Читать книгу The Daddy Deal - Kathleen O'Brien - Страница 8

CHAPTER ONE

TAYLOR PRYCE cursed under his breath as he watched the freckled kid on the swing. Didn’t public playgrounds have any supervision? If that kid didn’t slow down, he was going to crack his head open like a watermelon.

Hooking his hands through the openings on the chainlink fence, Taylor fought the urge to yell at the boy, who was about five years old and, if he didn’t stop trying to turn himself upside down on that swing, probably wouldn’t live to be six.

But Taylor managed to control himself. It wasn’t his problem. The kid’s mother was sitting just ten feet away, placidly gossiping with the other moms. She clearly wasn’t worried about how centrifugal force worked, or about concussions and busted skulls. Taylor turned around, unable to bear the gut-twisting suspense of watching the swing lurch higher and higher. It wasn’t, he repeated to himself, his problem.

He adjusted the knot on his tie uncomfortably. God, it was going to be a hot day. Checking his watch, he cast a scowling gaze around the park, which was already crowded on this steamy June morning. Kids everywhere. Mothers and infants, fathers and sons, balls and Frisbees and jump ropes. Didn’t anyone have to work on a midweek morning anymore? Was everyone in Florida a tourist? And where the devil was McAllister?

The kids on the playground behind him were really turning up the volume, squealing and hollering at one another like wild animals. Again he controlled the urge to turn around and check on the preschool daredevil. It was ridiculous. When had Taylor Pryce, thirty-year-old professional bachelor, developed this sudden fidgety paternal streak?

But, of course, he knew when it had happened—he knew to the day, to the minute. It happened more than a year ago, when he had read an old love letter addressed to his dead brother, a letter that spoke of a baby on the way.

Somehow, ever since that moment, while his lawyers combed the country, searching for that baby, Taylor’s subconscious had been training him, getting him ready to be a father.

A father. He shut his eyes against the bright morning sun. God, that sounded strange. Until the letter had surfaced, he hadn’t even known he was an uncle. But the letter left no room for doubt. Jimmy, who died two years ago in some crazy, war-torn European country Taylor had hardly known existed, had left behind a child, a little boy, now almost two years old. A boy who should bear the Pryce name—but didn’t. A boy who had been... Taylor clenched his teeth. There was only one word for it. Stolen. His nephew had been stolen.

Taylor jerked his tie down an inch and pried his top button loose. It must be a hundred degrees out here. Where the hell was Charlie?

But just as Taylor pulled his keys out of his pocket, ready to head back to his car, Charlie McAllister’s pudgy, sweat-drenched face jogged into sight.

“It’s about time,” Taylor said as Charlie plopped on the bench in front of him, wiping his gleaming face with his terry wristband. “Weren’t we supposed to meet at eight?”

Charlie leaned his head back, dramatically out of breath. “Yeah, well, I don’t run as fast as I used to.” He mopped the sweat from his neck and arms. “And you don’t run at all; you lazy son of a gun. How the hell do you stay so fit?”

Taylor just raised his eyebrows—they’d been through this before, and Charlie knew full well that it had something to do with the half-dozen doughnuts he’d scarfed down before his run this morning. Besides, they hadn’t met out here to discuss exercise programs. Propping one foot up on the bench beside his friend, Taylor rotated his shoulders slightly, stretching out the tension while he waited for Charlie’s heaving chest to slow down.

His patience gave out quickly. Charlie was stalling, and that was a bad sign. “Well?”

Charlie hung his short white towel over his neck and gave Taylor a sorrowful look. “Nothing,” he said mournfully. “Zilch.”

“Nothing?” Taylor didn’t ordinarily waste time repeating the obvious, but he could hardly believe his ears. “Nothing?”

Charlie shrugged. “Well, nothing you can use anyway. Nothing that would seriously impeach her character, or the adoption itself. Apparently, Brooke Davenport adopted Justin in good faith—”

“Good faith?” Taylor leaned over and jammed his forefinger against his thigh angrily. “With my name forged on those adoption papers?”

“We’ve only your word for that, Taylor.” Before Taylor could let loose the oath that rose in his throat, Charlie put up a placating hand. “And don’t scowl at me like that. You know what I mean. I’m talking as your lawyer now, and legally it’s your word against theirs. It’s a damned good forgery—even the experts we hired can’t agree whether it’s a fake.”

