twenty-five years ago." Closing the distance between them
and putting her narrow, angular face close to Alex's site
hissed, "I wish you'd never been born."
Alex's attempts to compose herself after Stacey's departure
had been in vain. Her face was pale and she was trembling
as she walked out of the powder room.
"I was about to come in and get you." Junior was waiting
for Alex in the hallway. At first he didn't notice her troubled
expression. When he did, he was instantly concerned. "Alex?
What's the matter?"
"I'd like to leave now."
"Are you sick? What's--"
"Please. We'll talk on the way."
Without further argument, Junior took her arm and steered
her toward the cloakroom, where he asked the attendant for
their coats. "Wait here." Alex watched him reenter the club,
skirt the dance floor, and move to the table where they had
eaten dinner. After a brief exchange with Angus and Sarah
Jo, he returned in time to claim their coats.
He hustled her outside and into the red Jaguar. He waited
until they were a good distance from the club and the car's
heater was pumping warm air before he addressed her across
the plush interior. "All right, what gives?"
"Why didn't you tell me that you were married to Stacey
Wallace?"
He stared at her until it became a driving hazard, then
turned his head and fixed his eyes on the road ahead. "You
didn't ask."
"How glib."
She laid her head against the cold passenger window, feeling
like she'd just sustained a beating with a chain and was
due to enter the ring for round two. Just when she thought
she had finished sorting through all the pieces of the various
liaisons of Purcell, another intricate twist emerged.
"Is it important?" Junior asked.
"I don't know." She turned her shoulders toward him and
rested the back of her head on the window. "You tell me. Is it?"
"No. The marriage lasted less than a year. We parted
friends."
"You parted friends. She's still in love with you."He winced. "That was one of our problems. Stacey's love is obsessive and possessive. She shackled me. I couldn't breathe. We--"
"Junior, you screwed around," she interrupted impatiently. "Spare me the banal explanations. I really don't
care."
"Then why'd you bring it up?"
"Because she confronted me in the powder room and accused
me of ruining her father's life with this investigation."
"For crissake, Alex, Joe Wallace is a big crybaby. Stacey
mothers him. I don't doubt for a minute that he's whined and
carried on about you something awful in front of her. It's a
ploy to get her sympathy. They feed each other's neuroses.
Don't worry about it."
Alex didn't like Junior Minton very much at that moment.
His cavalier attitude toward a woman's--any woman's--
love reduced him in Alex's eyes. She'd watched him tonight,
doing just as Stacey had described, moving from woman to
woman. The young and old, attractive and homely, married
and unattached, all seemed to be fair game. He was charming
with each, like a mall Easter bunny working the crowd, doling
out treats to greedy children who didn't realize they'd be
better off without them.
He seemed to take their fawning as his due. Alex had never
found that kind of conceit commendable or appealing. Junior
took for granted that he would elicit a response from every
woman he spoke to. Ruling was an involuntary action to
him, as natural as breathing. It would never occur to him that
someone might misinterpret his intentions and suffer emotional
pain.
Perhaps if she hadn't had the conversation with Stacey,
Alex would have smiled indulgently, as all the other women
and accepted his suaveness as part of his personality,
instead, she now felt irritable toward him and wanted
to know she couldn't be so blithely dismissed. "It wasn't just the judge Stacey took issue with. She said I was stirring
up memories of her marriage to you, airing her dirty linen.
I get the impression that being your ex has been a real trial
for her."
"That's not really my problem, is it?"
"Maybe it should be."
Her harsh backlash surprised him. "You sound mad at me.
Why?"
"I don't know." The flare of her temper had been short
and sweet. Now, she felt drained. "I'm sorry. Maybe it's
just that I always pull for the underdog."
He reached across the car and covered her knee with his
hand.' 'An admirable quality that hasn't escaped my notice.''
Alex picked up his hand and dropped it back onto the leather
seat between them. "Uh-oh, I'm not off the hook yet."
She resisted his smile. "Why did you marry Stacey?"
"Is this really what you want to talk about?" He wheeled
the car up to the breezeway of the Westerner Motel and shifted
the gear into Park.
"Yes."
Frowning, he cut the engine and laid his arm along the
seat, turning toward her. "It seemed like the thing to do at
the time."
"You didn't love her."
"No shit."
"But you made love to her." He raised an inquisitive
eyebrow. "Stacey told me that you'd been lovers for a long
time before you got married."
"Not lovers, Alex. I took her out every now and then."
