She’d wanted Joey to sleep, but now she hoped he’d wake up before they had to leave him so they’d at least be able to say goodbye to him. She hated the thought of his falling asleep with them and waking up with someone else. She didn’t want him to think they’d abandoned him.
Betty Williams, Joey’s foster mother, took the baby from Robbie’s arms as soon as she opened the door.
“Good. You’re right on time,” she said, smiling as she looked down at Joey. “And he’s sleeping, too. Hopefully it’ll last another half hour. My family’s right in the middle of dinner.”
“Let’s go,” Con said to Robbie, setting Joey’s things by the door before turning and heading back to the car.
Robbie couldn’t just walk away and leave her little boy with this total stranger. “He’s got some new clothes,” she told the woman.
“Oh! Thank you.” Mrs. Williams glanced over her shoulder, her hand on the front door. She obviously wanted to get back to her family.
“Well, if you have any questions about anything, call us. Our number’s in there with his stuff.”
“Fine,” Mrs. Williams said.
“Mama!” A child’s cry came from the interior of the house.
“Just a minute!” the woman called back.
Joey shifted, but he didn’t wake up, as if sleeping through bouts of loud noise wasn’t all that unusual.
“I’ll let you get back to your dinner, then,” Robbie said. She knew she had to go.
“Thanks for baby-sitting for us,” Betty Williams called just before her door closed.
Robbie flinched as the words lashed her. Baby-sitting? Was that all she and Con were? Baby-sitters? People with no authority whatsoever in the decisions made in Joey’s life? With no rights?
No! She refused to accept that. No matter what the state said, what the courts thought. They’d been a family this weekend, a real family. A mother, a father, a son.
The car was already running, with Con sitting impatiently behind the wheel. He threw it into reverse before Robbie even had her door closed. As much as she hated to cry, hated the weakness, the run-down neighborhood was blurred by her tears as they sped past. She’d just left a big piece of her heart behind.
Accelerating, Con pulled a pack of cigarettes out of the console, snapped open the ashtray and lit up, taking a long drag before offering the cigarette to her. Robbie accepted it gratefully and wiped away her tears with the fingers of her free hand. Con lit another cigarette for himself.
Angry control was in every movement he made. He drove well, but not smoothly, accelerating more quickly than necessary, taking corners sharply, yielding to no one.
He said nothing about the child they’d just left behind.
A car with a bunch of teenage boys pulled out in front of them, forcing Con to brake or hit them. “Bastards,” he said, slowing down.
Robbie held her tongue. She was sitting beside a stick of dynamite that was dangerously close to exploding.
“At least you can smoke again,” she said lightly, worried about him. They had to get through this. They were probably going to have to get through a lot more before it was all over.
Con grunted.
Robbie fell silent again, watching the neighborhoods whiz past, the seemingly endless miles that were taking them farther and farther from Joey. In an emergency it would take them forever to get to him.
If he has an emergency, will we even be called?
The car jerked to a halt behind a woman in a blue minivan in the right-turn lane. The light was red, but there was no oncoming traffic. No reason the woman couldn’t turn. Except that she was reaching behind her to an infant seat in the back. “Go,” Con muttered, scowling.
Robbie fought a fresh welling of tears. “You had no choice, Con. You had to leave him there.”
“Tell Joey that.” He passed the blue minivan, accelerating from zero to the speed limit in seconds.
“I know it’s hard, but we have to remember that the system is there to protect him,” Robbie said. The system helped children every day, made their lives better, didn’t it? Joey would be all right. He’d already survived six months without them.
“The system can go to hell.”
In that moment Robbie had a hard time not agreeing with him. What kind of system would force a man to do something that went against every responsible bone in his body? Force him to turn his newfound infant son over to total strangers?
No matter how hard she tried to look for the positive, she just kept thinking about what Joey was going to think, how he was going to feel, when he woke up to find they’d gone. Would he be scared? Would he miss them? Cry for them? Or would he just shrug them off as another couple of the temporary adults who had passed through his young life?
Would he care that there’d be no race-car mobile for him to watch when he awoke in the morning?
JOEY’S THINGS mocked Con when he followed Robbie through the garage door into the kitchen half an hour later. Clean bottles stood upside down on a towel by the sink, a can of soy-milk powder beside them. A blue teddy-bear rattle had been abandoned by the refrigerator. And a soiled bib still lay on the breakfast bar.
“Why in hell didn’t you put that in the laundry?” Con snapped, pointing at the offensive garment.
“I forgot. I’m sorry,” Robbie said softly, picking up the bib, quietly sliding open the doors concealing the laundry closet and dropping the tiny garment into the washing machine.
“And what about the bottles?” he asked, glaring at them.
“I’ll get them.” She quickly removed the bottles and all other evidence of the baby from the kitchen.
What in hell was she doing? What in hell was he doing? He’d left those bottles there.
“No. I’m sorry, Rob.” He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to make sense out of a world gone mad. “I just can’t…It’s not…I feel so…” He broke off, not knowing what he even wanted to say. He just knew that if he allowed himself to feel the waves of despair crashing around him, he’d drown. He had to keep fighting to keep them at bay.
