by Tami Hoag
The formalities were dispensed with quickly. Deputy Skreawupp seemed as eager to be rid of Alaina as Alaina was eager to get out of the jail—and out of Dylan Harrison’s tainted company. The instant the deputy told her she was free to go, she turned on her glittery spike heel and marched for the door.
“What about Dylan?” Jayne asked, hesitating at the gate. She exchanged an odd look of concern with Arnie the Austrian Wookie.
Behind them, Dylan pressed the telephone receiver to his shoulder. His questioning gaze captured Alaina’s as she paused with her hand on the brass doorknob. “What time should I pick you up for dinner?”
“When hell freezes over!” she shouted, simply unable to restrain her temper another second.
Dylan frowned. “They only serve until ten.”
Why? Why were men such bastards? Not that it mattered to her personally, Alaina told herself. Not a bit. Not anymore. She was all through looking for the elusive Mr. Right. How long had her mother been on the hunt for him? Helene had gone through five husbands and who knew how many near-misters, and she was still looking. It was pointless. One had better odds of finding the Holy Grail while on a tour of the Chicago sewer system.
Alaina sipped her Scotch and stared out the bay window. She was curled up on the window seat, wrapped in her gray silk dressing gown. Across from her, illuminated only by moonlight pouring in through the sheer curtains, was Julia, the petite black cat who had come with the duplex. Alaina had never been much for cats, but Julia, a very snobby superior feline, had simply ignored Alaina’s attempts to remove her from the house. Now she sat on the velvet cushion, meticulously cleaning her dainty paws, ignoring Alaina completely. Not to be outdone, Alaina ignored her right back.
Men were bastards because that was the way of the world. People were essentially selfish and greedy. Alaina had learned early on that the soundest philosophy a person could have was to look out for oneself, because nobody else gave a damn. Over the years she had found few exceptions to the rule.
Her friend Bryan had always frowned at her cynical analysis of the human race. Faith had been sympathetic. Faith was always sympathetic; it was one of her most endearing qualities. Jayne had told her she didn’t know where the center of the Earth was. Jayne was such a flake.
Alaina had moved to Anastasia in part to be with her friends. They were the closest she had ever—or would ever—come to having a family. She was an only child, one who had not been planned for or welcomed into her parents’ lives. With Faith, Jayne, and Bryan, she had found a sense of belonging, a home for a heart that was far more fragile than she would ever let on.
Twelve years had passed since the Fearsome Foursome had first dreamed up the plan to move to this picture-postcard town on California’s northern coast. From the crossroads of their graduation they had all rushed off in different directions in pursuit of the perfect future. They had chased their rainbows, and what had they found at the end of them? Three of them had found disappointment in one form or another. Only Bryan was still off on the chase, traveling the world as a psychic investigator.
A long sigh escaped Alaina as she ran a hand back through her dark hair and tilted her head back against the window frame. It was time to start over, time to put past disillusionments behind her and get her life back into tidy little compartments, the way she liked it. She was by nature a perfectionist, neat and analytical. That was the only sensible approach to life. Emotional entanglements were messy and painful as a rule, so she generally avoided them.
She had her small circle of friends. She had a nice home impeccably decorated with tasteful art deco–style furniture. She had financial security, which was basically the only kind of security she’d ever had. And soon she would have her own law practice, where she could follow her own code of ethics and choose her own clients. It was practically the ideal existence.
She was absolutely not looking for a relationship.
But as she stared out into the night and secretly acknowledged the too familiar pang of loneliness in her heart, she thought it might have been nice to go dancing.
Chapter 3
“Marlene, I really don’t see the need for this line ‘Astrological Sign’ on the client information form,” Alaina said, congratulating herself on her patience. She put the form back on the stack on her secretary’s desk, crossed her arms over her blue silk designer T-shirt, and calmly awaited a comment from the woman.
