“Then I come back to Dallas with enough cash to open a bookstore.”
“And if it takes more than forty thousand to open a bookstore?” she inquired politely. “Will you go away for another month?”
“I can raise the extra by selling the business in Acapulco.”
“You’ve got this all worked out, haven’t you?” she whispered wonderingly.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”
“How long?” she asked bluntly.
Matt shrugged. “Since you left Acapulco.”
“I see. So your decision to take Mr. Coyne’s offer of employment really has nothing to do with raising a quick forty thousand to open a bookstore in Dallas, does it? You had no plans for a bookstore here when I saw you in Acapulco.”
Matt got restlessly to his feet and paced to the door and back. He stopped directly in front of Sabrina. “Things change.”
“Do they? Or is this the way it was when you were married, Matt? ‘Well, Ginny, I’m off. Just be gone for a month or so this time. A one-shot deal. Take care of Brad, and when I get back everything will be different.’ ”
Sabrina regretted the harsh mockery as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She saw the red stain of anger on Matt’s cheekbones a split second before he reached down to grab her by the shoulders and haul her to her feet.
“You know nothing about what it was like when I was married,” he bit out savagely. “So don’t go making guesses. That was then. This is now. And everything’s different now. Everything.”
“What about that Rafferty Coyne? Is he different?” She gasped; his fingers were hurting her. Rigidly she stood in his grasp, unable to move.
“No, he’s not different. He’s the same prissy little bureaucrat he always was, but this time he’s having to pay to get his work done.”
“I don’t care how much he’s paying,” Sabrina burst out passionately. “I don’t like him. I wouldn’t trust him to go around the block with me, let alone pay me after I’d done a job for him!”
“You’ve hardly even met the man!”
“I’ve got good instincts when it comes to men!”
“The last time you thought you could trust your instincts about a man you nearly got yourself raped in Acapulco.”
Sabrina paled. “You ought to know,” she managed.
“Oh, shit.” Matt released her abruptly and stalked back to the bed. “Sit down, Sabrina. We’ve got to talk this out.”
“I can’t see that there’s much more to be said.”
“Sit down, damn it!”
Sabrina sat. A part of her was astonished that even in a situation like this Matt could command obedience when he tried. Or maybe she was simply too stunned to stay on her feet. “When were you thinking of leaving on this little jaunt?”
“As soon as possible. I want to get it over and done with.”
“And I’m to stay here patiently with your son like a good little wife and mother, is that it?”
“Sabrina …”
“There are a couple of small details wrong with this homey scenario. I’m neither a wife nor a mother,” she reminded him coldly. “I’m just the woman you’ve been living with for the past couple of weeks.”
“Don’t you dare try to oversimplify the situation.”
“Believe me, it hasn’t been simple,” she shot back. “Did you think it was routine for me to live with a man? To have a boy who doesn’t even like me living under my roof? Well, I’ve got news for you, August. Since I escaped my father’s home, I have never played house with anyone, let alone a man with a son. It’s been an adjustment, to say the least.”
“Then why have you put up with it? You’re the one who suggested Brad and I move in with you,” Matt snapped.
“For some insane reason I decided the time had come to bend a few rules. I found myself thinking of the future and I thought you were doing the same,” she admitted sadly.
“I am thinking of the future. Our future,” Matt said, his voice softening. “And Coyne’s forty grand would go a long way toward securing that future.”
“That’s your reasoning now. What was your reasoning back in Acapulco when you were considering the job?” Sabrina challenged. “Why were you going to accept his offer then when you didn’t need forty thousand dollars for a bookstore in Dallas?”
Matt narrowed his eyes. “There were other factors involved besides the money. I’ll admit it. But they don’t matter now.”
“What factors?” she demanded.
“I just told you, they aren’t important any longer.”
“Let me see if I can guess,” she hazarded furiously. “No one, not even the U.S. government, pays forty thousand dollars for a one-month job unless that job is going to entail some fairly dirty work. And you’ve said yourself the skills you developed in the military were of a limited nature. Therefore it follows that if Mr. Coyne wants you to work for him now he must need those limited skills. Right so far?”
