After Hours

RHYS STOOD IN THE OPEN DOORWAY, frowning at the sad-looking figure behind the desk. She hadn’t heard him open the door, and he wondered fleetingly if he could step out and close it again with equal unobtrusiveness. For the first time in the four months that he’d worked with her, Angelique St. Clair looked vulnerable, even a bit lost. And for the first time in his entire life, Rhys Wakefield found himself fighting the urge to take a woman in his arms and simply hold her, murmuring words of comfort.

That atypical impulse was extraordinary enough to make him frown in bewilderment. What words of comfort? Even if he was foolish enough to give in to the urge, he wouldn’t know what to say. And she’d probably think he’d lost his mind. She wasn’t the type of woman who’d appreciate a man’s shoulder to cry into. She’d rather take care of her own problems. Wouldn’t she?

He cleared his throat.

Angie jumped and whipped her head around, her hand going to her mouth. She dropped it immediately. “Oh, I—you startled me,” she said rather breathlessly, unnecessarily. She schooled her expression to the calm, impassive one she always wore, only a trace of sadness lingering in her violet eyes. “I wasn’t expecting you to come in until tomorrow.”

“I wanted to pick up a few things on the way home from the airport,” he replied, then asked awkwardly, “Is there—uh—is anything wrong, Ms. St. Clair?”

Her smile was bright and blatantly insecure. “Of course not, Mr. Wakefield. Was there something you needed?”

“The Garver file. Do you have it?”

“Yes, sir. Here it is. Is there anything else?”

Taking the file, he continued to study her. Her chin lifted and she met his eyes steadily, no expression showing on her pale, composed face. “No, that’s all,” he said after a moment. “It’s getting late. Why don’t you go on home.”

“I was just getting ready to leave,” she agreed, standing, purse in hand. “Good night, Mr. Wakefield. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, Ms. St. Clair. Sleep well,” he bade her impulsively.

If the uncharacteristic send-off startled her, she didn’t show it. “Thank you, Mr. Wakefield. I intend to.”

Sometime in the early hours of morning, Rhys found himself hoping she was sleeping well. Damned if he was. Lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling—a familiar position to a chronic insomniac such as Rhys—he couldn’t erase the image of her sitting so small and forlorn in the large office chair, her slender shoulders bowed under a massive imaginary weight. What was haunting Angelique St. Clair? What in her past had been so traumatic that it had turned a beautiful, naturally warm-natured young woman into a reclusive, work-obsessed automaton?

Would he ever find out? And did he really want to? Or was he correct in his suspicion that getting too close to his beautiful blond assistant could disrupt his entire life?

2

&nbs

p; IT WAS A SATURDAY in early May, beautiful, warm, fragrant. Angie had the day off. What luxury!

She did her weekly cleaning that morning, carefully dusting the furnishings and knickknacks that were still arranged exactly as they had been when Grandma Neal had died nearly a year earlier. Angie’s happiest memories of childhood were of the rare visits she’d been allowed with her maternal grandparents, who’d had little extra money but had always been rich in love. The house they’d left her was small, had a few maintenance problems, was far from luxurious, but Angie was content here, particularly now that she was beginning to build a small savings account from the salary she was earning at WakeTech.

She’d spent her first month in Birmingham desperately looking for a job, watching helplessly as the few dollars she’d been left after her father’s trial had rapidly dwindled. Her first paychecks had gone for payments on overdue bills and for clothing suitable to her position, replacing the glittering gowns and designer suits and sports clothes left behind in Boston. She took great pride in her new wardrobe. Though not as stylish or expensive, these garments were bought for herself, by herself, purchased with clean, honestly earned money.

Her father’s profitable shady business dealings had kept her in the lap of luxury, but she felt no gratitude to him now. He was serving time in a country-club prison, the shallow, materialistic crowd she’d once called her friends had long since deserted her, and Angie was completely alone. She’d suffered the mortification of being investigated, suspected of being a knowing accomplice in her father’s crooked deals simply because she’d worked as his social secretary for five years after graduating college.

She winced. Social secretary. He’d called her that as justification for the extravagant salary he’d paid her. Actually, she’d done very little other than to keep his calendar straight and serve as hostess for the many functions he deemed necessary for persons of their social standing.

Everything they’d owned had been sold to pay fines and the taxes Nolan had so skillfully avoided over the years. All those things she’d purchased with her “salary,” all those expensive gifts he had lavished on her. All gone. But she was making it, dammit, despite her father’s frequently expressed doubts that she would manage to get by on her own, without guidance from him or one of the upwardly mobile, morally deficient young men he’d urged her to wed. So, there, Dad.

Something inside her softened when she dusted a silver-framed portrait of her grandparents that had been kept on the piecrust occasional table for as long as Angie could remember. They would have believed in her, she mused, studying the strong-charactered faces depicted in the photograph. Though her grandfather had died many years ago, she remembered him as a hardworking, unassuming, honest man who quoted the Bible and Aesop with equal fervor. Never at a loss for an encouraging platitude.

Her grandmother, whom Angie had frankly adored, had been kind, loving and cheerful, though she’d never gotten over her disappointment that Angie’s mother had placed luxury above sentiment. Margaret had been a beautiful, rather spoiled young woman who’d headed East in search of stardom and ended up married to an ambitious, cunningly intelligent man who’d promised her everything and then proceeded to give it to her, regardless of how he obtained it.

Angie had often wondered if, prior to her death ten years earlier, Margaret had been more aware than her daughter that Nolan’s business dealings had occasionally strayed to the wrong side of the law. Angie felt guilty that she’d been so smugly complacent with her self-indulgent life-style that she’d been blind to harsh reality until her father’s arrest. Still grieving over her grandmother’s death a month prior to the arrest, Angie had taken a long look at her life during those stressful months of her father’s trial—and what she had seen had sickened her. So here she was, trying to make something of herself, trying to prove that she was more than a spoiled, decorative socialite.

“I wish you were here, Grandma,” she murmured to the sweetly lined face in the photograph. “I miss you.”

Sometimes the loneliness was overwhelming. But how could she make friends before she proved herself worthy of friendship—real friendship? Not the shallow games played by her set in Boston, the falsely amiable competition to be the most chic, the most visible, the most outrageous. Angie wasn’t even sure she knew how to be a friend, much less offer anything more lasting—such as love.

The chime of her doorbell made her replace the photograph with a curious frown. She couldn’t imagine who would be visiting her. Even after five months in Birmingham, there was no one she knew well enough to expect them to drop in unannounced. Crossing the room to answer the door, she wondered why she suddenly thought of Rhys. And she wondered why she was suddenly having trouble breathing.

She told herself that she was not disappointed to find a small freckled-face boy of about seven on the doorstep, a tiny black-and-white kitten in his rather grubby arms. She recognized the child as a neighbor she’d seen playing on the sidewalks in this quiet middle-class neighborhood. “May I help you?”

The boy grinned winningly, displaying several gaps where teeth should be. “My cat had kittens and my mom said I had to give them away. This is the last one. Would you take her, ma’am?”