by Diana Palmer
“Do I?” he mused, watching her from his superior height. “What an interesting reaction.”
She glared at him. “I thought you had a meeting somewhere tonight.”
He chuckled deeply. “Trying to get rid of me, Margie? Yes, I do have a meeting, but not until after dinner.”
“Business seems to take up most of your life,” she remarked quietly.
He nodded, lifting the cigarette to his wide, chiseled lips. He was watching her, classifying her, and it made her shaky. “The universal panacea, Margie,” he returned.
“Do you need one?” she blurted out.
He searched her wide eyes. “Do you?” he asked. “You spend a great deal of time at that typewriter for someone just doing the occasional article. Does it compensate?”
“For what?” she asked, resisting the urge to move away.
“For a lover,” he said bluntly, and smiled mockingly as the shock registered in her green eyes.
Four
She felt her breath stop momentarily as she looked up into his dark, laughing eyes.
“I don’t want a lover,” she said coldly.
“You make that quite obvious. But you need one,” he said, unabashed. “You look like a woman who hasn’t been touched in years. Or stroked,” he murmured, reaching out to run his fingers down her cheek.
She jerked wildly away from him, her eyes dilating, her mouth parted. “Don’t…!” she warned.
He lifted his dark head and studied her with narrowed eyes, the cigarette making a tiny smokescreen between them. “You don’t like to be touched, do you?” he asked. “Which only goes to prove my point. How long has it been since a man kissed you—really kissed you, with passion?”
She felt as if she were choking. “Sex isn’t everything, Mr. Van Dyne,” she ground out.
“Spoken like a nun,” he applauded.
She lashed out at him. “That’s all you men ever think about,” she accused. “What do you care about a woman’s needs?”
“What do you know about a woman’s needs?” he challenged. His eyes wandered over her taut body. “Tell me something, Silver. Did your husband really die in a plane crash, or did he freeze to death in your bed?”
She lifted her hand automatically, an involuntary response, a purely passionate act. But he was fast. He caught her wrist in a grip like steel and halted her fingers just inches from his tanned cheek.
“Lift your hand to me again, wildcat, and I’ll throw you down on the floor and teach you lessons in passion you’ve never learned,” he warned softly.
“What would you know about passion, you walking business machine?” she threw back, her hair wild as she struggled to free herself, her face alive and desperately beautiful.
He laughed softly. One big arm shot out to catch her and drag her against his taut body, holding her there with effortless ease.
She looked up at him with frightened eyes, her struggles intensifying, her face mirroring the apprehension she was feeling.
“Damn you,” she breathed, trying to kick his shins.
“Finally,” he murmured. “The real wom-an, under the facade.”
She pushed at his massive chest and her hands came in contact with his muscles under their covering of curling, crisp hair. She froze at the unfamiliar contact. She had always avoided touching Larry. But her hands liked the feel of Cannon’s flesh, and because of that, she dragged her fingers away as if they’d been burned.
He caught a handful of her silky hair and held her head where he wanted it. His eyes had gone darker while she fought him, until now they were almost black, and there was no smile in them. His gaze dropped to her soft, parted lips and his nostrils flared.
“Let me go, Cannon,” she whispered shakily.
“We fought, honey,” he replied in a husky, deep tone. “And you lost. Haven’t you ever heard to whom the spoils belong?”
His head was already moving down, and she was afraid of him, afraid of being forced into submission.
“Oh, please, no…!” she cried, her face going white as she saw Larry’s face above her, insensitive, intent with sexual need….
Cannon was supporting her weight suddenly, lifting her all at once to carry her to the sofa and hover over her with puzzled, concerned eyes.
“Want a brandy?” he asked softly.
She shook her head, drawing in quick breaths. She closed her eyes, hoping he’d go away.
“Then will you tell me what the hell is the matter with you?” he asked shortly. “I move toward you and you back away. I touch you, and you look as if I’ve stripped off your skin. And just now…my God, did you think I was going to rape you?”
