Difficult Decision

by Janet Dailey

  Her hand left his shoulder to curve into the virile thickness of his midnight-black hair and force his head down so she could know the full possession of his kiss. She was crushed to him, male hands igniting flames of excitement on the soft curves they caressed. She felt his mouth moving over her face, demanding and relentless, tantalizing and seductive by turns. Deborah pressed her hips more firmly against his thrusting thighs—needing, wanting, aching with the same primitive passions that burned him.

  Incapable of coherent thought, Deborah could not reason out the right or wrong of her actions. She was dominated by the pure sensual impact of the embrace. The potent, masculine smell of him enveloped her senses. His mouth, hands, and tongue made her limbs weak with desire. The seething chaos of her emotions permitted only the urgent need to be part of this vital man to register on her mind.

  Swept into the dangerous whirlpool of mindless passion, neither one heard the door being unlocked or opened. Tom's voice was cold water on the flaming embrace. "Refreshments are served on—" His bright announcement was abruptly broken off at the sight of them locked together, even as his words ripped them apart.

  Deborah's face flamed scarlet under his shocked look. For a moment, nobody spoke or moved. Then Zane took a step forward, inserting himself between Deborah and Tom.

  "I hope you brought some champagne, Tom," he said in a remarkable even voice. "I think we all need a drink."

  "Yes." Tom's voice was a thin thread at first, but gradually gained strength as he wheeled the serving cart into the room. "Yes, I have champagne. There is a tray of sandwiches here, too. Chicken salad, cheese, and ham. Potato chips and some sort of avocado dip."

  Deborah almost wished Tom had asked all the questions she knew were buzzing in his head, but he was taking his lead from Zane and pretending he hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary. God, she thought wildly, they don't really expect me to eat or drink anything, do they? But Zane was already taking a cocktail sandwich from the tray and biting into it while Tom popped the cork on the champagne bottle.

  "What will you have, Deborah?" Zane asked, shooting her a veiled glance to see if she had recovered.

  At least he hadn't referred to her as Miss Holland. Deborah thought she would have broken into hysterical laughter if he had. She made her shaky legs carry her to the serving cart draped with a white linen tablecloth. She remembered some old saying about chalk and cheese.

  "Cheese, I guess." Her hand trembled slightly as she took the little larger than bite-sized sandwich from the plate. It tasted like chalk when she bit into it. Then Tom was putting a champagne glass in her hand. She briefly met his eyes and saw the flash of concern in his gaze before he looked away.

  "Here's to the new project." Tom lifted his glass in a toast.

  They all clinked their glasses together and Deborah tried hard not to let her gaze linger on the strong, male hand with the sprinkling of black arm hairs curling out from beneath his shirt cuff. It was harder, still, not to remember that same hand had been caressing and molding her hips to his, only moments ago. The devastating force of his touch was still too vividly with her.

  The next twenty minutes became a total mockery, a farce. Everyone talked about the project and the successful financing arrangements, but no one said a word about what was really on their minds. What remained unspoken filled the suite with a tension that scraped a Deborah's nerves.

  Tom refilled his champagne glass and grimaced after taking a sip. "The champagne has gone flat."

  "So has the party. We're all tired so why don't we call it a night," Zane suggested.

  "Yes," Deborah was quick to agree. "We have to be up early in the morning so we can pack and fly home." She set her glass down, catching out of the corner of her eye the darting look Tom divided between them. She didn't give his suspicions a chance to form as she turned and tossed a careless goodnight over her shoulder and walked directly to her private bedroom.

  After closing the door, Deborah didn't bother to turn on the light. Instead she undressed in the darkness and slipped into her cotton nightgown. Tom's self-consciousness had been so obvious. She knew he had been wondering if she was going to sleep with Zane. She had no one to blame but herself for the direction his thoughts had taken. Deborah was well aware that she had been a very willing participant in that embrace that Tom had walked in on. If he hadn't returned when he did, she had the uncomfortable feeling that she might have been even more embarrassed.

