She'd responded then, an instantaneous, instinctive response. And heaven help her, it was happening all over again.
He released her hand, but she didn't realize it until she found her arms around his neck, fingers twining through the soft strands of hair at the base of his head. Past and present merged, driven by a rush of desire. His hands were on her bottom now, boldly cupping it, bringing her up against the firm heat of his lower body. She clutched him, welcoming each thrust of his tongue, knowing in the back of her mind she'd hate herself later, but she couldn't bank the insistent pulse of desire coursing through her as his mind-reeling kiss deadened the heartbreak of the past.
"See?" he whispered, his lips against hers. "You're still crazy about me. Five years hasn't changed a goddamn thing."
She didn't answer, craving his kiss even though she knew better. When would her body get the message? She hated him.
"Don't bother lying to me, Royce—or yourself."
He pressed himself against her just in case she'd missed the fact that he was fully aroused. He rotated his hips slowly, deliberately forcing her to wonder what it would be like to make love to him. Oh, Lordy, she hadn't moaned, had she? He'd think she liked this. She hated him.
She managed to wrench her lips away, but their bodies were still locked together. "I could kill you."
"You keep telling me that." He nudged her, the heat of his lower body penetrating the gossamer silk of her dress. "Be careful, Royce. I'm armed and dangerous."
She would never be certain how long they stood in the dark. Kissing. It was a raw act of possession. There had always been something untamed, slightly wild, about Mitch. Something she had to admit she found exciting.
A disturbing thought struck her, a deep unsettling premonition. She'd remember this moment, this kiss. Forever.
Her heart was pounding lawlessly when she noticed a strange sound. Oh, please, she hadn't moaned again, had she? Royce jerked her lips away from his.
The look on his face told her that he'd heard something too. The only sound in the room was their breathing, sharp and deep, an echo of desire frustrated too long. The odd sound had to have come from the hall. She turned toward the door but no one was there. Someone must have just walked past.
What if they'd seen her and told Brent? Royce thought, coming to her senses with a jolt of self-loathing. Kissing Mitch Durant. How could she? She didn't have an answer. She couldn't even look at him now for hating him. And herself.
"Ambition," he said, his voice a shade shy of a whisper, "—it's a double-edged sword. It brings out the best in us— and the worst. Think about it."
She looked at him, truly speechless now, but the darkness masked his angular features. He reached into his pocket and yanked out something white. A business card, she realized, wondering what she could possibly say or do to salvage the situation and praying no one had seen her kissing Mitch.
"Call me." Mitch tucked his card into the hollow between her breasts. "Anytime."
CHAPTER 2
Monday swept in on a horizon marbled with carbon-colored strafers driven by a rain-scented breeze that promised showers any minute. Royce joined her close friends Talia and Valerie for lunch at Reflections, overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
"Eleanor Farenholt can go to hell," Royce announced. "The wedding coordinator she recommended wants more money to organize our wedding than I make in an entire year writing a column. I'm going to convince Brent to elope."
Talia put down her menu, shaking her dark-brown head. "I doubt Brent will disappoint his mother. She's determined to have a grand wedding, the kind she'd throw if she had a daughter."
Valerie and Royce had grown up in the same neighborhood. They'd met Talia in high school. Rich and rebellious, Talia had been kicked out of several exclusive private schools before entering Sacred Heart Girls' School, where the strict nuns kept the girls in line. Royce and Talia had become close friends, sweeping the shy Valerie along in their wake.
Although Royce trusted both friends to give her their honest opinions, she relied more on Talia when it came to the Farenholts and their circle of friends. She traveled in the same circles—despite the detour to decidedly middle-class Sacred Heart. And Talia had known the Farenholts for years.
"Eleanor Farenholt wants the kind of wedding Caroline Rambeau would have if she'd married Brent," Valerie seconded Talia's opinion, her auburn hair gleaming in the light, her hazel eyes as serious as her tone. "Look on the positive side. At least Brent cares about his mother. They say you can judge a man by the way he treats his mother."
