White Hot Page 3

  That snapped her back to reality. She gave up the act. “Look, Jeremiah, we haven’t had any contact in ten years. Let’s just leave it that way, okay?”

  “But I want to hire you.”

  She stared at him. “You want to what?”

  He walked around the truck, nothing in the way he moved indicating he’d changed one whit. “Hire you. I’ve decided I need a publicist.”

  “You?”

  “Sure. I’ve become something of a star reporter these days. I’m inundated with requests for my presence at various functions, speaking engagements, interviews, appearances. It’s pretty irritating.”

  “I would think it would be flattering,” Mollie said stiffly.

  “That’s why you’re a publicist and I’m not. I need someone to run interference for me. What do you say?”

  “I say you’re not serious.”

  He eyed her, within touching distance now. He was still trim and well-muscled, a flat six feet tall. Mollie tried to ignore the flutter in the pit of her stomach. He wore his near-black hair shorter, but he had the same blade of a nose, the same thin, hard mouth and dangerous sexiness. She didn’t need him to take off his sunglasses for her to see his eyes. They, too, would be unchanged, the same mix of grays, greens, and golds that had intrigued and fascinated her right from the start.

  She inhaled. “Tabak…”

  “Ten minutes to make my case,” he said.

  “You have no case.”

  He tilted his head back, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Don’t trust me, Mollie?”

  “With good reason.”

  “Ah. Then you haven’t forgotten me.”

  She sighed. “All right, I’ll give you ten minutes, but only because you’ll hound me until I hear you out. And I don’t want anyone to see us out here arguing.”

  “No?”

  He seemed amused. Mollie could feel her tank top clinging to her in the warm sun. “No one knows about our little week together, Jeremiah. No one. I want to keep it that way.”

  He wasn’t chastened. Not Jeremiah. Their affair hadn’t even been a blip on the horizon for him. He had gone on to become one of Miami ’s most respected, hardest-hitting reporters, just as he’d planned.

  “That’s good, Mollie.” He grinned that slow, lazy, mind-bogglingly sexy grin. “I like being your deep, dark secret.”

  Mollie raced through her shower while her unwanted guest made himself at home in her kitchen. She quickly pulled on khaki shorts and a white shirt, unconcerned about her professional image because she and Jeremiah weren’t going to have a professional relationship. Or any relationship. She was going to hear him out and get rid of him.

  She slipped on sandals and pulled her damp hair back in a clip before sucking in a breath and venturing down the hall. Jeremiah had installed himself on a stool at the breakfast bar and had a pot of coffee brewing. Mollie gave him a brief nod and fetched down two mugs from the honey-colored cabinets.

  “Nice place,” he said. He wore a close-fitting, dusk-colored shirt, chinos, canvas shoes. Casual, not inexpensive. Deliberate. He was, Mollie remembered with a hot jolt, a very deliberate man. “I suppose it comes in handy having a world-renowned opera singer for a godfather.”

  “I’m house-sitting for Leonardo.”

  “Of course.”

  She bit her lip, wondering why she’d felt the need to justify her acceptance of her godfather’s generosity. She was just on edge, she decided, and bound to snap at everything. She filled the two mugs. Jeremiah, she remembered for no reason whatever, took his coffee black. She shoved the mug across the bar to him.

  “Is he the reason you moved to south Florida?”

  “Jeremiah-”

  “I’m just curious,” he said.

  She sighed. He was naturally curious, and he would pounce if he believed she had anything to hide. Which she didn’t. “I was looking for a change, and Leonardo’s on tour this year. He offered me use of his house, I accepted, and here I am.”

  “Why your own business?”

  She shrugged, sipping her coffee, trying not to look at his eyes long enough to see if the mix of colors was still so apparent. “I like being my own boss, doing everything from soup to nuts. It’s challenging, and it’s fun. I don’t think I’ll stay in Palm Beach after the year’s up, but I like south Florida.”

