Finger Prints

by Barbara Delinsky

  Her sharp sidelong glance shut him up. The sight of an office building was obviously less enticing than Locke-Ober’s. But then, he didn’t really blame her. Though relatively new and elegantly decorated, it was…an office. Wasn’t one law office the same as the next? It was, after all, what went on within its walls that set it apart. And Miss Carly Quinn certainly had no call to see that.

  Miss? Or Mrs.? Ryan cast a fleeting glance toward her left hand, waiting for it to come forward in alternate rhythm with its mate. No. There was no band. But there…on the right…that wide gold band he’d seen last night. She’d obviously been married. A European arrangement? But she lived alone. Separated? Divorced? He found it hard to believe she’d failed at marriage. She seemed quiet and agreeable, far different from so many of the strident women with whom he worked each day. Could it have been her marriage that had instilled such wariness in her? It didn’t seem possible. What man in his right mind would harm, even threaten, as gentle a creature as she? Unless her husband had not been all there. Lord only knew he’d seen enough of them!

  On reflex, he raised a hand to rub his bearded jaw. Oh, he knew firsthand about crazy husbands. One had nearly put an end to his career, not to mention his life. As if he’d ever have considered bedding a client…and that woman? Never!

  “Hello? Hello? Are you there?”

  The breathy voice by his side brought him back to reality. He looked down and smiled in relief. “Sure, I’m here.”

  “Could’ve fooled me for a minute there.” She crinkled up her nose. Again it made him melt. “Can we turn yet?”

  He looked around in surprise to find that they’d just about reached the spot he’d had in mind. “Uh, sure. This is far enough.”

  “Getting tired?” she teased in an effort to erase what had appeared to be anger from his face. It disconcerted her. She liked it better when he smiled, which he proceeded to do with devastating appeal.

  “Tired? Me?” Taking her elbow, he propelled her around, dropping his hold when she matched his gait, heading home. “I’ll have you know that you’re running with none other than the star of varsity track and field.”

  “Harvard?” she asked as her eyes spanned his chest. Faint rivulets of sweat marked a charcoal path down its center.

  Looking down, he ran his palm across the faded letters. “This thing has seen better days.” He chuckled. “So have I, for that matter. There was a time when I used to marathon. No more.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  He pondered the question for a minute, thinking how much more pleasant it was to run like this, totally relaxed, than to run with one eye on the clock. “Sorry? Not really. Anything like that involves a kind of obsession. It can be all-consuming if you do it right. But I had other interests that made their demands. I couldn’t do it all.”

  She assumed he spoke of the law, an obsession in itself. Almost against her will, she felt herself stiffen. It seemed impossible that this man, as surprisingly companionable as he was, should be grouped with those others she’d had the displeasure of meeting during the trial. But of course he might be different. John Meade had been different. As the prosecutor assigned to the Culbert-Barber case, he’d been kind and fair to her. His assistant, Brozniak, was something else. He’d wanted nothing more than to get her into his bed. Some obsession!

  “Hello, hello?”

  At his miming call to attention, she dashed a glance up at Ryan, whose grin brought her quickly from her trance. “Oops, I left you for a minute there, didn’t I?”

  “Just so long as it’s not me you’re angry at.”

  “I may be furious at you later. I’m not used to running this far. I’m apt to be crippled when my calves stiffen up.”

  “Then we can share my Ben-Gay,” he returned, undaunted. “Just stamp on the floor three times and I’ll bring it up.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “You bet.”

  With a soft chuckle, he looked forward again. They were back in familiar territory now; it wouldn’t be long before they reached the apartment and went their separate ways. It might be his last chance for a while to find out more about her. Then he looked to his side and saw the serenity of her expression and he didn’t have the heart to disturb it. It beckoned to him, that light and billowy cloud of contentment that hovered above them, between them, large enough to envelop them both. Unable to resist, he yielded. For now, it was enough.

  He didn’t talk further, nor did she. Rather, they ran in time with each other, comfortably and easily, finding strength in silent partnership. Ryan touched her elbow once to guide her across the street, then dropped his hand as they entered the courtyard and slowed to a breathless walk.

