“Screw my suit.” His hand caught her chin and tipped her face up to his; his blue-gray eyes were tender. His mouth touched hers for a brief moment, and she felt her soul come alive in that kiss. The long fingers on her flesh were soothing, and she wanted to sink into him, lose herself. But it was a weakness she couldn’t afford, not right then, and when he moved away, she let him go.
“Has someone called an ambulance?” she asked.
“For Willis or for you?”
You’re all I need, she thought suddenly, and then wondered if she’d spoken the damning words out loud. False words, she told herself. She didn’t need him, didn’t want him. And her fingers clutched his shoulders more tightly. “For Willis,” she said. “I want him to get a chance to suffer.”
“You’re going to tell me why,” he said, and it was a statement, flat and simple.
She nodded. “I’ll tell you why. Later. Are you going to get me down from this place, or are we going to leave Kate and Caleb to explain everything?”
“Sounds good to me. Maybe there’s a back way out.”
“Randall—”
He rose,
pulling her up to stand on shaky legs beside him. The sound of sirens in the distance penetrated the huge old building, getting louder. “I guess we’d better face the music,” he said. “Let me do the talking?”
“Don’t you always?”
He grinned, a suddenly carefree expression on his usually reserved face. “If you want to come up with the plausible explanations and still not say a thing, you can be my guest.”
Maggie’s weary smile mirrored his. “No, thanks,” she replied. “I’ll leave it up to you.”
“Abdicating, Maggie?”
“It’s only temporary,” she said, yawning. “I’m too tired to think, to fight, or to lie.”
“I think I like you this way.”
“Enjoy it while you can, Randall,” she murmured. “It’s not going to last.”
“That’s all right. It wouldn’t be the Maggie I know and love if it did.”
That was a hell of a strange word for Randall to use. Love—when he didn’t even believe it existed. She dared a small, furtive glance, but his face was impassive as always, and she decided it had to be a figure of speech. At that point, she couldn’t handle anything more.
“Umph,” she said, a noncommittal grunt. “Let’s go face the music.”
twenty-two
Sybil Bennett was holding court, surrounded by admiring reporters. She was holding her cherubic granddaughter and regaling everyone with the horror of the last few days and the insidious spy drama that she had somehow managed to become a central figure in.
Her daughters stood by, watching with the forbearance of long habit, listening to their mother’s fantasies with an indulgent ear.
“There are times, Maggie,” Randall murmured in her ear, “that you still manage to amaze me. Your mother is absolutely perfect. She’s got those reporters eating up every word she tells them, and if anything even slightly resembles the truth, no one will notice.”
“Mother has her talents,” Maggie agreed lightly. “You shouldn’t give me credit for siccing her on the media, though. It would have been impossible to hold her back.” She peered over at Kate, who usually had less tolerance when it came to her mother’s playacting. At the moment she was too involved in Caleb’s whispered words to pay the slightest bit of attention.
Maggie sighed. “Happy endings are so nice.”
Randall’s face was very still. “I suppose they are.”
“I mean, look at the two of them. Fighting like cats and dogs a week ago, and now blissfully happy. Slimy old Brian even dropped his custody suit.”
“I missed that development. Why did he do that?”
“Not out of the goodness of his heart, you can be sure of that. For one thing, Kate told him to stuff his child support. For another, his new wife is pregnant, and she decided that she didn’t want two infants interfering with her jet-setting life-style.”