by Judy Duarte
She knew what was coming and cut him off. “For some people, an entire lifetime isn’t enough, for others it only takes a few days, hours, maybe even moments.”
He laughed and shook his head. There was almost something endearing about how she saw the world. If only it were that way.
“Now you really are romanticizing.”
Crossing her arms before her, she looked at him, completely convinced of her stand. “You haven’t told me anything to make me change my mind.”
He had a feeling that she could probably argue until Gabriel sounded his horn, signaling the end of the world. He didn’t have that much time. “You finished?” He nodded at her cup.
It was empty. She hadn’t even realized that she’d drained the last drop. All of her attention had been focused on him. And she had a feeling that he wasn’t asking strictly about the coffee. But for now she relented.
“I guess I am.”
He rose, then leaned over the small table and helped her with her chair. “Then I’ll take you home.”
Standing beside him just before they made their way out to the street proper, she turned her face up to his. “Take me to your home.”
The softly spoken entreaty moved along his skin like early-morning mist. If only things were that simple, he thought again.
He took her arm and guided her around the scattered tables, beyond the two-foot wrought-iron fencing, out onto the sidewalk. When she turned to look at him, his smile was small, tolerant and genuine. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Yes, I do. I want to see how you live.” She knew what he was thinking. “We’re adults, Mark.”
The car was parked more than a block away. Finding a spot that close to the coffee shop had been nothing short of a miracle. He began to escort her toward it. “Some of us have been there longer than others.”
She laughed. “Residency doesn’t count.” She felt comfortable with him. Safe. Yet very excited. “I know you’re not going to jump me the minute we walk into the apartment.”
“Maybe not,” he allowed. Then the barest hint of a twinkle entered his eyes as he looked down at her face. “But you might jump me.”
“Only if you play your cards right,” Brooke teased. And then she added a tad more seriously, “Please? After that coffee, I feel completely wired, and I don’t want to go home yet.”
The last place he wanted to take her was his apartment. Out here he couldn’t act on what he was feeling. If they were alone together…well, he just didn’t want to put himself in that kind of a situation. “Then, we’ll go for a drive.”
They were approaching his car. She had a feeling a drive would quickly turn into a drive to her house. Holding on to his arm, she turned her face up to his. “I’d rather go for a walk.”
He felt himself weakening. “I had no idea you were this contrary.”
“Surprise.”
He paused beside his car, debating. He supposed it wouldn’t do any harm to indulge her a little. And there was no denying that he liked being with her. These were the best of circumstances.
“All right, a walk then. But a short one.” He saw her opening her mouth to protest. He cut her off. “Take it or leave it.”
She knew when she was outmaneuvered. With a surrendering shrug, she said, “I’ll take it.”
Her arm tucked through his, they walked along one of the city’s busier streets. As a concession, she searched for a neutral topic and talked about the new rare first edition of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court her father had uncovered several months ago at an estate sale in Maryland.
“You just never know where the next treasure might turn up,” she told him.
No, he thought, looking at her, you just never did.
He found that he was having difficulty drawing in a lungful of air. Rather than cooling off, the night seemed to be getting balmier. He felt he could almost touch the air around them.
They’d gone about three blocks when a sudden shower came from nowhere, falling hard, the drops sizzling against the hot pavement. Brooke squealed. When he looked at her, he expected her to be annoyed. Dana had hated it when her hair was mussed, but Brooke was laughing.
Looking around for shelter, he almost hurried her into the first store front he saw, but then he spotted something better three doors down. It was a bakery. The store itself was closed, but whoever had locked up had forgotten to retract the green-and-white awning. It provided the perfect shelter.
Mark grabbed her hand and made a run for it.
Once beneath the awning, Brooke all but collapsed, laughing. She huddled against him, drenched even though the shower had only begun minutes ago.
“Nothing like a little hot rain to perk you up,” she told him.
Her hair was plastered against her face, even her eyelashes were wet. Mark tried to remember when he’d seen something so beautiful and couldn’t. Feeling clumsy, unable to help himself, he pushed her hair away from her cheeks.
“See, I told you I should have taken you home.”
But she shook her head. She didn’t regret begging to stay. “This is more fun.”
He raised an eyebrow. She certainly was different from his late wife. “Getting drenched?”
“No, running through the summer rain.” The street lamp illuminated the laughter in her eyes as she looked up at him. “It’s all in how you look at things.”
He supposed it was.
And right now he was looking at her the way he knew he shouldn’t. The way he hadn’t looked at another woman since Dana.
He’d never thought that he would ever feel anything again, except rage. Even things like hunger, exhaustion were reactions that he was only vaguely aware of, like a distant itch felt along skin whose nerve endings had been severed. There was only the mildest of sensations.
But being with this woman, who was everything he was not, everything he had never been, made him aware that he was still breathing, still alive.
Still a man.
Without thinking, Mark stopped brushing back her hair with his fingertips and framed her face instead. His heart pounding in his chest, his common sense struggling to regain its lost control over him, he brought his mouth down to hers and kissed her.
