by Arlene James
“You’ve got some nerve, taking advantage of a woman in her position!”
“Taking advantage?” David exclaimed. “How did I take advantage? I did you a favor, if you’ll recall. That’s got nothing to do with Laurel herself.”
“No?” Edward retorted. “Well, it smells to high heaven, if you ask me. Just how ethical is it for a psychiatrist to date a patient?”
“She’s not my patient, nor will she ever be. And I’m not the one who set up this little farce. You are! How ethical is it to set up your own client for psychological evaluation with neither her knowledge nor her permission?”
“I didn’t have any choice!” Edward shot back. “I had to know she was playing with a full deck. Otherwise, Kennison would eat us alive in court. And he still might. Damn!”
“If you ask me, Counselor, you should’ve thought of that before you arranged this secret psychoanalysis.”
Edward didn’t know what to think now. He didn’t really even know what the problem was. He knew that he didn’t like David Greenlea, and he knew that he didn’t like David Greenlea draping himself all over Laurel. Most importantly, he knew that he’d never really seriously considered Laurel a nut case. But what the hell did it all mean? He pushed a hand through his hair in frustration, thought how Laurel would react to that and immediately set about putting it to rights again, only to draw up short, some sixth sense telling him that it was pointless.
She was there. He knew it as well as he knew his own name. She was there and she’d heard the whole damned thing, enough, at least, to hang him. Some part of him had always known that it would be so. It was utterly inevitable. And yet, the hardest thing he’d ever done was turn his head and confirm his worst suspicions.
It was the look in her eyes that he hadn’t expected, that he couldn’t take. She looked…shattered…broken. And he knew—too late—that he’d made the most colossal mistake of his life.
Chapter Nine
Laurel stared for a long moment. She felt frozen in place, as if this were eternity and she had been caught in a moment of hell, forever apart, forever suspended in the first unexpected stab of pain. She couldn’t even think what this pain was. She only knew that it was inescapable—and deserved, though she couldn’t say why just at that instant. Then she remembered. She had trusted. She had found the most responsible, fair, hardworking man available, and she had trusted him to care about her and her problems. And he thought that she was insane. Well, perhaps she was.
Without warning, her eyes closed, and she knew that the paralysis was past. She regretted that, for now she must do something. But what? She shook her head, surprised that it didn’t hurt. Something hurt. What was it? Her hand rose automatically to her chest. Ah, God, not that. How long had it been since she’d lain awake at night, the pain in her chest so deep and wide and hollow that she had feared it would swallow her whole? She had protected herself so well after…She couldn’t remember when she had learned to protect her heart from caring too much. How had she forgotten the way of it?
Her gaze moved automatically to Edward White, no longer dull Edward who looked as though he slept in those expensive but poorly fitted and unexceptional suits, the Edward who seemed to have forgotten that he had hair on his head until it hung over his eyes. This Edward was groomed to within an inch of his life, and a new knowledge struck Laurel. This wasn’t the real him, either. He didn’t know yet who the real Edward White was. How had she missed that? She had been there. Most of her life she had been the needy little girl without a soul to love her. Until Barry. Barry had made her grow up. He was the child, and he needed her to love him. The moment she had understood that, she had become her real self, not the little girl who needed love but the woman who needed to love. Why hadn’t she seen the old her in the new Edward? Why had she let herself believe that he was as ready to love as she was?
Not insane, just foolish. Oh, so foolish.
She found no comfort in the thought, just as she found no comfort in Edward White’s cool blue eyes. A hand fell upon the arm with which she had unknowingly hugged herself. She followed it to the person of David Greenlea, psychiatrist She should be angry with him, perhaps, but somehow she couldn’t muddle through the pain of discovery to any other emotion, and she could tell by the look in his eyes that he understood that. In silent acceptance of the comfort he offered, she nodded her head. His arm slid around her shoulders.
“I’m going to take Laurel home now,” he said quietly.
The Sugarmans walked into the room just then, arm in arm, smiling at some whispered intimacy. Laurel welcomed the distraction with a dull sort of relief. Reacting by rote, she curved her mouth in a smile and said, “Thank you for a lovely evening.” Her voice shook alarmingly. Her smile faded. Suddenly, tears filled her eyes.
Kendra was speaking. “Oh, surely you’re not going now. We haven’t had a chance—”
Laurel spun away and hurried blindly toward the door, stumbling when she came to the steps that led up into the foyer. Behind her she heard Edward say, “Let it go, Ken.” He meant, let her go. Fresh pain blossomed in her chest and broke apart on a sob. She clapped one hand over her mouth and reached for the door handle with the other. In another blessed moment, she was outside in the dark.
The evening was balmy, oddly serene, as if the night had hedged them in, protecting them from the city at large. Laurel felt as if, like Alice in Wonderland, she had fallen into a strange place and time. She did not belong, and she desperately needed to get away.
The door opened at her back, and David Greenlea walked through it. He flashed her a guilty look, then replaced it with a sympathetic smile. He laid a companionable arm across her shoulders and said, “Come with me.”
