Claimed? It was probably true, otherwise she’d never have gone with him. So what? Those were her problems, not his. Stephanie had made her bed. Now she could lie in it.
Or in his. His bed. His arms. And he could kiss her until she went all soft and breathless, as she had before Clare had burst into the room, and perhaps then he could seek out and find that sweetness that seemed to be waiting just for him, only for him.
Cray—zee, the wipers blades whispered. You are cray—zee…
Think about the case. Concentrate on the law. What were the facts? Could a man leave his wife with zero bucks when he had plenty? Had Avery Willingham simply given Stephanie a raw deal? Had he bought her favor for cold, hard cash, married her, shown her off to the world but arranged it so that when he toddled off this planet, there was nothing for her to inherit?
But she was entitled to something, wasn’t she? The court should have seen that.
On the other hand, how come Stephanie was broke? At the rate of a couple of thou per month, the little bride should have had time to amass a pretty decent retirement fund.
David frowned.
Where was the money? What had she done with it? It was a great question. How come he’d neglected to ask it?
David’s frown deepened. Because he was the wrong person to handle this case, that was why. His involvement was too personal. Too—too something. Call it what you wanted, it was not going to work. A lawyer and a client worked best when there was some space between them, not when they started out with a history that involved damn near making it in the cabin of an airplane.
There was a way out. He’d get Stephanie to Washington, check her into a hotel and phone Jay O’Leary. Or Bev Greenberg. Or any of the half a dozen juniors at the firm. One of them would be more than happy to take the case, and, come to think of it, wasn’t one of the pool secretaries going on maternity leave next week?
“That’s it,” David murmured.
“Excuse me?”
He looked at Stephanie. “Nothing,” he said, and smiled. “Nothing at all.”
Still smiling, he turned up the volume on the radio and began humming along with Paul and Art.
* * *
Nothing? Nothing at all?
Stephanie stared blindly out the window.
Something was going on in David’s head, and she knew damn well it couldn’t be classified as “nothing.”
A few minutes ago, he’d looked like a man on his way to his own execution. Now he was the portrait of contentment, from his smug little smile to the fingers tapping against the steering wheel to the abominable, off-key humming. What did he have to feel so good about?
Nothing she could think of.
As for her, she was beyond feeling, unless you wanted to dwell strictly on the panic she felt growing inside her as the minutes, and the miles, flew by.
What on earth was she doing here? It had seemed such a wonderful exit, walking straight out the door of that hideous mausoleum and leaving Clare looking even more slack-jawed than usual.
So she’d done it. Shall we leave? this man—this arrogant, oh-so-quick-to-condemn man—had said. And she had. She’d followed him blindly and now here she was, heading for no place, with nothing to her name but the grungy clothes on her back, a handful of change that she’d scooped off her dresser this morning, and a comb.
Well, that’s good, Steff. You have a comb, at least. That ought to be a big help when you get to D.C. and find out that this man has no real intention of helping you. For all you know, he’s going to tell you that your “secretarial” duties will begin, and end, in his bedroom.
“Stop the car!”
David looked at Stephanie. She had a wild look in her eyes and she was already fumbling with her seat belt. He cursed, twisted the wheel hard to the right and pulled onto the grassy shoulder of the road. The car behind them shot past, horn blaring.
“Dammit,” he roared, “what the hell are you doing?”
Flinging open the door, that was what she was doing. Hurling herself out like a human projectile and then sprinting for the nearby woods. David undid his seat belt and chased after her.
She was easy enough to catch. Not that she wasn’t fast on her feet; it was only that he was faster. Four years as a running back on a much-needed football scholarship at Yale still guaranteed that. He reached her just as she entered the treeline, tackled her and brought her down in a tangle of arms and legs. They rolled down a shallow embankment and landed in a pile of last fall’s leaves, Stephanie on her back, David straddling her.
“Dammit, Stephanie…”
“Don’t you ‘Stephanie’ me, you—you—”
Words weren’t enough. She made a fist and punched him, as hard as she could, in the belly. He grunted, grabbed for her wrists, forced her arms over her head and pinned them to the ground.
“Let go of me!”
“Not if you’re going to pretend I’m a punching bag.”
“Let—go—of—me, you—you…”
“Are you nuts? What did I do, to rate this?”
“You were born with the wrong chromosomes. Let go!”
“Will you behave if I do?”
“Yes,” she said.
Only a fool would have believed her, and David had committed his last foolish act an hour ago, when he’d walked her out the door and into his life.
“You’re pretty fast with the punches,” he said as she struggled beneath him. “What’d you do, grow up in a gym?”
“No,” she panted. “I grew up with a brother who believed in women being able to defend themselves against men like you!”
“Men like me?” David gave a short, sharp laugh. “Yup, you’re right. You sure as hell need to know how to defend yourself against an s.o.b. like me. Why, just look at what I’ve done in the past hour. Defended you against—”
“You didn’t defend me,” Stephanie huffed, trying to shove his weight off her. “Why would you? I don’t need defending.”
