by Diana Palmer
Mike grimaced. “Nikki...”
“Promise me, Uncle Mike,” she wheedled, “or I’ll tell Aunt Jenny about that blonde stewardess...” she added in a whisper.
His jaw dropped. “That was completely innocent!” he whispered back.
“It won’t be when I get through with it. Well?” she asked.
His face pouted, his blue eyes met hers accusingly. “I may never forgive you,” he reminded her.
“It won’t be the first time, either,” she said gaily.
“I do occasionally read financial magazines,” Mike said. “Callaway Steel is something of a legend among tycoons, you know.”
“He is something, period.” Jenny sighed. “Oh, if I were a few years younger, and Mike wasn’t so sexy...”
“He’s a good bit older than you are, Nikki,” Mike said gently.
She sighed. “I know. But it doesn’t matter. We’re only friends, Mike.” Her voice was more wistful than she knew.
“He looks like he’d be dynamite,” Jenny murmured.
“He is.” Nikki sighed, walking right into the trap.
“And don’t hand me that ‘just friends’ routine,” Jenny added with a wink. “He didn’t come all this way just to say hello. By the way,” she added, patting Nikki’s cheek as they went into the hall ahead of Mike, “your lipstick’s smeared.”
Nikki wouldn’t have touched that line with a shotgun. “Good night,” she called as she raced up the stairs.
* * *
“IS IT ALWAYS this quiet?” Cal asked lazily as he and Nikki lounged by the private lake under a towering oak tree on the grassy lawn the next morning.
“Most of the time,” she agreed. She was lying on her stomach in a bright yellow sundress, watching Cal, who was stretched out on his back wearing slacks and an unbuttoned brown plaid shirt. His thick, dark hair was mussed and fell into unruly patterns on his broad forehead. It made him look younger, but those hard lines in his face were still very much present.
She tickled his imposing nose with a blade of grass, laughing when he caught her wrist and pulled her over so that she was propped up on his broad, partially bared chest.
“I like you in yellow,” he murmured, opening his eyes to study the peasant-blouse styling of the dress. “It suits your personality.”
“Mushy?” she asked with arched brows.
He frowned. “How did you get that?”
“Well, you said it reminded you of my personality, and butter is yellow but mushy...”
He chuckled softly. “Your mind would fascinate a research scientist.”
“Umm,” she murmured. She only half heard him; she’d just discovered a faint dimple in his chin, and her fingers were tracing it.
“What I meant,” he murmured back, linking his hands behind her, “was that you’re sunny.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
His dark eyes searched hers. “Life hasn’t been kind to you,” he said gently. “Neither have I, in a lot of ways. It’s hard for me to trust people, Nikki.”
“I know. It’s hard for me, and I’m not rich,” she said gently. Her soft eyes searched his. “Did you really think I was after you because of who you were that first day?”
“Yes,” he admitted. He looked up through the leafy, sun-patterned branches of the oak. “It’s an old ploy with women to pretend indifference to get a man’s attention. You caught mine that first day, with that bathing suit tantalizingly visible under that next-to-nothing cover-up. You have gorgeous legs, Miss Blake.”
She laughed disbelievingly. “But you were horrible...!”
“Self-defense,” he said softly. “I wanted you on sight. I thought if I made you mad enough to stay away, I’d forget about you. Then you started running, and that old hunting instinct took over, in spite of my misgivings. When I found out you were a reporter, it all blew up in my mind.”
“You don’t trust reporters, I gather.”
He met her eyes. “Nikki, I’ve been harassed to death by the press.” His dark face seemed to stiffen. “You’ve heard about what happened, I gather? That my daughter was killed in an automobile accident and that my...wife died a few months later? The media had a field day with it. And every time I read another story speculating on Penny’s death, I had to relive it all again.”
“Penny was your wife, wasn’t she?” she asked quietly.
