by Sandra Field
However, everyone they passed wanted to say good-night and thank him for a great party, conversations from which Reece extricated himself with rather less than his usual expertise. But finally they made it to the lobby and the valet disappeared to get his car. Lauren slipped into the passenger seat, Reece put his foot to the accelerator and they surged away from the hotel.
Lauren said flatly, “Thank God that’s over. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard in all my life.”
It was as though she’d flung cold water in his face. So she’d been acting all along, he thought furiously. Right down to the blush. He said in a voice from which he removed any trace of emotion, “You did a fine job. Deception comes easy to you.”
She shot him an unfriendly look. “You’re no slouch in that department yourself.”
“Isn’t corporate ethics considered a contradiction in terms? As opposed to artistic integrity, that is?”
“You’re spoiling for a fight, aren’t you?” she fumed. “I’m only too happy to oblige. Every person in that hotel ballroom thinks you and I are having a scorcher of an affair. And when I disappear from your life next week, they’ll assume you dumped me. Because, of course, no woman in her right mind would give up the opportunity to get her greedy little paws on your millions.”
“On day eight,” Reece snarled, “we’ll stage the grand-daddy of all rows plunk in the middle of the Vancouver airport, and you can tell me to go to hell. You can shout it from the bloody rooftops as far as I care. The fight at least won’t be acting and the press can have a field day with me being the dumpee rather than the dumper.”
He pulled up with a jerk at a red light. Lauren said in an odd voice, “But you hate gossip.”
“Not as much as I hate acting,” Reece declared, and wondered what on earth had possessed him to say that.
He glanced over at her. She no longer looked angry. Instead she was staring down at her hands, which were linked in her lap. In a small voice she said, “You weren’t acting some of the time. Are you going to leap on me as soon as we get to your place? Because if so, I’ll get out now and go to a hotel.”
Rather a lot of her hair had tumbled down her neck; she looked tired and unhappy. He quelled an uprush of compassion, saying coldly, “You dress in slinky black crepe, fall all over me and expect me to behave like that chunk of wood you’re carving? I’m a normal red-blooded male, for Pete’s sake.”
“And I’m passably pretty.”
So she’d noticed that particular deception. “I take that back. You really are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, sure.”
“It’s the truth!”
Her head jerked up; he noticed with another of those disconcerting surges of emotion that she’d chewed some of the lipstick from her bottom lip. “You know what?” she declaimed. “I don’t have a clue when you’re telling the truth and when you’re lying yourself blue in the face.”
The lights changed. He drove across the junction and said impatiently, “You think I’ve got you all figured out?”
She sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter, does it? This is only about acting, and there’s only a week to go. But you haven’t answered the question. Are you going to leap on me, Reece?”
“No.”
Her fingers were still twisting in her lap. “Can I trust you?”
He said with cold fury, “I’m not into rape.”
“At least admit that I’m smart to be asking the question.”
His own anger died. “I’m six inches taller than you and eighty pounds heavier. Yeah, you’re right.”
A faint smile lit up her face. “Thanks.”
It wasn’t part of the next seven days for him to start liking her. “Ten minutes and we’ll be home,” he said repressively.
“You’ll be home—I won’t.”
“Give it a rest, Lauren.”
Conspicuously she said not one more word, gazing out of the window as they drove toward the park. As Reece pulled up outside his condo, he said, “Try not to look as though you hate my guts in front of the doorman, okay?”
Her eyes glittering, she said, “But, honeybunch, your body drives me mad. Surely that includes your guts.”
He wanted to laugh at her audacity; he wanted to kiss her senseless. He did neither. Rather, he walked around the hood of his car, helped Lauren out with the air of a man who had seduction on his mind, and, his arm snug around her waist, said good-night to the doorman. The elevator door opened and closed behind them. Reece dropped his arm, moved away from her and said in a clipped voice, “Tomorrow night is a private dinner party in Shaughnessy Heights. Three other couples. I’m wearing a business suit. Be ready by seven.”
