His One-Night Mistress

by Sandra Field

  He’d never wanted a woman as he wanted this one. And now he’d found her again.

  She was yanking at the hem of his shirt, pressing her belly to his, her hips writhing. His arousal had been instant, fierce and imperative. He put one hand to her buttocks, jamming her against it, and kissed her again, tasting her, laving the slick heat of her mouth. Knowing he couldn’t wait much longer, he lifted his head long enough to say hoarsely, “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

  The bedroom…her photo of Marise.

  She couldn’t possibly allow Seth in her bedroom.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  LIA went rigid in Seth’s arms; he might as well have thrown a bucket of cold water in her face. “What’s wrong with me?” she cried. “I’d have done it all over again—gone to bed with you and not a thought for—” She’d been about to say the consequences. In sheer panic she bit back the words. “Not a thought for tomorrow,” she stumbled. “We don’t know each other, we don’t trust each other and yet we’d fall into bed?”

  “You’re the truest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Seth said harshly, and heard the words echo in his head. “Come to bed with me, Lia. Let me make love to you again. And this time I’ll be able to see your face and call you by name…”

  The intensity in his green eyes made her belly ache with longing. But she wasn’t going to surrender to it. Or to him. How could she tell him about Marise when she couldn’t condone his long silence? She said jaggedly, “Why didn’t you answer my letters? Did you have another lover by then? Tell me, Seth. Tell me the truth! I swear I’ll do my best to understand.”

  “Lia, I never got them,” he said forcibly. “Do you think I wouldn’t have answered? It took me nearly two years to replace you in my bed, and—hell, what am I saying? I’ve never been able to replace you, and that’s the God’s truth.”

  A truth he’d never intended sharing with anyone.

  Lia gazed up at him. He was lying. He had to be. Two letters couldn’t just disappear off the face of the earth. If only the stakes weren’t so high, so impossibly weighted by the simple fact of Marise’s existence. “Then what happened to them?” she demanded.

  Ever since Lia had told him she’d sent one to the Hamptons, Seth had had his suspicions. But they were only suspicions, and a huge part of him dreaded for them to be proved true. He said flatly, “As soon as I get back to Manhattan, I’m going to find out. But I have to do it face-to-face.”

  “You’re saying someone might have interfered with your personal mail? Someone at work? Or one of your parents? I can’t believe that!”

  His jaw an inflexible line, Seth said, “I don’t want to talk about it until I have the facts.”

  “Well, I’m not going go to bed with you until I know. The letters are too important. Too basic.”

  He let out his breath in a frustrated sigh, moving away from her to pace up and down the room again. Like a caged tiger, she thought. She’d always hated zoos. Then he turned to face her. “You don’t trust me.”

  “Of course I don’t! Why should I?” His wet hair curled around his ears, his green eyes pinioning her like the butterfly she’d been. Stabbed with need, her whole body aching, Lia hugged her arms around her chest. “I’m cold,” she said in a low voice. “You’d better go, Seth.”

  “So are we going to avoid each other for the next three days? Pretend we’ve never met?”

  “If we’re smart, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

  Her head was downbent, and there were goosebumps on her bare arms. Stabbed with compunction—or that’s what he chose to call it—Seth said impulsively, “Have dinner with me tonight, Lia. Just dinner.” He added with a crooked smile, “We could call it a date. Seth meets Lia, they’re attracted to each other, and he asks her out. You’ll be quite safe—we won’t make love on the floor of the Reef Room.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it, and the answer’s no.”

  Seth came closer, deliberately running a finger down her cheek and watching her tiny shiver of response. “Eight o’clock in the Reef Room. In the meantime, have a hot shower… Lia, I’m sorry about the letters, more sorry than I can say. It must have hurt you when I didn’t answer—typical guy, he has a one-night stand, gets what he wants and crosses you off the list. It was never that way, and I swear I’ll find out who interfered with my mail.”