He nodded. “A beautiful woman. Blonde, blue-eyed, utterly gorgeous. But it was only skin-deep. She hated me, she hated the idea of a child, she hated anything that took her away from her mirror and her admirers. She had two lovers the first year we were married.” His jaw tautened. “I didn’t love her. The marriage was more of a merger than anything else. But after Genene was born, I told her if I ever caught her with another man, if there was a breath of scandal, I’d cut her off without a cent and she’d never see Genene again. It was very effective, in one sense. She gave up men. But she substituted drugs for them.”
“Didn’t she care for you?” she asked, incredulous.
“No, honey. She gave what little affection she was capable of to Genene. There wasn’t anything left over for anyone else. The night of the accident I was away at a conference. Penny decided to leave Genene with her grandmother so that she could go on to a party. She was high when she left the house.” He took a slow breath. “She never made it. I’ll never forget how I felt when the call came. It was just as well that it took me four hours to get home. I wanted to wring Penny’s neck.”
She could imagine how it must have been for him. Under those layers of reserve he seemed to be a deeply emotional man; the kind who’d love completely, not holding anything back.
He flexed his broad shoulders, shifting. She started to get up, but his grip was formidable. “Penny sobered up pretty quickly after that, but she couldn’t live with the guilt, not without some anesthetic. It kept taking more and more, and every time I’d send her off to be dried out, she’d start again. It reached the point where I couldn’t even reason with her anymore. One night she took a few pills too many. It was already too late when the maid found her.”
She searched his dark eyes. “And ever since, you’ve been asking yourself, ‘What if...?’” she murmured.
He looked faintly shocked. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“I know how it is,” she replied. “My mother died of a brain tumor—there was no help to be had. But my father and I had just had an argument the night he was killed.” She dropped her eyes to the pattern of his shirt. “You know how kids can be. He and my mother were devoted to each other. They never had time for me. After she died, it was even worse. I’d gotten the lead in our school play, and it was the night we were putting it on. Dad refused to go, or even to drive me there. I ranted and raved about it until he slapped me.” Her eyes closed on the memory. “I didn’t say another word, and neither did he. He walked out the door. Thirty minutes later Uncle Mike came to get me.” She sighed. “They said he was driving too fast for conditions. But it was suicide. He didn’t want to live without Mother.”
Cal’s big arms swallowed her, drawing her gently down against him, comforting her, soothing her. His fingers worked in her hair in a slow, rhythmic motion, and she could feel the steady, strong beat of his heart against her breasts.
“What was your daughter like?” she asked softly.
His chest rose and fell slowly against her. “Like me, strangely enough,” he murmured. The words came hesitantly, and Nikki sensed that he hadn’t talked about it to anyone until now. Perhaps there wasn’t anyone he could talk to, unless it was his mother.
“Dark?” she prompted.
“Dark hair, dark eyes. Tall, for her age. All legs and big eyes.” He laughed gently. “She liked to climb trees, which horrified her mother. Ladies weren’t supposed to do that, but Genene was a tomboy through and through. I bought her a horse and Penny went up lik
e a rocket, but Genene was a born rider. We’d get up early every morning and go riding before I went to the office.” He laughed shortly. “Once I walked out of a board meeting in the middle of a proxy fight to take Genene to a birthday party.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“I won.” He chuckled. “The deciding votes came from a stockholder who was delighted at the sight of a man willing to give up an empire for a birthday party.”
She laughed with him. “But you didn’t do it for that reason, I don’t imagine.”
“No, I didn’t. Hell, anytime they think I’m not showing enough profit, they can throw me out with my blessing. But that hasn’t happened, and it won’t happen.” His arms tightened. “I had cake and ice cream with the kids. Genene won a prize for pinning the tail on the donkey. You’d think she won the Nobel Prize, the way she beamed.” He drew in a short breath. “A week later she was dead. I’ve thanked God on my knees ever since that I didn’t tell her I was too busy to take her to that birthday party.” He sighed heavily. “If only I’d been at home...”
