by Diana Palmer
“Mr. Devereaux!” she whispered shakily.
Soft, deep laughter was muffled against her neck. “You sound like an outraged virgin, something we both know damned well you’re not. Stop pretending.”
She strained at his imprisoning hands. “Whatever I am is none of your business!” she spat over her shoulder. “Let me go!”
He started to say something but the door opened behind them and a silky voice purred, “Adrian, if you’re quite through marking time with the hired help, I’d like to dance.”
He turned gracefully for such a big man, his head tilted at an arrogant angle while he eyed the small blond intruder. “Meredith is my secretary,” he said slowly, deliberately, “not ‘hired help’ as you so delicately put it. Watch those claws, little cat, or I’ll trim them off to the quick!”
Behind him, peering around that broad, muscular shoulder, she saw Fayre’s face go white with the shock of his cold fury. “I…I didn’t mean…” she stammered.
“Get out.” He said it without ever raising his voice, but the impact was just as visible.
“Excuse me,” Fayre said weakly and turning, with a small accusing glance at Adrian, went back to where the music was throbbing in a disco beat.
Adrian lit a cigarette and stood with his back to her for several seconds before he turned. His dark eyes scanned her face quietly.
“You attack me all the time,” Dana murmured, working again on the tray. “Why shouldn’t she?”
“Because,” he explained simply, “nobody touches you except me. In any way. Nobody.”
She met his level gaze and felt something inside her tremble at the dark intensity of it. It was as if he’d reached out and marked her for life, a possession that was non-physical but permanent.
“Let Lillian finish that,” he said suddenly, crushing out his fresh cigarette in an ashtray. “I’ve got plans for you.”
“But…”
He put an iron hand behind her back and propelled her into the living room. The lights were low, the band was playing a slow, seductive tune, the assembled couples were wrapped around each other as they shuffled their feet lazily to the beat. Nervously, Dana looked for Fayre and found her smiling up at a man a little older than Adrian, darting an icy glance Dana’s way.
Before that warning glitter had time to register, Dana found herself imprisoned in Adrian Devereaux’s big, warm arms, locked to his broadness as he drew her along in a slow rhythm.
“Don’t be so damned conventional,” he murmured, and, catching her hands, moved them into the thick cloud of hair on his chest. “You’re not a baby.”
She swallowed nervously, and tried to draw a deep breath. “I…I haven’t danced in a long time.”
“Obviously.” One big, manicured hand came up to cover her cold one where it lay uneasily on his warm body. He pressed it into the mat of hair. “Your hands are like ice.”
“It…it’s a little…chilly,” she faltered, drowning in the feel of his powerful, sensuous masculinity, the musky fragrance of his cologne, the strength of his arms.
His breath, whiskey scented, filled her nostrils as he lowered his forehead against hers. “God, you’re soft,” he breathed deeply. “Like silk where you touch me.” His fingers came up and brushed against her chin shifting her face against his shoulder so that he could look down into her confused, soft eyes. His gaze dropped to her parted, pink mouth. Incredibly, he started to bend his head and she buried her face against him, the hair on his chest tickling her soft skin, the heavy thud of his pulse like distant drums in her ear.
His arms tightened around her. “Come outside with me,” he whispered sensuously.
“No!” she replied huskily. “P…please, I don’t know what kind of game this is, but I…I don’t want to play it! If you have to punish me, can’t you do it…some other way?! Why must you be so cruel!”
He stopped in his tracks and looked down at her. The tenderness went out of him in a flash of black eyes and he released her so suddenly she almost staggered.
Without another word, he turned away and made a beeline for Fayre, taking her away from her partner and jerking her against his body. Fayre caught Dana’s eyes as the younger woman started back to the kitchen, and there was triumph in her sharp features.
The confrontation was inevitable from the very beginning, and Dana had expected it. But the venom in Fayre’s face was still enough to paralyze her instantly when the little blonde tore into her bedroom as she was getting her shawl and preparing to leave.
