Neck & Neck (37 page)

And now she’d gone and proved him wrong. He couldn’t trust Natalie—should
never
have trusted Natalie. He was just relieved that her betrayal had been over something relatively benign. It would be awkward contradicting the news that Russell would be attending the party, but it certainly wouldn’t be a PR nightmare. It could be excused as a misunderstanding, mixed messages or crossed wires. No harm, no foul. Just a disappointed hostess and a bunch of people who would go to a different party on Derby Eve.

In fact, he thought now, he’d probably overreacted going to Natalie’s house the way he had, and dragging her back here to Russell’s suite. And he was big enough to admit now that his reasons for doing so had little to do with the stories on the news and a lot to do with his feeling of betrayal. But then, he hadn’t exactly been the most trustworthy guy himself, had he? Natalie had been right when she called him a rat that night. Not because only a rat would have sex with a woman he didn’t trust. But for the very reason that Finn
had
trusted Natalie, and what they’d had amounted to way more than sex. He’d just been too . . . something . . . to admit that before now. And now . . .

Ah, hell. Now he didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted Natalie to stop looking so wounded and vulnerable sitting in the oversized, overpadded desk chair dressed in what should have been the most off-putting outfit a woman could wear, but which, for some bizarre reason, Finn found kind of . . . sort of . . . cute. Dammit. She was sitting in a slumped position, her arms overhanging the arms of the chair, her fuzzy-slippered feet planted firmly on the floor, pushing just hard enough to send the chair spinning first slightly to the left, then slightly to the right. And with each new turn, the lopsided topknot on her head dipped in a different direction, something that made her look even . . . cuter. Dammit.

She hadn’t looked at him once since he’d told her to park herself there and not move. And she hadn’t spoken a word to him. Not that he blamed her. And looking at her now, he had to admit, she didn’t exactly look like the untrustworthy type. In fact, she’d never looked like the untrustworthy type. Because she’d never
been
the untrustworthy type. Yeah, she’d made a mistake, committing Russell to a party he’d never agreed to attend. But she hadn’t done it maliciously, of that Finn was confident. She’d done it, as she’d said, to help out her client, and because she’d genuinely thought she could convince Russell to change his mind.

Finn knew that because he trusted Natalie. Still.

Which was all the more reason he had to get her out of here. As soon as possible. Before he did something he’d regret. Like apologize. Like ask her forgiveness. Like touch her and kiss her and invite her back to his room, where he could make love to her again. The right way this time. Aware of the fact that he had nothing to fear from her, and nothing to hide, and that it wasn’t just scratching an itch, it was something that went way deeper than that, bone-deep, in fact, and maybe if the two of them just gave it a chance they could—

“C’mon, Natalie, I’ll take you home,” he said abruptly.

Her head snapped up at that, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. Great. Now she was the one full of mistrust. Then again, whose fault was that? And maybe it was better this way. Because now there really was no way he’d make love to her again. Natalie
wasn’t
a rat. She
wouldn’t
make love with a man
she
didn’t trust.

“Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” she said, “but why the sudden change of heart?”

He almost smiled at her choice of words. Change of heart. That’s what he was having. What he’d been having probably since Natalie Beckett walked into his life. That was the problem. His heart was supposed to stay out of stuff like this completely. There was no way the two of them could make anything work between them. They were the products of two entirely different worlds, separated by everything from geography to economics. It was pointless to pursue what was bound to end in disappointment.

He pushed himself away from the wall and made his way across the room toward her, but all he did in response to her question was repeat, “C’mon. I’ll take you home.”

“But what about Russell?” she asked, looking panicky now. “What about the party? What am I going to tell Clementine?”

Finn came to a halt in front of her. “Tell her you were mistaken. Tell her you misunderstood. You thought Russell had agreed, but he had his dates mixed up or something. Tell her whatever you want. Just tell her Russell can’t make it.”

“But what if he can?” she asked, sounding even more anxious now. “Finn, I need to talk to him. I need to tell him about Kids, Inc., the charity whose benefit Clementine is having the party for. Once he hears about all the good work they’re doing, he’ll change his mind. I know it.”

