Книга - And Babies Make Four

And Babies Make Four
Marie Ferrarella


Accepting the secretary position at prestigious Mallory and Dixon had been step one in Mindy Richards's makeover. After all, she was newly single in the city…with twin babies-on-the-way to support. But her new life took a turn down memory lane when she discovered that high school crush Jason Mallory was her firm's powerful namesake…and her new boss!At first, Jason seemed uncomfortable with their working relationship. Until Mindy realized that this business titan was unsettled by her, and always had been. Suddenly, despite a painful divorce, despite her pregnancy, she felt desirable again. But dare she believe that jaded-by-love Jason could want the fairy tale–babies and all…?









“It’s late.”


“It must be early somewhere in the world,” Mindy said.

“Must be,” Jason echoed.

But it was late here, and he had to keep that in mind. Just as he had to keep in mind that what he was feeling had no place in either of their lives right now. She was pregnant, he was her boss and they had both been badly burned by the people they’d chosen to spend their lives with. Not exactly great odds for starting a new relationship.

Still, a man was only so strong, had only so much within him to draw on to keep him noble. After that, it was every emotion for itself.

Just as it was now.

Gently threading his fingers through her hair, Jason tilted her face up toward his.

And kissed her.

The way they both wanted him to.




And Babies Make Four

Marie Ferrarella







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To

Terry and Joe Unger,

for being the perfect hosts.




MARIE FERRARELLA


earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA


Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.


MANHATTAN MULTIPLES

So much excitement happening at once!

The doors of Manhattan Multiples might close. The mayor and Eloise Vale once had a thing. Someone on the staff is pregnant and is keeping it a secret. Romance and drama—and so many babies in the big city!

Jason Mallory—Ruthless businessman with city savvy. Not even a dancing clown could make him smile, but his iron facade vanishes when he sees his old flame sitting at his administrative assistant’s desk. For once, he’s tongue-tied!

Mindy Richards—She’s pregnant with twins, but no one has to know just yet, except for her good friends at Manhattan Multiples. If only Jason didn’t still make her heart fly out of her chest—after all these years.

Eloise Vale—This director of Manhattan Multiples, the city’s leading multiple-birth clinic, is stewing over recent threats to cut funding. And she blames Mayor Harper—Bill—who seems hell-bent on revenge against her. Lucky for her, she has a card or two left to play.

Bill Harper—As Manhattan’s mayor, he wants nothing more than to make everyone happy—especially Eloise, the only one who’s ever meant anything to him.

Medical Mystery—Why are Nurse Lara Mancini and Dr. Derek Cross making eyes at each other across the examining table? Find out in next month’s The Fertility Factor, by Jennifer Mikels (SE #1559).




Contents


Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue




Prologue


“Why that no-good so-and-so.”

Grabbing up the newspaper from her desk, Eloise Vale narrowly avoided tipping over her coffee cup and sending a creamy, off-brown river pooling over the exact article she wanted to read. The one that announced that the ever-dapper, much-sought-after mayor of New York, Bill Harper, once her Bill Harper until she’d come to her senses, was debating overwhelming budget cuts in order to balance the city’s budget. Budget cuts that would, in addition to other things, cripple a great many much-needed charitable programs. Her program was on the list of possibilities.

Ignoring her newly rescued coffee, Eloise sat staring at the article, the words bouncing off her eyes like so many misfired photon torpedoes, her stomach cramping up as it wound itself into one huge knot.

There it was, Manhattan Multiples, smack in the middle. The mayor might as well have placed a gun to her head. Or her heart.

“How could he?” she demanded out loud of the cool pastel-blue walls that surrounded her Madison Avenue office.

Her office was the very hub that was Manhattan Multiples, an organization that had begun as a support group championed by one lone woman. Manhattan Multiples had grown like the proverbial weed until it had mushroomed into a foundation occupying three floors of the ten-story building. Rather than just a single small group of people, it now encompassed services that ranged from support groups—including career counseling, Lamaze, yoga and meditation classes—not to mention a thriving day-care center, all for women faced with the frightening and overwhelming reality of giving birth to not just one life-changing child, but two or more.

Eloise knew what that was all about. She’d had to face up to it herself when she’d given birth to her three boys, now all entering their adolescence together, a state guaranteed to turn her ash-blond hair as gray as her eyes. She hadn’t had a clue how to handle the situation, not then. And she wouldn’t have had much more than a hint now if it wasn’t for the organization she’d started and now oversaw, an organization blessed with knowledgeable people who came to share their experiences, their advice and their acquired wisdom with women who were scared out of their minds.

“And he wants to pull the plug on us?” Eloise drew the newspaper closer as she looked at the face of the man she had almost married instead of Walter. “Think again, Billy-boy. If you think I’m capitulating without one hell of a fight, boy have you got the wrong woman.”

With a pronounced sigh, Eloise threw the paper aside and picked up her coffee.




Chapter One


That Monday morning Jason Mallory had a great many things on his mind as he hurried into the spacious suite that comprised the securities investment offices of Mallory and Dixon. From the ridiculous—as in where he’d stashed his dry cleaning ticket for a jacket he needed—to the sublime, which meant going over the net-quarterly returns of a very successful firm season.

Being instantly and unceremoniously catapulted into the past, however, was not one of them.

But, scheduled or not, that was exactly where he found himself. In the past. More than eleven years in the past to be exact, at a time when he had been the loner in a local high school where everyone else seemed to know one another.

At that time, all he’d had were his thoughts, his books and an overwhelming ambition to become someone. A powerful “someone.” Someone a person like Mindy Conway would notice. She’d been, as much as anything, the reason why he’d been so driven, so compelled to scale those corporate mountains, so dedicated to accumulating not only money but respect for who and what he was.

She had been his catalyst, his focus. His impossible dream, even after she’d left town. Because loners like him didn’t stand a chance with popular girls like Mindy Conway.

So, after high school, after she’d gone away to Northwestern, he’d stayed in New York and attended first NYU, then Columbia University. And diligently worked toward his goal even though he would never see Mindy again.

After a while, of course, there had been Debra. Debra, with her extensive family connections that she’d tried to dangle before him like some kind of enticement. Debra with her sexy smile and her own agenda. Why she’d chosen to single him out as the man she wanted to be with was still a mystery to him. A flattering mystery.

At least, it was flattering at first.

But that all changed once vows had been exchanged and for the first time in his life, he’d surrendered himself completely to a woman, breaking down his own walls of reserve to be the man he thought she wanted him to be. He’d thought wrong. And just as suddenly as she’d burst onto his horizon, she’d withdrawn from it. From him. Physically, emotionally. He had no clue as to why. Another mystery, one he chose not to explore. The pain there was still too great. And very possibly always would be, he judged.

But now, for some strange, whimsical reason known only to the gods who helmed the universe strictly for their own amusement, the girl from his long-lost past was here. In his office.

Sitting at a desk.

Mindy.

Bigger than life and twice as beautiful as he remembered.

But Mindy wasn’t a girl anymore, she was a woman. A gorgeous woman with longish, straight black hair and the most beautiful sky-blue eyes he’d ever seen.

And he wasn’t that quiet, introverted loner no one noticed. He was Jason Mallory, whose business acumen people listened to with rapt attention because in this strange, topsy-turvy world of upending finances, he somehow, through instinct and a great deal of careful observation and painstaking, ongoing evaluation, knew how to negotiate through the often turbulent and troubled waters of the stock market.

