The Night In Question

by Harper Allen

  “Stupid,” he said flatly. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Go back to the damned office if you have to, Ross. Hell, get blind drunk and fall asleep in your clothes on the sofa, if that’s what it takes. But leave the woman alone.”

  She was right. She had been a beautiful woman two years ago, he thought a few minutes later. He lifted his glass to the light, and idly swirled the amber liquid inside it a little before taking a swallow. She’d been beautiful the way models were beautiful.

  Hell, he’d harbored a twinge or two of lust for her at the time, he admitted. He got up and poured himself another shot, bringing the bottle back to the sofa. He could feel himself flushing. Okay, maybe more than a twinge. And maybe more than once or twice.

  But he hadn’t felt anything comparable to the sledgehammer impact he’d experienced the night he’d met her in the coffee shop.

  There’d been purple smudges shadowing those fabulous sapphire eyes, emphasizing the dark sweep of her un-mascaraed lashes and the delicate ridge of her cheekbones. Her mouth, even as she’d been telling him to go to hell, had been nakedly lush, her lips looking like the palest of pink velvet. He’d told himself over and over again as he’d sat there, playing the heavy with her, that she wasn’t his type, she could never be his type, and he’d kept telling himself that in the days that had followed.

  She wasn’t his type. But that was only because she wasn’t a type at all anymore. There was only one Julia Tennant, and he was sitting here getting quietly and completely drunk because he wanted her so bad he could almost taste her.

  He took another hefty swallow of the Scotch in his glass. He lifted his eyes to the doorway, and saw her standing there. He felt an electric aliveness jolt through his body, and knew the Scotch hadn’t numbed a thing.

  The first night she’d stayed here he’d given her a couple of his old shirts to sleep in, and she was wearing one of them now. She hadn’t bothered to roll back the cuffs, so only the tips of her fingers showed past the ends of the sleeves, but if it was skin he was hoping to see, Max thought dryly, he didn’t have to look too much further in either direction.

  Her legs were creamy pale. The tails of the shirt skimmed the front of her thighs, curved up at the sides of her hips, and then presumably dipped back down again at the back to just cover her rump, although he couldn’t say for sure unless she turned around and he got a back view of her. She’d left the top four or five buttons of the shirt undone, and as she crossed her arms and looked at him her breasts were almost completely visible. For once her hair wasn’t pulled back into an elastic. Still darkly damp from her evening shower, it swung in separate chunks that just skimmed her shoulders.

  “Is that decent Scotch?” There was a husky note in her voice, and her attitude was confrontational. Desire shot through him.

  “Single malt. Decent enough.”

  His own voice was steady, he noted, so perhaps the liquor had done something. She turned on her bare heel, afforded him a glimpse of her shirttail-covered rump and went into the kitchen. She was back in a minute with a heavy tumbler, and as she held it out she slipped onto the sofa a foot or so away from him, curling a leg under her as she sat.

  “So why don’t you tell me why you’re in here getting drunk all by yourself, Max?” she said coolly, her eyes on her tumbler as he tilted the bottle toward it. Glass clattered against glass, and a few amber drops spilled onto her exposed knee.

  “Sorry.” With more care than the action warranted, he set the bottle back onto the coffee table. “I only intended to get drunk enough to fall asleep,” he said briefly, trying and failing to keep his gaze from lingering on the dark gold droplets running together on her skin.

  She saw him looking. Thoughtfully she wiped the palm of her hand across the spilled liquid, her eyes never leaving his face. “Then here’s to falling asleep,” she said, taking a small sip of her drink. “I couldn’t either. Funny, huh?”

  He looked at her over the rim of his glass. “What are you trying to tell me, Jules?” he asked guardedly. Draining the last of his Scotch, he let the smoky undertaste roll around his tongue before he swallowed. He set his glass on the table in front of him. Not leaning back against the sofa again, he rested his forearms on his thighs, his hands hanging loosely down between his knees, and slanted a glance at her across his shoulder.

