Lady In Red

by Fayrene Preston

  “I guess it depends on how you look at it. From my point of view, everything is going remarkably well. You're wearing my favorite color, you asked to be alone with me, you came willingly to my bedroom, you gave me a red-hot kiss - ”

  “Will you stop it?”

  “No, I don’t think I will. At least, not until I get some answers. If you didn’t bring me up here for sex, what did you bring me up here for?”

  She balled her fists at her sides in frustration. “Despite the fact that you still play with toys, Mr. Bennett, it’s got to be obvious I mistook you for someone else. Now please get out of my way.”

  He didn’t move. “So if I have this whole thing right, and you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t, because after all, as you said, I do still play with toys, you were supposed to meet someone else. And you expected that person to give you something, but it didn’t involve sex.”

  “That’s right,” she said, edging around him.

  Once more he stepped in front of her. “What?”

  “What?” she repeated blankly.

  “What was this mysterious person supposed to give you?”

  “Look, Mr. Bennett - ”

  “Zach.”

  “Whatever it was, it was between me and the person I was supposed to meet,” she snapped.

  He skimmed his hand lightly along the slope of her shoulder, knocking the sleeve off. “Someone you don’t know. Someone you rented a red dress for. Someone who also likes red.”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Bennett.”

  “Zach, remember?”

  She exhaled heavily. “Why don't you just give up and allow me to leave?”

  “Chalk it up to a naturally curious personality. Plus, I'm wild about the way you kiss. Now, if you’re not going to tell me about the other person who likes red, I suggest you forget him and concentrate on me. And you can start by giving me another kiss.”

  The amazing thing was she really thought about it. Memories of his kiss seeped through her mind and body, creating cracks in her resolve. She straightened. “If you don’t get out of my way and let me go, I’ll start screaming.”

  “Good,” he said, closing the gap between them and taking her into his arms. “I’d love to hear you scream.”

  He kissed her, pressuring her lips open with his, delving his tongue deep into her mouth in an effort to take and taste as much of her as possible. She aroused many emotions in him, but the strongest at this moment was desire. He tightened his hold on her, fitting her curves into him.

  She was beguilingly sensual, she responded to him like an alluring seductress. She was an exciting mystery. And he knew he was going to have to let her go.

  But not yet. First he had to feel her.

  The other sleeve had slipped off her shoulder, making it easy for him to slide his hand inside the low neckline of the dress and cup one breast. They hadn’t even met, at any rate, not in the usual, conventional manner. It was too soon for this sort of intimacy, but he was unable to stop himself. He could do nothing to make her stay. The least he could do was make her remember him until he saw her again.

  He caressed her, taking her fully into his hand and kneading the full, sweet softness. She gasped, and the sound shot heat straight to his groin. Her skin was hot to his touch, and her stiffened nipple teased his palm. He wanted desperately to pull her down to the bed with him and draw that nipple into his mouth while he discovered more of her. And only the hopeful knowledge that he would do just that in the not too distant future gave him the fortitude to slowly release her.

  Cassidy was shocked by the cessation of feelings. She had been caught up in the fire of the kiss, too caught up, she realized with an abrupt pang. What could she have been thinking of?

  “Do you still want to leave?” he asked softly.

  She looked at his lips, still able to taste them. She looked at his eyes and saw the twinkle. “Yes. Very much.”

  “Then I'll walk you down.”

  “All right,” she murmured, experiencing the unfamiliar feeling of floating on a cloud. Her skin still burned where he had touched her. Not since her disastrous affair in her college days had she been involved in such intimacy. But with Zach, she had had no choice. He had put his hands on her and her will had fled.

  Suddenly reality brought her up short. “I mean, no. You shouldn’t walk me down. People will talk.”

  “Really?” he asked with mild interest, lifting her sleeves back onto her shoulders. “What will they say?”

  “There’s no telling. They’ll think we’ve been… having sex.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  The utter confidence in his tone made her head snap up. “Why not?”

