the only jewelry he wore. “I suppose we’d better go. We don’t want to keep my constituents waiting, do we?”
“Not tonight,” she agreed, trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore her nervousness.
“Why don’t you let me help you with your coat?” Reaching out, Bill took it from her.
“Yes, of course. Thank you.”
Eloise glanced up at him again, and her cheeks warmed even more at the intensity still evident in his eyes, still plainly directed her way. Turning, she slid her arms into the silken sleeves of her coat as he held it open for her. As she fumbled with the rhinestone buttons, her fingers refusing to work properly, he put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently as if to reassure her in some way. The deft flex of his fingers through the fabric of her coat was not only heartening, but also disturbingly distracting.
Startled by an unexpected wave of heat that welled up deep within her, Eloise cast another wordless glance at Bill. His smile now had a mischievous hint to it, making her realize—as he must—just how easily she could once again become putty in his all-too-clever hands.
Taking a firm grip on her rioting emotions, and a decisive step away from the mayor, Eloise directed a stern look at each of her sons in turn.
“Bed by ten,” she reminded them.
“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused.
“I have my pager in my purse in case you need me for any reason.”
“We won’t,” Carl assured her.
“I doubt I’ll be out all that late,” she added.
Though she couldn’t say for sure, Eloise didn’t think Bill would want to spend any more time with her than absolutely necessary, especially once he’d attained maximum benefit from the photo ops attendant upon their being seen together in public. And, of course, she had no desire to linger in his company, either.
“You’d better not, Mom. You have to go to work tomorrow, and we all know how cranky you can be when you don’t get a good night’s sleep,” John admonished, his expression mockingly stern.
“Ah, so the lady still has to have a full eight hours of sleep to function,” Bill said, more than a hint of laughter lacing his voice. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
Exchanging what appeared to be conspiratorial glances with her sons, Bill shook hands again with each of them, then opened the door and gestured with a stately flourish.
“Eloise…”
Feeling just the slightest bit at a disadvantage, she lifted her chin, forced herself to meet his gaze and attempted a haughty smile as she stepped into the hallway.
“Thank you, Bill.”
She couldn’t think how she had expected the evening to unfold, but she was fairly certain she had already lost most, if not all control of the situation, and they weren’t even out of her apartment building yet. She also knew she should be trying to eliminate what seemed like a serious disadvantage on her part. But oddly enough, she couldn’t seem to get motivated in that particular direction.
Not when Bill took her arm and escorted her onto the elevator. Not as they rode down to the lobby in silence, his presence beside her comfortingly familiar. Not when the doorman greeted them politely, and not when the driver did likewise as he opened the door of the long, black limousine for them.
Only as Bill settled close to her on the richly upholstered leather seat and the door closed with a solid thunk, sealing them into luxurious privacy did her heartbeat quicken. The warning bells that should have been ringing all along finally went off in her head, but it was too late—much, much too late. They were alone together, shut off from the world, if only momentarily. And Mayor Harper—Bill Harper—her former friend and lover, and now the perpetrator of the possible undoing of all she’d worked so hard to achieve the past twelve years, was reaching out, taking her small, cold hand and folding it into his much larger, warmer one.
“I haven’t told you yet how good it is to see you again, have I, Eloise? And it is good to see you, finally face-to-face. Not just good, great, really, really great…” he said in the same soft, low, utterly sexy voice that still sometimes haunted her dreams.
She knew she should offer him a snappy comeback, curt words cut with just the right amount of irony. Instead she clung to his hand unabashedly, unable to stop herself from allowing her truest, deepest feelings to be revealed. She had loved Bill Harper once, and that love had never completely died. To pretend that it had, no matter how important the reason, was something she was simply too honest to do.
“It’s good to see you again, too, Bill,” she said at last. “Really, really good…”
Chapter Two
Until the moment Eloise Vale looked up at him in the limousine and admitted she was glad to see him again, Bill Harper had been gliding uncomfortably on the edge of uncertainty.
Seventeen years had passed since she’d turned down his proposal of marriage. He hadn’t allowed himself to believe that she’d retained any but the most pragmatic feelings for him during the time they’d spent living their separate lives. And her outspoken, unabashedly negative opinion of his proposed cuts to city funding had made it all too possible that her behavior toward him might be downright hostile.
Bill couldn’t say for sure exactly what had motivated him to ask Eloise to accompany him to the Mayor’s Ball as his personal guest. In fact, he had debated for weeks whether or not to do it.
But some force deep inside him had warned with ever-increasing urgency that renewing his old acquaintance with Eloise—his beloved Eloise—was fast becoming a now-or-never proposition.
He hadn’t wanted her to continue thinking of him as an enemy, as she would have so easily been able to do at a distance. At the very least, he had wanted to find some way for her to be able to consider him a friend.
Though, in all honesty, he wanted more than friendship from her, so much more. And he had known, intuitively, that if he expected to have any chance of winning back her affection, he had to act without further delay, or live to regret it the rest of his life.
He had finally issued his invitation—not by telephone but by handwritten note—fully anticipating that Eloise would politely refuse. Instead, she had accepted via a graciously worded, handwritten note of her own.
Bill had reread that note daily during the two weeks since he’d received it—two very long weeks when he had also contemplated every possible reason why she might decide to bow out at the last minute. She hadn’t, of course. And, in fact, he should have known all along that she wouldn’t.
Eloise Vale had always been as good as her word, something Bill knew well from firsthand experience. She had honored her promise to marry Walter Vale seventeen years ago, hadn’t she? And though her decision had been a painful one for him to bear, Bill had admired her loyalty then as he did now, even knowing that tonight she was only there with him out of dedication to Manhattan Multiples.
He had been fully aware, as certain members of his staff had taken great pains to point out, that she could, and most likely would, use her attendance at the Mayor’s Ball as his personal guest to the advantage of her non-profit organization. But as he sat beside Eloise