“It is.” Taylor’s lips were tight, and the words sounded like a hiss.

“Well, we’re going to have to prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt if we expect a judge to take Justin away from the only family he’s ever known.” Charlie met Taylor’s gaze steadily. “Away from what is, by all accounts, a damn good mother.”

Taylor narrowed his eyes. “Tell me.”

“Okay, but it’s really just a bunch of negatives.” Charlie took another unnecessary swipe at his upper lip with the towel. “No record, except for a couple of parking tickets. No drugs, no alcohol, no wild nights at the local saloon.”

“Boyfriends?”

Charlie shook his head. “Nope. She spends all day with Justin. She works in her garden. Grows a lot of roses. Then at night, she’s still working as a nurse, mostly nights, mostly private duty. Not much time for a love life, actually.”

“Who’s home with Justin all night, then?”

“A nurse friend of hers, older lady.”

“What about her?” Taylor knew he was grasping at straws, but damn it, there just had to be some chink in Brooke Davenport’s armor. “Any chance this other woman isn’t fit....?”

Charlie smiled, obviously following Taylor’s line of desperation logic. “You mean is there any chance the old lady is really Ma Barker? Any chance she slips out at night to rob convenience stores, leaving Justin all alone in his crib?” He shook his head. “Sorry. We’ve already checked her out. She’s just a nice, semiretired nurse who rents a room from Brooke in return for a little baby-sitting.”

Taylor expelled a frustrated breath and pulled on his left earlobe. “God, Charlie—”

“I know.” Charlie’s eyes were sympathetic, though his tone was determinedly light. “All the wickedness in this heathen world, and we have to stumble into a nest of saints.”

Taylor frowned. Something about all this didn’t make sense. “There aren’t very many single, twenty-six-year-old female saints around today, Charlie. Why no boyfriends? Is she hideous?”

“Hardly!” Charlie laughed as if the word were a joke, and Taylor wondered just how attractive Brooke Davenport really was. He should have asked to see a picture of her. Though he was considered a tough and astute lawyer, Charlie McAllister was a notorious pushover for a pretty lady, and Taylor had noticed a definite softening in Charlie’s attitude toward the whole situation since they had finally located Justin and his adoptive mother.

“So why no men in her life? Surely that’s odd in itself.”

“No, no.” Charlie seemed irritable, as if he resented Taylor’s implications. “There’ve been men, naturally. She was engaged a couple of years ago to a lawyer named Westover. I checked him, too. Good-looking guy, but word is he’s a little short on ethics. Anyway, he didn’t approve of the adoption, didn’t want to be saddled with a damaged kid, I guess, so the relationship went sour.”

“Still—”

“And, of course, there was the teenage fiasco—” Charlie stopped himself abruptly, as if he had said something he hadn’t meant to say. He fussed with the laces on his jogging shoes. “Anyway, as I said, for our purposes there’s nothing. She’s normal, but temporarily celibate. She’s not a saint, I guess, but she’s darn close.”

But Taylor wasn’t so easily distracted. He straightened slowly. “What teenage fiasco?”

Charlie frowned. “Ancient history,” he equivocated, moving to his other shoe, grunting as he bent over farther than his paunch wanted to let him. “Irrelevant.”

Taylor frowned, too, glaring down at Charlie’s bald spot, which was pink with incipient sunburn. “Whose side are you on here, Charlie?” His voice was hard, even harder than he had intended it to be, and he took a deep breath of muggy air. This thing was really getting to him.

Charlie stopped pretending interest in the shoes. “Yours,” he said calmly, meeting Taylor’s eyes with the same guileless brown gaze Taylor remembered from childhood, the same straightforward honesty that had made Charlie the undisputed referee of all their crowd’s boyhood arguments. “Yours. You know that.”

“Then why are you holding back on me? If you’ve found out something we can use—”

“I haven’t.” Charlie leaned back with a sigh, wadding his towel up and tossing it roughly onto the bench beside him. “Look, Taylor, I’m telling you it’s old news. Ten years old, in fact. When Brooke Davenport was sixteen, she got pregnant. The boyfriend was only a little older—eighteen, I think. Parental apoplexy all around, as you can imagine. Turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy, though, and the poor kid damn near died of it. Lost the baby, of course, and it messed her up so badly there probably won’t be any more pregnancies, planned or otherwise.”