  “You mean am I trying to give you the word, Max?” She shook her head, and a strand of hair curved damply to her cheek. She let it stay there. “No, not yet. Maybe not ever. I just wanted to talk.” He wasn’t conscious of any change in his expression, but she must have seen something in his face. Her smile was faintly ironic. “A phrase guaranteed to make strong men quail, right?”

  Despite himself, he felt a corner of his mouth lift in an answering smile, but he responded seriously enough. “So what do you want to talk about?”

  She didn’t answer him immediately. Instead, she brought her glass to her lips, closed her eyes, and tipped the last half inch of liquid into her mouth as if it were a medicine she’d steeled herself to take. She set the glass on the table with a small thud, and suddenly he saw that beneath the unruffled pose she was as nervous as he was.

  “Okay, here’s the deal, Max,” she said, her voice a little louder than it had been a moment ago. He saw color touch the pale cheeks, and, as if she’d only just realized it was there, with a quick gesture she brushed away the strand of hair that was still clinging damply to the line of her jaw. She cleared her throat. “I think I told you I’d lost the knack of small talk, so I’m not even going to try. You want me in your bed, don’t you?”

  His head jerked up a fraction, and he was glad that he wasn’t holding anything breakable at the moment. He met her eyes. “I told you I did, Jules. I also told you the final decision would be yours,” he said, struggling to keep his tone even.

  “So we’ve got that straight.” She hesitated, and then went on. “Does it go any further than that?”

  He frowned, more in order to buy a second of time than because he didn’t know what she was talking about. “Further?”

  The velvet lips pursed in irritation, and those strong slim fingers flicked impatiently at him, as if waving away his stalling tactics. “Cut the crap, Max. This is cards-on-the-table time, and you know damn well what I mean. God knows why, but you’ve got the hots for me, and badly. I can understand that, because the condition’s mutual.” She shrugged—for all the world, Max thought, as if she’d just told him she didn’t take cream in her coffee. “But I need to know if that’s all it is for you. Because I’ve got this sinking feeling that it might not be all it is for me.”

  She sank back against the sofa pillows abruptly, keeping her gaze on him. This time when she folded her arms across her chest the white cotton of the shirt bunched up protectively, concealing what it had so obligingly revealed before, and he found himself feeling obscurely grateful for that.

  The Scotch had been a mistake. He needed a clear head for this conversation.

  “I didn’t ask you what the meaning of life was, for heaven’s sake.” There was an edge to her tone. “Come on, Max—hit me with your best shot. I’m tough. I can take it. This is all there is, isn’t it? For you it doesn’t go any further, does it?”

  Maybe she was tough, he thought in sudden weariness. She’d been trying to persuade both him and herself of that since the night in the coffee shop. But she’d taken more than a few shots since that night, and tough or not, she had to have a breaking point.

  Except Julia Tennant’s breaking point wouldn’t be him, he told himself. He leaned back, and met her eyes directly.

  “I’m pretty good at my job, Jules, and I guess if you asked them, the people I work with would tell you that I’m a decent enough guy. But like I told you before, they don’t really know me.”

  He saw her lashes flick down and then up again, the movement so tiny and swift as to be almost unnoticeable, and even though he knew his reaction was completely and totally inappropriate he didn’t bother to fight the hot rush
of desire that washed over him. What was the use? he asked himself tightly. If he tried to put out every fire that Julia Tennant lit in him he’d be running around all the time with a mental extinguisher, and he still wouldn’t be able to keep them under control.

  But that didn’t mean she had to get singed as well.

  “I don’t think you know me either,” he said flatly. “If you did you wouldn’t ask that question. It doesn’t go any further because that’s my limit, Jules. There’s nothing else in me to give.”

  “Was there ever?” She held his gaze steadily, and all of a sudden Max didn’t want to continue the conversation.

  He got to his feet. “No, Jules, there never was. There was always something missing.” He looked down at her, still motionless on the sofa, and found he couldn’t leave it at that. “For what it’s worth, the rest still stands. But I guess I won’t be getting the word from you anytime soon after this, will I?”

