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“No, thanks.”
“Right.” He nodded to himself and smiled. “No caffeine for you. Don’t know how you’ll manage.”
“I’ve got bigger things to worry about at the moment. And why should I have expected you to propose marriage to me? You don’t even believe that this is your baby.”
He took a sip of coffee, then walked back to where he’d left her. Looking down at her, he said, “No, I don’t. But that’s not the issue anymore.”
She choked out a laugh. “What is?”
“You can’t pay the blackmail. I won’t pay it. I’m guessing you don’t want your family to know about this pregnancy yet, either, am I right?”
More right than he knew. Julia got a cold chill just imagining breaking the “unwed mother” news to her parents. They’d once stopped speaking to her for six months because she’d dated a musician briefly.
The Prentices weren’t exactly your average American family. She and her parents had never been close—which made one question why she cared what they thought of her life choices. But even if Margaret and Donald Prentice were cold and mostly uncaring, they were the only family Julia had. And now, more than ever, she couldn’t afford to lose touch with that one fragile thread of connection.
“Yes,” she whispered, ducking her head because she couldn’t meet his eyes when she said it. “You’re right.”
“And the actual father of this child is no longer in the picture.”
Wryly, she muttered, “You could say that.”
“Seems to me, the one option open to you is marrying me. If we’re married, then there is no scandal about your pregnancy. The blackmail will go away, end of problem.”
“And beginning of another one,” she countered, standing up now because tilting her head back to look at him simply put her at too great a disadvantage. “Max, I really appreciate your very unexpected offer of help, but don’t you think it’s going too far?”
“Why?” He set his coffee cup down on his desk, dropped both hands to her shoulders and held her gently, yet firmly. “We’ve got plenty of chemistry together, Julia. That’s been proven.”
“But a marriage?”
“Doesn’t have to be forever,” he qualified. “We can put a time stamp on it. Call it a marriage for a year. My attorney will draw up some papers and—”
“A year?”
“Less time would look suspicious, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose…” She felt as if she were being swept out to sea on a receding tidal wave. There was no ground beneath her feet. Nothing to grab hold of. Nowhere to turn. Nowhere to look but into his eyes. “But I still don’t understand why you would do this.”
“I want a son. An heir.” He let her go, walked around the edge of his desk and stared out at the skyline of the great city sprawled out in front of them. “That’s really all you need to know.” Turning back to her, his gaze speared hers. “I’ll marry you, give your child my name. He’ll be mine, legally and emotionally. You’ll sign legal papers asserting that fact.”
“And if the baby’s a girl?”
He looked startled—as if he hadn’t considered that possibility at all. Then he brushed the notion aside. “Doesn’t matter. Girl or boy, the baby’s mine the minute we get married. Agreed?”
No problem, she thought but didn’t say. The baby was his, despite what he thought, so she wouldn’t have any issues signing whatever documents he required. But there remained another question. “If we get married and want it to look real, we’ll have to live together.”
“Naturally.”
“As husband and wife.”
“Absolutely.” He came back to her, his gaze never leaving her face.
Julia felt heat start at the top of her head and slide all the way down to the soles of her feet. His gaze swept her up and down as surely as a touch, and just like that, Julia’s body slipped into overdrive.
When he touched her, she half expected to burst into flames. But all that happened was more heat, seeping from his hands on her shoulders down deep into her flesh.
“You’ll move into my place. My bed. As far as anyone else knows, this is a whirlwind romance.”
“Whirlwind…” She smiled in spite of everything. “Sounds appropriate.”
“And when we’re married,” he said softly, “I’ll expect you to tell me who the baby’s father really is. I’ll want to know who to watch out for. Who to guard against.”
“Max—”
He kissed her and Julia’s mind simply shut down. There was no room for thinking when sensation was spilling through her like a river of molten lava. Every cell in her body was alive and awake and clamoring for more.
Max’s hands swept up and down her spine, molding her body to his, pulling her in so tightly to him that Julia thought wildly for a moment that her body was going to slide right into his. Her arms came up and linked behind his neck, holding his head to hers, his mouth to hers. He parted her lips with his tongue and she lost her breath on a ragged sigh of pleasure so deep, so soul searingly complete, she gave herself up to the wonder of it.
All of this happened even while a small, still-rational corner of her mind explored this new situation. Marrying Max? Was she asking for more trouble? Was she blindly walking into a situation that was only going to lead to misery? Was she setting herself up to be broken and hurt?
Did she have a choice?
Max broke the kiss. He didn’t let her go, just lifted his head and looked down at her. “Well? What’s it going to be, Julia? Do we get married?”
