The Collector's Edition Volume 1 (36 page)

“I’m sure that’s what you’d like to think,” Rowena said tersely, disturbed by Adriana’s knowingness. Had Phil complained to her that his wife ignored his needs?

“I’m giving you some good advice for the next time around. The world is full of discontented married men.”

“Why pick on Phil?”

“He was here. He’s what I want. I’ll keep him happy.”

Rowena dearly wanted to rattle Adriana’s mind-battering confidence. A flash of intuition came to her. “Phil wasn’t your first choice, though, was he?”

A pause. A flicker of wariness. Then a return to aggression. “He’s my last choice, and I’ll make it stick, so don’t think you can muddy the issue.”

Rowena pressed further. “You got a job here so you could be around Keir Delahunty and try to catch his interest. He’s the bigger prize, isn’t he? Only he didn’t take the bait.”

Her eyes narrowed with anger. “Did he tell you that?”

“You were still flashing availability signals at him when you came into this office. You’d drop Phil if Keir gave you any encouragement.”

Adriana snorted. “That man is made of stone. Phil’s much more my style, and he knows it. You can’t put Keir Delahunty between us.”

That was probably true, Rowena thought in painful frustration. It didn’t matter how right her observation was about Adriana’s motivations, Keir obviously had a fine sense of discrimination in judging women on the make and wasn’t interested. Why on earth couldn’t Phil see…But maybe Adriana was right about him feeling
neglected, overlooked in favour of the children’s needs.

What was the best balance for being both a wife and mother? And why was the onus on her? Shouldn’t a good marriage be mutually supportive?

Her head spun between a confused sense of guilt and a sickening sense of having all her ideals betrayed. Coming here, speaking to this woman, was worse than futile. There was no help in it. None at all. If Phil wanted Adriana Leigh, then let him have her, she thought, resolution undermined by a tidal wave of deep hurt and disillusionment.

But what about the children?

“I take it you’re not overly keen about the role of stepmother,” she said flatly, trying to think of anything that might change the situation, might give Adriana pause for second thoughts about a future with Phil.

“You chose to have kids. They’re your responsibility. Not mine.”

“You honestly believe Phil will be happy about shutting them out of his life?”

“Put it this way. You needn’t worry about any fight over custody. Phil may want to see the girls now and then, and I’ll be happy to go along with that.”

“You’re forgetting Jamie.”

Again she shrugged, as though the burden was not hers to shoulder. “Well, he’s not really Phil’s, is he?” she drawled meaningfully.

“Phil is the only father Jamie’s known.”

“Whose fault is that?”

Angry heat crept into Rowena’s voice despite her resolution to keep cool. “Phil adopted Jamie as his son.”

“When he was how old? Four?”

“Three.”

“No difference. He was a little boy, not a baby. The feeling’s not the same no matter how you want to dress it up. The boy is yours, not Phil’s, and at his age, he’s bound to be a sulky troublemaker.”

Rowena could not trust herself to suppress her outrage at these callous sentiments. Her body was beginning to tremble. “Thank you,” she said tightly. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“Thank you,” Adriana returned snidely. “It’s always interesting to meet the wife.”

“M
RS
. G
OODMAN
has said all she wishes to say to me, Mr. Delahunty.”

Adriana’s light, almost flippant tone made Keir grit his teeth against an unwise snap. It would be unprofessional to reveal the strong antipathy he felt, knowing as he did that it was aroused by his sympathy for Rowena. He had no right to any personal involvement with this affair. It behove him to maintain some objectivity.

He unhitched himself from the edge of his secretary’s desk in deliberate slow motion. The report he’d been trying to read was still in his hands, and he used it as a point of dismissal. “Thank you for your cooperation, Adriana.”

“My pleasure.”

“To give pain?” The biting, judgmental words were out before he could monitor them. At least he had the satisfaction of wiping the smug look off her face.

“I didn’t ask for this meeting, Mr. Delahunty,” she coolly reminded him.

“A matter of opinion, Adriana. It’s my experience that changing people’s lives incites retaliation, even when the change is innocently caused.”

Rowena’s parents had taught him that. Not that this self-obsessed woman would care what damage she wreaked in going after what she wanted. They were empty words to her.

“I don’t want more company time wasted on gossip, Adriana,” he went on, chilling her out of any further comment. “I’d advise you to keep your meeting with Mrs. Goodman entirely private. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly, Mr. Delahunty. I appreciate your tact.”

He nodded.

She left.

He turned to his homely, middle-aged secretary. “Same for you, Fay. No talk about this.”

“Locked box,” she replied, giving him her owl look.

The tense muscles in his face relaxed into a smile. He liked Fay Pendleton. She not only delivered everything he asked of her with a minimum of fuss and maximum efficiency, her wonderfully expressive face and dry sense of humour always amused him. As did her hair, which was burgundy with wide, blonde streaks at the moment. Every three months she experimented with a new colour combination. Grey, she had declared, was too dull for her.

