by Mary Campisi
“You mean that little paste-waif running around in a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt with earbuds stuffed in her ears? Fresh air? I doubt she’s seen the outside of a room in six years.”
He shrugged. “What do you want, Angie?”
“I want you to leave Kate alone.”
“I hadn’t realized I was bothering her.”
“You are.” Her nostrils flared, her dark eyes narrowing on him as though she might lunge across the desk and choke him with his Armani tie. She would actually be attractive if she ever got over the perpetual PMS hump. Doubtful though. The woman had been a witch since the first time he laid eyes on her and she hadn’t improved with age.
“How long are you planning to stay?”
“A few weeks, give or take.”
“Why?” She worked her way around the desk and planted all five foot two of fury and force within arm’s reach.
“I told you—”
“Oh save it. I’m not a fool and I’m not the innocent Kate is. She just lost her husband a few months ago. She’s grieving.”
“I can appreciate that.”
“She’s vulnerable.” She jabbed a finger at him, stopping just short of nailing his chin. “You, better than anyone, know how to exploit that.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Now she was annoying him.
Her voice dripped with accusation. “Who left her, huh? Who walked away without even saying good-bye?”
It wasn’t supposed to be good-bye. He’d be damned if he’d admit that to her. “I had a lot to deal with, or have you conveniently forgotten what happened?”
“Of course not. But you could have been a man about it instead of pulling a disappearing act.”
He didn’t like to think about the early days without Kate, when he was filled with confusion and misery. Diana had guided him straight to Princeton and out of Kate’s life.
Angie continued her little barrage. “Two months of nothing. No phone number, no address, nothing but silence.”
Her words clogged his brain, jabbing him with memories of Kate. “I needed some distance.”
“Right.”
He didn’t bother to respond. So what if she didn’t believe him? She’d never believed a word he’d said, especially when it came to Kate.
The witch opened her mouth and blew him away like a nor’easter. “Kate was innocent and you deserted her.”
“Damn you, I wanted to come back.” Like a fool.
Angie Sorrento shook her head and a spray of dark curls fell across her forehead. “You are such a liar.”
“I don’t care what you believe.” Anger festered in his gut and spiraled out in his next words. “All I know is when I called ten weeks later, Clay Maden answered the phone. Kate’s phone. He said they’d gotten married.” The words burned his tongue. “You tell me who got played.”
“You bastard. You don’t know anything.”
“So enlighten me.”
“Not on your life. Kate will get through this just like she did before, and the people who love her will be here to help her, just like they were before.”
“Before what?”
But she was through sharing information. She turned on him and rattled off personal data about him as though they were a list of priors. “I know all about you, Rourke Flannigan. You traipse around the world in your little jet, wearing your fancy suits, bedding every woman who catches your eye, and you don’t care about any of them. All you care about is money and power and your own ego, which is bigger than your whole bank account.” Her dark eyes glittered with loathing. “Why don’t you just go back to Chicago and your little uptown girlfriends and leave us peons alone?”
Rourke stared at the spitfire in front of him, half expecting her to blow flames from her nostrils. “What in the hell have I ever done to you?”
“Not me. Kate.”
“She’s the one who married somebody else.” He could barely get the words out. “Got that?”
“Right.” She let out a snort of disgust. “You ran back to Chicago and hid in your little rich life and then off you went to Princeton and a gazillion other conquests and I’ll bet not once did you think about her.”
“That’s enough.”
She actually had the gall to sneer at him. “Is the truth a little too real for your type? You just wash it all away with a disappearing act, that’s your style, isn’t it?”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” But a sick feeling gripped him as her words settled in his brain. Part of what she said had been true, at least in the beginning. He’d been hesitant to tell Diana about the girl from Montpelier whose mother had brought tragedy to his family, but when he came home from Princeton one weekend, she guessed and that made the telling so much easier. When he finished his heart-wrenching tale of undying love for Kate Redmond, Diana had kissed his cheek and with an uncharacteristic show of sympathy, told him to follow his heart. All that honesty and it had been too damned late. “Did she really love him?”
Angie must have seen something in his expression that softened her a little. “I’m not the person to ask.”
“I need to know.”
She lifted a shoulder and said, “What could it matter now? You live in different worlds, hell, you live in different time periods. She eats tuna melts while you snack on caviar.”
“I’ve always had a fondness for tuna melts, especially with pickles.”
Her lips twitched and flattened. “I don’t like you, Rourke Flannigan. If you hurt Kate again, I’ll pull out the rifle under my bed and I’ll use it.”
The gleam in the woman’s eye told him she wasn’t joking. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He stood and held out his hand which she accepted with about as much enthusiasm as a man on his way to a vasectomy. “And just so you know, I plan on seeing her tonight.”
“Never happen.”
“Yes, it will. Kate and I have a lot to talk about.”
