LITMIR.BIZ

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ill to care, and too glad she was home to do more than give thanks that she was there.

      Jon thought anything she did was wonderful. He was proud of her. But he was always busy himself. And Ally knew that saving lives was far more important than her “sewing projects” even though he’d never actually said so. He never said much at all about them.

      PJ, on the other hand, kept tossing out questions.

      And Ally kept answering.

      Maybe she answered so expansively because she was proud of what she’d done. Maybe it was to make sure he understood that she had truly taken advantage of the opportunity he’d given her by marrying her, that she’d built something to be proud of, not merely escaped. Maybe it was to show him that she really wasn’t the immature rude person she’d been five years ago.

      And maybe, she admitted to herself, it was what happened when she found someone interested enough to really listen.

      By the time they had finished dinner, she was aware that she had talked more than she’d talked in ages—and PJ had said very little. He sat there, nursing his beer, tipped back in his chair, watching her from beneath hooded lids.

      Her awareness of his scrutiny had made Ally keep talking. But finally she stopped and said firmly, “Enough about me. Tell me about you.”

      It could be opening a Pandora’s box.

      She might well be better off not knowing anything more about the man who was her husband. But she couldn’t not ask. Besides, she really wanted to know.

      “You read the newspaper article.” He stood up and began to clear the table.

      “As you said, blah, blah, blah.”

      He paused, his hands full of plates. “They got the basics right. More wine?”

      Ally shook her head. “No, thanks.” She was mellow enough. She needed to move things along. At the back of her mind she could imagine talking to Jon in the morning, facing again the question about whether she’d got things settled.

      “So you don’t want to talk about what you’ve been up to?” she pressed. “I thought this was ‘catching up’ time.”

      “I work. I play a little softball. When I have a free weekend I go out to Long Island and surf.”

      “You’re living a completely monkish existence, then?”

      He grinned. “Doing my best.”

      Ally rolled her eyes. That certainly wasn’t what the article had indicated. But before she could question him further, the doorbell rang.

      “Wonder who that could be,” PJ murmured as he rinsed the plates and stuck them in the dishwasher.

      “Probably your friend Manny from the grocery store, wanting you to make it to the game.” Ally stood up, figuring it was time to go anyway.

      But PJ shook his head. “He knows better. Sit down,” he said. “I’ll see who it is. Get rid of them.”

      She hesitated. But he was already heading toward the front of the apartment.

      Ally knew she really should be going. There was no point in staying here any longer. PJ wasn’t going to let her use the opportunity to convince him to sign the divorce papers. And as pleasant as it had turned out to be, just sitting around shooting the breeze with him, it was a bad idea.

      It was diverting her from her objective. It was making her fall back into the easy familiarity she’d always felt with PJ. Worst of all, it was making her remember the night she’d spent making love with him.

      That was past, she reminded herself. Jon was her future.

      From the living room she heard voices. PJ’s and others’. He wasn’t, apparently, “getting rid of them” because as she listened the voices grew closer.

      “… don’t believe a word of it, for heaven’s sake!” a woman’s voice said as she came through the doorway and found herself staring straight at Ally.

      And Ally found herself staring back at a pixieish woman around thirty with spiky black hair and the most beautifully expressive dark eyes she’d ever seen.

      The eyes gaped at her, then flashed accusingly at PJ.

      “You mean,” the woman demanded, “it’s true? You really do have a wife?”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      PJ APPEARED in the doorway behind her. “I told you—”

      But the woman cut him off. “As if you ever told me the truth.” She dismissed him with a briskness that made Ally blink. Then the other woman’s hard level gaze swiveled back again to zero in on her. “So,” she said, “you’re PJ’s wife?”

      The wealth of doubt and the hard edge of challenge in her voice brought Ally to her feet. They also made her do the one thing she never expected to do.

      “Yes,” she said, “I am.” And she met the woman’s gaze with a frank, firm stare of her own. “And who are you?”

      Because if this short-haired brunette with her chiseled cheekbones, scarlet lips and tough-girl attitude was one of the women in PJ’s life, Ally knew one thing for sure: she was obviously going to have to rescue him from this female’s possessive talons before she moved on.

      The woman blinked, as if surprised by the question, then drew herself up straight. “I? I’m Cristina.”

      “My sister, God help me,” PJ put in.

      “And me,” Cristina retorted.

      Before Ally could do more than gape, another voice said dryly, “God should really have had mercy on their mother.” And a thirtyish man carrying a preschool-aged boy followed PJ and his sister into the room. “Imagine having those two as twins.”

       Twins?

      But even as she heard the word, Ally remembered PJ once remarking that he had a twin. She’d envisioned a cookie-cutter PJ. A less likely looking twin than Cristina was hard to imagine.

      PJ’s sister was as short as he was tall. Her eyes were brown; his were green. Admittedly they had the same dark hair. But that was the only similarity Ally could see.

      “I’m Mark, Cris’s husband.” The man holding the child offered his hand to Ally with the easy acceptance that his wife completely lacked. “And this is Alex.” He jiggled the little boy in his arms. “And your name is …?”

      “Ally.” Ally shook his hand, smiled at him, winked at Alex who hid his face in his father’s shoulder, then peeked at her when he thought she wouldn’t notice. He did resemble his uncle, and she had a fleeting sense of what PJ must have looked like as a little boy. Too cute for his own good. She shoved the thought away. “Alice Maruyama … Antonides.”

      PJ’s sister snorted at that. “Where’d you come from?”

      “Play nice, Cristina,” PJ said gruffly, stepping between them. “Ally came from Hawaii.” He gave his sister a hard look that shut her mouth long enough for him to add, “How about some wine? Beer? You’re just in time for dessert. We’ve got pineapple.”

      “Don’t change the subject, PJ.” Cristina was still eyeing Ally like an eagle sizing up its prey. “If she’s your wife—”

      “She is my wife.”

      “Then I want to know all about her. We didn’t believe him when he said he was married,” she told Ally as if he weren’t standing right there. “We thought he was just trying to avoid all the women Ma and Pa were trying to shove down his throat.”

      “Cristina—” PJ said sharply.

      “I’ll take a beer,” Mark cut in. “Sit down,” he said to his wife while PJ went to the refrigerator to get one. “You’re making

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