He pulled the car off to the side of the road and swung around to face her. “Why the hell do you think I allowed the play to open again? Why did I insist upon the same cast? I wanted them thrown together again, I wanted to see if sparks would fly. I just didn’t want—”
He broke off, staring at her, then said, “I didn’t imagine there would be a nosy little reporter around to get involved.”
“I can take care of myself.”
He sniffed, a sound that wasn’t particularly complimentary. He started to drive again, and she realized that they weren’t heading for the town square and her own car at all.
They were heading back to his house.
“Where are we going now?” she asked uneasily.
His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror. “My house.”
“I told you—”
“You told me that you wouldn’t come here. I told you all sorts of things. And you’ve yet to tell me who you called.”
“I’m not going to tell you—”
“You’re staying until you do,” he promised her softly.
He meant to carry out his words, she realized quickly as the car turned into the long drive that led to his house. He parked right in front, got out and walked around for her.
She stared at him, seething.
He grinned. “Okay, don’t tell me. We can play chess.”
“I’ll never play chess with you again,” Kristin vowed.
He was still grinning. “It’s very cold out here.”
She swore softly and stepped out of the car. She stared at the house as if it were a living, breathing entity. One that worked Justin’s will.
“I’ll call Roger.”
“Do that. Invite him to dinner. I seem to have a cook in residence once again.”
Kristin exhaled on an aggravated note and preceded him up the few steps to the house. He was behind her with his key, and opened the front door for her.
She swept through the entrance and walked to the living room. Despite the warmth in the house she shivered and crossed her arms over her chest. She walked to the rear of the room and stared out at the pool, remembering the way they had been in that pool, then decided that wasn’t such a good idea.
“So you really want to write an exposé on the truth,” he murmured from behind her.
She spun around. “Yes.”
He smiled. There was a tenderness to that smile. “You can still be so convinced that I’m innocent?”
“Yes,” she said flatly.
He strode across the floor to her. She felt the warmth of the room sweeping around her. She shouldn’t be here. She had been such a fool. She had believed in him, but he would never believe in her.
She should run, she realized. But she was trapped. The doors to the pool were behind, but Justin was between her and escape through the front of the house.
“Justin…” she murmured.
He reached her. He touched her chin, lifting it. His eyes searched hers.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I believe in you. And you don’t believe in me.”
“Convince me,” he whispered softly.
No. She started to form the word with her mouth, but the sound never came. His lips covered hers, forming over them, muffling sound, silencing the dictates of all logic. She set a hand upon his shoulders to push him away. She didn’t manage to do so. Her fingers curled into his jacket.
He touched her cheek, his hand cupping over it. His tongue flicked over her lips, his kiss seared her throat. She trembled as that kiss traveled to her earlobe, and then back to her throat. Her coat was falling to the floor. Her arms wound around him.
Then she twisted, burying her head against his chest.
“I’d never hurt you,” he whispered.
“But you have hurt me. You said horrible things to me.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I really am sorry.”
She was lifted up into his arms. She stared into his eyes. He returned her gaze, heading for the stairs.
She moistened her lips. “What are we doing?”
“Going upstairs to bed. Unless you’d rather play chess.”
She couldn’t help but smile. And her eyes fell closed, lazily closed. Despite the ferocity of his temper, this was where she had wanted to be.
The steps disappeared one by one. In seconds she was lying on his bed with its sleek black sheets. Her shoes were falling to the floor, then her sweater, and her jeans. He stripped off his own sweater and crawled down beside her. His lips touched hers, then her chin. Then the pulse at her throat. And his hands were busy, releasing the lacy strap of her bra. His lips fell where the strap had been. Then traveled into the shadowed valley between her breasts.
She inhaled sharply. “You were supposed to have traveled through five miles of snow,” she reminded him huskily.
“No,” he responded, his mouth against her flesh, “I was supposed to have crawled through five miles of snow.”
He rose above her for a moment, a wicked smile in place. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
Before she knew it, he had turned her onto her stomach. And his whisper touched her lower ear, haunting, damp, sending spirals of sensation to warm her. “I’ll crawl my way through five miles of flesh…” he teased.
“Five miles—!” she began to protest, but then a soft “Oh!” escaped her.
He was beginning his journey, sweeping her hair from her neck, his touch, his kiss, landing there. And then the tip of his tongue was on her spine, warm, fascinating, moving downward. Slowly. So very slowly.
All down her back, teasing her until his kiss roused the flesh at the very base of her spine. And then he was kissing the rounded flesh of her hips and her buttocks. She started to twist, but his hands held her there, and he kissed her longer, telling her that he hadn’t begun to reach five miles.
But her flesh was afire, and she cried out softly to him, and she was winding her way into his arms. Their lips met again, parted and met. Her fingers raked down his back, stroking, teasing. She pressed her lips against his chest, teasing the hair there with her tongue. Then she found herself pressed back into the endless pillows again, and his mouth was forming over her breast. And his tongue lay against the peak of it, tasting, teasing, moving erotically. He moved down the length of her and she begged him to come to her.