  Where was her control? She had always been a fairly levelheaded person, never getting carried away by her emotions. Those terms certainly couldn't describe her behavior tonight. She was a bloody fool. Zane Wilding was not only her employer but he was also a married man. What had possessed her?

  As she climbed into bed, she heard the doors to the other bedrooms open and close. She stared at the ceiling. It wasn't going to be easy to sleep tonight, not the way her conscience was troubling her, and not with the realization that Zane was in the next bedroom.

  Her arms felt so empty. Turning onto her side, Deborah pulled the spare pillow to her and wrapped her arms around that. It was too soft, its feel not at all reminiscent of the hard, male torso she ached to hold. She closed her eyes tightly and a hot tear squeezed out through her lashes.

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  Chapter Seven

  ROOM SERVICE ARRIVED with three orders of a continental breakfast fifteen minutes after the wake-up call. Deborah took her coffee, juice and roll into her bedroom to have while she finished her packing. Zane and Tom would have theirs at the table, but she wasn't ready to face them. Besides, she had noticed the faint shadows under her eyes when she'd put on her makeup. It was an obvious betrayal of the sleepless night she'd spent. Secretly, she hoped the coffee and orange juice would have a reviving effect and chase away those shadows before anyone noticed them.

  She drank her orange juice while she packed her cosmetics in their individual bag. The coffee was still too hot so she ate half of the Danish roll and threw the rest in the wastebasket. She was folding her clothes and placing them in the suitcase with meticulous care in order to prolong the whole process of packing, when there was a knock at her door.

  "Who is it?" she paused, feeling something flutter in her stomach.

  "It's Tom. May I come in?"

  Deborah hesitated only a second before responding with an offhand, "Of course." She heard the click of the latch, but she didn't turn around.

  "I called downstairs for a bellboy," Tom said, walking into her room.

  "You can have my suitcases in a minute. I'm almost finished." She continued with her packing, smoothing the material of a skirt she had just laid into her suitcase.

  "Deborah."

  Something in his tone made her mentally brace herself. The muscles in her stomach knotted with tension as she held her breath. A splintering pain shot through her chest. She wished fervently that Tom would leave.

  "Yes?" Deborah tried so desperately to appear absently curious as she gave him a brief glance over her shoulder before resuming the folding of her clothes.

  He cleared his throat a little nervously. "I don't normally butt my nose into anybody's private life," he began.

  "Then don't start now," she retorted, much sharper than she intended.

  "This time it's different. It involves two people I care about a lot."

  "Tom, don't." Deborah stopped pretending to fold the slip in her hands and clenched it tightly against her middle.

  "I know this sounds like a line out of some old movie, but if I ever had a kid sister, I think she would have been like you. And I wouldn't be much of a big brother if I didn't warn her when I can see she's heading for trouble."

  Her eyes were so dry they hurt. "Tom, honestly, I know you mean well and I'm flattered that you care about me, but I don't need a big brother. I—"

  "Don't fall in love with Zane."

  The blunt warning pivoted Deborah around. "I haven't." Not yet anyway, she qualified the thought.

  "He'
ll never leave Sylvia. Not for you. Not for anybody." The sadness and firm conviction in his brown eyes reached out to her.

  Deborah felt cold, icy cold inside and hopelessly empty. "I think I guessed that." Her voice wavered into a whisper.

  "Don't get involved with him," Tom warned again. "His marriage to Sylvia will only tear both of you to pieces. You'll both be worse off than before."

  "Yes," she swallowed the lump choking her throat. "I think I guessed that, too."

  From the vicinity of the living room, there was the sound of someone knocking on the door to the hotel corridor. Zane called from another room. "Tom, that's the bellboy. Let him in."

  "Right!" Tom shouted back, but paused to look at Deborah. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," she insisted. "I'm a big girl. I've weathered storms like this before. I can do it again."

  "Chin up," he instructed with a lopsided smile and walked out of her room to answer the door.