“I’ll check this later,” he said, dropping the report she had prepared for him on her desk. “Would you make some coffee, Fay, and bring it in with the sandwiches as soon as they’re delivered?”

“Will do.”

He wasn’t about to let Rowena go without any sustenance. She had probably been too wrought up to eat breakfast, and Adriana had undoubtedly gone for the kill. Rowena would be in no fit state to drive. She shouldn’t be alone, either.

Keir reached the office door in a few quick strides. He didn’t know if Rowena would welcome his company or not. He remembered the polite barrier she had maintained between them at last year’s staff Christmas party. He had felt then that she wanted no part of him, and he had reluctantly respected her wishes. It was probably only the shattering effect of knowing her marriage was on the rocks that had allowed the old sense of familiarity to break through this morning. He hoped…

Well, he could only try.

As he entered the office and closed the door quietly behind him, he was intensely aware of the need to tread very carefully. Rowena had come to do what she could to save her marriage. She wanted—loved—Phil Goodman. She was not looking for another man in her life, certainly not in any close capacity.

She sat with her elbows on the table, her head in her hands, fingers pressed tightly to her temples. Pain, defeat…and there was nothing he could do about either. It flitted through his mind that Brett would have pummelled Phil Goodman, inflicting hurt for hurt to his little sister. Keir knew it would do no good in these
circumstances, yet he found himself empathising with the urge to do violence. Rowena deserved to be valued. To be cast aside for a woman like Adriana Leigh…

Keir took a deep breath, unclenched his hands and headed down the room to offer what comfort he could. Maybe she would accept a shoulder to cry on. Maybe she would let him drive her home. Maybe there would come some time in the future when she could view him as a friend again. More than a friend.

He was acutely conscious of the hole in his life, the emptiness that no one had been able to fill since Rowena and Brett had been lost to him. A bond of long sharing and understanding had been broken, and the years since had only hammered home how precious and rare it had been. It was impossible to get Brett back, but Rowena…

Dared he lift her from that chair and enfold her in his arms?

She looked up.

Her beautiful green eyes were awash with tears.

There was no decision-making.

He simply did it.

I
T HAPPENED
so fast, Rowena was scooped from the chair and wrapped in Keir Delahunty’s embrace before she could even begin to think it was wrong to have such intimate contact with him. Then the impact of his body against hers threw her into confusion.

She wasn’t used to being held closely by any man but Phil. It had been so long since Keir had made love to her, yet she was instantly reminded of how it had felt with him. It made her acutely aware of both her sexuality and his.

Images of their youthful nakedness flashed into her mind. Her breasts, pressed flat to his broad chest, started prickling with disturbing sensitivity. Her thighs trembled with the shock of recognising the virile strength of his. Her back burned under the cocooning warmth of his arms. All normal thought processes were paralysed by sensations she was utterly powerless to stop.

One hand slid up to her neck, his fingers splaying through her hair as he gently pressed her head onto his shoulder. Her heart seemed to pound in her ears. The scent of some tangy aftershave lotion assaulted her nostrils. Her stomach contracted in sheer panic at the memories evoked.

“You don’t have to fight the tears, Rowena,” Keir murmured, his cheek resting against her head. “You can let out the grief with me. Just as you would with Brett if he were here.”

Guilt that she no longer had a big brother? Sympathy for her pain? The tears were gone, shocked back to the well of despair that Keir’s action had suddenly submerged. She shouldn’t be feeling other things, but she was. And it was wrong. Terribly wrong!

Her mind shifted from one turmoil to another. Was Keir remembering other times when he’d held her, not as a surrogate brother but as a man who wanted her, needed her to be a woman with him?

She was not seventeen any more. She was well and truly a woman, an experienced woman who was in a highly vulnerable state, with her marriage on the rocks and her husband in love—or lust—with someone else. Did Keir think that made her available to him?

Why hadn’t he married? What kind of man was he now? She didn’t know. The meeting with Adriana had left her feeling she was a naive fool who didn’t know anything!

It was as though all the foundations of her life had been ripped away. Was Keir a steady rock that she could cling to? Confide in? Or was there danger in trusting him, danger in trusting anybody?

His cheek moved, rubbing over her hair. His mouth—surely that was his mouth—pressing
warmth…kisses! Her heart kicked in alarm. She jerked her head back and looked up. It wasn’t brotherliness she saw in Keir’s eyes. There was no soft sympathy. She caught a darkly simmering passion that triggered a tumultuous eruption of the doubts and fears Adriana had raised.

“Let me go!” she cried, pushing herself free of his embrace as he loosened it.

“Rowena…”

The gruff appeal fell on closed ears. Her eyes flared a fierce and frightened rejection as she backed away from his trailing touch. “Adriana’s right. Sex is all that matters with men.”

