“You’ve shocked me. What happened to turn my sweet Allison into such a tough woman?”
She gloried in her immunity to him, in her ability to see him for the charlatan that he was. “You amuse me. Don’t you know a deflated balloon is useless? Don’t waste your time.” She walked over to the bellhop and asked him to escort her to the elevator.
“Any problems?”
“Not yet. I’m making certain that that man doesn’t follow me.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll see that he doesn’t.”
The phone rang as she walked into her room, but she didn’t feel like dueling with Roland Farr, so she let it ring half a dozen times before willing herself to answer it.
“Hello!”
“Hi. Say, what’s the matter? Somebody trip your trigger?”
She released a long breath and let her anxiety go with it. “Jake. Hi. I...uh. I’m fine. What about you?”
“Yeah? Well, you certainly fooled me. If I ever had an angrier greeting, I don’t remember it. But as long as I’m not the bad guy on your list, how about joining me for lunch?”
“Where are you, Jake?”
“Downstairs. Coming down?”
Allison let the desk chair take her weight. She wanted to see him, to enjoy his company, but if she was going to distance herself from him socially, she’d better start now. “I’m having lunch here in my room,” she said, “but thanks.” She hadn’t planned to do that, but the idea suddenly appealed to her.
“I asked you what’s the matter, Allison, and you haven’t told me. Something is wrong.”
She hated lies and liars, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. “I don’t know why you say that. I’m fine. I’ll meet you at six-thirty as planned.” The dead air told its own tale; Jake didn’t believe her. “You haven’t canceled your YWCA lecture again, have you?”
His voice, dry and unfriendly, bore no trace of the sexy masculinity that fascinated her. “Why would I? Meet you in the lobby here at six-thirty.” He hung up.
Allison ordered lunch in her room, opened her computer, and searched the Library of Congress catalogue again for information on Jake. When the last of her leads fizzled, she slumped in the chair and admitted defeat. Four hours of research had yielded nothing but the title, description, and publication date of his book. This wasn’t normal. How could she write a story about a man she didn’t know? An idea lurked just beyond the door of her conscious thought, but she couldn’t reach it. Frustrated, she stamped her foot. It would come to her. Sooner or later she would know Jake Covington.
She telephoned Twenty-first Century Publishing Corporation, identified herself as a reporter, and asked to speak with Jake’s editor.
“Mr. Covington is talented beyond measure. There doesn’t seem to be anything that he can’t do and do well. We consider him a treasure, the best crowd pleaser we’ve ever had. And his book is currently our bestseller. He’s a great guy and wonderful to work with.”
Allison resisted putting her hands over her ears to shut out the woman’s stock answers. “Where does he write?” she asked.
Inelegant sputters greeted her ears. “Well...he’s very private, so I...I can’t say.”
Allison cringed. She’d try again. “I’m doing a profile on him. I suppose he has a family, since he’s nearing forty.” It wasn’t true, but perhaps the woman would correct her.
“Well...I... Why don’t you send me your list of questions, and I’ll forward them to him?”
So much for that. She thanked the editor and pondered her next move. As soon as she’d asked a direct question about him, the woman jettisoned the ebullience and shut down like an engine out of gas. She got out her manual on bibliography research and began looking for clues as to where she might begin.
She paced the floor, turned on the television, and tried to distract herself with Oprah, but to no avail. She had to write a breakthrough story on Jacob Covington, one that would catapult her into the big time, and in doing it she had to honor her agreement not to dig into his private life. She also had to put the brakes on her escalating attraction to Jake. What was it about the man that lured her? When she wasn’t with him, she wanted to see him, and when they were together she didn’t want to leave him. Fortunately, he didn’t know how much energy she consumed just trying to resist her feelings for him!
* * *
At six-thirty, as agreed, Allison stepped out of the elevator and, as usual, there he stood, facing it. His bland expression quickly shifted into one of warmth and appreciation, and in spite of the lectures she’d given herself, her heart took off in a trot. She knew her smile communicated more to him than a casual greeting, for his eyes suddenly blazed with desire, burning her, plucking at something deep inside her. For long seconds, they stood before each other. Mute.
Finally, his hoarse words restored her presence of mind. “I have a taxi waiting. It’s only a short ride to the YWCA, but we’d better hurry.”
She sat through his lecture, marveling at his ability to keep it on course when his gaze continually strayed to her. After his talk, she remained seated while his fans crowded around him, asking questions and obtaining his autograph.
“You did yourself proud tonight,” she told him as they waited for a taxi.
He stood uncomfortably close, his gaze roaming over her face as though seeking something. “Thanks. But you caused me plenty of trouble, lady. You took a seat in my mind and wouldn’t move. How about some food? It’s nine-thirty, aren’t you hungry?”
She’d think about those words later. “Yes, but I don’t want to make a big deal out of eating.”
“Snack at the hotel?”
She agreed. At her suggestion, he got a table while she went to her room to leave her coat and handbag. They finished a light supper, and as he accompanied her to her room, the hall lights suddenly flickered. He took her plastic key card, opened the door, and stroked her cheek while gazing intently into her eyes. Then, he abruptly walked away.
