A week later, one worry was dispensed with. She had proof that she wasn't pregnant, and she almost jumped for joy. She wanted children, but not out of wedlock. Love on one side was never enough. She'd thought Nick might really care deeply about her, but if he did, he'd have been in touch by now. He simply wasn't interested. She had to face that.
She debated about calling Nick and telling him there was nothing to worry about, but she decided against it when she didn't hear anything from him. He was obviously not concerned with what had become of her, so let him continue in his oblivion.
Actually, Nick was oblivious only because he was being worked to death. Lassiter, sensing his employee's violent emotional state upon his return, had immediately thrown him in headfirst on a kidnapping case. For the past week he'd been on the road, trying to track down a parent who'd absconded with his four-year-old son while his ex-wife tried frantically to find him.
Nick had finally turned him up in a flea-bitten motel outside a small New Mexico town. He'd persuaded the desperate father to turn himself in, for the child's sake. That hadn't been an easy task, but he'd accomplished it.
All the time, he'd thought about Tabby and wished that he hadn't been so bullheaded when she'd tried to explain why she and Daniel had been making love on her carpet. Now he was worried about her. She was deeply religious and he'd seduced her. She might even be pregnant. What if she did something desperate because he wouldn't listen? When he got back to Houston, the first thing he did was ask his sister if she'd heard from her best friend.
“No," she said quizzically. "Should I have?"
"I thought she might have phoned to tell you how things were going, now that she's been cleared," he replied tersely.
Helen pursed her lips. She knew her brother. He looked haggard and guilty, and she'd already guessed that something devastating had happened to him in D.C. It had to involve Tabby, but she couldn't guess what it was.
"Why don't you call her, if you're so curious?" she asked.
He turned away. "I've got another case to start on," he replied. "I haven't time."
"I've got cases of my own," she reminded him, "but it doesn't take five minutes to pick up a telephone and make a call, does it?"
"Never mind," he said irritably.
She watched him storm out of the office with new interest. He was worried about Tabby for some reason, but he wasn't willing to phone her. Why? Wouldn't she talk to him, was that it?
That night Helen telephoned Tabby. Nick was out of town again on a new case, and there was probably no doubt that he hadn't been burning up telephone lines.
"How are you?" Helen asked without preamble. "Nick wouldn't say why, but he seemed to be worried about you."
Tabby felt her heart leap involuntarily. "I'm fine," she said non-committally. "If he asks, you can tell him there isn't anything he needs to be concerned about. He needn't waste any of his valuable time being worried about me!"
That sounded vicious. Helen grinned. "How's Daniel?"
"He and I are still working on our book. Unfortunately he's discovered that I have a temper. He doesn't want to marry me anymore. Just as well," she said, "because I think I hate men now!"
"You broke the engagement?"
"Yes. Daniel is a fine man, but he deserves more than I have to give him."
"You sound different," Helen said with some concern.
"I suppose I am different," Tabby told her. "I've had a hard couple of weeks, through no fault of my own. I've learned some lessons that hurt."
That sounded vaguely ominous. "Anything to do with Nick?"
"I'm finally convinced that he'll never be desperately in love with me, if that's what you mean." Tabby laughed bitterly. "He gave me the cure. I tried to talk to him and he left D.C. without a word or a note or even a goodbye."
"I'm sorry," Helen said sincerely. "He's been different since he's been back. I'd hoped it might be because of you."
"Not a chance. He can't see me for dust. It's probably just as well. Now that I think about it, I'm sure I wouldn't be happy with a man who can't live without a different woman in his bed every night and a gun under his pillow!"
"He doesn't date anybody these days," Helen remarked. "Not since New Year's, in fact. Isn't that odd?"
Tabby refused to let herself hope. She'd had enough misery on Nick's account.
"He hasn't even been talking anymore about being restless and changing jobs," Helen added.
"That's probably why he's thinking of going with the DEA or the customs people," Tabby muttered. "He said he was."
