Her smile was shy and grateful and he could have spent hours getting lost in it. He would have to be very, very careful. “Okay.”
Kullen left before he found another reason to stay.
His sedan was parked at the curb. When he looked back over his shoulder, just before he got into his car, Lilli was still standing there, framed in the doorway.
Just the way she was in his heart, Kullen suddenly realized.
This would be the most challenging case of his career to date.
The law—and Elizabeth Dalton with her expensive lawyers—had nothing to do with it.
“I stopped by your house last night.”
A little more than an hour later, Kate walked into his office without bothering to knock. The way she looked at him, with his still damp hair, she must have figured that he’d had another one of his wild nights.
“You weren’t there.” Closing the door behind her, she crossed to the leather sofa and perched on the edge. “But then, you already know that.”
“I was working late,” he countered evasively. “And I don’t remember hearing you knock.”
Her eyes held his. “Not here you weren’t—and I didn’t.”
Ordinarily this would be the time when Kate would send a few zingers his way about the intellectual deficiency of the women he dated and bedded. That she didn’t made him feel a little uncomfortable. Did she suspect something?
“I thought that Jewel was the one who did surveillance work,” he said, deliberately sounding casual.
Kate dropped the flippant tone. “I’m not spying on you, Kullen,” she told him. Getting up, she crossed to his desk. “This is me, being concerned.”
Beneath her banter, he knew Kate only had his best interests at heart, but he didn’t want her rummaging through his life, especially not now.
He curbed his natural impulse to tell her to butt out.
“Glad you cleared that up for me because I thought it was you, being nosy.”
“That, too,” Kate conceded, shrugging a shoulder carelessly. The corners of her mouth curved in a semi-smile. “But mostly, I was being concerned.”
“Touching,” he commented, searching through the piles of folders scattered about his desk. Where was the damn file he’d had out last night? He could have sworn he’d left it on the side of his desk. Someday, he would get a real filing system instead of relying on his memory.
“I’m being serious, Kullen.” Leaning over his desk, Kate lowered her face until it was level with her brother’s. “Are you sure that you know what you’re doing?”
“You mean taking on Elizabeth Dalton and her legion of shark lawyers?” He laughed shortly. “You know me, I love a challenge.”
“Yes, I know, but I was talking about you getting back together with Lilli.”
Kullen felt his back going up. Kate had just gone too far.
“For there to be a back together, there would have to have been an initial together somewhere in the past. And there wasn’t.” No matter how much he’d wanted it, he added silently. “Lilli and I were just law students at the same school, studying together. And then one day she just took off.”
He did his best to sound distant, as if Lilli’s leaving hadn’t almost thrown him into a deep, dark pit. He thought he’d succeeded pulling this off rather well—until he looked into his sister’s eyes.
He hadn’t fooled her.
Kate’s gaze pinned him against the wall. “I think there’s more to it than that, big brother.”
“You can think whatever you like.” He looked away, focusing his attention on trying to locate the damn elusive file he needed. “That’s why this is a free country.”
She continued as if he hadn’t all but come out and flatly told her to drop the subject.
“I think that Lilli’s the reason you’re so footloose and cavalier when it comes to your social life. You were different when you first went into law school. Mom and I always thought you’d get married before you took your bar exam.”
So did I. “Not me,” Kullen told her glibly. “I like having my freedom, not being accountable to anyone. Now, if you don’t mind.” He gestured toward the door, his meaning abundantly clear. “I’ve got a lot of work to do today.”
Kate straightened up but didn’t move away from his desk. Not yet.
“I don’t mind. I just thought you might want to use some of these court cases you had me hunting for. Custody battles between different generations of a family,” she added in case he was drawing a blank.
That was when he first noticed that Kate held a slender file in her hand. She dropped it on his desk. He opened it and saw a list of cases with dates beside them. How had they ultimately turned out?
“What’s the tally?” he asked.
“Fifty-fifty,” she answered. “Sometimes the custody was awarded to the mother, sometimes not.”
Kullen let the folder close and raised his eyes to hers. “Well, we’re just going to have to change that,” he said, more to himself than to her.
Kate smiled encouragingly. “If anyone can do that, it’s you.”
Kullen raised an eyebrow. “A compliment?” he queried. Kate was the one who usually came through with a stinging put-down. It was an ongoing game they played and he was as guilty as she of keeping it alive. “You’re being nice to me?” he asked incredulously. “Do you know something I don’t?” He pretended to feel his chest to check his heartbeat. “Am I dying?”
“We’re all dying, Kullen. Some of us faster than others.” About to leave, Kate turned back again for a second, her expression far more serious than it had been just a moment ago. “If you tell anyone I said this,” she told him in a low, steely voice, “I’ll deny it and sue the pants off you for defamation of character, but you’re a damn good lawyer, Kullen, and if anyone can go up against Mrs. Dalton’s flesh-eating piranhas and win, my money’s on you.”
The genuinely surprised look on Kullen’s face pleased her.