“Natalie.”

“He doesn’t have to stay all night. Just thirty minutes of his evening. An hour, tops. And it can be anytime he wants. Early, late, somewhere in the middle—”

“Natalie.”

“If he’ll just commit that tiny little bit of—”

“Natalie.”

She finally stopped, but her anxiety now was replaced by a sad sort of resolution that was almost palpable. “What?”

Finn sighed heavily. “He can’t make it. It’s not a matter of how much time he has. It’s a matter of his personal privacy. Of his personal safety. It’s just not the kind of function he attends. Ever.”

“But—”

“Now c’mon,” he said a third time. “I’ll take you home.”

She gazed at him in silence for a moment, then nodded silently in defeat. “Does this mean you’re not going to involve Russell’s attorneys?”

He nodded, then spoke aloud his earlier thoughts. “As long as you explain things to your client, and she sends a retraction to the media outlets. No harm, no foul.”

“No harm,” she repeated gloomily. “Not to you or Russell, anyway.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but he was probably better off not knowing. He was about to verbally prod her again, but she rose and collected her purse from the desk, then shuffled in her fuzzy pink slippers toward the door. Finn followed, noting the few errant strands of hair that had fallen from the haphazard twist gathered at the top of her head. When she halted at the door to wait for him to open it, before he could stop himself, he reached out to twine one silky tress around his finger, thinking to tuck it back into the knot. Once his fingertips skimmed the warm skin of her neck, however, he halted, because Natalie spun around, eyes wide.

Damn, she was beautiful. Even dressed as raggedly as she was, without a single effort at enhancement. In fact, at the moment, she was somehow even more desirable than she’d been before. There was no artifice here, no pretense, no wall. Only Natalie, the way she really was. Beautiful. Desirable. One of a kind.

He dropped the strand of hair and reached for the doorknob. “C’mon, Natalie,” he said for the last time, “I’ll take you home.”

ON TUESDAY MORNING, AS RUSSELL SAT AT THE scarred oak table in Ginny Collins’s tiny kitchen, nibbling an overly crisp, slightly blackened piece of bacon and washing it down with not-quite-dissolved frozen orange juice, his gaze flicking around that table from the narrowed, very suspicious eyes of a crotchety old woman; to the narrowed, very puzzled eyes of a young girl; to the narrowed, very worried eyes of the girl’s mother; to the narrowed, very confused eyes of his son, he marveled at how much a man’s life could change over the span of a single week.

Not just because he’d abandoned the wardrobe of a phony yachtsman and businessman and replaced them with the accoutrements of his former life: blue jeans and a lightweight, oatmeal-colored sweater. And not just because he couldn’t even remember the name of the woman to whom he’d loaned his yacht, never mind what she looked like, which was usually all he remembered anyway. And not because he was dining in—or, rather, breakfasting in—instead of eating out. And not because there wasn’t a single member of his security team in sight.

It was because he was finding more pleasure sitting at a scarred oak table in a tiny kitchen, nibbling an overly crisp, slightly blackened piece of bacon and washing it down with not-quite-dissolved frozen orange juice than he’d ever found sitting in a five-star restaurant savoring oysters Rocke feller and swilling Perrier-Jouët champagne. And it was because he was with a group of normal,
real
people—a family, no less—instead of with the suits and sycophants he normally surrounded himself with.

Ten days, he thought, still astonished. That was how long it had been since he’d first laid eyes on the miniskirted, overly made-up, redheaded bombshell named Amber, who had turned out to be the blue-jean-wearing, naked-faced, wholesome girl next door Ginny Collins. Not Gin. Not Ginna. Ginny. Because she was too nice, too sweet, too decent, to be anything else.

She should have scared Russell to death. She was exactly the kind of woman he had hoped never to meet again. Someone like Marti. Someone he might fall in love with. Someone he might lose again. Someone whose loss he would never be able to comprehend or overcome or forgive.