Her head still reeling, her body whimpering, Julia looked up into those grass-green eyes. She saw the future stretching out unknown in front of them and knew that he was the best choice for her and her child. She didn’t really want to marry a man who thought her capable of lying to him about something so personal, so important. But if she didn’t marry Max and the blackmailer made good on his/her threat, then she and her child would be the subject of vicious gossip for years. Besides, it wasn’t as if she was marrying a stranger. He was the father of her child.
This was her best…her only real choice. So she would marry Max. And somehow, she would find a way to convince him that the child she carried was his. With that thought firmly in mind, she heard herself say, “Yes, Max. We get married.”
“Excellent.”
Then he kissed her again and the deal was sealed.
“A prenup? You’re getting married? When did this happen?”
Max looked across the table at his attorney and friend, Alexander Harper. Tall, with dark hair and dark eyes, Alex looked dangerous, which Max appreciated in an attorney.
“It’s a sudden decision,” Max allowed, taking a sip of the fifty-year-old scotch in front of him.
“Damn sudden if you ask me,” Alex said, lifting a hand to signal the waitress for a scotch like his friend. He’d arrived a little late for their business lunch and had some catching up to do. “Aren’t you the guy who swore he’d never get married again after what happened with Camille?”
Frowning a little, Max nodded. “This is different.” In a few short sentences, he laid it all out for his friend, who shook his head and thanked their waitress for his drink when it arrived. Lifting the heavy crystal tumbler, he took a sip, set the glass down again and said, “That’s a hell of a thing, Max. And Julia Prentice is quite the catch.”
Max knew that. Hell, Julia’s bloodlines were better than Camille’s. The Prentice family was old money. They’d been around forever and guarded their name with the tenacity of a pen of pit bulls. Wryly, he admitted silently that he’d love to see the faces of Julia’s parents when she broke it to them that she’d be marrying him. A self-made billionaire, son of a truck driver and a housewife.
His gaze swept the interior of the small, upscale restaurant. Only a dozen or so tables filled the woodpaneled room, and those tables were covered in snowy-white linen. Waiters wearing black slacks and crisp white shirts moved through the room with silent efficiency. The darkly tinted windows looked out on Fifth Avenue, and for a moment, Max distracted himself by staring at the crowds of people streaming along the sidewalks.
“So,” Alex said, drawing his attention back to the conversation at hand, “you don’t believe her about the baby, but you’re marrying her, anyway.”
“That’s about the size of it. I need you to draw up a prenup and also a document stating I’m the father of her child.” The more he’d thought about this situation in the hour or so since Julia had left his office, the more Max liked the situation. He was getting a bed partner who lit his sheets on fire, and he was getting the child he so badly wanted. It was a win-win as far as he could see. And knowing going in that the woman he was about to marry was a beautiful liar gave him the advantage. Again. “I want it signed, notarized…hell, I want it bronzed, before the ceremony.”
“All doable,” Alex said, then pinned his friend with a hard look. “But tell me something. Why are you so fast to discount the possibility that you are the baby’s father?”
Frowning again, Max said, “You know why.”
“Yeah, Camille told you the tests came back saying you were infertile.”
Max scowled at him. Alex had never been a fan of Camille’s. Even knowing that his friend had been right didn’t change things. “I saw the damn test results.”
“You saw what Camille wanted you to see.”
They’d been over this before and Max was tired of the trip. So he cut his friend off at the pass. “Look, I don’t want to talk about ancient history. I just need you to take care of these details, all right?”
“Sure, Max,” Alex said with a shrug. “I’ll take care of it. How soon do you need it done?”
“The wedding’s in two weeks.”
Alex whistled, low and long. “I’ll have to hustle to get it all set up.”
“Well, my friend,” Max said with a self-satisfied smile, “that’s why you make the big bucks, isn’t it? Now, let’s eat. I’m picking Julia up in an hour to go see the police.”
“At least that much makes sense to me,” Alex said, picking up his leather-bound menu to peruse it. “Who’re you going to be talking to? Do you have a name?”
“A Detective McGray,” Max said, sliding his gaze over the restaurant’s offerings. “He’s in charge of the investigation into the death of the woman who lived in Julia’s building. I figured, the blackmail’s in the building, too. Might as well see the man who’s already investigating what’s happening at 721.”
Detective Arnold McGray looked tired.
His salt-and-pepper hair stood on end and his eyes had dark shadows beneath them. A five-o’clock shadow stubbled his jaws, and his dark blue tie had been loosened at his undone collar.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” he said, glancing down at the notepad he’d been writing on since Julia had started talking. “You’re being blackmailed and you have no idea who might be behind this?”
“That’s right.” Julia stiffened, instinctively uncomfortable in the bustling detective area of the local NYPD precinct building.
Around her, overworked and underpaid police officers were hunkered down over desks littered with manila file folders, towering stacks of papers and ringing phones. The cacophony was deafening. A drunken homeless man was singing to himself, a hooker in a bright red dress was trying to proposition her way out of an arrest, and a bearded younger man rattled the handcuffs that kept him locked in his chair.
