by JoAnn Ross
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Amanda mused. “Perhaps Greg’s using her as a spy. To discover my weak points. And to find out if I’m trying to unseat him.”
“That’d be my guess.” Even as Dane agreed, he thought that although the explanation made sense, it hadn’t seemed to fit Kelli Kyle’s probing questions. Putting the nagging little problem away for now, he ran his hands through Amanda’s tousled hair, dislodging silvery grains of sand.
“Are we through talking about business?”
“Absolutely.” She beamed up at him. “Are you going to make love to me again?”
“Absolutely.” And, after a long interlude spent beneath the shower in the bath adjoining the tower room, that’s exactly what Dane did.
With a restraint that she never would have guessed possible, he kept the pace slow and this time when he took her, the ride was slow and long and heartbreakingly gentle. But no less dizzying.
Amanda had mistakenly believed that in that whirlwind mating in the cave, Dane had taught her everything he knew about love. Before the sun rose the following morning, she realized that she’d been wrong.
Her first heady experience, as dizzying as it had proved to be, had only been a prelude to the most glorious night any woman could have known.
A night she knew she would remember for the rest of her life.
10
It was the coo of a pigeon sitting on her windowsill that woke her. Amanda stretched luxuriously and felt her lips curve into a slow, satisfied smile. For the first time in her life she knew exactly how Scarlett had felt the morning after Rhett had carried her up all those stairs.
Although she felt a pang of regret to find herself alone in bed, she decided that Dane must have slipped away to prevent gossip. Not that anyone would actually come all the way up here to the tower room. But it was thoughtful of him all the same.
It certainly wouldn’t help matters to have the team members gossiping about her and Dane sleeping together. Not that either of them had gotten much sleep.
Besides, they both had a busy day today. Amanda was taking the team out on a deep-sea fishing trip, while Dane caught up on some much-needed grounds work.
She climbed out of the high log bed, aware of an unfamiliar stiffness. To think you’ve wasted all that time on the stair stepper, she scolded herself lightly. When there are far better ways to work out.
Perhaps, she considered with an inward grin, she should take Dane back to Portland with her at the end of the challenge. Maybe, with the raise that comes with the creative director’s slot, I could hire him to be my personal trainer. And dear Lord, how personal he’d been!
Even as she found the idea more than a little appealing, it brought home, all too clearly, that their time together was coming to an end. If everything went according to plan, in two short days she’d be getting back on that bus and returning to Portland, where hopefully she’d move into Greg’s office. While Dane would stay here, in Satan’s Cove, living the bucolic life of a coastal innkeeper.
The thought of losing him, just when she’d found him again, was not a pleasant one. But unwilling to spoil what brief time they had left together, Amanda decided to take yet another page out of Scarlett O’Hara’s story and think about that tomorrow.
She went into the adjoining bathroom, which was now overbrimming with memories of the long hot shower they’d taken together last night.
This morning, as she stood beneath the streaming water, she wondered if she’d ever be able to take a shower again without remembering the feel of Dane’s strong, sure hands on her body, or the taste of his lips on hers, or the dazzling, dizzying way his mouth had felt when he’d knelt before her and treated her to lovemaking so sublime she’d actually wept.
When memories began flooding her mind and stimulating her body yet again, Amanda decided it was time to get to work. She turned off the water and slipped into the plush white robe—reminiscent of those favored by the Whitfield Palace hotels—hanging on the back of the door.
She found Dane pouring coffee. The scent of the rich dark brew, along with the aroma of Mary Cutter’s freshly baked croissants, drewher like a magnet.
“You weren’t kidding about special service.”
“With a smile.” He handed her a cup of steaming coffee, but before she could drink it, he bent his head and kissed her. “I knew it.”
“What?” How was it that he could set her head spinning with a single kiss? Although she doubted they’d had more than three hours’ sleep, Amanda had never felt more alive.
“That you’d be drop-dead gorgeous in the morning.” His eyes took a slow tour of her, from her wet caramel-colored hair down to her toes, painted the soft pink of the inside of a seashell. Beads of water glistened on the flesh framed by the lapels of the bulky white robe. Dane was struck with an urge to lick them away.
“Flatterer.” She laughed and dragged a hand through her damp hair. “And if you don’t stop looking at me that way, I’ll miss the fishing boat.”
“If you’ve ever smelled a fishing boat, you’d know that would be no great loss.” His own smile faded. “I’ve been thinking about the final challenge event.”
Amanda nodded. It had been on her mind, as well. “The cliff climb.”
“You realize there isn’t much room for error in rock climbing.”
“I know.” She sat down at the skirted table and tore off a piece of croissant. It was as flaky as expected, layered with the sweet taste of butter. “I trust you to keep things safe.”
“I’m not in the survival business.” He sat down as well, close enough that their knees were touching.
“I know that, too.” After last night, Amanda couldn’t find it in her to worry about anything. “But so far, you’ve done a wonderful job.”
“You haven’t been so bad, yourself, sweetheart. The way you’ve kept those team members from going for one another’s throats would probably earn you a top-level job in the diplomatic corps, if you ever decide to give up advertising.”