The moment he did, everything else faded away.
There was only her, only Brooke. Only the life-affirming reality of her. If she was surprised by the kiss, she gave him no indication. Instead she leaned her body into his, igniting flames through all of him.
He kissed her because he had no choice in the matter. He kissed her because to not do so meant the last tiny spark within him was going to be forever extinguished, taking all that he was along with it.
Her soft curves yielded against him, hardening him. Making him want her the way he knew he couldn’t have her. It was a line in the deception he just couldn’t afford to cross.
No matter how much his body begged him to.
Brooke knew he wanted her. Knew it! He wanted her. But no more than she wanted him.
This felt so right, so wonderful.
The hot wind drove the rain beneath the awning, wetting them further. She didn’t notice. Pushing herself up on her toes, Brooke pressed her mouth harder against his. Fell deeper into the kiss. She dug her fingers into his hair, glorying in the way it felt.
This was the man.
The thought throbbed in her brain. This was the man she wanted to spend forever with. Never mind that she was young and inexperienced. Never mind that some people spent a lifetime looking for their soul mate, never to find them. She had found hers.
She knew her heart, knew that this was no mistake. Everything else that had come before had been just a dry run, a rehearsal, for this. To prepare her for this. Because she knew that it wasn’t going to be easy. Mark Banning wasn’t a romantic extension of her daydreams, he was a real man and real men never made life easy. She didn’t care. She was ready.
From this moment forward, she belonged to him. The hard part was g
oing to be in getting him to want to belong to her.
Mark felt urges plunging through him, demanding attention. With the inner strength that arose from diligent self-discipline and denial, he pulled himself away from the situation. As gently as he could, he pushed her away from him.
The air he tried to draw into his lungs felt heavy. It did nothing to help him gain his bearings. Neither did holding her, so he stopped.
It wasn’t easy.
It didn’t help.
Neither did looking down into her smile. He struggled against the urge to seal its imprint into his soul.
She blew out a breath, waiting for her pulse to settle down. “I think we just dried our clothes.”
“I’m surprised we didn’t set the bakery on fire.” He glanced back at the store as if to make sure they hadn’t. Even with Dana, he’d never felt this kind of mindnumbing reaction.
That was because Brooke represented forbidden fruit, he told himself. If this moment wasn’t wrapped up in lies, then perhaps he would have reacted differently to her.
The excuse he gave himself was just another lie that joined the others.
Just as abruptly as the shower had begun, it stopped. Mark put his hand out, but no drops fell to meet his upturned palm. He took hold of her arm. The sooner he got her beneath her father’s roof, the better.
“We’d better take advantage of the break and get back to the car. I need to take you home.”
She nodded her head solemnly, knowing that there was no room for wordplay this time. He was taking her to her home. She would have been lying if she hadn’t admitted, at least to herself, that what had just happened had shaken her up a bit. But it had also made her aware that the next time—and there was going to be a next time—it would end differently. They were going to be together.
“Progress,” she murmured as she linked her arm through his.
Venturing out from beneath the awning, he spared her a glance. He wasn’t sure if he had heard her correctly. “What?”
“Progress,” she repeated. When the confusion didn’t leave his features, she explained, “This time you didn’t apologize.”
There was a reason for that. “You would only talk me out of it.”
Her eyes crinkled into her smile. “See, you’re getting to know me, too.”
This couldn’t be allowed to continue. Not when there was a very real and present danger of his forgetting every single professional ethic he had ever taught himself. He had no right to do that to her. Abruptly, he stopped walking and took hold of her shoulders, his expression deadly serious.
“Brooke, listen to me. There are things about me I can’t tell you.” At least, he added silently, not yet. “I’m not some romantic figure in a two-hundred-year-old book. I’m not one of those authors your father has at the shop.”
Her eyes were wide as she looked up at him, innocent and yet somehow oddly knowing. “I know.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “Nothing can happen between us.”
Her smile was unnervingly serene. “But it already has.”
He had no way of arguing that. Because, in his heart, whether he willingly admitted it to himself or not, he knew she was right.
Chapter Ten
He felt like a family friend.
He felt like a traitor.
He’d been a private investigator for five years now and in all that time, Mark could not remember ever being this ambivalent about a case before.
Of course, always before he’d either dealt with out-and-out criminals, like the time he’d gone undercover within a client’s company to discover which of the man’s employees was embezzling funds from him, or he was just tracking down missing persons. In the latter scenario, he’d never had to get under a so-called missing person’s skin before. Never tried to gain that person’s complete confidence. In every instance, once the party was located, that was that. He would hand over the information and leave it to his client to approach the person in whatever manner they felt was right.
But this was different. This meant at least pretending to get involved. And somewhere along the line the pretense had become real. He’d gotten involved. Too involved. Mark stood in front of the mirror over the bureau, wearing the jacket he put on when the situation required something more formal than just the workshirts and jeans he favored.
