by Cathie Linz
“Mallory, I thought things were going well between us. Why can’t we—”
His face dissolved in the mist of tears she refused to let fall. “Don’t you get it, Cliff? rm in love with you. I want all of you, not just the little pieces you’re willing to share. I know I can’t have that. It’s not in you to love me. But at least I can leave before I make you hate me. That’s why I have to go.”
Of course he argued. Cliff refused to believe that a compromise couldn’t be worked out. But to his frustration, she stood firm against all his arguments. No, she wouldn’t reconsider. No, she wouldn’t change her mind.
No, she wouldn’t stay.
In the end, he had to accept defeat. Not graciously. Not willingly. But he had to accept it nonetheless.
He won only one concession from her. She agreed to spend the night with him. He thought if he made love to her as tenderly and thoroughly as he knew how, she would understand how much she meant to him. And then her compassionate heart would realize how hurt he was that she wanted to leave him.
So they shared one last, loving farewell, a fitting epitaph for an affair that had been nothing but inconvenient from the very first day.
And when he woke before dawn, she was already gone.
10
FOR THE TENTH time in the past week, Cliff picked up his office phone to call Mallory. His door was shut. His secretary had left two hours ago, at five-thirty. As far as he knew, only the janitors shared the office with him this Friday night. He was as safe from discovery as he could be.
This time, he actually punched in the numbers with fingers that trembled. Four soft rings later, he was almost certain he’d waited too late and she’d already left the station for the day.
“Mailory Reissen.”
The sound of her voice, the first time he’d heard it in over a month, sucked the air from his lungs. He couldn’t make a sound.
“Hello? Hello?”
She was about to hang up. “Don’t hang up, Mallory. It’s Cliff.”
She was silent so long he wasn’t sure she hadn’t hung up anyway. “Hello, Cliff.”
Now what? “I, uh, just wanted to know if you were all right. I’ve been thinking about you.”
“I’m fine.” While not impolite, the chill courtesy in her voice could have frozen a Popsicle.
“Oh. I’m fine, too.”
“Good.”
Had a more inane conversation ever taken place? He hadn’t felt so inept since he was a thirteen-year-old requesting his first date. Which thought at least reminded him of his reason for calling.
“Mallory, I’ve been wondering. Would you like to go to dinner sometime soon? Maybe take in a movie?”
He measured her hesitation in heartbeats. Four long, thudding pumps later, she sighed. “Cliff, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Please, Mallory. I’d like to see you.”
“You see me all the time. I live right next door, remember?”
He ignored that. “Please.”
Three. Four. This time it took five heartbeats for her to respond. “Are you still on the Bartlett defense team?”
“Yes, of course.”
She sighed audibly. “Then I don’t think it’s a very good idea to start things up again between us, do you?”
“Dammit, Mallory, are you trying to punish me for being successful at what I do?”
“No, Cliff,” she said gently. “I’m trying not to punish myself. That’s all.”
With a soft click, the phone went dead. Slowly, Cliff dropped the handset onto its cradle. With a groan that was torn painfully from his gut, he buried his head in his hands and stayed that way for a long, long time.
FIONA BARTLETT draped herself over the conference-room chair with the suppleness of a panther. She looked a lot like a panther, Cliff thought. All long, sleek lines and hungry eyes.
Unfortunately, the meal she hungered for seemed to be him.
“Cliff—you don’t mind if I call you Cliff, do you?” Even her voice was a husky purr.
“Not at all, Ms. Bartlett. Cliff is fine.”
“I was just wondering why I haven’t had the opportunity to meet with you before now. The trial is about to start and I feel it’s important that everyone on my team be on my side.”
He rubbed his chin and wondered where the hell the paralegal was. He was sure he’d instructed her to be in the conference room at three o’clock on the dot. A quick glance at his watch confirmed it was now ten minutes after the hour.
Through some careful maneuvering and some plain, dumb luck, he’d managed to avoid being alone with the predatory Mrs. Bartlett until now. Apparently, his luck had run out. Along with that useless paralegal.
“We have met, of course,” he said as smoothly as he could manage. In large groups where I could be sure you were under control. “And I’m only a very minor member of your team—more a support person than anything else. Hardly important enough to waste your time with.”
She frowned and leaned sideways just enough to give him a glimpse of long, dark-stockinged leg stretched in voluptuous enticement. “But I thought you had something important to go over with me.”
“I do,” he assured her, ignoring her scarletpainted pout. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’ll round up our paralegal. She has copies of the paperwork we need to go over.”
“But—”
Before she could protest, Cliff slipped out the door. Hastily he stepped to a nearby secretary’s station. “Where the hell is Lucy? She was supposed to be here—”
“Sorry, Mr. Young!” Lucy Davenwood dashed up, her arms full of papers and files. “Mrs. Bartlett told me on her way in that she needed at least a half hour in private consultation with you, so I thought I should—”
Of course. By this time Fiona Bartlett must know enough of the workings of her attorneys’ office to know exactly how to sabotage his plans to avoid being alone with her.
