Every Breath You Take Read online

  Mitchell heard the relief in her voice and realized she’d been genuinely uneasy about a discussion of illicit sex and drugs with him. That puzzled and surprised him, but then virtually everything she did either confused or intrigued him. In the ensuing minutes, he watched her usher in the waiters and supervise the process of transferring the elaborate meals onto a table on the terrace as if she’d been presiding over the process in fine houses and hotels her entire life. Less than two hours ago, she’d knelt beside an injured stray dog and looked at Mitchell with tears of pleading in her eyes, and a few minutes after that, he’d found her sitting on a curb next to a busy driveway, serenely unconcerned with her comfort, or her clothes, or the reactions of the other hotel guests. A few moments later, when he told her help was on the way, she’d lifted her face to his and smiled at him with melting gratitude.

  She genuinely liked him, and she wasn’t trying to hide that … and yet, he had the feeling he made her nervous. She was vividly, almost exotically, lovely … but when he’d admired the way she looked in those flowing silk pants and a little white top held up by gossamer strings tied into bows at her shoulders, she’d seemed so self-conscious that he’d remarked on her hair, instead. A few minutes ago, they’d been on the verge of a kiss … but when the music interrupted, she backed away and tried to pretend nothing had happened.

  In view of all that, Mitchell began to wonder if he’d been wrong about her feelings for the lawyer. Perhaps the reason she’d stayed with him for years was that she was emotionally committed to him—or at least determined not to stray. Mitchell fervently hoped neither was true, because she was attracted to him, and he was very attracted to her.

  In fact, he was extremely attracted to her, he admitted to himself as he watched the waiters depart.

  Behind him from the terrace, she said lightly, “Dinner is served.”

  Mitchell turned and saw her standing in candlelight beside the table, the island breeze ruffling her fiery mantle of red hair around her shoulders.

  Wildly attracted.

  As he neared the table, she reached up and brushed a wayward strand of hair off her soft cheek. He watched the unconsciously feminine gesture as if he’d never seen hundreds of other women do it.

  “Please sit down,” she said graciously when he started around the table to pull out her chair for her. “You’ve already had to wait too long for this meal.”

  Kate’s earlier nervousness had vanished. She was on familiar territory now, standing beside an elegant, candlelit table and hovering near a special guest whom she wanted to make feel extremely important that evening. It was a role she could play to perfection. She’d studied under a master, and only he could do it better.

  But she was never again going to see her father play this role.

  Blinking back a sudden sheen of moisture in her eyes, Kate reached for the open wine bottle on a small table beside her. “May I pour you some wine?” she asked, smiling at his face through a blur of tears that blinded her to his sudden grin.

  “That depends on where you’re planning to pour it, and how good your aim is.”

  Kate’s emotions veered abruptly from anguish to laughter. “I have excellent aim,” she assured him, leaning toward his glass.

  “All earlier evidence to the contrary,” Mitchell pointed out. To Mitchell’s dismay, she retaliated by smiling straight into his eyes while she poured just the right amount of red wine into his glass.

  “Actually,” she informed him, “I hit exactly what I was aiming for that time, too.”

  Before Mitchell could be sure whether she was serious, she turned away. He studied her closely as she slid into the chair across from his, her expression serenely blasé. “Are you implying that you intended to douse me with that Bloody Mary?” he asked.

  “You know what they say about temperamental redheads,” Kate replied as she unfolded her napkin; then she leaned forward and looked at him as if a horrifying, but amusing, possibility had just occurred to her. “Surely you don’t think I deliberately dye my hair this impossible color?”

  Mitchell was dumbfounded to think she’d actually thrown a drink at him in a fit of childish, uncontrolled pique. He didn’t want to believe he was wrong about her, and he didn’t want to consider why it was becoming important to him that this one woman be all the things she seemed. With deceptive nonchalance, he said, “Did you really do it on purpose?”

  “Do you promise not to be angry?”

  He smiled good-naturedly. “No.”

  A startled giggle nearly escaped Kate at the vast contrast between his agreeable expression and his negative reply. “Then, will you promise never to bring the subject up again if I tell you the truth?”

  Another lazy smile accompanied his answer. “No.”

  Kate bit her lip to keep from laughing. “At least you’re honest and direct—in a misleading sort of way.” Needing to avert her gaze from his, she picked up a basket of crusty rolls from the center of the table and offered it to him.

  “Are you being honest and direct?” he inquired with amusement, taking a roll from the basket. Despite his affable attitude, Kate had a sudden, inexplicable sensation of an undercurrent. He was playing cat and mouse with her, she knew, and he was obviously a world-champion “cat,” but she sensed that he wasn’t actually enjoying the game. Since her goal was to repay his wonderful kindnesses by making the rest of the evening as pleasant for him as she could, she put an end to the whole charade.

  Meeting his gaze, she said with quiet sincerity, “I didn’t do it on purpose. I was only pretending I did in order to get even with you for teasing me twice about the Bloody Mary.”

  Mitchell heard her words, but the softness in her eyes and the expression on her lovely face were interfering with the pathways to his brain, and he decided it didn’t matter if she’d done it on purpose. Then he realized she hadn’t, and that mattered much more than he thought it should. What sort of family, he wondered, in what city, on what planet, had yielded up this jaunty, prim, unpredictable woman with a wayward sense of humor, a heart-stopping smile, and a fierce passion for wounded mongrel dogs?

  Mitchell reached for his butter knife. “Where in the hell are you from?”

  “Chicago,” she said with a startled smile at his tone.

  He looked up so sharply and with such narrowed disbelief that Kate felt compelled to reaffirm and amplify her answer. “Chicago,” she repeated. “I was born and raised there. What about you?”

  Chicago. Mitchell managed to smooth his distaste for her answer from his expression, but his guard was up. “I’ve never lived anywhere long enough to be ‘from’ there,” he replied, giving her the same vague answer that had always satisfied anyone who asked. The question was perfunctory anyway, he knew. People asked because it was a convenient conversational item among strangers. People never really cared what the answer was. Unfortunately, Kate Donovan was not one of those people.

  “What places did you live in when you were growing up—” she persevered, and teasingly added, “but not long enough to actually be ‘from’ any of them?”

  “Various places in Europe,” Mitchell replied, intending to immediately change the subject.

  “Where do you live now?” she asked, before he could.

  “Wherever my work takes me. I have apartments in several cities in Europe and New York.” His work occasionally took him to Chicago too, but he didn’t want to mention that to Kate, because he wanted to avoid the inevitable discussion about whom they might know in common. There was little chance she actually knew anyone within the Wyatts’ lofty social circle, but the Wyatt name was known to any Chicagoan who read a newspaper. Since Mitchell’s last name was also Wyatt, there was a chance Kate would ask him if he was related to those Wyatts, and the last thing he wanted to do was admit to that relationship, let alone discuss what it actually was.

  Kate waited for him to offer a clue as to what cities those apartments were in, or what his “work” was. When he didn’t, she assumed he wanted