Authors: Brenda Jackson
Rae’jean’s breath caught. She met his gaze, not wanting to believe what he’d just said. It couldn’t be true. The man who had fathered her couldn’t be dead, not when she had finally found him and had planned on getting to know him.
She took a deep calming breath. “How did he die?”
Ryan looked at her, hating the thought that the news he was giving her was causing her pain. “He was killed in a car accident less than ten miles from his home while on his way from work.”
Rae’jean took another deep calming breath, knowing she had to pull herself together. She reached over and began filling her plate with more eggs and bacon, enough for two people. “It doesn’t really matter, you know,” she said quickly, as if to convince herself and not him. “I didn’t even know him, so news of his death really doesn’t bother me.”
Ryan watched as she absentmindedly sprinkled sugar on her eggs instead of salt. “I don’t understand what reason I have to feel bad about him dying,” she continued. “He knew I existed and never came to see me anyway. I can’t believe I’m letting myself get worked up over this for—”
Ryan immediately stood and closed the distance between them. He was long past caring about the promise he’d made to her to keep things strictly business between them. He reached out and gently pulled her from her seat and into his arms, letting his chest absorb her tears. “It’s OK to cry. It’s OK. Whether you ever met him or not, he was still your father and you cared. You cared enough to want to find him. I’m just so sorry it was too late,” he said in a husky voice.
She nodded her head as she smothered her face in his chest, appreciating the comfort she found there. “It’s so unfair. So unfair.”
On that he had to agree with her. “There is something else I have to tell you that may be good news, though.”
She lifted her tear-stained gaze to his. His expression was one of deep concern and compassion. “What?”
“You have a sister.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “A sister?”
“Yes,” he answered with hesitancy. “Your father got married shortly after leaving Macon, and he and his wife had a daughter. She’s only two years younger than you, and the two of you look so much alike it’s uncanny.”
Rae’jean’s heart pounded. “You saw her?”
“No, but the guy who works for me out of Texas did. In fact, he took pictures and they are included in his report. Do you want to see them?”
“Yes.”
Taking her hand in his, he led her over to the sofa, and they sat down. He opened the package and pulled out several pictures and handed them to her. He watched as she studied each one of them.
“We do favor each other a lot, don’t we?” she asked quietly with utter amazement. No one could deny they were sisters.
“Yes, probably because her mother was Hispanic, which accounts for the both of you having the same coloring. The two of you must have favored your father.”
Rae’jean nodded. “Do you have any information on her? What’s her name? What does she do?”
Ryan smiled. He was glad to hear the excitement return to her voice. “Her name is Danica, but she goes by ‘Dani.’ She’s twenty-eight and finished school at the University of Texas with a master’s degree in accounting. She works as an accountant for a large firm in San Antonio. She’s single; however, she’s been dating the same guy for over a year. He’s an attorney who works for the same firm that she does.”
Rae’jean stared at Ryan, amazed. “You were able to get all that information?”
“Yes.”
Rae’jean smiled. “Is there any more?”
“Yes. Her mother died when she was ten, and your father raised her. They were very close.”
She nodded. “Does she know about me?”
“My man was advised not to make contact of any kind, so I don’t know if your father ever told her about you. Under the circumstances, I doubt that he did, but who knows?”
Rae’jean stood and began pacing the floor. “I’d like to go to Texas and meet her.”
He nodded, not surprised. “All the information you need is inside that packet, including her address.” He stood and looked at her steadily. “Do you have any more questions about anything?”
She shook her head. “No.”
He nodded. “Then that concludes your business with my company. A bill will be sent to you within a week.”
Rae’jean waited to see what else he would say, since it appeared he was getting things back on a business level with them. When he didn’t say anything, she stood, reached out, and presented him her hand. “Thanks for everything, Mr. Garrison. I appreciate everything that you did.”
He looked down at her hand for almost a second before taking it in his. He didn’t try fighting the warm feeling that settled in his chest from the feel of it encompassed in his. “Don’t mention it, Ms. Bennett, and thanks for breakfast.” He released her hand.
She looked up at him and smiled wryly. “Anytime.”
He smiled, hoping she actually meant that, as relief washed through him. Now that their business was concluded he had wondered what excuse he could come up with to see her again. “How about tomorrow?” he asked huskily.
Rae’jean blinked. “Excuse me?”
Ryan hesitated, wondering for the second time that day if he needed to have his head examined. He was totally forgetting his ironclad rule of not getting involved with a client. But then, he reasoned, she was no longer a client. “You said we could do breakfast again anytime, so I was wondering about tomorrow.”
