Jane Gilbert was silent.
A little of Mark’s anger spilled out as fear. “Can they?” he appealed.
“You should really get a lawyer,” Jane said.
When he hung up the phone, his hand was shaking. Damn it. He turned just as Nicole walked into the bar. His heart gave a great leap, which annoyed him even more, because it reminded him how vulnerable you were when you let yourself get close to somebody, when you let yourself care, and where did that ever get you except alone and needing a lawyer?
Although maybe that wasn’t going to be a problem, because the way Nicole was looking at him right now, he doubted they were ever going to reach a stage where lawyers were necessary. Unless, say, she murdered him and had to hire one to get her off.
He leaned against the bar, crossed his legs at the ankle and his arms against his chest, and waited for her attack.
But she stopped before she reached him, twisting her rings around on her fingers, her mouth a tight, miserable line. “I talked to Kathy.”
The roommate. The real estate agent.
“So?”
“So.” Nicole dragged in a slow, painful-sounding breath. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a prospective buyer for the bar?”
Boom. He wasn’t expecting an assault on this front. True to his training, he scrambled for cover and launched a counteroffensive.
“Why should I?”
“Well, because I—because you— Don’t you think it might have a bearing on our relationship?”
Quick fear cramped his gut. That’s why he hadn’t told her. She was so damn afraid of being used, so quick to believe no man could want her for herself.
“No,” he said.
Her jaw stuck out. “You still could have mentioned it.”
“Why? Did you want to hear more about my ‘inadequate business plan’? Or my ‘inability to obtain the necessary bank funding’?”
She flushed, recognizing her own words from their first meeting. But she said stubbornly, “I don’t like secrets. I especially don’t like secrets about money.”
“You’re just looking for some kind of proof that I can’t be trusted.”
“No. I’m asking you for proof that I’m wrong.”
“There is no proof, babe. I don’t come with a guarantee.”
Her chin quivered. “Fine. As long as you understand I don’t come with the bar.”
She might as well have hit him over the head with one of his own liquor bottles. How could she say that? How could she think it? Did she honestly have that low an opinion of herself? Or was it him? Fear and fury spilled together inside him, and he came back at her like the fighter he had been.
“You think I’m screwing you for the bar?” He laughed without amusement. “Babe, for that I’d have to marry you.”
She flinched. “And of course you would never commit yourself to that extent.”
“And aren’t you glad?” he taunted, as if she’d even think of contradicting him.
Right. As if.
“At least now we both know where we stand.” Was it his imagination or did her voice quaver slightly?
“I guess we do.”
“So.” She twisted the thin gold rings on her hand. “Where do we go from here?”
Directly to jail, he thought bitterly. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.
“That’s up to you, isn’t it?” he said. “Where do you want this to go?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at him then, and the hurt in her eyes echoed the ache in his own chest. “I honestly don’t know.”
Chapter 15
“Lady here to see you.”
Mark shoved the lunch ticket at Louis and turned to Joe, his heart thudding with dumb hope.
“Who is it?”
“Never saw her before.” Joe shifted his toothpick to the other corner of his mouth. “Older lady. Nice looking, though.”
“Right. Be there in a minute.”
But Joe stuck in the kitchen doorway, his chubby face concerned. “You expecting someone?”
Nicole.
He kept expecting to see her walk through that door to ask him something, to tell him something, her eyes shiny with some bright new idea, her voice rising in enthusiasm.
It was stupid. Really stupid, because she was never coming after him again for anything. He hadn’t even seen her this afternoon.
Anyway, Joe wouldn’t be calling her a lady.
“No,” Mark said. “I’m not expecting anybody.”
And he went to the front of the house.
He spotted the blonde right away, upright and awkward at the end of the bar, her white wine untouched in front of her. He put her age around fifty, her hair color, her figure, her way of life all carefully maintained.
It took him a second more to place her. Helen Wainscott.
His gut clenched hard. Just what this day needed to make it absolutely perfect. A close encounter with the Queen of Cold.
“Hi-ya, Helen.”
He had to give her credit. She stiffened at his use of her given name, but she managed a small, polite smile. “Mark.”
He waited. But that was all she could give him, just his name, and that slight, nervous smile. He nodded at her glass. “You don’t like the wine?”
“No, I— The wine is fine. I drove up here myself.”
Nice. So his kid didn’t have two alcoholic grannies. But Mark wasn’t about to swap family stories with Helen Wainscott. She disliked him enough already.
“Why?” he asked bluntly.
She played with her cocktail napkin, Nicole’s jaunty moon rocking over a stylized wave. “Is there someplace we could talk?”
He glanced around the nearly empty bar. It was still early. He bet she’d timed her visit so she could be home before rush hour started in Chicago.
“What’s wrong with here?”
“Nothing,” she said a little too quickly. “Here is…fine.”
“Right. So now we’ve established the wine is fine, the place is fine. How are you, Helen?”
“I’m f—very well, thank you.”
