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Max had made it a point over the years to learn how to read people. It came in handy in negotiations and was invaluable when meeting new clients or prospective business partners. And every instinct Max had told him that Henry was nervous. It didn’t show clearly, of course, and if he hadn’t been looking for the signals, he might have missed them himself.
But Henry’s gaze was furtive, darting around the lobby as if looking for help that wasn’t going to come. His right hand was fisted on his desk and the fingers of his left hand tapped restlessly against a pad of paper with 721 in elegant script across the top.
Interesting, Max thought and smiled inwardly. “Yes, Henry. I want you to think back on the last few days.”
“About what?”
“Have you seen anyone in here who didn’t belong?” Max leaned one arm on the desktop. “Anyone who might have dropped an envelope into one of the mailboxes?”
Henry blinked as if he was stepping out of the shadows and into the light. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then he swallowed hard and shook his head. “No, sir, I haven’t. And nothing like that would happen without me seeing it. I’m on duty right here. No one would get in who didn’t belong.”
“I did,” Max pointed out.
Henry licked his upper lip, blew out a breath and said, “What I meant was, no one could stay inside who didn’t talk to me first. And no one but the mailman and the residents go near the mailboxes.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Henry lifted his narrow chin, met Max’s gaze with the direct stare of an honest man and said, “Absolutely.”
Max was sure about something, too.
Henry was lying.
Max couldn’t prove it, but he knew it down to his bones. And that made him wonder what exactly was going on at 721. The old place looked quiet, dignified. But there were undercurrents here and Max didn’t like it. He didn’t want to think about Julia staying here. One woman was dead and Julia herself was being blackmailed.
Something was very wrong in this building.
“You’re pregnant?”
Julia winced as her mother’s voice hit a particularly high note. She’d known this was going to be an ugly meeting. She had to face her parents not only with the news of her pregnancy, but her upcoming marriage, as well.
She sighed a little as her mother stood up from her silk-brocade chair and stared down at Julia as though she were a particularly appalling bug. Just imagine, she thought, what this scene would have been like if you hadn’t been able to tell them you’re getting married.
The sting of their only daughter being an unwed mother was something her parents might never have recovered from. All her life, Julia had been a disappointment. She knew that. Her parents had made sure of it. And all of her life, a part of Julia had tried to make them proud. To make them love her. Despite her efforts, nothing had changed.
She looked up at her mother and felt…nothing. No connection. No bond. No threads of affection or familial loyalty. Just…nothing. As sad as that made her, Julia realized that accepting this was the first step in finding her own kind of peace. The first step in building her own family. Her own world, separate and apart from the people who’d made her.
“Yes,” Julia said, smiling into her mother’s disapproving gaze, “I am. And my baby’s father and I will be getting married in just a couple of weeks.”
“That’s something, I suppose,” her father muttered from the chair where he sat glaring at her. “As long as you’re married quickly, no one will have to know the reason.”
Julia glanced at him and noticed that his bushy gray eyebrows were drawn together in a too-familiar frown of disgust. She couldn’t remember a single time in her life when her father had held her, hugged her, told her that she was pretty or that he loved her. How strange it was to sit here in this place and realize the sad truth of her life.
She didn’t have a family. She had biological parents. That was all.
And because she knew that they would never approve of her or give her the kind of love she’d once longed for, Julia was free. Free to speak her mind. To tell them what she’d feared telling them only days before.
Straightening in her chair, she clasped her fingers together tightly in her lap and said, “People will know I’m going to have a baby, Father.”
“Eventually,” he conceded with a shake of his head.
“Donald, you’re missing the point here,” Margaret Prentice snapped. “This will make us grandparents. For heaven’s sake, I don’t want people thinking I’m old enough to be a grandmother. This is a disaster.”
“Thank you,” Julia muttered.
“You will not speak to us in such a fashion, Julia,” her mother said as her cold blue gaze fixed on her daughter. “At the very least, you owe us civility and respect.”
“Respect is a two-way street, Mother.”
Margaret laughed shortly. “Respect? You expect us to respect you for being stupid enough to get pregnant? You ask too much.”
“Having a baby isn’t stupid,” Julia argued.
“You’re not even married,” her father said.