Taylor could hear the edge that had crept into Charlie’s voice, an edge of pity for Brooke Davenport and irritation toward Taylor for pushing the issue. But though he knew it was a sad story, and his heart tightened in spite of himself, Taylor wouldn’t allow himself to lose sight of the main point.

“Well, I’m sorry she can’t have kids, but that doesn’t give her the right to steal someone else’s child, does it?”

Charlie’s eyes hardened, and suddenly he looked more like the tough opponent other lawyers met in court. “Listen here, Taylor—”

But Taylor ignored the dangerous flash in his friend’s eyes. He had a feeling his own eyes looked pretty dangerous right now, too.

“And besides,” he went on ruthlessly, “who says we can’t use the information? Maybe she’s developed an obsession. Maybe being sterile has given her a fixation about adopting, so that she’d do anything to get a baby, even forge my name to those papers. If that could be proved—”

Charlie cursed, an expression of frustration he rarely allowed himself. “God, Taylor, do you hear yourself?”

“What? I’m just being practical. This is no time to get squeamish, Char—”

Before Taylor could finish, a clamor broke out on the playground behind them. Someone was hurt. Above the scuffling of bodies and the confused tumult of voices, Taylor could hear the wailing of a child in pain. He spun around, a foreboding settling in his gut. And he was right—the swing was empty now, twisting crazily back and forth. The freckled little boy was finally on the ground, screaming in fear as his mother knelt next to him, trying to inspect the rapidly reddening scrapes on his cheeks, hands and knees.

Taylor watched the woman fold the kid in her arms, comforting and scolding all at once. Damn! He had known it was going to happen. He should have said something—he should have done something. But he hadn’t had the right to get involved. The child wasn’t his.

He tried to hold back the sense of impotence that threatened to overwhelm him. Somewhere in this town, his brother’s child might be in need, too, and Taylor had no right to get involved in that, either. He cursed under his breath. It was unendurable.

He wheeled back toward Charlie. “I’m going to get him,” he said, his voice sounding as if it had been scoured with sandpaper. “I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what anybody thinks. That boy is my nephew. My flesh and blood. And, by God, I’m going to take him back from that woman if it’s the last thing I do.”

To his surprise, Charlie’s gaze was once again sympathetic, drifting from the scene on the playground to Taylor, then back to the crying boy again. Finally, he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”

“I already have,” Taylor said curtly, pulling his pen out of the breast pocket of his jacket. “Give me the woman’s address.”

Charlie recoiled subtly, his eyes narrowing. “Why? I thought you didn’t want me to approach her. I thought you didn’t want me to let her know we were investigating.”

“I don’t.” Taylor held out the pen and a slim black notebook, pointing them at Charlie’s chest like weapons. “Just give me her address.”

The lawyer took the pen reluctantly. “What the devil are you planning?” He began, very slowly, to write, and Taylor waited silently while he scribbled a few words on the page.

Sighing deeply, he handed the notebook to Taylor, who gave it only one short glance before flipping it shut. One glance was all he needed. 909 Parker Lane—he’d remember that address until the day he died.

Turning his head away from Charlie’s disapproving frown, Taylor watched the little boy hobble off the playground, sobbing inconsolably into his mother’s skirt. He could feel Charlie standing behind him, his anxiety and annoyance almost as palpable as the heat around them.

“I asked you a question,” Charlie said slowly. “What are you planning to do?”

Taylor turned his head an inch. He could just see the other man out of the corner of his eye.

“Whatever it takes,” he said grimly, sliding the notebook back into his breast pocket. “Whatever it takes.”

Was it just that she was so tired, Brooke Davenport wondered, or was the Eberson Theater looking particularly surreal tonight?

Ordinarily, Brooke loved the exotic old movie palace, which dated from the Roaring Twenties. The auditorium walls were covered with sculpted facades to suggest an open-air Mediterranean courtyard; its ceiling was painted violet, like a twilight sky, and dotted with electric “stars”.