“He belongs to me,” she told Dana without preliminaries, her cold eyes summing up the taller woman in one insulting glance. “I’ve held him longer than any of the others, and I’ve got my eye on a wedding ring. Don’t think you’re going to cut me out, honey. It’ll take more than a skinny little innocent like you to do that. Hands off. You understand?!”
Dana eyed the bleached blonde with a schooled calmness that came from years of dealing with hot tempers in city council chambers and county commission meetings.
“I don’t believe in possession,” she replied. “Not of things, or people. I work for Mr. Devereaux. Period. He wouldn’t have me on a bet, and the feeling is mutual. If you don’t believe me, ask him.”
“Don’t worry, I will.” She threw the shawl around her shoulders. “Cool, aren’t you?”
“I’m a reporter. We have to be.”
“A reporter?!” A harsh, mocking laugh flared out of that slender throat. “And he hired you? Why, it was a woman reporter who ruined him…!”
“It was me.” Dana said it deliberately and saw the confusion in the other’s expression.
“Vengeance?” Fayre sighed. “I can almost feel sorry for you. Almost. But whatever his reasons for hiring you, just remember he’s committed. Body and soul,” she added deliberately. She turned and left the room with a trail of Chanel drifting behind her.
Dana mumbled something under her breath and slammed the bedroom door after the woman’s retreating figure. She stayed there for the rest of the night, even refusing a final cup of coffee with Lillian.
The atmosphere was frigid for days after the party. Dana took dictation and planned her employer’s appointments and kept his calendar with the absolute minimum of conversation. She took her meals in the kitchen with Lillian and kept out of his way every minute she could. He noticed this, and it did nothing for his black mood.
Three days in New York didn’t improve him, either. He stood over Dana in the den, his eyes on the appointment calendar she was making an addition to, his mouth a thin line.
“Hold it,” he said shortly. “You’re scheduling me for the Chamber of Commerce banquet on the twenty-seventh. I won’t be here,” he added, one long, darkly masculine finger touching hers on the calendar to point out a scrawl in one corner. “I’ve got a meeting with Callahan and Vaughan on that new equipment I’m ordering.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, feeling his breath in her hair as he leaned over her. “I didn’t see that.”
“Did you bother to look?” he asked harshly.
“Yes, sir, I did,” she defended herself weakly. She laid the calendar aside and stood up, moving away from him.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
“To…to help Lillian get supper on the table.”
“My God, how did she ever manage to do it without you?” he growled, glaring at her across the room. “All right, run, Meredith. You’ll eventually wear yourself out.”
She had her hand on the doorknob and was just about to open it.
“Meredith.”
“Yes, sir?”
“When you’re through pecking at your supper, come back in here. I’ve got to work up a report on our latest production schedules.”
“Yes, sir.”
She dreaded those minutes alone with him, and her appetite dropped again.
Lillian grimaced at the food she left on the plate. “You’re going to blow away if you don’t start eating!” she scol
ded.
Dana managed a wan smile. “All the way back to Miami, do you think?” she laughed mirthlessly. “I…I left someone there I’m concerned about. I can’t even call to find out…”
“And why not?” Lillian was indignant. “You aren’t a prisoner here, and the Mister wouldn’t begrudge you a phone call.”
“Lillian, he begrudges me the air I breathe,” she said miserably, “Speaking of which, I’ve got to go back in there and take some dictation. I thought I heard the TV.”
“You did. He’s watching it.” Lillian smiled at the shock on Dana’s face. “Oh, he does, occasionally. Some cable movie, I think. It should be just about over by now. He had a tray in there.”
“I set him a place in the dining room.”
“One man, all alone, in that huge room?” Lillian asked gently. “Would you eat in there?”
The thought shocked her. Was he vulnerable enough to be lonely? She’d never considered it before, and it touched her in some unfamiliar way.
She knocked gently at the door of the study and went in, closing it behind her.
“Just a minute, Persephone, it’s almost over. Sit down,” he said over his shoulder. He was leaning forward on the couch, his eyes glued on the screen, not noticing that Dana came no closer to the wide-screened color TV.
