by Diana Palmer
His fingers moved on hers gently, seductively, entwining with hers against all her better judgment as she let him force her taut hand open. “Trust me.”
“I can’t,” she whispered unsteadily. “I can’t ever trust you again.”
“Was it seeing Fayre come down those stairs this morning?” he asked solemnly.
“I don’t particularly care where Miss Braunns sleeps,” she told him with a calm indifference that was quite convincing.
His jaw set menacingly. “No more than you care where you sleep?”
She didn’t have to answer him. The Jamesons appeared suddenly, drawing the two of them into the room with laughter and introductions that made Dana’s mind whirl. They were, as Adrian had said, nice people. But they were also strangers, and they made her nervous.
Adrian grasped her hand tightly in his and kept her close by his side until they had made the rounds of the guests.
Then he drew her with him out to the patio, where several couples had a massive stereo set up and were dancing to soft music under the torch lamps and shards of moonlight filtering through the trees.
“I…thought you came here to talk business,” Dana protested as he took her into his big arms and began to dance.
“I’m going to get you calmed down first,” he replied gently. “Relax, honey. Just relax, they’re people like the rest of us, and they’re probably every bit as nervous as you are.”
“How did you know I was nervous?” she asked him.
He only smiled. “I know you very well, Miss Meredith,” he replied quietly.
“You think you do,” she countered, letting her body relax just a little in the close, comforting circle of his hard arms.
His big hand ran down her smooth bare back to the zipper, then down still lower to her waist over the smooth material, slow and gentle and caressing.
“This is too inhibiting,” he murmured at her temple.
She felt her cheeks burn. “Will you please remember that my name is Dana, not Fayre?” she asked icily.
A soft, deep chuckle passed his lips. “Were you jealous, little cat?” he asked.
“Of you? You’re my boss, not my…” she paused over the word.
“…lover?” he supplied, and drew back enough to look down into her soft brown eyes. “No, I’m not, but I’d like to be.”
She jerked her gaze down to his dark jacket. “I wouldn’t like it,” she denied huskily.
“Then why did you follow me out to the Mercedes?” he taunted. “For all you know, I might have been taking you to a motel room.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
He caught her eyes. “You’re learning,” he said gently.
She glared up at him, all the anguish coming back. “I’m not easy!” she threw at him.
“Not with other men, no,” he said, and his hand tightened around hers. “But you are with me, and I want to know why.”
“It’s a fixation,” she lied glibly. “I’ve always been crazy about Anthony Quinn, and you remind me of him in a physical sense.”
He laughed softly down at her, his eyes kind and strangely tolerant. “As I recall, Quinn usually gets the girl in the final scene,” he said meaningfully.
Her pale brown eyes glared at him. “You’ll never get me!”
He was looking past her shoulder at something. “Won’t I, Dana?” he asked absently.
His hand left her waist to move caressingly against her throat. He lowered his head, herding hers back against his shoulder while his breath made a warm wind at her lips.
“Adrian…” she whispered, starting to protest.
“They’re not paying attention to us,” he murmured, and his mouth opened to brush slowly across hers. “Do you like this?” he whispered seductively.
“Devil!” she moaned.
“Yes,” he whispered, coaxing her lips to follow his.
“Heartless…devil!”
“Yes, honey, yes,” he murmured, his breath making chills against her moist lips.
“Adrian…!”
And something flashed as she hung there, her lips open and pleading as his met them briefly, open and demanding. Flashed, making her jump, breaking the spell, bruising her heart. A camera…somewhere.
She drew back, aware of smiling, teasing glances that caused her to blush. Without a word, she turned and went inside.
Adrian was two steps behind her. Her caught her hand again and locked her fingers with his.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Those people…staring,” she muttered.
He only chuckled. “Things were getting interesting. I can make you burn without even trying, little girl.”
She blushed furiously, without a comeback.
He squeezed her hand. “You didn’t see the man with the camera, did you?”
She glanced up and the look in his eyes puzzled her. There was something like triumph there.
“I…saw the flash,” she admitted.
“It was one of the men from my personnel department. We have a company magazine,” he told her. “You know, Mary on the shirt line is keeping company with Johnny in the Cutting Room…that kind of thing. I don’t doubt that picture will make its way back to your friend Pat.”
She felt all the color leave her face. “You saw the photographer coming, you did that to me deliberately….”
His eyes narrowed, glittered. “Damned straight,” he said. “It’s going to be interesting to hear you talk your way out of that.”
“I’ll simply tell him the truth,” she shot back. “He’ll believe me.”
Sure enough, Pat was standing on the front steps Sunday afternoon with a brown envelope in his hand, and she knew what was in it by the look on his pale face.
She invited him into the living room, hoping against hope that Adrian wouldn’t come downstairs.
Pat handed her the envelope without a word and she opened it. The picture was in glorious color. It shoved a dark, striking man with a slender blond girl in his arms, her hands gripping his powerful shoulders tightly as her lips touched his—open and pleading, her face a study in abject worship.
She closed her eyes and handed it back to him.
