Studying the two women, their resemblance was startling, although their differing styles played down the similarities. Someone who wasn’t looking for it might not even realize they were related.

  But to him, it was clear. Del’s chin was a little more determined, and she mostly ignored her assets while her mother enhanced her eyes, her lips, her skin and damn near everything else that he could see to the maximum. Their figures were similar although her mother seemed a bit top-heavy considering how petite the rest of her was. Then again, that probably was the result of a clever bra or surgery.

  “Fine. Come on in and make yourself at home.” Del’s voice was resigned. She seemed to have recovered a little, but even through the anger that was rapidly replacing his shock, Sam could see that she was deeply upset. “I’ve asked you never to drop in without calling, remember?”

  “But, darling, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if I’d called! And this way, I got to meet your adorable Sam. He’s been out of town every other time I’ve come by.”

  Out of town? What other times? He looked at Del, who was even paler than she’d been when she’d first seen her unexpected guest.

  “Uh, Mom—”

  “Honestly, Del.” Aurelia glanced at him and smiled, then turned back to her daughter. “I thought I was never going to get to meet your husband.”

  Husband? It was a good thing Aurelia wasn’t looking at him, because his mouth fell open.

  “Mom, make yourself at home,” Del said hurriedly. “Sam and I need to get dressed.” She snagged his hand with the one that wasn’t holding her towel in place and towed him toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

  He let her, not because she actually had any hope of moving him, but because getting Del alone seemed like the quickest way to find out exactly why in the hell Aurelia Parker thought he was married to her daughter.

  Del dropped his hand the second they stepped into her bedroom. Crossing her arms defensively and hugging herself, she said, “I guess you’d like an explanation.”

  “You mean I’d like to know why your mother—whom you neglected to mention is a world-famous actress—believes you’re my wife.” His voice cracked like a whip and he saw her flinch. But hell—all he could think of was what a disaster this was. He’d spent seven years in blissful anonymity, and the first time he took a full-time lover she turned out to be the daughter of a star who rarely went a day without making some publication somewhere. What were the chances that he was going to stay anonymous now?

  Hell, he’d even been thinking about marriage. Wouldn’t that have been just peachy?

  “I needed a husband,” Del blurted. Her color was coming back in a big way as her cheeks flamed with what he could only assume was embarrassment at being caught in her lies. “Not a real one. Just a fictional one to get her off my back and make her stop trying to set me up with every man she came across.”

  “So you used me.” He couldn’t control the rage and hurt seething beneath his set expression.

  “Well, yes.” She looked completely ashamed. “It was easier if I talked about you than if I completely made a guy up. This way, I didn’t have so many details to worry about, since I already knew you.”

  “How long?”

  She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Almost six years now. She thinks we have an anniversary coming up in two weeks.”

  “Hell!” He raked a hand through his hair. Aurelia Parker was Del’s mother. He’d be lucky if there hadn’t been tabloid photographers outside Del’s door this morning taking pictures of him in his unbuttoned jeans.

  Del flinched again at the succinct curse. “I didn’t think you’d ever really meet,” she said, her voice shaking. “I mean, it wasn’t as if…”

  “We were lovers,” he finished grimly. “Didn’t it even occur to you recently to tell me who your mother was?”

  Tears were standing in her eyes now. “Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. I’ve spent my entire life trying to get away from being Aurelia Parker’s daughter. I was afraid if I told you, you’d…look at me differently or something. Or not want to be with me at all.”

  He was too angry to be careful with his words. “You’re damn right about that. The last thing I want is to be hooked up with someone whose name is going to get in the papers.”

  Del put a hand to her throat, a blatantly defensive gesture, but her voice was steadier when she spoke again. “You have something specific against fame or is this just a general policy?”

  Ah, what the hell. He’d been going to tell her soon anyway. “Eight years ago I stopped a gunman on the street in San Diego before he killed more people. I spent the next year trying to get away from the publicity it generated.”

  “The San Diego shootings,” she whispered. She looked absolutely stunned. “He killed seven people before he was stopped by a Navy SEAL on shore leave. That’s you? Sam Pender?”

  “Was,” he corrected. “I even had to change my name.”

  “Why? You should be proud of the lives you saved that day.”

  “I am,” he said. “But I didn’t need all the hoopla that came with it. I was just doing what I was trained to do. What I knew I needed to do to stop that guy.” He shook his head, looking into the past. “At first, there were reporters all over the hospital where I’d been taken. They would have followed me to the rehab center if I hadn’t changed my name—”

  “They said you would never walk again,” she said, almost to herself. “They were wrong.”

  “Yeah, and the last thing I want is to have to start running from the press again.”

  “Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry.” Del looked stricken, but he was too angry to care. She slumped down onto the edge of the bed, her lower lip trembling. “I’ll go out and explain to her that I’ve been lying to her. You can leave if you like. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

  He turned away from her and paced the room. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?” He was repeating himself in his agitation.

  This time, a hint of the Del he knew emerged. Her spine straightened. “Why didn’t you tell me your secret?”

