“All that cholesterol isn’t good for you.”
“Fiona.” His voice had a growly undertone to it as he quickly swallowed his food. “You don’t have to justify everything.”
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m happy with bagels for breakfast and I’m telling you you should be, too.”
He groaned and rolled his eyes. “If I promise to never eat a cholesterol blue-plate special ever again in my life, will you let me eat in peace?”
His tone made her frown. And made those nerves subside a bit. “You said before that I shouldn’t worry about other people’s feelings. Now are you saying I should?”
He looked as if he was in pain. “I’m saying that I’m not used to being badgered during breakfast.”
“Well, excuse me, sir. I thought a little conversation at breakfast would help relax things. Encourage good digestion.”
“I think the operative word is little. “
“Fine.”
She took another bite of her bagel, a big one this time, and chewed vigorously. She was acting like a silly schoolgirl, chatting on and on. She needed to relax. Ten days was a long time and she had to learn how to ignore his every move. Her gaze roamed and stopped on his hands as he paged through the newspaper. They were strong hands, capable and sure. A man’s hands.
She swallowed hard and looked away. Annoying him with her chatter was better than letting her mind wander.
“I guess you must have had quiet breakfasts when you were a kid,” she said. “I mean, being an only child like you were.”
“Yes.” His words came out slowly and carefully, as he lowered his newspaper. “My breakfasts were quiet. And very, very peaceful. When I finished, I was totally relaxed.”
She pursed her lips. She should just take the hint and shut up.
“I usually ate alone. My mother didn’t like to get up early.” His words seemed tagged with bits of tiredness and he was concentrating on his food, macho pride radiating out like heat from a radiator.
Her heart heard the hurt behind the words and went out to him. “Do you still eat alone?”
“Most of the time I eat out,” he said. “So, unless I’m with a client, I might as well be alone. Everyone else in the restaurant is into their own thing.” He shrugged. “That’s the way it is in the big city.”
“That’s sad,” she said.
“Don’t you live alone?” He was frowning at her again. “Your breakfasts have to be quiet also.”
“Yes.” She started peeling her orange. “But not entirely. I have two cats, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” He snapped the paper upright again. “Well, just pretend I’m a cat.”
After a long moment, Fiona found herself glaring at the top of his head. Her warm feelings were cooling rapidly. She thought they’d been getting closer and he’d shot the walls back up again.
“You’re ignoring me,” she said.
“I thought that’s what cats do best.”
Suddenly Fiona noticed a suspicious quiver to Alex’s shoulders. “You’re laughing at me.”
“No, I’m not.” He looked up at her, his whole face filled with laughter. “I’m laughing with you.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Maybe you ought to.” His face was wearing a mask of male smugness. “Try it, you’ll like it.”
Not only was he pushing her away, he was laughing at her attempts to get close. Thirty years of being polite and following the rules evaporated as fast as the dew on a hot summer morning. She sprang up out of her chair and grabbed up a section of the newspaper. Rather than begin to read it, though, she started rolling it up.
“Hey,” he said, as he watched her. “I thought you didn’t believe in violence.”
“It has its place.”
“Come on, Fiona.”
She whacked him on the shoulder. It was highly satisfying. He raised his arms and she feinted a blow toward his chest. When he lowered his arm, she whacked him on the head. It felt even better. She was tired of being nice and polite and unselfish.
“I like this,” she said, and whacked him another couple of times. “I really do.”
“Darn it.” He grabbed her and pulled her down onto his lap. “Now, cut that out. The Andrewses don’t want us doing anything dangerous.”
Fiona stopped her assault as his eyes captured hers. The laughter in his gaze slowly faded as something else took its place—something hot and fiery and all too willing to consume her. She felt a wonderful warmth slip around her, promising something even more splendid.
His arms were lightly around her, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Her mouth was dry and she licked her lips, trying to find a way to ease the fever in her blood. She was sitting in a man’s lap, with nothing but a thin robe and even thinner nightgown to shield her. And her body told her that he was a hard man—well muscled and… and hard.
“And what would you call this?” she murmured hoarsely.
He stared deeper into her eyes. Fiona could smell the coffee on his breath and feel the throbbing of his heart, pumping blood to the farthest reaches of his body.
“Dangerous,” he finally replied.
“Extremely dangerous,” she agreed.
They slowly separated, pulling apart cell by cell. Fiona tried to straighten her robe, but her wayward eyes only wanted to devour him. His shirt was pulled half out of his pants and her hands itched to pull it all the way out. She needed—
“I need to do something physical.”
He just blinked once. Like he wasn’t sure she’d just said what she’d said.
“Like jogging along the lakefront,” she said, quickly. “Or maybe a bicycle ride.”
“Bicycling would be good,” Alex said. “We can rent some bikes over by Lincoln Park.”
“I’ll go change.”
“Okay.” Alex stood. “I’ll clean up while you do.”
“That’s okay,” she replied. “I can—”
“Hey, you made breakfast, let me clean up.”
