Mind Over Matter

wedding.”
    She sent him a mild look. “There’s no such thing as a small, simple wedding. I’ve spent two full mornings haggling with florists and over a week off and on struggling with caterers.”
    “Learn anything?”
    “Elopement is the wisest course. Now here—”
    “Would you?”
    “Would I what?”
    “Elope.”
    With a laugh, A.J. picked up her first stack of papers. “If I ever lost a grip on myself and decided on marriage, I think I’d fly to Vegas, swing through one of those drive-in chapels and have it over with.”
    His eyes narrowed as he listened to her, as if he were trying to see beyond the words. “Not very romantic.”
    “Neither am I.”
    “Aren’t you?” He put a hand over hers, surprising her. There was something proprietary in the gesture, and something completely natural.
    “No.” But her fingers linked with his. “There’s not a lot of room for romance in business.”
    “And otherwise?”
    “Otherwise romance tends to lead you to see things that aren’t really there. I like illusions on the stage and screen, not in my life.”
    “What do you want in your life, Aurora? You’ve never told me.”
    Why was she nervous? It was foolish, but he was looking at her so closely. He was asking questions he’d never asked. And the answers weren’t as simple as she’d once thought. “Success,” she told him. Hadn’t it always been true?
    He nodded, but his thumb moved gently up and down the side of her hand. “You run a successful agency already. What else?” He was waiting, for one word, one sign. Did she need him? For the first time in his life he wanted to be needed.
    “I…” She was fumbling for words. He seemed to be the only one who could make her fumble. What did he want? What answer would satisfy him? “I suppose I want to know I’ve earned my own way.”
    “Is that why you turned down Alice Van Camp as a client?”
    “She told you that?” They hadn’t discussed the Van Camp interview. A.J. had purposely talked around it for days.
    “She mentioned it.” She’d pulled her hand from his. David wondered why every time they talked, really talked, she seemed to draw further away from him.
    “It was kind of her to come to me when I was just getting started and things were…rough.” She shrugged her shoulders, then began to slide her pencil through her fingers. “But it was out of gratitude to my mother. I couldn’t sign my first big client out of gratitude.”
    “Then later you turned her down again.”
    “It was too personal.” She fought the urge to stand up, walk away from the table, and from him.
    “No mixing business with personal relationships.”
    “Exactly. Do you want some coffee before we get started?”
    “You mixed a business and personal relationship with me.”
    Her fingers tightened on the pencil. He watched them. “Yes, I did.”
    “Why?”
    Though it cost her, she kept her eyes on his. He could strip her bare, she knew. If she told him she had fallen in love with him, had started the tumble almost from the first, she would have no defense left. He would have complete and total control. And she would have reneged on the most important agreement in her life. If she couldn’t give him the truth, she could give him the answer he’d understand. The answer that mirrored his feelings for her. “Because I wanted you,” she said, and kept her voice cool. “I was attracted to you, and wisely or not, I gave in to the attraction.”
    He felt the twinge, a need unfulfilled. “That’s enough for you?”
    Hadn’t she said he could hurt her? He was hurting her now with every word. “Why shouldn’t it be?” She gave him an easy smile and waited for the ache to pass.
    “Why shouldn’t it be?” he murmured, and tried to accept the answer for what it was. He pulled out a cigarette, then began carefully. “I think you should know we’re shooting a segment on the Ridehour case.” Though his eyes stayed on hers, he saw her tense. “Clarissa agreed to discuss it.”
    “She told me. That should wrap the taping?”
    “It should.” She was holding back. Though no more than a table separated them, it might have been a canyon. “You don’t like it.”
    “No, I don’t, but I’m trying to learn that Clarissa has to make her own decisions.”
    “A.J., she seems very easy about it.”
    “You don’t understand.”
    “Then let me.”
    “Before I convinced her to move, to keep her residence strictly confidential, she had closets full