A Taste of Romance: Four Original Harlequin Novellas: The Reaper's HeartThe Good GirlAny Man of MineSecret Agent Seduction

by Michele Hauf

  She didn’t feel like sitting. And couldn’t stand around in heels for hours on end. Which was why she rarely wore them. Or the suit. She didn’t spend too many days only in the office. And her more serviceable slacks and jackets and low heels were better suited to the types of house calls she made on a daily basis.

  “You did, didn’t you? You thought I’d just walk out on you.”

  Bill had donned one of the tweed sport coats he wore to work with his dress slacks. He’d put on the gray-and-brown silk tie she’d bought him the previous Christmas. He was sitting, knees apart, in the middle of her couch. His hands rested on his knees, as if he had no idea what to do with them. If she hadn’t been breaking apart inside, she’d have felt sorry for him.

  “I think it would be easier on both of us if you went,” she said. It wasn’t like they were fighting over anything that could be fixed. She had a history. Bill didn’t approve of it.

  And she didn’t blame him.

  “Really, Bill, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Or she would be. As soon as she had a chance to pick up her pieces and put them back together.

  “You’re a good girl, Mary. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “You said your mother lives in Florida with her twin sister. Your aunt. You go visit them.”

  “That’s right.” She’d asked Bill to come along a couple of times, but he’d always been too busy at work. The man hadn’t taken a vacation in more than two years.

  “Was she already down there, when you...danced?”

  He couldn’t look her in the eye. And she felt dirty, in her own home. She wanted him gone.

  “No.”

  “Did she know?”

  If she hadn’t spent two years loving the man, she’d have shown him the door. She didn’t have to put herself through this.

  But he’d just told her he loved her. He’d been sincere. And this was Bill. Her knight in shining armor. She didn’t love him any less because he didn’t want to marry a stripper.

  “I’m not sure,” she told him honestly, finally sitting, legs together and hands clasped, in the armchair perpendicular to the couch where he sat. The couch her father had spent his last weeks on. “I think she did. I’m pretty certain she knew. But we never discussed it.”

  His eyes rose quickly, meeting hers briefly, and then he looked away. “She never asked?”

  Mom had given her the respect of not bringing that part of her life into their home. Into their relationship. And maybe that was why she’d been so ready to believe that Bill had done the same.

  “My father was dying,” she said. “He was on medications that had caused kidney failure. He needed a transplant. He’d been on a donor list and a kidney was supposed to be available soon, but his insurance wouldn’t pay for the surgery and dialysis wasn’t enough anymore. My aunt had gone through a horrible divorce and was living with us while she tried to get herself out of debt. She worked full-time as a receptionist at a PR firm. Mom had to be home to care for my dad. I was fresh out of high school. Still flipping burgers for minimum wage until Dad’s health improved and I could go to college. The year before, I’d met a girl who came into the restaurant. She’d told me she knew how I could make a hell of a lot more money. I’d told Mom about it at the time and we both shuddered and had an uneasy laugh.” Mary spoke to the carpet. And the drapes. Powered by the ocean tumbling along in the distance, she took the high road. Did the decent thing. And gave Bill his due.

  “When I heard about the insurance company’s refusal to pay for Dad’s surgery, I went to The Strip Joint and found the girl—a woman named Sheila who got a cut for every girl she brought in. But I didn’t know that at the time. She put in a word for me and I was onstage the very next night. No time for second thoughts. That first night I made enough money to pay for an initial visit with the transplant surgeon.”

  “And your parents never asked where the money came from?”

  “No. Dad was too sick and drugged, at that point, to know what was going on. Mom told him an insurance payment had come through.”

  And she’d cried every single time Mary came home with more money. She’d hugged her. Coddled her. Kept her close. And told her, every single day, that she was a good girl.

  “You said your dad died ten years ago.”

  “That’s right. About six weeks after The Strip Joint was busted.”

  “Because he couldn’t afford the surgery?” Bill stared her straight in the face. “I’m responsible for your father’s death?”

  “Of course not. A kidney didn’t become available in time.”

  “But if it had, you couldn’t have paid for the surgery without the...job.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But they left your father on the list?”

  No, they hadn’t.

  But she’d given Bill his due. And she’d had enough.

  “It’s a moot point. He clearly didn’t have the strength to make it through the transplant or to tolerate the rejection drugs that would’ve come after.”

  And if she’d known that going in, she still would have tried. She still would have danced every night of the week if it meant there was even a minute chance that she could have kept her father alive.

  “You loved him.” Bill hadn’t moved, but his eyes were glistening.

  “Yeah. He was a great man. A great dad.” She smiled. “I had a blessed childhood.”

  “Which is why you work so hard to help other children know even some of that same happiness.”

  Shrugging, Mary stared at her hands. And then at the door. She’d quit analyzing the whys of her life, of her choices, a long time ago. She got up every day and did what she had to do so she could look herself in the mirror.

  Chapter Seven

  He should tell her about Jenny. Tell her why he’d busted The Strip Joint and taken away her only hope of seeing her father recover. Obviously Mary would have known his sister. They’d been onstage together the night of the arrest.

