A Winning Battle

by Carla Neggers

  But what the hell. He was doomed, anyway.

  There were no ashes.

  He hadn’t burned his notes. He hadn’t burned a thing. What self-respecting reporter would? The matches had been a ploy.

  “You bastard,” he muttered to himself as they turned up Beacon.

  He was every bit as bad as Page thought he was. No, the matches hadn’t been a ploy to get into her apartment so he could do his column. But they’d still been a ploy—to get on her good side the easy way, with none of the hard work. That accomplished, they could go on and be friends, then lovers.

  In Page’s world view, however, ploys were lies, and lies weren’t tolerated.

  And she’d already revealed herself to be anything but forgiving.

  What was more, he hadn’t exactly abandoned the article—or not abandoned it, either. He’d tried a number of times to write the damn thing, just to exorcise Page from his thoughts once and for all. But images of her would interfere. In incredible detail he could see her lovely, pale-skinned body climbing from the hotel pool, her bright smile and her turquoise eyes sparkling with anger and determination. He’d thought coffee with her might help him to decide, one way or the other, what to do about her. He knew he couldn’t do the column. He really did. But how was he going to convince Page she hadn’t been conned?

  The truth was out, at least for the moment. She’d be—preferably not his own.

  Chapter Six

  Page leaned Against the wall in the lobby of Chris’s building as he fished out his keys. She noticed this time he didn’t bother with any pretense of not being able to find them. He stuck the key in the door and grinned at her, as if he knew what she was thinking. She smiled back. She doubted it was much of a smile. As she’d walked along beside him, she’d had a curious urge to scoop up his hand, swing his arm and run with him. It was madness, of course. But any more mad than going up to his apartment to see his ashes?

  “Chickening out?” he asked, his look filled with challenge and amusement.

  “Of course not.”

  “Not Page B. Once you’ve made up your mind, that’s it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re one tough lady, right?”

  “That depends on what you mean by ‘tough.’ As I’ve already indicated, Mr. Battle, you don’t scare me.”

  He laughed as he pushed the door open with his shoulder. “I’m onto you, sweetheart. Whenever I strike a nerve, you start with the ‘Mr. Battle’ routine. You are thinking about chickening out.”

  She was. She wasn’t going to admit it to him, but she was reconsidering, trying to make herself reconsider. Chickening out seemed to be a wise course of action, although not because she was afraid of him. She was simply ill at ease with her mixed feelings toward him. Spring fever seemed to have gotten hold of her sensible nature, and who knew what would happen next. Already she was noticing too much about him. In the sunlight she’d spotted touches of gray in his stubble of beard and the slight glisten of perspiration on his brow. She’d observed the wrinkles in his shirt, its cotton fabric worn and soft with use, making him seem even sexier, and her gaze had dwelled for seconds too long on the good-quality leather belt that had to be a decade old. He wasn’t slick and polished and packaged. Like everything else, she’d noticed that about him, too.

  What was more disconcerting, she’d reacted. Her response was in no way professional or distanced or that of the wronged target of a relentless journalist. Walking beside him, she’d wanted him to touch her. Her lips tingled with the urge to touch his. Her fingertips itched with the need to reach out and feel a part of him, any part, hands, hair, face, stomach, thighs. Her spine ached with a longing so deep, so basic that she had almost groaned aloud. If it was only spring fever, it was the worse case she’d ever had!

  But he was still Christopher O. Battle, still relentless, still unpredictable, still a liar. Still unsuitable. Still not the man for her. She had fought too long and too hard for some stability in her life, and she wasn’t going to lose it, not for him, not for anyone.

  “I am not chickening out,” she said firmly, and swept through the door after him.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  There was something tentative in his voice that, preoccupied with her own ambivalence, she hadn’t noticed before. She eyed him suspiciously. “Do you want me to chicken out?”

  He shrugged unconvincingly. “Makes no difference to me.”

  Interesting, she thought. Interesting, indeed. She prided herself on her judgment of character. In her business such a skill was critical. Any journalist burning his notes would raise her eyebrows. Journalists simply didn’t do such things. But a tenacious, hard-hitting, cynical columnist like Chris Battle burning his notes seemed very much on the incredible side. In fact, unbelievable. Taking on professional organizers wasn’t in the same league as taking on political corruption or the illegal dumping of hazardous chemicals, but Chris was a professional. He wouldn’t make such distinctions, particularly while he was hot on the scent of whatever project consumed his interest.

  Which meant it was highly unlikely he’d burned his notes.

  Which meant he might or might not have abandoned his column on professional organizers.

  Which meant he was a liar, and she had probably been conned.

  “That’s good,” she said, deciding to let him roast for a while in his own fire.

  She followed him up the five flights of stairs and derived great satisfaction from watching a little more sweat break out on his brow. Inside his apartment everything was just as untidy as it had been a few weeks ago. The coat tree teetered when he tossed his jacket among the collection that had gathered there over the long winter.

  “Some coffee?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. Where are the ashes?”

