Grinning to himself, he poured two fingers of Scotch into the bottom of a heavy cut crystal tumbler, then turned and held it out to her. The look in his dark eyes dared her, telling her without words that he didn't think she would really drink it.
She surprised him again.
Grabbing the glass out of his hand, she tossed back half of the contents in one gulp, then set it down—sharply—on the delicate cabriole-legged table at the end of the sofa and glared at him, her eyes watering from the fierce sting of the alcohol. "There. We've had a drink. Satisfied? Now say what you have to say and then please leave."
Zeke took a casual sip of his own drink. "Do you want to tell me what you're so damned mad about?"
"You forced your way into my house, isn't that reason enough?"
"You were mad at me before I did that. In fact," he said, just realizing it himself, "you've been quietly furious at me since that day at the wedding consultant's office. Why is that, I wonder?" he said musingly, watching her closely for a reaction.
She just stood there, staring daggers at him, her slender body as tense and straight as an arrow quivering against the string of a drawn bow, looking more beautiful and desirable than he'd ever seen her look before.
"Before that day we hadn't seen each other in—what?—three, almost four years? At Cameron's college graduation ceremony, remember? And we didn't speak to each other, even then. So, I have to wonder..." His dark gaze locked on hers, penetrating, demanding. "Why are you so angry?"
"I'm not angry, I'm—" Ariel turned her back on him and walked toward the multipaned, leaded glass doors that opened out onto the patio and pool. Her shoulders lifted in a deep, shaky sigh he heard halfway across the room. And then she put her hands on the glass, palms flat against the surface.
"Talk to me, Ariel," he said from behind her.
She sighed again and turned around to face him. "I'm not angry," she said, but her voice wasn't as crystal cool and calm as it normally was, even to her own ears. And the fire in her eyes hadn't quite been banked. And her smooth, alabaster cheeks were delicately flushed with emotion.
"Oh, you're angry, all right," he taunted her, trying to get at the source of her pent-up emotion. "You're so angry, you're seething with it. You're boiling inside, aren't you, Ariel? You'd like to tear me apart with your bare hands, wouldn't you?"
He put his drink down on the sideboard and stepped closer, as if inviting her, daring her, to reach out and do some violence to his person. She clenched her hands at her sides and refused to give him—or herself—the satisfaction of losing control.
He extended one hand and she stepped back, automatically trying to avoid his touch, but he only picked something up off the table behind her. Then he reached out and grabbed her wrist with his other hand, quickly, before she could jerk away from him. Turning it palm up, he forced her to unclench her fingers and pressed something cold and round and hard into her hand.
It was one of her collection of glass and crystal paperweights, the sapphire-blue Lalique with the swirl of real gold dust through the middle.
Her fingers curled around it, so tightly that her knuckles showed white.
"Go, ahead," Zeke whispered. "Throw it."
She hesitated, her whole body trembling with the need to release the feelings that had been locked up inside her for so long.
"Pretend you're aiming at my head."
With a muffled shriek of pure, unadulterated rage, Ariel lifted the fragile paperweight and heaved it at the wall with every ounce of strength she possessed. It shattered on impact, splintering into a thousand glimmering shards with a sound like a rifle shot across the water. She stood, stock-still, breathless, panting, her unbelieving gaze riveted on the dent she'd made in the pale blue watered-silk wall covering. My God, I did that, she thought, aghast at her action. She'd never lost control like that in her life, not even when Zeke had broken her heart and shattered her dreams. She never raised her voice. Never lost her temper. Never forgot who she was, not even for one minute. Never.
"Feel better now?"
Ariel turned to look at her ex-husband. He stood there, watching her with a little half smile on his handsome face, his stance casual under the elegant, loose-fitting Armani suit, the expression in his dark eyes expectant and faintly... amused.
He was laughing at her!
"No, dammit, I don't feel better," she snarled, furious as a spitting cat.
But it was a great, big, whopping, bald-faced lie. She felt marvelous. She felt vital and alive. Hot, surging emotion was roiling through her like a violent thunderstorm over a calm mountain lake, churning everything up. For the first time in her controlled, circumspect life, she let it spill out.
"Why did you do it?" she demanded, her voice low and furious.
"Do what?"
"Sleep with that woman!"
For a moment, Zeke looked blank, truly not understanding what woman she was referring to, then comprehension dawned. She could only mean one woman, after all.
"All I did that night was sleep with her," he said, emphasizing the verb. "And I didn't even know I was doing that until I woke up to find you standing there, staring at me as if I'd just committed murder."
She made a dismissive gesture with one hand. "Don't lie to me, Zeke," she said impatiently. "Not now. Not after all these years. I saw you, remember? I was there, in the room with you and I saw—"
"What did you see?" he demanded.
"I saw..." Memories of that night formed a picture in her mind's eye. The way she'd reached down in the dark to touch him and had touched the naked shoulder of the woman in bed with him, instead. The husky female voice offering to wake him up. The sexy tumble of chestnut curls and sleep-flushed skin when the light came on. The naked bodies. Two of them.
She looked Zeke straight in the eye, daring him to deny it. "I saw everything I needed to see."