  Jeremiah drank more of his coffee, studying her with a calm she found faintly irritating. He was an accomplished journalist, she reminded herself. He was accustomed to keeping his emotions under check. But he didn’t seem to be suffering any of the shock, self-consciousness, awareness, or simple embarrassment she was at being thrown back together.

  “What happened to your flute?” he asked quietly.

  She stiffened, not wanting to go down that road. “Nothing. It still plays just fine.”

  “You didn’t join an orchestra after all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I went into communications instead,” she said briskly and changed the subject. “How did you find me?”

  He didn’t answer right away. She could see him calculating just how far he could push her before she chased him out. Finally, he said, “Coincidence. A colleague on the paper happened to mention you. Don’t worry,” he added with a quick smile, “I didn’t let on about our ‘past.’ She said I might talk to you about publicity. Here for the past ten years I’ve been picturing you in a concert hall with your flute and a black dress, and it turns out you’re a publicist.”

  Mollie wasn’t sure if she detected a note of disdain for her profession or if she was simply being defensive. Jeremiah was hard news all the way. He would consider publicists roadblocks thrown between him and the truth.

  “She warned me your client list is a little weird,” he said.

  “Weird?”

  “She said unusual. Same difference.”

  Mollie set her mug in the sink and regarded him with a cool, measured look. He was lying. Flat out, one hundred percent, no doubt in her mind. The only question was, what was his motive? He would, she knew, have a reason. “So why would a hard-hitting, award-winning investigative journalist like yourself want to join such a list?”

  His eyes narrowed on her abruptly, a shock, an almost physical reminder of this man’s relentless drive and intensity. Then it was gone, and he sat back, everything about him relaxed and even somewhat amused. “Seems you doubt my sincerity, Miss Mollie.”

  “And why would I?”

  “Because you hold a grudge against me for ten years ago,” he said flatly.

  “No, because you didn’t come here to hire me, you came here because you couldn’t stand not to. You saw me last night, and you couldn’t resist. You did your reporter thing, found out I’d set up shop as a publicist, and had to see for yourself.” She took a breath. “And I haven’t thought about you in ten years.”

  “Ah. Then you don’t believe a colleague put me onto you.”

  “Jeremiah, I want to be there the day, one, you want to hire a publicist, and, two, you find one who’d take you on as a client.”

  He grinned, entertained. “Think you know me pretty well, don’t you?”

  “Some lessons I never forget.”

  The phone rang, and Mollie snatched up the kitchen extension, prepared to get rid of whoever was on the other end. But it was Boca Raton magazine returning her call, and she knew she had to take it. She looked at Jeremiah. “This is someone I’ve been trying to reach for two weeks. I need about two minutes. Would you mind-”

  “No problem.”

  He slid off the stool and headed into the den off the back of the kitchen. It was usually off-limits for business, but she didn’t bother directing him to her living room-office. Instead she put him out of her mind and focused on her call. “Hi, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been-”

  The den!

  Mollie choked and gripped the phone, calling upon every ounce of professionalism and her limited experience as a performing ar
tist. “Excuse me, something’s just come up. I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

  She hung up, steadied herself, and rushed into the den.

  She was too late.

  Jeremiah glanced back at her from his position in the middle of the room. His eyes gleamed with humor, and his straight mouth twitched. “Haven’t thought about me in ten years, have you, Mollie?”

  She stood very still. The den was small and cozy, with simple, comfortable furnishings. She’d added a few personal items brought down from Boston: two photo albums, photographs of her family and Leonardo, movie videos, her CD player and CD collection.

  And her dartboard.

  She’d nailed it to the wall above a rattan chair in the corner. She’d started playing darts shortly after her Miami spring break and first and only fling on the dark and dangerous side. The game relaxed her and helped her process her emotions, even think.

  Two weeks ago, something had possessed her-she now couldn’t imagine what-to enlarge a black-and-white photo of Jeremiah and staple it to her dartboard. It was a candid shot from a South Florida magazine piece on Miami’s star reporters. He’d refused to pose for the story, preferring to be the one doing the interviews, not giving them. And he had no patience with celebrity.