He didn’t see the navy sports jacket, or the light-blue shirt, or the crisply pressed—thanks to the dry-cleaning shop down the block—light-gray pair of pants. He saw the scar. For a while as he grew used to it, the angry red welt had begun to fade. Over time it had almost seemed to become smaller to him until he barely noticed it at all.
But now he felt as if the scar was taking over his entire face.
Like the portrait hidden in Dorian Gray’s attic, he thought, that wound up taking on the outward signs of the evil that its namesake was committing over the years.
To the casual observer, it didn’t appear as if he was doing anything “evil,” he told himself. He was getting paid to help Tyler Carlton claim his birthright and avenge his mother’s honor in the bargain. He opened a drawer and took out his tie, the same tie he’d worn to dinner that first night.
He knew where Tyler was coming from. God knew if there’d been a way he could have avenged his own parents’ death, especially his mother’s, he would have gladly done it.
But when he’d taken on this case, he hadn’t thought about the fact that there might be trusts that would have to be forged and then broken. That was what he was faced with now; that was what was chafing so badly at his conscience. Within a relatively short amount of time, Derek Ross had taken to him as if he were some long-lost son.
And Brooke—well, Brooke looked at him as if he were her knight in shining armor, come to rescue her from the tower so that they could live happily ever after.
Mark stopped trying to knot his tie and stared into the mirror.
If only.
But he knew there was no happily ever after in the offing. There was no happily now, either. Except for the few moments when he forgot who and what he was, what he was about, and focused only on the way she laughed. On the way the light in every room she entered seemed to gather around her and make love to her. The way it lightly slid along her skin, the way it got caught up in her hair, adding highlights to the rich blue-black color.
Mark stopped abruptly. He wasn’t helping his case any.
Or this stupid tie.
With an impatient tug, he pulled off the tie he was vainly attempting to knot, then just said the hell with it. Balling it up, he shoved it back into the drawer and slammed it shut.
He blew out a long breath and reined his emotions in. He couldn’t afford to go off like this. The second she saw him, Brooke would know there was something wrong and then he’d be subjected to endless questions. The woman would have made one hell of an interrogator, he thought.
What would she have said if she knew that when he’d slipped out of the shop today at one, he hadn’t been going to some mysterious appointment, but to her house? To let himself stealthily in through the back door and methodically go through Derek’s things, looking for that one last bit of proof that would seal things as to his identity?
He’d found it, too. After going through the man’s things, he’d found the photograph hidden in one of the man’s beloved old first editions. The same photograph that Tyler had given him. It was of Derek and his sister taken a quarter of a century ago.
He’d put it back, but seeing it was enough. Now there was no room for doubt. He hadn’t told Tyler about it, but he would have to. Soon.
The guilt didn’t go, but at least he felt a little calmer. Squaring his shoulders, he walked out of his apartment. He was supposed to be picking up Derek and Brooke within the hour. There was a gallery opening he’d promised to attend with them.
But when he arrived, only one of the two was ready. Derek greeted him at the door, wearing a comfortable-looking old sweater whose hem had come unraveled on one side and slack
s that looked more appropriate to puttering around in his garden, coaxing flowers to blossom than for a gallery opening.
“Am I too early?” Mark asked. He could have sworn the man said to come at seven-thirty. He’d pulled up in front of the house at seven-twenty-five, then waited five minutes.
“No, you’re right on time,” Derek assured him. “But I’m afraid I won’t be going with you.”
Mark’s next question faded into oblivion because Brooke came down the stairs just then. She was wearing a black cocktail dress that trailed after her in the back, but was cut high in the front, displaying legs that would have made a dancer envious. Her hair was artfully piled up on her head, making her look hopelessly sexy and far older than her years.
He was a dead man, Mark thought.
The next moment he forced his attention back to Derek. The last thing he wanted to do was be alone with Brooke, especially when she looked like every man’s fantasy come true. “Are you sure you can’t go?”
“You look lovely, Brooke.” Derek turned from his daughter and shook his head as he looked at him. “I’m afraid that I’m really not feeling very well.”
Just a hint of concern entered Brooke’s eyes, doing battle with indecision. “Maybe I should stay home, too, then, Dad. Take care of you.” She started to shed the shawl she’d thrown about her shoulders.
Derek was quick to move the shawl back into place. “No, no, I’ll be fine, really. This passes,” he assured her. “I’d feel worse if I knew I was responsible for the two of you missing out on Waller’s show. Go, have a good time. For all three of us.”A hand firmly on each of their elbows, Derek ushered the younger people across the threshold.
Brooke pressed her lips together. Mark had the vague impression that she was trying to stifle a laugh.
“If you’re sure…” she was saying.
“I’m positive,” Derek told her. “Now go.”
With that, the door was suddenly closed, leaving them standing on the doorstep.
Not trusting himself to touch her, Mark shoved his hands into his pockets and led the way to the car he’d parked in the driveway.
“I’m sorry about that,” Brooke apologized as she fell into step beside him.