"The hell you did. You saw me sleeping. Sleeping," he emphasized. "And then you ran away without giving me a chance to explain."
"Because there was nothing to explain!" she shouted, and then, shocked at her own behavior, she covered her face with her hands to keep from seeing the startled expression on his. "There was nothing to explain," she repeated in a more normal tone of voice. "I guess there never is, in a situation like that." She gave a strangled, embarrassed laugh and dropped her hands, the vital, energized feeling of a moment ago abruptly deserting her.
"I didn't have sex with her," Zeke said softly, willing her to believe him. "No, dammit—" he reached out and grasped her chin when she tried to turn away "—look at me. I did not have sex with her. I didn't even know who she was. I still don't."
"Then what was she doing in your bed?"
"I don't know." Zeke let go of her chin to run his hand through his hair. "I swear to God, Ariel, I don't really know. I don't think she really knew, either. She was still there after the police left that night, stoned out of her mind on something. Maybe she just wanted a place to sleep it off. Hell, maybe she was just into indiscriminate sex the way too many people were back then, and thought I might be a likely candidate. All I know is that I was alone when I went to sleep and when I woke up, there she was."
"And you're telling me nothing happened?"
"Not unless she took advantage of me while I was out cold," he said, trying to inject a little humor into the situation. He could tell by the expression on Ariel's face that the attempt had fallen sadly short. "I was more unconscious than asleep that night," he said seriously, with no attempt at humor this time. "I'd drunk a lot of beer before I finally passed out. So if she expected anything when she crawled into bed with me, she was disappointed. I couldn't have gotten it up if I'd wanted to."
"It doesn't matter," Ariel said, wondering if it did. Why it did. "I guess none of it really matters now. I don't know why I even brought it up."
"You brought it up because you needed to know," he said. "And I needed to tell you. I still need to tell you."
"Tell me what?" Ariel whispered.
"That's why I got so drunk that night. I was trying to drown my sorrows and ended up passing out. When I woke up, there she was. And there you were. I never did figure out why you were there, you know," he said reflectively. "I thought, later, that it must have been because you'd found out you were pregnant and wanted to tell me you'd changed your mind about getting married because of it. But if that had been the case, then why did you refuse to see me the next day?" He shook his head as if her behavior still puzzled him. "That never made any sense to me."
Ariel's blue eyes widened a fraction. "You tried to see me the next day?"
"As soon as I could. But I barely made it through your front door. Your mother said you were shocked and disgusted with me and everything that had happened. The reporters had been hounding you about Eric's suicide and the network execs had made some not so subtle threats about canceling your show. She said you weren't home and that you'd begged her not to tell me where you were."
"No, I didn't. I..." Ariel shook her head.
"Are you telling me that's not true? That your mother lied?"
"I don't know," she admitted hesitantly, knowing full well that her mother might very well have lied to him. And to her. All in the name of protecting her daughter, of course. "I might have said it." She shook her head again. What good would it do to revile her mother now? Constance Cameron had been dead for nearly ten years, and they had been estranged for nearly ten years before that because Ariel had refused to let Constance run Cameron's life.
"I probably did say it. Or something close to it," Ariel said, finally. "When I left the Wilshire Arms I was borderline hysterical. I could barely see to drive home, I was crying so hard. And then I smashed my car into the corner of the garage and whacked my forehead on the steering wheel when I got there because I was shaking so much that I couldn't steer straight."
He reached out, as if to touch her head where she'd hit it, and she stepped back, quickly, evading his touch. If he touched her right now, she'd collapse into a small, pitiful heap of blubbering, incoherent emotion. And she needed to get this out first. She'd been carrying it around inside for far too long.
"My mother was upset, of course, wanting to know where I'd been and what happened to put me in such a state. And then the police showed up, asking me what I knew about Eric Shannon's death. And... I really don't know." She spread her hands in front of her, palms up. "Maybe I suffered some kind of shock or emotional trauma because nothing is really clear until a day or two later when I woke up in a hospital bed."
"My God, Ariel. I'm sorry. I had no idea."
"It wasn't serious. The car accident, I mean. Just a dented fender and a bump on the head. I could have been home in my own bed, except that my mother was always so overprotective. I was her only child." She smiled ruefully. "Her precious single chick."
Her meal ticket, Zeke thought.
"She was used to taking care of me, of being everything to me, and doing everything for me." It had been an unhealthy relationship—Ariel knew that now—a way for Constance to control and live through her daughter. But Ariel had trustingly accepted it, unaware there was any other kind of mother-daughter relationship until her own tiny daughter was born.
"She was frantic with worry that I might have been seriously hurt and she wanted me to be checked over thoroughly," Ariel explained, "just to make sure I was all right. That's when I found out I was going to have a baby. The doctor told me when I woke up."
"Then you didn't go to the Wilshire Arms that night because you were pregnant."
"No. I went because I..." Her voice trailed off. Why bring it up now, twenty-five years later? Nothing she could say would change what had happened. Nothing would bring back those lost years.
"Because you what?" Zeke insisted gently, watching her with dark, eager eyes.
