From Boss to Bridegroom (10 page)

Then, as if Rand knew how tempted she was and wanted to save her from herself, he said, “Go on. Maybe you can still get home in time to read your son a bedtime story.”

Lucy just nodded, finally succeeding at breaking that magnetic eye contact of his so she could leave.

But as she grabbed her coat, purse and Rand's keys from the living room and rode the elevator down to the lobby she couldn't help recalling the feel of his back beneath her hands, reliving that kiss…that glorious kiss and all it had brought to life inside her.

And she knew as the elevator doors opened again on the ground floor that it was a good thing Rand's health had made anything else off-limits. If it hadn't,
she was afraid to think where things might have gone from there.

Because she honestly didn't know if she'd have had the ability to stick to her convictions and resist.

L
ucy had told Rand's driver not to bother picking her up the next morning. Since Rand's apartment was only two miles from her own home, it was easier for her to drive herself. Besides, it gave her the chance to take Max to day care.

She was pleased to see that what Sadie had told her was true—her son had already made friends. The moment Max got out of the car two other little boys ran up to greet him and off they went as Lucy followed them into the building.

“I'll pick you up a little after five,” she called to him but her only acknowledgment was a brief glance over his shoulder and a wave before Max disappeared into the day care's gym while Lucy signed him in and left.

The doorman at Rand's building seemed to recognize her and to be expecting her when she arrived there a few minutes before nine. He had the door open when she reached it and greeted her with a hearty “Good morning.”

And then she got on the elevator and succumbed to the jitters she'd been fighting.

Try as she might, in the last thirteen hours since leaving Rand's apartment, she had not been able to justify that kiss they'd shared. The peck of the night before that had been so inconsequential that it had allowed her to convince herself to some degree that it had merely been a buss of gratitude. But last night…

Last night's kiss was a real kiss.

And she wasn't too sure how to act after it.

It shouldn't have happened—that she knew. She shouldn't have
let
it happen. And she certainly shouldn't have been reliving it again and again in her mind ever since, like a teenager savoring a dream come true.

It wasn't a dream come true, Lucy told herself. She didn't have dreams about suave, sophisticated men sweeping her off her feet. She was a realist. Her dreams were about raising a good, productive son who would accomplish great things in his life. About having a wide circle of genuine friends whom she could count on. About traveling a little with Max or Sadie or her friends.

And as for romance? Yes, she had dreams of
romance. Later. After Max was on his own. She had dreams of finding a mature, intelligent, responsible, prudent man who had sown all his wild oats and was in the market for companionship. She had dreams of a calm, sensible romance that would be two people coming together through mutual interests and values, both of them at the same place in life, wanting the same things, living the same kind of lifestyle. Settled. Secure. Low-risk romance. That was what she envisioned for herself.

Nowhere in even her dream was she a harried single mother rushing headlong into the arms of a man like Rand Colton who had women to spare and no room in his life for a ready-made family.

Yet there she'd been last night, kissing him.

And now she didn't know what to do about it.

Should she tell him it had been a mistake? That she didn't want it to ever happen again? That if it did it would mean the end of their work relationship and she would never see him again?

Or was that too dramatic? Would he look at her as if she were out of her mind and say it was not the big deal she was making it, that she should just forget about it?

Except that it felt like a big deal. A very big deal that had left her feeling branded by the man. That had left her weak-kneed and wobbly and wanting more.

Wanting more…

Now
that
was a big deal.

On the other hand, she thought as the elevator
reached the eighth floor, Rand
had
been under the influence of a lot of medication. That might have contributed to his kissing her in the first place. He might not have been in his right mind, not in command of his senses. He might not have meant a single thing by it, nor even remember it this morning.

She liked that possibility the best. If he didn't remember the kiss, she wouldn't be the one bringing it to mind.

And as payment for taking the easy way out she vowed that a kiss would never happen again. No matter how much she wanted it.

After all, she wanted lots of things she didn't indulge in. Like banana splits for breakfast or brownies for midnight snacks or five-hundred-dollar shoes.

