waited.

“The same service that provides the Town Car also has limousines. It’s my choice which I use and I thought tonight called for the limo.”

Rand poured the champagne, handing her one of the flutes as he settled back with his own.

“And you thought Max would do all right in this car and at Aux Beaux Champs?” she asked with a small laugh at the notion.

“I had no doubt he would rise to the occasion.”

“Don’t be too sure about that.”

“I figured there was a little gentleman lurking beneath the surface and we might bring it out in him tonight.”

“Well, one way or another it was a nice idea. But to be honest it’s nicer to have an adult night for a change.”

Rand gave her a secret smile. “I’m glad it worked out this way then. And I’ll save all the dinosaur trivia I read up on on the way over for another time.”

Lucy laughed. “You boned up on dinosaur trivia so you could make conversation with Max?”

Rand flipped open a compartment below the bar and produced a dinosaur book. “I also thought if worst came to worst it would give Max something to look through. There are great pictures.”

If Rand was searching for a way to melt the last of her reserves, he’d found it because Lucy was touched by the trouble he’d gone to to relate to her son.

“You really are something,” she said softly.

Rand didn’t respond to that. He just put the book back in the compartment and closed it securely. “But that’s it for dinosaur talk. Unless you want me to woo you with the statistics of the Triceratops?”

“Are you wooing me?”

His smile this time was boyish. “Not so you’re supposed to notice.”

They’d arrived at the restaurant then and the valet opened their door before Frank had a chance. Rand got out then turned to offer her a hand, and Lucy accepted it without a thought, slipping her own into his much larger one as if it were something she’d been doing forever.

Once he had a hold of it, he didn’t let it go.

It delighted Lucy more than she knew it should have. But it felt so good to have her hand in his. To walk into the elegant restaurant with such a man staking a claim to her in a way that all the room could see.

Rand was greeted by name and they were led without pause to the best table in the house where another bottle of champagne was already chilling. As the maître d’ seated and welcomed them, the wine steward poured the bubbly elixir and an appetizer tray appeared as if by magic, laden with tiny pastries stuffed with crab and caviar.

And so their night truly began.

Over courses of soup, salad, succulent beef Wellington and artfully presented chocolate mousse cake for dessert, Rand kept up a conversation that might have bored someone else but was as much a feast for Lucy’s mind as the food was a feast for her palate. He told her about his years in law school, about clerking for a Supreme Court judge, about the beginning of his career, about his most interesting cases.

Once again Lucy held her own with him, asking pertinent questions and even debating better ways he might have argued two cases he lost.

Before she knew it, it was eleven o’clock and Rand was suggesting dancing at a nightclub he knew of.

Lucy didn’t hesitate to accept and off they went to what looked like an old-time ballroom complete with a full orchestra that played big band music from the forties and fifties.

After the stimulation of their dinner talk it was nice to take a more mellow turn, to be in Rand’s arms, led around the dance floor as adeptly, as gracefully, as he did everything else.

Conversation slowed and they just let the music waft around them, carrying them along until the wee hours of the morning when the last song was played.

But somehow Lucy felt as if the evening shouldn’t be drawing to a close yet, as strange as that seemed for someone who was usually asleep by midnight.

The truth was that she didn’t want to say good-night to Rand. Not yet. And so when the limo pulled up in front of her town house again, she asked him in for a nightcap.

He didn’t hesitate to accept, countering with a suggestion that they stick with champagne and bringing inside the bottle and glasses they’d started with.

Coming from a subtly lit restaurant and a dimly lit nightclub, bright lamplight didn’t seem called for so once Lucy had shed her coat and folded Rand’s suit jacket over the banister, she led the way into the living room and turned on only one table lamp to cast an amber glow.

Rand poured them each more champagne but after handing her her glass he whisked her into his arms the way he had been all evening on the dance floor and began to sway with her as if there were still music playing.

“I think this was the perfect evening,” he said.

“You make that sound as if it isn’t something you do all the time and I don’t believe that for a second,” she countered with a laugh.

“That all depends on how you look at it.”

“Oh? And how do you look at it?”

“I look at it as a rare occasion when I can share good food, good wine, good dancing and excellent conversation with a woman whose face I never seem to tire of looking at.”

“Is that a line you use at the end of every Saturday night?” she joked.

He angled a mock frown down at her. “I do not use lines,” he corrected. “And even if I did, what I just said was the absolute truth, so help me God.”

“Well, now that you’re sworn in…” Lucy said with a laugh.

“Go ahead. Ask me anything,” he challenged.

“Are you drunk?”

He laughed that oh-so-masculine laugh that gave her goose bumps. “No, I am not drunk. I’m perfectly clearheaded.” He set his champagne flute on the mantelpiece. “And rather than have you think for one minute that I’m not in full command of my senses, I will forego a single sip more.”

Lucy set her glass beside his. Not only because she’d had enough and didn’t want to get drunk either, but also because what she really wanted was her hand free to place against his biceps as they danced.

“All right, you’re not drunk. You’re just smooth,” she teased.

“Am I? I don’t feel smooth when I’m with you.”