“Yeah, Mom, who knows?” Henry added.
“She’s safe with me,” Bill assured them. “Although I must admit I couldn’t resist snatching one little kiss before I said good-night.” He traded conspiratorial grins with her sons then transferred his charming gaze back to Eloise. “Thank you for a wonderful evening, Ms. Vale.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Mayor,” she murmured in reply, not quite able to look him in the eye.
Bending, Bill gave her a last quick kiss on the cheek, and added very quietly for her ears only, “I’ll call you,” as he gave her shoulder a gentle, reassuring squeeze.
Then, to her sons, he saluted smartly.
“Gentlemen, don’t be too hard on her.”
“We won’t,” Carl answered for all of them.
“And don’t you be too hard on them,” he instructed Eloise, his grin widening for an instant before he turned and headed down the hallway to the elevator.
“Yeah, Mom, don’t be too hard on us,” Henry pleaded in a teasing tone as she made herding gestures with her hands to get them out of the hallway and back inside the apartment where they belonged.
“We were only looking out for you, Mom,” John reminded her.
“’Cause we love you,” Carl added wisely.
“You are never going to be able to get out of bed in the morning, much less be able to stay awake all day,” she chastised them. “I’m not paying good money to a private school for you to fall asleep in class.”
“Hey, it’s already morning. Maybe we should just stay up,” Henry suggested.
“Absolutely not. You are all going to bed without any further delay, and I don’t want to hear a single complaint from any of you when your alarms go off at six o’clock.”
“Like you’re even going to be up then yourself,” Carl quipped as he headed into his room.
“Oh, I’ll be up,” Eloise vowed, remembering the busy day she had ahead of her. Then remembering, too, that she hadn’t done anything tonight to alleviate any of the problems awaiting resolution at Manhattan Multiples, she added by way of warning, “And I’ll also be just a little cranky.”
“No, please, not Cranky Mom,” Henry teased as he scurried into his room.
“A fate worse than death,” John said, peeling off down the hallway into his room, as well.
“Good night, boys,” Eloise called out, smiling to herself as she continued on to her bedroom.
“Good night, Mom,” they replied in unison.
They were such good boys, she thought as she slipped out of her black silk coat and hung it in the closet. But they really should have gone to bed as instructed. Although, as John had said, it was probably a good thing they hadn’t. Without the teasing interruption they’d provided, there was no telling what she and Bill might have been tempted to do out in the hallway.
Why, she might even have invited him into the apartment for a nightcap.
Just thinking about curling up on the sofa with Bill made Eloise blush as she kicked off her high-heeled black shoes, then reached for the zipper at the back of her dress. They wouldn’t have simply sat there for very long if the kiss they had shared in the hallway was any indication. And Eloise had sense enough to know that sharing even a chaste kiss with him wasn’t a very good idea under the circumstances.
The issues dividing them hadn’t magically faded away over the course of the evening they’d spent together. In fact, those issues would have to be addressed first thing in the morning when she arrived at her Manhattan Multiples office. No amount of wishing otherwise would change that. Nor would any number of shared kisses, whether chaste or intimate.
Though not sworn enemies, she and Bill Harper couldn’t really be friends, much less lovers. Not when he had the power to destroy all she had worked so hard to accomplish the past twelve years, she reminded herself as she washed her face, brushed her hair, slipped into her nightgown and then into bed.
And while she understood Bill’s reasons for wanting to cut city funding to nonprofit organizations, she couldn’t, in good conscience, appear to go along with those reasons by pursuing any kind of personal relationship with him. There were too many good and dedicated people depending on her and, more important, on Manhattan Multiples for her to be so selfish.
She’d had her downtime—as she had come to think of that evening—and she had enjoyed it thoroughly. But she had to face reality in the morning and get busy again doing whatever she could to save Manhattan Multiples. Even if that meant staying as far away from Mayor Harper as she could.
And she would, really she would—in the morning.
But now, snuggling under the blankets on her bed, eyes closed, arms around her linen-covered feather pillow, Eloise allowed herself to relive one more time the soul-stirring kiss she had shared with him so unreservedly, and to consider, as she drifted off to sleep, the might-have-been that could, and would, never be.
Chapter Three
The muted but monotonous drone of a vacuum cleaner brought Eloise slowly, annoyingly awake. Much to her regret, the remaining wisps of a very pleasant dream faded altogether as she opened her eyes. Beams of sunlight peeked through the slats of the plantation blinds on the bedroom windows, assuring her morning had come.
Only, she didn’t really want to get out of bed just yet. She wanted to close her eyes again, snuggle deeper under the blankets and try to recapture the peace and serenity of wherever her sleeping self had been just moments ago. And she tried to do that—for all of the thirty seconds it took her to realize what hearing the sound of the vacuum cleaner meant.
Mrs. Kazinsky, who always arrived at the apartment at nine o’clock sharp on Wednesdays and Fridays, was already busily at work.
Which meant that she, in turn, had overslept by at least three hours from the time when her alarm should have gone off. Would have gone off if she hadn’t been in such a daze following the Mayor’s Ball that she had forgotten to set the darn thing in the first place.
Why hadn’t anyone invented an alarm clock that went off at the same time every morning whether you remembered to click the appropriate switch or not? And if someone already had, why hadn’t she found one yet?
Grumbling to herself, Eloise tossed aside her blankets and sat up, finally risking a glance at the obstinately ordinary and uncooperative, though highly decorative, clock on her nightstand.
Ten-fifteen! It couldn’t be.
But it was, she chided herself as she hurried toward the master bathroom, then skidded to a halt and headed, instead, for the bedroom door, her disgust at her own lack of discipline—how much effort did it require to set an alarm clock, after all?—having been replaced by concern for her sons.
It was her responsibility to see that Carl, John and Henry got off to school on time every morning—a responsibility she had never taken lightly and had always fulfilled regardless of how late she had been out the night before—well, always in the past.
As she flung open the door and started down the hallway, her agitation mounting, Eloise saw Mrs. Kazinsky backing slowly out of Carl’s room, pushing, then pulling the vacuum cleaner as she went. Seeming to sense Eloise’s presence in the hallway, the housekeeper looked up, smiled placidly and switched off the vacuum.
“So, Mrs. Vale, you are awake. I am hoping I didn’t disturb you, but I had to start on the boys’ rooms.”
“It’s a good thing you did or I might have slept till noon,” Eloise reassured her.
She knew Mrs. Kazinsky liked to tackle her sons’ rooms first, getting the heaviest cleaning out of the way while she was feeling