Harper Allen - The Night In Question

Prison had taught her to keep her mouth shut. But she wasn’t in prison anymore. The spark inside her ignited into a cold flame.

“It must have made for some interesting bedtime reading.” She allowed a note of husky amusement to creep into her voice and widened her eyes at him. “Is it still tucked away in a drawer somewhere to pull out on those restless nights when you can’t fall asleep? Did it feed a fantasy or two?”

His mouth tightened. He shook his head. “I told you, Julia—you weren’t my fantasy. Learning everything I could about you was part of the job.”

Leaning back against the counter, he crossed his forearms over his chest and met her eyes. “Maybe we should get this straight right now. Even if we hadn’t met under these circumstances, you’re not my type. I don’t go for high-maintenance blondes who were born clutching a charge card. Sure, when I first saw you I realized you were probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, but you’re a little too rich for my blood, honey. I live in the real world.”

“I didn’t think you were considering taking me home to meet Mom and Pop, Ross.” Julia returned his gaze steadily. “That’s why I used the term fantasy. And no matter how hard you try to deny it, I know you indulged once in a while.” Her smile was cynical. “What exactly are you hoping this will lead to?”

She saw the flash of anger, quickly veiled, in his eyes and knew her arrow had found its mark. But the next moment he proved that his aim was at least as good as hers.

“The same thing you want it to lead to, Julia.” Casually he pushed himself from the counter he’d been leaning against and took a step toward her. In the less-than-spacious room that one step brought him close enough to touch her, but he merely unfolded his arms and let them hang by his sides, his manner relaxed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe all this hostility between us is a front for something else. Why don’t we test your theory?”

The suit jacket he’d been wearing earlier had been thrown over the back of a nearby chair, and he’d rolled back the cuffs of the plain white shirt he was wearing. Against the skin of his wrist glinted the steel of a utilitarian watch. Everything about him was unobtrusive, as she’d noted before, Julia thought. Everything about him was almost boringly ordinary. She should have been able to let her gaze sweep over and by him without feeling the slightest twinge of interest, and for one moment, she almost made it.

Then her eyes met his, and suddenly it seemed as if the air around them had thickened, making it hard for her to breathe.

Ordinary? she thought faintly. How had she gotten that impression? Maybe feature by feature there was nothing about him that grabbed attention. The dark brown hair was a little too long to conform to current style, a little too short to be sexily shaggy. The even features were bluntly masculine, but not memorable. He was tall, but not more than an inch or two over six feet, and although his shoulders were broad enough to strain the seams of the white shirt, they didn’t have the obsessive muscularity of a bodybuilder.

And none of that was important, because emanating from him like an almost physical force was an aura of pure maleness.

An insane vision of tangled sheets, sweat-sheened skin, intertwined limbs fogged her mind for a second, and for that second it was so real that she could almost feel his hands spread wide on her hips, feel him thrusting into her. It wasn’t her fault, she thought disjointedly. Any woman would sense what she was sensing. Line Max Ross up with three other men, men with movie-star good looks, men who knew and used all the tricks to make a female heart turn over, and without even exerting himself he would be the one that a woman would pick out, maybe without even knowing why she’d done so.

She felt a spreading heat radiate through her, and let herself sway infinitesimally toward him.

Trillions and jillions, Mommy. And forever and ever…

Julia jerked back, sanity flooding through her. The man in front of her had taken her child away from her. The man in front of her had destroyed her whole life. How could she have seen him, even for a moment, as anything but her enemy?

The heat she’d thought she’d felt was anger, she told herself unsteadily. Rage. She just hadn’t recognized it, because for too long now that emotion had been forbidden her.

“Forget it, Ross.” Her tone was ice. “Maybe if I thought you really could help me get my daughter back I might go for your deal, but you can’t and we both know it. So I guess it’s just you and your fantasies again tonight.”

She took a step away from him, expecting him to react in some way and not knowing what she would do if he did. She didn’t want to get into it with him, she thought in sudden weariness. She didn’t have the energy to indulge in any more skirmishes with the man, especially since there was absolutely nothing to be gained from them. What she really wanted to do was to find some anonymous place to lay her head for the night, blot out the last few hours from her mind and wait for sleep to claim her. Maybe she would dream of Willa, she thought without much hope. Tomorrow she would have to start planning how she was going to spend the rest of her life, but maybe just for tonight she could linger in the past a while longer.

“It wasn’t a quid pro quo.” Behind her he spoke, his voice harsh in the silence. “But okay, there’s been a fantasy or two, Julia. I don’t know why, but I can’t deny it. If that makes me a bastard, then go ahead and pin the label on me. Just don’t insinuate that I’d put conditions on helping you. No matter what you think of me, I’m going to do my damnedest to bring your daughter home to you.”

She paused at the doorway of the kitchen. “The woman I used to be might have believed you, Max,” she said tonelessly. “I used to be able to fool myself about nearly everything. But you told me yourself how it would be for Willa if I managed to find her. I won’t do that to her.”

A few minutes ago she’d told herself she didn’t know why she’d come back here with him, she thought. But like so much in her life, that had been a lie too. She’d come here hoping he would save her, hoping she could dump all her problems in his lap and let him solve them for her.

Like Sylvia used to. The comparison brought the usual conflicting mixture of love and regret that thinking of her mother unfailingly stirred in her. You always told yourself you’d never grow up to be like her, but in the end you turned out exactly the same. Admit it—some part of you really did think he could wipe out the past for you.

But life, no matter what the impulsive and beautiful Sylvia Weston had believed right up until the end, wasn’t a fairy tale. There were no knights in shining armor, there were no magic solutions, there weren’t any guaranteed happy endings. And sometimes the only choice left was the hardest one of all.

Whether or not Max managed to pull off the impossible and clear her name wasn’t the point. Willa didn’t need her. Barbara was a born mother—the kind of mother that Willa should have had from the start.

Babs always wanted children. You forfeited your right to Willa before she was even born, and you know it.

The truth was so ugly. No wonder it had taken her this long to gather up the courage to face it. Now all she had to do was to speak it out loud, so that never again would she be tempted into thinking it had been any other way than how it had really been.

She turned. He’d come up behind her and was standing only a foot or so away, as if he knew she had one last thing to say. Her eyes met his.

“I married him for the money, you know,” she said unevenly. “He married me for my looks. I knew I was a trophy wife, and I didn’t see anything wrong with the bargain we’d struck. It wasn’t until the maternity nurse put Willa into my arms for the very first time that I realized what I’d done.”