Tonight, though, as she followed Clarke Westover through the glittering throng of wealthy Floridians who had gathered to raise money for the theater’s ongoing restoration, Brooke suddenly found the atmosphere unnerving. She swept her tired gaze across the walls that climbed up toward the artificial twilight. Not one square inch had been left uncarved. Scrolls, vines, flowers, birds and cherubs all twisted together in nightmarish intimacies. It was almost suffocating.

Or perhaps the auditorium was just too crowded. She took a deep breath of the stuffy, overconditioned air and tried to ignore the champagne that splashed over her knuckles as yet another tuxedo bumped into her. The seats had been removed—the latest phase of the renovation—and replaced for the evening with a temporary floor and small wrought-iron tables and chairs. Brooke looked longingly at every empty chair they passed. She was so tired—she had barely slept for the past week. If only Clarke had agreed to meet her in his office. This whole ordeal could have been over by now.

Instead, it was just beginning. Climbing to the stage, the emcee tapped his microphone and announced that it was time to open the auction. An expectant murmur rode through the room like a wave, and the guests began gliding toward their seats, a psychedelic rainbow of silk swirling against a checkerboard of black-and-white tuxedos.

Brooke was just barely able to keep up with Clarke’s broad, black-clad back—he was moving fast, more accustomed than she to maneuvering through elegant party crushes. Without warning, the room dimmed as someone turned down the stars, and for a frightening second Brooke wondered if she were fainting.

“Clarke...”

She clutched at his hand for balance, a moment of weakness she regretted when she saw his surprised smile broaden into self-satisfaction. Ahhh, that smile said—now he had her precisely where he wanted her. After almost two years of keeping a strained distance, she had finally come crawling back to him, just as he had always predicted she would.

Except that it wasn’t true. When she had telephoned him this morning, she’d been scrupulously careful to explain that her call was strictly business. But she had known, from the minute he insisted on meeting her at this society function, that he was reading something more personal into it.

What a mess! She tried to extricate her hand unobtrusively, but his cold grip was proprietary and unyielding. Finally, just as she began to feel slightly claustrophobic, Clarke found the table assigned to them and pulled out her chair with a flourish.

She sat, her whole body sinking with relief, though the iron was stiff and unwelcoming. When Clarke draped his arm loosely around the back of her chair, Brooke pretended not to notice. She knew she had to tread very carefully. If she wounded his pride, he would find a way to make her pay.

Exhausted tears suddenly stung behind Brooke’s eyes. How high would the price be? Would he refuse to help her, to talk to Mr. Alston for her? Or would he go even further? He knew that Alston, the millionaire builder whose legal affairs he handled, was the one man in Tampa who actually desired Brooke’s little bungalow enough to pay three times its appraised value. Could Clarke possibly be capable of advising Mr. Alston not to buy?

“Seven hundred once, twice—” The gavel thumped, echoing in the microphone, and Brooke started slightly. “Sold to Mr. Westover, number twenty-three, for seven hundred dollars.”

She looked up, stunned. She hadn’t even realized that Clarke was bidding on anything, hadn’t, in truth, even realized the auction was under way. Seven hundred dollars? Good Lord, what was he buying? She glanced over at him, and even in the dim light she could see the flush of triumph on his features.

“Bastard thought he was going to take it away from me,” Clarke muttered to her out of the side of his mouth.

“Who?” She was confused, as if he were speaking a foreign language. “Take what away?”

“Number three-oh-four.” Clarke shifted his eyes subtly to the table on their immediate right, where a man sat, absently tapping his card on the arm of his chair while he chatted softly with a stunning brunette. “See him? Taylor Allen. Man’s a damn fool. It’s a good case of champagne, but not that good. It’s not worth more than six hundred.”

Brooke wasn’t sure which of the two men had been proved the bigger fool—Taylor What’s-his-name, who had lost the opportunity to overpay for the case of champagne, or Clarke, who seemed so smugly pleased to have done so—but she knew better than to voice any such thoughts. Clarke had caught Taylor’s eye, and the other man raised his glass with a small smile, as if saluting Clarke’s acumen. Clarke returned the gesture, bowing slightly, and Brooke inwardly flinched. Was she the only one who saw the mockery in Taylor’s eyes?

“Usher!” Clarke’s sudden whisper, spoken over his shoulder, was sharp and piercing. “We’ll have a bottle now.” The usher nodded and disappeared, and Clarke turned to Brooke. “To celebrate,” he said softly. “An important champagne for an important night.”