This was so far out of Julia’s everyday world, she didn’t know where to look.
“And you think this might have something to do with the death of Marie Endicott?” McGray’s voice was pitched just loud enough to carry over the noise.
“What?” Julia shook herself and frowned. “No, I mean, I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose…” She glanced at Max, sitting beside her.
Even in this setting, his personal stamp of power was easy to read. He didn’t look intimidated or threatened by the surroundings. Clearly, he was a man completely at home and confident of himself wherever he was.
As if picking up on her uncertainty, Max took the thread of her conversation and finished it himself. “Detective McGray,” he said, “the truth is, my fiancée and I have no idea who might be behind this blackmail attempt. My feeling was that we should bring the matter to you, as it could very well be part of what’s happened at my fiancée’s building.”
Julia had to force herself not to jerk in reaction to the word fiancée. He’d used it twice, as if making a point either to her or the detective. Which? she wondered, and then asked herself if it mattered.
She’d already agreed to marry him. And though a part of her was worried about what would happen, another, more cowardly part was grateful for the reprieve Max had offered her. The fact that the child she carried actually was his, was, she thought, ironic.
“I appreciate you bringing the matter to my attention,” McGray said, slumping back in his tattered chair. “Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a connection.”
“Really?” Julia asked.
“Seems unlikely that two such unrelated events would happen in the span of a couple of weeks—in a place that’s seen no trouble at all in more than ten years.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Max said, reaching out to give Julia’s cold hand a squeeze.
“Well, I’ve got all I need for the moment,” the detective said, standing up behind his desk. “I’ll look into this and if I find anything, I’ll be in touch.”
Max stood up, too, and held out one hand. When the older man shook it, Max thanked him. Then almost before she knew what was happening, Julia found herself being steered out of the police precinct and led outside.
“Do you really think the blackmailer has something to do with what happened to Marie Endicott?” Julia asked when they were alone.
He glanced over her head at the teeming streets, then led her down the steps to the sidewalk. Lifting one hand to hail a cab, Max glanced down at her. “My gut says yeah. They’re related.”
“Then that means…”
“We’re not sure what it means,” he cautioned, his green eyes going cold and hard. “But yes, your blackmailer could have been involved in that woman’s death.”
“Oh, God.” Julia hadn’t wanted to think of Marie committing suicide. But the thought of a murderer walking free through 721 Park Avenue was even more disquieting.
A chill swept over her, making her shiver despite the cloying heat and humidity pounding down on the city.
Five
Max stared up at the edifice of 721 Park Avenue, craning his neck to take in the entire fourteen-story brick facade. A prewar structure, 721 was a classic in the old style. The building settled into the corner of Park and Seventieth like an old woman in a comfortable chair.
The city itself had grown and changed over the years, but the old building remained the same, sitting in the heart of the most expensive slice of real estate in the United States. Politicians, celebrities, old money and new, all gravitated to the Upper East Side of New York. And this place was one of the crown jewels of the neighborhood.
All around him, the city pulsed with life and energy. People streamed past him on the sidewalk, and on the streets car horns blasted out a cacophony of sound.
Max ignored it all, though, as his gaze fixed on the roof and his thoughts turned to the woman who’d fallen to her death from that very roof. Then he thought about the blackmail attempt on Julia and asked himself, just what the hell was going on at 721? He agreed with the police detective they’d spoken to the day before. It seemed highly unlikely that two such-out-of-the-normal events could happen within a couple of weeks of each other and not be related somehow.
Lowering his gaze to the glass door that opened into the quietly elegant lobby of the building, Max spied the doorman wandering over to his desk. Smiling to himself, Max stepped up, pulled open the front door and stepped into the cool quiet of the lobby. Vastly different from his own building’s entry, 721 reeked of oldworld elegance and a time long past.
Instantly the doorman’s gaze snapped up to meet Max’s. “Good afternoon,” he said. “May I help you?”
Max walked up to the impressive mahogany desk behind which the much smaller man stood. Taking a quick look around the lobby area, Max spotted the mailboxes for the tenants and smiled to himself. Just as he’d thought. The doorman would have had a good view of whoever might have slipped a blackmail letter into Julia’s mail slot.
Rather than answering the man’s question, Max gave him a tight smile and said, “You’re Henry, right?”
The doorman looked surprised. “Yes, sir. Henry Brown.”
“My fiancée lives in this building,” Max said, and realized that it was getting easier to say the word fiancee. “Ms. Prentice.”
There was a flicker of surprise in Henry’s dark brown eyes, which disappeared a moment later. “Are you here to see her, then? She’s not at home at the moment, but I’d be happy to deliver a message for you.”
Trying to get rid of him? Max wondered. “No,” he said, “actually, I came to talk to you.”
“Me?”
