Interrupted Lullaby

She sighed. “I hope Zeke agrees with you. The publisher I’m seeing wants me to write a book about the foundation’s work, so he must think it’s on the level.”

Carol rested her elbows on the counter. “So why are you letting Zeke undermine your confidence? I can hear it in your voice and see it in your body language.”

Tara straightened, chagrined at being read so easily. Reading body language was part of a lawyer’s stock-in-trade, she told herself, but it didn’t change the fact that Carol was right. “How can I be the children’s spokesperson when the proof of my own failure as a mother was sitting in my audience last Monday?”

There, it was out. Tara had barely articulated her reasoning to herself, but as soon as she said it, she knew it had been nagging at her from the moment she’d seen Zeke in her audience.

“Losing the baby wasn’t your failure any more than it was Zeke’s,” Carol stated. She retrieved a jug of homemade lemonade from the refrigerator and added it and two glasses to a tray with the sandwiches. “Let’s go outside. It seems I have a pep talk to give.”

“I don’t need a pep talk.” But Tara followed her sister-in-law out to a table and chairs placed underneath the weeping branches of a crepe myrtle. From somewhere in the greenery, a Little-Wattle Bird gave its distinctive rusty-hinged cry. “It’s beautiful out here,” she said.

Carol wagged a finger at her. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Can I make a statement in my own defense, counselor?”

“Only if it doesn’t incriminate you.”

Tara poured them both a glass of lemonade. “Everything I can think to say fits that category.”

“Because you’re not as over Zeke Blaxland as you tell yourself.”

Tara felt her eyebrows lift. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“Sometimes defending a client involves making them deal with facts they’d rather not face.” Carol held out the plate. “Have a sandwich. They’re good if I do say so myself. Then we’ll discuss Zeke.”

About to refuse, Tara saw Carol’s expression. It was easier to eat than to get into an argument with someone who made a career out of it, so she took half a sandwich and bit into it, although her appetite had deserted her.

Was she avoiding facing facts? Perhaps so, Tara thought on a silent sigh. She was still attracted to Zeke, but it didn’t mean she had to give in to it. “Whatever he and I had is over. All I’m hearing are echoes from the past,” she said firmly.

Carol looked unconvinced. “As long as you’re sure.”

Tara wasn’t, but decided to let it lie. She appreciated Carol’s and Ben’s support, but there was nothing they could do. At some stage Tara knew she had to learn to deal with a world that included Zeke. Now was as good a time to start as any.

“You haven’t told me how the insider trading suit ended,” she said, seizing on the fastest way to divert her sister-in-law.

Her tactic worked. “We won. My client was completely exonerated. Didn’t you read this morning’s paper? We made the front page and the editorial.”

Tara had avoided looking at the paper. She choked back an instinctive protest as Carol went to fetch the paper. Seeing Zeke’s byline and knowing he was writing his column practically on her doorstep was another thing she must learn to deal with.

Carol came back and spread the paper across Tara’s knees. “Read the headlines then the editorial. I get a mention in both.”

Tara dutifully scanned the story, feeling pride in her sister-in-law’s accomplishment. “So the unwinnable case wasn’t as unwinnable as everyone predicted,” she said, a note of pleasure in her voice.

Carol nodded. “That’s pretty much what the editor says, too.”

Tara flipped pages until she came to the piece in question. It painted a glowing word picture of Carol’s handling of the difficult case. About to congratulate her, Tara’s eye strayed to the photo at the top of the next column and her heart almost stopped. A new photo of Zeke accompanied his column. It showed him seated behind a desk, making him look much more commanding and handsome than the previous head shot. More like the man she remembered so well, she thought.

Like someone drawn to touch a hot stove to prove it really can burn, she began to read and her blood turned to ice in her veins. “How can he do this?” she stormed after a few paragraphs.

Carol looked surprised. “I thought it was pretty flattering myself.” She glanced over Tara’s shoulder and saw what she was reading. “I didn’t mean to put that in front of you. I didn’t have time to read beyond the editorial this morning. Sorry.”