“Clarke...” She leaned forward, suddenly desperate to straighten things out now, before they went too far. “Clarke, I hope you understand that I just wanted to ask you—”

“Shhh...” The emcee had begun hawking a celebrity autograph. Clarke had returned his attention to the stage, though she could tell he was watching Taylor out of the corner of his eye, waiting to see whether the other man desired the item before he bid on it.

Clarke needn’t have bothered. Taylor couldn’t have been more disinterested. His brunette, whose preferred method of communication seemed to be through her fingertips, was talking to him, and their heads were bent together in a heart-shaped shadow. Brooke watched them for a moment, envying the brunette her utter sangfroid.

The woman was quite beautiful, and judging from the understated glamour of her dress, she had no money problems, no sick child at home. No, the brunette had nothing more troubling on her mind than whether she could make Taylor kiss her.

Even that didn’t seem to be much in question. As Brooke watched, too tired to subdue the demon of envy, the man smiled at some soft coquetry the brunette tossed his way. And what a smile... For a space no longer than the pulse of a heartbeat, something intensely female lurched inside Brooke, something warm and electric she hadn’t felt in years—something she certainly hadn’t expected to feel tonight.

The sensation disappeared as quickly as it came, though. Feeling foolish, Brooke averted her eyes and gulped down some of Clarke’s seven-hundred-dollar champagne, which the obedient usher had just poured into her glass.

She drank again, aware of growing slightly tipsy, blessedly numb. How depressing. How desperately depressing. It was proof of how exhausted she really was that, even after a glimpse of that smile, she still wanted more than anything to go home and sleep—alone—for a week.

Was she really a dried-up old woman at only twenty-six? Had the past two years of constant worry—worry about expensive doctors and painful operations and her little boy sobbing in bewildered pain—left her with a heart too withered to enjoy, even for a moment, a handsome man’s beautiful, sexy smile?

Finally, halfway through the second bottle, the auction was over. Though by now she could hardly feel her tongue, could hardly string her words together with anything approaching eloquence or diplomacy, she began trying to explain to Clarke why she had asked to see him.

She heard it all as if someone else were speaking. “The doctors say Justin’s new skin graft has to be done right away,” she said. “They think the old one, the one just above his rib cage, has healed awkwardly—and it might be restricting the use of his left arm.” She was proud of the matter-of-fact tone she achieved. The words might be slurred a little, but at least they weren’t spoken through tears. “So I have to find more money, and I have to find it soon.”

Clarke’s face seemed colder than before, more remote. “What about your inheritance from your grandmother? You told me you’d use that to finance Justin’s medical care.”

“It’s gone.” In her mind’s eye, Brooke could see the rapidly decreasing numbers marching across her bank statements. The inheritance had been small to begin with. Two years of expensive surgeries had been like an open drain, and the money had flowed through it in a flood. “I...” She tried to think of a way to put it. “I guess I underestimated the number of op—”

Clarke broke in with a bitter laugh. “I told you, didn’t I? I knew you had no idea what you were getting into. No idea at all.”

“No,” she agreed meekly. He was right. She hadn’t listened to him, hadn’t even wanted to know. You couldn’t put a price tag on love. She had been rescuing Justin, an orphan in a dangerous foreign country, from being sold to the highest bidder by two uncles who had no interest in taking responsibility for a badly burned, badly frightened infant. What did it matter, in such a case, how much the doctors were going to cost?

“You were right. I had no idea at all.” She leaned forward. “Anway, the bungalow is the only asset I have left.”

Clarke raised his brows. “It’s pretty small. Is it worth enough to pay for the operation?”

“No.” She bit her lower lip and folded her hands, white-knuckled, on the table in front of her. “That’s why I needed to see you. Your Richard Alston has always wanted to buy it, you know. A few years ago he offered me almost three times its appraised value.”

Clarke nodded warily. “Yes, but you turned him down. As I recall, he told you then he’d never make the offer again. He’s not a man who takes rejection well. He’s not accustomed to it.”

She drew in a deep breath and tried to sound sweet—the way Clarke liked her. “I know. That’s why I’m coming to you. I was hoping you might be able to coax him into reinstating the offer. Maybe not at the full price he offered before, but something—something that would help me cover the expenses...”

