Flash and Fire

by Marie Ferrarella

  “If I did, it wouldn’t be you.”

  He didn’t know what had made him drive by her house after he had left the studio at eleven-thirty. Curiosity, probably. When he saw lights on in two of the rooms, he’d decided to stop and see if she was up. And maybe finally satisfy his craving.

  He leaned a hip against the desk. “I listen pretty well. It’s part of the job.”

  She wasn’t going to let go of her anger, she swore to herself. She wasn’t. “I’m not part of your job, so get out.”

  Pierce gave no indication that he was about to leave. “Those were pretty big knots I felt in your shoulders. Since you obviously blame me for them, turn around and let me finish massaging you.” He grinned, and she could feel the waves along her skin. “I kind of like hearing you moan like that. Tells me what I’m in for.”

  At times like this, she really wished she had gone in for some sort of self-defense training. She would have liked nothing better than to have him on the floor, with the toe of her shoe pressing into that smug face of his.

  “What you’re in for is a lot of pain if you don’t leave right now,” she bluffed.

  “Amanda.” He laughed the way a person would at a silly, headstrong child. “I don’t know what sort of self-image you have, but I’m sorry to disappoint you. I am not afraid of you.” He twirled his finger over her head, indicating what he wanted her to do. “Now shut up, turn around, and let me help.”

  She wondered what the penalty in Texas was these days for justifiable homicide.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Amanda vacillated between demanding that Pierce leave immediately and relenting enough to let him stay. There was no denying the fact that, louse or not, Pierce was giving her a massage that was resurrecting her out of the realm of the living dead.

  Weighing both sides, she chose to smother her anger. It was counterproductive; there were unanswered questions between them regarding Whitney.

  “All right.” Somewhat warily, Amanda turned her chair around, then lifted her hair off the back of her neck. “You are good at this, so go ahead.” Very carefully. Amanda bowed her head forward.

  The long, pale column she exposed was more than passingly inviting. And he had never been one to ignore an invitation. Pierce leaned over and pressed a kiss softly to the back of her neck.

  Amanda jolted as the touch of skin to skin sent electric waves charging right through to the very tips of her breasts. Clutching the arms of her chair, Amanda was halfway out of her seat. Anger added color to her features. ‘What the hell—?”

  He laid a gentling hand on her shoulder, urging her back down into the chair. She had all the signs of going up like a rocket.

  “Calm yourself, Mandy,” he drawled easily, his voice a direct contrast to the pressure of his fingers. “I was just getting the area primed, that’s all. And you do have one lovely, tempting neck.”

  Amanda let out a slow breath. It helped steady her pulse. “Do you know that you drawl when you’re trying to hit on me?”

  He was more entertained than insulted. “So?”

  His hands were working the stiffness out of her shoulders. And with it, some of her animosity. “I’m trying to figure out which is the real you.”

  He smiled to himself. She was telling him more than she realized. He’d been preying on her mind, which was encouraging. It was only fair, seeing as how she’d seemed to have taken up residence in his.

  “They’re all me, Mandy. All bits and pieces of a whole.” With long, sure strokes, Pierce feathered his fingers along the slope of her neck.

  Amanda struggled to keep a sigh from emerging. With effort, she gathered her thoughts together. She had to keep him talking. If she did, maybe he wouldn’t notice that she was dissolving into a puddle beneath his hands.

  “Where did you learn to do this?”

  Her question made him think. He couldn’t remember the first time he had done it. He had just always known how. “I didn’t learn it. It’s a gift.”

  Amanda wondered if the Guinness Book of World Records knew about this man’s ego. “Next you’ll tell me that women love you for your hands.”

  The chuckle was low, deep and sensual. Like his touch, it seeped under her skin, making her yearn.

  “Among other attributes.” Pierce paused, debating whether to say more.

  What the hell. He’d tell her for the novelty of it. He’d never told anyone before.

