She was still tempted to give him one. After all, this was her apartment and she'd fed him and been perfectly civil ... well, perhaps not perfectly civil, but still... It was just prolonging the inevitable, she recognized. He wouldn't go until he'd had his say and she was suddenly very tired.
"All right, Dain. Say what you must, and then go. It's been a long, tiring day." She was afraid to add the concomitant and I’d like to go to bed. He had shown himself distractible and she didn't plan to distract him right into her bedroom!
They sat down on the couch and Keri tucked her feet up beneath the full skirt of her dress. Dain didn't try to crowd her—he sat a cushion's width away—but his arm lay along the back of the couch, his hand just a touch away from her shoulder. She was uncomfortably conscious of the nearness of that hand.
"You said you'd had a long day," he said obliquely. "Would you like to tell me what made it longer than usual? When I cametack to the office to collect some files and you at five past five, you were gone. I had to draft Mrs. Covey to take notes and her shorthand is slow. Are you going to turn into a clockwatcher?"
Keri was cautious. His words were superficially jesting, but the tone was probing and serious. She said carefully, "My normal hours are from 8:30 to 5:00. I hadn't been notified that you would want me to work overtime to- night"
Dain dropped the indirect approach. "Elise Barth will get her notice tomorrow." Keri risked a sideways glance at Dain. He wasn't looking at her just then, but rather staring across the room into space. His face was set in.
"You . . . you've heard something," Keri forced through dry lips.
"Heard something? Heard something! I've heard sly snickers and veiled innuendos and Barkley even jabbed me in the ribs with his elbow."
It really wasn't fanny. Dain was furious and the situation could prove explosive. She wasn't sure just how to defuse it, but she had to try.
"How did you connect Elise with. She gestured expressively, unable to put the whole wretched situation into words.
"It wasn't hard," he replied grimly. "I'm not blind, you know. I knew she fancied me, but I didn't fancy her." Keri sucked in breath at this masculine arrogance and gave Dain a look of pure dislike. It was wasted because he wasn't looking at her. "I knew she wasn't going to take kindly to your . . . ah . . . transformation, but I thought she'd have more sense of self-preservation." He looked at her directly. "And don't quote the old saw about the ment. All that I asked of her was that she be a competent secretary and keep her personal feelings to herself. What
I do in my private life is no concern of hers. She meddled and she hurt you, so she has to go."
"But how did you hear?" Keri pursued.
"Barkley's secretary is evidently a crony of Miss Barth's and she passed on some choice tidbits of fallacious reasoning brewed up by my ex-secretary. Barkley was in turn merely congratulating me on my good fortune." Dain's voice was heavy with irony.
Keri wasn't listening to the irony. She was nearly beside herself with rage. She hated Dain and she hated Mr. Bark- ley and she hated the whole smug masculine assumption that, were she attractive enough, a secretary cum mistress could be considered one of the perks of an executive's job! At least Schyler had offered her marriage!
It nearly choked her, but she knew what she had to say. "You aren't going to fire Elise. If you fire her you'll only add fuel to the speculation. If everything remains the same, the gossip will die away quickly and I've already taken steps to make sure it'll go no further."
It would be too much to expect that he would just accept her word on the matter and not pursue it further. After all, she was the injured party. Dain had started to object when a thought seemed to occur to him.
"What steps?" he questioned with evidence of great interest.
Keri wasn't going to repeat any of those conversations verbatim. "Never mind," she said hastily. "I spoke to Elise and one of her friends. I can assure you that the story will go no further and Elise will do all in her power to repair the damage. If you fire her, you'll lend veracity to her gossip, so just leave it alone. I promise that Elise's daws have been cut."
A belated thought struck Dain. "Elise doesn't have the flu, does she?" He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. "You must have gotten finished with her just before I came in.
She looked wiped out." He came to a decision. "I think you're right. You won't have any more trouble with her. D'you want to take over her job and put her in with Mrs. Covey? I'd like to have you in the outer office."