"Because I wanted to tell you that I'd changed my mind," she said, abruptly deciding he deserved the truth, that they both deserved the truth. "I wanted to tell you that you were more important to me than my career or my image as America's sweetheart, and that I'd marry you whenever you wanted, without waiting to see if my contract had been renewed or not, regardless of what my mother said. No, don't," she said, when he reached for her. "Please don't."
But Zeke ignored her, drawing her into his arms and against his chest, holding her close as he had wanted to do that fateful night. And so many nights since. "I'm sorry," he crooned. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart."
She realized then, as she stood there with her face pressed against his broad chest, that she was crying. She could feel the wetness against her cheek, soaking into the silk of his shirt. She could feel his heartbeat, solid and strong, and her own, beating wildly in answer. She could feel his arms around her, warm and comforting; his breath, soft as a whisper against her temple; his big hands, rubbing slowly, soothingly, up and down the length of her spine. He meant his arms to be comforting, she knew, and his touch to be soothing, but she could feel the vibrant life and vitality and passion coming back into her body, called into being by the searing heat and virility of his.
She wanted to curl her fingers into the smooth, silky fabric beneath her hands and hold on for dear life. She wanted to burrow her face into his hard, comforting chest and bawl like a baby. She wanted to melt into him until neither of them knew where one began and the other ended. She wanted, desperately, to surrender to her feelings and the moment, giving free rein to everything he stirred in her and responding to every single thing he made her feel. She wanted to feel alive again, if only for one night.
She lifted her head from his chest, pushing back enough to look up into his face. "Zeke," she murmured, her voice husky and compelling. "Kiss me."
He looked down into her face for a long moment, the expression on his own a mixture of surprise and banked desire. And then he bent his head and touched his lips, very lightly, to hers.
It wasn't at all the kind of kiss she had in mind.
"No," she said, and slid her hands up over his chest to curl them around the back of his neck. "Really kiss me."
Zeke felt a bolt of pure electricity shoot down his spine, but he held himself back, remembering what had happened out by the pool when he'd recklessly given in to the needs she stirred in him. "The last time I 'really' kissed you, you made a pretty snide remark about my sexual habits."
"I'm sorry." She blushed, a combination of nerves and embarrassment. And excitement. "Your sexual habits are none of my business."
"Well, actually—" one corner of his mouth turned up in a wry, self-mocking, unconsciously sexy little grin "—if you intend to take this much further than a kiss, you'd better make it your business." He waited a beat but she didn't respond.
He wondered if he'd misread her intent, but she didn't move or draw away. She just stood there, looking up at him with a burning light in her eyes he'd never seen before.
Still, he hesitated, wanting but unsure. What was she really asking for? Was it just sex or something deeper? Was he going to end up with his heart all battered and broken again?
She started to draw away. "If you don't want me..."
"No." His arms tightened, holding her where she was. "I want you. God knows, I want you. I've always wanted you." He pressed his mouth to hers.
It was exactly the kind of kiss she wanted. Exactly. Hard and hot and ravenous. His tongue invaded her mouth, thrusting boldly, taking what she so desperately needed to give, gathering up her sweetness and her heat, giving it back tenfold. He licked at her lips, ran his tongue over the edge of her teeth, touched it to the sensitive roof o
f her mouth, telling her without words how urgently he desired her. It was a rapacious, voracious, eating kiss that went on... and on... and on... until her brain evaporated and her body melted against his. And still he kissed her, tasting, savoring, appreciating all the delicate tastes and textures of her willing mouth, seducing her into mindless, aching need with his kiss alone. She whimpered softly and pressed against him, needing more. So much more.
Without taking his mouth from hers, he slid one hand between them and released the two gold buttons on the front of her chic St. Laurent suit, then put his hands on her shoulders, blindly forcing her arms down from around his neck as he pushed the jacket off. As soon as it slid over the ends of her fingers, she put her hands back on his chest and slid them up and over his broad shoulders, under his jacket, pushing it down his arms to the floor. Catching his hands in hers, she lifted them to her lace-covered breasts, unable to wait another minute for him to do it on his own.
He cupped her breasts in his palms, squeezing gently. She moaned and bit his bottom lip, not quite as gently. He kneaded her through the lace of her bra, drawing his fingers together around the tip of each turgid nipple, making her gasp with pleasure against his lips. And then doing it again. And again. And again.
It was too much... too much. And not nearly enough. The heat in her was furnace hot now, intemperate and needy. So very, very needy. Mindless with the heat, she reached down and placed her hand over the hard bulge beneath the fly of his elegant Armani slacks.
He groaned and thrust himself into her palm, reaching down to press her hand more firmly against him for a moment. She curled her fingers beneath his and squeezed. Zeke stiffened and pulled her hand away, fighting for the control that was rapidly slipping away.
He had meant to use all the finesse at his command. He had meant to seduce and captivate and delight her with prolonged kisses and soft, lingering caresses. But her bold, hungry touch had pushed him over the edge. He was on fire. His heart felt like a blast furnace in his chest, burning up his brain, sending his blood sizzling through his veins, racing headlong down a path that led directly to his groin. And there was only one way to put it out. He had to have her. Now.
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