by Diana Palmer
The ballroom boasted a live orchestra, and the colors of the women’s gowns made a bright kaleidoscope. All Kenna saw were shapes and swirls of color, not individual faces, but it was enchanting and when she squinted she could recognize people. She found Denny and Margo immediately. They were standing by the punch bowl, smiling at each other, and she felt the color drain out of her face.
“Stop that,” Regan said curtly. “You look like somebody’s grandmother when you squint.”
“Thank you, fairy godfather, for the coach and glass slippers,” she returned, glaring in his general direction, “but now could you wave your magic wand and disappear?”
“Sorry, honey,” he murmured, “there’s nothing I’d like better, but circumstances dictate a different course. Act loving, you sweet little prude, and smile!”
She did, sickeningly, and clung to his hard arm as she caught a glimpse of Denny and Margo heading toward them. “My, my, how you do go on,” she drawled. “And how I wish you would—go on, that is.”
“Shut up, they’re coming.” He slid his arm around her waist. “Hello, Denny.”
“Hi, big brother” came the pleasant reply. A thrill of pleasure went through Kenna at the sound of Denny’s voice. “Who’s this dishy thing with you?”
“As if you didn’t know.” Regan chuckled, hugging her close. “Kenna and I just got here.”
Denny was close enough now that Kenna could see his shocked features as he studied her. “What happened to you?” he mumbled “You look...different.”
“I happened to her,” Regan said, his tone threatening enough to catch his brother’s attention.
“Well, well,” Denny muttered, “and I thought you two were likely to kill each other if I left you alone for a week.”
“May I be introduced?” the dark-eyed, raven-haired woman at Denny’s side asked gently.
“Oh, excuse me, of course! Margo de la Vera, this is my stepbrother, Regan Cole, and my secretary, Kenna Dean.”
Regan caught the woman’s hand and raised it to his lips with devastating finesse. “Señorita, mucho gusto en conocerla,” he said in perfect Spanish.
Taken aback, the full-lipped woman smiled widely. “Con mucho gusto, señor. Habla usted español?”
“Un poco,” he agreed, smiling back. “Denny has good taste.”
“No, señor, it is I who have that,” Margo said softly, and her eyes openly worshipped Denny. She was unexpectedly gracious, smiling even at Kenna, her eyes gentle, friendly.
Kenna, who had seen Margo in the office several times but had never spoken to her, had expected a cold, icy veneer with a money-hungry heart under it. This woman was totally unexpected.
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Kenna managed with a wan smile. Margo was only a year or so older than she was, but possessed far more maturity and poise.
“And I, you,” Margo replied, nodding. “Denny says that the office would surely fall apart without you.”
“How kind of him,” Kenna mumbled.
“How honest of him.” Regan chuckled, drawing her closer. “She keeps our noses to the grindstone, don’t you, honey?”
Denny was frowning now, puzzled. “Would you like to dance, Kenna?” he asked suddenly.
Kenna’s heart leaped up and she was opening her lips to accept when Regan shook his head and his fingers bit into her waist. “Sorry,” he told his stepbrother with dangerously glittering eyes. “She’s booked for the night, I’m afraid.”
Denny looked uncomfortable, but he quickly erased the expression from his face and caught Margo’s hand. “I don’t blame you, the way she looks,” he told Regan. “Well, we’ll go sway to the beat some more. See you later.”
“Come by my place about midnight and we’ll have a nightcap,” Regan told them.
“We’d like that,” Denny said, drawing Margo along with him.
“Oh, damn you,” Kenna spat at Regan the first chance she got, as he was pushing her around the ballroom to a waltz.
“Your one chance to be in Denny’s arms—” he laughed mockingly “—and I cheated you out of it, is that what you’re thinking? Well, honey, no man wants what’s openly on offer. The harder it is to come by, the more he wants it.”
Her face closed up and she dropped her gaze to his shirtfront, fixing it involuntarily on Denny and Margo as they waltzed past. Margo, in her peach-colored gown, with her dark coloring, was strikingly beautiful. It wasn’t hard to see why Denny was so attracted to her. Even with her new trappings, Kenna felt inferior to her.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” she asked Regan. “And not the cold, mercenary woman you assumed.”
“Appearances can be deceiving, honey,” he reminded her. “I’ve seen innocent little things who were as cold as cash registers in bed.”
“Do you have to buy your women, counselor?” she asked with an oversweet smile.
His eyes glittered down at her. “You’ll pay for that one,” he said quietly.
“I’m shaking in my size-eight shoes,” she assured him. “Isn’t it lucky for me that we’re in this crowd?”
“Enjoy it while you can.”
“I would, if you’d let me dance with Denny,” she grumbled.
“I know what I’m doing, even if you don’t,” he said, whirling her around. His arm suddenly drew her tight against him, and she started at the close contact with his long, powerful legs.
The involuntary little gasp was something she couldn’t help. The feel of him was like a brand, and she tried to draw back.
His arm only tightened until her breasts were crushed softly against his jacket. “Will you relax?” he growled. “Denny’s glaring in this direction. I’d like to give him something to think about.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and let him fold her closer. The feel of his big, hard body at close quarters was doing strange things to her equilibrium. She felt light-headed, shaky. She must be tired, she told herself.