  Torn between the sincerity in his voice, and her own knowledge of just what it was she’d said in those letters, Lia struggled to find her bearings. Either he’d received at least one of her letters, in which case his sincerity was nothing but a ruthless ploy to get her in his bed again; or someone had destroyed both of them: a scenario she couldn’t begin to encompass.

  “I won’t have dinner with you, Seth, it’s playing with fire,” she said evenly. “I don’t trust a word you’re saying—that’s objection number one, and it’s huge. There’s more, though. Today was like a repeat of that masked ball—when I get within ten feet of you, I want to rip the clothes off your body and jump your bones. But I’m eight years older now, and I’ve learned a thing or two. No more one-night stands, for starters.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, and shut it again. Having found her for the second time, he’d been overwhelmed by his compulsive need to take her to bed again. But what then? He hadn’t even thought about the consequences. If he went to bed with Lia in the warmth of a tropical island, could he walk away from her? Drop her, as sooner or later he dropped all his women?

  Marriage was out, and he’d never wanted children. What did he have to offer but an affair? A six-week stand, he thought with a grimace.

  She deserved better than that.

  What was he going to do?

  He said curtly, “Tomorrow then. Let’s meet for breakfast. No risks attached.”

  “Your middle name is risk.”

  “So you’ve turned into a coward in the last eight years?”

  “I’m being sensible,” Lia cried. Wanting nothing more than to put her head down on the nearest pillow and weep her eyes out, she added, hearing the thread of desperation in her voice, “Please go.”

  “Nine o’clock tomorrow,” Seth said in a steel voice. “The Reef Room. They do dynamite scrambled eggs.”

  “I hope you enjoy them. All by yourself.”

  “You’ll turn up. I know you will. Because I’ve heard you play, and that woman doesn’t know the meaning of cowardice or caution.”

  Two days ago, she would have agreed with him. Lia walked toward the door and pushed it wide, her fingers gripping the cool wood. The first thing she was going to do once he’d gone was hide the photo of Marise in the depths of her suitcase. She said with icy emphasis, “Stay away from me, Seth.”

  He brushed his lips against her cold cheek and heard himself say, “No…I’m too happy to have found you.”

  What did that have to do with a six-week stand?

  For the second night in a row, Seth scarcely slept. This time, it wasn’t nightmares that kept him awake. It was Lia.

  Or rather, Lia’s absence.

  He hadn’t laid eyes on her yesterday after he’d left her cottage. The knowledge that she was within a few hundred feet of him every minute of the day was a constant and powerful irritant. Unable to settle to anything, he went to bed at eleven, planning to make up for his lack of sleep the night before. But at 4:00 a.m. he was wide-awake and staring up into the darkness. It wasn’t her absence that was the problem, no matter how empty his bed felt without her. It was her presence.

  She wanted nothing to do with him. According to her, in those weeks after Paris she’d sent him two letters that he’d never bothered answering. A cold-blooded philanderer, that’s how she saw him.

  Had she really sent the letters?

  If she hadn’t, why would she bother constructing such an elaborate system of lies? And why would she be so angry with him?

  Even if he left the letters out of the equation, this reunion was still horribly fraught. He had nothing to offer her. He’d never marry her; no a
mount of hot, glorious sex could change that.

  But a one-night stand—or its equivalent—was also out. Lia d’Angeli wasn’t like the women he always dated: emotionally cool, malleable, as rational in their way as he was in his. Lia was hot-tempered, strong-willed, intense and generous. All he had to do was think back eight years to know just how generous.

  He couldn’t mess around with her. One of her strengths as a musician was that she took risks, opening herself to the music and making herself vulnerable. She’d do the same in bed with him, he knew it. He couldn’t abuse that vulnerability, any more than he could take advantage of her generosity.

  Several months ago, a friend in Berlin had introduced him to one of her CDs. He’d never forget how her playing had penetrated every one of his defenses; it was as though she knew him intimately, and was addressing only himself: the lonely little boy he’d been, the guarded man he’d become.