“Need it or not, I defended you. And I offered you free legal advice—”
“Some advice. You told me I’ve got as much chance of getting anything out of the estate as a—a cottonmouth has of getting petted.”
“It was not only free advice, it was excellent advice. Plus, I gave you a job.”
“Has.”
“Listen, lady, maybe typing letters isn’t half as exotic as what you used to do to earn your daily bread, but most women in your position would be grateful for it.”
“And what is that supposed to mean, huh? ‘Most women in my position’? Just what, exactly, is my position, Mr. Chambers?”
It was a question fraught with many possibilities but, just then, David could only see one of them. Stephanie’s position was directly under his, and even though he was angry, even though hanging on to her was like hanging on to a football at the bottom of a pileup, he knew suddenly that if she kept moving the way she was, they were both going to be in trouble.
“Okay,” he said, “here’s what I’m going to do.”
“Oh, I know what you’re going to do,” Stephanie said fiercely.
“I’m going to stand up,” David said, ignoring her. “Take it nice and easy, understand? Then we’ll talk.”
“We are done talking! I should never have listened to you in the first place. Walking me right past Clare and out of that house, and I never stopped to ask why!”
“I’m a sucker for appeals from the SPCA, too,” David said grimly. “Dammit, don’t do that!”
“You’re no better than Avery, you—you liar!”
“Did he lie to you? Your husband?”
“Don’t call him that,” Stephanie said through her teeth. “And yes, he lied to me. I told you that. He said—he said he’d take care of my—my needs as long as it was necessary, but he didn’t.”
“What needs?” David said softly, and suddenly everything around them seemed to stop.
Stephanie looked up into David’s face. His eyes were sapphire dark and locked on hers.
The rest of him was locked on her, too. Chest to chest. Hip to hip. Thigh to thigh…
Warmth suffused her skin. Her heart gave an unsteady thump. Desperately, she tried to dislodge him.
“Don’t…” David caught his breath. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what? Dump you on your head? Damn you, David!”
“That,” he said, biting back a groan as she moved again. “Hell, that You’re the one who was busy talking about all those male chromosomes. What must I do, draw you a diagram?”
His body gave up the struggle and reacted to hers. He saw comprehension dawn in her eyes and she went absolutely still.
That had stopped her, he thought grimly. She wasn’t fighting him anymore…not that he was thinking about her fighting him. All he could think about now was her softness. Her heat. Her scent.
“Let go,” she said.
He would. He’d let go of her wrists, gather her into his arms and take her angry mouth in a long, hungry kiss—except, she wasn’t angry. She had a look to her he’d seen in the eyes of a stray cat he’d found haunting the back alley when he was a kid, a cat so feral and afraid it had never let him get close enough to help it.
“Let me up,” she said. “Right now.”
The words were strong, but that didn’t disguise the fear. Hell, it was more than that, it was something he didn’t even want to put a name to. He drew back, his hands still holding hers.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Just—just get off me.”
Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. He took a deep breath and fought against the unreasonable desire to kiss those tears away.
“Promise me you won’t run?”
She nodded stiffly.
“Let me hear you say it. Tell me you’re not going to run like a scared rabbit.”
“I was not running like a scared rabbit”
He decided against arguing the point. He released her, rolled off her and stood up. He held out his hand, but Stephanie ignored the gesture, rose on her own and began dusting off her jeans.
“Maybe you’d like to tell me where you thought you were going,” he said.
She sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and shrugged.
“Home.”
“Home,” he repeated.
His tone incredulous. Not that she could blame him. Where was home, exactly? It was just that anywhere was safer than here, when she didn’t trust this stranger or his promises…when she didn’t trust herself when he touched her.
“That’s right. Home. I told you. Home. To Willingham Corners.”
“Ah, yes. Willingham Corners. And that house.” David folded his arms and fixed her with an interested look. “How stupid of me. Come to think of it, didn’t the Yankees burn Tara?”
She gave a choked little laugh. “It’s true. I thought of Tara, too, the first time I saw Seven Oaks.”
David smiled. “When I rang the doorbell, that’s what I half expected to hear. Dah-daaah-dah-dah…you know. That music.”
“You almost did,” Stephanie said. “For a time, Avery actually thought about it.”
“But you managed to talk him out of it?”
“Me? Talk Avery out of something?” Her laugh was without humor this time. “I didn’t even try. He just got sidetracked, I guess. Not that it mattered to me. It was his house, not mine.”
“Strange way to feel, about a house that’s your home, isn’t it?”
“Seven Oaks was never my home. It belonged to my husband, and I… I…” Her voice trailed away.
“And you belonged to him, too.”
Anger flashed in her eyes. “Are we back to that?”
“We never left it.”
“What do you want me to say, David? That it wasn’t an arrangement I was proud of? Okay. It wasn’t.” Her shoulders slumped. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Try me.”
“I… I don’t see how it matters.”
