by JoAnn Ross
Although he hated to admit to any weakness, Zach realized that somehow, when he hadn't been looking, he'd crossed the line between merely wanting Miranda and needing her. As other men were addicted to the bottle, or gambling, Zach had been lured into obsession with the sultry siren call of sex.
Their work for Lord's kept them apart for days, even weeks, at a time. But whenever the need grew unmanageable, which it always did, one of them would pick up the phone and call the other, and within hours they'd be in bed, driving one another mad.
Miranda was, quite simply, Zach's weakness. The only thing that kept him from denying it was that his need was not one-sided. In fact, although he hadn't really been keeping score, it had not escaped Zach's notice that Miranda had been the one to initiate the majority of these stolen interludes.
"Deborah Langley asked me again when we were going to make an announcement," Miranda said. The society matron had been Averill's companion at Eleanor's holiday dinner party.
"An announcement?" His body soothed, Zach's mind had wandered to a vexsome zoning problem regarding a planned underground parking garage at the new Atlanta Lord's.
"It's embarrassing, this going steady like a pair of teenagers."
He glanced at her, surprised. He'd never received any sign that Miranda gave a damn what anyone thought.
"I'd hardly call it going steady," he said, "since we're hardly ever seen in public."
And then only at the glitzy functions Miranda insisted were de rigueur for making and keeping business-society contacts. Although Zach hated any event that forced him into a dinner jacket, he had to admit that couture and jewelry sales inevitably rose after such an appearance.
"It is difficult," Miranda agreed on a sigh. "Our schedules keep us apart so much that when we do get together I don't want to share you with anyone."
Zach knew that feeling all too well.
"But that doesn't mean people don't know we're what the society columnists call an item," she tacked on.
Screw the columnists, Zach wanted to say. "Does our affair really embarrass you?" he asked, instead.
"Do you want the truth?"
Having always been honest with Miranda, it had never occurred to Zach that she might not have been equally forthright with him. "Of course."
She gazed up at him through smoky lashes. "Yes, it does embarrass me when I hear people whispering that you don't care enough about me to make our relationship official."
"By official, I assume you're talking about marriage."
"Yes."
On the rare occasion Zach thought about life beyond work, he imagined that if and when he did marry, the union would be based on respect and trust and shared dreams. Having witnessed the wealth of love his parents had shown one another, he'd expected to share that same closeness of mind and spirit with his wife.
All he and Miranda seemed to share were their bodies. And, of course, Lord's.
As if reading his mind, Miranda framed his frowning face with her palms and gave him a slow, reassuring smile.
"Darling Zachary," she murmured on a voice that was half smoke, half honey, "there's no reason to look so grim. I'm not some silly young girl looking for a mythical Grand Love."
Her lips plucked at his enticingly. "What we have together is quite enough." Her fingers trailed down his chest. "More than enough."
Zach had always prided himself on his rational, decision-making abilities. He inevitably weighed every bit of evidence, analyzed all data, lined up facts and figures on a mental ledger. That was exactly what he did now.
On the plus side of the ledger, Miranda was a charming companion. She was a willing, enthusiastic, demanding and amazingly inventive lover. Even after all these months together, knowing that she found him sexually irresistible continued to be a potent aphrodisiac.
On the negative side, she had the irritating habit of showing him off to her jet-setting friends in a way that made Zach feel like an Angus bull on display at a stock show.
Once, when he'd complained about her behavior, she'd broken into hysterical tears, asserting between choking sobs that she was sorry if she'd made him angry. It was just that she was so marvelously proud of him and adored him so that it was hard to hide her happiness. By the time he'd managed to calm her down, Zach had felt like an unappreciative ass.
Miranda was more than a little emotional, not to mention maddeningly complicated, but she was also stunningly beautiful and highly intelligent. And when it came to Lord's, she'd surprised him by being every bit as driven as he.
