The Last Man She'd Marry

His soft-spoken query had an edge to it and she couldn’t blame him one bit for being annoyed that “thank you” wasn’t enough either personally or professionally. But she, too, was known to be a hard read in her personal life and a barracuda for her clients. So, bottom line, she had no inclination to explain herself today, and might never.

“What’s done is done, Jonas. You have your world and I have mine. Let’s leave well enough alone.” Only when she replaced her own glasses did she risk glancing up at him. Despite the filtered lenses, in the bright sunlight, what she saw brought a bit of a shock. He no longer had that Teflon, nothing-sticks, smooth-operator look that she remembered. His face was sunken, more lined and his mouth had a harder twist.

“‘Well enough’?” he snapped, breaking into her thoughts, “Alyx, have you looked in a mirror lately? There may be no blood this time, but you still look one missed depression pill away from suicide.” With a muttered expletive, he walked away.

The sting of his criticism, regardless of its accuracy, made it impossible to resist striking back. “Yeah?” she called to his back. “Well, consider the compliment returned and then some!”

Men. Here she was doing him a favor—whether he knew it or not—but leave it to Testosterone Man that when rejected, he was determined to cut her down to manageable size.

Inside her cousin’s SUV, Alyx tossed the bag onto the passenger’s seat and shoved the key into the ignition. Tried, that is. Her hands were shaking so hard she had to grip her wrist and direct it in. That’s when the tears started pouring down her cheeks.

“Crap.”

Desperate for the privacy of Parke’s house, Alyx blindly ripped at tissues from the box in the console and slipped them under the sunglasses to dab at her eyes. Never would she have suspected that seeing Jonas again would have this effect on her. After the attack, it had been a relief when he’d stopped coming to the hospital and had returned to Washington, D.C., better still when he’d stopped phoning and e-mailing.

Why start all that again when he claimed to be here for a friend? He’d certainly left without too much coercion.

Recovering somewhat, Alyx carefully backed out of the parking space, but she kept an eye out for Jonas. When she spotted him a lane away climbing into a red vintage Mustang convertible, her caution turned to skepticism, which sent her eyebrows arching.

“The government must be paying well these days if that’s what was allowed from the rental counters,” she muttered.

Accelerating, she made it to the exit and turned right onto the main road. Parke’s house was another few miles west and a bit down from the plateau where the municipal airport was located. At the next traffic light, she eased the SUV left to the turning lane, and it was as she was waiting for the light that she spotted the Mustang two cars behind her.

What on earth did he think he was doing?

Agitated, the second the green arrow lit, Alyx hit the gas pedal. Okay, she told herself as emotions turned her insides into a cruller, calm down; there were another few turns on this road. He would go down one of those. Surely he wasn’t trying to find out where she was staying after she’d made it clear she had no interest in picking up where they’d left off?

But parallel to the airport turnoff, she pulled over to the side of the road—and Jonas pulled in right behind her. “Of course,” she seethed, “because we both know you aren’t headed there. You said yourself that you hate to fly!” And he sure wasn’t going to buy onto one of those tourist sightseeing trips in a First World War biplane that soared over the skyline day in and day out, circling the hot-air balloons and gorgeous rock formations.

Having had enough, Alyx thrust open the door. It cost her, but gritting her teeth against the pain in her shoulder, she stood tall and strode back to his purring sports car.

Behind his sunglasses, Jonas’s face remained impassive, and he didn’t indicate for a second that he intended to get out of the car. “What’s the problem now?” he asked.

“You tell me.”

Looking off into space, he released the steering wheel to give the palms-up, I-don’t-get-it gesture.

“Why are you following me?” she enunciated, hating him for making her spell it out.

“I’m not.”

“This is taking things too far, Jonas. Please go away. I don’t want to have to notify the police.”

Drawing his sunglasses down his nose, he stared at her, a steely glint flashing in his narrowed eyes. “Get over yourself, Alyx. I’m going to work.”

“What?” She followed his nod toward the airport. “This is a joke, right? The airport? You happen to have told me that you hate to fly.”

“I hate going commercial. I have a private pilot’s license, and—sorry to burst your conspiracy theory—I’m helping a friend with his tour service while his broken leg heals.”

“I see. Then I apologize for…I apologize.” Wishing she could start this day over, or better yet, evaporate into thin air, Alyx returned to Parke’s Toyota. Once again her stomach threatened to add to her humiliation and, glancing in the rearview mirror to assure herself that the way was clear, she hit the accelerator and tore away without a last glance at Jonas.

Had to get your drop of blood, didn’t you?