Or like men who could mess up the order she'd finally gotten her life into, distance her from her son and hurt them both.

So no, she would not indulge in any more kisses with Rand Colton, and that was all there was to it.

She just hoped as she put the key in the lock that the entire night before was nothing but a blur to him.

As Lucy went in she called, “It's me.”

She half expected there to be no answer or to hear a weak hello from the bedroom. But instead Rand's deep voice called back a strong, “I'm in the kitchen.”

Lucy took off her coat and set her purse with it on
the art-deco wrought-iron hall tree in the corner of the entryway. Then she smoothed the red turtleneck sweater she had on over her black slacks.

She hadn't known exactly how to dress but had assumed that a workday spent in Rand's apartment didn't call for the business suits she wore to the office, so she'd opted for casual attire.

But when she reached the kitchen to join Rand she felt overdressed as he stood there in pajama bottoms and his bathrobe left open down the front.

Lucy's mouth went dry at that first glimpse of him, standing at the sink filling the coffeepot with water. Drier still when he finished and turned to face her.

He did it carefully, pivoting his whole body while keeping his torso and head ramrod straight, but it gave her a glimpse of what was beneath the bathrobe. A glimpse of a stomach that was a flat six-pack rising to a massively muscled chest spattered lightly with hair and shoulders so broad they were like a grand explosion of Old Faithful.

And it didn't help matters that his profoundly handsome face was shadowed in ruggedly masculine beard or that his dark hair was mussed as if from a night of lovemaking.

No secretary should be presented with such a sight and be expected to perform.

At least not to perform secretarial tasks.

Lucy knew instantly that keeping her vow was going to be the hardest thing she did all day because what she really wanted was to cross the space that
separated them, slide her arms inside the flaps of his robe and start up where they'd left off the previous evening.

It took some doing not to succumb to that impulse, to hold her ground and say, “Good morning.”

“Morning.”

He gave her the once-over and there seemed to be approval—maybe even appreciation—in his expression as he did. Until he reached her upswept hair and then the slight smile on his provocative lips twitched just enough to make her think he didn't like the do.

She didn't know why that would be the case. It was the way she'd worn her hair every day since going to work for him, but even the faintest hint of displeasure from him made her want to reach up and unfasten the clip that held the spray of curls at her crown and shake her hair free.

But she steadfastly resisted that urge, too.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“I've been better. The pills make me too foggy so I'm only taking half the dose, just enough to blur the edges of the pain to get me by.”

He didn't seem to want to discuss it further because then he launched into work-mode. “I've dictated some letters into the tape recorder that will need to be typed but I'd like for you to work up the anonymous note to my family about Emily so we can get that out. I thought if you wrote it there really wouldn't be any indication that it came from me. If you would,
you can do that while I shower and then go on to the letters while I write the summation I have to get done. That'll also need to be proofread and typed. I doubt if we'll finish before noon but I thought we might devote the afternoon to the Internet search into my mother's background. I don't want Emily calling to check with me and not have something to tell her. Plus I'd like for you to be on the clock for that. I don't expect it to be a freebie. We can put off the rest of today's work until tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Lucy agreed, grasping onto thoughts of work to help distract herself.

“I'm going to have to lie on the sofa in the office to do my part. Sitting is an exercise in agony.”

“Can I fix you breakfast while you shower?” she offered.

“Thanks but I ate some toast to cushion the pain pills. Just pour us some coffee when it's done, if you would.”

And with that he left to shower.

Lucy tried not to think about that as she went into his home office. Not to picture him dropping that bathrobe and those pajama bottoms. Not to think about the fact that he would be stark naked only a room away. Not to imagine thick-muscled thighs and well-honed calves, or a backside to die for, or a front side…

Oh, boy. This was not going to be an easy day at all.

She forced her mind off Rand and turned on one
of his computers, laying out in her head the jobs of the hours ahead, picturing Max's cherubic face to remind herself of her own priorities.

