Read If Winter Comes for Free Online Page B

or
sisters?” he probed.
     
    She shook her head and
shot him a grin. “They were afraid to try again: they might have had another
one like me.”
     
    His bold, slow eyes
studied her intently from the waist up. “From where I’m sitting, that would
have been pretty nice.”
     
    She took a long sip of
her drink and tried not to blush. He made her feel like a naïve
fifteen-year-old.
     
    “What about you?” she
asked. “Do you have a family?” Her face blushed as she remembered. “Oh, my…!”
     
    “Don’t,” he said
quietly. “I told you not to walk on eggshells with me. Someone told you about
it?”
     
    She nodded miserably.
     
    “The wounds are still
there, but not nearly as fresh as they were,” he told her. “Sometimes talking
about it helps. I loved my daughter very much. I hate to remember how she died,
but that doesn’t mean I want to forget that she lived. You understand?”
     
    “Yes,” she said. “I
think I do. Did she look like you? Was she dark?”
     
    A corner of his mouth
curved up. “No. She was fair, like her mother. All arms and legs and laughter.
Not a sad child at all. She had promise.”
     
    Her fingers reached out
and touched his, where they rested on the white linen tablecloth. “You miss
her.”
     
    “Yes,” he said simply.
He studied her fingers and turned his hand abruptly to catch them in a warm,
slow clasp. “Your hands are cool.”
     
    “Yours are warm,” she
replied, feeling the effects of that sensuous clasp all the way to her toes.
     
    His thumb caressed her
palm. “We’d better go,” he said abruptly, dropping his hand. “It’s late, and
I’ve been stuck with a visiting politician first thing in the morning. She
wants to see my ghetto.”
     
    “I’d kind of like to
see your ghetto, too,” she remarked.
     
    He smiled at her. “Be
in my office at nine-thirty.”
     
    “Really?”
     
    “What’s your city
editor going to say? This is the second interview in as many days,” he said
with a wicked smile.
     
    “He’ll probably think
I’m trying to seduce you,” she replied smartly.
     
    He studied her in a
sudden, tense silence, and she regretted the impulsive teasing as his eyes dropped
pointedly to her mouth.
     
    “I don’t think you’d
know how,” he said.
     
    She got to her feet,
red faced. “You might be surprised.”
     
    He moved in front of
her, forcing her to look up into dark, steady eyes. “You wear your innocence
like a banner,” he said in a soft, deep voice that reached only her ears.
     
    She tried to answer
him, but the words caught in her throat. He seemed to read every thought in her
whirling mind.
     
    “I’ll get the check,”
he said, and turned away.
     
    The strained silence
was still between them when he pulled up in front of her apartment building and
cut the engine.
     
    “Thank you for a lovely
evening,” she said as she reached for the door handle.
     
    “I’m coming up with
you,” he said abruptly.
     
    He got out and opened
her door for her, eyeing her speechless stare with dawning amusement.
     
    “Don’t panic,” he
teased. “I’m only going to see you safely to your door. I know this city a hell
of a lot better than you do, and I just got the revised homicide statistics
yesterday.”
     
    She turned and went up
the steps with him on her heels. “Bill Peck was furious at me for not doing a
story about the night you rescued me from those punks.”
     
    “Any other reporter
would have,” he reminded her.
     
    She went into the
elevator with her green eyes flashing. “There is such a thing as personal
privilege.”
     
    “Not in the eyes of the
media,” he said, joining her. He pressed the sixth-floor button and leaned
back. Only the two of them had boarded the conveyance, and she felt very young
as he watched her.
     
    “You’re nervous,” he
commented.
     
    She ran her tongue over
her dry lips. “Am I?”
     
    One heavy eyebrow went
up over dancing dark eyes. “I almost never rape