When Lightning Strikes Twice (5 page)

“I refuse to indulge in games of one-upsmanship with you. Out of the courtroom, of course.” Rachel took a giant step backward. He was still too close for comfort, and she was excruciatingly aware of his size and strength.

“Is that what we’re doing?” He took a step toward her, closing the distance, and they went through the paces again. Her retreat, his advance—until she had backed herself against the door. He stopped when she did, inches away from her.

“You’re deliberately trying to physically intimidate me—and it’s not working!” She was aware that she was obfuscating, a useful courtroom tactic, but not too convincing right here and now. His tactics were working all too well. She’d literally backed away from him, her breathing quickening, visible symptoms of a successful physical intimidation.

“It’s not working at all,” she added, striving for total denial.

“Just to set the record straight, I’m not trying to physically intimidate you. Which means I’m glad you aren’t—physically intimidated by me, that is.”

His voice sounded oddly thick, a husky rasp. Rachel raised her eyes to his.

She could feel the heat emanating from his body and a bolt of undeniable sexual electricity rocked her.
Why did he have to be so masculine, so virile?
And why was she acutely, and uncharacteristically, susceptible—to him, of all men?

A strange combination of confusion and fury tornadoed within her. She alternately felt like laughing and cursing. In her entire twenty-eight years, she’d never met anyone who affected her like Quinton Cormack. Everything he did
or said got under her skin and provoked an overreaction.

In fact, he could do nothing and still evoke a response from her, Rachel admitted grimly to herself. Simply being in his presence unsettled her like nothing else ever had….

And then, shockingly, alarmingly, the floor began to shake and the framed pictures and diplomas on the walls rattled as the entire office seemed to go into motion.

Startled, Rachel pitched forward. She heard a great roaring sound and immediately remembered watching CNN’s earthquake coverage and the survivors who always mentioned a terrible, roaring-engine sound that accompanied those great jolts in the fault lines.

Now, the unthinkable had happened—an earthquake had hit New Jersey. If she survived, she herself might be one of those shaken victims talking to eager on-site reporters.

Automatically, she reached for the nearest, strongest, and most stable object to hold onto. That happened to be Quinton Cormack. Her fingers grasped the lapels of his gray suit jacket and she felt his arms come around her. He held her firmly, anchoring her against him. For a moment, she leaned into his solid frame, her eyes squeezed shut, feeling the strength and power of his arms encircling her.

“Relax.” His lips were somewhere around the vicinity of the top of her head. “It’s just the ten-eighteen commuter train into Philadelphia.”

Rachel opened her eyes. The sound was already receding into the distance and the building had stopped shaking. It wasn’t an earthquake, only the High Speed Line. Still too unnerved to feel the acute embarrassment that would surely follow, she lifted her head to see Quint gazing down at her. She felt a hot melting sensation deep inside her.

“Does that happen often?” Her voice was soft and slightly breathless. “It felt like we were being launched into space from a rocket pad. How do you stand it?”

“You get used to it. The trains run to and from the city twice an hour.” He dropped his arms that were holding her tightly against him, but not before running his hands over
the curves of her hips, turning the release into an intimate and possessive caress.

Rachel quickly stepped aside, but Quint was already moving away from her. She watched him stride to the window and stop in front of it to stare out, his back to her. Compulsively, her gaze swept the long, strong length of him, lingering on the nape of his neck, where his thick dark hair was cut bristly short. She studied the width of his shoulders, his broad strong back, abruptly averting her eyes from a downward perusal.

Her nerves were tingling, her pulses were in overdrive, and her knees felt weak. She walked shakily to the nearest chair and sank down into it.
She had been in his arms!
And she was still reeling from the forceful sexual tension that had vibrated between them.

Silence fell, so heavy and charged that Rachel knew she had to break it. Otherwise, she would sit here and obsess about the feel of his hard body next to hers, about the unfamiliar but thrilling sensations his nearness had evoked within her. She felt dizzy and defenseless and more off-balance than she’d ever been in her entire well-ordered, controlled life.

“I—I guess I didn’t realize how close to the High Speed Line this office actually is,” she mumbled.

Inwardly, she groaned at the remark, which was nothing short of inane. This was a well-paid, functioning attorney? She cringed, waiting for Quint to annihilate her with a choice bit of sarcasm. Ruefully, Rachel decided she deserved it.

Instead, he seized upon her feeble comment and picked up the conversational ball, his tone—grateful?

“Yeah, we’re really close to the High Speed Line down here. Any closer, and we’d be on the track itself. My father boasted to me about the low rent he paid for his office space, and when I saw the place, I guessed why. Then the train went by and I
knew
why.”

“Maybe the landlord should pay
you
.” Rachel attempted
a little joke, but glancing around, she wondered if it wasn’t a statement of truth.