  Mary had just poured out her deepest secrets to him and Bill sat there, holding his silence. He could look at her now and see the woman he’d loved for the past two years.

  The woman he’d almost lost two days before.

  But things were different. Something was happening. Inside him, or between them, he didn’t know. He just knew he had to get out of there.

  He offered to take her to work, where her car had been parked since the storm.

  She accepted.

  And they talked about the sunshine and the calm during the drive, finding it odd that things could look so peaceful and normal after the nightmare storm. They talked about the vagaries of Mother Nature. And when he pulled up in front of her office, she jumped out, thanking him for the ride before he could decide whether or not to kiss her goodbye.

  She didn’t expect to hear from him anytime soon. He could tell.

  “I’ll call you,” he said just before the door shut, but he wasn’t sure she heard him. He wasn’t sure he’d wanted her to.

  Neither was he sure why he called Ramsey’s cell and told the younger man to let their Captain know he wouldn’t be in that day. Or why he drove to the airport and boarded a plane to Atlantic City. He didn’t tell anyone, not even Ramsey Miller, what he was doing.

  Mostly because he had no idea what he’d tell them. He had no idea what he was doing.

  The few hours’ wait to get on a plane, the flight and cab ride didn’t give him any clarity. He gave the last address he had for his baby sister, not convinced she’d let him in. She’d made it clear when she’d left home ten years before that she didn’t want to see any of them again. She wasn’t like them, she’d said. She didn’t fit into their cozy family unit.

  And she was done with their interference.

  What she did with her life was her own business. And she was going to do it on her own. Not with help from her parents, who wanted her to be what they thought she should be. Or her older sister, and certainly not from her interfering cop brother.

  She�
�d been in touch with Bill’s younger brother. Had him up to Atlantic City more than once. Sean let things slip now and then. But the family didn’t mention Jenny much. Talk of her hurt too badly.

  It especially hurt Bill. Jenny hated him most of all.

  She wasn’t going to answer her door to him. Didn’t matter that it was three-thirty in the afternoon. He’d made this trip half a dozen times. In the morning. The evening. She was never home—or hadn’t wanted him to think she was. He’d leave a note and catch the next flight back to Boston. That should get him home by early evening and he could still put in a few hours at the office before heading home.

  Before Mary turned in and he’d have to decide whether or not he was going to call and see how she was doing.

  Leaving the cabbie out front with the meter running, he knocked on the door of Jenny’s apartment. And stood there speechless when she opened it. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with her long blond hair hanging over her shoulders, she wore no makeup, no jewelry. She looked like a grown-up version of the little girl who used to tag along behind him and drive him nuts with her questions.

  He’d never questioned her adoration.

  Until he’d lost it.

  “What’s wrong?” Her question wasn’t filled with the resentment he’d come to expect from her. But it wasn’t all that friendly, either. “Did something happen to Mom or Dad?”

  Yesterday his reply would have been along the lines of “Little you care.” Bill choked on emotion he didn’t quite understand.

  “I love you, Jen.”

  Frowning, she hugged the door. “What’s wrong?” she asked again, fear entering her voice.

  “I...nothing. Mom and Dad, everyone else, we’re all fine. I just...need to talk to you. Can I come in?”

  Standing back, she said, “Sure. I guess. I just got home from...work.”

  She was what, twenty-eight now? She still looked eighteen to him. Taking a minute to pay off the cabbie and send him on his way, Bill strode quickly back up before Jenny changed her mind and closed her door.

  She led him into a small but clean and nicely furnished living room. Classical music was playing. The computer was on at a desk in the corner. She offered him something to drink. Freshly squeezed juice. He turned her down. Didn’t need anything else to choke on.

  And then they were sitting, Bill on her couch, she with both feet curled up beneath her in an armchair. Too similar to the situation he’d found himself in that morning in Mary’s apartment.

  “What’s up?”

  He wrung his hands. “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Why’d you come then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She could have stood. Told him she didn’t have time for this. Instead she just sat there, watching him. Probably glad that she could finally see him squirm. Funny, it didn’t feel that way.

  “I...the thing is...”

  She waited. He sweated.

  “People don’t just change for no reason. You don’t go from being a Goody Two-shoes, who likes to read and study and tag along behind her older brother, to being a rebellious malcontent for no apparent reason.”

  She nodded. And didn’t look interested in his opinon. He didn’t blame her.

  “Sometimes you feel forced to do something. You must not understand why, but you do it, even if you don’t want to.”

  She nodded again. He wasn’t completely certain he had her attention.

  “Jen? I need to know why you did it.”

  She didn’t ask what he meant. Didn’t do anything but stare at him. “You never asked.” Her voice was tiny, that of a little girl, when she finally answered. “I thought you, of all people, would ask. Sean did.”

  He could hear tears in her voice. And died his second death that day.

  “I’m here now.”

  She nodded one more time. And when she swallowed, he saw the way her neck moved, with difficulty, like she was having trouble getting anything past her throat.

  “Remember the night I snuck out to see Dwayne Hodges?”

  “The guy mom and dad had forbidden you to date.”

  “Right.”

  Bill’s heart sank. He wasn’t sure he could take what he’d come asking for. Wasn’t sure that he was up for it twice in one day.