“It’s okay, friend,” Robbie said, moving to him and squeezing his hand briefly. “I understand.”
Which was more than he did.
“That still doesn’t give me the right to take it out on you.” She’d just changed her entire life for him, and he repaid her with a display of bad temper.
“That’s what friends are for,” she said, trying a grin that didn’t quite work.
She was hurting, too. He could see the pain in her steady gaze, in the tremble in her chin. He put his arms around her and pulled her against him.
“Ah, Rob, what have we gotten ourselves into?” he asked.
“Just another one of life’s little challenges, I guess.” Her words were muffled against his chest.
Resting his chin on the top of her head, the short blond tendrils of her hair tickling his face, he told himself to set her away. But her warmth was too soothing. “We have to face the fact that the judge may not give him to me. To us.”
She shuddered, pulling back to look up at him. “He has to, Con. And he will.”
She must have seen Con’s doubt. “Look at all we have to offer Joey,” she added. “How could he not?”
Con grimaced. She’d never really seen him for what he was. “You have a lot to offer, maybe. I fathered a child with a woman I didn’t know.”
“You were drunk, Con.”
“Oh, that makes it all right, then,” he said sarcastically. He had to make her see the truth.
They might very well not get the boy. Con had a lot of strikes against him. Always had. And he couldn’t have Robbie resting all her hopes and dreams on the chance that the judge was willing to overlook his mistakes, the flaws in his character.
“It makes you human, Con. Once you have a chance to explain the circumstances—”
He cut her off. “He’ll certainly find it commendable that I was so bloodthirsty for Ramirez I allowed an innocent woman to d
ie just to get him.”
“You didn’t know—”
“I knew someone was there,” he said harshly.
She reached up and traced the lines on his forehead with gentle fingers. “But you thought it was an accomplice.”
He needed to let her go. Out of his arms. Out of his life. He had nothing for her. Not even the baby she wanted so badly to mother.
“It doesn’t matter what I thought,” Con said. “I should have waited.”
“And let Ramirez get away?”
“Why not ask the question of the family who loved that woman? Why not ask the teenage boy who had to make his mother’s funeral arrangements, instead of attending his high-school prom?”
Robbie sighed and laid her head back on his chest. “You’re a good man, Con Randolph. You have a good heart. Someday, somehow, I’m going to make you see that.”
Con took Robbie’s shoulders and held her away from him. Her belief in him was a burden he could no longer bear, not when it was leading her into pain and unhappiness. He couldn’t let her stay another minute if she wasn’t going to do it with her eyes open.
“I have no heart, Robbie. None.”
Tears flooded her eyes as her lips formed a trembling smile. “Oh, yes, you do. You’re just not listening to it yet.”
Her refusal to see the truth was one frustration too many. “You’re the one not listening, Robbie. It’s time to give up the pretense.” His grip on her shoulder tightened. “I’ll never have these great qualities you think you see in me. And if you can’t accept that, you need to get out.”
Her eyes continued to shimmer with tears. “You have them, Con. I see them every time you risk your life to right an injustice. I feel them every time you look at me, every time I need a friend and you’re there, every time you get mad at me for doing some-thing a little dangerous.”
God, the woman was obtuse. “I’m using you, Rob,” he said brutally. He had to get her away from him, to protect her.
“You aren’t using me. We’re using each other. Otherwise known as caring. It’s what being friends is all about.”
Friends. Right. If he was any kind of friend, if he cared, his body wouldn’t be on fire for her. Maybe, he thought next, that was the only way to get her see the truth. To show her how badly he could use her.
Even while his brain told him it was wrong, he gave in to the temptation that had been driving him mad for days. He hauled her to him and crushed her lips beneath his own. He didn’t ask for a response, he took one, forcing her lips open. She wasn’t his friend anymore. She was just a woman who had something his body wanted.
His tongue plundered her mouth, showing her none of the respect that had defined their relationship since they were kids. He let his desire lead him and didn’t even attempt to soften its force. A part of him, some small speck left over from his boyhood, cried out, knowing he was destroying the one good thing he’d ever had in his life—Robbie’s affection for him.
Her mouth was warm and soft, so deliciously soft. And her tongue was doing things to him that had never been done before.
He continued to ravage her mouth, trying to consume her. Except that she wasn’t letting him consume anything. She was giving what he demanded and taking as much in return. Her tongue matched his thrust for thrust. She was a formidable opponent, better now than during the best of their verbal battles.
And suddenly Con couldn’t do it. Couldn’t take that final step that would make her hate him—and maybe herself, as well.
Confused, he pulled away. Something was happening. He just had no idea what. His body was still hard and throbbing, still wanting to drive into her, to seek satisfaction in the only way he knew. But his mind had suddenly taken a different route; he was thinking of the woman he held, not of the body he’d been about to plunder. He had no idea what was wrong with him, with her. He only knew he had to stop.
He moved back another step, steadying his breathing, willing his heart to resume its normal pace, until all that was left of the moment was the bitter aftertaste of shame.