Right now he would rather have been traveling down the Colorado white rapids in a canoe made out of paper cups than standing here, staring at a woman who could have so easily had his heart—if she had only known that he was alive.

For a frozen second in time, Jason’s mouth felt too dry to form any words.

A single word kept echoing within Mindy Richards’s brain over and over again, each time increasing in volume. Omigod, omigod, OMIGOD!

She was surprised that she’d somehow managed to keep it tucked in the confines of her head and not let it burst out of her all-but-numbed lips.

It was a complete set. Her numbed lips went with her numbed everything else. Because that’s how she felt. Completely numbed. She’d become that way the second she raised her eyes to see who walked in through the door of the office that she had only moments ago walked into herself.

Everything inside of her froze for exactly half a beat, then went into a frenzied dance, the kind that would make a musician’s fingers fall off if he tried to emulate it.

Forget about what her heart was doing.

Jason? Jason Mallory?

It just hadn’t occurred to her that the Mallory attached to the logo on the door belonged to Jason, to the hunk she’d spent all four of her high school years daydreaming about. How many hours had she wasted wishing, praying, that he would part the sea of people in the high school hallway and just walk up to her? She couldn’t begin to remember.

All she remembered was that he hadn’t made that short trip. And she hadn’t had the nerve to approach him. Except on the very last day of high school, when, clutching her senior yearbook to her young chest, she’d walked up to Jason and asked him to sign it for her. The words had tasted like cotton in her mouth, but she’d gotten them out somehow. And belatedly remembered to smile.

Have A Nice Life—Jason. That was all he’d written. It was enough. She’d slept with the open page beside her on her pillow for weeks.

Right now, remembering how she’d felt approaching him that one time infused a ray of heat through her that melted away the iciness of her fingertips. She had to remember to make herself breathe.

Eventually, after she’d gone to Northwestern in pursuit of a degree in journalism, Jason had become that unattainable star for her, like some celebrity you fall in love with on the screen. With effort, she’d filed him away in her mind. To take out and sneak a peek at every so often when her spirits were low and she needed to think, “What if—?”

But that was before Brad had entered her life. “What if—” became a thing of the past. Until just recently. She had no idea why, but as she’d spent her first night in her new, minuscule apartment, she’d found herself thinking what if Jason had taken that single opportunity to talk to her? What if they’d gone out, become romantically involved and gotten married? What if they’d begun their married life in an apartment just like this little bit of plaster, floorboard and paint?

God, but life was funny. She’d never dreamed that she’d run into him again. Yet, here he was, looking twice as gorgeous as he ever had.

Jason thought he was hallucinating. Maybe the pressure he’d been putting on himself had finally gotten to him. Like a man not entirely sure of what his eyes were seeing, he said her name. Part of him expected her to either vanish or transform into someone else, into the real woman sitting there.

“Mindy?”

She couldn’t think, couldn’t even answer in the affirmative. All she could do was say his name. And hope that she didn’t sound like some addle-brained idiot. “Jason?”

Somehow he found enough moisture in his mouth to ask, “What are you doing here?”

Even as Jason asked the question, he upbraided himself. Damn it, he sounded just as tongue-tied as he was certain he would have if he’d ever tried to talk to her in high school. What the hell was wrong with him? He gave seminars for high-ranking financiers from all over the country without so much as a second’s hesitation. Met with important CEOs of major companies on a regular basis. Even if this was Mindy, there was no reason to feel as if the very foundation of his life had suddenly transformed into delicately arranged playing cards.

He followed up his own question with the only thing he could think of. “Are you here for some financial advice?”

But if that were the case, what was she doing, sitting at the desk normally occupied by the battalion of temporary administrative assistants his partner, Nathalie Dixon, kept insisting on hiring?

Her eyes never left his face. My God but he’d gotten even sexier looking than I remembered. Stop it, you can’t think like that anymore.

“No,” Mindy heard herself saying, “I work here.”

Jason frowned. He’d only been away on business for four days. “Since when?”

“Since now.” That sounded almost confrontational, she thought as a sudden zip of panic came out of nowhere. “Um—” she looked at her wristwatch, wanting to be more accurate “—since ten minutes ago.”

His dark-brown eyes narrowed beneath what Mindy had always considered to be perfectly shaped eyebrows. She couldn’t help wondering if her heightened hormonal state was responsible for her very physical, very intense reaction to Jason.

“I don’t understand.” When he’d left Wednesday evening, the young, rather vapid temp who’d been sitting at this desk was gathering her things together to leave. Permanently. He’d just assumed that Nathalie would find someone else from that bottomless well of temps. How did Mindy Conway even remotely qualify?

Mindy knew she had to get control of the butterflies that were dive bombing around her as-yet visually undetectable twins or she was going to make an absolute fool of herself and throw up right in front of Jason. Trying to pull herself above this newest unforeseen wrinkle in her life, Mindy pressed a hand to her stomach, hoped he wouldn’t notice this very maternal gesture and tried to sound as professional as possible under the circumstances. “Ms. Dixon hired me.”

“Oh, she did, did she?” Jason raised his voice as he called out his partner’s name, “Nathalie.”

The effort wasn’t necessary. His learned and usually very levelheaded business partner, not to mention close friend—at least up to this point—materialized in the doorway of her office which was next to his. There was an amused expression he didn’t appreciate creasing Nathalie’s lips.

“I see you’ve met our new administrative assistant.” Nathalie’s eyes shifted from Jason’s handsome, tanned face and almost permanent sober expression to the rather shocked look on their new employee’s face. Nathalie sighed. “Oh, God, Jason, you’re not frightening the help already, are you?” She offered Mindy a broad smile. “Because I picked this one to last.”

In response, Jason took hold of Nathalie’s arm, mumbled a barely audible “excuse us” to Mindy and shepherded his partner into her office. He managed to shut the door before demanding, “What the hell are you doing?”

Jason and she went back a ways, back to the first elementary business course at Columbia. She’d begun her education later than most and because of their age difference, treated Jason like a younger brother who needed occasional emotional support. She’d seen him through his wedding and the unsteady years that followed, and she knew him as well as, if not better than, anyone.

“Trying to run an efficient office while you make predictions from the top of Mt. Sinai, my friend, why?” She seemed to scrutinize his face, as if trying to discern what was really up. “We decided to split the tasks, remember? I was going to handle the mundane things, like getting the office to run in a timely fashion and schmooze with the clients while you were going to handle the research that has made our company a household name among the famous and rich who want desperately to remain that way.” She glanced past his shoulder toward where the outer office was. “Now, Mindy Richards seems like a very bright, capable young woman who just needs a chance to show us her stuff without being raked over the coals in the first ten seconds of your entrance.”

Richards? Was she married? It occurred to him that he hadn’t looked at her hand. He’d been too stunned to look at anything but her face.

Of course she was married. Probably in the first ten minutes after graduation. Someone like Mindy had her pick of men.

He couldn’t bank down the feeling of sadness that suddenly rose up and filled him.

Nathalie was looking at him as if he was some kind of science experiment that had gone awry. He forced his mind forward. “How could you hire her without asking me?”

“Simple. I never asked you before. And,” she reminded him diplomatically, in case he missed this salient point, “I never said very much when you sent them all fleeing into the hills. But I swear, Jason, you send this one packing and we are going to have a very, very serious talk about adjusting this attitude of yours.” Her voice softened a little. “I know where this is coming from, but it’s been over a year since—”

The look in his eyes was the darkest she’d ever seen. It cut her off midbreath.