“No,” he denied strongly.

But Rowena took refuge in walking over to the glass wall beyond the table, putting a cold, safe distance between them, wrapping her arms around herself, hugging in the pain of hopeless disillusionment.

She was a married woman. It was wrong of Keir to pretend to offer brotherly comfort and then use the opportunity to change it to something else. Even though Phil…But that didn’t excuse it. Keir must realise she had come to save her marriage if she could. For him to take advantage of her weakness at such a time placed him on the same moral level as Adriana Leigh.

“She
would have had you.” The words burst from her, the bitter irony of his behaviour being similar to Adriana’s striking her hard. “Why
didn’t you take her on, Keir? She was handy, available…”

“Rowena, I care about you. I always have.”

The soft answer stirred more turmoil. She clutched wildly at the first reason she could think of to disbelieve him. “Then why didn’t you stop what was happening between Adriana and Phil?”

No answer.

She swung around to probe further. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know she fancied you, Keir. Even I saw the signals when she walked into this room.”

His face tightened as though she had hit him, yet there was no backward step in the dark blaze of his eyes. “You want a husband that needs to be rescued from another woman?” he challenged, a sting of contempt in his voice. “Face it, Rowena. Phil isn’t worthy of your love. If he really cared for you, Adriana wouldn’t have had a chance with him.”

Phil
had
cared for her. Rowena was not about to forget he had cared when Keir’s so-called caring wasn’t anywhere in touching distance. “Who are you to judge that? Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I didn’t give him enough…enough—”

“Sex?”

Heat flooded up her neck and scorched her cheeks. It was too shaming to concede she must have left Phil dissatisfied in that area, yet it had to be true. She bit her lips, wishing she hadn’t started this tasteless argument. Even Keir’s mouth was curling in disgust.

“Sex isn’t the glue that keeps a man and woman together, Rowena. It helps, but if other things are missing…” He paused, compelling her full attention. “You have so many desirable qualities, any man should consider himself fortunate to have you in his life.”

Desirable.
Is that how Keir saw her? Still? But he had no right. And she mustn’t let herself get confused and distracted.

“The evidence is against it,” she reminded him. “Phil wants to be with Adriana. Everything we’ve shared means nothing against what she gives him.”

“She strokes his ego, Rowena,” he said flatly. “Phil likes to be stroked. He can’t have enough of it. He never will have enough of it. Surely you’ve recognised that weakness over the years.”

“Then why did you hire him?” she demanded, trying to reject his clear-sightedness about Phil’s vulnerability to flattery. It went against her ingrained sense of loyalty to accept it.

“He’s good at his job.”

“Why did you hire her?”

“I didn’t. Phil did. He’s entitled to choose the staff that work with him. Usually it makes for a more effective team.”

All perfectly reasonable. Rowena was left floundering in a quagmire of emotions with no outlet for them. A knock on the office door provided a welcome distraction.

A woman entered, pushing a traymobile. Either the silence or the palpable tension got to her. She
paused, her eyes darting from Keir’s rigid back to Rowena’s face, obviously gauging the weather in the room and finding it dangerously volatile. She winced apologetically and started to retreat.

“It’s all right, Fay. Bring it in,” Keir commanded quietly. He turned to wave encouragement. “This is my secretary, Fay Pendleton. Mrs. Goodman, Fay.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Goodman.” The quick greeting was accompanied by a tentative smile.

“Yes. Thank you,” Rowena returned jerkily, surprised by Keir’s choice of secretary. Far from being a slickly sophisticated front person for him, this woman looked more like a homely pudding. Except for her hair. The rich burgundy colour with wide blonde bands had a definite touch of eccentricity.

The traymobile was swiftly wheeled to the table, and cups, saucers and plates were set out with deft efficiency. Black coffee was poured, milk and sugar placed handily, and a plate of artistically arranged sandwiches completed the service.

“Smoked salmon, turkey and avocado, ham and—”

“Thank you, Fay.” Keir cut her off.

She gave Rowena a motherly look, her lively brown eyes kind. “Do try to eat.”

“Fay…” Keir warned.

Rowena watched her leave, instinctively liking the woman and oddly comforted by the fact that
she didn’t emanate competitive sexiness. Not that it should matter what kind of woman Keir had close to him at work. It didn’t, Rowena told herself. The contrast to Adriana Leigh was simply a relief.

The click of the door shutting behind Fay Pendleton jolted Rowena into realising she should have left, too. This brief hiatus didn’t change anything. Coffee and sandwiches did not fix anything. In fact, they lent an absurd cloak of normality to a highly charged situation, one she should get out of right now before it developed into something worse.

She steeled herself to look at Keir again, thank him for the use of his office and escape from being alone with him any longer. With slow deliberation, she shifted her gaze from the door and met his squarely, determined to put an end to whatever he had in mind.