  “Good show!” he panted through a grin, leaning down to brace his hands on his knees. His hair hung wet on his brow, giving him an eminently masculine look.

  Carly flexed her legs, walking in small, idle circles. “Not bad yourself,” she gasped, then splayed her fingers over the muscles of her lower back in support. “Why is it…that it’s easier to…talk when you’re…running, than when you stop?”

  Straightening, he mopped his forehead with a long, muscled arm. “I’m not sure…but you’re right. I think it must be a…kind of illusion. You know, we assume…that the words will be broken when we run, so the mind and body make…their own connections. We can talk even though our breathing is choppy. But when we stop, our breathing by…comparison seems that much rougher.”

  Carly nodded. She stood taking deep, long drags of air in an effort to ease her laboring lungs. After a minute, when she seemed even shorter of breath, it occurred to her that something else was at work deep within. Apprehension…anticipation…she had no intention of sticking around to find out.

  “Well,” she breathed, with feigned nonchalance. Her voice seemed unusually high; she was grateful to be able to blame it on the run. “I’ll be going.”

  Ryan reached out, pausing just short of touching her. “Look, Carly—”

  Her sharp stare cut him short. “You know my name,” she whispered, appalled. She hadn’t told him; she was sure of that.

  Unable to comprehend her sudden shift from calm to coiled, Ryan eyed her in puzzlement. He kept his voice gentle. “Of course, I know your name. It’s on your mailbox.”

  “Not my first name.”

  “Ted Arbuckle filled me in on that. Listen, it’s no big thing. You would have told me your name, wouldn’t you have? I mean, I hope you weren’t going to have me call you Ms. Quinn,” he drawled in soft mockery, “through an evening at Locke-Ober’s.” His lips twitched coaxingly at the corners.

  He was right, of course. She was being oversensitive and suspicious. Always suspicious. She hated herself for it. Suitably chastised by Ryan’s teasing, she looked away in self-reproach. “Of course not,” she murmured. “It’s just that I didn’t expect you’d ask around.”

  “It was really only a fluke,” he explained. “Arbuckle came up the walk yesterday right after we collided. I pointed after you, wanting to make sure you were all right. As a matter of fact, he wouldn’t even admit that you lived here until I’d introduced myself. It was then that he called you by name.

  It was all so perfectly logical. She grinned sheepishly. “If I didn’t know better, I might suspect you’d hit him with a few of those leading questions you lawyers are known for.”

  “We lawyers?” As the tables turned, Ryan looked at her skeptically. “And how did you know I was a lawyer?”

  Too late, Carly realized her error. She looked up at him, swallowing hard. “My, uh, my friend last night recognized you from some case a few months ago. You were on television a lot?”

  “The Duncan case.” He nodded. “And your friend? Who was he?” It was one of the questions he’d been aching to ask. Now she’d inadvertently given him the opportunity. He had to admit that he felt slightly guilty. His interest in her friend had nothing to do with the Duncan case or the fact that her friend had recognized him. It was pure jealousy.


  Fortunately Carly had spent enough time with Sam, particularly when she’d first arrived, to know precisely how to introduce him. They’d been over it many times. It was nothing more than a version of the truth.

  “His name is Sam Loomis. He’s a good friend of mine.”

  “Do you date him?”

  “Date? Not in the sense you mean.”

  “Then in what sense?”

  “In the sense of friends. Period.”

  “And he doesn’t want it differently?” Ryan couldn’t believe it wasn’t so. Even now, amid the compulsion that kept him questioning her when he knew he should let up, he wanted only to reach out and smooth a stray curl from her cheek. With her hair caught loosely up in a ponytail and her face damp and makeup free, she looked no more than twenty, until one looked into her eyes. They were older, more knowing. It was one of the things he found so intriguing. That fleeting look of sadness, of pain and fear and understanding. Once again he wondered what she’d been through in life to have been so thoroughly seasoned.

  “What is this?” she teased uneasily. “An interrogation?”

