he let out an unsteady breath.
From the way his gut twisted just looking at her, he was still just as foolishly susceptible to Marisa Rourke as a mature thirty-year-old woman as he’d been to the lovely journalism student he’d known ten years ago. Lucky for him that now she’d declared all-out war between them.
Not that he blamed her. He hadn’t exactly been comfortable with the way Jackie Horton had blindsided her on the television talk show. But Jackie and Mac’s longtime producer, Tom Powell, had insisted on pinning the actress down under a cross fire of startling accusations.
“An elite baby mill...”
“Police today arrested exclusive Bel Air physician, Dr. Franco Morris...”
“Marisa, isn’t it true that you and your late husband, Victor Latimore, used Dr. Morris to acquire your own baby?”
“We have copies of Dr. Morris’s records, verifying names, dates and fees...”
“It’s a lie! You’ll hear from my attorney!” she shouted.
Mac grimaced at the memory. But it had to be done, for impact value, Tom had said. To pull the viewing public into the story, raise an outcry, close the baby mill. And Mac had agreed. Dr. Franco Morris had been preying on innocents long enough. Bottom line was, as always, get the job done.
Mac shrugged and began to unbutton his damp shirt. Every detail he unearthed was another step closer to putting the dirty doctor behind bars permanently. The involvement of a celebrity of Marisa’s stature—Mac’s mouth tightened in disdain at the application of such a term to a soap opera star—would insure that the black-market-baby investigation got the media attention it deserved. And, of course, there was the matter of that contract....
Heck, he wasn’t unsympathetic! The kid was cute enough, and Marisa’s maternal affection appeared genuine. Like it or not, however, Marisa Rourke Latimore had to accept responsibility for her and her dead husband’s actions. And Mac should have his butt kicked for not anticipating that at the first hint of confrontation Marisa would tuck in her pretty tail and head for the hills—literally. Actions had consequences. How the hell did she think she could run away from this mess?
After spreading out his shirt on the stone hearth to dry, Mac stared into the now-blazing fire, his hands resting on the snap of his denims. He’d tackled plenty of tough assignments all over the globe—hostage crises, earthquakes, revolutions—but he knew that this one could be more than he’d bargained for, especially if he let old memories get in the way of the truth. His instincts told him those old memories were far from dead for Marisa, too. Mac hadn’t missed the way her mouth trembled when he touched her. The chemistry was still there, despite everything.
Not that he wanted to fan the ashes of a dead love affair into life again. He’d learned the hard way what he could count on, what he couldn’t. Still, in Mac’s book, Marisa owed him. A period of enforced isolation with an old lover hadn’t been in his game plan when he’d discovered her involvement in the Morris story, but he was human enough to take advantage of the present situation. He would enjoy seeing that she finally paid—at least in some small measure—for the way she’d betrayed him so long ago.
His smile returned at the prospect. He unfastened his jeans, then slid out of them and draped them over a chair back. They began to steam almost immediately. Clad in long-sleeved thermal undershirt and long johns, he rested both hands on the mantel, letting the waves of heat soak into him. The frantic detective work and two-day drive in stinking weather, not to mention that mile hike uphill in a snowstorm, were catching up with him, and the warmth was making him drowsy.
“Here, this is the only thing I could—” Behind him, Marisa’s words broke off with a small gasp of outrage.
Mac straightened, stretched and gave her a lazy glance over his shoulder. “Get a grip, princess. You’ve seen me in my skivvies before.”
“Not an experience I wanted to repeat,” she snapped. Face flaming, she dropped blankets, a rolled-up pair of wool socks and a paper plate holding a ham sandwich into a pile beside the chairs he’d chosen. “But I suppose your behaving with the least bit of common decency is too much to expect.”
“Hey, I was wet. You want me to sleep in damp clothes and catch my death?”
“It’s a thought.” Without looking at him, she kicked off her shoes and crawled onto the sofa beside her son, arranging the blankets over them both.
Mac wrapped himself in a fluffy comforter and sat in the chair to pull on the dry socks. He made his tone conversational. “You know, the most sensible thing would be for us to cuddle together to conserve body heat.”
“In your dreams, Mahoney.” Her voice was muffled by the piles of blankets, but the agitation in her tone was plain. “Shut up so we can sleep.”
Reaching for the sandwich, Mac propped his long legs in the seat of the matching chair. Yeah, in my dreams, he thought. If she only knew.
Halfway through the sandwich, he paused long enough to examine it more closely. Ham, cheese, mustard, no mayo. He hated mayonnaise. She’d remembered....
The next mouthful went down hard. She remembered. As much as he did? With as much pain? They’d had so much. At least he’d thought they had. Did she regret at all that she’d left him without a word?
Mac set aside the unfinished sandwich, huddling down in the chair and pulling the comforter up around his ears. Dancing orange shadows illuminated the room and the rounded forms of the woman and child on the big sofa. Although the cadence of her breathing was even, he knew she wasn’t asleep.
“Marisa?” His voice was low, barely audible above the howling of the unrelenting storm outside.
“Hmm?”
“Where did it go wrong?”
There was a long silence, so long that Mac decided she wasn’t going to answer him.
Finally, she replied. “Does it matter?”
Mac had no answer that he could voice, but it did matter. God help him. It did.
Two
Marisa awoke smiling, her dreams melting into gossamer images of beaches and a green-eyed man and the sensation of sunshine warming her skin. She stretched, indulging in the perfect euphoric moment. In the next instant, sleep slipped completely away, and she sat up with a gasp.
Nicky! The space on the sofa beside her was empty. Blood surging, Marisa threw back the blankets and rolled to her feet in a panic.
Above the crackle of the steadily burning fire, high-pitched childish chatter drifted from the direction of the kitchen. She stumbled toward the rear of the lodge, stopping short at the cased opening into the cozy dining area and country kitchen.
“My mommy can do that better.”
“Yeah, kid? Well, your mommy’s still snoozing like Goldilocks, so I guess it’s up to me. See if this suits you.”
Marisa quit breathing. Mac Mahoney stood with his back to her—his bare,
