Breath of Scandal

by Sandra Brown

  “No,” she whispered. “Please.”

  She didn’t mean please stop. She meant please continue. Because, even though she had prefaced that please with a no, he sensed her excitement. It was building inside her. It generated heat that he could feel through her clothing. Her breathing was rapid and light—aroused breathing.

  He cupped her head between his long fingers and tilted it farther back. He nuzzled her exposed throat and kissed the soft, fragrant pallet of skin beneath her ear.

  “No, Dillon,” she whimpered.

  “You don’t mean no.”

  Returning to her lips, he angled his head and kissed her deeper than before. Heat and lust concentrated in his loins. He groaned over the intensity of the ache, the potency of the pleasure. He dropped one hand to her derriere and lifted her front against his. His erection nestled in her cleft. He rubbed it against her. She moaned.

  His other hand moved to her breast. It was firm, full, perfect. Her nipple responded to a stroke of his thumb. He wanted to put his mouth to it, even through her blouse, and lowered his head to do so.

  “No!”

  She backed away from him so quickly that she stumbled, lost her balance, and careened into the far wall. She folded her arms across her chest and moved her hands up and down her arms as though trying to scrub them clean. Her eyes were so round that white showed all around the alarming, electric-blue irises.

  “I said no,” she cried raggedly. “I told you no. No. No. Don’t you understand? No.”

  Flabbergasted, Dillon took a step toward her. “Jade, I—”

  “Don’t touch me. Don’t.” Her voice rose to a hysterical pitch, and she thrust a hand out in front of her to stave him off.

  He raised his hands in a sign of surrender. “Okay, okay, I won’t touch you. I swear.”

  He had never been in a situation like this before. Women sometimes put up token resistance to be coy, but none had ever gone hysterical on him. She wasn’t faking it, either. If he had thought it was an act, he would have been furious. It wasn’t an act. Without a doubt, she was genuinely terrified of him.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Jade,” he said gently. “I won’t force you to do anything.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I see that now.”

  “I can’t,” she repeated.

  “It’s cool, all right? Now, please stop looking at me like I’m Jack the Ripper. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Gradually her panic subsided. She stopped rubbing her hands up and down her arms, but kept them crossed over her chest. Her eyes lost that trapped, wild animal alarm, but they were evasive. She smoothed her hand over the breast he had caressed. That very feminine, self-protective gesture made him feel as vile as a child molester.

  Still avoiding his eyes, she hastily gathered up her purse and keys. “I’d better get home or Cathy will start worrying again.”

  “Jade, what—”

  She shook her head brusquely, eliminating any plans he might have to probe for a reason behind her bizarre behavior.

  She left the building at a near run and climbed into her Cherokee. Dillon stood in the doorway, staring after her with perplexity. He watched until the darkness absorbed the red glow of her taillights.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The idea that George Stein had discussed with Jade on the first of May involved building a GSS corporate annex somewhere in the vicinity of the TexTile plant. It would accommodate not only the upper-echelon executives of that facility but those affiliated with GSS’s shipping, petroleum, and diverse other industries located in the Southeast. In the month since then, he had called her almost daily, asking for a report on land acquisition. She had stalled him by saying that she was being very choosy. Recently, he had hinted that if the job was too much for her to handle alone, perhaps he should send someone to assist her.

  She recognized the intimidating bluff for what it was, but knew that she couldn’t stall him forever. The annex was an enticing prospect, one that she wanted to be an integral part of… but all in good time. Unfortunately, once Mr. Stein conceived an idea, he wanted to see work in progress immediately.

  The morning following Dillon’s return, Jade decided to approach Otis Parker again. As unobtrusively as possible, she had had his farm appraised, along with several other tracts of land in and around Palmetto.

  She arrived at the farm early, just as Otis was climbing onto his tractor, about to leave for the fields. “I won’t take but a minute of your time, Mr. Parker,” she said as she approached him.

