Good Girls Do (24 page)

“I did worry about that. It kept me up nights. I told Tyler—”

“He knows about this?”

“No, of course not. He only knows that I had a secret and that I was concerned about revealing it to you.”

“Does anyone else know? Does Skye know?” Julia could read the answer on her mom’s face. It was the final blow. “You told her before you told me? That we have different fathers? How could you do that to me?”

Julia couldn’t breathe. She had to get away or suffocate. She jumped up, relieved that her shaking legs still supported her after emotionally having the rug torn out from under her.

“Julia, wait . . .” Angel put out her hand.

But Julia sidestepped her, dashing toward the foyer where she grabbed a coat, slid into a pair of shoes, and ran out the front door.

Luke stood outside in the alley behind Maguire’s and inhaled the cold air. Adele would have his hide for taking off during the busy New Year’s Eve festivities, but he didn’t care. Too many bad memories were hanging around the edge of his consciousness tonight, taunting him like old bullies. Bullies like his dad.

The belt, the voice, the back of his hamlike hand. All were weapons to be used against Luke. And he’d used them often.

Had his father been right? Doubt rose in his throat like a bad meal. Had he deserved the beatings? Maybe he was just a screwup who couldn’t do anything right.

Maybe that was why he always walked away—from the Marines, from the FBI. Because he was a loser.

Luke started pacing. He hated thinking about this stuff. He’d been through enough fires by now to have burned those negative voices out of his head, the ones in his father’s bellowing voice.

Returning here had brought it all back, even though he fought to keep the images away. You’d think that painting Maguire’s would clean the slate, but it had only camouflaged it.

What a way to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Instead of seducing the sexy belly-dancing librarian, he was pouring drinks for other happy couples.

Not that he and Julia were a couple . . . happy or otherwise.

Wham!
Luke grabbed hold of the person who had just blindsided him and almost knocked them both on their butts.

He knew it was Julia the instant he touched her. Had she come racing to his side, ready to jump into bed with him? Wishful thinking maybe . . . but . . .

Then he saw the tears on her face. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Julia gulped and hiccuped.

“What happened? What’s the matter?”

She just shook her head, tears continuing to run down her face as the sound of people celebrating the New Year echoed in the alley.
Five, four, three, two, one . . . Happy New Year!

“Come here.” He tugged her into his arms. “Did someone hurt you?”

She nodded.

“Who?” His voice was grim. “Do you know who it was? Were you attacked? Should I call the police?”

“It was Angel.”

“Angel attacked you?”

Julia shook her head.

“You two had a fight?” Luke rubbed circles around her back in a way that was meant to be reassuring. “Not a good way to start off a new year, huh?”

“I don’t cry,” Julia mumbled against his shoulder.

“Of course you don’t.”

“I mean it,” she said fiercely. “I
never
cry.”

“Me, neither. Another thing we have in common, huh?”

She lifted her hands to wipe the dampness from her cheeks, but his fingers were there before hers. “It’ll be okay.” His voice was roughly reassuring.

Looking up at him, so close she could see the individual dark eyelashes circling his vivid blue eyes, Julia knew what she had to do.

She slid her hands up to his face, cupping his cheeks and tugging him down so she could kiss him.

The moment their lips met, the passion was once again all-consuming. There was no room to think about the bombshell Angel had dropped on her. No time to fret over that fact that she’d never been a pretty cryer and that her nose probably resembled Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by now.

No, there was only this heated moment. His tongue parting her lips, her tongue greeting his . . . tangling, tasting, tempting.

Desire escalated rapidly. Luke yanked her into the shadows of the alleyway and up against the wall, his thigh between her legs, her hands under his shirt. Neither was properly dressed for the snowy weather. Neither cared.

His mouth continued to consume hers while her tongue danced with his. In the distance she could hear revelers inside Maguire’s, but mostly she heard the pounding of her own heart and felt the throbbing need to have him with her, within her.

“Make love to me,” she murmured against his lips.

Shaking his head, Luke reluctantly pulled away. “Ask me again when you’re not hysterical.”

“I am
not
hysterical. And even if I was, since when have you had a thing against having sex with hysterical women?”

“Oh, so you figured with my reputation I’d have sex with anyone, right?” He sounded aggravated now.

“You said you wanted to have sex with me. You’ve told me that more than once. Or was it just a line?”

“No.”

“Then you only wanted to have sex with me providing I didn’t want to have sex with
you
.”

“You
always
wanted to have sex with me.”

“That is so not true.”

“And that is so a lie,” he mocked her.

“Go to hell!” Totally humiliated by now, she spun away from him.

“Trust me, I know hell well,” Luke said even as he caught her in his arms.

“Let me go!” She was so angry she couldn’t even see straight. Plus all that wine she’d consumed earlier was clouding her thinking. Which was good. She didn’t want to think.

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”

“Forget it!”

“As much as I’d like to, I won’t be able to. Which is why you’re coming upstairs with me and having some coffee and . . .”

“No way!”

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Your call.”

She struggled to free herself.

“Okay, you chose the hard way. Fine by me.” The next thing Julia knew, he had her slung over his shoulder in a fire-man’s lift. She hung onto handfuls of his soft leather jacket as she found herself staring at his sexy butt. She didn’t have much choice. It was right there in front of her nose.

“Put me down!”

“Keep it down back there. You don’t want the entire town to see you this way, do you?”

The wine she’d consumed and the stress were catching up to her, making head spin. Or maybe it was all the blood rushing to her head. Either way, she was woozy.

Her sudden stillness made him suspicious. “You’re not gonna hurl or anything are you?”

She didn’t answer, which made him hurry up the back stairs to the apartment over Maguire’s. He returned her to her feet with surprising care and gentleness. “Are you okay?”