“I will be soon,” she responded, feeling a fire begin to build inside her. For years, when there were “discussions” like this one, she’d kept her mouth shut, done what was expected of her. But not anymore. She owed her child more than that. She owed herself more than that.
“How could you do this to me?” Margaret’s voice shrieked a little.
“I didn’t do anything to you, Mother…”
“None of my friends are grandmothers,” her mother said hotly. “How will this look to people? How can I face my friends?” She crossed her too-thin arms over her narrow chest, but not tightly enough to wrinkle the cream-colored silk blouse she wore tucked into the waistband of linen pants the color of wheat. Margaret’s elegantly styled hair was short and dyed honey-blond every four weeks. Her manicure was perfect, her makeup expertly applied, and her unlined face was a billboard for the best cosmetic surgeons in the city.
“Mother—”
“Don’t speak to me.”
“If we keep the ceremony quiet,” Donald Prentice mused more to himself than anyone else, “it’s possible—”
“What?” Margaret turned on her husband like a cobra. “That no one will notice when Julia’s body begins to swell? People will notice, I assure you. And my friends will never let me forget that I’m a grand-mother, for pity’s sake.”
It was as if Julia wasn’t even present. They talked around her, over her, about her, as if she wasn’t their daughter at all, but some annoying distant relative who’d made a claim on them they didn’t care to acknowledge.
This she was used to. She’d grown accustomed to being nothing more than an annoyance to the people who should have loved her the most. Her succession of nannies had given her the only affection she’d known in her childhood, and as she grew older, Julia had realized that her parents had never wanted children in the first place.
At fifteen, she’d actually heard her mother telling a friend one day about “accidentally” getting pregnant and what a horror it had been. Julia glanced around the living room of the home where she’d grown up and realized that she’d never once felt comfortable there. Never once had she felt as though she belonged.
And that still held true. The walls were a glaring white with only a few abstract paintings lending garish splotches of color to the cold room. The floors were white tile and the chairs and couches, upholstered in subtle, differing shades of beige, were designed more for appearance than comfort. Even the smell of the house was sterile, as if the air in the place had long since died and was only being recycled by the people who continued to breathe it.
Rubbing at her temples, Margaret glared at Julia. “Who, may I inquire, is the father of this unfortunate child?”
Julia squirmed in her chair and cupped one hand over her still-flat abdomen as if she could prevent her baby from hearing its grandparents’ dismissal of its very existence. “His name is Max. Max Rolland.”
Margaret frowned, though her too-tight forehead prevented it from showing. “Rolland. Hmm. No, I don’t believe I know any Rollands. Donald?”
Julia waited, knowing that this news would completely wipe away her parents’ fury at hearing about the baby. Discovering that their only child was about to marry a man with no pedigree would put everything else they’d heard into perspective for them.
Strangely enough, Julia was almost looking forward to their reaction.
“Max Rolland…” Her father repeated the name thoughtfully.
“Who are his people?” Margaret demanded.
“His parents have passed away,” Julia told her.
“I didn’t ask where they were,” Margaret reminded her, “I said who are they?”
“I know the name Rolland,” her father said from his chair. “I just can’t place it.”
“Max is from upstate,” Julia told her mother. Then, smiling, she took a breath and added, “His father was, I believe, a truck driver and his mother was a house-wife.”
Margaret slapped one hand to her chest and staggered backward as if someone had shoved a sword through her body.
“Rolland!” Donald Prentice shouted the name and pounded one fist against the arm of his chair. “That’s how I know the name. That upstart running roughshod over Wall Street. He’s made something of a name for himself, but—”
“A truck driver?” Margaret moaned softly, dropped back into her chair and lifted one hand to cover her eyes. “Oh, dear God, how did this happen?”
Julia paid no attention to the drama. “Max is very successful,” she said. “He’s a…good man.” That might have been a bit of a stretch, she told herself, but at the same time, she realized that only a good man would have proposed to help her out. Whether he saw it that way or not, if he’d been a different sort of man, he’d have left her to solve her own problem or drown in her own misery.
“A housewife?” Margaret whispered the word as if afraid someone might hear her.
“People say he’s cold and ruthless,” Donald was saying, though his wife wasn’t listening and Julia didn’t want to hear him. “Could be quite a force in the city if he had a family name behind him.”