There was also the inescapable fact that she was a highly sexed animal. If she couldn't satisfy her innate lust with him, her need would drive her into the arms—and the beds—of others. Just the thought of another man tasting that fragrant warm flesh made a red mist billow in front of Zach's eyes.
But marriage?
There were various ways of dealing with a Gordian knot. You could try to untie it, dooming yourself to failure. If you were Alexander the Great, you could simply say to hell with ancient prophesies and cut it.
Or, Zach considered thoughtfully, as he gazed down into Miranda's intense, glittering eyes, you could just accept it the way it was, enjoying the intricacy of its workmanship.
Pushing lingering misgivings into the farthest corner of his mind, with one deft, strong move, he lifted her onto his newly aroused body, claiming possession.
"I think," he said, as Miranda fitted him tightly inside her and began to ride, "it's time I made an honest woman of you."
Chapter Ten
Zach and Miranda's wedding, held three days before Christmas, was the highlight of the Santa Barbara social season.
The bride was beautiful in a Geoffrey Beene cocktail suit of ivory peau de soie, with which she wore a cream, wide-brimmed hat and the pearls Zach had given her for an engagement present.
The groom was handsome in a dark suit, but to the amusement of all gathered, appeared uncharacteristically nervous. The flowers were from Eleanor's greenhouse, the champagne was from France, and the wedding gifts came in blue Tiffany boxes.
After the ceremony, the happy couple flew to Brazil for their holiday honeymoon. Rio de Janeiro had a beat and a beauty all its own. The Cariocas' renowned zest for living was so evident that first-time visitors could be excused for half expecting pedestrians walking along the pink-tiled sidewalks to break into a samba.
Miranda couldn't remember when she'd felt so grand. Even the light afternoon rain couldn't dampen her spirits. Here she was, in the sexiest, most uninhibited city in the world, lying in bed next to a handsome husband whose lust equaled her own.
Last night, she'd talked Zach into visiting a club in Copacabana, where for a small cover charge, they were given an eye-opening glimpse of Rio in the raw. The motto of the underground nightclub seemed to be Anything Goes. Men danced with men, women with women, in pairs, sometimes threesomes, and if there was a lot more than dancing going on in the dark corners, the management turned a blind eye.
Although Zach had professed distaste for the more blatantly outrageous displays, after returning to their hotel at dawn, he'd taken her with a savage passion that definitely belied his earlier condemnation.
But it was more than great sex that had Miranda floating on air. By becoming Mrs. Zachary Deveraux, she'd pulled off the coup of a lifetime.
At first she'd been furious to discover that Eleanor was leaving control of Lord's to Zach. There was, unsurprisingly, the obligatory bequest to Anna, whom everyone knew was dead. Any good attorney could break that clause.
It wasn't that Miranda had been disinherited. On the contrary, Eleanor had bequeathed her a lump sum of two million dollars and several exquisite pieces of jewelry, including an incomparable jaguar pin once worn by the Duchess of Windsor.
Along with the jewelry, Miranda was to receive the oversize Caravaggio of St. Matthew the tax collector that hung in a gold frame on the library wall, the Cézanne still life from the dining room and a valuable scale model of the London Lord's, c
omplete with Gothic ornaments and flying buttresses.
But the one thing Miranda wasn't going to gain by her aunt's death was the one thing she most wanted: power.
Undaunted, after an initial outburst of rage that had required her to apologize profusely to Teddy Galbraith and to replace the shattered Waterford globe he'd used for thirty years as paperweight, Miranda had devised a new plan.
If she couldn't inherit control of Lord's, she'd earn it the old-fashioned way: by marriage.
Miranda glanced at her sleeping husband. Deciding she deserved a reward for devising such a brilliant solution, she slipped out of bed, dressed and took a taxi to Mesbla, Rio's answer to Macy's.
The department store was bustling. Miranda strolled idly past the fragrant cosmetics counters, past innumerable alligator belts and leather purses, and through the shoe department. She took the escalator to all eleven floors, perusing everything from lingerie to linens to pots and pans. But she could find nothing that shouted, Choose Me!
