Leigh Michaels - The Playboy Assignment

“Perfect timing, in fact,” a rich baritone answered.

Susannah’s heel went out from under her and she tumbled back against the cab’s seat.

“Except that since you’re here, I don’t need a cab,” Marc went on reasonably. “May I offer you a hand, Susannah, since you seem to be having trouble getting out on your own?”

Today he looked more like the Marc she remembered—his jeans worn to pale blue and clinging to narrow hips, his pullover shirt emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders and the strength of his arms. Without apparent effort he almost lifted Susannah out of the cab, then stood with a hand still on her arm as if to steady her as he waved the driver away.

“What are you doing here?” As soon as the words were out, Susannah wanted to bite her tongue off; as opening gambits, that was about the worst she could think of.

“Don’t you think we have a few things to talk about?”

Pierce had said something yesterday about Marc looking at her like a hungry wolf. Susannah couldn’t see anything of the sort, herself. And she could detect nothing suggestive about his voice; his tone was perfectly level, and in fact he didn’t sound particularly interested. The combination made her feel a great deal more sure of herself, and she attacked. “I can’t imagine what we’d have to discuss. If you happen to be wondering what makes a public relations person qualified to appraise an art collection—”

“Oh, nothing so dull as that,” Marc said. “Besides, who am I to question your aptitude for the job? Growing up in such a privileged family, one of the Northbrook Millers—I imagine you absorbed more about art with your infant formula than I know now.”

A privileged family. For a moment, she wondered if there was the smallest hint of sarcasm in his tone. But Marc didn’t know. Marc couldn’t know...

He added, very gently, “I left a message for you with your receptionist, that I just wanted to talk over old times. She seemed to think you’d be disappointed to have missed me.”

Just my luck, Susannah thought, to have caught him on the way out. If I’d been five minutes later—just five minutes...

The white lace curtain on Mrs. Holcomb’s bay window next door didn’t just flutter as it usually did when anything of interest happened on the street outside. This time the lace was actually folded back, and Susannah didn’t think she was imagining the shadowy face which appeared behind the glass.

And if Mrs. Holcomb could see this very interesting conversation, so could Rita and Alison—if they happened to look out the window. And if Susannah walked into Tryad with Marc Herrington in tow, she might as well issue engraved invitations to a grilling, with herself on the barbecue spit.

She sighed. “There’s a little restaurant around the corner. How about a cup of coffee?”

“I thought you’d never ask. Shall I carry your briefcase?”

Susannah surrendered it, and pretended not to notice when Marc offered his arm. She spent the couple of minutes’ walk debating with herself. Had he always been a gentleman, or was that, too, something new? At eighteen, in the midst of a revolt against her parents’ values—a rebellion which had come a little later but no less violently than that of most teenagers—would she even have noticed such things as courtly manners?

The same waitress who had been working at breakfast hour on Monday brought their coffee, and dimpled when Marc thanked her.

Susannah stirred cream into her coffee and said, “Old times, you said. All right—you go first. What have you been up to for the last eight years? What are you working at these days?”

“I’m still in manufacturing.” Marc stretched out his hands—long fingers arched, each knuckle tensed. It was a gesture Susannah remembered seeing often, though the reason for it was less vivid in her mind. She vaguely recalled that he’d said something about the need to keep his hands flexible, for the work he did...

“Welding must be paying better these days,” she said crisply, “for you to afford to dress like that. The suit you were wearing at the funeral yesterday—”

“Did you like it? I bought it just for the occasion.”

“Is that why the funeral was delayed—to let you go shopping? Nice that you thought that highly of Cyrus.”

“I didn’t, particularly. I never met the man in my life.”

That much didn’t surprise her, but it chipped away at her original theory that Cyrus’s mysterious heir was also his son. To the best of Susannah’s recollection, Marc had had a perfectly serviceable set of parents... “I must admit I’d like to know how your mother met him.”

“I’ll have to ask her sometime. As long as we’re talking about families, how’s your daughter, Susannah?”

The question came at her like a curve ball, hanging just out of reach for an impossibly long time, taunting her. She wasn’t shocked, exactly; she’d been half expecting something of the sort. Why had he fixed on a girl? “I don’t have a daughter.”

“Really? It seemed a perfectly reasonable conclusion. A professional office probably wouldn’t provide hopscotch layouts on the front walk for clients’ children—at least, not the sort of firm yours obviously is. And since hopscotch is not only a little girl’s game, but is most fascinating to girls exactly the age yours would be...” -

“Very logical,” she admitted. “Very reasonable. And very wrong. The neighborhood girls like to play there. It’s the widest and flattest walk around.”

“A son, then?”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Marc was stirring his coffee. “Oh, I couldn’t be any more disillusioned with you than I was eight years ago. I must admit, however, I’d like to know what happened. I expected, after you told me that you hadn’t married after all, that you’d still be trying to convince the world your child was also mine, and I’d been too much of a bum to marry you. Naive of me, wasn’t it, to think that? Of course the Northbrook Millers would figure out a neater, easier way. What was it, Susannah? A convenient miscarriage?” The spoon didn’t stop moving in concentric circles as his gaze lifted to meet hers. “A very private adoption?”

“As you pointed out yourself, it’s none of your business.”

“Perhaps I should ask Pierce.”

“He doesn’t know.”

“In that case, it might be even more interesting to compare notes.”

“Be my guest. Is there anything else you wanted, Marc?”

“Oh, I could think of a few things.”

Susannah took that with a grain of salt. “Then I doubt I’ll see you again.”

“What makes you think that?” Only mild interest spiced his voice.

She shrugged, but the gesture turned out, despite her best efforts, to be more like a shiver. What was there about his gentle, even voice that scared her so? “I assume you’ll go back to your life. There must be things you can’t walk away from.”

“You mean things like the job, the mortgage, the wife, and the kids?”

Wife? Kids? But why shouldn’t he have married? Susannah could think of no good reason.

Her gaze went straight to his left hand, cupped easily on the plastic surface of the table. He wore no wedding ring, and there was no telltale pale band where one might have rested in the past....

Marc followed her gaze. His eyes narrowed, and he stretched out his hand toward her. “So you still have wedding rings on the brain. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I see,” she said. “The machinery you work around makes a ring dangerous. Catch it wrong, and it could tear off your finger.”

“True,” he said. “Besides, it makes a handy excuse not to wear a ring. I think you’ve misunderstood, though. I’m not going back for a while. The wife—well, you know how these things go. A break sounds like a very good idea. And as for the kids—I don’t know why you’d assume that one can’t walk out on children, Susannah, considering your own record.”