The Princess and the Pauper (28 page)

April blinked to wakefulness, conscious of a dull throbbing in her head. It was still night; a faint glow of moonlight streamed in through the window.

She didn’t have any clothes on, she realized dimly. But she couldn’t remember taking them off.

The warmth of another body penetrated her hazy senses.
Jesse.
One jean-clad leg was tossed carelessly over hers, and the weight of his bare arm snuggled tightly around her waist. For a moment she hardly dared breathe, reveling in the sensation of sleeping with him. For all their lovemaking, they’d never spent an entire night together, never awakened in each other’s arms.

She gazed at the dark blond hair covering his muscled arms and her heart lurched. She wanted him so much, she realized. Still, she sensed it wasn’t going to be. Jesse had built up a lot of resentment.

She moved slightly, encountering the hardness of his hipbone. His grip tightened perceptibly. “April,” he murmured lazily. “You awake?”

“What time is it?”

“About five. I’ve got to leave.”

Her disappointment was acute. “You can’t stay a little longer?” she asked in a small voice.

He groaned, squeezing her more tightly. “Not unless you want to take chances.”

She knew what he meant this time. What surprised her was, even with all the pain of her past, a part of her did want to take chances. “You don’t have anything to…” She licked her lips, embarrassed.

“To?” he prompted.

“To use, so we could make love?” The words came out in a rush.

“April,” he said patiently. “If I had, I wouldn’t have waited this long.”

“Oh.”

“But there are other ways,” he suggested.

“Other ways,” April repeated suspiciously, as he turned her gently onto her back.

He smoothed a strand of hair off her forehead. “This lack of experience of yours could be interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

Instead of answering he kissed her slowly. April’s mind was abuzz with questions, but when his tongue gently pried her lips apart, slipping past her teeth and thrusting into her mouth, she gave herself up to the liquid sensations that were storming through her body.

His mouth stayed on hers only as long as was necessary to bring her to a fever pitch. Then he moved lower. Wet heat surrounded her nipple as he sucked hard. His tongue demanded a reaction, and April dug her fingers into his hair, arching upward.

And then he moved lower still, kissing the trembling skin of her inner thigh.

“What – what are you doing?” she gasped.

“Loving you,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything else for a long, long time.

If April had thought anything had changed between them, she learned she was sorely mistaken. He left before daylight – he’d called a cab to come pick him up – and his last words were another warning to be careful in Old Town.

A week later April, sitting in Touché’s back room, still hadn’t heard from Jesse. She’d tried his cell but couldn’t bring herself to leave a message; she’d left too many already that hadn’t been answered. She did call Bettina to learn his address, but hadn’t heard back from her, either.

She couldn’t help feeling a bit resentful. She’d thought that night had been a turning point. He’d learned more about her – in every way, she blushed to admit now – and she’d learned more about him than either had learned during all the time they’d known one another.

Jesse had been warm and sensual and loving that early morning. He’d made her cry with ecstasy, taking nothing for himself. How could that man forget her now? Was he just busy? Surely he knew she wanted to hear from him?

Even Eden had asked about him. She’d somehow come to realize he was a part of her mother’s life, and had accepted him without a word of complaint. Amazing. Eden was usually very verbal about her feelings. But then, April had never really had a man in her life, and Eden might have reacted to anyone the same way. Or so April told herself, though her foolish heart refused to believe it.

So where was Jesse now?

Touché’s phone rang, and a few seconds later Martha ducked her head around the corner and pointed at April. “For you. A man.”

April dropped her pile of invoices in a flash. She snatched up the extension, heart pounding. “Hello?”

“Hi, April,” her father’s voice said diffidently.

Disappointment filled her. Just as diffidently, she answered, “Hello, Dad.”

He sighed. “I feel we should talk about what happened. I know you’re angry, but I only want what’s best for you. You do know that, don’t you?”

April closed her eyes and tilted back her head, drawing in a silent breath. “Yes.”

“Perhaps I went about it all wrong…”

His comment was open-ended, as if he wasn’t entirely sure. She knew it was as close to an apology as he would ever come. Her father was too opinionated to actually admit he’d made a mistake. “I can’t be a puppet, Dad,” she told him earnestly.

“I understand. I wouldn’t want one.” His words came a little faster. “But let’s not give up on each other.”

“I don’t think we could ever do that,” April said unevenly.

“What if I drop by sometime, just to say hello?”

April looked down at her hands. “I’d like to see you,” she admitted in a voice so soft that it could barely be heard.

“Good. Good.” As if mentally washing his hands of an unpleasant task, he said briskly, “Then I’ll stop by.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

April struggle for the words. “Just don’t expect too much from me.”

“If you want to see Jesse Cawthorne, it’s your business,” he said. “I won’t pretend to like it, but I’ll try to be civil.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She was barely able to choke out a word of thanks, and almost dropped the receiver.

She walked toward the car park that evening lost in thought. Her father’s call had been a milestone, an unprecedented reaching out to her, and as such, she couldn’t take it lightly. He would never approve of Jesse, but he wasn’t willing to lose his daughter for the other man’s sake. April could almost smile. Now all she had to do was straighten out her relationship with Jesse, a rather difficult task, to be sure, but one she desperately needed to complete.