  After that, he’d bought every one of her recordings. But he’d never gone to a live recital. He’d known it would be too much for him; he loathed exposing his emotions in public.

  So he’d never seen her in the flesh. He always steered away from reading reviews of music, preferring to make up his own mind, and the society pages weren’t part of his reading matter; he also, therefore, knew very little about her. But there was one more reason he hadn’t recognized her in the lobby of the Tradewind Room. Her CDs all had reproductions of famous paintings on the cover; her own photo, if there at all, was tucked somewhere in the liner notes, her face merged with those of the players in the orchestra. Presumably it had been against her principles to use her beauty as a sales pitch.

  Hadn’t she refused to have dinner with him last night because of her principles? She didn’t trust him, and therefore was refusing point blank to spend time with him. Odds were he’d be eating breakfast alone.

  If that’s what happened, he’d track her down afterward and tell her calmly and logically that she was right, they shouldn’t see each other again; it was out of the question that he have either a brief fling with her, or commit to any kind of longstanding relationship. He’d keep the whole thing low-key and under control.

  Game over. Before it had begun.

  As for himself, there’d be no risk that, once again, she’d touch him in that indefinable place called the soul. It had taken too long to get over her the last time. He didn’t want a repeat.

  His decision made, Seth should have found it easy to fall asleep. The numbers on the clock jumped from one digit to the next; the night sky slowly lightened, and the birds began warming up outside his window in a medley of chortles, whistles and screams.

  It didn’t matter what his decision was, Seth thought in near despair. He still wanted Lia. If she were here with him now, her slender warm body pressed to his, he’d be kissing her until he couldn’t breathe, tasting her skin, exploring its every secret…dammit, why couldn’t the birds shut up?

  At six Seth got out of bed, dragged a T-shirt over his head and went outside. He had three hours before he met Lia for breakfast. He lay down in the hammock strung between two tall trees, wedging a pillow under his head. The sky was a gentle eggshell blue, washed with streaks of pale pink and gold. Listening to the soft shushing of waves on the sand, he closed his eyes. He wouldn’t sleep. But at least it would be better than being caged up indoors…

  In the dream, it was blinding sunlight. Mud huts, an army jeep, a mute array of helpless villagers. The soldiers were dragging a mother away from her little boy. The boy was screaming. As one of the soldiers took out his machete, Seth gave a hoarse shout of horror and ran toward him. But his feet were as heavy as lead and he couldn’t cover the ground quick enough. The machete was descending and again he shouted…

  “Seth! Wake up, please wake up!”

  He was tangled in ropes, his whole body bathed in sweat. Seth’s eyes flew open. Lia was bending over him, shaking him by the shoulder, her dark eyes appalled. The sun made a brilliant aureole behind her head.

  He wasn’t in Africa. He was at the White Cay Resort. Tangled up in a hammock. The machete still inscribing its deadly arc in his mind, Seth rasped, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I was walking back to breakfast when I heard you yell—I thought someone was murdering you.”

  His humiliation that she’d heard him screeching like a banshee translated itself into rage. Seth yanked his fingers free from the weave of the hammock and swung his feet to the ground. “Just what were you going to do if someone was?”

  “I don’t know—I hadn’t got that far. Were you having a nightmare?”

  He stood up, swaying momentarily. As she grabbed for his arm, he shook her hand off, his face a rictus of fury. “Why don’t you get lost?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Which I’m choosing not to answer.”

  Her lashes flickered. “You’re ashamed of yourself,” she said pithily. “Embarrassed. Because I’ve seen a part of you that’s private.”

  “Whadda ya know,” he snarled, “you’re not just gorgeous, you’ve got brains as well. Vamoose, Lia.”

