From the Heart

lip and stared into space. He hadn’t led up to it. She would have thrown up the barricades if he had. She knew the signs to look for: the smiles, the soft, promising words. Thorpe hadn’t spared any of those. It was an impulse, she decided, and shrugged it off. There hadn’t been anything desperate or even particularly loverlike in the kiss. He hadn’t been rough; he hadn’t tried a seduction. She was making too much of it. She had wanted to kiss him. She had wanted to go on kissing him. To be held close, to be needed, desired. Why? He meant nothing to her, she told herself firmly.
    “What do you want?” she whispered to herself. “And why don’t you know?”
    To be the best, she thought. To win. To be Olivia Carmichael without having to lose pieces of myself along the way. I want to be whole again.
    The doorbell rang. Business, she reminded herself. I’m going to be the best reporter in Washington. If I have to socialize with T.C. Thorpe to do it, then I’ll socialize with T.C. Thorpe.
    She glanced at the perfume on her dresser, then turned away from it. There was no point in giving him any ideas. She felt sure he had enough of his own. She moved through the apartment without hurry. It gave her a small touch of satisfaction to keep him waiting. But when Liv opened the door, Thorpe didn’t appear annoyed. There was approval and simple male appreciation for a woman in his eyes.
    “You look lovely.” Thorpe handed her a single rosebud,long-stemmed and white. “It suits you,” he said, as she accepted it without a word. “Red’s too obvious; pink’s too sweet.”
    Liv stared down at the flower and forgot everything she had just told herself. She hadn’t counted on being moved by him again so quickly. She lifted serious eyes to his. “Thank you.”
    Thorpe smiled, but his tone was as serious as hers. “You’re welcome. Are you going to let me in?”
    I’d be smarter not to, she thought abruptly, but stepped back. “I’ll go put this in water.”
    Thorpe scanned the living room as she walked away. It was neat, tastefully furnished. No decorator, he thought. She had taken her time here, choosing precisely what she wanted. He noted that there were no photographs, no mementos. Liv wasn’t putting any parts of herself on display. Very careful, very private. The vague hint of secrecy had aroused his reporter’s instincts.
    It might be time, he considered, for a bit of gentle probing. He walked into the kitchen and leaned on the door as Liv added water to a crystal bud vase.
    “Nice place,” he said conversationally. “You have a good view of the city.”
    “Yes.”
    “Washington’s a far cry from Connecticut. What part are you from?”
    Liv raised her eyes. They were cool again, cautious. “Westport.”
    Westport—Carmichael. Thorpe had no trouble with the connection. “Tyler Carmichael’s your father?”
    Liv lifted the vase from the sink and turned to him. “Yes.”
    Tyler Carmichael—real estate, staunch conservative, roots straight back to the Mayflower. There had been two daughters, Thorpe remembered suddenly. He’d forgotten because one had simply slipped from notice a decade before, while the other had struck out on the debutante circuit. Five-thousand-dollar dresses and a pink Rolls. Her daddy’s darling. When she had graduated from Radcliffe and snapped up her first husband, a playwright, Carmichael had given her afifteen-acre estate as a wedding present. Melinda Carmichael Howard LeClare was now on husband number two. She was a nervous, spoiled woman with a desperate sort of beauty and a taste for the expensive.
    “I’ve met your sister,” Thorpe commented, studying Liv’s face. “You’re nothing like her.”
    “No,” Liv agreed simply, and moved past him into the living room. She set the rose down on a small glass table. “I’ll get my coat.”
    A good reporter, Thorpe mused, makes the worst interview subject. They know how to answer questions with a yes or no, and without inflection. Olivia Carmichael was a good reporter. So was he.
    “You don’t get along with your family?”
    “I didn’t say that.” Liv chose a hip-length fox fur from her closet.
    “You didn’t have to.” Smoothly, Thorpe took the coat and held it out. Liv slipped her arms into the sleeves. She wore no scent, he noted, just the light lingering fragrance from her bath, and the clean faintly citrus scent from shampoo. The lack of artifice aroused him. He turned her so that she faced him.