A new thought struck him. A new fear. “Danny?”
She pleated the edge of her napkin. “That’s what I came to talk to you about. Danny.”
“Is he all right?” Mark demanded.
She looked at him directly for the first time, and something in her face relaxed. “Danny is fine. He’s in school today.”
“So, when does he get home?”
“Maria is there when he gets home,” Helen said quietly, answering his unspoken accusation. “Won’t you sit down?”
He came around the bar and sat.
She took the first sip of her wine. “As you might imagine, this has been a somewhat…difficult year for Bob and me.”
“Yeah,” Mark said. Joe came out of the kitchen. He warned him away with a look. “Sorry for your loss,” he added.
“Thank you. Elizabeth was— We had no other children. She meant everything to Bob. To me. I wonder sometimes if we were too protective of her, if we took too active a role in her life, but—”
“I know you loved her very much,” Mark said.
Enough to separate us, he thought. Enough to keep Betsy from telling me about our baby.
But he didn’t say those things. The woman had lost her daughter. Putting her down as a mother at this point was pretty much useless. Not to mention cruel.
“Yes,” Helen said gratefully. “And we love Daniel.”
Hell. He so did not want to go there. Not now. Not with her. He could deal with this as long as he concentrated on what was right, on where his duty lay. He was not getting into a pissing match with Helen Wainscott over who loved Danny longer or who loved Danny more.
Because she might win. And then where would he be? And what would happen to his son?
“He’s a good kid,” Mark said.
“He’s a very confused kid right now,” Helen countered. “To lose his mother, to be in danger of losing the only ho
me he’s ever known, is enormously difficult for him.”
Mark crossed his arms. “He seemed okay when he was up here.”
“You don’t know him like I do.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Helen winced. “I suppose we deserve that. Elizabeth often asked… That is—”
His heart beat faster. “Asked what?”
“She wanted to see you again,” Helen admitted. “To tell you about the baby.”
“Then why the hell didn’t she?”
“You were gone,” Helen said simply. “I told her it was reasonable to assume you weren’t ready for a relationship. Certainly not for fatherhood.”
“How would you know? I never got the chance to prove myself.”
“You sound like Elizabeth. But Robert said—” Helen’s gaze dropped to her wineglass.
“What? What did he say?”
“He said if she contacted you we wouldn’t help her with the baby’s expenses. She had to choose, he said. We would help her with Daniel. We would help her with college. We would help her find child care and a place to live, but she had to decide then and forever who her family would be.”
Oh, God. Mark thought what that ultimatum must have meant to a scared, sheltered, pregnant seventeen-year-old forced to choose between the well-being of the child she carried and loyalty to a boyfriend who’d already skipped town.
“Poor kid,” he said. “So you won.”
Helen smiled sadly. “No. We lost. Because once she finished college, we didn’t see Elizabeth very often. She kept her promise. She never contacted you. I think she was happy with her work, her life, her son. But in the end she chose you anyway.”
He was shaken. “Too bad for you,” he said flippantly.
Helen Wainscott’s nostrils narrowed. “I’m not here for myself. I’m here for Daniel, to ask you to consider what he needs. A child his age deserves a stable home and a two-parent family.”
“It’s a little late for that,” Mark said. “Seeing as his mother and I never got the chance to work things out.”
“It’s not really too late. Bob and I are his family.”
“And Maria. We can’t forget Maria. Who is she, anyway? The nanny?”
“Maria is our housekeeper,” Helen said stiffly. “She’s been with us since Daniel was two years old. And she adores him.”
“Which explains why she’s taking care of him after school today.”
“I hardly think you’re in a position to criticize my child care arrangements. Or do you imagine that as a single, working father you will have so much more time to give Daniel than we do?”
The problem was, he didn’t think that at all. He couldn’t imagine the impact that keeping Danny full-time would have on his life. That didn’t mean he didn’t have the responsibility to try.
“We’ll figure that out when we get there.”
“When you get there, it may be too late to figure something out.”
He looked at her levelly. “What do you want, Helen?”
“Mark.” She put a well-manicured hand on his arm. “Have you ever asked yourself if it’s really in Daniel’s best interest to be with you?”
Hell, yes. He asked himself all the time. He just hadn’t answered himself yet.
“That’s what the lawyer’s for, isn’t it? The guardian ad litem. To decide what’s in Danny’s best interest.”
“Lawyers can be wrong.”
“That’s really interesting coming from a lawyer’s wife.”
“You, more than anyone, should understand that we might have made mistakes. That we might have regrets. That doesn’t change the fact that we love our grandson. And we are in the position to offer Daniel the things he needs.”
“You mean money,” Mark said flatly.
“Is that so bad, to want our grandson to grow up with certain material advantages? Can you honestly say your childhood wouldn’t have been easier if your parents had been able to provide better for you and your sister? That you wouldn’t have benefited from the opportunity to go to college? Even now, wouldn’t more money make it possible for you to live a better life?”