Finally she returned to the main floor and stood by the displays of costume jewelry. Across the aisle, behind the locked glass-topped counter displaying fine jewelry, a salesclerk with coffee-dark eyes and thick hair that fell to her waist was busily trying to convince a covey of young Japanese tourists that they couldn't leave Brazil without a pair of pink tourmaline earrings.
Nearby, a teenage girl, squeezed seductively into a flowered dress a samba dancer would have lusted after, tried on necklace after necklace, looking for the perfect accessory to her beauty.
Miranda plucked a pair of gold hoops from the costume-jewelery display and held them up to her earlobes, examining herself in the round mirror on the counter. They were regretfully common.
She returned them to the rack, choosing instead a pair of pearls surrounded by Austrian crystals. The cultured pearls definitely lacked luster. The faux rubies were too muddy, the sapphires too blue.
And then she saw them. A pair of glittering green stones set in gold. She clipped them on and smiled at her reflection.
Perfect. She looked over at the salesclerk, who had moved on to pushing aquamarines. Satisfied with her choice, Miranda took off the earrings and, with one last casual glance around, slipped them into her crocodile Hermès bag.
Excitement surged through her. She was heady with it. Her blood pounding, she walked quickly back the way she had come.
She'd just made it to the heavy glass doors, when an overweight, middle-aged man, wearing the dark blue uniform of authority the world over, stepped in front of her.
"Excuse me, Madame," he said in heavily accented English. He put a beefy hand on the sleeve of her black silk dress. "If you would please come with me?"
* * *
Displaying her usual flair for extravagance, Sophie arranged to transport the entire cast and crew of her three daytime soaps to Colorado for a week on the slopes during that unproductive time between Christmas and New Year's. Also along for the celebration were several actors and actresses she'd pegged to star in "Blue Bayou," and the new writers, many of whom she'd hired away from other daytime productions.
In the beginning, Alex had tried to beg off.
"There's still so much to do," she complained, frustrated by Sophie's tendency to continually tinker with the script, expunging story lines, adding others, creating havoc with Alex's costuming plans.
"Don't you worry about a thing," Sophie said blithely. She smiled, thinking about the surprise she had waiting for this workaholic young woman who had come to mean so much to her. "Things will all work out fine. They always do."
"I have a feeling you won't be so sanguine when Tiffany doesn't have a thing to wear for the opening scene when the show debuts."
"Tiffany has a body that won't quit. Just having her play her part in the buff would probably send ratings through the roof."
Alex laughed and caved in.
While Alex was growing up, her mother, seemingly possessed with wanderlust, had constantly moved their small family from town to town, state to state. Although they'd spent nearly a year in Durango, Alex had never visited Aspen. The former mining town did not disappoint.
From her first glimpse, the snow-clad valley reminded Alex of a Currier and Ives print. She found the Victorian architecture and quaint shops charming, the scenery inspiring, and the people friendlier than she'd imagined.
Of course, Alex allowed, part of her instant acceptance into Aspen's lofty social stratum was undoubtedly because her hostess was a driving force in the alpine community.
Sophie's ski chalet, which she had wrested from her husband during the bitter divorce negotiations, was nestled at the base of Buttermilk Mountain, two miles from the village center. The enormous house had walls made up almost entirely of triple-paned glass, offering an extraordinary panorama of blue sky, craggy mountains and deep drifts of blindingly white powder snow. In nearly every room of the house, fires blazed merrily away in stone fireplaces.
In the living room, a fifteen-foot Christmas tree, decorated with Western and Native American ornaments, towered above the assembled guests, reaching for the lofty, cantilevered ceiling. Outside the sliding glass doors, steam rose high in the crisp, dry mountain air from a huge hot tub.
On the third night of her visit, Alex was sitting at the pine desk in her room, her bright head bent over her sketchbook.
"Knock, knock" came a voice from the open door.
She glanced up. It was Stone Michaels, signed to play Tiffany's former high school sweetheart, a jazz saxophonist. When she'd first seen the attractive couple together, Alex had thought they looked like Ken and Barbie.