Tara shook her head although her muscles felt stiff and unresponsive. “I would have seen it sooner or later.”

Under the heading, Not-So-Sweet Charity, Zeke urged his readers to consider carefully where they donated their hard-earned money, suggesting that some organizations were designed as much to provide for their organizers as to help the underprivileged.

“How dare he suggest that I’m a do-gooder,” Tara demanded hotly.

Carol scanned the column and she frowned. “He doesn’t mention your name, or the foundation’s.”

“He doesn’t have to. After Australian Life publishes their piece and notes that top-gun reporter Zeke Blaxland was checking us out, it won’t be hard for people to put two and two together.”

Carol read on. “Are you sure you aren’t reading too much into this? Zeke may not flatter some of the fund-raising activities people do, but he doesn’t say anything that could give rise to legal action.”

“He only suggests that we’re in this for our own benefit.”

Carol gestured dismissively. “Nobody in their right mind will think he means you. You gave up a fortune in modeling fees to help set up and run the foundation.”

“Because I want the bulk of the money to go to the children. He doesn’t mention that part.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know it,” Carol suggested.

Tara stood up, adrenaline surging through her body. “Then it’s time he did, counselor. I may have no legal redress, but I can give that son-of-a-columnist a piece of my mind.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to cool down first?”

It was the last thing Tara wanted to do. “I’d rather tackle him while my blood is so hot I could burn him by bleeding on him.”

In spite of the situation, Carol laughed. “Poor Zeke. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when you get hold of him.”

Tara looked affronted. “How can you say ‘poor Zeke’? He’s the one using his position to take a cheap shot at me just because I didn’t leap into bed with him the moment he showed up.”

Carol shook her head. “I meant poor Zeke after you get through with him. From the look on your face, that cheap shot may turn out to be a lot more expensive than he bargained on.”

The Publishing House was a curious hybrid. Built behind a century-old sandstone facade, the new tower rose seventeen floors above Sydney’s historic Macquarie Street. Tara’s publisher was headquartered there, as was the editorial division of Zeke’s newspaper. When she parked outside, she wondered how she was going to cope with coming here on a regular basis, knowing that Zeke was only a few floors away.

Today it wasn’t a problem. She not only wanted him back in town, but seated behind the desk in his office so she could give him a large chunk of her mind.

Naturally, because she was fired up to confront him, he wasn’t there. His computer screensaver featured an animated figure walking through a never-ending series of doors that closed behind him one after the other, accompanied by cheerful sound effects. Across the screen scrolled the words, “Missed me by that much.”

It was an in-joke, related to Zeke’s love of classic television shows, she remembered, thinking of the hundreds of tapes in his collection. She wasn’t a fan but her pleasure had come from watching him while he watched the tapes. Some of them he knew practically by heart. Unwillingly, she found herself remembering long, rainy Sunday afternoons when they made huge bowls of popcorn and watched marathon sessions of old series.

Sometimes he had turned the sound off and made up his own dialogue, urging her to join in until they had both been helpless with laughter, she recalled. Inevitably, she had ended up in his arms, her laughter turning to passion as his kisses deepened. From the sofa, they invariably slid to the floor and made love while some old superhero flickered in the background. She couldn’t be certain but she suspected that their baby had been conceived at such a moment.

She made herself turn away from the screen, unwilling to be reminded of those days.

“Looking for Zeke?” came a familiar voice behind her. “He’s out.”

She spun around. “Matthew Brock. It’s great to see you. Still working for this newspaper then?”

He looked rueful. “Until the right man comes along to take me away from all this, I don’t have much choice. I finally stopped chasing Pulitzer prizes and settled for a steady paycheck and what little security this business has to offer.”

Matthew was a photographer and Tara had worked with him many times during her modeling days. “You never chased Pulitzer prizes, although you have the talent for it,” she said. “You always preferred security. A plateful of do-nuts and you’re anybody’s, you used to tell me.”

He rolled his eyes. “I never could put anything past you, Tara. You look great. I know you’re pretty involved with the kids thing, but if you ever want a modeling assignment…”

“I’m after blood, actually,” she cut in, remembering her mission.