Halfway through the speech, she saw Clarke’s face was tightening. His lips seemed to be closing in on themselves, his eyes disappearing into the folds of their lids.

He was furious. Oh, God. She had so hoped that he could put their personal issues behind him long enough to see that the suggestion she was making him could benefit both of them. But the sight of his tense, offended features was far from reassuring, and she swallowed hard before finishing up in a rush of awkward words.

“So I was hoping that perhaps you could set something up.” She smiled ingratiatingly. “It could work to your advantage, too, earn you some goodwill if he realizes you’re the one making it possible. He might be grateful, and—”

“Wait a minute.” Clarke broke through Brooke’s stumbling explanations, waving his right hand, his diamond-studded signet ring glinting under the electric stars. “Are you telling me that all of this—your call, our date—this really is just about business?”

His color had risen along with his voice, and Brooke had to steel herself not to flinch. All around them, people who had been murmuring politely over their champagne glasses were casting curious, sidelong glances their way.

His scowl, though fierce, looked suddenly a lot like the approach of one of Justin’s two-year-old tantrums, and even through her anxiety, Brooke felt a surge of relief that she hadn’t actually married this man. She must have been mad, quite completely mad, ever to have considered it.

“I did say it was just business.” She defended herself mildly, trying not to inflame him any further, but her tone was firm. “I wanted to meet at your office, but you. insisted on bringing me here—”

“I didn’t have time at my office.” Clarke’s flush deepened. “You said it had to be today, and I was booked solid. I’m a damned busy man, Brooke.”

“I know you are.” She forced herself to soothe him.

“I’m grateful, really I am, that you’re making the time to talk to me now. And of course I’m pleased to get the chance to be part of such a lovely evening....”

She rattled on, not allowing herself to feel humiliated by hand-feeding this petty man’s ego. It was for Justin, she reminded herself desperately.

She gave it her best, but Clarke was clearly only marginally mollified. Finishing his drink with a sharp, backward toss of his head, he drummed his fingers on the small wrought-iron table between them and let his eyes roam the room, checking out the other guests, refusing to meet Brooke’s gaze.

“So what do you think?” She was losing patience with his petulance. Though she knew it was suicidal, the champagne was playing havoc with her self-control. “Do you think Mr. Alston is still interested? I really need to sell the house soon, Clarke.”

Clarke swiveled in his chair. “Jennifer!” he cried in patently feigned surprise. “Look, there’s Jennifer Hanlon!” He stood, excusing himself curtly with a wave of his hand and, with a deliberate discourtesy, pushed his way through the crush of bodies toward a lovely blonde swathed in mink.

At-first, Brooke was too stunned to be angry. Her gaze followed him numbly, watching his slow, self-important progress through the crowd. The dancing was just about to begin, the orchestra already in the pit, tuning up, and the floor was dense with people, all of whom seemed to know Clarke. He stopped every few feet, eager to slap another back, shake another hand.

She tilted her head down, trying to compose herself. What a fool she had been to think that Clarke would help her. He didn’t understand anything. He still thought life was just a power play, where you lived for the chance to one-up your enemies.

He didn’t have any idea how far she had traveled beyond that pinched world of his. He had no idea what it was like to be a parent, to love someone more than you loved yourself. And he didn’t know real grief—didn’t know what it felt like to hear your child crying, begging you to make his pain go away, every syllable falling onto your raw nerves like the lash of a whip, maddening you, making you choke on your own impotent rage and fear, making you offer fate any Faustian bargain you can imagine.

But fate was deaf and didn’t answer.

She drew a deep breath, squeezing her eyes shut. Maybe she should call home. It was only nine, and maybe Justin hadn’t fallen asleep yet. Gretchen let him stay up late, and Brooke couldn’t really blame her for it. When he begged for one more story, it was terribly hard to say no. They were spoiling him, Brooke knew. But he had been through so much....

Yes. She’d call home. She dug blindly through her purse. Hearing Justin’s voice would chase these stupid tears back where they belonged. Justin was her focus. She would just call to say good-night one more time—

“Are you all right?”

