Chapter 4
This is the last thing I need, Jamie thought. The very last thing. Her stupid heart skipped a beat at the sight of him and if she were honest with herself she would admit that her breath caught in her throat nonetheless. If she had any sense at all, she’d tell him to get lost.
You can’t do that, Jamie-girl. He’s a bona fide paying client now, remember? Like it or not, you have to deal with him and you have to be professional. No matter what kind of a lying bastard he might be.
“Something I can do for you?” she asked as she cracked open the door, then, feeling foolish threw it wide enough to let in a gust of frosty air and give her full view of the man she’d sworn to despise.
“You said to call or drop by if any of us needed anything.” Snowflakes clung to the shoulders of his jacket and sparkled in his dark hair.
“That I did.” She’d never in a million years thought he’d take her up on it.
“I think you and I...we should clear the air.”
“Does it need clearing?”
“I think so.” His eyes didn’t warm. Every muscle in her body was tense. “The way I see it, you and I, we’re gonna be stuck with each other for a couple of weeks.”
“Is that a problem?” she asked, sounding far more cool and professional than she felt.
“Could be. I don’t want anything from the past making either one of us uncomfortable.”
Too late. “I’m not uncomfortable.”
“Well, I am,” he said, one side of his mouth twisting upward in a hard semblance of a smile. God, he was sexy. “I’m freezing my rear out here.” A pause. She didn’t move. “Are you gonna invite me in or what?”
This is going to be dangerous, Jamie. Being alone with Slade isn’t a good idea.
“Sure,” she said, pushing the door even wider. “Why not?” A million reasons. None worth examining. The faint hint of smoke and a blast of cold air swirled into the foyer as he walked into the small hallway. Quickly she closed the door and leaned against it. She didn’t offer him a chair. “So, what’s on your mind?”
“You.”
She nearly fell through the floor.
“Me?”
“More specifically us.”
“Us?” Her heart catapulted. This wasn’t what she’d expected. The professional smile she’d practiced all afternoon cracked and fell away. “There is no ‘us,’ not anymore, Slade,” she said, clearing her throat. “Where’s this coming from?”
“Guilt, probably.”
“Well, forget it. What happened was a lifetime ago. We were just kids and...and it’s just easier if we forget there ever was. We only saw each other for a couple of months. I’m surprised you remember.”
“Don’t you?”
As though it was yesterday! “Vaguely,” she lied. “You know, little flashbacks, I guess, but not much. It’s been a long time, more like a lifetime,” she said, gathering steam. “You and I, we’ve got to deal with each other professionally for the next few weeks, so let’s just forget that we ever knew each other, okay? Let the past stay right where it is. After all, it wasn’t much more than a blip in our lives.”
“Bull.”
“Excuse me?”
“It was more than that.”
“At the time.”
“I’m not buying that you don’t remember.”
“I said I do, some of it, probably more than I wanted to when I drove back here, but let’s just keep things in perspective.”
“Perspective?”
“I’m an attorney working for you. You’re the client.”
“Hell’s bells, Jamie, we slept together.”
“That’s really not so unique, is it? Not for you. Not with the girls around here.”
His jaw tightened and he took a step forward. “You were different.”
“Like hell, McCafferty. I’m going to be honest with you, okay? There was a time when I would have done anything, anything to hear you tell me I was different, special, someone you never forgot... But that was eons ago, when I was just a wounded little girl. I’m over it and I don’t want to go back there and I don’t believe for an instant, not one instant, that you’ve had even the slightest bit of regret for what happened.
“So just because I’m in town and you feel...what? Compelled to ‘clear the air,’ forget it. I have.”
“Nice speech you’re peddling,” he said, looking down at her. “But I’m not buying it.”
God, his eyes were blue. “You don’t have to. You can take it or leave it.” She wanted to step away from him. He was just too damned close, but she held her ground, determined to show him that she wasn’t going to be intimidated or bullied. Those days were over.
“You’re scared.”
“And you’ve got one hell of an inflated ego, McCafferty. But then some things just don’t change, do they?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. And you do remember, Jamie. You’re too smart to have forgotten.”
“Flattery won’t work—hey!” To her surprise he grabbed her wrist in his gloved fingers. Worse yet, she felt a jolt of electricity—that same damned charge that had gotten her into all kinds of trouble years ago.
“What will?” he asked, too close...much too close.
“Nothing! It’s over, Slade. Don’t come on to me, okay? Just because I’m here and it’s convenient, let’s not go there.” She tried to pull her hand out of his grasp, but he only gripped her tighter, and her heart began to pound, her pulse race... She swallowed hard, reminding herself that this man was the cause of much of the pain in her life, that it would be incredibly stupid to come under his sensual spell once again....
“Admit it, you remember.”
“For the love of God, yes. I remember that we dated, but that’s about it. No reason to lie and make it a bigger deal than it was—” she glanced down at her hand “—and you don’t have to act like I was important to you.”
“You were.”
“So important that you threw me over for... Oh, wait a minute, I’m not going there, okay?” She looked pointedly at the gloved fingers surrounding her wrist. “Let go,” she ordered a tad too breathlessly. When he didn’t comply, she managed to yank her hand away. “Let’s just keep this professional.”
