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She nodded, finally finding her voice. “We’ve just opened our own law firm. I’m tired of fighting the IRS on behalf of huge, wealthy corporations. It has occurred to me that ordinary citizens sometimes get shafted by the system, too. Carmen and I met a few years ago through a professional organization and when she found out I was available, she called and asked if I was interested in going into business with her.”
Blake nodded thoughtfully. “It sounds ideal for you,” he said simply.
Tara turned to Carmen then. “I know you have plans for the evening. We’re finished for the day, aren’t we?”
Carmen nodded, looking doubtfully from Tara to Blake. “You don’t need me to stay?”
“No. Blake is an old...friend.”
Carmen glanced at the rose. “Mmm-hmm.”
“It was nice to meet you,” Blake told Carmen as she left. “We’ll be seeing each other again.”
“Will we?” Carmen murmured, looking one more time at Tara before stepping out the door. “I suppose that remains to be seen.”
Tara closed the door behind her partner and then smoothed her palms down the legs of the navy slacks she wore with a short-sleeved cream sweater. At least this time Blake hadn’t caught her looking grubby and hopeless, she thought with a fleeting sense of relief.
Blake offered the rose. “This is for you.”
She took it carefully, as though worried about hidden thorns. “Thank you.”
“Your hair is still red. I’d have expected the color to wash out by now.”
“It did. I had it dyed again. I like it red.”
“So do I. Er...how’s your arm?”
“It’s fine. The cast has been gone for a week.”
“No lingering pain?”
“No. Is that why you’re here, Blake?” she asked, deciding not to waste any more time playing games. “Did you suddenly feel the need to make sure that I’m all right? I am, you know.”
“I can see that. A new look. A new job. What else has changed?”
“I have,” she answered simply. “I’m doing what I want to do now, not what everyone else expects me to do. My new career won’t be high-powered or prestigious, and I won’t make the money I’d have made in corporate tax law, but I think I’m going to be much happier doing it.”
“Good for you. I never had any doubt that you would land on your feet, Tara. That you would find what you wanted.”
She nodded, looking down at the rose to hide her expression—afraid that it would reveal that the one thing she’d wanted most was the one thing she hadn’t been able to get.
“Now that you’ve satisfied yourself that I’m all right, there’s no need for you to hang around,” she said, abandoning her manners for the sake of her pride. She really didn’t want to fall apart in front of him, and she was afraid that the longer he remained, the greater would be her chances of doing so.
“There’s something I need to tell you before I go.”
She steeled herself. “What is it?”
He drew a deep breath. “My last name is Fox,” he said. “That’s the real one. Stephanie uses it, too. Our parents were carnies—circus performers. We grew up on the road, both of us part of the act by the time we could walk. My parents died when a heavy piece of equipment crashed down on them while they were setting up for a performance. I’ve blamed myself ever since, because I was supposed to be there to help them, but instead I was off flirting with a pretty tightrope walker.”
His mother had survived the accident, only to die a few days later in a hospital, Tara remembered him saying. She reached out to him, laying her hand on his arm, aching for the pain he must have suffered being orphaned so young—and blaming himself. “I’m so sorry. I—”
He shook his head and kept talking, as though he had prepared this speech and was determined to deliver it. “I raised Stephanie on the road, supporting us by working the carnival circuits until she was eighteen. We stayed on the move, sheltered by our carnie friends who knew child-protection services would take Stephanie away from me if they ever caught up with us. I never finished high school, though I made sure Stephanie did—even if she had to change schools at least a dozen times before she finished. I wanted to send her to college, but she already had show business in her blood. She went to work for Jeremy right out of school and started getting modeling jobs not long after that. She was completely self-sufficient by the time she was twenty.”
“Blake—”
He held up a hand to silence her. “I’ve never had a real home,” he said. “I’ve never held what some might call a real job. When I was twenty-one, I needed some quick cash and I earned it by sitting on a stakeout for a P.I. in Dallas. I discovered I had an aptitude for the business, and I started training for it.
“I’ve built a career from word of mouth, taking the cases that interested me, turning down the ones that didn’t. I had the freedom to do that because I had no obligations, no one to provide for except for myself. I’ve lived for various lengths of time in twenty different states. I’ve never had a relationship that lasted more than a few months. I’ve got friends all over the country, but more than half of them don’t know my full name. I’ve never expected to settle down, get married, have kids...never thought I’d be any good at it. And, considering the way I let my parents down, I didn’t think I deserved it. When I met you—a Harvard-educated attorney from a respectable, small-town family, a woman who could have any man she wanted—well, I knew I was way out of my league.”