“Five miles…” he whispered.
He found a very erogenous zone at the back of her knee, and one on the side of it. One against her inner thigh, and one against her upper thigh. Her fingers wound into the covers in an anguish of expectation. She wanted him to kiss her there… she wanted him to take her, to end the agony of questing and longing.
“Five miles…” he whispered again.
Blinding sensation seized her, and she moved against him. The sweet, soaring sensation became more than she could bear. She cried out again, feeling the ecstasy sweep over her, seep from her. She heard his throaty laughter, and then he wrapped his arms around her. And she wanted to whisper that he had gone too far, that she could take no more. But the words never left her lips, and he was within her, and to her amazement, all the sensations were growing again, spiraling again.
And bursting upon them both.
Moments later, he was pulling her against him. His lips just brushed her forehead.
“I’ve missed you,” he murmured. “I’ve missed you more than I thought I could ever miss anyone.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” she murmured. She curled against him, running her fingers over his chest. “You apologize very well,” she told him.
He was silent. She pushed up against him, suddenly very suspicious.
“You didn’t mean a word of it!” she said angrily.
His lashes fell quickly, but she thought she had seen the truth in his eyes.
“You didn’t mean it!” she repeated.
He opened his eyes. Impatient, he tried to pull her back into his arms. “I did mean it
. I’m sorry that I said horrible things. I know you slept with me only because you wanted to, because this … this is wonderful between us.”
“And?” Kristin prompted.
“Isn’t that enough?”
“No!” Kristin screamed.
“Then quit lying to me!”
“Lying!” Enflamed, exasperated, Kristin jumped out of bed. She stumbled quickly into her clothes. He watched her for a moment, then rose himself and reached for his jeans. She was already heading for the door when he caught her.
“Kristin—”
“I give up! I never know what you’re talking about! Trust is something that matters to both of us. And it’s something that I always gave you. I expected so little from you, I asked so little from you. But you couldn’t even give me that in return.”
“Kristin!” His hands were on her shoulders, holding her there.
“Let me go!”
“Look, I’m trying to give you everything, but you—”
“Trying! Trying isn’t good enough! If you have to try, the whole thing is worthless!”
She was going to cry again, she thought. Damn it. She was always leaving this place with tears in her eyes. “Let go of me, Justin.”
“Where are you going? I brought you here, remember?”
“But I’m never trapped, do you remember that?”
He exploded with an oath. “I’m not trying to trap you. I want you to go home tonight. You want me to trust you but you never tell me the truth about anything! Just hold on and I’ll drive you to your car.” He turned around, sat on the foot of his bed and pulled on his socks. Kristin stayed by the door, staring at him numbly.
“What did I lie about?” she asked him.
He pulled his sweater over his head and stared at her. “The phone call!”
She gasped softly. Damn! She’d forgotten all about the phone call. But she still didn’t dare tell him the truth.
“I told you—”
“A lie.”
“Trust me—”
She could hear his teeth grating together. “Who did you call?”
“What makes you so sure that my phone call had anything to do with you?”
“Oh, just the fact that you were digging through my past life at the time.”
“I do have a life of my own, you know.”
“Yes, but you seem to be obsessed with mine at the moment.”
“I’m not obsessed at the moment at all,” she said pleasantly. “Just with leaving. I have to get back to Roger and Sue’s.”
“We have to talk about this. I want to know who you called.”
“I can’t talk about anything right now!” Kristin insisted. “I have to go!”
She turned from him quickly and started to walk. She still needed a ride, and he could hound her then, but she wanted to be out of the house.
There seemed to be safety outside. Inside, she was too vulnerable. Intimacy was dangerous.
She passed through the sitting room. When she heard him coming behind her, she hurried down the stairs.
She had just reached the bottom step when she heard the doorbell ringing. She stared at the door. It was his house; she didn’t know whether to open the door or not.
He was behind her, wearing his jeans and now his shoes, but still shirtless since he had been coming in pursuit of her. She stood on the bottom step, and he walked past her, glancing her way.
“Who is it?” she asked him tensely.
“I won’t know until I answer it,” he told her.
Someone connected…
Christina Anderson, his agent. Maybe Artie Fein, Myra’s agent. Or the new member of the cast, the woman who wanted to meet him, Maria Canova.
She felt her muscles tightening as Justin walked across the entryway to throw open the door. She had the strangest feeling that things would begin to happen. The play was reopening.
“Justin!”
Kristin heard a soft voice, and frowned. Then she smiled slowly. So much for intuition, and things beginning to happen.
“Justin, we’re so sorry to bother you. But I can’t seem to find Kristin anywhere, and her car is still outside the library. Miss Petrie suggested that she might be with you, since you had come by and spoken with her.”
It was Sue.
And Roger was with her. Justin’s lip curled slightly as he widened the opening of the door. Kristin could see the two of them standing there on the step together, hand in hand, like a pair of schoolchildren.
And they could see her, too.
