“The limo’s here.”
“So I see.” Hayley adjusted the hem of her wedding dress with more than necessary care, avoiding his eyes.
Dillon waited until she had picked up her oversize purse. “Ready?”
“Absolutely.” Hayley pushed the words through stiff lips. The sooner she got out of here and away from the scene of the crime, the better, she thought. She still couldn’t believe she had done such an impulsive thing. And now she was going to have to live with it. They both were.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
She turned to see he held her negligee and his silk pajama bottoms in his hands. She flushed bright red. “We could leave them for the owners of the cottage, but they might just think we forgot them and send them back to the neighbors who rented the place.”
Which would be even more uncomfortable, Hayley knew. She snatched the garments out of his hands and shoved them into her bag. “You really are incorrigible.”
He grinned. “I’m trying,” he said.
He fell into step beside her as they started down the walk. “You don’t have to look as though you’re headed for the guillotine, you know.”
“Right,” Hayley countered, rolling her eyes. She hadn’t been able to eat a thing this morning. Her nerves were strung tight.
“Hayley—”
“Please, no more conversation, Dillon.” Hayley held up her hands in distressed surrender. “Or I really will get a migraine.”
Dillon studied her a long moment, then took her at her word.
The ride back to the suburbs was long, tense and silent. Worse, a crowd had gathered in front of the house. “Looks like they’re very interested in our wedding night,” Dillon murmured, reaching to give her a hand from the limousine.
Hayley took his proffered palm only because she saw no graceful way out of it. “Might as well give them their money’s worth,” Dillon murmured in her ear as she stepped from the car, then he swept her up into his arms.
Hayley had no choice but to hang on as he strode up the front walk.
“Guess I don’t have to ask you how last night went,” Marge teased, coming out to stand on the front steps, Christine in her arms.
Dillon swept past his sister, not pausing until he’d carried Hayley over the threshold and delivered another swift, hard, breath-stealing kiss on her lips. “Try to at least look as if you’re having fun,” he murmured against her mouth.
Slowly he let her down. Hayley’s feet touched the floor. To her dismay she was as dizzy and pleasurably disoriented as she had been when they’d made love.
“Mama!” Christine cried, and held out her arms to Hayley.
Hayley reached for her baby, like a drowning sailor reaching for a lifeline. At last, Hayley thought, she’d found the shield she needed to keep Dillon at arm’s length. “Hi, darlin’,” she crooned, holding her little girl close. “Did you miss Mama?”
Christine hid her face in Hayley’s neck and snuggled even closer. Dillon, Hayley noted, looked thoughtful and not as smugly victorious as he had been.
Dillon turned to the neighbors who had gathered to welcome them home. “Hayley and I had a great time. We can’t thank you enough.”
Knowing it was the least she could do, Hayley seconded his appreciative speech. “Yes. We really…” She choked briefly as she tried to get out the appropriate words. “We had a—a terrific time. It was an enormous surprise. Thank you all.”
Dillon winked. “The night clothes were great, too.”
Everyone laughed. Hayley blushed.
“Well, guess we better let the newlyweds have their home to themselves,” Marge said tactfully. She cast a look at the gutted interior of the home. “Such as it is, anyway.”
I have more than enough to keep me busy now that I’m home again, Hayley thought, glancing around her at the stripped woodwork and walls, and the half-finished foyer. And so does Dillon. Once he goes back to work, everything will be fine.
* * *
“I KNOW WHAT you’re doing, Hayley. It won’t work,” Dillon said.
Hayley looked up from the foyer floor. Although they had only been home from their honeymoon for three hours, she had put the time to good use. She’d played with Christine, fed her her lunch and put her down for her nap. Then she’d concentrated on pulling up the rest of the faux marble tile that had covered a beautiful wood floor.
“Sure it will,” Hayley retorted. “All I have to do is sand the floor down with the electric sander, then apply a good coat of varnish or maybe wood stain and—”
“I meant the get-up,” Dillon said, his hands on his hips. He had changed out of his wedding clothes hours ago, into a navy silk fisherman sweater and tailored khaki slacks.
Beside him, Hayley felt all the more grimy. Not wanting him to know that, she feigned an innocence meant to irritate him and asked coyly, “What get-up?”
Dillon gestured impatiently at her. “The torn, baggy sweatshirt, the loose jeans, the spinster’s bun.” He sauntered toward her lazily, rested an elbow on the wobbly wooden banister leading up the sweeping staircase. His gaze moved over her slowly, then returned to her eyes.
“If you’re trying to impress upon me how unfeminine you can be, forget it,” he advised with an amused smile. “I find you even more appealing this way, without artifice of any kind.” He sauntered close. “Don’t you know your real beauty shines through no matter how you try to hide it?” He reached toward her as if to touch her face.
