He studied her for a moment before saying anything. “Is it that? Or is it just that you don’t want to be alone with me?”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
She realized that she hadn’t denied his allegation, she’d twisted it. Because she
was
afraid to be alone with him. Afraid of her own vulnerability, her own weakness. Afraid of the desire that ricocheted through her.
“Doesn’t it?” That old longing slipped over him, the one that had prompted him to kiss her that very first time, in the quad, in the rain, while students all around them ran for shelter from the sudden spring downpour. Nothing had seemed quite as important as kissing her. Nothing did now.
She purposely stiffened her spine, praying the physical act would trigger an emotional one and make her shut down. It didn’t.
“I’m not afraid of being alone with you, Clay. I got over you a long time ago. Just like you got over me.”
His eyes held hers. “What makes you think I ever got over you?” He saw the momentary surprise flicker in her eyes before she banked it down. “After all, you were the one to dump me.”
She was too smart to have been taken in by that. He’d used it as an excuse, a last-minute stay from the governor. “Technically.”
“Still felt as if you dumped me,” he insisted. “I felt very dumped.”
Did he think she was that naive? They both knew he’d orchestrated it. “And relieved, I’m sure.”
“Relieved?”
“You’re not the type to be tied down. You told me so the very first time we met.” She laughed softly, though her smile never touched her eyes. Or her soul. “It was like having to read the disclaimer on a package I was unwrapping.”
“No packages were unwrapped until at least the third date.” Restraining himself even that long had been hell. Just as it was now. He’d wanted her with every fiber of his being from the very first time he’d kissed her. Before. And like a man whose destiny had already been preordained, he felt himself being reeled in. Very slowly he ran his fingertips along the hollow of her throat. Mesmerizing himself.
“Don’t,” Ilene breathed, barely able to get the word out. Pinpricks of anticipation began to dance along her skin, quickening her loins, making her heart go into overdrive.
“Don’t what?” He felt excitement taking hold. “Do you remember the first time I kissed you?”
“It was in the quad.” The words came out of her lips in slow motion as the world around her froze, then slipped into shadow. She couldn’t draw her eyes away from his. “It was monsooning. I caught a cold.”
“So did I. It was worth it,” he whispered just before his lips touched hers.
No, no, this wasn’t happening. She wasn’t going to let this happen. Wasn’t going to buy a ticket for a ride on a roller coaster that would be over too soon. So why was she leaning into the kiss? Into him? Why had her entire system just gone haywire with an excitement that had been missing from her life for the past six long years?
She knew she should be trying to save herself.
And maybe she was. By staying just where she was.
Clay had missed her so much, missed this head-over-heels feeling, this rush that captured him the second he knew he was going to kiss her.
The second he did.
No other woman had ever done this to him. Made him want her beyond all reason. Because wanting her went beyond reason. He knew that. That was why he’d left in the first place.
She still had the power to scare the hell out of him, because there was this feeling that every shred of control over his own life could easily slip through his fingers, plummeting him into a place with smooth, shiny walls that couldn’t be scaled.
A place he couldn’t climb out of.
Okay, he knew that—knew the dangers, knew he couldn’t linger here beyond the moment. Just the moment.
Just one very long, wonderful moment.
His hands left her face and slid to her shoulders, anchoring her in place. Anchoring him. Holding on to her so she could travel the distance with him. Just this one more time.
The kiss deepened, pulling him into the center of it with a force beyond the powers of nature. He willed time to stand still.
Ilene stopped short of threading her arms around his neck the way she so desperately wanted to. Stopped short when she felt her body cleaving to his, as if it had been created for just that purpose. Her heart hammering like the tap shoes of someone dancing an Irish jig, she drew back.
She was breathless, with possibly no prayer of ever catching her breath again. “That can’t happen again,” she told him.
“Why?”
Shaky, afraid of giving in to the temptation shimmering before her, Ilene took more than a few steps back. Away from him. She didn’t have the luxury of being able to give in to him. To herself.
“Because I’m not twenty-one anymore. Because there’s more than just me to think about now. I’ve got someone else depending on me, Clay, and Alex comes first. He always will.”
He wanted to touch her again. To take her into his arms and just hold her, breathe in the scent of her hair. But the look in her eyes stopped him. Feeling almost rebellious, he shoved his hands into his back pockets.