“Oh, no,” Roger groaned, looking from Justin to Kristin, and then down at Sue. “They’ve been at it again. Playing chess!”
“Hey, no secrets in this family,” Justin said dryly. He gazed over at Kristin. “You told them about chess?”
“Roger!” Kristin grated.
“Well, are you coming in?” Justin asked politely. “It’s cold out there.”
Roger started to come in; Sue dragged him back to the porch. “We didn’t mean to interfere. We were just worried,” she said.
“Is it that late?” Kristin asked.
“No, no, we just had an exciting piece of information to share, and—”
Justin reached out for Sue’s hand, pulling her into the house. Roger came along with her.
“Well, we didn’t want to bother you with personal things, Justin—” Sue began.
“Hell, you know all about chess. I’m anxious to hear about anything personal.”
Sue smiled, then she turned to Kristin. “Guess what? You’ll never believe it! After all these years. I was so very anxious. I thought I was right, but I didn’t know for sure, you know—”
“Sue!” Kristin said.
“We’re going to have a baby! Roger and I are going to have a baby!”
“Oh, Sue, how wonderful!” Kristin said. She jumped down the last step and threw her arms around her cousin-in-law enthusiastically.
“Well, this definitely calls for a celebration,” Justin said after he had congratulated Roger. “Champagne, the works.”
“Where should we go?” Sue asked.
“I know the best place in the world,” Justin told her. “Lots of ambience, and the best chef in the area.”
“Where’s that?” Roger asked.
“Right here. You two sit down and make yourselves comfortable. Madame chef here—” he indicated Kristin “—and I will take care of everything.”
He smiled at Kristin, complacent, smug.
She didn’t have to go anywhere anymore. He’d have the entire evening to plague any answers from her that he wanted.
Chapter 10
“Roxanne,” Justin said suddenly.
Kristin, who had been sprinkling paprika over lobster tails, turned around and looked at him.
Justin was at the island counter, skewering steaks and splashing them liberally with teriyaki sauce. Thanks to the generator on his deep freezer, none of his well-supplied stock of meat and seafood had been damaged by the electrical failure, and they had managed to come up with a menu worthy of the occasion. There would be corn on the cob, broccoli with hollandaise sauce, the lobster tail and the filets.
And Kristin had to hand it to Justin, he did have a sense of the romantic. He seemed genuinely pleased for Roger and Sue, sensing without much of an explanation that the two of them had nearly given up on having children.
The expectant parents were out in the patio area now, sipping champagne—only one glass for Sue, and she’d be sipping it very slowly. A round glass table had already been set for them with a red cloth and snowy napkins, crystal glasses and a three-tiered candle.
There was a pillow beneath Sue’s feet, and Justin had managed to find a red flower from one of his house plants, and it lay on the table before Sue.
Now he was being competent in the kitchen, and he hadn’t even said a word to Kristin about the stupid phone call.
Until now.
“It was Roxanne,” he said flatly. “You called Roxanne.”
; Kristin turned back to the lobster tails, stubbornly silent.
“Damn it, answer me.”
She shrugged. “You seem to know.”
“I do.”
She swung and smiled at him, leaving her lobster to check the temperature of the oven. She kept her eyes low. He knew. And he knew, of course, that she was actively delving into the murder. She had to make light of it.
“Just think, a good sound guess an hour earlier, and you could have saved yourself this evening.”
“I’m enjoying this evening. I like Roger and Sue. And they’ve been to dinner here before.”
“I know,” Kristin said. “I heard that Myra wasn’t terribly gracious.”
“She wasn’t. But they’ve been here since Myra died.”
Kristin glanced at him, surprised. He popped an olive into his mouth, and she gazed back at the oven racks. “Sue didn’t mention that they’d been here several times.”
“It probably slipped her mind. Once you started spilling the details of our sex lives, such trivial things such as dinner were undoubtedly passed on by.”
Kristin wrinkled her nose at him. “I didn’t spill intimate details about our sex lives. It was really your fault. I mean Roger knew … and I was just trying to explain that it had been a mutual thing.”
Justin didn’t answer. He just popped another olive into his mouth, watching her with a smug look that made her want to give him a good whack.
She decided to ignore him. “It’s nice what you’re doing for them anyway. It’s better than a restaurant. It’s so intimate out there. It means a lot to them. And Sue loves this house. Especially the pool area. She was asking me what it was like—”
She broke off. Sue had been asking her about sex and the pool. A flush covered her cheeks that didn’t come from the heat in the kitchen. She quickly tried to think of a way out of her words.
“She asked you about what?” Justin demanded, leaning over the counter to watch her more closely.
“Nothing.”
“Oh, no intimate details, huh? You just told her about every room in the house.”
“No!” Kristin protested, but he was laughing.
“We should have arranged to leave. That might have been the nicest thing to do for them tonight.”
“Well, we can—”
“Not until after we eat,” Justin stated. “I want my lobster tail. We’ll serve them, we’ll socialize, and then we’ll slip away, letting them know we’ll be out for a long, long time. How’s that?”
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