He looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, we’d talked about it,” he mumbled, as he pointedly went back to fiddling with more gadgets.
“Is he also a pilot?”
“No.”
With a sudden and not especially pleasing flash of insight, Audrey sensed a shift in the balance of power in this conversation. “If he wasn’t going to crew for you, then who was?”
“No one.” A middle-of-the-night intimacy couldn’t have been murmured any more quietly. The impact, however, was decidedly different.
“No one?” she repeated in an ominous tone. “I thought you mistook me for your crew.”
“I did.”
“Look me in the eye and say that.”
“I did.” Blue eyes glanced defiantly in her direction, then shifted away. “Sort of.”
“Explain.”
“Cal was supposed to send someone new for the ground crew.”
“Ground being the operative word, I assume.”
“Yes, dammit.” The guilt-ridden words were ground out between tight lips.
“I see.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I hope you don’t think I’m being unreasonable, but do you mind my asking what the hell I’m doing here?” Her voice rose until she was sure her shout could be heard three states away.
A tiny muscle worked in Blake’s jaw. For the first time since they’d taken off, he was the one who appeared nervous. If she had her way, the man would be quaking in his boots before she finished with him. He would be seeing visions of a long jail term or, at the very least, a hefty fine.
Since it was difficult to be thoroughly intimidating while seated, she got to her feet. Blake still towered over her by several inches, so it wasn’t quite as effective as she might have liked, but it was a start. Hands on hips, she glowered at him. “Well?”
He met her gaze and she caught a twinkle in his eyes, before he carefully—and wisely—banished it. She was in no mood to provide him with another second of his morning’s entertainment.
“I wanted you along,” he finally responded. The simple words set up a thrumming in the air that affected every nerve in her body. She searched the depths of his eyes for any sign of an easy lie, but she couldn’t find it. She found sincerity and warmth and, most unexpected of all, desire. Sharp, primitive, unmistakable desire. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Not as crew?” she managed to ask in a raw-edged whisper.
“Not as crew,” he confirmed, then admitted with obvious reluctance, “we almost never take crew along on these events.”
She allowed her mind to digest that little piece of information.
“I could file kidnapping charges,” she said almost casually, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. He was leaning back against the side of the gondola now and he no longer looked nearly as tense. He was supposed to be quaking by now. Where had she gone wrong? It must have been in the phrasing. She should have sounded more sure of herself, more definite. “In fact, I think I will file them. The minute we get back on the ground, I’ll call the FBI or whoever’s in charge of those things and file criminal charges.”
“Harvey will hate it,” Blake pointed out, as if what Harvey thought mattered. If she could think of charges, she’d file them against him, too.
“It’ll be really bad PR,” he added.
She refused to be daunted by such flimsy, veiled threats. “You should have thought of that before you got me up here under false pretenses.”
He took a step toward her. A couple more of those long, easy strides of his would put him very, very close. A wayward shiver of anticipation shot up her spine. When it reached her brain, she gave it a stern lecture, then tried to ignore it.
“Why do I have the feeling that this argument has very little to do with kidnapping?” he said softly.
Her heart fluttered. Her brain told her to ignore that, too. “Why would you say that?”
“For one thing, you agreed to come along with me, so kidnapping’s out.”
“You can’t prove it.”
He grinned at her, which was very irritating, and took another step. “You certainly didn’t try to get away when you had the chance. I think John will vouch for that. We’re up to two against one and I do have something of a national reputation.”
His breath whispered past her cheek and left it flushed. She tried to take a step backward, but there was no place to go. She swallowed deeply, then said with as much disdain as she could muster, “Sure, as a rogue. How much good do you think that will do you?”
“I was referring to my reputation in the business world.”
“I think that other, carefully cultivated image is the one they’ll look at in this instance...man about town, jet-setting playboy, most eligible bachelor, you know the one. Yes, indeed, I don’t think a judge would overlook that.” She began to inch sideways, trying not to be too obvious about it.
“Tell me something, Audrey. Why do I get the feeling that what we’re battling about here is control? Do I make you nervous for some reason?” he inquired with an attempt at innocence. “Are you trying to take charge of this situation?”
“Why on earth would I want to do that? This is your balloon. You’re the pilot, so obviously you’re in charge.” The denial sounded incredibly weak even to her ears.
There was a disturbing gleam in his eyes. “I wasn’t referring to ballooning. I was thinking more in terms of our personal relationship.”
“We don’t have a personal relationship,” she insisted stubbornly.
“Yet.”
“Ever.”
That irksome smile was back. “We’ll see,” he taunted.
Four
Blake’s expression was so smug it set Audrey’s teeth on edge. She knew that look. It was the look of a man who always, no matter what, got what he wanted.
Not this time, she vowed. He had pushed her too far. She was going to steel herself against his smooth-as-silk moves and sweet-talking words. She might have a little more trouble remaining immune to his overpowering sexiness, but she could do it if she just reminded herself that he was a no-good scoundrel. If she had a piece of paper in her purse, she’d write it a hundred, convincing times: Blake Marshall is an unscrupulous, untrustworthy rat.
