He could give him a whole list of reasons if he wanted, but Rex wasn’t taken in by any of it. “Did you also ‘arrange’ to be hiding from her the rest of the time?”
Though it hurt his head to look at the screen, Alec did, afraid that if he continued to look at Rex, he was going to punch him out. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Rex swung the chair around so that Alec was forced to look at him. Arms on either side of the chair, he leaned in until he was literally in Alec’s face, where he intended to remain until he talked sense into him.
“Yes, I do,” he said, growing serious. “I’m talking about one of my best friends turning into a hollow shell of a man when he has a chance not to.” He sighed. “For some, Alec, love doesn’t happen at all. For others, they get lucky once. And a very rare few get lucky twice. You’ve got a lottery ticket in your hand, buddy. Are you going to use it, or tear it up?”
“I’m going to finish my work.” Gripping both wrists, he removed Rex’s hands from the armrests and turned his chair back to face the desk.
“You’re fired,” Rex said to the back of Alec’s head. “Go home.”
Alec didn’t even bother turning around to look at Rex. He started playing with a set of coordinates on the screen. The shape altered. Distorted, actually. Damn it all. “You can’t fire me, Rex. I have part interest in the company.”
“All right, then I’m relieving you of duty and putting you on the sick list”
Back to the “Star Trek” metaphor, Alec thought with a heavy sigh. It had been Rex’s consuming passion throughout college. He’d never been able to get into it himself. “I’m not sick.”
“Mental illness is considered a sickness. And you’re acting like a loon.”
Alec pressed the Escape button and the screen turned blank. It was late. He wasn’t going to get anything more done tonight. He’d used up what little creativity he seemed to have available hours ago.
He frowned at Rex, resigned. “You’re not going to shut up, are you?”
Rex shook his head, a smug look creasing his lips. “Nope.”
Alec reached for the telephone. “I’m going to get Joe over here to haul you out on the carpet and get you to stop harassing me.”
Rex placed his hand on top of Alec’s on the receiver. “Joe’s backing me on this, Alec. He got a good eyeful of Marissa at the party, too. And we both saw you together.”
Alec felt like a petulant kid, but he was tired. “Doesn’t prove anything.”
“You’re in denial,” Rex observed. He thought for a minute, trying to remember. “Don’t you at least have a class to go to? That Kid and Me thing?”
“Baby and Me,” Alec corrected. “And I can’t make it. It’s too late.” Class was long over.
“Do I have to carry you out? Alec, go home. Go home to your daughter, to your life. Don’t look back years from now and say, ‘Damn, but Rex was a smart man. I really should have listened to him.’”
Alec laughed, too tired to protest anymore. “That is never going to happen.” Shutting off his computer, he rose to his feet. “But because I can’t stand listening to you anymore, I am going to leave.”
“One way or another, doesn’t matter to me. As long as you go.”
Chapter Twelve
The house was quiet when he let himself in. Almost too quiet. Alec looked around. There wasn’t a thing out of place. It was hard to imagine that this was the personal play area of two energetic toddlers during the day.
Whatever might have gone on here earlier, it was all quiet and neat now. Quiet and neat. Things he had been taking for granted lately.
He’d been taking a lot of things for granted lately, he thought as he walked into the kitchen. And they all had to do with Marissa.
Opening the refrigerator, Alec took a can of soda from the rack in the door and tugged on the metal ring. As it fizzed, he took a long, deep pull, shutting the refrigerator door with his elbow. A vague sense of hunger registered, but he decided to ignore it, too tired to fix himself something.
He looked toward the table. There was a covered dish sitting at the place he customarily sat. Alec shook his head. She was always one step ahead of him.
Straddling the chair, he lifted the lid from the plate. There were several pieces of fried chicken on it, cold now. But it was good hot or cold.
Just like her, he mused. Whether she was being passionate, or just amusing and witty, Marissa whet his appetite.
He picked up a piece of chicken and began to eat, his mind on the woman in the rooms above the garage.
Was he going to continue to do that? To just think about her, to just look and never do anything more about it?
He thought of what Rex had said to him. All of it. Much as he hated to admit it, Rex did have a point. So what was he going to do? Was he going to use his lottery ticket or just tear it up?
Alec didn’t know. He really didn’t know.
He concentrated on filling the void in his belly, ignoring the much larger one that loomed before him in his life. He didn’t have to make any decisions tonight, not when he was too tired to really think straight.
As if thinking straight actually helped.
Alec finished the meal and put the dish in the dishwasher. It was empty. She’d put everything away. Frustrated, though he really wouldn’t have been able to explain why, Alec tossed the empty soda can into the bag Marissa kept for recycling.
How the hell did she manage to be so damn efficient? How could she just go on with her life at top speed when he felt as if he was suddenly stuck in mud, unable to move forward, unable to move back into the sterile life he’d had before she came? Wasn’t she as bothered about this impasse they found themselves in as he was?
Apparently not. She was functioning. Brilliantly, while he…he felt as if his wheels were just spinning in place in that damn tar pit.
