JONATHAN’S party was a great success, Eden had to admit, even though she was feeling tense and vaguely unhappy. All week she had cruised the Web sites Barry had given her. There was a registry where donor offspring or their parents could try to make contact with their donors. She was trying that route, making connections and building bridges with people while Barry was using outside contacts and more conventional methods. He thought he might be on the trail of the child. The tension was mounting in her and in Jeremy, but that wasn’t the cause of this vague feeling of dread that was suffusing her now.
“I appreciate the information and the fact that you’re keeping me up to date,” Jeremy had said when she’d given him a progress report. “You’re an excellent assistant.”
Which was a nice thing to say and yet…the unhappy feeling grew.
When some of the visual aids she had ordered had arrived, she had reluctantly delivered them to Jeremy to try them out, remembering that she had badgered him into being a guinea pig.
“I’ll have a report to you in the morning,” he had said. And he had. He’d entered her office, tall and dark, imposing and utterly distant. No grin, no teasing, but he had hesitated at the door. She’d turned to him and caught a frown on his face. “You have everything you need?” he asked.
“Yes.”
And yet she didn’t have everything she needed at all. She missed his teasing and his smiles. Just two days ago she would have tried to coax him into sharing a laugh with her, but when she’d tried that yesterday he had given her a patient but very small smile, thanked her and then gone back to work.
No question why, she thought. Ashley had called two days ago. She’d offered counsel. She’d suggested caution.
“I love him. He’s my friend and neighbor,” Ashley had said, “but I know him too well. He has nothing permanent to offer, but he’s so incredibly tempting. He knows just what to say to a woman. Even worse, he knows just how to touch a woman.” Which made Eden feel awful. So many women knew his touch, but she never really would.
That’s a good thing, she reminded herself. You couldn’t handle being just another fling for him.
“I’m worried you’re starting to fall in love with him,” Ashley had continued.
It had been all Eden could do to keep from covering her ears or from running screaming from the room, but Ashley was right.
“I’ll be fine,” she had promised her cousin, but she wasn’t fine. She was falling. Hard. With no soft cushion to land on.
“I spoke to him,” Ashley said. “He agreed that he might have let things get out of control. He really likes and respects you and doesn’t want to see you hurt. I made him promise to behave from now on.”
The words were like stab wounds. Jeremy had admitted that he had gone overboard with her, Eden thought. As he had with other women he flirted with and then walked away from. Hadn’t she learned anything from her father and husband?
“You could leave. I could find him someone else,” Ashley said.
It would be smart. She’d already earned enough to pay her creditors. “I’ll think about it.”
But then she had come upon Jeremy in a hallway. He had been standing near a painting of a garden in front of a lake, very reminiscent of Monet. A gorgeous piece, one Eden had often thought that she could stare at for hours.
But Jeremy couldn’t stare at it the way she could. He could see it, but not all of it at once. He couldn’t make out the details or the subtleties. Instead he had been touching the painting and he had been embarrassed when she’d come upon him.
Still, true to form, he hadn’t jerked his hand away like a guilty child, but had slowly lowered it to his side. “Probably not the best thing for the painting,” he admitted.
“It’s your painting,” she pointed out.
“Not really. I think it still belongs to the person who created it, at least in some ways. And while an artist might want others to enjoy his work, well…I’m pretty sure touching a painting is frowned upon.”
Slowly she shook her head. “Art is meant to be seen in a thousand different ways, so if the viewer owns it and senses it better with his fingertips…I embarrassed you, didn’t I?”
He thought about that. “No. You don’t make me feel that I’m less than I was.”
The question that came to mind arrived so easily even though she knew it was the completely wrong question to ask. It was a question that should never be asked. A major part of her didn’t even want to ask it, but her mouth just seemed to jump in there and take over.
“What do I make you feel?” she said.
He looked to the side. “Like a man with a fire inside him. I want to touch you. I want to taste you. And it would be the worst thing I ever did if I allowed that to happen. I like you too much to use you for my own selfish desires, knowing that when we’re done here I’ll walk away. I’ll go back to Europe or Asia or Australia and stay away from my old life as much as I can, and you’ll go back to St. Louis. We’ll probably never meet again. You don’t want that kind of complication in your life.”
She did. At that moment she wanted to risk it all just to have him touch her, but…he was right, too. She was cowardly and she feared the pain that would follow.
