Matthew shrugged. “If you say so.”
She took a sharp breath of frustration, not sure whether she needed to convince him or herself. “Matthew…”
But the elevator doors swished open onto their floor and Matthew gestured her ahead of him. “Age before beauty.”
She laughed. “At least you never change.”
Her laughter died when she saw that Zeke still hadn’t returned to his desk, evidenced by a growing pile of messages. “Doesn’t he believe in keeping regular hours?”
Matthew shrugged. “The office is made available to him as a courtesy. Officially he’s a consultant, free to set his own hours.” His expression said that some people had all the luck.
Frustration gnawed at Tara as she glanced at her watch. “I can’t wait any longer. I’m due at a publisher’s meeting.”
“Shall I tell Zeke you were looking for him?”
“Tell him…” She hesitated. What could she have Matthew tell Zeke second hand that wouldn’t suggest she had wanted an excuse to see him again. Matthew obviously believed it. She didn’t want Zeke to draw the same conclusion. “Don’t bother. I’ll catch up with him later.”
Matthew feigned disappointment. “Pity. The showdown promised to be entertaining.”
Not if she had had anything to say about it. “But messy,” she said shortly.
“They’re the best kind. Now all I can look forward to this afternoon is processing prints of some society woman riding her horse in Centennial Park.”
Matthew might complain about working on the society pages but Tara knew he loved the whole scene. “Maybe she’ll have a rich son,” she consoled him.
He pouted. “Could be, although with my luck he’d be straight.”
Murmuring supportively, she left to keep her appointment, more disappointed than she had let Matthew see how anxious she’d been to see Zeke. The feeling made her pause reflectively, her hand poised over the elevator button. Was her anger over the column merely an excuse to see Zeke again?
As her sister-in-law had pointed out, he hadn’t written anything that he hadn’t told Tara face-to-face when they were together. And she could be reading too much into the potential benefactor’s phone call. If so, it was just as well she had missed Zeke. The more distance she kept between them the better, she assured herself, although she was aware of stabbing the elevator button with unusual ferocity.
When the doors opened, she stepped inside, making an effort to focus on the meeting ahead. She looked forward to getting her teeth into a new project, and she wasn’t about to let anything—or anyone—spoil it for her.
Furlong Press was on the fourth floor of the same building. The firm had been established by Colin Adeel, a retired jockey who had started out publishing racing industry fare, then gone on to publish other books when he found he had a flair for picking bestsellers.
Tara had been pleased and flattered when he’d approached her to write a book about Model Children. Zeke had been right when he said she had always wanted to write. Like him, she had assumed that when she did it would be a novel. She had a file bulging with ideas, and had tried to write in the days following the loss of her baby, but the timing had been hopeless. Now her step lightened as she approached the publisher’s office. Other writers told her she should write about what she knew, so this might be the start she needed.
“Go right in, Ms. McNiven,” the receptionist said before she could introduce herself.
Tara pushed open a frosted-glass door with Colin Adeel’s name in gold on it, then stopped in her tracks, her heart automatically picking up speed at the sight of the man behind the publisher’s desk. “Zeke? What are you doing here?”
“My job. I own a slice of Furlong Press.”
She felt as if all the breath had been squeezed from her body. “Colin didn’t say he planned to sell the business.”
Zeke tilted the black executive chair so far back she expected him to crash to the floor at any minute, but as usual his sense of balance was perfect. The angle of his body brought him into disturbingly direct eye contact with her. “He hasn’t sold out. He needs capital to expand, and I want something more than a column to write, so I let a mutual friend broker a partnership between us. You’re not the only one with dreams, Tara,” he said softly.
She struggled to deal with the overwhelming reality of his presence. It was hard enough when she was prepared for it. Unprepared, she felt alarmingly vulnerable. “You never talked about wanting to go into publishing.”
“We never talked about a lot of things and we took far too many things for granted.”
What was he saying? “It’s too late,” she found herself whispering.
“It’s never too late while we’re still breathing.” He gestured to a chair opposite the desk. “Sit down and stop looking as if you’re going to run out of here at any moment. This is us, remember?”
Was her discomfort that obvious? She had come to the newspaper looking for his blood, sure that she could deal with her memories while she gave him a piece of her mind. But she had envisioned having the showdown with other people around. No part of her plan had included being alone with him. For a moment she debated turning and fleeing, but everything in her balked at giving him the satisfaction. She sat.
“This isn’t supposed to be about…us…” Strange how hard she found it to force the single syllable out. “This meeting is supposed to be about a book Colin wants me to write.”
Zeke thumped a palm down on a folder in front of him. “Don’t worry, the whole deal is spelled out here. But Colin’s a romantic at heart. He knows you and I share a lot of history. When he briefed me on the company’s future projects and I heard that your book was on the list, I asked if I could sit in on the meeting. He said he’d let me handle the contract as a way of easing me into the business. I suspect he thinks we’re about to rekindle our romance.” He spread his hands wide. “So here I am.”
His expression of innocence didn’t fool her for a second. “Colin might believe what we had can be revived, but you don’t.”
He abandoned all pretense of ease and let the chair clatter to the floor as he leaned toward her. “What do you think?”
Her gaze flew to his face. On Monday night, she hadn’t believed him when he said he wanted to try again, thinking he was only saying it to lure her into his bed. The very idea made her throat feel dry but she refused to swallow and confirm his effect on her. However skilled he was as a lover, and she knew he was spectacular, she needed more from him than sex.
Nine months of imagining her future as the mother of his baby had shown her how much she yearned for a real home and a family, the kind of future Zeke refused to believe in. “It’s over,” she said flatly. “We’ve both moved on. You to Lucy…”
“And you?” he put in, his voice hard.
“It’s hardly any of your business.”
“But there is a man?”
She wished with all her heart that she could say yes and end this now, but it wouldn’t be true. She hated to think it might never be true, because Zeke had spoiled her for other men for life. “I didn’t say so.”
His eyes flashed fire at her. “You haven’t said there isn’t.”
She made a move to rise. “This will get us nowhere. For some reason you wanted to believe I had another man in my life before you went away, and you’re still obsessed with the notion although it never was true. It still isn’t.”
She saw him digest this. “I’m trying to understand what happened between us.”
“What happened was, we needed different things.