  THE PRIVATE LEAR JET was streaking across the sky, too high to cast a shadow on the Grand Canyon R flew across. Thunderheads billowed in the Rockies to the north, but the sky surrounding the jet was clear and the eastern horizon ahead was sapphire blue. The air was smooth. The only turbulence in the atmosphere was inside the plane.

  Tom was seated at a desk in the plush interior of the private jet, running up figures on his electronic calculator. In a cushioned armchair, Deborah was writing out a series of memos to be typed and sent to the various department heads when they arrived at the corporate offices later on. Each reference to Mr. Wilding that appeared in the memo caused her pencil to hesitate on the paper. It was caused by the wincing of raw nerves.

  "How are you coming with those memos?" Zane stood beside her chair.

  Her head jerked toward him, but not ail the way, avoiding contact with his gaze. Deborah tried her professional voice. "I have two left." It worked admirably. "Did you want to dictate those alternatives to solve the environmental questions now? I can finish these later."

  She didn't immediately get a response as he turned the chair in front of her around so that it was angled toward hers instead of away. As he folded his length into it, she couldn't help noticing the absence of his suit jacket and tie. The white of his shirt was stretched across his chest, hinting at the rippling muscles that bunched beneath it. Her pulse skittered in an erratic tempo. Taking his action as an affirmative answer, Deborah flipped to an empty sheet on her steno pad to begin taking down his dictation.

  "The efficient Miss Holland." The grimness of his voice sounded almost censuring. Her startled gaze lifted to meet the hard glitter of his eyes. "She not only has her hair pulled back all primly in its bun, but she also has the waspish crispness back in her voice."

  "I wear my hair in this style to keep it out of the way when I'm working," she began.

  "It looks better loose," Zane interrupted, a muscle working in his jaw.

  Oh God, she didn't want to know that. Taking a breath, Deborah glanced quickly down to the steno pad on her lap. He had leaned forward in the chair, which brought his face much too close.

  "As for my tone of voice, I'll speak however please. And wear my hair however I please," she asserted and kept her gaze firmly downcast. "Did you wish to dictate those alternatives, Mr. Wilding?"

  "Deborah." His low voice carried a ring of exasperation along with a silent plea. But she refused to respond to the tug on her heartstrings. She wasn't his puppet. Determinedly, she kept air emotion out of her expression, aware of his searching gaze. At last, Zane let out a long sigh. In the limited range of her vision, she saw him flex his hands on his knees, then lace them together.

  "Tom gave you a brotherly lecture this morning, didn't he?" The expectant tone of his voice said he anticipated an affirmative answer. Perhaps Tom had already admitted as much to him.

  Deborah didn't see any point in denying it. "Yes, he did." She kept her answer very matter-of-fact.

  "Tom is an intelligent, perceptive man. His counsel is always based on the soundest of reasoning. I've rarely known him to be wrong. He never gives advice unless he knows what he's talking about."

  Zane seemed to be hammering his point home and a numbness inched through her at the invisible blows. She managed a terse, "I believe that."

  Keeping her gaze averted from his face, Deborah wished he would get to the point and quit torturing her with all this talk that she didn't know how to take. If he wanted to get a message across to her, why didn't he just come right out and say it?

  As if reading her mind, Zane asked a husky question. "Are you going to take his advice?"

  Stunned by his unexpectedly frank question, Deborah's gaze jerked to his face. The probing search of his narrowed blue eyes explored the tormented uncertainty of her gray eyes. Wordless, she couldn't force an answer from her strangled throat.

  The sculpted bronze of his features became taut with the strain of control. "Stay away from me, Deborah … for both our sakes."

  Before she could respond to that crushing order, he was swinging out of the chair and striding across the carpeted floor of the aircraft. Resentment flared through her. How dare he put the burden of that on her? She had never been the one to make the first move. She had never flirted with him or invited his advances. Why was it her responsibility to make sure it never happened again? She was not a sultry temptress trying to lead him astray. She was the victim, not the seducer.

