by Susan Kyle
“That would be nice,” he agreed. “I’ve been on the move for fourteen hours.”
“Business trip?” she asked as she led the way into her kitchen.
His broad shoulders rose and fell. “What else? I had to fly to California and back with delays everywhere.” He sat down at her small kitchen table. The cloth was white and ruffed, like the curtains at the windows. The room had yellow highlights and white appliances. It was bright and cheery.
“I like the way you decorate,” he remarked. “I haven’t been here since you moved in.”
“You haven’t been anywhere except to your office and other offices in a long time,” she remarked as she filled the automatic drip coffee maker and turned it on.
He traced the pattern of a leaf on the tablecloth. “No, I haven’t.”
She got down cups and saucers and filled a cream pitcher. She put that and the sugar bowl on the table, because he took his coffee black but she didn’t. She laid napkins and silver at two places. Then, strapped for anything else to do, she reluctantly sat down across from him. Her heart was beating her half to death already, and he’d barely been in the house five minutes.
“Is this a friendly visit, or do you want to hear about the Gazette?” she asked.
He searched her face. He wasn’t the only one who was working hard. There were traces of fatigue there.
“Tell me about the Gazette,” he said noncommittally.
“I’m going to make some minor changes that I hope your Mr. Johnson will be too preoccupied to notice,” she said, smiling faintly. “He’ll get around to it, and I’ll probably be in trouble. But I’m going to make that job press pay. If you close it down now,” she added, “you’ll lose money.”
“I haven’t made a decision to close it down,” he replied. His eyes fell to her hands, bare of jewelry, noticing their nervous clenching. He was just as unsettled by her, and trying not to show it. He hadn’t meant to come here. But he was lonely.
He leaned back, his face taut as he stared across the table at her. “Life doesn’t get any easier,” he remarked absently.
“I know what you mean.”
“Has Brad said anything to you about his finances?” he asked abruptly.
So that was why he was here. Her eyes fell. “I know about the gambling debt. But I can’t discuss Brad’s private business even with you. Whatever he tells me, I keep in confidence.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “But if he goes in headfirst, I’d like to know. You can tell him that.”
“He already knows it. He’s trying to take care of his own liabilities, though. I tried to point him in the right direction…”
“What an interesting idea,” he said, annoyed that Brad had approached Amanda for advice. He didn’t like to think of Brad getting too close to Amanda. “You aren’t solvent yourself and you’re advising my brother?”
His question made her angry. She had had enough of his patronizing manner. She smiled coldly. “Well, he could always solve his problems and mine just by marrying me,” she said just to antagonize him. It worked, too. His face tautened to steely hardness. “I would inherit my share of the newspaper immediately, then I could loan him enough to bail him out,” she added, turning the knife.
Josh went dead inside. His face, livid with surprise and distaste, was naked for the first time in memory.
She was surprised by his expression. She’d only been joking. Why was he taking it so seriously? “Josh, I’m not going to marry Brad,” she said, forcing a laugh. “Why, he’s like a brother!”
He was all but vibrating with rage. It had never occurred to him, God knew why, that if he found Amanda attractive, Brad might, too. His womanizing brother and Amanda! Brad needed money, she had some, they were old friends, and she liked Brad. The thought, just the thought of it, drove him crazy. He couldn’t let that happen!
“Will you listen… Josh!”
He was on his feet beside her in seconds, and with one smooth motion he had her up in his arms and was carrying her toward the living room.
She didn’t fight. The action was such a shock that she just lay against his chest trying to catch her breath. And then the familiarity of him began to work on her like a drug as she savored the warm strength of him against her.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“God knows.” He sat down on a big armchair with Amanda in his lap. His dark eyes slid over her face and shoulders, to the deep expanse of bane skin where die black laces held the bodice of her white blouse together. “I knew you’d been seeing Brad,” he said, his voice choked with anger. “I didn’t know things had gone that far.”
“They haven’t,” she assured him. She let out a long, weary breath, and her green eyes were as cynical as his had ever been.
He made a rough sound deep in his throat and pulled her into a warm, close embrace. He sat with his face in her hair, just holding her, for a long time. It was like coming home.
“Can’t you tell me what’s upsetting you?” she whispered at his ear.
“Not yet.” In that moment he wanted to tell her his deepest fear, but he couldn’t. Amanda didn’t deserve to shoulder that burden.
She smoothed his thick blond hair. He smelled of expensive cologne and clean cotton. She loved being held by him.
His cheek slid against hers, and he found her mouth with tender deliberation, parting it With his so that he could savor the delicate intimacy with his tongue.
He hadn't kissed her like this before. Not this deeply. She liked it. She loved it. Her mouth opened for him, and she shifted in his arms so that she could press her hands under his jacket, against the warm, hard muscles of his chest through the thin shirt.
He lifted his head and looked down at her hands. Under them, his heart raced. His gaze shifted to her bodice, and his body began to stir.
With a long, resigned sigh, he reached out and began to unlace the blouse, his dark eyes almost apologetic as they searched hers.