She stood with her back against the cold wood of the door, trembling from one end of her body to the other, her horrified eyes hypnotized by the sight of a dam bursting on the TV screen, spreading a watery blanket of death over screaming victims. Her legs felt as if they were going to collapse under her. Her throat dried up. It was only six months ago and she was seeing her nightmares in full color.
With a terrible effort, she closed her eyes and felt the shudder rip through her, while the sound of the rushing water pounded in her ears and brought the old tears washing down her face. “Let it end, let it end, let it end,” she chanted silently like a prayer, “let it end. God, let it end!”
Five
Seconds later, mercifully, a commercial took the place of the flood scene.
“Not bad, for a disaster flick, was it?” Adrian asked as he snapped off the television. “Well, let’s get to…” He stopped in mid-sentence, looking at her where she was frozen, white-faced and trembling.
With an effort, she straightened and dashed the tears away impatiently. “My…my pad’s on the desk,” she whispered huskily, moving toward it.
He intercepted her, his big hands catching her head to tilt her flushed, tear-stained face up to his dark, narrow eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked gently.
“It…it’s nothing, really,” she said with a hollow laugh.
He scowled, darting a glance at the black television screen as his eyes came back to capture hers. “The movie? My God, honey, I didn’t think…” he said harshly.
Her eyes widened, the question in her whole look.
“Yes, I know,” he said, confirming her suspicions. “Charlie told me all about it. My God, little girl, why didn’t you say something?”
“What should I have said?” she asked bitterly. “Please don’t look at any movies with dambursts in them, or listen to any recordings that sound like rushing water because they give me hysterics? Don’t take me to a waterfall, because I’ll scream when I hear the water?” She laughed shakily. “Right after it happened, I couldn’t take a bath, do you know, because the water sounded…God, I can’t! I can’t think about it, please…please, let’s get to work, please…”
He drew her gently against him, his arms swallowing her up, warm and powerful and almost tender. “Tell me about it. Tell me everything you remember.”
“I…I can’t…bear to remember!” she wept, shuddering.
“Until you let it out,” he said quietly, “it’s going to haunt you like a ghost. Meredith, you don’t face problems by running from them, haven’t you learned that in your young life?”
She lifted her face to his. “I don’t run from much, Mr. Devereaux,” she reminded him proudly.
A wisp of a smile curved his broad, hard mouth. “Don’t you, Persephone?”
“If I have to qualify it, only from devils,” she replied.
“Deh-vuls, did you say?” he asked, his eyes dark and laughing.
“You needn’t make fun of my accent,” she returned. “You have one of your own!”
“Me?” He scoffed at that. “Not a trace.”
“Say card. Go ahead, I dare you,” she challenged, the flood forgotten in the business of arguing with her dark enemy.
“Card,” he said, lifting his head arrogantly.
“Aha, you see?!” she burst out, her eyes gleaming with laughter, her small hands pressing quickly against his broad chest.
“See what?” he asked.
“You say ‘cahd’,” she explained impatiently.
He chuckled softly. His dark eyes traced the lines of her cheeks, her mouth, her nose. “You’d rather fight me than eat, wouldn’t you?” he asked deeply. “I liked that about you three years ago, I recognized a kindred spirit. Do you believe in reincarnation, Meredith? That we take an instant like, or dislike, to a stranger because we knew him or her in another lifetime?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Some people…some places…it’s like going home when you’re around them.”
“Isn’t it, though?” he asked in a soft, low tone.
She felt her pulse race at the look in his dark eyes and abruptly turned away. “I’ll get my pad.”
“Do that,” he said with a lightning change back to his normal curtness. “I could use a few hours sleep. These damned cross-country jaunts are getting to me.”
“Old age creeping up?” She couldn’t resist it, darting a glance at him from under her lashes.
His bold, slow eyes touched her from head to toe.
“Come upstairs with me, you impudent little taffy cat, and I’ll show you how old I am,” he replied in a tone that brought the blood burning into her cheeks.
