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.”