  “My grandmother had rheumatism. It acted up whenever she drank, for some reason.” A smile with no feeling behind it twisted his lips. Amanda saw it in the reflection on her computer screen. “It acted up a lot. She liked to have me massage her shoulders then.” The old woman’s image rose up before him, and it felt like yesterday. The memory caused a faint zigzag of fear to dart through him, like the old days. “Made me do it for hours.”

  He’d felt Amanda straighten slightly beneath his hands. He never talked about his family, his real family, or what there was of it, to anyone. There was no reason to. He didn’t know why he was doing it now, except that maybe he owed Amanda something. Or maybe he thought she’d understand some things better if she knew.

  Hell, he shouldn’t have started this.

  She watched his face. The screen hazed his image, but she saw emotions playing across it. “What did your mother say?”

  The cynical smile spread, reaching his eyes.

  “Nothing. She wasn’t there.” The next words came without any thought on his part. They just seemed to bleed through the crack he’d allowed to open. “She left me with my grandmother when I was six months old. I have no idea what she looks like. My grandmother didn’t believe in keeping pictures.”

  Amanda wanted to turn around to look at him. Her initial inclination was to believe him, to want to put her arms around him and say she was sorry. But this was Pierce, who would say or do anything to get what he wanted. Was he telling her the truth, or was this just another lie he was using to get to her? She couldn’t tell, not intellectually. Emotionally, she had already made up her mind.

  She continued watching his reflection as his hands worked magic along her spine. “Did you ever try to find her?”

  “No.” The reply was quick, emphatic. “I figure we’re both better off if she stays lost.”

  He believed that, she thought, and for a moment she ached for him. Amanda thought of Christopher, sleeping in his room. And of Jeff, who’d left them both without so much as a backward glance at his son. Though she worked with stories like this so frequently she should have become calloused to them by now, Amanda could never bring herself to understand how a parent could turn her back on her own child.

  And she always empathized with the child.

  “How could she just leave you?”

  He heard the compassion and steeled himself. He didn’t need it. Compassion wasn’t what he was ultimately looking for from her. But if that was true, a voice mocked him, why was he saying anything?

  “Easy. She didn’t care.” He had come to terms with that a long time ago. There was no reason for this tight feeling in his throat. “If she had, she would have remembered that Grandma was real heavy-handed when it came to discipline.”

  Horror filled Amanda as images rose in her mind. “Your grandmother beat you?”

  He laughed, recalling. Beatrice Alexander had favored a cat-o-nine-tails. The old woman had handled it with the dexterity of an Argentine gaucho.

  “Only when she could catch me. Around the end, it got hard.” He’d run away a dozen times. The last was when he was fifteen. That time, running away had worked. No one had been interested enough to try to bring him back, not even to watch the whippings.

  Pierce had stopped massaging her.

  Amanda turned to look at him. He saw the empathy shining in her eyes. He expected it to make him angry. Instead, it seemed to draw the words out of him, even as he tried to stop them.

  “I suppose I don’t really blame her now. She’d had it pretty rough. I heard once that she’d wanted to b
e a dancer when she was young. Grandma was a real hell-raiser at sixteen. She got pregnant and her one dream died.” He tried to imagine his grandmother as a young girl fumbling through her first time, and couldn’t. “Her husband ran off and left her with four kids to raise. It wasn’t easy for her. One got killed robbing a store.” His mouth curved a little. “A liquor store, aptly enough.”

  Pierce stuck his hands into his pockets and sat down on the edge of her desk, facing her. “That was Uncle Harry. Uncle Bob joined the marines. She used to get postcards from him sometimes. But he never came back to see her—not that I blame him,” Pierce had only returned once himself. For the funeral. “Uncle Peter disappeared one summer. I think he was gay and couldn’t face himself—or her, which was probably a hell of a lot more frightening.”

  Pierce took a deep breath, unconsciously bracing himself. “And then there was Billie. My mother.” Even the very word felt foreign on his tongue. He’d never called anyone that. She was just “that woman” to him. “Looking for love in all the wrong places.”