Just when she was getting wound up, the rat spoke, his tone conciliatory. “How about a truce?”
She glared at him, but he kept right on talking in that low, pleasant, insistently seductive voice of his. “Here we are on a beautiful day, a breeze against our faces, all this gorgeous scenery and you’re grumbling about kidnapping. Why not just settle back, have a glass of champagne, get to know each other better and enjoy the ride?”
“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction,” she muttered obstinately, her arms folded protectively around her middle.
“Well, I hope you won’t mind if I make the best of things,” he said easily. Ignoring her completely, he pulled a bottle of champagne out of the cooler, popped the cork, poured himself a glass and enjoyed the view. He seemed utterly content.
Audrey gritted her teeth and scowled at his profile. She thought she caught his lips twitching with amusement. She wasn’t sure what infuriated her more, his obvious determination to enjoy their situation despite her mood or the fact that he hadn’t tried a little harder to persuade her to join him. He might at least have poured her a glass of champagne. She would have refused it, of course, maybe even thrown it back in his smirking face, but a real gentleman would have offered.
That was one of the problems, though. Blake wasn’t a real gentleman. She’d heard enough about his romantic escapades, and his actions this morning had only confirmed it. As a child he’d probably had a streak of mischief in him that kept his parents hopping. As a man that trait had made him as bold and daring as any pirate. Perversely, it was a significant part of her attraction toward him. If he’d been bland and polite and uninteresting, she wouldn’t be torn by these conflicting feelings. She would never have felt this wild, urgent desire to step willingly into
his arms, a desire that warred with her common sense and a healthy, if somewhat belated, instinct for self-preservation.
She’d just discovered that for the past year or more she’d been deluding herself that she could be satisfied with safe, pleasant companionship. Now Blake had turned up with his potent masculinity, his take-charge attitude and his devilish smile, and she recognized the absurdity of the delusion. Those other men seemed impossibly tame. Not one of them had made her blood roar through her veins, not one of them had made her feel dangerously, wickedly alive.
Damn the man! She’d been content with her life until this morning, pleased with the progress she’d been making to change.
She began to pace around the gondola, which caused it to sway just enough to remind her that she wasn’t stalking around the man’s living room in a huff. If she was going to engage in a fight at two thousand feet, there were certain concessions she was going to have to make, such as standing still.
She clung to the edge of the gondola and gazed out at the scenery—the river winding below like a tossed-aside strand of iridescent ribbon, the meadows dotted with pink and yellow and red wildflowers, the houses that looked no bigger than a child’s toys. Their altitude registered in her head and was recalculated in terms of height off the ground and the potential for broken bones. She gulped and swiveled around to stare down at the floor. When he spoke she was counting slowly in an effort to calm her rapid breathing.
“I’m sorry.”
The quiet words nudged their way past her annoyance and caught her by surprise. She turned toward Blake and found that he had that sincere expression in his eyes again. It was a look that had probably gotten him out of any number of jams. She’d read someplace that he’d gone to Catholic schools as a boy. That angelic, innocent air had probably been very effective on the nuns. Goodness knows, she’d thought she’d steeled herself against it but it was still playing havoc with her heartbeat.
“What was that?” she said coolly.
“I said I was sorry.”
“For what?” She had a whole list of his transgressions that required an apology. She was curious about where he’d choose to start.
“Deceiving you.”
He’d picked a good one. She waited for more.
“I really did just want you along for the ride, but I should have given you a choice in the matter,” he admitted contritely. He reached out a hand as if to caress her cheek, then dropped it uncertainly to his side. “I could have asked you before we ever left the ground.”
A soft sigh whispered past her lips and, predictably, she detected the slightest weakening in her resistance. “Thank you for that.”
“Want to explain why it made you so angry?”
She was still struggling with all the ramifications of her anger herself. She wasn’t sure she wanted to get into some of them with him. “Wasn’t it enough that you just carted me off without asking?”
“I’m asking you. Is that all it was?”
Blake had to force himself to stand very still while he waited for her answer. Two minutes ago he’d been tempted to sweep her into his arms and kiss her until she stopped muttering all that utter nonsense about kidnapping. He knew she would respond, more fervently than she had earlier, but something told him that using her passion as a weapon was the wrong thing to do. She was scared about more than being up here in this balloon. For some reason, she seemed to be frightened of him and her feelings for him as well.
As a boy, he’d loved animals and he’d had to learn to be patient with some of them, especially those that were wild and injured. He’d held the quivering, terrified creatures in his hands until they accepted his gentle touch, even welcomed it. He’d grown more impatient with age, more rushed, but he drew now on those early lessons in restraint.
He watched Audrey squirm uncomfortably for several minutes and when she still hadn’t answered, he suggested, “Maybe we should change the subject.”