“I’m not looking to replace Alex.”
She felt like screaming, like crying. With supreme control, she held herself in check. “No, you’re not looking for anything but a good time, just as you always have. I can’t give it to you, Clay.”
“I think you really underestimate yourself,” he said. Unable to help himself, he feathered her silky hair through his fingers.
She raised her chin. “No, I’m just not willing to sell myself short anymore.” She reached for the sliding glass door, pulling it open. “If you’re through ‘talking’ to me, I’d better go back inside. Alex might be looking for me.”
“No, I’m not through talking.” His hand over hers, he slid the door shut again.
And then he asked the question she’d been dreading all along. The question that had haunted her mind and conscience since the moment the nurse had told her there was a life growing inside of her.
“Is Alex mine?”
Chapter 9
I
t took her a moment to find her tongue. Her voice was deadly still as she answered his question with a question. She prayed that her expression wasn’t giving her away. “What makes you ask?”
“His coloring, for one. Alex looks a lot like my brother Shaw did at his age. The way you looked at him when my father was talking about getting his first grandchild, for another.” His eyes held hers, looking for answers, finding none. “Maybe just a gut feeling.”
Ilene grabbed on to the only thing she could honestly respond to. “Your gut feelings only work when you apply them to your job.”
The breeze picked up. He shifted, blocking it from her with his body and creating a cozy alcove for the two of them. Maybe too cozy.
“This is an exception.”
She looked at Clay, so tempted to tell him the truth that she ached. But she knew that it would have been weak of her to admit that Alex was his son, just as it would have been back when she’d discovered she was pregnant. Once he knew, Clay would do the right thing and it would turn out all wrong. And he’d wind up resenting her and Alex, if not actually hating them. She already knew how that scenario played itself out.
Maybe she would have felt differently if, just once, he had told her he loved her. But he hadn’t, and anything said after the fact wouldn’t ring true to her.
Ilene looked him straight in the eye. And lied. “It’s also wrong.”
He kept thinking that if he continued to look into her eyes, he could discern if she was telling him the truth. And yet, there was something that nagged at him, something that didn’t feel right even when she didn’t flinch, didn’t look away.
“He’s not mine.” The words were almost a challenge.
“He’s not yours.”
He believed her and yet he didn’t. She’d never lied to him or at least he’d never caught her in a lie, and yet…
“What’s his father’s name?”
Slowly she shook her head. Eye contact remained, although she wasn’t sure how much longer she could maintain it, how much longer she could tough it out. “Sorry, but that’s privileged information and I can’t give it to you.”
His eyes narrowed. “What is he, the president?”
“No.” Her manner was cool, collected. Inside, her heart hammered like a continuous drumroll. “Just someone who wouldn’t want his name bandied about.” It was her turn to pin him with a look. “Put yourself in his position.”
“I am.” In more ways than you can guess, Clay thought.
She could almost read his mind. “Not that far into his position,” she told him, opening the door to insure her getaway. “Just enough to be sympathetic.”
She left him standing in the cold, looking in. Wondering.
Andrew turned from the garbage pail in the kitchen in time to see Ilene approaching with an armload of dinner plates. He moved to take them from her, but she sidestepped him, placing the stack on the counter. He shook his head. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“I know,” she replied. Less than twenty-four hours in the man’s company and she felt closer to him than she had after a lifetime with her father. “I want to.”
“I have enough hands to help with cleanup,” Andrew protested as Teri made her way in behind Ilene. “All I have to do is bully them into it.”
Ilene began to rinse off the plates before putting them in the dishwasher. “You don’t have to bully me, and I like doing it.” She looked at him. “I
need
to be doing it.”
Andrew gave her a knowing look. He’d felt the same need for the past fifteen years, trying to stay one step ahead of the thoughts that haunted him. “If you stay in perpetual motion, you don’t have to think, is that it?”
She paused to look at him. “That’s it.”
Andrew nodded as he handed her a towel to dry off her hands. “Tell you what, Clay said something about you being an auditor?”
And had she been anything else, she wouldn’t have been in this predicament. Ilene took a breath. “That’s right, I am.”
He cocked his head, studying her. “Does that mean you can untangle taxes?”
Doing income taxes had never held that dread she knew most people experienced. She’d always been good with numbers, always liked math. “For the most part.”