“That has nothing to do with it.” Nathalie was closer to him than anyone else ever had been, but even she was not allowed to cross a certain line.

“It has everything to do with it. With you and the way you’ve become.”

Jason could feel himself shutting down. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t bring himself to discuss Debra’s death or the effect it had on him. Just as he couldn’t talk about how the empty sham of a marriage had unmanned him. “Drop it, Nat.”

She sighed. Stubborn though she was, even she knew when to stop hitting her head against a brick wall.

“All right—for now. And only because we both have work to do,” she added in case he thought he’d won. “But I want you to behave around that girl, hear me? She needs this job.”

Why, he wondered. Why would Mindy need a job that was so completely out of the realm of what she’d gone to school for? And if she was married, wouldn’t her husband be able to provide for her so that she could find work in her field?

It didn’t make any sense to him.

Jason looked at his partner. “Why?”

Nathalie stared at him. “Since when do you care about the personal life of anyone?”

“That’s not fair.” Damn it, she made him sound like some kind of self-absorbed despot. Feeling unaccountably restless, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his Italian custom-made slacks.

“All right, it’s not. You’ve been good to me.” Reaching up, Nathalie placed her arm around his shoulder in big-sister fashion. “But I worry about you, Jason,” she confessed. “About what all this enforced solitude is doing to you.”

He knew she meant well, but he wasn’t in the mood for this. He shrugged off her arm. “I just got back from a convention of three thousand people—”

“It’s very easy to be alone in a crowded room. All you need is a mind that isolates you.” Tilting her head, she studied him for a moment. Then her eyes widened as a realization seemed to come with the suddenness of a fireworks display on the Fourth of July. “You know her, don’t you?” When he made no immediate denial, she advanced to the next plateau. “What is she, an old girlfriend? Someone you had a wild, secret fling with?” The grin nearly split her face. “Oh, Jason, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“I don’t. I didn’t.” Damn it, where did she get off, making these wild assumptions? Well-meaning or not, sometimes Nathalie really got on his nerves. “She’s just someone I used to know.”

She cocked her head. “Know how, in the biblical sense?”

“In the elementary sense, as in high school. We went to the same school, that’s all,” he emphasized. He peeled off his jacket. It was suddenly very warm in the office. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Nat.”

“Don’t be so judgmental, Jason. Under the right set of circumstances, the gutter can be a very nice place to visit once in a while.” The wink she sent his way was a broad one. Nathalie cleared her throat. “All right, so now that we’ve established that this is a prior mysterious acquaintance—”

Damn it, why did she insist on digging this way? “Not mysterious, Nathalie, I just told you—”

She was quick to cut him off. “Oh, but it’s what you didn’t tell me that I’m more interested in, Jason. One doesn’t look like that if one runs into the kid who sat beside you in homeroom and once borrowed your pen so they could finish their English homework.” The look she gave him was a knowing one and all the more infuriating for it. Nathalie had never cared for Debra, although he’d found that out only after the fact. And she had been trying her damnedest to get him to go out again no matter how often he told her to butt out of that part of his life. “I’d wager there was more to it than that.”

“Then you’d lose, Nathalie.”

“I never lose.” Nathalie tossed her head, sending her vibrant auburn hair cascading over her shoulder. “I just suffer temporary setbacks that will eventually be overcome if I just hang in there.” It was a great motto for a firm that specialized in stock market finances. It was also the motto that Nathalie lived by.

“Excuse me, is anything wrong?”

In unison, they turned around to the source of the question. To the young woman standing now in the open doorway.

Self-conscious, Mindy dropped her hand to her side. “I knocked—twice—but I guess you didn’t hear me,” she explained.

Mindy had sat at her desk, pretending she didn’t hear the raised voices or that her future might not very well be hanging in the balance with what was being said. But it was. Since she’d arrived back in New York, she’d gone to a score of companies in response to almost any ad she found in the paper that didn’t list working out in the open fields in its job description. In desperation, she would have even gone for that, but her present stamina wouldn’t allow it. The tone of the interviews that had been conducted all wound up being the same. Hopefully positive, until her own code of honor forced her to be truthful with her perspective employer and admit that, although she didn’t look it, she was three months pregnant with twins.

And really, really needed this job, she would add silently.

Granted her parents were more than willing to take her in, but that wasn’t the way she wanted to start her new life here—indebted to her parents. It was enough that they gave her emotional support and had floated her a loan so that she could put down the first and last month’s security on her tiny apartment. The latter was the size of a moderate walk-in restaurant refrigerator, but it was hers and that meant a lot. So did earning her own way.

Up until this job, no one had room for a woman who was going to expand before their eyes in the coming months and whom they felt might or might not be back once she gave birth, despite all her assurances that she would be. But Nathalie Dixon had been sympathetic and understanding and willing to take a chance on her, which meant the world to Mindy. She’d instantly taken a liking to the other woman.

But it was obvious that she was going to have to convince the man from her past that she was up to this. Funny how things turned out.

She wondered how much Nathalie had told him. But Jason’s eyes weren’t traveling to her belly, so maybe he didn’t know.

Which was just the way she wanted it for now. One battle at a time.

“No,” Jason said curtly, sparing a look at Nathalie before he turned to face Mindy, “nothing’s wrong. Let’s see about getting you to work, Mindy.”

She smiled, relieved. Maybe this was going to be all right after all. “That sounds good to me.”

We’ll see, Jason added silently. We’ll see.




Chapter Two


Jason glanced at his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. Finally. All day it had felt as if the minutes were dragging on the back of an arthritic turtle.

He hadn’t been able to concentrate for more than ten, fifteen of those slow-moving minutes at a time. No matter how hard he tried to block out everything, his mind kept wandering back to the woman sitting some thirty feet outside of his office.

His lack of self-discipline surprised and annoyed him. It had been years since he hadn’t been able to throw a rope around his thoughts and rein them in.

He had even managed to contain the pain and guilt he felt over Debra’s death, placing the emotions in a sealed area so that he could get on with his work. That had been the important thing then. Work had been his main goal, his main purpose for existing and his salvation, all wrapped up in one—much to the relief of the great many investors that his company handled who had come to depend very heavily on his knowledge and his savvy.

Without him a lot of people would have found themselves adrift in financial waters that seemed to keep insisting on changing course without giving the slightest warning to them.

He wasn’t much good to any of them now, least of all himself, Jason thought darkly, thoroughly disgusted with himself.

With a sigh he closed the folder containing the reports he’d been staring at without success for the past half hour. Pushing away from the desk, he dragged a hand through his hair.

The July sun was shining brightly into his window, and he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass. He doubted that anyone looking at him would have had a clue what was going on inside of him, just as they wouldn’t have been able to tell back in the days when he was in high school. He’d learned early on how to mask his feelings from the outside world.

But that didn’t make them any less real to him.

This had to stop, he told himself. But at the moment, he didn’t see how. It couldn’t end by dismissing Mindy. He hadn’t expected it, but she was good. She’d taken to the work like a proverbial duck to water, absorbing everything he said. Unlike with the temps who had paraded through the office, he hadn’t had to explain anything to her twice. What was more, she didn’t act as if he was speaking in some unfathomable foreign language. The world of finance left a great many people anesthetized, but Mindy just looked at him with those bright-blue eyes of hers, and he could see she understood. In his book, that made her a very rare person.

But then, he already knew that.

Jason massaged his forehead. The shadow of a headache was playing hide-and-seek with his temples, threatening to take over. What he needed, he thought, was a stiff drink. He didn’t indulge often, but this definitely felt like one of those times men announced that they needed a drink.