Hayley swatted at his hand irritably and stepped back over the electric sander. She placed both hands on her hips. “Honestly, Dillon, I think all that champagne you drank yesterday went to your head.”
“Something went to my head,” he agreed. He hooked an arm about her waist and pulled her close. “But it wasn’t champagne, Hayley. It was you.”
His warm fragrant breath stirred her hair, reminding her just how thrilling and satisfying his lovemaking had been.
“It was last night.”
As much as she wanted to make love with him, she couldn’t, wouldn’t, sacrifice her dreams. And that meant she couldn’t make love with him again. She placed both hands on his chest and shoved. “It was sex.”
“That, too,” Dillon agreed. He let her go, but kept his eyes on hers.
Hayley hauled in a shaky breath. She could keep him at arm’s length, she persuaded herself sternly, all she had to do was try. “And it was a one-night stand,” she continued.
Dillon slouched against the wall. He rubbed his handsome jaw contemplatively. “Funny, you didn’t strike me as the type who had one-night stands,” he drawled, knitting his brows together as if greatly perplexed.
“I don’t,” Hayley hastened to correct. Then realizing what she had just admitted, said, “Didn’t.”
He grinned victoriously. “You did.”
“Must you keep reminding me of that?” Hayley cried, incensed.
“Someone should.”
“Just because I did it once, does not mean I will ever do it again,” she said icily.
His blue eyes gleamed wickedly. “So you’ve informed me.”
He looked determined to change her mind about that.
She was just as resolved not to let him.
Hayley picked up her electric sander defiantly and released a loud, put-upon sigh. “Dillon, please. I’ve got to get this done before Christine wakes up from her nap.”
He studied her a long moment. Whatever pleasure he had felt earlier at being with her was fading fast. “Fine,” he said curtly. “I’m going in to the office for a while.”
“The one here?”
“The one in the city.”
Good, Hayley thought.
“I may not be back tonight,” he informed her flatly.
Hayley’s initial relief faded. If he wasn’t, the neighbors would talk. Oh, well, she’d just say he had a hot story to monitor, reporters to assign. It was the nature of his work. They all knew he was a bureau chief for NCN with heavy, ongoing responsibilities.
“Fine,” she said cheerfully.
Only it wasn’t fine.
Because Dillon didn’t come back. Not Sunday evening, not Monday morning, not Monday night. By Tuesday Hayley was deeply depressed. She had wanted to hold him at arm’s length and maintain their friendship, not drive him completely out of his home.
It bothered her she cared where he was. It bothered her she missed him. It bothered her she thought about him at all. Heavens, it wasn’t as if she was beginning to depend on his presence in her life to make her happy, was it? She knew how dangerous that was. It was like asking to have her heart stomped on!
“This just isn’t good,” she told Christine as she bathed her that evening. “I’m beginning to get too involved here.” She’d lost sight of the fact that this really wasn’t her home, but merely an investment property, the sale of which would allow her to purchase her own home, for her and Christine.
“I need to think more about the future,” Hayley continued.
“Mama?” Christine giggled, as she splashed Hayley in the face.
Hayley grinned, her spirits already lifting. “Our future.”
At midnight she was still working on that future.
* * *
DILLON HEARD the rat-a-tat-tat of a manual typewriter the moment he entered the house. Having stayed in the city, he had hoped Hayley would have come to her senses, realized as did he that the powerful attraction between them was something to be savored, not wasted.
His mood tense but hopeful, he followed the sound to the kitchen where Hayley sat, pounding away on the keys. It was an incongruous sight, Hayley in mens flannel pajamas that covered her from head to toe, and white sweat socks. He knew she’d heard him come in. He could tell by the twin spots of color that appeared in her otherwise pale face, but she kept her vision steadfastly glued to the page in front of her.
Dillon didn’t know what he’d expected. Recriminations for staying away and not calling to either check on her and the baby or let her know where he was staying. At this point he would take even a coldly uttered greeting. It seemed, however, she was determined to ignore him completely.
“So,” Dillon drawled. He sauntered forward across the untiled kitchen floor to stand behind her chair. He was close enough to see the damp hair on the nape of her neck and smell the heady scent of her perfume and know she had recently taken another of her long bubble baths. “What are you up to?”
“Just typing a few letters,” Hayley murmured, her tone noncommittal. The pink spots in her cheeks deepened.
“I can see that.” Dillon started reading over her shoulder. “Why?”
“I’m still looking for a job, remember? For when I’m done here.”
“But that won’t be for months.”