"What about your former mother-in-law?" Talia asked.
The question made Royce cringe, because Valerie was still suffering from her husband's betrayal. Val had always been less sure of herself than Royce or Talia, but since Val's divorce, she'd become withdrawn and bitter. Why upset her?
"The jerk never called his mother. I told her he'd left me."
"See?" Talia said. "He was a schmuck and it showed in his relationship with his mother."
"Have you heard from your parents lately?" Val asked Talia.
"Last I heard they were at a villa in Marbella."
Royce watched Talia closely. It was a shame, but since she'd entered an alcohol rehabilitation program almost a year ago, Talia's parents hadn't been around to give her support. Suddenly the usual lunchtime noises—the buzz of conversation, the soft music coming from the overhead speakers, and the clink of cutlery—seemed deafening. Silence hung between the threesome like a shroud.
What had happened? Royce asked herself. Once they'd all been so happy, so full of hope. Now she was the only one who was happy. Why was she complaining about the Farenholts? Compared to her friends' problems, hers were nonexistent.
"Do you realize none of us have parents, not really," Val broke the silence. "Royce's are dead and ours might as well be."
How true, Royce thought. Talia had been raised by a succession of nannies. Val, though, was a different case. Her family had been close until Val's divorce. Since her husband walked out, Val hadn't spoken to her family.
Royce toyed with her water glass, not wanting to recall her mother's slow, agonizing death from cancer. Or her father's funeral.
The waiter interrupted to take their orders. Then Royce switched the conversation back to a less serious topic with a joke. "I'm going to have to rob a bank to pay for this wedding. What else? My house already has a huge second mortgage that Daddy took when Mama was dying."
"Have you discussed this with Brent?" Talia hooked a strand of sleek brown hair behind one ear. "What does he say?"
"He wants to give me the money, but that's not right. It's the bride's responsibility—"
"If you ask me," Val cut in as she snapped a breadstick in two, "expensive weddings are a waste of time. Half the marriages in this country end in divorce."
Royce cringed at the bitterness in her friend's tone—so unlike the old Val, who'd been unfailingly upbeat. Until the divorce.
"You'll make a lot of money if you land that TV job," Talia mercifully changed the subject.
"Even if I do get the job, it'll take time to save enough. I want a baby, but my biological clock is quickly becoming a time bomb. Now that I've found the right man, why wait?"
"Speaking of men," Talia said to Val, "Royce found you a date for the auction this Saturday night."
Val wagged her finger at Royce. "Last time you fixed me up with a periodontist. I had to listen all night to how gingivitis is a bigger health threat than AIDS. Then after dinner, know what he did?"
"He flossed—hopefully in the men's room, not at the table." Royce wheedled a smile out of Val, a glimmer of her old self.
"No. He said: 'Your place or mine?' Like sex was a given."
"You'll get back into the swing of dating," Talia said.
Dating was only part of the problem, Royce decided. During the years the three of them had attended Sacred Heart Girls' School, Val rarely dated. She'd met her husband the day they'd arri
ved at college. Royce doubted Val had ever kissed another man.
A kiss. Heaven help her. Why had she kissed Mitchell Durant like that? She despised him for having forced himself on her, but she hated herself even more for remembering that kiss in such exquisite detail. Even now, in the sobering light of day, she could feel his lips on hers, his masculine body aggressively pressing against hers.
There was no escaping the ugly truth: She'd wanted Mitch in spite of what he'd done to her father. She must need counseling. Clearly, she had some deep-seated psychological problem.
Val expelled a tortured sigh, then asked Royce, "All right, who have you dug up for me this time?"
"Remember that column I wrote: Where Does All the Parsley Go?"
"Uh-huh. Restaurants put parsley on every plate but nobody eats it. That was one of your funnier pieces."
"Well, I received an irate call from the parsley king, the man who supplies the entire West Coast with the stuff, which has made him richer than the Farenholts. I schmoozed him over a cup of coffee, and I really liked the guy. So I called him last night and told him about you."
"Go with him, Val," Talia urged. "Everyone will be there."
