The Paternity Proposition(8)

"Blake enjoyed meeting you," Alex said as he stood aside for her to precede him out the door.

"I enjoyed meeting him, too." She glanced toward his brother's end of the corridor. "Is he driving to the restaurant with us?"

"We're walking, if that's okay. It's only a short jaunt. And Blake's not joining us for dinner."

"So it's just you, me and your mother?"

And possibly the baby. No, surely they wouldn't bring an infant to a crowded downtown restaurant. As they approached the elevator, Julie geared up for her opening round with the no-holds-barred Delilah.

"Actually," Alex said, tossing a monkey wrench into her mental prep, "it's just you and me."





Four

"Just the two of us?"

Julie came to a dead stop and eyed the man at her side with instant suspicion. She had to admit he didn't look as though he was plotting something devious. Just the opposite, in fact. In crisply ironed khakis and a short-sleeved, open-necked shirt with a faint blue stripe, he looked good enough to eat. Whole. Without taking time to chew.

Still, there was the small matter of his thinking she was capable of abandoning her own child. And let's not forget blackmailing her into spending a week in the city.

"I thought one of the reasons behind this excursion was, how did you put it? So I could see how you and the baby fit together?"

"It is." Unruffled, he pressed the elevator button. "But before I throw you to the tiger otherwise known as my mother, I thought we should get to know each other a little better."

Better? Like they didn't already possess an inside and very intimate track on each other? Her gaze made another involuntary drop to his belt buckle. Smothering a curse, she yanked it up again.

Damn! She'd darn well better control the images that kept jumping into her head at the most inopportune moments. If she didn't, this was going to be a looooong week.

They exited the DI building into blazing July heat only partially mitigated by the shadows of the downtown skyscrapers. Thankfully, the restaurant was only a block away. The elegant French bistro sat just off the lobby of a '30s-era hotel recently renovated to the tune of some fifty million dollars. According to one of the articles Julie had devoured, Dalton International had contributed a good portion of the renovation funds. Which no doubt explained why the bistro's chef/owner herself hurried around the stone counter separating the bricked-in kitchen from the main dining area.                       
       
           



       

"Alex!"

A petite bundle of sparkle and energy, she rattled off what Julie guessed was an effusive greeting in French. Laughing, Alex dropped a kiss on both cheeks and replied in kind before switching to English for the introductions.

"Cecile, this is Julie Bartlett. Julie, meet Cecile Duchamp. The lightest hand at crepes ever to come out of Maubec."

"Pah!" their hostess puffed. "As though she would know Maubec. It has not even a highway, only a two-lane farm road. But it is in Provence, yes, and all Provençal cooks prepare the crepes like you have never tasted before."

The smile she turned in Julie's direction didn't dim. If anything, it ratcheted up another notch. Yet the look that accompanied it was swift, assessing and distinctly female.

Uh-oh. Was Cecile one of the also-ran in the mother-of-my-child contest? Julie couldn't help wondering as the vivacious brunette escorted them to a circular booth tucked into a corner.

"I bring a bottle of red from your reserve, yes? And the crudités."

Alex looked to Julie. "Is red okay or would you prefer white? Or something other than wine?"

Like the Dos Equis they'd downed that night in Nuevo Laredo? Another memory shot to the surface, this one of Alex laughing at her grimace when she sucked on the lime wedge-right before he leaned across the table and kissed the pucker off her lips.

"Red's fine," she said hastily.

It was more than fine, she discovered when Cecile had decanted the wine. One sip evoked smooth velvet and giant sunflowers-fields and fields of them, bobbing on tall stalks with their faces turned up to the sun … probably because those particular flowers dominated almost every poster Julie had ever seen of the south of France.

"It's good," she told Alex. "Tastes a little like a Chilean syrah."

"You've got a discriminating palette. They come from the same grape variety."

His shoulders rested against the back of the booth but she wasn't fooled into thinking he was relaxed. Especially when he issued a seemingly casual request.

"Tell me about your time in Chile."

"This is what you meant by getting to know each other?" she said, bristling. "An immediate demand to know what I was up to last year?"

"Sorry. That came out wrong. Let me rephrase. What type of jobs did you fly down in Chile?"

"Mostly contact airlift for Caterpillar."

"One of our major competitors," he commented.

"I also flew for Komatsu, hauling equipment parts to Minera Escondida's gold and copper mines. As I'm sure your private investigator has informed you," she couldn't help tacking on.

Annoyance flickered across his tanned face. "I'm just making conversation here."

"Fine. Then why don't you tell me about yourself?"

"What do you want to know?"

She'd gleaned the basics from her Google searches. Age, education, professional associations. She'd catalogued far more intimate physical details during their night together. And she'd certainly had a taste of the ruthless determination that had taken Alex Dalton and his family to the top. Yet the man himself was pretty much an unknown quantity.

"What's it like to be a twin?"

He eased into a rueful grin. "All the cliches apply. Blake and I fought like hell from day one to maintain our individual identities. Fought each other, too. Sibling rivalry takes on a whole new dimension when you're half of a pair. We also rarely passed up a chance to pretend to be each other to confuse babysitters and teachers."

He took another taste of his wine. Julie watched his throat work and vaguely recalled burying her face in the hot crease between it and his shoulder.

"The bond is always there," he continued. "It's undefinable, intangible. Even when we're in different parts of the world. If Blake hurts, I feel it. If I get angry, his blood pressure spikes."

She traced a pattern on the table with her nail, trying to imagine that kind of closeness.

"How about you?" Alex asked, as if reading her mind. "What was it like to be an only child?"

"I loved it," she replied, with a familiar pang at the thought of the parents she'd lost more than a decade ago. "My folks spoiled me rotten."

"That must be how you talked them into letting you apply for a pilot's license at, what? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

He held up his palms before she could get all huffy about him prying into her past again. "I was curious about you after Nuevo Laredo. Did some checking."

"Which you didn't bother to follow up on until someone deposited a baby on your mother's doorstep."

Where did that come from? Julie sincerely hoped it didn't sound as snarky to him as it did to her. Evidently not, since he lifted his shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug.

"Actually, I did try to follow up. By the time I got around to it, though, you were already down in South America."

"Oh."

That put a different spin on things. So different she found herself relaxing for the first time since Alex Dalton had walked out of her past and turned her life upside down.                       
       
           



       

They stuck to non-controversial subjects through an appetizer platter of crisp vegetables with a creamy Dijon mustard dipping sauce and a dinner of herb-crusted Dover sole that flaked off the fork. Cecile herself flambeed dessert at their table in a long-handled copper pan. Julie had to admit the woman hadn't boasted. The crepes Suzette were the lightest, most succulent she'd ever put in her mouth.

Not that she'd downed all that many. Having spent most of her cockpit time flying in and out of the Americas, she was a fervent and self-avowed connoisseur of tamales and empanadas. The spicier the better. She could get hooked on these paper-thin pancakes swimming in caramelized Grand Marnier sauce, though. Especially when Alex offered her the last of his after she'd finished her own with a near moan of ecstasy. His eyes dancing, he nudged his plate across the table.

"I warned you."

"Yes, you did." She stabbed the morsel and used it to sop up the remaining sauce. "Wonder if she does carry-out? I'd love to take some of these back to Dusty and Chuck. On second thought," she said after letting the heavenly morsel slide her throat. "I'd better not. Dusty would feed half of his to Belinda, and she certainly doesn't need the calories."

"Belinda being the mottled fur rug?"

"That's her."

"Unusual name for a cat."

He stretched a casual arm along the back of the circular booth. It didn't come within six inches of Julie but she could swear she felt a slow flush crawling up the back of her neck.