“I owe you another apology.” His quiet voice vibrated across the room.
She reacted as though he had actually touched her. Her stomach was sucked in on a sharp breath. She knew what was coming, but talking to him about it was unthinkable. “I don’t want to hear it,” she whispered. “Just go.”
“I’m sorry I kissed you.”
She groaned and covered her mouth with her hand. “Go away. Leave me alone.”
“Or, more honestly, I’m sorry for doing it when you had no choice in the matter. I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
Her head came up and she sought his reflection in the mirror. “Wasn’t it enough that you crucified my husband’s reputation? Wasn’t it enough that you exposed me to public ridicule and caused me to lose my baby?” Her small fists were balled at her sides and she thumped the mattress angrily. Tears slid down her cheeks. “But aside from all that, you had no right to touch me, much less … touch me the way you did.”
His eyes closed briefly in a spasm of guilt. “I know.”
“Then how could you have kissed me?” she demanded.
He spun around. He wasn’t entirely to blame. She wasn’t faultless and by God he wasn’t going to be branded as the only culprit in the crime. “I’ll tell you how I could.” His new tone stopped her tears and snatched the breath out of her lungs. “I’ve wanted to kiss you from the first time I saw you. Now you can kick and scream, pitch a fit, summon your watchdogs out there to come in here to haul me out, but that’s a fact. I wanted to kiss you. And you didn’t seem to mind. In fact, when I tried to pull away, you wouldn’t let me.”
“Wouldn’t let … You outweigh me seventy-five pounds!”
He looked properly chagrined. It was absurd to suggest that she could physically best him. But resolutely he came forward until he stood at the foot of the bed. “Your arms embraced me. Your hands caressed me. You pressed your mouth against mine. You—”
“Stop!”
“—opened your lips and—”
“No more, I said.”
“—you kissed me back!”
She was breathing hard, laboring for every breath. “I was dreaming, practically unconscious. I wasn’t kissing you. I thought you were my husband!”
Frustrated in his own right, Hunter whipped off his eyeglasses. He leaned forward and trapped her feet and lower legs between the straight arms that braced him up over her. He spoke softly, enunciating each word. “Well, I’ll tell you something, Kari Stewart. If I were your husband, I wouldn’t do something so stupid as to risk losing you.”
His meaning was clear. Thomas Wynne had been that stupid.
“Get out.” She pushed the words through her teeth.
“And you can deny it to me and to yourself till hell freezes over, but you participated in and enjoyed that kiss.”
“I did not!”
Then, with his eyelids partially closed as he studied her mouth, he leaned closer and said in a soft, declarative whisper, “Liar.”
“Get out!”
Her shout brought Pinkie and Bonnie on a run. They arrived in time to see Hunter calmly putting on his glasses. Apparently the bouquet of yellow roses that were hurled at his retreating back didn’t faze him. He shouldered past them muttering “Excuse me,” and seconds later the front door slammed.
Chapter Five
HER CONVALESCENCE WAS LIKE A SENTENCE, BUT SHE served it. When she passed the doctor’s muster and was allowed to go back to work, she had to admit that the time of complete rest had been to her advantage.
She felt renewed. It had been almost five months since Thomas’s death. It was time to get on with her life. Before her miscarriage, she had felt she was moving in limbo, but now she had a definite goal—to see that the acting D.A. got his comeuppance.
Hunter McKee had won his conviction of councilmen Parker and Haynes. Even though Thomas Wynne was dead and unable to defend himself, he had been sentenced in shame just as the other two had been. Kari Stewart Wynne was not going to forgive and forget that.
She had been back at work for three weeks when she heard a rumor that sent her flying out of an editing room and straight to Pinkie’s desk in the newsroom.
“I just heard that Dick Johnson is leaving to go to KABC.”
Pinkie blew a cloud of cigarette smoke ceilingward. “The grapevine around here is shorter than a hooker’s timer,” he said crossly. “I just heard it from the horse’s mouth not fifteen minutes ago.”
“I want his beat.”
Pinkie frowned up at her. His eyes stayed hard on her face even as he shouted to a passing videotape photographer to get his camera and meet a reporter at the heliport. “It’s a chemical explosion, so take plenty of equipment,” he shouted. Then to Kari he said, “Let’s talk.”