“Sabrina,” Matt said wearily, “there’s no point going into this.”
“I think there is. Because I think there’s more than money involved here. If you’d needed money that badly in Acapulco, you would have been doing something besides selling books. You’d have been dealing drugs, or something.”
“For Christ’s sake!”
“If you were planning on taking Mr. Coyne’s little job, then it must have been because you wanted to prove something to yourself. Maybe you wanted to see if you still had your limited skills. Maybe you wanted to make up for that last mission somehow, the one you thought you’d screwed up. How am I doing, Matt? Still guessing accurately?”
He looked at her for a long moment, hazel eyes unreadable. “If I’d taken the job while still in Acapulco, those reasons might have had something to do with my decision. I won’t deny it. But they aren’t the reasons why I’m going to take it now.”
Sabrina caught her breath. “Then you have definitely decided to accept. This charming conversation is not a discussion of the matter at all, is it? You’re just letting me know what you’ve decided. You’re not asking for my opinion at all, are you?”
“I seem to be getting it, regardless,” he observed roughly.
“How did you think I’d react to the news? Pack you a light bag and tell you to have fun while I take care of Brad for you?”
“I’m hardly going off to have fun.”
“No? I’m not so sure about that. Men who play with knives have a peculiar notion of what constitutes fun.”
“Sabrina, I’m doing this for us.”
“You’re doing it for yourself. To prove something stupid in order to satisfy your macho ego; to make a quick forty grand; to find out if you’ve still got the right stuff.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Okay, let’s find out. You say you’re doing this for us. Well, I don’t want you to do it. How’s that? Now you no longer have to do it for us because half of ‘us’ is opposed to the whole idea. Tell Coyne to take a hike.”
Matt didn’t move, just continued to sit on the edge of the bed, giving an excellent imitation of a rock. Hard, immovable, inflexible. “I’m not going to tell him that.”
Sabrina’s fingers trembled. She wrapped them firmly around the arms of the chair in which she sat. “No, I didn’t think you would. Because you’re not doing this for us. You’re doing it for yourself.”
Matt hesitated and then said very carefully, “There is one other factor involved that you haven’t recognized.”
“What?”
“This is a government mission.”
“So?”
“So there are reasons why it’s important. Reasons that have nothing to do with either of us.”
Her eyes widened. “The hell there are. If they’re paying you forty thousand dollars, then whatever the government wants you to do must be as illegal and as covert as that last mission they sent you on two years ago. In case I haven’t made my views on such matters perfectly clear, I will do so now. I do not approve of sneaky, clandestine government operations. We have no business fooling around in other countries in a secret and illegal capacity. Don’t try an appeal to my patriotism, Matt August. I don’t consider that kind of work patriotic.”
“And if I do?” he offered quietly.
She lifted her chin. “You are, of course, entitled to your own opinions. Don’t expect me to back them.”
“I’m not asking for your approval. I’m asking you to take care of Brad while I’m gone,” Matt said flatly.
Sabrina held her breath before asking cautiously: “If I refuse, will you have to tell Coyne you can’t take the job?”
For the first time Matt’s mouth twisted in the ghost of a smile. “I think I detect a little blackmail coming.”
“Right at the moment I don’t have a lot of scruples. Will it work, Matt? If I refuse to take care of Brad, are you going to have to refuse the job?”
“If you refuse to take care of Brad, there’s not a lot of incentive for me to take the job. Refusing to take Brad will be as good as telling me you don’t think we have much of a future together.”
“That’s not true!” she denied starkly.
“Yes, it is. If you honestly don’t understand that I have to hold my own economically in this arrangement of ours, then you don’t understand me very well. Sabrina, let me give you a few economic facts of life. I make enough off that bookstore in Mexico to get by down there. But it’s a whole different ball game up here. I need a job here in Dallas, and what I know about best is running a bookstore. Opening one will take a large chunk of money. Coyne’s offering it to me for one lousy month’s work. Maybe there are some other reasons involved. Maybe my sense of duty hasn’t atrophied completely and maybe I would, somehow, like to clear the books because of what happened two years ago. But my main reason for taking the job is to nail down a future for us and the kid. I know those all sound like chauvinistic, macho, masculine reasons to you, but damn it, I’m a man. My reasoning tends to be based on that fact.”