“I would hurt you,” he said, as if reading her mind. “You want things I’ll never want and can’t have. I can’t do real relationships or a normal family. Heck, I’m not even sure what a normal family feels like, but I also can’t be what I once was and use people anymore. I can no longer blithely pretend that I can do anything and the consequences won’t matter. I’d hate myself later.”
“I know. It’s all right.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.” And it wasn’t.
Now they were at the party, and it was all Jonathan had said it would be. But, after her exchange with Jeremy, Eden felt miserable. Surprisingly enough, her discomfort had little to do with the rich guests who would have normally made her feel nervous, self-aware and inadequate. Tonight she was focused solely on Jeremy. And after the episode with Ashley and today’s conversation, she was trying her best to remember that Jeremy was just a job.
She needed to do her job well, but not do more. So she stood as inconspicuously as possible at Jeremy’s side and quietly described other guests so that he could identify them. She let him know if there was some obstacle in his way that he might not be aware of. She concocted stories about what was on the buffet table so that it wouldn’t look as if she was relating something he didn’t already know.
“Don’t you just love these little butterfly shrimp on skewers?” she asked, reaching for one and popping it into her mouth. “Or how about these spinach rolls? Or these gorgeous little crackers with some sort of topping?” She picked up one of them. And then stopped cold.
Immediately Jeremy turned to her. “Eden?”
“I’m sorry. I—”
He drew her arm through his. “The door,” he ordered. “I think we need some fresh air.”
Still holding the cracker, she moved toward the open French doors and toward the edge of the huge deck. “Two stairs down,” she whispered. “We’re at the first one now.”
Together they smoothly stepped down onto the grass and away from the crowd. When the crowd had disappeared behind them he turned to her. “What’s wrong? Why did you freeze that way?”
She wrinkled her nose. “It’s nothing. It’s really stupid. I feel so foolish.”
He tilted his head and looked at her more closely in that wonderful, sexy, lopsided way of his that always brought him nearly cheek to cheek with her. She always felt as if he might just lean forward a bit more and whisper in her ear. He might place his mouth on her, drop kisses beneath her ear, down her jaw to her throat and…
Eden caught her breath. She blinked and shook her head, fighting to slow her breathing so Jeremy wouldn’t hear the change in her voice or zero in on the changes in her demeanor in that disarming way he had. She was aware of the moon shining full on her face, which might make her a bit more visible to him. “What is it that’s upset you?” he finally asked.
“I…it’s just…this hors d’oeuvre.” She held up the cracker. “I couldn’t make out what was on it when I first picked it up. It’s egg. I’m totally allergic, but it was already in my hand. I didn’t want to be rude and throw it away and I couldn’t eat it and I really couldn’t put it back on the plate after I had touched it. That would be such an ill-mannered thing for an assistant of yours to do and—”
A small chuckle slipped from Jeremy’s lips. “You couldn’t see it? I absolutely love that. Eden, you’re wonderful, a complete delight. I bring a woman with me to be my eyes and she can’t see any more than I can.”
It was so good to hear him laugh again, to hear that deep, sexy rumble that Eden just couldn’t help laughing, too, despite reminding herself to stick to her employee role.
“Don’t make fun of me,” she finally managed to say. “I spent years teaching myself the rules of society with no adult to guide me, and here I am brought low by a bit of egg.” She held the cracker as if it were an explosive device.
“Ah, but I can solve your social dilemma,” Jeremy said. “I’m not allergic to eggs.” And he bent closer. He placed his hand beneath hers and lifted her fingertips to his lips, stealing the small bite from her grasp. His lips and his tongue touched her. “Problem solved,” he said.
With the greatest of efforts she withheld her moan. “Nice magic trick,” she said. “Why didn’t I just think of feeding you? You are, after all, a man. And with all the exercise you get, you tend to be a human eating-machine.”
His chuckle was warm. His smile charmed her. “I’m glad to be of help, my lovely Cinderella,” he said with a mock bow. “In spite of your insulting remarks about my eating habits, I’m yours to command should the need arise again.” And his smile turned into a full-fledged look of total amusement.
“I’ve really missed you,” she said without even thinking. “I’ve missed your laugh.”
Instantly his gaze turned hot and fierce. “I explained all that.”
“I know, and you’re right,” she said with a resigned sigh. “But no matter the problems, I do have to spend time with you in order to get from point A to point B. I’m supposed to be helping you. I’m your employee.”