“All right,” she said, almost at a loss for words. “Tomorrow would be fine. Do you like pancakes?”
He decided not to tell her that he always enjoyed the ones he got from McDonald’s, but he knew any she made would probably taste a lot better. “Yes, I like pancakes.”
She smiled up at him. “Good. We’ll have pancakes, eggs, and sausage tomorrow.”
That sounded mighty good to him. He glanced down at his watch. “I’d better go.”
“OK.”
“Is there anything I need to bring tomorrow?”
She shook her head and grinned. “No, just a healthy appetite.”
He glanced over at the table. “Do you need help cleaning up? I can call the office and—”
“No, I can handle things here. Then I plan on going to bed and getting some sleep. I have to report back to work at ten tonight.”
He nodded slowly. “But you’ll be getting off in the morning at ten just like today, right?”
“Right.” She tipped her head to the side as she gazed up at him. “Just out of curiosity, how do you know the hours I work?”
He smiled mischievously. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.” Turning, he headed for the door. He pulled it open and started through it, then turned back around. He smiled again, but this time his smile as well as the gaze was focused and intense. “Good-bye, Rae’jean.”
Hearing him say her first name for the first time sent her pulse racing and the lower part of her stomach simmering. She returned his smile, inhaling deeply, then releasing it slowly. “Good-bye, Ryan.”
Rae’jean watched as he walked out of the apartment, closing the door behind him. She shook her head. She had no idea how they had gone from uninvolved to involved in less than two hours.
Ryan leaned back in his chair. “Mmm, breakfast was fantastic again. Do you ever rent out your cooking services?”
Rae’jean had risen and was already clearing off the table. She smiled when she looked at Ryan. “No, but like I told you yesterday, you’re welcome to breakfast anytime. Every once in a while I find time to cook dinner, but because of my hours at the hospital that usually doesn’t happen.” She lifted a brow. “And speaking of my hours at the hospital, you never did say how you knew what shift I worked.”
Ryan stood and began helping Rae’jean remove the items from the table. He smiled at her. “Didn’t I?”
“No, you didn’t.” Conversation during breakfast had really been nice. They had talked about Samuel Jackson’s latest movie, delved into a discussion of politics, and talked about the house Ryan had recently moved into. But neither had discussed their respective jobs.
“It must have slipped my mind,” he said easily, following her into the kitchen, where he deposited their used dishes on the counter. He leaned against the counter and watched as she put the syrup, milk, and orange juice into the refrigerator.
“Yes, it must have.” She walked over to the sink and began making dishwater. “So how did you know what time I got off work yesterday?”
The room got quiet and Rae’jean glanced back over her shoulder at him. He was looking at her intently. “When I lived here I used to watch you leave every night. I would stand by my window and watch you get into your car. Although the parking lot was well lit, I had to know you were safe,” he finally said.
Rae’jean was suddenly unsure as to what she should say. Knowing he had watched her leave each night because he cared for her safety touched her. She cleared her throat. “Thanks. I didn’t know.”
His impressive shoulders lifted slightly. “There was no need for you to know. To be totally honest with you, I didn’t have a right to stand there and watch out for you the way I did. You belonged to another man,” he said, raising his eyes to Rae’jean. “But I also happened to notice your fiancé was never here at night when you left, nor did he spend the nights over here on your days off. Why?”
His question took her by surprise. She started not to answer him, thinking her past relationship with Grady was none of his business. But if she wanted to satisfy her curiosity about him, then she had to satisfy his curiosity about her as well. “Once I agreed to marry Grady I made him promise that we wouldn’t sleep together anymore until our wedding night. We had just gotten engaged the day before you moved in.”
Ryan nodded. “Making a promise like that didn’t bother him?”
Rae’jean grinned as she reached for the dishes off the counter to place in the sudsy water. “I wouldn’t say that, but he was a good sport about it.”
Ryan crossed the room to get the dish towel off the rack. He went to her side and began drying the dishes she had washed. He tilted his head and looked at her and asked, “And did it bother you?”
She glanced up at him, vitally aware of him and how much space his masculine physique took up in her kitchen. “What?”
“The abstinence.”
“Oh, heavens no,” she said, blushing somewhat at their topic of conversation. “I’m not a passionate person anyway, so it didn’t bother me at all.”
Ryan almost dropped the plate he was drying. He stared at her, stunned, astonished at such a notion. “Excuse me?”
Her blush deepened. “I said I’m not a passionate person, so the abstinence didn’t bother me,” she said flatly.
Ryan continued to stare at her. That was what he thought she said. He put the plate he was holding down. “What gave you that idea about you not being a passionate person?”