Marlene Desidarian paused in her task of driving a nail in the wall behind her desk to shoot her boss a look. “You’ll thank me for it,” she said in a voice that made Roseanne Barr sound like a songbird. “Well be able to tell at a glance how compatible they’re going to be with your personality.”
“All I really need to know is whether or not I’m interested in their case, and whether or not they can pay me.”
“Capricorns,” Marlene muttered disparagingly as she turned and gave the nail a good thump.
Compromise, Alaina knew, was an unpleasant but necessary fact of life. It was a word she despised but lived with. Sometimes a person simply had to trade off one priority to achieve another. Marlene Desidarian was a living example of this law at work in her life.
Marlene might have been fifty or she might have been sixty. It was difficult to tell, and she was creatively evasive when questioned about it—a skill Alaina herself cultivated, so she let the issue slide. Marlene was tall and built like a side-by-side refrigerator. Her fading silver-blond hair fell down her back in a long, utilitarian braid, and she dressed like a hippy. She was an enthusiastic student of astrology and mythology and auras and karmas and all of the same goofy mystical California nonsense Jayne Jordan was into.
For these reasons Alaina would ordinarily have avoided Marlene, but Marlene could also type a hundred and ten words a minute, and she had a forbidding look that could stop an office supplies salesman in his tracks at twenty yards.
Oh, hell, Alaina admitted to herself as she watched her secretary hang a perfectly horrid painting, she liked Marlene. The woman was undeniably weird, but she had a good heart. They had struck up an odd, argumentative sort of friendship practically the moment they’d met when Alaina had been inspecting the duplex as a prospective buyer.
“Marlene, you are not hanging that atrocious thing in here,” she declared, planting her hands on her hips. She glared at the painting, which appeared to be an abstract of a woman with nine eyes and three breasts.
Marlene gave her a shrewd look. “What do you think it looks like?”
Instantly wary, Alaina held her true impression and said noncommittally, “It looks like an inkblot.”
“It is an inkblot. You catch on fast for a lawyer.”
Alaina ignored the insult. She waved a regal hand at the splotch of blue on white. “It’s coming down. I won’t have prospective clients subjected to a Rorschach test the second they come into the office.”
Shrugging tiredly, Marlene heaved a much-put-upon sigh, her broad shoulders sagging. She shook her head and tugged up one shoulder of her huge, purple, tie-dyed T-shirt. “If you say so, but you’re missing the boat on a slick screening process.”
“And you’re missing the boat altogether,” Alaina muttered under her breath as she turned to go into her private office to sort through her law books.
The suite she had rented consisted of three rooms and was located in a small, relatively new professional building just off Anastasia’s main street. She looked around at the pristine white walls where her diplomas would hang, at the freshly laid gray carpet, at the two large windows that let the warm fall sunlight stream in through textured vertical blinds, and a proud, satisfied smile turned her lips. She had her much-coveted corner office, and she wasn’t going to have to sell her soul for it.
This was going to be her practice. Alaina N. Montgomery, attorney at law. There were no senior partners to pay homage to. There were no duel-to-the-death, winner-take-all divorce cases, no trumped-up personal injury cases, no let’s-make-the-kid-a-wishbone custody cases.
There were no clients either, but that was only a temporary condition, a minor detail she wasn’t concerned about in the least. She had ample confidence in her own abilities, and ample funds in her bank account to keep her going until she built up a clientele. The important thing was, she would be her own boss.
It wasn’t that practices had been unethical at Abercrombie, Turtletaub, and Flinch. The firm was one of the most prestigious, highly respected in the Chicago area. And heaven knew, Alaina had taken to their aggressive style of law like a shark to water. It was just that within the last year or so she had begun suffering from a strange sort of dissatisfaction with her lot in life. One day she’d realized she had everything she’d wanted—money, prestige, a certain amount of power—but she wasn’t happy, and she didn’t know why. And then, of course, there’d been that unpleasant business with Clayton.