Resigned, he just nodded. “That’s all right. You’re here now.” He took a stack of papers from her and guided her to the closed conference room door. “But, Lucy, no matter what she says, you don’t leave this room unless I tell you it’s all right—understood?”
She nodded earnestly.
Grim-faced, he stepped back inside the lioness’s den to discuss the depositions he’d been assigned to review with her. Was this what he really wanted to do with his life? Play dodgem with predatory women and defend them in court from the consequences of their own actions?
In his own mind he’d long ago realized that Fiona Bartlett wasn’t merely guilty—she was as guilty as sin. From his reading of the evidence, she hadn’t found her husband in bed with another woman and shot the pair in a rage. No, all the evidence pointed to a very carefully planned setup of both her husband and his lover—a woman who had once been Fiona’s best friend.
And he was bound by oath to help Fiona walk free.
His hand groped in his pocket for the antacids that were once again a staple of his diet. How he longed for Mallory’s presence to help him sort through his life! She had a deep-rooted rational approach to sticky problems that he needed desperately. Yet after that one futile phone call, she’d started screening her calls both at work and at home. And messages from C. Young went mysteriously unanswered.
He never saw her entering or leaving her condo, though he made a point of looking for her whenever he was home—which was seldom. And just lately he’d been reduced to taping her nightly newscasts on his VCR, then watching a whole week’s worth on Sundays, the only day of the week he didn’t spend slaving at his desk. Sometimes he’d watch the tape over and over again, trying to decipher what she was thinking as she capably explained the day’s events.
He wondered how she was doing. He wondered if she’d gotten over the disappointment of losing that network slot He wondered if she was lonely, too.
He wondered if she’d found someone else.
To be on the safe side, he shoved two more antacids into his mouth. It was going t
o be another long afternoon. He only wished he didn’t anticipate a lifetime of equally long afternoons in front of him.
“YOU LOOK LIKE hell, buddy.” Todd Sinewski’s blunt assessment only confirmed Cliffs own impression.
He’d answered the pounding on his front door with wildly beating heart. Maybe Mallory had had second thoughts. Maybe she was sorry she’d deserted him. Maybe—maybe it’s only Todd at the door.
Disappointed, he turned away, a movement that allowed Todd to push his way inside and close the door.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Cliff? You look worse than the bum I gave a dollar to yesterday in the Gaslamp Quarter.”
He shrugged. “I quit my job.”
“I heard.” Todd settled down on the large leather sofa. “Do you want to tell me why?”
Cliff shrugged and reached for the remote. He’d just started playing this week’s tape when Todd’s pounding interrupted his obsessive viewing.
“You look like you haven’t shaved in a week.”
“I haven’t. Or maybe longer. I don’t remember.”
“Your hair needs a trim.”
“So?” He pressed the start button on the remote, then used fast forward to whiz past the various commercials.
“Your cutoffs have definitely seen better days and could use a wash.” Todd gave an indelicate sniff. “And so could you, from the smell of it.”
“Get to the point.” Cliff was barely listening. His attention was focused on the cool blonde on the screen. She had her hair down. He’d always liked it down.
“Will you give me that!” Todd snatched the remote and turned the tape and television off.
“Hey!”
“I’m not letting you go back to your wallowing until you tell me what’s going on. Why has the city’s most ambitious overachiever turned into a couch potato?”
Cliff’s eyes, red-rimmed and burning, met Todd’s gaze. “God’s truth, Todd, I have no idea. One day I was kicking along just fine, well on the way to a partnership. The next thing I know, I hate my job, and I’m obsessing over a woman who loves me but doesn’t want me anywhere around her.”
“Mallory Reissen?” Todd gestured to the screen.
“Uh-huh.” Suddenly, the words poured out. Cliff explained the whole sorry mess—the affair that was supposed to solve all his problems and how it had only created one larger than anything he’d ever dealt with in his life.
Todd listened in silence. Finally, after Cliff ran out of words, he said, “You say she said she loves you. Yet she doesn’t want you to work so hard?”
“That’s about the size of it. I tell you, Todd, I’ve just about gone crazy over her. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”
“Well, quitting your job doesn’t seem to be a real bright move.”
Cliff shrugged. “I haven’t really quit. Just taken a leave of absence.”
“In the middle of the biggest trial to hit San Diego? When you’re on the defense team? Are you nuts?”
Cliff met his gaze straight on. “Maybe. Probably.” He took a deep breath. “But you know what? I really hate being a big-time defense attorney. The clients are so slimy. If you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I got it.” Todd took a deep breath. “You know, I never thought I’d live to see this happen to you. But I think you are nuts—nuts about Mallory Reissen. Maybe you should think about doing something about it.”
“You think I haven’t tried? She won’t take my calls. She’s virtually disappeared from her condo—I haven’t seen her go in or out of there in weeks. About the only thing left for me to try is to lay siege to her at work—and if she really has gotten over me, that would humiliate her and me.”
“It’s a problem all right,” Todd admitted.