“I’ll set the beeper on my watch to go off at six,” Lauren said with equal crispness. “That way I won’t forget.”
He was easily forgettable. That was the message. Swiftly Reece unlocked the door of his condo and stood back for her to precede him. She said, her back to him, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sweet dreams,” he said ironically, and watched her hurry across the living room with none of her usual grace. He then stripped off his tie, poured himself a stiff whiskey and flipped on the television movie channel. Comedy. Drama. Violence. It didn’t matter. Anything to distract him from Lauren’s body and his ferocious need to possess that body.
What he mustn’t forget was what a consummate actress she was.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE following evening Lauren marched into the living room of Reece’s condo at ten to seven. Tonight it was Reece who was going to be late, she thought irritably, and tried to focus on a delightful Chardin oil painting hanging beside a Stieglitz photograph.
The key clicked in the lock and Reece walked in, hauling at his tie and flinging his jacket on the nearest chair. Then he saw her and for a moment stopped dead. “You’re on time.”
“I’m not always late.”
“But you’re always argumentative… I’m going to have a shower. Ten minutes. Help yourself to a drink.”
She didn’t need a drink. She needed to stay stone cold sober the entire evening. She picked up the small sketch pad she’d brought from her room and started copying a Picasso stroke for stroke. Reece Callahan was nothing to her. Nothing.
If Wallace were alive, he should be down on his knees to her in gratitude.
If Wallace were alive, she wouldn’t be here.
Her sketch was a disaster and her fingers were cold. She tossed the pad on a wing chair and went to stand by the window, blind to the panoramic view of Stanley Park and the snowcapped Rockies. Then Reece came back in the room. He was fiddling with a gold cuff link, his shoulders very broad in his pristine white shirt, his damp hair curling over his ears.
“My turn to be late tomorrow night,” Lauren said.
“You’ve got the night off tomorrow—I fly to Seattle for meetings and won’t be home until nine or so.”
She didn’t try to mask her relief. Reece said curtly, “The following morning we leave for Whistler. Don’t wear an outfit like that for the Japanese delegation.”
Don’t tell me what to do, she thought. “You don’t like what I’m wearing?” she purred, fluttering her lashes at him. “But you bought it for me, remember? You said you couldn’t wait to get me home and tear it from my body.”
“If the market ever dries up for bronze sculptures, you could make B-grade movies,” Reece jeered. “Let’s go. Our host’s name is Brian, his wife’s Bianca, and she’s the one who’s out to get me.”
“No accounting for taste,” Lauren remarked, and picked up her black wool shawl from the chair, throwing it around her shoulders.
“Smart move, wearing that shawl,” Reece said, ushering her out the door. “So you won’t catch pneumonia.”
Her jade-green top did show rather a lot of cleavage. Her wide-legged silk pants swishing softly as she walked toward the elevator, Lauren said amiably, “If you’ve got it, flaunt it, and the level of this conve
rsation is definitely B-grade.”
He pushed the button for the ground floor; then his gaze wandered to the creamy curves of her collarbone, and the shadow between her breasts. “Oh, you’ve got it.”
Color crept up Lauren’s cheeks. She’d worn this outfit before and thought nothing of it. Why should Reece Callahan make her feel as shy and uncertain as an adolescent? She found herself longing for the evening to be over before it had even begun; to be alone in her bedroom, away from a man who unsettled and infuriated her. Then Reece took her by the shoulders, his lips drifting down her throat to the hollow at its base. Her pulse leaped, then began to race with frantic speed. The elevator doors opened.
She said in a venomous whisper, “The doorman’s nowhere in sight. You can quit right away.”
Against her skin he murmured, “Security cameras—this is for their benefit.”
The waft of his breath jangled every nerve she possessed. She lifted her fingers to stroke his thick dark hair, discovering it to be unexpectedly silky to the touch, and said shakily, “Darling, we’re already late.”
