naked, in the heat and crawling all over one another, and it wouldn’t matter one bit that they didn’t have a thing to say to each other anymore, that they’d broken up explosively all those years ago, and that even back then they’d been as different as night and day, Spencer so fair, David so dark, Spencer the height of society, with ancestors who had all but stepped off the Mayflower, and David the child of an immigrant and a refugee. But if twelfth-grade rumor had been true…
He’d been in twelfth grade with them, known them both all his life. And now Spencer was his wife, David was still his best friend, and one day he would manage to turn the two of them back into good friends, too. Maybe if he and Spencer could actually get this parenthood thing going…
He was already in his jogging shorts, T-shirt and sneakers. He’d been eager to get all the help he could from David on the Vichy case, but nothing in the world was more important that sharing this morning with Spencer. “I’m supposed to meet David right out on Main Street. We were going to jog over to his place and then go through the files over breakfast. I’ll meet him on the street like we planned and give him some excuse. It won’t matter what—he won’t press me. I’ll be gone about twenty-five minutes, then I’ll be home. How about it?”
“I’ll be waiting,” Spencer promised solemnly.
He grinned, gave her a thumbs-up sign, then started walking to the door. He was jogging before he reached it.
Twenty-five minutes! Spencer pushed herself away from the staircase and tore into their bedroom. In seconds flat she arranged the covers and pillows invitingly on the bed. Then she spun around and headed into the shower. This was going to be Danny’s day, and she was going to make it the best one he had ever lived.
Work! She raced for the phone.
She told her secretary she had a touch of flu, but would be in the next morning. She felt a blush touch her cheeks as her secretary sympathized and told her that she hoped Spencer would feel better. How strange! She was married—not to mention the president of Montgomery Enterprises—and Audrey was a good friend, but she still couldn’t quite manage the truth. You see, we’re trying to procreate here, but our schedules are so screwed up that Danny’s at work on the nights that count, and I’m usually in another city when it matters most. I’m staying home just to spend the entire day screwing around.
“Do you need anything, Spencer? Can I bring you something?” Audrey asked with concern.
“No, no, Danny will be back after he’s done jogging. I’ll be fine, thanks,” she said firmly, a touch of guilt stirring within her again. She was the boss! she reminded herself. She worked long, hard hours, and she deserved a day off with her husband.
“Stay in bed now,” Audrey warned her.
“I, ah—yes, I will,” Spencer said, stared at the receiver, then set it down.
So what was Danny telling David?
A hot flush crept over her body; she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about David. She tried so damned hard not to think about David most of the time.
She turned on the water full blast.
“I love Danny Huntington!” she said fiercely out loud. And it was true. She did. Very much. There just seemed to be so many levels of love. Sly had told her that once. And it was true.
“I love Danny!”
She loved him; their life was good. They laughed together; they talked together. Danny was kind, concerned, wonderful, gentle. She was lucky, so lucky. She stepped into the shower. Danny wanted a baby. This time they were going to do it the right way—and at the right time!—to have one.
The water rushed down on her.
Danny left his house behind and inhaled the clear morning air. The day was going to be a scorcher, but it wasn’t dead hot yet. He loved the early morning and the late night, when the sun hadn’t gotten its grip on the city yet. He loved to run when even the early birds weren’t out, when dew still touched the grass and the leaves of the gnarled trees that lined the road.
He smiled. Just what the hell was he going to tell David? The truth would be best, but he had told Spencer he would think of something else. How the hell was he going to manage when he was grinning from ear to ear, anticipating the day? They hadn’t had a chance to do anything like this since their honeymoon. Since that day in Paris when they had watched the sun rise over the gargoyles, gilding the City of Lights. He quickened his pace, anxious to get back home.
He came out of his private road and rounded the corner. To his amazement, he saw a familiar figure jogging toward him. Curious. Talk about someone he’d never expected to see here…
David Delgado ran in place by the street sign, then looped around a few times on the jogging trail that ran alongside the road. Six foot two, black-haired, and with eyes so dark a blue that they appeared black at times, he was an arresting figure. But then, in Coconut Grove runners came in all kinds, the squat and the lean, the muscled and the nearly anorectic. But even amidst the healthy, muscled, tanned and sometimes very young and almost bare bodies that jogged through this old but still-trendy section of Miami, David was a striking man. The best of a strange mixture of genes had combined to make him as tall and broad shouldered as the Highlanders of his mother’s Scottish kin, while his raven dark hair and clean-lined, classical features had come from his father’s side, Spain by way of Cuba. Thanks to his Hispanic heritage, he was a natural in the sun, bronzing quickly, and since he had spent most of his life in that sun, he didn’t notice the heat too badly while he jogged around in another circle, glanced at his watch and considered heading to the house and giving Danny a call. It wasn’t like him to be late. Especially when he didn’t have far to come to meet David. David’s house didn’t compare to the old Twenties manor Spencer and Danny had bought and fixed up. Though he was doing well at his new business—so well, in fact, that it almost scared him at times—he didn’t have the kind of income to purchase such a place, not to mention keeping it up. He had to hand it to the pair of them, though. There was nothing ostentatious about their home. It was in a quietly affluent neighborhood, and it had lots more character than it did dazzle. It was a warm house to walk into, with a good feeling about it, it just felt a little bit too much like Spencer Anne Montgomery—Spencer Anne Huntington, he reminded himself. But there hadn’t been anything between him and Spencer in well over a decade, and Danny was one of his best friends. It was still amazing to him that someone who had been born with a silver spoon—hell, a silver knife and fork, as well—in his mouth could have grown up to become such a decent human being. But Danny had always been good, ever since they had first met, and Spencer was as cold as ice to him now. Hell, it was ancient history. They were long past whatever feelings they’d shared, and they’d both built their own lives. It was something they could all laugh about. Except that they never did. Maybe, David thought, it was because there had been something vulnerable about all of them way back then. As kids, they had all learned each other’s weaknesses, and maybe some of those weaknesses hadn’t gone away. He and Spencer were still, after all these years, wary of one another, though they both tried, for Danny’s sake, to be civil.
Just as he tried like hell not to let his best friend know how much he remembered about Spencer Anne Montgomery.
Spencer Anne Huntington.
He jogged around the loop again, looking down the street. Things hadn’t changed much here since he’d been a kid. The foliage still grew right up to the edge of the winding road, and the old houses still stood almost on top of it, except where long drives led to mansions unseen by the general public. From the time he’d
