The Night In Question. Harper Allen

what you’ve wanted, isn’t it?

      The small voice inside her head didn’t belong to her anymore. It was the voice of the woman she’d once been, Julia thought dully—Sylvia’s daughter, who, if she’d learned nothing else from her beautiful mother, had been taught that her golden looks and an ability to tell the number of carats in a diamond at a glance entitled her to glide through life without taking any responsibility. And there was still enough of Sylvia left in her that she’d shirked from telling him the whole truth, even yet.

      She raised her gaze to his, schooling her features into a frozen impassivity.

      “I thought you would have come across it during your investigation, but I guess Kenneth’s lawyers must have figured it made him look almost as bad as it did me.” Despite herself, her voice shook. “But it exists, Max. I wish to heaven it didn’t but it does, and my signature’s on it.”

      “What exists, dammit?” Obliterating the last few inches between them, he took her by the shoulders, his grip firm. He shook his head in confusion. “Did Tennant get you to sign some kind of prenuptial agreement or something? Whatever it was, it won’t have any bearing on whether you’re given custody of Willa. You’re her mother, for God’s sake—no one can take that away from you.”

      “That’s just it—it wasn’t taken away from me!”

      Wrenching out of his grasp, Julia felt the tremors start to spread. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if to hold them in, but it was no use. She stared back at him, her vision glazing in pain.

      “It wasn’t taken away from me, Max—I gave it up.” Her voice cracked hoarsely. “I gave Willa up.”

      She saw the incomprehension in his eyes and suddenly the guilt and shame that had been dammed up in her for so long spilled over in a corrosive wave.

      “You still don’t get it, do you?” she said, her tone rising thinly. “I signed all rights to my daughter away two days before I got married, Max! She’s the most precious thing in my life—and nothing can wipe out the fact that I traded her away before she was even born.”

      Chapter Five

      He’d been wrong, Max thought grimly.

      When he’d met with her in the coffee shop, he’d told himself that Julia had been through hell. He’d assumed that the internal demons that drove her had appeared the day she’d been put behind bars, never to see her child again.

      But some part of Julia’s soul had been in torment even when she’d been living as Kenneth’s wife.

      And her tough facade had been just that—a facade. She’d reached her breaking point. Even as the thought went through his mind, he saw what little color there had been in her cheeks drain away. With one swift movement he caught her just as her limbs began to crumple.

      “I know you don’t like being touched, Julia,” he said shortly as her eyes widened in instant consternation and her body stiffened. “But I don’t like letting women fall face-first onto my kitchen floor.”

      “For God’s sake, put me down.” Her lips were still bloodlessly white, but her eyes lasered blue fire at him as he carried her into the living room. “I’m perfectly all right, Max. Put me down.” Her tone was tight with tension.

      “You’re not perfectly all right.”