He glanced over at her plate, and stole some of the chops she wasn’t eating.
“They’ve all got worry-lists of girls or kids they think are promiscuous. But whether any of those girls were for sure pregnant at the time Angel’s mom had to be-no one knows. One minister gave me a couple of names to check out. So did one of the vice principals at the high school.”
“But…?” He held out a tidbit of pork chop on a fork, until she bit into it and chewed.
“But it could be an adult woman. It’s not like the mother had to be a teenager.” She swallowed, only to have the exasperating man nudge another bite toward her mouth. “So I called the women’s shelter. Asked if anyone was pregnant at the time Angel’s mom had to be. Since this woman knew my name, I keep thinking that if I could just get some clues, some ideas, I might recognize her in some way. And I’m looking for a grown-up now, a woman with the means to hide a pregnancy, but for some reason feels she can’t keep her baby. Unfortunately, the people at the shelter were as bad as the doctors. Angel’s mom could have been right there, but no one was about to tell me. I understand confidentiality. I believe in it, for Pete’s sake. Only it’s been days now, and I can’t get a solid lead to save my life.”
“Win,” Justin stopped trying to coax her into more food. “Are you positive that you want a lead?”
The question startled her. “Are you asking me if I’d drag my feet because of wanting the baby for myself?” She shook her head, fast, fiercely. “I admit I’ve fallen in love with her. I know it’s only been three days, but I swear she already feels like she’s mine. But there’s only one way I can make this right, Justin. To find the mom. To know what the whole story is. Then to legally go after doing whatever’s right for Angel. I admit, I want her. But there’s still only one way to drive down this street, and that’s the right way. You know how it is. The truth’ll come back to bite you in the butt if you don’t face it down to start with.”
“Um, is that a Texas saying?”
She grinned. “No, but it should be, don’t you think?”
“What I think, Ms. Raye, is that you’ve got too much on your plate-and that’s a problem that you’d be really, really stupid not to let me help you with. What the hell good is it to have a friend with a ton of money unless you use him now and then? You know my house. You know Myrt, my housekeeper. And while you’re trying to work full-time-”
“No,” she interrupted firmly.
“No? No? This ‘no’ is in reference to what? I never asked you a question.”
Since Sheila was nowhere in sight, Winona got up herself and carted their plates to the old Formica counter, out of their way. The baby was still snoozing, but starting to stir. With a little more space, she could use a hand to keep the baby carrier in a gentle, rocking motion, but her gaze stayed glued on Justin’s. “Somehow you managed to get me talking all this time about Angel and my problems, Doc. But that isn’t why I wanted to see you today.”
She could see him brace, his eyes pick up a wary glint. “Yeah. I suspect you wanted to talk to me about weddings.”
She nodded. “You’re not going to bamboozle me into a marriage, Doc,” she said gently.
“Do you think you’re announcing something I didn’t know? Why on earth would I want to bamboozle you into anything?”
But she was all through being fooled by that easy, lazy teasing tone. “That’s exactly what confounded me for the last few days. Trying to understand. You’ve asked me to marry you a gazillion times, but I always knew you didn’t mean it. I mean, it’s one of our favorite private jokes together. But this time-you sounded serious. So then I started thinking. Maybe something was really bothering you.” She watched his eyes. “I know something happened to you in Bosnia.”
He stilled. “What is this? A guy can’t ask a woman to marry him without her thinking he’s mentally ill or has some deep dark problem?”
“Don’t even try throwing feathers in front of my eyes, Doc. You know perfectly well that’s not what I meant. Answer the question. Or is Bosnia something you can’t talk about?”
She’d seen that exasperated look on his face before-and that unwilling hint of humor in his eyes. Somehow, some way, they’d always been able to talk honestly together. Even when Justin fought it tooth and nail. He threw up a hand. “How Bosnia got in this conversation beats me. But yeah, of course things happened to me there. I went through a year of real hell.”
She nodded gently. “I know you did. And you’ve always pretty openly admitted that…but I meant, was there something that happened that you didn’t talk about? Or couldn’t? I know you saw horrors. I know you went through hell. But you came home and changed from trauma medicine to plastic surgery.”
“So?”
“So…when I realized that, I tapped into my memory banks and it seemed like that was around the time that other things changed for you, too. You picked up a reputation as a devil-may-care playboy. It’s stupid.”
“I don’t know about stupid. More, hard to avoid. I’ve got money and I’m single, so the press naturally-”
“Don’t try to sell me cow patties, darlin’.” Winona leaned forward, feeling better now. In fact, feeling downright good, now that the subject was off her and on him, and Justin was no longer looking at her as if she were whipped cream. “I’m talking about how the media regularly pegs you, Doc. I’m talking about the kind of reputation that you’ve let happen. And it isn’t at all true.”
“It’s not exactly a lie that I’m single. Or that I have the means to-”
She snorted. Not particularly delicately. “You make out like you spend all your time on tummy tucks and boob implants. Nothing wrong with boob implants, mind you-but why is it that no one in town realizes you’re the reason we have that fancy Burn Unit at Royal Memorial?”
