She would not expose her old body to his young gaze again.
Ever.
How embarrassing. Humiliating.
Wrong.
“Why? I don’t get it.” He followed her around the bed to where her clothes were scattered all over the floor. Helped her pick them up.
She snatched her bra from his fingers with a sharp “Give me that.” He shook his head.
“What’s a few years’ difference in age, Audrey? We’re still the same people who’ve been making love in that bed for most of the past twenty-four hours.”
How dare he remind her of that? Especially now?
“A few years?” she screamed at him. Where had that voice come from? Taking a deep breath, she finished a little more calmly, “That’s what you call it?”
“Last time I looked a few’s three to four,” he said, standing between her and the door—deliberately, she suspected. “I figure at the most we’re looking at five or six, so if you want to split hairs and worry about semantics, then it’s one or two more than a few.”
His voice had lost some of its tenderness, though she detected no anger. Just distance. He was transforming from lover to detective again. From child to man. Audrey stared at him. She couldn’t help it.
She had to leave. Had to get away and pretend this weekend never happened. To somehow rescue her heart from the debacle she’d created.
She started to laugh incredulously.
“Five or six years?” she asked, her voice, shaky with tears, still sharp. “That’s what you think?”
He slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans. A child his age had no right to look so damned mature doing that.
So damned sexy.
“Yeah,” he said with another frown. “You just took the bar exam. On average, a person graduates from college at twenty-one or -two, then does three years of law school. That puts him at twenty-five. But as smart as you are, and being a workaholic, I figured you probably didn’t take five years to do your undergrad, so there’s a good chance you were twenty or twenty-one when you finished your undergrad and twenty-three or -four out of law school, which made the difference in our ages not that great.”
He’d given the matter a lot of thought. She didn’t really understand why the notion calmed her, but she welcomed the respite. However brief it might turn out to be.
“I graduated from college at twenty,” she told him, not sure her delivery carried the power she intended as she stood there trailing sheets and a blanket over her naked torso. “At which time I followed my mother’s dictates and worked for her until I had saved enough money to attend law school without any help from her. She’d told me she would disown me if I made a decision so obviously not right for me.”
Ryan’s shoulders straightened. Tensed. His entire body seemed to be on alert. As though he were walking into a robbery in progress. “How long did it take you to save up for law school?”
“You can’t work your first year in law school, did you know that?”
His eyes narrowed. “No.”
“I had to save a couple of years’ living expenses, as well as tuition and books…”
“But you were working for the boss, so you made a lot.” There was nothing childlike about the alert man standing before her. Nothing young or immature about the commanding tone of voice, almost as though he could will the truth to be what he needed it to be.
“My mother insisted I start out at the bottom and earn my way up just like everyone else. Character building, she said.”
She almost felt sorry for him. Except that she had to stay angry to survive this. And to figure out a way to exit with dignity.
Or, more importantly, with finality.
She just wasn’t sure who she was mad at. Herself or him. She hadn’t known. She’d assumed.
And so, apparently, had he.
Suddenly Audrey was exhausted. Needed to get this over and done with. Needed to get outside his world and find herself again.
To reassure herself that she was still there.
Intact.
That she hadn’t made a mistake that would change the rest of her life.
“I’m thirty-five, Ryan.” Her words were crisp and clear. All business. “Thirteen years older than you. Almost old enough to be your mother.”
CHAPTER SIX
YOUR MOTHER. Audrey’s words crashed around in Ryan’s brain, deafening him to whatever else she was saying. He could see her lips moving, but couldn’t make any sense out of the sound. Your mother.
She had no idea how close she was to the truth.
Ryan’s biological mother was thirty-eight. Only three years older than the woman he’d spent the past twenty-four hours in bed with.
He stood rigid. It’s what he did. Remained on his feet no matter the circumstances. Met it head on. Handled it.
Did what was right.
Followed the rules.
Black and white.
What in the hell did he do with a situation that had every color of the rainbow, in every hue, all clashing with one another, surrounded by a sea of brown and a buzzing that wouldn’t quiet?
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