Why not? It was his problem, not hers. She’d probably already moved on in her mind. But not him. No, not him.
Why not him? he demanded of himself. He’d been the one to set down the terms, say he couldn’t handle loving and losing again. So he had chosen not to love at all and she had accepted that.
Easy for her.
Hard for him.
He was making himself crazy. What he needed right now was not answers to his riddles, but sleep. Pure, simple sleep.
Alec started up the stairs to his room. He was dead tired in more ways than one. And, like as not, probably facing another sleepless night. They’d all been pretty much sleepless since the night of the costume party.
Since the night he’d almost taken her and hadn’t.
Midway up, Alec thought he heard something downstairs. Maybe it was just what was left of his flagging imagination, but it bore checking out. Maybe Marissa had forgotten to turn off one of the baby monitors downstairs.
He went back to the kitchen. There was no monitor there, on or otherwise. She must have moved it, he decided. He was too tired to care where. But as he turned from the kitchen, he found himself walking toward the spare bedroom. The room where she worked on her thesis. He hadn’t the faintest idea why. Maybe it was just basic instinct.
Or maybe he just wanted to be in a room where she had been recently.
The door was closed, just as it usually was. But there was a light peering out from beneath it, spilling out over the sill. As he listened, he heard the sound of keys being struck rapidly.
She was still in the house. A flicker of hope rose within him.
Alec picked up his hand to knock on the door, then decided against it. What was he going to say to her once she opened the door? He hadn’t the foggiest idea. She’d always been so easy to talk to, even before he actually knew her. Now he couldn’t find the right words to use.
Sighing, he turned from the door.
It opened and suddenly she was there, looking up at him quizzically, cutting off his silent escape.
So she hadn’t conjured him up just now, the way she’d done at least a doze
n times since he had all but gone into exile. He actually was home.
Big deal. Anger nudged aside the momentary ray of excitement that pierced her.
Marissa pasted a smile on her face, the same one she’d always used when she’d been determined not to show the Sergeant that his critical words had cut deep.
“I thought I heard something. Been home long?” Turning, Marissa crossed back to the desk.
Alec shook his head. “No. Just a little while.” Damn, but he felt awkward. It shouldn’t be this way. “The chicken was good.”
“Even better warm.” She couldn’t help the slight dig. Where the hell had he been all these days? “But cold chicken’s all right.” She sat down at the computer and looked at the screen. Suddenly unable to concentrate, her mind turned blank.
Common sense, Alec thought, would have had him leaving, especially since he felt as uncomfortable as a man who’d gone out in his underwear to get the morning paper, only to have the door slam shut behind him.
Instead, Alec found himself drifting into the room. He hadn’t been inside it since he’d set up the computer for her.
She had the baby monitors set up on either side of the screen, like twin speakers. Set to different frequencies, there was one for each of the nurseries. Always on call, he mused. What was he doing, cutting someone like that out of his life? Maybe he really was crazy.
Searching for something to say, Alec nodded at the computer screen. “How’s it going?”
Remarkably, considering the state of Marissa’s mind these last few days, the thesis was coming together rather well. Her advisor in the department was pleased. Everyone, it seemed, was pleased with her. Except the one person who counted.
“It’s almost done.” He’d hardly been around for the past two weeks and she had longed for the sight of him, but now that he was here, she found that she couldn’t look at him. She didn’t want him to see the pain that was in her heart. Marissa was sure he’d see it in her eyes.
It was a matter of preserving what little pride she had left to her.
“Which is a good thing,” she continued. “The deadline’s breathing down my neck. I’ll be glad to see it finished.” Marissa slanted a look toward him. “All of it.”
“All of it?” He wasn’t sure he got her meaning.
He was afraid that he did.
“Going to class, rushing around.” She gathered together the hard copy of the revisions she had printed tonight. “I’m graduating in less than a month.” Marissa looked speculatively at the pages in her hands. “Provided that the committee reviewing this likes my thesis.”
He wasn’t accustomed to seeing uncertainty in her eyes. “They’ll like it.”
“How would you know? Maybe it’s garbage.” She frowned at the screen, her mind frozen. Maybe she should just call it quits for tonight. There was no use pushing it.
She was serious, he realized. “Nothing you put your hand to is ever garbage.”
Marissa smiled absently, knowing Alec was just paying lip service. He didn’t mean what he said. If he was untrue to the sentiments she had felt in his kiss, how could she believe anything he said? “I don’t know, this might come close.”
He came around to stand behind her and looked at the screen. Slowly the words faded and the screen saver he had programmed for her came on. She was there, looking back at him, smiling the way he remembered her. The way she wasn’t now.
“Do you really believe that?”
Marissa shrugged. She waited until the photo of her son reformed into her face again, then struck a key, bringing back her thesis. “Maybe I’m too close.”
“Want me to read it?” he offered. “Tell you what I think?”
She couldn’t help the accusation that rose into her eyes. He’d used the excuse of a busy schedule to keep him at the office and away from both home and the classes he was supposed to be taking with Andrea. Now, suddenly, he had time to read her thesis? “When would you have the time?”