It helped. By the time Rand returned, shaved, combed and dressed in sweatpants and a Harvard sweatshirt that still made him look all too good, Lucy had his coffee waiting on a TV tray in front of the couch and had already printed out the note for his family, informing them simply and succinctly that Emily had not been kidnapped, that she was alive, well, not in danger and would return home as soon as she could.

“Great,” Rand judged after reading it.

“I called my friend so she knows it's coming and what to do with it. I've also called FedEx to pick it up this morning. I didn't think you'd want to waste any time getting it to its destination.”

“You read my mind,” he assured her as he oh-so-carefully lowered himself onto the couch, his head and back elevated only enough to sip his coffee and write on the legal pad he set on his lap.

And with that they went to work as usual, spending the morning as Rand had instructed. Which was fine with Lucy. But it wasn't as much fun as the afternoon when she began to search into Meredith Colton's—nee Meredith Portman's—past.

“Some things are directly accessible,” Lucy explained to Rand as they got started, sitting at the computer while he continued to lie on the sofa that ran the length of the wall beside it. “Things that are
a matter of public record are basically there for the asking, but that doesn't mean I can just tap into the computer systems and bring them up myself. But I can e-mail a request for copies of things, which I did the night before last after you left. Last night when I got home I checked to see if any of my requests had been answered and when I found on your mother's birth record that she was a twin, I e-mailed for everything that was a matter of public record on her twin, too. I hope that wasn't out of line. I just thought that with your sister making claims to have seen two—”

“Twin?” Rand said, cutting her off. “What are you talking about?”

“Your mother was one of a double birth. You didn't know that?”

“No, I didn't know that. No one knew that. Are you sure?”

Lucy pulled up the e-mail and printed it out for him to see. Along with the birth information for Meredith Portman was documentation for a person named Patsy Portman, born on the same day, at the same hospital, to the same parents, five minutes later than the time of birth for Meredith.

“Why didn't you tell me about this right away?”

“I assumed you knew. Your mother didn't mention a thing like having a twin?”

“Never. Are you sure the twin didn't die shortly after birth? Or wasn't given up for adoption or something? Maybe my mother doesn't even know.”

“I asked for everything that was a matter of public record on both Meredith and Patsy Portman. They both got driver's licenses when they were sixteen and the same address is listed on them. So your mother had to have known about her.”

“What happened to her?”

Lucy wasn't crazy about being the one to inform him of this next part. She'd thought it was something he knew and had purposely not talked about because his family wasn't proud of it. “Patsy Portman has a criminal record, but I haven't delved into that yet. I thought you were aware of it and might not want me poking around in what was a skeleton in the closet, that that's why you hadn't mentioned the twin.”

“A
criminal
record? No, I didn't know about that either. What did she do?”

Lucy felt very much the burden of being the bearer of bad news so she answered quietly, “She was convicted of murdering someone named Ellis Mayfair when she was eighteen.”

“I need to know everything you can get on that.”

“Old newspaper articles are the best but they're on microfiche. I might be able to persuade the library to fax us copies.”

“Try,” Rand said.

Lucy spent the next hour doing just that, luckily connecting with a helpful librarian in California who was willing to go to the trouble of looking for all the articles on the long-ago killing.

By the time the faxes began to come in, Rand had
fallen asleep, and since the sound of the machine didn't wake him, Lucy read the articles herself.

It seemed that Patsy Portman had had a troubled youth wrought with mental instability, anxiety, bouts of depression and severe mood swings, all of which had been dealt with unsuccessfully by a caring mother who had tried to get her daughter help. Patsy had dropped out of high school and had been reported as a runaway several times.

Apparently in 1967 she'd become pregnant by Ellis Mayfair who was considerably older than she was and married.

Ellis Mayfair had wanted her to have an abortion but she had refused, hiding her pregnancy even from her family. She'd given birth to a baby girl in a motel room with only Mayfair in attendance, naming the child Jewel. But while Patsy had slept postpartum, Mayfair had taken the baby away.

When Patsy had awakened and asked for her baby, Mayfair had at first told her the baby had died. Patsy hadn't believed that and after pressing Mayfair was told that he'd sold the baby to a doctor for a secret private adoption.