All a Man Can Be

by Virginia Kantra

  “I might be. Yes. Seven o’clock, Mr. DeLucca. We can talk about Daniel at seven.”

  “Great. Okay. I’ll see you at seven.”

  “And Mr. DeLucca?”

  He turned in the doorway.

  “Wear a tie.”

  Chapter 6

  In the Palmer House ballroom, a jazz quintet played. Nicole’s temples pulsed in rhythm to the snare drum. Her feet, pinched in ice-blue Charles David sandals, throbbed, too. Miserable from head to toe, she clutched her glass like a lifeline and listened to a recital of her sins and her mother’s grievances. Since the two lists were nearly identical, Nicole had hoped the recitation would be short.

  But Margaret Reed, fueled by her second martini, was eager to explain the connections between Nicole’s most recent transgressions and her own deep disappointment.

  “I still don’t understand why you have to go back tonight,” Margaret said plaintively.

  “It’s my business, Mother,” Nicole said stiffly. Not yours. “I have to be there.”

  Only she didn’t. She wanted to be there.

  Nicole sipped her white wine, trying to ignore the mocking memory of Mark’s voice. I had you pegged as a chardonnay girl.

  She longed to be anywhere but here.

  “Can’t you pay someone to take care of things for you for a few hours?” Margaret asked.

  She had. She paid Mark. Only— “It’s not that simple, Mother.”

  “Why? Can’t you trust them?”

  The cello scraped along Nicole’s nerves. Her ex-lover Yuri had played the cello. When he could find work, which was not often. “Of course, I can trust—”

  Him.

  Mark.

  Here.

  Mark DeLucca was standing on the other side of the dance floor, lounging between a potted palm and a marble column. His height and his sharp, predatory profile made him stand out among Chicago’s elite in their suits and cocktail dresses like a crow in a flock of pigeons.

  Nicole’s first, clenching thought was that something was wrong and he’d come to find her. But he didn’t look worried. In fact, he didn’t look at her at all. He was chatting up a frosted brunette in last year’s Ann Taylor who was sophisticated enough and certainly old enough to know better.

  Mark’s head thrust forward to listen. When he raised it, he saw her.

  Nicole was too far away to read his expression. She thought glumly that most of the time, he kept his face too closely guarded for her to guess what he was feeling anyway. But he murmured something to Mrs. Robinson and started across the room.

  Her heart beat faster. She shifted her weight in her strappy sandals, in an agony of discomfort.

  “Who is that…extraordinary-looking young man?” Margaret whispered in her ear.

  Nicole barely heard, all her attention on Mark negotiating the dance floor. She tightened her grip on her glass, grateful the hotel’s thick stemware was unlikely to break in her grasp.

  “What man, Mother?”

  “That jacket is all wrong for a function like this. Although there’s something about him…” Margaret mused. “Do you suppose he works for the D.A.’s office?”

  Oh, God. She meant Mark.

  And he was definitely heading toward them.

  “Actually,” Nicole said faintly, “he works for me.”

  He stopped in front of them. Compared to the expensive tailored suits all around them, his off-the-rack navy blazer was a cheap imitation. But the tough, lean man inside was the real thing. His dark, straight gaze made her insides melt. Nicole pressed her knees together so she wouldn’t dissolve into a puddle on the floor.

  He nodded. “Nicole.”

  She inhaled. “Mark.”

  “He works for you at that bar?” Her mother sounded scandalized.

  Mark’s gaze cut to Margaret.

  Nicole wished the floor would open and swallow them up. In the background, the jazz group swung into another number, like the band playing on the deck of the Titanic as it went down.

  “This is Mark DeLucca, who works with me at the Blue Moon. Mark, this is my mother, Margaret Reed.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Mark said blandly.

  “What are you doing here?” Margaret asked.

  Nicole burned in embarrassment.

  “I’m with a friend,” Mark said.

