So what could the estimable Horace Blackburn, LL.B., J.D., be talking about? Did some kind of legal mumbo jumbo require him to inform her that Simon had written her out of his will?
Well, she’d thought as she dialed Blackburn’s office, he could just tell her that over the phone.
A recorded voice had informed her that the offices were closed until Monday morning at nine.
Crista had grimaced. She’d just have to wait until then to make the call…
Maybe it was impulsiveness. Maybe it was stubborn pride and the determination not to be intimidated by anyone, traits that had always infuriated her uncle. But sometime between Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening, she’d changed her mind.
Crista had decided to keep the appointment.
She’d met Horace Blackburn once when Simon had consulted him about transferring her from one boarding school to another. A prissy man with the same icy bearing as his client, Blackburn’s disapproval of her had been written all over his face.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to smile sweetly at him and tell him where to get off after he’d read the words he undoubtedly hoped would bring tears to her eyes?
The more she’d thought about it, the more she’d looked forward to the chance.
But reality wasn’t measuring up to the fantasy, Crista thought glumly as she turned down Canal Street. Things had gone wrong from the minute she’d awakened this morning. She’d slept through the first jangling call of her alarm clock, and then the gray cat had managed to get himself stuck behind the refrigerator. By the time she’d finally dashed from the apartment, Crista had been running late.
The bus had pulled out just as she’d reached the stop, and neither frantic shouting or jumping up and down had slowed it down or brought it back. So she’d caught the crosstown instead, intending to transfer to a downtown bus at Broadway, but somehow she’d miscalculated.
Now she was walking the last four long blocks in the rain, wondering why on earth she’d ever thought a face-to-face confrontation with Horace Blackburn would be a good idea.
She hunched deeper into the collar of her raincoat. The wind was picking up now, driving the rain before it. Her hair would be as tangled as a bird’s nest by the time she reached Blackburn’s office, and whatever rain-defeating abilities her thin coat once had were long gone. She didn’t even want to think about what the dampness seeping through it might be doing to her already snug T-shirt.
Crista sighed as she stepped off the curb. She’d have been better off sticking to Plan A, she thought as she hurried across the intersection. She could have phoned Blackburn this morning and told him, in her best lockjawed, boarding-school accent, that she didn’t give a fig for whatever it was he had to tell her, that he could either make his little speech over the phone or he could—
“Look out!”
The warning came too late. Crista’s head came up just as the man barreled into her. Her right foot, already up on the curb, slid out from under her. She gave an outraged cry, windmilled her arms in a desperate attempt to keep her boots from bidding a fast farewell to the pavement, and went stumbling backward into the street just as a truck, horn blaring, came racing into the intersection.
The man’s arms swept around her. “I’ve got you,” he said, swinging Crista off her feet and onto the pavement as the truck thundered past, drenching them both in a spray of water.
They stood looking at each other in shocked silence and then Crista let out a long, shaky breath.
“Ohmygod,” she whispered as she clung to the hard, broad shoulders of her rescuer.
“Oh my God?” Her rescuer’s voice was deep and harsh and very angry. “Oh my God? Is that all you can say after you almost killed us both?”
Crista blinked. His face, as harsh and as angry as his voice, was inches from hers; his eyes—some strange combination of blue and brown and green—were cold with fury.
“Me?” she said. Her head lifted. “Me?” she repeated, her voice shooting up the scale in indignation. “I almost killed us both?” She glared back at him, shoved her drenched hair back from her eyes, and twisted free of his grasp. “You ran into me, remember?”
“Where are you from, lady? Didn’t anybody tell you that you’re supposed to watch where you’re going in the big city?”
“I was watching where I was going,” Crista said in her best New York fashion. “You were the one who was tearing along like a linebacker for the Jets.”
The man’s eyes grew flinty. “Thank you for the apology. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get by.”
“That makes two of us,” Crista said, her tone as nasty as his.
She stepped to her right. The man stepped to his left. They glared at each other, then made the same moves in reverse. He shook his head, muttered something, then made a mock-chivalrous sweeping gesture with his arm.
“Ladies first,” he said, his tone heavy with sarcasm.
Crista sniffed. “Try keeping that in mind. It might save another woman from almost getting knocked down.”
It was, she thought, a fair exit line—but as she started past him, her right ankle buckled. With a cry of alarm, she stumbled—and was caught in the man’s arms again.
“What now?” he demanded.
Crista’s brows drew together. “I don’t know,” she said. “I was fine until I put weight on my foot. But when I did, it just—”
“Hell, I get it.” She gasped as his hands dug into her forearms. “What comes next? An ambulance ride to the nearest emergency room, where you suddenly develop an incurable headache and back pains?”
“What are you talking about? I never said—”
“I warn you, you’re wasting your time trying a scam like this on me. I’m an attorney, and—”
“An attorney!” Crista twisted away from him and slapped her hands on her hips. “Of course,” she said, her lip curling, “I might have known.”
“Spoils your little scheme, doesn’t it?” Grant smiled tightly. “Trust me, madam. There’s nothing you can try that I haven’t seen before.”
No, he thought, with a catch of his breath, no, he had not seen a face like hers before.
Her eyes were enormous, the color of violets. Her mouth was rosy and heart-shaped, centered between a small, slender nose and a feminine, yet determined, chin. Clusters of tiny silver bells swayed from a pair of delicate ears that were framed by a silky tumble of ebony hair in which raindrops glistened like tiny jewels.
For a man who had seen everything, Grant was suddenly speechless.
“What’s the matter?”
Grant blinked. She was eyeing him narrowly, her face tilted at a questioning angle. The anger was still there but something else was there, too. Wariness? Suspicion?
He sighed. Hell, she was right to look at him like that. Only a nut—or a man in a very bad moodwould go off the deep end the way he had.
She’d run into him, or he’d run into her—who could tell? And what did it matter? The one indisputable fact was that their collision had been forceful. For all he knew, she damned well might h
ave twisted her ankle when she fell back off the curb.
“Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been so—”
“Unpleasant?” That determined chin shot forward. “Hostile? How about just plain nasty?”
He tried a polite smile. “I was just heading into that building,” he said, and nodded toward an entryway on his right. “Why don’t we step inside the lobby? You can get off that foot and I’ll check to see if—”
Her hand drove into his belly, hard enough to make the breath shoot from his lungs.
“That’s the most pathetic come-on I’ve ever heard,” she snarled. “Next you’re going to ask me to come up to your office so you can examine me on your couch.”
“Don’t be a fool. I simply meant—”
“Oh, I know exactly what you meant.” Crista’s chin lifted. “First you knock me down, then you accuse me of faking an injury, and now you’re trying to—to—”
“Listen, lady—”
“I’m on my way to a meeting with my attorney this very minute. I swear, I’ll tell him to sue you for—for—”
“The charge is stupidity, lady. First degree stupidity,” Grant said coldly. “Go on, limp your way to wherever it is you’re going. And good luck to the next poor chump you run into.”
“The same to you,” Crista said, and flounced past him.
She didn’t get very far. This time, she didn’t so much stumble as drop to her knees.
“Oh,” she said in surprise.
“Give me a break,” Grant said wearily, stooped, and swung her up into his arms.
“Hey,” she said, “what are you doing?”
Being a glutton for punishment, Grant thought as he carried her toward the building where Horace Blackburn’s office was located. Hell, he thought grimly, at least he was getting closer to that damned meeting.
“You put me down!”
She was beating her fists against his shoulder, but Grant ignored her. At some later point, he thought with bemused detachment, he’d probably laugh at all this, especially at how a woman who felt so soft and smelled so good could land such solid, uncompromising punches.