She frowned, her hand absently stroking the spine of a leather-bound tome on jurisprudence. Odd, but she couldn’t quite remember what A. Clayton Collier looked like. She could remember too clearly what his wife had looked like the fateful day she’d come to call. She remembered every detail of Mrs. Collier, right down to her red snakeskin pumps and matching handbag. But when she tried to call a man’s face to mind, it was Dylan Harrison’s she saw with his unruly hair and devilish grin.
Even though she’d met him only once and that had been nearly a week ago, she could remember his handsome features with alarming clarity. She remembered everything about him, every word they had exchanged, every glance, every arc of awareness that had passed between them.
Giving herself a mental shake, she began sorting through her books. The man had a wife and child and no scruples whatsoever. That was a combination she had learned to avoid. And if his marital status weren’t enough to dissuade her from thinking about him, he ran a bar and bait shop, for Pete’s sake. What on earth would she have in common with a man who sold swill and chum? Nothing.
Then why did she keep thinking about him? Why did she keep thinking of the way he’d traced his finger along her jaw? And why did she keep reliving that instant when he’d held her against the side of her car, his sexy mouth just a heartbeat from hers? Even when she’d suspected he was a lunatic, she’d been attracted to him.
A chill swept over her as she had a horrid thought. She suddenly envisioned Mrs. Dylan Harrison chasing her around her office wielding a giant fishhook.
Alaina swore through her teeth as she forcibly dismissed the image and returned her attention to her task.
“You’re coming to dinner tonight.” The announcement made from the door of her office was a statement of fact, not a question.
Alaina looked up at her secretary and frowned. Ever since she’d moved into the duplex, Marlene had been trying to fix her up with a seemingly endless parade of eligible men. The woman was worse than Jayne when it came to matchmaking and utterly shameless in her efforts. It was embarrassing to say the very least. Alaina kept promising herself she would refuse the next time, but for some unfathomable reason, she had a hard time telling Marlene no.
This time was no exception. She sighed up into her stylishly cut bangs and tucked a strand of chestnut hair behind her right ear. “Promise me this isn’t another blind date.”
Marlene scowled, an expression that gave her an alarming resemblance to Deputy Skreawupp. She wouldn’t quite look her boss in the eye. “It’s a dinner party,” she said flatly.
“Swear it.”
“I swear it’s a dinner party.”
“A cleverly evasive answer if ever I’ve heard one. And believe me, I’ve heard zillions.”
Going on the offensive, Marlene shook a finger at Alaina. A quartet of silver and turquoise bracelets rattled on her thick wrist. “You’re too suspicious for your own good. What’s the matter with you, thinking I’d stoop to trapping you into a blind date?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Alaina said, her arms sailing upward in an exaggerated shrug. “Maybe the fact that you advertise in the yellow pages under ‘Matchmakers.’ ”
“A person’s got to make a living.”
“Not at the expense of my social life. After last week’s fiasco, I ought to turn you down flat.” She shuddered at the memory and made a face. “I ought to sue you for emotional—not to mention sartorial—suffering.”
“What? You didn’t like Quenton Stockley?” Marlene’s expression clearly indicated her incredulity at the prospect.
Alaina still marveled at the fact that she’d agreed to go out with the man. Marlene had shown up at her door one evening, unannounced, with Quenton in tow. Quenton Stockley was an anemic little man with terminal hay fever and what Alaina sincerely hoped was the last polyester leisure suit in the continental United States.
It was all Dylan Harrison’s fault she had sacrificed an evening of her free time to Quenton Stockley. She had gone out with him only to escape her constant disconcerting thoughts of Dylan the dastardly philanderer.
Marlene propped a meaty fist on her hip. “What was wrong with Quenton?”
The list was endless. Alaina decided to choose one major fault and leave the rest. “He took me to a Three Stooges movie festival.”
“So?”
“Grown men poking each other in the eyes is not my idea of cinema.”
Marlene made a face and waved a beringed hand at her. “You’re too fussy.”
“I’m tastefully discriminating,” Alaina corrected. “And for the billionth time, Marlene, I am not looking for a man. Please get that through your thick head.”