No matter what Phil had done, she was still married to him, and Keir had no right to be stirring feelings that should have been buried long ago. Buried along with her brother, Brett, because that had been the end of what they had shared together.

Whether he read her intention or not, Keir instantly forestalled any speech from her. “To answer your earlier question,” he said in a tone of relentless pursuit, “I had no interest in Adriana because I don’t care for manipulative people. I don’t want to be with a woman whose responses aren’t genuinely felt. It’s a complete
turn-off, regardless of how physically attractive and available she is.”

“And I’m suddenly a turn-on?”

The tense words hung between them, loaded with too much to back away from. Rowena was appalled at having been goaded into such a provocative retort. Somehow Keir’s supreme confidence in who and what he was diminished Phil as a man, and she resented it. She resented even more the idea that Keir might think he could just step in and take advantage of her vulnerable state, letting her know he found her desirable even if her husband no longer did.

“No. Not suddenly,” he answered quietly. “I doubt that many people forget their first love.”

The yearning for that simpler time was in his eyes, and it hurt. It hurt because if he hadn’t forgotten, he should have done something positive about it when it had really mattered. It hurt because it reminded her how naive and trusting she had been, the faith she’d had that he would come back to her and they’d make a life together.

It was he who had broken that faith, he who had dismissed his first love and put it behind him, and he had no right to call on it now. It was Phil who had brought love into her life again. Yet Phil was betraying that love, just as Keir had.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said desolately.

“It does to me.”

She couldn’t believe him, not after all this time. He might still be able to stir treacherous feelings
in her, but his feelings could only be shallow, a response to present stimulus, nothing deep and lasting.

“How many years have we led separate lives, Keir?”

“We’re still the same people, Rowena.”

The burning conviction in his eyes riled her. “No, we’re not. I’m not,” she stated very deliberately, her conviction rising out of the pain of too many losses.
I’m scarred,
she wanted to yell at him, but pride held her tongue.

There was a shift in his expression. A frown. A doubt. “Do you really want Phil back, Rowena? Knowing what you now know about him and Adriana?”

It stung raw wounds. “He’s my husband. He married me.”
When you didn’t.
“He’s the father of my children,” she added, then wished she had cut out her tongue before uttering those last words.

His face tightened. The sudden bleakness in his eyes smote her heart, awakening a painful guilt over the secret she had kept from him. His child…his son. But Keir had forfeited any right to Jamie. Phil was the only father Jamie had known, and Phil had been there for him, good to him. Only now…What should she do now? What if Adriana got her way and Phil didn’t want to be bothered with Jamie any more?

Keir’s gaze dropped to the table. He stepped over to it and lifted the milk jug. “Do you still
have white with one sugar?” he asked without looking up.

“I don’t want coffee,” she said flatly, wishing he hadn’t remembered how she liked it. The familiarity hurt. Everything hurt. She should go. Why did she feel this heavy reluctance to move? What could be gained by continuing such a disturbing dialogue with Keir?

He slowly returned the jug to the table, then lifted his gaze directly to hers, his eyes having gathered a piercing intensity. “Do you want me to try to take Adriana away from Phil?”

That he should even think of making such a move for her stunned Rowena. “You said you didn’t like manipulative people.”

“I don’t. Sometimes fire can only be fought with fire.” He shrugged. “If it means so much to you to get Phil back…”

“No. Not that way.” She inwardly recoiled at the awful dishonesty of it.

“If you really believe your happiness lies with him…”

“It wouldn’t work anyway. Adriana’s not stupid, Keir. You shouldn’t have taken my hand.”

Hand…body…She flushed again at the response his embrace had drawn from her. It wasn’t fair that he could still affect her so deeply, so shatteringly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said softly. Then with dry self-mockery, he continued, “I should have curbed my natural impulses.”

“Maybe you meant no harm, but people put their own interpretations on things and reputations can be tainted. I don’t want more trouble than I’ve got, Keir.” She nodded to the door. “Your secretary could have come in while you were holding me. How would that have looked?”

She saw his eyes harden with weighing calculation. “You want Phil back,” he said, as though planning how to achieve that end.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said miserably. She honestly didn’t know how their marriage would work with the undermining spectre of adultery hovering between them, yet for the children’s sake…

“It could do some good to jolt him out of taking you for granted.”

“How?” she asked without hope. Adriana had left her with no hope.

“I’m his boss. Most people would consider me a highly eligible bachelor. Adriana certainly saw me in that light,” he said sardonically.

“What has this to do with me?” She didn’t follow his train of thought at all.

“Sometimes people don’t appreciate the value of what they have until someone takes it over, especially someone in a higher position than themselves. If we make a point of being seen together, you could use me to make him jealous, Rowena,” Keir suggested without batting an eyelid. “You might find that Phil will suddenly want you again.”