Kitabı oku: «And Babies Make Four», sayfa 3

For another, there was her perfume. It was still as gut-stirringly present as ever. He wondered if there was some way he could get her to stop wearing it so that it would stop haunting him.

He was right. She was there, in the process of powering down her computer and getting her things together. For a second he just stood and watched her. Why did every movement she made seem like poetry?

This was no way for a grown man to think, he told himself.

It didn’t stop him.

He had to say something before she turned around to see him staring at her. He didn’t want her to think he was stalking her. Even if they did belong in the same office at the same time.

Not wanting to startle her, Jason cleared his throat. “Getting ready to go home?”

He could see by the way she jumped that he’d startled her, anyway.

His deep voice shimmered along her skin, melting into her consciousness. Mindy swung around in her chair to look at him.

Jason hadn’t talked to her very much these past four days. Just small sound bites aimed at whatever detail he wanted her to see to. And then he’d been gone, lingering like smoke in her mind but not in fact.

She half thought she imagined the sound of his voice now, but there he was, in his doorway. The next moment he was walking toward her.

Mindy nodded toward the clock on the wall. “It’s after five. I thought I’d close up shop.” Nathalie had already left for what she’d announced was going to be a very long, very sexy weekend, hinting that she probably was going to spend most of it in bed. The vibrant woman had punctuated the last remark with a significant look aimed at Jason that neither he, nor she, had missed.

Her purse hovered over the drawer as she held it aloft. “Unless you need me for something.”

He couldn’t help it. The remark made him laugh. If she only knew, he thought.

Jason saw a wide smile crease her lips in response. “I forgot you could do that.”

He wasn’t following her. “Do what?”

“Laugh. Not that I heard you do it very often in high school,” she confessed. The times that she had, it had sent warm ripples through her stomach. It was the kind of deep, sexy laugh that pulled you in, painting improbable, unattainable scenarios in your head.

Surprised, Jason leaned a hip against her desk as he folded his arms before his chest. He probed a little. “I didn’t think that you were even aware of me in high school.”

“I asked you to sign my yearbook,” Mindy reminded him.

That had made an impression on him, but one that he’d thought was fueled only by his own imagination. He’d never possessed a bloated ego. “I thought you were asking everyone.”

She looked at him for a second. Was he serious? Didn’t he know how many girls would have loved to have gone out with him? That he’d been the school’s brooding man of mystery? They’d all held their breaths to see who he’d ask to the prom. And when he didn’t ask anyone, or attend, they’d all thought that was so typically Jason, to be above mundane things like proms and graduation parties.

“There was hardly room in my book for everyone. Just the people I wanted.” God, did that sound as much of a come-on as she thought it did? She sincerely hoped the blush she felt forming inside her wouldn’t rise up to color her face.

He lifted a shoulder, letting it drop. She was just being polite, nothing more.

“Our paths didn’t exactly cross.” She’d been part of every major event that took place in high school, while Jason had simply kept to himself, his focus on his goals. Only, his mind had remained on her.

Maybe he didn’t remember, she thought. Maybe she’d only imagined that he’d look her way. Maybe it was someone else who had caught his attention and she’d only been in his line of sight, as invisible as air to him. Still, her pride made her remind him. “You were in my math class. And in economics.”

He was really surprised that she’d even noticed that, much less remembered it. He truly doubted that she was aware of the fact that he used to come in early just to watch her walk through the door. And wish he were one of the guys who clustered around her.

But it wasn’t in his nature to cluster, and the risks he took were never truly risks, but completely calculated actions. Putting himself out there, exposed, was not the way he operated.

“Really? I don’t remember.”

To say that she did, that she even remembered some of the outfits he wore, like that black turtleneck sweater he seemed to favor and those tight jeans that had caused her to actually snap her pencil in two the first day she’d seen him walking into class wearing them, would have placed her in an awkward position.

So instead, to save face, something that she had very little of these days, Mindy merely shrugged her slim shoulders. “You were kind of hard to miss.” In case he got the wrong idea, she quickly added, “You sat in front of Terry Malone.”

Terry Malone. Tall, blond. Rich. Perfect. With three track-and-field letters adorning his school jacket. Had he been able to find a picture of the guy, Terry’s face would have adorned the dartboard on the back of his bedroom door.

“Right. Your boyfriend.”

Mindy looked at him sharply. Jason couldn’t have known that, if he’d been as unaware of her as he was leading her to believe.

A little ripple of satisfaction danced through her.

She smiled. “It all seems like such a very long time ago.”