She let him guide her to a bright red, German-made convertible parked directly behind Edward’s big, boxy, sensible, luxury sedan. He put her inside and swung around the back, letting himself into the driver’s seat. He started up the engine and reached for a switch on the dashboard. “I think we need to put the top down.” An electronic hum preceded the retraction of the top by seconds, then gradually the heavy vinyl folded and slid away. David made a show of surveying the blank sky and sniffing the air. “Yes, definitely a night for putting the top down.”
He was right. The cool wind calmed and engaged her as they drove through the city, and then she realized they were going in the wrong direction. She sat up abruptly, recognizing the upscale shopping area accessed by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Freeway. David immediately slowed the excessive speed of the red convertible and exited the freeway. Some blocks or more later, the neat, compact auto came to a smooth, uneventful stop at a red light. “Welcome back,” David said succinctly. “Where to?”
She combed her hair with the fingers of one hand. “Home,” she said, and then she fixed David Greenlea with a direct gaze and bluntly added, “but I have to pick up my son first.”
Edward tossed back the second Scotch and hissed breath through his teeth to cool his tongue and throat. Liquid courage was a damnably unpleasant beverage, but he’d rather drink the whole bottle in a single slug than perform the task he’d set himself this day. Merciful God, the look in her eyes. The look haunted him, no matter how hard he worked to hold it at bay. It came at him at odd moments—the hollow injury, the gaping disappointment, the self-deprecation and disillusionment. Why hadn’t she slapped him or, better yet, doubled up her fist and knocked him off his pompous ass? But that would have been too easy. That would have engaged his fury and let him off the hook of sheer responsibility. Guilt. It roiled in his stomach with the Scotch, reminding him what a gutless wonder he was.
The bubbly waitress slid a plate of club sandwiches and potato chips across the bar top to him, but his appetite had gone again and with it the will to make himself eat. He’d prefer another Scotch, but he ordered a cup of coffee instead and forced it down in three long drinks, then paid the tab and walked out.
The sidewalk was hot. Summer was showing its face every now and again between the thun
derstorms and tornado warnings that marked a Texas spring. Edward stripped off his tie and crammed it into his coat pocket before working loose the top two buttons of his shirt. He pushed back the unmoussed lock of hair that fell insistently over his forehead and got into the car, telling himself that it was time for another haircut.
He was embarrassed by the way his heart pounded and dread curled in his gut as he drove to the diner. The dusty lot was nearly empty now that the lunch hour waned. He parked as far from the door as possible and got out. A large part of him wanted to get right back in his car and drive away, but another part wanted— needed—to see her, and it proved the stronger. He gulped down the dread, pulled a deep breath of tepid, exhaust-flavored air and trudged, head down, to the diner.
He pushed inside in two long strides, giving himself no chance to back out, and immediately looked around. He found her before the brass bell attached to the door clanked back against the glass. She sat beside David Greenlea on a stool at the counter, halfturned as if expecting him. He clamped his jaw, wishing he could afford to throw David out on his face, but he couldn’t He told himself that maybe David’s being here was a good sign. If she could forgive David his part in this conspiracy, surely she could forgive him.
Laurel slipped away before he got there, moving around behind the counter to adopt the mein of waitress—and nothing more. He got no greeting, no expression to signal her feelings toward him, not even a flicker of recognition. He might have been a complete stranger. David Greenlea, on the other hand, swung around to hang his elbows on the edge of the counter and lift an inquiring brow at Edward. Edward lifted one right back. As far as he was concerned, Greenlea was his partner in crime, however reluctant the pairing. He tried not to think that his history with Laurel made him the more culpable party, but his training as an attorney wouldn’t quite allow him to ignore that interpretation. Still, he told himself for the millionth time that she needed him to put forward her case and that in itself ought to get him a hearing. Hope existed.
He took the stool she had vacated and dared Greenlea to take exception. David merely shook his head and turned back to his lunch, his gaze settling on Laurel Her hands trembled when she extracted the order pad from the pocket of her uniform skirt, but otherwise she gave no indication of anything amiss. If her smile was a touch practiced and her gaze not quite direct, well, only one who had been gifted with more could tell the difference.
“What can I get for you?”
Edward folded his hands and refused to answer. He wasn’t here to play games.
After a moment, she dropped the pad back into her pocket and slid the pencil behind her ear. Turning away, she lifted a water pitcher and refilled David’s glass. When she turned back to Edward, the pretense had been dropped. She sat down the pitcher and folded her arms. “Come to ask me to submit to psychiatric examination, perhaps?”
Her tone had a bite Edward had never heard before. He accepted it as his due, almost with gratitude. “No, but you can bet Kennison’s going to hang a large part of his case on your mental stability.”
“Don’t you mean my lack of it?” she retorted.
He looked down to hide the smile that struggled for release, not realizing until that very moment how deeply he’d feared the damage he might have done that brazen spirit. When he’d conquered his expression, he looked up again. “You have given him some ammunition to support that argument.”
“Him,” she replied smartly, meaning that he, Edward, ought to have known better.
He nodded in agreement. “All right. I’m a slow learner, but you knocked me off balance. Give me that at least.”