"I've been searching the entire house for you."
With an inward sigh, she put down the royal blue pencil. Stone was Sophie's latest attempt at matchmaking. After discovering the aspiring actor/musician pumping gas at the Arco station on Sunset, the producer had set her sights on casting him as the man in Alex's life.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I was taking a shower and this thought occurred to me, and—"
"And you just couldn't rest until you got it down on paper," Stone finished. He entered the room on a long, loose-hipped stride reminiscent of James Dean. He was carrying a glass of white wine in each hand. He held one out to Alex.
She accepted the glass. "Guilty."
"I'm the same way when I'm working on a character sketch."
Alex smiled up at him as she took a sip of the wine. "This is great. Thanks."
"My pleasure." He glanced down, trying to catch a glimpse of her newest design.
Alex turned the pad over. A perfectionist by nature, she didn't like anyone seeing her work until she'd completed it to her satisfaction.
Tilting his sun-streaked head, he sipped his wine and studied her. "I thought you were going to soak your aching bones in the hot tub."
At Sophie's urging, she'd spent the day taking ski lessons from a gorgeous hunk who talked like Arnold Schwarzenegger, looked like Robert Redford and skied like Phil Mahre. After several humbling hours struggling to learn the logistics of schussing, herringbone and snowplows, after tumbling again and again into drifts of thick white powder, every muscle in her body was screaming in protest.
Which was why, when she'd returned to the house, Alex had allowed Stone to talk her into joining the gregarious group in the spa. At the time, the idea of all those jets of hot water massaging her aching body sounded like Nirvana.
But then, as so often happened, while she was standing beneath the pelting shower, a new design for a velvet-and-lace cocktail suit popped into her mind, and she'd rushed to get the thought onto paper.
"You know," Stone said when she didn't immediately answer, "if I didn't have the obligatory Hollywood stud superego, I'd think you were ignoring me." His friendly smile took the whine from his accusation.
"That's not true." Alex sipped a little more of her drink. "I seem to remember going into town with you just last night."
"With five other people acting as chaperons," he reminded her. "And you
only stayed long enough to dance a couple of numbers. Hell, Alex, you were back here by nine."
Stone was nice. But pushy. She wished he'd hit on someone else. Like Brenda, a writer who hadn't tried to hide her crush on him.
"I'm sorry." Alex brushed his hand away when he began toying with her earring. "But I was exhausted. My body hasn't adjusted to this altitude."
He gave her a chiding look over the rim of his glass. "You're making this awfully hard, Alex."
"This?"
"You." He took her hand. "Me." Brushed his lips over her knuckles. "Us."
Tired and sore, she was not up to playing games. He'd been tossing these sexual innuendos her way since they'd boarded the private train in L.A. Not wanting to get into an argument, she'd tried to ignore them.
Which had been, Alex decided, a mistake. "There isn't going to be any us," she insisted firmly, tugging her hand free.
"Are you so sure about that?"
"Positive." Alex could feel her temper beginning to fray. "I'm sorry, Stone. I think you're a nice guy. And I like you."
"I like you, too." Encouraged, he tugged on the ends of her hair.
Once again, she brushed his intimate touch away. "I like you as a friend. A 'Blue Bayou' colleague. But right now my work is so demanding I don't have time for a relationship."
"That's okay by me." This time his grin was blatantly suggestive. "I'd settle for a holiday fling."
Why was it, Alex wondered, that the gorgeous ones were inevitably so damn dense? Reminding herself they'd be working on the same program and it wouldn't do to antagonize him, she put her glass down on the desk, stood up, placed both her hands on his broad shoulders and looked him straight in the eye.
"Stone, listen to me. I am not in the market for an affair or a holiday fling. I came up here to relax. Which is very hard to do when you keep trying to get me horizontal."
He stared at her for a long time like someone who couldn't quite comprehend the language. "You really mean that, don't you?" he asked finally with obvious surprise.