"Even the Farenholts are coming," Royce added with an edge to her voice. She waited while the waiter served their salads. "Brent took a table and invited his parents to come with us. Naturally, his mother insisted on including Caroline and that Italian count she's been dating."
"What nerve." Val speared a mushroom with her fork. "I'd come just to give you moral support, but I haven't got a dress suitable for a black tie affair."
"I have the perfect dress. Borrow it." Royce refused to let Val spend another night alone, moping over that heartless jerk. "Go by my place and try on the copper dress in my closet. You know where I keep the key, don't you?"
"Everyone knows. You might as well keep the door unlocked."
Talia added, "You're asking to be robbed."
"I haven't got anything worth taking." Royce winked at her friends and tossed a piece of parsley on Val's plate. "Come on Val. It'll be fun."
They finished their salads and Royce passed on dessert, thinking of Eleanor Farenholt's comment about her weight. Royce didn't aspire to having a stick figure like Brent's former girlfriend, Caroline, but she didn't want condo thighs either. She was only ten pounds or so overweight, but beside Eleanor and Caroline it felt like fifty tons.
"I'm tired of waiting," Talia announced after she was served a chocolate torte that made Royce's mouth water. "When are you going to tell us why you were dancing with Mitchell Durant?"
"Because Arnold Dillingham insisted," Royce said, striving to justify her actions, but having difficulty convincing herself as she informed her friends about the situation with her trial television program.
But she couldn't bring herself to tell them about the kiss in the dark. She simply couldn't explain her actions, even though she'd spent the better part of the weekend thinking about her stupidity.
The noise in the hall. Someone had passed by as she was kissing Mitch. Had that person seen them? Thank heaven it hadn't been Brent. There would have been no way she could have explained to him what she couldn't even explain to herself.
"So," she concluded with false bravado, "I'm spending this week researching the homeless, ready to face Mitchell Durant in front of a camera."
"Don't attack him," warned Val. "While you were living in Rome, one of his trials was televised. The man's a shark. He annihilated every prosecution witness."
"No one has to remind me what he's like in court."
Talia touched Royce's hand. "Get it over with and you'll never have to see that dreadful man again."
"I can't just let it go. If I have the chance, I'm going to embarrass that jerk or something. Whatever I do won't pay him back, but I can't live with myself if I don't try."
She didn't add that after the kiss in the dark, she was more determined than ever to get even with Mitch Durant. With any luck it would be Friday night in front of millions of viewers.
"You're positive you want to run away?" Mitch asked Jason as he drove his Viper into the Tenderloin, San Francisco's sinister netherworld, the side of the city tourists rarely saw. Drug addicts, pushers, pimps. And worse. Mitch hated being here, especially at night. Too many memories. All of them bad.
"I can make it on my own, dude. I'll take my drums and hook up with a rock band. Or somethin'. I can't stand that man Mom married dissin' me. I don't do nothin' right. Nothin'."
How well Mitch remembered thinking the same thing.
"I'm almost fifteen—old enough to be on my own."
Yeah, right. The expensive sports car slugged through the heavy traffic past neon-lit tattoo parlors and the latest crop of Thai restaurants. Old enough? That's what Mitch had thought.
Mitch shot a look at Jason. Short, skinny, with dusty-brown hair and eyes a shade darker. Tonight he wore his prize possession, the leather jacket he'd saved for a year to buy, the haute couture of postpunk chic.
"Tell you what. You want to be on your own? I'll give you fifty bucks"—Mitch shifted to street talk—"that's fifty dead presidents, to spend a couple of hours here."
Jason gazed out the window, seeing the bright lights, not the walk on the wild side—the living hell. "You're on," he said as Mitch wheeled to the curb.
"I'll pick you up right here," Mitch yelled to Jason's back, "in two hours." He let the kid saunter into the crowd before he picked up the car phone and dialed. "Paul? You got him?"
"Yo, Mitch, relax." Paul Talbott's mellow voice seemed to fill the car. "We've got a tail on him."