“Mmm.” David Greenlea swallowed a french fry and nodded at Laurel “The marriage proposal,” he reminded her needlessly.
Her green eyes flashed. She frowned and bore down on him. “I explained that! It was a bid to secure his fee, a way to show him how serious I am about gaining control of my inheritance.”
David shrugged and poked another fried potato slice into his mouth. Edward tamped down his irritation at the psychiatrist and concentrated on Laurel.
“So you told him about that, did you?”
“Why not?”
“You tell him about the kiss, too? How you knocked my socks off and—”
“What kiss?” she snapped. “It was more like punishment for my stupidity!”
“The first one,” he admitted roughly. “Not the second.”
“For which I slapped your face!”
“And then you went out with me again,” he reminded her doggedly.
She murdered him with her glare, but he wouldn’t be cowed, not with his former partner in crime sitting there basking in the fullness of her companionship and, worse, her obvious trust. He gave her back as level a look as he could manage, no easy feat when what he really wanted to do was fall on his knees and beg forgiveness. He was after more than forgiveness, however. He needed to regain her trust. How could he represent her in court if she did not trust him? But at bottom he knew it was more, even, than that. He didn’t know why, but some sixth sense told him that he could not properly function without her trust. With a glance in Greenlea’s direction, he made a deliberate bid for it. “Laurel, you found it in your heart to forgive me after I apologized before. More than ever now, I—”
The metal door behind the counter swung back and forth in smaller and smaller arcs until it simply stopped, Laurel safely hidden behind it. Edward was left sitting there with his mouth open. She had walked out. She wasn’t going to listen to his carefully prepared speech or his fervent pleas or anything else, apparently. And David Greenlea sat at his elbow shaking his head like some sort of all-knowing guru. It was all Edward could do not to wrap his hands around Greenlea’s throat, but he managed. He’d be damned if he could resist taking at least one stripe off Greenlea’s hide, though.
“Well, I see you’ve managed to paint me as the true villain in the piece.”
To his surprise, Greenlea turned to face him almost with eagerness. “On the contrary,” he said smoothly, “I’ve tried to explain to her all the valid reasons why you may have done what you’ve done.”
“Valid reasons! What the hell would you know about my reasons for anything?”
Greenlea cocked his head. “Well, for one thing, I’ve made a study of human reasoning. It’s part of what I do. For another, I’ve had insight from someone who may know you better than you know yourself.”
Edward scoffed at the very idea. “Yeah, right. You’ve had a nice long coze with my mother, no doubt.”
“No. With the woman you wanted to marry.”
Edward went very still, torn between denial that Kendra could have discussed him in an intimate fashion with David Greenlea and the need to justify—and thereby accept—why she had done so. He shook off both, demanding, “What have you told Laurel about me?”
“Nothing she didn’t already know.”
“You son of a bitch!”
Greenlea shrugged unconcernedly. “Why don’t you face facts, Ed? You screwed up. You couldn’t face the idea that you might be falling for her, and you were looking for reasons to derail the relationship.”
“That’s just what I’d expect from you,” Edward scoffed. “Typical psychobabble.” It was, wasn’t it? It had to be. The only woman who had ever meant anything significant to him was Kendra, and Laurel was nothing, nothing, like Kendra. That didn’t mean he didn’t care about Laurel, though. On the contrary, he cared a great deal. Moreover, he owed her. Hell, the whole world owed her. He got up off his stool, ignoring Greenlea, and calmly walked around the counter and through the swinging metal doors. Laurel was sitting on the single bench in the long, narrow room, her head in her hands. She sniffed when the door fanned behind her and straightened. “Is he gone?”
“I’m right here, Laurel.”
Dashing away the tears, she jumped up and rounded on him. “You’re not allowed back here! Get out.”
“Not until you listen to what I have to say.”
&
nbsp; She glared at him. “It doesn’t make any difference.”
“Then what can it hurt to listen?”
She frowned but was effectively caught. “All right, get it over with.”
He walked around the end of the bench and moved toward her. She backed up until she was pressed against the metal door of one of a half-dozen lockers. “I came to ask your forgiveness,” he began, “but if you can’t give me that, then give me something else, for both our sakes.”
“What is that?” she asked warily.
He took a deep breath. “Your trust.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound.
“I know, I know,” he said, “but I can help you, Laurel. I can win your case for you. I know I can. Let me, please.”
She shook her head, wiping away fresh tears with the back of one hand. “I don’t know, Ed. I just don’t know.”
“I do. I know I can win this one. I know as well that I don’t deserve your trust, but if you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt once more, I’ll do my damnedest, I swear.”
She sighed wearily and put the back of her hand to her forehead. “You don’t understand,” she said weakly. “There are things you don’t even know.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She closed her eyes as if she found it too painful to look at him. “Maybe it doesn’t,” she said, “but I’m just not sure I can work with you.” She opened her eyes but looked away from him. “The thing is, David has a cousin who is an attorney, and I’ve asked David to speak to her on my behalf.”
Edward’s heart did a free-fall inside his chest. He tried not to appear as shaken as he felt, though, asking in a low voice, “Who would that be?”