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“I’ve missed you too, Julio.”
They lay in each other’s arms for a long time after that, listening to the sounds in the apartment: a television program droning on from Joan’s bedroom and the snores of the babies, like rain falling, from the baby monitor. Their babies.
For just a moment in time, Lissa and Julio were both thinking the same thing: All was right with the world.
# # #
A baby’s cry woke Lissa from a deep sleep. She glanced at her clock. Three in the morning.
As her head cleared, the night came rushing back. No wonder she was groggy. Her body still tingled from Julio’s lovemaking. Although they’d been fast, and careful not to make any noise, he’d still managed to arouse her to heights she hadn’t thought possible. No man she’d ever been with had been able to get her body to respond the way he could. His tongue, his fingers, how they made her nerve endings tingle, how he could make her nipples erect, how he could make her oh so wet. Even now, as she realized she was alone in the bed. He must have left while she was sleeping, which was probably a good thing, but still, the memories, his smells, and the odors of sex still clinging to her body, to her sheets… She let her fingers slide down her belly towards her slickening heat.
A baby crying in the distance broke her mood. Muffled voices reached her as she put on a robe and headed for the nursery. She opened the door and saw one baby sleeping soundly, undisturbed. The other two beds were empty.
Half-awake still, Lissa staggered towards the voices, into the kitchen. There she found Joan and Julio, each holding a baby, bouncing it and talking. She smelled tea—Joan’s favorite herbal tea.
“Good morning, more or less,” Joan said.
“Some little person or two seem to think it is. We still have one person in the family who wants to lie in.”
“The family.” She’d said it that way without thinking. It had seemed right, and Julio had smiled when she said it. Joan too.
Julio brought the baby over to her. “Ryland, tell Mom you didn’t mean to wake her,” he said.
“But he did mean to wake her,” Joan protested. “That’s how they remind parents who is actually in charge. If they are awake, then they must be attended to.”
“You seem to have an agitator in the nursery,” Julio teased. “Whose side are you on, Joan?”
A new cry came from the nursery. “I guess he finally realized he was being left out,” Lissa said.
As Lissa went to get the Hunter from his crib, she understood part of what was troubling her. It was easy to slip into this idea of a family. It was comforting and reassuring. And it frightened her. If she let herself get used to it and believe in it, then she could lose it one day. The pain would be far worse than the pain she’d felt when she’d lost Julio, after Switzerland. She hadn’t opened her heart to him completely because of that. Wanting and enjoying too quickly became needing, and it was hard enough to manage the things that were in your control.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lissa found Abby waiting for her when she got to the office.
“We haven’t found a sign of that contract on our server,” she said. “I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but we can’t prove it’s a new document.”
Lissa cupped her hands around her coffee cup. Getting into the rhythm of business after the night—well, the start of the day—came as something of a jolt. The safe, warm feeling of being around her babies and her lover, their father, lingered tantalizingly. “Okay. That was a long shot. I’m sure you’d have found it if it were there.”
“Well, I do have some good—or at least interesting—news. You wanted to talk to Tina. She called this morning asking to meet with you. I made an appointment for this morning. I hope that was okay.”
“Sure. That’s probably good. Odd, though. She’ll be after something. Did you tell her anything?”
“No. She told me she wanted to discuss the contract for the Milan project. I suppose the word is out and she sees some kind of opportunity to make hay.”
“I think you’re right.” Lissa grinned. “I’ll be at my desk, fortifying myself with coffee and grinding my teeth.”
“Is the situation that bad?”
“Frustrating more than anything. Maybe Tina will tell me something I can use to get out of the contract. Then I can work with Julio. For now, I’m marking time, and I’m not good at that.”
“How is it going with Julio? I can’t wait to meet him.”
“He comes over to visit the kids.” Then she grinned. “But yes, he stayed. He was even up at three this morning with the kids.”
“Wow. Then he wants to get to know them?”
“I think he wants a lot more than that.”
“Is he a good dad?”
“I think he thinks so.” So did she. It was easy to see how much he loved them. He acted like he loved her too, but how would that work? They worked well together, and he was an unbelievable lover—Abby got that right, too. It was the family thing that had her brain in turmoil. She still grappled with the idea that she was a mother to three boys—how she would deal with that, much less how she might have the energy for a relationship with Julio, was more than she could deal with.
