LITMIR.BIZ

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soon as she entered, she noticed something odd. Usually the place had a sterile look, with the receptionist sitting alone at her desk. Today, however, professors, graduate students and technicians formed solemn clumps in the pale peach entryway.

      Dex spotted a doctoral student she knew. “Hey, LaShawna, what’s going on?”

      The tall African-American woman swung toward her. Instead of giving an upbeat greeting, LaShawna Gregory hugged her clipboard as if it were a life preserver. “It’s Dr. Saldivar. She’s had an accident.”

      “An accident?” Dex had never heard of an explosion occurring in an infertility lab. Except maybe a population explosion. “Here?”

      “No, in India.” Unshed tears glimmered in the young woman’s eyes. “She was due back yesterday from a medical conference but…” She bit her lip. “We keep hearing rumors. Something about an elephant.”

      Helene Saldivar was a brilliant researcher who helped couples have kids. Tall and rawboned, the woman strode through life, her manner brisk but kindly. “Her patients must be upset.”

      “Her patients?” said LaShawna. “She doesn’t actually treat any…”

      The receptionist marched over and plucked the envelope from Dex’s hands. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s still work to be done around here.”

      Dex nodded guiltily. “I hope the accident isn’t serious,” she told the graduate student, and hurried out. Eager to start grading papers, she sped along the three blocks from campus to the apartment she rented from the retired dean of comparative literature.

      Amid a block of pastel-painted bungalows and pineapple-shaped palm trees on Forest Lane, Dean Marie Pipp’s dark-shingled home lurked like an escapee from a Grimm’s fairy tale. An overarching eucalyptus blocked most of the sunlight from the yard, where spindly herbs dominated the flower beds.

      Across the street, little old Mrs. Zimpelman stopped trimming her roses and waved to Dex. Then she dialed her cell phone and made a call to one of her gossipy friends. Mrs. Zimpelman reported all the comings and goings on Forest Lane as if it were Avenue of the Stars.

      Dean Pipp, by contrast, minded her own business. Today, however, she must have been watching through the window. When she saw Dex, she came onto the porch, her fringed shawl quivering in the light breeze.

      “Yoo-hoo, my dear!” she called. “You have a telephone message!”

      Dex already had a good idea whom it was from.

      THE LAW FIRM of Page, Bittner and Steele occupied the seventh floor of Clair De Lune’s tallest professional building. It was served by four elevators, two of them out of service and the third dedicated to floors eight through twelve.

      Dex waited in the lobby for a ridiculous length of time. She wished she’d stopped to eat lunch, but Dean Pipp, whose farsighted eyes could scarcely decipher her own spidery handwriting, said the attorney needed to see her either at one or at once, which in this case amounted to the same thing.

      “It’s some important fellow downtown,” she’d said. “You know, the firm of Something, Something and Something. Mr. Something ran for mayor last year, didn’t he? It’s his partner Mr. Something who wants to see you.”

      “Page, Bittner and Steele,” Dex had deciphered when she took the note. It was a prestigious partnership. What on earth could they want, and why the urgency?

      Curious and tired of the constant messages, Dex had hopped on her bike and headed for the firm.

      Across the marble-floored lobby, the revolving door swung into action. Although she was blinded by a burst of sunlight reflecting off the glass doors, she heard awed murmurs from the other elevator hopefuls, as if a celebrity had entered the building.

      Dex’s vision cleared. Toward the elevator bank strolled the confident figure of the town’s self-made multimillionaire, who also happened to be one of De Lune University’s biggest benefactors and a visiting member of its computer faculty.

      His body was toned and lean. His brown hair retained a hint of sun bleaching, even though it was years since he’d given up surfing for long days running his computer software firm and long nights making women very, very happy.

      James Bonderoff was known for his sophisticated lifestyle and, judging by the pictures in the local newspaper, his exquisite taste in women. He preferred gorgeous executives and professional women, all of whom looked terrific getting in and out of his expensive cars.

      He didn’t usually go for women with crinkly hair who tended toward plumpness. He probably didn’t even remember Dex.

      James gave the group a puzzled smile. “Something wrong with the lifts?”

      At that moment, the only working elevator opened. The crowd parted like the Red Sea to let him enter.

      Dex tried to duck back, but she was standing too close to the doors. The crowd swept her in, right next to the last man on earth she ever wanted to see again.

      He smelled of sunshine and expensive aftershave, and he wore his silk suit as casually if it were jeans and a T-shirt. Beneath the elegant fabric, there was no mistaking the muscular build of the man. Especially since the crowd was mashing her right into his pecs.

      In the enclosed space, his dominant presence aroused a prickly combination of uneasiness and longing. There was too much of him, Dex decided. The legs were too long, the shoulders too broad, the face too sculpted.

      She couldn’t imagine herself rolling around in a delirium of sweaty ecstasy with such a man. Or rather, she didn’t want to imagine it, because she had done it and regretted it ever since.

      A tall woman on the far side of the elevator gave Jim a come-hither look and flirtatiously finger combed her hair. Dex was impressed. She couldn’t drag her fingers more than two inches through her tangled mane without the aid of a blowtorch.

      As they stopped at floor after floor, the occupants dispersed. For the last leg, there were only two people in the elevator.

      Dex edged away from Jim, keeping her gaze averted. With luck, he’d go striding off at the seventh floor, never to be seen again.

      “Don’t I know you?” The remark rumbled through her nervous system. She felt his breath whisper across the crown of her head, which was all he could see.

      What the heck? Lifting her chin, she met his eyes squarely. “You might say that.”

      She could see at once that she’d misjudged the distance. She was closer than she’d thought, so close that when the elevator stopped, the tiniest stumble brought her against his arm.

      She drew back in time to glimpse surprise on his face. And recognition. Oh, heavens, not recognition!

      “Didn’t we—?” Jim stopped in mid faux pas.

      “That was my twin sister,” Dex said. “The one who does stupid things at faculty parties.”

      His face registered confusion. Curiosity. Doubt. When the doors opened, Dex hurried to exit, forestalling further conversation.

      The name of the law firm blazed from glass doors dead ahead. Apparently the partnership took up the entire seventh floor.

      “Paying a visit to your lawyer?” Jim asked. He was very close to Dex’s ear, or else his baritone reverberated at a particularly sympathetic frequency.

      “My lawyer?” Good heavens, what kind of budget did the man think she had? “Well, you know how it is. Between the personal trainer, the live-in hair stylist and the full-time guru, I had to let somebody go. So I decided to come fire my lawyer.”

      Her humor fell flat. His silence, possibly offended or merely bored, followed her through the glass doors. She’d made another great impression, Dex thought uneasily.

      The law office, she discovered as she entered, was decorated in such intense black and white that humanity seemed like an intrusion. Then, from

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