Desperate Measures

by Linda Cajio

  “Yes. I’ll do that. I said I would.”

  “And I said I was sorry about Uncle Thomas’s misunderstanding.”

  She narrowed her eyes for an instant, her body tensing. Watching her, he figured his family must have grated even more than he had thought.

  Finally she sighed and relaxed again. “I know. But you should have told him the truth about me, Joe. Then this wouldn’t have happened.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration at the twin urges to shake her and kiss her. Both sounded satisfying. “I told him you were helping me with Mario. I thought he understood. How was I to know he had jumped to conclusions and assumed we were involved with each other and that’s why you were helping me.”

  She waved a hand. “I guess it couldn’t be helped. Joe, I do understand that you have to keep up this farce for a little while longer—”

  “It’s not a farce, Ell. Just a dinner invitation.” Joe scrambled for something to get her to agree. Maybe she only needed a little push. After all, her protest sounded halfhearted. “I merely asked you to have dinner with me tonight. What’s wrong with that? Mario’s ‘contained’ for the moment, so why don’t we relax and get to know each other better?” Her body tensed again, and he knew he’d made a mistake. Backtracking, he added, “I’d like to do something to show my appreciation for all your help.”

  “Then send me flowers.”

  “I’ll pick you up at eight,” he snapped, his exasperation getting the best of him. Why couldn’t just one thing be easy with her? Because she’d been hurt as very few people had, he answered himself.

  “Joe—”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “No. I’m not ready.”

  He stared into her wide eyes. Why wouldn’t she acknowledge what was between them? He corrected himself. She acknowledged it. The problem was she was afraid to do something about it.

  “You’d better hurry,” he said, grinning. “You’ve got a little more than four hours to get ready. I’d walk you to your car, but that would give you time to think up an excuse. And I’m not accepting excuses today. Remember that.”

  He walked away through the double doors before she could protest his Neanderthal tactics. He should have known a simple invitation to dinner wouldn’t be so simple with Ellen. Nothing worth having ever was.

  “But she’s not here, Joseph.”

  Joe gaped at Ellen’s grandmother as she stood in the doorway of her Gladwyne home. He was dimly aware of a slow flush of anger rising up his neck to his face. He hadn’t once considered that Ellen might stand him up.

  “I’ll wring her neck,” he finally said.

  “I assume from that remark that she was supposed to be here,” Lettice said, eyeing him.

  “I told her I would pick her up at eight for dinner,” he replied, numb with the shock of her defection. He should have realized she would panic. He’d pushed too hard. Suddenly he was angry with himself. “How could I be so stupid?”

  “One does wonder.” Lettice took the bouquet of flowers from his stiff fingers. “We might as well get these in water before you crush the freesias and daisies any further. You better come in, Joseph. You look as though you could use a drink.”

  The offer was surprising coming from the dragon lady, but he didn’t have time for it. “Where is she?”

  “Not until you’re calm. Now come inside.”

  The imperious tone penetrated the red haze that was building inside him. He opened his mouth to say he was calm, but Lettice had already turned on her heel and was walking back into the house. He had no choice but to follow her—if he wanted to know where Ellen was.

  Lettice took him into a little solarium off the kitchen. It was filled with plants of all kinds, and Joe stared at the vibrantly colored orchids in bloom along one wall. She stopped at a work counter and began to fuss with the bouquet.

  “There’s a bottle of whiskey and some glasses in that cabinet there,” she said, dipping her head to her left.

  “No thanks.”

  “Then make one for me. A little water and no ice. Ice ruins a good grain.” She smiled slightly. “I learned that in Scotland.”

  Joe swallowed back his impatience and made the drink. He handed it over.

  Lettice took a healthy sip, then said, “Actually, I don’t know where she is.”

  He glared at the older woman. “Then why didn’t you tell me that before—”

  “Because you’ve turned her upside down, young man,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “She ran out of here as if it were the great escape. Any fool can figure out there’s something between you two. I want to know exactly what it is.”

