light out of her eyes, the smile from her face. How was she going to manage life without Cal in it? Would the memories be enough?
He took a long draw from the cigarette he’d just lit and turned, his face more composed, his eyes calm if a little dark.
“It’s just as well that we aren’t still in Nassau,” he said with a wry smile.
She made a face at him. “I used to think I had loads of willpower until you came along,” she admitted shyly. “With Ralley, I was always reserved, very cool. He used to complain about it.”
He didn’t like that reference; she read the distaste in his dark eyes. “Ralley?” he asked.
“Ralley Hall. He, uh, came back to work for Uncle Mike this week,” she added reluctantly.
Cal’s dark head lifted sharply. “How convenient.”
She hated the ice in that deep voice. She scrambled to her feet with worried eyes. “Cal, it was over long before the flood,” she told him. “I gave him up the day he and Leda married, and I never wanted him back. I still don’t.”
His taut features relaxed a little. He took a long draw from the cigarette and studied its orange tip.
“Did you ever let him touch you the way I have?” he asked suddenly, staring straight across into her eyes.
“No, Cal,” she replied. “Not ever.”
He moved forward, dropping a careless big arm across her shoulders in a gesture that was more comradely than lover-like. “I’d like to see where you work,” he said as they walked back toward the house.
Which meant, she thought nervously, that he wanted to see Ralley. At least he was that interested in her. But was it only a physical jealousy, or was he beginning to care?
She wasn’t going to sacrifice her hard-won peace of mind to that kind of reflection, she decided firmly.
“Suppose we drive by the office then?” she asked pleasantly.
He nodded. “That suits me.”
Now, if only the police would arrest someone important so that Ralley would have to leave the office to cover the story...
She should have expected to find her former fiancé in his office, poring over the week’s columns to check them for errors and make sure they’d fit the space he’d allowed.
He stood up when Nikki walked in with Cal at her side. Cal had exchanged his casual clothes for a dark blue blazer with an open-necked white silk shirt and white trousers. He looked like a fashion plate, and Nikki wanted more than anything to show him off. He was so good to look at.
But if she thought so, Ralley didn’t. His blue eyes turned cold when they met Cal’s, and that dislike was reflected in the older man’s dark, piercing eyes.
“How do you do?” Ralley asked as if he couldn’t have cared less, when Nikki introduced them.
He held out his hand, but Cal hesitated a few seconds before he took it, treating it like dead meat.
“This is the editorial office,” Nikki said, jumping in. “Ralley is our news editor. He does most of the editorial writing and substitutes for me at city and county council meetings when I’m tied up elsewhere. He edits column copy, too.”
“Nikki’s never needs editing,” Ralley murmured, giving Nikki his most ardent look. He came around the desk to slide an arm affectionately around her shoulders, grinning when she stiffened in shock. “She’s a super little writer,” he added, “and I tell her so twice a day, don’t I, darling?”
Cal didn’t say a word; the expression on his broad face didn’t change. But something in the gaze he pinned on Ralley’s face made the younger man remove his arm and back away.
“I’ll show you around,” Ralley volunteered. “Thursdays aren’t too hectic, except for phone calls protesting what people read when the paper comes out on Wednesdays. The really bad day is Tuesday, when we go to press. That’s when we all scream and tear our hair out and curse the telephone.”
“It rings like mad all day long,” Nikki added with a tight smile. Cal was as remote now as if he’d been shot to the moon. She couldn’t understand Ralley’s brazen move any more than she could understand Cal’s reaction to it. Surely he didn’t believe there was anything between her and Ralley? Surely Ralley didn’t think she still cared...!
“This is where the type comes from,” Ralley told Cal, indicating a computer with a screen and a keyboard like a typewriter, with two extra narrow keyboards on either side. “It’s a computerized system, brand-new, just like the