know what prompted him to utter his next words.
“I saw her the day before yesterday. She’s fine. Nothing’s happened to her.”
Julia’s eyes were still closed, and he saw her lips tighten. The burning end of the cigarette trembled slightly. When the dark lashes lifted, the fabulous sapphire gaze that had disturbed his dreams for the last two years rested on him.
“Thank you,” she said in an undertone so low that he barely caught it. A wisp of smoke drifted between them, and she looked down at the cigarette in her hand as if she’d forgotten it was there.
“Cherie’s on her break. Did you folks want anything else?”
An older waitress had approached their table, and, disconcerted, Max wrenched his gaze from Julia. “No.” He shook his head. “We’re just about to leave.”
As he turned back to the slender figure in the wind-breaker and jeans, Julia bent swiftly forward and stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. Once again she was under control, he realized. Any vulnerability she might have inadvertently revealed a moment ago was gone, and her eyes were no longer sapphire-like, but a hard, opaque blue.
“Don’t ever try to push my buttons like that again, Ross,” she said quietly. “You of all people should know what a cheap shot that was.”
He stared at her, taken off-guard. Then he frowned. “Look, lady, I wasn’t trying to push—” he began, but she cut him off.
“I know more about you than you think I do. I made it my business to find out all I could about the man who ripped my life away from me.” Her gaze darkened. “You lost a child yourself, didn’t you?”
The door to the coffee shop opened and a blast of chilled air blew in. There was a chorus of half-joking shouts from the table of construction workers nearest the door, but Max heard nothing except for the crashing roar that was suddenly filling his ears.
How had she known? He felt violated. She’d dug into his background—how in hell she’d managed it, he didn’t know, but somehow she’d learned more about him during her two years in prison than his closest acquaintances at work knew. She’d had no right to—
“You don’t like having your personal life pored over by a stranger, do you?” Julia said thinly. “Mine was on the front pages, Max—courtesy of you and your associates. Like I said, I don’t ever want to see you around me again.”
This time when she turned away he let her take a few steps before he called out her name. She looked over her shoulder at him, a flicker of anger crossing her features.
“What the hell is it now, Ross?” she asked, not disguising the impatience in her tone.
He shoved the cardboard package to the edge of the table. “You forgot your cigarettes, Julia,” he said, his own voice barbed. “I don’t want them. I don’t smoke.”
She took a half step toward him. Then she checked herself. “Neither do I, Max. I just quit.” Her grin was tight. “I’m going to be a model citizen from now on.”
The next moment she was gone. Across from him her coffee cup and the battered pack of cigarettes were the only proof that she had been there at all.
She’d been taunting him, he thought with sudden anger. Even her last remark had held a hidden message she’d known he would understand. She’d been telling him that she had the strength and the willpower to do whatever she had to do.
She’d been taunting him and she’d been lying to him.
Julia Tennant fully intended to go looking for her child.
Chapter Two
“You smell like a party, Mommy…”
Julia felt Willa’s hair brushing against her neck as her small daughter gustily breathed in the scent of Dior. She tightened her hold on her, praying that the tears she could feel prickling behind her eyelids would remain unshed for these final few moments. But Willa’s attention was on something else, she noted thankfully. She felt tiny fingers touch the luminous pearl studs she’d defiantly fastened to her ears earlier that morning.
“You look like a princess, Mommy.”
“Do I, kitten-paws?” Even as she used the endearment her throat closed in pain. She couldn’t do this, she thought desperately—she couldn’t go through with it. If she packed a bag for Willa right now they could be at the airport before anyone started looking for her. She could get them on the first flight leaving the country—she could find a job, change their names, make a new life for the two of them—
Except that she didn’t have a passport. And within minutes of her non-appearance at court, all airport and border crossing personnel would be on the lookout for a woman and a little girl.
She couldn’t do this. But she had no choice.
She opened her eyes as Maria stifled a sob a few feet away, and the housekeeper’s tearful gaze met hers. Thomas, the chauffeur who’d driven her on countless shopping trips and frivolous outings, stood by the door awkwardly twisting his cap between his hands.
It was time to go. And even though it felt as if her heart was being ripped from her body, she had to make this final parting as normal as possible for her child’s sake.
Julia pressed a desperate kiss to the flaxen head, gave Willa one last too-tight hug and set her back on her feet. Round blue eyes looked up at her in slight alarm as Maria came forward and placed her work-worn palms on the small, OshKosh-clad shoulders.
“Why are you crying, Mommy?”
Because when I walk into court today I’m pretty sure I’m not going to walk out, honey. Because twelve people who don’t even know me are probably going to find me guilty of doing a terrible thing. Because you’re my life—my sun and my moon and my stars—and I’m so very, very afraid I’m never going to see you again.
She forced a smile and saw the worry in her daughter’s eyes disappear. “Because pearls are for tears, silly. It’s the rule. Now, go back into the kitchen with Maria and finish your toast, okay? See you then, red hen.”
“See you later, alligator,” Willa giggled. “Love you trillions.”
Before the rest of their ritual could be completed, the sturdy little legs were skipping down the hall to the breakfast room with Willa’s usual exuberance.
Julia said it anyway.
“Love you trillions,” she whispered, the tears finally spilling over completely as her hungry gaze imprinted this last precious image of her daughter on her memory. Willa reached the end of the hall and turned the corner.
“Trillions and jillions,” Julia breathed hoarsely to the empty hallway. “And forever and ever, kitten-paws.”
Slowly she turned to where Thomas was waiting for her, and the endless pain began….
JULIA HUGGED the damp pillow tightly, willing herself not to awaken. Sometimes the dream would repeat itself. And despite the wrenching anguish she relived night after night at the end of it, it was worth it to hold, even in her imagination, that