Rae’jean shrugged, wondering how on earth they had gotten on this topic of conversation and just what she could do to get them off of it. She gazed levelly and said, “Because I know I’m not. In my profession as a doctor there’s as much excitement, tempestuousness, and intensity as I can handle. I don’t want nor do I need those things to spill over into my personal life as well. I much prefer the calm, sedate, tranquil. I don’t like the turbulence that full-fledged passion can bring. Somehow my body has built an immunity to it. Grady understood that and I appreciated him for it.”
Ryan shook his head as he dried another plate. The corners of his lips tilted into a faint smile. Unbelievable, he thought. If this woman thought she much preferred calm in a relationship rather than passion she was really fooling herself. He wondered what she thought the two of them were feeling whenever they came within two feet of each other. Why did she think they were working so hard even now to keep it in check? She probably had more passion in her little finger than most women had in their entire bodies. But evidently it was bottled passion, and as far as he was concerned, around him the cap wasn’t on the bottle too tight.
He had definitely felt passion emitting from her that day he had seen her standing at the window looking at him. And then that other time, when they had collided in the hallway, he had felt it. It had been so thick he could have cut it with a knife. And then, even more recently, the time in his office and yesterday and even today. Did she know what real passion was? Whether she admitted it or not, she was full of it. And if she was bottling it inside of her, he could just imagine how it would be once it got unleashed. That would be one hell of an explosion.
“I know it’s different for some men,” she then remarked as casually as if they were discussing the weather and not such an intimate subject as passion. “Passion is important to some men, isn’t it?”
Even her voice sounded passionate and desirable, he thought. “Depends on who it’s coming from and how deep you feel about that person.”
She nodded. She wouldn’t be surprised if Grady felt a lot stronger passion for Lynn than he had for her now that he’d accepted the fact that he was in love with Lynn. She wondered if the reason the two of them never shared earth-shattering passion was because they hadn’t been in love with each other.
Rae’jean and Ryan continued doing the dishes in silence. Rae’jean thought that since she had shared something about herself with him, she wanted to satisfy her curiosity about him. “You mentioned you’re divorced. Are you and your ex-wife still on friendly terms?”
He was reaching up and putting the juice glasses back in the cabinet. He slanted her a look that was minus his usual smile. “No. It’s hard to stay on friendly terms with a woman who got pregnant from another man while married to you,” he said coldly, his jaw tensing.
Rae’jean stopped what she was doing and turned to him apologetically. “I’m sorry.”
“Why? You didn’t do anything.”
“I brought up a subject that must be painful to you.”
He shook his head dismissively and turned his focus back to drying the dishes. “I’ve gotten over it. You learn from your mistakes. She was mine.”
Rae’jean nodded. “How did the two of you meet?”
Without turning to look at her, he said, “She came to me as a client. She’s a defense attorney and needed my help solving a murder her client had been charged with. She won the case and we went out and celebrated one night and lost our heads. She got pregnant. I did the honorable thing and asked her to marry me, and she accepted since it wouldn’t have looked good for her to be a single mom in the prestigious law firm where she worked.”
“How long were you married?”
“A little over two years.”
Rae’jean pressed her lips together when she remembered something. “I thought you said you don’t have any children.”
“I don’t. She lost the baby in her fourth month, but we decided to remain married and make it work.” He replaced the dish towel on the rack. “At least that’s what I thought we had decided to do. I didn’t know she had resumed an affair with another attorney in her office who was married. They decided they wanted to be together, especially after she got pregnant with his child. He divorced his wife of ten years and she divorced me.”
“Did they get married?”
He turned to face her. “Yes. They got married the same day our divorce became final. They have since left the firm they were working for and have now formed their own law office.”
She nodded. No wonder he’d been adamant about not mixing business with pleasure. The last time he’d done so had turned out disastrous for him. Before she could say anything else the doorbell rang. She breathed in deeply, relieved by the interruption. “Excuse me while I answer that.”
Leaving the kitchen, she walked into the living room to the door and opened it. “Grady?” She was surprised but happy to see him. Since Lynn had been released from the hospital and was going through rehabilitative therapy, Rae’jean didn’t see Grady much anymore.
“Hi, Rae’jean. I got some good news to share with you,” he said, entering her apartment when she stepped aside.
She could feel his excitement. “What is it?”
Before Grady could respond he glanced over her shoulder and a surprised expression appeared on his face. Rae’jean turned to see what had caught his attention and saw Ryan standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen. She looked from Ryan back to Grady. “Ryan mentioned the two of you ran into each other in the elevators a few times but haven’t actually met,” she said diplomatically.