She wondered what he’d say if he knew she thought about exactly that on an almost daily basis lately. One of the things that had drawn her to advertising in the first place was that it was a service business, a business that prospered or failed on how it served its clients.
With all the recent megamergers, there seemed to be very little benefit to clients. In fact, more than one old-time C.C.C. client had proclaimed to be upset by a supposed conflict of interest now that the same huge agency was also handling their competitors’ advertising.
“You know,” she murmured, “a lot of people—mostly those in New York—used to consider C.C.C. old-fashioned. And perhaps it was.” Which was, she’d often thought lately, one of the things she’d loved about Connally Creative Concepts. “But it was still an agency where clients’ desires were catered to.
“These days, it seems that if you can’t win new accounts by being creative, you buy them by gobbling up other, more innovative shops. But the forced combination inevitably fails to create a stronger agency.”
“Instead of getting the best of both worlds, you get the worst of each,” Dane guessed.
“Exactly.” Amanda nodded. “Creativity becomes the last item on the agenda. And, although I hate to admit it, the advertising coming out of Janzen, Lawton and Young these days shows it. In the pursuit of profits, our clients have become an afterthought. They’re getting lost in the shuffle.”
“It’s not just happening in advertising,” Dane observed. “The workplace, in general, has become increasingly impersonal.”
Which was another of the reasons he’d left the world of big business. Although, under Eve Whitfield Deveraux’s guidance, the Whitfield Palace hotel chain routinely topped all the Best 100 Corporations to Work For lists, it was, and always would be, a profit-driven business.
“Every day I arrive at my office, hoping to rediscover the business I used to work in.” Amanda had been so busy trying to keep things on an even keel at work, she hadn’t real ize
d exactly how much she’d missed the often-frantic, always-stimulating atmosphere of C.C.C. “But I can’t. Because it’s disappeared beneath a flood of memos and dress codes and constantly changing managerial guidelines.”
She sighed again. “Would you mind if we tabled this discussion for some other time?” The depressing topic was threatening to cast a pall over her previously blissful mood.
“Sure.” It was none of his business anyway, Dane told himself again. What Amanda chose to do with her life was no one’s concern but her own. Knowing that he was utterly hooked on this woman who’d stolen his heart so long ago, Dane only wished that were true.
“May I ask you something?”
There was something in his low tone that set off warnings inside Amanda. She slowly lowered her cup to the flowered tablecloth. “Of course.”
“Why me? And why now?”
Good question. She wondered what he’d say if she just said it right out: Because I think—no, I know—that I love you.
She put her cup down and stared out at the tall windows at the sea, which was draped in its usual silvery cloak of early-morning mist.
“When I was a girl, I was a romantic.”
“I remember.” All too well.
“I believed that someday a handsome prince would come riding up on his white steed and carry me off to his palace, where we’d live happily ever after.” Dane had had a Harley in those days instead of a white horse, but he’d fit the romantic fantasy as if it had been created with him in mind. He still did.
“Sounds nice,” Dane agreed. “For a fairy tale.” Speaking of fairy tales, he wondered what would happen if, now that he finally had her back again, he just kept Amanda locked away up here in the tower room, like Rapunzel.
“For a fairy tale,” she agreed. “I also was brought up to believe that lovemaking was something to be saved for the man I married.”
“A not-unreasonable expectation.” Dane considered it ironic that he might have Gordon Stockenberg to thank for last night.
“No. But not entirely practical, either.” She ran her fingernail around the rim of the coffee cup, uncomfortable with this discussion. Although they’d been as intimate as two people could be, she was discovering that revealing the secrets of her heart was a great deal more difficult than revealing her body.
“If we’d made love that summer, I probably would have found it easier to have casual sex with guys I dated in college. Like so many of my friends.
“But you’d made such a big deal of it, I guess I wanted to wait until I met someone I could at least believe myself to be in love with as much as I’d been in love with you.”
Which had never happened.
“Then, after I graduated, I was so busy concentrating on my work, that whenever I did meet a man who seemed like he might be a candidate, he’d usually get tired of waiting around and find some more willing woman.”
“Or a less choosy one.”
She smiled at that suggestion. “Anyway, after a time, sex just didn’t seem that important anymore.”
“You have been working too hard.”
Amanda laughed even as she considered that now that she’d experienced Dane’s magnificent lovemaking, sex had taken on an entirely new perspective.
“Anyway,” she said with a shrug designed to conceal her tumultuous feelings, “perhaps it was old unresolved feelings reasserting themselves, but being back here again with you, making love to you, just felt so natural. So right.”
“I know the feeling.” He covered her free hand with his, lacing their fingers together. “You realize, of course, that you could have saved me a great many cold showers if you’d just admitted to wanting me that first night?”
The way his thumb was brushing tantalizingly against the palm of her hand was creating another slow burn deep inside Amanda. “Better late than never.”
“Speaking of being late…” He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss against the skin his thumb had left tingling. “How much time do we have before you’re due at the dock?”