Nerve endings tightened as he heard the knock on his door. Nathalie rarely knocked, she just strolled in. The fact that it could be one of the interns whom he kept to pore over every bit of news data that affected the market, never even occurred to him.

He knew it was her. “Come in.”

And he was right. The next moment Mindy was standing in the doorway, her hand resting on the doorknob, a somewhat uncertain expression on her face.

He wasn’t accustomed to seeing her that way. The Mindy Conway he remembered was the last word in confidence, in vibrancy.

But she wasn’t Mindy Conway anymore, she was Mindy Richards, he reminded himself.

Looking at her now, it seemed as if someone had put out her light, and she was struggling to strike at least a small match again.

What had happened to her? he wondered.

Mindy cleared her throat. The last time she’d felt this awkward, she’d accidentally put on two different-colored shoes and hadn’t realized it until she was halfway to class.

“Um, it’s five o’clock and I was going to…”

The words didn’t feel right even as she said them. They felt stilted on her tongue. Everything since she’d walked in on Brad, in his plush insurance office, body wrestling with his secretary, had felt stilted to her. As though she was walking around in someone else’s dream.

Or someone else’s nightmare. It certainly wasn’t hers.

Mindy bit her lower lip and tried again. The words still didn’t feel right. Or maybe it was just the situation. Here she was, playing office with someone she’d once envisioned dressed only in a loincloth. She’d heard from someone in high school that Jason had a killer body. She had a feeling he still did.

“I was wondering, will there be anything else before I go home, um, Mr. Mallory?”

She saw him frown. Had she said something wrong? When he’d given her instructions today he’d been even more reserved than she’d remembered. At least back in high school she’d caught him looking her way occasionally. Enough times to set her heart racing. This time he was acting as if she was some kind of annoyance he was forced to deal with because of circumstances.

Jason’s frowned deepened at her use of his last name. The chasm between them felt even wider than before. “Don’t call me that.”

She pressed her lips together. “What should I call you?”

“Jason.” He fairly snapped out his own name.

She tilted her head slightly as if considering the directive. And then she shook it. “But you’re my boss, it doesn’t seem right.”

He laughed shortly, the words escaping before he could think them through. “It doesn’t seem right me being your boss.”

“Are you going to fire me?” Her breath made a pit stop in her throat and stayed there.

He looked as her as if she’d just suggested his alter ego was Spiderman. “What gave you that idea?”

Was it going to be like this every day? Was she going to feel horribly uncomfortable every time she was in his presence? She’d tried her damnedest today to be bright and cheery and eager, hoping to win him over, but he’d just seemed to become progressively worse every time he talked to her.

Mindy felt as if she was digging a deeper hole for herself with every word she uttered. But she had no choice but to respond. “Well, for one thing, you’re frowning.”

“He always frowns.”

Mindy almost sighed with relief as she heard Nathalie’s voice behind her. Turning, she saw the woman pausing in the doorway, obviously on her way out.

Nathalie’s eyes were smiling as she turned them toward her. “You know how when you were a kid and your mother warned you not to make funny faces because it would freeze that way? Jason didn’t listen.” With a throaty laugh at her own joke, Nathalie patted her on the shoulder. “Just wanted to tell you you did a great job today, Mindy. Keep it up.” She looked significantly at Jason. “Well, I have to go. I’ve got a date,” she announced.

Jason glanced at his calendar, as if to assure himself that this was Monday, the beginning of a work week. “A date?”

“Yes, a date.”

Nathalie leaned into the office, her eyes on Jason. She tossed her hair, obviously knowing the lighting would catch some of the red highlights her hairdresser had slaved to put in.

“Some of us have a social life.” She winked at her partner. “See you tomorrow, smiley.”

Nodding at Mindy, she sailed out of the room and out of the suite of offices.

Nathalie left silence in her wake. Jason shifted in his seat. He and Nathalie needed to have a long talk soon about her less-than-subtle hints.

“Well, you’re probably in a hurry to get to your husband, so I’ll see you tomorrow.” He was already looking down at the report he couldn’t seem to read.

She was being dismissed, Mindy thought. A lot better than being fired. Still, something wouldn’t allow her to leave this way. “That won’t be possible.”

Jason raised his eyes from his reading material and caused a tidal wave in her stomach. She hoped the twins were able to grab on to something stable to weather the storm out.

“I won’t see you tomorrow?”

“No, I mean it won’t be possible for me to hurry to my husband.”

Having gone through the trauma himself, the first thing that occurred to Jason was that her spouse was dead. And he’d just told her to hurry off home to him. Quickly he tried to make amends.

“Hey, I’m sorry—”

She had no idea why he felt he had to apologize. “Nothing for you to be sorry about.” Unable to stop it, the mental image of Brad’s limbs tangled around that two-bit, anorexic flake he’d supposedly hired to take dictation flashed across her brain. “Brad, of course, is another story.”

Damn, why had she just said that? Mindy upbraided herself. Jason certainly didn’t want to hear about her life and she certainly didn’t want to talk about it. From the way he was acting, Jason didn’t want to hear about anything that had to do with anything that was outside of the company he ran.

He surprised her by leaning forward. “What do you mean?”

Panic nibbled away at her, followed by a wave of shame. Her husband had cheated on her. Not once, but a number of times. This after she’d tried so hard to please him. Had given up so much to make him happy. That meant there had to be something lacking in her. She didn’t want Jason to think that, didn’t want to see pity in his eyes. “You don’t want to hear.”

“I wouldn’t have asked the question if I didn’t want to hear an answer.” He leaned back in his chair, allowing himself to study Mindy for the first time. Along with the beauty, there were signs of stress that artful applications of makeup didn’t completely manage to hide. What did she have to be stressed about? What had happened to her since the years they walked the same halls together? “What are you doing here, Mindy?”

She raised her chin ever so slightly. Defensiveness rose in her chest. “Working.”

“Besides that.”

She glanced toward the doorway that Nathalie had just vacated. “Trying to go home.”

Jason sighed. What had come over him? Where did he get off, prying? He’d never appreciated probing questions aimed at him. The least he could do was treat her the way he wanted to be treated.

He waved her on her way. “Sorry, didn’t mean to keep you.”

This time the dismissal stung. She hadn’t meant to shut him out. “No, I’m sorry. That wasn’t very polite of me. You asked a question and I gave you a flippant answer.” She squared her shoulders. “The reason I’m not going home to my husband is because I’m divorced, or about to be,” she amended. The divorce was almost final. It couldn’t be fast enough for her.

Divorced. He and Debra would have been divorced by now if she hadn’t been killed. A wave of empathy washed over him. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Oh no, was that pity in his eyes? She wasn’t about to accept pity, not even from the hunk who’d inhabited her daydreams for so long. If possible, she squared her shoulders even farther. A tiny ache rose instantly in her lower back. A sign of things to come, she thought. But first things first.

“I’m not.” She glanced at her watch. If she hurried, she could just make her five forty-five appointment with her doctor at Manhattan Multiples.

He saw the way she looked at her watch. He was keeping her, he thought, and she was anxious to get away. Jason inclined his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It was her cue to go. Still, she paused one moment longer. She needed to know. “Then it was all right? My work?”

“Your work was fine. Surprisingly so.” He saw her brows narrow. She probably took that as an insult, he realized, and was quick to make himself clear. “I didn’t think this kind of thing was up your alley.”