If he was looking for a protest, he wasn’t going to find one. She lay with her lips parted, trembling a little. He’d never seen her without her blouse. Or touched her under it. They’d shared nothing more intimate than kisses. Until now.
“Is it because you’re missing Terri?” she asked in a whisper.
His hand didn’t still. He shook his head. “It’s because my eyes ache for you,” he said softly.
Her head rested against his broad shoulder. She watched his eyes, her body tensing as he drew the laces down and slowly, so slowly, pulled away the fabric that covered her high, tip-tilted breasts.
His breath expelled in a soft rush. He hadn’t known that she’d be so exquisite. Her nipples were dusky pink, very hard. The shape and firmness of her soft breasts awed him, aroused him.
He bent, hesitating only for a second before his mouth fastened with delicate tenderness over a hard nipple and worked its way down in a blistering silence to the firm, sweet skin below it. His big hands slid around her, faintly rough but very gentle on the bareness of her back, as he lifted her closer to his mouth and fed on her.
She heard the sound he made, a mingling of a harsh groan and a grunt of pleasure. Her hands cradled his head and she closed her eyes, shivering with the heady newness of this sweet intimacy. She’d never imagined that it would feel like this to have his mouth on her skin. It was like sinking into heated velvet. Her whole body rippled with delight, and she tried to lift closer, to make it last. She moaned as the seductive tracing of his tongue and lips increased the tension explosively.
When the need was unbearable, he turned his cheek against her and enveloped her in his arms. There was a faint tremor in them, in his breathing. She felt it through her own aching quiver.
Time seemed to hang by a thread in the silence of die room. She was aware on some level of the sound of the coffee maker whishing as it finished its cycle, of cars far away on the highway. But closer, there was the hard, quick beat of her heart in Josh’s ear and the scent and feel of him. Years ago she ha
dn’t thought him capable of this kind of tenderness. It seemed oddly contradictory for a confessed womanizer who kept pushing her away.
She said so, her voice unsteady above his head.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Isn’t it?”
She kissed his forehead, his closed eyes, with her heart in her lips. “Why did you come today, really?”
“I think you know.”
She was afraid to say what she suspected. Afraid that, like a secret dream, if she said it aloud, it would turn to ashes.
He lifted his head and studied her rapt, abandoned face. Her cheeks were flushed. Her green eyes were soft and half-closed and misty with pleasure. Her mouth was red and swollen from his kisses.
He drew his hand softly over the curve of one firm breast, tracing the mark his hungry mouth had made just below the nipple. “Did I hurt you when I did this?”
She smiled. “I didn’t notice.” She arched a little, still in thrall to the addictive sensations he’d aroused. “Wouldn’t you like to do it again, so that I could tell if it hurts?”
He smiled back. He touched the hard tip, watching her eyes dilate. Gently he took it between his thumb and forefinger and caressed it. She made a sharp little sound in her throat, and hear lips parted.
“I know exactly what reaction this causes in your body, and where,” he whispered. “I’d like to touch you there. But this has already gone too far. I want you badly, Amanda.”
She pulled his hand completely over the mounded flesh and pressed it to her, feeling the warmth of his palm cupping her. “I want you, too. Is that so terrible?”
“No. Between us, lovemaking would be beautiful,” he replied, “a soft, sweet joining that would be very addictive.” His fingers contracted tenderly. “And very wrong.”
“You sound like a theologian,” she whispered.
He smiled gently. “You’re virginal,” he whispered back. “In this, I’m hopelessly conservative. There are a few gentlemanly rules of conduct left that I still believe in.”
She sighed. “Good girls wait until they’re married,” she murmured. “Why is it that only rakes feel that way?”
“Because we honor innocence, having deprived the world of so much of it,” he teased. He moved his hand, enjoying the pleasure that came so readily to her eyes when he caressed her. Her sadden moan aroused him deeply. He breathed out and covered her with his big, warm hand. “I don’t sleep,” he said quietly. “I don’t eat, I don’t function. All I do is remember how you looked when I sent you away. That’s why I came here today. I had to know that you were all right, that I hadn’t hurt you too much.”
“You didn’t mean anything you said that day, really, did you?” she asked.
He laughed faintly, bitterly. “What do you think?” He watched the progress of his own hand from her breast to her collarbone and her soft throat. His eyes lingered with quiet awe on the beauty of her breasts. “I’ll know what I need to know by the end of next week,” he said enigmatically. His eyes lifted back to hers. “If I needed you, would you come?”
“What a silly question,” she murmured lovingly.
“Yes, wasn’t it?” He removed his hand. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, like this,” he said matter-of-factly. His eyes caught hers. “I’m sorry there was ever a woman at all, do you know that?”
She did. His eyes told her so. “I don’t know what’s wrong in your life,” she said. “But nothing would matter. Love doesn’t make conditions.”
He drew her blouse back together. “No. But sometimes it imposes them.”
He was frightening her. It was as if he had some terrible suspicion that he couldn’t, wouldn’t, share. He was withdrawing from her emotionally all over again. She had to do something to lessen the tension in him. “Is this all I get?” she asked suddenly.
He frowned. “What?”
“I’ll bet you never stopped this soon in your life before,” she accused.