“Yeah, well—”

Straightening, Jason looked toward the outer office door. He should be going. Now. Before he said something stupid and had to have his foot surgically removed from his mouth.

He was going to leave, Mindy thought. To go to whatever life he had outside of this office. Her evening and the weekend that was to follow was going to be spent trying to make the tiny one-room apartment she rented into a home.

Suddenly she didn’t feel like going there, didn’t feel like being alone.

She could always go to Manhattan Multiples, she supposed. There was always someone there to talk to, even as late as ten o’clock. She could even take Lara Mancini up on her offer, if the woman was there tonight.

Or she could go to see her parents. That was always a viable option. Her parents always made her feel welcome and wanted.

But she didn’t want to be someone’s patient or someone’s daughter tonight. She wanted to feel the way she used to, like someone who could have the world at her feet if she just applied herself.

Like someone whose husband hadn’t run her self-esteem into the ground and cheated on her. Like someone whose husband hadn’t said, “that’s tough,” when she’d told him she was pregnant.

She wanted the bright, shining life she thought she had when she’d graduated high school.

Without realizing it, Mindy allowed a sigh to escape her lips.

She might not have realized it, but Jason did. He heard her. It stopped him in his tracks and made him turn from the door. And say something he had absolutely no intention of saying.

“Would you like to go somewhere and get a cup of coffee?”

He watched Mindy brighten like a thirsty flower turning up its head toward the first spring rain. “I’d love to.”

Big mistake.

The warning echoed in his head. But the sound of her response drowned it out. So he smiled, ignoring the former, replaying the latter, and said, “Then let’s go. Places around here tend to fill up fast with people escaping to the first leg of their weekend.”

Purse in hand, she was on her feet instantly. “Let’s,” she agreed.

Chapter Four

Sitting outside at a table for two at a nearby trendy restaurant, Jason solemnly watched the late-afternoon sun making shimmering patterns on the surface of his coffee.

The noise of the city pushed its way in, surrounding him and Mindy. The silence that existed between them was all he was aware of.

He had to admit that he hadn’t thought this out.

Being moved exclusively by the desire for Mindy’s company, he’d forgotten that in order to share it comfortably, he was going to have to talk with her.

Talking, when it didn’t involve the care and feeding of investment funds, was not his long suit. It never had been. He had never been accused of being one of those people blessed with a golden tongue. Not even fool’s gold. And right now, his tongue felt as if it had been forged out of two tons of lead.

“So,” was all he could manage before he had utterly depleted his supply of words. It sank to the bottom of his cup of coffee like a stone.

Mindy smiled at him, looking over the rim of her recently stirred cup of foam and decaf, her eyes stirring him.

“So,” she echoed, waiting for him to make some kind of stab at conversation.

Well, that had gone nowhere, he thought darkly. When in doubt, ask questions. That way the spotlight was focused somewhere other than on him.

He took a sip of the strong, black cup of unaffected coffee, let it wind its hot, dark path down his throat and through his chest, then ventured forward. “Care to fill in the blanks?”

She tilted her head in that way he’d always thought hopelessly endearing. “Excuse me?”

He was going to have to stop talking in bits and pieces, he thought, and make sense before she thought he was hopelessly sentence challenged.

“The blanks between walking on stage to get your diploma and arriving at Mallory and Dixon on Monday morning.” He did a quick subtraction. “That leaves us with what, eleven years?”

Eleven years. The simple statement stunned her. My God, was it really all that time? Had that many years actually gone by since she’d left for Northwestern, determined to set the world on fire?

It didn’t seem possible.

She felt as if the distance between then and now was a little more than a blink of an eye. A year, maybe two, no more than three. Eleven? How had that happened?

“Eleven years,” she echoed out loud. Her mouth curved in a self-deprecating smile. “That suddenly makes me feel very old.”

He hadn’t meant to do that. “Someone once said everyone has to grow older, but you don’t have to grow old.”

She recalled reading that someplace. Mindy thought for a second, then her eyes brightened as she remembered. “George Burns, I think.”

He was surprised that she knew something like that. But then, she’d been surprising him all week. He took another sip of coffee, wishing there was something in the drink that would transform his stilted tongue into a glib one. He began to understand what had driven Christian to approach Cyrano and ask the character to do his talking for him.

“Good words to live by.” He allowed himself to study her face for a moment. He’d noticed women looking in her direction enviously as they walked by. “In any case, I don’t think you have anything to worry about in that department for a very long, long time.”

She raised her eyes to his, and for one moment he forgot to breathe.

“That’s very sweet of you.”

