by Carole Buck
She fingered the bouquet, not meeting his gaze, not bothering to reply.
“Leigh, I’m sorry if my staying over has caused a problem for you.”
Her hand stilled. Then she lifted her eyes to meet his once again. The strength he saw in her face reminded him again of how much she’d changed in the five and a half years of their enforced separation. She was so much…more…than Suzanne Whitney had been.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle, John,” she said steadily. “Besides. You and I know the truth.”
The truth…
Tell her, his heart commanded.
Not yet, his head countered. But soon.
“Yes,” he agreed huskily. “I guess we do. Still, if I’ve stirred up something between you and Dee—”
“It’s settled.”
John glanced toward the rear of the store. Dee was handing Wes a book.
“I thought I had things settled with Wes,” he commented edgily. “About what happened at your house, I mean. Or…didn’t happen.”
“You did.”
“But you said Dee talked to him this morning—”
“He told her you’d told him you’d spent the night on my sofa.” Leigh tilted her head, a curious expression coming over her face. “Although why you felt compelled to say anything in the first place…”
“I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.”
“Ah.”
John expelled a breath on a frustrated hiss, feeling strangely off-balance. “Something about the guy rubs me the wrong way.”
“Really?”
What was that supposed to mean? he wondered. If he didn’t know better, he would think Leigh was enjoying a joke at his expense.
Whoa. Wait a second. Maybe he didn’t know better. That Suzanne Whitney would never have dreamed of teasing Nicholas Marchand, he was absolutely certain. But what liberties Leigh McKay might consider taking with John Gulliver…
“Let’s forget about Wes, okay?” he suggested abruptly. “Unless you think he didn’t believe what he told Dee I told him. Because if that’s the case—”
“He wouldn’t have repeated it if he’d thought it was a lie.”
John raked a hand through his hair, considering the implications of this assertion. “Then Dee’s the one who doesn’t believe.”
“Didn’t. Does now. As I said, we pretty much sorted things out.”
“Oh.”
There was a pause.
“So, John,” Leigh finally said, lifting the bouquet to her nose and taking another sniff. “Did you have a reason for stopping by? Aside from bringing me these gorgeous flowers, that is.”
Actually, he had.
“I have to fly down to New York tonight,” he replied. “A business problem.”
“Not something you can take care of via computer while lounging around in your jammies, hmm?”
He chuckled, understanding the reference. “Unfortunately, no. I expect to be back early tomorrow evening, though, and I was wondering if I could talk you and Andy into having dinner with me again.”
“Dutch treat?” The suggestion came after a brief hesitation.
“Fine with me,” he immediately acquiesced, sensing the pride that underlay the offer. Then he winked. “Or we could stick Andy with the bill. Get him to shell out some of those millions of pennies he has in his savings jar.”
Leigh laughed. “Speaking of my son—”
“I know. I know.” He’d already anticipated the caveat. “He wouldn’t want to go back to a restaurant that serves Bambi au poivre.”
“Something like that.”
“Is there a pancake house in the vicinity?”
His companion’s soft lips twisted. “I don’t think so.”
“How about the local pizza joint?”
“Been there. Done that.”
“No craving for pepperoni, huh?”
“I happen to prefer anchovies and black olives, thank you very much.”
John feigned a shudder of disgust. “Now that sounds awful.”
“How about hamburgers?”
“How about it?”
“There’s a place nearby that specializes in overcooked burgers, greasy fries and shakes with less milk in them than artificial coffee creamers.”
“It’s a date.”
“I’m sorry. I told you the arrangements would take time.”
“Time’s up,” Federal Prisoner No. 00394756 replied, trying to bore a hole in his lawyer’s skull with his eyes. “Someone’s been messing with what’s mine.”
“H-how—?”
“My source.”
“You…spoke directly to your source?”
“You have a problem with that?”