Keri stared at him in disbelief. He was offering her a choice instead of merely saying "Thus it shall be." Elise's collapse must really have impressed him. It didn't make any difference. She didn't want to be in the outer office, whatever Dain might want. Elise was welcome to be front woman.
For the duration of her stay, and the probable duration grew shorter with each passing day, Keri was determined to maintain a low profile. Keri was going to have another talk with Charles in the near future. With his contacts in the State Department she could have her choice of embassies or legations anywhere in the world, and any part of the world except the Washington, D.C., area looked mighty good to her tonight. And she wouldn't go as a secretary. She'd arrange to take her Foreign Service rating exams and once she left RanCo, she'd make sure she was on the other side of the desk from now on! It had taken a long time for the lesson to sink in, but it was well rooted at last.
Dain was waiting for her answer. "No, thank you," Keri declined politely. "I don't think it would be a good idea to make any changes in the office hierarchy at this.
He snorted. "So you prefer to run my office from behind the scenes, do you? Well, all right. Just keep Elise in line. It won't be for too long anyway." She looked at him suspiciously, but his face was now relaxed and bland. She hugged her own secret plans and agreed. "No, it won't be for long." Let him read what he would into that simple statement.
He didn't seem to like what he read. With a decisive movement he came closer to her on the couch, catching the back of her neck in a gentle but inexorable grip to prevent her escape. His fingers again wove their way into her thick hair and gently pulled, tilting her face up so that she was forced to look directly at him.
"Somehow," he mused, "I don't think we mean the same thing when we say, It won't be for long.' You wouldn't be planning to seek other employment in the near future, would you? And perhaps disappear from the area, leaving no forwarding address, hmm, my sweet?"
Keri tried to keep a look of blank incomprehension pasted over her face, but she didn't think she was succeeding. She was feeling the magnetic pull of Dain's attraction too strongly. She wished he'd go home!
"You seem to have a habit of skipping out, Keri, darling," he stated insistently and persuasively. "You wouldn't be thinking of becoming some other man's secretary, now would you?"
His fingers were now stroking firmly up and down the back of her neck. It should have relaxed the tense muscles back there, but the touch of his hard fingers was having the opposite effect. She had to brace herself against responding to the warm seduction of his expert massage. "No, Dain, I don't plan to become another man's secretary," she managed to say in slightly breathless tones.
"Now why don't I feel satisfied with that answer?" he spoke his thoughts aloud. "I think because it leaves so much unpromised, Keri," he concluded. "You wouldn't care to expand on the scope of your promise, would you?" It was practically a royal command.
Keri braced herself. "No." She refused bluntly. She hated to give so much away, but she wouldn't lie to him, nor would she make any promises she didn't intend to keep.
"Ah-ha." He didn't seem surprised. "Charles, I presume. Have you spoken to him yet? Or hasn't there been time?" Still that hand stroked gently up and down her neck.
"There hasn't been time," she admitted grudgingly. She wanted to tell him it was time for him to go home, but she didn't quite dare. A strange tension was rising between them, coiling and tightening with each exchange of words. She was afraid that
one wrong word would spark a reaction from Dain which she couldn't, or wouldn't, handle.
"Any particular country in mind or are you just going to take pot luck?" Now there was a sharp bite to his question and the hand had stopped stroking gently. His hand moved down across the top line of her shoulder, exploring the bare expanse of skin before it journeyed to clasp the point of her shoulder.
Suddenly she realized that he was sitting right next to her, his thigh pressed warmly (and warningly?) against her own. She wasn't exactly sure how this had come about I —she hadn't noticed his further encroachment—but here 1 he definitely was.
"I haven't got any country in mind," she protested a bit feebly. "I just thought that . . ."
She wasn't allowed to get another word out. "Don't think, Keri," Dain ordered. "It'll just get you into trouble." And his mouth swooped down to close off further words and thought.
