INTERRUPTED LULLABY

by Valery Parv

  It didn't help to remind herself that forever wasn't in his vocabulary. He was here. Nothing mattered except the demands he made on her mouth as his hands roved over her body, exploring, pleasuring, exciting. As he eased her jacket open and slid his hand inside, her heart almost stopped. When she felt him cup her breast, she went weak. She moaned again, shifting closer to him to press his hand against the spot where he would feel her rapid heartbeat.

  He was aroused, too, she felt as their altered positions made it apparent. Seeing how quickly she had made him want her brought her senses close to overload. How could she have forgotten what they were like together?

  She hadn't forgotten for one single moment, she understood in the instant, eye-of-the-storm moment she had for clear thinking. She had accepted his invitation knowing what would happen. Wanting it. Wanting him.

  His tongue began a sinuous dance with hers, sending spears of sensation lancing through her. She wanted to deny everything he made her feel, but the words stalled inside her, unable to compete with the way her heart pumped in erratic rhythm, hazing her mind and filling her with yearnings. As they kissed, he massaged her nipples, sending her into a spiral of desire that could end in only one way. "Oh, Zeke, it's been so long," she heard herself murmur.

  "Too long," he said in a voice like broken glass. "I want to make love to you."

  It was enough to break the spell. "No, Zeke." She placed a hand against his chest, the gesture too ineffectual to push him away but symbolic enough that he understood her meaning. Self-preservation was the only thing urging her to refuse him. He knew every inch of her body as well as she knew it herself. He was bound to notice the changes in her and ask questions.

  Questions she was far from ready to answer.

  She found she ached to say yes more than she had wanted to do anything for a long time. To know the mind-shattering pleasure of his possession and to surrender utterly to his will, even as she commanded him, was a heaven she had dreamed of all the time they'd been apart.

  Not that she hadn't tried to put him out of her mind. Awake, she had almost succeeded. About her dreams she could do nothing. Instead of dulling her need for him, the long months of abstinence had sharpened her desire until it registered as an exquisite pleasure-pain sensation that ached to be satisfied.

  But not tonight.

  Not ever, if she had any sense. Her breath escaped in a sigh of frustration. When had she shown any sense around Zeke? This time she had little choice, she thought as she closed her jacket with shaking fingers and took an unsteady step away from him. It was only a few inches, but it felt like a vast gulf of emptiness opening between them.

  "Am I going too fast for you?" he asked, sounding as strained as she felt.

  If you could count the months of abstinence as fast, she thought ruefully. "No, it's just … I don't know how I feel about us anymore."

  His expression turned cold. "As I recall, you never did."

  The accusation in his tone shocked her out of her remaining torpor. "I wasn't the one who went away and found someone else."

  Light broke across his strong features. She had forgotten the full force of his attractiveness, she thought distractedly. His dark hair was thick and full, curling slightly at the ends where it wanted a barber's touch. In anger, his eyes looked like the sea in storm but the glint of gold reminded her of how they could sparkle wickedly at her, usually just before they made love. She closed her own eyes against the reminder. It would be a long time before she saw that look again, if ever.

  "Is that what this is about?" he demanded, sounding furious. "It's okay for you to send me away but not for me to find comfort somewhere else. What was I supposed to do? Wait until you made up your mind that I was worth making a few temporary sacrifices for? Or did you hope I'd come rushing back, unable to exist without you?"

  Both options had occurred to her. Evidently only one of them to him. She dragged her fingers through her hair, mussing it. Her scalp felt tight and tense, good company for the rest of her. "I didn't want anything from you that you weren't prepared to offer freely, and I still don't. You did the right thing finding someone else. I'm only sorry it didn't last." Then she wouldn't have to deal with this.

  Instead she would have to deal with knowing he was forever beyond her reach. She wasn't sure which was the worse torment

  "Well, I did come back," he said, startling her. "I tried moving on and it didn't work. You can't give to one person something you've already given to another, and Lucy sensed it. I decided to come back and find out if you felt the same way about me. Was I wrong?"