  The edge in her voice, underscoring the flicker of apprehension in her eyes, brought him to his senses. He dropped his head in an outward show of contrition, then sighed, looked up and smiled more gently. “No. We lawyer types get carried away every so often.” When her lips remained taut, he went on. “Actually, it had nothing to do with lawyer types. That was me wanting to know about you.”

  “About Sam,” she corrected softly.

  “About Sam as he relates to you. What I really want to know,” he murmured hastily, helplessly, “is why you wear a wedding band, and whether you’re involved with Sam or anyone else. I want to know if you’re free.”

  “Free?” Her voice was weak, seeming to come from far away. Her eyes grew sad beneath the weight of memories. As she looked away, her gaze fell to the leaves beneath the trees, leaves that had been alive and aflame with color mere days before, yet now lay drab and dried, like cold ashes in the hearth. “No,” she whispered without looking up, “I don’t think I am.” Lost in a trance, she headed for the door.

  She was through the lobby and on the stairs before Ryan went after her.

  Five

  “cARLY, WAIT!” CATCHING THE DOOR JUST before it closed, he ran through, crossing the lobby in two strides, taking the first three steps in another. Reaching up, he grabbed her hand. He spoke more softly then. “Carly, please. Don’t just run off like that.”

  She kept her head tucked low. “I’ve got to go,” she whispered, but didn’t remove her hand from his.

  “Not yet,” he murmured, climbing another step just until they were at eye level. “We haven’t set a date.”

  She raised her head slowly. “A date?”

  “For dinner. Locke-Ober’s?”

  Her gaze dropped to the railing where her free hand had tightly anchored itself. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

  “Why not? It’d be fun. Don’t you need that sometimes?”

  “I do. And I have it sometimes. It’s just that….” How could she explain her sudden fear, when she didn’t understand it herself? Ryan was no threat to her in the usual sense of the word. She accepted that, as Sam had told her to do, as her own instinct had told her to do. But there was something new now, something related to the rapid beat of her pulse, to the warming feel of his hand on hers, to the fact that when she looked into his eyes she didn’t want to look away. “It’s just that I’m really not free.”

  Sensing her weakness, since it was his own as well, he offered a soft challenge. “Can you look me in the eye and tell me that?”

  She hesitated, then her eyes slowly met his. Her expression was an amalgam of emotions, not the least of which was regret. “I’m not,” she whispered in anguish.

  Glancing down at her hand, he passed his thumb over her ring. “You don’t live with your husband.”

  “No. And I’m not attached to anyone else,” she added, anxious to head off the question she was sure would come. “But I have other things, other responsibilities. I really can’t let myself get involved.”

  “It’s just a dinner, Carly. What harm can come of that?”

  But he knew. He felt it himself, lured and captured by something far deeper in her wide gray eyes than the promise of companionship, of easy conversation, of a smile. He’d never had quite this reaction to a woman before, this sense of glimpsing a true treasure worth seeking. He felt suddenly stunned and frightened in his way, though he couldn’t turn his back as she had done. Very slowly, he climbed another step until he gazed down at her.

  Carly tipped her head up as he rose, helpless to either look away or escape. Her mouth felt dry; she swallowed hard. She felt the warmth of his gaze as it seared her eyes and cheeks before sliding to her lips in a vibrant caress. Catching in a sharp breath, she silently pleaded for him to stop. She couldn’t handle this kind of attraction, simply couldn’t handle it.

  But he didn’t let go. His hand turned once on hers to cradle it protectively. His thumb moved lightly on her palm. “I won’t hurt you,” he murmured. “I couldn’t hurt you. I don’t want you to be frightened.”

  “But I am!” she countered in a frantic whisper, all too aware of his long, lean body mere inches from her own. “Please, Ryan. Please let me go.”

  He dropped her hand, but only to gently touch her face. “I can’t do that. I’d never forgive myself.”

  “But I can’t be who you need! You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all! Leave me be, Ryan. Please?”