  It would have been all too easy to have snarled back. Lia had had very little sleep, and what she’d managed to get had been riddled with dreams so sexually explicit that she’d been more than embarrassed. The object of those dreams was now glaring at her, all six feet three of him. But when she’d woken Seth a couple of minutes ago, the sick horror in his eyes had struck her to the heart. Horror, pain and helplessness…they’d all been there. Reining in her errant temper, she said tightly, “Let me tell you something about myself. My father was Italian, a very famous baritone—”

  “Arturo d’Angeli,” Seth interrupted impatiently. “I’m not a total ignoramus.” His voice gentled. “I read somewhere that he and your mother were both killed in a car crash several years ago.”

  “When I was eighteen. I still miss them.” Grimacing, Lia picked up her train of thought. “My father was passionate and romantic, all his emotions as volatile as an erupting volcano—including his rages, which were legendary. My mother was Norwegian, though. A harpsichordist of world renown, who was cool, rational and controlled.”

  “Gudrun Halvardson.”

  “Right now I’m trying very hard not to act like my father. To be my mother instead. Calm and moderate.” Lia’s voice rose. “Even though I’d like to bang your head on the nearest tree.”

  Despite himself, a smile tugged at Seth’s lips. A reluctant smile, maybe. But still a smile. “I hate to tell you—Arturo’s winning.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? You’re so goldarn stubborn! Stubborn, strong and silent. A bad combo—in my books, that adds up to dull. Deadly dull. So why don’t you tell me what you were dreaming about?”

  Her hair, black as a raven’s wing, had the same blue glint of raven feathers in the sun. She was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before, the fabric a dizzying swirl of red, black and white. Her earrings were huge red hoops, while clunky red and white enamel bracelets circled her wrists. “You won’t get lost in a crowd,” he said.

  “If that’s supposed to be a compliment, I’m underwhelmed.”

  Before he could lose his nerve, Seth said rapidly, “I was in central Africa last week. Saw more than I wanted to of a local insurrection—that’s what I was dreaming about. If you’ll give me five minutes, I’ll shower and take you to breakfast.”

  Her face softened. She said quietly, “I was part of a benefit concert to raise money for AIDS’s relief in Africa last year. I made myself look at a lot of news footage…I had awful dreams for weeks afterward. I can’t imagine what it would be like to actually see that kind of stuff.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s the kids that get to me. I can’t get them out of my mind.”

  “Why were you there? On business?”

  He could have lied; he rarely talked about this side of his personality. “I started a charitable foundation several years ago…it’s grown over the years, perhaps you’ve h
eard of it.”

  She shook her head. “After you didn’t answer my letters, I avoided any mention of you in the press.”

  He labored on. “I take a personal interest in it—visit all the places to see the money goes to make people as independent as possible.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “Not just handouts, you mean.”

  “Right.”

  Lia gazed at him thoughtfully. There was a lot he wasn’t saying, but she was quite capable of filling in the gaps. He was involved. He cared. And in the process, he put his life on the line. “Yesterday, when you kissed me in my cottage, I noticed there was a bandage around your ribs.”

  He winced. “Bullets were flying. I didn’t duck fast enough.”

  Lia picked a leaf from the nearest shrub, absently rubbing it between her fingers. He was a man of integrity, that’s what she’d learned in the last few minutes. How could she square that with the man who hadn’t answered her letters? It’s the kids that get to me, that’s what he’d just said. So would he have disregarded any responsibility toward his own child?

  As if this would give her the answers she sought, she stepped forward, looped her arms around his waist and reached up to kiss him, her breasts pressed to the hardness of his chest.

  Seth went utterly still. Then he pulled his head back. “Don’t, Lia,” he said.

  She quivered as though he’d struck her. “Why not?”

  “I figured something out in the night—I was going to tell you at breakfast.”

  “You’d better tell me now.”

  She’d moved back from him, her dark eyes wary. Get it over with, Seth, he thought. The quicker the better. “For reasons of my own, I’m not into marriage and I don’t want children. You’re not the kind of woman I can have a casual affair with—on one day, off the next. That didn’t work eight years ago, and I see no reason why it would work now.” He gave her a faint smile. “I should have listened to you yesterday when you told me to leave you alone—because you were right.”