  “That was just…I was just amusing myself.” She tried to sound as if she wasn’t choking from embarrassment. If he’d changed in any significant way-gained weight, lost some of his intensity, started wearing dopey clothes, anything-she might not have felt so exposed. “I was bored one night, and I saw that picture, and…” She took a breath, summoning the last shreds of her dignity. “I have no animosity toward you.”

  “That why most of the darts landed between my eyes?”

  She forced a laugh. “I’m a good shot.”

  He settled back on his heels, glanced again at the dartboard, having a hell of a good time for himself. “I guess I should consider myself lucky you aimed for my forehead.” He shifted back to her. “At least most of the time.”

  “Look, don’t go thinking that just because I threw a few darts at your picture that I’ve been carrying a torch for you or plotting revenge or even thinking about you for the past ten years. I haven’t. I saw your picture, and it amused me, and-”

  “And you stuck it up on your dartboard.”

  “Yes. Exactly. You shouldn’t feel flattered or insulted.”

  “What was on your dartboard before me?”

  “Nothing. It was just a regular dartboard.” She licked her lips, feeling somewhat less self-conscious. “No one comes in here but me. I’d never leave your picture up for company to see.”

  “Because I’m your deep, dark secret,” he said, taking a step toward her.

  Before he could come any closer, she gave up trying to explain and charged back into the kitchen. Why had she agreed to let him make his case? He’d never meant to hire her. She’d known that. He’d just had to see for himself if she’d gone to pieces after he’d admitted he was a heel who’d used her to get a story and then sent her home to Boston. This little visit was an exercise in male ego. Nothing more.

  He rejoined her in the kitchen, and she flew around at him. But before she could get a choked word out, he picked up his sunglasses. She noticed the blunt nails, the dark hairs on his forearms, the taut muscles. And the eyes, probing, assessing. “Coming here was a bad idea, Mollie. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”

  Her anger went out of her even before it had a chance to take firm hold. She brushed back a strand of hair that had come loose in her mad dash from the den. “You haven’t, not really. You never meant to hire me, did you? You just wanted to see what’d become of me?”

  “I’m a reporter,” he said dryly, heading for the door. “I have an insatiable curiosity. Good seeing you again, Mollie.”

  “You, too.”

  He winked. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

  “Maybe.”

  The door shut, and he was gone.

  Mollie let out a long, slow, cleansing breath and collapsed onto a bar stool. There. She’d survived. The encounter she’d dreaded since agreeing to Leonardo’s proposal had come and gone, and here she was, intact, sane, her own curiosity satisfied. As she’d predicted, Jeremiah hadn’t changed at all. Not in ten years, not in a million.

  And he hadn’t figured out the impact he’d had on her life. After their affair, she’d returned home questioning herself, her life, her commitment to music, everything. She could no longer just drift along in currents not of her own making. So she had dropped out of the conservatory and given up her dream of becoming a world-class flutist. She simply didn’t have the drive, the talent, the desire. Her week with her dark and dangerous reporter, for all its drama, had forced her to look inside herself and see what was there.

  For that, she thought, she couldn’t hate him.

  For betraying her, she could. He had used her shamelessly to get his first big story, sitting next to her on the beach, inviting her out, even going to bed with her because he thought she had something to do with the drug dealers operating practically at her toes.

  She had to admit that from what she’d heard and read about him since her arrival in Florida, such unethical conduct didn’t seem to be part of his current modus operandi. But that didn’t mean she had to forgive him.

  She returned to the den and peeled his picture off her dartboard. It had been stuck with darts so many times it didn’t come easily. She crumpled it into a tight ball and charged to the kitchen to toss it immediately into the trash, hesitating at the last moment. She didn’t know why.