“Who told you that?” Justin yanked on his ear, a clear clue that he was feeling edgy. “And for the record, I do my share of tummy tucks and nose jobs. If you think I’m apologizing for that-”
“No one’s suggesting you need to apologize. If anything, you should take a bow. Some idiots think tummy tucks and boob jobs are about nothing but vanity. You’ve always been a women’s supporter for real, Justin. Reconstruction after cancer or a tumor can make a difference to a woman’s esteem…” Abruptly she stopped and waved that subject aside. She could have ranted on, but he was obviously trying to distract her. “Anyway, the point is-I’m not knocking the work you do. I’m only asking why you give the community the impression that you only take on spoiled rich women for patients, when in reality you donate a ton of your time to some of the worst burn cases over three states.”
“Hell.” He tugged on his ear again. “Who told you that? Someone’s been spreading vicious lies and slander about me.”
“Shut up, Justin. I’m just trying to tell you…I know something’s wrong. Maybe it’s not my business. But once I started realizing how much you’ve changed since Bosnia, it just kept hitting me in the face. Obviously something serious has been bothering you. Something you don’t talk about. And I don’t know whether that wild-assed idea about marrying me could be part of that, but…”
As if she hadn’t been right in the middle of an important, serious conversation with him, Justin suddenly bolted to his feet and grabbed his jacket. Some instinct made Winona turn around in bewilderment, seeking some reason for his sudden behavior.
At the door to the diner, Willis Herkner was just ambling in. The jerk was still working for American Investigator, which, as far as Winona was concerned, was the belly-buster of all the sensational media rags. Willis was dressed to impress, wearing a long white aviator scarf with his ultracool jacket. Still, even though the smarmy investigator was a major nuisance, Winona couldn’t fathom why his appearance would bother Justin enough for him to be hustling double-time out of there.
“Justin…” she began, intending to question him, but just then Angel’s baby-blue eyes fluttered open and her rosebud mouth opened in a squeal. The first squeal w
as fairly sleepy and friendly sounding. The next one, Winona knew, wouldn’t be. The baby needed to be fed, bathed and rocked to sleep. Come to think of it, after this long day-so did she.
Justin, in the meantime, had lunged out of the booth and was zipping up. “You know what? Even when you were a belligerent, aggravating, sullen twelve-year-old, I realized this odd thing about you. You were never fooled by people’s bologna. You always saw past the cover story to the truth. I could never lie to you, Win, even when I wanted to.”
“Well…that’s good,” she said forcefully, and then hesitated. He’d seemed to mean a compliment, didn’t he? Only he’d managed to confuse her by the side comment. She organized the thoughts in her mind again, determined to get back to the point-there was something wrong, something bothering Justin, and she was determined to get him to talk about it.
Instead, faster than she could get the words out, he leaned down.
Half the town-maybe more-was sardine-packed in the Royal Diner, most of them familiar, the baby squawking louder now, children screaming from another booth and Sheila shrieking something to Manny in the back. Yet he kissed her. Just bent down, and softer than the stroke of a petal, brushed his lips on hers.
Like a rose hungry for sunlight, her whole body strained upward for the touch of him. Her throat arched at the same time her eyelashes swooshed down. It wasn’t dark behind her closed eyelids. If anything, there were fireworks of light and soft, silver flames. Her closed eyes just cut out the riffraff sensory images in the restaurant until there was nothing in her mind-nothing in her sight, sound, touch, taste, but Dr. Justin Webb and his wicked, wicked mouth.
Her conscience scrambled for some common sense. Some inhibitions. Some sanity.
Nobody home behind any of those doors.
Oh my, oh my. She didn’t let go. Not with men, not with anyone. You get too close to people, then if they abandoned you-even if they never meant to or wanted to-your heart broke. You didn’t die. Your heart just hurt and ached and never stopped aching. Nothing was worth that. She was sure of that yesterday, and she was sure of it today.
But her lips clung to Justin’s and wouldn’t let go. Her hands didn’t touch him. Her breasts, her legs, her tummy-no body part was connected to him except her lips. And tongue. His warm, silky tongue touched hers, gentle as a spring breeze, not demanding, not taking, just…offering. Touch. Taste. The intimacy of himself.
Heat flushed her body head to toe.
The baby revved up the volume of tears. A child galloped past toward the rest room. A plate clattered on the floor. The jukebox twanged out another song about pickup trucks and getting up in the morning. Neon lights flashed on, off, on, off into the dark winter night street outside. Winona saw. She heard. She just didn’t care.
And then Justin lifted his head, eyes suddenly darker than a midnight sky. “It’s a good idea, don’t you think? Kissing in public.”
“What?” He might as well have suggested rolling naked in a mud puddle. It would have made as much sense.
“Everyone in town realizes that we know each other, Win. But just in case…this way they’ll get the picture that we’re close…that we were thinking about getting married even before Angel entered the picture. This way we’ll look like a couple. So it won’t seem contrived or hokey when we tie the knot.”
“Tie the knot,” she echoed.
“And you’re damn right. There was a very serious reason I asked you to marry me. It’s because I thought we could make it together. And I thought that ages before you ever laid eyes on our beauty here.”