He began to smile. “There’s a first time for everything.”
“Yes,” she said, her lips tugging up and an impish look in her sparkling eyes.
His eyebrows arched. “Was that…?” He nodded toward the bodice she was lacing up.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she teased. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“You don’t need to. You have a very expressive face. Well, well,” he murmured, and he looked so smug that she glared at him.
“You puritan,” she muttered when he put her back on her feet and sauntered into the kitchen to pour coffee into the cups.
He glanced at her with pure mischief as he put the coffeepot back in its holder. “Why? Because I won’t let you seduce me?”
“I can’t imagine why you make an exception of me,” she said with a sigh.
He stood beside her for a moment, his face guarded. “Because I care too much to treat you that way,” he said quietly. “I’m jealous of my own brother. Jealous of any man who looks at you.” He sat down, his expression puzzling. “When I have no right to feel that way. None at all.”
She was beginning to get the idea that it wasn’t a dislike of marriage that was keeping him away from her.
“Joshua,” she said, catching his big hand in hers, “we never used to have secrets.”
He knelt beside her chair, his eyes almost on a level with hers. “We wouldn’t have this one,” he replied, “except that I can’t make promises until I’m sure I can keep them. When I know exactly what I’m up against, I’ll tell you.”
Her stomach felt knotted as she considered the implications of what he wasn’t saying. “You’re not ill?!”
“No,” he replied. “I’m not hiding a fatal illness.”
She let out a long sigh. “You worry me.”
“That works both ways.” He got up and sat down on his own chair, taking time to sip his coffee. “Not bad,” he mused. “But I make it stronger.”
“You can make it next time,” she promised.
He checked his watch, swallowed the rest of the hot liquid, and got up again.
“You don’t have to leave already?” she moaned.
“Yes. I’m due in Florence by midnight, our time.” He pulled her up and held her in front of him. “I have to go.”
She searched his eyes sadly. “You’re always saying good-bye.”
“Kismet,” he murmured.
“Did you say ‘Kiss me?” she teased. “I’d be just delighted.”
She reached up on tiptoe and put her mouth firmly over his. He tensed, but almost at once he lifted her closer and began to devour her soft, willing mouth. It only made her hungrier to feel the long, powerful line of his body completely against hers. She stepped closer, trembling. It was like alcohol, she thought dizzily, kissing him back. The more she had, the more she wanted. She lifted herself against him, shivering with pleasure.
He felt it and putted back. But he was more than obviously aroused.
“Stop that,” he muttered.
“Liar,” she accused breathlessly. “You don’t want to stop.”
He gave tor a rueful smile. “Shrewd guess. It must be the result of all drat higher education.”
She glanced down and up again. “Nope. Just keen observation,” she whispered wickedly, and flushed in spite of her attempted sophistication.
He chuckled, unruffled. “I’ll be in touch.”
He walked to the front door. She went with him, subdued and sad, because it was always endings for them, never beginnings.
“I’m glad you don’t want to many my brother,” he observed. “But don’t turn your back on him, all the same. His reputation was honestly come by.”
“Meaning yours wasn’t?” she probed.
He turned and looked down at her, the open door beckoning. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he teased, throwing the words she’d used earlier back at her.
“Brad won’t come up on my blind side. Please try to get some rest,” she added. Her long look was expressive. “You’re exhausted already, and
Florence is so far away…”
“Worrywart.” He touched her face with his fingertips. His eyes adored it, adored her. He smiled wistfully. “It’s dangerous to hope.”
“It’s cowardly not to,” she returned, without really understanding why he looked so sad, “When hope is ail we have.”
He dropped his hand slowly. “So long, pixie.”
She wanted to drag him back, hold him, prevent him. But he turned and walked back toward the black stretch limousine, where the driver sat with stoic patience until he approached. The liveried chauffeur got out to open the door for him. Josh got in. He didn’t look back, even when the driver cranked the car and pulled out of the driveway.
Amanda watched, though, until he was out of sight. Even then she didn’t close the door at once. It was only just occurring to her that he might love her.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Mirri was a nervous wreck by Saturday. She and Nelson Stuart had reached a sort of compromise in the office. She was plaguing him less and wearing clothes that were a shade more conservative than usual. He was somewhat less abrasive.
The odd thing was that he’d started giving her long, smoldering looks, the kind she’d read about in romantic novels but never seen for real. He had another look, too. Not a very pleasant one.
There was a new man in the office, Danny Tanner by name. Danny was a ladies’ man, and he took to Mirri on sight. Unfortunately for him, he reminded her of one of the boys who’d hurt her so badly. She froze whenever he came near.
He’d been standing, talking to her past the lunch hour Friday. Through the glass window of his office, Nelson had seen him flirting with Mirri.
He’d gotten up, come into the outer office, and stood by Mirri’s desk, just looking at Danny. That’s all he’d done. He’d simply looked at him, with those deep-set black eyes in a face like honed leather.
Danny had stammered something and escaped. “Don’t encourage him during office hours,” Nelson told her curtly.
“I wasn’t,” she said, defensive.
“He might as well move his pillow onto your desk, he hangs around it so much.”