  “I was planning to!” he roared, and she flinched. “If you’d been straight with me from the beginning—”

  “I didn’t think it was any of your business in the beginning,” she flared. “We might be sleeping together but that doesn’t mean I have to share my life story with you.”

  The words hit him with the force of a blow. He stopped moving, his back to her as he absorbed the implications of her terse response. Clearly, she hadn’t been seeing their growing closeness in the same light he had. In her mind, all they were doing was sleeping together. She couldn’t have made her position more clear.

  “You’re right.” His voice sounded stiff and rigid even to him; he had to force the words out through a throat so tight he could barely speak. “It isn’t any of my business.”

  There was a silence behind him as he stalked over to the dresser and yanked out an old university sweatshirt, his standard Saturday attire. As he tugged it over his head, she said, “Sam…” in a trembling voice.

  But he was done with the whole mess. “I’m leaving,” he said. “You can tell your mother whatever you want.”

  He slammed the bedroom door behind him and snatched his keys off the kitchen counter as he headed for the door.

  Del’s mother half rose from the couch where she’d taken a seat. “Sam….”

  He didn’t bother answering.

  He didn’t know where else to go, so he went to the office. It was pretty damn pathetic, he thought, when a man didn’t have a single friend he could call on at a time like this. But it was true. He’d immersed himself in his business so deeply that even his family had been excluded gradually. It had been too painful to stay in touch with his buddies still in the teams so he’d let their overtures and persistent calls go unanswered until they’d finally given up.

  Del was the only other person who knew him anymore. Under normal circumstances he might have considered calling Robert, but this situation was far from normal, and besides, Robert couldn’t be expected to be objective. The man might not be related to Del by any legal or biological means, but it was clear that he was the closest thing she had to a father figure.

  And Robert had been married to Aurelia Parker. That was going to take a while to compute.

  As he let himself in and reset the security system, he berated himself for being four kinds of an idiot. He almost snorted aloud as he thought of how wrong he’d been in his mental vision of Del’s mother.

  Your mother didn’t want kids?

  She was afraid they’d ruin her image.

  What an ass he’d been! He’d assumed she meant that her mother was worried about regaining her figure and still looking young. He’d half feared her mother had been a hooker, dependent on her looks for her income. When, in fact, Del had literally meant that a child might ruin the sexpot image Aurelia Parker projected as her stock-in-trade.

  God! He threw himself into his executive chair and spun around to face the window. What the hell was he going to do now?

  What did it matter? He doubted Del would keep his identity from her mother, and even if she did, what were the chances he could hang around Aurelia Parker’s daughter without everyone in the world seeing him? Someone would eventually recognize him, and then he’d be right back to that crazy place he’d been in eight years ago, with women everywhere angling to meet him. He knew how the reality-TV bachelors felt—the only differences were that he hadn’t chosen to make himself America’s bachelor, and he hadn’t gotten a million dollars for it.

  Just one hell of a lot of aggravation and a total loss of privacy.

  The beeping of the security system interrupted his thoughts, and he swiveled his chair back around, moving the mouse so that his computer monitor screen saver vanished and the programs were visible. Clicking on the state-of-the-art program, he saw that Walker’s ID had been confirmed by the scanner that surveyed his employees’ irises.

  Moments later, he heard the subdued whoosh of the elevator doors opening and Walker’s footsteps marched across the carpet toward his office. Hell. The last thing he wanted to do was put on a pleasant face today.

  “Hey, boss.” The big man loomed in the doorway. He leaned a shoulder against the frame and crossed his arms. “Thought I’d be the only one in here today.”

  “Nope. Beat you to it.” He didn’t feel like answering questions so he asked one instead. “What are you doing in here on a Saturday?”

  Walker shrugged. “I wanted to check over the plans for the child-recovery op next week one last time, be sure we’ve got contingency plans to cover every sort of foul-up.” He shifted from one foot to the other and his gaze slid away from Sam’s.

  And suddenly Sam thought he knew what was eating at the guy. Karen Munson was going undercover on that op.

  “She’s going to do fine,” he said quietly. “Her references are terrific. I wouldn’t send her if I wasn’t confident of her abilities.”

  “I know.” Walker didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I just want to be sure nothing goes wrong.”

  Sam nodded.

  “I mean, I’ve been thinking…” Walker’s eyes met Sam’s. “I’m not sure putting Karen on cases involving kids is such a good idea. If something ever goes wrong, she’s going to take it hard.”

  The man might have a point. “But I can’t pick and choose her assignments,” he said to his buddy.

  “I guess not.” Walker sighed. “She knew coming in that a lot of recovery work deals with kids.”

  “She did.”

  “And it’s not my job to worry about how she’s handling that.”

  “It’s not,” Sam agreed.

  “It’s just that…she’s hurting,” Walker said. He looked thoroughly ashamed. “I’ve already hurt her more. And I don’t want to add to it.”

  “I don’t, either, but I can’t just yank her off every case involving a kid, with no explanation. Everyone else would see what was going on and they might resent her getting special treatment.” He met Walker’s gaze with a cool one of his own. “Most of them don’t know about her past. Or they didn’t before the other night.”