“Actually, it might happen a little sooner, if I step up the remodeling schedule,” Hayley said. She reached for the bottle of correction fluid and, rolling the paper up, dabbed a small amount on an e that should have been an i.
Dillon felt the first stirrings of panic. He was irritated with Hayley for refusing to admit they were extremely sexually compatible, but he hadn’t wanted this. “How soon?” he asked, his tone clipped.
Hayley shrugged a slender shoulder. “I don’t know. A couple of months. It could happen even more quickly if I subbed out a lot of the interior work.” She looked around her thoughtfully at the stripped walls and half-painted kitchen cabinets. “But of course that would cut into my profits quite a bit. Labor is expensive.” Her pretty mouth pursed. “It’s a definite trade-off.”
“I’d think the more profits you can reap out of this place, the better,” Dillon said, wishing he didn’t recall quite so accurately how sweet that bare mouth of hers tasted, or just how well she could kiss. “For your future,” he amended hastily, when he saw she was about to take offense.
“Yes, but the question is at what cost ultimately,” Hayley said, giving him a pointed look.
Dillon was quiet. He knew he’d deserved that. He had put too much pressure on her, but damn it, what was he supposed to do? They’d taken their relationship a giant step forward, making love the way they had. Now she wanted to forget all about it, pretend it hadn’t happened, and he wasn’t sure he could do that. He knew he didn’t want to. He also knew she wasn’t giving him much choice.
He’d either have to try like hell to be more patient with her and hope, given time, she would come around, or lose her entirely. The one thing they wouldn’t do, he decided firmly, was talk about it anymore. They had done that enough as it was, to bitter result.
He glanced at the stack of envelopes next to her desk. All had labels. All were empty. “Why aren’t you using my computer?” he asked, focusing for a minute on the practical, instead of the highly improbable and romantic.
Hayley shrugged again, the movement jiggling her breasts enough to tell him she wasn’t wearing a bra. “You weren’t here,” she said, while Dillon struggled to contain both a groan and the rising heat in his groin. Her eyes focused on his as she continued in the same matter-of-fact tone, “I couldn’t ask you if it was okay.”
Dillon had the distinct feeling even if he had been there Hayley would have died rather than ask him for any favors. “You could have called me at the office,” he pointed out reasonably.
“How was I supposed to know you were there?”
Ouch, Dillon thought.
Hayley got up and pushed her chair with a screech. “Look, you don’t own me,” she said impatiently. “I don’t own you. We may be married—in name only—it doesn’t mean we suddenly have to ask permission from each other to breathe.”
“Is that how it was in your first marriage?” Dillon asked. He pulled out a chair, turned it around and sank into it, placing his arm over the back.
“No!” Hayley looked stunned. “Hank and I each went our separate ways.”
“So much so that you didn’t mind him going overseas?”
“Now, that I didn’t say,” Hayley corrected as she tore out the first letter and rolled another sheet of clean paper into her typewriter. “I did mind him being out of the country for months on end, especially during the war. I worried he might get hurt.”
Realizing all over again what he’d neglected to tell her—that he’d not only recruited Hank personally, but had been the person who’d sent him out on the assignment during which he’d been killed, Dillon lowered his gaze to the tabletop.
He should have been straight with her from the first, he thought. But looking back on it, he didn’t really see how he could have been, not when she’d regarded him so suspiciously from the outset. No, it was better to let sleeping issues lie. Besides, what happened then was over. It wasn’t as if it could be undone, even if he did tell her.
He wished he could keep his mouth shut, but he was curious about Hayley. “What about when Hank was in-country?” he asked. What had their relationship been like then? “You were married to him about a year before he left, weren’t you?”
Hayley nodded. “Yes, but we weren’t joined at the hip. We continued to lead our own lives and pursue our own careers.”
“You were still working as a financial analyst then, weren’t you?”
Hayley rested her elbows on the typewriter. “And he was trying to make it happen for him as a reporter. When he got hired by NCN, it was like a dream come true for him.”
“Did you know you were pregnant when he accepted the job covering Desert Storm?”
“Yes.”
“And you encouraged him to go?” Dillon marveled at her independence even though a part of him really couldn’t understand. Most new husbands and wives wanted their partners with them, period. That went double when they were expecting the birth of their first child. But to his surprise, Hayley seemed to have no such feelings.
“Of course I encouraged him to go.”
“But?” Dillon prodded, sensing there was more.
“We had an agreement he would come home as often as possible once the baby was born.”
“Most wives wouldn’t have been that understanding.”
Hayley bit her lip. Some of the color left her cheeks. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t want him here every day, especially when I made the decision to stop working.”
He faced her incredulously. “Why not?”
