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Nick barely noticed. Because he found himself staring at the one woman he thought he’d managed to forget.
Carolyn Duff.
She had deep-green eyes, so wide and dark, they were as inviting as placid lakes beneath a moonlit sky. A charcoal suit hugged her body, yet gave nothing away. Sensible pumps with kitten heels, not high enough to show off the real curves of her long legs, but enough to remind him of those gorgeous, long limbs. Blond hair, put back in a severe, tight bun, but Nick knew, when she let her hair down, it would be just long enough to tease around her features and whisper along her cheekbones, her jaw.
Everything about Carolyn on the outside was delicate, and yet on the inside she was strong—like a flamingo that could weather a hurricane.
She’d been the one woman who had intrigued him more than any other in law school. Her uppercrust, stiff Bostonian attitude had been a challenge to him—because when they’d met and he’d made her laugh, he’d glimpsed the Carolyn underneath, it had made him want to peel back the layers, get her to loosen up. Tease out the fun side of the severe, break-no-rules studier.
He’d done that, then done the most spontaneous thing in his life. Taken it to the next level and married her—the biggest mistake of his life.
And now that mistake was standing right in front of him.
CHAPTER TWO
“WHAT are you doing here?” Carolyn asked. Her heartbeat doubled with the shock of seeing him. She saw the same surprise reflected in the widening of his eyes, the way he seemed rooted to the spot. Nick Gilbert, the last man she expected to run into in the toy aisle.
Nick. Her…
Husband?
The thought ran through her in a rush, along with the embarrassing memory of when she’d said “I do” in a tacky Vegas wedding chapel and made promises she, of all people, shouldn’t have made.
No, he wasn’t her husband. Not anymore. Her ex.
Their marriage, their relationship was over now. They were over.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” he said.
She looked up at him, hating the disadvantage of being shorter. At six-two, Nick had always had a good seven-inch height advantage over her. Years ago she’d liked that. Liked that she could look up into his teasing blue eyes and be swept up into the humor of his smile.
But not anymore. Right now she wished she had on platform heels so she could go toe-to-toe with those blue eyes.
Blue eyes that no longer had any effect on her. Whatsoever. Despite the tingle she’d felt when she ran into him in the crowded courthouse elevator last week. And glimpsed him in the cafeteria from time to time.
She’d seen him off and on many times since their divorce, but never this close. Never had to have a real conversation with him. Even now, as she had for the past three years, she could turn away, walk down the aisle as if nothing had happened.
But something had. A little something inside her had zigged when they had zagged.
With a start, she realized he was staring at her—because she hadn’t answered the question. Heat filled her cheeks, which only left her more discomfited.
Carolyn Duff didn’t do discomfited. She never felt out of sorts.
“I’m buying toys for one of the children in the charity—” She glanced down at his cart and saw toys. Books.
“Me, too. I think the entire Lawford legal community got onboard with this one,” he said. “But maybe I should have stuck to business law. I haven’t the foggiest idea what the hell I’m doing.” He reached into his cart and pulled out the two dolls. “Burps or cries? Which is better? How am I supposed to know? To me, they’re both losing propositions.”
She laughed and when she did, it resurrected a part of her she’d thought she left behind long ago. A lightness she’d lost in the years she’d lived with her aunt Greta, then rediscovered when she’d met Nick.
A lightness she’d missed in the heavy work of being a city prosecutor.
She glanced at Nick. The poor man clearly had no clue when it came to kids—and neither did she. The two of them were stuck in the same shopping hell. What harm could come from a little talking? “I know exactly how you feel. I was standing in the next aisle with the same problem.” She reached into her cart and pulled out a selection of trucks. “Fire engine or police car? Dump truck or…what is this thing? A front loader? And what is a front loader anyway? And then there’s these things called transformers, but I can’t figure out why anyone would want a toy that transforms, or if it’s even what this boy would want.” Carolyn tossed the toys back into her cart and threw up her hands. She was babbling. She always did that when she got nervous—something that only seemed to happen outside the courtroom, and apparently whenever she got around Nick, who was a six-foot-two reminder of her biggest mistake. “Whatever happened to a bat, a ball and a catcher’s mitt?”
Nick chuckled. “It has gotten complicated, hasn’t it? Every single thing I see here has a computer chip in it, I swear. These aren’t just toys, they’re technological revolutions.” Nick shook his head. “Well, I’ll muddle through somehow. After all, I’ve got a college degree. How hard can it be? Just watch me.” He chuckled, showing the easy humor that had always been as much a part of Nick as his dark-brown hair and his cobalt eyes.