Embarrassed, not knowing what to do with his face, his eyes, his hands, Jason shrugged. “Just stating a fact.”

Sweet. Who would have ever thought that Jason Mallory could actually be described that way? Mindy mused. Tough, rugged, sexy, yes, but sweet? That was a new one.

She sat back, enjoying this lovely island of time that had materialized out of nowhere, not unaware of the envious looks she was garnering. She would bet that every woman who walked by wished that she was in her place.

The conversation had stopped again. Searching for something to move it along, Jason looked down at her hand. He heard himself asking another personal question before he had a chance to think it out. “So, are you divorced, or—?”

“Or,” she replied. It was a state of limbo, really, not quite married anymore, not yet divorced. “It’s not final yet.” Anyday now, she thought.

The sun was pushing its way into the restaurant, brushing against the wide gold band, highlighting it. “Oh, I was just wondering because you’re still wearing your wedding ring.”

Mindy looked down at the gold band as if it had somehow managed to offend her through no fault of its own. She wasn’t wearing the ring because of any real sentimental attachment. The truth was, the only part of her that had gained weight since she’d become pregnant was her hands. Actually, not even her hands, just her hand. Her left one.

The fingers of her left hand had swollen just enough to make easy removal of her wedding ring an impossibility. Tugging at it was futile. Like a guest who had intentionally overstayed their welcome, the ring refused to be dislodged. The only way to rid herself of it was to cut it off, and she really wasn’t ready to do that at the moment.

Somehow that would have underscored the mistake she’d made in giving her heart to Brad and putting her life on virtual hold. Cutting the ring off would have symbolized her making a complete break with that part of her life, and though she was struggling to be independent now, she wasn’t ready to bury everything just yet. But soon, very soon, she promised herself. And then she was going to have to send it back to Brad.

But she didn’t want to tell Jason any of this.

She thought of a movie she’d once seen. The heroine pretended to be married in order not to have anyone hit on her.

Mindy ran her thumb over the row of winking diamonds slowly. “Oh that. I just wear it to keep the wolves away.”

He felt a sense of relief and told himself he shouldn’t. “I thought that you were still wearing it because you and your husband were trying to reconcile.”

The very idea threatened to make Mindy gag. “Never happen,” she told him flatly. She set the cup down a little too hard and some of the liquid sloshed over the side. She moved her napkin over to sop up the mess. If only the mess that her life had become was as easily cleaned up, she thought. “I’ve always disliked having to take a number and wait in line, like in a bakery or at the post office.”

His eyes narrowed as he tried to fathom what the remark had to do with the state of her marriage. “I don’t understand—”

“Neither did I. Glossed right over the evidence, even though it was right there in front of me.” The excuses, the late nights, the faint scent of perfume that wasn’t hers, the hang-up calls when she answered the phone. “Believed every word he said when he told me he was working late.” She looked at him. Did he think her a hopeless fool to be so naive? “People do work late in this day and age.”

“But he wasn’t working.” It wasn’t a question, it was rhetorical. And hit so close to home that he couldn’t believe it. Debra had played the same game with him, lying to him when she bothered saying anything at all to him.

She laughed shortly. “Oh, he was working all right.” Holding up her hand, she enumerated, counting the women off on her fingers one by one. “Working over his secretary, his assistant, some of his prettier clients. I always thought that Brad’s main problem was that he spread himself around too much.” She shook her head. Sometimes, it was hard even for her to believe how blind she’d been, how trusting. “I had no idea how right I was. It was like he spread himself and his seed all over the state of Illinois.” Mindy looked down at her hands. She’d knotted them together in her lap. “I guess I just wasn’t woman enough to keep him at home or satisfied.”

He felt a flash of anger rising within him. Anger at the man who had done this to her, anger at the sheer absurdity of what she was suggesting. Didn’t she see what she had to offer a man?

“Seems to me the problem’s with him, not you.” She looked at him, confusion knitting in her brow. “Any man who goes from woman to woman is looking to bolster a very sagging self-esteem and has severe psychological deficiencies. He needs validation. None of that has anything to do with you.”

Jason was being very kind, but that still didn’t erase what she was feeling. Brad’s shabby treatment of her had made her doubt herself in the most severe way. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do. Otherwise, your husband—” He knew she’d referred to him by name, but right now he was drawing a blank. “What did you say his name was?”

“Brad.”

“Brad.” He’d never liked that name, Jason thought. It sounded as if it belonged to some shallow narcissistic preppy. “Brad would have been more than happy to stay at home and count himself lucky to have a woman like you for his wife.”