  Margaret sniffed. “Well, your ‘friend’ should have told you this was a semiformal affair. The invitation—”

  “Mom,” Nicole said. “Stop it. I don’t like it when you talk this way.”

  Margaret turned on her, glittering with diamonds and dislike. “Don’t let’s get into a discussion of what we don’t like about each other, dear. Because I have a lot to say.”

  Nicole’s breath caught. The remark jabbed into her like a needle: first the shock and then the pain and then the welling blood.

  “Seems to me you’ve said enough already.” Mark pried the wineglass from Nicole’s hand and set it on a tray. “Let’s dance.”

  Gripping her cold hand, he pulled her into his arms and onto the dance floor. She grabbed at his shoulder in surprise, steadying herself. It took her two steps to find her balance, six strides to catch his rhythm. He didn’t do anything difficult or funky—one, two, step, step—nothing beyond the ability of her dancing partners in cotillion. But none of the boys she’d danced with at thirteen had strong, dry hands and solid shoulders and muscled thighs. Heck, at thirteen Nicole had been lucky to find a partner whose eyes weren’t on a direct line with her breasts.

  She wanted to ask what he was doing here, except then she would sound like her mother. So what she said, stupidly, staring at his throat, was, “You can dance.”

  “Surprised?”

  She lied. “No.”

  He bared his teeth in a smile. “Bet you had dancing lessons when you were a kid.”

  “My mother insisted. Also art, tennis and horseback riding.” She stumbled slightly as he pulled her in to avoid another couple. “I’m not very good at any of them.”

  He didn’t seem to mind. His hand was warm against her back. “Family responsibility sucks,” he said, so sympathetically she forgot she had ever been mad at him.

  “Your mother made you learn to dance, too?” She tried hard to wrap her mind around the image: Lucifer before the fall, with a mother and half hours devoted to the fox-trot.

  “No. My sister.”

  The exotic brunette with the killer nails. A little of Nicole’s headache floated away on the music. “I met her, didn’t I? She seemed very nice.”

  Mark slanted a look down at her. “She’s a sucker. But she’s getting married in a couple of weeks, and the dance-with-the-bride thing matters to her, so…”

  So he’d learned to dance to please his sister. Nicole’s heart melted.

  “That’s so sweet.”

  Mark looked revolted. “It’s not sweet. It’s self-preservation. When my sister decides she wants something, it’s easier to give up and go along.”

  “And she wants to dance with you at her wedding. I think it’s nice.”

  “It’s not like she’s got a lot of choices. Jarek—her fiancé—has family crawling out of the woodwork. Tess needs somebody on her side, and I’m it.”

  “Your father?” Nicole asked delicately.

  He clenched his jaw. He had a nice jaw. He didn’t need to shave, exactly, but there was a subtle suggestion of beard that tempted her to test it with her fingers.

  “Gone,” he said.

  She jerked her mind back from the texture of his chin. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  His mouth relaxed. His eyes were amused. “Not dead, Blondie. Gone. He took off when we were kids.”

  “It still must have been hard on you.”

  “Not as hard as when he was around.”

  “Your parents argued?” She could relate to that.

  “My parents drank,” Mark said flatly. “When they drank, they argued. When they argued, my dad liked to knock my mom around. It was better when he left.”


  She stumbled. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  He steadied her, tightening his grip on her hand until she found the rhythm again. “Sure you did. It’s okay.”

  Chapter Two, “Who Is a Loser?”, cautioned about the seeds of alcoholism and the pattern of domestic violence. Everything Mark told her confirmed he was a bad relationship risk. Everything he did made her like him more.

  “Sometimes when I was growing up I wished my father would move out,” she confided.

  Mark didn’t falter, but the arms around her tensed. “He hit you?”

  “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “Nothing like that…. He and Mother liked to let me know that since they were staying together for my sake, the least I could do was show some appreciation by making them proud.”

  “Well, you did, didn’t you? CFO at the age of— What are you?—twenty-four?”