“I’m in love with her, you know. It took a long time for me to realize it—too long. Now I can’t even get her to listen to me long enough to try to apologize.”
“Is this how you’ve been spending your time? Watching tapes of her over and over?”
“Pretty much. Wanna help me watch?”
Taking Todd’s silence as acceptance, Cliff picked up the remote and turned the television and VCR back on. Silently, they watched the week’s newscasts together, with Cliff fast-forwarding past anything that didn’t have Mallory on screen.
It didn’t take long for them to get to Friday’s broadcast. At the very end of the program, the camera focused in on Mallory. Cliff caught his breath. How could he have been so stupid as to let her go? More to the point, how could he get her back?
On the screen, Mallory was talking. “—and I’d like to take a moment in my final broadcast here in San Diego to thank all the wonderful people in the city and especially here at KSAN television. It’ll be a wrench leaving you all, but I’d like to wish everyone here in San Diego a happy, healthy life. Thank you for all your support.” A tear glimmered in her eyes. “Goodbye. This is Mallory Reissen, signing off.”
Stunned, Cliff turned to Todd. “Did you hear what I did? Did she just say that she’d left the station?”
Todd nodded. “That’s what it sounded like to me.”
Cliff picked up the telephone and punched in the number he knew by heart. Her office number rang and rang, until a taped voice came on the line and said, “You have reached an extension that is not currently in use. Please redial, or press 0 to reach the operator.”
The operator confirmed that Mallory Reissen no longer worked at KSAN television, but could not—or would not—say where she had gone.
His hands shaking, Cliff punched in her home phone number. This time the recorded voice came on after only two rings. “The number you have dialed has been disconnected.”
Without bothering to explain to Todd, he dashed out the front door and to hers next door. For the first time he noticed a small, discreet For Sale sign posted in the niche by her door. And when he peered through the now-curtainless window, he saw that no furniture remained inside.
Sometime recently she’d moved out.
Todd found him there moments later, sitting on the front doorstep, bitter tears etching his cheeks. In despair he looked up. “I’ve lost her, Todd. She’s gone.”
MALLORY SMILED up at the warm Sierra sunshine, her arms full of groceries. She’d been in Sunfield for three weeks and still enjoyed every moment. The small town was just as she remembered it from her childhood, filled with gentle people and a charming, low-key life-style. She woke each morning in her grandmother’s house, trying hard to think only of her contentment in her new life, trying hard to forget that she’d left her heart behind in San Diego.
Every so often she wondered how he was doing. He’d wrapped himself so firmly around her heart that she knew she’d never break free of him. Nor did she want to. She treasured every moment of their loving. If remembrances were all she could have of him, remembrances would be what she’d make do with.
The nights were lonely, of course, and sometimes she would see a dark-haired man from a distance and feel her heartbeat accelerate.
It had all seemed so clear to her. When she realized she had to give up her relationship with Cliff, she recognized at last that she’d spent twenty-eight years striving for a crumb of appreciation from parents who simply didn’t care.
She didn’t really want that New York job—or at least she could live without it. What she wanted was a meaningful life with neighbors and a job she really loved, not one she did merely to impress her parents. She wanted children, too—PTA meetings and school plays and Jimmy-pushed-me-Mom squabbles. Most of all, she wanted to find a man just like Cliff, but one who also was willing to give up the “good” life of ambition for the even better life of love and family.
In the depths of the night when tears and longing were her only companions, she knew it would take her a long time to get over losing Cliff, but she had to try. For her own happiness, she had to forget him.
She’d had no choice except to leave him. She refused to let herself become one more woman he wanted to forg
et. He knew she loved him—she was glad of that. But her heartache and longing for him was private, not to be cheapened by painful scenes.
And she loved her new life. When she’d looked for a way to escape, she’d remembered the small college in the slightly larger town next to Sunfield. The communications department had been thrilled with her proposal to teach radio and television technology to their students. She was already looking forward to the start of classes in the fall.
She took her time as she walked the quarter mile back to her grandmother’s house—her house now. There was no hurry; none of her groceries would spoil. And the day was beautiful—warm sunshine with just enough breeze to remind her she was in the mountains. As usual, her eyes drank in the picturesque setting eagerly, lingering on a quarrelsome squirrel here, a sassy mountain bluebird there.
So she was almost on top of the gold-colored Lexus before she noticed it.
His car.
Her steps slowed to a halt beside the front fender as she looked toward the front porch of her house.
“Hello, Mallory.”
Her arms loosened and would have dropped the groceries if he hadn’t stepped down from the porch and collected the bags. He set them on the porch, then took her arm and guided her to the swing suspended from the porch ceiling.
“Are you all right?” he asked solicitously.
“Cliff?” To her dismay, every nerve in her body seemed to have migrated to her elbow, directly underneath his protective hand. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged, but his intense gaze belied the gesture. “Looking for you.”
“How did you find me?”
His irises gleamed an intense pewter, a sign of some deep feeling held in check. Sunlight glinted off his dark auburn hair, but she noticed one or two silvery strands. And the tiny lines at the comers of his eyes seemed deeper.