He had completely overwhelmed her. Warmth enveloped her, easing away the cold lump of self-doubt. “Wow. I don’t know what to say.”

He hadn’t said that to get any kind of response. “The truth doesn’t need to be commented on. It just exists.” Jason looked over toward their waiter. The man was unsubtly hovering, eyeing their small table. In the not-too-far distance, separated by a rope, were would-be patrons all waiting to be seated. Jason nodded toward her empty cup. “Would you like to order anything else?”

“No, this was fine,” she told him, pushing back her coffee cup.

In deference to her condition, she had ordered decaf, but even so, she knew that the drink would go straight through her. Mentally, Mindy ticked off forty-five minutes from her first sip, knowing that was approximately all the time she’d have before her first bathroom run. If she had any more coffee, that would just speed up her relays.

Jason shifted forward, taking his wallet out of his pocket. He pulled out a twenty and placed it on the table. “Then I think we’re going to have to leave. The crowd looks like it could get ugly.”

Rising to his feet, he took her arm. He escorted her out, maneuvering through the throng and not saying anything until they reached the entrance. The scent of her hair seemed to swirl around him as he pushed open the door for her and followed her out. He could feel his gut tightening in response.

Hungry, he was hungry, he thought. That was the problem. Nothing a little steak dinner couldn’t cure.

As if.

The second they walked out the door, the oppressive heat hit them. It was all Mindy could do to keep from wilting. It was like walking into an oven set at five hundred degrees. She felt as if her eyelashes were in danger of melting.

Jason felt her sag a little against him. His hand tightened on her arm. “Something wrong?”

Mindy shook her head, rallying. For a second, there, the change in temperature from the restaurant to the street had her knees feeling rubbery.

Or was it just a by-product of being pregnant, she wondered.

She hung on to his arm for support. “No, I just forgot how humid summers in New York could be. I feel as if someone just lobbed a fireball in my direction.”

Now that he looked at her, she did look a little pale. “There’s air-conditioning in my car. Can I drop you somewhere?”

The bus she took stopped just across the street. There was already a long line. His offer was tempting. Still, she couldn’t just put him out like that. “Oh, no, I don’t want to be a bother.”

She wasn’t a bother. The thoughts he was having about her, the desire that kept skewering him at unexpected times, that was a bother, but not her.

“I told you before, I don’t say anything I don’t mean. If I thought that dropping you off somewhere would be a bother, I wouldn’t have offered.” How many times did he have to make that clear to her? “Shall we take it from the top?”

“Well, I don’t live too far from here if you take it as the crow flies.” She bit her lip, looking at the clogged streets. Driving her home would be an ordeal this time of day. “But if the crow’s driving a car and stuck in traffic…”

He laughed at the image. There was no doubt about it; being around her made him feel good. Too good. He had to be careful.

“You’ll make the same time in a bus,” he pointed out. “And at least in my car, you don’t run the risk of having to stand next to someone who had garlic bread with his lunch.”

He definitely had a point. Mindy felt herself losing more ground. She was trying to do the right thing, but her condition made his offer exceptionally tempting. Besides, she really did like being in his company, even if she had to do most of the talking.

She smiled at him. “You do put up a persuasive argument when you want to.”

It was as if someone else was doing the talking for him. He heard himself say, “I only want to when the stakes are right.”

Taking her arm again, he guided her to the curb, keeping his body between her and at least one branch of strident pedestrians.

Mindy was grateful for the buffer. She’d forgotten how aggressive New Yorkers could be. And how plentiful. Living in the suburbs the way she had ever since she’d married Brad, she’d become accustomed to having plenty of elbow room. On the streets of New York, especially during certain hours, there was no such thing as elbow room. Even grounded chickens would have found themselves hard-pressed to flap their wings without hitting something.

It took longer to walk the three blocks back to the building where Jason’s office was located than it had to reach the restaurant in the first place. People kept coming at them like a steady stream of bullets. She started to feel just the slightest bit light-headed again and hung on to Jason’s arm. And then suddenly she wasn’t moving at all.

Looking down, Mindy saw that the heel of her shoe had gotten caught in the subway grating. “Wait,” she cried out. “I’m stuck.”

Without a word, Jason took in the situation, then dropped to one knee beside her. With one hand on her ankle and one bracing the back of her shoe, he worked her heel out of the grating. Mindy felt a trail of heat travel swiftly up her leg even after he’d removed his hand from her ankle. She felt a little like a modern-day Cinderella. If Cinderella had had to flee from the castle over subway grating.

“I guess chivalry isn’t dead,” Mindy commented as Jason took her arm again.

