For All of Her Life (7 page)

“All right.”

“All right?” Jordan repeated. He seemed to let out his breath. She was somewhat startled by the expression she caught in his eyes before he blinked, thick sandy lashes seeming to sweep away whatever she had thought she saw. He had really wanted her to come. This hadn’t just been a polite and determined attempt on behalf of their daughters; it was important to him that she be there.

Why?

Their marriage was—had been—indisputably over. He hadn’t been alone, though she had to admit he’d never lived the wild, reckless life she might have expected him to indulge in once he’d gained his freedom. Before Tara Hughes, there had been a voluptuous country-western singer. Not his type—Kathy could have told him so. Before that, he had been seeing a very attractive television weatherwoman and, right after the divorce, the ballet dancer. He certainly hadn’t been pining after her all these years. So what?

There was something very intense about him tonight. But then...

He had become tense after Keith’s death. Sometimes then she had thought she didn’t know him at all. She hadn’t been able to reach him. She had felt...

As if she’d lost him. She had lost him. Lost all the trust, the belief.

She didn’t want to think back. And her first reaction had been the right one—she didn’t want to go back.

But she was doing it.

She was setting herself up for a knife twisted in the heart. The Star Island house had been her home for nearly ten years before she had left it. She knew every nook and cranny of the place, knew the legends about the mobsters who had owned it during the thirties, could picture now the view from the backyard at night—stars in a dark sky and the lights from downtown Miami striking water blackened by into a rippling velvet sea.

Behind the pool where the guest house had been... Even when she had left, the earth had seemed parched and burned there, though the skeletal remnants of the cottage had been blasted and swept away.

Had he rebuilt the guest house?

She wondered as well if Miss April had done any redecorating.

“I’m not sure what good I’ll be to you,” she said suddenly. “I haven’t done anything except sing in the shower in the past ten years. I never really was a musician, I—”

“You wrote the best lyrics,” he told her.

Did he mean it? Or was it a polite way of agreeing that she had never been a musician?

“If you’re really planning a performance—”

“I am.”

“Then you won’t be getting much help from me.”

He shook his head. “I intend to on the second Saturday night. By then, we’ll have had five days of practice, and we’ll do all the old songs we’d have to be dead not to remember. Most of the guys have kept working one way or another. And Shelley has been singing in Las Vegas. It’s a benefit; you haven’t anything to worry about.”

She nodded, knowing he was lying through his teeth! He was worried about something himself.

But as she had realized, she did know Jordan. And she wasn’t going to get anything more out of him tonight.

“All set?” he asked.

She had one shrimp left—his squiggly little oysters were all gone. Well, that was Jordan. He had what he wanted; he was ready to move on.

“Yeah, I’m all set.”

He helped himself to her last shrimp, asked for the check, and paid it. He then politely pulled back her chair and just as politely set a hand at the small of her back to escort her out of the restaurant.

“Is this where you’re staying?” she asked him.

He nodded.

“Well, you don’t have to see me home. This is my city and I’m well over twenty-one—”

“Yeah, I know.”

Great, she thought wryly. He knew her age.

“I can go home alone.”

“Don’t you think the girls will be waiting up to see me? You were the one who wanted to leave a note.”

They would.

“Besides, I always like to take my ‘date’ home after an evening out.”

“I’m not your date. I’m your ex-wife.”

“Kath, quit being difficult, will you?”

“I’m merely truthful. To you it always seemed to be one and the same.”

They were outside; their limo driver was waiting with the door open, smiling away. Obviously, he was pleased to be chauffeuring
the
Jordan Treveryan for the evening.

Kathy slipped into the plush interior of the vehicle. Once again, Jordan sat across from her. She was suddenly exhausted, and acutely aware of a sense of danger.
She’d been okay—all this time—because she hadn’t had to see him. Didn’t he understand that?

Apparently not. She felt his eyes on her in the shadows, saw his face in the sudden streaks and shafts of light that made their way into the vehicle despite the tinting of the windows. Something in her heart suddenly seemed to ache, and she wanted very badly to reach out and stroke his bearded cheek. God, she’d always loved his face! She wanted to ask him what was wrong, to tell him she knew something was haunting him.