Chapter 6
“Some things should be left in the past.”—Kate Redmond Maden
Kate locked the Corolla and started across the street toward Sophie’s Diner. When she was a young girl, her mother brought her here after Sunday Mass for a grilled cheese sandwich and a cherry phosphate. Kate repeated the tradition with Julia, only the grilled cheese had morphed into chicken nuggets and the cherry phosphate into cherry Coke.
She spied the sleek black Mercedes outside and knew it was Rourke’s. He must have gone two towns over to get it, unless it was his and his personal driver delivered it. Did he have a personal driver? The news clippings she’d devoured last night mentioned a limousine driver. They mentioned quite a bit actually, and what they didn’t spell out, they alluded to with catchy phrases or photographs, such as the number of women he’d dated around the world, the price of his most recent Ferrari, and the value of his vacation home in Malibu.
In all the photographs, he was tanned, smiling, and oh so dazzling. A stranger. Kate took a deep breath and stepped inside the diner. Thankfully, Sophie was recovering from gall bladder surgery and wasn’t present to descend upon Rourke with a list of reasons why he wasn’t welcome in Montpelier, the main one being what he’d done to one of their own.
“Hey, Kate.” Sophie’s granddaughter, Melody, smiled at her and glanced shyly toward the back of the restaurant.
“Hi Melody.” Kate followed her gaze and spotted Rourke in a back booth where the lighting was dim and much too intimate. He wore a navy shirt of some thin material that molded and accentuated the muscles in his arms and chest. Why couldn’t he have worn a sweatshirt and chosen a front table with clusters of bright lights and lively chatter?
She moved toward him, trapped by the aura that had always surrounded Rourke Flannigan like tentacles latching onto unsuspecting prey. Heat lapped over her, warming her arms, her legs, her breasts. The second she registered what a huge mistake this meeting was, Rourke looked up, his gray eyes shifting to liquid silver, just like they used to right before he—
“Kate.”
The tentacles tightened around her waist and dragged her into the booth. She cleared her throat and focused on the bottom half of his face; chin, mouth, jaw. She did not want to look into those eyes. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No problem. You never were the most punctual—” He cleared his throat and his lips pulled into a perfect, white smile. “No problem.”
“Your tooth.” She leaned in and stared at his mouth. “What happened to the chip?” She remembered exactly which one it was because she used to run her tongue along the irregular edge of it.
“Caps.” He pointed to his bottom teeth. “I knocked three out sophomore year.”
“Hockey?”
“Yep. Rough season.”
“Do you still play?”
“No, I outgrew it a long time ago.”
Like you outgrew me? Kate plucked a menu from behind the napkin holder and scanned the items. Sophie hadn’t changed the menu in five years. Today was noodles and sirloin tips with cherry pie or apple cobbler. Kate and Rourke used to come here on Friday nights for burgers and fries. Then they’d drive down to the lake and—she slammed the menu shut and said, “I’m really not hungry.”
“Kate.”
There it was again. That damn heat in his voice pouring over her like a trail of hot wax. Had she really thought she could have a civil conversation without remembering the way they were?
“Are you okay?”
He reached out and covered her hands with his. They were so much larger than she remembered, his fingers covered with a light smattering of dark hair. He stroked the back of her hand…slow, casual, so very sensual. Her breath skittered through her lungs and fell out in a long sigh.
“Did you love him?”
“What?” His touch pulsed through her, blotting out fourteen years of marriage to another man.
“Did you love him?”
She yanked her hands away and buried them in her lap. “That’s an inappropriate question.”
His gaze slid across her face and paused on her lips. “It’s only inappropriate if the answer is no.”
“This was a bad idea.” She gathered her purse and scooted toward the edge of the booth.
“Please don’t go.”
It was the obvious pain in his voice that stopped her.
“I’ve been waiting fourteen years for this. I was coming back, Kate. I wasn’t going to leave you.”
Of course he could say that now. She closed her eyes against his words. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”
“Dammit, it does matter. After the accident, I wanted to blame somebody.”
“Rourke, please.” Why was he doing this? She did not want to relive the pain all over again. “Some things should remain in the past.”
“If you can keep them in the past. That’s the hell of it, I can’t seem to do that. I refused to believe your mother hadn’t been drinking. Why else would she wait eight hours to go to the emergency room? She must have been in horrible pain, and yet she waited.”
“If it’s any consolation, she hasn’t walked right since.”
“It’s not. My mother never recovered, though the doctors said there was no reason she wouldn’t walk again. She just gave up.” He paused. “And gave in to her pills. She died thirteen years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I couldn’t accept that my mother was luded out on Valium when she got hit even after I found the open bottle by her bedside.” The tormented honesty in his voice reminded her of the old Rourke. “Who walks down the middle of an unlit road at midnight unless they’re on something? Guilt messed me up. I told myself if we hadn’t been together that night, I could have stopped her from leaving the house. It took me a long time to come to terms with everything, especially you.”
She kept her head bent. If she looked in his eyes and saw the pain there, she’d start crying, and she might not be able to stop.
