by Janet Dailey
The few minutes of inactivity had slowed her heartbeat to a more normal rhythm. Deborah freshened her lipstick and leaned back to survey the repaired product. Her mind flashed back to that first dinner with Foster Darrow so many months ago. His wife and daughter had been along that time.
After all these months of talks, dinners, cocktails, and endless negotiations, it was going to be settled tonight. She was nervous about the outcome. Not that it meant the project would fail without Darrow's financial backing. They would have to wine and dine someone else and more time would be lost.
Zane was tense, too. Not that he showed it. But Deborah had gained valuable insight into her employer that night the bronze mask he wore, had broken. She no longer accepted what she saw on the surface, but kept looking for the man. In critical situations, such as tonight, she had discovered that he had a tendency to smile with just one side of his mouth. It was an action that always appeared aloofly mocking—a don't-give-a-damn attitude. She suspected that he really didn't. Zane rolled high for the thrill of gambling. He liked the danger, the excitement and the risks of big business. He had poured his whole life into it, because there was nothing left for him outside of it.
It was a sad fact. He had an empty marriage. Deborah didn't pity him, because he wasn't the kind of man a person would pity. Neither he nor Sylvia was to blame for what had happened. Deborah realized that. From the very little she had gleaned from Tom on her first encounter with the unbalanced side of Sylvia Wilding, Zane's wife had never been very emotionally stable. The loss of a child, their only child, had been more than she could take. Not even Zane's strength had been enough to help her through it. That wasn't his fault. It wasn't anybody's fault, which was probably the hardest thing to accept of all.
Zane's poignant declarations of his needs echoed back to her, as they had done many a night since the one when he had whispered them to her a month ago. Deborah remembered how she had mocked Tom's inference of his monklike existence. Zane's murmured yearnings had added confirmation. But his obvious virility was so at odds with vows of celibacy and fidelity, that she had continued to doubt. She was ashamed to admit—even to herself—that she had engaged in some discreet snooping before she was finally convinced.
His personal address book contained no telephone numbers or names that weren't directly related to business or relatives. She had even got her hands on his personal bank statements for the past year. Every source she had checked revealed there weren't any women—either on a permanent or temporary basis.
Deborah gave herself a mental shake. She had promised herself she wouldn't think about his personal life, especially his love life. He was her employer and he was married … and that was the end of it. Zane had successfully managed to ignore the incident. He hadn't forgotten it. That was something her woman's instinct knew because there were times he watched her when he didn't think she knew.
Two women entered the powder room chatting noisily. It seemed noisy after the silence of her thoughts. Their intrusion served to remind her that it was time she was returning to the table.
Rising from the stool, she smiled distantly at the two women and left the powder room. Deborah wound her way through the crowded lounge to the table where the three men sat. They didn't see her approach until she was standing beside her chair. Belatedly there was an attempt by all three to stand, but she waved them down.
"With your hair down like that, you look like a girl ready to abandon herself to another polka," Foster Darrow declared jovially.
"It was simpler than trying to fix the other style," Deborah admitted, aware of the gaze from the man next to her inspecting her changed appearance. The look was almost a physical touch, but she did her best to appear oblivious to it. "As for the polka, it will have to wait until I've had a chance to quench my thirst."
"Dancing makes you dry," the financier agreed with a hearty laugh.
"Would you like a soft drink?" Zane leaned forward to make the inquiry. Deborah nearly jumped when she realized his hand was on the back of her chair. The accidental brush of his fingertips against the bare skin of her back sparked an immediate tingling of her flesh.
"No, this is fine," she insisted and reached for the watered-down gin and lime drink.
"Cigarette?" The financier offered her one from his case and lighted it for her. "I'm going to have to have a talk with the men of your generation. You are a beautiful and intelligent woman, Deborah. Some man should have snatched you up and married you a long time ago."
The sun-browned hand had been removed from her chair. Deborah leaned back, striking a pose intended to appear casual and unconcerned.
