“We finished our business.” Her head tilted up at him, those green eyes with their mysterious brown flecks, had him thinking otherwise.
“I’m not arguing with that,” he offered. “I guess I’m just looking for some closure on that whole phase of my life. Think you could humor me long enough for a conversation?”
“I guess.”
He wondered at her hesitancy. “You have a significant other out there who might not understand?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not married or otherwise significantly, uh, connected.”
“Because you’re still afraid that a relationship would take away your freedom?”
When he’d married Amunet, he hadn’t thought he’d robbed his wife of her liberty, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Their marriage had certainly trapped her. Or changed her, anyway. Enough so that she’d eventually been driven to suicide?
“Not really,” Juliet said, her gaze clear. “Anyway, it wasn’t my freedom I was protecting back then. I just needed to know that I could provide for myself before I relied on anyone else. I needed to believe in me.”
He nodded. That he understood. It had taken four years away and more time back home before he’d discovered that.
“Are you dating someone?”
She shook her head, lower lip protruding slightly. “No. You?”
“No.” He couldn’t tell if his reply had any effect on her. Not that it mattered.
“So what about that drink?”
“If you can make it early, say, four o’clock or so, I can do Thursday this week. Just once. For old times’ sake.”
Right after court.
Blake nodded. “Thursday it is.”
HAVING BUILT a successful career on finding different ways to present the truth, Juliet failed miserably, over the next two days, to come up with a truth that would suffice as a plausible excuse to cancel her drink date with Blake Ramsden.
She just couldn’t find a way to say, “I don’t want to see you ever again because you’re the father of my daughter and I don’t want you to know that.”
“You’re wearing red again.” Mary Jane was sitting at the kitchen table Thursday morning, chewing her favorite marshmallow-and-oat cereal, her legs bouncing beneath her.
“It’s my third day on the hot seat.”
“That’s green day.”
The kid knew her too well. She was too predictable. Had life really become so obsessively the same that someone could predict her day based on the colors she chose? Or was it just Mary Jane who’d always been too perceptive?
“I’m having a drink with Blake Ramsden after court this afternoon.”
“While I’m at Brownies,” Mary Jane said, nodding, her attention still on her cereal. “Good thinking.”
Juliet dropped into the chair closest to her daughter, reaching over to push curls back from the girl’s cheek, knowing they were going to spring right back.
“Don’t you want to know why I’m meeting him?”
Wide eyes, such a strange contrast of all-knowing adult and unsure little girl, stared up at her. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you worried?”
“How can I be? I just found out about it.”
“Are you mad?”
“No.”
“But?”
“I don’t want a dad. I like us just the way we are.”
Life just never quit getting harder. No matter how many hurdles she maneuvered through successfully. “I like us just the way we are, too.”
Frowning, Mary Jane pushed away her not-quite-empty bowl. “You promised you wouldn’t tell him about me.”
“I’m not going to tell him.” She paused to assess the doubts that had been plaguing her for almost a week. Everything happened for a reason and the timing of Blake Ramsden’s return to her life had occurred just as she was struggling to help Mary Jane find her place in the world.
Every day, when she dropped the child off at school, she waited for a phone call. And every afternoon, when she picked her up, she breathed a sigh of relief.
It wasn’t normal.
Picking up the bowl, she took it to the sink, rinsed it, put it in the dishwasher. “Here’s your lunch,” she said, taking the brown bag out of the refrigerator.
Mary Jane reached for the bag, looking up, her expression not quite as open as usual.
“Hey, remember our deal,” Juliet said, holding her daughter’s free hand.
“What?”
“If ever there comes a time that you want to meet Blake, you let me know.”
“I won’t—”
“And,” Juliet interrupted, “if ever there is a time when I think I have to tell him about you, I’ll discuss it with you first. I promised, Mary Jane, and I’ve never broken a promise to you.”
It took a moment for the clouds to disappear, but after a little bit of thought the little girl smiled up at her.
“I know,” she said.
Juliet just hoped she didn’t live to regret having made that promise.
WALKING INTO the upscale downtown bar on Thursday, Juliet took a cursory glance around, hoping Blake would be late. She could say she’d been there and leave before he showed up.
It would be the truth—and the best version of it she’d managed to concoct.
Her second best idea had been to look, but not very hard, only enough to say she’d been there and hadn’t seen him, and then get the hell out before he saw her.
Her third and final hope had been that he wouldn’t show.
She saw him as soon as her eyes adjusted from the day’s bright sunshine to the bar’s interior. Sitting in a rather secluded booth for two, he should have been easy to miss. But no, her eyes were drawn right to him.
“Hi.” Juliet slid in across from him, trying not to notice how broad his shoulders looked minus the suit coat he’d been wearing the other day.
“Red, again,” he greeted her with a curious smile. “A brave move for a redhead.”
“My hair’s not—”
“I know, I was teasing,” he admitted. “Your hair is auburn.”
They’d had that conversation nine years before. When she’d been wearing nothing at all and he’d been playing with her hair against her breasts, telling her he’d never seen anything quite like it.
It had been right after they’d made love the second time with the first condom—the time, she’d long ago decided, that she had conceived Mary Jane.
“And the suit looks great,” he said when she didn’t respond. “Beautiful in fact.”
She wished he’d stop catching her off guard. “Thank you.” It had been a long time since she’d felt desirable, and life was much more under control that way.
They ordered drinks, the bar’s specialty, a mixture of rum, vodka and a couple of exotic fruits. Blake added an order of chips and salsa.
“We’re