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“What would you know about emotions?”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“Figure it out, Judd,” Lise said wearily. The drugs were starting to take effect, the throbbing in her shoulder lessening; her eyes felt heavy, her body full of lassitude, and all she wanted was for him to go away. Then the door swung smoothly on its hinges again, and with a flood of relief she saw Dave’s familiar face.
Dave McDowell was her co-worker, almost always on the same shifts as she. She liked him enormously for his calmness under pressure, and for his rock-solid dependability. He was still wearing the navy-blue coveralls that went under their outer gear; he looked worn-out. She said warmly, “Dave…good thing you were on that ladder.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You were really pushing it, Lise.”
“The little girl wasn’t in her room. For some reason she’d slept in the attic. So it took me a while to find her.”
Judd made a small sound in his throat. Emmy slept in the attic when she was lonely, she’d told him that once. And he’d been away for four days. So if she’d died in the fire because she couldn’t be found, the blame could have been laid squarely on his own shoulders.
Unable to face his own thoughts, Judd turned to Dave. “My name’s Judd Harwood—it’s my daughter Lise rescued. If you were the man on the ladder—then I owe you a debt of thanks, too.”
“Dave McDowell,” Dave said with a friendly grin that lit up his brown eyes. “We make a good team, Lise and I. Except she doesn’t always go by the manual.”
“Rules are made to be bent,” Lise muttered.
“One of these days, you’ll bend them too often,” Dave said with a touch of grimness.
“Dave, I weigh less than the guys and I can go places they can’t. And I got her out, didn’t I?”
“You scare the tar out of me sometimes, that’s all.”
Lise said a very pithy word under her breath. Dave raised his eyebrows and produced a rather battered bouquet of flowers from behind his back. “Picked these up on the way over. Although you’ll be going home tomorrow, they say.”
“Come and get me?” Lise asked.
“Sure will.”
“Good,” she said contentedly.
“Might even clean up your apartment for you.”
Lise said with considerable dignity, “A messy room is the sign of a creative mind.”
“It’s the sign of someone who’d rather read mystery novels than do housework.”
“Makes total sense to me.” Lise grinned.
Judd shifted his position. The easy camaraderie between the two of them made him obscurely angry in a way he couldn’t analyse. So Dave was familiar with Lise’s apartment. Was he her lover as well as her cohort at work? And what if he was? Why should that matter to him, Judd? Other than being the woman who’d saved Emmy’s life, Lise Charbonneau was nothing to him.
Yet she was beautiful in a way Angeline could never be. A beauty that was much more than skin deep, that was rooted not only in courage but in emotion. He said brusquely, “I’ll be staying in the hospital overnight with my daughter. I’ll drop by in the morning, Lise, to see how you are.”
“Please don’t,” she said sharply. “You’ve thanked me. There’s nothing more to say.”
As Dave raised his brows again, Judd said implacably, “Then I’ll be in touch with you later on. McDowell, thanks again—your team did a great job.”
“No sweat, man.”
Judd marched out of the room and down the corridor toward the elevator. He wasn’t used to being given the brush-off. Hey, who was he kidding? He was never given the brush-off. Women seemed to find his looks, coupled with his money, a potent combination, so much so that he was the one used to handing out brush-offs. Politely. Diplomatically. But the message was almost always the same. Hands off.
Lise Charbonneau hated his guts. No doubt about that. Dammit, she’d been scarcely conscious and she’d found the energy to let him know she thought he was the lowest of the low. And all because of Angeline. Who in the end had dumped him as unceremoniously as if he’d been a pair of boots she was tired of wearing. Trouble is, at the time that had hurt. Hurt rather more than he was prepared to admit. During the eleven years it had lasted, he’d done his level best to hold his marriage together, and to preserve the intensity of emotion that had poleaxed him when he’d first met Angeline. But he’d failed on both counts. Hence his propensity for brush-offs whenever a woman showed any signs of getting too close, or having any ambitions toward matrimony.
Been there. Done that.
He’d have to phone Angeline first thing in the morning: assuming that she was home in the elegant chateau on the Loire that was the principal residence of her second husband, Henri. Who was, incidentally, no longer richer than Judd. Judd, however, couldn’t lay claim to a string of counts and dukes in his ancestry. Far from it. If he rarely thought about Angeline, he even more rarely recalled his upbringing on the sordid tenements of Manhattan’s lower east side.
The elevator seemed to take forever to arrive, but finally he was pushing open the door to Emmy’s room. The little girl was lying peacefully asleep, just as he’d left her. She had her mother’s dark blue eyes and heart-shaped face; but her long, straight hair was as black as his, and she’d inherited both his quickness of mind and ability to keep her own counsel. He’d loved her from the moment she’d been born. But only rarely did he know exactly what she was thinking.
As he reached over and smoothed her hair back from her face, she didn’t even stir. He’d wanted to make the same gesture with Lise, although from very different motives. Motives nowhere near as pure as the love of a father for his daughter.
