“All right,” she said briskly, and scrubbed her hands over her face.
What was done, was done. There was no sense in brooding over things, or in playing a game of “What if?” What was it her mother used to say? It was hard to remember; it seemed such a long, long time ago…
“No use cryin’ over spilled milk, Steffie. Just mop it up an’ get on with your life.”
The advice still held. She had to get on with her life, put aside what the town thought, what Avery had done… put aside, as well, all memories of whatever it was that had happened between her and David Chambers. He wasn’t even worth thinking about. For all his looks and money and charm, he was nothing but another member of the brotherhood, a lying, sneaking, self-centered, testosterone-impaired, no-account rat—and the only good news about that Sunday was that it was over, and she’d never see the man’s face again.
Stephanie swiped her hand across her eyes one last time, then reached for the letter from Clare’s attorneys. Not that she needed to read it. She’d paced the floor with it the last ten days; its message was embedded in her brain.
Dear Mrs. Willingham: Please be advised that it is the wish of our client, Clare Willingham, that you vacate her property no later than Friday the thirteenth.
“Such a propitious date, don’t you think?” Clare had purred, when she’d phoned to have the pleasure of delivering the news, firsthand.
Stephanie’s throat constricted. She cleared it, then read the next sentence aloud into the silence of the room.
“Please be advised that the stipend paid to your account will cease as of that date, as well.”
That was the phrase that had made her begin to tremble.
That was when she’d known she was lost.
She’d tried fighting it. Months ago, as soon as Clare had started dropping hints that Stephanie’s days at Seven Oaks were limited, she’d gone to see Amos Turner, who had a law office in town.
“I don’t give a damn about the house,” she’d told him. “I only want what’s rightfully mine. Avery promised to put a specified amount of money into my checking account each month.”
“How much?” Turner asked with an oily smile.
Stephanie took a deep breath. “Twenty-five hundred dollars.”
The lawyer smiled. “My, my, my,” he purred, “that surely is a lot of money for a man to provide his wife as an allowance.”
“It wasn’t an allowance.”
“No? What was it then, my dear?”
Payment. Payment for selling her soul…
“I don’t see how that’s germane, Mr. Turner,” she said coolly.
Turner’s beady eyes glistened. “Must be nice, havin’ such a value put on yourself,” he said, tilting back his chair so that his fat belly protruded like an island in a sea of shiny black worsted.
Stephanie flushed but she refused to give an inch. What was the point? The town had made up its mind about her a long time ago.
“Bet you earned every bit of that money, too,” he’d said, and she’d looked him squarely in the eye and assured him that he was damned right. She had.
Such brave talk, she thought now. Her mouth trembled. And so useless. Turner had folded like an accordion after a meeting with Clare and, she had no doubt, with Clare’s checkbook. Judge Parker had proved no obstacle to the proceedings, either.
And so it was over. She had nothing. No roof over her head, no money—and no way to pay for Paul’s care.
Panic sent her heart thump-thumping in her chest.
There had to be something she could do. She was Avery’s widow, wasn’t she? A widow had certain rights. Sure, the Willinghams owned this town, but they didn’t rule the world.
Stephanie rose to her feet. She’d met an attorney once, at one of the dinner parties she’d hosted for Avery. The man didn’t practice here, he practiced…where? Washington. That was it. What was his name?
Hustle? Fussell?
Russell. That was it. Jack Russell, like the breed of dog. She’d blurted that out when they’d been introduced, and Avery’s arm had tightened around her waist and he’d pinched her, where no one could see. She’d tried to stammer out an apology but Russell had bowed over her hand and assured her, in a drawl thicker than hers, that he had no objection to being compared to a handsome, feisty little terrier, especially when the comparison was made by such a beautiful woman.
Russell had smiled at her the entire evening. Not the way other men did. His smile had been kind, and generous, and tinged, she’d thought, with a little sadness.
“If this old ogre ever mistreats you, my dear,” he’d said, kissing her cheek at evening’s end, when she and Avery stood at the ornate front door to bid their guests goodnight, “you just give me a call and I’ll come to your rescue.”
Avery had laughed in that way that made her skin crawl just to remember it.
“Not to worry,” he’d said. “I know exactly how to treat a gal like this.”
Stephanie blocked out the memory and hurried to the library, where Avery had kept his address book. There was no point in thinking about the past. It was the present that mattered and perhaps, if she were very, very lucky, Jack Russell could help her face that present and survive it.
She leafed through the book, found Russell’s name and a Washington, D.C., telephone number.
“No use crying over spilled milk, Steffie,” she whispered.
Then she took a deep breath and reached for the telephone.
* * *
Life had taught David a series of lessons.
Red wine was better than white.
Old Porsches were better than new ones.
Springtime in the nation’s capitol was glorious.
But not this year, David thought as he sat with his back to his desk and stared out his office window.
The weather was mild. The sky was clear. The cherry blossoms were delivering their annual show, a little late, but the tourists didn’t much care.
And still, he was in a foul mood.
Everybody had told him so, including his secretary. He’d never liked Miss Murchison much; he knew he’d hired her in a moment of weakness, when sympathy for her acne, mousy looks and weight problem had overruled logic.