“Randi accused me of breaking your heart.”
She froze. All of her poise threatened to seep from her body and through the floor. “Boy,” she whispered. “You...you just get right down to it, don’t you?” Heat crawled up her neck as her pride crumbled. She tried to shrink away but he grabbed her again, his grip strong.
“No reason to beat around the bush.” The sounds of the night closed in on her, the hum of the refrigerator, the ticking of the clock, the sigh of the wind outside, and the crazy beat of her own silly heart. She had to end this conversation now. Before she was seduced into thinking that he actually cared.
“Look, Slade,” she said, jerking her arm away again but stepping closer, angling her chin upward so that she could stare into those hot blue eyes. “I don’t know what you thought you would accomplish by coming over here tonight, but unless it’s about business, then I don’t see that we need to be talking. Consider the air cleared.”
She eased into the living room and propped her rear on the edge of the couch as much to put some space between them as to brace herself. Folding her arms over her chest, she added, “Anything else?”
The house had seemed to shrink, not only filled by the man himself but by the memories of a misspent youth, a few weeks that had changed the course of her life forever. She reached over to one of Nana’s end tables and snapped on a lamp.
“I’ve got a couple of questions.”
Me, too. About a billion of them, but I’m not asking.
“Why were you assigned to our case? I thought Chuck Jansen was handling it.”
“I think he called Thorne and explained that he couldn’t get away and since I was coming to Grand Hope to put my grandmother’s house on the market, he thought I
could handle it.”
“Is he your boss?”
She bristled slightly. “A senior partner.”
“And you?”
“Junior partner.”
He frowned, his lips folding in on themselves, a furrow deepening between his brow. “I never figured you for a lawyer.”
“But then you really didn’t stick around to find out too much about me, did you?” she snapped, then bit her tongue. She was the one who didn’t want to talk about the past. Before he could accuse her of just that, she added, “If you want to talk about what happened between us, consider the subject closed, but, if you came by because you want to talk about the sale of the ranch, maybe we should go into my office,” she offered, pushing up from the arm of the sofa.
“That would be a good idea.”
She led him down the short hallway to the tiny dining room at the back of the house. She snapped on the overhead fixture and wished it had brighter, harsher bulbs, anything to keep the house from feeling cozy or intimate. “Could I get you something? Coffee?”
“Not without a shot of whiskey in it.”
“Fresh out. My grandmother was a teetotaler.” She managed another tight smile, motioned toward a caned-back chair near the window, then took one herself on the opposite side of the table.
“For the record, Jamie? What we shared? It was more than a blip.”
Oh, if you only knew. “I thought we agreed not to discuss this.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.” He pulled off his gloves and unbuttoned his jacket as if he were settling in. “That was your idea.”
Obviously he couldn’t be budged. She took a new tack. “Okay, but let’s keep what happened between us in perspective. It wasn’t that big of a deal, right? We saw each other for six weeks, maybe two months at the most?”
He wasn’t buying. “That can be a long time when you’re a kid.”
“That’s the point, we were kids.”
“But we’re not any longer.” He shrugged out of his sheepskin jacket. “I figure we’re going to see a lot of each other in the next week or so, whether we want to or not.” He was undeterred. She remembered that about him, how focused he could be. Stubborn. Nearly obsessive. It had appealed to her at seventeen. Now, it was a pain.
He hesitated, looked away for a second as if studying the reflection of the room in the paned windows, then said, “I thought maybe I should explain what happened.”
There seemed to be no way around it. “You went back to Sue Ellen. End of story.” If only she believed it herself, could dismiss her feelings as a high school girl’s crush...first love...but there had been more to it.
A lot more.
Of course he hadn’t known about the baby. Would never. There wasn’t any reason to tell him.
“Listen, this isn’t easy for me.”
“Nor me.” To diffuse the tension, she scooted back her chair. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some coffee.”
“You’re avoiding the issue.”
But she’d already walked into the kitchen. She heard the scrape of his chair as he followed, only to lean one broad shoulder against the archway separating the rooms.
“There is no issue.” She pulled out a jar of coffee crystals. Oh, damn, she forgot there was no microwave. Nana hadn’t believed in them. Scrounging around a cupboard she found a saucepan, filled it with tap water and set it on a burner. “It was a fling.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all,” she lied. There was just no reason to dig it all up again. All the old feelings, the painful emotions, the anguish she’d been through, were long buried. From the corner of her eye, she spied Lazarus. He’d been hiding in the pantry, but had slipped through the door that had been left ajar to rub up against Slade’s legs, doing figure eights as if he’d missed the man. “So you came over here, explained yourself, cleared your conscience and now that’s not hanging over our heads anymore, let’s just forget it.”
God, his eyes were blue. “Right.” Sarcasm.
Time to change the subject. “How’d that happen?” She motioned to his face and the thin scar slicing down one side. “A fight?”
“Yeah. You should see the other guy.” His lips twitched. “Not a scratch on him.”