When she surfaced for the first time it was to the realization that his kisses became even more devastating with increased exposure. Familiarity bred a desire for more familiarity. She sank beneath the onslaught of his expert seduction for a second time.
He never gave her a chance to think, to protest. Each deep, probing kiss sapped her will to resist further. His tongue touched and tasted, sipping the nectar of her mouth like a honeybee dipping into a fragrant flower. He sucked her lower lip gently into his mouth and caressed the pouted fullness with a gentle, questing tongue tip. The corners of her mouth, the line of her upper lip, all were traced and teased until her mouth was softly swollen, aching for his further possession.
When he lifted her, positioning her across his lap, Keri merely looped an arm behind his back and sank again down the ladder into the deep well of passion, for the third time, without a murmur of complaint. As he whispered, "Oh, God, you're beautiful, Keri, darling," she stroked the hard line of his jaw, enjoying the beginnings of his beard, a texture which didn't scrape, but felt excitingly masculine.
She wondered... and then she felt the drag, sensuously rough, of his cheek across the tender skin of her breasts. She was supported by his left arm, stretched out across his lap, and his right hand had been stroking the warm skin of her throat. With an unhurried motion. He stroked down beneath the loose top to cup her breasts, and his mouth followed in hungry pursuit to capture the pink-brown crest of the ripe mound his fingers so lovingly molded. The crawing pressure of his lips sent an electric tingle shooting down into the pit of her stomach where it arced and flared into a deep, burning holocaust. He started to slide the sleeve of the dress down her arm.
She whimpered, a sound of mindless acquiescence. She was his for the taking . . . and the phone began to ring. "Leave it," he whispered, lifting his head slightly and then returning to his preoccupation. She tried, but the insistent summons began to pull her up, rung by painful rung, back into the air of sanity. The waters of passion receded slowly, but he could feel the altering character of her response.
Keri struggled to surface. "Dain, the phone. I must . . ." She sat up dizzily, and he sighed. With reluctant fingers he helped her adjust her dress and boosted her up off his lap.
"Next month don't pay your phone bill," he ordered her half fiercely.
Keri walked unsteadily to the kitchen and lifted the receiver. She held it to her ear and said, "Hello?" in a husky croak. Her throat didn't seem to be working properly.
She turned back to look at Dain, a bewildered expression on her face. "There wasn't anyone there. They hung up." She held the receiver in her hand as though not quite sure what to do next. Her mental processes were laborious, still hazed by her deep submersion in passion. She shook her head slightly, as though to clear it.
"Hang up the phone, Keri," he ordered softly. "Come back here to me."
Keri's brain was clearing fast. She hung up the phone, but she didn't go back into Dain's waiting arms. She wasn't sure of much right then, but the one thing she did know was that if she got within five feet of him she was lost. Now that sanity was returning she wasn't sure that she wanted to be lost. She might never find her way again.
"Come here, darling," he repeated softly. She was so lovely, the soft folds of her long gown swirling gracefully down to the floor and her eyes huge and still drowsy with the lingering remnants of desire. The scent of her perfumed skin still drifted around him, but it was poor substitute for the satin warmth of her body.
"No, Dain. No and no." Her voice was stronger. She was regaining control rapidly. "I shouldn't have . . . we shouldn't have I won't come back. And you stay right where you are!" But he showed signs of coming to her instead.
He sank back on the couch, a rueful smile creasing the corners of his mouth. "All right, Keri. Remind me to sell my AT&T stock tomorrow."
She grinned slightly at this sally and managed to retort, ' Really? I planned to buy more. Marvelous invention, the telephone. I wouldn't be without one."
"Point taken, Keri." He looked very serious and said quietly, "Don't call Charles for a while, Keri. Promise me that you'll wait and that you'll talk to me before you start pulling strings. Give me a little time."
"Time for what, Dain?" Time to complete what you just started? she questioned herself silently.
"Time for you to learn to trust me, Keri. You don't now, do you?"