He looked interested. “Zeke’s blood, by any chance?”

“Blood, bones, whatever.”

“‘Hell hath no fury,”’ he quoted, adding, “I gather you saw the column?”

She affected an expression of innocence. “Did he write a column concerning me?”

“Zeke knows better than that, but reading between the lines, it wasn’t very kind, considering the two of you used to be an item. Maybe that quote should be about a man scorned.”

“I didn’t scorn him, he left me,” she snapped then caught herself. Matthew was an old friend, not the enemy.

She jumped as her cell phone played the first few notes of “Jingle Bells.” Matthew grinned as she answered it. It was early for Christmas, but the tune was easy to hear in a noisy setting. By the time she flipped the phone shut, she could feel her face muscles tightening. She relaxed them with an effort.

“Problem?” Matthew asked.

“Only a potential benefactor calling to cancel our dinner engagement tonight. Apparently something came up. I’ll bet I know what.”

“You might be reading too much into this. Not everybody reads Zeke’s column.”

“There may be a corner of the African veld he doesn’t reach, but I happen to know this lady never misses it. She told me she’s thinking of supporting one large charity rather than a number of smaller ones but she’ll get back to me. In a pig’s eye.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh. When I get my hands on Zeke…”

“Maybe it’s just as well he isn’t around. He’s doing wonders for our circulation.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “You and your insecurity. The paper survived while Zeke was in America. It will survive again without him.”

“Wow, you really are out for his blood.”

“When is he due back?”

Matthew looked thoughtful. “He’s following a lead, something about a baby farming racket he’s working on.”

Something tightened inside her. “Baby farming? Isn’t that a bit out of Zeke’s line?”

Matthew shook his head. “Before agreeing to come back to Australia he negotiated the right to work on features of his choice. This is one of them.”

She kept her tone carefully neutral although every instinct shrilled a warning. “It sounds fascinating. What’s it about?”

Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know much. I only took a couple of pictures that Zeke wanted. A mother being united with a year-old baby that was apparently stolen from her, for one.”

Something inside Tara wound even tighter. “Really?”

He nodded, glad of her interest. “Yeah, it’s all very cloak-and-dagger. Zeke needed a shot of the hospital involved, so I used a long lens to avoid tipping them off. It’s a place with a flowery name. The Roses Private Hospital, that’s it.”

She could hardly breathe. “How fascinating.”

Concern flashed over his features. “Keep it to yourself, Tara. If anyone else breaks the story before Zeke is ready, he’ll kill me. It’s his baby.”

She felt faint. His baby. Matthew couldn’t know how his words stabbed her to the heart, but not because of a newspaper feature. Zeke’s infuriating column was nothing compared to what she had just learned. He was investigating the hospital where she had given birth less than a year ago.

She knew better than to hope that her baby had been stolen and given to someone else. She had only to remember her son’s lifeless form when the midwife brought him to her after attempts to revive him had failed. So she held no hope that things might be different for herself. But if Zeke managed to access the hospital records, and he was more than capable of doing it, he was bound to learn the truth.

Matthew regarded her anxiously. “Are you okay? You’ve gone chalk-white.”

She made herself nod and say shakily, “I’ve only eaten half a sandwich today. My blood sugar is probably in my boots by now.”

He took her arm. “Let’s grab some coffee and you can have a snack.”

She didn’t really want food, but she needed to occupy herself until Zeke returned, and she did feel shaky. Besides, the photographer was one of her favorite people. “Okay but I can’t stay long. I have a meeting in the building in less than an hour.”

“That’s just long enough to tell me more about what you plan to do with Zeke when you catch up with him.”

It was more a case of what he would do with her if he uncovered the truth, she thought as she allowed Matthew to steer her out of the office. The unkind things Zeke had written in his column would pale into insignificance beside his reaction when he knew she had kept from him the birth of his own child.

Chapter 4

A tense half hour later, Tara rode the elevator from the cafeteria back to the editorial floor. “Thanks for the coffee. It was great to catch up,” she told Matthew.

“Considering you hardly heard a word I said.”

She shot him a rueful look. “Was it that obvious?”