A harsh laugh escaped him. “That’s only a partial truth, Eden. You’re a bit more than my employee.”
And there it was. The very thing she had been fighting. This couldn’t be a simple, safe, risk-free employer-employee relationship and there had never really been a chance of that. At least on her part.
“Maybe that’s true. There’s no getting past the fact that we both know I once had a horrible crush on you. But we’re not kids anymore. I’m not sobbing over my pet. And, yes, I’ve already admitted that I’m still attracted to you, but I’m doing an okay job of ignoring my attraction. I know darn well it wouldn’t be smart to indulge myself, not when you’re—”
She couldn’t say the words.
“When I’m a man who isn’t doing an okay job of ignoring his attraction. The fact is that my temperature rises every time you’re in the room,” he said. “I want to see what’s under this soft, silky thing you’re wearing. I want to place my hands on you and feel what I can’t see.”
Eden’s heart was beating so fast that she was afraid she might pass out. Instead she forced herself to raise her chin. “Yes, but we’ve both admitted that that’s mere physical attraction. It’s natural to feel that way given the amount of time we’re together. And, I think…it’s okay as long as we’re both aware that this is going nowhere. Neither of us wants it to get out of hand, but can’t we still be—I don’t know. Business associates and friends? This arrangement was friendly for a while. For the short time we’re going to be working together, can’t we try to get back to that?”
His smile was thin. He blew out a long breath and muttered a word beneath his breath that she had never heard him use. “Are you sure you heard what I said and that you understand the impending difficulties of our arrangement?”
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “You want to sleep with me, but you won’t.”
Jeremy groaned. “That was such a schoolteacher tone, so matter-of-fact.”
She shrugged. “It’s who I am,” she said casually, although she wasn’t feeling anything even close to casual.
“You want me to agree to be friends?”
“And business associates. Let me go back to just being a good employee again.”
Jeremy studied the sky he couldn’t see clearly. Then he laughed a bit harshly. “Who knew that I would ever develop a conscience?”
Maybe they could go backward, Eden thought. Maybe she could get over him if they tried to turn back the clock. “Friends?” she asked again.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re very persistent?”
“Had to be. I had to feed and raise a bunch of kids.”
He nodded. “All right. Friends. And for the record, I missed you, too.”
“That’s because we’re biking buddies.”
He gave her a look. No, he gave her the look, the one that said that biking wasn’t what he most wanted to do with her.
“Okay, I won’t push it,” she said.
Jeremy laughed. “You always push.” And then he reached down and took her hand. “You wanted to know if there would be dancing at this party. There is.”
He pulled her into his arms and they moved over the uneven ground. Jeremy had clearly been dancing from birth, because his steps were faultless. Eden, who had never been an accomplished dancer, knew that she wouldn’t fall as long as he was holding her. It was heaven. Very temporary heaven, she amended.
They were friends again, even though she was feeling something more than friendship, something she didn’t want to think about.
And I won’t think about it, she told herself. I can be careful for just a few more weeks.
“It’s a boy,” Barry said, the minute he walked into the room the next day.
Jeremy felt all the blood drain from his face. He had fathered a child. He’d known that for days. Now he knew more.
“Where? Who?” he asked. He avoided looking at Eden. He did his best to keep his expression calm so that she wouldn’t see how much this was affecting him.
“I don’t know, yet. Another employee of the agency saw one of my messages. She remembered you and the mother and she said she was relatively certain that the child was yours. She might have more information soon.”
Jeremy’s heart was pounding fast. Panic threatened even as he pushed it away.
His eyesight was getting worse. When he had looked at Eden last evening and held her while they danced, there had been…less of her even as his feelings were growing more powerful.
“All right, keep at it,” he said casually. He turned to Eden. “Progress of sorts,” he said, and he actually managed to smile.
“I’m glad,” she said.
And now? A real child with a past and a future and dreams that could easily be shattered. What could he do about that? he asked himself later when he was alone in his room.
But the world felt dark and the answers wouldn’t come. He knew all too much about loss and injustice. Sometimes the sins of adults were paid for by children.
“And sometimes you end up hoping all your life not to be like your father but in the end, you are him,” Jeremy said. A person whose careless, selfish deeds kept punishing others.
The only bright light in this scenario was that he hadn’t given way to temptation and taken advantage of Eden. She was still relatively unharmed.