“Revealing, isn’t it?” Pat asked quietly. “I don’t have any strings on you, and I probably shouldn’t be here at all. But you told me he was your boss and nothing more, and this picture makes a liar out of you. I’d just like to know the truth before we go any further together.”
She stared down into her lap at her long, graceful hands. “He’s a charming man, and he knows how to use that charm to his advantage. He set me up for that photo.”
“There’s nothing between you, then?” Pat asked gently.
“That,” Adrian Devereaux said from the doorway, “is a matter of opinion.”
Pat stood up quickly, his eyes taking in the somber lines of her employer’s face. “I know I’m here without permission. But I had to know,” he explained, waving the brown envelope aimlessly.
“There’s a simpler way,” Adrian said. He paused to light a cigarette and pocketed his lighter, blowing out a thin cloud of smoke, eyeing Dana’s apprehensive expression. “Ask her,” he challenged Pat, “if she’s ever slept with me.”
Dana’s face went white. Like plaster. Like sheetrock. Like a blank page.
Pat’s jaw clamped harshly, his eyes hurt and contemptuous on the woman’s face. “I don’t have to ask her,” he growled. “It’s written all over her face! Dana, you little…!”
“Say it,” Devereaux dared him, his eyes slits of brown flame, “and I’ll break every bone in your body.”
Pat’s flush of anger left him abruptly as he saw the confidence in that leonine face and realized that Devereaux wasn’t making an idle threat.
He tossed the brown envelope on the sofa, and, without another word, turned and went out the door.
Adrian picked up the envelope and took out the photograph, his eyes taking on a soft, dark warmth as he studied the two figures in it
.
“I think I’ll have it framed,” he said carelessly.
“It will remind you of me, won’t you hate that?” Her voice broke, trembling. “Damn you, I cared about him!”
Something exploded in his face, in his eyes, in the hands that caught her shoulders and jerked her to her feet.
“What the hell do you know about caring?” he demanded. “If I cut you, you’d bleed printer’s ink! You wouldn’t know what to do with an honest emotion, you little zombie. My God, the only time I’ve ever seen you feel outside of a nightmare was when your mother died. And that softening didn’t last long. Two days later, you were cased in ice!”
“You don’t know what I feel or don’t feel,” she argued weakly, struggling to escape the merciless grip he had on her shoulders.
“The hell I don’t,” he growled. His blazing eyes met hers, the contempt in them dark and haunting. “You walked into my life in disguise, Meredith. You took everything there was to take and walked away without even looking back. I hated you for that, little girl, did you know? Not an apology, not a card, not a note or a phone call—nothing to tell me you cared one way or the other that you’d ruined me!”
“But, I tried…!”
“Not very hard, did you?” he demanded, his voice painfully soft with fury. “Three years I wondered if you could feel at all, and I saw that damned photo of you in that magazine, and I decided that, by God, I was going to teach you a lesson. Look here, Miss Meredith,” he said, grabbing up the photograph to hold it under her wide, frightened eyes. “Look at the woman in this photograph! Her eyes soft and her mouth hungry, emotion in every line of her body. Not a trace of resemblance to the blonde zombie in that magazine I saw. This woman feels!”
She bit her lip to stop its trembling. “And that makes you very happy, doesn’t it, because if I can feel I can be hurt? Congratulations,” she whispered. “You’ve hurt me more than you’ll ever know, and I hope you enjoy the triumph.”
His eyes darkened. “Dana…”
“Pat was special to me,” she continued, unable to stop now. “He understood me, because he was like me—he knew what I meant when I talked about newspapers and reporting because it had been his life, too. When did you ever really talk to me? When did you ever do anything except hurt me?!”
He was looking down at her with a furrowed brow, his lips parted as if he was about to speak and couldn’t get the words out.
“You said the name Persephone suited me and you were right because it’s been hell living here with you!” she cried brokenly.
His face became set, carved out of stone, ashen under its tan. He let her go with a jerk. “Pack your bags and get out.” He said it calmly, without raising his voice, but the words cut like a whip.
Her life changed in that space of seconds, and she stood there gaping at him. She’d planned things to do tomorrow, and now she wouldn’t be here to do them, and it was like having her roots torn out from under her and tossed into a river.
“Now?” she whispered incredulously.
“Now. This minute. Get out, damn you!” he threw at her, his voice so harsh that she jumped.
Without another word, she turned and ran from the room. He was letting her go. Sending her away. And she knew that this time, there’d be no coming back. This time it was forever. Tears were washing her face when she reached her room.
Minutes later, she was packed. She called a cab, picked up her bag and purse and went hesitantly down the stairs, her steps light, as if any minute she expected him to come out and attack her.
“It’s all right,” Lillian said gently from the bottom of the steps. “He’s gone out.”
Dana’s lower lips trembled with hurt and indignation. “He…fired me,” she whispered.
“I heard,” Lillian said with a sigh. “So did the neighbors, I’ll wager—that last bit, anyway. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what’s wrong with that man lately!”
Dana stared down at her shoes. “He hates me,” she said quietly. “I think he always has, he almost said as much today.”
“And you love that man until it hurts, don’t you, honey?” Lillian asked with a quiet knowing smile, watching Dana’s face jerk up, astonishment in the soft brown eyes. “You light up like a Christmas tree when he walks into a room. You did three years ago. He didn’t see it then, and he won’t let himself see it now, either. But it’s hard for a woman to miss.”