Andrew cocked an eyebrow. “Really tangled-up taxes?”
She tried not to laugh. “Just how big a knot are we talking about?”
The shrug was noncommittal. “I kind of let things slide this year.”
Her attention was captured. Helping Andrew was the least she could do in exchange for his hospitality. “Did you file for an extension?”
“Yes.” Andrew frowned. “And it’s breathing down my neck. I’m supposed to have it done by the end of the year.”
Which was quickly approaching, Ilene thought. It never ceased to amaze her how much people could procrastinate. She usually had her own taxes in order the moment all her necessary papers arrived in the mail, certainly no later than the beginning of February. She couldn’t understand how people who waited until the last minute managed to get a decent night’s sleep.
“He won’t go to a tax consultant—” Clay told her as he walked into the kitchen with a bulging garbage bag filled with empty beer bottles and cans.
A firm believer in privacy, his father snorted. “None of their damn business what I’ve got. Bad enough I have to bare all to the government, I’m not about to go to some stranger with all my worldly goods done up in little pieces of paper.”
Ilene looked at him. “But you’re willing to trust me?”
There was no hesitation on Andrew’s part. After thirty years on the force, he considered himself an excellent judge of character, and he liked what he saw in this woman. “Yes.”
“I’m honored.” A smile slowly curved Ilene’s lips.
The shrug was quick, dismissive. “You’ve got an honest face.”
“Apparently the only one around,” Rayne cracked with a deep chuckle. Then she looked at Ilene a tad uneasily. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Ilene assured her.
Andrew waved a hand at the guest of honor. He was on a mission of mercy now. “Don’t pay attention to her. Will you do it?”
She had a feeling that she and Alex were going to be here for at least a few days, which was longer than she would have liked. But if it couldn’t be helped, she wanted to keep busy instead of counting tiles in the bathroom. “I’d be more than happy to take a look at it for you.”
Coming back from where he’d dumped the trash into the recycle bin, Clay caught the tail end of the exchange. He shook his head. “You’ll be getting into a lot.”
“The more tangled, the better,” she told him, and she meant it. “I’ll get to it right after I drop off Alex at school and see Janelle.”
“Back up,” Clay said sharply. His tone caught her off guard, he could tell by the surprised look on her face. “What do you mean right after you drop Alex off at school? Alex isn’t going anywhere.”
She didn’t like his tone. Hers became steely. “I thought part of the reason I’m staying here is so that Alex doesn’t feel entirely uprooted.”
Clay exchanged looks with his father. The woman was incredibly naive. He thought the danger would have sunk in by now. There were bad guys after her and they wouldn’t hesitate to use her son to get what they wanted. “And part of the reason is so that Alex doesn’t get harmed if they want to up the ante on this. Ilene, I don’t have the manpower to guard your son while he’s attending preschool.”
“He goes to a private school. They have a security system in place—”
Yeah, he’d just bet. Didn’t she get it yet? “Anyone clever enough to hoodwink a large body of shareholders can easily circumvent the security system employed by a preschool—” he anticipated her protest “—fancy or not. Now unless you have enough money to hire the kid a personal bodyguard who’s going to make Alex feel as if he’s sticking out like a sore thumb because there’s this adult standing around in his class, I suggest you forget about dropping him off anywhere tomorrow except the living room.”
She was having a hard time with this. Andrew’s heart went out to the woman. “I could ask one of my buddies to do a little private duty,” he told her. “As a favor to me.”
Clay was well aware of how the network of law enforcement agents within Aurora worked. It was a small, tight-knit community that looked out for one another. Still, he didn’t like the idea of leaving Alex exposed, special detail or no special detail. Something could always go wrong, and the more risks that were taken, the more that could go wrong.
Clay glanced at Ilene before turning to his father. “The kid’s taken to you, Dad. Why don’t you just take Alex under your wing tomorrow and teach him how to cook, you know, something simple? It’ll be different and it’s something he can use once he’s on his own.” He turned his attention back to Ilene. “Bottom line is to keep him safe.”
She blew out a breath. He was right and she knew it. She’d been thinking with her heart and not her head. “I just don’t want to do anything that’ll make him feel afraid.” Once that seed was instilled, it could never be completely removed. And Alex was so fearless now, so happy. She didn’t want anything to change that quality. Taking him away from everything he knew would accomplish that.