  He rubbed his stubble of beard. “I think I’ve misled you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I didn’t really burn the notes. It sounded dramatic and seemed like a fun thing to tell you, like something you’d swallow. A game, you know? So that’s what I told you. As it happens, I didn’t actually burn them. My building’s old. Couldn’t very well risk a fire, could I?”

  She tucked her thumbs in the corners of her suit jacket pockets. “You lied.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was no remorse in his tone or his expression. His easy admission—as if to say, what was the big deal—deflated her anger somewhat, but not anywhere near enough to compel her to retreat to Beacon Street.

  “Why did you drag me all the way up here before telling me?” she demanded. “Why not admit you lied back in the cafe and save us both the trouble?”

  He headed for his kitchen and grabbed an apple out of a mixing bowl on the table, offering it to her. She shook her head, and he bit into it. Something about the way he chewed rekindled the ache in her back, and she began to pace, hoping it would help. It didn’t.

  “I was hoping I could come up with a good cover on the way over,” he said.

  “You mean another lie?”

  “If you want to be so bald about it, yes, another lie.”

  “But you couldn’t come up with one?”

  “Didn’t.”

  She snorted. “What kind of cover could you have come up with? Either you have ashes, or you don’t have ashes!”

  He swallowed a chunk of his apple, still not looking contrite. “I considered telling you I’d sprinkled them on the Public Garden so we could both think about my sacrifice whenever we looked out our windows.” He spoke in a mockingly mournful voice, as if the ashes were those of a deceased mutual friend, not some damn notes. “I was even going to show you the exact spot where the ashes of my hard work had met the dirt and mud of—”

  “Oh, spare me. I’d never have swallowed that!”

  A small, unrepentant smile escaped. “No? You swallowed the line about the ashes in the first place. Two burned matches—and you the Ms. Organized Barracuda. Gullible, gullible.”

  “Don’t turn thi
s back around to me, Battle. You’re the one who lied.”

  “And you’re the one who fell for it.” He winked at her and took another chomp of apple.

  “That hardly makes us even.”

  “Who’s keeping score?”

  “I am.”

  “Page, let’s talk.”

  But she refused to hear him as she flounced over to his desk and began madly flipping through the piles of papers. “Where are the notes?” she asked, feeling breathless and wild. “You didn’t dispose of them at all, did you?”

  “Now wait just a minute.” He was behind her in an instant. “Nobody touches my desk.”

  “I shouldn’t imagine anyone would want to.”

  He grabbed her wrist as she reached for a folder and pulled her around toward him. She didn’t fight him. She didn’t want to, couldn’t. She knew what was coming, and her fears and inhibitions no longer mattered.

  “I can’t stand this,” she whispered, her gaze locking with his.

  “Neither can I.”

  His voice was husky and rich and honest. He had her wrist up by her throat, an awkward but not painful position, and let his hand move slowly down her forearm to her crooked elbow, which was pressed against her breast. Then he skipped from her elbow to her ribs, the knuckles of his thumb just skimming the lower part of her breast as she moved not away from him, but toward him. His eyes never left hers. His lips were parted slightly, and her mind spun with images of what they’d feel like on her mouth, her nipples, her—

  You can’t do this!

  She turned sharply, and his hand fell away. “Look at this,” she said, her voice strained, the laugh that was supposed to have been caustic a pathetic sound. “It’s unbelievable. Grocery lists in among your business notes, phone messages scrawled on anything available, scraps of paper that may or not be anything worth saving, tear sheets just tossed any ol’ place, clippings—”

  “Page, don’t.” His voice was soft, a caress.

  “Look here—a birthday card for your mother.”

  “What? So there it is. I was wondering what happened to it. Hey, now I’m only a week late.” He smiled as her eyes met his. “There, I knew that’d get you to look at me.”

  Her throat was dry and tight, but she maintained her Ms. Organizer facade. “How you get anything done is completely beyond me.”

  “How doesn’t matter. That I do should be enough.”

  He spoke quietly and smiled again, a soft, tender smile that lit up his eyes and made him look more than roguishly sexy, more than simply a man wanting a quick and meaningless toss in bed. She felt jittery and silly. It was so much easier just to keep their animosity going.

  “I...I think your honesty unnerves me more than your dishonesty,” she said, then turned away quickly and snatched up a book of matches. “What’s this? If you don’t smoke, I don’t understand—” She’d opened the matchbook and spotted her phone number on the inside flap. “Oh, I see. Well, luckily there’s a whole book of matches here. That should suffice to get us a nice fire going. Where are the notes on professional organizers?”

  “Page,” Chris said, curiously calm, “I’m not going to let you burn my notes.”

  “Then you admit you didn’t get rid of them?”

  “Look around and see for yourself. I’m a pack rat. I never get rid of anything.”

  “Least of all notes for a potential column.”

  “It’s not a potential column. I’m not going to do it. I’m sorry I lied, Page. I’m sorry we’ve gotten off to such a rotten start. I’m sorry I’m not such an easy guy to trust. But if you’ve never believed anything I’ve told you, believe me now. I’m not going to do that piece.”

  She turned around to face him and leaned against the desk. “Why are you being nice?”

  “I have to have an ulterior motive?”

  “Not have to. But you probably do.”