  “Because we haven’t been up here long enough. Everyone knows that when I make love, I make love for hours.”

  Her mouth fell open at his outrageous statement. He smiled. Strange, she thought, how before tonight she hadn’t known how dangerous a combination humor and dreams could be in a man’s eyes.

  Minutes later, Zach was watching her walk out his front door. But even after she had disappeared, she remained vividly in his mind, shimmering in her red dress. He’d have to change one thing about her. Her gray eyes had been too serious, too guarded.

  He signaled a waiter and whispered a brief instruction. The young man put down the tray he had been carrying and left.

  The lady in the leotard sidled up to him with more hors d’oeuvres. “The chef in the funny hat is pushing miniature egg plants stuffed with partridge sausage. One bite and you’ll die for sure. Have my shrimp quiche instead. You look as if you could do with some protein.”

  He took a tiny quiche without even glancing at the woman.

  Two

  Bobby Stuart bounded into the kitchen. “I don’t want any breakfast, Cass.” He reached his long arm across the table and scooped up a glass of orange juice.

  Cassidy pointed the knife she was using to butter toast at her six-foot-tall, sixteen-year-old brother. “Sit. Eat.”

  “But basketball practice - ”

  “Doesn’t start for thirty minutes. That gives you fifteen minutes to eat. You'll never get your face on the front or back of a cereal box by skipping breakfast. Sit.”

  He slid his lanky frame onto a chair. “I’ll eat, but not because I want my face on a cereal box. I’m going for the tennis shoe commercials.” He grinned. “Can’t you see me on TV, selling away?”

  “Uh-uh. Eat your oatmeal, Bobby, and tell me about your trigonometry test yesterday.”

  “No prob’,” he said, dumping two spoonfuls of sugar into the bowl, then adding milk. “I aced it.”

  “Good. What about English?”

  “I’m thinking about making it my second language.”

  She plopped a plate of toast down in front of him. “Not funny.”

  He grinned again. “You’re way too serious, sis. A basketball player of my caliber shouldn’t have to worry about whether to use lay or lie. When I become an NBA player, all I’ll have to worry about is fighting off the girls and signing my name to those checks I’m going to be writing. What do you want, Cass? A Jag or a Mercedes?” Smiling, she reached out and ruffled his hair. “I want a college education for you, my love. And to get into a good school, you’re going to have to know whether to use lay or lie, not to mention affect or effect.”

  He ate the last spoonful of oatmeal, gulped down the rest of the orange juice, and pushed back from the table. “I’ll work on it between slam dunks.”

  “I’m going to slam dunk you - ”

  With two pieces of toast in one hand, he leaned down and planted a kiss on her forehead, effectively stopping her threat. “Don’t worry, I’ll get into a good school. It’s in the bag. Gotta go now.” He grabbed up his books and an apple and bolted out the door.

  “See you tonight,” she called after him, shaking her head and grinning. He knew how to get around her, there was no doubt about it. But he was a good kid, and she loved him with all her heart. She had raised him by herself si
nce he was eight years old, and she had never begrudged him a moment of the time.

  In an indirect way, Bobby was responsible for her being at Zach Bennett’s house the previous night. The more good, solid stories she could get for the newspaper where she worked, the more promotions she would earn and the higher her salary would go. And she was going to need a lot of money in the next few years. She didn’t want Bobby to have to work his way through college as she had had to do. Sometimes she thought she was more ambitious for Bobby than she was for herself. But he had a real genius for math, and engineering fascinated him. He would be a great engineer, she thought with pride.

  With a glance at the clock, she began clearing the table and rinsing the dishes. Her expression clouded as she worked. Meeting Zach Bennett had definitely not been on the agenda the night before. But once she had, she had compounded her error by kissing him and practically melting in his arms. “Stupid, stupid,” she muttered, hitting the faucet with more force than necessary to turn it off. It had been a long time since she had been kissed by a man, and she had never, ever even imagined herself being so bowled over.