“Because you’re quick and you’re good. And being my brother doesn’t exactly hold you back, either,” she added loftily. “Winning against all odds is in our DNA.” And there was a major reason for that, one that had been part of their everyday lives. “The old man expected it.”
“The old man is probably the one who planted this need to win inside both of us to begin with,” Kullen re plied.
Their father had been a hard man to please and an even harder man to love. But he’d known that they both loved him.
Kate crossed to the door. “Can I get you anything?” she asked, her hand on the doorknob.
“Yeah, about four hours’ sleep.” This day was no different from any of the others and it required that he be sharp. Right now, he felt as sharp as a pencil with a broken point. “I didn’t really get any last night.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Brag, brag, brag.”
He didn’t want her getting the wrong idea, not about Lilli. Or their relationship. “It’s not like that. I didn’t sleep with her.”
Her smile was wicked. Knowing. “In my experience, sleeping rarely comes into it.”
“You know what I mean,” he said impatiently. Patience was for people who got enough sleep. “There’s no physical relationship.”
Kate stood there for a long moment, studying him. And then she grinned. “This is more serious than I thought. Mom just may die of happiness. Wow, two in one year. She’s hit the jackpot.”
Maybe it was his lack of sleep, but he had no idea what his sister was talking about. “Two what in one year?”
“You’re the sharp lawyer, Kullen. You figure it out,” she told him with a pleased laugh just before she walked out and closed the door behind her.
Kullen could have sworn he heard his sister humming a wedding march as she walked away.
It was official, he thought, continuing with his search for the file he needed. The women in his family were certifiably crazy.
Chapter Eleven
For once, Kullen managed to leave work a few m
inutes early. He took the opportunity to stop by his place and pack a couple of changes of clothing as well as a few other things he thought he might need for his stay at Lilli’s.
It felt odd standing on her doorstep with a suitcase in his hand. Odder still when the door opened in response to his knock and it wasn’t Lilli—or her son—he found himself looking at, but Anne McCall, her mother.
“Oh. Hello, Kullen. Lilli told me that you’d be over.”
The woman, who looked more like Lilli’s older sister than her mother, appeared ill at ease in his presence. At first he thought it was because of the suitcase he was carrying, then he realized that her discomfort went deeper than that.
Stepping back to allow him into the living room, Anne lowered her eyes and seemed to address her words to the rug beneath her feet.
“I want to thank you for what you’re doing for Lilli.” Then, as if rallying, Lilli’s mother forced herself to look up and meet his gaze. She cleared her throat. “About the last time we saw each other…” Anne’s voice trailed off for a moment, then returned with a measure of force. “I didn’t mean to lie to you….”
So that was what this was all about, Kullen thought. In retrospect he realized that Lilli’s mother had to have lied to him, but bearing a grudge seemed pointless, especially after all this time.
“You had your reasons,” Kullen told her diplomatically.
Eight years ago, frantic over Lilli having taken off the way she had, he’d felt that if anyone knew where she had gone, it would be her mother. The first personal thing Lilli had ever shared with him was that she and her mother were very close.
But when he sought out Anne McCall, asking after Lilli’s whereabouts, her mother had told him that she had no idea where Lilli was. She said that the only thing she did know was that Lilli had told her that she wanted to be left alone, and that if he cared anything at all about her, he would just let her go and move on with his life.
Looking at Anne McCall now, that scene between them came back to him in all-too vivid colors. As did the frustration and the ache that had all but torn him apart at the time.
He remembered being on the verge of a deep depression but his spirit, his determination to go on no matter what, mercifully had kicked in. With a great deal of effort—and the need to survive—he had taught himself how to block out that painful section of his life, and all thoughts of Lilli with it. He forced himself to continue because he fervently wanted not to be subjected to his father’s lectures if he’d washed out of law school after all the money that had been invested in his education.
Most of all, he didn’t want his father to pull his mother into this, angrily blaming her for raising such a “soft” son.
So he’d hardened himself and had somehow gotten through it. At the same time, he’d hardened his heart down to its inner core, allowing no one to get through ever again. Kullen schooled himself not only to be a good lawyer, but to be a good lover as well. He became a lover of women—but never allowed himself to be in love with any of them. Not ever again.
“Yes,” Anne said to him after another awkward silence had passed, “I had my reasons and they were to protect my child.” She looked at him, a sliver of contrition in her eyes. “But still, you deserved better. You came to me because you cared about Lilli so much. I saw it in your eyes and I still turned you away.” Her guilt obviously weighed heavily on her. Anne pressed her lips together, then said, “I’m sorry, Kullen.”
He got no satisfaction from her discomfort. It erased nothing, restored nothing. “It’s in the past, Mrs. McCall. Please don’t worry about it,” Kullen counseled.
“Lilli told me what you’re doing for her.” Her eyes softened as she said, “Thank you.”
There was no need to thank him. If something happened to the boy because he’d ignored Lilli’s concerns, then it would be on him. The way he saw it, he had no choice. “I’m a lawyer. It’s what I do.”