She glanced over at the clock on the pine bedside table and sighed. “Not enough.”
“I was afraid of that.” He ran the back of his hand down her cheek. “How would you like to go into town with me tonight?”
The opportunity to be alone with Dane, away from the prying eyes of the others, sounded sublime. “I’d love to.”
“Great. Davey Jones’s Locker probably isn’t what you’re used to—I mean, the tablecloths are white butcher paper instead of damask and the wine list isn’t anything to boast about. But the food’s pretty good. And the lighting’s dark enough that we can neck in the back booth between courses.”
Her smile lit her face. “It sounds absolutely perfect.”
Other than the fact that the sea had turned rough and choppy by midafternoon, and Dane had been right about the smell of fish permeating every inch of the chartered fishing boat, the derby turned out better than Amanda had honestly expected.
The teams seemed to be meshing more with each passing day, and at the same time the competitive viciousness displayed on the bike race had abated somewhat. At least, she considered, as the boat chugged its way into the Satan’s Cove harbor, no one had thrown anyone overboard.
As team members stood in line to have their catch weighed and measured, Amanda noticed that Kelli was missing. She found her in the rest room of the charter office, splashing water on her face. Her complexion was as green as the linoleum floor.
“Whoever thought up this stupid challenge week should be keelhauled,” the public-relations manager moaned.
Since the week had been Greg’s idea, Amanda didn’t answer. “I guess the Dramamine didn’t work.” Prepared for seasickness among the group, Amanda had given Kelli the tablets shortly after the boat left the dock, when it became obvious that the woman was not a natural-born sailor.
“Actually, it helped a lot with the seasickness. I think it was the smell of the fish that finally got to me.” She pressed a hand against her stomach. “I’m never going to be able to eat salmon or calamari again.”
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said, realizing she actually mednt it. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No.” Kelli shook her head, then cringed, as if wishing she hadn’t done so. “I just want to get back to the inn, go to bed, pull the covers over my head and if not die, at least sleep until morning.”
“That sounds like a good idea. I’ll ask Mary Cutter to fix a tray for you to eat in your room.”
If possible, Kelli’s complexion turned an even sicklicr hue of green. “I don’t think I could keep down a thing.” “You need something in your stomach. Just something light. Some crackers. And a little broth, perhaps.”
Although obviously quite ill, Kelli managed a smile. “You know, everything I’ve been told about you suggests you’re a dynamite advertising executive. Yet, sometimes, like during that stupid helicopter session, you seem to be a born diplomat.”
“Thank you.” Amanda was surprised to receive praise from someone so close to her nemesis.
“You don’t have to thank me for telling the truth,” Kelli said. “But there’s another side to you, as well. A softer, nurturing side. So, what about children?”
The question had come from left field. “What about them?”
“Do you intend to have any?”
“I suppose. Someday.”
“But not anytime soon?”
“Getting pregnant certainly isn’t on this week’s agenda,” Amanda said honestly.
For some reason she could not discern, Kelli seemed to be mulling that over. Amanda waited patiently to see what the woman was up to.
“You don’t like me much, do you?” Kelli asked finally.
“I don’t really know you.”
“True. And spoken like a true diplomat. By the way, Dane was a perfect gentleman last night.”
“I can’t imagine Dane being anything but a gentleman.”
“What I mean is—”
“I know what you mean.” Amanda didn’t want to talk about Dane. Not with this woman.
Kelli reached into her canvas tote, pulled out a compact and began applying rose blush to her too-pale cheeks. “You love Dane, don’t you?”
“I really don’t believe my feelings are anyone’s business but my own.”
“Of course not,” Kelli said quickly. A bit too quickly, Amanda thought. “I was just thinking that advertising is a very unstable business, and if you were to get involved with our sexy innkeeper, then have to move back East—”
“I doubt there’s much possibility of that. Besides, as exciting as New York admittedly is, I’m comfortable where I am.”
Kelli dropped the blush back into the bag and pulled out a black-and-gold lipstick case. “Even with Greg as creative director?”
She’d definitely hit the bull’s-eye with that question.
“Greg Parsons isn’t Patrick Connally,” Amanda said truthfully. “And his management style is a great deal different.” Sort of like the difference between Genghis Khan and Ghandi. “But, as we’ve pointed out over these past days, advertising is all about change.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Kelli looked at Amanda in the mirror. Her gaze was long and deep. Finally, she returned to her primping. After applying a fuchsia lipstick that added much-needed color to her lips, she said, “I suppose we may as well join the others.”
As they left the rest room together, Amanda couldn’t help thinking that their brief conversation wasn’t exactly like two women sharing confidences. It had strangely seemed more like an interview. Deciding that she was reading too much into the incident, she began anticipating the evening ahead.
Amanda hadn’t been so nervous since the summer of her fifteenth year. She bathed in scented water that left her skin as smooth as silk, brushed her newly washed hair until it shone like gold and applied her makeup with unusual care. Then she stood in front of the closet, wondering what she could wear for what was, essentially, her first real date with Dane.