He wanted…
No.
Don’t say it, Sterling. Don’t even think it.
“Are you hungry?” he asked as they started for the hallway. “I’m getting there.”
Payne had been there since the first moment he’d seen her in the courtroom. He recognized all the symptoms of an appetite that was growing out of control.
He should have sent Mac for the paintings, but some irresistible force had propelled him to Rainey’s apartment door instead. That same force had prompted him to manufacture a reason to see her again.
And after tonight, what then?
The answer was simple. There couldn’t be an after.
Tomorrow his pilot would fly her back to the city. Andy would make certain she was driven to her apartment. Payne would destroy all evidence of Ms. Bennett’s brief appearance in the scheme of things.
With her gone, his newly fabricated life since the shooting would once again resume its required p
attern.
But even as he rehearsed those thoughts in his mind, his hand came in contact with her silken-clad skin. Somehow her dress had ridden up while he was helping her into the back of the limo.
Both their bodies trembled from the contact before she scrambled to the other side of the limo with a speed he hadn’t thought possible.
His body tautened. She was as aware of him as he was of her.
“Is your niece caught up in politics like her mother?”
The innocuous question came after they’d left the parking area on the north side of the house. With Mac and John inside the car, she couldn’t have chosen a better topic.
“No. She’ll be a philanthropist one day.”
“Sounds like she takes after her uncle.”
“Hardly. Catherine was born compassionate.”
“What a rare and wonderful trait that is. I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
Payne stared out the window with unseeing eyes. Like water cascading to the pool below, Catherine would gravitate to Rainey. Like Payne, she wouldn’t be able to help herself.
“Tell me about your fiancée. Does she have a career?”
He’d wondered when Rainey would get around to Diane.
“Her background is English literature. Until the accident she worked for a magazine put out by Blakely College, her alma mater.”
“I’m impressed. Blakely’s a prestigious women’s college. I had a friend who tried to get in. She was a straight-A student with lots of other credentials going for her, but she was still turned down.”
He nodded. “It’s very competitive. What happened to your friend?”
“She ended up at Vassar.”
They both started to chuckle at the same time.
This was something new for him. To be with a woman who could read his mind, who laughed and found joy over the same things. Whose thoughts were bound to his, especially during the silences.
Phyllis’s house came into view.