Tears threatened again, and she struggled to hold them back. “I already told you before that I wasn’t.”

“Come on, you’ll feel better after you’ve had some coffee.”

She only came inside and took the seat on the couch he offered her because her legs were suddenly too wobbly to hold her up. He had a mug in her hand in fifteen seconds flat.

“Talk to me,” he ordered.

“You told me you don’t like gabby women.”

“You told me you didn’t care.”

“I don’t.”

“Then talk to me.”

She stared down at the swirl of milk he’d added to her coffee but hadn’t bothered stirring and remembered how her mother learned how to read tea leaves from a Greek neighbor many years ago. What was that woman’s name? Helena? Athena? something-ena.

Keeping her eyes on her coffee she said, “Have you ever felt like your life is suddenly not what you thought it was? That it just unravelled and totally fell apart? That it was all based on a lie?”

“Yeah.” More of his life was based on a lie than not. Luke had trained in everything from mobile surveillance to high-risk building entries, but he had no experience in how to deal with a woman like Julia.

Or maybe he did. In interrogation training he’d learned that human beings give off all kinds of indicators. Body language. Eye movement. At one point, he’d been good at getting people to tell him what he wanted to know. At one point, he’d had a gut-deep confidence in his abilities. He needed to get that back.

“What did you and Angel argue about?” he asked.

“We didn’t argue. She dropped a bombshell on me. Turns out my father isn’t who I though he was.”

Because Luke would have taken the news that his father wasn’t really Tommy Maguire as good news, he wasn’t sure how to react to this. Julia didn’t appear to view it as good news in her case. So he let her do all the talking, glad that he hadn’t had to use much prompting to get her to confide in him.

“I always felt like I didn’t fit in with the rest of my family. I guess now I know the reason why.” She took an unsteady sip of coffee. “I never liked the footloose lifestyle we had. Even so, I put up with all the moves. I didn’t complain about not going to my senior prom because we left the state a week before. I never said anything about always being the kid with the kooky family. But this . . . this is too much.”

“Did she tell you who your real father is?”

Julia shook her head. “Just that he was a corporate capitalist monster.”

“Well, that narrows the list, doesn’t it?”

“She met him at a party in the seventies. She did say they shared an Ethics class at UCLA. And that his name was Adam.”

“How old are you?”

She blinked. “Why should I tell you that?”

“Because maybe we can figure out who this guy is. If you want that, I mean. By going back and figuring out what year they shared that class and then looking at the records . . .”

“Can that be done?”

“I’ve got some friends who could do it, yeah.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “What kind of friends?”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t want to do anything illegal or get into trouble or get you or them into trouble.”

“That’s a long list of what you
don’t
want. Now tell me what you
do
want.”

She’d tried to tell him that she wanted
him
down in the alley, but he’d turned her away.

“Do you want to track down your father or not?” he said.

“I don’t know. I only discovered all this an hour ago. I need some time for it to sink in.”

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

“I don’t understand why she lied to me all these years. Angel always made such a big deal out of living an honest life. Of being in touch with your inner self, no deception. Yet here she’d been hiding a huge part of my life from me. Was my father so bad that she was afraid of him?”

“What did she say about that?”

“I only asked if he was a drug dealer or in jail and she said ‘no.’ ”

When Luke’s cell phone rang, he was going to ignore it until he saw the caller ID number. He answered.

“Luke, this is Angel.” Her voice was breathless and agitated. “I’m looking for Julia. Have you seen her?”

“Yes, Angel, she’s here.” When Luke motioned as if to hand the phone over, Julia vehemently shook her head.

“Tell her I don’t want to talk to her,” Julia said.

“You don’t have to tell me.” Angel sounded very polite. And very relieved to have located her daughter. “I heard her and I understand. She needs space. Tell her I get that. And that I’ll be waiting for her whenever she’s ready.”

“Your mom said she’ll be waiting for you whenever you’re ready,” Luke repeated after disconnecting the call and turning off his cell.

Another wild thought popped into Julia’s head. “What if she’s not really my mother? What if
everything
was a lie, not just that part of my parenthood?”

“A DNA test would give you the answer to that, but you look a lot like her.”

“I do not.”

“Sure you do. You’ve both got that thing going on with your eyes.”

“What thing?”

He tipped up her chin with his fingertip. “That green hazel thing.”

“She starts riots.”

He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “So could you if you wanted to.”

“I don’t. All I wanted was some peace and quiet, and instead I get llamas in my backyard, my mother telling me my father isn’t who I thought he was, and you . . .”

“Yeah? And me?”

“Getting nuns to help me out.”

“And that bothers you, huh? That I had Sister Mary come to your aid?”

“You said you did it because you wanted to have sex with me.”

“That’s right.”

She set down her coffee and stood, feeling the need to move around. Or even better, to hit something. The punching bag was nearby so she gave it an open-handed smack. “But you just told me no.”

“Not true. I told you that you I don’t take advantage of women who’ve had too much to drink.”

“You said I was hysterical.”

“That, too.”

“That why you brought me up here? To sober me up? Or to teach me more boxing moves?” She paused to peel off her coat and soft fleece hoodie.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s hot in here.”

She stood before him, wearing a black tank top that molded to her breasts and made his mouth water. Her pants hugged her hips, leaving a tantalizing strip of creamy skin just beneath her navel.

She moved closer to him, sliding the leather jacket off his shoulders. “Show me what you’ve got.”

“You first.”

“Okay.” She stepped away and kicked off her shoes.

The next thing he knew, she was undulating her hips in a way that brought his body to full alert. His belly-dancing librarian was putting on a show for him, moving to a beat only she could hear, starting slowly and then moving faster. Desire shot through his veins like quicksilver. Closing her eyes, she lifted her arms, dancing with a feminine mystery as old as time itself.