“If I’m going to represent you,” he said, waving a mental goodbye to his junior partners because, hell, this case was too complex for them, “the arrangement you keep referring to matters a great deal. I need to know the specifics.”
“You know them. Avery deposited money in my name each month—”
“Did your sister-in-law hate you from the beginning?”
Stephanie shrugged. “No more than anyone else in town.”
David nodded. “I got that feeling from the documents I read. And yet, you were going back there, where Clare’s probably already changed the locks, and the good townsfolk are probably holding a party to celebrate the removal of the grasping, scheming, hard-hearted widow of the town’s fairhaired patriarch.”
“You don’t believe in pulling your punches, do you, Mr. Chambers?”
“We’ve made too much progress to go back to such formality now, Mrs. Willingham. And no, I don’t believe in pulling my punches. That is how they see you, isn’t it?”
Stephanie lifted her chin. “Everyone does. Including you.”
David reached out and plucked a leaf from her hair. “Change my opinion, then.”
“How? By listing my virtues?” She drew herself up. “I am not about to defend myself to you or anybody, sir.”
He smiled. “I like the way you say that.”
“Say what?”
“Sir.” His smile tilted. “It’s very old fashioned, and polite—and yet, I get the feeling what you’re really doing is calling me a four-letter word.” He reached out and took another bit of leaf from her hair, his hand lingering against the dark curls. “Avery wasn’t a nice guy, was he?”
“He was a rat,” Stephanie said in a whisper.
“Because he cut you off without a cent?”
“Because he lied,” she said sharply. “He lied about everything, and once I was trapped, once I realized, he just laughed and said I’d have to live with it.”
She spun away, her arms wrapped around herself. David turned her to face him.
“Did he hurt you?”
She looked up. His eyes had gone as flat as his voice.
“He didn’t beat me, if that’s what you mean.” She shook her head. “He was just—he got his kicks out of inflicting other kinds of pain. He was mean-tempered. Vindictive. He must have been the kind of little boy that pulled wings off bugs, you know?” She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. “I suspect lots of people would agree, if it didn’t mean bucking Clare and siding with me. Most folks would sooner shake hands with a rattlesnake than admit to having anything in common with Bess Horton’s girl.”
David’s gaze swept over her face. It was bright with defiance.
“Is that your maiden name? Horton?”
She nodded.
“And what is it people have against your mother?”
Stephanie looked down and brushed a speck of dirt he couldn’t see off her jeans.
“They don’t have anything against her, anymore,” she said brusquely. “She’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
She shrugged. “I’ve no idea.”
“And the brother you mentioned? Where is he?”
“He’s…” She hesitated. “He’s around.”
“Why didn’t you leave Avery Willingham, if he was such a bastard?”
“I didn’t know what he was like. Not at first. And besides…”
“Besides, there was the money.” His tone was cold and accusatory.
“Yes,” she said, so faintly that he had to strain to hear it.
“And it’s all gone,” he said.
She nodded.
“How? How could it be gone? What did you do with it?”
“I spent it.”
“All of it? On what?”
“That’s none of your—”
“Do you want me to represent you, or don’t you?”
She stared at him. “Why would you do that? You don’t like me. You don’t believe anything I say. Why would you take me on?”
“Because I’m a lawye
r,” he said quickly. Too quickly. What was he getting into here? Nothing he couldn’t get out of, he told himself, answering his own question. “And I believe that every person in this country is entitled to the protection of the law.”
“I couldn’t pay you.”
“Our office does pro bono work all the time,” he said, trying to think straight. It wasn’t easy. She was touching the tip of her tongue to her bottom lip again. Her tongue was a pale, velvety pink, and her mouth was—her mouth was—“But I need some answers first. Like, what happened to the money in your account?”
Stephanie thought of Paul, who’d been her courage and her strength when the town had pointed its fingers at Bess Horton and her dirty-faced, ragamuffin offspring. Who’d raised her, after their mother left. Who sat now in his room at Rest Haven, unable to do the things he used to do, and of the pride that was all he had left.
Swear to me, Steff, he’d said, swear you won’t ever tell anybody about me.
She swallowed dryly and looked at David. “I spent the money.”
“Gambling?” She shook her head. “Drinking?” She shook her head again. “Do you do coke? Heroin? Dammit, Scarlett.” He shook her, hard. “It couldn’t have just trickled through your fingers.”
“It’s gone,” she said, her eyes on his. “That’s all I can tell you.”
“And now you want more,” he said softly.
“I want what’s rightfully mine. What Avery promised me.”
It was the answer David had expected. Only a miracle would have made her say that she didn’t want anything, now that she’d met him. Nothing but him, his kisses, his arms around her…
He stepped back, his hands curling into fists that he buried in his pockets, his anger as much for himself as for her.
“I’ll take you to D.C.,” he said. “To my place.” He almost laughed at her strangled yelp of indignation. “There’s a housekeeper’s apartment in my town house. Bath, bedroom, small sitting room—and a lock on the door. All that’s missing is a housekeeper. Mine sleeps out, not in.”
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