What he hadn’t counted on was that she couldn’t type much faster than he could, or figure out how to turn on her computer without bringing down the entire system. She had her hat and coat on by five o’clock, promptly, and never mind that she’d known, right up front, that he sometimes would need her to put in an additional hour or so, for which her salary more than compensated.
Yesterday, after she’d taken an entire afternoon to type two letters and topped the day off by whining, “But, Mr. Chambers, do you know what time it is?” when, at twenty minutes of five, he’d asked her to please retype one of the letters she’d managed to get chocolate stains on, he’d finally exploded.
He said that he knew exactly what time it was. It was time for her to find a new job. Time for her to inflict herself on somebody else…
David shut his eyes and groaned.
So much for doing things that seemed right at the time you did them. He’d ended up with a weeping Miss Murchison and a knot in his belly.
“Don’t cry, for God’s sake,” he’d said helplessly, and then he’d done his best to soothe her hurt feelings by writing out a check for three months’ severance pay and handed it over along with a rambling tale about his rotten mood being caused by a headache that simply refused to go away. Miss Murchison, who’d managed a swift recovery once she had his check firmly in her hand, had sniffed and said that any man who’d had a rotten headache for two weeks’ straight was a man with a problem.
She was right. He did have a problem, and its name was Stephanie Willingham. The woman was in his head, night and day, and wasn’t that ridiculous? Okay, so he’d been attracted to her. Okay, so he’d come on to her…
David groaned again and slumped back in his chair. To hell with all that. He’d behaved like a jerk, a
nd he knew it. Kissing her in that airplane. Touching her. Damn near ravishing her… Who knew what he’d have done if the lights hadn’t come back on when they did?
Why? Because she was good-looking? So were half the women on the planet. So were all the women in his little black book, and he’d never made a fool of himself with any of them.
Maybe he needed a break. Yes, that was it. This town was great. He loved its pace, its excitement, the realization that he was practicing high-powered law in the very heart of the western world, but sometimes it got to be too much. The crowds. The cars. The day that began at six and ended after midnight, if you added in the dinners and parties and charity affairs he had to attend.
“We work our tails off,” Jack Russell had told him when David had come on board more than a dozen cherryblossom seasons ago, and the esteemed law firm of Russell, Russell and Hanley had become Russell, Russell, Hanley and Chambers. “But if you like living on the edge, David, you’ll love it here.”
David had smiled and said he was sure he would.
“No place prettier than D.C. in the springtime,” Jack had said as David’s gaze went to the cherry trees out on the street, and David had smiled again and asked Jack if he’d ever seen Wyoming this time of year.
“No,” Jack had replied. “Bet it’s all snow and cold winds.”
Snow, David thought, staring out the window. Probably. The mountains ringing his ranch would still bear their winter cloaks…and yet, if he saddled a horse and went riding, he knew he’d see the signs of rebirth all around. The rosy tinge birch branches get when the sap begins to flow. Green shoots seeking the sun’s warmth where the snow had blown away. Calves butting their heads against their mothers’ bellies and colts, still gawky on their long, ungainly legs…
“Hell,” David muttered, and swiveled his chair back toward his desk.
Sitting here and staring out the windows was not going to get any work done. And he had a lot of work to do. Tons of it, from the look of his appointment book, with “hire a secretary” right on top.
It was just that he was in the darkest mood. The Cooper wedding had taken place two weeks ago but the memory of Stephanie Willingham wouldn’t go away. And never mind all that stuff he’d been telling himself about damn near ravishing her. Who was he trying to kid? The widow Willingham, she of the icy words and the hot mouth, had sizzled as soon as he’d looked at her. And when he’d touched her—when he’d touched her…
David mouthed an oath, rose to his feet and stalked across his office. There was a carafe of fresh coffee on an antique mahogany sideboard and it took him a couple of seconds to remember that this was not the pale slop Miss Murchison had passed off as coffee but a pot he’d brewed for himself. He poured a cup, took a sip, and plunked himself down on one of a pair of small leather sofas.
Enough of this crap. He’d been dragging his butt for days, alternately chewing himself out for the idiotic way he’d behaved with Stephanie and fantasizing over what might have happened if they hadn’t been in a plane but in his town house. It was time to move on to something else.
What he needed was a good, swift dose of reality. A workout in his gym. A couple of games of racquetball, maybe, or half an hour trading jabs with a punching bag…
Or a weekend at home.
David put down his cup, rose and strolled to the window. Yes. That would do it. A couple of afternoons spent digging fence posts or stringing wire after the damages of the winter would put him on track again. Hard work and sweat went a long way toward reminding a man of what really mattered in the overall scheme of things. That conviction had taken him home nearly every weekend after he’d first come east to practice law.
Reality, he had known instinctively, would always lie to the west, in Wyoming.
It was unfortunate that his wife—his ex-wife—had figured it to be just the opposite. The real world, Krissie had insisted, was in Georgetown. The cocktail parties and dinners, the tweedy weekends spent at elegant old homes in the Virginia countryside—all the stuff that made him wince, made her smile.