He hadn’t seen the last of Lise. He knew that in his bones. Although if she were involved with Dave, he’d be one heck of a lot smarter to keep his distance. If he hadn’t liked the first brush-off, why would he like the second any better? And he’d never tried forcing himself between a woman and her lover. Never had to, and he wasn’t about to start now.
Put Lise Charbonneau out of your mind, he told himself, and focus on getting some sleep. Tomorrow he had to look after Emmy, insurance agents, the police and contractors for repairs. He didn’t need the distraction of a flame-haired woman who thought he was the scum of the earth. Scowling, Judd lay down on the cot that the nurses had provided and stared up at the ceiling. But it was a long time before he fell asleep, because two images kept circling in his brain.
Emmy sleeping in the attic because she was lonely.
And the dirt under Lise’s fingernails. Dirt from a fire in which she’d risked her life for Emmy’s sake.
CHAPTER TWO
THREE days after the fire and her shoulder was still killing her, Lise thought irritably. She hated being off work and having so much time to think. And even more she hated feeling so helpless and ineffective. It was nearly noon, and all she’d accomplished so far today was to have a shower, make her bed and buy a few groceries. The cabbie had been kind enough to carry them upstairs to her apartment door. But she’d had to put them away, one thing at a time, because she could only use her left arm. She wasn’t sleeping well, she’d watched far too much TV the last three days, she’d read until her eyes ached, and yes, she was in a foul mood.
She pulled a chair over to the counter, climbed up and reached for the package of rice. But as she lifted it in her good hand, she bumped her sore shoulder on the edge of the cupboard door. Pain lanced the whole length of her arm. With a sharp cry, she dropped the rice. It hit a can of tomatoes, the bag split and rice showered over the counter and the floor.
Lise knew a great many swearwords, working as she did with a team of men. But not one of them seemed even remotely adequate. Tears of frustration flooding her eyes, she leaned her forehead against the cupboard door. What was wrong with her? Why did she suddenly feel like crying her eyes out?
She needed a change. That was one reason. Desperately and immediately, she needed to alter her lifestyle.
It wasn’t the first time she’d had this thought. But its intensity was new. New and frightening, because if she quit her job at the fire station, what else would she do? She’d worked there for nearly ten years. She didn’t have a university degree, she had not one speck of artistic talent, and anything to do with the world of commerce reduced her to a blithering idiot. She couldn’t even balance her checkbook, for Pete’s sake.
So how could she quit her job?
With her good hand, she reached for the box of tissues on the counter; but as she tugged one free, more rice pellets rattled to the counter. The counter needed wiping. The sink was full of dirty dishes. Her whole life was a mess, Lise thought, blowing her nose and clambering down from the chair. And how she loathed self-pitying women. Maybe she’d make herself a large cherry milk shake and eat six brownies in a row. That might give her the energy to clean up the rice. If not the refrigerator.
Somewhat cheered by the thought of the brownies—she’d made them from a packaged mix, with considerable difficulty, yesterday—Lise pulled the pan out from on top of the bread bin. But as she opened the drawer for a knife, someone knocked on her door.
It was a very decisive knock. Puzzled, she walked to the door and peered through the peephole.
Judd Harwood was standing on the other side of the door.
The last person in the world she wanted visiting her.
She yanked the door open, said furiously, “No, I do not want to see you and how did you get past security?”
“Waited until someone else opened the main door,” he said mildly. “You look god-awful, Lise.”
“Make my day.”
“Looks like someone ought to, and it might as well be me.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
But as she tried to push the door shut, he neatly inserted his foot in the gap and pried it further open. She seethed, “Judd, I’ll holler blue murder if you don’t go away.”
He gave her a charming smile, although his eyes, she noticed, were cool and watchful. “I’ve got a favor to ask you,” he said. “It concerns Emmy, not me, and it’s important. Won’t you at least hear me out?”
“Do you always use other people to gain your own ends?”
In a voice like steel, he said, “I happen to be telling the truth. Or is that a commodity you don’t recognize?”
“In you, no.”
“If we’re going to have a no-holds-barred, drag-’em-out fight, let’s at least do it in the privacy of your apartment,” he said, and pushed past her to stand in the hallway.
He was six inches taller than she, and probably seventy pounds heavier. Not to mention his muscles. Lise slammed the door shut and leaned back against it. “So what’s the favor and make it fast.”
He stepped closer. “You’ve been crying.”
Between gritted teeth she said, “The favor, Judd.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything. I can’t go back to work for a whole week, my right arm’s useless and I’m going nuts. Do you know what I did all day yesterday? Watched reruns of Star Wars—for the third time. And what else would you like to know? What are you doing here anyway—slumming?”
“I told you—I have a favor to ask you.”
“I’ve read about you. In Fortune and Time magazine. About all your fancy houses, your cars and planes, your women. The international airlines you own. All of which are euphemisms for power. Power and money. And you expect me to believe that I can be of use to you? Don’t make me laugh.”
