“Fair comeback.”

His wry smile gave her a hint of the dimple, and that irritated her. “You don’t know fair from foul, Drex. You accuse me of lying, when that’s all you’ve been doing.”

“And now you know why.”

“In the line of duty, I suppose.”

“Yes. What’s your excuse?”

She let it drop, too tired to fight back.

He motioned down to the mug. “Drink your tea while it’s hot.”

“It hasn’t steeped long enough.”

“What was the doctor’s appointment about?”

The swift change in topic was tactical, intended to take her off-guard, and it did. “That’s personal.”

“So’s murder.”

“Don’t bully me. Haven’t I had enough to deal with tonight?” She reached for the mug of tea, but her hand was unsteady.

He took the mug from her. “You’re going to scald yourself again.”

“As if you care.”

“I do care, goddammit!”

“That’s not what you told your buddies!” Perhaps she had a reserve of fight left in her, after all. “I have excellent hearing and, clear as a bell, I heard exactly the regard you give my feelings, my likes and dislikes.”

He looked about to defend himself, but she raised her hand to stop him. “Never mind.” With a weary sigh, she pressed her head deeper into the pillow and looked at the ceiling. “Leave me alone, Drex. If you want to know about my appointment with the gynecologist, I’m sure one of your friends will unearth the information for you, even if it breaches ethics.”

“Mike’s already offered. I told him no.”

She shifted her gaze back to him.

“I would rather you volunteer it,” he said.

She didn’t see what harm could come from him knowing. If she confided this, maybe she would win a measure of trust, which she feared she might need in the days to come.

“I would like to have a child. Jasper asked for time to adjust to the idea of parenthood at his age. But I’m not getting any younger, either. Biological clock. All that. So I had eggs harvested to be frozen until he…until the time was right to have IVF.”

Drex didn’t move, speak, blink.

“When you approached me in the coffee shop, I had just received the disappointing news that some of the eggs—and the number wasn’t abundant to begin with—weren’t robust. Which means much lower odds for success, should we decide even to try fertilization.”

She was looking down at her fingers as they pleated the edge of the counterpane. His hand came into her range of vision. He was holding out the cup of tea with the handle toward her. She took it from him, sipped. The tea had grown tepid, but she continued to take small drinks of it. It gave her something to do besides look at him.

Since becoming involved with Jasper, she hadn’t been alone with many men, but certainly with no one who unsettled her as Drex did. He posed an indefinable, but very real, threat. She’d felt it from the moment she met him. Instinct had cautioned her to Keep Away, not out of fear that he would endanger her intentionally, but as though she were getting too close to open flame. The light source that attracts the moth isn’t responsible for its innate heat, nor can it be blamed for the moth’s compulsion to fly into it.

While confident in every other circumstance of her life, when near Drex, she felt unsure and self-conscious. He made her aware of everything about herself. As now. She could feel every inch of her skin inside the soft pajamas, everywhere the cotton conformed to her shape, every place it abraded her with no more friction than a warm breath.

She was even more keenly aware of him. He had taken off his necktie. His collar button was undone, his shirt cuffs rolled back, his shirttail pulled out. At best, his hair had been finger combed. The dishevelment only made him more attractive. She flashed back to the sight of his bare chest and abdomen and the dusting of hair that tapered to a strip that disappeared into his low-slung waistband.

This awareness of him created a pressure against her chest, which she wanted to shove away…but also to hug tightly.

“One more question and I’ll let you go to sleep,” he said. “Why didn’t you kiss goodbye?”

Her head came up. She met his gaze. She exhaled through her mouth. “What?”

“You and Jasper didn’t kiss goodbye at the airport, did you? And the reason you didn’t go on that trip had nothing to do with an attack of queasiness. Jasper picked a fight on the way to the airport, didn’t he?”

“No.”

“Talia.”

She returned the mug the nightstand, threw off the covers, and tried to get up. He placed his hands on her shoulders. She resisted, but his eyes held her more imperatively than his hands.

“Jasper picked a fight,” he said quietly but with intensity. “You quarreled. You didn’t kiss goodbye and wave him off, did you? That was a lie.”

She glared at him, breathing hard, but she would die before admitting that he was right.

“What was the fight about? You wanted IVF, he didn’t?”

She shook her head. “I hadn’t even told him I was having the harvesting procedure. I still haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“An opportunity hasn’t presented itself.”

“Bullshit. You’ve had plenty of opportunities to tell him. You haven’t because you’re afraid he’ll be relieved, and his relief will break your heart.”

“I’m not talking about this with you. It’s personal. Furthermore, it’s irrelevant.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so what did you quarrel about on the way to the airport?”

“It was a spat, over nothing. Nothing important.”

“It was important enough for you to nix a romantic getaway.”

“I wish I had it to do over again.”

“Well, you don’t!”

The incisiveness of his tone shut her down. She turned her head aside. He took hold of her chin and brought it back around. “Who started the quarrel?”

She pushed his hand away from her face. “I don’t remember.”

“Yes you do.”

“What difference does it make?”

“A monumental difference. It was Jasper, right?”

She remained stubbornly silent.

He was just as stubbornly persistent. “Right?”

“All right, yes! He got angry.”

“At what?”

“At me.”

“Over what?”

“Over you!”

He recoiled and dropped his hands from her shoulders, then sat very still. “What about me?”

She reached for the mug of tea, changed her mind, and let her hand fall back onto the bed. She wet her lips. “While we were driving to the airport, Jasper picked up where he had left off the night before. He went on and on about how you couldn’t be trusted. I came to your defense. Erroneously, as it turns out.” She paused and took a swift breath to stave off a sob. “I should have listened when Jasper said you weren’t who you claimed to be. You’ve been lying all along. Everything has been a lie. You played us. Jasper. Elaine. Me.”