"Funny, he didn't mention it around here."
"He'll get around to it. I have to go. I've got a lot of papers to grade."
"Sure. Well, keep in touch, will you? I worry about you."
Tabby smiled. "I know. I worry about you, too, believe it or not. You're the only family I have left, even if you aren't a blood relation."
"That goes double for me. I'm sorry my brother is such a blind idiot."
"He's that, all right! Blind, deaf, dumb and stupid as a...!" She forced herself to calm down when she heard Helen's faint giggle. "It wouldn't have worked, anyway. I hardly fit the image of the glamorous party girl with a laid-back attitude toward love."
"Yes, I see what you mean," Helen said ruefully.
"Just tell your stupid brother that he doesn't have anything to worry about. If he bothers to ask," she added venomously.
"I'll do that little thing. You take care of yourself."
"You, too."
Helen hung up, her mind going like a watch. Tabby sounded different. Something was going on. She had to make Nick tell her what it was, since Tabby wouldn't.
But she didn't get a chance the next day. Nick didn't come back. However, a complication did upset the routine of the office.
Harold proposed immediate marriage. Helen, astonished, agreed on the spot, only to be told that Harold was going to have to move to South America for a year to work on his father's construction gang as a prerequisite to inheriting his trust fund.
"What am I going to do?" Helen wailed to Tess Lassiter later that day. "I hate to put you on the spot like this, but I love Harold. I want to go with him. We have to get married now and leave the country in a week."
"You're irreplaceable," Tess agreed. "But I can see that you have to go with Harold. Don't worry," she said gently. "Something will work out."
Something did, hours later. A weeping Kit Morris, Tess's best friend, came storming into the office with red eyes and audible sobs.
"He fired me!" she choked, going into Tess's outstretched arms.
"He? You mean Logan Deverell, your boss?" Tess asked, aghast. "But you've worked for him for three years...!"
"Slaved for him," Kit amended, wiping her big blue eyes. Her oval face in its frame of dark hair was as white as tissue except for her red nose. "But he's got a new lady love. She was terrible to me. We had an argument. She threw hot coffee all over me, and he took her side and he told me to get out and that he didn't want to have to see me ever again!"
Tess was astonished. Kit had worked for Logan Deverell for longer than Tess had worked with Dane before she married him. The two were inseparable during working hours and sometimes even at evening soirees where Kit was obliged to take notes for her boss. Now Logan had apparently fired her over some woman. It was almost too much to believe.
"What am I going to do?" Kit wailed. "I've got rent due, and a car payment, and he didn't say one word about severance pay. I've got no place to go, and not even a job...!" She started crying again.
Tess thought about her problem, and about the agency's problem of losing Helen so quickly. She smiled as she began to arrive at a solution to both their problems.
"Kit," she asked her best friend, "have you ever thought about doing detective work?"
Nick was finally on his way back home again. He'd pursued a bail jumper all the way to San Francisco, only to lose him to a streetcar. The man had underestimated its speed and fallen under its
metal mass, dying instantly. Nick had watched. The man had been young, much younger than himself. The experience had shaken and sobered him—much the same as when he'd lost Lucy—making him realize just how short life was. He saw the world through new, more cynical eyes, and he began to see things that he hadn't before. He was going to die someday himself. If he did, would anyone really care except his sister? He was practically alone. No wife, no family, no one of his own to love. No one—except Tabby. She'd wanted to love him so badly, but he wouldn't let her. Now he'd faced mortality; he'd seen death. Everything had changed, all at once.
There was, he decided, no point in continuing to hide his head in the sand. Tabby was a part of his life that he wasn't going to be happy without. He didn't want roots, but it looked as if he had them just the same. He hadn't looked at another woman since he'd had Tabby. He didn't want anyone else.
The thing was, he'd behaved like an idiot. How did Tabby feel after the way he'd treated her? He groaned out loud at the memory of the things he'd said to her, and how she'd reacted to them. Chances were very good that she'd go off the deep end and marry prissy Daniel just to show him. He'd fouled up everything with his callous attitude.