And although the last ten days had proved Ginny was exactly that kind of woman, those days had also taught Russell some important truths. That it was indeed impossible to comprehend, overcome, or forgive the loss of some people. He would never be able to do any of those things where Marti’s death was concerned. But it was also possible to . . . salve . . . that loss, to temper the grief and buffer the pain, to leave it in the past where it belonged, by finding someone to love in the present. Someone to love in, and with whom to plan, the future.

Because love wasn’t confined to one person, he realized now. And the loss of love didn’t mean loving came to an end. The heart didn’t manufacture a finite amount that had to be doled out sparingly over time to special, specific individuals. No, the heart was an amazing organ that could produce mass quantities of the stuff, and with fairly little effort. No matter who you gave love to, there was always more to give. For anyone who might come along.

He’d learned that about Max, too. Yes, he would always fear losing his son. No, not fear, he would be terrified of it, with a terror so profound it would cripple him emotionally if he allowed himself to dwell on it, with a terror that
had
crippled him emotionally since Marti’s death, to the point where he hadn’t allowed himself to express the love he should—and did—feel for his son, so great was his horror of losing Max, too. But spending time with Ginny this week, Russell had gradually begun to realize that living life as an emotional cripple was slowly killing him, too.

And he didn’t want to die. Not when he was learning so many important lessons about life. There were too many reasons to live.

Which was how he and Max—his family—came to be sharing breakfast with Ginny and her family, Maisy and the Lenski woman. Who, Russell had to admit, scared the bejeezus out of him. Though he actually kind of liked that part. It made him feel like he was a teenage high school student meeting his equally teenage girlfriend’s parents for the first time, and being weighed for his potential to overstep the bounds of propriety with her. Which was a situation, it went without saying, he’d never found himself in as a teenager. Mostly because he’d had no propriety then. And neither had any of the girls he’d dated. Of course, most of the girls he’d dated hadn’t had parents, either. At least none with any propriety.

Hazel, he could see, had buckets of the stuff. She also, he’d been told—by Hazel herself, in fact—had a .32 automatic and wasn’t afraid to use it. Talk about proprietary. Propitious. Whatever the adjective that went along with propriety was. Then again, he supposed those other two were kind of appropriate, too.

He was just glad to be here sharing breakfast with the others and grateful for Maisy’s in-service day at school so that all five of them could spend it together, getting to know each other and doing the sorts of things families did when they had an entire day to spend together. Now, if only Russell knew what some of those things were . . .

“I, um . . . I think I heard the mail truck,” Ginny said suddenly, alleviating what Russell had to admit had been a pretty long, awkward silence, since no one had said a word after she put the too-crisp bacon and undercooked eggs on the table. “I’ll run out and get it, ’kay?”

Ah, there was a good start, Russell thought. Mail. That was something families all across America got, right?

Unfortunately, when Ginny, one of only two people in the room who was linked to the remaining guests, left it, Russell was the one upon whom fell the duty of keeping the conversation going. And since Ginny was much better at that than he, and he had so far failed abysmally, there wasn’t much chance he would do any better. Still, if he intended for this family thing to work out—and for some reason he had yet to fathom, he did—then he would have to do the family man thing and, you know, talk to his family.

“So, Maisy,” he began, choosing the non-gun-toting member of Ginny’s family for obvious reasons, “what’s your favorite subject in school?”

Maisy, who was a thirteen-year-old version of her mother, right down to the hauntingly beautiful eyes, concentrated very hard on moving her scrambled eggs from one side of the plate to the other and not looking at anyone. “It’s not really a class, but I like it best when we go to computer lab.”

Russell brightened. “A budding technological genius. Excellent.”

She looked up at that and smiled at Russell, then glanced over at Max, who also seemed to be showing an unusual amount of interest in the food on his plate. Then her cheeks stained with red, her expression went kind of panicky, and she stared back down at her breakfast. “Well, I wouldn’t say I’m a genius . . .”

“I would,” Hazel volunteered enthusiastically, fairly beaming at the girl. “She’s in the Duke University Talent Identification Program and the Johns Hopkins thingy for gifted students. She took the SAT this year, at thirteen, and scored higher than most outgoing seniors. Got a perfect score on her essay, I might add.”