  Joe felt as if someone had just punched him in the solar plexus.

  Lettice chuckled. “Took the wind out of your sails, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “Then I’ll take them out some more. What are your intentions concerning my granddaughter?”

  “I …” He paused. “To be honest, I don’t know. I only know she turns me upside down. I’m willing to go wherever it leads. And in case this is the reason for the third degree: I don’t give a damn that her family came over on the Mayflower or that she has enough trust funds to bankroll an entire country. I’ve got my own money and my own name, and I like them just fine.”

  Lettice gazed at him. He gazed back.

  “I’ll accept that,” she said at last. “And if you hurt her, I’ll come after you with everything I’ve got. She’s been hurt too much.”

  “I know,” he said. He was beginning to like Ellen’s grandmother.

  Lettice nodded. “Now that we understand each other … I might not know where she is, but I have a good idea where you could look.”

  Ellen glided around the roller rink, unconsciously avoiding the other skaters as her tensions drained out of her.

  It felt good to be on skates, she thought. It felt good, too, to be at the rink nearest to home. No more hiding in Jersey. Teenagers dominated the rink this evening, and two boys whooshed by her. They were so close that one misstep would have knocked her off her feet.

  And she would have deserved it.

  She had no sooner set foot in the rink than the guilt of skipping out on Joe had assailed her. Okay, so he had ordered her to dinner. The man had been entitled to his frustration when she had refused the date. After all, she had kissed him as if she were starving for him.

  No wonder he was confused. She was confused. But it was just that dinner seemed so … intimate. Candlelight and champagne reminded her too much of sensuality and seduction. She wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready for Joe Carlini to be in her life. And he was already there. Tours and christenings and dinners were too fast for her. She was fine when they were charging after his cousin Mario. But beyond that, she panicked. She knew she was afraid to be hurt again, and it was easier to avoid anything resembling a relationship, including dinner. The kiss seared through her mind again, and she groaned.

  “Just as if he were the last man on earth, and you were really glad to see him,” Ellen muttered to herself in disgust.

  “Problem, lady?”

  Startled, she turned to discover one of the rink’s referees hovering. Clearly, he’d heard her mumblings and thought she was speaking to him. She blushed and gave him a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Just grumbling to myself over the latest headlines.”

  The referee looked blank, then he nodded and skated past. Good thing, too, Ellen thought with a widening smile. She had no idea what the latest headlines were either.

  Her amusement subsided when she noticed a young boy and girl by the locker area. The two teenagers were standing together in the flush of growing sexuality, and she slowed as she couldn’t help watching them. The girl’s fingers caressed a button on the boy’s denim jacket. His hand tightened on her hip in response. The girl looked up at the same moment his head lowered, and he took her mouth in a deep kiss.

  Ellen felt her face heat again for a different reason. She wrapped her arms
around her waist and skated faster, determined to put the scene behind her. Everything was so uncomplicated to teenagers, she thought with envy.

  Then someone all too familiar caught her attention. She stumbled over her roller skates as she recognized Joe standing on the other side of the curving barrier separating the rink proper from the rest of the building. She managed to save herself from a humiliating fall on her backside. He was staring at her, his expression giving away nothing.

  How, she wondered frantically, had he found her? She had thought no one would find her here. In fact, she had thought no one would even bother to look. She should have known better than to think she could get away from Joe.

  She realized she had to go over to him. To do anything else would only make her look more foolish than she already was.

  Trying to control her nervousness, she carefully picked her way through the rambunctious young skaters. She stopped when she reached the barrier, grateful for the space between them.

  “I wish you would have told me you wanted to eat here,” he said in the calmest of voices.

  His matter-of-fact attitude bewildered her. She had been preparing for an outburst of anger.

  “I … ah … well, pizza and soda seemed just fine to me,” she said helplessly, waving toward the snack bar.