As he moved away from her, his arm brushed the fullness of her breast; her indrawn breath was no act, Lauren realized with a lurch of her heart, and felt her nipples harden. Hurriedly she drew the shawl around her body and almost ran outside to Reece’s car. How could her body betray her by responding to a man she both disliked and feared?
Frigid was a word Sandor had thrown at her more than once during their stormy relationship; in the ensuing months and years, not one of the men she’d dated had tempted her to have an affair. Her conclusion had been inevitable: sex wasn’t for her.
Not that she was contemplating having sex with Reece. That was out of the question.
“You’re very quiet,” Reece said, starting the car.
She shivered. “There’s no audience.”
“Are you cold?”
She huddled into her shawl. “No. Thanks.”
“Sometimes you behave like a Victorian virgin,” he said, whipping out into the traffic. “And how’s that for a laugh?”
Ridiculously, Lauren felt tears prickle at the backs of her eyes. But she never cried, and she wasn’t going to start with Reece Callahan. She said with sudden fierce honesty, “I’m so tired of all the innuendoes and sneers from men who believed Sandor’s version of events without even asking me if I had a different version. You’re just like them, Reece—I’m condemned before I even walk in the room. Not that I give a hoot in hell what you think about me…and that’s the last word you’re getting out of me until we arrive.” Ostentatiously turning her face to the window, she closed her eyes.
She didn’t fall asleep, she was too riled up for that. But she didn’t cry, either. When eventually they pulled into a long curve of driveway, Reece said evenly, “We’re here.”
Lauren sat up, opened her purse and checked her lipstick. “I’ll do the best I can this evening because of Wallace. Just don’t forget it’s an act, will you?”
He said with dangerous softness, “Lauren, when I kissed your throat, I felt your pulse race. That wasn’t an act.”
“More proof that I’m easy—that Sandor’s right,” she said bitterly, and climbed out of the car. A Tudor mansion loomed in the darkness; she disliked it on sight, and stalked toward the huge oak door with its insets of mullioned glass. Fake beams, fake glass and fake woman, she thought, and rounded on Reece, her eyes glittering. “You know what? I hate the sight of you.”
His answer was to bury his hands in her tumble of loose curls and kiss her hard on the mouth. As the front door opened, Reece released her so quickly that she staggered, turning a stunned face to her host. She said weakly, “You must be Brian,” and held out her hand. It was, she noticed, trembling slightly.
With a courtesy she had to admire, Brian ignored her confusion. “Hello, Lauren, welcome to Stratford House…Reece, come in. Oh, here’s Bianca. Darling, this is Reece’s friend, Lauren Courtney. You’re from Manhattan, am I right, Lauren?”
Bianca was a voluptuous brunette who looked ready to throttle her, Lauren thought with distant humor. Bianca must have seen that kiss on the front step: a kiss from which Lauren was still inwardly reeling. It had been so sudden and so shocking that she’d had no time to react. Wasn’t this even more proof that all those horrible accusations Sandor had hurled at her were still true? Frigid. Ungenerous. Heartless. On and on they’d gone, and she in her vulnerability had believed him.
Desperately she tried to pull herself together, praying Reece was in ignorance of her response. Or rather, her lack of it. Because, of course, he’d kissed her hoping Bianca would see. All part of the act.
With a superhuman effort Lauren managed to sound relaxed. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Bianca.”
“Do come in,” Bianca said with minimal warmth. Then, her voice changing, she added, “How are you, Reece? Lovely to see you. Let me get you a drink while Brian introduces Lauren to our other guests.”
Divide and conquer, Lauren thought shrewdly, and tucked her arm into Reece’s. “I’m actually rather thirsty, Bianca. We had to rush around so we wouldn’t be late, didn’t we, darling?” she said, smiling besottedly up at Reece.
There were sparks of blue fire in his eyes as he lifted her fingers to his lips, kissing her knuckles with lingering pleasure. “Until I met you, I was known as Mr. Punctuality,” he said. “Right, Brian? Lead the way, Bianca. I’ll introduce Lauren to the rest in a few minutes.”
