by Carole Buck
“Why?”
“Uh—uh—” Great. Just great! Flummoxed by a three-letter question from a not-yet-five-year-old!
“Because it is, Andy.”
Andy turned toward John, clearly taken aback. Leigh was a bit startled, too. And oddly bemused. The “Because” ploy was even lamer than her “That’s different” gambit!
“Grown-ups always say that,” Andy groused, making a face. His hitherto-perfect hero apparently had fallen a few points in his esteem. He shifted back toward Leigh again. She saw a hint of mulishness enter his expression and she braced herself.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with talkin’ about money, Mommy,” he declared. “Maybe John could ‘vest some of his in your bookstore. It’s a really good business. Everybody says. And if he gave us that little extra-boost thing, I bet we could get rich enough to buy a baby for Christmas. Or maybe just some of those seeds the daddy’s s’posed to—”
“Andrew McKay, that’s quite enough!” Leigh knew she should have cut him off several sentences earlier. Unfortunately, she’d been too stunned by what she’d been hearing to speak.
“I don’t-”
“I said, that’s enough. Take your napkin and wipe your mouth. It’s got milk all over it.”
“But, Mommy—”
She fixed her son with her most uncompromising I-mean-ityoung-man glare. Eventually, he did as he’d been bidden. His obedience was grumblingly reluctant, to be sure, but at least he acquiesced to her authority.
She then forced herself to look at John. His expression was difficult to read. But there was a hint of something in his dark, deep-set eyes. Could it be…regret? she wondered. Yes. Perhaps. Although what he would have to regret in this situation she could not begin to imagine.
There was tenderness in his eyes, too. At least, she thought it was tenderness. Whatever it was, it triggered a soft, stirring warmth deep within her.
“I—” she slipped her hands beneath the table to wipe her suddenly damp palms on her napkin “—I’m sorry.”
“For what, Leigh?”
It was tenderness she was seeing, she thought, licking her lips. And desire. And much, much more. Where were these emotions coming from?
“My son can be a little too…candid…at times,” she replied after a moment, her voice throaty.
“You telled me to always tell the truth,” Andy muttered in a mutinous undertone.
An odd look passed over John’s angular face. His eyes turned opaque. Leigh watched as he glanced at the poutymouthed little boy seated to his left.
“And you always should, Andy,” he said quietly. “But you have to be careful how you tell it…and to whom.”
You telled me to always tell the truth.
But you have to be careful how you tell it…and to whom.
Those two sentiments stayed with Leigh throughout the rest of their meal and during the half-hour ride back from the restaurant. She was still turning them over in her mind when John came downstairs after a good-night chat with Andy.
You telled me to always tell the truth.
How could she advocate honesty when so much about her life was a sham? she asked herself poignantly, leaning her forehead against the chilly glass of the living room’s main window. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d offered someone the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!
But you have to be careful how you tell it…and to whom.
Careful? Lord. Scared speechless part of the time—and preoccupied with keeping track of her lies the rest of it—was closer to the mark.
Worrying her lower lip with the edge of her front teeth, Leigh stared out into the wintry darkness. It had started to snow several hours earlier. Gentle flurries at first. Now, great fat flakes. She knew the roads were treacherous. John’s concentration during the drive home had been a palpable thing. Even Andy had seemed to sense—
She didn’t hear John come back into the living room. She felt him. Awareness of his presence rippled through her like a heated tide, making her body tingle. Even before he spoke, she was turning away from the window to face him.
“I think Andy’s down for the count,” he commented, crossing to her. He moved like a jungle cat. No discernible footsteps. Scarcely a squeak out of the room’s normally noisy hardwood floor.
“Good,” she responded, brushing at the fabric of her skirt with a slightly shaky hand. She caught a brief whiff of his after-shave. The subtly spicy fragrance was unfamiliar to her. But beneath it was a scent that teased at her olfactory nerves and sent a shiver skittering along the surface of her suddenly sensitized skin.
There was an element of anticipation in the shiver. Of expectation. As though she knew what the scent portended.
There was flash of anxiety, too, for precisely the same reason.
“You didn’t mind, did you?” John asked quietly. Although he was within touching distance, he wasn’t crowding her. The distance between them was nicely judged. Too well-calibrated to be accidental.
“Mind what?”
“Andy insisting I stay upstairs and talk after you tucked him in.”
Leigh stiffened. Of course, she’d minded! Although her son and she had shared their usual night-night kiss and cuddle, Andy had punctuated this loving ritual by dismissing her from his room so he could have a private conversation with his new best buddy. The jealousy she’d experienced during John’s initial visit to their home had returned full force. So, too, her insecurity about her ability to provide the kind of guidance a boy needed on his journey into manhood.
“It was good of you to spend the time with him,” she said after a moment or two, picking her words with great care.
John cocked an eyebrow, the scarring on his temple furrowing. “You weren’t so diplomatic the day before yesterday when you were talking about my tacky tomahawk.”
Leigh lifted her chin, responding to the challenge in his observation. The angle felt…familiar. A split second later she realized why. She’d tilted her head to precisely the same degree to look up into Nicholas Marchand’s eyes many, many times in the past.