  Muttering to herself, she smoothed out the picture and shoved it into her thick Miami Yellow Pages. Later she’d burn it while she was grilling chicken or roasting marshmallows on her deck. Make a ceremony out of it. A cleansing ritual. Prove to herself that Jeremiah Tabak was well and truly out of her life.

  Twenty years old, on her first trip over spring break and just so sure she was in love.

  Don’t think. Don’t remember.

  But she couldn’t stop herself.

  She’d spent previous spring breaks in Boston, playing flute in dingy, windowless, sound-proof practice rooms. That week, she’d indulged in Florida sun and sand…and a young, hungry, impossibly sexy reporter. Their relationship was improbable from the start, a future together impossible.

  He’d used her to get his drug story, not realizing, until it was too late, that she didn’t even smoke or drink, much less use drugs, and barely knew anyone who did. Her life was music. Hours and hours of daily practice alone and in ensembles and orchestra. Classes in music theory, music composition, music history, all in addition to her regular academic classes.

  And, of course, there was her family. Her parents were violinists, her older sister a cellist, her godfather a world-famous tenor. Mollie remembered trying to explain the nuances of Lavender family life to Jeremiah in the predawn darkness after they’d made love, when he’d seemed so attentive and empathetic, so certain of himself. The rivalries, prejudices, expectations of classical musicians-their drive and ambition-mystified him. “Your family and friends back in Boston sound like a bunch of flakes to me,” he’d pronounced, inoffensively.

  They were. They were loving, tolerant, devoted to their work and their families and friends, but not tuned into the world in any conventional way, in the way, Mollie finally realized, that she wanted to be.

  She smiled, thinking of them.

  After Miami, after Jeremiah, she could no longer pretend she shared their passion for music. She was different. She’d packed up her flute, quit the conservatory, and entered the world of communications, expecting never to see her ex-lover again.

  She realized she was trembling. Damn. Thirty years old, trembling over a man she’d known for only a week and hadn’t seen in a decade. She’d convinced herself Palm Beach was well removed from the world of crime and corruption in which Jeremiah operated, that she needn’t worry about running into the Miami Tribune’s star investigative re
porter.

  So why had she?

  Why had he been parked outside the Greenaway Club last night?

  She frowned, not liking the direction her thoughts were taking. He had to have his share of ex-lovers. Why such curiosity about her?

  Jeremiah Tabak, she remembered, didn’t do things for personal reasons. Not ten years ago, not now.

  And that could mean only one thing: he was on a story.

  3

  Jeremiah arrived at his desk at the Miami Tribune wondering how many women had his picture on their dartboards. He supposed he should have told Mollie the truth about himself ten years ago. But she did seem to enjoy thinking of him as scum.

  Which, as far as she was concerned, he was. Twenty was young, but twenty-six wasn’t old, and he’d tried to do the honorable thing, even if it had, in retrospect, been awfully damned dumb. Now he had a blonde-haired publicist up in Palm Beach firing darts between his eyes.

  “Son,” his father liked to tell him, “remember that more than anything else, what a woman wants from a man is the truth.”

  In his twisted logic, Jeremiah had thought because what he’d told Mollie made him look like a snake, he was off the hook as far as telling the truth. He’d acted honorably, in his estimation, trying to soften the blow of ending their weeklong affair by telling her he’d used her to get his drug-dealing story. The truth was, he’d fallen for her just as hard and fast and incomprehensibly as she had fallen for him. Yet he’d known-and saw it before she did-that they couldn’t last.

  So he’d lied to her then, just as he’d lied to her two hours ago. Both lies had been expedient. The first, because he’d thought it would be easier to have her hate him than to try to explain the complexities of why they couldn’t be together. The second, because he’d thought he could get out of there without a dart somewhere on his person if he let her believe simple, human curiosity had driven him to her doorstep rather than a story.

  “God, what a chickenshit,” he muttered, hitting the space key on his computer, just to interrupt the image of her trim legs and pale, straight hair, her natural, incongruous elegance, apparent even in her sweaty exercise clothes.