She drew away far enough to look down into his dark, sad eyes. She laid a finger across his hard, chiseled mouth. “You couldn’t have prevented it if you’d been standing across the street,” she said gently. “Any more than I could have taken my father’s foot off the accelerator, or stopped my mother from getting a brain tumor... Cal, I don’t pretend to know all the answers. But God sees farther down the road than we do. Perhaps He’s protecting people from something we can’t foresee by drawing them to Him.” She smiled quietly. “I like to think of it that way, at least.”
Her fingers traced his mouth; her eyes lingered on the chiseled curve of it. Impulsively, she leaned down and brushed her lips over it, feeling a delicious shiver of sensation at the light contact.
“Do you mind?” she whispered achingly.
His chest rose and fell quickly, heavily. “I need it as much as you do, Nikki,” he replied in a deep, taut whisper. “I need you...”
His arms brought her down to him, and he made a harsh, muffled sound as her mouth opened over his. The action tightened the arms around her bruisingly as he whipped her across his big body and onto her back in the lush, green grass with the weight of his broad chest crushing her down into it.
His mouth was hungry, rough, slow and achingly thorough on the petal softness of hers. She felt the nip of his teeth against her full lower lip before his tongue drew a sensuous path over it, past it, in a sudden, sharp intimacy that dragged a moan from her throat.
Her arms slid under his, her hands easing past the hem of his cotton shirt to caress his warm, bronzed back over his hard, silky muscles. Her fingers dug into his back, tested its strength, as his mouth became more demanding on hers.
He levered away from her all at once, his eyes dark with unsatisfied desire, his jaw as taut as the muscles in his powerful arms as they supported him.
“No more, Nikki,” he said in a husky voice. “We’re getting in over our heads.”
Her fingers lingered on the damp flesh of his back, her eyes mirroring the conflict that was going on inside her. She thought ahead involuntarily, to the end of the day when she’d watch him fly away and she’d stand on the runway and feel an emptiness like death inside. The thought took the light out of her eyes, the smile from her face. How was she going to manage life without Cal in it? Would the memories be enough?
He took a long draw from the cigarette he’d just lit and turned, his face more composed, his eyes calm if a little dark.
“It’s just as well that we aren’t still in Nassau,” he said with a wry smile.
She made a face at him. “I used to think I had loads of willpower until you came along,” she admitted shyly. “With Ralley, I was always reserved, very cool. He used to complain about it.”
He didn’t like that reference; she read the distaste in his dark eyes. “Ralley?” he asked.
“Ralley Hall. He, uh, came back to work for Uncle Mike this week,” she added reluctantly.
Cal’s dark head lifted sharply. “How convenient.”
She hated the ice in that deep voice. She scrambled to her feet with worried eyes. “Cal, it was over long before the flood,” she told him. “I gave him up the day he and Leda married, and I never wanted him back. I still don’t.”
His taut features relaxed a little. He took a long draw from the cigarette and studied its orange tip.
“Did you ever let him touch you the way I have?” he asked suddenly, staring straight across into her eyes.
“No, Cal,” she replied. “Not ever.”
He moved forward, dropping a careless big arm across her shoulders in a gesture that was more comradely than lover-like. “I’d like to see where you work,” he said as they walked back toward the house.
Which meant, she thought nervously, that he wanted to see Ralley. At least he was that interested in her. But was it only a physical jealousy, or was he beginning to care?
She wasn’t going to sacrifice her hard-won peace of mind to that kind of reflection, she decided firmly.
“Suppose we drive by the office then?” she asked pleasantly.
He nodded. “That suits me.”
Now, if only the police would arrest someone important so that Ralley would have to leave the office to cover the story...
She should have expected to find her former fiancé in his office, poring over the week’s columns to check them for errors and make sure they’d fit the space he’d allowed.
He stood up when Nikki walked in with Cal at her side. Cal had exchanged his casual clothes for a dark blue blazer with an open-necked white silk shirt and white trousers. He looked like a fashion plate, and Nikki wanted more than anything to show him off. He was so good to look at.