"How often?"
"You want it plain?"
"Shoot."
"I called on Stacey whenever I got horny and the Gail
sisters were busy, or had their periods, or--"
"The who?"
"The Gail sisters. Another story." He waved off the questions
he could see rising in her mind.
"I've got all night." She settled more comfortably against her door.
"Doesn't anything escape you?"
"Very little. What about these sisters?"
"There were three of them--triplets, in fact. AH named
Gail."
"That stands to reason."
"No, it wasn't their last name. Their names were Wanda
Gail, Nora Gail, and Peggy Gail."
"Is this a joke?"
He drew an x across his chest. "Cross my heart. Reede
had already initiated them, so to speak, before I arrived on
the scene. He introduced me to them." He snickered, as
though recalling a particularly sordid incident of his youth.
"In short, the Gail sisters put out. They liked putting out.
Every guy in Purcell High School must of had them at least
once."
"Okay, I get the picture. But when they were unavailable
you called on Stacey Wallace, because she put out, too."
He looked at her levelly. "I've never coerced a woman.
She was willing, Alex."
"Only for you."
He shrugged an admission.
"And you took advantage of that."
"Name me one guy who wouldn't."
"You've got a point," she said dryly. "I would venture
to say that you're the only man Stacey's ever been with."
He had the grace to look a little ashamed. "Yeah, I'd say
so, too."
"I felt sorry for her tonight, Junior. She was hateful to
me, but I couldn't help but feel sorry for her."
"I never understood why she latched onto me, but she
shadowed me from the day I enrolled into Purcell High
School. She was a brainy kid, you know. Always the teachers'
favorite because she was so conscientious and never got into trouble." He chuckled. "They'd never believe what she was
willing to do in the back seat of my Chevy."
Alex gazed distractedly into space, not really listening.
"Stacey despised Celina."
"She was jealous of her."
"Mainly because when you made love to Stacey, she knew
it was my mother you were wishing for."
"Jesus," he swore softly, his smile collapsing.
"That's what she said. Is that true?"
"Celina was always with Reede. That's just the way it
was. It was a fact of life."
"But you did want her, even though she belonged to your
best friend?"
After a lengthy pause, he admitted, "I'd be lying if I said
otherwise."
Very softly, Alex said, "Stacey told me something else.
It was an offhanded comment, not a revelation. She said it
as though it was common knowledge--something I should
already know."
"What?"
"That you wanted to marry my mother." She refocused
on him and asked huskily, "Did you?"
He averted his head for a second, then said, "Yes."
"Before or after she got married and had me?"
"Both." When he saw her apparent confusion, he said,
"I don't think a man could look at Celina and not want her
for his own. She was beautiful and funny and had this way
of making you think you were special to her. She had ..."
He groped for the adequate word. "Something," he said,
closing his fist around the elusive noun, "something that
made you want to possess her."
"Did you ever possess her?"
"Physically?"
"Did you ever sleep with my mother?"
His expression was baldly honest and terribly sad. "No,
Alex. Never."
"Did you ever try? Would she have?"
"I don't think so. I never tried. At least, not very hard."
"Why not, if you wanted her so much?"
"Because Reede would have killed us."
Stunned, she gazed at him. "Do you really think so?"
He shrugged as his disarming smile moved into place.
"Figure of speech."
Alex wasn't so sure. It had sounded literal when he said
it.
He scooted along the seat of his Jaguar until they were
sitting very close. He slid his fingers up through her hair,
laid his thumb along her neck and stroked it lightly.
"That's sure a dreary subject. Let's change it," he whispered,
brushing an airy kiss across her mouth. "How about
leaving the past for a while and thinking about the present?"
His eyes wandered over her face while his fingertips touched
each feature. "I want to sleep with you, Alex."
For a moment, she was too stunned to speak. "You're not
serious?"
"Wanna bet?"
He kissed her in earnest then. At least, he tried to. Tilting
his head, he rested his lips upon hers, pressed, tested, pressed
harder. When she didn't respond, he pulled back and gave
her a puzzled look.
"No?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"You know without my telling you. It would be crazy.
Wrong."
"I've done crazier things." He lowered his hand to the
front of her sweater and fingered a patch of soft suede.
"Wronger things, too."
"Well, I haven't."
"We'd be good together, Alex."
"We'll never know."
He ran his thumb along her lower lip, tracking its slow
progress with his eyes. "Never say never." He bent his head