The Night In Question. Harper Allen

she was gone. Across from him her coffee cup and the battered pack of cigarettes were the only proof that she had been there at all.

      She’d been taunting him, he thought with sudden anger. Even her last remark had held a hidden message she’d known he would understand. She’d been telling him that she had the strength and the willpower to do whatever she had to do.

      She’d been taunting him and she’d been lying to him.

      Julia Tennant fully intended to go looking for her child.

      Chapter Two

      “You smell like a party, Mommy…”

      Julia felt Willa’s hair brushing against her neck as her small daughter gustily breathed in the scent of Dior. She tightened her hold on her, praying that the tears she could feel prickling behind her eyelids would remain unshed for these final few moments. But Willa’s attention was on something else, she noted thankfully. She felt tiny fingers touch the luminous pearl studs she’d defiantly fastened to her ears earlier that morning.

      “You look like a princess, Mommy.”

      “Do I, kitten-paws?” Even as she used the endearment her throat closed in pain. She couldn’t do this, she thought desperately—she couldn’t go through with it. If she packed a bag for Willa right now they could be at the airport before anyone started looking for her. She could get them on the first flight leaving the country—she could find a job, change their names, make a new life for the two of them—

      Except that she didn’t have a passport. And within minutes of her non-appearance at court, all airport and border crossing personnel would be on the lookout for a woman and a little girl.

      She couldn’t do this. But she had no choice.

      She opened her eyes as Maria stifled a sob a few feet away, and the housekeeper’s tearful gaze met hers. Thomas, the chauffeur who’d driven her on countless shopping trips and frivolous outings, stood by the door awkwardly twisting his cap between his hands.

      It was time to go. And even though it felt as if her heart was being ripped from her body, she had to make this final parting as normal as possible for her child’s sake.

      Julia pressed a desperate kiss to the flaxen head, gave Willa one last too-tight hug and set her back on her feet. Round blue eyes looked up at her in slight alarm as Maria came forward and placed her work-worn palms on the small, OshKosh-clad shoulders.

      “Why are you crying, Mommy?”

      Because when I walk into court today I’m pretty sure I’m not going to walk out, honey. Because twelve people who don’t even know me are probably going to find me guilty of doing a terrible thing. Because you’re my life—my sun and my moon and my stars—and I’m so very, very afraid I’m never going to see you again.

      She forced a smile and saw the worry in her daughter’s eyes disappear. “Because pearls are for tears, silly. It’s the rule. Now, go back into the kitchen with Maria and finish your toast, okay? See you then, red hen.”

      “See you later, alligator,” Willa giggled. “Love you trillions.”

      Before the rest of their ritual could be completed, the sturdy little legs were skipping down the hall to the breakfast room with Willa’s usual exuberance.

      Julia said it anyway.

      “Love you trillions,” she whispered, the tears finally spilling over completely as her hungry gaze imprinted this last precious image of her daughter on her memory. Willa reached the end of the hall and turned the corner.

      “Trillions and jillions,” Julia breathed hoarsely to the empty hallway. “And forever and ever, kitten-paws.”

      Slowly she turned to where Thomas was waiting for her, and the endless pain began….

      JULIA HUGGED the damp pillow tightly, willing herself not to awaken. Sometimes the dream would repeat itself. And despite the wrenching anguish she relived night after night at the end of it, it was worth it to hold, even in her imagination, that small wriggling body, press her face against that silky topknot of blond hair, breathe in the sweet, milky, little-girl scent of Willa’s skin. But this time it was no good. Tiredly, she opened her eyes to the unfamiliar room around her.

      The next moment she was sitting up abruptly, her heart crashing against her ribs as full consciousness returned.

      She wasn’t in prison anymore. She was free. She was free!

      Swiftly flipping back the thin blanket that had been covering her, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet impervious to the chill of the linoleum floor. Joy so pure it felt like a physical element tore through her. No matter that she was in the cheapest room of the cheapest flophouse she’d been able to find last night—she was free, she thought, trembling with excitement. There had been times that she’d thought this moment would never come.

      Free meant she could start looking for Willa. She could hardly believe it was true, she thought faintly. No wonder she was shaking like a leaf. She let her breath out in a ragged exhalation.

      “You got out,” she whispered. Across the room her reflection wavered at her from a smeared dresser mirror, and she met her own gaze.

      “There were times in there you weren’t sure you were going to make it, but you did,” she told the woman staring back at her. “They said you were too pampered, that you’d never survive. They were wrong. They didn’t know how much you had to live for.”

      Slowly she got to her feet. Drawing closer to the mirror, she stared at her reflection in it, her palms flat on the dresser’s surface, her arms braced.

      She’d slept in the cotton bra and the utilitarian briefs that were all the underwear she owned. Against the pallor of her skin the bra straps looked dingy from too many washings, and she felt a brief flicker of humiliation.

      She’d gone into that place wearing a teal-blue designer suit, handmade Italian heels, satin and lace lingerie. She’d come out almost two years later in a shapeless polyester smock, her own clothes somehow having been mislaid, she’d been told. In the smock she’d felt as conspicuous as if she’d had her inmate number stencilled across her back, and the first thing she’d done when she’d gotten out yesterday was to spend a few of her precious dollars in a secondhand clothing store.

      She’d left the hated smock balled up on the floor of a change room, and for an hour or so she’d just walked aimlessly down one street after another, not noticing the April chill but finding herself trembling instead with nervous exhilaration. Around her streetlamps and neon signs and car headlights had begun to come on, piercing the blue Boston dusk, and gradually she’d started to feel at ease among the stream of humanity flowing around her on the sidewalks.

      Then a tall figure had detached himself from the passers-by and had stepped in front of her, blocking her path.

      As easily as that, Max Ross had ripped away any delusions she might have had of putting her past behind her. At the sight of him she’d felt immediately exposed, as if everyone around them knew what she was and where she’d spent the last twenty-three months.

      He’d meant her to feel that way.

      But he’d made one vital miscalculation, she thought with a spark of cold anger. He’d thought he’d been dealing with Julia Tennant—the Julia Tennant he’d seen two years ago, the Julia Tennant he’d helped put behind bars. That woman might have accepted his warning.

      That woman didn’t exist any longer.

      She raked her hair straight back from her forehead, and narrowed her gaze at her reflection in the mirror. “You tipped your hand, Ross. That wasn’t smart,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t have let me know how much you hated me, because now I’ll be watching out for you.”

      Despite her words, a sudden tremor ran through her as she recalled their briefly antagonistic meeting the night before and saw again the hostile implacability in