“That’s it,” he murmured over her head, “just let go, let your body rest against mine. Dancing is like making love, you have to let the man lead.”
She flushed to the roots of her hair and stiffened, until the caressing movements of his hand made her give in again.
“You haven’t danced much, have you?” he asked quietly. “You flinch every time your thighs brush mine, as if even this kind of intimacy is new to you.”
It was, but she wouldn’t admit it to her worst enemy. Her fingers clutched at his lapels, and they felt like ice, numb with nervousness. She didn’t dare look up. It was bad enough that his cologne was invading her senses, that the warm maleness of him was wrapping around her and sapping her strength. She couldn’t risk meeting his eyes at point-blank range. He frightened her too much.
“Don’t stiffen up, darling,” he whispered, and his fingers curled into hers seductively. “Let go. Let me feel you.”
He was drowning her in new sensations. She knew what he was doing, he was using his expertise to seduce her so that Denny would think there was something between them. But her body was being tricked into responding to his, and her mind couldn’t protect it anymore. Her thighs, when they met his, trembled wildly, and she caught her breath when his hand slid down low on her back to bring her hips completely against his.
“Oh, no, don’t!” she whispered shakenly, tugging against his hand.
His head bent so that his breath was on her ear, and he nipped the lobe with his teeth. His own breath was strangely harsh, quick. “Don’t you know what I’m doing?” he asked.
“Yes,” she agreed in a stranger’s voice. “But...”
“Don’t read anything personal into it,” he murmured gruffly. “We’re putting on a show, that’s all. You’re vulnerable to this kind of intimacy because you’re a virgin. It would be the same with any experienced man.”
> Would it? She almost voiced the question, and her own thoughts shocked her. The way she was reacting to him was dangerous, but she couldn’t help it. Her senses were screaming for something she’d never experienced, wanting a closer contact than this, wanting something...more.
“Regan?” she whispered shakily.
His breath seemed to catch at the unfamiliar sound of his name on her lips. “What?”
“Please...don’t hold me like this,” she pleaded. Her fingers crushed the lapel of his jacket. “It frightens me.”
He drew in a slow, deep breath and loosened his tight hold. “Why?” he asked.
She couldn’t tell him that. She didn’t know why herself. But she sighed with relief when he let her move slightly away. Something had been happening to him, too, something she wasn’t familiar with, a rigidity that was unmistakable.
“Isn’t the music lovely?” she asked nervously.
His fingers moved caressingly on hers. “A man’s body can play tricks on him,” he whispered at her ear. “It doesn’t necessarily take the feel of a woman against him to trigger it, either.”
She flushed wildly and wondered if she could pull loose and run without attracting too much attention.
“It wasn’t that,” she choked.
“Wasn’t it?” He drew back and looked down into her stunned eyes. “If you could see your face,” he murmured with a strange smile. “Did it shock you?”
She tore her eyes from his with a tiny cry. “Don’t,” she whispered.
“Virgin,” he murmured quietly. His fingers contracted violently around hers for an instant, and she thought she felt his cheek brush softly against her hair.
She swallowed down her nervousness and managed a shaky laugh. “Don’t get any ideas about offering me up as a sacrifice, will you?”
He laughed softly beside her forehead. “Those cultures died out years ago. Have you ever seen the pyramids in Mexico and Central America?”
That brought her eyes up quickly. “And in Peru? Oh, I’d give anything to climb all over them,” she said without reservation. “I wanted to go into archaeology, but I didn’t have the money to pursue graduate courses....”
Something had shadowed his eyes for an instant as he stared down at her. “I’ll have to show you my collection of photos one of these days,” he murmured. “I took an archaeology tour a couple of years back and saw all those places.”
Her face brightened with mingled pleasure and surprise. “Well, well, who’d have thought it?” she murmured. “I didn’t think you old fossils liked other old fossils.”
His eyebrows went straight up. “Flirting with me, Miss Dean?” he asked in an odd tone.
She’d forgotten for an instant that he was the enemy. She turned her eyes to Denny, and a pang of regret went through her as she saw him bend his blond head to listen to Margo’s animated chatter. The sadness showed in her face and Regan reacted to it violently, his arm crushing her against him for an instant.
“Stop it,” he growled. “Must you wear your heart on your sleeve?”
“It’s not working,” she muttered miserably, staring at his shirtfront, at the quick rise and fall of it. “He wouldn’t notice me if I danced a flamenco nude.”
“Give it time, honey,” he said. “You can’t expect everything at once.”
“So they say.” She was glad when the music ended. Dancing with Regan was disturbing, and she was relieved to break contact with his hard body.
As it turned out, she didn’t manage even one dance with Denny, although the hope of it kept her beaming all evening. But at eleven-thirty, when Regan gestured for her to join him, she was forced to give up. Apparently, what Regan had said to him at the beginning of the ball had kept Denny from even asking her to dance. Head down, she went to the door, her evening bag clutched in her hand, and let Regan lead her out into the night.
Chapter Five
Regan seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts and hardly said a word on the way back. Kenna sat rigidly beside him, feeling odd and unfamiliar sensations and disliking them and him acutely.
