“Mom, don’t lie. I can take care of him-”
If she had been looking at Matthew, she might have seen a half smile on his lips. But she was looking at her son, groping for the proper words. Her maternal instincts had never failed her before; but now she stood as if paralyzed. Her flesh was still warm from Matthew’s touch, her heart still beating wildly. She shivered violently as Matthew zipped up her dress and rested a quietly supportive hand on her shoulder.
“Johnny, I would never hurt your mother,” Matthew assured him quietly. “You have every right to be concerned about anyone who might. I’ll be leaving the house within the next five minutes. You can keep your door open when you go back to bed.”
There was a silence. “Well…” Johnny’s fists slowly unclenched, but he aimed a look of total distrust at Matthew.
“Matthew wasn’t hurting me, honey,” Lorna echoed, and took a long breath.
Johnny wasn’t looking at her. “You’re leaving soon?” he insisted to Matthew.
“I’m leaving soon,” Matthew agreed.
The child stalked back through the dark hallway. When Lorna turned around again, Matthew was bending over to pick up his coat, but his eyes met hers. A twinkle of something dark and private passed between them. “That’s quite a chaperon you have there. It’s pretty impossible to believe he’d take it kindly if he woke up one morning to find someone in bed next to you.”
“Well, of course, I wouldn’t…” Her first impulse was to defend herself. Of course she wouldn’t allow some strange man in bed with her while her half-grown son was asleep in the next room! But she didn’t finish the sentence, aware from the way Matthew’s eyes pierced hers that he’d already come to that conclusion. A conclusion, she thought fleetingly, that should be none of his business.
He adjusted his collar, buttoned his suit jacket and reached for the overcoat he had tossed on a chair. Suddenly, he was all control and authority again; he faced her as Matthew Whitaker, the imposing attorney, and she could no longer read any emotion in his dark eyes. “Misha, whatever you’re thinking, I didn’t come here to seduce you. That had nothing to do with my brother, with your boy. If you’re angry…”
She sucked in her breath, feeling shaky inside. “No.” But she was frightened by the feelings he’d evoked in her. Because all the same, his brother and her child made even the simplest touch between her and Matthew far too complicated. She looked away from him and crossed her arms as she followed him to the door.
He opened it, letting in a sudden chill and the glow of moonlight on snow-covered street. The night had turned silent; the afternoon snowstorm had worn itself out, and the wind had abated. He looked out and then turned back, raising his hand to her cheek. She curled her face into his palm, aching inside, as her eyes searched his. “I don’t see how it can possibly work, Misha.”
She nodded, unable to deny it.
“My father and your son are involved, and they’ve already been hurt.”
She knew it all. And worse, she knew also that Matthew still believed she had been unfaithful to Richard. The trust so vital to any kind of meaningful relationship could never be there for him.
“Do you want me to call you?” he asked quietly.
No, said her every instinct of self-preservation. But she nodded, and he turned to go out into the black, still night.
Lorna had checked on the sleeping Johnny, turned off the lights and locked the door, and was now immersed to the shoulders in a steaming-hot bath, her eyes closed and a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. She thought of Matthew, and then she thought of her son, and then she thought of Matthew…but finally, almost inevitably, her thoughts settled on Richard’s friend and mentor, Ron Stone.
She’d fallen in love with Richard when he was studying for the bar-terrible timing, any attorney would have told her, but then, Lorna had grown up in an academic atmosphere. Richard was immersed in law books seven days a week, but when he did come up for air they were together… They seemed to live on fast food and late-night conversations after the rest of the world had long been asleep, the two of them isolated in a very private world. Richard was her first love, her only lover; within a week after he at last passed the bar, he put a wedding ring on her finger, and their life was abruptly turned upside down.
Ron Stone was older than her husband by ten years. He was tall and blond, as Ivy League as alligator shirts, as smooth as whipped cream, and as good-looking as a tennis pro. An attorney, naturally. Divorce was his specialty, although he didn’t seem to favor divorcees. He liked young, beautiful and unforgivably stupid married women.
He liked Lorna.
Richard had turned into a stranger the day he was admitted to the bar. He worked for the law firm sixty, sometimes seventy hours a week; at night he and a reluctant Lorna partied with a fast-moving crowd, some of whom swapped mates to keep from being bored. Ron Stone headed that pack. Lorna considered him a vulture, but Richard thought him an irreplaceable key that would unlock the doors Richard wished to enter. Ron Stone knew all the right people, could help Richard make all the right contacts. Coming from a successful family, Richard wanted to make his own name in his own way, and now. If that meant using people…well, Ron Stone was a master at that game. From the first he took on Lorna as his own personal little cause. There was no talking to Richard about Stone’s lifestyle or her uneasiness at his innuendos, especially since his behavior toward her was impeccable whenever Richard was within sight.
Her husband would change back to the man she’d fallen in love with, Lorna told herself a thousand times; all he needed was a little confidence under his belt, some successes he could call his own. Any new marriage requires adjustments, and she desperately wanted her marriage to be successful…but it wasn’t. Critical, jealous, possessive, domineering… Richard had not shown any of these traits before they were married, but now he had them all in abundance. She couldn’t even try to talk with him. And Ron Stone kept coming on to her.
He cornered her at every party. Every social gathering. He started calling her at home. Nothing she said or did put him off, and it got to the point where she wasn’t sleeping nights and was afraid to stay home during the day. She became nervous around Richard, telling white lies to explain why she wasn’t home when he called. They fought. He was trying so hard to do well; he wanted so much for both of them…but Lorna was lonely and frightened and floundering. She couldn’t simply tell Ron Stone to shove it, because Richard thought so much of him; she didn’t tell Richard about Ron, because she was afraid he wouldn’t believe her, because she didn’t want to seem naive, because she thought she should be able to handle it… She had a dozen reasons. And then one day Ron had evidently decided he was tired of the hunt and chase; Lorna was home in bed with a cold the day he moved in for the kill. A half hour after he arrived, Richard raced in unexpectedly to pick up a brief he’d forgotten. He found his wife just inside the front door dressed in a filmy nightgown, in what must have looked very much like a parting embrace after a morning tryst with a verbally creative Ron Stone…
End of story, Lorna thought wryly, and flicked open the drain. She stood up, wrapping a towel around herself as she stepped out of the tub. That single afternoon had caused such endless heartache when the solution had really been so simple: Buy an eight-gauge shotgun, the kind once used on elephants, and murder one Ron Stone.
She rubbed a towel over the mirror to wipe off the steam, and saw a pair of haunted gray eyes looking back at her. Ron Stone was not really to blame. She knew that. He was just a predator in a world of predators.