  “If you come about me selling the place, you’re wasting your time.”

  “Please hear me out.” She waited while he reluctantly stepped to the ground. After a moment, she continued. “I find it hard to believe that you and Mrs. Parker wouldn’t like living the rest of your lives in luxury. You could buy a beautiful place in town and retire. You wouldn’t have to work another day of your life unless you wanted to. Think of all you could do for your children and grandchildren.”

  He looked at her resentfully. “That all sounds real attractive, all right. But if I ever did decide to sell, it wouldn’t be to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He whipped a faded, red shop towel from the hip pocket of his overalls and pretended to tinker with the tractor. “I don’t owe you any explanations.”

  “Mr. Parker, I asked you not to discuss my interest in your land with anyone.”

  “I didn’t. But you, better’n most, ought to know how things is in a small town. Word gets out. That appraiser feller you hired was out here for two days straight. He made some other folks curious.”

  Hastily, she zipped open her attaché. “Here is what GSS is offering for your property, including the house.”

  She handed him the legally prepared contract and pointed to the sum at the bottom of the page. He blinked his poor eyesight into focus, then his narrow jaw went slack.

  “Five hun’erd thousand dollars? Are you shittin’ me?”

  “No, Mr. Parker, I’m not. All you have to do is meet me at the title office this afternoon and sign the contract.”

  “I dunno,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I can assure you that no one else will offer this much on the property, Mr. Parker. It’s far above the appraisal.”

  He regarded her suspiciously for a moment, then shook his head. “Well, I ain’t going to do nothing rash. Like I told you, I ain’t even decided on selling.”

  Turning his back on her, he climbed onto the tractor again and started the motor. After clapping a straw hat on his head, he steered the tractor out of the yard. Jade laid the contract on the porch and anchored it down with a rock. As she turned to leave, she heard the screen door open and looked up to see Mrs. Parker.

  “Good morning.”

  “I’ve heard folks say that you’ve got a boy.” Mrs. Parker said the words in a rush, as though it was very difficult for her to say them.

  “That’s right. His name is Graham.”

  “I’s just wondering if, you know, he might be my Gary’s child?”

  Sorrow settled over Jade like a shroud. The desperate hope she saw in the tired, homely face was heartbreaking. She was tempted to lie and claim that Gary had been Graham’s father, but ultimately that would only be doing a disservice to the Parkers and to Graham.

  “No, he isn’t, Mrs. Parker,” she said sadly. “But I’ve wished from the day I learned I was pregnant that he was.”

  Without another word the gaunt woman slipped back into the house. The screen door slapped closed.

  In a matter of minutes Jade reached the intersection with the highway. Just as she did, a candy-apple-red El Dorado sped passed.

  Headed toward the construction site, she was so lost in thought about the Parkers that she didn’t notice the El Dorado again until it was almost even with her. Apparently it had made a U-turn and was following her. Neal Patchett was at the wheel.

  Smiling, he signaled for her to pull over.

&nb
sp; “Go to hell.”

  Still smiling, he speeded up enough to give his car the advantage of a few yards before cutting his wheels sharply, almost swerving into Jade’s Cherokee. Reflexively she stomped on the brake pedal. Neal parked sideways in front of her, so that the two cars formed a T on the narrow highway.

  Jade flung open her door and got out. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I asked you nice to pull over.” His tone, his swagger, his ingratiating grin were all too familiar as he moved toward her.

  Ironically, they were almost at the same spot where he had kidnapped her from Donna Dee’s car fifteen years earlier. “And as usual, if you don’t get your way, you impose it.”

  He made a courtly bow from his waist. “Guilty.”

  “If you wanted to see me, you should have made an appointment.”

  “Well now, I’ve tried, haven’t I? Didn’t you get any of those messages I left on your answering machine?”

  “I got them. I ignored them.”

  “And haven’t you hung up on me every time I’ve called? I never even got a thank-you note for the flowers I sent, welcoming you back to town.”