He touched Angel’s cheek, which was enough to startle her from whimpering into a gurgle for him. And then he strode for the door.
All that noise, all that chaos, but there suddenly wasn’t a sound in the restaurant but the scratched tape from the jukebox. Some folks were being polite. But the others were either outright staring at her or at Justin’s departing figure.
Swiftly, Winona gathered up the baby, patting, soothing, trying to grab her jacket and car keys at the same time. He put a drug in his kisses. Well, what else could she possibly think? Maybe she didn’t recognize the controlled substance, but it was there. In the taste of him. The mood. The look in his eyes. And whatever was in that damn chemical went straight to her head.
And it was still going straight to her head.
Blasted man-richer than a tycoon-yet he’d forgotten to pay for their dinners. So she had to finagle that money out of her pocket, get her jacket on, get Angel and all the baby paraphernalia, all under the watchful, smiling eyes of everyone in the whole darn diner.
But when she finally hurtled into the night a few moments later, she sucked in a lungful of frigid winter air and, out of absolutely nowhere, smiled, too.
There was nothing funny about her situation. Nothing. She needed to figure that man out, and pronto. Somehow there still seemed to be a marriage proposal hanging between them. More worrisome yet was the stunning, startling thought that he actually wanted to marry her. But boy…
That man sure could kiss.
Six
Justin drove to the Texas Cattleman’s Club, but when he parked the Porsche, he turned the key and sat there, motionless. His meeting with the guys was at eight. It was already a few minutes after. He could see lights on within the building, recognize some of the other members’ cars in the lot. His mind needed to be on the plane crash and the missing jewels and serious business. Instead, all he could think about was Winona.
He was so in love with her.
Technically, loving her was old news. Heaven knew, he’d figured out his feelings for her long, long before he’d kissed her in the diner.
But that kiss was the first time he’d really dreamed, thought, believed that she could come to feel the same way about him. The baby was the first need he’d seen in Winona, the first dent in her emotional armor, the first emotion that she’d willingly revealed to him…but that kiss wasn’t anything about Angel. It was about them. About something new and strong and powerful building between the two of them.
Justin tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, thinking that when a man got a taste of heaven, it was tough not to want it all. Both the problems and the joys. It was possible that Winona wanted to adopt every abandoned kid in the county for the rest of their lives, and God knew the woman was stubborn, closed in, too independent to lean on him even when he damn well wanted to be leaned on. But he really didn’t care. Justin was also well aware that she was confused about the emotions suddenly exploding between them, but just as Shakespeare had said, all was fair in love and war. She’d been doing a lulu act on his heart for a long time. It wouldn’t kill Win to be off balance for a bit.
Not when the cause was right.
Whistling, he finally climbed out of his classy chassis, and hiked toward the building. When he stepped inside, his mood promptly sobered.
He had to quit thinking about Win. For that matter he had to quit thinking like a cockeyed dimwit in love. This was no time to be singing in the rain.
He could hear a game of poker going on in the far room, saw a few men putting on their coats, leaving the card room where cigar smoke gushed out in a fog. From old habit, his eyes shot to the Leadership, Justice and Peace motto on the far wall. The actual sign wasn’t that intrusive or large; most strangers ambling in rarely seemed even to notice it. But for him, it was like making eye contact with an old friend, and abruptly he charged toward the east rooms, expecting to find the others in the standard meeting area off to the right…and he did.
The room was as comfortably overloaded with testosterone as a room could get. A fire blazed in the hearth. A boar’s head hung over the stone mantel. The pool table stood under a Tiffany chandelier, untouched, rack ready. The furniture was all leather, couches and big chairs, with ottomans to put your boots on-but no one was sitting tonight. Justin braced, feeling how much tension the others were giving off. Matt was pacing like a caged cougar, Dakota standing in the window, pensive and still. Aaron s
till wasn’t back from Washington, but Ben was here now…typically, the sheikh had on his proper kaffiyeh for a serious meeting, and any other time Justin would have smiled. Ben was an extraordinary man who’d become a special friend, but he did have a way of looking like a desert warrior, between his kaffiyeh and those fierce dark eyes and rigid posture.
“For someone who’s usually never late, I can’t seem to catch up with a clock today to save my life. I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.” Justin strode in, feeling guilty as a shamed hound. “And hell, you’re all looking as dark as a thunderstorm. Are we talking more bad news? Dakota, I take it you looked for the red diamond-”
“No. I came here earlier, intending to do just what we said-check on the red diamond and report back to the rest of you,” Dakota said. “Only when I got here, I discovered there was a problem. The wine-cellar door was unlocked.”
Justin swore under his breath. Dakota continued, “So I could have called you all, but it made more sense to wait until I informed Hank Langley as he is the owner of the Club. He said he’d inform the other members, but we five, including Aaron, would take the lead and handle the situation. So now we need to discover what’s wrong together. Decide what to do together. And earlier, there were just too many people here. It made the most sense to hold up any further investigations until after dark, now. Once the poker game breaks up in the other room, we’ll be the only ones here. I only wish we’d managed to get hold of Aaron before now, because I have a feeling we’re going to need his advice.”
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