“Who said I was acting?”
He almost crashed. The car veered toward the wrong side of the road, and Jenny grabbed the wheel and chuckled. “Hey, okay, I was joking. Watch the road.”
His blood pressure lurched and settled, and he glared at the woman by his side. “Thanks for the advice.”
She dimpled. “My pleasure. Honest, though, there was no problem. They’re not bad kids.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. They steal cars, but maybe I would, too, if I was as bored as they are. And they won’t hurt anyone. Besides, it’s stupid to drive a car like this.”
“Yeah, right.” He grimaced. “You sound like a schoolmarm.”
“Well…” She managed another smile. Smiles seemed her specialty, and he realized suddenly why he’d liked having her around the office the past few months. Her smile lit up all sorts of dark places, and some of those dark places were right inside him.
But she hadn’t noticed his reaction. “I guess if you’re rich enough to afford it then you can drive it,” she said, “but you should have an ordinary one so you can pretend to be an ordinary person sometimes.”
“Pretend?”
“I’d never presume to call you an ordinary person,” she said, eyes twinkling. “After all, you’re my boss.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I know which side my bread’s buttered on.” She dimpled nicely, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and then hesitated, her laughter fading. “But I guess you’re not my boss now. If you could take me to the bus station…”
“The bus station?”
“It’s where you go to catch a bus when you don’t have a car like this to drive. Or any car to drive.” Her smile suddenly didn’t reach her eyes. “Michael-Mr. Lord-I’m really grateful-”
“You’re not working for me anymore, so it’s Michael,” he said curtly. “And you’re not going to any bus station. The immigration guys were arriving at your apartment as I left. Your landlady will let them in, they’ll discover your gear is gone, and they’ll think, ‘She knows we’re looking for her. She’s on the run.’ So where do you think they’ll look?”
“The airport?” she asked doubtfully, but he shook his head.
“No. They’ll never let you on board a plane looking this pregnant, and immigration knows that. So where?”
She was silent, sitting in the plush leather seat and trying to make her jumbled mind think. “I guess the bus station’s not such a hot idea, then.”
“No.”
More silence. Michael turned off the main road and headed to the river.
“Where are we going?” she asked. She chewed her lip, stubbornness returning. “I guess if you could drop me at a hotel, somewhere cheap-”
“They’ll think of that, too. It’ll take them twenty minutes to phone every hotel in town, and you’re not exactly easily disguised.”
She closed her eyes.
“Do you have any money?” Michael asked her curiously, and he saw her anger flash again.
“Of course I have money. Why do you think I’ve been living so cheaply for the past six months? I’ve saved everything.”
“So you’re intending to live on what you’ve saved from six months’ salary while you have the baby?” Michael asked incredulously. “No wonder the immigration people want you out. You’re hardly independent.”
“I’m independent.”
“You’re not.” He sighed and steered his car to where the oaks lined the cliff tops overlooking the river. There was a place there he knew. Quiet. Private. It was hardly the sort of place detectives would look for a fugitive.
He pulled to a stop and turned to face the woman beside him, and discovered she had the look of someone who expected to be slapped. Hard. It was a dreadful look. He gazed at her for a long moment and discovered feelings shifting inside him that had never shifted in his life. Feelings he didn’t understand one bit.
It put him off balance. Michael Lord was unemotional, detached, cool as ice, and now he suddenly found himself emotional, attached and hot as fire. Damn, who had done this to her? he thought savagely. He had to know.
“Tell me about this person you’re so afraid of, this Gloria,” he said, and waited.
For a while he didn’t think she’d tell him. She sat staring straight ahead at the deep-running river below. The weather was perfect, Michael thought inconsequentially, autumn perfect. He’d put the top down on the Corvette, and the sun was warm on their faces.
She looked as if she needed its comfort, he thought, and suddenly had to resist the urge to put an arm around those frail shoulders. She was making him feel too proprietary for words.
But he still had to know about Gloria. “Tell me,” he said softly. “You can trust me, Jenny.” He teased her gently. “Have I not shinnied down drainpipes on your behalf?”
That brought an answering smile. “There was a perfectly good fire escape. If you chose the drainpipe…”
“Heroes always choose drainpipes,” he told her, smiling. “It’s far more heroic.”
“But much bumpier.” She managed a chuckle. “Not to say risky-especially if you’re thinking about the future production of little superheroes. Think of what all those sharp edges on the way down could have done to your manhood.”
That took him aback. He stared at her in shock. His quiet, demure secretary making remarks about his manhood! And then slowly, his deep green eyes creased into laughter.
HE CHUCKLED, a low, lazy rumble that Jenny hadn’t heard before. Very few people had. Michael Lord wasn’t much given to laughter.
It transformed him, she thought. Michael was big and solid, with a blaze of burnt-red hair, deep green eyes and strongly boned features that made him classically good-looking. His aloofness had repelled her, though, during the time she’d worked for him. She hadn’t noticed what she was noticing now, that the laughter behind his eyes made him seem not just classically good-looking. Impossibly good-looking!
She had other things on her mind, though, apart from Michael’s good looks. She tore herself away from the laughter in his eyes and forced herself to answer his question. After all, she did owe him the truth.
At least talking bought her time. She didn’t have to get out of this lovely car quite yet and face whatever was before her alone.
“I told you. Gloria is my mother-in-law,” she said in a low, husky voice that Michael had to lean forward to hear. “Or she was my mother-in-law.”
“You’re divorced?”
“No.” She gave a half smile but it didn’t reach her eyes. “My husband…Peter is dead.”
“Oh.” It was hopelessly inadequate. “I’m sorry.”
“He died seven months ago,” Jenny said tonelessly. “I’m used to it now.”
“Seven months isn’t long.” Michael thought back to the death of his partner on the police force. Was it two years already since Dan had died?
Grief and shock stayed with you forever, he thought, and the emotional damage lasted a lifetime. No, seven months wasn’t long at all.
Jenny was studying him curiously. “You look like you understand.”
“I don’t know how it feels to lose the person you love,” Michael said. “But I’d guess it must be just about as bad as it can get.”
“It is,” she said forcibly, staring at the river. “One minute I was telling him I was pregnant and watching his face, and he…” She shook her head as if shaking off a nightmare. “No matter. The next thing, the hotel phone’s ringing and they’re telling me Peter’s plane crashed and I’d best get to the hospital because he’s dying.” She flinched, and her eyes looked inward. “Peter died four days later, but in the hospital we talked about the baby… And his mother came from England and he told her…told Gloria…”
“Told Gloria what?”
“That I was pregnant.”
He frowned, still not understanding. “So there’s a problem with that? I’d imagine it might have been the only piece of good news in the whole tragedy.”
“But you don’t know Peter’s mother. She’s Gloria Hepworth-Morrow, eighth Duchess of Epingdale,” Jenny said
