by Неизвестный
"But I can give you everythingl" he’d protested, stunned when she’d turned him down. ‘ ‘Money, prestige, entrance to the best social circles." He’d indicated the millions of twinkling lights below them. "Marry me, Leila, and all this will be yours."
He hadn’t understood that it was what she couldn’t give him that mattered, namely her heart.
"Or else what?" Dante prompted.
She met his gaze and saw the skepticism lingering in his eyes. "Because his pride wouldn’t allow him to be-lieve me when I told him I didn’t want what he was willing to offer," she said, "just as yours won’t allow you to believe me when I tell you that I love only you.’’
His glance slid away from hers at that and for a long while he didn’t say anything. He drummed his fingers on the edge of her desk. Went to the window and stared out. Cleared his throat and fiddled with the cord on the blinds. And eventually—finally—swung back to face her and with something approaching his old passion, said ruefully, "The poor bastard. No wonder he took off for Croatia. It must have seemed like heaven compared to the hell of not being able to have you."
She didn’t know who made the first move after that, nor did she care. All that mattered was that they met halfway around her desk and that he held her in his arms as if he’d never let her go again. And stroked her face as if she were the most precious creature ever born. And murmured words of love and apology and self-condemnation, mixing them all up with kisses full of hunger and flavored with fire.
But it wasn’t enough to ease the heartache or to erase the doubts and misgivings so recently endured. She needed more—tangible proof that her instincts when first she’d met him had been right; confirmation that destiny had always been on their side. She needed to recapture what they’d come too close to losing.
Goaded by fear and wishing she was more skilled in the art of physical loving, she clung to him, imprinting herself inch for inch against him and praying that she could incite him to the same raging hunger that con-sumed her. Because wasn’t it then, when a man and a woman shared the ultimate intimacy, that they opened their hearts to each other without reservation?
Or was it entrapment of the most ancient kind, a ma-nipulation of feminine power over a man when he was at his most vulnerable?
No! Ignoring the voice of conscience, she tugged at Dante’s shirt, freeing it from the waist of his slacks and opening it against his chest. With an aggression unlike any she’d shown before, she pressed her lips to the warm skin covering his heart. Flicked her tongue over his nip-ple. His response was swift and unmistakable. The leap of his blood pulsing through his veins, the urgent thrust of his flesh, the ragged, painful rasp of his breath, spelled only one message. She had succeeded beyond her wil-dest expectations. He was on fire for her. What chance had moral rectitude or self-preservation against such intoxication? Oblivious to the fact that the office cleaners could walk in at any moment and dis-cover them, she lay half sprawled beneath him on the desk, while the papers she’d taken all afternoon to sort into neat and separate piles fluttered to the floor like so many flakes of snow flying before the wind.
Her only awareness was of her hands frantic at his fly, of her skirt riding up around her hips and his finger reaching inside her panties to torture her.
She could not endure the cruelty. Driven wild by the heat of his mouth at her throat, at her breast, she whim-pered his name, only to lose the last syllable in an ex-plosive sigh of release as he spun her around and, brac-ing himself on the edge of the desk, pulled her astride him and drove into her.
It was not a graceful coupling. It was desperate and frenzied and undignified. Much later, when it was too late to repair the damage she’d done, she would realize that what she’d initiated in those too brief seconds had less to do with love than with desperation, but at the time she did not want to admit to such a thought. At the time she thought that the shuddering of his powerful body and her own molten surrender were enough to
erase the damage they’d inflicted on their relationship and a guarantee against future doubt and mistrust.
"I didn’t come here intending for this to happen," he said, when it was over.
"Are you sorry it did?"
He pulled her clothing into place again with great ten-derness. "I should be. There’s more to making a rela-tionship work than sex, yet when I’m around you I lose all perspective. You make me crazy, Leila. That’s all the explanation I can offer for acting like such a boor this morning? A grimace of disgust touched his mouth. "I don’t like to think of myself as a man given to violence but the thought of you with another man-"
"Please," she said, covering his mouth with her fin-gertips. "Let’s not go over it all again."