Did he remember that crazy decision to rush off to Vegas? The heady choice they’d made? One where they’d clearly not been thinking with brain cells, and only with the blush of lust?
Carolyn, out of Aunt Greta’s house for the first time since she was nine, so desperate to cast off the strangling structure of her past, saw escape in Nick. She’d married him for all the wrong reasons and had at least been smart enough to undo it the first chance she got.
Nick leaned forward, reading the boxes that lined the shelves, studying the facts and figures, researching his purchase. He was being the detail man that made him a good lawyer, but betraying none of the funny, spontaneous Nick she’d once known. Just as well. She didn’t need that man in her life. Because that man was the one who had—for a snippet of time—made her think she could be someone she really wasn’t.
“This says ages eight and up,” Nick read aloud, sounding as serious as a tax accountant. “I don’t think that will work. My paper says the child is six.”
“My—” She caught herself before she said “my child,” because this wasn’t her child. “The child I’m sponsoring is almost the same age. I have a five-year-old.”
“Someone wasn’t thinking. Giving you and me a couple of little kids like that. They should have assigned us two high school students. That we can handle. Buy them a couple calculators and some dictionaries. Sit them down, dispense some college advice.”
“Yeah.” She let out a little laugh. An uncomfortable silence filled the space between them, the kind that came from two people who used to know each other and now didn’t, who were pretending everything was cool—even when a heat still simmered in the air.
Leave, her mind said. Take this pause as what it was—an excuse to go. But her feet didn’t go anywhere and she couldn’t have said why.
“Maybe you should try this one.” Carolyn picked up a box that held a big white plastic horse designed for a doll to take galloping into the sunset. She flipped over the box, read the same age recommendation as Nick had seen and put it back on the shelf. That was all they needed—a choking lawsuit. “Forget it. Too many small parts.”
He gave her a smile. “When did you get so smart about toys?”
“I didn’t. It’s the lawyer in me reading the fine print.”
“You always were good at that part.”
Carolyn let those words go, knowing Nick meant more than the directions on a box. She’d been the strict one, always playing by the rules, where he’d been the opposite.
“What’s your kid’s name?” Nick asked, strolling further down the aisle, toward the dress-up clothes.
“Name?” Carolyn looked at him.
“Yeah. His or her name.”
“Uh…” Carolyn thought for a second. “Bobby.”
Nick grinned, and when he did, Carolyn was whisked back to those college days. “Nice name. My child is named Angela.”
“Your…your child? You’re married?”
“Are you kidding me? Could you see me with kids?” He chuckled. “You know me, Carolyn. I’m not the kind of guy who likes to have ties.”
That had been part of the attraction and part of the problem. Carolyn had gone for Nick because he’d been the complete opposite of the life she’d left in Boston, but when she’d needed him to be dependable, to listen, to be a true partner—
He hadn’t been there. He’d let her down.
“No, I never married again,” Nick went on. “Angela is the child I’m sponsoring.”
Carolyn released a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding. Nick wasn’t married. He didn’t have kids. No other woman had laid claim to his heart.
She shouldn’t care. The days when she had any stake in Nick—or in anything about Nick—were long past.
“So, nope, no kids for me. This is as close as I get.” He gestured toward the basket of toys.
“A one-day commitment, huh?”
“Those seem to be the kind I’m good at.” Nick’s gaze met hers, and their shared history unfurled in the tension thickening the air between them.
A mother with two children, one strapped into the shopping cart’s seat, the other trailing behind and whining discontent about some toy she’d been denied, squeezed past them. On the overhead sound system, someone called for a price check in aisle three. Once again, the uncomfortable silence of two people who had essentially become strangers grew between Carolyn and Nick, like a tangle of thorny vines separating once-friendly neighbors.
“Well, it was great seeing you, Nick,” Carolyn said. “Good luck with your shopping.”
Before she could turn away, Nick reached out and laid a hand on top of hers. Carolyn took in a breath, the air searing her lungs, awareness pumping through her veins. Nick’s touch, so familiar, yet also so new after all this time apart, spread warmth through her hand. The scent of his cologne—the same cologne, as if nothing had changed, not a single thing. The sound of his heartbeat, his every breath—could she really hear that, or was it just her own, matching his?—time stopping for one, long slow second. “Wait. Don’t go,” he said.
“Why?”
“Why don’t we shop together?”
The mother and two children disappeared around the corner, the whine of the eldest child dropping off when she apparently spied a better toy. The store’s music droned on with its instrumental rendition of Seventies hits, a soft undertow of lounge melodies. “Shop together?” Carolyn repeated.
He grinned. “Do either of us look like we know what the heck we’re doing?”