Footsteps sounded behind her. April jerked around violently. Her blood thumped painfully through her veins. Her eyes darted all around, but no one was there.

It was dark and quiet; a soft breeze, heavy with the moist scent of the river, floated around her. Jesse’s warnings flashed like a red beacon in her mind. She increased her pace. The concrete structure was dark and deserted. She chose the elevator rather than the stairs, even though she’d parked on the second level, where she always did. Her palms were moist and she wiped them on her black slacks. She should have taken Jesse’s warnings more seriously, she realized uneasily.

The elevator doors slid open and she stood poised on the balls of her feet. Her hair stood on end. She could smell the lingering odor of diesel fuel, but not a sound whispered in the dead air.

She stepped out and breathed more easily. She was alone. Her car was less than twenty feet away.

“April?”

Her scream was short. “Jesse!” she cried, a hand at her throat.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, slightly alarmed. “Are you all right?”

Her pulse was thudding hard. “Yes,” she answered on a weak laugh. “I am now.”

He was leaning against an unfamiliar two-door sedan parked next to her BMW, and had gone back to wearing holey jeans and his leather jacket. “What are you doing here?” April demanded, crossing the concrete surface.

“Waiting for you.”

“Well, I’ve been waiting for you to call for days. You know how unpleasant it is to have a man sneak away and never phone you again?”

He acknowledged that with a rueful smile. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

His gaze narrowed. “You don’t give up, do you?”

April made a point of standing directly in front of him, her feet between his outstretched legs. She leaned forward and placed her palms on the sedan, trapping him. “Jesse,” she said, her lips bare millimeters from his.

He slipped a hand around her nape and pulled her mouth to his. He kissed her with a fervency that made her heart fluttered with joy. Wrapping her arms around him, she sighed contentedly against his chest.

“I want to show you something,” he said unevenly.

“Not now. Let’s climb in the back seat and make out like when we were young.”

“I’m serious, April.”

“I know you are.” She pulled back reluctantly, hearing unresolved problems in his tone.

“Climb in.” He indicated the sedan, and April’s brows lifted.

“Yours?”

“I’m off duty,” he explained. “This is my car.”

“It’s so
establishment,”
April said in mock horror.

He opened the door for her, his mouth twisting with humor, but the smile never quite reached his eyes. April’s heart contracted. She suddenly knew she didn’t want to see whatever he had to show her.

It turned out to be at home, a small apartment on the east side. It looked as cold and austere as if no one had ever lived there. He flipped on the lights and waited for her to make some comment. April was gaining an inkling of what he was trying to tell her.

She shot him a killing glance out of the corner of her eye. He was standing by a sliding glass door, which looked as if it had never been opened. “You don’t spend much time here,” April commented coolly.

“I sleep here on occasion.”

“How come I get the feeling you’re about to lay some of Jesse Cawthorne’s own special brand of wisdom on me?” April dragged her gaze away from his appealing, lean physique and stared through the window at the inky night beyond. Her mouth set in a tight line.

“I wanted to strangle you when I found out about Eden. I wanted to knock you off your Windsor Estates hill. I was ready to drag you into court.”

“And?” April asked tautly.

“And I wasn’t really thinking of Eden. She’s used to a certain situation, a certain lifestyle.”

“Ahh…” April was mocking.

“A lifestyle I can’t give her,” Jesse added more aggressively. “Surely even you can see that!”

“If you have to tell me you’re no good for me, just spit it out,” April demanded. “I’ve certainly heard it enough times before.”

“I’m an undercover cop.” Jesse spoke slowly and harshly as if explaining to a very dull child. “I don’t live by your rules.”

“I haven’t exactly asked you to marry me.” April’s bravado was slipping by degrees. She was too close to tears to go on. She couldn’t lose her composure now. This was too important to her.

His jaw was set. “Are you willing to have an affair? No strings attached? With our daughter in the middle?”

April gritted her teeth. Did he always have to be right? “No.”

“What else is there?”

“Nothing, I guess,” she said bitterly. The truth of the matter was that she would marry him, for better or worse. She loved him. She would take the good with the bad, but Jesse always pushed barriers between them, and she saw now that he always would. “If I fought you about Eden, would you have been so interested in removing yourself from my life?”

“Probably not,” he admitted, grimacing.

“Then it looks like I made a mistake.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“Don’t tell me what I feel.” Twin flags of color rose in her cheeks. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. It’s not enough for you! You can’t stand to care about someone who has money. It’s an easy copout. I won’t be with her because she’s too rich. Not because I’m scared of making a relationship work. Not because I can’t commit myself to someone.”

“April!” Jesse barked her name in frustration.

“Take me back to my car. I don’t want to have this fight.” Tears burned behind her eyes. She wasn’t going to suffer the humiliation of falling apart
again
.

“What do you want from me?” He demanded.

Her smile was brittle. “Too much, obviously. More than you’re willing to give.”

Chapter Fourteen

J
esse stared out the window at the street, a dizzying twelve floors below. Behind him he could hear one of the detectives hunting and pecking on his keyboard. It was a good thing eighty-words-per-minute typing wasn’t a prerequisite for the job; otherwise half the department, himself included, would be out of luck. As it was, he was probably already walking on thin ice. Reports on his desk were gathering dust, and he had no interest in filling them out.