  She didn’t answer, and he raked a hand through his hair tiredly. “We’ve got a full day ahead of us tomorrow,” he said, shrugging off his jacket and throwing it onto a nearby chair. He pulled his tie down farther, until it was a loose noose around his neck, and unbuttoned his shirt cuffs. “We’d better get to bed.”

  She looked up at him and blinked, as if he’d interrupted her thoughts. “What? Oh.” Uncurling the leg that had been tucked underneath her, she rose too, her bare toes sinking slightly into the pile of the carpet. “I guess we’d better. Good night, Max.”

  He’d been right, he thought as he saw her walk down the short hall, the shirt she was wearing glimmering whitely in the shadows. Julia Tennant wasn’t about to crack over Max Ross. She hadn’t cracked when she’d been accused of murder, she hadn’t cracked in prison, and the steel inside her was still holding. What had she meant when she’d said she didn’t think that was all it was for her? Was it possible that she was—

  He was a goddamn fool, he thought, suddenly angry with himself. She’d already endured one bastard in her life, and if and when she decided she was ready to take a chance with another man, she’d take her time about it. She’d be cautious. She’d be smart. She’d look for someone who could give her what she deserved this time, and she wouldn’t settle for anything less.

  He still wanted her. He couldn’t have her. He would get her daughter back for her and then get out of her life.

  “Max.”

  He looked up, startled. She was standing in the doorway of the guest room, and although she’d folded her arms across her chest again, this time there was nothing defensive about the pose.

  “The thing is, you never told me what the damn word was.” She sounded impatient. “How the hell am I supposed to give you the word when I don’t even know what it is?”

  Chapter Eleven

  This was the point of no return, Julia thought faintly. She unfolded her arms and pushed herself away from the door frame. “So what’s the word, Max?” she asked once more.

  “I guess the word is yes,” he said slowly. He was still standing in front of the sofa, and the light from the lamp on the table beside it didn’t reach his eyes. She could feel his gaze on her anyway.

  “Yes,” she said. She turned and walked into the bedroom. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

  She’d made a lot of ill-advised decisions in her life, she thought, pressing her knees together to keep them from shaking. This one probably transcended that category. This one was probably just plain stupid. He’d played straight with her all the way down the line, so if she ever looked back on this moment in the future there would be no way she could blame anyone else but herself for what she’d just done.

  She’d come right out and asked him, and he’d given her the answer she’d known he was going to give. He wanted her. He wanted to make love to her—no, scratch that, he wanted to have sex with her. And that was as far as it went, according to him.

  So he hadn’t played games, and he hadn’t tried to tell her what she wanted, and she’d still given him the word he’d been waiting for since yesterday.

  Why?

  There was enough dim light coming from the hall to see him appear in the doorway. He stopped on the threshold, pressing his palms flat against either side of the frame as if to physically prevent himself from coming any farther. “You sure, Jules?” Except for the use of that damned nickname he’d given her, he could have been asking a witness to verify a previous statement.

  But he did use his nickname for her. And the nickname was part of it, Julia thought helplessly.

  She’d been born Julia Weston, a blond, blue-eyed, adorably miniature version of a mother who trotted her out when it was convenient and whisked her away when having a daughter might have cramped her flirtatious style. She’d become Julia Tennant, the ice-queen wife of a man who’d seen her as a possession. She’d been dubbed The Porcelain Doll by the media, and in prison she’d been assigned a number.

  He called her Jules. He didn’t see her as any of those other women she’d once been. By the time she’d met him on the night of her release she hadn’t had anything left to hide behind, and that in itself had been a release.

  So he’d gotten the real her. And it was the real her he wanted.

  If that was all Max Ross had to give, she still wanted it, Julia thought.

  “You’re the FBI agent,” she said edgily. “I walk in on your bout of solitary drinking wearing only a shirt and panties, I toss off a slug myself for courage, and then I do everything but leave a trail of bread crumbs to the door of my bedroom. Aren’t those enough clues for you? Of course I’m sure, Max. Stop propping up the door frame.”