"I have always had ambitions of my own. I guess I've never met a man who put the thought of marriage in my mind." There was one man who could have, under different circumstances. Her gaze ricocheted to Zane and glanced just as quickly away from his narrowly veiled look. She leaned forward to tap her cigarette in the ashtray.
"Spoken like a true liberated lady," Foster smiled. "Complete unto yourself and not needing the support of a man. You're happy with your life as it stands."
"I wouldn't go so far as to say that." Her natural honesty wouldn't permit it. "In the mornings when I have to wake up alone and fix my breakfast alone, and sit down at the table alone, that's the time when I'm lonely as hell."
As she spoke, Deborah was studying the burning tip of her cigarette. It was a short distance from it to the face of the man sitting beside her. An inner force compelled her to look his way. She was trapped by a bright blue flame of understanding. It caught at her breath, stealing it from her.
She tried to deny the havoc that searing blue gaze was creating inside, and attempted to joke, "Of course, since I've worked for Mr. Wilding, I haven't had time to sit around the breakfast table feeling sorry for myself."
There was that crooked smile, that slanted lift of his mouth. "No, you generally wait until you get to the office to have your coffee and a Danish."
"Now you know my secret," Deborah laughed, only there was a tightness in her throat.
"Personally I can't eat when I first get up in the morning," Tom inserted and successfully broke the spell that had locked Deborah's gaze to Zane's. "I always have to wait a couple of hours."
"So do I," Foster agreed. "Now, my wife, she wakes up and immediately eats a gargantuan breakfast. I don't see how she does it."
The conversation digressed into a discussion of eating habits with Foster Darrow and Tom being the main participants. When Deborah crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray, the financier excused himself from the table.
Tom darted her a conspiratorial grin. "Maybe I should go bribe the band notto play another polka." Like Deborah, he had guessed where Foster Darrow was going and for what purpose.
"I don't mind," she shrugged in resignation. "You know what they say—keep 'em happy. That's my job."
"You were not hired, Miss Holland, to amuse prospective associates." Zane's voice slashed apart the lighthearted atmosphere, its low, rumbling tone ominous in its contained anger. "If you don't wish to dance with the man, you have only to refuse."
"I didn't mean that literally," she replied, just a little angry that he thought she was the type that would let herself be used in that way. "You should know that I'm capable of saying no to a situation I don't want."
Unconsciously Deborah had forced him to recall the night she had rejected his advances. Even in the dimness of the lounge, she saw him whiten at her reminder, the flare of his nostrils and the thinning of his mouth. She had struck a raw nerve that hadn't healed for either of them, and she regretted her words.
"And you were right to do so," Zane snapped.
His usage of the past tense caused Deborah to dart a quick glance at Tom to see if he had caught it. Foster Darrow chose that moment to return to the table and Tom had already been distracted by his approach. Deborah couldn't tell if he'd heard Zane's slip.
As the financier stopped beside her chair, the dance band struck up a polka tune. "The
y are playing our song, Deborah," the man joked.
To escape the table and the sudden tension between her and Zane, Deborah placed her hand in the one the financier proffered and rose to dance with him. She even managed a bright smile as she agreed, "So they are, Mr. Darrow."
When the song ended and the financier escorted Deborah back to the table, Zane began to press for a decision. At first, Foster Darrow appeared to resent the injection of business into what had all the earmarks of a social evening, regardless of its actual purpose. Deborah worried that Zane's timing was wrong, but within a short space of time, the financier was enmeshed in the details of the project. He didn't even notice when the band played another polka.
Her concentration wavered and Deborah missed the point in the conversation when Foster responded with an affirmative decision. The next thing she knew Zane was reaching in front of her to shake the financier's hand and clinch the deal. Dazed, it took her a few minutes to realize what had happened.