She was angry at him. He could hear it in her voice. Alec couldn’t really blame her. “Maybe I could scrounge some up.”
Marissa didn’t want any favors, any crumbs tossed in her direction. She’d already humiliated herself enough for one lifetime when it came to him. “That’s all right, don’t trouble yourself. After all, you’re very busy.”
She was distant, almost disinterested. Well, what the hell had he expected? For her to remain the way she’d been, warm and friendly, while he flip-flopped from Jekyll to Hyde and back again at will?
Her manner had him taking stock of how the immediate future would be affected by her graduation. Something he hadn’t thought about up until now. “Once you graduate, what then?”
She’d thought about this long and hard. Her answer was different now than it would have been two weeks ago. More on track with what it had been before she had come here.
“Then I go job hunting. I have a few prospects.” She thought of the telephone call she’d taken yesterday. “There’s a clinic that’s responded favorably to my application. If we like each other, I might go to work for them.”
He was losing her, he thought. Really losing her. “You’d be working there full-time?”
She raised her eyes to his. He couldn’t read anything there. She was deliberately shutting him out. “Yes.”
Alec took a breath. “That means you’ll be moving out?”
She nodded. She couldn’t tell if that even bothered him. “I’ll be able to afford my own place again. A real home for Christopher,” she added. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave you in a lurch,” she assured him. If he was concerned about this change at all, it was only because he was probably afraid she’d leave him without any help. “There’s still time to find a replacement.”
He felt oddly numbed, like a man who’d been submerged in freezing water. “I guess I had better get around to conducting interviews again.”
Alec waited for her to say something—anything—that would let him know the door between them wasn’t completely shut.
“Yes,” she agreed, her voice tight. “I guess you’d better.”
He didn’t know what to do with himself. He just knew he didn’t want to remain standing here, looking like a fool.
“You probably want to get back to work.” Alec backed out of the room. His hand curled around the doorknob. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you,” Marissa murmured in response, not looking up. It was only after she heard the door close that she dared look in his direction. “You big, dumb jerk,” she added, tears rising in her eyes.
* * *
He’d been right.
It was another sleepless night. And what little sleep he did get was littered with dreams, dreams of Marissa. They were all the same. She was walking away from him. Over and over again.
All he had to do was one thing, and she wouldn’t go. He knew that, sensed it, yet he couldn’t think what that one thing was.
And so she left Again and again, through the course of the entire night. Every time he closed his eyes and fell asleep, there she was, walking away, out of his life. Forever.
Well, he’d better get used to it, he thought when he finally got out of bed the next morning. It was going to happen soon enough.
Alec was halfway through a briefing he was conducting that afternoon when he decided with resounding finality that he didn’t want to get used to it. Didn’t want to get used to life without her.
And he thought he knew what he had to do to make her stay.
The realization that he was probably the biggest fool to have ever walked the face of the earth washed over Alec like a huge wave crashing down on an unsuspecting surfer. It stopped him in midsentence.
Alec looked from Rex to Joe, not even seeing the other assistants who were seated around the table. He knew what he had to do.
“I’ve got to leave,” he said abruptly, backing away from the huge screen he’d been using to illustrate the finer points of the program.
Rex
exchanged looks with Joe. Joe looked bewildered, but Rex was smiling to himself. Finally.
“What did you say?” Joe stared at Alec as if he thought he’d heard wrong.
Alec glanced at his notes on the table, then decided to leave them where they were. Rex could use them to conduct the rest of the briefing. He looked at his watch, even though he had just looked at it less than a minute ago. “I said I have to leave. I’ve got a Baby and Me class to get to.”
Joe waved around at the table. “Now? Alec, we’re in the middle of a meeting. A meeting you’re conducting.”
Alec looked to Rex for support. “Nothing you can’t handle without me.”
Rex nodded, already reaching for the notes. “We’ll muddle through it, don’t worry. Just get moving. And by the way, it’s about time!”
Alec didn’t answer. He didn’t even hear Rex as he ran down the hall to the elevator. He had fifteen minutes to get to class.
It took him twenty. Even then, he’d only made it by watching his rearview mirror for signs of approaching police vehicles as he drove faster than was allowed, barring a life and death emergency.
He figured this qualified.
There was no parking available in the lot when he pulled up in it, except at the very perimeter. Alec raced all the way from his car to the building, and then to class.
Breathing heavily, he hurried in. The door slipped from his fingers, slamming in his wake and drawing everyone’s attention to his entrance.
Marissa swung around. When she saw him, her first thought was that there was something wrong. But it couldn’t have to do with either of the children, they were with her. She couldn’t think of any other reason Alec would come running in, dressed as if he had just dashed out of a meeting.
Before she could ask, he was at her side, taking her arm. He didn’t even say hello.
“Excuse me.” Alec nodded at the woman Marissa had just been talking to. “But I have to talk to Marissa.”
The woman looked at them, a bemused expression on her face. Marissa was painfully aware that every pair of eyes was focused on them as Alec dragged her out into the hallway.
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