  “I threw them away the moment they were delivered.”

  He tsked her. “Jade, Jade, you went up North and got rude. You must’ve picked up a bunch of bad habits from all those Yankees up there. What happened to the sweet girl we all used to know and love?”

  “She got gang-raped.”

  He winced, but it was a rehearsed reaction. “I see you’re still carrying a grudge. Better watch that, Jade. Bitterness will make you old before your time, put lines in your face. Besides, what’s the point? Lamar’s dead and buried. Hutch is as good as. Me—I’m coming to you as an old friend, offering a peace pipe, hoping you’ll forget our little misunderstanding.”

  To reduce her rape and Gary’s suicide to a little misunderstanding was grotesque. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to claw the complacent smile off his face. “You’re coming to me as a man running scared, Neal. My company is a threat to the feudalistic economy around here. You stand to lose your ruling power, and you know it. Better yet, I know it.”

  “Don’t count us Patchetts out yet, Jade.”

  “I never have. Only this time you’re not going to win.”

  She got back into her car and shut the door. He bent down and stuck his head in the open window. “Are you sure about that?”

  “I’m going to make damn sure.”

  His eyelids lowered to half-mast. “You know, Jade, I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard you had a son, seeing that you don’t even have a husband. So I moseyed over to your house the other day, and lo and behold, there he was—a teenage boy, shooting basketballs in the driveway just like I used to do.”

  She couldn’t conceal her panic. Seeing it, Neal continued in that same soft, unruffled tone. “He’s a good-looking kid, Jade. Reminds me of myself when I was that age.” He leaned in closer. “I was just wondering if maybe Georgie didn’t take a baby out of you that day we watched you go into her house.”

  “We?”

  “Why, Gary and me. We went to buy some moonshine from her. Damned if we weren’t shocked to see you tiptoeing up her sidewalk with your fifty dollars clutched in your tight little fist.”

  “You didn’t go there to buy moonshine. Patrice Watley told you I would be there. You took Gary so he would see me.”

  “He went plumb crazy,” he said with a soft laugh.

  She was shaking uncontrollably and so enraged that she could barely speak. “I thought that killing you was better than you deserved. I was wrong. I should have killed you fifteen years ago.”

  He snickered with unconcern. “Know what I think, Jade? I think you came out of Georgie’s house with your fifty dollars still in your hand and a baby in your belly.” He reached into the window and twined a strand of her hair around his fingertip. “I think I put that baby there. I think your boy is mine. And what we Patchetts consider ours, we take.”

  She jerked her head back at the same instant she dropped the gear shift into reverse. The car lurched backward, almost tearing Neal’s arm off before he got it out of the open window. Jade shoved the car into drive and depressed the accelerator. The Cherokee shot forward, missing the rear end of his late-model El Dorado by a hair. Jade’s fingers flexed around the steering wheel. She gritted her teeth to keep from screaming. Damn them! Why was it that the Patchetts were endowed with the power to terrorize her?

  Fear and suspicion were still gnawing at her when she arrived at the site and parked in front of her portable office. Inside, the building was already stuffy. Agitated and afraid, she switched on the air-conditioner and removed her jacket. As she was hanging it on a coat tree, the door behind her opened.

  Dillon’s silhouette was large and stark against the bright morning sunlight. “Good morning,” she said.

  “Morning.”

  It was difficult to look at him after what had transpired the night before. She quickly diverted her attention to making coffee. Her hands were still shaking from what Neal had said. She was clumsy and inefficient, scattering coffee grounds everywhere. “I didn’t have a chance to ask you last night about your trip. How was it?”

  “It was productive, I think.”

  “I wasn’t looking for you to get back before Thursday.”

  “I got around to seeing everybody on my list faster than I expected.”

  “Did you award the contract?”

  “I wanted to discuss the main contenders with you first.”