She nodded and hurried across the room. Distance would ensure safety. But she stopped just at the hall. “You don’t suppose bicycling counts as dangerous, do you?”
Alex didn’t look at her; he was busily cleaning up the breakfast dishes. He just laughed, sounding as shaken as she felt. “Not as dangerous as staying here.”
Chapter Six
“I thought you said it was just a little farther,” Fiona said. “We’ve been biking for miles.”
“You said you wanted some exercise,” Alex reminded. Well, that wasn’t exactly what she’d said, but it was close. And it was what he needed. Hours and hours of it. This morning had been a little too cozy for his peace of mind.
Unfortunately, they were nearing their destination. “Turn up here,” he said. “I live in the next block.”
“Oh, yeah?” Fiona slowed her bike as she looked around. “Cute neighborhood.”
Cute? Alex looked down his street, at the old brownstones crowded up against each other, at the spindly city trees that hadn’t yet leafed out. And at the parked cars lining both sides of the street. “If you think this is cute, wait until you see my apartment.”
“I can hardly wait.”
Suddenly he wasn’t sure he wanted her to see it. Not that his apartment held all sorts of secrets. Except for his autograph collection, it was almost void of personality. But that in itself would mean something to her. And he didn’t want to give her any further glimpses inside him. It was going to be hard enough to maintain their distance over the next week or so—as this morning’s episode proved.
“This building on the right, here,” he called to her. “I’m on the ground floor.”
They stopped in front of the one he indicated and dismounted from their rented bikes. Fiona’s face said nothing, but she probably was comparing it to the building she lived in. And hers was no doubt winning. They both were old houses converted into apartments, but hers had a yard around it and was in a quiet neighborhood. There was no such th
ing in the city.
But he liked it here. Showed how different they were.
“Better put the bikes down here,” he said, nodding down the stairs to his little patio. “They’d probably be okay out here on the street for a few minutes.”
“But best not to take the chance,” she finished for him.
He started at her completing his thought, but then just grabbed up her bike and carried it down the short flight of steps. No big deal. What else would he have been going to say? She was not reading his mind.
He bounded back up the stairs to find Fiona lifting his bike. “What are you doing?” he asked, and took his bike from her.
“I can carry one,” she insisted, following him down. “Bringing a bike down a few steps doesn’t constitute danger.”
No, just ungentlemanliness on his part. “I’m a full-service guy, remember?”
He leaned the bikes against the near wall, then emptied his mailbox. “My place is pretty ordinary,” he told her, suddenly thinking of the worn rug in his living room and the scratches all over his kitchen table. And heaven knew when he dusted last. “I really don’t spend a lot of time here.”
“You want me to stay out here?”
He wished he had the guts to say yes but then, perversely, he wanted her inside, wanted her soft presence in his home. He opened his door and waved her inside.
“Sit down, look around, or whatever,” he said. “I’m just going to check my mail and pick up some clean clothes.”
“Okay.” She’d followed him into the living room, somehow making the room seem lighter and warmer.
“I’d offer you something to drink but I don’t have anything.” That sounded strange even to him, like he was some anonymous ghost just passing through. “I knew I’d be in and out over the last couple of weeks so I didn’t stock up on anything.”
“No problem.”
Of course not. When did she ever see a problem?
Strangely annoyed, he went into his office and flipped through the mail in his hand. Nothing of significance; a few bills and a whole lot of junk. He slipped back out into the living room on his way to his bedroom. Fiona was looking at his autograph collection.
Well, if there was one thing in the place that told who he was, that was it. It would be interesting to see what Fiona made of it. Not that it mattered to him one way or another.
He pulled a suitcase from under the bed and threw it on a chair, before rummaging in his dresser for some clean shirts, socks and underwear. He tossed them into the bag, added a few toiletries. Then, after snapping the case shut, he hurried out into the living room.
“You have a very interesting collection here,” Fiona said, turning to face him. “But I’m not sure what the theme is. You have athletes, politicians, and other people that I don’t recognize.”
“Yeah.” He could feel the left side of his face pull up in a crooked smile. “I have the world’s best, and probably only, collection of people who put honesty ahead of everything else.”
Fiona looked back at the collection, her face wrinkling up. He put his suitcase down and moved to her side.
“There’s Walter Mondale,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“He said taxes would go up even though it might’ve cost him the election.”
“And why do you have this team?” She stepped closer to the picture of high school basketball players. “The Salem Sentinels? Why are they in your honest people’s hall of fame? Did they tell the other team what plays they were going to run?”
“No.” He shook his head. “But they made it to their state finals before learning that one of their players was ineligible. They reported it and it negated their whole season.”
She moved down slightly and stopped. “Hey, this is Great-great-grandpa Horace.”
“Yep. He believed honesty was more important than popularity,” Alex said. “Refused to kiss up to anybody. He made a lot of people angry when he started a series on ethics in politics, but he didn’t care.”
She turned from the display. “You sure are into honesty, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “Guess it makes me pretty weird.”
“No.” She shook her head, her smile so gentle, so accepting. “It means I can always trust you,” she said. “No matter what, I know you’re going to tell me the truth.”
