For All of Her Life (4 page)

He was walking back into her life.

And God help her, she didn’t know if she could bear it.

The bad...

...or the good.

But that didn’t seem to matter—to Jordan, at least. He walked in, glanced around the living room, his green gaze giving away nothing of his inner thoughts. He turned by the large, beige, soft leather sofa and lifted a brow to her.

“Please, sit down,” she invited dryly.

He did so, near the edge of the sofa, watching her, elbows on his knees, hands folded idly between them. He waited for her to seat herself, and she gingerly sat before him in the recliner. As she felt his gaze sweep over her she wondered if he was giving her the same assessment she had just given him—seeing what damage the last decade had brought upon her. She waited for him to make a comment. Perhaps, You look great, Kath. The years haven’t changed you at all. But he didn’t. He just watched her. Damn him. She didn’t like surprises. If she’d known she was going to see him, she’d have had on makeup, her hair would have been brushed and styled, and she would have been wearing real clothing. Something black probably, black was such a dignified,
slimming
color.

She wanted to appear dignified, not slim, she assured herself. This had been over long ago. She didn’t need to prove anything to Jordan.

She wondered why it mattered what he thought of her. It shouldn’t. It did.

Still, he didn’t comment, but his eyes remained upon her, intent as he studied her. Unnerved, she determined she was going to be casual. Calm. At ease. She would ignore the Lladro pieces on the floor and the little specks of porcelain dust on his shoulders and in his hair.

“Since you’re here,” she said, “may I offer you anything?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll have a—” he began, then paused and shook his head. “Let’s go somewhere. Let me take you to dinner.”

“Jordan, it’s nearly midnight.”

“And this is New York. The theater crowd will be out in numbers.”

“What are you doing in New York?” she inquired carefully, without responding to his invitation.

“I came to talk to you.”

“As I said before, I have a telephone. You could have called.”

He nodded. “Yeah. And you just bashed me on the head before you closed the door in my face.”

“I didn’t mean to hit you.”

“Did you mean to close the door?”

“Jordan—”

“Instinct, right?” he taunted softly. “Kathy, you’d have hung up on me if I’d called you here, and your assistant would have had you in continual meetings if I’d tried to get you at work.”

“You could have warned me you were coming.”

“You’d have left town.”

“We have written upon occasion.”

“This is important.”

“To you.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, to me. And our daughters.”

She hesitated a minute, watching him. “Are you here in New York alone?”

A slow smile crept onto his lips. “Why? Have you room on the sofa?”

“Not on your life,” she said sweetly. “I was just concerned about that sweet young thing with whom you’re involved at the moment.”

“Tara Hughes?”

“Is that her name?”

“Yes.”

She shrugged. “Is she with you? She may be expecting you back for a late-nite supper.”

“She’s not here. I’m alone.”

Hmmm, all right. So his little playmate wasn’t even concerned about his taking a trip to see his ex-wife. Not exactly flattering, Kathy decided. “She must miss you,” she told him.

“My life is my own.” He shrugged. “Kathy, will you have dinner with me? It really doesn’t seem that much to ask.” He hesitated just a second. “You did leave me, remember?” he asked softly.

“You filed for divorce.”

“Somehow, I didn’t get the impression that you were just on a vacation.”

“You didn’t—”

“Kathy, didn’t we do our fighting long ago?”

Ouch. Maybe he was right.

“It was why I left.”

“Was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes I think you left because you were afraid.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know exactly. You tell me.”

She started to rise. “Jordan—”

“Sorry, I’m not trying to wage war again. It’s just that I sometimes wonder if you didn’t just throw everything away because you weren’t willing to fight.”

“I didn’t want to have to fight. I wanted marriage to be an equal, trusting relationship.”

“Why didn’t you trust me?” he demanded tensely.

“Why didn’t you trust
me?”
she countered.

“And just what wasn’t equal?” he responded.

“Didn’t you just say we’d already done our fighting?” Kathy asked. It was absolutely incredible that after so much time had passed, they came up with these questions—with so much passion still, and so much anger. It didn’t matter anymore. It was over.

