turned and followed Luke.
The man was totally amoral! Bonnie squeezed her eyes shut, sick to her soul as she relived her other encounter with one of his playmates. Her hands clenched into fists, nails digging cruelly into her palms, as she struggled to suppress a scream of outrage.
“Mrs. Ford?” The receptionist’s voice was tinged with concern.
Hearing herself addressed as a married woman after all these years, Bonnie went stiff with shock. What a vulgar situation! No wonder the secretaries had stopped working when she stepped off the elevator with him. Melodrama was infinitely more fascinating than facts and figures.
“Mrs. Ford,” the receptionist repeated, “are you—“
“It’s Ms. Ford,” she corrected between clenched teeth, “and I’ll be in his office.” She retreated to her sanctuary, shut the door and leaned back against the solid wood. But there was no hiding from the truth.
Twice now, she’d let her heart mislead her. And with the same man, no less. Stupid! an inner voice taunted. How long she stood there enmeshed in misery, she didn’t know. Finally, she walked to the windows overlooking the lush landscape below. Had Chris designed that, too? She pressed her forehead to the glass and the other buildings nearby blurred into one gray smudge before her tear-filled eyes.
The gentle tapping at the door reverberated like thunder through the silent room. Bonnie didn’t bother answering—it wasn’t locked. Nor did she turn around to see who had entered—it didn’t matter.
“I’m sorry for the intrusion,” Chris Miller began quietly as she moved toward the marble-topped desk in the center of the office, “but we really should talk.”
“What’s there to talk about?” Bonnie pivoted, her lips curved in a derisive smile. “You must be good with numbers so you know one man isn’t divisible by two women.”
“Nobody knows that better than…” Chris’s voice cracked, and she quickly cleared her throat. Her expressive artist’s hands trembled slightly as she lifted the lid off the small, loblolly pine box sitting on a corner of the desk. She removed a cigarette and, hesitantly, offered it to Bonnie.
“No, thank you,” she refused curtly.
Chris’s slender fingers encircled the slim silver lighter that she took from the pocket of her drafting smock. She inhaled deeply, as if the smoke would give her the courage to speak. “I never had any nesting instincts that I can recall. Marriage. Motherhood. It always sounded like a regular Cinderella crock...”
“Then you met Luke?” Bonnie prompted cynically.
“In college.” Chris’s gray gaze focused on the nearest wall.
Bonnie looked in the same direction and immediately noticed the evidence of another accomplishment. Framed and centered among his personal photographs and professional awards hung his engineering degree. Sadness shimmered in Bonnie’s amber eyes. Here he’d finished school, and she’d never had an inkling. What else didn’t she know about the man who possessed her soul?
“It was the last semester of my graduate program at Georgia Tech,” Chris continued slowly. “Luke had enrolled in order to complete his engineering credits, and we had some classes together—most of them related to environmental design and energy conservation techniques in the construction field.”
Chris paused, puffing nervously on her cigarette, then shrugged her shoulders. “Coffee after class. Late-hour study sessions at the library during finals week. He’d just started his own company, and I needed a job after graduation.” Her voice thickened with emotion. “Our professional goals were so similar that I was fool enough to begin fantasizing—”
“I don’t want to hear this—this saga of your affair with Luke,” Bonnie interrupted, her tone defensive.
“You need to hear it,” Chris insisted, extinguishing her cigarette with sharp stabs in the heavy glass ashtray. “You need to know the truth.”
“Why?” Bonnie
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