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to think he was the only one who had suffered any losses because of the Carpenter case. He blamed her for everything, though, so of course he wouldn't be sitting around thinking about how her life had been affected. She'd lost her job, which she'd loved, and she'd lost him, whom she'd also loved, all in one fell swoop. Not to mention that at the time she'd also been dealing with the very fresh news that her mother had cancer.

    Two months of depression later, Kimberly had pulled herself together enough to take a job with another company. Unfortunately, the guy she'd worked for wasn't as good as Max, and business was bad. When the agency finally folded just over a year ago, she'd signed on with Frank.

    She'd recovered from the blows she'd taken during that period, but she considered it the blackest spot of her entire past, for reasons both professional and personal.

    Oh sure, she'd made mistakes under Max's tutelage, but she'd never completely screwed up a case. And she'd never been fired from a job before in her life.

    Max's way of handling what had happened had shown her that he obviously hadn't cared for her very much. Sure, she'd been the one to walk out of that office, but he hadn't stopped her. Then he'd gone to Las Vegas , just like that. Only then had she come to the conclusion that what they'd shared had been one-sided. Not sexually—she knew that—but in other ways. In emotional ways. She was glad she'd never said the words to him that had lingered in her heart whenever they were together— I love you . If any shred of doubt about how Max had felt had been left lingering in the back of her mind, seeing him again had killed it off entirely. It was clear that she'd been nothing to him.

    But that's okay , she affirmed as a familiar hurt melted through her. That's okay because you don't even want to share a bed with him. You don't want to be close to him . The fact was, Kimberly was over Max. Completely and for good. As of right now, he was nothing to her , either.

    * * *

    Max lay on the plush leather couch in the big family room watching TV, trying to take it easy in the last few hours before the show began, and also trying to feel as if this place, this life, were his . Meanwhile, his pretend wife was in the kitchen digging through drawers and cabinets, getting herself familiar with things.

    He didn't know why he'd made that crack about her handling the job earlier. He'd told himself this morning that he had to quit that crap if they were going to work together with any success, but it had leaked out like air escaping a punctured balloon.

    Three years hadn't healed his mistrust of her. This was going to be hard, perhaps the hardest case of his career. Now it was being made even harder, not only by his fears of her screwing up or letting him down, but also because he had to own up to the fact that he was still attracted to her, which he'd have to forget or ignore or something. It was like he'd told Frank last night. If he wanted sex, he could get it. He certainly wouldn't attempt to get that or anything else from the woman who had betrayed him.

    "Oh my God, we have caviar!"

    Her voice sounded from somewhere in the kitchen behind him and he worked to hold in even the hint of a smile, whether she could see him or not. He couldn't start going soft on her. But that's what he remembered about Kimberly. How fascinated she could be by the world. How in awe.

    Maybe that's why he'd given her such a hard time over her wonder regarding the house—he hadn't wanted to be reminded of her, of them together. And maybe that's why this morning he'd thought of those simple, easy times with her, those T-shirt-and-jeans times. He knew they'd done other things, too—gone out to dinner, gone to plays, to nightclubs—but she could find unmitigated joy just in eating ice cream or watching the rain fall. She wasn't like that all the time, though. When she was working, she was strictly business. But when work was done, she took