At the sound of a strange masculine voice, Brooke looked up guiltily, her hands frozen knuckle-deep in her purse as if she had been caught burrowing through someone else’s wallet instead of her own. To her shock, the man who had battled Clarke over the case of champagne—Clarke had said his name was Taylor, Taylor something, what was his last name?—was standing next to her. Alone. His brunette had vanished.

A stray tear dribbled onto the corner of her mouth, and Brooke felt herself flushing. He was watching her quietly, studying her with the dispassionate curiosity he might have given an intriguing but perplexing painting. She knew what he was thinking. He was probably wondering why she sat here alone downing champagne in the wake of a date who was conspicuously ignoring her. Wondering why she was pale and on the verge of a crying jag. Wondering, perhaps, whether that meant she was an easy mark...

She tried to lick the tear from her lip unobtrusively. Strange. He didn’t look like the kind of man who had to prey on other men’s rejects. In this dim light, some of the details were unclear-eye color, for instance—but he projected the confidence of a man accustomed to finding a welcome wherever he went. Now that he had unfolded himself from the chair, she saw that he was at least six foot two. He wore that tuxedo as if he’d been born in it.

And that smile...

He was holding out a snowy, softly folded handkerchief, smiling at her over his outstretched hand. It was a slow smile, and when it reached his eyes it lit them from within, revealing green sparks that were at once strangely new and amazingly familiar.

“Thank you.” She forced herself to smile back as she accepted the handkerchief. His expression was calmly neutral, but somehow it seemed to impart strength to her. “To tell you the truth, though,” she said, blotting her eyes carefully, then returning the slightly soggy white square with an apologetic grimace, “I was actually digging around in here looking for a quarter.”

He tilted his head, silently speculating, but without a word he extracted a silver coin from his pocket and held it out.

Brooke’s face burned—she must have sounded as if she were panhandling the man—but there was nothing to do but take the quarter. “Thank you,” she said again stiffly, closing her band around it, feeling its hard, cool edges grow warm in her palm.

“The pay phones are in the lobby,” he said conversationally, as if he handed money to crying ladies every day. “But I’m sure one of the ushers will call a taxi for you if you need a ride home.”

“A taxi?” She was momentarily confused, but she followed his gaze across the room and saw that he was looking at Clarke, who was still clutching the blonde, his fingers buried deep in the mink that caressed her shoulders. “Oh...” She shook her head. “No, I just need to call home to check on my son. I’m not leaving.”

“Really?” He raised one brow. “Why not?”

Such unexpected bluntness confused her, and she stared stupidly. for a moment, as if she hadn’t understood him. “Why not?” she echoed hollowly. Oh, God, why had she drunk so many glasses of champagne? She must sound like an idiot. “Well, because Clarke is coming right back. We were in the middle of a rather important discussion, you see, so he’ll have to come right back....”

But even as she spoke, she saw that Clarke was now at the far side of the auditorium, his cellular telephone held self-importantly to his ear, and the blonde still clinging to his arm. He stopped for a moment at the door, saying something to the usher without even lowering the flip phone.

The usher nodded uncertainly, looking uncomfortable, but Clarke spoke sharply to the younger man, who nodded again and began picking his way hurriedly back toward Brooke’s table. She watched his approach helplessly, a dread certainty settling like a weight in her chest.

“Mr. Westover says he regrets he’s been called away,” the usher said when he finally made it across the room. He looked a bit confused himself. “An emergency. He asked me to tell you.”

Brooke nodded. Fury and humiliation warred within her, and the result was a strange, passive paralysis. “Thanks,” she said, as if he had brought her a present. And then, nonsensically, again. “Yes, well. Thank you.”

“Ummm...” The young man shifted from one foot to the other and bit his lip. “Um, the thing is, someone needs to settle Mr. Westover’s bill.”

Brooke slowly turned and stared at the young man blankly. “His bill?” The word had no meaning, really. It was just a collection of sounds. How could Clarke have left her here? If she had imagined a hundred cruel paybacks, she could never have thought of this one. She didn’t know another soul in this room. Struggling single-mom nurses didn’t exactly hobnob with Tampa’s social royalty.

“Well, yes, you see... Mr. Westover bought some champagne at the auction, remember?” He looked pointedly at the glass she held in her trembling hand. “You’re drinking it now. But no one paid for it, you see, and now Mr. Westover seems to have left, and well, I wondered if maybe he had left his credit card with you....”