She couldn’t look at him. “I don’t like being held against my will,” she breathed. “I can’t bear it.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“Then why do it?” she blazed, her voice breaking.
He drew in a harsh breath. “You chip at my pride,” he ground out. “I don’t like being told I’m a walking business machine with no feelings.”
She sat up and sighed wearily. “It isn’t you,” she said in a fatigued tone. “Not you at all.”
“Then what?” he demanded.
She laughed bitterly. “Stop trying to storm the gates, will you, Attila the Hun?” she asked. “I don’t pry into your life, do I?”
He scowled darkly. “No, you don’t. And that irritates me just as much,” he murmured as he turned to watch the others saunter in, oblivious to the tension in the air.
“Saved!” she whispered to irritate him.
“Only for the moment,” he promised.
* * *
Margie was just about to go up to bed later that evening when Cannon returned from his business meeting. He went to the padded bar and poured himself a brandy, hardly sparing her a glance. His shirt was still undone almost to the waist, and he had a white jacket slung over one shoulder. He threw the jacket onto the bar stool and tossed back the drink. His dark hair was ruffled, as if by the sea breeze, and his eyes were bloodshot and shadowed with fatigue.
Margie edged away, hoping to make her escape without speaking to him, but Cannon moved between her and the door with a smile so mocking that she seated herself on the couch instead.
“What is it about me that gives you these impulses to turn around and run?” he asked curtly, dropping down on the sofa beside her and crossing his powerful legs.
“I don’t like your approach,” she threw back, rubbing her upper arms.
“My God, what approach?” he growled. “You started to hit me, remember?”
Her face went cold. “And do you remember what you said to me?”
“Not all of it,” he admitted. “It wasn’t important enough.” He took a deep breath while she fumed silently. “God, I’m tired. The older I get, the more I’m convinced that lower-level executives were created to drive men mad.”
“You’ve been dealing with one, I gath-er?” she asked, clenching her hands in her lap. She wasn’t about to run from him.
He laughed shortly. “That’s a pleasant way of putting it.”
Her eyes fell on his well-shaped hand holding the cigarette he was smoking. He had strong hands, she thought, very masculine hands. Her eyes involuntarily lifted to his broad, half-bare chest, and she felt a tremor go through her body as she remembered the feel of it under her hands. She hadn’t meant to touch him, she hadn’t wanted to, but that fleeting contact with his hair-roughened flesh had done incredible things to her. Embarrassed at her own thoughts, she dropped her eyes back to his hands and felt her cheeks coloring.
“Do my hands embarrass you?” he asked quietly. “I can always stick them in my pockets.”
She cleared her throat. “I was thinking of something,” she mumbled.
He finished the cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray beside him. “You don’t drink, do you?” he asked conversationally. “You never touched your drink at Louis Dane’s, and you always leave your wine untouched at meals.”
She glanced up at him. “I don’t like alcohol,” she admitted. “You’ll never know the names I called you when you ordered me that drink I didn’t touch the first night we met—and left me stuck with the bill.”
He chuckled delightedly. “I’ll make amends one of these days.” He leaned a long, powerful arm across the back of the sofa and studied her, the action widening the gap of his shirt so that Margie had to look away or be hypnotized by the blatant masculinity of his bareness. “Why don’t you drink?”
“I can’t get the stuff past my nose,” she told him.
“Is that the truth? Or is alcohol attached to some unpleasant memory in your past?”
She thought of her father’s alcoholism and felt herself turn pale. “I like your mother very much,” she said, changing the subject. “She’s a character.”
He hesitated before he let her change the subject. “She had to be,” he said after a minute. “My father was a retired army colonel who saw service in two wars. He was miserable in peacetime and amused himself by regimenting the people around him.”
“Especially you?” she probed softly.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Perceptive, aren’t you?” He chuckled. “Yes, especially me. At least until I outgrew my adolescent yearnings for his praise. We fought like hell until he died—and he loved every minute of it.”
She searched his dark eyes. “And Andy?”
