The Night In Question

by Harper Allen

  Despite the shadows, she saw the quick flash of amusement that crossed his face. “I think we’ll manage,” he said dryly.

  He’d said she tasted of flowers, Julia thought, and she felt as if she was one, slowly opening into some secret and night-dark bloom as he continued entering her. The pressure inside her increased and she tightened her grip on the solid wrists at her hips.

  Gingerly she let herself be eased farther downward, feeling a flutter of panic as he began to fill her more completely. Desperately locking her gaze on his, she saw his teeth sink into his bottom lip, saw his lashes, thick and dark, brush against the hard ridges of his cheekbones, heard him inhale softly.

  He was inside her. She was enveloping him, surrounding him, wrapping around him, and suddenly that dark bloom was edged with desire, was no longer tightly furled but had opened fully to him. A wave of molten pleasure poured through her, and a tiny tremor ran along her limbs.

  “Ride me, Jules.” His words were no more than a sigh. “I want to see you riding me, honey.”

  He released her hips. His hands spread wide, he slid them upward, past her waist, past her ribcage, finally reaching her breasts and covering them. Cupping their weight in his palms, his thumbs traced lazy circles around each pink areola as tentatively she began to rock slowly forward along his length. As she sank back on him again he rose to meet her return, his thrust solid and powerful inside her, and all of a sudden it felt as if her whole body was suffusing with heat. She moved forward once more, the soft skin of her upper thighs and her rump chafing lightly against the coarse tangle of hair beneath her. He withdrew slightly, and then filled her again, withdrew and then filled her, his half-closed eyes never leaving her face and those hard hands of his covering her breasts.

  Somewhere deep inside her, liquid fire began to spread. She let her own lashes drift down as she felt him slide into her and out of her, into her and out again, and blindly she reached out. She gripped his rigidly muscled arms, and sensed rather than saw him looking at her.

  “I wanted to see you like this, Jules.” His words were slurred. “Your hair around your face, your head thrown back, your lips parted. You’re so beautiful, honey.”

  It wasn’t a lie, she thought dazedly. He really believed it. The room swam dizzily around her. She saw the green of his eyes begin to lose focus, saw the corded muscles in his neck tighten, felt him plunge deeper into her as he dragged in a shallow breath. The heat inside her became all-consuming, and she felt herself spiralling into a maelstrom of pure sensations—wanton need, erotic urgency, hot, wet desire. She couldn’t last any longer, Julia thought. She had to let him know that she—

  “Ride me all the way home, Jules.” His voice was a hoarse rasp. “Let’s bring this all the way home now, honey.”

  His hands had slid down to her hips again, and as he spoke his grip tightened. He pulled her convulsively to him and she felt him move even deeper inside her than before. Arching her back and moving onto him again she heard herself crying out his name, heard him gasp out hers, and then he was filling her one final, overwhelming time, and it was as if the black world behind her closed eyelids was dissolving into glittering explosions of heat and light. Now his arms were around her and her breasts were crushed to his chest, and still the shattering sensations poured through her, like a whole night sky blazing with fireworks.

  And then she was tumbling through space, falling as weightlessly as a feather back through the velvety night. She could feel the heavy beat of his heart under her palm, the warmth of his breath against the dampness of her hairline.

  Slowly she opened her eyes. His were still closed, the thick lashes a dark fan against the hard angles of his face, but even as she watched he opened them and met her gaze.

  He brought a hand up to push back the hair from her eyes. “So beautiful…” His whisper was little more than a sigh. “…love you, Jules,” he murmured almost inaudibly as his eyes closed again.

  Tell me lies…

  Tightly she shut her own suddenly tear-spangled eyes. She felt his hand on her hair, and laid her cheek gently down on his chest to hear his heartbeat.

  “I know you do, Max,” she lied back.

  Chapter Twelve

  “If you could cut the tags off this blue sweater and the jeans I’ve got on, I’ll wear them out, thanks.” Julia looked at the brand-new Timex on her wrist. “I’m running a little late.”