“Uh…I’m ready when you are,” she said, side-stepping the innuendo as she dropped into the chair at his desk with her steno pad in her lap and her pen ready.
“Oh?” Both dark eyebrows went up and she felt herself cringing in the chair as what she’d said echoed in her mind. “A Freudian slip?”
With a glimmer of the old Dana Meredith, she peeked under the hem of her skirt and shook her head. “Nylon,” she corrected.
He threw back his head and laughed like the devil he was, and she couldn’t bite back a giggle of her own. The years and arguments and bitterness fell away, and she was his secretary and he was her boss, and it was like the sun coming up in the morning.
“Shut up and write, you little monster,” he chuckled. “Ready? Production figures on the cutting room…”
She lay awake for a long time, watching the moon-washed pattern of leaves dance on the coverlet of her bed. If she’d had anything to make her sleep, she’d have taken it. The movie brought it all back, and it was taking her forever to push it far enough away.
Far away in the darkness, there was a sound. A rumble, vaguely like thunder, above the steady beat of the rain. Then a crashing watery roar seemed to come out of nowhere. On a wide plain, she was standing, paralyzed, watching, as a thirty foot wall of muddy, debris-carrying water came tumbling over the waterfall and down over houses and trees. Frightened into action, she turned and ran, her thin white silk gown flaring out behind her as she sprinted ahead of the water, her lungs bursting, her legs stretched to the limit, and all around her the screaming, dying sound of victims being sucked into that wet, hungry maw…it caught her, and soaked her, and she was being dragged under…
“Meredith!”
The voice was salvation, shelter. It jerked her away in the nick of time, returning her to consciousness, bathed in sweat, tears rolling down her cheeks. She looked up drowsily into a broad, leonine face, its hard planes outlined in the light of her small lamp. He was sitting beside her on the bed, his eyes dark with concern, his big han
d holding both of hers. He must have come running, she thought dazedly, because that broad, hair-riddled chest was bare, and all he had on were silk pajama bottoms.
“My God, I’ve never heard a scream like that,” he said gently. “Are you all right, honey?”
“What?” she whispered, blinking her eyes, her breath coming in gasps, as if she’d been running.
His fingers brushed the damp, sweaty strands of her hair from her temples, her cheeks. “You had the great grandfather of all bloodcurdling nightmares, from the sound of it,” he told her, a smile touching his hard mouth.
She swallowed, catching her breath, just his voice enough to calm her, to ease back to fear. “I’m all right,” she whispered. “I’m all right, now.”
“You were screaming,” he said, his eyes narrowed. “I want you to tell me about it, Dana. Now.”
It barely registered that he’d called her by her first name, or that the concern in those dark eyes was genuine. She didn’t look higher than the bronzed skin of his throat.
“I can’t.”
“You can.” He threw the covers back. His big arms lifted her, turned, cradled her until she was lying across his broad, warm chest with her cheek on his bare shoulder.
“Now,” he murmured, looking down into her stunned eyes, caressing her bare shoulders, the soft curves of her nightgown, with gentle eyes. “Tell me what happened. Tell me what you saw. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can touch you as long as I’ve got you close like this. You’re safe, honey. Tell me about it.”
And she did. She told him about the dam that burst on a rainy Sunday morning in the darkness, and the unbelievable damage that a 30-foot wall of water can do to property and people, and about the victims…the victims…
“So many of them were children,” she whispered, her face buried in the curling hair on his chest, her hands clinging to him. “So many…and the mud and mire was everywhere, and I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to look!” A sob shook her. “But the whole place was covered with reporters and TV cameras and curiosity seekers who got past the rescue workers…! And that man, that poor harassed man in the thick of it trying to get his friend’s body onto a stretcher past the television camera, and he said…he said…” Her voice broke. “He said we were vultures, that we were making a…a carnival out of it, and he was right, Adrian, we were, we were! All those poor, dead people, and the poor men who had to get them out and live with what they saw…!”