  Walker’s face turned a dull brick-red. He put up a hand and massaged the back of his neck roughly. “I was an idiot,” he said. “You probably should have fired me.”

  “I thought about it,” Sam said honestly.

  “The thing is,” Walker said, “she said she loved me. But when we couldn’t agree on our lifestyle, she bailed. Couldn’t get away from me fast enough. I couldn’t let that go.”

  “And now?”

  Walker sighed heavily. “And now I have to face the fact that I’ve destroyed any chance at a relationship with the only woman I’ve ever loved.” He let his arms drop to his sides as he slowly straightened. “Guess I’ll check over a few things before I take off.” He aimed a halfhearted wave in Sam’s direction as he moved off down the hallway toward his own office.

  Nine

  Now I have to face the fact that I’ve destroyed any chance at a relationship with the only woman I’ve ever loved.

  As Walker’s footsteps receded down the hallway, Sam sat frozen in his chair.

  God, was that what he, Sam, had done? He’d lashed out at Del, worried about himself rather than thinking about her feelings. She hadn’t told him about her mother at first because she hadn’t wanted to lose him. She’d probably been afraid—and with good reason, given her past—that he’d be happier with his connection to the famous star than he was with her daughter. How could she have known how the news would affect him? A sense of shame crawled through him. She hadn’t been the only one keeping secrets. Why should he have expected her to trust him more than he had allowed himself to trust her?

  But…he did trust her. With the sparkling clarity of hindsight, he saw that over the past seven years, he had trusted Del with far, far more of his company’s intimate workings and secrets than any mere employee normally would warrant. He’d always known, in his heart, that she would never betray him. Long ago, something in him had recognized that she loved him, even though she’d always been careful and correct in his presence.

  She loved him! Realizing that should have made him the happiest man in the world. But he’d screwed up royally when he’d walked out on her. She’d needed him, he saw now. Needed a buffer between her mother and her. She’d created an artificial one over the last few years with their fictitious marriage, but now, when she needed protection the most, he wasn’t there.

  Abruptly, he surged to his feet, rolling his chair back so hard it banged against the wall. He had to get home and apologize. He didn’t want to be Walker, screwing up his life so thoroughly that he could never straighten it out with the one woman he really loved.

  As he headed down to his truck, he thought of Del and his confidence returned. She loved him. She had to, or she couldn’t be so tender, so responsive. She couldn’t finish his sentences and read his moods unless she was totally tuned in to The Sam Channel all the time, just as he was able to discern her thoughts before she opened her mouth half the time.

  She loved him! And it went both ways. He hadn’t been ready to recognize or define his feelings for Del before, although he didn’t really know why. He’d already acknowledged the fact that Del was very different from Ilsa. If she had a self-centered bone in her body he had yet to see it.

  Something contracted in his heart as her face came into his mind again, a certain knowledge he’d never felt before with anyone. He loved her, and he’d better get back there and tell her so.

  But…when he did see her again, what was he going to say to her?

  Marry me. The answer was right there in front of him, and it was so simple he was amazed he hadn’t seen it before.

  They’d tell her mother the truth, and invite her to the wedding. He almost smiled when he thought of telling Del he wanted to make her marriage real. She was wary and cautious about relationships, but he’d already bulldozed over most of her fears. He’d just tell her she didn’t have a choice.

  Once, he’d thought Ilsa had cured him of any desire to put a ring on a woman’s finger. By now, though, the betrayal and hurt he’d once felt had altered, become nothing more than thankfulness that he’d escaped such a shallow relationship. It wasn’t marriage he’d been avoiding, he’d realized. It was putting your heart in someone else’s hands.

  Now he was ready to hand Del his heart in a wrapped box.

  He stepped into Del’s apartment fifteen minutes later, filled with anticipation. If her mother was still there, he’d apologize. He’d grovel, if that was what it took to get Del to forgive him.

  But as the door swung open, there were no voices. No lights. No smell of the scented candle Del loved and faithfully burned whenever she was at home. The apartment felt empty, and he knew before he even called her name that Del wasn’t there.

  Maybe she’d taken her mother to her hotel. Maybe they’d gone shopping. He reached for acceptable alternatives to the terrible fear that was spreading through him.

  Behind him, another key scraped in the lock and the fear began to ebb. He whirled—but it wasn’t Del who stepped through the door. It was Robert, looking unusually grim.

  “Hey,” Sam said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Get your things and give me your key to this place.” Robert’s face was granite hard, his tone far less than friendly.

  Sam was stunned. “Where’s Del?”

  “She asked me to come over in case you returned,” Robert said. He handed Sam a plain white envelope.

  With a sense of foreboding, Sam tore it open and extracted two sheets of paper. Del’s familiar handwriting covered the top page.

  Sam—

  Enclosed is my resignation, effective immediately. I’m sure you’ll find someone to replace me quickly. Sorry to leave this way, but I can’t imagine working together anymore. I’m sure you agree.