Lauren knew she was blushing. All the better, she thought wildly. It adds veracity. And I’ll make darn sure Bianca doesn’t put arsenic in my wine.
As they followed Bianca into a paneled library where an imposing oak bar and a great many horse brasses took precedence over the books, Reece winked at her. Impulsively she winked back, bumping him gently with her hip and watching his irises darken. His strongly carved lips curled in a smile; his eyes weren’t at all like ice. Was it act or reality? Desire or deception?
Did she really want the answers?
With all the social ease and charm she was capable of, she engaged Bianca in conversation. When they went into a living room dominated by overstuffed furniture, she kept her arm tucked into Reece’s and interspersed her remarks with adoring looks and endearments. What did it matter that the other guests would label her a clinging vine? That was the deal she’d struck.
The food was excellent, the wine flowed freely, and the conversation sparkled. Lauren was seated across from Reece. As she took the last spoonful of raspberry torte, she glanced over at him. He was laughing at something Brian had said, and as though she’d never seen him before, his image imprinted itself on her mind: his white teeth and tanned face, alive with strength and intelligence; the lock of dark hair falling on his forehead; the entirely masculine vitality that infused every one of his movements. Handsome, sexy, and utterly male. How could she ever have thought him a cold fish?
He spells danger, she thought blankly. Maybe the reason she hadn’t really looked at him before had been pure self-protection. Because if she’d looked, she’d never have embarked on this crazy scheme.
Six more days. She’d be all right. Of course she would.
The party broke up at one a.m., Reece and Lauren being the last to leave. Again Lauren did her imitation of a clinging vine, neatly foiling Bianca’s attempt to corral Reece and show him the new solarium. As soon as they were in his car with the doors shut, she announced, “You owe me, buddy. Big time.”
He laughed, putting the key in the ignition. “Did you ever play interference in football? You’d be a natural.”
“You’re the one built like a football player,” she said incautiously.
“Don’t tell me that’s a compliment?”
She’d drunk rather too much Cabernet Sauvignon and in the semidarkness she didn’t feel the slightest bit frigid. “I believe it is,” she said. “Imagine that.”
“Seriously, Lauren, you did wonders this evening. You kept Bianca from eating me alive and no one else ev
en realized what was going on. Thanks.”
“Beyond the call of duty?” she said with a cheeky grin, and slid her feet out of her elegant pumps with a sigh of relief. “That’s better—my feet are killing me. I’ve been scared to take my shoes off at dinner parties ever since someone swiped my shoes during the speeches at a reception I once went to. I had to walk out in my stockinged feet with my nose in the air, as though it was the latest fashion to go unshod to fancy parties.”
Reece threw back his head, laughing all the way from his belly. “I promise I’ll always protect you from shoe thieves, my darling Lauren.”
My darling Lauren… Lauren said primly, “That’s very nice of you, Reece.”
Still chuckling, he began asking her about the reception. From there they moved to a Broadway play they’d both seen, and before she knew it, they were back at the condo. Reece opened the car door on her side. Then he leaned over and picked her up, straightening and heading for the lobby. “Put me down,” Lauren croaked.
“Your feet are hurting. It’s the least I can do after Bianca,” he said, and smiled at the doorman. The elevator doors opened and shut. In its gleaming gold walls, Lauren gazed at the outline of a tall dark-clad man holding a woman whose hair rippled over his sleeve, and felt herself tremble with what was surely desire.
Desire? Her?
I don’t desire him, she thought frantically. I can’t! This is a business arrangement, it’s only going to last a few more days. I mustn’t get involved. Anyway, I hate sex. Sandor saw to that.
She wriggled in Reece’s arms. “You can put me down now. No one’s watching.”
He tightened his hold. “This is nothing to do with the doorman,” he said, carrying her out of the elevator and along the thick carpet. Stooping slightly, he inserted the key in the lock and then kicked the door shut behind him. “Stop squirming,” he said thickly, “it’s driving me nuts.”
She squirmed all the harder. “Reece, put me down!”