An Imperfect Process (18 page)

"I certainly hope it wasn't an aberration." He set his glass aside as the energy between them turned electric. "In fact, I can think of a very good way to prove that it wasn't a one-night stand."

With a mischievous smile she hadn't seen before, he caught her around the waist and sat her on the edge of the table, then proceeded to kiss her with a thoroughness that rocked her to her toes. "Do the math."

"You're right, if we do it again, it's no longer a one-time fling." Doubts vanishing, she set her tumbler down and abandoned herself to the kiss. The worst part of her two years of celibacy had been the lack of touch. Now his vivid physicality exploded through her senses like the wild, sweet tang of raspberries. "All week I've wanted so much to wrap myself around you like a boa constrictor."

"If we're getting Freudian here, I think I'm the one entitled to the snake imagery." His laugh was a sexy rumble from his chest to hers. "I'm so glad you're here, Val. I've been wanting to call you all week, but knowing how busy you are, I didn't want to be a nuisance."

She yanked out the tails of his T-shirt and spread her hands on his taut back. "I would have loved to talk to you. I think we like each other, so it's okay to call or visit."

"Much more than like." He slid his hands under her and cradled her tailored bottom. "You have almost an hour and a half until your meeting. I could nuke some Mexican food I have in the freezer and feed you supper, or..." He buried his face in her hair, his breath warm against her throat. "I could show you the bedroom. It's not much to look at, but the appearance sure would improve if you were on the bed."

The heady excitement of a new romance bubbled through her like champagne. "I want to see that bedroom. After all, you've seen mine."

Since his apartment was smaller, they got there a lot quicker than they had reached hers on Sunday night.

* * *

Half an hour later they lay twined together on Rob's bed, passion satisfied but the urge to touch still strong. Lazily Val toyed with his beard. "This gives you a misleading teddy bear look."

"A teddy bear?" He made an exaggerated face. "And here I thought I looked like a Hell's Angel. So much for your thinking I'm an alpha male."

"Alpha enough for me." She snuggled closer. "Are we still on for Saturday night?"

"I certainly hope so." His hands were as active as hers, stroking, caressing, kneading. "Do you have any favorite restaurants you'd like to go to?"

"Surprise me."

"Okay. Fairly dressy, seven o'clock."

She nodded, her face against his shoulder. "I have to get up and go home."

He sighed and tightened his arm around her. "'The world is too much with us, late and soon.'"

Since she had also studied her poetry, she continued the quote. "'Getting and spending, we lay waste our power: Little we see in Nature that is ours.' To think that Wordsworth came up with that two hundred years before voice mail and texting."

"I wonder how he would react to life today? Probably freak out."

"Who could blame him?" Regretfully she disentangled herself and slid from the bed. After a quick wash-up in the bathroom, she collected her randomly strewn garments and began to dress.

As Rob pulled on his jeans, he asked, "When I was looking you up, every reference was as Val. Is that your full name, or did you decide you didn't like Valerie?"

"Neither." Since her stockings were wrecked, she slipped her bare feet into her neat little lawyer pumps. "My eternal hippie mother had a thing for Prince Valiant. She considered naming me Valiant, but ended up with Valentine, since I was born on Valentine's Day. That's better than Valiant, though not by much."

"I like the name Valentine."

He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She leaned back, enjoying the playful affection in his embrace. There had been passion before and would be again, but for now, it was enough to be held.

And she was no longer worried about whether they had a real relationship.

* * *

Rob walked Val to her car and sent her off with a last lingering kiss. Though she left his arms reluctantly, by the time she pulled out of the lot she looked like a woman who would be able to keep her mind on business during her evening meeting. No way could he do the same. He would much rather sit around with a dopey smile on his face.

Fizzing with buoyant energy, he changed into shorts and jogging shoes and went for a run along the quiet, tree-lined streets of the neighborhood. Val might not be as head over heels as he was, but she had liked him well enough to come by voluntarily.

Ever since Sunday night, he had been wondering if they had ended up in bed together because that was her way of expressing sympathy. The fact that today she had found time to visit despite her hectic schedule made him want to turn cartwheels.

She had seemed surprisingly shy when she first showed up on his doorstep. After a startled moment, he'd hustled her inside before she could change her mind and leave. His motives had been pure—a few minutes of her company would have been enough to make his day. That they had ended up in bed again was a glorious bonus.

Exuberantly he broke stride, leaping into the air and batting at a clump of leaves on the maple that overhung the street. He felt like a seventeen year old who was in love for the first time.

Except that he had never felt like this as a kid. Then he was always worrying about what new domestic explosions awaited, and counting the days until he could escape to a new life. The real reason for his good high school grades was because studying at the library kept him away from home.

As a child he hadn't known he was intelligent—his family hadn't looked at the world in those terms. But as his home life deteriorated, he discovered solace in books. He enjoyed reading and using his mind, liked the approval of his teachers, liked demonstrating that he was smarter than kids who came from normal homes.

He had ended up as the class valedictorian without even trying. It had broken his math teacher's heart when he chose the Marines over college, but higher education was something else that wasn't part of his family's worldview. Hell, Harley never graduated from high school. Despite his grades, in his heart Rob hadn't believed that a kid from his side of the tracks belonged in a university even though his teachers swore he could get the scholarships that would have made it possible.

Would Jeff have turned out differently if Rob had gone to a college close enough that he could have been there for his little brother? With Rob as an example, Jeff could have gone to college, too. His swath of destruction had been brilliantly executed—what might he have achieved if he had been encouraged to channel his intelligence in constructive ways?