Krissie’s idea of a cozy evening at home involved twenty or thirty of her closest friends.
A muscle knotted in David’s cheek. It had not been that way when they’d been dating.
Back then, she’d professed to love the things he loved. The ranch, and riding out to the purple hills. Quiet meals by the fireside and afterward, soft music on the CD player, and freshly made popcorn…and long hours spent in each other’s arms.
It was going to be like a fairy tale. One man, one woman. One love, forever after.
What a fool he’d been. Women said what a man wanted to hear when they were setting the snare that would trap him. His wife had lied about everything, what she liked, what she disliked…
About fidelity.
He’d tolerated all of it. Everything—right up until the day he’d come home early and found her in bed with another man. That he hadn’t killed the son of a bitch and thrown Krissie into the street bare-ass naked was less a reflection of his forbearance than an indication of how little she’d meant to him by then.
The divorce had been swift and nasty, the recovery lengthy and painful. But recover he had, and the lessons he’d learned had stuck.
Women were not to be trusted. They said one thing, meant another, and the man who didn’t keep that always, always, in mind deserved what he got.
David smiled. That wasn’t to say that women didn’t have their uses. He liked women. He liked the way they sounded, and the way they smelled. He liked the softness of their laughter, the curved lushness of their bodies…
Stephanie had a lush body. Her skin had been soft as silk, hot as flame under his hands. And the taste of her mouth…he’d never known a taste like it. So honeyed. So sweet. So exciting…
David swung away from the window, his breathing harsh. What in hell was he doing, thinking about her? It was crazy. Crazy! The world was filled with women. Obliging women, who didn’t say “no” when they meant “yes”—and yet his thoughts were possessed by one who did just that.
Stephanie.
He’d even phoned Annie Cooper, late last week, and after a few minutes of inconsequential chitchat, he’d brought Stephanie’s name into the conversation, asked Annie about her, then braced himself for the teasing he’d figured he was sure to get. But Annie had seemed preoccupied. She’d said she didn’t know Stephanie very well, only that she was a widow whose husband had died fairly recently.
“Is it important?” she’d said, adding that if it was, she could always give Stephanie a call.
“No,” David had said quickly, “no, it’s not important at all.”
Annie, completely out of character, had let the subject go. He’d hung up the phone, reached for his Rolodex file, had his hand on the card of the private investigator the firm sometimes used before he’d realized that he was behaving like a certifiable nutcase.
David sighed, sat down behind his desk and picked up a pencil. Instead of reaching for the private investigator’s card, he’d reached for his own private address book. He’d made some phone calls, then spent the next few evenings pleasantly, in the company of half a dozen bright, beautiful females. He’d taken them out, he’d taken them home—one at a time, he thought, with a little smile…
His smile faded. And then, despite the promises in their eyes, he’d kissed them gently, eased their arms from his neck, said goodnight and gone home, alone, to lie in his bed and dream of a woman he would never see again, never wanted to see again…
“Hell,” he said through his teeth, and snapped the pencil in two.
“Careful, lad. Got to watch that temper.”
David jerked his head up. Jack Russell stood in the doorway, smiling, thumbs tucked into the pockets of his old-fashioned vest.
“Jack.” David mustered a smile. “Good morning.”
“It is that.” Jack strolled into the room, sat down on the chair across from David’s desk, and glanced at the window. “Though, I must say, th
e cherry blossoms aren’t all they should be this year.”
“Nothing is all it should be,” David said flatly. Jack shot him a quizzical look, and he managed another smile. “What can I do for you this morning?”
“Well, for openers, you can tell me where you were last night.”
“Where I was last…” David puffed out his breath. “The Weller cocktail party! Jack, I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. I made your apologies to our host and hostess, and told them you were up to your neck in work.”
“I owe you one.”
Jack chuckled. “You owe me several. I’ve protected your gluteus maximus more than once in the past couple of weeks.”
“Yeah. Well, you know how it is. I’ve been… busy.”
“Preoccupied, might be a better word. Something on your mind?”
“Listen, just because I blew a couple of appointments…”
“Six,” Jack said, ticking them off on his fingers. “Three dinners, one round of drinks, one embassy do and that charity auction last weekend.”
“I told you,” David said brusquely, “I’ve been—”
“Busy. Yes, I know.” Jack leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Who’s the lucky young woman?”
“The baloney I have to put up with,” David said, forcing a smile to his lips, “because I’m the only bachelor around here…”
“And deservedly so, according to my better half. Mary says you need a wife.”
David laughed. “You tell Mary that what I need is a secretary. Somebody to keep my appointments straight and type more than ten words a minute. I fired Murchison, did you hear?”
“Certainly. The other secretaries are taking up a collection.”
“Yeah,” David said, and sighed. “Well, I’m sure she’ll appreciate the flowers, whatever it is they send her. Tell them they can count on me for my share.”
Jack chuckled. “The collection’s for you, David. They figure you deserve a bouquet for tolerating her as long as you did.” Jack pursed his lips. “So, now what?”
“Well, I’ve arranged for a temp. Next week, I’ll phone that agency we always use…”
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