"Great. Now, scare the shit out of him. And while you're at it, snatch his jacket." Mitch hung up and gunned the engine, bullying his way into the heavy traffic. He raised his fist and flipped off a curbside pharmacologist, barely dodging the pimp trying to flag him down by banging on the Viper's hood.
While he drove to his office, he thought about Royce Winston. Son of a bitch. He'd gotten to her. Big time. He chuckled, a low gruff sound that reflected his deep sense of satisfaction. At least on one level nothing had changed between them. Over five years. He hadn't been sure.
Memories could deceive. Lure you. Then betray you. He knew that better than anyone. It had almost gotten him killed.
But this time, unlike the first, he'd been dead-on. Royce Anne Winston could wish him in hell. Still, deep down inside, in that secret window into the soul, an ember of the past remained, more easily fanned to life than he'd expected. Helluva lot of good it would do him, since she was set to marry that wuss.
So, now what? he wondered after he'd parked his car and was unlocking his office. Damned if he knew. But he'd think of something. He always did. Too bad the noise that ended the kiss hadn't been Brent Farenholt. Goddamn, he would have passed on a Supreme Court appointment just to see the look on Farenholt's face if he'd found Royce in his arms.
Brent—the cocky little prick. An intellectual brain trust, he wasn't. He was incapable of an original thought. Proof positive money couldn't buy everything. Too bad he didn't know a woman in love didn't kiss another man with such passion. Especially a man she claimed to hate.
The telephone on Mitch's desk rang before he even sat down.
It was Paul. "The kid's on the corner, waiting for you— already. We've got his jacket. Do you want it?"
"Hell, no. Give it to the first homeless man it'll fit."
"Mitch, it's brand new."
"Screw it. The only lesson Jason will remember is one that hurts."
Mitch let the full two hours expire before even heading down to his car. It was a cold night, typical of early May. Moist fog coiled in from the bay. He heard muffled noises coming from the rear of the subterranean parking structure. A group of homeless men had moved in to avoid the cold. Lost souls, he thought, living in the shadows.
They'd probably found the money and the packets of ketchup from McDonald's that he'd left for them. He caught a whiff of tomato soup they'd brewed from the ketchup
by adding hot water. He almost gagged. To this day he couldn't stomach tomato soup.
As he drove up Jason sprang off the curb and yanked open the door. The kid was trembling, his face leached of color.
"Hey, how'd you like it?" Mitch asked, grinning.
"S'okay," Jason said, the threat of tears in his voice.
"You left your jacket somewhere."
"They ripped it off."
"Why'd you let them take it?"
"Let them?" Jason cried, swiping at tears with the back of his hand. "A gang of Viets dragged me down an alley."
"Jeezus!" Mitch said, genuine sympathy in his voice now. Yessirree, Paul had outdone himself. Of all the gangs operating in the city—blacks, Chicanos, Koreans, even the Japanese yakuza—the Vietnamese were the most deadly. What they'd learned in the jungles of Nam, they'd perfected in the city.
"I guess it's rougher out there than you thought."
Grim faced, Jason nodded. "A man grabbed me"—his eyes shot down to his crotch—"I slugged him."
"Good for you." Mitch tossed him fifty dollars. "Here, you've earned it. One dead president—Ulysses S. Grant."
"My jacket," Jason muttered, pocketing the bill. "What am I going to tell my mother?"
"That's your problem."
"Wally." Royce kissed her uncle's cheek, then gazed around the Plexiglas cubbyhole that was his office at the San Francisco Examiner.
The computer terminal was on and running the international UPI feed. The desk was cluttered with printouts and empty Styrofoam cups partially filled with coffee. The only thing on the stucco wall was the picture of Wally accepting the Pulitzer prize.
He returned her affectionate hug, his green eyes the mirror image of her own. Sixtyish, but trim, with a full head of brindled hair, Wallace Winston was the city's most respected investigative reporter.
"I wasn't expecting to see you before the auction this Saturday night. Did you miss your deadline?"
Sawyer, Meryl Page 3