The office was singularly unattractive, with peeling dull gray paint on the walls, ugly institutional furniture, and aging linoleum floors. Every frame hung on the walls was crooked, adding a peculiar lopsided feel. And to top it all off, this eyesore came equipped with sound effects. Twice an hour it sounded as if a runaway train was crashing through the office.

“There’s no getting around the fact that this place is a dump,” Quint said bluntly.

“I—didn’t say that.”

“Because you were being polite. Thank you.”

Clearly, she wasn’t the only one being polite. Rachel fiddled with the leather strap of her watchband, carefully keeping her eyes averted from him though she was achingly aware of his exact location in the office.

They were both being so cordial, it would’ve been funny under any other circumstances. But neither one was laughing.

She willed her breathing to return to a normal rhythm but didn’t have much luck. If someone were to enter the office and see her gulping for air, it might be assumed that she’d been running laps around the building. Surely, nobody would ever guess that Quint Cormack had held her in his arms, that she’d felt his body crucially hardening against her while she grew moist and soft, as though anticipating …

The sound of a double beep made her jump in her chair. Quint snatched up the receiver of his telephone. “Helen, I told you to hold my calls,” he snapped.

Rachel noted with a certain satisfaction that Quint’s usual laconic air was missing, replaced by a noticeable tension bordering on—uptight? Fascinated, she stared at him. Was it her imagination or had a flush of color stained his neck?

Quint looked up and saw her watching him. As her gaze became more intent, he suffered an abrupt loss of coordination,
fumbling and accidentally pressing the button for his speaker phone.

Helen’s voice was broadcasted into the office.

“I know what you said.” Helen was not at all apologetic for her intrusion. “But this is one call you’re going to want to take, Quint. It’s Sarah Sheely on line one. She’s calling to tell you that your father’s house is on fire.”

“W
hat?” Quint’s voice was loud and sharp as a shotgun blast.

Rachel jumped to her feet. Her entire body was trembling but she instinctively moved toward Quint.

“Hi, Quint.” A young woman’s voice sounded over the speakerphone. “Your father’s house is on fire and I’m—”

“Sarah, where’s Brady?” Quint cut in. “Is he all right?”

“Don’t worry, Brady’s here with me. Say ‘hi’ to Daddy, Brady.”

“Hi, Daddy!” A baby voice boomed throughout the office.

Rachel grasped the edge of the desk and stared at Quint, wide-eyed. He had a child? Quinton Cormack was a father? Certainly, she had never asked about his marital status—as if she cared!—yet she’d known early on that he was a bachelor. The existence of his child came as a distinct shock.

“See, Quint, Brady’s fine,” Sarah’s voice came over the line once again. “We’re at the neighbors across the street from your dad’s house. That’s where Carla called me from, and I drove right over.”

“Why did Carla call you?” Quint demanded. “Wouldn’t calling the fire department be a more logical choice?”

“She was trying to reach you. Maybe she thought you were at home instead of the office, I don’t know. Carla’s scared out of her mind, Quint, she’s not thinking too straight. The neighbors called the fire department and the
truck’s here now. The police too. Quint, you’d better get over here.”

Sarah paused to audibly inhale. “Nobody knows where Dustin is. Somebody said he was seen running back inside the house yelling he was going to get their dog.”

“And he hasn’t been seen since? My God, Dustin is trapped inside?”

Quint’s voice echoed through Rachel’s head. She didn’t know who he was talking about, but the implications of anyone being trapped in a burning building were horrifying.

“What was the kid doing at home at this hour? It’s a Thursday, why in hell wasn’t that child at school? I know he’s not sick, I just saw him yesterday,” Quint thundered in a raw furious voice that was light-years away from his effective, controlled courtroom tone of oh-so-righteous anger. “God almighty, Sarah, why didn’t someone grab him before he went into that house?”

“I don’t know!” Sarah shouted back. “Just get here, Quint. Carla’s running around screaming and everybody’s starting to go crazy.” A loud baby wail nearly drowned out her voice. “See what I mean? Even Brady’s getting scared.”

“I’ll be right there,” Quint promised, and raced from his office.

Automatically, Rachel followed him, so close on his heels that when he stopped suddenly in the reception area she crashed into him, colliding full force with his broad back. Reeling from impact, gulping for breath, she swayed backward.

“Dammit, I don’t have my car!” Quint seemed unaware that he’d dealt Rachel a body blow equal to an offensive lineman’s sack of a quarterback. He was talking aloud to himself, oblivious to everything around him. “That damned recall—I finally took the car in to the dealership, today of all days, and now I’m stuck without—”

“Wish I could help, but my husband dropped me off on his way to the warehouse, as usual,” Helen lamented. “Dana doesn’t have her car today either—one of her brothers
borrowed it. You know how those Sheelys are always juggling rides. Should I call you a taxi, Quint?”