Her breath caught.
Her pulse scrambled, then accelerated into a nervy, hip-hop rhythm.
Stop it, she ordered herself, a prickle of panic running up her spine in response to the unbidden encroachment of memory. Just stop it! So what if John Gulliver is the same height as Nick was? Millions of men are—
“Leigh?”
She started, blinking rapidly. Her heart was thumping. “Wh-what?”
“Are you all right?” John had closed most of the distance between them. He’d also taken hold of her, his palms curving to fit the shape of her shoulders. She could feel the virile heat of his body, sense his aggressively masculine power.
And yet…she wasn’t afraid of him. Urgently aware of his proximity, yes. Acutely conscious of his physical superiority, too. But afraid, no. Not at all. Because something—his quiet, controlled tone? the disciplined gentleness of his touch?—persuaded her that John Gulliver would never hurt her.
This was not to say that she thought him harmless. Quite the contrary. The woman who’d once been Suzanne Whitney didn’t doubt for a second that the man standing before her was capable of doing harm to another human being. Yet every instinct she had also assured her that he represented no threat to her.
Unless…
Unless she lowered her guard and allowed him to become one. And in that case, the fault would be hers—not his.
“Yes, John,” Leigh managed, astonished by the steadiness of her voice. “I’m just…fine.”
His gold-flecked brown eyes shifted back and forth several times as though he were trying to gauge the real meaning of her words. She sustained his searching gaze, even as she felt herself start to flush.
Finally, John’s grip moderated. He slid his hands off her shoulders and halfway down her arms, then let go of her. “You looked a little rocky,” he commented, stepping back a pace as though to underscore her release.
&nb
sp; “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Positive.” Several seconds ticked by. Leigh finally broke eye contact and gestured in the direction of the sofa. She knew the color in her cheeks was still higher than normal. “Would you like to sit down?”
John hesitated for a moment, seeming to want to press for further reassurance. Then something changed his mind. He nodded, saying, “Okay. Thanks.”
They moved to the sofa and seated themselves. There was an awkward pause. Just as the awkwardness was about to consolidate into something worse, Leigh asked, “So, what did you and Andy talk about?”
John shrugged. “This and that.”
“Investment opportunities?”
“Not…exactly.”
She grimaced inwardly, recognizing evasiveness when she heard it. She told herself that she and her son were going to have to have a serious discussion about the need for discretion in the very near future. She pretty much acquitted John of snooping. Why should the man pry? Andy had already demonstrated that he was ready to reveal all without any kind of prompting.
“Home arsenals?”
“Nope.” This response was quicker and much more definite than the previous one.
Leigh crossed her right leg over her left, smoothing down the hem of her skirt as she did so. The fabric of her slip moved sleekly across her stocking-clad thighs, triggering a fluttering in her stomach. She caught another hint of the primal male scent beneath John’s after-shave. The fluttering became more insistent.
“Baby…seeds?” she suggested.
John studied her for a few moments, as though trying to determine whether she was being deliberately provocative. She wished him luck in figuring it out. She wasn’t certain herself. She only knew she couldn’t let the issue alone.
“The subject did come up,” he eventually allowed. His lips twisted as his eyes sparked with a sudden flash of humor. “Nothing I didn’t know already, though.”
Leigh caught her breath, knocked off-balance by the casual quip. A strange quiver ran through her. She could imagine Nicholas Marchand countering a question with exactly the same kind of—
No! she cried inwardly, cutting off the thought before she could complete it. Don’t imagine anything about Nick! He’s dead!
“Leigh?”
She steadied herself by sheer force of will.
“Sorry,” she murmured, then wished she hadn’t. A tremulous half-laugh worked its way up from her chest. This was-what? she wondered. The fourth time she’d been with John Gulliver? Yes. The fourth. And how many times during those four encounters had she felt compelled to apologize for her behavior? She couldn’t exactly recall, but she knew the routine was beginning to wear a bit thin. “Have you noticed? I tend to say ‘sorry’ to you a lot.”
“Some sort of vibe I’m giving off?”
“No!” She shook her head emphatically, but couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “Of course not.”
“But I do make you uncomfortable.”
It was more assertion than inquiry and for a good ten seconds, Leigh had no idea how to respond to it. “That’s me, John,” she finally replied, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Not…you.”
“Maybe it’s both of us.”
Her heart missed a beat. Shifting her position, she lifted a hand and began toying with her hair. Then she realized what she was doing and lowered the hand back to her side. She shifted again.
“We’ve known each other less than a week,” she said at last.
“It feels longer.”
“Yes, well, I can’t rely on how a situation feels, John. I have to depend on how it really is.”
There was a silence. Then, “Do you want me to go…Leigh?”
She shifted a third time, wondering tangentially about the peculiar way he’d just inflected her name. She’d heard him do it several times before. In a bizarre way, it reminded her of the terrible sense of disorientation she’d suffered during the first months after she’d assumed her new identity. She’d been a beat behind—a few degrees off—during that entire period. She’d had to remind herself over and over that Suzanne Whitney was no more. She was Leigh McKay. And she would be Leigh McKay until the end of her days.