Yet it was frightening to see how much emotion remained, how much anger would not go away.

“Yeah,” Jordan breathed softly. “We’ve done the fighting. It’s all in the past, isn’t it?”

“Definitely,” she lied.

“Then surely, by now we can be civil. Kath, can we go to dinner?”

Dinner. Out with him. He just didn’t understand—even if he was close in a strange way she would never admit. He didn’t realize why she had left. She was okay when she didn’t see him. When he wasn’t a part of her life. But being with him again...

She could manage, and she was going to do so. Maybe they could never actually be friends—their time together had been far too intense for that, as they had proven to one another in a matter of seconds after nearly ten years—but it might help her to get on with things if she could exorcise the ghosts of their marriage and at least have a decent speaking relationship with him again.

“All right. Just give me a few minutes. There are sodas and beers in the refrigerator if you want to help yourself to anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

She rose and started toward her bedroom.

“Kathy!”

She paused and turned back. He was standing, tall, straight, arresting, his green eyes sharp, intelligent, and curiously soft as they lit upon her. “This is a nice home you’ve created here.”

“Thanks.”

“And you look great.”

Was that what he really thought? Or was it polite conversation because she’d agreed to go out for dinner?

“Really great!” he said.

It sounded sincere. As if the words had resulted from the intent scrutiny he had given her before.

“Thanks, again,” she murmured. Keep the tone casual, she reminded herself.

She started back to her bedroom again, wondering what she was doing. This was a mistake. She had been better off when she’d closed the door on him. She should have told him to go away. Then he would have been only a minor interruption. She would have been tortured by his face in her dreams for a month or so, but then the memories would fade.

This was just dinner. They’d been apart ten years. She loved what she did for a living. She had good friends. She did date upon occasion. It was just...

She’d never found what she had once had. Long before the divorce, of course. But somehow she’d wanted it just right, she’d wanted it all—the love, the laughter, the devotion, the passion. And if she couldn’t have it, she hadn’t wanted a commitment that offered anything less. Jordan, on the other hand, did have something going. He hadn’t remarried yet, but she was convinced it was just a matter of time before he did.

She threw open her closet door and stared at the rows of clothing. Hmmm. What was just the right outfit for a late dinner out with an ex-husband she couldn’t help but want to impress?

Back to basic black?

She almost managed to grin to herself. Summer in the city was hot, and she did have the perfect black dress, a cotton knit halter-type with a not-too-long and not-too-short skirt. Not too dressed up and not jeans and a T-shirt either. She drew it from the closet, tossed it on the bed, and warned herself sternly that her ex-husband was a man she had left for a reason, that she wasn’t up to a good time in the least, that he was involved with a girl not much older than their daughters.

It wasn’t that. She wasn’t looking to recapture the past. She just wanted the dignity of Jordan knowing that she hadn’t fallen apart, that she was still a person. One who counted in her own right, perhaps. She sighed. Who was she kidding? He’d always respected her intelligence. She’d found that to be one of the most endearing of his traits when they were young. He’d loved to listen to her, sometimes argue a point—be it about the house, their lives, or world issues—and sometimes concede.

Certain that he considered her a person still, and respected her intelligence, she wanted more. Pride, perhaps. Vanity. She wanted him to still consider her desirable. Because she found him attractive.

“No, no, no!” she chastised herself firmly. Jordan was no longer a part of her life.

But what had gone wrong between them had never been physical. She didn’t want to let herself remember just how good sex had been, not now. Maybe she’d been alone too long. Maybe she’d taken “responsible” relationships too far, and maybe that was why intimate details were now springing unbidden into her mind. Yet more than those came to her. Memories of closeness...
after
intimate details. Waking together, being held—

“Quit this! Or else you can’t go to dinner with him!” she hissed to herself.
She had left him because she had already lost him, somehow. Because the trust had been gone. Because of the way he had looked at her.

Maybe she had thought he would come for her, she told herself wryly. That he’d follow, determined to break the barrier that had risen.

After Keith’s death...