She would have to deal with all of it sooner or later, though. The future was vague, and although it was exciting, having all these people in her life added more variables, made it easier for things to go wrong. Joan might not want to be a child-care person her entire life. What would she do then? At some point she’d have to think about schools, about all sorts of things for them. It was beginning to look as if her life was going to be constantly adapting to their changing needs.
For the moment she needed to think about getting this project.
# # #
Tina seemed a lot more upbeat and cheerful than she’d expected. “I bet you want to know about the contract with Acker,” Tina said.
“The one you signed for my company?”
“Yeah, that was important to him when I was negotiating with him. You came back and I was working my way out the door. I wanted to get in on the Milan project, and he said he’d give me the job if I came up with a way to make sure you couldn’t work with Julio. The idea had him shaking in his boots. So I came up with this idea. We wrote the contract and backdated it. The asshole. Him and his kinky games. I’m glad to be out of it all.”
“You admit it’s a fake? Why?”
“Because I’m pissed. He screwed me—in every imaginable sense. He and that bitch Willa.”
“He paid you off, though.”
“None of what I did was about the money, Lissa. Think about it. I’d have made more working for you than he paid me. I wanted to be in on the project—an international operation, working with a European consortium. That was exciting. And he left me with a little money and no work. He tossed me out in the cold. Willa saw to that, after she made sure Julio wouldn’t hire me. She made me think that she wanted me working with her and Julio, but when we met, she set me up. I didn’t know she was working Acker as well. She surprised me with that.”
“Would you be willing to sign a statement about what happened?”
“I talked to a lawyer.” She opened her briefcase and took out a document. “Read it, but it says you won’t press charges against me for anything I did regarding any of your projects.”
“A get-out-of-jail-free card?”
“And I want ten grand.”
“You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
She took out another document. “I’ve done a lot more than just thinking. My lawyer wrote out this statement for you. I hope you can fry his ass with it. My lawyer notarized it. Hand over a check and sign my little note and it's yours.”
Lissa read the waiver of liability, as the document was titled. It was a simple declaration that she wouldn’t press charges against Tina. She didn’t care to anyway. She took out a ballpoint and signed it, pushing it back to Tina. “We can go to the bank and get the m
oney, if you have the time. Neither of us really wants a check involved, do we?”
Tina smiled. “Good thinking.”
“Abby, watch the store for a while. Tina and I need to go to the bank.” As they went out the door, Lissa took Tina’s arm. “When this is over, I never want to see you again.”
“Fine,” Tina said.
When Lissa had taken out the money and it was safely in Tina’s purse, she closed it with a click. “I’ve been offered a job with an ad agency,” Tina said. “It’s a small but up-and-coming company. They understand that with my connections I can get them a few serious industrial accounts.”
“You know what? I think you just might do well in advertising.” She was feeling good. The statement would mean that if she had to go to court, Tom Acker wouldn’t stand a chance. “You know that Tom will try and make things difficult for you now.”
Tina smiled. “I considered that possibility. But Willa and I think that, under the circumstances, he’ll think it’s funny.”
“What circumstances?” The mention of Willa’s name sent off alarms. Somehow she was becoming an unpleasant thorn in Lissa’s side.
“The contract has to do with doing work on the Milan job. Without that, there isn’t any point to any of this.”
“You aren’t making any sense.”
“Everything will be clear soon enough. Now I’m off.”
Lissa watched as Tina caught a cab, wondering why she insisted on being so mysterious. Then Lissa walked back to the office thinking about a more intriguing question. Why were Willa and Tina still working together after what Willa had done to Tina? Something stunk.
# # #
After work, Lissa went to meet Julio at an office he had rented. She was looking forward to seeing him, but when she came in and he stood up from his desk, she saw a sadness in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
He picked up a sheaf of papers. “The project is off. Milan is dead.”
“Off? Why?”
“The consortium discovered a problem. They sent out a memo to all the bidders, but some clerk sent mine to my Barcelona office. I can bitch about Willa, but she never would have let this happen.”