  A brief grin broke the hard angles of his face. He let his hands drop to his sides and walked into the room, not stopping until he was standing in front of her. “Let’s get the first kiss over with right away,” he said lightly. “’Cause everyone’s nerves are way too strung up here, Jules—mine included.”

  “My nerves aren’t strung up.” Still on the bed, she had to crane her neck back to look at him. “Dammit, Max, you make me sound like some fragile flower. A week ago I was behind bars, and believe me, fragile gets toughened up pretty fast in—”

  “Shut up, Jules.” He moved that last inch closer, and she felt his knee beside her on the bed. She closed her mouth with a snap, her heart suddenly pounding. “No, keep that open, you’re gonna need it,” he said hoarsely, bending to her and cupping her chin in his hand, his thumb going to her bottom lip and parting it again. “Let’s do this thing,” he whispered.

  She’d expected him to lower himself to her. Instead his arms went around her waist and she felt him lifting her effortlessly to her feet, straightening up himself as he did so. But by then his mouth was already on hers. At that point the mechanics of what they were doing suddenly seemed supremely unimportant.

  He tasted of the Scotch he’d drunk, and at first that taste was deceptively smooth, lulling her into letting her lips open more fully as his tongue moved farther into her. But beneath the smoothness was the raw jolt of pure alcohol. Even as Julia’s own tongue flicked against his, discovered that rawness and instinctively retreated, it was too late.

  It felt as if all the nerve endings in her body had been charged by the contact, had turned into dangerously live wires that no longer transmitted the signals they were supposed to, but instead shot off showers of erratic sparks that scrambled her senses, her reactions, her intentions. Without conscious thought, she allowed her hands to slide up between his body and hers, allowed them to curl into fists, felt them clutching twin handfuls of his shirt and pulling him even closer.

  She didn’t need to pull him closer. The arms around her tensed with muscle. He took his kiss deeper.

  You can do any damn thing you want to do to me…

  It had been a rash promise. Only a rash man would have made it, she thought disjointedly. Or had he known that she would have been beyond demanding anything, beyond being able even to string a coherent thought together, when he was doing what he was doing
right now with her?

  There was an aggressiveness in his kiss, as if he couldn’t rein himself in, or didn’t want to. His tongue stroked the softness of her inner lips, pushed past hers to the dark well of her throat, slipped tantalizingly back again, velvet-rough, along the sensitive wetness of her cheek. She felt a small shock as his teeth closed firmly over her bottom lip, but before the sensation could translate itself into pain he was licking the tenderness away, soothing it with the tip of his tongue, coaxing her mouth into fullness again.

  She felt herself melting.

  He wanted her to melt, she thought hazily. He knew liquid heat was beginning to cascade through her, spilling over like burning wax and running slowly down her breasts, her hips, her thighs.

  His mouth took hers again, his jaw scraping against her skin like diamond grit. When this finally came down to what it ultimately, inevitably was leading toward, she thought, she would already be over the edge. She would be as limp as wet silk, unhesitatingly ready for him.

  He lifted his head. Slowly she opened her eyes and met his gaze.

  The half light from the hall shadowed one side of his face, and for a moment she found it impossible to read his expression. Then she saw the corded muscles in his neck, the hard color high on his cheekbones, the effort it was costing him to remain motionless. He exhaled slowly.

  “What was I saying about getting the first kiss over with so we could both relax?” he murmured. “It’s not working for me. But you’re the tough girl, Jules, honey—did it work for you?”

  There’d been nothing calculated about what he’d just done with her, she realized in disconcertion. He’d been melting too. He was still melting. Those green eyes were glazed over with heat and his mouth was slightly parted, as if he needed to taste her again.

  Even as the thought went through her mind his glance flicked to her temple. He smiled slowly, and just as slowly he ran a light finger along the arch of her eyebrow, past it to her hairline, and softly tucked a wayward strand behind her ear. The tender gesture was so at odds with his actions of a moment ago that she felt her breath catch in her throat.