  “Twenty-seven. And I haven’t done anything with my life that they wanted me to.”

  “What did they want?”

  “My father wanted me to go to law school and join the firm.” Mark looked unimpressed. “He’s the Reed in Reed, Davis,” she explained.

  He looked as if he’d never heard of them. It was…nice. “And your mom?”

  My mother wants me to stop sleeping with men like you.

  Heat flooded her face. “Oh, you know,” she said airily. “The usual. She wants me to stay in Chicago, get married and join the Junior League. Not buy a bar and move out of town.”

  “And you have a problem because they disapprove.”

  No. She had a problem because she was afraid they were right.

  She tripped over his feet again. “Sorry.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You want to sit this one out?”

  She didn’t. She could have danced with his arms around her forever. Besides, if they stopped, she would have to go talk with her mother again.

  “It’s these shoes,” she said. “They pinch, and the heels are too high.”

  “Then why did you buy them?”

  “They matched my dress.”

  He shook his head. “Take them off.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said automatically.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I— Well, they— It would ruin my stockings, for one thing.”

  He gave her a warm look and a slow smile. “So peel off the stockings. I’ll watch.”

  She managed a breathless laugh. “Go without hose at a legal fund-raiser attended by all my mother’s friends and half my father’s firm? I don’t think so.”

  “Do you always do what’s expected of you?”

  “Since the expectation is that I will screw up… Gee, I hope not.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. It seemed safer to concentrate on his jaw and the smooth, tanned column of his throat above his collar. He smelled good, all animal male and some ordinary, guys’ cologne. She opened her mouth to breathe. “I like your tie.”

  “Is that a polite way of telling me to butt out?”

  “No.” She risked a glance at his face. He was still smiling, and her heart did a little two-step all on its own. “It’s a polite way of telling you I’m not about to start taking my clothes off for you here.”

  “I’m okay with it if you want to go someplace else.”

  She wanted to shock him. To tease him. To tempt him. She wanted to say yes. Do you always do what’s expected of you?

  She sighed. “Not a good idea. Tell me about your tie.”

  “It’s blue.”

  “Thank you, I’d noticed that. Is it new?”

  “What if it is?”

  “I was just wondering if—” she had to ask, she couldn’t bear not to know “—it was a gift or something.”

  She felt his withdrawal. He was still moving with her, moving to the music, but he withdrew from her all the same. “You think I don’t know how to pick out my own clothes?”

  Oh, dear.

  She tried again. “Well, you weren’t wearing a tie this morning. You can’t have had many opportunities to go shopping today, so I wondered if—”

  “If I had a tie-producing girlfriend on the side?”

  She winced. Yes. Their thighs brushed. He felt so good, she was tempted to let it go. Wasn’t it enough that he was here and hard and warm against her?

  No.

  She straightened her spine, conscious of his hand on her back. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  He stopped at the edge of the dance floor. “Not last time I checked.”

  Could she believe him? She wanted to. And that alone made her suspect her judgment.

  “Then that woman you were with—”

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  It was her. Mrs. Robinson, sleek and stunning in her power suit and feminine blouse. She looked at Nicole. “Hello.”

  Nicole was glad she hadn’t taken off her shoes. She needed every inch of confidence she could buy.

  “Hi. I’m Nicole. A friend of Mark’s.”

  “Jane Gilbert,” Mark said. “A friend of…the family.”

  Jane Gilbert raised her eyebrows. “Nice to meet you. Do you have a minute?” she asked Mark.

  “Yeah. I’ll see you,” he said to Nicole.

  She nodded, trying not to look as if she minded being abandoned like an empty glass on a busboy’s tray. “Don’t forget to lock up when you get in tonight,” she said.

  He gave her a brief, hard glance. And then he grinned. “I’ll do that.”

  She watched him go, his head bent to listen to the other woman, leaving her with nothing but her blistered feet and bruised pride.