He got off the plane in Houston and took a cab to the office. He reported to Dane and heard Helen's news without really comprehending it.
“Didn't you understand?" his sister asked irritably. "I'm marrying Harold and going off to South America, to the jungle, where pygmies live!"
"That's Africa," he murmured absently.
"Headhunters, then!"
"Wear a scarf and keep it tied," he advised.
She threw up her hands. "What's the matter with you!"
He looked at her, his hands deep in his pockets, glad that they were temporarily undisturbed in his office. "Did you talk to Tabby?"
She shifted her stance. "Yes. Why?" she added, cocking her head.
"How is she?" he asked.
"She sounded strange," she began.
His face began to pale. He caught her by the shoulders. "Suicid-ally depressed?" he persisted.
"No!" She frowned at him. "In fact, she sounded more mature and independent than ever."
His lips parted on a held breath. "Helen, is she pregnant?" he asked in a choked tone, his eyes wild as they searched hers.
Light bulbs went on in her head. So that was it! Her eyes widened and she smiled. "Well, well," she mused.
He actually flushed. He dropped his hands and moved away, staring out the window with the first embarrassment he could ever remember feeling. "She'd have told you, surely, if she was?"
"She's not," she said, sorry to put him out of his misery so quickly. She'd enjoyed seeing her big, strong brother just momentarily weak.
"You witch!" he burst out, turning, his dark eyes blazing at her. “You might have spared me!"
"Why?" she asked reasonably. "Tabby wouldn't tell me anything. I wanted to know why she was so sarcastic about you. Almost as if she hated you. She told me to tell you that you had absolutely nothing to be concerned about. I wondered what it meant." She grinned. "Now I know."
The flush got worse. "Don't push."
"Sorry. Going to marry her?" she persisted, and her eyes narrowed. "You don't go around seducing nice girls like Tabby," she added. "It's ungentlemanly."
"I know that, too," he replied heavily. "Believe me, it wasn't anything I planned. I loused it all up," he added, throwing up his hands. "Just like I did before, at New Year's. She'll never believe another thing I say. She'll never trust me."
"You could go back and try to talk to her," Helen suggested.
He glared at her furiously. "You conned me into going home before. That's what got me into this mess."
"Tabby loves you. Love doesn't die because of a few harsh words."
"I wouldn't be too sure of that. It might have been nothing more than a long-standing infatuation."
"And it might not. You could—"
"Where the hell have you put my secretary?" came a deep roar from the direction of the open office door.
Nick and Helen turned together to find a huge, dark-haired, dark-eyed man glowering at them. He was dressed in a green overcoat and his thick hair was wet. His deeply tanned face was livid with anger. One huge hand was holding the door open, and the other was holding a cigar.
"If you mean Kit," Helen said, "she's out with Tess and Dane.”
"Doing what?" he demanded.
"Eating lunch, I guess." Helen shrugged. "Did you need to see her about something?"
"Something." He nodded. "She hid my appointment book before she left and messed up the computer. Every time I hit a button, it throws up an error message at me! I'm going to wring her neck!"
Helen exchanged glances with Nick. "Tell you what, Mr. Deverell," she offered, “I’ll come back with you and fix the computer. I think I know what's wrong with it. As for Kit, she'll be back about two, I suppose."
"Back here? Why?" he demanded.
"They gave her a job," Helen said and winced when he proceeded to turn the air blue.
Long minutes later, Helen managed to persuade Logan Deverell back into his own office. It wouldn't do for poor Kit to have to confront him in this violent temper.
What was wrong with the computer, she soon discovered, was Logan Deverell. He didn't know how to use it. Within minutes, she extracted all the information he needed and managed to get an agency to send over a sacrificial victim to do his office work. Then she got out, quickly.
Nick had gone back to his apartment in the meantime, smoking one cigarette after another until he had a vicious cough.