Unexpectedly Nicole’s voice came back to him: I can’t stand people who use other people for money.
Mark shook his head. “You almost had me till the last one. I can’t be bought off, Helen. Your husband already tried.”
“I’m not offering you money.”
“What, then?”
“A chance for Daniel. Please, think about it.” She collected her purse and folded her raincoat over her arm. Mark watched her select a five-dollar bill from her wallet and leave it beside her full glass of wine.
He picked it up and handed it to her. “My treat,” he said.
“My tip,” she replied. “Give it to the bartender, if you want.”
A chance for Daniel. Think about it.
Mark scowled at the empty bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon lined in front of him. Right. Like he’d been able to do anything else but think. And drink. And wish he could go back to last night, to the time before Helen made her big emotional power play and Nicole was all that occupied his heart and his brain.
He couldn’t do a damn thing about Helen. At least, not tonight. He didn’t even know what he should do.
So he tipped his chair back on two legs and closed his eyes, letting himself sink from deep funk into fantasy, seduced by longing and the memory of Nicole arching under him, smooth and soft and slick.
With the bar shut out and a nice buzz from the beer going, he could almost imagine he had it all back, had her back, the glow in her eyes and the scent of her skin and the sound of her voice saying—
“You said you didn’t drink much.”
Okay. Definitely not part of the fantasy. Which meant…
He dropped the front legs of the chair and opened his eyes.
Nicole wavered before him.
“I thought you went home early,” he said.
“I did.” When he continued to squint at her, she explained, “I moved in upstairs today.”
Without his help. Without even telling him. Even through the beer, her rejection stung. “I didn’t see furniture.”
“It’s still in storage.”
“So you’re camping out?”
Despite the way she’d taken to his boat, he didn’t see her as the sleeping bag type.
“Well…” She met his gaze, and the rueful humor in her eyes snagged in his chest. “I have plumbing. And paper supplies. I’ve been raiding the kitchen down here until I get my boxes unpacked.”
“Why the rush?”
“I had a—call it a difference of opinion with my roommate this morning.”
She was doing that thing with her rings again, twisting them around on her fingers.
Concern slid through his pleasant fog and nicked him. “What about?”
She stopped fussing with the rings and jerked up her chin. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What happened to ‘friends talk to each other’?”
“We’re not friends.”
Ouch.
“No?” He slid out of his chair, noting smugly that her eyes widened and her breath quickened as he got close. “You better hope we’re friends, babe, or I’m going to start thinking of things I’d rather do with you than talk. What’s up with you and the vampire real estate agent?”
Nicole snickered. A release of tension, she told herself. “You shouldn’t call her that.”
“Are you telling me she didn’t try to suck the life out of you this morning?”
She was gratified by his quick defense. She was too used to parents who found fault, to bosses who blamed her, to boyfriends who were quick to point out the ways she’d failed or fallen short. “How did you know?”
“Because I’ve met her.” His gaze was direct. Unapologetic. “I was the other prospective buyer for the bar, remember?”
Remember? She couldn’t forget.
Except it was really hard to care when he was stand
ing so close with his hot, dark eyes and his lean, hard body promising her everything she’d ever wanted. Respect. Understanding. Sex.
“So, are you okay?” he asked.
“I— Yes,” she said, surprised because it was true. “She only…she tried to make me feel small. I think maybe she always has, and I just never noticed it.”
He nodded, not interrupting.
Nicole swallowed. “You don’t do that.”
He reached up with one hand, barely toying with the ends of her hair where it touched her shoulder. Her scalp prickled in reaction. “That’s because I like that light you carry around inside you. Somebody like Kathy only sees that you outshine her.”
It was so unexpected a thing for him to say that her mouth dropped open.
“A light?” she repeated.
He looked embarrassed. “Forget it.”
“No, I like it. What do you mean, a light?”
“You’re just…you know.” He shrugged. “You’ve got all these ideas and all this hope. Even when things go wrong for you, you don’t give up.”
She wanted to bask a little in the glow of his compliment. But there was an edge to his voice and a shadow in his eyes that tamped her own pleasure.
“Did things go wrong for you today? Is that why you’re drinking?”
“Three beers,” he said. “I’m not turning into my old man yet.”
“You’re still sitting here alone after closing in the dark.”
“I wouldn’t be here alone if you hadn’t dropped me like a wet glass this morning.”
Her heart beat faster. “I didn’t drop you.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “No.” She’d had the strength to walk away. Did she have the confidence to come back? She smiled ruefully. “I just put you back on the shelf for a while.”
A corner of his mouth quirked. “Does that mean you plan to take me down and use me again sometime?”
Her knees wobbled. Oh, yes.
“Don’t try to distract me,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
He sat at the table and pushed out the chair opposite him with his foot. She obeyed his silent invitation, pressing her weak knees together.
But instead of answering her, he asked, “Did your parents ever read to you when you were a kid?”
All a Man Can Be Page 17