  He smiled. “If I’m not nice, you won’t talk to me and explain why you pulled away from me a minute ago.”

  “What you should be asking is why I didn’t pull away sooner.”

  “Okay. Why didn’t you?”

  “Spring fever.”

  “Why don’t you trust your own emotions?”

  “Because...” No, she couldn’t explain. She couldn’t even begin to explain. And even if she could, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Chris Battle was attracted to a combative, give-as-good-as-she-gets woman. She wasn’t going to expose her weaknesses. “It’s not important. Chris, I want you to do your column on professional organizers.”

  He didn’t say a word, just regarded her with his infamous skepticism.

  “Don’t you want to know why I’ve changed my mind?” she asked.

  “I think it’s fairly obvious. You want to keep hating me, and the column will help. That way you don’t have to confront your feelings.”

  “No, not at all.” She tried to sound crisp and businesslike, but instead sounded shocked, even hurt. Had she been that big a jerk that he thought she hated him? “It seems to me that you think with pen in hand. You gather information and process it through your writing. You’ve been gathering information on me and what I do, but in order for you to make sense of any of it, you’ve got to write. So write. Do the column.” She looked away. “Understand me.”

  She was relieved when he didn’t tell her she wasn’t making any sense and didn’t try to touch her, because this time she wouldn’t have pulled away. Even with what little she’d said, she’d never opened herself up in such a way as to invite probing, understanding. It was safer to remain a mystery.

  “I’ll need to see your office,” he said.

  “Nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  He smiled, but she could see the confusion in his eyes. “Sharp?”

  She grinned back. “Of course.”

  He leaned against his desk and watched her as she told him goodbye and left, moving faster as she hit the landing outside the apartment and even faster as she hit the stairs. She took them two at a time. Outside she leaped down his front stoop and stumbled, twisting her ankle, but she righted herself immediately. She knew Battle was up there watching her. She could feel his eyes on her.

  “Hey, Page B.”

  She looked up in the sunlight and saw his head thrust out of his attic window. Saw his grin.

  “What’d you do with that birthday card?”

  “I didn’t do anything with it. You took it.”

  “I did?”

  She groaned. “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s around here somewhere. Your ankle okay?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “See? You need me.”

  “How do you figure?”

  His grin broadened. “The irritation factor. I keep you on edge.”

  That he did. His head disappeared back inside, and the window shut with a thud. Page headed up Beacon and ducked quickly onto Charles Street, out of view of Chris’s attic. Then she found an ice-cream shop and bought herself a cup of raspberry sorbet.

  Spring, she thought miserably. Would she survive it?

  * * *

  AT NINE O’CLOCK the next morning Chris still wasn’t dressed. He lay flat on his back on his bed, stark naked, and contemplated his bedroom ceiling. No coffee stains there, but the white plaster, almost gray now, needed painting. There were a few cracks that could use patching. When he made love to Page, she’d probably comment on the state of his ceiling.

  He shut his eyes and groaned. “My man, that’s not funny.”

  But in an odd, painful way, it summed up his confusion. He had lain awake most of the night wondering what the hell was going on between him and the unexpectedly unpredictable organizer. Was he doing the column? No, no way. He couldn’t. At the very least, it’d be unethical. So why had he agreed to show up this morning? Because he wanted to know more about her, and it seemed a good way to get at the inner workings of Page B. Harrington. But also a dishonest way. Which was why he wasn’t dressed.

  He supposed Page was
fuming by now. He should call, but what would he say? I’m not coming. But he might. I’ll be late. But he already was, and he hadn’t decided he would in fact go. I want to see you, but not on business. She’d tell him not to bother; she wasn’t going to waste a morning’s work. I’m lying here in bed wishing you were here with me. For sure she’d tell him not to come.

  The course of least resistance was just to get dressed and get moving.

  But when he arrived at the Four Seasons, one of his security guard buddies handed him an envelope. Inside he found a key and a note printed on Get It Together Inc. stationery.

  I don’t know if you’re just late because you’re irresponsible and inconsiderate, or if you chickened out and aren’t coming. I don’t even care. If you get here, here’s the key to my apartment. Go on in and have yourself a ball. I have a 10:30 meeting and won’t be back until 4:15.

  Sincerely, Page Harrington

  He loved the “sincerely.” From the looks of her handwriting—she’d practically punched holes in the paper she’d pressed so hard—he guessed she’d have liked to send him off with a less professional closure, something in the vein of rot in hell.

  Inconsiderate and irresponsible, was he? From her point of view, maybe. From his, he had simply tried to spare her feelings—and his own, too, he supposed. Would she have rather he’d called her and told her he was lying in bed naked thinking about making love to her?

  What the hell. He scrawled that on the back of her note, tucked it back in its envelope and returned it and the key to the security guard.

  “Wait,” he said. “On second thought, I’ll take the key.”

  No point in burning all his bridges.

  * * *

  I didn’t call you because I was lying in bed naked thinking about making love to you and didn’t want to embarrass you.

  Page felt a curious thrill when she read Chris’s note as she rode the elevator up to her condominium. Was he serious?