Even as she said the words, he felt a cloud cover his sun. Would she always want the truth? Few people did.
She picked up the framed photo on a bookshelf. “This your mom?”
“Yeah.”
“She looks nice.” Fiona put the photo down, then looked around as if looking for others. “No other family photos?” she asked. “I thought you said your mother was married a number of times.”
“She was.” He made a small face, not really wanting to get into this discussion, but he couldn’t not answer her. “She had too many husbands and I didn’t want to waste wall space on them.”
“Not even your father?”
He looked away, checking out the front window that their bikes were still there. “She never married him,” he said. “I don’t even know who he is.“
He was surprised that the words came out like they had. It wasn’t like him to tell people that; certainly not people he barely knew. Yet that didn’t quite describe Fiona. True, it was less than a week since he’d driven up to her apartment, but they’d been through a lot in that time.
“I’m sorry,” Fiona said.
He turned back to her. “What for?”
“You obviously still hurt.”
“I don’t obviously anything.” He felt a frown growing on his face but he also felt pain from being too sharp with her. “We should get going.”
She still had that knowing look on her face. Damn it. He should never have opened his big mouth. He didn’t need her sympathy.
“I’m not upset that my biological mother and father never married,” he said. “Those things happen.”
She didn’t look convinced and he found himself going on.
“Trouble was, I went along for years thinking that her first husband was my father.” He looked away and took a deep breath. “They never said he was, but they never said he wasn’t. So I guess it was my mistake.”
“I’m sorry.”
She put her hand on his arm, and for the life of him he wanted her to take him in her arms. He wanted to lay his head on her shoulder and let her arms surround him until he could hear nothing but the roaring of his heart.
Jeez, what was happening to him? That all happened ages ago. It didn’t bother him anymore.
“It’s not your fault.” Thinking his words had come out too sharp, Alex paused and cleared his throat. “You’re not the one who lied to me.”
“I’m sure they had their reasons,” Fiona said.
Alex couldn’t help but laugh, although it had a bitter, hollow sound. Little Miss Fiona Sunshine. She’d find a good reason for anyone’s meanness, from Judas Iscariot to Attila the Hun.
“Their reasons don’t matter,” Alex said. “They should have told the truth. That would have saved all of us a lot of embarrassment and pain.”
“I’m sure they meant well.”
He shook his head. “If they had, they would have been honest. Honesty isn’t just the best policy, it’s the only policy.”
This time it was Fiona’s turn to shake her head. Her eyes grew dark and troubled. “I don’t like absolutes.”
“What? You think lies are okay?”
Her look told Alex he’d again made a wrong choice of words.
“You think that lying is sometimes okay?”
Fiona shrugged. “My adoptive father says that secrets are like dirty socks. Sometimes bringing them out to the sunshine is fine. But other times, they should just be left buried.”
“I don’t agree. There may be some pain but, in the end, honesty leaves everything all clean and fresh.”
For a while she didn’t say anything, but the expression on her face said she stood with
the fudgers of the world—people who didn’t lie outright, but bent things to present a better view.
It didn’t surprise him. It didn’t even disappoint him. Strangely enough, he felt only a measure of relief. That stirring in his heart when his eyes met hers would pass.
“We’d been left with a neighbor, me and Cassie and Sam,” she said, her voice quiet. “Our parents said they were going to Milwaukee about a new job for my dad.”
Alex knew something bad was coming. There was a stillness about her, a fragility that said the pain she was holding in was great. “You said they were killed in an automobile accident.”
“Yes.” Fiona stood still for a moment. “In Minnesota.”
On their way to Milwaukee and ending up in Minnesota? Alex waited.
“At the funeral, I overheard my mother’s best friend talking. She said that my parents had never planned to come back. That they were abandoning us.”
The pain he had sensed was in her voice and in her eyes. He had to somehow ease it, but this was where he always failed. Slaying the dragons was easy; reading the needs in a woman’s soul was impossible.
“That had nothing to do with honesty,” he said gently. “That woman you overheard was probably just mouthing off.”
“Maybe.”
The one word held all the fears she’d accumulated over half a lifetime. Damn. He wasn’t good at this. He was blindfolded with both hands tied behind his back.
“So they were going someplace else,” he said. “If they’d told you truthfully where they were going, you would never have given that woman’s words a second thought.”
“What if Mrs. Cochran’s words were the truth?”
Time had made her fears a certainty, had cast them in stone. What dynamite could he use to reduce their size?
But no words would come, no vestiges of wisdom appeared. He didn’t know what else to do, so he just opened his arms to her and drew her into his embrace. She came as if it were the only place in the world for her to go. And when his lips lowered toward hers, she rose up to meet them.
His kiss started out gentle, like a touch meant to soothe and ease, but it changed suddenly. Her lips seemed to ignite some spark within him, some buried need that only she could awaken. That only she could meet. The spark grew into a fire, trying to consume him, and he seemed powerless to fight it.
On Mother's Day (Great Expectations #1) Page 10
