tell me you just ‘dropped in’?” He arched a skeptical brow. “No, you didn’t, Al. You came specifically to see me. You said so. Sit down.” It wasn’t an invitation this time. It was an order. He punched the intercom. “Rosie. Can we have some iced tea, please? Thanks.”
Ally took a deep breath. He even sounded like a CEO. Brisk, no nonsense. In command. Of course he had always had those qualities, Ally realized. But he’d never been in charge of anyone but himself when she’d known him.
Reluctantly she sat. He was right, of course, she had come to see him. But she’d expected the visit to be perfunctory. And the fact that he was making it into something else—something social, something extended even by a few minutes—was undermining her plans.
It wasn’t personal, she assured herself. At least not very. And PJ didn’t care. She was sure about that. This was simply a hurdle to be jumped. One she should have jumped a long time ago.
She needed to do this, make her peace with PJ, put the past behind her. Move on.
And if doing so meant sitting down and conversing with him for a few minutes first, fine. She could do that.
It would be good for her, actually. It would prove to her that she was doing the right thing.
So she sat down, perched on the edge of one of the armchairs overlooking the East River and downtown Manhattan and tried to muster the easy casual charm she was known for.
But it was hard to be casual and polite and basically indifferent when all she really wanted to do was just feast her eyes on him.
PJ Antonides had always been drop-dead handsome in a rugged, windblown, seaswept sort of way. Not a man she’d ever imagined in a suit.
He hadn’t even worn one to their wedding. Not that it had been a formal occasion. It had been five minutes in a courthouse office, paid fees, repeated vows, scrawled signatures, after which they’d come blinking out into the sunlight—married.
Now she looked at him and tried to find the carefree young man he’d been inside this older, harder, sharper version.
His lean face wasn’t as tanned as she remembered, and the lines around his eyes were deeper. But those eyes were still the deep intense green of the jade dragon that had been her grandmother’s favorite piece. His formerly tangled dark hair was now cut reasonably short and definitely neat with very little length to tangle, though it was ruffled a bit, as if he’d recently run his fingers through it. His shoulders were broader. And though jacketless at the moment, apparently PJ really did own a suit. She could see its navy jacket tossed over the back of his chair.
He obviously owned a dress shirt, too—a narrow-striped, pale-gray-and-white one. He had its long sleeves shoved halfway up his forearms, as if, even in running a corporation, he was still willing to get down and dirty with whatever had to be done. Beneath his unbuttoned collar dangled a loosened subdued burgundy-and-gray-patterned silk tie.
Ally wondered idly if his other tie was equally conservative.
It wouldn’t matter. At twenty-two PJ Antonides had been a sexy son of a gun in board shorts with a towel slung around his neck, but at thirty-two in tropical-weight wool, an open-necked dress shirt and a half-mast tie, he was devastating.
And he made her want things she knew were not for her.
She shut her eyes against the sight.
When she opened them again it was to watch as PJ dropped easily into the chair opposite her and sat regarding her steadily from beneath hooded lids. “So, wife, where have you been?”
Wife? Well, she was his wife, of course, but she didn’t expect him to simply toss it into the conversation.
Her spine stiffened. “All over the place,” she said quickly before any tempting thoughts could lead her into disaster. “You must know that.”
He cocked his head. “Fill me in.”
She ground her teeth. “Fine. Prepare yourself to be bored. As you know, I started out in California.”
“You mean after you walked out?”
“You make it sound like I dumped you! I didn’t, and you know it! It was your idea … getting married. And you knew the reason! You offered—”
“—to marry you. Yeah, I know.” He shifted in the chair, then recited, “So you could get your grandmother’s legacy, foil your evil father and live your own life. I remember, Al.”
She pressed her lips together. “It wasn’t exactly like that.”
“It was exactly like that.”
“He wasn’t evil. Isn’t evil,” she corrected herself.
PJ shrugged. “Not what you were saying then.”
“I didn’t think he was evil then! I just … I just didn’t want him controlling my life! I told you what he was like. All ‘traditional Japanese father.’ He who must be obeyed. He thought he knew best—what I should take at university, what I should do with my life, who I should marry!”
“And you didn’t.” PJ shrugged. “So, what are you saying, that you were wrong?”
“No. Of course not. I was right. You know that. You saw me when—” But she didn’t want to go there particularly. So she started again. “I just … I understand him better now. I’m older. Wiser. And I’m back in Hawaii. I’ve been seeing him again.”
PJ raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
So Ally explained. “He had a heart attack a couple of months ago. I’ve always kept in touch with my mother’s cousin Grace. She knew. She rang me in Seattle, told me he was ill. It was serious. He could have died. And I knew I couldn’t leave things the way they were. I wanted to make peace. So I went back to Honolulu. It was the first time I’d seen him since … since …”
“Since he said you were no daughter of his?” PJ’s tone was harsh.
And Ally remembered how incensed he’d been when she’d told him what her father had said.
Now she had some perspective, understood her father better. But at the time she’d turned her back and walked away. Run away. And even now she tried not to think about the rift between them that had lasted so many years.
“Yes.” Because her father had said that. Her fingers twisted in her lap. “When I went back, I … I thought he might still act that way. Might just turn away from me. But he didn’t.” She lifted her head and smiled at the recollection. “He was glad to see me. He reached out to me. Held my hand. Asked … asked me to stay.” She blinked back the tears that always threatened when she reflected again on how close she’d come to losing her father without ever having made her peace with him. “And I have.”
“Stayed? With him?” PJ was scowling.
“Not at his house. I think he would like that, but no—” Ally shook her head “—it wouldn’t be a good idea. I’m an adult. I’m not a child anymore. I have my own apartment in downtown Honolulu. I’ve been back there since May. I did … go back to the beach and … look for you.”