  “‘A friend of the family?’” Jane repeated.

  Mark shrugged. Nicole’s scent, her warmth, her softness, were messing with his head. “It’s not like I could introduce you as my son’s lawyer. I don’t even know for sure yet if the kid’s mine.”

  “Would it cramp your style too much?”

  Cramp his style to have a six-year-old running around calling him Daddy? Looking to him to provide hot meals and discipline and support? Living with him in his three rooms over the boathouse, expecting him to be home—alone—at regular hours?

  Panic struck. His stomach cramped. The boathouse. Could the kid even swim?

  He took a deep breath. “Would it matter?” he asked coolly.

  “To the court? It might,” Jane said. “Would it matter to your girlfriend?”

  In his mind he was still measuring the distance from the bottom of his apartment steps to the water. It took him a minute to realize she was talking about Nicole.

  “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my boss.”

  “A live-in boss? How convenient.”

  Maybe later he would feel glad the Wainscott kid had somebody sharp and tough on his side. But right now she was pissing him off.

  “We don’t live together. I have responsibility for closing the bar tonight.”

  “And do you take all your responsibilities seriously?”

  Did he?

  “I guess we’ll find out,” he said grimly.

  To his surprise Jane smiled. “I might like you,” she said. “I certainly trust you more than I would if you told me this was the best thing to ever happen to you.”

  “I thought you were supposed to want what was best.”

  “What is in the best interests of the child, yes. In most cases the court considers those interests are served by uniting the child with his natural parent.”

  “And you? What do you think?”

  “I think Elizabeth Wainscott may have known what she was doing when she named you Daniel’s guardian.”

  Pleasure at the compliment pricked him. Shocked him.

  He shook his head in quick denial. “Maybe. Or maybe she was just using me to get back at her father.”

  “Get back at him for…?”

  “They didn’t get along. And he hated my guts. Then I was too young and dumb to get that she was sleeping with me partly out of spite. Or maybe I was too grateful. But I’d buy it
now.”

  “Bitter, Mr. DeLucca?”

  “Experienced. And as long as we’re discussing my sex life, you might as well call me Mark.”

  She gave a slight smile. “Mark. Would Elizabeth have claimed Daniel was your son simply to frustrate her father?”

  “Is that what he says?”

  “The argument might have been made.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  She didn’t correct him. “He’s here tonight,” she said. “He wants to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “You could ask him that yourself.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You setting me up, Jane?”

  “Let’s say I’m providing you with an opportunity to see what you make of it.”

  He had a medal in his drawer and a reprimand on his service record for leading his squad against orders out of the line of friendly fire. Whatever land mines lay ahead at this high-toned legal shindig, he wasn’t gaining any ground by sitting still and getting shot at.

  “Let’s roll,” he said.

  Jane led the way around the ballroom as if she’d mapped their destination from the beginning. Following, Mark wondered where in the shifting, glittering crowd Nicole was hiding. She wasn’t his ally. She wasn’t his girlfriend. She was his boss. But venturing across enemy territory with only his legal guide, Mark caught himself watching for her.

  He didn’t get it.

  He had always lived solitary. He had always felt alone. This was a bad time to be imagining a connection with a blue-blood blonde in designer shoes.

  He should have followed the lawyer.

  He remembered Betsy’s father was built like a whiskey bottle, tall and narrow, capped by shiny black hair. Seven years hadn’t changed him much.

  He looked at Mark in dislike. “You know this is preposterous. We were shocked Elizabeth even remembered you.”

  Mark rocked back on his heels. “Yeah. It was a surprise to me, too.”

  “You’re not Daniel’s father.”

  There were two cotton swabs loaded with his DNA on their way to a testing center in Texas that could prove the older man wrong. But Mark didn’t say anything.

  “Daniel has a good home with us,” Robert Wainscott insisted. “There’s no need for you to get involved.”

  “Your daughter thought different.”