  Tom intercepted her glaring look and sent her a quizzical glance. Deborah quickly avoided it, pretending she hadn't seen it and flipped back the pages of her steno pad to the memos she had been writing. She tried to bring her concentration back to bear the task, but she wasn't very successful.

  SKIMMING THE PREVIOUS PAGE of the report, Deborah checked to make sure she hadn't omitted any facts as she combined three department studies into one overall view. She flexed her shoulders and back tiredly and felt a prickling sensation along her spine. She guessed the cause, her sensitive radar signaling its awareness of Zane's gaze on her.

  In a quick, sidelong glance, she took note of the figure behind the large oak desk. Zane was leaning back in his chair, making no pretense of working. A haunting grimness shadowed his craggy male features and the winter steel of his eyes. The emotional strain of pretending there were no turbulent undercurrents between them became more than Deborah could take.

  "Will you quit watching me?" she flashed in disturbed annoyance, fixing her frowning gaze to the pencil notes on her desk.

  "It's after five. You can finish drafting that report tomorrow. You may go home, Miss Holland."

  There was that dreaded "Miss Holland" again—so cold and so formal. It cut to the bone. Once she had worked until well after dark, but since that flight from California, Deborah began having what seemed like banker's hours. No more late nights. No more working until well after everyone else in the building had gone home. Only twice had she stayed late, and both times Tom had been there to act as a chaperon.

  Deborah wanted to argue against his order to leave, but she invariably lost such battles. Instead, she reached down to pick up the slim, feminine briefcase she had recently purchased.

  "I'll finish this draft tonight at home." Snapping open the case, she arranged the papers and notes inside.

  "It isn't necessary." Zane rolled out of his chair with a leashed sort of fury, even though his voice was evenly controlled. He walked to the small closet and removed her coat. "I'm not sending you home to work. You should be going out on a date."

  He held her coat to help her into it. Deborah hesitated, then slipped her arms into the sleeves. "Maybe I should, but I don't happen to have a boyfriend or a lover to take me out."

  It was a stiff, almost curt response. As he slid the coat onto her shoulders, his hands paused to clasp her bones. It was an inadvertently possessive grip that altered quickly into a kneading caress that made all her defenses melt. Deborah closed her eyes to savor the feel of his touch. All her sexual and emotional frustrations surfaced with a powerful yearn
ing to have the promised fulfillment of his embrace.

  "I think we're kidding ourselves," she declared in an aching whisper. "I should hand in my resignation and get as far away from you as possible."

  "No." It was a choked protest that he shut his teeth on.

  At the ring of the telephone, Deborah wrenched out of his hold to answer it, grabbing the receiver as if it were a lifeline. "Hello. Mr. Wilding's office." She heard the strained pitch of her voice, but there wasn't anything she could do about it now.

  "Deborah? Is that you?" her mother's voice responded.

  "Mom." Her startled recognition was followed instantly by alarm. "Is something wrong?" Deborah had never known her mother to call her at work before, so her first thought was that there was some emergency.

  "Yes. I haven't talked to you in ages." Behind the amused voice was a thinly veiled reproof. "Since you're always at the office working, I decided if I wanted to hear your voice, I'd have to call you there."

  "Actually I was just leaving to go home to my apartment."

  Her eyes strayed to Zane, but he had turned his back to her, although Deborah knew he was listening. Would she have been on her way home if her mother had called a few minutes later? Somehow Deborah thought it was a question that she would never know the answer to. That charged minute when his hands had held her was gone. The fuse had blown and the lights had gone out.

  "Do you have any idea how long it's been since I heard from you?" her mother asked.

  "Didn't you receive the check I sent you this month?"

  "Oh, yes," her mother admitted dryly, "I received the envelope from you with the check in it, but there wasn't even a scrawled note in it saying, 'I'm fine.'"

  "I'm sorry, mother, but I've been … very busy."

  "Is something wrong, Deborah?" In the shrewd question there was concern.

  "No, of course not," Deborah denied that quickly.