He still lounged at ease on the couch, across the room from her, but the tension was starting to build between them again. She could feel the caress of his eyes and she knew that if she didn't get him out of her apartment right now, she would soon have good reason not to trust him.
"No, I don't trust you, Dain," she admitted candidly.
But may it comfort you to know that, after this episode, I don't trust myself either." There was no reason not to admit it, because she truly couldn't deny her willing participation in the events of the past minutes. She certainly hadn't struggled wildly for her virtue!
"And now, if I'm to learn to trust you, I suggest that it's time for you to go."
"Have I your promise?" he insisted as he rose obediently to his feet.
"I don't know, Dain," she replied in a troubled voice. "If I give it, it will only be a conditional promise at best. I can't promise not to talk to Charles, but I will promise not to do so just on the basis of whatever gossip is currently being circulated about us."
"So I'm to be put on my best behavior," he said grimly.
"If you want to call it that," she agreed stiffly. "I prefer to see it as a desire not to see the situation at work exacerbated further."
"Damn it, Keri, it's my company!"
"Damn it, Dain, it's my reputation!" She continued. "You may own the company, but you don't own the employees' tongues, nor can you control them. It isn't practical to fire everyone who gossips about us. I prefer to give them nothing damaging to gossip about"
"I refuse categorically to call you Miss Dalton at work," he protested, but she knew she'd won.
"I shall call you Mr. Randolph, however," she said firmly.
"All right, Keri. In the office. But I'll make the rules out of the office," he promised darkly.
"You can try," she said demurely and then grinned wickedly. "Go on home, Dain, and let me get some rest."
He gathered up his coat and said formally, "Thank you for the meal, Keri. It was delicious ... all of it"
She blushed, delightfully he thought, and opened the front door. "Out, Dain!" He stopped before her and tipped up her chin with a long forefinger. "I'll see you tomorrow, Keri." He kissed her lips gently, making no demands.
"I don't suppose you'd like to go back abroad and buy another company, would you?" she asked a trifle wistfully.
"Certainly," he agreed promptly. "When can we leave? I'll even let you pick the company and the country. I've never bothered to travel with a secretary before. I can tell it would be a great convenience . . . dictation taken at all hours of the day and night."
She threw up her hands in despair and shoved him out the door. She heard his chuckle as she closed it firmly behind him and locked th
e deadbolt. He was finally locked out of her apartment but he wasn't easily banished from her thoughts, and, she suspected ruefully, from her dreams.
Keri cleaned the kitchen for the second time and as she was drying her hands, the phone rang again. This time she got to it by the second ring.
"Hello?"
"Where have you been? I called earlier."
"None of your business, Schyler. I'm not accountable to you." She was short with him, but not as short as she might have been because she owed him. How delicious to know that it had been a call from Schyler that saved her from Dain.
"I've been in New York, but I'm back now. I want you to go out with me this weekend. I have tickets for the Kennedy Center for Saturday night, and we'll have dinner a: the Tavern in Georgetown." He sounded supremely confident.
"I shall send you a hearing aid because you are obviously hard of hearing. I am not going anywhere, anytime with you, Schyler." She nearly screamed into the phone.
"I'll pick you up at seven thirty, Keri," he said, ignoring her angry exclamation completely. "Good night, my darling." He hung up.
Keri threw the phone receiver back into its rest. "I hate men! All men, in every shape, size and form. I . . . hate . . . men!" That outburst did little to relieve her feelings. She flounced off to bed.
The next morning she went to work spoiling for a fight. She couldn't find any opponents, however. Elise was still out with "flu" and Dain called in to say that he would be away from the office until mid-afternoon. Since Bridget Covey declined the honor of manning the outer office, it fell to Keri, little as she desired it.
The morning passed quietly and Keri calmed somewhat. She no longer desired the head of any man who crossed her path, served up on a plate. She would be content with just Schyler's, well garnished with parsley. Talk about people who couldn't take a hint . . . Schyler wouldn't know a hint if it blew up in his face.
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