He shrugged. “Andy fights no one, least of all me,” he added challengingly.
“Is that a warning?” she asked.
“You might take it as one.” He lit a cigarette without offering her one. “Andy isn’t strong willed. He needs a woman sophisticated enough to keep the wolves at bay.”
“You’re insinuating that he’s a weakling who needs a built-in battle axe,” she shot back. “That’s insulting and it’s untrue. Andy may be full of fun, but he’s no marshmallow. You may find that out someday.”
He lifted both eyebrows insolently. “Are you presuming to describe my brother to me?”
“Just because you’ve lived with him, don’t sit there so smugly and assume that you know him like the back of your hand,” she returned sharply. “You never really know other people. We all have a deeply private side that even our closest kin don’t see.”
“Then how do you know about Andy’s other side?” he taunted.
“I learned to read people when I worked on the newspaper staff,” she informed him. “Andy’s got a lot of steel under that easy friendliness. You just haven’t discovered it because he’s never wanted anything before that you told him he couldn’t have. Tell him he can’t have Jan and watch what happens,” she challenged.
His dark eyes narrowed menacingly, and the forgotten cigarette sent curls of gray smoke into the air between them.
“My God, you’ve got nerve.”
“What’s wrong, Mr. Van Dyne,” she chided, “aren’t you used to people talking back to you?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Well, you may intimidate your board of directors, but it’s going to take a lot more than an underwear manufacturer…oh!”
She gasped as his hand shot out and caught her by the nape of the neck, jerking her face under his.
“Keep pushing,” he said under his breath. “I’m tired and out of humor, and you’ve already gotten under my skin once this evening.”
“Let go!” she ground out, pushing furiously at his chest, as she had earlier in the evening when she’d fought and lost. But now there was something different—her excited pulses were racing, but not out of fear.
His hand contracted, forcing her cheek onto his shoulder. He didn’t touch her in any other way, only with that relentless hand as inflexible as steel.
“Go ahead, honey, fight me,” he murmured, holding her gaze as his head started to bend. “But the only thing you’re going to accomplish by twisting your body against mine is to arouse me even more….”
She caught her breath at the suggestive remark, and while her lips were parted, he took them.
She felt her body freeze in a shocked arch as his warm, hard lips crushed down on her mouth, his teeth faintly bruising against the soft flesh. She breathed in the smoky, brandied taste of him, the aura of expensive cologne, and felt a strange new emotion burning at the ice around her body. He was incredibly strong, his hand holding her neck still, his mouth deliberately insulting, his tongue doing things to her that made her blush. She could have gone for him with her long nails, but she didn’t. They were clenched at her own chest, locked there.
She groaned, opening her eyes to find him looking back at her, amused mockery in his gaze as his mouth controlled and dominated hers.
It was the most serious thing she could ever have imagined. Never before had a man looked into her eyes while he kissed her, and a surge of the most unbelievable warmth shot through her. That frightened her more than his strength did. Suddenly she tore her mouth away from his and ducked, escaping his hand. Her movement was so quick that she lost her balance and fell backward, catching the sofa arm to halt her descent. She was breathing hard, her eyes wild with fear and outrage and excitement, her lips bruised, her body trembling. She looked at him like an animal at bay.
He watched her narrowly, not a hair out of place as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth with steady fingers.
“That was disgusting,” she bit off, her eyes accusing, glittering.
A shadow clouded his eyes, but his bland expression didn’t change. “You asked for it, honey,” he replied casually.
“Not me, mister,” she returned, fighting to catch her breath. “I don’t get my kicks by being mauled.”
He frowned slightly. “Is that what you call a kiss, Silver—being mauled?”
She stood up and moved away, her knees slightly weak, her mind whirling with confusion. How could she tell him, make him understand how deep the scars from her marriage went? He’d never understand, anyway. Not a male chauvinist like him!
“I’m going to bed,” she choked, licking her dry lips to find the taste of him still on them.
“Running from the enemy?” he taunted.
