LITMIR.BIZ

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he’d just returned to the States five years before—with a wife. Mary Jane had been about three at the time. Marcie had been visiting and Juliet had just run out to pick up some wine for the two of them to have with dinner. Blake had been over in her part of town looking at a prospective building site and had stopped for a six-pack of beer.

      He loosened his tie. “She didn’t like San Diego.”

      “How can anyone not like San Diego?”

      He tried to smile, but failed rather miserably, in her opinion. “Guess that proves your point about individual reality, huh?”

      There was more he wasn’t saying. A lot more.

      “So I guess you were right back then when you said it was a blessing you didn’t have kids.” Some dormant form of masochism had made her ask him about children that night.

      “Until that point Amunet and I had lived a rather unconventional life. And neither of us was completely sure we wanted that to change. We were both fairly disoriented when we first settled in San Diego. Adjusting to a life of routine and stability is rougher than it sounds.”

      “Especially after living without it for so long.”

      There was gratitude in the blue eyes looking back at her.

      “In the long run, I adjusted. Amunet did not.”

      There was more to that story, too. But Blake Ramsden’s heartache was not any of Juliet McNeil’s business or concern.

      It couldn’t be. It didn’t fit into her version of their reality.

      CHAPTER SIX

      AT SIX, two hours after she’d arrived at the bar, Blake ordered a third drink. Juliet didn’t appear to be in any hurry to leave, still nibbling on the half-eaten ribs and chicken.

      And Lord knew he had nothing to go home to that night but more of the same mental battles he’d been fighting for several days. Amunet’s death had nothing to do with him. In his head he knew that. Just as he wasn’t in any real way responsible for his father’s heart attack or the car accident that had robbed him of all his living family, before he’d grown up enough to realize how much he’d loved them. Needed them.

      “I can’t say that I remember parts of that night on the beach all that clearly,” he dropped into the silence that had finally fallen between them. Picking up a piece of celery, he bit into it. “But I seem to remember being pretty down on my father.”

      Juliet’s smile was soft. “Young people have a way of doing that.”

      The tenderness in her words reminded him of a moment that night nine years ago, just before they’d made love. He’d been about to tell her he couldn’t, that he had nothing to offer beyond the moment and that it wasn’t fair to her. She’d silenced him with a finger to his lips, said the words for him, and told him that even if he offered, she wouldn’t accept anything. Couldn’t accept anything. Rather than judging him and finding him wanting, she’d understood him.

      “It’s only when we’ve lived long enough that we begin to see that our parents really aren’t stupid at all,” she continued.

      “Unfortunately, I lived long enough. My parents didn’t.”

      “You had no way of knowing your father was ill.”

      Blake sipped, turned in his seat, lifting an ankle across his knee. “Logically, I realize that,” he admitted. In five years’ time, he hadn’t been able to say that to anyone else. It was only recently he’d acknowledged it to himself. “And then I think about the fact that if I’d made one different choice in my life, come home after that year instead of making the phone call that turned out to be the last time I ever spoke with the old man, lives might have been saved.”

      It was a thought that wouldn’t let go.

      “Lives?”

      A middle-aged couple was being seated in the booth behind them. They were the third party to have that table since he and Juliet had arrived.

      “My father’s, my mother’s, Amunet’s.”

      “You think you’re that powerful?” Her words were soft, but her eyes gave him no mercy.

      “I don’t feel powerful at all.”

      She took a sip of a drink that must have been very watered down. She was still on her second and it was more than an hour old. She picked up a chicken wing, bit off a piece, chewed.

      “Your father had a bad heart,” she went on. “You didn’t cause that. Nor could you have cured it.”

      He appreciated hearing the words. “I say that to myself every night, about two in the morning or so.”

      “You think your leaving him to deal with the business all alone shortened his life?”

      He shrugged, studied the condensation forming on the outside of his glass. A couple of men at the bar were feeling no pain, their laughter growing louder with each beer they downed.

      “It’s also possible that his heart was going to go whether he was puttering around the yard at home or sitting in a high-rise office.”

      “Likely not as soon.”

      “Maybe not for a lot of men, but the man you described your father to be would never have been content slowing down. The stress of having to sit back and watch someone else run things would surely have killed him.”

      Blake raised his head and stared at her. “All the hours I’ve spent going around and around with myself about this, I never came up with that one. Not that I’m going to let myself off the hook that easily, but at least now I have a solid argument to make the mental war more interesting.”

      “You wouldn’t be the man you obviously are if you let yourself off the hook easily,” she said. “Perhaps it took someone who didn’t know your father personally to see that less responsibility might not have been the answer.”

      His smile was slow in coming, but sincere. “I was actually feeling bad about having spoken so poorly of him to you. I hated that the only view you had of him was as a tyrant. And that I was responsible for that.”

      “Being an only son—an only child—to a successful, demanding parent is difficult, isn’t it?”

      He frowned. “What do you mean?”

      “Not only did you have to deal with all the expectations that were strangling you nine years ago, but you had—and have—the responsibility of being the only one to carry on.”

      Shaking his head, Blake took a long, cold sip. “You’re in the wrong profession.”

      She raised an eyebrow in question, finishing off the chicken wing and licking her fingers.

      “You should have been a damn psychologist.”

      Juliet, breaking a chip into several pieces on her plate, looked down. “It’s easy to see other people’s problems,” she said. “It’s your own that bog you down.”

      “Not you.” Blake grinned. “The formidable Ms. McNeil getting bogged down? It’ll never happen.”

      He expected her to smile, to shoot off some sassy remark. She didn’t.

      “It’s happened.”

      “When?” He’d meant the word to be playful. It came out honestly interested instead.

      She shrugged, and with one hand broke another chip, slowly, methodically, into small triangular pieces. “Various times.”

      “Any examples?”

      “Not tonight.”

      Another time then?

      “Does it have anything to do with your being single?”

      “Not really.” She paused

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