“He’s doing just fine without a ‘name,’” Julia argued.
“No doubt,” Donald said with a frown. “But there are limits to what a man like him can accomplish.”
“Because his blood isn’t blue?” Julia stood up and looked at her parents each in turn. “That’s ridiculous. Max Rolland is a good, hardworking man who made his own fortune rather than inherited it.”
“Exactly,” Donald said with a slow shake of his head.
Sunlight streamed through the windows, glancing off the white walls and floors until Julia’s eyes stung with the cold, hard brilliance of it all. Why had she been so concerned with telling her parents about her baby? Why had she been so terrified that she might lose this one slender thread of family?
The truth was, she’d never had a family to lose. She’d always been alone.
Until now, anyway.
Now she had her baby.
And she had Max.
“You can’t possibly be serious about marrying this person.” Her mother posed it as a sentence, not a question.
“I’m more serious about it with every passing second,” Julia assured her, picking up her purse and slipping the slim leather strap over her shoulder.
“Julia, don’t do something you’ll regret,” her father warned.
“I’ve already done that, Father,” Julia told him as she turned to leave. “I came here expecting support. I’m not sure why, exactly, but this visit is definitely something I regret.”
She walked briskly across the room, through the doorway and down the stairs where a maid in uniform waited to open the front door for her. Julia reached the bottom of the steps and turned when her mother called her name sharply.
Margaret Prentice stood at the head of the stairs, looking as cool and unapproachable as a queen. “What is it, Mother?”
“Don’t think for one moment, young woman, that your father and I will acknowledge your marriage to this man. If you do this, you turn your back on your family.”
A small twist of fear became a knot in the pit of her stomach, but then, as she drew one long breath, that knot dissolved. Strange, Julia thought, that it was at the moment her life was most in turmoil that she should find such an incredible sense of peace.
“I understand, Mother. Goodbye.”
The door closed firmly behind her.
By the following day, Julia was too busy to spend much time worrying about her parents. She had a wedding to plan and a move to organize.
“It’s going to be great,” Amanda said as they settled into a couple of armchairs at the Park Café. Reaching into her leather briefcase, Amanda pulled out a thick day planner and quickly scanned her notes. “I know Max wants a fast wedding,” she said with a wink for Julia, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fabulous. I’ve got the names of some caterers and I’d like you to look at some samples from the florist I’ve been working with.”
Julia had notes of her own to check and they didn’t have anything to do with her upcoming wedding. She was in the middle of a fund-raiser for a Manhattan shelter, and there were still one or two things that had to be nailed down. “Why don’t you pick the caterer, Amanda? I swear I haven’t had enough of an appetite to even think about food lately.”
Her friend frowned a bit, reached for her ice blended mocha and took a sip. Her gaze fixed on Julia until she squirmed uncomfortably.
“You haven’t been feeling well ever since you went to see your folks,” Amanda said.
“Can you blame me?” Julia forced a smile and told herself she’d be fine. She’d be great. She had her work, she had her baby and soon she’d have her very own husband, complete with prenup, baby contract and suspicion.
“No,” Amanda said, “who can blame you? I’m just saying, the wedding’s coming and you really should pay attention.”
Julia closed her folder, sighed and leaned back into her chair. The café was crowded at lunchtime, and the noise level was such that Julia felt safe enough talking about what was really bothering her. “It’s not the wedding or my parents,” she said, leaning in a bit closer. “It’s the fact that I’m moving in with Max in a few days.”
Amanda laughed. “Honey, you’re marrying him.”
“I know, I know.” Julia frowned and told herself she was being foolish. “But living with him is a little…”
“Exciting?”
“I was going to go with ‘unnerving.’”
“Why?”
“Because of the way we’re getting married,” she said. “And the fact that he still doesn’t believe me about the baby.”
“Well, he’s an idiot. We already decided that.” Amanda went back to her lists.
“I know, but how’m I supposed to convince him that he is the father?”
“You may not be able to until the baby’s born. Then you can do a paternity test.”
“So that leaves me with seven months of my husband thinking I’m a liar.”
Amanda closed her folder, picked up her mocha and idly twirled the straw through the thick, pale brown liquid. “You know I’m with you, no matter what, right?”
