good,” he murmured. “It sounds as if you’re doing well.”
Looking up at her now, he found himself confused about why he’d let this woman walk out on him. He tried to focus, to grab at a reason, then it came to him in a wrenching thud when she spoke again.
“I am. I love working on things for children.”
Children. At least he remembered one of the many reasons why their marriage had dissolved. They’d been on the beach at dawn, watching the sun rise, and she’d hugged her legs, staring out at the water.
“What a place for kids to grow up.”
He’d made some noncommittal answer like “Yeah, great,” but he’d been paying more attention to her tiny blue bikini and wondering how soon they could get back to the house so he could make love to her.
“I’ve always wanted to raise my kids by the ocean. That was the best time of my life, up in Jensen Pass. The ocean was like freedom to me, and I always knew that when I got married, I’d be by the ocean, and my kids would swim like fish.”
He’d been tracing her jawline with the tip of his finger but stopped. “That’s a nice fantasy,” he’d murmured, hoping he could banish the whole idea that easily.
But nothing about Sam had been easy. “It’s what I want. What I’ve always dreamed of. A husband and children. All the trimmings.”
He couldn’t pass that off as another rough spot in a rushed marriage. They were two people who had met and married in two weeks, two strangers who had desperately tried to reach out to each other. He hid from her words, from a dream life that he didn’t want. All he wanted was her.
He didn’t want children. He didn’t want to be tied down. But he wanted her. He’d stood, lifted her into his arms and carried her to the house. Their lovemaking that time had been explosive, and it had also been the last time he’d touched her.
Their relationship had been too intense and all-consuming. All he’d known while they were together was that nothing else mattered. Not when she smiled. Not when she touched him. At least, not at first while they were lost in each other’s arms.
“Children. Good.” He spoke past an odd tightness in his throat. “I’m glad things are working out for you.” He looked away, the thought of that last day bringing bitterness in a rush. He’d been wrong, so wrong. His mistake. His impulsiveness. His decision. A marriage that should have never been. She’d needed the commitment of marriage, and he’d gone along with it, never thinking about the consequences of two people finally looking at each other and finding out they were strangers. Husband and wife, but strangers.
“How have you been doing?” Sam asked abruptly.
He looked back at her, bracing himself this time, expecting that rush of need and desire that came no matter how rationally he tried to fight it when he was near her. “Working. I keep busy.”
“Of course, I remember,” she said softly. “Still fighting for the bad guy? Giving a defense to those with no defense?”
His headache increased as echoes from the past bombarded him. “How can you defend me when you know darn well that I did all that stuff the judge read to you? I mean, I didn’t intend to do it, but I’m guilty.”
His response now came as easily as the same response had come so long ago. “Everyone deserves a defense and I’m good at it.” He’d gotten her off with a fine, driving school and a restricted license for three months. A slap on the wrist after everything she’d done. “I got you off, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did,” she said, and his headache grew when her chin lifted just a fraction of an inch. “But then again, I wasn’t a serial killer.”
“You drove like one,” he said.
Sam felt her face burn, and she was furious that she was still so vulnerable to everything Nick said or did. It had to be the shock. When she’d come to Los Angeles, she’d known she wouldn’t be going anywhere near Malibu and she certainly hadn’t expected to see him walk through the door. Not any more than she’d expected that the sight of him would rock the world under her feet.
She turned from him and the way he seemed to fill all the space in the room, the way he’d always filled the space around her. She concentrated on the attorney behind the desk. But nothing she did could stop her from feeling Nick’s presence beside her. She didn’t have to inhale to know that he was so close she almost felt the air stir as he shifted in the leather chair.
She didn’t have to turn to be assailed by his image, an image burned into her mind. The navy suit, the pin-striped shirt with a deep red tie. His hair, a bit longer than it once had been, swept back from a hard face. Angles and planes. Those eyes. The one constant with Nick was that he was as sexy as hell. Even when he looked as if he wasn’t feeling well.
She couldn’t block out the image even when she wasn’t looking at him. He still had the same effect on her as he had the first moment they’d met, the first time he spoke to her in that low, rough voice, the first moment he touched her. She took a deep breath and knew she needed to go home, but she couldn’t till tomorrow morning. Until then, she just needed to be out of this office and to put Nick behind her.
“Mr. Danforth, I tell you what. I’ll get these back to you before I fly out tomorrow,” she told the attorney.
“That’s fine.” The man frowned at the two of them, probably glad that she was leaving and any explosion wouldn’t happen. “Just fine.”
She picked up her small white purse, then turned and walked away. The door was close enough for her to reach out and touch when she heard Nick’s voice call out, “Sam?”
She stopped but didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to look at Nick, the man she married, the man whose touch could make all reason flee, the man who could make her ache with just the sound of his voice. She held the doorknob so tightly her hand ached. All she wanted to do was cross the room and make some contact with him. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
Sam stood very still, his words hanging between them, and she didn’t know what to do. He was sorry. For some reason, that centered her. It killed whatever had been happening, whatever craziness was growing inside her, and in its place came a startling anger. She remembered. That moment she knew she’d have to leave. That moment she realized that Nick was a stranger.
Nick and Greg O’Neill on the deck of the Malibu house. She’d been gone, losing herself in her painting. The morning had started badly with a sense of something wrong, but she hadn’t been able to figure it out. There had been so many rough spots in the short marriage, but that morning, something had changed.
When they’d come back to the house from the beach, their lovemaking had been incredible and almost desperate. Now she realized she had sensed their relationship was over. That was the last time they’d made love. She’d immersed herself in her painting all day, then when night came, she’d heard voices in some other part of the house.
Wiping her hands on a rag, she’d gone toward the voices but stopped when she realized that Nick and Greg O’Neill were talking on the deck overlooking the beach. There were no lights on, just a partial moon, and the sound of Nick’s voice seemed to be everywhere in the air.
“My God, Greg, I’ve gotten
