Strange Bedfellow

by Janet Dailey

  Gasping back a sob, she tried to roll away from him and reached the protective cover of the sheets and blankets. Blake thwarted the attempt, forcing her back, his weight crushing her to the unyielding mattress that had already bruised her muscles and bones.

  “No, Dina, I want to look at you,” Blake insisted in a voice husky with desire. “I imagined you like this so many times, lying naked in the bed beside me, your body soft and eager to have me make love to you. Don’t blame me for wanting to savor this moment. This time no screech of a jungle bird is going to chase away this image. You are mine, Dina, mine.”

  The last word was uttered with possessive emphasis as his head descended to stake its first claim, his mouth seeking her lips, kissing them until passion overrode her brief attempt at resistance. A languorous desire consumed her as he extended his lovemaking to more than just her lips. She quivered with fervent longing at the slow descent of his mouth to her breasts, favoring each of them in turn to the erotic stimulations of his tongue.

  Under his sensuous skill, Dina forgot the strangeness of his arms and the hardness of the rocklike mattress beneath her. She forgot all but the dizzying climb to the heights of gratification and the dazzling view from the peak. They descended slowly, not finding their breath until they reached the lower altitudes of reality.

  Dina lay enclosed in his arms, her head resting on his chest as it had when she had awakened. This time there was a film of perspiration coating his hard muscles and dampening the thick, wiry hairs beneath her head. Dina closed her eyes, aware that she had come very close to discovering her love for Blake again, its light glittered in the far recesses of her heart.

  Blake’s mouth moved against her hair. “I had forgotten what an almost insatiably passionate little wench you are.” His murmured comment suddenly brought the experience down to a purely physical level. What had bordered on an act of love, became lust. “I enjoyed it. Correction, I enjoyed you,” he added, which partially brought the light back to her heart.

  Crimsoning, Dina rolled out of his arms, an action he didn’t attempt to prevent. The movement immediately caused a wince of pain. Every bone and fiber in her body wag an aching reminder of the night she had spent in the hard-rock bed.

  “How can you stand to sleep in this bed?” Dina was anxious to change the subject, unwilling to speak of the passion they had just shared. “It’s awful.”

  “You’ll get used to it.” When Blake spoke, Dina realized he had slid out of bed with barely a sound while she had been discovering her arches and pains. Her gaze swung to him as he stepped into the bottoms of his silk pajamas and pulled them on. Feeling her eyes watching him, Blake glanced around. There was a laughing glint in his dark eyes as he said, “It’s a concession to Deirdre and her Victorian modesty this morning.”

  Dina smiled. Even that hurt. “What time is it?”

  “Seven,” he answered somewhat absently, and rubbed the stubble of beard on his chin.

  “That late?”

  Her pains deserted her for an instant and she started to rise, intent only on the thought that she would be late getting to the office unless she hurried. Then she remembered she no longer had any reason to go to the office and sank back to the mattress, tiredness and irritation sweeping over her.

  “Why am I getting up?” she questioned herself aloud. “It took me so long to get to sleep last night. Why didn’t you just let me keep right on sleeping?” Then he wouldn’t have made love to her and she wouldn’t be experiencing all this confusion and uncertainty, about herself and him.

  “You’d be late to work,” was Blake’s even response.

  “Have you forgotten?” Bitterness coated her tongue. “I’ve been replaced. I’m a lady of leisure now.”

  “Are you?” He gave her a bland look. “Your boss doesn’t think so.”

  “What boss? You?” Dina breathed out with a scornful laugh. “You’re only my husband.”

  “Does that mean you’re turning it down?”

  “What? Will you quit talking in riddles?”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t been so proud and stubborn yesterday morning and attended the meeting as I asked you to, you’d know what I’m talking about.”

  She pressed a hand against her forehead, tension and sleeplessness pounding between her eyes. “I didn’t attend the meeting, so perhaps you could explain.”

  “We’re starting a whole new advertising campaign to upgrade the image of the Chandler Hotel chain,” he explained. “We can’t possibly compete with the bigger chains on a nationwide basis, especially when most of our hotels are located in resort areas, not necessarily heavily populated ones. We’re going to use that fact to our advantage. From now on, when people think of resort hotels, it’s going to be synonymous with Chandler Hotels.”

  “It’s a sound idea,” Dina conceded. “But what does that have to do with me?”

  “You’re going to be in charge of the campaign.”

  “What?” Blake’s calm announcement brought her upright, wary disbelief and skepticism in the look she gave him. “Is this some kind of a cruel joke?”

  There was an arrogant arch to one dark eyebrow. “Hardly.” He walked around the bed to where she stood. “I put the proposal to the rest of the staff yesterday, along with the recommendation that you handle it.”

  “Is this a token gesture? Something for me to do to keep me quiet?” She couldn’t accept that there wasn’t an ulterior motive behind the offer. It might mean admitting something else.