Dana blinked away a rush of tears and bit her lower lip. “Look after my successor,” she said in a husky voice. “He does yell. And…and don’t forget to remind him about the…the Lions Club meeting next Tuesday, they’re giving him a plaque for working in the conservation fund drive.” Her voice broke. “Damn him…!”
Lillian hugged her, hard, and took out a handkerchief to press into her small hand. “Write to me,” she said in a hoarse whisper.
Dana nodded through the tears. “Bye.”
“Bye, honey.”
She lifted her case and went through the door just as the taxi pulled up at the steps. And she never looked back. Not once.
Sitting on the plane, her eyes red and burning, she fought down waves of anguish and forced her mind to concentrate on practical matters.
Money was the biggest problem. She had precious little left over from the plane fare. But, with luck, it would do her until she got her first paycheck.
She frowned in concentration and her plans began to jell. When she got to the airport, she’d get a taxi directly to the newspaper office. First she’d see Jack and get her old job back. Then she’d see about an apartment or, in desperation, a motel room until she could do better. Then, she’d have something to eat. She’d skipped breakfast, and there hadn’t been time to eat dinner…
She ignored the rumbling of her stomach, and closed her eyes on her future. A tiny smile touched her mouth. It would all work out.
If the dream was perfect, the reality certainly wasn’t. Things started going wrong the minute she got off the plane. To begin with, she was in the cab headed for the newspaper when it suddenly dawned on her what day it was. Jack had Sundays off, and could only be found out on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic. That threw everything off schedule. So she had the cab turn around and take her back to the rooming house she’d boarded in weeks ago.
Her old room was taken, and there was nothing else available. She didn’t have a newspaper to look for apartments in, and counting the substantial fee she already owed the taxi, her meager savings were hardly enough to cover two days’ lodging in a motel now. With a sigh, she had the driver drop her off at a downtown motel.
Meals at those prices were going to be impossible, she saw that immediately. There was a small grocery store down the street, and she hoped it kept convenient store hours as she walked wearily toward it. Her eyes were drawn to the palm trees, her nose tickled by the sea smell of the nearby ocean. She drew in a deep breath. Part of her had missed this tropical atmosphere, missed the sand and the sea and the rough-barked palms waving in the wind on their crooked, curved trunks. It was only when she thought of Adrian that the pain came, the hurt. It was like having one part of her missing, like being half a person, without him. But then, she reminded herself, it had been this way three years ago and she had lived through it then. She’d live through this, too.
The store, mercifully, was open, and she brought a loaf of bread and a can of sandwich spread and a couple of soft drinks from a smiling old man whose accent was decidedly Cuban.
“Muchas gracias,” he grinned as she paid him. “Tiene usted…excuse me, I speak English, your face is known to me, Senorita. You work near here?”
She studied him, frowning. His face, too, was familiar…
“Esteban,” she recalled, smiling. “Esteban Valdez. I interviewed your son—he was one of the refugees on that last boatload…”
“Yes, my son, Jorge,” he laughed. “He now has a job, many thanks to the fine story you wrote about him.”
She felt the warmth steal up into
her cold heart and warm it. Her eyes crinkled with pleasure. “I’m so glad.”
“You are still a reporter?” he asked her.
“So far, I’m a tourist,” she laughed. “I hope to go back to work for the paper. I’ve…been away for a while.”
“Well, I hope it goes well with you. Say, you like planatos fritos?”
Her high school Spanish failed her. “What?” she asked.
“Ah…fried bananas,” he grinned.
“I don’t know, I’ve never tried them.”
“Maria, she want to meet you, to thank you for the story about Jorge before, but at the paper they couldn’t tell us where you were,” he apologized. “Tomorrow, you come home with me for dinner, and Maria make for you arros con pollo—you know, chicken with rice!”
The friendly openness of the invitation was sunshine after a storm. “If I’m free tomorrow, I’d love it. Maria won’t mind?”
“My wife is a good woman,” he replied. “And a very good cook. Twelve o’clock tomorrow. You remember.”
“Oh, I’ll remember for chicken and rice,” she said.
Esteban had cheered her up. But the lonely motel room had just the opposite effect. She slept fitfully, her stubborn mind going forever back to that parting scene with Adrian, feeling the anger and the hurt flood her heart all over again. Part of her could hate him, but the other part loved him too much to maintain that hatred. She forced his dark face to the back of her mind. She had to erase him from her life, to begin to learn how to live without him. Tomorrow she’d have a job, and everything would be fine.
When she got to Jack’s office first thing the next morning, another disaster befell her.
“Oh, hell, Dana, why didn’t you come Friday?” Jack growled, pacing the floor of his office. “It’s all my fault, I was holding the job open—but I talked with Devereaux last week, and he gave me the idea that…well, that you weren’t coming back. I’m sorry. I filled the slot Friday, and it was the only reporting job I had.”
She felt the floor drop out from under her, thinking of how little money she had, and how much more it would take to live. She took a deep breath to keep from passing out.