Hayley shrugged and avoided his eyes. “If he had been here, I might have started depending on him.” She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. Their eyes met. “I’ve seen it happen, Dillon,” she continued earnestly. “Capable career women, who’ve turned into clinging vines when they’re home with a child for any length of time. I never wanted that.”
Or in other words, Dillon thought, Hayley had married with one foot out the door. That explained why she had adapted to widowhood so well and why she hadn’t minded being married to a man in such a dangerous profession.
“And that’s also why I’m working on my résumés tonight,” Hayley continued pragmatically. “Now that I’ve done a number of paintings to show my skill, I need to start the process of setting up interviews with publishing houses. It’ll take a while for me to find free-lance work, I know, especially since I have no former experience in the field, but I’m determined to succeed.”
And succeed she would, Dillon thought. “I don’t know how much help I can be,” he offered genially, “but I do have a few contacts—”
Hayley cut him off. “No. Thanks.” For her the subject was closed.
Realizing how little she would allow herself to take from him, Dillon felt guiltier than ever. “At least use my computer,” he urged as she began to type on the hopelessly outdated manual typewriter again. “You can type your query letters in half the time.”
Hayley paused, clearly tempted. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
She studied him, silently assessing, deciding, Dillon figured, if she could trust him again. He wanted her to feel she could. “Hayley,” he said, resisting the urge to cover her hand with his only because he was afraid that at this point she might take any physical touch the wrong way. “I’m sorry. Sorry we fought.”
“So am I. I don’t like fighting.”
Dillon’s heart was pounding. He wanted to take her in his arms, cement their conciliatory words with a hug. He knew he couldn’t, not without being tempted to do more than simply hold her. So he sat where he was. “Truce?”
“That depends,” she said slowly, her green eyes lighting up suspiciously again, “on just what it is that you want from me.”
Dillon had had a lot of time to think about that when he was closeted up in a hotel room in New York. “To know we can count on each other through thick or thin, as friends.”
“I don’t know, Dillon.”
“Why not?”
She fidgeted restlessly in her chair. “What you’re describing sounds far more intimate than what I had in mind.”
Dillon grinned. She was weakening, he could see it. “Hey, I didn’t include sex,” he teased, pretending to be offended.
Hayley smirked and rolled her eyes. “As if you would get that demand met,” she retorted dryly.
They grinned at each other, the sexy banter lightening the tension between them. “Come on, Hayley,” Dillon persuaded, liking it when she looked at him like that, her eyes all soft and full of a very tenuous trust. “Give it a try.”
Hayley sat all the way back in her chair. It was so hard to be around Dillon, even now, nearly seventy-two hours after they’d made love. Just looking at him, she recalled the womanly way he’d made her feel. If only they were more alike. Or wanted the same things out of life. But they didn’t, she reminded herself firmly. And she had a future to ensure for herself and her daughter. There was only one way that could be accomplished. To manage that, she had to keep Dillon at arm’s length.
She planted both hands on her slender hips and studied him sternly as she spelled out the terms for her continued employment. “You promise you’ll keep your hands to yourself?” she demanded archly.
Dillon had always prided himself on being a man of his word. She’d already tempted him to break that promise once. “I promise I’ll try,” he said.
Hayley shook her head, the slight movement of her body jiggling her breasts beneath the opaque forest green and navy plaid pajama top. “Not good enough, Dillon,” she chided.
“Okay, okay.” Dillon told himself he was not thinking about making love to her again. “I promise.”
She stared at him, assessing him another long moment, then finally capitulated, as Dillon had hoped she would. “All right,” she said slowly. “I’ll accommodate you as long as you accommodate me.”
“And if one of us fails?”
“Depends.” Hayley lifted her shoulders, then let them fall. “If it’s you trying to get me into bed again,” Hayley continued, “all bets are off. If it’s in the other area, of us counting on one another and we screw up, then…” Her eyes lifted to his and held a moment. “I guess we try again,” she said, her expression determined. “Try and make this buddy system of ours work,” she finished, her low voice once again taking on a practical edge.
Dillon knew how hard this was going to be for her. She didn’t know how to let herself count on someone else. “Okay, you’ve got a deal,” he said.
He watched her gather up her papers. “Want me to show you how to use my computer?” he offered.
Hayley’s head lifted. Moments earlier her gaze had been intimate. Now her look was as impersonal as her cool tone. “It’s an IBM, right?”
Dillon nodded, trying not to feel too disappointed. “Right.”
“What kind of software are you using?”
“WordPerfect.”
“There’s no need. I’m already familiar with it.”
Silently Dillon watched her gather her things and head to his study. Once again she didn’t seem to need him. She didn’t seem to need anyone. He wondered if she ever would.