Clay pretended to take her words at face value. “Well, yeah, Dad can be scary at times, but he’ll be on his best behavior, right, Dad?”
Putting away the little that was left of the two huge spiral hams he’d prepared, Andrew snorted. “Listen to him, you’d think he was treated with anything but kid gloves since the day he came into the world, hollering and screaming.”
Clay picked at one of the leftover canapés. “If I was hollering and screaming, it was because I knew you were going to be my dad.”
Another time she would have let herself be distracted by the banter. But not now. Not when this was being driven home to her. She had taken a step that would forever change her life, forever change Alex’s life. Just like the step she’d taken six years ago.
She sighed, surrendering. “Okay.”
Andrew immediately caught her drift. “Hey, it won’t be so bad. Alex’ll have fun,” he promised. “And I’ve already talked to Brent about having Rachel dropped off here after school.” He winked at Ilene. “I think Alex’s got his first major crush.”
He was a dear, dear man to have taken that upon himself, she thought. As for her son’s infatuation with Rachel, she’d noticed it, too. A bittersweet pang drifted through her. “I know. I was hoping it’d be a few more years before I was replaced.”
Andrew patted her hand. “Nobody replaces a mother in a boy’s heart. She represents the first relationship he has with a woman, laying the foundation for all the others.”
That was a little more philosophy than Ilene thought even her precocious son was capable of. About to laugh off the notion, Ilene saw the expression on Clay’s face.
His father’s words had struck a chord.
Maybe Andrew wasn’t just trying to be nice to her. Maybe there was more than a little bit of truth in Andrew’s words, she thought. Clay’s mother had left him. Willingly or otherwise, she had left. Fear of abandonment could have gone a long way to making Clay think twice before forging another relationship with a woman.
The next moment she was rejecting her own theory. She was making excuses for Clay because she wanted to tell him that Alex was his. All these years, not a day went by when her secret hadn’t weighed heavily on her conscience.
Doing the right thing wasn’t always easy, she reminded herself. But keeping her secret was still the right thing to do.
“Damn it, she couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air.”
John Walken’s angry voice echoed about the massive room where he retreated to be alone with his thoughts. His thoughts were now as dark as the rich, teak bookcases that comprised three of the four walls. Behind him on one wall a movie ran unnoticed, its image scattered along the fifty-inch plasma screen. He had all the toys, all the trappings of wealth a man could possibly want.
His toys were in jeopardy and he wouldn’t stand for it.
“The next time you call, I want to hear that you found her, understand?” He didn’t have to tack on a threat, it was understood.
The man on the other end of the line was quiet for a moment. His voice was strained with unreleased anger. “It’s not like we’re not trying.”
Walken held up his brandy glass. The handsome face reflected there was cold, deadly. “Try harder. The D.A.’s office just served me with papers for an indictment hearing.”
That smug little Cavanaugh bitch had come to do it personally. Everywhere he turned, he felt as if the walls were closing in on him, on the life he’d fought so hard to forge. All because of one do-gooder he hadn’t been able to control.
Control took on many forms, and he was ready to exercise the ultimate one.
Provided she was found in time.
The man on the other end attempted to reason with him. There was a great deal at stake. None of them could afford to lose their cool.
“It’s just a fishing expedition. They can’t prove anything. You’ve erased all the data from the hard drive, and we’ve substituted another computer for the one O’Hara was using,” he reminded Walken. “There’s no way they can get their hands on any substantiating data.”
“Unless they have O’Hara. Damn it, this comes under the heading of protection. Something you’ve been more than happy to accept money for. Now protect me!”
“Her computer’s the important thing, and that’s history.”
Rage bubbled in his veins and threatened to explode. “You don’t think she’s made copies? The woman’s not an idiot, she knew no one was going to just take her word for anything. And you just told me your people didn’t find anything at her house. That means she’s got the damn laptop with her. I want it and her and the sooner the better.” He took a breath, issuing the final threat. “If I go down for this, I’m not going down by myself. You remember that.”
There was silence on the other end. “I’ll find her,” the man promised. “And when I do—”
Walken quickly interrupted the other man. He wanted no verbal exchange to actually implicate him. Even though things were understood. “I want you to do whatever you have to do in order to fix the problem—and I don’t want to know any details, other than the fact that this won’t somehow come back and bite me on the butt.”