She was grateful for the presence of mind that had made her take business courses while at Northwestern. “Survival is up everyone’s alley.”

“No argument there.” He closed the folder for the last time that day. No use beating a stalled horse. “And Mindy—”

She turned from the door to look at him over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“Tomorrow call me Jason. Mr. Mallory makes me feel like my old man.”

There was nothing old about Jason, she thought. Godlike, maybe, but not old. “Fine. Jason, then.”

Mindy smiled to herself. Workplace or not, it felt right calling him that. Like something had just moved closer in sync.

With that she withdrew, unaware that he watched her progress all the way to the front door. Or that he continued to look at the door, lost in thought, for a long while after that.



“You can sit up now.”

Digging her elbows in closer to her body, Mindy pushed herself up from the examination table. She sat up, dangling her legs over the side. She looked at the rugged profile of her doctor, Derek Cross, and realized that she was holding her breath. These days she kept waiting for the shoes to fall and disasters to line themselves up like macabre ducks in a row. His expression gave nothing away, short of the fact that he looked tired.

“Is everything all right, Dr. Cross? With the babies, I mean,” she added when he looked at her.

“Couldn’t be better.” He retired his stethoscope, draping the length of it along his neck while his nurse, Lara Mancini, removed the machine that had allowed Mindy to listen to the heartbeats of the babies she was carrying. They sounded like tiny hoofbeats. Looking at his patient, he smiled. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to prepare yourself to be losing that girlish figure of yours very soon.”

She’d forgotten about that. Mindy bit her lower lip, her thoughts shifting to Jason as if they were on automatic pilot. She wasn’t normally a vain person, but this time it was different. This time she was going to be facing Jason. She wanted at least a little time before she mushroomed.

“Am I going to be huge?”

Derek exchanged glances with Lara and laughed. “Not if you don’t take your condition to mean you have carte blanche at the dinner table. If you eat sensibly and exercise, there’s absolutely no reason for you to gain much more weight than what these babies of yours will come to on their own.”

Exercise. Didn’t Manhattan Multiples have a gym on the premises? “How much exercise?”

Flipping to a new page within her chart, Derek began to make some notes to himself. “Well, I wouldn’t go hang gliding in the desert anytime soon, but within reason you can continue whatever you’re accustomed to.” He glanced up at her. “One of my patients played tennis until the end of her eighth month. Of course, she wasn’t carrying twins. Don’t push yourself but don’t baby yourself, either, no pun intended.”

“Don’t let him kid you,” Lara interjected, grinning as she continued tidying up within the room, “Dr. Cross intended it.”

“A nurse is supposed to back up her doctor.” Derek managed to keep a straight face only long enough to get halfway through his sentence.

Lara laughed shortly. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she cracked.

It still seemed incredible to Mindy that the woman she had seen on the screen in more than one supporting role was now being supportive of her. It was no secret that Lara Mancini had given up a promising movie career to follow her heart’s dream of becoming a nurse.

If Lara could reinvent herself, Mindy thought, if she could walk away from budding fame and gobs of money to do something noble, then what she was trying to do with her own life should be a piece of cake.

After all, it wasn’t as if she had walked away from an actual career. Despite her education and her degree in journalism, Brad hadn’t wanted her to have a career. Her place was at his side while he forged his, he’d told her time and again. Because she loved him, she’d listened. And, she supposed, to his credit, there’d always been money to do whatever she wanted to do.

The trouble was, she always had to ask him for it. It embarrassed her, even though he had always dispensed it. Embarrassed her because she always had to tell him what she wanted the money for. At times, it felt like begging. She certainly never felt it was her money as well as his. He never lost an opportunity to drive the point home that he was the one who had earned the money, not her. When he gave it to her, he always jokingly referred to the money as her “allowance.” As if she were still a child in her parents’ house.

Or worse, just a child. A child who was supposed to stand obediently by as her husband satisfied some inner craving and had affairs.

She clenched her hands on either side of her as she sat on the examination table.

“Is something wrong?” Lara’s soft voice broke into her thoughts.

Mindy shook off the morbid memories that threatened to overwhelm her. All that was behind her, she reminded herself. The best was yet to be. Right? She looked at Lara. “No, why?”

“No reason. You just had a strange look on your face, that’s all.” Lara kept her voice cheerful. A cheerful disposition, Mindy had noticed, seemed to be a prerequisite for working at Manhattan Multiples, from the receptionist on up. “If you have any questions, I’d be happy to sit down with you and answer them. Or just talk.” Lara’s eyes were kind. “You’re the last patient of the day.”

Mindy was touched. She had to stop feeling sorry for herself, she silently ordered. She was around people who genuinely cared about her and her babies. That was the important thing, not if she was going to turn into a whale for a few months.

“Thanks, but no. I was just thinking, that’s all.” She pressed her lips together. The intimate moment emboldened her. “Do you miss it?”

Lara tossed away the used paper from the table. “Miss what?”

Mindy looked to see if the doctor was listening, but he was still busy making notations in her chart. “Your career.”

Lara smiled, as if this wasn’t an original question. “This is my career.”

Mindy didn’t want to give offense, but she was curious. “I meant, do you miss making movies?”

Lara seemed to consider the question, then glanced at Derek, who watched her from hooded eyes. The two obviously were attracted to each other. “Do I miss standing around all day waiting to shoot two minutes of film that might or might not make it to the final cut? No, I like being active and there’s always plenty of activity here.” She grinned, sending another sidelong glance toward the doctor as he finished writing notes in Mindy’s chart.

Derek flipped the chart closed and looked at Mindy. “So, we’ll see you again in two weeks.”

“I thought I was on a monthly schedule.”

“That was just in the beginning,” he told her. “Because you’re carrying more than one baby, we want to be on top of things here, to make sure everything continues going smoothly for you. Besides, you can come here and complain to your heart’s content.” The support portion was the very heart of Manhattan Multiples, and none of them ever lost sight of that. “Everyone will be very sympathetic to what you’re going through. Mothers of multiple babies have their own unique set of…um—” he hunted for the right word “—circumstances.”

More like problems, Mindy thought. And she could readily identify with that. It was all she could do to place one foot in front of the other and deal with the path her life had taken.

Tempting though the thought was, and tempting though Lara’s invitation to stay and talk was, all she wanted to do tonight was fall into her own bed. The thought of sleep was more alluring than food was right now.

“When will I stop being tired?” she wanted to know.

At the door the doctor looked at his watch, then back at her. “In about eighteen and a half years. If you’re lucky.” He glanced toward Lara. “Coming, Nurse?”

Lara brightened slightly at the verbal byplay. “Right behind you, Doctor.”

They had something going, Mindy thought. Or would very soon. The looks that went between the doctor and his nurse were too hot not to generate their own flame, if they hadn’t already.

Mindy couldn’t help the pang of envy that went through her.




Chapter Three


Eloise stood in the hallway before her office, directly in the path of foot traffic and lost in thought.

She’d had no luck yet with getting through to Bill Harper. His aides guarded him like those flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz.

You’d think that the city of New York would help support an organization that dealt with pregnancies and specialized in multiple births.

Bill’s betrayal still vexed her. How could he hold this grudge against her? And why couldn’t he simply talk to her? It wasn’t as if she was unapproachable, Eloise thought as she nodded at a couple of new members who hurried past her to the ladies’ room. When she died, and if there was need for an autopsy, she was convinced that they would probably find one of the world’s biggest hearts in her chest. She truly cared about what went on here and the people who were involved in Manhattan Multiples.