  He had no illusions to see him through the fragility of childhood. None at all. He had been born a bastard. His mother had been a whore, pure and simple. She had done it with so many men, by the time she had gotten pregnant, she’d had no idea who the father was.

  Pierce had a sudden urge for a cigarette. He reached for one in his pocket before he remembered that he’d left the pack at home. And that it was empty anyway.

  “That’s why I became a foreign correspondent.” He laughed, trying to show how indifferent he was to the story he was telling her. It had been a long, hard road from that haunted fifteen-year-old boy to the man he was today. But only he knew that. Only he knew the sacrifices he’d made just to get an education, just to keep his soul from being sucked up by the vermin that existed side by side with the unsuspecting in society. “Hey, I cut my teeth on war zones back in good old Georgia.”

  He moved aside, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He was restless, and could think of only one way to alleviate that. He didn’t like being held captive by his needs.

  Pierce turned away from Amanda, afraid she might see something in his eyes that he didn’t want to share. The pain that surfaced every so often. The pain of a small, abandoned boy.

  “There is nothing gracious about the South, Mandy,” he said softly as he remembered his early years. “It’s a myth we like to spin.” He looked at her over his shoulder. “Read Tennessee Williams and Faulkner sometime if you don’t believe me.”

  Amanda remained silent, staring at him. She had no idea where to begin. “I’m sorry.” The words were hardly more than a whisper.

  He’d been a fool to say anything.

  “So,” Pierce began lightly, damning himself for opening up to her. What the hell could he have been thinking of? He turned around to face her squarely, a cocky smile playing on his lips. “Which story do you like better? Me as the uncle with five nephews and nieces? Or me, the poor, abandoned Georgia cracker boy with the wicked grandmother?”

  He was trying to push her away. He’d bared his soul for an instant and he was embarrassed, she thought. “You don’t have five nieces and nephews,” she said quietly. “I checked.”

  He inclined his head. “Very thorough of you. I don’t have a grandmother, either.” She’d died the year he turned eighteen. He hadn’t shed a single tear. Her death had left him free emotionally as well as legally.

  Amanda watched his face, trying to find clues to the man. He wasn’t just a Johnny-one-note whose only goal was to score. There was a great deal more to him than that. “But you did.”

  He shrugged, feeling awkward. “Everyone usually does. Look, I just made it all up so you that wouldn’t fly off the handle at me again about Granger.” He’d rather have her railing at him than pitying him. He’d seen enough pity directed at him when he was growing up, and it stuck in his throat. “Granger must have told you by now that I went over there.”

  Pierce’s words brought back the sense of betrayal she’d experienced. She realized now, despite her exhaustion, that she had expected better from Pierce. At least Whitney had reasons for his betrayal that she could understand.

  Pierce had merely been out for himself. And using Amanda to further his own ambitions. Maybe she was just being a fool, feeling sorry for him. Feeling for him.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why did you?”

  He felt more at ease when she was angry with him. “Hey, I’m an investigative reporter.” He spread his hands wide. “We investigate.”

  His manner was so blase, it irked her. Which was the act? Then, or now?

  “Is that why you’re here, now?”

  Slowly, he ran the tip of his finger along the inside of her collar. He saw her pupils grow large.

  “Yes, I’m here to investigate. Investigate anything you’ll let me.”

  Amanda moved the chair back, breaking contact. It was an act, she thought, this tough guy come-on of his. Or was it? The hour was late and her thinking was muddied. She went after simpler answers.

  “Why didn’t you go on the air with my story?”

  There was no point in covering himself with glory. He told her the truth, or as much of the truth as he would let her have. He didn’t want her to have any false illusions about him.

  “I didn’t have enough to work with. Granger became suspicious, and I didn’t have enough time to dig up any material or tap any sources. You were going on at five with the story.” He shrugged. “So, you get the feather in your hat.” He thought of the look on Grimsley’s face. “Or the ax.”