“I have my car,” Rachel heard herself say.

For a moment, she wondered if her forceful collision with Quint had left her delirious. Was that really her offering to help her avowed enemy? Then she thought of the fierce panic in his voice, the fear she’d seen in his dark brown eyes when he’d heard that the child named Dustin had run inside the burning house. She was acting on a natural humanitarian impulse, she assured herself.

“Thanks.” Quint breathed a genuine sigh of relief. “Give me the keys.”

Rachel’s humanitarian impulse faltered a bit. “I’ll drive you where you want to go, but I can’t give you my car. I—uh—need it later, for an appointment.”

Which wasn’t entirely true. She had no appointment scheduled later but she wasn’t about to be left stranded without her car. Especially not in this place where carlessness seemed to be the order of the day.

“Right, come on.” Quint grasped her arm and half dragged her from the office.

They saw Dana Sheely across the street, standing on the corner waiting for the light to change, a cardboard carton of coffee cups in her hands.

“Dana, hold down the fort, okay?” Quint shouted to her. “Helen will explain everything.” He turned to Rachel. “Where’s your car?”

“There.” Rachel pointed to her dream car, a royal blue BMW convertible that she would be making car payments on for many more years. But it didn’t matter; she’d wanted a convertible her entire life and had fallen in love with the car at first sight two years ago. At the Pedersen Car Shoppe.

And now she was offering to give Quinton Cormack a lift in it. Maybe she’d been concussed by that body slam back in his office and her thought processes were off-kilter, but suddenly there seemed to be something cyclically cosmic going on. She stared at him, her hazel eyes huge.

“Ever put the top down?” Quint tapped the roof of the car, which was securely in place.

“Of course. Often. What’s the point of having a convertible if the top is always up?”

“This isn’t what I’d expected you to drive,” he muttered, climbing into the passenger side as she slid behind the wheel. “I’d’ve bet my house that your car would be something big, black and sturdy, something solid and traditional. Conservative.”

“Sounds like a hearse.” Rachel turned the key and the engine purred to life. “It’s enlightening to know that even in the midst of—of acute anxiety you still have the presence of mind to insult me.”

“I wasn’t insulting you, Rachel.”

The sound of her name on his lips made her shiver. Desperately, she tried to tamp down the sensation. “You’ll have to direct me to your father’s house,” she said, hoping she sounded businesslike, maybe even severe.

“It’s not far from here. Take a left at the next light.”

She quickly became aware that the directions were leading toward Lakeview’s only marginal residential neighborhood, consisting of several crowded streets of small wooden houses on undersized lots. The neighborhood directly bordered the less desirable zip code of Oak Shade, and the aging houses in varying states of disrepair and untended yards were far more typical of Oak Shade than tony Lakeview.

Rachel knew the neighborhood was referred to as “Lakeshade”, and the appellation was not meant to be flattering. It wasn’t a surprise to learn that Frank Cormack, that inept and unlucky lawyer, lived there with his much younger wife Carla.

Whose house was currently on fire.

“Who is Dustin?” she asked suddenly, her voice breaking the silence.

“Frank and Carla’s kid. He turned seven last month.” Quint’s voice was taut. “He’s a first-grader and a smart little boy. He’d do even better in school if his mother ever
gets it through her head to send him every day, instead of letting him decide when he feels like going.”

Rachel shot him a sidelong glance. He was sitting rigidly in the seat beside her, his jacket laid across his lap in deference to the heat of the day, although he was already visibly perspiring. His eyes were riveted straight ahead, his hands balled into fists. He was virtually a body-language textbook case of nervous tension. A pang of something that felt very much like sympathy streaked through her.

“So he is your half-brother,” she stated the obvious, for she felt the need to say something. Anything. Quint’s tension was contagious; she felt it seeping into her every pore. “Do—Frank and Carla have other children?”

“Another boy, Austin, who’s nine. Take a right here.”

Rachel did as bidden. “I—I sort of know Carla. That is, I know who she is. I went to high school with her. She was Carla Polk back then.” She couldn’t seem to stop talking, but even realizing that didn’t shut her up. “Carla was in the class two years ahead of me.”

“I bet you two were never friends, probably not even nodding acquaintances. Not Carla from Oak Shade and Princess Rachel. I’m surprised you even went to the public school. I’d pegged you as an alum from an exclusive prep school.”

His tone was unmistakably insulting, but Rachel decided not to take offense. That flash of sheer terror he’d displayed in his office upon learning little Dustin’s whereabouts—or nonwhereabouts—opened her compassionate vein, allowing her to give him a lot of extra leeway in word and deed. Who could fight with a man who feared his baby brother might be burning to death?