  “Good. We’ll do that as soon as the coffee’s ready.”

  “Then I still work here?”

  Jade turned to him suddenly. Although he was dressed in his customary workclothes, he hadn’t moved inside. He was poised on the threshold as though waiting for permission to enter. “Of course you still work here. And please close the door. You’re letting out the cool air.”

  He moved inside and shut the door. “After what happened last night, I wasn’t sure I still had a job. I thought you might send me packing this morning.”

  Sometimes she wished he would wear more than a tank top. She especially wished so now. It was hard to look at his exposed chest, but even harder to meet his intense eyes. “Firing you wouldn’t be fair, would it? Over something as silly as a mere kiss?”

  She deliberately minimized the kiss’s significance because that was the only swift, safe, and sane way to approach this situation—in other words, she was copping out. If she didn’t dismiss its importance, she must take him to task. In doing so, she would be forced to grapple with her own ambiguities about it. That, she wasn’t prepared to do.

  His kiss had rocked her, yes. It had terrified her, certainly. But coupled with these reactions she had come to regard as normal for herself, there was an additional confusion arising from a deep-seated curiosity over what would have happened if she hadn’t stopped him.

  Through a sleepless night, she had played mind games with herself: What would the outcome have been if her no’s hadn’t been adamant enough to quell his desire? No matter how she posed this hypothetical question to herself, the answer was always the same. His caresses would have become more urgent. Shortly, clothes would have become an impediment, and eventually he would have expected her to receive into herself that which had made a hard impression on her lower abdomen. He would know her intimately. She would know him, his strength, his power, his essence. The very thought of it made her tremulous inside and out, and not strictly from revulsion and fear. That was the source of her confusion. Why wasn’t she outraged? Why wasn’t she repulsed?

  Hank’s attempts to woo her, once he understood her reluctance to be wooed, had been soft and sweet. There had been nothing soft in the way Dillon’s mouth had seized command of hers, nothing sweet in the hungry probing of his tongue. She hadn’t been kissed like that since Gary. If she was baldly honest, she would have to admit that she hadn’t been kissed like that ever.

  Her rea
ction to Dillon’s aggression was conditioned. She had responded in a fashion symptomatic of her psychological problem. Yet, she hadn’t responded with her usual speed and inflexibility. She had granted him time and space in which to maneuver. Why? Because, in spite of his aggressiveness, his embrace had made her tingle in places she had believed were immune to sexual stimulation. Her heart had pounded not only with fear but with a peculiar excitement that, because of its strangeness, was equally as frightening. Her unprecedented reaction to it was as disturbing as the kiss itself.

  That’s why she wasn’t equipped to deal with it right now. Her encounter with Neal, his veiled threats, had left her feeling frightened and vulnerable. Cathy had predicted that they would attack her through Graham. She vowed to redouble her efforts to keep him away from them.

  Her most pressing problem, however, was reestablishing a working relationship with Dillon. That must be dealt with immediately, for the good of the project.

  Temporarily shelving her concern for Graham, she said, “Sit down, Dillon. Tell me about the concrete contractors you have in mind for the job.”

  He took a seat while she poured their coffee. Knowing by now that he drank his black, she handed him a steaming mug, then moved behind her desk and sat down.

  “I’ve narrowed it down to three bids,” he said, passing her a folder he had carried in with him. “They’re in no particular order.”

  She glanced through the three bids Dillon had received, then returned to the first one and began to read more thoroughly. He fidgeted in his chair. She knew he was about to speak before he uttered a single sound.

  “I feel like I should apologize to you, Jade, but I’m not sure why or what for.”

  “No apology is necessary.”

  “I can tell you’re upset.”

  “I’m upset, but it has nothing to do with you.”

  She kept her eyes on the sheets before her but retained very little of what she read. Her concentration kept drifting to the memory of how his mustache had felt against her mouth.

  “You set me straight on that once, about kissing you, I mean.”