  It wasn’t like her to let herself go as she had with him. Normally she was a calm, serious, responsible young woman, and she was very proud of that fact. But with Zach she had behaved terribly, and she had no excuse. None.

  She had fouled up the meeting with a man whose information might be able to help her career, and she had almost succumbed to a man who was known to love to play. She never played.

  Great night's work, she told herself sarcastically.

  She put the last dish into the dishwasher and reached for the sponge. There was nothing left for her to do but put the whole episode out of her mind, she reflected, wiping the counter with an energy that threatened to take off the finish. She also had to keep her fingers crossed and hope her informant would contact her again.

  His voice had been deep, like Zach’s. But now that she considered the matter, the man on the other end of the line had sounded scared, almost panicky. Zach was the most confident man she had ever met.

  The image of Zach filled her mind. Damn the man and his twinkling blue eyes! She tossed the sponge into the sink and went to get ready for work.

  Zach pushed his favorite toy bulldozer along his desk, scooping aside pencils and paper clips as he went.

  Janet McCloskey, a brunette with shapely legs, sat in front of his desk, not at all perturbed by the unorthodox manner in which her boss was conducting this meeting. She had worked with Zach for five years and knew he was a dreamer and that playing helped him work out problems. They were meeting about the new video game Bennett Toys planned to launch in the following year.

  “Part One, The Quest, of the game is just about finished,” Janet said. “Another few days should do it. Wait until you see the graphics. They’re great.” She sneezed and with a mild oath reached for a tissue.

  “The Battle will be finished at about the same time,” Will Frazier said. He was an intense young man who lived computers, and he had told Zach when he had applied for the job that working in the video division of Bennett Toys would be his idea of heaven. “The graphics are extraordinary, but I think I’m most proud of the sound.”

  Zach switched his attention to his lime green Hot Wheels Beatnik Bandit and drove it along the path he had cleared with the bulldozer. “Did you all know that pound for pound, inch for inch, Hot Wheels are the fastest cars in the world?”

  “Yes, Zach, we knew that.” Brad Monroe might be the newest employee of Bennett Toys, but he already had heard Zach expound on the wonders of Hot Wheels a number of times. He also knew Zach wasn’t missing a word of what they were saying. He drew a handkerchief out of the pocket of his designer suit and blew his nose. “Whenever we figure out who gave us these damned colds, I say we lynch them. Practically everyone in the building has it except you, Zach.”

  Mitchell Compton, an older man complete with a large family and grandchildren, and the fourth supervisor of the video group, remained silent, sipping a cup of hot tea, and occasionally muffling a cough with his hand.

  “I can't wait until we can put all four parts of the game together,” Will said. “It’s going to blow the competition out of the water.”

  Zach drove the Beatnik Bandit toward a folded piece of paper, stopped a foot away, backed it up, then took it to the edge of the paper.

  “We still haven’t come up with a name for Part Three, the romance part,” Janet said. “It might turn the kids off if we leave it with the title The Romance.”

  Mitchell Compton spoke up. “I agree. My grandsons, for instance, would hate it.”

  Zach circled the Hot Wheels around the folded piece of paper. “We’ll call it The Rescue.”

  “That sounds good,” Janet said, then had to wait a moment while she sneezed. Holding a tissue to her nose, she went on. “It may be the romance of the game, but the hero does spend the entire time rescuing the maiden.”

  The other three supervisors nodded.

  “Now all we need is a name for the game,” Will said.

  Zach drove the lime green car over the folded paper. “It’s The Game.”

  Will snapped his ball-point pen open and shut, then coughed. “Right. That’s what I said. We need a name for the game. Something catchy. Anyone have any cough drops?” Three boxes were extended toward him. He chose one and helped himself.

  Zach’s mouth formed the sounds vroom, vroom, as he drove the car off the paper.

  Janet passed the tissue box around.