Elation at their victory was just surfacing as Zane uncoiled his length from the chair. "It's been a long day, Foster. I still haven't adjusted to the change in time zones. I'm sure you'll understand if we call it a night. Tomorrow is going to be even busier, flying back and getting all the necessary papers drawn up."
"I quite agree. It is late." The financier stood.
Tom was already standing, which left only Deborah seated. Belatedly, she rose, too. A hand settled on the curve of her waist, faint possession in its firmness. The burning contact of its warmth told her in advance that it belonged to Zane. Ostensibly his touch was innocent enough—to guide her from the lounge, but it sent a little pulse hammering in her throat. She was much too physically aware of him, all because of that one incident, and Deborah knew it had to stop.
"Good night, my polka partner." Foster Darrow clasped her hand in his stout fingers. "Be sure to have Zane bring you along the next time we meet."
"Of course," she murmured. "Good night."
The financier walked with them to the elevators in the hotel lobby. After a promise to be in touch within the next couple of days, he left and the copper-plated elevator doors swished closed to carry them to their suite of rooms. In total silence they made the ride to their floor. Deborah was bewildered by the lack of even mild jubilation.
Zane unlocked the door to their suite. It rivaled a spacious apartment in size. Besides three private bedrooms, there was a living room and dining room combined and a kitchenette tucked in a small alcove. Deborah remembered one of the first business trips she had taken with Zane, and her initial discovery that she was supposed to sleep in a bedroom in the same suite of rooms as Zane and Tom. At the time, she had wondered if she should request a private room on a different floor. All it had taken was one marathon session of paperwork that had lasted nearly all night, for her to appreciate the advantages of staggering from one room into the next to fall into bed. Besides, neither Tom nor Zane was given to nocturnal wanderings.
The hotel room door opened into the living room with its plush furnishings and even plusher carpet. Zane walked in and slipped the hotel key in his pants pocket. Deborah followed him, with Tom bringing up the rear. No one said a word.
"All this silence," Deborah finally burst out in disbelief. "Darrow said yes. Shouldn't we be celebrating or something? The way you two look, anyone would think he said no."
Zane didn't even acknowledge her comment with a glance, but Tom pivoted to look at her blankly for an instant. Then a wide grin split his face.
"Shall we polka?"
It was such a ludicrous suggestion that Deborah could only stare at him in amazed confusion. Before she could protest, Tom was swinging her into his arms and swirling her around the room in an absurdly exaggerated imitation of Foster Darrow, minus the benefit of music. The wild sense of humor of this apparently mild-mannered man had Deborah reeling with laughter.
"Stop, please," she begged, laughing so hard that she could barely breathe. When he had twirled her to the front of the apricot-colored sofa, he stopped to let her collapse on the cushions. "You're insane, Tom," Deborah declared as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
"Didn't you enjoy the dance?" He assumed an expression of mock regret, but the mischievous twinkle in his brown eyes belied it.
"You probably sounded like a herd of elephants stampeding, to whoever has the room below us," Zane remarked dryly.
"How can you say that?" Tom chided. "My partner is as light on her feet as a ton of concrete."
"Thanks a lot," she protested and lifted the mane of copper hair away from her neck, letting the coolness of the air conditioner reach her damp skin.
"We are a little too matter-of-fact about Darrow's agreement," Tom said, sobering unexpectedly. "I guess Zane and I were thinking about all the work that was ahead of us, and all the different phases that have to be put in motion now that we definitely have a commitment on the financing."
"You are right," Zane agreed. "So is Deborah. We should be celebrating. Since it's too late for room service, why don't you go down to the kitchen, Tom, and bring up some sandwiches or snacks and a bottle of Dom Perignon?"
"Excellent suggestion," Tom asserted with alacrity.
"Here." Zane handed him some bills. "You might have to do some persuading."
"Right." He started for the door. "I won't be long. Keep the party going until I get back!" With a cheery wave, he walked out of the hotel suite.