"No," he said, taking a small velvet pouch from his pocket. "Let’s not."
Thanks to her father, Leila knew a good deal about gems; enough, certainly, to recognize the superb quality of the diamond which Dante let slide into his hand. The clarity and cut of the stone were flawless, the elegant simplicity of its setting breathtaking.
"If you were wearing this," he said, slipping the ring on her finger, "everyone would know you belong to me."
An hour ago she had wept for all that she thought she had lost. Now sheer happiness brought her to the brink of tears again. Or had it all come about too quickly, too easily? Was this yet another example of willful naiveté
on her part?
"Now that I know Fletcher’s out of your life," Dante said, seeing her hesitation, "there’s no reason we can’t make our engagement official, is there?"
The question brought back all the demons which had haunted her earlier. They were trying too hard to make things right again. It would take more than a Band—Aid solution like a diamond ring to restore what they’d once shared. "Anthony isn’t out of my life, Dante," she said quietly.
"Why the hell not, if, as you claim, you’ve ended things with him?"
"I never said I’d ‘ended things’ I said I’d cleared up the misunderstandings?
"Same thing," he snapped, his eyes shooting sparks of tire. "Stay away from him, that’s all."
"No. He’s my friend and right now he needs me." Dante raked furious fingers through his hair. "He’s the reason you and I are off track, for crying out loud!"
"No, he isn’t," she said sadly. "You and I are the reason. And if you think my wearing your ring gives you the right to determine who my friends are, we’ll be staying off track."
"Damn it, Leila, I won’t tolerate this."
"Then go back to your import accounts and forget this," she said, taking off the ring and handing it back to "Because I don’t want a control freak for a hus-band."
"And I don’t want another man’s leftovers!" he bel-lowed. "Carl was right. You’re nothing but a cheap—" As though realizing he’d gone too far, he pulled him-self up short, but the damage was done. Newbury had been her declared enemy from the start, but that his poi-son had infected a man of Dante’s stature devastated her. Slowly, she stood up, though truth to tell she needed to lean against the side of her desk to counteract the dizziness that swept over her. "By allowing Carl Newbury to prejudice our relationship you have tainted every lovely thing we ever shared," she half whispered,
"and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for it." He looked ashamed, but too proud to reverse things before further rot set in. All it would have taken was an apology. Even at that late stage, if he could have bent enough to say, "I’m sorry," she would have forgiven him.
But she saw the stubborn cast to his mouth, the proud arrogant bearing, the unveiled anger in his eyes. So what was the point in prolonging the agony? In the space of a few minutes, he’d destroyed the most glorious months of her life. He was not the man of her dreams, after all.
CHAPTER SIX
DANTE hunched over the table and stared moodily into his predinner Scotch. He was in no mood for entertaining the clients who’d blown into town that morning on a moment’s notice from Buenos Aires.
From his se
at opposite, Carl Newbury alternated be-tween watching Dante and keeping an eye on the visi-tors, who’d gone out on the restaurant balcony with Rita and Gavin to admire the view.
At length he cleared his throat and said, "You seem preoccupied, boss. Down in the mouth, even." Small wonder! He’d always thought having five sis-ters made him an expert on women but, somewhere along the way, he’d obviously missed a lesson because he clearly hadn’t the foggiest idea what made the female mind tick. He couldn’t see what was so unreasonable about a man expecting his fiancée to abandon an ex-boyfriend, but the way Leila had reacted, anyone would think he’d asked her to trade in her firstborn.
Of course, he never should have brought Carl into things. He’d never set any store by the man’s opinions and knew the only reason he’d even mentioned his name had been a skewed attempt to give her back a dose of her own medicine.
"Dante? Anything wrong?" Carl never did know when to back off.
"I’m tired," he said, uncaring that he sounded short.
