The Playboy Assignment

“I didn’t, particularly. I never met the man in my life.”

That much didn’t surprise her, but it chipped away at her original theory that Cyrus’s mysterious heir was also his son. To the best of Susannah’s recollection, Marc had had a perfectly serviceable set of parents... “I must admit I’d like to know how your mother met him.”

“I’ll have to ask her sometime. As long as we’re talking about families, how’s your daughter, Susannah?”

The question came at her like a curve ball, hanging just out of reach for an impossibly long time, taunting her. She wasn’t shocked, exactly; she’d been half expecting something of the sort. Why had he fixed on a girl? “I don’t have a daughter.”

“Really? It seemed a perfectly reasonable conclusion. A professional office probably wouldn’t provide hopscotch layouts on the front walk for clients’ children—at least, not the sort of firm yours obviously is. And since hopscotch is not only a little girl’s game, but is most fascinating to girls exactly the age yours would be...” -

“Very logical,” she admitted. “Very reasonable. And very wrong. The neighborhood girls like to play there. It’s the widest and flattest walk around.”

“A son, then?”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

Marc was stirring his coffee. “Oh, I couldn’t be any more disillusioned with you than I was eight years ago. I must admit, however, I’d like to know what happened. I expected, after you told me that you hadn’t married after all, that you’d still be trying to convince the world your child was also mine, and I’d been too much of a bum to marry you. Naive of me, wasn’t it, to think that? Of course the Northbrook Millers would figure out a neater, easier way. What was it, Susannah? A convenient miscarriage?” The spoon didn’t stop moving in concentric circles as his gaze lifted to meet hers. “A very private adoption?”

“As you pointed out yourself, it’s none of your business.”

“Perhaps I should ask Pierce.”

“He doesn’t know.”

“In that case, it might be even more interesting to compare notes.”

“Be my guest. Is there anything else you wanted, Marc?”

“Oh, I could think of a few things.”

Susannah took that with a grain of salt. “Then I doubt I’ll see you again.”

“What makes you think that?” Only mild interest spiced his voice.

She shrugged, but the gesture turned out, despite her best efforts, to be more like a shiver. What was there about his gentle, even voice that scared her so? “I assume you’ll go back to your life. There must be things you can’t walk away from.”

“You mean things like the job, the mortgage, the wife, and the kids?”

Wife? Kids? But why shouldn’t he have married? Susannah could think of no good reason.

Her gaze went straight to his left hand, cupped easily on the plastic surface of the table. He wore no wedding ring, and there was no telltale pale band where one might have rested in the past....

Marc followed her gaze. His eyes narrowed, and he stretched out his hand toward her. “So you still have wedding rings on the brain. Sorry to disappoint you.”

“I see,” she said. “The machinery you work around makes a ring dangerous. Catch it wrong, and it could tear off your finger.”

“True,” he said. “Besides, it makes a handy excuse not to wear a ring. I think you’ve misunderstood, though. I’m not going back for a while. The wife—well, you know how these things go. A break sounds like a very good idea. And as for the kids—I don’t know why you’d assume that one can’t walk out on children, Susannah, considering your own record.”

She was too numb to be shocked.

“And as far as the job and the mortgage—well, it’s such a large inheritance, you see, that neither of those things matters much just now. Or at least it should be a tidy sum, if it’s properly looked after and not left to a bunch of vultures.”

“Meaning me?” Susannah managed to keep her voice steady, but it took enormous effort.

“Now why would you jump to the conclusion that I was talking about you?” Marc’s tone was soft, almost caressing. “Right now, it just makes sense to stick around and keep my eye on things—and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

CHAPTER THREE

DESPITE the effort she’d made to convince herself that Marc woutdn‘t—couldn’t—stay in Chicago, Susannah wasn’t really surprised. It was a sizable estate. One had only to walk into Cyrus’s house to realize that.

She could imagine the impact that house had had on Marc—the gleaming furniture, the solid walnut staircase, the art on the walls...even if he didn’t care for the subjects, he must have realized the paintings themselves were far above poster quality.

She could still remember his low whistle when he’d gotten his first glimpse of the Miller’s house, on that never-to-be-forgotten weekend when Susannah had brought him home on her Thanksgiving break from college to meet her family. If her parents’ house, spare and modern and all stainless steel and glass, had evoked that sort of response, Susannah could imagine the way he’d reacted to Cyrus’s exuberant Victorian.

And, once realizing the probable worth of his legacy, of course Marc would stay, watchful and protective, until everything was settled and the cash safely in his hands. He had no reason, after all, to trust Joe Brewster—or anyone else. And beside the magnitude of Cyrus’s estate, a welder’s income must look like peanuts, easily tossed aside.

“Of course,” she said coolly. “It only makes sense to protect oneself.”

Marc’s eyes narrowed. “Thank you for sharing your personal philosophy.”

Susannah opened her mouth to say that she hadn’t been talking about herself, and then decided the point wasn’t worth explaining. She wasn’t going to convince him with mere words. Not that she wanted to convince him; what did it matter what Marc thought of her?

“You’re quite right,” Marc went on thoughtfully. “And I’ll certainly keep your advice in mind as this process unfolds. I wonder how long it will take. A year, maybe.... Another cup of coffee?”

Susannah shook her head. The motion felt like forcing rusty machinery to move against its will; the tension in her muscles was the worst she’d ever felt. A year? Of course he was right; an estate the size of Cyrus’s would take forever to untangle.

On the other hand, perhaps she’d overestimated her part of the work. It would take time, of course, but much of it would be spent in libraries, not with the paintings themselves. She might not run into Marc much at all.

“Very well,” Marc said. He slid out of the booth.

Susannah made the mistake of looking up at him. He seemed incredibly tall, broad-shouldered, strong, as he stood there. He wasn’t frightening, exactly, but it was only sensible to be watchful. And she was certainly that; there seemed to be as much wariness circulating in her veins as blood.

“I’ll see you Monday, then,” he said. “Unless you’d prefer to spend the weekend with me?”

Susannah had turned, reaching for her handbag and briefcase. Her head snapped up once more; all her inner alarms shouted, Danger.

“Inventorying Cyrus’s pictures, of course,” he added smoothly. “Good heavens, Susannah, your eyes look like the Gulf of Mexico—the same shade of blue-green, and nearly as big. What did you think I meant?”

Susannah knew perfectly well what he’d meant. He’d meant for her to think that he was offering a weekend full of passion. And of course she’d fallen straight into the trap by reacting as she had. In fact, the only real question was what he’d truly been offering—an honest-to-goodness illicit encounter, or only a chance to make a fool of herself once more for his entertainment.

The old Marc wouldn’t have thought of either alternative, she knew. The young man she had known had been ardent—no doubt about that; she had yet to meet another man who could knock her socks off with a kiss as Marc had been able to. But he’d also been respectful, sometimes to the point of being quaint. He’d almost worshiped her; he would never have made that careless, offhand reference to sleeping together. And he would never have baited her, or embarrassed her.

The new Marc was cynical, sardonic, distrustful—and far more dangerous. The sooner Susannah stopped thinking of the man he’d once been and started handling him as she would a jar of nitroglycerine, the better off she’d be.

Still, she spent most of the weekend turning the whole thing over in her head—grooming the acid barbs she wished she’d thought of earlier and fretting about what Monday would bring. Why had she committed herself to showing up at Cyrus’s house on Monday, anyway?