“I’ve never forced a woman,” he said. It was suddenly imperative she know that.
“I didn’t think you had.”
Her voice was husky. His body started to throb again. He had to put a stop to the insanity.
“What just happened,” he said, “don’t go thinking it meant something. It didn’t.”
She stood in front of him, her chest heaving with the effort it took to breathe. “It meant you want me.”
Her boldness turned him on even more, making him desperate. “It meant I want sex. Who with isn’t important. When it’s time, I take what’s offered.”
He took no satisfaction when his barb hit home. She flinched and retreated a step. “I didn’t offer.”
“What do you call last night in the pool?”
She stared at him, stricken, speechless for the first time since he’d known her. For all her toughness she was as tender as they come, no match for him at all. He was winning hands down. So why did he feel so awful?
“Your nipples were hard as pebbles, babe, and you were playing with my chest like a woman in heat,” he taunted, purposefully cruel—and hating himself for every word he said. But someday she’d thank him. Someday she’d be grateful he’d saved her from him.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked. Again her eyes shimmered with unwashed tears.
They were almost his undoing. Except that too much was at stake. Her own father knew she needed saving. “Why shouldn’t I take what’s offered if I feel like it? As I recall, you’re my wife.”
“Because this isn’t how you do things, Con Randolph,” she said, her chin trembling. “You may really be a cold, hard man, but you’ve never been cruel.”
She was supposed to be running from him in tears, not sounding like some damn righteous know-it-all. And his shorts weren’t still supposed to be so painfully tight.
She stepped close to him again, her gaze steady as she looked into his eyes. “You’re trying to save me from myself, aren’t you. It’d be just like you to do something so ridiculously outrageously noble—and stupid.”
Con issued a string of expletives. She knew him too damn well. No one should know him that well.
“Sorry it didn’t work, but welcome back, friend,” Robbie said with a wobbly grin.
And then it was Con who found himself retreating. It was either that, or haul her into his arms again. Only this time it wouldn’t have been to teach her a lesson. If it ever had been.
Grabbing a pack of cigarettes out of the kitchen drawer, he headed for the door.
“Con?”
He turned around reluctantly. He needed some space.
“Don’t touch me again,” she said, her voice steadier than it had any right being. “Not until you can do it without apologizing. Not until you can do it with more than just your body.”
Which meant never. “I won’t,” he promised her. It was a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.
CHAPTER TEN
CON TOOK ONE MORE DRAG on his cigarette before crushing it in the car ashtray. Once he went inside, he wouldn’t have another one. He hadn’t smoked in the house in five days. Not since Friday when his son had arrived.
It had been three days since they’d seen Joey. It seemed like another lifetime. His gut had been eroding ever since.
Throwing his keys on the breakfast bar, Con headed straight for the fridge and a beer. God, he was tired. Tired to the bone. He’d been back to work for three days and already he was beat. The case he was working on was a local check counterfeiter, nothing big—not like Ramirez’s organization had been. He’d be able to get the guy within the week. Too bad he didn’t care.
The phone rang just as he was enjoying his first sip of beer.
“Randolph,” he snapped into the receiver. If it was Robbie telling him she was going to be late again, he was going to wring her neck. She didn’t have to avoid him, didn’t have to worry that he was going to try to jump her bone
s again. That had to have been the all-time dumbest thing he’d ever done.
“Mr. Randolph? This is Karen Smith from social services.”
“Yes?” Con said, bracing himself.
“There’re a couple of things I need to discuss with you, sir,” the woman said in a rush. “First, we’ve got a court date for the placement hearing. It’s set for July thirtieth at ten. Is that all right for you?”
“I’ll make sure it is,” Con said, grabbing his pen and jotting down the date and time.
“Will your wife be attending with you?”
“Of course.” He hoped Robbie was still around by then. Hell, he was beginning to hope she’d be around a lot longer than that. Though, after what he’d done Sunday night he wouldn’t blame her if she’d already filed for divorce.
“Oh, good,” Karen said, her relief apparent. Con heard what she wasn’t saying. If Robbie wasn’t there, they were all wasting their time.
“You said you had two things to discuss?” Con reminded the woman. There was something she didn’t want to tell him. He could sense it.
“Yes, sir. It’s just that…the baby’s mother has come back into the picture.”
Con felt the blood drain from his face. “Meaning?”
“Probably nothing,” Karen was quick to assure him. “Except that she claims she’s sorry and she’s willing to do whatever is necessary to get custody of Joey.”
“Is that possible?”
“Anything’s possible,” Karen said in her usual noncommittal way. “But personally I’m not sure she really means it. How well do you know Cecily Barn-hardt, Mr. Randolph?”
He thought of the woman who’d sat beside him in the bar that night. He’d never even gotten a good look at her. “I don’t know her at all,” he said, though he suspected Karen knew that.
“She’s very immature,” Karen said calmly. “She appears to be looking for someone to take care of her, not someone to take care of. It’s possible she heard you were back in the picture and has somehow assumed that if you want Joey, you’ll take her in, too.”
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