"A lot piled up while I was away and I’ve got enough on my mind without having to wine and dine overseas clients before my suitcase is properly unpacked.”
"Ah!" Newbury downed half his martini and pursed his lips in what Dante could only suppose was an at-tempt to encourage some sort of male bonding. "Would one of those things be Leila Connors—Lee, by any
chance?"
Three months ago, no one in the company would have dared ask such a question. That Newbury did now, with-out any attempt to disguise his bald—faced curiosity, both offended and infuriated Dante. "Where the hell do you get off asking me a question like that?" he snarled. Newbury reared back and raised his hands in exag-gerated surrender. "Hey, sorry if I was out of line. It’s just that...well ... "
The phoney reluctance didn’t fool Dante for a minute. Carl was onto something and itching to share it. "Well, what? You might as well finish what you’ve started, Carl. You’ve said too much to stop now."
The other man raised his eyebrows and took his time fishing the olive out of his glass before replying.
"There’s talk that you and our Miss Connors—Lee have had a falling—out. The way I hear it, she left your office in tears yesterday morning and has been pretty much incommunicado ever since. Naturally I assumed that business with the Fletcher heir had been the last straw and you’d finally seen her for the pushy opportunist she is."
Dante resisted the urge to plant his fist in the middle of Newbury’s self-satisfied face. He knew some of his colleagues thought he’d lost his marbles in the
Caribbean and was making a damn fool of himself. And in all fairness, he couldn’t deny that he’d given them cause.
Not normally a man given to reckless behavior, he’d indulged in one impulse after another from the moment Leila walked into his life and now he was paying the price. But he was damned if he’d sit meekly and let Newbury rub his nose in the fact. Which was the only explanation he could offer for what he said next.
"I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong, pal. Leila and I are as tight as ever. In fact, we’re all but engaged?
The lie was almost justified, if only to see the effect it had on Newbury. "Cripes," he bleated, and drained his glass. "When’s the happy day‘?"
‘‘Not for some time. ’ Stunned that he’d allowed blind impulse to coerce him into yet another untenable posi-tion, Dante attempted to brush the subject aside. Newbury, however, was not about to be sidetracked.
"I’ve got to hand it to you, Dante. You’ve got guts. Jumping into marriage after everything that’s hap-pened..." He shook his head, the gesture conveying a mixture of pity and contempt. "In your place, I’d have washed my hands of her."
Dante was under no illusions about Carl’s real feelings toward him. Unlike his vice president, who’d been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, and who’d added to his blue chip background by an advantageous marriage, Dante had reached the top the hard way, earn-ing his way through college on scholarships and taking part—time work wherever he could pick it up.
During the winter and spring semesters, he’d delivered take-out pizza in the evenings and on weekends.
Summers, he hired himself out to one of the logging camps, turning his hand to whatever job needed to be done as long as it helped pay the bills. Given the cir-cumstances, he’d had little other choice. What he didn’t have was a pedigree as long as his arm. He’d never had the time or inclination to join a fraternity, and when his father’s death had left his mother to raise five teenage daughters alone, he’d quit university and taken a job as a warehouse foreman, put-ting in eighteen—hour shifts, six days a week, to make sure the family had a roof over its head and bread on the table.
But he’d never given up on his dream to do better than his father and grandfather. Not for him a life of working to make another man rich. So when the oppor-tunity arose to learn the import business from Gavin Black and rescue Classic Collections from the brink of bankruptcy, Dante recognized his chance and grabbed it. He’d worked his way up to where he was today. Partner and CEO. On top. In charge.