“Do you want to leave?”
“No.”
His bluntness shook her. She’d assumed that John would try to finesse her question as she’d finessed his. Equivocation she could deal with. But this—
“Your turn,” he prompted, holding her gaze with his.
“What?”
“Do you want me to go?”
She swallowed hard, a part of her wishing she could match his frankness. “No,” she admitted with a small shake of her head. “I don’t want you to go. Not…yet.”
There was another break in their conversation. For reasons she couldn’t articulate, Leigh found this one was easier to endure than the ones that had come before. Unfortunately, John chose to end it by broaching a very volatile topic.
“It must be tough for you,” he observed reflectively.
“What?”
“Being a single mother.”
Whether it was intended to do so or not, the remark hurt. “I’m doing the best I can,” Leigh retorted.
“I wasn’t suggesting you weren’t.” John held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “You’ve done an amazing job with Andy. He’s a terrific little boy.”
“But he is a little boy.” The words slipped out of their own accord.
“Well…yes. Obviously.”
“And little boys need more than their mommies if they’re going to grow up right.”
John’s gaze sharpened. He leaned toward her. “You’re worried about there not being a…male influence…in Andy’s life?”
Leigh looked away, the bridge of her nose aching with the sudden pressure of unshed tears. The stress of the last five days had left her very thin-skinned. “I’m his mother. It’s my job to worry about everything.”
“What about his father?”
Blue eyes collided with brown ones. Leigh’s breath clogged halfway up her throat, compressing the hurt inherent in her next words. “What about him?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“He’s not a part of our lives.” It was the truth, but hardly the whole truth. She didn’t know the whole truth. She’d spent five and a half years clinging to the conviction that she didn’t really want to.
“You’re divorced?”
“No.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “We were never married.”
“He just…left you?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Leigh abruptly declared, getting up from the sofa. That she’d talked about it at all dismayed her. She’d declared the subject of Andy’s paternity off-limits the day she’d learned she was pregnant, and she’d made the prohibition stick. Why had she abandoned her silence now? Why had John Gulliver been able to draw her out when so many others—
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, also rising to his feet. Reaching out, he caught her left upper arm. “Leigh. Please. I’m sorry.”
She pivoted toward him, pulling free of his grasp. He made no effort to hold on to her.
“I think you should leave, John,” she said. “Now.”
His instinct was to balk. She could see it in the hardening of his angular features and the tensing of his leanly powerful body. Strangely enough, she felt no fear. The impression she’d formed earlier—that this man would do her no physical harm—remained intact.
“Are you sure?” John asked after a painful pause.
No, she wasn’t.
“Yes,” she lied.
He inclined his head. “All right, then. I’ll go.”
They walked to the front door in silence. John retrieved his tan trench coat, donned it, then turned to face her. “I am sorry, Leigh. Truly.”
She lifted her chin, shutting her mind to the sense of déjà vu it stirred. “So am I, John.”
“
Will you forgive me?”
“After everything you’ve done for Andy—”
“Is that what it comes down to?” he interrupted. “I get a pass because I helped your son?”
She inhaled sharply at the rasp of temper in his voice. The spicy scent of his after-shave—and the natural male musk it overlay—filled her nose. A melting warmth stole through her, muting her momentary flash of alarm. Her lashes fluttered down. She felt herself sway.
“Is it, Leigh?” The angry, injured edge was gone, super-seded by an insinuating huskiness. As John spoke, his left hand came up to trace the curve of her right cheek. Gently. Oh, so gently.
“No,” she admitted in a breathless whisper, wondering if he could tell how fast her pulse was pounding. She lifted her eyelids and gazed up at him. “This…I…It’s not just because of Andy.”
His fingers splayed. He eased his hand back, his hard palm cupping the side of her face with infinite care. “‘This’ being—?”
She lifted her own left hand and placed it against John’s chest. She felt his muscles contract beneath the fine knit fabric of the dark turtleneck sweater he was wearing. The hammer stroke of his heartbeat was clearly discernible. She registered this evidence of the effect her touch had on him with an unsettling mixture of excitement and uncertainty.
“You know what this is,” she said throatily, answering his question the only way she could.
“Yes,” he concurred, buffing the pad of his thumb against the nerve-rich hollow just beneath her right ear. “I know.”
And then he bent his head and touched his lips to hers.
The contact was featherlight at first. Cautious. Almost chaste. His mouth was teasing, hers tightly shut. She felt…next to nothing.
Or so Leigh told herself.
The coaxing glide of his tongue changed that. John traced the seam between her lips with a tantalizing stroke, murmuring her name in a velvety undertone. The caress of his hand against the side of her throat became more explicit in its eroticism. She shivered as a quicksilver thrill coursed through her veins.
Yes, she thought.
She opened to him on a melting sigh, tilting her head to the right as he tilted his to the left. There was no first-time awkwardness. No hesitation. Had every incremental alteration of position been choreographed, it could not have gone more smoothly. The uncertainty she’d experienced a few minutes before disintegrated in the face of an inexplicable sense of familiarity.