LITMIR.BIZ

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She held her hand up and studied the odd marks on the back of it, slowly turning it so that her palm faced outward at him.

      The same four red scars showed, a mirror image of the other side, but Max wasn’t looking at them. Her eyes were steady and there was a tiny mocking hitch at the corner of her mouth, and all of a sudden he saw her coolness for what it was.

      Behind the mask was a woman just barely holding herself together. Julia Tennant had been through hell.

      Wrong tense. She was still there.

      He felt as if he’d just been kicked in the solar plexus. The stale air of the restaurant pressed in on him, making it hard to breathe, but he knew it wasn’t the haze of smoke drifting from a nearby table or the unpleasant odor of frying grease that was creating the suffocating miasma. The air around Julia was thick with despair. It was an almost palpable thing.

      “What was it—some kind of homemade weapon?” he asked, his throat dry and his voice a harsh rasp.

      “It was a fork, Max.” Her outspread fingers trembled, and she instantly stilled them. “They got the new girl in a corner one day, and they nailed my hand to a table with a fork. I guess it was an initiation rite or something.”

      She held her hand out a moment longer, in much the same pose as she might once have held it to admire the green fire of an emerald on her finger. Then she wrapped it around the coffee cup so that the wound wasn’t visible to him, drained the last of her coffee and set the cup back down on the table with an audible click.

      “I’m leaving now,” she said offhandedly. “I have to find a place to stay for tonight, and since I don’t have reservations at the Ritz I’d better start looking for a room. If you ever approach me again, Ross, I’m putting you in a world of pain that you’ll never crawl out of. Do you understand that?”

      The woman was threatening him. Compassion fled, and Max narrowed his gaze. “What are you planning, Julia—another gift-wrapped bomb?”

      “No. A gift-wrapped attempted rape charge,” she said, her tone as cold as his. “You come near me and I’ll have my blouse ripped so fast you won’t have time to pull your damn ID from your wallet before the cops come. The charge won’t stick, but that’s the kind of thing that stays on your personnel file. Think about it.”

      “And you think about this.” He’d passed the point where he could hide his anger and he knew it. “I’m never going to stop watching you. I’m making it my personal mission in life to ensure you don’t ever find her, Tennant, so keep that in mind if you get the urge to play mommy someday in the future and decide to go looking for her. She’s doing fine without you. She’s starting to get back to normal, and I won’t let you rip her world apart a second time.”

      “You—you’ve seen her?” Julia had already started to turn away. Now she froze. Slowly she turned back to face him, her shoulders rigidly set and what little color there’d been in her face ebbing away. “When did you see her? Is she all right? Has anything happened to her?”

      The questions tumbled from her bloodless lips too rapidly for him to answer, and the previously dull eyes blazed with sudden urgency. She looked down at him, and for a moment she seemed to be holding her breath.

      Then she let it out. One corner of her mouth lifted in a mocking grin, and she shrugged carelessly. Reaching into her windbreaker, she pulled out the pack of cigarettes, shook one free and tossed the pack on the table. From the front pocket of her worn jeans she extracted a box of wooden matches, and one-handedly she snapped a thumbnail against the head of a match and peered at him through the flaring flame.

      “Isn’t that what you wanted from me, Max?” There was a jeering note in the husky voice. She put the cigarette between her lips, raked back a limp strand of blond hair and brought the flame closer. “Isn’t that why you mentioned her—because you wanted to see if I would crack, just a little?”

      “You didn’t crack when you watched your husband’s plane go down. You didn’t crack on the stand.” Max ignored the tendril of smoke that curled down at him and kept his tone even. “I hear you didn’t crack in prison, Julia. No, I didn’t expect the mention of her would upset you. But tell me one thing—why can’t you bring yourself to say her name?”

      The shadow he thought he saw pass behind her eyes was gone so quickly that he realized it had to have been a distortion from the cigarette’s smoke. She was still holding the burning match in her right hand. With a deliberate movement she brought the fingers of her left to the flame, her gaze locked on his. Slowly she let her thumb and her index finger get closer, until he knew it had to be burning her. Then she pinched the flame out, her eyes still not leaving his face.

      “Willa,” she said flatly. “Her name’s Willa, and she used to be my daughter, before you people took her away from me. I can say it, Max. There’s just no reason to, since I’m never going to see her again.”

      She held his gaze for a moment longer. Then her lashes dipped briefly to her cheekbones, as if she was suddenly weary of the conversation. He didn’t know what prompted him to utter his next words.

      “I saw her the day before yesterday. She’s fine. Nothing’s happened to her.”

      Julia’s eyes were still closed, and he saw her lips tighten. The burning end of the cigarette trembled slightly. When the dark lashes lifted, the fabulous sapphire gaze that had disturbed his dreams for the last two years rested on him.

      “Thank you,” she said in an undertone so low that he barely caught it. A wisp of smoke drifted between them, and she looked down at the cigarette in her hand as if she’d forgotten it was there.

      “Cherie’s on her break. Did you folks want anything else?”

      An older waitress had approached their table, and, disconcerted, Max wrenched his gaze from Julia. “No.” He shook his head. “We’re just about to leave.”

      As he turned back to the slender figure in the wind-breaker and jeans, Julia bent swiftly forward and stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. Once again she was under control, he realized. Any vulnerability she might have inadvertently revealed a moment ago was gone, and her eyes were no longer sapphire-like, but a hard, opaque blue.

      “Don’t ever try to push my buttons like that again, Ross,” she said quietly. “You of all people should know what a cheap shot that was.”

      He stared at her, taken off-guard. Then he frowned. “Look, lady, I wasn’t trying to push—” he began, but she cut him off.

      “I know more about you than you think I do. I made it my business to find out all I could about the man who ripped my life away from me.” Her gaze darkened. “You lost a child yourself, didn’t you?”

      The door to the coffee shop opened and a blast of chilled air blew in. There was a chorus of half-joking shouts from the table of construction workers nearest the door, but Max heard nothing except for the crashing roar that was suddenly filling his ears.

      How had she known? He felt violated. She’d dug into his background—how in hell she’d managed it, he didn’t know, but somehow she’d learned more about him during her two years in prison than his closest acquaintances at work knew. She’d had no right to—

      “You don’t like having your personal life pored over by a stranger, do you?” Julia said thinly. “Mine was on the front pages, Max—courtesy of you and your associates. Like I said, I don’t ever want to see you around me again.”

      This time when she turned away he let her take a few steps before he called out her name. She looked over her shoulder at him, a flicker of anger crossing her features.

      “What the hell is it now, Ross?” she asked, not disguising the impatience in her tone.

      He shoved the cardboard package to the edge of the table. “You forgot your cigarettes, Julia,” he said, his own voice barbed. “I don’t want them. I don’t smoke.”

      She took a half step toward him.

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