LITMIR.BIZ

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as her expression registered the natural shock of seeing him again after so many years. The hazel depths he’d always admired were barred like a prison, holding the world at bay. Behind those bars crouched emotions Ross couldn’t read, experiences he hadn’t been permitted to share. And a heart as frigid as an ice storm in January.

      She looked from his face to Toby’s, and her straight, slender body unbent with relief. He’d been wrong. Her heart wasn’t cold. Not where her son was concerned.

      “Toby,” she said. “Thank God.”

      Toby stood very still, his face ashen. He began to walk toward his mother, not unlike a prisoner going to his well-earned punishment. Gillian knelt on the rough pavement and smiled, her eyes coming to life.

      “Mother,” Toby said, his voice catching, and walked into her arms.

      Gillian closed her eyes, kissed Toby’s flushed cheek and held him tight for a dozen heartbeats. Then she let him go and stood up, keeping her hand on her son’s shoulder.

      “Thank you,” she said to Ross, sincere and utterly formal. “Thank you for finding him.”

      Ross opened his mouth to answer and found his tongue as thick and unwieldy as a block of concrete. “I didn’t find him,” he managed to say at last. “He found me.”

      “At the police station,” Toby offered, his brief moment of repentance already vanished. He looked from Ross to his mother, wide-eyed innocence concealing something uncomfortably like calculation. “You needn’t have worried, Mother. I was never in any danger.”

      Gillian tightened her fingers on his shoulder, her gaze steady on Ross’s. “I’m sorry that you were put to so much trouble,” she said. “I didn’t know he had left England until the ship had already departed.”

      “Yeah.” Ross locked his hands behind his back. “Your friend Ethan Warbrick told me the story. He implied that you weren’t coming.”

      The barest hint of color touched Gillian’s smooth cheeks. “Perhaps Lord Warbrick misunderstood.” She glanced away. “Again, I apologize, Mr. Kavanagh. If you’ve incurred any expenses…”

      “I bought him a hot dog,” Ross said, a wave of heat rising under his collar. “It didn’t exactly break the bank.” He smiled the kind of smile he reserved for suspects in the interrogation room. “As I told Warbrick, I don’t need any ‘consideration,’ either.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      That little hint of vulnerability was a nice touch, Ross thought. “Tell Warbrick he can tear up the check.”

      “The—” Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. You mustn’t think such a thing, Ross. You—” She caught herself, donning the mantle of aristocratic dignity again. “We shan’t trouble you any longer, Mr. Kavanagh.”

      She turned to go, taking Toby with her. He dug in his heels and wouldn’t budge. Ross pushed past the burning wall of his anger and crossed the space between them until he was blocking her path of escape.

      “Is that it?” he asked softly. “Nothing else to say…Mrs. Delvaux?”

      Most people would have shrunk away from the finely tuned menace in Ross’s voice. Gillian wasn’t most people.

      “I had not thought,” she said, “that you would wish to prolong the conversation.”

      “I didn’t know we were having one,” he said. “Not the kind you’d expect between old friends.”

      Gillian understood him. She understood him very well, but she wasn’t about to crack. “This is neither the time nor the place,” she said, holding on to Toby as if she expected him to bolt.

      Ross showed his teeth. “As it so happens,” he said, “my schedule is pretty open at the moment. You pick the time and place. I’ll be there.”

      She looked down at Toby. He was listening intently to every word, his head slightly cocked.

      “We will not be staying in America long,” she said. “The ship—”

      “Mother!” Toby cried. “We’ve only just arrived.” He turned pleading eyes on Ross. “Father promised he’d take me to Coney Island.”

      Ross had promised nothing of the kind, but under the circumstances, he wasn’t prepared to dispute Toby’s claim. He was certain he’d seen Gillian flinch when Toby said “Father.” Did she really believe he would have accepted Warbrick’s lie about the kid being some other guy’s son?

      “I’m surprised that Mr. Kavanagh has had time to make such promises,” she said, her voice chilly.

      “Toby knows what he wants,” Ross said. “I like that in a man.”

      “He’s hardly a—” She clamped her mouth shut. “If you have no objection, I’ll take Toby back to our hotel. My brother is also stopping there. He can watch Toby while you and I—”

      “Uncle Hugh came, too?” Toby interrupted.

      “Yes. And you will remain with him while I make arrangements for our return to England.”

      “But Mother—”

      “Do as your mother says,” Ross said. “I’ll come along with you.”

      “And we’ll go to Coney Island before I leave?”

      “Maybe.” He stared at Gillian until she met his gaze. “You don’t mind if I accompany you to your hotel?”

      She stiffened. “That is hardly necessary, Mr. Kavanagh.”

      “New York is a complicated city, Mrs. Delvaux. I’ll feel better knowing you aren’t traveling alone.”

      Gillian had never been anything but bright. She knew she was licked, at least for the moment. She inclined her head with all the condescension of a queen.

      “As you wish,” she said. She gave the address of her hotel—one of the fancy kind an ordinary homicide detective seldom had occasion to set foot in—and Ross escorted her and Toby back to Tenth Avenue, where he flagged down a taxi.

      The ride to Midtown was about as pleasant as a Manhattan heat wave. Toby sat between Ross and Gillian, darting glances from one to the other, but remaining uncharacteristically silent. If Gillian felt any shame about the situation, her forbidding demeanor concealed it perfectly. Ross’s temper continued to simmer, held in check by the thought that he would soon have Gillian alone.

      And when he did…by God, when he did…

      “Roosevelt Hotel,” the cabbie announced as he pulled his vehicle up to the kerb. Ross stepped out first, circled the cab and opened the door for Gillian, extending his hand to help her up.

      She hesitated for just a moment, then put her gloved hand in his.

      Ross knew he shouldn’t have felt anything. Not a damned thing. He couldn’t even feel her skin through the kid gloves, and she let go as soon as her feet were firmly planted on the sidewalk.

      But there was something he couldn’t deny, a spark of awareness, a memory of flesh on flesh in a far more intimate setting. Unwillingly, he glanced at Gillian to see if she’d felt it, too, but her attention was fixed on her pocketbook as she counted out the fare. Ross was just a few seconds too late to stop her. She took Toby’s hand as he bounced up beside her and marched across the sidewalk without a word to Ross; the doorman hurried to open the door and tipped his hat as she swept into the lobby.

      “Nice family you got there, mister,” the cabbie said as Ross stared after her.

      There was genuine admiration in the guy’s voice. Ross pressed another buck into the guy’s hand and started after Gillian, walking in a way that advised anyone in his path to step aside.

      His skin began to prickle as soon as he entered the lobby. He’d spent his childhood up to his knees in manure

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