She couldn’t help but laugh as she found a couple of mugs, rinsed them quickly, then measured dark coffee crystals from the jar as steam began to rise from the water heating on the stove. “I can’t see you in a knife fight.”
“I wasn’t.” He fingered the scar and frowned. “It happened early last winter. I was skiing.”
“And you fell?”
“Avalanche.”
“Really?” she said, thinking he was kidding again, but his expression had turned serious. “But obviously not a bad one. You survived.”
“I guess I was lucky,” he said, though she heard the irony in his words and noticed as he leaned against the refrigerator that the edges of his mouth pulled tight.
“There were others,” she guessed, carefully pouring hot water into the cups, then stirring the coffee crystals as they dissolved. “You weren’t alone.”
A muscle worked in his jaw and he stared at the floor for a heartbeat. “That’s right.” The silence was only disturbed by the hum of the refrigerator and the clink of her spoon against one of the cups.
“You had a friend with you?”
“Yeah.”
More than a friend, she figured. From the devastation in his expression, she felt a sliver of envy for this unknown woman. “Is...is she okay?”
“She died.”
“Oh, Lord.” The floor seemed to buckle. “I didn’t know...I’m sorry.” Her heart dropped and she felt guilty for having felt any bit of envy for the poor woman. The seconds ticked by, meted off by Nana’s clock in the living room. “I...I don’t know what to say.”
“Nothing. There’s nothing to say.” His eyes held hers for a second, then moved to the window again. So that was it. The pain she’d thought she’d glimpsed in his gaze. He was still grieving.
She handed him a mug and she saw how much he’d cared for the woman, enough that he was still raw. Or maybe there was more than simple grief in the shadows in his eyes; perhaps there was a twinge of guilt on his part because he was the one who had survived.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nope.” He sipped from his cup.
Her cell phone jangled from the dining room. “Excuse me.” Jamie switched off the stove, nearly burning herself. “I’ve got to get that.”
Slade nodded as she swept past him and retrieved her phone from the table in the dining room. “Hello?”
“Hi.” Chuck’s voice echoed in her ear.
“Hi.” Oh, Lord, why now? She cast a look through the archway to the kitchen where Slade was watching her unabashedly, as if it was his damned right. Turning her back to him, she wrapped one arm around her middle and tried to concentrate on the conversation.
“How’s it going? You meet with Thorne McCafferty and his brothers today?” Chuck asked.
“Earlier. Yes.” She nodded, keeping her voice low.
“And it went well?”
Professionally, yes. An ace. Personally? A disaster. “I think I’ll wrap up everything pretty quickly.”
“What about your grandmother’s place?”
She swept a glance over the dust in the china cabinet, the walls that needed at least two coats of paint, the windows that had to be resealed. “That’ll take a little longer.” Looking through the window to the backyard where the snow shined silver in the moonglow, she saw the faint image of her reflection in the glass. As she watched, Slade appeared behind her, holding out a steaming cup of coffee. She turned, accepted the mug and her gaze connected with his for just an instant. A heartbeat. She lost the thread of the conversation.
“Jamie?” Chuck’s voice brought her back.
“Oh, what?”
“I asked how long?”
“I’m not sure. I’m still taking stock
,” she said. “But...but I’ll come back to Missoula ASAP.”
Slade walked into the dining room again and dropped into his chair. The legs scraped against the hardwood and Jamie inwardly cringed; she didn’t want to explain this particular scenario—that she was alone with the man to whom she’d lost her virginity—to her boss and the man who swore he was in love with her. It was just too complicated.
“I already miss you,” Chuck said, and she felt herself blush.
“All talk, Jansen,” she teased. “All talk.”
“No way.” He chuckled and her cheeks burned hotter.
“Don’t suppose you talked to Thorne about sending more of his legal business our way?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, work it in. Do it smoothly though. Start by doing a good job on this land transfer and...oh, hold on a minute.” He turned, answered a question that she couldn’t hear, then said, “Wasn’t there something else he wanted? What was it?” A snap of fingers. “That’s right. How could I have forgotten? The last time I talked with Thorne he mentioned a custody situation with his half sister’s baby. Something he wanted cleared up, but I don’t have the particulars.”
“Neither do I.”
“Maybe you should get them, forward the info on to Felicia. Do some prelim stuff, dazzle McCafferty, you know, show you’re interested in his family, take the whole family out to dinner on the firm. Just play the game.”
The game. She was beginning to hate the game. “Don’t you think he’d see it for what it is?” she asked, embarrassed that Slade could hear every word of her end of the conversation. She walked back to the kitchen, put some space between her voice and his ears.
“Oh, yeah, Thorne will. He knows what’s up, and that sister, she probably will, too. The other brothers, I don’t know. I think we already talked about them, didn’t we? I think I mentioned that one of the other boys is a rancher, the other kind of a nothing, I take it. The loser or black sheep, I’d guess. Never has settled down with a wife or a steady job, kind of into himself the way I hear it.”
“Is that the way you hear it?” Jamie couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice as she turned in the kitchen and, from her vantage point, saw the squared-off toes of Slade’s boots as his legs, ankles crossed, were stretched under the dining room table.