Why hadn’t he let her dance with Denny just once? It wouldn’t have mattered so much, and she would have lived on it all her life. Her eyes closed on a wave of pain. Denny was so obviously wrapped up in his South American paramour. How did a plain little country girl go about fighting that kind of beauty and sophistication? Oh, she’d drawn his eye, thanks to Regan’s coaching. But it took more than physical attraction to make a relationship work. She wanted more than that from Denny. So much more!
“Take off the glass slippers, honey,” Regan said with a bite in his voice as he parked the car in the garage beneath his apartment building. “It’s almost midnight.”
She opened her eyes with a sigh. “Are we here?” she murmured, glancing around at the dark blurs of other cars.
“You little bat,” he grumbled. “If you’d wear your glasses, you could see for yourself.”
“This is much nicer,” she countered, opening the door for herself before he could do it for her. “I don’t have to see you, do I?” she added with a cold smile.
She caught the flash of his eyes before he slammed the car door behind her and locked it. “Don’t push your luck, Kenna,” he said curtly.
It was one of the few times he’d ever used her name, and the sound rippled through her like tumbling water. She tossed her head, and suddenly she missed the former length of her hair. Her hand went to it, rumpling the waves.
“I miss my hair,” she murmured, following him into the elevator.
“Well, I don’t,” he growled, and lit another cigarette. He was setting new records tonight, he’d smoked so many. He glanced at her head. “At least it doesn’t look like barbed wire now.”
“Do, please, say what you think,” she said with biting sarcasm, glaring up at the hazy features of his hard face. Her wide, bright eyes searched his in the silence; she could hardly make them out without squinting. But she wasn’t going to squint. She looked away.
“I always do,” he returned coldly. The elevator door opened and he led the way to his apartment, unlocking it with a minimum of motion and then standing aside so she could enter first.
He turned on the lights and went straight to the bar. He poured himself a whiskey, a big one, and took a long sip before he glanced her way.
“Would you like sherry or a brandy?” he asked curtly.
“I am allowed to drink hard liquor,” she said, her eyes flashing. “Or do I look like a milk fanatic?”
“Whiskey would go to your head,” he replied. He poured an inch of brandy into a snifter and set it on the coffee table in front of the sofa, where she was perched on the very edge of the seat. “Can you see it?” he asked with a mocking smile. “Or would you like me to shove it under your nose?”
“I’d like to tell you where to shove it,” she flashed back at him, feeling herself bristling, sparring with him, wanting to fight. Needing it.
“Go ahead,” he invited, draining his glass. He set it roughly on the coffee table in front of her.
“You are so smug,” she accused. She took a sip of the brandy, grimaced and put it back down. Her indulgence in alcohol was limited to wine on special occasions, and, blissfully unaware of its age and excellence, she didn’t appreciate the fiery taste of the brandy. “Rearranging people’s lives for them, deciding whom they should marry,” she continued, her face livid with anger and wounded pride and disappointment. “Who pulls your strings, Mr. Famous Attorney, the ghost you live with?”
He went rigid. Absolutely rigid, and it was as well that she couldn’t see the dangerous glitter in his eyes. It probably wouldn’t have stopped her, anyway.
“It’s all right for you to pull my appearance to pieces and order Denny’s life for him, but nobody discusses your life, do they?” she
continued, rising from the sofa. “What’s so secretive about your late wife that you can’t even discuss her without exploding, Mr. Cole? Was she trying to get away from you when she died...oh!”
The sheer fury of his sudden movement cut her off in midsentence. She felt his hands grasping, hurting, as he slammed her down onto the sofa and pinned her there with the impact of his big, warm body.
“Damn you,” he growled as he took her mouth, hurting her, grinding his lips into it until she felt his teeth cutting her lower lip. “Damn you to hell...”
She could hardly breathe for the weight of him, and she was afraid of a man for the first time in her life, physically afraid. His hands were inhumanly strong as they pinned her wrists into the cushions above her head, his chest hurt as it ground down against her soft breasts. There was a tautness to his powerful body that threatened, and his physical superiority was both evident and terrifying.
Tears were stinging her eyes as his mouth bit hers, twisting angrily, hurting and meaning to hurt, as if he were taking out his anguish on her defenseless body.
She had no idea how far he might go, and she knew that she couldn’t stop him. She stiffened, closing her eyes against the fleeting glimpse of his furious scowl, the dark passion in his face. She moaned piteously against his rough mouth, breathing in its smoky warmth as she tried to get enough air to breathe.
The sound seemed to get through to him, along with the tears he could taste on her face.
He lifted his dark head, breathing roughly and much too fast, and looked into her frightened eyes. His mouth made a straight line when he saw her pale face, her swollen lips, her tear-reddened eyes.
“My wife,” he breathed unsteadily, “was six months pregnant with our baby when she died. She was flying to meet me in Charleston when the plane went down.”
She felt her eyes burn with new tears. She ached for him, for the hurt she read in his steady gaze, for the pain he must have suffered. It would have been bad enough to lose a woman he loved. But to lose her like that, to lose his child with her....