She glanced down at her haphazard selection of toys. A complete zoo of stuffed animals. Every type and kind of truck carried by the store. Books that featured cartoon characters, superheroes, animals and dancing vegetables. She’d pretty much bought one of everything, hoping that a scattershot of presents would result in something the child might like.
She’d already spent three hours at this toy shopping and had almost nothing that said “Wow, great gift” to show for her efforts. Every item she picked up, she hemmed and hawed over, wondering if a little boy would like this or would prefer that. The truth was, she had no idea what little boys, or little girls, for that matter, really wanted. She could barely remember her own childhood.
When it came to buying presents for a little boy, who better to ask for an opinion than a male? A male who’d been the kind to enjoy playing Frisbee and catch on the college campus? The kind who clearly knew how to have fun?
She and Nick were both adults. Their marriage—which they’d both agreed back in that diner was a mistake—was far in the past. This was a charity mission. What harm could a few minutes of shopping do?
“This is a one-time offer,” he said. “One of the Lawford attorneys offering to help a prosecutor, pro bono.”
She laughed again, and right there, found herself caught in the old spell all over again. The one that had made her abandon her structured life and go along with Nick’s crazy Vegas plan. But this idea wasn’t crazy; it was merely a partnership. “How very charitable of you.”
“It’s not charity. After all, weren’t we always better together than apart?”
“Maybe in school, in classes, we worked well together, but not as a couple. You know that, Nick,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been happily divorced for three years.”
He arched a brow, cynicism written all over his features, and she wondered if maybe the end of the marriage hadn’t been the relief to him that she’d always told herself it had been. “Happily?”
“Divorce was what we both wanted. We agreed it was a stupid mistake and the best thing was to undo it as fast as possible. Tell no one, forget it ever happened. Pretend we’d never met. Remember?” Carolyn remembered those words, the argument that had accompanied that moment, and most of all, the look of pained disappointment in Nick’s eyes. It had surprised her, because she’d thought Nick hadn’t taken their bolt to the altar seriously at all—hadn’t thought Nick took anything seriously.
“I remember our ending as being more like removing a bandage, quick and a little painful.”
“Well, it’s over now, and we’ve both moved on, right?”
“Of course. And presumably, we’ve matured since then.”
“Have you?” she asked.
He grinned. “Not a bit.”
She chuckled. “I’m not surprised.”
“Ah, but that’s what keeps my life fun. And makes for entertainment in the courtroom.”
She just shook her head. Nick was exactly the same.
Over the years, Carolyn had managed to avoid seeing Nick, as much as was possible in the relatively small Lawford legal community. It helped that they worked in two entirely different areas of law—criminal and corporate.
When they did see each other, they exchanged nothing more than a simple nod, a few words of greeting.
Wearing a suit, he was devastatingly handsome. Powerful. In boxers and barechested, he was—
Irresistible. Sexy.
Luckily, today he was wearing a two-button navy suit with a white shirt and dark-crimson tie. It fit him perfectly, hugging over the broad shoulders and defined chest she knew existed beneath the fine fabrics. As did, apparently, the rest of the female population in the store, women who made little secret of staring at Nick. And why not? Nick Gilbert was the kind of man women noticed.
Carolyn returned to the matter at hand, drawing herself up. “I’ll let you get back to your shopping,” she said. “It was nice to see you again. Good night, Nick.”
She made moves to leave, but Nick took a step closer. “You don’t want to shop together? Are you afraid?”
“Afraid of what?”
“Working together. Don’t tell me the great Bulldog of Lawford isn’t up to the challenge of a little shopping trip with her ex. For a good cause, I might add.”
Her chin went up a notch. “I can certainly shop with you.”
“And not be at all affected by my winning personality.” He grinned. And damn if that smile didn’t whisper a temptation to take a dip in the pool of fun again. Just for a second.
“What winning personality?” She gave him a slight teasing smile back. “I heard you lost your last two cases.”
“Are you keeping track of my career, Miss Duff?”
“Of course not.”
“One might think you are. Otherwise, why would a city prosecutor care what a corporate lawyer is up to?”
Her chin rose a little higher. “Just making sure you’re staying in check, Mr. Gilbert, and not breaking any rules.”
He grinned. “And when have you ever known me to stay in check?”
The memory danced into the forefront of her thoughts. The first time she’d met Nick Gilbert. She’d been leaving the university library, overloaded and overwhelmed, books piled in her arms, preparation for a marathon study session for the upcoming bar exam.
She’d transferred to the Indiana school just a month earlier, and found the transition to be difficult, the adjustment harder than she’d expected. She’d made the best of the change, as she always had of every situation in her life—because she didn’t have a choice.