A determined look on her face, the secretary stepped closer, trapping Alaina against the side of the table that was temporarily serving duty as a desk. She closed her eyes with a dramatic fluttering of her lashes and began running her hands all around Alaina’s head and shoulders, not quite touching her.
“Jeez, Marlene, stop it,” Alaina whined, cringing. “You know I hate when you do that.”
The woman stepped back, shaking her head reproachfully. “Your aura is all out of whack.”
“Small wonder,” Alaina mumbled, turning back to her books, “what with you attacking me every time I turn around.”
“A woman your age ought to have a man in her life,” Marlene announced.
“What for? I can take out my own garbage,” Alaina quipped. Her dark brows suddenly snapped down low over her eyes and turned to bore a look into her secretary’s retreating broad back. “What do you mean—a woman my age?”
“Dinner’s at seven.”
“Okay, guys, I’m leaving now!” Dylan called, hastily checking his appearance in the dusty mirror that hung above the cluttered table in the front entry. He ran a hand back through his unruly hair and gave his hand-painted leather tie a jerk to set it straight, then he turned to say good-bye to his children.
Nine-year-old Sam stood there with an exact-scale replica of the starship Enterprise cradled in his arms. He had his mother’s sandy hair and his father’s lanky frame and an expression that was far too mature for his age. “You appear magnetically prepossessing this evening, Dad.”
Dylan blinked, a little taken aback as he always was by his son’s rather adult intellect. “You’ve been reading the thesaurus again. Do you like my tie?”
“It’s awesome,” Sam said seriously.
“Thanks.” Dylan dug through the rubble on the table for his car keys as he spoke. “I won’t be late, but you guys will be in bed by the time I get home, so I’ll call by eight-thirty.”
The Harrison children exchanged a significant look. As usual, Sam acted as spokesman. “You’ll tuck Cori in when you get home, won’t you?”
Dylan hunkered down in front of his little girl, a tender smile turning his lips. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
Cori leaned against the family dog, Scottie, an enormous shaggy beast of indiscriminate background. The little girl’s brown eyes stared up owlishly at her father. Dylan’s heart clenched in his chest.
He had been hurt when Veronica had divorced him and moved to L.A. to pursue he
r career, but his deepest pain came from the knowledge that what had happened between himself and his wife had left lasting scars on their children. Sometimes he thought he’d never forgive himself or Veronica for that. What they’d done to each other had been the choice of consenting adults; their children had been innocent casualties in the war.
Sam had somehow seen the need to grow up overnight. Bypassing the rowdy, carefree phase of childhood, he was a quiet, meticulous, studious adult in the body of a nine-year-old boy. He spent much of his free time in academic pursuits or working with their extensive collection of science fiction memorabilia rather than with friends. And he had grown fiercely protective of Cori, seemingly determined to fend off any threat of hurt to his little sister.
Cori, who had been only five at the time of the breakup, had reacted by retreating into herself. She was too young to understand or deal with her emotions regarding her mother’s departure from the family, Dylan doted on her—on both children, really, but on Cori in particular—doing his level best to make her feel safe and secure in his love. But even now, nearly two years after the divorce, Cori rarely spoke unless asked a direct question that couldn’t be answered by a nod or a shake of her head.
Dylan hooked a finger under his daughter’s chin and tilted her face up to plant a kiss on her cheek. “No wild parties while I’m gone. Mind Mrs. Pepoon.” He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a hug. “I love you.”
“Love you, Daddy,” Cori murmured, bussing his cheek.
Reluctantly pulling back, Dylan reached up and ruffled Sam’s sandy hair. Standing, he gave a proper Federation salute to his son. “Mr. Spock, you have the con.”
“Aye aye, Captain. I hope you have an enjoyable repast.”
Dylan shook his head. “I’m sure I will. Why don’t you watch some TV tonight?”
Sam gave him a quizzical look, wrinkling his freckled nose.
“See you later, Mrs. Pepoon!” Dylan called to his housekeeper.