  “I admit that picking you as my choice to head the campaign was influenced by the tantrum you threw in the office yesterday morning when you discovered I was taking over.” His gaze was steady, not yielding an inch in guilt. “But you can be sure, Dina, that I wouldn’t have suggested your name to the others if I didn’t believe you could handle the job. You can put whatever interpretation you like on that.”

  Dina believed him. His candor was too forthright to be doubted, especially when he acknowledged the argument they had had earlier. It surprised her that he had relented to this extent, putting her in charge of something that could ultimately be so to the company. True, she would be working for him, but she would be making decisions on her own, too.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this last night?” She frowned. “Your decision had already been made. You just said a moment ago that you told the staff yesterday. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

  Blake studied her thoughtfully. “I was going to tell you last night after we’d had our talk, but circumstances altered my decision and I decided to wait.”

  “What circumstances?” Dina persisted, not following his reasoning.

  “To be perfectly honest, I thought if you knew about it last night you might have been prompted to make love to me out of gratitude,” Blake replied without a flicker of emotion appearing in his impassive expression.

  There was an explosion of red before her eyes. “You thought I’d be so grateful that I’d…” Anger robbed her of speech.

  “It was a possibility.”

  Dina was so blind with indignant rage that she couldn’t see straight, but it didn’t affect her aim as her opened palm connected with the hard contour of his cheek. As the white mark turned scarlet, Blake walked into the bathroom. Trembling with the violence of her aroused temper, Dina watched him go.

  When her anger dissipated, she was left with a niggling question. If he hadn’t made that degrading remark, would she still be angry with him? Or would this have been the first step towards reestablishing the foundation of their marriage, with Blake recognizing that she had the talent and skill to be more than a simple housewife? Hindsight could not provide the answer.

  At the breakfast table, their conversation was frigidly civil.

  “Please pass the juice.”

  “May I have the marmalade?”

  That fragile mood of shy affection they had woken up to that morning was gone, broken by the doubting of each other’s motives.

  When both had finishe
d breakfast, Blake set his cup down. “You may ride to the office with me this morning,” he announced.

  “I would prefer to take my own car.”

  “It’s impractical for both of us to drive.”

  “If you had to work late, I would be without a way home,” Dina protested.

  “If that should arise, you may have the car and I’ll take a taxi home,” he stated, his demeanor cold and arrogant.

  Dina was infuriatingly aware that Blake would have an argument for every excuse she could offer. “Very well, I’ll ride with you.” She gave in with ill grace.

  The morning crush of Newport traffic seemed heavier than normal, the distance to the office greater, the time passing slower, and the polar atmosphere between them colder than ever.

  Feeling like a puppy dog on a leash, Dina followed Blake from the parking lot to his office. There she sat down, adopting a business air to listen to specific suggestions that had been offered by Blake and the staff for the campaign. It was a far-reaching plan, extending to redecorating some hotels to meet with their new resort image.

  At that one, Dina couldn’t help commenting caustically, “I’m surprised I’m not limited to that task. Decorating is woman’s work, isn’t it?”

  The thrust of his frigid gaze pierced her like a cold knife. “Do you want to discuss this program intelligently? Or do you want to bring our personal difficulties into it? Because if you do, I’ll find someone else for the job.”

  Her pride wanted to tell him to find that person, but common sense insisted she would ultimately be the loser if she did. The project promised to be a challenge, and Dina had come to enjoy that. Her pride was a bitter thing to swallow, but she managed to get it down.

  “Sorry. That remark just slipped out.” She shrugged. “Go on.”

  There was a second’s pause as Blake weighed her words before continuing. When he had concluded, he gave her a copy of the notes from the staff meeting and a tentative budget.

  Dina glanced over them, then asked, “Where am I to work?”

  “I’ll take you to your new office.”

  She followed him out of the office and walked beside him down the long corridor until they came to the end. Blake opened the last door.

  “Here it is.”

  The metal desk, chair and shelves seemed to fill up the room. Three offices this size could have fit into Blake’s office, Dina realized. And that wasn’t all. It was cut off from the other staff offices, at the end of the hall, isolated. She could die in there and nobody would know, she thought to herself.

  Blake saw the fire smoldering in her blue eyes. “This is the only office that was available on such short notice,” he explained.

  “Is it?” she retorted grimly.

  “Yes —” he clipped out the word challengingly “— unless you think I should have moved one of the executive staff out of his or her office to make room for you.”

  Dina knew that would have been illogical and chaotic, with records being shifted and their exact location possibly unknown for several days. Still, she resented the size and location of her new office, regardless of how much she accepted the practicality of its choice. But she didn’t complain. She didn’t have to, since Blake knew how she felt.

  She looked at the bare desk top and said, “There’s no telephone?”

  “Arrangements have already been made to have one installed today.”

  “Fine.” She walked briskly into the room, aware of Blake still standing in the doorway.

  “If you have any questions —” he began in a cool tone.

  Dina interrupted, “I doubt if I will.” The banked fires of her anger glittered in the clear blue of her eyes.

  His gaze narrowed, his expression hardening. “You can be replaced, Dina.”

  “Permanently?” she drawled in a taunting kitten-purr voice.