“No. No, of course not, Mr. Stone. It’s perfectly understandable. Given that your source is—” the lawyer glanced nervously toward the omnipresent surveillance camera “—I mean—”
“I don’t give a damn what you mean. I don’t pay you to mean. I pay you to do what I tell you.”
“I…y-yes. Yes. Absolutely.”
“When?”
“Another week.”
“Too long.”
“Maybe…maybe six days.”
Six days, thought Federal Prisoner No. 00394756 with a slow smile of expectation.
Six days.
In six days he would be on his way to disposing of Suzanne Whitney—that faithless witch!—and reclaiming his only son. Maybe en route he could find Saint Nick Marchand’s grave and spit on it.
“Mr. S-Stone?” the Ivy League shyster asked.
“Six days. No more.”
Chapter 10
“Is not.”
“Is, too!”
“Is not!”
“Is, too!”
“Hey, chill out, you guys,” John commanded, stepping between a glaring, red-faced Andy McKay and an equally bellicose little boy with a roly-poly build and curly black hair. Although he would have preferred to spend the interlude watching Leigh, he’d felt compelled to keep an eye on these two youngsters during the story hour just past. Instinct had told him that they were spoiling for some kind of square-off. When they’d moved away from the refreshment table and headed toward the back of the bookstore, he’d decided to follow—just in case. “What’s going on?”
Andy turned, his blue-gray eyes incandescent with indignation. “Bryan says his ‘pendix scar is gooder than my head owwie and it’s not!”
“Is so!” the aforementioned Bryan insisted, also turning toward John. There was a smear of chocolate on his plump upper lip, a souvenir of the frosted snack cake that John had seen him wolf down in three huge bites. The boy had also packed away four or five peanut-butter cookies and at least two raisin-studded fruit bars. “Wanna see?”
John frowned, not immediately understanding the implications of this artless query. Then he realized that the curly-haired kid had hooked his thumbs into the drawstring waistband of his sweatpants and was preparing to yank them down. A split second later he recalled what Andy had told him about his friend’s penchant for showing off the scar on his stomach.
“No!”
“Huh?” Bryan froze in mid-tug. He seemed mildly puzzled by the vehemence with which his offer had been rejected.
“I don’t, uh, need to see your appendix scar, uh, Bryan,” John said, making a conscious effort to moderate his tone. He glanced toward the front of the store. Leigh was standing by the door, bidding farewell to a pregnant woman and a pair of identically dressed twin girls. Each of the little girls was clutching her very own copy of the book of poems from which Leigh had read at the close of story hour. “I’m sure it’s…terrific.”
“More terrificker than my head owwie?” Andy asked, a whiny edge entering his voice.
John brought his gaze back to the two boys, trying to focus his thoughts. “Not necessarily.”
“What’s that mean?” Bryan demanded. “Not ‘cess-asarily?”
Good question, John acknowledged with an inward grimace, struggling to formulate an
adequate answer. “It means your scars are different,” he elaborated after a moment. “You can’t really compare them to each other.”
“So—” Andy scrunched up his face “—they can both be terrific?”
“Uh…yes. They can both be terrific.”
“Only not the same terrific, right?”
“Exactly.”
Andy and Bryan exchanged looks. John held his breath, uncertain how his improvised reasoning would play with a pair of not-yet-five-year-olds. He released it in a relieved rush when the two little boys started to grin.
“Cool!” Bryan exclaimed, the enthusiasm of his tone making up for his less-than-eloquent choice of adjectives.
“Yeah,” Andy concurred with a merry giggle, bobbing his head. The bandage that covered his wound was considerably smaller than the one he’d sported at the previous week’s story hour. “Cool.”
There was a pause. Eventually John bent down and extended his hand to Bryan. “I’m John Gulliver, Bryan,” he said.
“I know,” the curly-haired youngster replied, allowing his fat little fingers to be engulfed by John’s long, lean ones.