Caring was one of the reasons she’d started this center in the first place. She’d needed something into which she could channel her energy and her love. She needed something to fill the hole that had appeared when Walter was taken from her.

Even trying to lose herself in her sons’ lives didn’t take care of the problem for her. And as they became older, she knew Carl, Henry and John would have less and less need for her. They’d be going out into the world, testing their wings, forging paths for themselves. As well they should.

But that would leave her with increasingly less to do. She couldn’t very well stay at home counting flowers on the wallpaper. So the idea for the center had been born, and she had taken the helm, dispensing the wisdom of her own experiences, seeking others to add to it, and all the while making a point of being in touch with every single woman who flew or waddled, depending on their state, through those doors.

A people person, she made herself accessible and hoped others would do the same for her.

So why was Bill shutting her out?

With a sigh Eloise shoved her hands into the pockets of her powder-blue skirt.

“You know, if you stand there long enough, someone is going to wind up walking into you.” Allison Baker, her personal assistant, came up to her. “Is anything wrong, Eloise?”

With a shake of her head, Eloise pulled herself out of her trance. For a second she was tempted to share her fears about Manhattan Multiples but then decided against it.

Damn, she wished she knew the answer.

Eloise realized that her prim-and-proper assistant was still waiting for an answer to her question. Eloise said the first thing that came to her mind, lame though it sounded. “I’m just thinking, that’s all.”

Allison nodded knowingly. “About the mayor’s proposed cutbacks?”

Allison was very intuitive and this shouldn’t have been a surprise. Everyone on the Manhattan Multiples staff was talking about it, wondering if they should start updating their résumés and look for work. No one wanted that to happen. Working here was a joy, even at the worst of times.

“Yes.”

Allison hugged the thick binder she was holding a little closer to her chest. “What do you plan to do?”

Eloise tossed her head. “Fight this, of course.” There’d never been any doubt in her mind that she would. Above all else, she’d been blessed with the courage of her own convictions. She would have thought that had become evident by now to everyone.

“I’m not one of those socialites who likes to sit back and watch her nail polish dry. Manhattan Multiples is a long way off from closing its doors. We have fund-raisers to throw and legal issues to stand on. If Bill Harper thinks that we’re going to ‘go gentle into that good night,’ he definitely has another think coming.”

Twenty-something Josie Tate, Manhattan Multiples’ very own walking, breathing tribute to the sixties hippie era as well as their head receptionist, turned the corner just in time to catch the last part of Eloise’s declaration.

“Dylan Thomas, right?” Josie asked brightly, guessing at the origin of Eloise’s reference.

Glancing her way, Eloise nodded her reply. Josie was wearing a wide, ruffled skirt that contained every bright color known to civilized woman within its fabric. It was offset by a black velvet vest that seemed completely out of sync with the damp, humid July day outside the building. But then, Eloise had long since ceased being surprised by Josie’s choice of clothing. And, in an odd sort of way, the twenty-five-year-old pseudo hippie/poet/receptionist added to the charm that was Manhattan Multiples just as much as the pastel decor and soothing music that was piped in during the day.

Self-taught and pleased with herself, Josie grinned. “Hey, I wrote a new poem.” She held up the piece of paper she’d labored over all last night. It was filled with handwriting only Josie could decipher. “Anyone want to hear it?”

In her off hours, Josie wrote poetry and gave readings all over the city to receptive groups of budding poets and would-be musicians in search of lyrics. Her bright-blue eyes jumped from one woman to the other, as if eagerly waiting for a response.

“Only if it’s something that would inspire a fight rally,” Eloise told her.

Allison was already withdrawing. Although they were friends, they were as different in their approach to life and in their interests outside the center as night was to day. The expression on her heart-shaped face was apologetic. “Maybe later.”

Undaunted, Josie pretended to sigh. “A prophet is never honored in her hometown.”

“You hold that thought,” Eloise advised with a laugh, patting her shoulder. “And in the meantime, see if you can come up with something catchy that we can use to help fry our illustrious mayor’s butt.”

“That seems like a waste,” Josie confided. “The man’s got one hell of a cute butt.”

“Josie!” Allison looked at her friend incredulously. “He’s the mayor.”

“That doesn’t stop him from having a cute butt—although the odds are against it.” She grinned, turning toward Eloise. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

Spinning on her heel, Josie headed back the way she’d come. Break was almost over and she had a desk to oversee and people to welcome.



It had been five days.

Jason flipped back the pages on his desk calendar. Time to stop trying to find fault with her, he decided. He pushed the calendar back on his desk. That was what he’d been doing, he thought. Consciously and unconsciously he’d been searching for flaws, for ways to get Mindy to give up and quit.

Who would have ever thought that he would one day be trying to push Mindy Conway away?

Mindy Richards, Jason reminded himself. She was Mindy Richards now, and with a husband in her life or not, she had no place in Jason’s.

Nothing and no one had a place in his life except for work. He owed the people who paid him good money for advice 110 percent of his abilities—and the same portion of his mind. They weren’t paying him to spend his time thinking about Mindy. Wondering about Mindy. Yearning for Mindy.

There, he’d said it, albeit silently. He wanted her. Wanted her in every sense of the word. That was no way for an employer to feel about someone who worked for him. That embodied the cornerstone of sexual harassment.

Except that he hadn’t, of course. Hadn’t touched her, hadn’t harassed her. Had hardly said very much of anything that wasn’t absolutely work related after that first day. The way he treated her, she might as well have been a stranger who had come in off the street.

Except that she wasn’t.

Still, it was doing her a huge disservice to try to fire her when she was so damn good, so damn eager. She actually looked as if she liked what she was doing. Nathalie was already saying that Mindy was invaluable and she didn’t know how they’d gotten along without her all these years.

Nathalie would say that.

Having someone competent as an administrative assistant freed her up to enjoy her own life a little more. Not that Nathalie had conducted her life like a cloistered nun before Mindy had come on the scene. Twice married, and divorced just as many times, Nathalie knew how to kick up her heels and enjoy life to the fullest. None of the inhibitions that plagued normal men and women seemed to have been woven into her makeup.

That he behaved like a monk in a secluded mountainside monastery had always been a source of discontent for her. Nathalie acted as if getting him to come around was her own personal crusade. He was certain that the temps she’d hired before Mindy had all been chosen not for their office proficiency but for their looks. Each seemed to have been more pretty than the last. And all had been largely empty-headed.

Which brought him back full circle to Mindy.

Beauty and brains. It was a hard combination for a man to resist, and he found himself less and less inclined to do so with each day that went by. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had a disastrous marriage in his background, he’d be sorely tempted to break self-imposed employer-employee regulations and ask Mindy out.

And ask for trouble along with it.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?

And right now, Mindy Richards was the best thing that had ever happened to Mallory and Dixon since they had opened their doors. If he didn’t want to scare her away, he knew he should just keep on going the way he had. Silently.

He had no business thinking what he was thinking. Had even less business getting up from his desk the way he was doing and proceeding to the outer office as if he was on automatic pilot.

Maybe he’d be lucky and she would have left for the day. For the weekend.

But he knew even before he set foot outside his own office that Mindy was still sitting at her desk. For one, she never left without saying good-night, her very words ensuring that at least it would be, as long as he could continue replaying the sound of her voice uttering them in his head.

For another, there was her perfume. It was still as gut-stirringly present as ever. He wondered if there was some way he could get her to stop wearing it so that it would stop haunting him.