As she stepped inside the room, the light she’d left burning flickered and went out. Her scream pierced the air, and almost immediately the doorbell rang. Perspiration beaded on her forehead, and she stumbled, knocking over a floor lamp, as she struggled to get to the door and out of the room. She managed to open it, and to touch Jake when he rushed to her.
“Jake! Oh, Lord!” Darkness surrounded them. “Jake, where are you?”
He grasped her hand. “Right here. Are you—”
“I...I’m scared. I hate the darkness. I—”
“Shhh. Nothing can hurt you while you’re with me.” He relinquished her hand and draped his arm around her waist. She squeezed her eyes shut and clung to him, and her entire being responded to his whispered words of comfort, reassuring and soothing her as they stood locked together in the darkness. His big hands lovingly stroked her back and caressed her arms, and she settled into him, secure for the first time in her memory. The stroking changed, and his arms tightened around her in an unmistakable gesture of masculine need. Tremors that she knew he felt raced through her body, and her arms crept up around his shoulders.
“Allison. Something’s happening here. I... Honey, the light is back on.”
Heedlessly, her right hand lifted to caress the back of his head, and her parted lips begged for his.
“Allison!”
She stared into the blaze of desire that his eyes had become. Stormy. Wild. Fierce with a masculine need to mate. Her fingers grasped his nape, pulled him toward her, and waited.
His lips met hers in a powerful claim to her whole being, firing and possessing, as the heat of desire singed her nerve ends and settled in her loins. The longing that had gripped her from the moment she first looked at him shut off her thinking and took possession of her body. She opened her mouth and he plunged into her. More. She wanted, needed more of him. All of him. Her n
ipples hardened, and she locked him to her. His velvet tongue danced in her mouth, possessing every nook and crevice, every centimeter, as the hot swell of desire shot through her bloodstream, weakening her limbs and turning her into a mass of raw need. His big hands gripped her hips, and she spread her legs in a symbolic quest for what she needed.
He attempted to move her from him, but she sucked his tongue into her mouth, grabbed his buttocks, and undulated wildly against him. He groaned and, capitulating, pulled her closer and rose against her. She slumped into him, shackled by the wild longing that had overcome her.
After a time, she realized that he held her away from him, and she opened her eyes to see the question that blazed in his. Sadly, she stepped away. What on earth had she done?
“I started that, Jake. I asked for it and I’m not sorry. But you know we can’t... That nothing can happen between us.”
He stared down at her, his desire far from dormant. “I don’t know any such thing. What I do know is that we want each other, and one of these days we’ll get what we want. I can wait till you’re ready.” He brushed a thumb beneath her chin. “Good night, Allison.”
Allison closed the door slowly and softly. Then she slumped into the nearest chair, threw her head back, closed her eyes, and surrendered to the emotional turmoil that gripped her. His fingers still pressed into her hips, and his hot tongue still plunged into and out of her mouth, promising her a ride into the stratosphere by the sheer power of his loins. She moaned in frustration. She had ignored her warnings and lectures to herself. Now that she’d had a taste of him, how could she stay out of his arms? She went into her bathroom and drank several glasses of water. Calmer, she undressed and got into bed.
When she closed her eyes, the vision of Roland Farr loomed before her, and she threw back the covers and sat up. What had she done? After such a bitter lesson, how could she have been so foolish as to walk back into the same trap? Roland Farr had been her first important news assignment. “Bring me everything you can find on him,” her editor at that time had said. But Roland Farr was a handsome charmer, a man of the world, and at twenty-four she’d been no match for him. He’d courted her without seeming to do so, had even pretended that he didn’t want anything to develop between them. It would be unethical from her perspective, he’d said. And then he’d seduced her, taken her most precious possession with an oath of love. She’d believed him, and out of loyalty she had omitted from her story the undocumented tales of his trafficking in illegal immigrants, telling herself that if she couldn’t prove it, she couldn’t print it.
The day after her story broke in The Herald, The Star printed what she had omitted, and Roland Farr disappeared. Her editor awakened her with a phone call at two o’clock in the morning and told her she had no job. The next day he reported her dismissal on the paper’s front page, but the man for whom she’d taken the risk left her to face the heat alone. Farr was never indicted or even publicly held criminally suspect, and she had sworn that she would never again find herself in such a predicament.
She believed in facing the truth, and she had to admit that her strong and growing attraction to Jake could put her in a compromising situation. The Allison whom Jake had held, loved, and aroused was not a twenty-four-year-old girl, but a woman whose clock had ticked for work and work alone over the last six years, and whose cold, drab, and lonely life he’d just heated up and torn apart. A woman who had just discovered whom and what she needed and who knew she wanted what he offered. She didn’t doubt that Jake was special, a rarity among men in her circles. Intelligent, strong, gentle, and caring. Honorable. Affectionate. Yes. And common sense told her she’d be a fool to throw away such a diamond as Jake. She put the pillow on top of her head in the hope of getting to sleep, but pulled it off at once, sat up, and idly flicked her nails. No matter how great he might be, and no matter how badly she coveted him, she couldn’t afford to walk back into that trap; it had taken her years to get out of the last one.