His departure exposed an undercurrent of electricity in the atmosphere that Deborah hadn't been aware of before. Now she felt it tingling along her nerve ends. The few seconds of silence that followed ticked loudly in her head. Her gaze swerved from the door to meet the unfathomable blue depths of Zane's eyes. He held her look for an instant, then turned to walk casually to an oak credenza along one wall of the living room.
"For once your outspokenness was well placed, Miss Holland," Zane commented. "If you hadn't said something about cerebrating, do you know what we would be doing now?" He slid her a lazy, sidelong glance, accompanied by a half smile that turned all her insides topsy-turvy.
"No." She shook her head, feeling the stiffness of her composure.
"We would probably be sitting at that table—" he nodded in the direction of the polished oak table in the formal dining end of the room "—and mapping out the completion schedule for different phases of the project, discussing permits and a half a hundred other details. Instead we are all going to relax for an hour or so, get some rest, and be fresh to tackle everything in the morning on the flight home."
"I hadn't thought about it like that."
"No, you followed your instinct. It was the correct one."
Deborah heard something click before Zane turned away from the credenza. He had taken several steps toward her before she heard the music and realized he had turned on the radio. By then he was standing in front of the sofa.
"Since Tom instructed us to keep the party going until he returned, will you dance with me if I promise not to ask you to polka?" He seemed to joke to take the seriousness out of his invitation.
What would he do if she said it was too dangerous to be in his arms, she wondered frantically. But how could she refuse when she had been the one to suggest they celebrate in the first place? No, Deborah knew she had to brazen her way through this moment as if she didn't care.
She forced out a laugh, "As long as that part about the polka is a promise, I'll accept."
Straightening from the sofa, she let herself glide smoothly into his arms, pretending a nonchalance she didn't feel. This time Zane didn't hold her at arm's length, but neither did he hold her close. Still, Deborah felt the disturbance of his nearness. It became essential to talk and not let the romantic music weave a dangerous spell around her.
"Tom continually amazes me," she declared. "On the surface he seems so quiet, but he's really a lot of fun, too. I'm probably not telling you anything you haven't already discovered. You've known Tom a long time, haven't you?" He seemed a safe subject.
/> "Yes." He ran his gaze over her brightly upturned face. "Are you and Tom having an affair?"
Deborah's first reaction was a startled, "What?" She followed it with an emphatic "No!"
"Is it so impossible?" His mouth quirked in a cynical line. "You are both unattached. You work together almost constantly. It would be natural for an attraction to spring up between you. Tom has a great deal of admiration for you. I have the impression the feeling is mutual."
"I do admire him," she admitted stiffly.
"But you aren't attracted to him?"
Her gaze was focused on the air beyond his shoulder. At the questioning sentence, her stormy gray eyes flashed an angry look at his face.
"If I was, would you suggest to him that he should go to bed with me to satisfy my libido?" she accused.
Deborah couldn't ignore the nasty suspicion that Zane was trying to steer her to Tom to avoid her becoming romantically attracted to him. It was totally unfair since he was the one who had made the advance the previous time. She had never encouraged Zane to believe she found him sexually attractive. It angered her to think that Zane might believe she was yearning after him.
The humiliating thought made her attempt to twist angrily out of his arms. "That isn't what I meant at all!" Impatience surged through his clipped response as he immediately tightened his hold to keep her from escaping.
The pressure he applied jerked her back into his arms, its force carrying her into his chest. The contact caught both of them off guard. Their dance steps ceased as Deborah's head was tipped back to let her startled gaze drown in his possessive look. She was arched against his hard flesh and bone, stunned by his raw masculinity, and unnerved by the tremors quaking within.
"Zane." His name came from her lips in a voice that was half-fearful and half wanting.
A muffled groan shuddered free of his throat as he lowered his head to savor the softness of her lips with his mouth. It was a slow, exploring process that melted her hesitancy. He adeptly coaxed her lips apart and probed the white barrier of her teeth until they, too, let down their defenses.