Sullivan's Last Stand. Harper Allen
in a suddenly frustrated gesture, he held her gaze intently. “I always wanted to call you up and apologize for the way I behaved, but I figured you’d just slam the phone down as soon as you heard my voice,” he said softly. “But you’re here now. I’m sorry for what happened last year, Bailey. No excuses. I handled things badly.”
She stared at him, taken completely off guard. Once she would have given almost anything to hear him say what he’d just said, she thought. For months after, her heart had skipped a beat every time her phone had rung, thinking it might—just might—be him. But as he’d said, he’d never called.
She hadn’t been able to forget him completely, but she’d gotten on with her life. His twelve-months-late apology shouldn’t have the power to rip away the scar tissue of composure it had taken her so long to build up.
But it did. And all of a sudden she was back there in his house, standing in the doorway of his study and clad only in one of his shirts, listening to him methodically pull her world to bits.
Bailey blinked. Her throat felt as if it had a drawstring around it and someone had just tugged the drawstring shut.
“You’re wrong, Sullivan. There’s nothing personal left at all between us. I’m over you completely.” Her voice was barely audible. “Want proof?”
She got to her feet and leaned over the desk until she was close enough to him to lightly grasp the pearl-gray silk of his tie. Sullivan half rose from his chair, his eyes dark with suspicion.
“What the hell—” he began, but she didn’t give him a chance to finish. With a swift movement she brought her lips to his. Her tongue darted out and flicked the corner of his mouth teasingly, and immediately she felt a tremor run through him and heard his sudden indrawn breath. Those eyes, which only a moment ago had been narrowed and wary, closed, the thick lashes fanning against the hard ridge of his cheekbones.
Bailey kept her own open with an effort and fought down the dazed languor that she could feel spreading through her. She couldn’t keep this up for more than a second or so, she told herself disjointedly. Already the taste of him was spilling through her like some kind of dangerous intoxicant, addictive and seductive.
It had taken long months to break that addiction the last time. She wasn’t going to let herself get hooked on it again.
Her hand tightened on his tie. She ran her tongue lightly across his parted lips, forcing herself to ignore the impulse to explore deeper, and finished up at the opposite corner of his mouth with another little flick of her tongue.
“Completely. Over. You,” she whispered against his mouth. Then she drew back from him and let go of his tie.
His eyes opened and he stared at her in disbelief, his gaze still slightly unfocused and his breath audibly shallow. She kept her own expression impassive, willing herself not to betray the shakiness she was feeling. She gave him a brief smile.
“So now that you know it’s not personal, what are you planning to do about finding my sister?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he slowly lowered himself to his chair, his eyes never leaving hers. “That was dirty fighting, honey,” he said softly. “You’ve changed.”
She sat down herself, her legs feeling as if they couldn’t support her a minute longer. “Maybe I have, Sullivan. Maybe you changed me.” She shrugged tightly. “You played me for a fool once. I came so damned close to falling in love with you that one more kiss would have done it. I looked at you and saw the person I’d been waiting for all my life—a sexy, gorgeous man with a wicked sense of humor who, by some miracle, was falling in love with me.” She paused. “I thought we were two halves of a whole,” she added. “I was wrong.”
For a moment she thought he was about to speak, but when he said nothing she continued, her tone brisker.
“Anyway, we both know how that turned out. I was a wreck for about a week after, and then for two weeks more I think I hated you. But after a while I realized that was simply the way you were, and to expect anything more of you had been unreasonable of me. You’ve got a reputation, Sullivan. I was well aware of it before I went home with you the first time.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’ve got a reputation,” he said shortly.
“Please.” Her smile was humorless. “Of course you do, and of course you know it. You never stay with the same woman for more than a month or so, but that doesn’t matter, because the women you date prefer brief relationships. You don’t like intense, you like casual. You say that you intend to settle down one day, but no one’s putting their money on the likelihood of that happening.”
“I see.” He looked away, and then back at her, his expression shuttered. “That’s quite a list, honey. Anything on the plus side that you can think of?”
She blinked, wondering if she’d imagined the thread of unsteadiness she thought she’d heard in his voice. Of course she had, she told herself impatiently. She hadn’t exactly hit the man with any painful revelations about himself.
“On the plus side, you’re a damn good investigator,” she said smoothly. “Or at least you used to be. That’s why I came—”
“Sully?”
The interruption came from the doorway and, looking over her shoulder, Bailey saw Sullivan’s indispensable secretary, Moira, standing there surveying them quizzically. The slim, dark-haired woman sounded hesitant.
“Jackson hasn’t been in to work for the past three days, and Shirley in personnel says she hasn’t been able to contact him at home. It seems that his line’s out of order.” Moira’s expression clouded. “You’d better send someone over to his house to see what’s wrong, Sully. I—I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Chapter Two
One way or another, Bailey Flowers had been the biggest mistake of his life, Terrence Sullivan told himself, pressing the button for the elevator and slanting a sideways glance at the straight-backed figure beside him. He just wasn’t sure what part had been a mistake—acting so out of character as to let himself get involved with her in the first place, or reverting at the last possible moment back to type and letting her walk away for good.
The former, of course, he thought with a familiar twinge of self-disgust. He’d known from the moment he’d laid eyes on her that she was capable of blowing the precariously fragile existence he’d carved out for himself all the way to hell and gone. He’d known she wasn’t the type that he’d been so careful to restrict himself to up until then. A few laughs, a couple of heated encounters between the sheets, and the women he usually dated would be casting their big blue eyes around as restlessly as he was, looking for someone new.
Bailey’s eyes were the color of water running over stones in a stream. They hadn’t glanced around restlessly; they’d been direct and clear, looking at him and only him. Sometimes he’d even had the unsettling feeling that her hazel eyes could look right through him and see everything he’d always kept so well hidden.
The rest of her was a combination of ordinary attributes that somehow added up to beauty. Her hair was a rich, peaty brown, with glints of honey and amber in it. She’d pinned it up on top of her head once, and the exposed nape of her neck had excited him as no blatant display of any other woman’s cleavage ever had. Her mouth was wide, and a dead giveaway to whatever she was feeling. She was slim, her muscles had definition, and all in all she was as unlike the kittenish blondes he was used to as possible.
He’d fallen for her like a ton of bricks.
Things had ended badly between them, and it had been his fault entirely. But as brief as their affair had been, there had been moments about it that he’d clung to since she’d walked out on him. One wet afternoon they’d gone to a horrendously bad kickboxing double feature, and Bailey had laughed so hard she’d spilled a jumbo carton of popcorn all over him. Once they’d gone on a picnic, and