She didn’t have the right anymore. Miss April played with that bearded cheek, and Kathy was going to spend her week in Florida pretending that her every waking moment hinged around Jeremy—muscleman.

“When are you going back?” she asked Jordan, wishing once again that she didn’t feel as if they were alone together in the blackness of a strange, vast—but confining—universe. She could still smell that damned aftershave. There was cruel irony in this. She’d spent ten years building up her own life, her own personality, her own world.

She’d been with him just a few hours, yet the protective wall of those ten years had seemed to crumble like dust. He was still Jordan; she still knew him. All the hurt seemed to be with her again, and still she was saying that she would set herself up for more of it.

She still didn’t know exactly why.

Or did she?

Maybe she still loved him. Somewhere, deep inside her. And maybe she couldn’t bear to see that tension still in him.

“Tomorrow. I fly back tomorrow,” he said.

“No business in the city?”

He shook his head. “Just you.”

“I’m flattered.”

He grinned. “You should be.” He leaned forward suddenly, taking her hands. “Kath, thank you,” he said softly.

Oh, God. This was a Jordan she knew well, too. He could rant, he could rave, he could demand that things be done his way. But he’d always given credit to others, and he’d always been quick to apologize, quicker still to give thanks when he thought it was due.

She wanted to snatch her hands away, take them from that enveloping warmth she knew too well. In the shadows, she still knew exactly what his hands looked like. Very long, the palms large, fitting the man; his fingers slim and yet powerful. The fingers of a natural musician. His nails would be bluntly cut, clean, even. Once upon a time, he would have touched her cheek next, leaned closer to her, kissed her lips...

Damn! How could this seem so natural, so easy, when ten years had passed.

She managed to draw her hands from his, cursing the shadows yet thankful for them. She couldn’t read his eyes, neither could he see what lay within her own.

The limo had stopped, she realized. They were back at her condo.

The driver opened the door. Jordan thanked him, helped Kathy out. They started for the street door, but before they reached it, there was a sudden flurry of blinding activity.

“Dad!” The shriek came in unison from the two young women emerging from the doorway.

Alex and Bren. Kathy stood back, watching her daughters, seeing the joy on their faces as they greeted their father. She realized with a pang that though they loved her dearly and were happy to have spent most of their growing-up time with her, they adored their father as well.

And time with him was something precious.

They are grown now, she thought. And still, they are their father’s little girls.

Alex, Kathy’s own height but absolutely her father’s image. She had Jordan’s sandy hair, his lime green eyes, his way of cocking his head. Her personality, as well, was more her father’s. She was determined, and she was an artist. She meant to storm the world as a photographer, but more than that, she loved photography as an art, loved the play of light on a subject, the contrast of colors, the beauty of a sunset, the poignancy in the face of a lonely child.

People had liked to tease Kathy by saying there had been a dead-even splitting of genes when she and Jordan had decided to procreate. Bren, with her whiskey eyes and deep red-brown hair, was even taller than her sister and mother, nearly five-nine, and slim as a reed. Like Kathy, she loved books. Alex had to be coaxed into studying; she had made it through high school with mediocre grades, then scored miraculously high on the SATs. Bren, who would stay up all night with her books, had scored only moderately on the college boards, but her grades were among the highest in her class.

Kathy was incredibly proud of both of them.

Even if they were fawning over Jordan with such enthusiasm it was almost nauseating.

“Mom!” Alex said, at last seeming to realize that Kathy had emerged from the limo as well. She looked just a little bit uneasy, as well she should, since she was aware that her mother now had some idea of what she had been doing.

“Mom!” Bren echoed, still arm in arm with her father, but smiling broadly at Kathy. “You guys had dinner together? How great.”

“Just dinner—” Kathy began.

“What a perfectly
civil
thing to do!” Bren exclaimed, grinning.

“Wonderfully civil,” Kathy said dryly.

“We didn’t throw a single piece of food at one another,” Jordan said somberly.

“Dad!” Alex groaned, and elbowed him in the ribs.

“See, she did let you in,” Bren murmured.

“Barely. She belted me on the head and slammed the door in my face.”