  Say yes and end this now, she urged herself. Instead, what came out was a lame. "I don't know."

  "You don't know if you still care about me?"

  He sounded so bitter that she wanted to weep. She kept her head high. When their baby died she had shed all the tears in the world for their child, for him and for herself. She had thought she had no tears left. Now, feeling her eyes grow heavy, she knew she did, but shedding them in front of him would be far too revealing. To herself or to him? The question caught her off guard, silencing her until she realized he was waiting for an answer.

  "We can't pick up where we left off," she said with an honesty he couldn't possibly understand. There were too many layers under what he thought he heard.

  His generous mouth tightened into a hard line. "Can we pick up at all?"

  "No."

  She hadn't intended to be so forthright, but survival demanded it. If she said so much as another word, she would break down and admit that there was more than a chance. After what she had experienced in his arms tonight there was a bedrock certainty. And it was a luxury she couldn't afford. One night with him would undo all the months of silence.

  How could she tell him she had conceived and lost their baby? How would he react to being excluded from something he had every right to expect to share? Even now, she had trouble justifying it to herself. No matter how difficult he had made it, or how ill she had been at the beginning, she should have found a way to tell him. Now it was too late. Would he even believe the child had been his? He had been ready enough to blame her refusal to come with him on another man. She wasn't sure he believed her denials even now.

  There was only one thing she could do. It cost her almost more courage than she possessed to retrieve her bag and touch a hand to the side of his face in silent homage to what might have been. "Goodbye, Zeke," she said, and made herself walk through the door.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  Three days later, Tara knew she had done the right thing in walking away from Zeke, but couldn't make herself feel good about it. She was babysitting for her sister-in-law, Carol, when the sound of the front door opening and closing told her that her sister-in-law had returned. Carol came into the room and dropped her briefcase on a side table. "Children asleep?"

  "Finally." Tara's tone suggested it was an achievement. Carol gave a wry smile. "I hope they didn't give you too hard a time."

  "Of course not," Tara assured her. "Cole might be at the Terrible Two stage, but he always makes me laugh. And Katie's so sweet, calling me Tawa through the gap in her teeth. How can you refuse them anything?"

  "I remind myself it's for their own good." Carol paused at the kitchen door. "Join me for lunch?"

  Tara nodded. "I'm seeing a publisher this afternoon and having dinner with a potential benefactor for the foundation, but I'm free till then."

  "Another schmoozy dinner. How do you stand spending so much time with people whose only attractive feature is their bank balance?"

  "It isn't always the case. Some of them are sweet, and when it's for the kids, it's worth it," Tara said.

  "We've never really discussed it, but it can't be easy for you, dealing with children every day. Even minding mine must be a strain."

  Tara let out a long sigh. "When I'm bathing them or playing with them, I sometimes feel such a longing for what might have been. Then I think how lucky I am
to be an aunt to your two. They help in the healing process."

  "Children are like that," Carol conceded, adding realistically, "especially when they're asleep."

  "Then they're positive angels," Tara agreed, laughing.

  "I don't know why dramas always have to coincide with the nanny's day off," Carol went on. "Although if Mrs. McCarthy changes her will one more time, I swear I'll hasten her end myself."

  Tara laughed. Her sister-in-law was a lawyer who had set up a practice at home while her children were young. The client in question was bedridden, but still feisty enough to enjoy the power her fortune gave her over her family. According to Carol, the woman changed her will at regular intervals to keep her clan under her thumb.

  Tara perched on a stool and watched Carol prepare sandwiches with practiced ease. Her sister-in-law was one of six children, all younger than herself, so she was incredibly domesticated. She was also a good friend. Tara's brother, Ben, reminded her frequently, that marrying Carol was an example of his dedication to pleasing his little sister.