He nodded. “I’ve known you a long time. Zeke was the man for you from the moment you set eyes on him. It doesn’t look as if anything has changed.”

She kept her gaze on the floor indicator. “Everything has changed. He stopped being the man for me the day he left the country.”

Matthew shrugged. “If you say so.”

She took a sharp breath of frustration, not sure whether she needed to convince him or herself. “Matthew…”

But the elevator doors swished open onto their floor and Matthew gestured her ahead of him. “Age before beauty.”

She laughed. “At least you never change.”

Her laughter died when she saw that Zeke still hadn’t returned to his desk, evidenced by a growing pile of messages. “Doesn’t he believe in keeping regular hours?”

Matthew shrugged. “The office is made available to him as a courtesy. Officially he’s a consultant, free to set his own hours.” His expression said that some people had all the luck.

Frustration gnawed at Tara as she glanced at her watch. “I can’t wait any longer. I’m due at a publisher’s meeting.”

“Shall I tell Zeke you were looking for him?”

“Tell him…” She hesitated. What could she have Matthew tell Zeke second hand that wouldn’t suggest she had wanted an excuse to see him again. Matthew obviously believed it. She didn’t want Zeke to draw the same conclusion. “Don’t bother. I’ll catch up with him later.”

Matthew feigned disappointment. “Pity. The showdown promised to be entertaining.”

Not if she had had anything to say about it. “But messy,” she said shortly.

“They’re the best kind. Now all I can look forward to this afternoon is processing prints of some society woman riding her horse in Centennial Park.”

Matthew might complain about working on the society pages but Tara knew he loved the whole scene. “Maybe she’ll have a rich son,” she consoled him.

He pouted. “Could be, although with my luck he’d be straight.”

Murmuring supportively, she left to keep her appointment, more disappointed than she had let Matthew see how anxious she’d been to see Zeke. The feeling made her pause reflectively, her hand poised over the elevator button. Was her anger over the column merely an excuse to see Zeke again?

As her sister-in-law had pointed out, he hadn’t written anything that he hadn’t told Tara face-to-face when they were together. And she could be reading too much into the potential benefactor’s phone call. If so, it was just as well she had missed Zeke. The more distance she kept between them the better, she assured herself, although she was aware of stabbing the elevator button with unusual ferocity.

When the doors opened, she stepped inside, making an effort to focus on the meeting ahead. She looked forward to getting her teeth into a new project, and she wasn’t about to let anything—or anyone—spoil it for her.

Furlong Press was on the fourth floor of the same building. The firm had been established by Colin Adeel, a retired jockey who had started out publishing racing industry fare, then gone on to publish other books when he found he had a flair for picking bestsellers.

Tara had been pleased and flattered when he’d approached her to write a book about Model Children. Zeke had been right when he said she had always wanted to write. Like him, she had assumed that when she did it would be a novel. She had a file bulging with ideas, and had tried to write in the days following the loss of her baby, but the timing had been hopeless. Now her step lightened as she approached the publisher’s office. Other writers told her she should write about what she knew, so this might be the start she needed.

“Go right in, Ms. McNiven,” the receptionist said before she could introduce herself.

Tara pushed open a frosted-glass door with Colin Adeel’s name in gold on it, then stopped in her tracks, her heart automatically picking up speed at the sight of the man behind the publisher’s desk. “Zeke? What are you doing here?”

“My job. I own a slice of Furlong Press.”

She felt as if all the breath had been squeezed from her body. “Colin didn’t say he planned to sell the business.”

Zeke tilted the black executive chair so far back she expected him to crash to the floor at any minute, but as usual his sense of balance was perfect. The angle of his body brought him into disturbingly direct eye contact with her. “He hasn’t sold out. He needs capital to expand, and I want something more than a column to write, so I let a mutual friend broker a partnership between us. You’re not the only one with dreams, Tara,” he said softly.

She struggled to deal with the overwhelming reality of his presence. It was hard enough when she was prepared for it. Unprepared, she felt alarmingly vulnerable. “You never talked about wanting to go into publishing.”