  He stared at her then for what seemed an eternity before slowly shaking his head. The backs of his fingers caressed her cheek; he ran a trembling thumb across her lips. He hesitated, entranced by the unadorned softness of her mouth. Then, yielding to a need as strong as any he’d ever known, he lowered his head.

  But Carly’s fingers were against his lips, holding him back at that last moment. “No!” she cried on the edge of panic, then forced her voice to a whisper when she felt his compliance. “I can’t handle this now. I’m sorry, but I can’t.” She was aware of her fingers on his mouth and lingered for that briefest instant to savor his maleness, the soft bristle of his mustache and beard, the strength of his lips, before letting her hand drop to her side.

  “Can you tell me why?” When she shook her head, he went quickly on. “How can I fight something if I don’t know what it is?”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, finally managing to avert her gaze. Fearing that if she lingered she might never have the chance again, she turned and ran up the stairs.

  Ryan’s voice carried clearly upward. “I’ll fight anyway, y’know!” He watched her round the second-floor railing and start toward the third, and raised his voice accordingly. “I don’t give up easily!” Then he leaned over the railing with his head tipped way back, reluctant to lose sight of her. His voice echoed in the silence. “I can play dirty….!”

  If he’d hoped to appeal to her sense of humor, he failed. The quiet opening and shutting of her door was the only response he got. Long after he knew she was once again entombed in her private world, he stood looking up.

  Finally, accepting temporary defeat, he dropped his head forward and began the slow climb. Whereas when he’d bounded in after her, he’d had all the energy in the world, now he felt drained, discouraged, impotent. That was it. Impotent. It was a chilling feeling, one he’d experienced only once before in his life. That had been the night Alyssa had miscarried. He recalled every agonizing moment, from the instant he’d come home to find her doubled over in pain to that later one, when the doctor had sadly shaken his head. He’d felt so helpless then, as he did now. And he barely knew Carly Quinn!

  Eyes dark and puzzled, he let himself into his apartment, closed the door, then passed distractedly to the bedroom. It was nice enough, he mused. The whole place was nice enough. Clean. Comfortable. But it wasn’t home.

  Home was…. Where was it? It wasn’t Tom’s place, which he�
��d used only for the year. It wasn’t the old house in the Berkshires where he’d grown up. And it certainly wasn’t the house he’d shared with Alyssa. Not anymore, at least. He hadn’t set foot there in a year. Nor did he miss it. With its four massive columns in front and its twelve silent rooms within and its three acres of land to keep mowed and limed and landscaped, it had been far too pretentious for him from the start. But Alyssa had wanted something befitting la crème de la crème of society. She had it now, for better or worse. Perversely, he wondered whether the termites had made headway on the gardener’s shed. Then, feeling minor remorse, he headed for the shower.

  An hour later he was buried in work in his downtown office, as he’d been every Saturday for years. It wasn’t that the work couldn’t wait. While that might have been true when he’d first started out, when he’d had to bust his tail to ensure the success of the firm, things had changed. His reputation was established. His practice thrived. He had reliable lawyers under him, hand picked, personally trained. Oh, yes, his work could wait. But there was nothing he rather do. He loved the law. Perhaps Alyssa had been right when she’d accused him of making his work his mistress.

  It was late when he returned to Cambridge, later than he’d expected. He’d spent the afternoon in the law library plotting his arguments for an upcoming fraud case and lost track of the hour. Now, rounding the block a second time in search of a parking space, he cursed the impulse on which he’d accepted the Crowley’s invitation. A dinner party. Black tie and tails, no less. It was the last thing he needed! No, he caught himself, the last thing he needed was the eligible female they would inevitably pair him with.

  Thin lipped, he started around the block again, only to slam on his brakes when the taillight of a car by the curb lit up, telling of its imminent departure. Shifting deftly into reverse, he backed up and waited, watching with growing dismay as the driver proceeded to comb her hair and apply lipstick, then fiddle in her purse for an elusive candy before finally pulling out. Muttering snide remarks under his breath, Ryan quickly took the space, then slid from his silver BMW and headed down the block.