Grady shook his head as he kept his eyes on the man standing across the room. “No, we haven’t.”
Ryan crossed the room to stand next to Rae’jean, and she was suddenly aware how the two men were staring at each other. “Grady, this is Ryan Garrison. He was my neighbor for a while some months ago, and he’s the investigator I hired to find my father.”
Grady nodded. Although Rae’jean had painted a picture that indicated her relationship with Ryan was business, Grady could tell by the way Ryan was looking at him that the man wanted more. Grady wanted Rae’jean to be happy, and for some reason he felt the man standing beside her could make that happen. “Good seeing you again, Ryan.” He smiled, offering him his hand.
Ryan felt the sincerity in Grady’s smile as well as in his handshake. He relaxed his guard and began feeling less awkward. “Same here, Grady.”
“So what’s your good news, Grady?” Rae’jean asked, relieved that there was now a more relaxed atmosphere surrounding the two men.
Grady’s smile widened. “I got a call from Dr. Morris Donovan. He wants me to come to San Diego General and work closely with him in the cardiology department there.”
Rae’jean let out a squeal as she threw her arms around him. “Grady, that’s wonderful! I know how much you wanted that position. How soon will you be leaving?”
“Not for another month or so. I told him about Lynn, and he understands.” Grady then looked at Rae’jean thoughtfully. He felt better telling her what he was about to tell her with Ryan standing by her side, since it was obvious to him the man was interested in her. “There’s something else I have to tell you, Rae.”
She lifted her brow at the serious tone in his voice. She looked up at him. “What is it, Grady?”
“Lynn and I have decided to get married this weekend. I wanted you to know.”
Grady watched as Ryan instinctively stepped closer to Rae’jean’s side. “Oh, Grady, that’s wonderful. I’m so happy for the both of you,” she said, smiling.
He nodded, knowing that she truly was. If it hadn’t been for her, he would not have realized his true feelings for Lynn until it was too late. “Thanks, Rae’jean. Now what about your father? Were you able to find him?”
Rae’jean told him about Ryan’s report. “Oh, Rae’jean, I’m sorry. I know how much finding him meant to you.”
“I’m OK. Now I’m looking forward to meeting my sister.”
After Grady left, Rae’jean was quiet. Ryan was just as quiet. Then he spoke. “It doesn’t bother you that he’s marrying another woman a little more than a month after the two of you ended your engagement?”
Rae’jean looked up at Ryan and shook her head. “No. I’m glad I was able to get him to see just how much he loved Lynn before he made a mistake and married me.”
When Ryan cast her a confused look she told him the entire story, including her part in bringing Lynn and Grady together. “So you realized the two of you were not in love?” he asked.
“Yes. We love each other as friends but not the way two people who plan on getting married and sharing a life together should love each other.”
Ryan nodded. No wonder they had been quick to settle for a passionless relationship. He knew if he and Rae’jean ever became involved, it would definitely not be that way with them. “I’m leaving later today for Miami. I’ll be gone for a couple of days. When I return will you have dinner with me?”
“You don’t have to do that, Ryan. I—”
“I want to, Rae’jean. I enjoy your company. Will you be free Friday night?”
“Yes, I’m not working that night.”
“Can I come pick you up around seven then?”
Rae’jean lowered her head and studied the floor. Where would all this lead, the breakfasts and now dinner? Did she want to know? Did she dare find out? Maybe it was best if she didn’t. She raised her eyes to him and shook her head. “I’m not ready for a serious involvement with anyone right now, Ryan.”
He nodded. “Neither am I. But having breakfast together twice hasn’t killed us and I doubt sharing dinner will, either. I’m not asking you to move in with me, Rae’jean. All I’m asking is for you to have dinner with me. Will you?”
The odd note of pleading in his voice helped Rae’jean make the decision. “Yes, I’ll go out to dinner with you.”
A smile curved his lips. “Thanks.” He glanced back down at his watch. “I’d better go,” he said in a voice that was thick and taut.
“All right. I hope you have a safe trip to Florida, and I’ll see you when you return on Friday.”
He nodded, reached for the door, then paused. He stared at her, as if going through the motions of making up his mind about something. Then he reached for her and lowered his head. Rae’jean met his lips without hesitation.
He kissed her possessively, thoroughly, and she kissed him back, putting everything she had into it. It was a greedy kiss, as he continued to taste her as if he were sampling the sweetest wine. His tongue mated with hers, sucking hers deeply and sparking a demand from her. When he heard the moan from deep within her throat, his kiss became hotter, more electrifying.