He cleared his throat. Twice. “I figured you’d be angry, maybe not talk to me, even make me beg forgiveness—”
“Rourke, please.”
“All I wanted to do was apologize and get back to the way we were.”
She could not dig up the old pains. It would be unbearable. “It’s done. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
“I was too late, Kate.” He traced the plain gold band on her ring finger. “When I called Clay told me the two of you had taken off and gotten married.”
She jerked her head up. She could not have heard him correctly. “You called?”
“November twenty-second. At four seventeen in the afternoon. You weren’t home.”
Her brain pinched. “You called my house?”
“Your house but Clay answered.” Bitterness coated his next words. “Imagine my surprise.”
She couldn’t breathe. “I don’t believe you.” Her voice shook when she said, “Clay would have told me.”
“You think so?” The steel in his voice sliced her resolve. “He hated me for stealing his chances with you. Ring or not, he didn’t trust you to stay with him if I was back in the picture.”
She wouldn’t have trusted herself. “If what you’re saying is true…” She stared at him, unable to finish the thought.
Rourke clasped her hand. “It’s true.”
Kate jerked her hand away, trying to break the tingling sensations shooting through her body. “Clay was a good man and you will not desecrate his name.”
“He was still just a man and a damn jealous one at that. I would have done the same thing.”
“Stop.”
“Why did you marry him?”
She forced calm into her voice. “That’s a ridiculous question.”
He must not have thought so. His eyes narrowed and he grew still. “How old is your daughter?”
Fear tripped through her like shock waves. She’d learned to answer this question without a tremble in her voice. “She’s thirteen.”
He picked up a salt shaker and traced the “S”. “When’s her birthday?”
The calm in his voice matched hers but she didn’t miss the tensing of his neck muscles or the way his shoulders straightened, as though on heightened alert. A man like Rourke would not let it go. She told him and added, “Julia was a premie.”
His head shot up and the burn in his eyes scared her. “Is she mine?”
“No.”
“And I should believe you, why?” His voice grew harder, his gaze hotter.
She could see why the articles she’d read last night referred to him with words like strong-willed, compelling, and determined. Well, she would not fall apart under his interrogation. This was Julia they were talking about. Her child. Kate met his gaze and thought of Julia’s laughter as it bubbled through the house, filling the emptiness inside. “You should believe me because I’m telling you the truth.”
The left side of his jaw twitched. “Which truth is that? The one where you married Clay and had his child less than nine months later? Or the one where you got pregnant with my child and married Clay?”
“No!” Her heart slammed against her ribs with a force that bruised.
“No? No what?”
Rourke watched her like a lion about to devour its prey. He was waiting for a misstep. Kate shrugged and folded her hands in her lap. Julia was her child and Rourke Flannigan had no rights to her. “As disappointing as you may or may not be to hear every woman isn’t waiting to have your child, it’s the truth. You’re not Julia’s father. Clay is.” Bitterness flashed across his face and she knew what she had to do. “Why did I marry him? Because he didn’t leave and he vowed to love me until the second he drew his last breath.” She leaned forward and gripped the edge of the table. “You think you have a right to question me because my baby was born a month early? How dare you.”
Rourke Flannigan, the entrepreneur with a quote for every magazine from People to Newsweek, was speechless. Kate cleared her throat and let out a quiet breath. “Now that we’ve settled that, I would apprecia
te it if you didn’t bring it up again.” He nodded, a quick jerk of his head that almost didn’t qualify as acknowledgement. His face had paled beneath the tan but his eyes had taken on a stony opaqueness that disturbed her. “If that’s all, I think I’ll be going.” Kate grabbed her purse and eased toward the edge of the booth.
“One more question.”
She met the opaque gaze and wondered how she’d ever thought him warm and tender. “Yes?”
“Did you love him?”
She hadn’t expected that. The man certainly had an arsenal of ammunition in ready supply, but why?
“Did you love him?” he asked again when she didn’t spit out a quick response.
Why did it matter to him so much? She’d seen the hurt on his face after she’d blown him away with her little speech about not living and breathing to carry his child. Angie would have been proud of the delivery, given with such conviction, contempt even, as to be convincing—if one didn’t know better. The man was obviously used to asking questions without regard to the sensitivity of the subject matter. He wanted a response? She’d give him one—sort of. “Everyone loved Clay,” she said, forcing a half smile. “He was just that kind of person.”
He actually huffed his irritation. “I know that, but did you love him?”
A left jaw twitch. A clenched mouth. Now he was irritated and angry. Good. Let him think ten times before asking such personal questions again. She had fourteen years of rage stored up for him and given the opportunity, she’d dole it out a teaspoon at a time. “You mean as much as I loved you?” Oh, he didn’t like that. “That’s really what you want to know, isn’t it?” His lips flattened but he said nothing, so Kate continued, “Of course, it is. That’s exactly what you want to know. Next you’ll be asking me to make comparisons about more, ah, intimate situations.”