No one had ever accused him of that before. He shrugged off the comment. “It was either get your shoe out of the grating or carry you,” he told her gruffly.

Entering the office building, they took the elevator down to the parking garage nestled in its bowels. At this time of the evening, it was a hub of activity as car after car queued up to leave its darkened lair in order to hit the hot streets and head for a little mindless entertainment, or just home. Anywhere but where it had just spent the last soul-dampening eight hours.

His silver Morgan was parked on the first level. Even so, it looked as if they were going to have a long wait before they got out of the building again.

“This might take a while,” he warned as he let her in on the passenger side.

Maybe Mindy would have been better off waiting for her bus, he thought, glancing at her as he slowly backed out of his space.

The plush leather upholstery sighed softly as she secured her seat belt around her. The English vehicle had to be the last word in luxury, she thought. Jason certainly had done well for himself. Though she had absolutely nothing to do with it, she couldn’t help feeling rather proud of him.

“That’s all right, I’m not in any hurry to get home.”

It occurred to him that he hadn’t asked for her address. “Where is home?” he asked, then added as they inched along toward the front booth and relative freedom. “Not that we’re about to get there anytime soon.”

He pressed down on the brake as they came to yet another stop. There were definitely times when he felt that walking was the fastest way of getting around in Manhattan. Gridlock here was pretty much a fact of life these days.

She gave him the address. It wasn’t really that far away, but in this blistering, damp heat, the distance would have seemed almost insurmountable if she’d had to walk it. Reaching over, he switched on the air-conditioning, flipping the switch on high.

Mindy looked at him uncertainly. “Shouldn’t we wait until the car is actually moving more than one inch an hour? You might ruin the engine.”

He was struck by her thoughtfulness. A lot of other people in her position would have only thought of their own comfort, not the cost to the car. Her husband must have been an A-number-one jerk to have stepped out on her like that. Some men never knew when they had it good.

“Don’t worry about it. That’s one of the perks of owning a high-price luxury car. Aside from having mechanics charge you an arm and a leg whenever you drive in for an oil change or a tune-up, the air-conditioning units are strong enough to actually make a difference no matter what speed you’re traveling.” He suppressed a sigh as they were forced to stop again. “Or not traveling, as the case may be.”

The cool air coming out of the vents bathed her face and neck, and she began to feel human once more. She hadn’t realized she’d shut her eyes until she was opening them again. They were finally emerging from the subterranean cave.

She shifted toward Jason. God, but his profile looked almost chiseled out of rock. “Are you sure I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?”

Once on the street, sunshine hit his face full force, creating a halo of light around him. Making him seem more godlike than he already was. If she didn’t move her tongue, it was going to be permanently paralyzed any second.

Mindy held up her hands to forestall another protest. “I know, I know, you wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean it.”

Jason allowed the tiniest of smiles to work the corners of his mouth. “You do catch on fast.”

That was a laugh. “Not as fast at times as I should have.” She shifted forward in her seat. The air-conditioning was doing a great deal to soothe her agitation. She began to relax a little. “Otherwise, I would have recognized Brad for what he was and not wasted all those years on him.”

He’d never finished asking her his question in the restaurant. Stopping at the first light, he glanced at her. “What happened to your career?”

“What career?”

“The one you were supposed to have after you graduated.” He knew she’d gone to Northwestern as a journalist major and fully expected to one day turn on the television and see her face looking back at him. He’d counted on it.

“Oh, that career.” It would have been easy to give in to self-pity. Easy, but not very productive, and she was a firm believer in always looking forward. There was nothing she could do about the past, except to learn from it. “I met Brad in my senior year, fell in love, and everything else paled in comparison. When he asked me to stay in Illinois and be his wife, nothing else mattered. And when he asked that I be supportive of his career, put my energies into helping him establish himself, I didn’t think anything of it. Didn’t feel resentful,” she tagged on in a whisper.

“But now you do.”

Having noble goals was one thing, but she wasn’t about to lie. “Damn right I do.”

They were moving again. At the speed of a drowsy snail. “So why didn’t you do something about it when you left him?”

“Do something?” She didn’t understand what he was driving at.

“Why didn’t you follow your dream?” To have landed a job as an administrative assistant for a securities firm was light-years away from being a journalist, no matter how helpful she was becoming to them.

“Nobody would hire me without experience, and I had to eat.” She stared straight ahead. Providing for herself and her future babies was all that mattered. Dreams were for people without responsibilities. “Maybe someday,” she whispered quietly.

But he heard her and took it to mean that she was back in his life only temporarily. But then, he already knew that.