He was right. She was there, in the process of powering down her computer and getting her things together. For a second he just stood and watched her. Why did every movement she made seem like poetry?

This was no way for a grown man to think, he told himself.

It didn’t stop him.

He had to say something before she turned around to see him staring at her. He didn’t want her to think he was stalking her. Even if they did belong in the same office at the same time.

Not wanting to startle her, Jason cleared his throat. “Getting ready to go home?”

He could see by the way she jumped that he’d startled her, anyway.

His deep voice shimmered along her skin, melting into her consciousness. Mindy swung around in her chair to look at him.

Jason hadn’t talked to her very much these past four days. Just small sound bites aimed at whatever detail he wanted her to see to. And then he’d been gone, lingering like smoke in her mind but not in fact.

She half thought she imagined the sound of his voice now, but there he was, in his doorway. The next moment he was walking toward her.

Mindy nodded toward the clock on the wall. “It’s after five. I thought I’d close up shop.” Nathalie had already left for what she’d announced was going to be a very long, very sexy weekend, hinting that she probably was going to spend most of it in bed. The vibrant woman had punctuated the last remark with a significant look aimed at Jason that neither he, nor she, had missed.

Her purse hovered over the drawer as she held it aloft. “Unless you need me for something.”

He couldn’t help it. The remark made him laugh. If she only knew, he thought.

Jason saw a wide smile crease her lips in response. “I forgot you could do that.”

He wasn’t following her. “Do what?”

“Laugh. Not that I heard you do it very often in high school,” she confessed. The times that she had, it had sent warm ripples through her stomach. It was the kind of deep, sexy laugh that pulled you in, painting improbable, unattainable scenarios in your head.

Surprised, Jason leaned a hip against her desk as he folded his arms before his chest. He probed a little. “I didn’t think that you were even aware of me in high school.”

“I asked you to sign my yearbook,” Mindy reminded him.

That had made an impression on him, but one that he’d thought was fueled only by his own imagination. He’d never possessed a bloated ego. “I thought you were asking everyone.”

She looked at him for a second. Was he serious? Didn’t he know how many girls would have loved to have gone out with him? That he’d been the school’s brooding man of mystery? They’d all held their breaths to see who he’d ask to the prom. And when he didn’t ask anyone, or attend, they’d all thought that was so typically Jason, to be above mundane things like proms and graduation parties.

“There was hardly room in my book for everyone. Just the people I wanted.” God, did that sound as much of a come-on as she thought it did? She sincerely hoped the blush she felt forming inside her wouldn’t rise up to color her face.

He lifted a shoulder, letting it drop. She was just being polite, nothing more.

“Our paths didn’t exactly cross.” She’d been part of every major event that took place in high school, while Jason had simply kept to himself, his focus on his goals. Only, his mind had remained on her.

Maybe he didn’t remember, she thought. Maybe she’d only imagined that he’d look her way. Maybe it was someone else who had caught his attention and she’d only been in his line of sight, as invisible as air to him. Still, her pride made her remind him. “You were in my math class. And in economics.”

He was really surprised that she’d even noticed that, much less remembered it. He truly doubted that she was aware of the fact that he used to come in early just to watch her walk through the door. And wish he were one of the guys who clustered around her.

But it wasn’t in his nature to cluster, and the risks he took were never truly risks, but completely calculated actions. Putting himself out there, exposed, was not the way he operated.

“Really? I don’t remember.”

To say that she did, that she even remembered some of the outfits he wore, like that black turtleneck sweater he seemed to favor and those tight jeans that had caused her to actually snap her pencil in two the first day she’d seen him walking into class wearing them, would have placed her in an awkward position.

So instead, to save face, something that she had very little of these days, Mindy merely shrugged her slim shoulders. “You were kind of hard to miss.” In case he got the wrong idea, she quickly added, “You sat in front of Terry Malone.”

Terry Malone. Tall, blond. Rich. Perfect. With three track-and-field letters adorning his school jacket. Had he been able to find a picture of the guy, Terry’s face would have adorned the dartboard on the back of his bedroom door.

“Right. Your boyfriend.”

Mindy looked at him sharply. Jason couldn’t have known that, if he’d been as unaware of her as he was leading her to believe.

A little ripple of satisfaction danced through her.

She smiled. “It all seems like such a very long time ago.”

“Yeah, well—”

Straightening, Jason looked toward the outer office door. He should be going. Now. Before he said something stupid and had to have his foot surgically removed from his mouth.

He was going to leave, Mindy thought. To go to whatever life he had outside of this office. Her evening and the weekend that was to follow was going to be spent trying to make the tiny one-room apartment she rented into a home.

Suddenly she didn’t feel like going there, didn’t feel like being alone.

She could always go to Manhattan Multiples, she supposed. There was always someone there to talk to, even as late as ten o’clock. She could even take Lara Mancini up on her offer, if the woman was there tonight.

Or she could go to see her parents. That was always a viable option. Her parents always made her feel welcome and wanted.

But she didn’t want to be someone’s patient or someone’s daughter tonight. She wanted to feel the way she used to, like someone who could have the world at her feet if she just applied herself.

Like someone whose husband hadn’t run her self-esteem into the ground and cheated on her. Like someone whose husband hadn’t said, “that’s tough,” when she’d told him she was pregnant.

She wanted the bright, shining life she thought she had when she’d graduated high school.

Without realizing it, Mindy allowed a sigh to escape her lips.

She might not have realized it, but Jason did. He heard her. It stopped him in his tracks and made him turn from the door. And say something he had absolutely no intention of saying.

“Would you like to go somewhere and get a cup of coffee?”

He watched Mindy brighten like a thirsty flower turning up its head toward the first spring rain. “I’d love to.”

Big mistake.

The warning echoed in his head. But the sound of her response drowned it out. So he smiled, ignoring the former, replaying the latter, and said, “Then let’s go. Places around here tend to fill up fast with people escaping to the first leg of their weekend.”

Purse in hand, she was on her feet instantly. “Let’s,” she agreed.




Chapter Four


Sitting outside at a table for two at a nearby trendy restaurant, Jason solemnly watched the late-afternoon sun making shimmering patterns on the surface of his coffee.

The noise of the city pushed its way in, surrounding him and Mindy. The silence that existed between them was all he was aware of.

He had to admit that he hadn’t thought this out.

Being moved exclusively by the desire for Mindy’s company, he’d forgotten that in order to share it comfortably, he was going to have to talk with her.

Talking, when it didn’t involve the care and feeding of investment funds, was not his long suit. It never had been. He had never been accused of being one of those people blessed with a golden tongue. Not even fool’s gold. And right now, his tongue felt as if it had been forged out of two tons of lead.

“So,” was all he could manage before he had utterly depleted his supply of words. It sank to the bottom of his cup of coffee like a stone.

Mindy smiled at him, looking over the rim of her recently stirred cup of foam and decaf, her eyes stirring him.

“So,” she echoed, waiting for him to make some kind of stab at conversation.

Well, that had gone nowhere, he thought darkly. When in doubt, ask questions. That way the spotlight was focused somewhere other than on him.

He took a sip of the strong, black cup of unaffected coffee, let it wind its hot, dark path down his throat and through his chest, then ventured forward. “Care to fill in the blanks?”

She tilted her head in that way he’d always thought hopelessly endearing. “Excuse me?”

He was going to have to stop talking in bits and pieces, he thought, and make sense before she thought he was hopelessly sentence challenged.