  She wasn’t buying his explanation, but his words did trigger another image. Amanda’s expression hardened. She didn’t care for confrontations, but they seemed to find her. And she wasn’t about to back away meekly. She wasn’t her mother.

  “Grimsley can try.”

  There was a fire in her that warmed him and drew him in.

  He smiled, a sexy, lazy smile that Amanda was discovering she was less and less immune to.

  “I do admire your spirit, Mandy. It takes my breath away.” He leaned closer. “Just like you do.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “Oh puh-lease.”

  He laughed, entertained. “That’s what they all say.” He winked, filling his hand with her hair. “You won’t have to.”

  It was that cockiness that kept her from succumbing and reminded her just what sort of man she was dealing with. She secretly blessed it as she pushed him aside. “That’s good to know, because I don’t intend to.”

  His eyes grew serious as he studied her. “But I do have one question.”

  She should be the one asking the questions, she thought. Amanda raised her eyes to his, braced. “Which is?’

  His eyes narrowed to small slits as he watched her face. If she was lying, he thought he’d know. “Did you sleep with Granger?”

  Her face grew hot, from anger rather than embarrassment. “Is that for your latest news report?”

  “Maybe.” Arms still crossed, he shrugged carelessly. “Maybe it’s just for me.”

  She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of a direct answer. Let him think what he wanted to. It didn’t matter to her.

  “Well, I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  He fingered the framed photograph of Christopher. “That’s rather obvious.”

  Pierce carefully replaced the photograph on her desk, then raised his eyes, pinning her with a look, daring her to lie to him. “Then you did.”

  She straightened her shoulders, her expression unreadable. “And if I did?”

  He told himself that it didn’t matter, that he liked it better that way. Less chance for complications. If she was involved with someone else, then she’d place no demands on him.

  “Then I’d say he had good taste.”

  She wanted to hit him and went as far as fisting her hand. She had no idea what made her tell him the truth.

  “Well, he does, but I didn’t. He never tried any
thing.”

  Pierce slowly reopened her hand, driving his fingers between hers. Granger didn’t strike him as a stupid man. “Yeah, I’ll just bet.”

  Amanda had taken his snide remarks about her pretty much in stride, but she wasn’t about to let him insult Whitney. It was bad enough that he’d try to weasel into the estate, using her name and Whitney’s trust to get a story; painting Whitney as a womanizer was going too far. Having driven herself hard today, Amanda felt her emotions dangerously close to the breaking point and she rose suddenly to her feet, sending her chair tottering backward.

  She hit his chest with the flat of her hand, then hit it again, forcing him to take a step back. “Can’t you get it through your thick, sleazy mind that there are some decent, noble men left in the world?”

  When frustration caused her to raise her hand again, Pierce caught it in a firm grip. Enough was enough, even if she wanted to make a plaster saint out of a CEO who was caught with his hand in the till just because he looked like a younger Cary Grant.

  “Just how decent is it for a guy to embezzle over a million dollars of other people’s money to promote his own dream?”

  He was seeing headlines, not the real story. That was his problem. Headlines were splashy, stories had heart. And Pierce, she thought with a surprising pang, had none.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “No? Well, maybe you are, for believing in things like knights in shining armor.” He forced her hand down.

  Amanda rubbed her wrist. “Something you wouldn’t know anything about, you with your thousand and one backgrounds and your southern drawl.”

  “No, you’re right,” he agreed, his voice dangerously low. “All I know about is things like this.”

  And then, before she could get away, he grabbed her roughly and brought his mouth down on hers.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Amanda struggled against him, wanting to kick, to bite, to scratch. Wanting to do anything but what she was doing: kissing him back.

  Pierce had unearthed a well of emotions within her, just as he had the last time. Desperately, she tried to make her indignation tangible, to keep her body from melting like hot wax against him.