  “I kind of like Stratospheric something,” Brad said, taking a tissue and a cough drop for himself. “Maybe Stratospheric Four, for the four parts of the game, and stratospheric for… I don’t know…” His words trailed away, and he glanced absently at his gold watch.

  Zach at last looked up at the four people in his office. “It’s The Game. I’m going to call it The Game.”

  There was silence in the office for a full minute. Then everyone started talking at once.

  “I like it.”

  “It’s so simple, so intriguing.”

  “The kids are going to love it.”

  “Great idea, Zach.”

  “Thanks.” He glanced back at the Beatnik Bandit and the piece of paper. “Is there anything else? Any problems? Anything I should know?”

  A chorus of no’s answered him.

  “Good, then see you later.”

  He scarcely noticed when they left his office. The woman, Cassidy Stuart, was on his mind. He rolled the little car out of the way and unfolded the piece of paper with her name and address on it. And he smiled.

  The telephone on Cassidy’s desk in the newsroom rang. “Cassidy Stuart,” she answered automatically, her mind on the words of her latest article displayed on her word processor.

  “You screwed up last night.”

  She froze. It was the same deep voice she had heard once before. “I know, and I’m sorry. But when Zach Bennett came up and said what we had agreed upon as my way of identifying you, I naturally assumed it was you.”

  “I damned near had a heart attack when I saw you two together.”

  “Well where were you? I had been standing there quite a while.”

  “I told you, I had other responsibilities at the party. It took some doing to get a break.”

  “Okay, okay, when can we meet? You’re still willing to give me the information, aren’t you?”

  There was a pause. “Yeah, I guess so, except lady, there better not be any screw-ups this time. My nerves can take only so much.”

  Hers too, she thought ruefully. “Don’t worry. Where do you want to meet, and when?”

  “Tonight, seven-thirty. The park. Go in the east entrance, walk to the seventh park bench on the left, and sit down. Got it?”

  “Yes,” she said, scribbling the instructions on a notepad. “Do we need a code phrase?”

  “No. I know what you look like now, and hopefully not too many people will approach you and hand you an envelope conta
ining a transcript of a telephone conversation.”

  Her lips twitched. “Right. What are the odds?”

  “Seven-thirty,” he said and hung up.

  A little after seven that evening, Zach pulled his car to a stop across the street from Cassidy’s house. He was just in time to see her drive away in the opposite direction. With a curse, he made a U-turn and headed after her. He had hoped to break away from work much earlier, but Brad hadn’t exaggerated when he had said practically everyone in the company was sick. Besides having to endure resentful comments about his disgustingly healthy immune system, Zach also had to be present to put out fires.

  A light turned red, and he watched in frustration as Cassidy’s taillights disappeared down the street. But, he reassured himself, the traffic wasn’t heavy tonight, and he’d be able to catch up to her soon.

  She had been alone. He smiled with satisfaction, reflecting that she was probably going out to dinner or a movie. Wherever she was going, he planned to be there too. He had gone to a lot of trouble to find out her address, and he didn’t intend to let her get away from him tonight.

  Ten minutes later, he was worried as he looked for her car. Then he saw it, parallel to the street by the entrance to the park, sitting empty.

  He frowned as he slowed down and pulled his car to the curb. The park was an odd place for a woman alone to be going at night. His fertile imagination took a leap. Was she meeting the man she had been looking for last night? His mouth thinned. He had no idea what she was up to. He almost didn’t care, finding only what concerned the two of them important. But it seemed very plain to him that he would have to clear this mystery out of the way so he could get down to having a relationship with her.

  She had mistaken him for someone else, he had misunderstood the things she had said, and he had found the whole encounter vastly amusing. But he was also aware that she hadn’t found it the least bit funny. What was the man to have given her? It was obviously something important to her. Why? Could she be in some kind of trouble?

  Unfortunately, whatever the answers were, he knew they weren’t going to come easily.