“The blanks between walking on stage to get your diploma and arriving at Mallory and Dixon on Monday morning.” He did a quick subtraction. “That leaves us with what, eleven years?”

Eleven years. The simple statement stunned her. My God, was it really all that time? Had that many years actually gone by since she’d left for Northwestern, determined to set the world on fire?

It didn’t seem possible.

She felt as if the distance between then and now was a little more than a blink of an eye. A year, maybe two, no more than three. Eleven? How had that happened?

“Eleven years,” she echoed out loud. Her mouth curved in a self-deprecating smile. “That suddenly makes me feel very old.”

He hadn’t meant to do that. “Someone once said everyone has to grow older, but you don’t have to grow old.”

She recalled reading that someplace. Mindy thought for a second, then her eyes brightened as she remembered. “George Burns, I think.”

He was surprised that she knew something like that. But then, she’d been surprising him all week. He took another sip of coffee, wishing there was something in the drink that would transform his stilted tongue into a glib one. He began to understand what had driven Christian to approach Cyrano and ask the character to do his talking for him.

“Good words to live by.” He allowed himself to study her face for a moment. He’d noticed women looking in her direction enviously as they walked by. “In any case, I don’t think you have anything to worry about in that department for a very long, long time.”

She raised her eyes to his, and for one moment he forgot to breathe.

“That’s very sweet of you.”

Embarrassed, not knowing what to do with his face, his eyes, his hands, Jason shrugged. “Just stating a fact.”

Sweet. Who would have ever thought that Jason Mallory could actually be described that way? Mindy mused. Tough, rugged, sexy, yes, but sweet? That was a new one.

She sat back, enjoying this lovely island of time that had materialized out of nowhere, not unaware of the envious looks she was garnering. She would bet that every woman who walked by wished that she was in her place.

The conversation had stopped again. Searching for something to move it along, Jason looked down at her hand. He heard himself asking another personal question before he had a chance to think it out. “So, are you divorced, or—?”

“Or,” she replied. It was a state of limbo, really, not quite married anymore, not yet divorced. “It’s not final yet.” Anyday now, she thought.

The sun was pushing its way into the restaurant, brushing against the wide gold band, highlighting it. “Oh, I was just wondering because you’re still wearing your wedding ring.”

Mindy looked down at the gold band as if it had somehow managed to offend her through no fault of its own. She wasn’t wearing the ring because of any real sentimental attachment. The truth was, the only part of her that had gained weight since she’d become pregnant was her hands. Actually, not even her hands, just her hand. Her left one.

The fingers of her left hand had swollen just enough to make easy removal of her wedding ring an impossibility. Tugging at it was futile. Like a guest who had intentionally overstayed their welcome, the ring refused to be dislodged. The only way to rid herself of it was to cut it off, and she really wasn’t ready to do that at the moment.

Somehow that would have underscored the mistake she’d made in giving her heart to Brad and putting her life on virtual hold. Cutting the ring off would have symbolized her making a complete break with that part of her life, and though she was struggling to be independent now, she wasn’t ready to bury everything just yet. But soon, very soon, she promised herself. And then she was going to have to send it back to Brad.

But she didn’t want to tell Jason any of this.

She thought of a movie she’d once seen. The heroine pretended to be married in order not to have anyone hit on her.

Mindy ran her thumb over the row of winking diamonds slowly. “Oh that. I just wear it to keep the wolves away.”

He felt a sense of relief and told himself he shouldn’t. “I thought that you were still wearing it because you and your husband were trying to reconcile.”

The very idea threatened to make Mindy gag. “Never happen,” she told him flatly. She set the cup down a little too hard and some of the liquid sloshed over the side. She moved her napkin over to sop up the mess. If only the mess that her life had become was as easily cleaned up, she thought. “I’ve always disliked having to take a number and wait in line, like in a bakery or at the post office.”

His eyes narrowed as he tried to fathom what the remark had to do with the state of her marriage. “I don’t understand—”

“Neither did I. Glossed right over the evidence, even though it was right there in front of me.” The excuses, the late nights, the faint scent of perfume that wasn’t hers, the hang-up calls when she answered the phone. “Believed every word he said when he told me he was working late.” She looked at him. Did he think her a hopeless fool to be so naive? “People do work late in this day and age.”

“But he wasn’t working.” It wasn’t a question, it was rhetorical. And hit so close to home that he couldn’t believe it. Debra had played the same game with him, lying to him when she bothered saying anything at all to him.

She laughed shortly. “Oh, he was working all right.” Holding up her hand, she enumerated, counting the women off on her fingers one by one. “Working over his secretary, his assistant, some of his prettier clients. I always thought that Brad’s main problem was that he spread himself around too much.” She shook her head. Sometimes, it was hard even for her to believe how blind she’d been, how trusting. “I had no idea how right I was. It was like he spread himself and his seed all over the state of Illinois.” Mindy looked down at her hands. She’d knotted them together in her lap. “I guess I just wasn’t woman enough to keep him at home or satisfied.”

He felt a flash of anger rising within him. Anger at the man who had done this to her, anger at the sheer absurdity of what she was suggesting. Didn’t she see what she had to offer a man?

“Seems to me the problem’s with him, not you.” She looked at him, confusion knitting in her brow. “Any man who goes from woman to woman is looking to bolster a very sagging self-esteem and has severe psychological deficiencies. He needs validation. None of that has anything to do with you.”

Jason was being very kind, but that still didn’t erase what she was feeling. Brad’s shabby treatment of her had made her doubt herself in the most severe way. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do. Otherwise, your husband—” He knew she’d referred to him by name, but right now he was drawing a blank. “What did you say his name was?”

“Brad.”

“Brad.” He’d never liked that name, Jason thought. It sounded as if it belonged to some shallow narcissistic preppy. “Brad would have been more than happy to stay at home and count himself lucky to have a woman like you for his wife.”

He had completely overwhelmed her. Warmth enveloped her, easing away the cold lump of self-doubt. “Wow. I don’t know what to say.”

He hadn’t said that to get any kind of response. “The truth doesn’t need to be commented on. It just exists.” Jason looked over toward their waiter. The man was unsubtly hovering, eyeing their small table. In the not-too-far distance, separated by a rope, were would-be patrons all waiting to be seated. Jason nodded toward her empty cup. “Would you like to order anything else?”

“No, this was fine,” she told him, pushing back her coffee cup.

In deference to her condition, she had ordered decaf, but even so, she knew that the drink would go straight through her. Mentally, Mindy ticked off forty-five minutes from her first sip, knowing that was approximately all the time she’d have before her first bathroom run. If she had any more coffee, that would just speed up her relays.

Jason shifted forward, taking his wallet out of his pocket. He pulled out a twenty and placed it on the table. “Then I think we’re going to have to leave. The crowd looks like it could get ugly.”

Rising to his feet, he took her arm. He escorted her out, maneuvering through the throng and not saying anything until they reached the entrance. The scent of her hair seemed to swirl around him as he pushed open the door for her and followed her out. He could feel his gut tightening in response.

Hungry, he was hungry, he thought. That was the problem. Nothing a little steak dinner couldn’t cure.

As if.

The second they walked out the door, the oppressive heat hit them. It was all Mindy could do to keep from wilting. It was like walking into an oven set at five hundred degrees. She felt as if her eyelashes were in danger of melting.

Jason felt her sag a little against him. His hand tightened on her arm. “Something wrong?”

Mindy shook her head, rallying. For a second, there, the change in temperature from the restaurant to the street had her knees feeling rubbery.





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