  “Did you want me to put this windbreaker and your old jeans in the bag with the rest of your purchases?” The young salesclerk sounded dubious. Julia shook her head.

  “No. You can throw them—” She paused, and then gave the clerk an abashed smile. “Yes, put them in with the rest. They’ve got sentimental value.”

  She was being foolish, she thought as she sped through the mall with her two bulging bags of clothing. But the jeans and windbreaker had been the clothes she’d been wearing the night in the coffee shop, when Max Ross had come back into her life.

  She’d left just enough time to have her hair trimmed before she was supposed to meet him outside. Feeling ridiculously self-indulgent as she sat back a few minutes later in the perfumed atmosphere of the mall hair salon and felt warm water spraying down her scalp, she closed her eyes and sighed blissfully.

  They would have slept in even later this morning if Boomer hadn’t awakened them. The old dog had simply circled the bed, nudging a cold nose at whatever out-sprawled limb he could reach, and Julia had opened her eyes to see a wagging tail just past the solid bulge of Max’s shoulder. Max had opened one sleepy eye at the same time, pulled her closer into his arms, and spoken in a low growl.

  “Pretend you don’t see him. Sometimes he gives up.”

  “I’m going to put some intensive conditioner on.” She glanced up to see the hairdresser looking down at her in consternation. “Girl, you’ve got gorgeous hair. What have you been doing with it lately?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Julia smiled. “Go ahead. I’m sure it needs it.”

  Max’s ploy with Boomer hadn’t worked, but after the dog had performed his urgent errand outside, he’d settled down once more on his rug in the kitchen, and Max had stumbled back to the bedroom looking for her. By then she’d been in the shower, Julia remembered, but that hadn’t mattered. He’d joined her there.

  They’d made love in clouds of billowing steam. Afterward he’d scrubbed her back and she’d returned the favor, and it hadn’t been until they were towelling each other off that Max had told her he had to drop by the office to pick up some information he’d put in a request for the previous night. In other circumstances she might have tried to get him to change his mind and come back to bed with her, Julia thought wistfully. In other circumstances he probably wouldn’t have needed persuading. But between both of them was the unspoken knowledge that the night they’d just shared had been an interlude, and that interlude, as sweet as it had been, couldn’t interfere with the task still ahead of them.

  Which didn’t mean she couldn’t allow herself to relive it a little in her mind, she told herself as her hairdresser came bustling back. Her neck arched again into the deep sink behind her, she let a small, secret smile play around her lips.

  They’d made love three times after that first time—four if you counted the shower scene, Julia told herself, and she definitely was counting the shower scene. And despite the erotic heights they had brought each other to, it hadn’t been just sex. It had been lovemaking. Even though he hadn’t come right out and said the words again, even though when he had said them that once his words had been slurred with languid after-climax incoherence, what they’d had together hadn’t been just a series of physical acts, she thought stubbornly.

  But you asked him to lie to you. He told you he couldn’t give you what you wanted because it wasn’t in him to give, and then you asked him to lie to you. You even promised that you wouldn’t do the very thing you’re doing now—persuade yourself in the morning that it hadn’t been a lie, persuade yourself th
at by some miracle, you’d brought the other half of Max Ross back to life.

  “Just a trim, right? Maybe some layers near the bottom to give it movement?” With brisk efficiency the stylist wrapped a thick cotton towel around her head like a turban. “I’ll have you looking like Cinderella at the ball before you leave here, girlfriend.”

  The woman’s words were almost an exact echo of her own thoughts. Staring unseeingly at her reflection in the mirror in front of her while the stylist began snipping, Julia clasped her hands tightly together under the plastic coverall she was wearing.

  Okay, she’d asked him to lie to her. But had everything been a lie? She shook her head in automatic denial, and beside her the hairdresser shot her an admonishing look before resuming her task.