  Pleasing himself had nothing to do with it, she thought with humor. Ben was a doctor and had met Carol professionally when she defended a colleague in a malpractice lawsuit. Love at first sight, Ben had called it, when he wasn't claiming he chose Carol so he'd have his own private lawyer on tap. Tara knew which reason she believed.

  "This is the first chance I've had to ask you how Monday's talk went?" her sister-in-law said, levering the top off a mustard jar.

  Tara traced a pattern on the granite counter. "The usual."

  Carol's hands stilled. "No matter how many times you do this, you never describe it as usual. In fact you assure me every presentation is different. So out with it, what's the problem this time?"

  "Zeke Blaxland is investigating the work of the foundation."

  Carol caught her breath. She knew about Zeke and had been incredibly supportive during Tara's pregnancy and the shattering aftermath. Other than Tara's doctor, her brother and sister-in-law had been the only two people Tara had confided in.

  Tara knew that Carol still felt badly about being out of Australia when the baby was born, but the family had been in England, settling Carol's elderly mother into a retirement place. They had flown back as soon as they could, but it was too late. Tara had assured Carol she understood. Their presence wouldn't have changed the outcome. And they had supported her through everything else, including the baby's memorial service. Carol had shed almost as many tears as Tara herself, and had held Tara's hand through the days that followed.

  Now she frowned in sympathy. "Oh, honey, how awful. Did you hate him on sight?"

  Tara laced and unlaced her fingers until she regained her voice. "Worse than that, I didn't hate him."

  Carol covered Tara's hand with her own. "You didn't do anything foolish?"

  Tara knew her laugh sounded hollow. "You mean like go home with him and let him make love to me? Does one out of two count?"

  Reading between the lines, Carol shook her head. "Sounds like your sense of self-preservation kicked in just in time."

  What self-preservation? Tara asked herself. Zeke had been in her audience for only a few hours before she'd thrown caution to the wind and driven him home. She hadn't been reckless enough to go to bed with him, although it was close. But he still managed to dominate her waking thoughts. Her dreaming ones, too, she had discovered, only in her dream they had been a family of three. This morning she awoke with tears drying on her cheeks.

  "I didn't have him figured as the charitable type," Carol said.

  "He isn't. He's writing a series of columns about charities that help themselves more than the people they're set up to help."

  Carol looked shocked. "He must know the foundation is genuine or you wouldn't be involved."

  Tara nodded. Carol knew that after ending her relationship with Zeke and losing the baby, Tara hadn't wanted to face the world at all, far less be involved in a cause that brought her into daily contact with young children. She hadn't wanted to return to modeling, either, so had retreated behind closed doors to lick her emotional wounds.

  But the storm of publicity surrounding her efforts to help the single parent with the triplets had refused to abate. Gradually she had been drawn into similar projects until it had become a full-time job.

  She sighed. "I hope Zeke agrees with you. The publisher I'm seeing wants me to write a book about the foundation's work, so he must think it's on the level."

  Carol rested her elbows on the counter. "So why are you letting Zeke undermine your confidence? I can hear it in your voice and see it in your body language."

  Tara straightened, chagrined at being read so easily. Reading body language was part of a lawyer's stock-in-trade, she told herself, but it didn't change the fact that Carol was right. "How can I be the children's spokesperson when the proof of my own failure as a mother was sitting in my audience last Monday?"

  There, it was out. Tara had barely articulated her reasoning to herself, but as soon as she said it, she knew it had been nagging at her from the moment she'd seen Zeke in her audience.

  "Losing the baby wasn't your failure any more than it was Zeke's," Carol stated. She retrieved a jug of homemade lemonade from the refrigerator and added it and two glasses to a tray with the sandwiches. "Let's go outside. It seems I have a pep talk to give."

  "I don't need a pep talk." But Tara followed her sister-in-law out to a table and chairs placed underneath the weeping branches of a crepe myrtle. From somewhere in the greenery, a Little-Wattle Bird gave its distinctive rusty-hinged cry. "It's beautiful out here," she said.