  For an instant she thought he might do away with her violently, but instead he exhibited that iron control and pivoted to walk away. There was a tearing in her heart as he left. Dina wondered if she was deliberately antagonizing him or merely reacting to his attempted domination of her.

  Pushing the unanswerable question aside, she set to work, taking an inventory of the supplies on hand and calculating what she would need. After obtaining the required items from the supply room, she began making a list of information she would need before drawing up a plan of action for the advertising campaign.

  At the sound of footsteps approaching the end of the hallway, she glanced up from her growing list. She had left the door to her office open to lessen the claustrophobic sensation, and she watched the doorway, curious as to who would be coming and for what reason.

  Chet appeared, pausing in the doorway, a twinkle in his gray blue eyes, an arm behind his back. “Hello there,” he smiled.

  “Are you lost or slumming?” Dina questioned with a wry curve to her lips.

  He chuckled and admitted, “I was beginning to think I was going to have to stop and ask directions before I found you.”

  “It’s certain I’m not going to be bothered with people stopping by to chat on their way someplace else. This is the end of the line,” she declared with a rueful glance around the tiny office. “Which brings me to the next obvious question.”

  “What am I doing here?” Chet asked it for her. “When I heard you were exiled to the far reaches of the office building, I decided you might like a cup of hot coffee.” The arm that had been behind his back moved to the front to reveal the two Styrofoam cups of coffee he was juggling in one hand. “At least, I hope it’s hot. After that long walk, it might be cold.”

  “Hot or lukewarm, it sounds terrific.” Dina straightened away from the desk to relax against the rigid back of her chair. “I shall love you forever for thinking of it.”

  She had tossed out the remark without considering what she was saying, but she was reminded of it as a discomfited look flashed across Chet’s face.

  “I guess that brings me to the second reason why I’m here.” He lowered his head as he walked into the room, not quite able to meet her gaze.

  “You mean about not meeting me yesterday and sending Blake in your place,” Dina guessed, accurately as it turned out

  “Yes, well —” Chet set the two cups on the desk top “— I’m sorry about that. I know you didn’t want me to tell Blake and I wouldn’t have, either, except that he was in my office when you called and he guessed who I was talking to.”

  “So he said,” she murmured, not really wanting to talk about it in view of the discussion she had with Blake last night regarding Chet.

  “Blake didn’t lay down the law and forbid me to go or anything like that, Dina.”

  “He didn’t?” she breathed skeptically.

  “No. He asked if you sounded upset,” Chet explained. “When I said that you did, he admitted that the two of you were having a few differences and he thought it was best that I didn’t become involved in it. He didn’t want me to be put in the position of having to take sides when both of you are my friends.”

  Friends? Dina thought. Just a few days ago, Chet had been her fiancé, not her friend. But he looked so pathetically sorry for having let her down yesterday that she simply couldn’t heap more guilt on his bowed head.

  Instead she gave him the easy way out. “Blake was right, it isn’t fair to put you in the middle of our disagreements. If I hadn’t been so upset I would have realized it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.” She shrugged. “It all worked out for the best.” That was a white lie, since it almost had, until their blowup that morning.

  “I knew it would.” The smile he gave her was tinged with relief. “Although I wasn’t surprised to hear Blake admit that the two of you had got off to a rocky start.” He removed the plastic lid from the cup and handed the cup to her.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “The two of you were always testing each other to see which was the stronger. It looks like you still are.”

  “Which one us is the
stronger? In your opinion,” Dina qualified her question.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” His laughter was accompanied by a dubious shake of his head. “A feeling of loyalty to my own sex makes me want to say Blake, but I have a hunch I would be underestimating you.”

  In other words, Dina realized, Chet was not taking sides. He was going to wait until there was a clear-cut winner. In the meantime he was keeping his options open, buttering up both of them.

  The minute the last thought occurred to her, Dina knew it had been influenced by Blake’s comment that Chet was always beside the one in power. But she immediately squashed the thought as small and not deserving of someone as loyal as Chet.

  “You’re a born diplomat, Chet.” She lifted the coffee cup in a toast. “No wonder you’re such an asset to this company.”

  “I try to be,” he admitted modestly, and touched the side of his cup to hers. “Here’s to the new campaign.”

  The coffee was only medium hot and Dina took a big sip of it. Chet’s reference to the new project made her glance at the papers, notes and lists spread over her desk.

  “It’s going to be quite a formidable project.” She took a deep breath, aware of the magnitude of the image change for the Chandler Hotel chain. “But I can feel it’s right and that it will be very successful.”

  “That’s the third reason I’m here.”

  Her startled gaze flew to his face, her blue eyes rounded and bright with inquiry. “Why?”

  Had she made Blake so angry that he was already taking her off the campaign? Oh, why hadn’t she held her tongue, she thought, angered by the way she had kept pushing him.

  “Blake wants me to work with you on it,” Chet announced.

  Her relief that Blake hadn’t replaced her didn’t last long. “Doesn’t he think I’m capable of handling it by myself?” Her temper flared at the implied doubt of her ability.