But if she thought so, Ralley didn’t. His blue eyes turned cold when they met Cal’s, and that dislike was reflected in the older man’s dark, piercing eyes.
“How do you do?” Ralley asked as if he couldn’t have cared less, when Nikki introduced them.
He held out his hand, but Cal hesitated a few seconds before he took it, treating it like dead meat.
“This is the editorial office,” Nikki said, jumping in. “Ralley is our news editor. He does most of the editorial writing and substitutes for me at city and county council meetings when I’m tied up elsewhere. He edits column copy, too.”
“Nikki’s never needs editing,” Ralley murmured, giving Nikki his most ardent look. He came around the desk to slide an arm affectionately around her shoulders, grinning when she stiffened in shock. “She’s a super little writer,” he added, “and I tell her so twice a day, don’t I, darling?”
Cal didn’t say a word; the expression on his broad face didn’t change. But something in the gaze he pinned on Ralley’s face made the younger man remove his arm and back away.
“I’ll show you around,” Ralley volunteered. “Thursdays aren’t too hectic, except for phone calls protesting what people read when the paper comes out on Wednesdays. The really bad day is Tuesday, when we go to press. That’s when we all scream and tear our hair out and curse the telephone.”
“It rings like mad all day long,” Nikki added with a tight smile. Cal was as remote now as if he’d been shot to the moon. She couldn’t understand Ralley’s brazen move any more than she could understand Cal’s reaction to it. Surely he didn’t believe there was anything between her and Ralley? Surely Ralley didn’t think she still cared...!
“This is where the type comes from,” Ralley told Cal, indicating a computer with a screen and a keyboard like a typewriter, with two extra narrow keyboards on either side. “It’s a computerized system, brand-new, just like the big-city papers have. Reporters mostly set their own copy, but we have Billie to set the filler stuff and the legals,” he added with a wink at the petite blonde behind the computer.
“Is the newspaper print
ed here?” Cal asked quietly.
“No,” Nikki told him. “We have to carry it all the way to Mount Hebron, thirty miles away. At that, it’s still less expensive than buying the setup we’d need to do it here. We do all the makeup and paste-up, get our own ads and make them up—everything, in fact, but the actual printing. Mike drives the paper down there Wednesday morning and we get it back by that afternoon. Then we all rush to the back, run the papers through the mailing plate machine to put the names on the local papers, bag the single wraps, and get it in the mail. It’s in the boxes Thursday morning.”
“And nobody comes by the office on Thursday and Friday, because they don’t want to bother us while we’re working on the paper,” the redheaded reporter, aptly named Red Jones, piped in, pausing to introduce himself and short, dark Jerry Clinton to the newcomer.
“Nobody realizes that we do that on Monday and Tuesday.” Clinton grinned. “It’s a deep, dark secret.”
“These two handle the police beat and the advertising, respectively,” Nikki said. “We’re all interchangeable, of course, and we all do makeup and paste-up.”
“And Jenny keeps the books,” Mike broke in, joining them. “Came to see if I was working, huh?” he teased Nikki.
Cal arched his eyebrows at the neat, orderly operation. “I expected to find a desk buried under reams of paper and old journalism books and yellowed back issues stacked on shelves. I’m impressed.”
“You should have seen the place when my father was alive.” Mike chuckled. “He used to inspect the office once a week wearing white gloves. God help the staff if he found dust. Care for some coffee? We have our own snack bar in the back.”
“No, thanks,” Cal replied before Nikki could open her mouth, “I’ve got some phone calls to make.”
“See you at the house, then,” Mike murmured, sensing undercurrents.
“Nice to have met you,” Cal told the rest of the staff, his eyes stopping short of Ralley.
They echoed the polite remark. Ralley, seeing opportunity slamming at his door, moved forward and tugged a lock of Nikki’s hair in an old, affectionate intimacy.