  She didn’t think it had been, Julia thought, keeping obediently still. The man in the video had been capable of so much love that even in a grainy ten-year-old tape she’d seen it in his gaze. That man had been devastated by a loss so wrenching that even now he hadn’t been able to bring himself to acknowledge his pain, but he hadn’t disappeared completely.

  He was still there. She’d seen him last night. She was in love with him.

  “Whoever he is, tell him to take you to lunch at the most expensive place in town. You definitely should make him show off the new you a little before he messes up my handiwork in bed, girlfriend.” The stylist whipped away the plastic cape in satisfaction. “Like it?”

  Slightly disconcerted that her thoughts had been so visible, Julia focused her attention on her reflection in front of her. Her hastily knitted brows arched in surprised pleasure, ruining her pretence of detachment immediately.

  “I love it,” she said happily. “It looks…free, somehow.”

  “I didn’t take off a lot, I just got rid of the damaged bits. You gotta do that every so often, girlfriend.”

  Maybe it was Hair Philosophy 101, Julia thought wryly as she stood by the entrance to the mall and waited for Max to arrive, but the woman had made a point worth keeping in mind—and especially today, of all days. In a while she would be confronting her mother-in-law, if Max had managed to arrange an appointment with Olivia as he’d planned. She would have to discard that part of her that had always been so intimidated by her husband’s formidable mother, if she wanted this interview to be of any benefit at all.

  As she saw his car pull up she hurried over to it, suddenly a little self-conscious of her transformation and nervously wondering what his reaction to it would be. Even though he’d given her the money he’d forced Melvin Dobbs to return to her, she shouldn’t have spent any of it on herself, she thought with belated guilt. That money could set her and Willa up in an apartment while she looked for a job. That money might be needed as a safety net until she got back on her feet again. Even the few hundred dollars she’d spent might better have been—

  “God, Jules, you look gorgeous.”

  He’d gotten out of the car and had taken her bags from her, but instead of putting them in the trunk he simply stood there, looking at her. Her guilt lessened.

  “I do, don’t I?” Smiling, she looked down at the blue sweater and the hipster jeans, and then reached up to touch her hair. “No more tough babe, Max. Are you going to miss her?”

  “Oh, I think you’re probably still pretty tough, honey.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Just twice as dangerous now, looking like that.”

  “I bought something else too.” As they got into the car and Max began heading for the mall exit, she looked at him, her smile suddenly crooked. “I got Willa a birthday present, Max. Do you think you’d be able to get it to Barbara to give to her?”

  They were merging with a stream of traffic, and it was a moment before he replied. He glanced over at her, his expression unreadable. “That’s not going to be necessary, Jules. I was about to tell you anyway—while I was at the office a call came in for me. It was Barbara. She wants to meet with you.” He shrugged tightly. “Apparently Noel contacted her yesterday and told her we were looking into the bombing. I would have been out of line suggesting it myself, but since the request came from her we won’t be violating the terms of her protection program. I said we’d meet on neutral ground, and she gave me the name of a restaurant.”

  “Babs wants to meet with me?” Everything else forgotten, Julia stared at him in shock. “Why? She brokered a deal with the government to stay hidden from me, for God’s sake. She thinks I killed her husband and her brother, Max—why would she suddenly want to see me?”

  A thought struck her, and she caught her breath in sudden hope. “Does she think I didn’t do it? Does—does she want to give Willa back to me, Max?”

  “I don’t think so, Jules.”

  They came to a stoplight, and he turned to her. “I tried to get her to soften her position, Jules, but it was no go. She’s still just as convinced that you’re guilty as she was the day she testified against you.”

  The light changed to green, but he ignored the impatient honk of the car behind him and went on, his tone heavy. “I think she wants to make it clear to you that she’s never giving up Willa. I think she wants you to know that it’s useless even to try.”