She turned with her hand on the doorknob, gloriously beautiful in her fury, her green eyes like Colombian emeralds, sparkling in the sun. “God only knows what you’re capable of,” she flung at him.
He leaned back against the sofa, his eyes insolently appraising. “Well, don’t get your hopes up, honey,” he murmured. “I have to toss the women out of my bedroom as it is. You’d have to wait in line for the chance.”
“I wouldn’t even buy a ticket,” she assured him.
“That works both ways,” he returned. He laughed bitterly. “It was like making love to a corpse.”
She caught her breath. That hurt. It actually hurt. She turned, opening the door.
“Margie!” he called suddenly.
She paused for an instant, with her back to him, then rushed into the hall and slammed the door behind her. She didn’t stop running until she got to her room.
Five
Margie and Cannon barely spoke at the breakfast table, and she avoided his gaze completely. She couldn’t bear the mocking amusement she knew she’d find there, the memory of his kiss was still too fresh.
“What time are your guests coming, dear?” Victorine asked Cannon as they finished breakfast and settled back with a second cup of coffee.
“At six,” he replied, and Margie felt his eyes on her. “I meant what I said about clothes, Mrs. Silver. If you come down those stairs in anything shocking, I’ll carry you back up them myself.”
Margie didn’t reply. She kept her eyes doggedly on her plate and listened while his chair scraped as he stood up. Then there was a muffled sound followed by footsteps dying away.
“Well,” Victorine murmured, watching Margie. “What was that all about? Did you two have a falling out?”
Margie lifted her eyes, grateful that Jan and Andy hadn’t been around to witness the scene. “You might call it that,” she murmured curtly. She
sipped her coffee. “He’s just insufferable!”
“So was his father,” Victorine volunteered. She smiled wistfully. “But I loved the old devil to distraction. I found quite by accident that when he was the most furious and intimidating, I could calm him right down just by putting my arms around him.”
Margie stared at her. “I’d rather be shot than put my arms around Cannon.”
The older woman grinned. “Would you, really? Or does he disturb you, my dear?”
She shifted nervously. “He…frightens me.”
“Yes, I know. You frighten him, too. He’s never been so hostile to a guest before. I can see him bristle when you walk into a room, and his eyes follow you everywhere.”
Margie looked hunted. She reached for her coffee cup too quickly and almost upset it, then caught her breath sharply as she righted it again.
Victorine placed a gentle hand over hers. “Don’t be intimidated by him, Margie. He’s tough, because he’s always had to be. But one thing I can promise you, he’d never deliberately hurt you.”
She almost disputed that, until she realized she had provoked him into that violent confrontation. And then she began to wonder why. Had she known, even then, that if she made him angry enough, he’d touch her? Had she wanted him to?
“He’s a very lonely man,” the older woman continued.
“That isn’t what he told me,” she muttered, her eyes narrowing. “He said he had to shake the women out of his bed.” She remembered to whom she was talking and flushed.
Victorine grinned delightedly. “Now I wonder why he said such a thing?” she murmured. “And it’s not true. Since Della left him—rather since he threw her out—he’s had no deep involvement with any woman. Oh, there are the glittery women that he’s sometimes seen with. He’s a man, after all, my dear. But he’s kept his heart quite deliberately tucked away, out of reach. And he hasn’t allowed anyone close enough to touch it.”
Margie studied the black liquid in her cup with a preoccupied stare. “May I ask you why his wife…ran around?”
Victorine smiled wistfully. “Not for the reason you might think,” she said gently. “Della simply liked men—I think there’s a medical term for that kind of obsession with sex. Cannon’s pride took quite a blow before he finally got tired enough of it to do something decisive.” She studied the younger woman intensely. “Your husband was cruel to you in bed, wasn’t he?” she asked quietly, and sighed. “Oh, my dear, all marriages aren’t like that. You had a bad experience, but I’m afraid you’re letting it ruin the rest of your life. You mustn’t, Margie.” She reached over and touched Margie’s hand lightly. “You’re much too young to stop living.”