“I get to call him John,” Andy reported smugly. “Cuz he said I could. You have to call him Mr. Gul’ver.”
John glanced at his son with a mixture of affection and exasperation. “He can call me John, too, if he’d like.”
“Yeah!” Bryan cheered, sticking out his tongue at Andy. Andy promptly reciprocated.
“Guys,” John reproved, feeling a bit like a referee. “Come on. I thought you two were supposed to be friends.”
“Sometimes.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, maybe you could make this one of those ‘sometimes’?”
The little boys traded another pair of glances, considering the proposition.
“‘Kay,” Andy finally acquiesced, shrugging.
“Yeah,” Bryan concurred, twiddling with the drawstring on his sweatpants. “‘Kay.”
It wasn’t quite peace in the Middle East, John reflected wryly, but it was better than a fistfight.
“John?” Bryan queried after a few seconds, cocking his head.
“Yes?”
“Did you get in an ax-ident? Is that why your face has that stuff on the side of it?”
John hesitated, trying to gauge whether the little boy was upset by his appearance. He didn’t really seem to be..Still…
“Yes, Bryan,” he replied after a moment. “I was in an accident. A car crash.”
“Did somebody run into you?”
“No. I lost control and hit an embankment.” Or so the official police report maintained. He had no memory of what had happened.
“He cried after,” Andy contributed. “Even though he was a grown-up. Cuz what happened to him really hurt.”
Bryan frowned. “My daddy says only sissies cry.”
Again, John hesitated. There’d been a time when he, too, had subscribed to the notion that “real men” didn’t weep. He hadn’t realized until the episode with the clinic staffer who’d chided Andy for acting like a baby how far away from this attitude he’d moved. But just because he’d come to the conclusion that tears and masculinity weren’t mutually exclusive didn’t mean he had the right to impose his conviction on another man’s son.
“John says it’s okay to cry,” Andy declared before he’d decided how to respond. “I cried kind of a lot when I got my head owwie, but he still telled me I was brave.”
“And you were, buddy,” John said, finally finding his voice. He was deeply touched by his son’s faith in his opinion. And humbled, too. He was accustomed to having people defer to his judgment in professional matters, of course. But this was different. This was from the heart. “You were very brave.”
“Well…maybe,” Bryan conceded.
Andy fixed his pudgy playmate with a inquisitive look. “Did you cry when the doctor sticked that giant needle in your leg to suck out all the pus and keep it from havin’ to be chopped off?”
The curly-haired boy screwed up his mouth, the chocolate smear on his upper lip twisting like a caterpiller. “Some,” he admitted with palpable reluctance. “But mostly I screamed. And after, my doodoo-head sister Allison said how it was all my fault cuz I didn’t leave my cut alone like I was s’posed to. I wanted to sock her.”
“Sisters are doodoo heads cuz they’re girls,” Andy asserted with a disdainful gesture. “That’s how come 1 want a baby brother for Christmas.”
“Yeah.” Bryan nodded solemnly. “Brothers are much better. ‘Cept if they do gucky stuff on you.”
“Like poop.”
“Or pee.”
“Or—” Andy broke off, glancing beyond John. He lifted his hand and waggled his fingers. “Oh, hi, Mommy.”
John had already started to turn. Something—a sound, a scent, something—had alerted him to Leigh’s approach. He was conscious of an acceleration in his pulse. Likewise, of a twinge of uneasiness. How much of his conversation with Andy and Bryan had she overheard?
“Hi, guys,” came the pleasant greeting.
“Wanna see my ‘pendix scar, Ms. McKay?” Bryan questioned, his hands dropping to his waistband.
Leigh didn’t miss a beat. Favoring her son’s chubby chum with a serene smile she replied, “I’ve already seen it, thank you, Bryan.”
“John was ‘splainin’ to us about owwies, Mommy,” Andy informed her.
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. How, like, they’re not all the same. And you can’t com—uh—com-pare them. Did you know he cried when he got his?”