  He gave her a brief smile. “I have something better in mind. Let’s go. I’m starving.”

  Feeling trapped, she came around the open end of the barrier and joined him on the other side. He didn’t touch her, and for a moment she thought he was too furious with her to do so. Yet as he walked beside her, saying nothing, she realized he was disappointed, as if she had hurt him. She had never meant to do that. It had only been her own fears riding her that had made her act so … selfishly.

  She nearly groaned aloud when they reached the locker bay. The boy and girl were still there. They had retreated to a shadowy corner and were now wrapped in each other’s arms, oblivious to anything around them. Just what she needed, she thought, as she inserted the key in her locker. A full-blown demonstration of what she was refusing to acknowledge. At least the teenagers were behind her and she could turn her back on the worst of it. She refused to look at Joe, and at the same time realized how much that refusal merely heightened her awareness of him.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, hoping to dispel the urge to caress his suit buttons in imitation of the girl’s earlier gesture.

  He glanced over at the couple, then returned his gaze to her. She could feel him take in her profile, her throat, her breasts. Her oxford cotton blouse, she knew, was more like see-through net to his gaze. Her blood throbbed in her veins.

  “Common sense,” he said at last. “You skate to work off your feelings. That’s been obvious from the first. And now that your grandmother knows you skate, you don’t have to go to Jersey anymore. I just started with the rink closest to your home and found you first time out.”

  “I didn’t know I was so obvious,” she said.

  “You’re not.”

  A moan of pleasure came from the shadows behind them, stilling all conversation. Her hands stopped the task of pulling her things from the locker. Her body temperature rose sharply, and she couldn’t quite catch her breath. How could a couple of kids necking do this to her? And then she realized it wasn’t the kids.

  It was Joe.

  The raw edge of suppressed male passion reached out to her, burrowing its way into her body, intensifying her emotions. His heat, bare inches from her, was like a blast furnace, turning her to molten liquid. She could hear the breath rasping in his lungs. The remembered taste of his mouth on hers flashed through her, vivid and enticing. She wanted to turn to him, to toy with the buttons of his jacket, to feel his hand tighten on her hip, then pull her into a deep kiss. He didn’t have to touch her to get a response, and he had to know it. He could take her right here, and she doubted she’d have the power to stop him. She thought she would die of embarrassment … and want.

  “Kids,” he muttered hoarsely. “Get your stuff, Ell.”

  Eight

  “Now dinner wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Joe glanced over at Ellen and chuckled as she made a face at him. They were on their way home after an easy meal. Maybe not easy, he admitted, remembering the occasional moments of tension. Since the near eruption of passion at the skating rink, both of them had kept their attraction under tight control. Still, dinner went better than he would have thought, especially after seeing those damn kids at the rink. Hadn’t they ever heard of parking?

  “Delicious, actually,” Ellen conceded, then waved a hand at her sweater and jeans. “But did you have to take me to the Cafe Royale dressed like this?”

  “That was where I made the reservation.” He watched the evening traffic with a prudent eye. Center-city Philadelphia could match New York City for the “nuts on the road” award. He added, “Don’t blame me, just because you weren’t ready.”

  She was silent for a long moment. “Your idea of slow is the speed of light.”

  He smiled. “And your idea of slow would make a snail look like a racehorse.”

  “I panicked over the idea of dinner, I admit that. But I’m not … I don’t know what I’m not. I’m just not.”

  “Eloquently put.” He glanced over at her. “You make me impatient, Ell. So you’ll have to be patient with me.”

  She smiled slightly. “If you can be patient with me.”

  “Agreed.”

  Joe hid a burst of satisfaction. At least she recognized there was something to be patient about. That ought to be enough for him. As long as he didn’t touch her.