He threw the package on the floor and stepped on it finally and then jerked up the telephone and dialed Washington, D.C.
Tabby had only been home from work for about fifteen minutes. She was still recuperating from her long day with a cup of coffee when the phone rang.
Daniel, probably, she thought wryly as she picked it up, wanting her to do some more research for his book. She wouldn't mind. It gave her a way to fill in the emptiness of her life without Nick.
"Hello?" she asked with twinkling amusement.
The sound of her voice made Nick's heart catch. He felt as if he'd come home. He leaned back in his easy chair and kicked his shoes off. "Hello, Tabby," he said quietly.
She almost put the receiver down.
"Don't hang up," he asked softly. "I haven't called to hassle you. I just want to know."
"About what?" she said curtly, making it hard for him.
"If you're carrying my child," he replied gently.
There was a long pause. "No, I'm not," she said stiffly. "I told Helen to tell you..."
“Yes. She did."
"Then why are you calling me?"
"To make sure there were no misunderstandings," he said simply. "How are you?"
"I'm very well, thanks," she bit off.
"Want to know how I am?" he asked with bitter sarcasm.
"Only if you've had your head blown off or you've got termites in your wooden heart," she said icily.
"Funny girl."
"I've told you how I am."
"So you have. How about flying out here?"
"What for?" she asked coldly.
He stared around at the apartment, and saw for the first time how empty and dull it was. There was no color, no life, in it. "I thought you might like to spruce up my apartment. Make it livable."
"I'd dig a hole and fill it with crocodiles..."
"Venomous," he sighed. "I don't suppose I blame you. I've been a twenty-four karat heel. For what it's worth, I was feeling betrayed, although God knows why I should when I gave you every reason to want to put a knife in my pride. I ran, but you were everywhere I went."
"You don't have to feel threatened because of me," she told him, aching inside. Why did he have to call now and destroy her hard-won peace of mind?
"I close my eyes and see you, Tabby," he said softly. "Feel you. Taste you."
"Me and the rest of the women in the c
ountry..."
"I haven't had anyone since I had you," he said quietly. "I won't. Not ever again."
She hesitated. It was a line. Just a line. She had to force herself to accept that. She closed her eyes. "It won't work. I don't want you, Nick. I'm..." She searched for a lie. "I'm going to marry Daniel."
"That wasn't what you told Helen," he said smugly.
She let out a rough sigh. "I'll never tell her anything else as long as I live, you can bet on that!"
"Buy a plane ticket. Come out here," he coaxed. His voice dropped. "Live with me, Tabby."
She had to clench her teeth to bite back an answer. It was tempting. Oh, yes, it was tempting. But living with a man didn't figure in her scheme of things. She wanted a wedding ring and a settled marriage. She wanted children. Nick was only offering an affair.
"No," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't do that, Nick."
"Why?" he asked, his voice more tender than she'd ever heard it.
"It wouldn't work. I'm not...not suited to fervent affairs. I can't come, Nick."
"Affairs...?"
"There's someone at the door," she lied unsteadily. "I have to go." She hung up and then took the phone off the hook.
Tears rolled down her cheeks in torrents. She threw herself down on the couch and bawled. Why had he called, to torment her with temptations she had to resist? As much as she loved him, she could have strangled him for that!
Nick was staring at the receiver with a scowl. What had brought on that comment about having an affair with him, he wondered. He'd asked her to come and live with him....
He slapped his forehead roughly. Of all the stupid things, he'd let her think he wanted her to come and live with him without offering her marriage. Having seduced her twice without mentioning any kind of commitment, how could he blame her for not trusting him? His Tabby would never consent to such living arrangements. She was too conventional for unconventional relationships.
Well, it would be easy enough to clarify that. He dialed the number again. Busy. He kept trying, but she'd obviously taken it off the hook. Just the way he'd done to her before he left D.C. Oddly enough, he didn't get angry. She was entitled to a little revenge.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 123