Blue eyes shifted toward brown ones, full of questions. John decided it was time to trot out the trusty distract-’em-with-food ploy. It had worked before; perhaps it would work again.
“You know, you two,” he said, inclining his head toward the front of the store, “I think I see a couple of leftover chocolate snack cakes on the refreshment table. It’d be a shame to let them go to waste.”
Bingo. The touchy issue of injuries suffered and tears shed in the wake of them was instantly abandoned.
Bryan’s eyes widened in greedy anticipation. “Can we—?”
“Please, Mommy?” Andy wheedled, looking up at his mother.
Leigh’s mouth quirked. “One apiece,” she replied, shooing them off with a quick movement of her hands. “Go on.”
The two preschoolers raced away.
There was a pause. Blue eyes met brown ones once again. Lord, she was lovely, John thought, his body tightening. Inside as well as out, Leigh McKay was absolutely beautiful. And he wanted her. In his arms. In his bed. In.his life. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone.
Including Suzanne Whitney.
“You have quite a knack for dealing with little boys,” she finally observed, her voice wry.
“Just borrowing a page from your book.”
“Excuse me?”
“The first day I came to visit, when Andy got on the subject of your having a handgun in the house, you distracted him—”
“By suggesting he offer you some refreshments.” Leigh colored delicately as-she completed the sentence. Whether she was embarrassed by the reminder of her firearm—or by the revelation that her parental manipulations had not gone unnoticed—was impossible to say. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. “Yes. I remember.”
“Well, I’m no expert on the younger set,” John admitted frankly. Although he was determined to find out more about why his former lover had chosen to arm herself, he knew this wasn’t the time to pursue the matter. “I figured I’d go with what I’d seen work. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Except for having to cope with the effects of a post-snackcake sugar rush, not at all.”
John glanced toward the front of the store, watching his-their—son. “Andy’s a wonderful boy, Leigh.”
“He likes you, too, John. Very much.”
The tone of this statement brought his gaze back to her face. That his companion’s softly spoken words were sincer
e, he didn’t doubt. But there was a hint of…of…well, it sounded like regret lurking beneath the assertion, as well.
What about Andy’s mother? John suddenly found himself wanting to demand. Did she like him very much?
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to push those questions aside. This was not the time or place to press. He summoned up what he hoped looked like a casual smile and said, “I had a great time at dinner last night.”
Leigh responded to his smile with one of her own. He saw a look of relief shimmer through the depths of her sky-colored eyes. “Me, too.”
“Of course, I probably consumed a hundred times the federal government’s recommended daily allowance of grease in one sitting.”
“I warned you about those fried onion rings.”
“True. Although you neglected to mention that I’d still be tasting them twenty-four hours later.”
They both laughed.
There was another pause. After a moment or two, Leigh looked away. She licked her lips. John clenched his hands at the sight of her pale pink tongue and the provocative sheen of moisture it left behind.
“Do you want to do it again?” he asked abruptly.
Leigh’s gaze slewed back to his. She seemed genuinely startled. Had he harbored a suspicion that the lip-licking routine had been some kind of come-on, it would have died right then.
“Do what again, John?” she asked, flicking a lock of hair away from her face. “Go out for hamburgers?”
Cool down, he ordered himself. “Only if you insist.”
“I don’t—”
“Dinner,” he quickly clarified. “You, me and Andy.”
Confusion gave way to caution. And something more. John stiffened.
“What is it, Leigh?” he asked, taking a step closer. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she replied, fiddling with the cuff of the raspberry wool sweater she wore. The color flattered her fair complexion. “It’s just that—Well, I know you’re planning to stay here ‘til Christmas—”
“You know?”
“I…heard.”
Of course. He should have figured. “From Edith in housekeeping, no doubt.”
“Indirectly.”
Which meant she’d heard it from Dee Bleeker who’d heard it from Edith in housekeeping, he translated. “So?”