“My cousin Wade went to Lakeview Academy, but my sister and I were students at good old Lakeview Public High. It has an excellent reputation,” she replied mildly. “And just for the record, my family isn’t actually rich. There is no big Saxon extended family fortune. Wade’s parents are both bankers and are well-off, but my father is a sociology professor at Carbury College, right outside
Philadelphia, and we always lived on his salary. He received only a very small inheritance from Grandfather, as did Wade’s father.”

“So Aunty Eve is the one with the big bucks, huh? The Porsche, the jewelry, the Italian leather attaché case, the designer clothes. I’ll be tactful and not mention her Park Avenue plastic surgery which must’ve cost as much as—”

“Aunt Eve hasn’t had plastic surgery!” Rachel exclaimed. “She wouldn’t! She believes in natural, graceful aging.”

“And I’m Santa Claus. Come on, Rachel. The rest of you Saxons might be regular folks struggling to make ends meet, but Eve Saxon is
actually rich
.”

He was mocking her family a bit too gleefully, even using her own words to do it. Rachel stiffened.

“My aunt Eve has been very successful, professionally and financially. She followed my grandfather into the family law firm and his will heavily favored her because of her career decision,” she added defensively.

“Bet the rest of the clan loved that.” Quint was sardonic. “Too bad I wasn’t in town then. You could’ve hired me to contest the will. You Saxons are into that, aren’t you? You get off on contesting wills.”

“There was never a thought to contesting Grandfather’s will. Everyone was familiar with the terms beforehand,” Rachel stated succinctly. “Contrary to your low opinion of the Saxons, we’re not a greedy, money-hungry tribe.”

“So you’re saying you aren’t like your eminent clients, the Tildens, huh?” Quint gave a decidedly nasty laugh. “Because they are greedy and money-hungry, and they do get off on contesting wills, especially a certain one about to be probated.”

Rachel’s lips tightened. “I don’t want to talk about the Tildens right now.”

“No, you’d rather talk about how different you are from Carla. How you aren’t filthy rich but you are genteel and classy while Carla is the stereotypical fast girl from the
trashy neighborhood who was stupid enough to get mixed up with a loser old enough to be her father. Who, unfortunately, happens to be my father.”

Rachel slammed on the brakes at the stop sign. If Quint hadn’t been buckled in, he would’ve been propelled through the windshield. A rather satisfying image. Right now she’d like to see him propelled into orbit.

“I never said anything of the sort about Carla,” she gritted through her teeth.
“You
said it all.”

“I merely stated what you were thinking, sweetie. It was written all over your face.”

She drove through the intersection, then deliberately jammed on the brakes again, for the sheer pleasure of watching the shoulder strap nearly hang him. She saw him cast a glance at her, saw him open his mouth as if to speak. But he said nothing.

That was fine because she had plenty to say. Rachel felt a surge of adrenaline pumping through her. “I’m going to take issue with that last statement of yours, Counselor. First and foremost, don’t ever call me ‘sweetie’ again. Second, despite your alleged talent for
reading faces
, I was not thinking about Carla at all. I was thinking what an insufferable, ungrateful jerk you are.” The words flowed easily; she felt charged and inspired, as if presenting the winning final summation to a jury.

“Given the circumstances, I’ve been trying to be patient, but you don’t deserve any special consideration. You aren’t worried about your poor little brother, you’re too busy taking verbal potshots at me and my family. Well, I don’t want to hear another word out of you, the sound of your voice makes me sick! Don’t speak to me again.”

He immediately proceeded to disregard her order. “If I don’t speak to you, how am I supposed to direct you to—”

“I’ll manage to find the place. It shouldn’t be hard—it’s on fire!”

Rachel drove down the street with no further directions from him. She didn’t need any. The noise of chaos and smell of burning matter filled the air, and she unerringly
followed. Around the corner, flames were shooting out of a small brick house while firemen held hoses directing steady streams of water onto the blaze. The street was blocked by a hook and ladder truck, an ambulance, and two police cars. A crowd of people, growing larger by the minute, watched the fire as if fixated by the sight.

Quint’s stomach clenched. He couldn’t stand to look, couldn’t stand to think that little Dustin might be inside that blazing house. He stole a quick glance at Rachel, who was clutching the steering wheel, looking grim. He couldn’t stand to think of the way he’d behaved toward her, either.

She had called him an insufferable, ungrateful jerk, and he agreed that she was right on the mark. He’d deliberately been rude to her. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and she didn’t deserve it.

He wasn’t proud of himself, though he could offer grounds. Guilty by reason of insanity. Because from the fateful moment back in his office when he’d taken one step too close to her and felt the potent wallop of her allure, his head had been spinning, his body possessed by a wild desire that obliterated all rational thought. And didn’t the absence of all rational thought constitute insanity in its purest form?

Rachel seemed to think he knew exactly what he was doing, that he had plotted his every move like the game plan from a football team’s playoff strategy book. That was good for a laugh, but he knew the joke was on him.