  He set his jaw, thinking that he might as well stop breathing. The results would be the same. The problem was that this was their first date. It was just a dinner, he told himself in an attempt to keep the adrenaline coursing through him under some control. But it was nearly impossible, since he knew they weren’t on a mission to save the sauce. Or a pretense of a mission to save the sauce. They were on a date.

  “I noticed Mario in the company dining room at the plant,” Ellen said, breaking into his thoughts. “I meant to ask you if he’s made another attempt at the recipe.”

  “Not yet,” he replied, looking over at her. Her features held a translucent glow that left him staring in awe. He realized what he was doing and turned back to the road. To cover his discomposure, he added, “Even though it’s only been a few days, he’s been too quiet, and that worries me. I think Uncle Thomas was his best shot at getting a second piece of the recipe. Thomas was the easiest. My cousin Jamie, who holds another quarter, is one of the company lawyers. He’s too smart to be tricked into giving it away. I hope. Anyway, my sister at least wouldn’t be fooled. But I can’t help feeling Mario is only biding his time.”

  “You still have no proof against him?” she asked, her voice even and calm. He could see nothing in her of the turmoil he was feeling. “What about your uncle? Couldn’t he support you, if you told your family about what Mario is doing?”

  “How?” Joe asked, his hands tightening on the steering wheel when he thought of how thoroughly he was trapped in family politics. “All Mario really did was to treat his uncle to a night in Atlantic City. Thomas knows and understands I can’t fire Mario on suspicion, because of family repercussions. It’ll be bad enough when I do catch him. His mother, my aunt Mary, is going to be devastated. She dotes on him. That’s a lot of the problem.”

  “You said he needed money,” Ellen said, in a speculative tone. “Maybe she’s giving him money.”

  He shook his head. “She and his father had a huge fight several months ago about that. His father did manage to cut off that source of money from Mario. I do know Mario’s spending didn’t slow at all. He’s desperate now. I have a feeling the only way I’ll catch him is for him to be careless.”

  He resisted the urge to vent his frustration. Tonight was his first real opportunity to further the relationship with her, and here she had managed to get him thinking about
his cousin. It was like thinking of baseball at the crucial moment of lovemaking. No one wanted to, but it was damn effective.

  He became aware that Ellen was quiet, too, and he glanced over to find her expression far away.

  “Thinking can be hazardous to one’s health,” he said, stopping at a red light.

  She took a deep breath and refocused on the road ahead of them. “I know.”

  She didn’t add anything to her answer and instead reached over and turned on the car radio. Hard, driving rock and roll blasted from the speakers. He grabbed for the volume dial the same moment she did.

  Their fingers touched, and Joe was plunged into a well of desire for her, endless and enveloping. She snatched her hand away, but it was too late for him. His breath labored in his lungs, his body tensed, his blood pounded in his ears. The road faded for an instant, then he forced himself to control the primitive urges racing through him. The light had changed and horns were beeping behind him. He stepped on the accelerator.

  Once the car was across the intersection, he turned off the radio. He could hear Ellen breathing hard. She was sitting as far away from him as the passenger seat would allow. She didn’t look unaffected now. He decided he had been much better off discussing business with her. At least they had a good chance of getting home in one piece. He was president of a company that had survived going national and a takeover attempt last year. He was supposed to have ice in his veins, not the raging heat of a hormone-crazy adolescent.

  “Okay, so now you know my deep, dark secret. I like hard rock,” he confessed, knowing he had to keep it light if he was ever to get through the trip home. “I can’t help it. I grew up in the sixties. Give me an Eric Clapton album and I’m a happy man.”

  Ellen relaxed. He was pleased she even managed a giggle. She turned the radio back on, but adjusted the volume to a more manageable level. “You’ll be warped for life, you know.”

  He smiled. “I expect so.”

  It was after eleven when they reached the parking lot of the roller rink, where Ellen’s car was still parked. Joe breathed a sigh of relief that they had made it without further mishap. The conversation between them had been as light as helium. It kept the existing tensions on an even keel.