Brooke whirled, horrified. She set her champagne glass on the table as if it had been poisoned. Seven hundred dollars? Was Clarke insane? Where on earth was she going to get seven hundred dollars? Just five minutes ago she would have considered herself wealthy if she’d been able to dredge up a quarter. She dropped onto the chair, trying to make the suddenly tilting room stand still.

Brooke was hardly a socialite, but even she understood that people who bid at fund-raisers were as honor bound as poker players to make good their debts. She half expected someone to call the manager, to call the police, to tie an apron around her blatantly inferior party dress and send her in to wash the dishes.

Suddenly, she felt an overwhelming, irrational urge to laugh. Seven hundred dollars was a whole lot of dishes.

“No, no, he didn’t give me any instructions,” she managed to say. Somehow she forced herself to look at the man beside her, who had been a nonchalant spectator through the whole embarrassing scene. To her shock, he was smiling composedly down at the perspiring usher. And he was holding out a silver credit card between two long, perfectly shaped fingers.

“It’s no. problem at all,” he was saying soothingly.

“I’m sure it was just an oversight on Mr. Westover’s part. I’ll get him to reimburse me tomorrow.”

“Oh, no!” She couldn’t let this happen. Brooke reached up and clutched the man’s arm. “No, you mustn’t!”

But it was too late. The usher, not fool enough to let such a simple solution slip through his fingers, had already whisked the credit card out of the man’s dark hand. She stared at him, sinking back against the stiff iron of her chair.

“Mr....” she began miserably, wishing she at least could remember his name.

He smiled. “Call me Taylor,” he said graciously. “Taylor,” she repeated weakly. “You mustn’t do that. It’s not up to you to—”

“But I already did.” He pulled out the chair that Clarke had vacated and, settling himself comfortably in it, turned his beautiful smile toward Brooke.

“But you can’t be sure that Clarke will—”

“It doesn’t matter.” He held up the half-empty bottle that still perched in its nest of ice. “I was bidding on it anyway. I’ll be perfectly happy to own the case myself, if it comes to that. It will be reward enough if you’ll invite me to share a glass with you. I think I’d like to make a toast.”

She frowned. She must have had too much champagne. She couldn’t catch up somehow, couldn’t follow the dizzying turn of events. Catch up? Good heavens—when he smiled at her like that, she couldn’t even catch her breath.

“A toast?”

“Yes,” he said, pouring each of them half a glass, then lifting his. “To Clarke Westover, wherever he is right now.”

Her frown deepened. “Do you know Clarke?”

He nodded. “Oh, yes. I know him.” His voice had undertones she couldn’t decipher, but he didn’t give her time to dwell on them. “Let’s toast him, then, for being such a busy man. For leaving this chair empty.” He grinned disarmingly. “You see, I’ve been wanting to meet you all night.”

She knew her cheeks pinkened at the compliment, which pleased her inordinately. He was a very handsome man after all, and the room was ripe with beautiful women. The wriggle of sensual warmth, that delicious female awareness she had felt when she first saw this man, had returned. In spite of the awkward circumstances, she felt strangely exhilarated, triumphant, as if she had proved something. Proved, perhaps, that she wasn’t quite an old, dried-up woman yet.

After all, it wasn’t quite so terrible, not if he really knew Clarke. Clarke would reimburse him tomorrow, as Taylor had said. Still, a dim note of caution sounded. Something in all this didn’t make sense.

“But if you know Clarke,” she said, trying to verbalize that hazy uncertainty, “then why didn’t you come over when he was still here?”

He smiled again, and in that moment she almost felt as if he were an old, trusted friend. His eyes were so familiar somehow, so warm and full of intelligence, full of sympathy. And yet she knew she’d never met him before. If she had, she never could have forgotten it.

Already, though, her nerves were relaxing, and she picked up her glass slowly. Logic be damned. She liked this man, whoever he was. She liked him very much. Now if only he could answer the question, could still her suspicions, and let her give in to the pleasurable glow that was stealing through her.

“If you know Clarke,” she repeated, “why didn’t you join us when he was here?”

“That should be obvious, I’d think,” he answered, clinking the rim of his glass against hers. “Because I simply cannot stand the man.”