Jonas sat still until the black SUV vanished from sight. It bothered him that he hadn’t hesitated to embarrass Alyx, but it bothered him more how much he wanted to follow her, to find out if she was telling the truth about the cousin and where the house was. And he’d thought he’d conquered that weakness. When she’d shut him out earlier this year, he’d had his regrets. He could also admit his ego had been bruised, but shortly after arriving back in Washington, D.C., he’d convinced himself that he’d been lucky because then the grandfather of garbage trucks hit the fan, and his personal life got knocked into a different time zone.

Now, with all kinds of opportunity to rethink matters, it was ironic that she should show up. However, he couldn’t let that be a trip-switch to acting like a drooling college kid again. His professional clock was ticking and he needed a clear head to make some decisions before the alarm triggered.

As his gaze dropped to his watch, Jonas snapped out of his brooding. He was already minutes late for his first appointment of the day and suspected Zane’s phone was seconds away from ringing back at the house as panicking receptionist Miranda attempted to save herself from taking a waiting customer’s flack. However, as he continued through the airport entrance, Alyx’s face reappeared before him.

He shouldn’t have said she looked bad. It would take a mud bath to hide Alyx Carmel’s captivating features, and such an event would certainly accent her other outstanding assets, namely her luscious figure.

“Down, boy,” he muttered under his breath.

Under no circumstances could he afford to reawaken his libido; he’d mandated a starvation diet for it. The rule was simple: no paycheck, no playtime. Not that Alyx would consider going out with him again.

“‘What’s done is done.’”

Quoting her, his words sounded more like a puzzle than a vow. But as he pulled up to the Sedona Sites ticket office, he couldn’t ignore a tightening in his abdomen that had nothing to do with any concern about Zane’s beloved aircraft’s air-worthiness and had everything to do with another truth.

Alyx was too close for comfort even for someone with his discipline and willpower.

Chapter Two

As soon as Alyx entered Parke’s hillside house, her cousin’s greyhound, Grace, drew herself erect from the tile floor in the center of the entryway and stared at her with mournful eyes.

Alyx stopped for a moment to eye the sad creature, as gorgeous a living sculpture as those her owner produced from rock, metal and clay. “C’mon, Gracie, I was as fast as I could be. You have no idea what I went through this morning.”

Grace—a racing dog adopted to save her from euthanasia—looked away as though Alyx had insulted her intelligence.

“Okay, your majesty, I know your ancestors wouldn’t even let me touch them unless I had a title, and I’m sorry that my absence left you worried about being abandoned again—not that you’ll admit it to lowly me. But if you’ll give me a moment to pour myself a glass of chardonnay, I’ll soak your teeth-cleaning bone in a ladle of your mom’s chicken stew. How about that?”

Not waiting for an answer, Alyx eased off her sunglasses and visor and set them and her purse onto the hallway table on her way to the kitchen. Depositing her two bags from the grocery on a counter, she returned to the door of the garage to toe off her sneakers, massaging her shoulder along the way. She felt worse than when she’d entered the fitness center, but right now she had commitments to deal with.

As promised, she got out the pot of chicken stew that was for Grace’s dinner and dropped the chew bone in there for a minute while pouring herself the cold wine from a bottle in the refrigerator. After a sip, she sighed and offered the dog the bone.

“There you go. Now behave and don’t start wailing and otherwise telling me about your rough morning. Mine was worse and I need to make a couple of calls without sound effects.”

Wiping her wet hand on a damp paper towel, she took another soothing taste of the wine. Then Alyx flipped open her cell phone and located E. D. Martel’s number in the directory. Martel-Justiss now, she thought with a fatalistic sigh. Her client-turned-dear-friend had not only married Judge Dylan Justiss, but had recently given birth to a third child, Dylan’s first, and his namesake. Alyx felt like an amoeba compared to that woman and her courage.

At the sound of E.D.’s voice, she drawled, “How’s the mother of the judiciary’s next sage?”

“Hey—I’ve been wanting to call you, but have tried to respect your space. How’s it going?” Eva Danielle’s tone reverberated with genuine delight. “I expected you to live up to your warning that you’d be out of touch and resigned myself to weeks of worry.”

That was one of the many things that made her want to keep E.D. in her life. She might not be comfortable with Alyx’s decisions, but she did her best to honor them. “I appreciate that,” she told her. “And I’d intended to stay incommunicado, but you know life—make a plan and watch it get a slap shot into the stratosphere.”

“Interesting image. You aren’t dating a hockey player, are you?”

“Very funny,” Alyx replied. “You know I’m not in any shape even to think of such a thing.”