She wasn’t going to dwell on it now. She was going to go to dinner and establish a civil relationship between them. Dignified and civil.

All right, so she still hoped she could be dignified and sexy.

She pulled her tailored nightshirt over her head, ready to slip into a dignified and—hopefully—desirable black dress.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

She heard the shuddering of the condo’s front door; the slam as it was thrown inward, striking the wall.

“Kathy, Kathy!”

Her name was shouted in a deep, male voice. Footsteps came tearing down the hallway to her room.

“Hey!” That was Jordan’s voice. That incredible baritone, startled, outraged. Furious, defensive.

The door to her room burst inward, and all she saw at first was a blur. It had all happened so quickly! She let out a shriek, startled and alarmed.

Caught naked except for the lace panties she’d worn beneath the nightshirt.

Her fear quickly faded as the blur cleared as two men hit the floor, Jordan having tackled...

Jeremy.

“W
AIT, WAIT!” SHE CRIED,
making a mad dive for her discarded nightshirt, then grasping it to her chest and trying to break up the two men at the same time. They were well matched. Jeremy was honed to perfection—muscle-building was his job. But Jordan had always been tall and well built and he was the one who had tackled Jeremy.

“This guy just came bursting into the apartment!” Jordan grated as she caught his shoulder with her free hand, trying to drag him up and off Jeremy.

“Jordan, it’s all right!” With a great deal of effort, she managed to drag her ex-husband from Jeremy.

“What the hell is going on, Kathy? The doorman is right behind me; he’s called the police!” Jeremy said indignantly. He scrambled to his feet, standing and straightening his shirt while watching Jordan with wary and accusing eyes.

“Jeremy, this is—”

“Whoa!” Jeremy exclaimed, his eyes growing very wide. He was staring at Jordan almost as if he had just met his Maker. He didn’t need any introduction from Kathy. “My God—you’re Jordan Treveryan!” He stared at Kathy as if she had betrayed him in the worst way, then offered a hand to Jordan. “Sorry. God, I’m so sorry. We were just on the phone, you see. Kathy and I. We were talking. When Kathy didn’t get back on with me, I thought something awful had happened to her. I thought she’d been attacked. You know, big city.”

Kathy winced. She’d forgotten that Jeremy had been on the line. So now both men were standing in her bedroom and she was undressed. Jordan had his hands on his hips, surveying Jeremy as if he were a rival on a high-school football team. Not that Jordan had any rights, but then, being Jordan, he would have defended her to his last breath whether they had any relationship left or not.

If she weren’t in such a ridiculous and half-naked situation, that might even be nice.

“Kathy, who is this?” Jordan asked, looking to her at last.

Who was Jeremy? A lifesaver, at this particular moment, she decided.

She clutched Jeremy’s arm, still trying to hold her nightgown to her breast and maintain a semblance of dignity. “Jordan, Jeremy Hunt, a...a very good friend.” She looked to Jeremy. “I’m so sorry, darling, I was just so startled to see Jordan that I forgot the phone—”

“Ms. Connoly!” The deep, masculine cry came from the doorway. Jordan arched a brow at her. “Ms. Connoly, are you in there, are you all right? Mr. Hunt? What’s going on? Will someone please answer me?”

“James Tanner, the doorman!” Kathy said quickly to Jordan. “You must have met him on the way in.”

He shook his head. “There was no one downstairs when I entered the building. A young man was outside helping an older woman into a car.”

Jeremy gasped. “James said he’d been outside for a few minutes when I rushed in and saw him. He was going to call the police as I came on up here. Oh, Lord. I’m sure he did—”

“Did call the police!” Kathy said in dismay.

“I’ll run out and explain the situation to James and maybe he can call them back and stop them before they get here,” Jeremy said.

He pulled away from Kathy. She lost the nightshirt—it was caught in his arm—as he did so. Turning beet red, she made a dive to retrieve it.

Jeremy, flushed to a shade of crimson, returned it. He then walked out of the room as Kathy grasped the nightshirt to her chest. Jordan continued to stare at her, his lips curving into a smile of amusement...and something more. She wasn’t quite sure what.