  Carol wagged a finger at her. "Don't change the subject."

  "Can I make a statement in my own defense, counselor?"

  "Only if it doesn't incriminate you."

  Tara poured them both a glass of lemonade. "Everything I can think to say fits that category."

  "Because you're not as over Zeke Blaxland as you tell yourself."

  Tara felt her eyebrows lift. "You're supposed to be on my side."

  "Sometimes defending a client involves making them deal with facts they'd rather not face." Carol held out the plate. "Have a sandwich. They're good if I do say so myself. Then we'll discuss Zeke."

  About to refuse, Tara saw Carol's expression. It was easier to eat than to get into an argument with someone who made a career out of it, so she took half a sandwich and bit into it, although her appetite had deserted her.

  Was she avoiding facing facts? Perhaps so, Tara thought on a silent sigh. She was still attracted to Zeke, but it didn't mean she had to give in to it. "Whatever he and I had is over. All I'm hearing are echoes from the past," she said firmly.

  Carol looked unconvinced. "As long as you're sure."

  Tara wasn't, but decided to let it lie. She appreciated Carol's and Ben's support, but there was nothing they could do. At some stage Tara knew she had to learn to deal with a world that included Zeke. Now was as good a time to start as any.

  "You haven't told me how the insider trading suit ended," she said, seizing on the fastest way to divert her sister-in-law.

  Her tactic worked. "We won. My client was completely exonerated. Didn't you read this morning's paper? We made the front page and the editorial."

  Tara had avoided looking at the paper. She choked back an instinctive protest as Carol went to fetch the paper. Seeing Zeke's byline and knowing he was writing his column practically on her doorstep was another thing she must learn to deal with.

  Carol came back and spread the paper across Tara's knees. "Read the headlines then the editorial. I get a mention in both."

  Tara dutifully scanned the story, feeling pride in her sister-in-law's accomplishment. "So the unwinnable case wasn't as unwinnable as everyone predicted," she said, a note of pleasure in her voice.

  Carol nodded. "That's pretty much what the editor says, too."

  Tara flipped pages until she came to the piece in question. It painted a glowing word picture of Carol's handlin
g of the difficult case. About to congratulate her, Tara's eye strayed to the photo at the top of the next column and her heart almost stopped. A new photo of Zeke accompanied his column. It showed him seated behind a desk, making him look much more commanding and handsome than the previous head shot. More like the man she remembered so well, she thought.

  Like someone drawn to touch a hot stove to prove it really can burn, she began to read and her blood turned to ice in her veins. "How can he do this?" she stormed after a few paragraphs.

  Carol looked surprised. "I thought it was pretty flattering myself." She glanced over Tara's shoulder and saw what she was reading. "I didn't mean to put that in front of you. I didn't have time to read beyond the editorial this morning. Sorry."

  Tara shook her head although her muscles felt stiff and unresponsive. "I would have seen it sooner or later."

  Under the heading, Not-So-Sweet Charity, Zeke urged his readers to consider carefully where they donated their hard-earned money, suggesting that some organizations were designed as much to provide for their organizers as to help the underprivileged.

  "How dare he suggest that I'm a do-gooder," Tara demanded hotly.

  Carol scanned the column and she frowned. "He doesn't mention your name, or the foundation's."

  "He doesn't have to. After Australian Life publishes their piece and notes that top-gun reporter Zeke Blaxland was checking us out, it won't be hard for people to put two and two together."

  Carol read on. "Are you sure you aren't reading too much into this? Zeke may not flatter some of the fund-raising activities people do, but he doesn't say anything that could give rise to legal action."

  "He only suggests that we're in this for our own benefit."

  Carol gestured dismissively. "Nobody in their right mind will think he means you. You gave up a fortune in modeling fees to help set up and run the foundation."

  "Because I want the bulk of the money to go to the children. He doesn't mention that part."