“We never talked about a lot of things and we took far too many things for granted.”

What was he saying? “It’s too late,” she found herself whispering.

“It’s never too late while we’re still breathing.” He gestured to a chair opposite the desk. “Sit down and stop looking as if you’re going to run out of here at any moment. This is us, remember?”

Was her discomfort that obvious? She had come to the newspaper looking for his blood, sure that she could deal with her memories while she gave him a piece of her mind. But she had envisioned having the showdown with other people around. No part of her plan had included being alone with him. For a moment she debated turning and fleeing, but everything in her balked at giving him the satisfaction. She sat.

“This isn’t supposed to be about…us…” Strange how hard she found it to force the single syllable out. “This meeting is supposed to be about a book Colin wants me to write.”

Zeke thumped a palm down on a folder in front of him. “Don’t worry, the whole deal is spelled out here. But Colin’s a romantic at heart. He knows you and I share a lot of history. When he briefed me on the company’s future projects and I heard that your book was on the list, I asked if I could sit in on the meeting. He said he’d let me handle the contract as a way of easing me into the business. I suspect he thinks we’re about to rekindle our romance.” He spread his hands wide. “So here I am.”

His expression of innocence didn’t fool her for a second. “Colin might believe what we had can be revived, but you don’t.”

He abandoned all pretense of ease and let the chair clatter to the floor as he leaned toward her. “What do you think?”

Her gaze flew to his face. On Monday night, she hadn’t believed him when he said he wanted to try again, thinking he was only saying it to lure her into his bed. The very idea made her throat feel dry but she refused to swallow and confirm his effect on her. However skilled he was as a lover, and she knew he was spectacular, she needed more from him than sex.

Nine months of imagining her future as the mother of his baby had shown her how much she yearned for a real home and a family, the kind of future Zeke refused to believe in. “It’s over,” she said flatly. “We’ve both moved on. You to Lucy…”

“And you?” he put in, his voice hard.

“It’s hardly any of your business.”

“But there is a man?”

She wished with all her heart that she could say yes and end this now, but it wouldn’t be true. She hated to think it might never be true, because Zeke had spoiled her for other men for life. “I didn’t say so.”

His eyes flashed fire at her. “You haven’t said there isn’t.”

She made a move to rise. “This will get us nowhere. For some reason you wanted to believe I had another man in my life before you went away, and you’re still obsessed with the notion although it never was true. It still isn’t.”

She saw him digest this. “I’m trying to understand what happened between us.”

“What happened was, we needed different things. You don’t believe in happy-ever-afters and I do. It’s that simple.”

He made a show of glancing around. “You haven’t found your happy-ever-after yet.”

“It hasn’t stopped me from looking.”

She wasn’t surprised when his expression turned skeptical. “What if you never find it?”

“You have my permission to say ‘I told you so.”’

He shook his head violently. “It won’t give me as much satisfaction as you evidently think. I want to believe in happy endings, but experience has taught me they’re a myth.”

Her sigh whistled between them. “You see? How can you hope to find something if you’re not prepared to concede it exists?”

“I came closest when we were together,” he said softly.

Shock poured through her like a paralizing drug. She felt frozen into immobility, knowing she should leave but unable to make her body obey her mind’s commands. Unwillingly, she remembered the long, dark nights when he had whispered that she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. No one else had been there for him the way she had, he had assured her.

She had taken pride in being what he called his anchor, forgetting that anchors could be cut adrift if the winds and tide were strong enough.

She felt cut adrift now, at the mercy of a tide of desire so powerful it threatened to deluge her. “Don’t do this, Zeke. It isn’t fair.”

“All’s fair in love,” he reminded her.

“What we have isn’t love. It’s…” Her voice trailed off as words failed her. War was hardly the right description. So what was between them?

He looked intrigued. Too late she realized she’d used the present tense and knew it was too much to hope that he hadn’t noticed. “What would you call it?” he demanded.

“Lust, infatuation, sex. Never love.”

His eyes gleamed. “Three out of four isn’t a bad start, considering that a moment ago you were writing us off completely. At least now I know there’s something to work with.”