Wintergreen

respected his nine-year-old ethics, but as a single parent she was also frightened of Johnny’s volatile personality. “What did you say to him?” she asked suddenly.

“That I would love to see Baker behind bars. That that’s why I became a lawyer, so I could put cruel people behind bars. And that by taking the situation into his own hands, Johnny didn’t hurt Baker-he hurt you. To the tune of six hundred dollars.” Matthew hesitated. “He understands now that something he did hurt you. And I’ll pay for that window.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “You certainly won’t.”

“I will.”

“When it snows in the tropics,” Lorna said politely.

He stalked forward, smiling. “I never argue with stubborn women. If you want Baker to be paid twice, Misha, you go right ahead, but in the morning he’s getting six hundred dollars from me, along with a little commentary. I don’t ever want to see him around here again. I intend to tell him that I’d like to rearrange his nose for him, but never mind that. Attorney talk would bore you.”

“Matthew-”

But before she could say anything else, Matthew had pulled her to her feet and was maneuvering her arms around his neck. His lips were gentle on her cheeks, on her temples. His cool hands slipped under the red flannel shirt and stroked the warm skin of her back.

“Your son is waiting to talk to you, so don’t start anything,” he whispered.

“Me?”

“You.” The graze of a whiskery cheek contrasted to the soft pressure of his mouth and she shivered. Her thighs tightened together, enclosing a secret pressure of curling desire that seemed to come out of nowhere. “I came to spend a few simple uninterrupted hours with you. Instead I find myself relegated to the kitchen while you entertain my competition.”

She jumped at the opening. “Stan isn’t competition, Matthew. He hired me to do a job.”

Matthew nuzzled the soft spot just behind her ear. “Honey, I never said it was your fault he looks at you as if you were whipped cream. In the meantime, a quiet supper is interrupted when you try to get into a fist fight with a man twice your size, and I find myself handling your kid as if I had a right to. It’s not my style to interfere where I haven’t the right, Misha. Any kid without a father is vulnerable to a surrogate. No matter how sure I am, it takes two to make that decision and you’re still running shaky. Scared, Misha? You think I can’t see it? Put all that on top of the way you disgracefully teased me in the woods…”

“I never…”

His fingers suddenly tangled in her hair, arching her head back. His tongue brushed the softness of her lips, then stole inside to find the dark warmth. Those few inches between them suddenly weren’t there anymore; his tall frame pressed closer to her, her breasts crushed to his chest, her thighs against his. Liquid suddenly seemed to flow in her veins, but it wasn’t blood. It was molten gold, hot and bright, startling her with its intense rush.

“Say you’re coming to Quebec with me,” he murmured huskily. “I want you, Misha.”

“Yes.” Siberia. The South Seas. Dayton, Ohio. Wherever he wanted. She had never made a decision so easily.

Bemused, Lorna watched Matthew drive away a few minutes later. When he was out of sight, she turned toward Johnny’s room and caught a quick glimpse of herself in the hall mirror. She wore the silliest smile…

Matthew almost had her believing that he initially took a distant attitude toward Johnny solely to protect the child from unconsciously becoming attached to him. He hadn’t thought of Johnny in relation to Richard (or to Ron Stone?). He believed that no child belonged in a romance until the two participants knew with certainty that they were going to stay together.

Matthew almost had her believing that he hadn’t jumped to any erroneous conclusions about Stan. Competition, he’d labeled the man, smiling. Wickedly smiling. She’d seen the first possessive look, had suffered an anxiety attack over dinner anticipating the kind of jealous tirade Richard would have leveled at her… Matthew had felt that jealousy. She would have staked her life on that.

Lorna turned away from the mirror, the smile hovering as she walked toward her son’s room. Dammit, if Matthew Whitaker didn’t repeatedly manage to take the wind out of her sails. She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Or maybe she was still scared to believe what she really wanted to.

Johnny was curled up with his arms around his knees on the bed waiting for her with a stricken white face. “I don’t like what Matthew said. I don’t know who he thinks he is,” her son blurted belligerently.

She sat down next to him, not touching yet. “Johnny-”

“How could he say I hurt you? I’ll pay for the stupid window, Mom. You’ve got to understand. If you’d seen that puppy…”

She didn’t have to. She saw her son’s face, and she gathered him close, hugging him desperately as tears sprang to her eyes. There wouldn’t be so many more times when her son was still young enough to let her hold him, to allow her to see him cry. She was shocked at his breaking that window, and she was going to be very, very tough…in the next life.

Not this one.

In this one, she fell in love with Matthew just a little bit more because he took on her son so she wouldn’t have to. In the interim, there was a man in Johnny’s life whom he respected, though he didn’t know it yet. Johnny was very, very angry with Matthew at the moment.

“I thought he liked me. Then he says do I know what I did to my mother? Do you think I would have done something if I’d thought it would hurt you?”

“No, sweetheart,” she murmured, stroking his hair. “I never thought that.”

“He said he was disappointed that I hadn’t thought about you. Disappointed in me. You never said you were disappointed in me in my whole life.”

So Johnny was smarting from his first man-to-man talk. But there would be no apron strings for him.

Lorna could already see just how much a certain man’s opinion meant to her son.

The delicate model airplane that Johnny had put together was a pre-World War II model, and a testimony to the patience she thought her son had. He didn’t have it, actually. Lorna had decided to reglue it while he was in school, so the entire thing wouldn’t fall apart. When her fingers were stickily committed to positioning the wing on the fuselage, the phone rang.

She fumbled for it, snatching up the receiver to cradle it between cheek and shoulder, becoming thoroughly exasperated when the model plane slipped from her hands. “Hello?”

“Misha? You sound ready to start throwing things.”

“Not at all.” She chuckled, wondering if he could read her mind. Repositioning the plane’s wing, she listened to a few minutes of Matthew’s chatter. He sounded tired, too tired. Nor was it like him to waste a lot of time on small talk.

“…so I’m thinking of taking him on anyway, a rookie fresh out of law school. He’s got a thing for hockey, and I have tickets for the game tomorrow night…a good chance to get to know him outside an office setting, Mish, but it’s been a hell of a week and I’m frankly in no mood for socializing. Will you go to the game with us? I hope to God you like hockey.”

She swallowed rapidly, setting down the plane. “I love it!”

“You’re sure? I hate to rope you in on such short notice-”

“I adore hockey, Matthew, it’s no problem.” She hesitated, wanting to scold him for sounding so tired, but she knew he would resent her noticing. Besides, it sounded wifely. “Who’s playing?”

“The Red Wings and the Blackhawks.”

“Wonderful,” Lorna gushed enthusiastically.

A few minutes later, she set down the receiver, wrapped three rubber bands around the glued plane parts to hold them in place and stared out the window at the falling snow. Not that many years ago, Richard Whitaker, Sr., had had a one-man attorney’s office. Four more men in it now? No wonder Matthew was tired, with that kind of expanding business; she felt proud of him for his success, and she felt a modest glow of pleasure that he was