  BARBARA HADN’T CHOSEN neutral ground for their meeting, Julia thought stonily as she and Max entered the restaurant. It was one she’d lunched at often when she’d been the aimless and bored Mrs. Kenneth Tennant, and even though she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead of her she was sure she recognized more than a few of the female faces looking up in quickly concealed interest at her. The new outfit that had bolstered her confidence only an hour earlier looked ridiculously out of place amid the designer suits and cashmere twinsets of the women around her, and she was suddenly convinced that her haircut looked exactly like what it was—a budget creation from a mall stylist. She curled the fingers of her left hand into her palm as she and Max followed the maître d’ past a table of chattering matrons.

  “Remind me again what decade we’re in?” Max frowned at the almost exclusively female lunch crowd. “Doesn’t anybody in this room hold down an honest job, for crying out loud?”

  He sounded so disgruntled that she was surprised into a smile. “Not hardly, Max,” she drawled. “Oh, I think Victoria Charles over there might hold a soirée once a year for the symphony, and Peggy Shoemaker calls herself an interior designer because she’s constantly redecorating her Boston home and the lodge in Aspen, but work? They married rich so they wouldn’t have to.” She added with raw honesty, “I should know. I used to be one of them.”

  “Do you wish you still were?”

  His question was blunt, but she didn’t even hesitate before giving him her equally blunt answer. “Hell, no!” The table they were just passing fell silent as the exclamation burst from her, and Julia caught the eye of an immaculately groomed brunette before the woman could turn away. “Hi, Sheryl,” she purred without missing a stride. “Long time no see.”

  “That was childish.” Max gave her a reproving look as they left the stunned table behind, and then broke into a grin. “Feel better?”

  She grinned back at him. “Hell, yes.” She sobered. “It was my way of whistling past the graveyard, Max. I’m nervous.”

  “Don’t be.” The green gaze holding hers darkened. “Unlike the rest of this crowd, Barbara Van Hale used to be a friend of yours. But she’s spent two years building you up into the bogeyman, Jules. Maybe once she sees you haven’t sprouted horns and a tail she’ll listen to your side of the story.”

  “And if she doesn’t, what do we—”

  Julia broke off as the maître d’ stopped just ahead of them and with a flourish pulled out one of the delicate gilt chairs that surrounded the pink-linened table. She stood as if rooted to the spot as the dark-haired woman already seated at the table met her eyes.

  “Hello, Julia.” Babs flushed, but didn’t look away. “I—I’m glad you came. Thank you for arranging this, Agent Ross.”

  Her heart thumping painfully in her chest, Julia shakily lowered herself int
o the chair that the maître d’ had been holding out for her. She was vaguely aware of Max taking his place at the table with them.

  Babs was as apprehensive as she was, she thought wonderingly, taking in her former sister-in-law’s trembling hands and the pallor that had replaced that first flood of color in her cheeks. The soft brown eyes were shadowed and wary. Julia found her voice.

  “Hello, Babs.” It had come out as more of a croak, she thought, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to let Barbara know she was on tenterhooks here too. She swallowed dryly, and tried again. “You—you’re looking well.”

  “I’ve put on some weight since you saw me last.”

  Babs stopped, and once again her face flamed. Their waiter chose that moment to take their orders for drinks, and it was with a sense of relief that Julia opened her menu in front of her and studied it while the man hovered beside them.

  “Just a mineral water,” she mumbled up at him as he came to her. “With lots of ice, please.”

  “I’ll have the same.” Babs’s voice was barely audible.

  Julia knew what was going through her mind. The last time they’d seen each other had been on the final day of her trial. Babs had been frighteningly thin by then. She’d been widowed and had lost her brother all in the same day, and after attending two funeral services, one after the other, with her late brother’s wife at her side for both of them, she’d been informed only hours later that the woman she’d thought of as her closest friend was the prime suspect in those deaths. By the time she’d had to give her evidence a few months later, she’d been close to having a complete physical and emotional breakdown.

  But Babs was like her, Julia thought—tougher than she looked. Her valor and determination on the cliff the day before yesterday had been proof of that.

  She saved my daughter. She saved Willa, and she’s given her a loving home for the last two years, she reminded herself shakily. No matter what, I can never repay her for that.