The next morning she telephoned Bill Jenkins.
“What do you mean you’re not covering the opening of that hotel? The hell you say! You work for me, you’ll do as I tell you.”
The bile of her distaste settled in her mouth. “Put me on that story, and you will regret it.”
“Don’t tell me you still break out in a sweat over Farr. Well, if you do, that’s your problem. Deal with it. That opening’s big time. Senator Wade’s sunk a bundle in it, and everybody who’s anybody will be there.”
“Except me, so you’d better assign somebody else. I refuse to whitewash that man.”
“Oh, yes, you will. He’s paying for this.”
Allison couldn’t help laughing as her anger dissolved. “Bill, if you don’t want Farr to sue you for fraud, assign somebody else. He’s a crook. That’s why he’s paying you for a story that makes him look good. If you force me to do it, I’ll ruin him, because I know how he operates, and I’ll find whatever he’s hiding.”
“I’ll deal with you later.” He hung up, but she didn’t doubt that he’d give that assignment to one of his feature writers and split the fee.
* * *
She’d asked for it, she said. Jake walked into his darkened room, disoriented for the first time in his memory. No matter what she said or that she assumed responsibility, he had wanted that kiss...and more. He’d been primed for it, and she had reached him in places that no one else had touched. She’d said she wasn’t sorry, though she considered it a mistake, so he’d just as soon it had never happened. He disliked the sense that pieces of himself now lodged elsewhere, that another human being could set him aglow, fire up his engine, and immediately turn off the ignition. She’d made a mistake. He undressed and crawled into bed without turning on a light, fell over on his belly, and locked his hands beneath the pillow. He wouldn’t swear not to touch her again, not even if doing it hurt. When something felt as good as her body in his arms and her mouth moving beneath his, he didn’t doubt that he’d go back for another taste. But he’d protect his flank.
* * *
Jake had assumed that, when he met Allison that next morning, he could expect a slight chill, but she didn’t look him in the eye. Shy? He hadn’t thought shyness a part of her makeup, and he figured dealing openly with it would clear the air.
“Good morning, Allison. I see you’re as dumbfounded about last night as I am.” She nodded her greeting, but her eyebrows shot upward, and he knew he’d taken the right course. She’d been prepared to pretend that their relationship hadn’t changed. “We have another four weeks on this tour,” he went on, “and the more we see of each other, the more intense this is likely to become. We’ll get on better if we talk about it now.”
He watched as she drew her shield tighter, shrouding herself in her professional armor, and it stunned him that he wanted to give her the treasure a woman gained by letting go, to show her the wonders that awaited her in the galaxy of loving. He had no doubt, after last night, that she didn’t know and wasn’t ready to risk learning. Her feigned nonchalance was all the evidence he needed that she was prepared to forgo that knowledge indefinitely. He touched her shoulder and smiled inwardly when she stepped back, as he’d known she would.
He changed tactics. “I hope you slept well, because we have a crowded schedule today. I hadn’t thought we’d tour this week, but we did, and I’m relieved. I’m taking the four o’clock shuttle back to Washington. How about you?”
She smiled, but he could see that she forced it. “I haven’t packed, so I’ll take a later flight.”
His grin must have embarrassed her, because she lowered her gaze. That from a woman who looked him straight in the eye whenever she decided to give him some sass. Unrepentant, he let the grin spread into a full-faced smile. “Chicken. I won’t ask whether you’ll miss me this weekend, because you’d be scared to tell the truth.”
Her chin poked out, and he could s
ee that she’d squared off to defend herself. “You’re just like one of our Vermont cows that gives a pail of fresh milk, swishes her tail a few times, and kicks it over. If I find myself missing you this weekend or any other, I’ll give myself such a tongue-lashing that you can bet it will never happen again.”
He laughed aloud at that. “If you succeed, please tell me how you do it.” He touched her elbow. “Let’s hurry, or we’ll be late for the taping.”
* * *
Allison looked down at the clean sheet of paper on her knee. After one hour during which Jake had answered the interviewer’s questions, matched wits with him, and sassed him a few times, she hadn’t detected one special mannerism, habit, point of view, or idea about which she wanted to write. Dismayed that he didn’t seem to spring to life in the interview, she started to put the writing pad in her briefcase when she heard the interviewer say, “You’re the most unique subject I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing. You don’t project yourself, only your work.”
And then she knew. Her previous days with Jake had proved interesting to such an extent that her notes had filled a writing tablet. Today, she searched for a different Jake, the private man she’d gotten to know the previous evening, the one for whom her insides had churned while his mouth seared hers and his tongue possessed her. And that Jake wasn’t being interviewed. She couldn’t believe that she had relaxed her professionalism to such an extent. Annoyed with herself, she zipped up her briefcase, folded her hands in her lap, and waited for the interview to end. Jake could have been right; maybe they had better talk about it. She’d make that a priority when they met on Monday.
* * *
Jake got to Washington a few minutes before five that afternoon and went directly to the agency. The chief handed him his orders.
Last Chance at Love Page 8