She regarded him warily, but some of the tension seemed to drain from her and he knew then for certain that backing off was the right thing to do. She needed some space and he’d do his best to give it to her. The only thing he wouldn’t do was walk away from her. Audrey Nelson fascinated him in some way he didn’t totally understand. He wanted to know everything about her.
“Why don’t you tell me how you wound up with the company?”
Relief replaced caution in her eyes. “I was looking for a change and I heard about the opening in your PR department. It seemed like the perfect answer.”
The response piqued his interest. “A change from what?”
So many things, Audrey wanted to say. The past, my life. I wanted to be a new person. All she said was, “My job. It’s a pretty typical story. I’d been working in a very boring position with an insurance company for several years and I hated it. There was no challenge, no fun. When...when some things happened, I decided to make a clean break of it and start over in something else.”
Surely Blake of all people would understand the need for new challenges, the need to take risks after a lifetime of caution and constant consideration for the needs of others.
“These things that happened, were they related to your job?”
With a sense of dismay, she read the concern in Blake’s eyes and interpreted it as the wariness of a boss unexpectedly discovering a flaw in a trusted employee’s character. That look insulted her. More than that, it hurt. “If you’re asking if I was fired, the answer is no. I was a model employee. They were sorry to see me go,” she said stiffly.
Blake seemed surprised by her tone. “I didn’t mean that at all. I was just trying to find out why you felt the need to make such a drastic change.”
“I told you, I was bored.”
Audrey should have known it wasn’t going to end at that. She’d given him an opening now and, like a dog worrying a bone, Blake was going to poke and prod into her past until he knew everything there was to know about her. Obviously he’d never read any of those etiquette columns about the rudeness of asking personal questions, although she’d never learned how to heed the columnists’ advice and avoid responding.
“Wasn’t there any room for advancement?” he persisted.
She sighed. “I’m sure, if I’d stayed, I would eventually have done very well.”
His puzzled gaze skimmed across her face, then his eyes locked with hers. “I’m missing something.”
“What could you possibly be missing? A lot of people quit their jobs and go looking for something more exciting, more rewarding. That’s what I did. Harvey gave me a chance to try something I’d always wanted to do. No intrigue. Just a simple matter of moving on with my life.”
Audrey mentally cursed herself the minute the words were out of her mouth. She’d practically provoked him into probing more deeply.
“Interesting choice of words,” he said, exactly as she had feared her would. The man read subtleties more clearly than some people read the boldest headlines. “Did you literally make a move?”
“Yes,” she said tightly. With each new piece of information, he was getting closer to the whole story. It was not an ugly one or even a particularly unusual one, but it was not a time in her life of which she was particularly proud. She settled for giving Blake the bare minimum of information, the facts, but not the emotions behind them. He’d find the basics on her personnel record anyway. “I’d been living in Seattle.”
“But you wanted to get away from there, too?”
“The job was in California.”
“I’m sure there are a lot of jobs in Seattle. Didn’t you like it there?”
She glared at him. “Why do I have the feeling that we’ve gone beyond a casual get-acquainted conversation? Are you after something in particular?”
He seemed startled by her outburst. “I just want to know you better. Since you don’t seem especially forthcoming with information, I’m just asking what I want to know. We can trade roles, if you like. You ask the questions for a while.”
She knew she’d been reacting defensively, but Blake backed down so easily, it threw her off balance. The only questions that came to mind were far too revealing. She couldn’t very well plunge right in and ask the sort of thing she really wanted to know...if he’d ever been seriously involved with anyone or something equally provocative such as whether he slept in the nude. Who knew how he’d interpret those queries and what he’d feel free to ask in turn. She settled for the obvious.
“Why did you buy the vineyard? From what I’ve read it was failing. You were taking an incredible risk.”
He grinned. “That’s exactly why I bought it. It was a challenge in something with which I’d always been fascinated. It was also in my price range. I didn’t have a lot of ready cash or a lot of experience. Banks weren’t going to give me a huge loan for what could be a disaster and I didn’t want to take on a partner. The company and I seemed made for each other.”
“You must feel very proud of the way it’s turned out.”
“I do, but now that Marshall wines are counted among the best in California I’m looking for new challenges,” he said. His gaze lin gered on her face, then drifted lower. The look practically singed her with its suggestiveness and left her breathless. She shook her head.
“You’re looking in the wrong place,” she finally managed to whisper raggedly.
“I don’t think so. I want to get past those barriers you’ve put around yourself. I think there’s a very special woman inside.”
Blake’s words warmed her, even as they terrified her. He’d made his intentions very clear and there was no place for her to run, at least not right now. If she was going to run, it would have to be very, very soon, because if Blake got any closer, if he sought more intimacy, discovered more secrets and still cared, she wasn’t going to be able to resist. He was going to possess her in every nuance of the word.
“Please, Blake, let it go. You don’t know me at all.”
“You’re right. I don’t know nearly enough about you. But there’s something between us and I can’t just pretend it doesn’t exist.”
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