In sudden amusement Judd said, “You don’t have red hair for nothing, do you? I didn’t have time for coffee this morning—how about I put on a pot and we sit down like two civilized human beings and have a reasonable conversation.”
“I don’t feel even remotely reasonable when I’m anywhere in your vicinity,” Lise snapped, then instantly wished the words unsaid.
“Don’t you? Now that’s interesting,” Judd said silkily.
She couldn’t back away from him: her shoulder blades were pressed into the door as it was. “Judd, let’s get something straight. I don’t like you. I don’t like what you did to Angeline. So there’s no room for small talk between you and me. Tell me what the favor is, I’ll decide if I want to do it and then you can leave.”
“I’ll leave when I’m ready.”
She tossed her head. “Macho stuff. I get a dose of that at work, I don’t need it at home.”
“Are you ever at a loss for words?”
“I can’t afford to be—I work with men,” she retorted. As, unexpectedly, he began to laugh, his sheer vitality seemed to shrink the hallway; she caught her breath between her teeth, wishing she’d gone out for coffee this morning and was anywhere but here. But Judd would have tracked her down sooner or later: that much she knew. Realizing she was conceding defeat, swearing it would be only temporary, she said grudgingly, “Caffeinated or decaf?”
“Doesn’t matter. Where’s the kitchen?”
She winced. “The living room’s through there. I’ll only be a minute.”
“Got a man hidden behind the stove, Lise?”
The gleam of humor in his slate-gray eyes was irresistible, and suddenly she heard herself laughing. Laughing as if she liked him, she thought in panic. “Behind my stove is not a place any self-respecting man would want to go,” she said, adding, “Watch where you step,” as she led the way into the narrow galley kitchen.
Judd stopped in the doorway. “Well,” he said, looking around. “If Dave cleaned up your apartment the other day, he’s a better firefighter than a Molly Maid.”
“Dave doesn’t live here!”
“Is he your lover?”
“What gives you the right to ask a personal question like that?”
He hesitated perceptibly. “I’m not sure. Are you and Dave lovers?”
Not for anything was she going to expose the relationship between her and Dave to Judd Harwood’s knife-blade gaze. “No comment,” she said stonily.
“I see…in that case, I take my coffee black,” Judd said. “With honey if you have any. Did you throw the rice at the wall?”
She rolled her eyes. “I was trying to put away the groceries, banged my shoulder on the cupboard and dropped the rice. The bag burst. As you see.”
“Rice is a symbol of fertility,” Judd said lightly. “Isn’t that why they throw it at weddings?”
“Did they throw it at yours?”
His lashes flickered. “No. Angeline was into gold-leaf confetti. Nothing as ordinary as rice.” Angeline had never wanted to have a baby; her figure had been more important to her than her husband’s longing for children. Emmy’s conception had been an accident, plain and simple.
For a moment Lise would have sworn there’d been genuine pain underlying Judd’s voice. But the next moment his eyes were guarded, impenetrable as pewter. She’d imagined it. Of course she had. Judd Harwood hurt because of something she’d said? What a joke.
He said casually, “Where do you keep your vacuum cleaner? I’d better get rid of this mess before you slip on it and break your neck.”
He owned the largest and most luxurious airlines in the world; she couldn’t pick up a daily paper and not know that. And he was about to vacuum her kitchen floor? Something so ordinary—to use his own word—had never figured among her romantic fantasies all those years ago. As a teenager, she’d been more apt to picture him maddened by desire, carrying her in his strong arms away from Marthe, from the ugly brick house in Outremont, and the boredom of homework and appointments with the orthodontist.
“The vacuum’s in the hall cupboard,” Lise said edgily. “I’ll wipe all the rice that’s on the counters onto the floor.”
“You do that.”
As he left the room, she stared after him. Her whole nervous system was on high alert; any remnants of self-pity had fled the minute Judd had pushed his way into her apartment. But she could handle him. She wasn’t an impressionable and innocent teenager anymore; she’d been around the block a few times and learned a thing or two. No, she was more than a match for Judd Harwood. Scowling, Lise fished a cloth from among the dishes piled in the sink and started pushing the rice grains onto the floor. Which could do with a darn good scrubbing.
When Judd came back in, he’d shed his leather bomber jacket and was rolling up the sleeves of a blue cotton shirt. His jeans were faded with wear, fitting his hips snugly. Her gaze skewed away. She said rapidly, “I still can’t use my right arm—I feel such a klutz.”
“No permanent damage, though?” he asked; she would have sworn his concern was real.
“Nope. Just a Technicolor shoulder,” she said, and watched his gaze drop.
She was wearing a T-shirt that had shrunk in the drier; it was turquoise with orange hummingbirds flitting across her breasts. The bruise on her jaw was a putrid shade of yellow. How to impress the man of your dreams, Lise thought dryly, and said, “I’ll get out of the way while you vacuum. This kitchen’s never been big enough for two.”
Reaching for the plug, Judd remarked, “Perhaps that’s why you haven’t married?”