  And he thought of the two women he loved most in the world. His baby sister. And the woman he’d been taking for granted for the past two years. And he knew he owed them both. Listening. Understanding. Loving. And so much more.

  * * *

  Mary went to work. The first order of business was checking up on Damon and Kayla. They were both well. Second, she made a call. There was a couple she knew—they’d lost a son in an accident at the beach—who’d been approved for foster care but had not yet had children placed in their home. They’d been planning to start out with one. They were open to taking two. And were going, that day, to get Damon enrolled in the elementary school closest to their house.

  She spent the next several hours getting caught up on casework. Reports. Setting appointments for the following week. She worked until everyone else had gone home for the night. And when her head began to throb, she left.

  It felt good to get in her own car again. To drive herself out of the parking lot toward home. The detour to Chloe’s Restaurant felt good, too. She’d lost the man who was going to take her there, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t go herself.

  With a take-out seafood salad to go on the seat beside her, she headed home. To eat. Rest. Regroup. And maybe think about taking a trip to Florida over Thanksgiving. The only thing that sounded remotely comforting at the moment was a nice long cry on her mother’s shoulder.

  Not that she’d actually let herself do that. She couldn’t tell her mother that she’d lost the love of her life because of the choices they’d made in the past. Mary’s choice to exploit her body and her mother’s choice to turn a blind eye.

  She’d been a fool to think that Bill had known who she was. A fool to think any decent man would want to marry a woman who’d bared it all for more men than she could count. Who’d let them shove their fingers against her pubic hair as they left their dollars behind.

  She’d lost her right to—

  His car was in her driveway. Breath coming in small bursts, Mary parked out front. She wasn’t going to block him in.

  Leaving the salad on the seat, she made her way up to his car, her knees weak with longing. She needed him. There was nothing wrong with that.

  And nothing wrong with her love, either.

  She glanced in the driver’s side window and saw that the car was empty.

  She raised her eyes in the moonlit night. Her front door was closed, the blinds drawn—as they’d been when she’d left that morning.

  Bill had a key. He’d never used it without her permission.

  He was probably getting his things, hoping to be gone before she got back. Intending to return to her car, to drive to the cliff she loved and eat her salad in peace before returning to reclaim her home as her own, Mary moved up the walk instead.

  As pathetic as it was, she wanted to see him. To talk to him.

  Unlocking the front door, she let herself in, dropped her purse on the table by the door, just as she always did. And listened. She noticed that lights were on in the back of the house.

  If Bill was packing, he was doing so without making a sound.

  And then she heard voices. Two of them. Bill’s. And a woman’s.

  He’d brought another woman to her home? He had his own place, for God’s sake! And then it dawned on her. He thought she was sexually promiscuous. She’d received her share of disrespectful offers during her time onstage.

  But if Bill thought for one second she’d...

  They were in her kitchen.

  She was seeking the strength to confront them, to get them out of her space, to look Bill in the eye and tell him he had to go, when they walked in.

  “Mary! Sweetheart. I didn’t hear you. I wanted to call, I
know I should have, but Jenny said...”

  Mary saw Bill, but she was staring at the sweet, normal-looking woman standing just behind him.

  “Jenny?” She smiled, without a thought beyond the moment. “It’s so great to see you!”

  With a grin, Jenny flew toward her, wrapping her in the hug she’d been craving from her mother minutes before. “I can’t believe you’re here! The timing—it’s incredible. And you’ve met Bill...”

  She frowned. “How...why...” She hadn’t seen or heard from Jenny since the night of the arrest. How could she suddenly be showing up at her door, on this of all days?

  They were both watching her, Jenny with a tentative smile, Bill looking sick to his stomach.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The lout who screwed up this morning is my brother.” Jenny’s words made sense, but they didn’t compute. “It’s his fault we all got busted and went to jail. I’m here to do anything I can to assuage any pain he caused you.”

  “Bill’s your brother?”

  Jenny nodded. “My oldest brother.”

  “The one you’d said deserted you.” She and Jenny had become friends during their months on the stage. They were the only two who hadn’t been willing to make more money for that pimp, Sheila.

  “Yeah.”

  “The one who wouldn’t help you after you took one little pill that guy—the guy you had a crush on—gave you, and you ended up unable to defend yourself when he and his friends date-raped you.” When she’d heard the story she’d not only detested the boys who’d hurt her friend, she’d also hated the brother who hadn’t rescued his little sister. She looked at Bill and then back at Jenny. “The brother who wouldn’t believe you.”

  “She left out one detail when she told you what led her down the path that ultimately ended up at The Strip Joint,” Bill said, his voice sounding normal for the first time since he’d asked her to marry him.

  Jenny had been her only real friend in the place—the one bright spot during the most horrendous months of her life. Like Mary, Jenny had been courted by Sheila and, like Mary, had only performed onstage. But all the women Mary had met during those long nights had a story, a reason they’d felt forced to sell their bodies. Some really were forced—by pimps like Sheila who got a commission from them for services rendered in the back rooms of the club. Some had been sexually abused at a young age. A couple thought they were on their way to stardom.