“Unfortunately.” But there was no longer any real heat in her voice. Sabrina felt the anger and frustration drain out of her, leaving only a bleak awareness that there was nothing she could do. It was clear Matt’s mind had been made up before she even got home from work that afternoon.
“I could say your reasoning processes are feminine and narrow-minded,” Matt pointed out almost gently. Sabrina didn’t look at him, her gaze on the wall behind his head. “You’re going, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And nothing I can say or do will stop you.”
“You could refuse to take care of Brad, I suppose.”
She shook her head listlessly. “You’d make other arrangements. Send him back to his mother or to your parents or something. You’d find a way because you’re determined to do that man Coyne’s dirty work. To make up for botching that operation two years ago, because of a sense of duty that’s unrealistic, for forty thousand dollars. You’ll find a way to go.”
“You’re forgetting the most important reason, Sabrina,” he said harshly.
“Because of us? I think that’s the least of your reasons.” Sabrina got to her feet, hugging herself with her arms. She moved over to the black lacquer dressing table and absently toyed with the fake silver necklace lying in a box on top. “Brad’s going to come unglued, you know. He’ll be crushed that you’re abandoning him and he’ll hate me for trying to take a parent’s place in his life. I’m really not cut out to be a mother, Matt. I’m just naturally not the maternal sort. Maybe I did one too many loads of dirty socks when I was growing up. I don’t know. I just know I haven’t missed raising children and I have a sneaking suspicion that kids can sense it.”
“And you haven’t missed having a husband.”
She shook her head. “No. On the whole I’ve been increasingly satisfied with my life. Except for that fiasco out in California, I’ve been doing pretty well for myself. I’m pretty satisfied with who I am and the life I’ve made for myself.”
“Things change, Sabrina.”
“Yes, they do, don’t they? Who would have thought that I’d ever agree to watch some ex-major’s son while said major takes off to earn forty grand doing something that has to be both illegal and dangerous?”
Matt inhaled heavily. “You’ll do it, then?”
“I guess so,” she agreed dully. “God knows why. Getting me to do it is only half the problem, though. You’ll have to convince Brad that you’re not abandoning him.”
“I’ll have a talk with him tomorrow.”
“You do that.” She nodded. “You do that, Matt. Tell him you’re off on one of those wonderfully exciting mercenary operations that he’s always reading about in those magazines of his. Maybe he’ll buy that. I wouldn’t give him the song and dance about using the forty thousand to set up a bookstore and establish a future with me, though. I don’t think that will go over very well. Brad would be quite happy going down to Acapulco for the rest of his youth, you know. The thought of settling here in Dallas with me probably won’t excite him very much.”
“It doesn’t seem to excite you very much, either,” he said quietly.
“Probably because I don’t think it will happen.” In the dressing-table mirror she saw him surge to his feet and glide across the room to stand directly behind her.
“What do you think will happen, Sabrina?”
“Well, if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll come back in one piece with the forty thousand. Then, perhaps, you’ll amuse yourself setting up the bookstore and pretending you’re going to settle down. And then one day Rafferty Coyne will come knocking on your door again with another offer. Maybe fifty thousand. You’ll ask me to look after Brad for a month or two and off you’ll go. Eventually you’ll either fail to return from a job or you’ll grow tired of playing house with me in between operations. That’s one scenario,” she ended bitterly.
His hands came down on her shoulders. “There’s another possibility entirely,” Matt said roughly.
She nodded. “True.”
He nuzzled her hair. “Let’s hear you spell out the second scenario.”
“The second one is that I wise up during the month ahead with Brad and realize I’m being a fool to tolerate the situation. When you get back I hand Brad back to you and kick you both out of the apartment. I then go back to living my life the way I like it.”
His fingers clenched into her flesh with sudden fury as he whipped her around to face him. “You mean go back to looking for pleasant little affairs with pleasant, undemanding men.”
“Something like that.” She refused to cower beneath his tightly reined fury.