He’d secured that place by exercising integrity and judicious restraint, not by blowing off about something on which he couldn’t guarantee delivery. So what did he think he was doing, announcing to Newbury of all peo-ple, that he and Leila were as good as engaged? In light of yesterday afternoon’s fiasco of a reconciliation, a con-genital idiot would have known better. Burying a sigh, he forced himself to acknowledge an-other painful truth. What he lacked in fancy letters be-hind his name, he made up for in bullheaded determi-nation and pride. He could put up with a lot from other people—nobody was perfect, after all—as long as they didn’t take advantage of his family or try to make a fool of him. That he’d allowed Newbury to push him into making a fool of himself he found both inexcusable and intolerable.
But did he back off? Take a little time to regroup?
Hell, no! Savvy, streetwise Dante Rossi blundered on, trying to cover his tracks and succeeding only in miring himself deeper in trouble.
‘‘I guess that’s the difference between us, Carl. I know a good thing when I see it," he said, staring Newbury in the eye and not backing down an inch.
"The question is, Dante, do you know enough?" Your pride won't let you believe I love you, she’d said when they were duking it out over Fletcher, and in his heart he knew she was right. Was he going to keep mak-ing the same dumb mistake over and over until he really had lost her for good?
"If this is still about Leila, I know everything that matters."
"When you say ‘everything,’ " Newbury put in smoothly, "does that include the part to do with her father?"
You don’t like to talk about your father, do you?
No.
Careful not to let it show that the question rocked his composure more than it should have, he said, "Her fa-ther’s dead."
"I know. It’s how he died-or more to the point, why, that concerns me."
"Well, it shouldn’t," Dante said, signaling the waiter to bring another round of drinks. "You’re not the one proposing to marry her, I am. And frankly, I find your curiosity more than a little odd. You take altogether too much interest in Leila’s business, you know that?"
"Perhaps you don’t take enough. I did a little back-ground research on her that I think you’ll find enlight-ening."
"I’d ask how you went about that, Carl, but I’m not sure I want to know."
"Oh, I didn’t do anything illegal, if that’s what’s wor-rying you. But we’ve got contacts in the Orient that go back a long way. One phone call was all it took to get the goods on a man as prominent as the late Mr. Henry J. Lee of Singapore. He offed himself, Dante, and left behind a pile of debt which his estate didn’t begin to cover and which his daughter is still scrambling to pay off." Newbury’s laugh came insultingly close to a sneer.
"The woman’s agenda is clear enough. She’s looking for someone to bankroll her, and if you ask me, you’d be a fool to hook u
p with her."
The contrary side of his nature had Dante wanting to see how far Newbury would dare to push him. The sane side decided to put an end to a subject which never should have been raised in the first place.
Leaning forward, he said in his deadliest tone, "But I’m not asking you, Carl. I never have, nor do I antici-pate a time when I ever will. Frankly I find Leila’s ob-jectives regarding her father’s debts admirable, so I’m not sure what it is you really have against her, apart from the fact that you think she robbed a buddy of yours of a promotion that was never coming his way to begin with. But I can promise you that if you continue this smear campaign against her, I won’t let the fact that you’re married to Gavin’s favorite goddaughter stop me from booting you out of this company so fast you’ll bounce. Do I make myself clear?"
Newbury’s discomfiture was almost comical. "You’ve misunderstood, Dante! My only concern is for you. I don’t want to see you taken to the cleaners."
"I can look after myself and you’d do well to remem—
ber that." Dante leaned back and smiled benignly. "I see our visitors heading back our way. Smile, Carl, and try not to look as if you’ve just discovered a bee up your ass."
He’d had the last word and left Newbury in no doubt about who was in charge. If only he could dismiss Leila as easily ....
He’d have given his right arm not to give a hoot in hell about her or anyone connected with her. But the damnable truth was, despite the fact that they were poles apart in how they saw things, he still wanted her. And would do just about anything to keep her. Because the thought of any other man taking his place was enough to drive him over the edge.
She managed to avoid Dante for the next couple of days, in part because he was occupied with his Argentinian clients but mostly because she simply wasn’t able to put in a full working week. Her nausea was just too severe, leaving her so drained that, by the Wednesday, she could barely drag herself home.