“Oh, Dad!” Bren giggled.

“Then the police came.”

Both girls giggled. “Oh, you two!” Alex sighed, not believing a word of what he had said.

Jordan shrugged, looking at Kathy.

Enough. He was going to fly back home tomorrow morning to Miss April. And Kathy—Kathy was going to remain
civil.
The events of this night had played havoc with her soul, and she was going to have to learn to be both very careful and very hard.

“I know you three will want to visit,” she said lightly, “but I do have to go to work tomorrow. I’m going up.”

“We’ll all go up!” Alex said cheerfully.

They all followed her into the building’s lobby, where they greeted James who, Kathy was glad to see, now had the good grace to appear very sheepish. Except that he was quick to grin when Bren tried to introduce him to her father, and he assured her he’d already had the “honor.”

The light in the elevator seemed blinding. Kathy wondered if she might not look a hundred years old beneath it, and she could feel the three of them staring at her the whole way up. “Mom, have you agreed to come to Florida—?” Bren began.

“Mom, you’ve got to, please? Twenty-one is a major event in a person’s life. Please, you’ve got to come for me,” Alex insisted, breaking in on her sister.

“Mother—” Bren began anew, ready with her own pitch.

“She’s agreed,” Jordan said.

“What?” the girls cried.

The elevator opened on Kathy’s floor. She walked out, heading for her door, pulling out her key.

“Mother!” Alex insisted.

“Well?” Bren demanded.

With the door unlocked, Kathy spun around. “Will you all please hush up out here in the hall? Other people might be sleeping?”

The girls quieted quickly, and Kathy stepped on into her apartment, followed by them and then Jordan. She looked at him, reminding herself that she was going to be perfectly civil. And dignified. Dignity was in order now.

“Yes, I’ve agreed to come to Florida. But I really do have to work tomorrow.”

“But, Mom, Dad’s just come—” Bren began.

“And I think that’s fine, and I want you to enjoy him. Jordan, please feel free to stay as late as you wish. The three of you talking out here won’t disturb me in the least. Have a nice night, you’ve just got to excuse me.”

“Of course!” Bren murmured, and came to kiss her good night. Alex followed her sister. They both hugged her extra warmly.

Dignity had its own rewards.

But still she felt Jordan’s eyes on her.

“Thanks, Kath,” he called to her. That voice. That damned voice was his. Husky. Rich. Somehow sensual even with such simple words.

“Sure,” she said. They stood a room apart. She wasn’t going anywhere near him again. He had his own dignity. And she still had to admit, he looked damn good. Tall, straight. Handsome.

Why couldn’t he be decently decayed? His face seemed all the more arresting. Hard to draw her gaze from him now.

“Good night,” she said firmly.

The word echoed back to her from all three.

She turned quickly to head for her room.

And she felt his eyes on her all the way. Felt a very strange warmth. Felt again, or sensed, his tension.

And something more...

What? Oh, dear God, just what was in that gaze? What was it she sensed but just couldn’t touch?

J
ORDAN STOOD IN THE
darkness, looking out the windows of his Plaza suite. The rooms were beautifully situated, offering a view of Central Park and of the avenue below. It was very late, but New York was never really in darkness, nor did the city bow to night and sleep. There were still horse-drawn carriages below. Their drivers, some of them garishly dressed, approached the tourist-types who embraced the mood of the city and still walked the streets, most of them now returning to posh parkside lodgings. Taxis still moved about, delivering their fares to various hotels. Occasionally a sleek limo swept along the street. Far across from him Jordan could see the large windows of FAO Schwarz, a delightful dazzle of color guaranteed to fascinate every child—and to entice adults as well. Tiffany was near, as were a multitude of high-priced and trendy stores. This was one of the best areas of the city, but not so far away some of the homeless were sleeping in doorways while junkies were making their buys. Gangs were busy stealing the streets from the innocents. Heat swept up from the subways to add to the summer haze caught between the walls of concrete and steel, despite the fact that it was night and the sun had fallen. New York. He’d loved the city. Loved to come here, go to the theater, hear good music, and enjoy the bustle and the unending flow of humanity as diverse as could be found anywhere in the world.