If he hadn't stolen and used the experimental security detection device, he would still be alive. And probably still burning developments and people.

Rob's elation crashed. While he was enjoying himself in various libraries, his little brother had disappeared into some rough, woodsy hideout he had created for himself. Jeff was a classic loner. School bullies learned to avoid him because he fought like a berserk buzz saw if attacked. So he spent his time alone, growing ever more angry and twisted. It hadn't occurred to Rob to pry into his brother's life—at the time, it seemed that they owed each other privacy. But he should have been more aware. He should have done something.

Sweaty and leaden-limbed, he slowed to a walk as heaviness settled over him. To him, Val was like the world's greatest Christmas present, glittering and beautiful and infinitely desirable.

But he had learned early not to trust gifts. Once, not long after his mother had married Harley, the old goat had taken his stepsons to an ice cream stand when their mother was at work. The specialty of the place was something called a Brown Derby—soft ice cream swirled onto a sugar cone, then dipped into melted chocolate which solidified over the ice cream in a crackly, delicious coat.

The counter girl had made the Brown Derbys extra large and brought them over. Rob had stared at the cones, his mouth watering. On a steamy Florida night, the smoothness of the ice cream and the richness of the chocolate melting on his tongue was the next thing to heaven.

Harley presented a two-for-one coupon only to be told that it had expired. He exploded into curses and waved the ice cream away. The boys watched the cones disappear, paralyzed with shock and yearning. The family wasn't that poor. There was always enough for food and Harley's booze, but to save a buck, the bastard had acid-etched a memory in Rob's brain that still filled him with a disappointment so painful it ached. That stupid ice cream cone had become an emblem of everything that was wrong with his childhood.

It didn't take much to keep a kid happy. A little affection, a full belly, and an occasional treat—and no physical violence that the kid hadn't earned. Instead, he and Jeff had been taught that they didn't deserve the good things in life, and whenever it seemed that they might get lucky, the prize would be taken away.

The wonder was that they hadn't both turned into arsonists.

* * *

Mia Kolski proved to be slender, blond, and tired-looking. She was perched on the top doorstep when Val arrived home. Val climbed from her car, apologizing. "I'm so sorry I'm running late, Mia." To be precise, she was sorry she was late, but not sorry for why. Firmly she blocked out thoughts of Rob, since Mia deserved her full attention.

"Not a problem. Sitting here for ten minutes on this peaceful street is practically a vacation." She stood and offered Val her hand. "I really appreciate your willingness to look at this. My dear ex-husband is putting me in the poor-house by constantly dragging me back into court, and while music teachers are underpaid, it's still too much to qualify for Legal Aid. Sometimes I'm tempted to grab the kids and run so we can start over somewhere else under an assumed name."

Though she managed a brittle smile, it was clear that Mia was at her wits' end.

"Running is not a good idea. Come on in and we'll see what can be done," Val said. "And trust me, something can be done. Want a cappuccino?"

"That would be absolutely heavenly. Go heavy on the caffeine."

Val escorted her visitor into the den. By the time she returned with two cappuccinos, Damocles had settled on Mia's lap and was purring comfortably. "Do you have a cat? If not, you should get one. They're wonderful stress relievers." Val set the foaming drink by Mia, then sat down with a tablet to take notes. "Now, where do you want to start?"

Mia brushed her hair back nervously. "Steve and I were married for seventeen years. For the first twelve, he was in the army, and we moved around a lot. He was always a negative, controlling sort of guy, and he got worse over time. I could stand it when his criticism made me cry, but when I found my daughter sobbing as if her heart would break because he'd destroyed all her pleasure in something she had worked hard to achieve, I hit the snapping point and told him to leave."

"Was he violent? Did he hit you or the children?"

"Never that, but I've come to realize that his behavior was emotional abuse," Mia said wearily. "After the divorce he moved to Atlanta for a couple of years, and life was great. Then he moved back here and started taking me to court, trying to reduce the amount of child support, trying to force me out of the house, which we had agreed I would keep until the kids are both twenty-one, quarreling about visitation. Now he's threatening to ask for full custody on the grounds that I'm unfit."

"On what grounds does he claim you're unfit?"

Mia relaxed into a smile. "I've acquired a boyfriend, a great guy who has kids of his own and treats mine well. They think he's terrific. We never spend the night at my place, or do anything that might upset the children, but the mere fact of having a boyfriend makes me a slut in Steve's book."

"He won't get far in court with that." Val leaned back in the sofa. "Does Steve love his children?"

Mia thought about that. "Yes, but he doesn't
like
them much. Teenagers are just too noisy and headstrong and uncontrolled. He's also such a narcissist that he doesn't really see how his constant feuding with me hurts the kids even though I try to keep as much of this petty nastiness from them as possible."

"Does he spend a lot of time with the children?"

"Not really. He has them two weekends a month. He's never gone out of his way to see them more often even though I wouldn't interfere if they all wanted it. I think it's important that their father be part of their lives, even if he is a pain." She smiled ruefully. "For the record, I never criticize him in front of the children. They're smart enough to make up their own minds."

"It doesn't sound as if he has any grounds for taking custody away from you, and likely it would crimp his bachelor lifestyle," Val said cynically. "Probably he's just threatening that to upset you."

"With great success. Or maybe his mother put him up to it. She'd love to get the kids away from me and under her control."

"Don't worry, it won't happen." Usually a lawyer didn't make sweeping guarantees, but Val figured that Mia needed some reassurance. Since Callie had worked with Mia for years and vouched for her all the way, it wasn't likely that any skeletons would tumble out of the music teacher's closet. "When we talked on the phone, I asked for copies of your legal history?"