Anne shook her head. “I’m talking about the extra mile. Staying here to allay Lilli’s fears that that horrible woman was sending someone to steal Jonathan—that’s not part of being a lawyer,” she said knowingly. “That’s part of being a good man.” Impulsively, Anne opened the purse she was holding and took out her checkbook. “I don’t have much money, but whatever I have, it’s yours.”
Kullen put his hand over the checkbook, closing it as he shook his head. “We’ll work something out later,” he promised.
“Yes, we will,” Anne replied. Her hand on the doorknob, she paused a moment longer. The glint of tears entered her eyes and she fought to keep them in check. “Your mother raised a good man, Kullen. No wonder she’s so proud of you.”
Drawn by the voices, Lilli walked into the living room just in time to see her mother finally make it out the door.
But her attention was focused on Kullen. Part of her really hadn’t believed that he would return for a second night. But he had, and it brought her a tremendous wave of relief.
“You came back.”
He set down his suitcase on the rug beside the sofa. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t,” she confessed. She could only guess what he thought about the fears she’d shared with him. To him this had to be a little like holding the hand of a child at night who was afraid of the dark. “In addition I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had reconsidered taking on my case and changed your mind about the whole thing.”
“Why would I do that?”
She took a breath before answering. “To get revenge for what I did to you.”
In addition to the suitcase, he’d brought along his brief case. He’d set it on the coffee table and was unpacking his laptop, but her words stopped him in his tracks. He looked at Lilli for a long moment.
“Is that what you think of me?” he finally asked, his voice low, devoid of emotion. “That I’ve been biding my time all these years, waiting to spring some kind of revenge on you in order to soothe my bruised ego?”
When he put it like that, Lilli thought, entertaining the fears she’d had seemed stupid now.
The smile that curved the corners of her mouth was shy and, to him, almost painfully sweet. “No, you’re not like that. I don’t know why you’re not like that because I had it coming to me, but you’re not.”
He could feel it. Lilli stirred up feelings, memories and a battalion of emotions that would only get in the way of his doing a good job. Emotions that might impede his winning the case for her. They had to be banked down.
“Look, I think this will work out better if we just put the past behind us as if it never happened. Our history is not going to help you retain custody of your son,” he said.
She looked at him with a trace of confusion. “What do you mean?”
The history that was important belonged to Erik and his mother. “I have a private investigator looking into several angles that might prove advantageous to our side, and that’s where our focus will be. The only part of your back history that’s important is the fact that you didn’t sweep this whole episode from your life when you had the chance. You went through with the pregnancy and kept your baby. Another woman—”
Lilli didn’t let him finish. She didn’t want to even hear him say it out loud.
“There was never any other option,” she told him quietly, firmly. “None of what happened at his conception was Jonathan’s fault. He was the innocent in all this.”
Jonathan picked that moment to burst into the room, going off like a proverbial firecracker. Seeing Kullen, the boy grinned from ear to ear and made a beeline for his new idol.
“Hi, Mr. Kullen, want to play another game of racers with me?” he asked eagerly, his small face shining with hope.
Lilli caught her son before he could successfully launch himself at Kullen. “Jonathan, Mr. Kullen has work to—”
“Sure,” Kullen cut in, answering the boy’s question. “Can’t think of a better way to unwind after a stress-filled day.” He put his
arm around Jonathan’s small, slender shoulders.
Lilli looked at him. Was he just saying that for the boy’s sake? “Seriously?” she pressed.
Kullen nodded, still gazing at his small friend. “Seriously.”
“All right. Then I’ll be in the kitchen, getting dinner ready,” Lilli told him, excusing herself.
As she turned to go, Lilli caught her reflection in the living room window. If she grinned any harder, she was fairly certain her face would crack apart from the sheer force.
All things considered, there were far worse ways to go.
The sound of her son’s gleeful laughter filled the air, warming her heart.
It was three days later, or rather, three evenings later. Three evenings and she’d already slipped into a routine, looking forward to leaving work to come home to Jonathan and Kullen the way some people looked forward to sipping their favorite drink at night to unwind, or treating themselves to something special as a reward for what they’d endured or accomplished.
This was something special, all right, she thought, watching her son interact with Kullen as the cars they were piloting with their separate controllers raced across the wide flat-screen.
If this was the merit system, then she’d done everything not to deserve this cozy scene.
This is what life would have been like if—
If.
But the word if didn’t apply here. She was a grown woman and grown women didn’t believe in fairy tales or happily-ever-after. Life was there, lurking in the wings to show them otherwise, just as it had showed her.
Still…
“Mom, you’ve got a funny look on your face,” Jonathan said, twisting around on the sofa to look up at her.
Lilli flushed, forcing herself to focus. “Sorry, honey,” she said, smiling at him. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?” the boy asked. They were gathered around the coffee table in the family room. A vote had been taken to allow dinner be an informal affair, nibbled on between serious rounds of the latest video game that Kullen had brought over for Jonathan.
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