by Ann Cristy
She had been running head down through the cutting November wind, trying to avoid the deep pools of slush on the sidewalk, the aftermath of a sudden snow storm. She hadn't heard the car draw up to the curb next to her then cruise in front of her and stop, the passenger door opening. The "New York City caution" that had been hammered into her by stories told her by friends made her eye the car warily. She looked around to see if there was someone she could turn to for help just as the other door opened and Dev stepped from the car.
"Miss Orwell, I'm Devon Carstairs. I was in Toner's salon today with my cousin and her friends. I assure you I'm respectable and only want to give you a lift to your destination."
"I don't think.. .My bus will be coming." Cle had ducked her head and scooted past the car, breaking into the light jogging pace she used when she worked out. It was a little slippery but Cle kept going, praying that her bus would be as late as usual.
She was fighting her way through the cluster of people as her bus was pulling away from the curb. Desperation made her bang her gloved hand on the side of the bus but the driver never paused.
Cle took a deep breath and pushed her flyaway hair off her face. She felt shaken and a little out of breath. She gave a jerky step backward when the sleek Ferrari filled the space vacated by the bus.
"Get in, Miss Orwell, before you get spattered with slush and I get arrested." The voice was less smooth, the harshness denoting irritation.
Cle giggled to herself in bed, letting her mouth touch Dev's chest. She had never figured out why at that certain moment she decided not to argue with him and get into the car.
The moment the door closed, shutting out the noise of Manhattan traffic in the early evening, she felt panic run with the blood in her veins, pacing the flow then increasing it. "I'm sure I'll take you out of your way... so if you can just manage to pass that bus right ahead of us, I can..."
"We'll have dinner, then I'll take you home, Miss Orwell. I want to talk to you."
"I'm not hungry. I'm in the habit of taking my main meal at noon. I eat very little in the evening." She cleared her throat trying to erase the squeak in her voice. "And I don't have much to talk with you about so if you don't mind..."
"I do mind." The voice had a velvet harshness that seemed menacing to Cle.
She shivered, edging toward the door.
"Miss Orwell, I have never raped a female in my life, nor have I ever so much as contemplated an assault."
"Get plenty of cooperation, do you?" Cle snapped, wanting to reach out for a handful of the November slush and dump it down the neck of his cashmere coat.
The hard laugh was accompanied by an assessing glance. "Beauty with a viper's tongue."
"Then I suggest you get rid of the viper's tongue and let me out right here." Cle had her hand on the car door.
"Forget it. It's locked electronically at the wheel. Now stop arguing with me." He swung the wheel in a ninety degree turn down an alley, the car slewing a bit in the slush, then the tires took hold. He pulled into a parking place that led from the alley down under a building.
"I don't know where we are. I've never been here," Cle said, her eyes roving the darkened interior of the garage.
"I'm sure you haven't." Dev's grin had a lopsided twist to it as he helped her from the car and led her to an elevator.
"Don't get pompous with me, Lord Carstairs." Cle gasped as the hand at her elbow tightened into a numbing grip. "Stop that. It hurts."
"Then stop being so troublesome. I wasn't being pompous. This is a private club and I know most of the people who frequent it. I would have seen you or at least heard about you if you had been here." He turned her to face him as the elevator sped upward. "My name is Dev Carstairs. If you can't use my first name, call me mister, not lord. All right?" His voice was soft but the measured words left no doubt as to the rock hard meaning.
"All right. I thought you were being condescending. I apologize if I was wrong." Cle looked at the wall of the elevator. She jumped as she felt his mouth on her cheek.
"You were wrong, darling. I would never patronize you."
Before Cle was on even keel, the elevator doors opened and the cacophony of voices and music precluded conversation.
The maitre d' said something to Dev, then snapped his fingers to an underling who took their coats before he led them to a booth along the wall. The noise seemed appreciably less when they were cocooned in the leather privacy of the booth.
"Do you come here often?" Cle asked, feeling the hairs on her arm lift as he edged closer to her on the semicircular bench. "It certainly is lively."
Dev shrugged, the movement bringing his silk coated arm in contact with hers. "Now and then. The food is good and if I feel like dancing, the music, too, is very good." He turned to look down into her face and Cle wanted to throw herself backwards. "Do you like to dance, Cle?"
"Ah.. .yes." She looked back at him, saliva filling her mouth. She wanted to swallow but her muscles were spastic.
"Good. We'll dance." He took one finger and ran it up her cheek into her hair. "I love your coloring, that blue black hair with the china white skin and sky blue eyes. That could sound conceited, I suppose, since our coloring is similar." He lifted a strand of her hair to his mouth, his eyes never leaving her face.
"But your eyes are green," she murmured.
"Quite green," he said teasingly. Suddenly his expression turned serious. "After the fashion show, I asked Toner for your name. He didn't want to tell me but I was persistent. He's in love with you, isn't he? Do you feel the same about him?"
"What you're saying is ridiculous." Cle looked at him openmouthed. "Jaime is my boss and we have a very good working relationship... not that it's any of your business," she finished, her tone stiff.
Dev's smile spread that sensual mouth wide, live sparks seeming to leap from his eyes. "So Toner is just your boss, eh? Good. Any other boy friends?"
"Thousands. How about you? I'll want you to dump any old mistresses you might have hanging around and I trust your teeth are good. I should hate to have to pay for your braces." She smiled so wide she felt her jaw crack. "Of course, I'm assuming you don't have any debilitating disease. I can see you're no spring chicken."
"Very amusing. I'm thirty six years old, in acceptable control of my faculties, and very, very attracted to you," Dev replied taking her hand and lifting one of her fingers into his mouth and chewing at it. "I've never wanted any woman so fast or so completely." He spoke in a surprised way, almost as though he were talking to himself.
"Big whip." Cle croaked, feeling her heart kick into high gear at his words. "I'm twenty six and see so clearly that I can see right through you. I'm not at all attracted to you," she lied, struggling to keep her equilibrium with him.
They had ordered dinner but even now, lying in bed and concentrating on it, Cle did not remember what she ate or what she drank. She did remember dancing with Dev and feeling like a kamikaze pilot. No matter how she struggled, destiny was netting her in, tying her to Dev.
He had taken her home at two o'clock in the morning and they hardly spoke. He told her he would pick her up at Toner's right after work the next day.
Two weeks later she slept with him, delighting him because at her ripe old age of twenty six she was still man wary, inexperienced; and shocking herself because sleeping with Dev had seemed to be the most natural— and marvelous—thing in the world to do.
When she tried to explain her reticence at their first meeting she wound up explaining about Red Shafer the boy she had fully intended to marry. They attended the same college—he for engineering, she for art. By the beginning of their third year they had decided to marry after graduating and finding jobs. But in their senior year Red had been killed when he and some buddies had been coming home from a fraternity party at a nearby university. The car had skidded on icy pavement. "I dated other people of course but there was no one that I...well..." Cle stumbled, wondering with amused horror why she had opened herself up like that t
o Dev.
"Darling, I love you telling me all about yourself. Now I want to be your only man." He had kissed her ear. "You have a freshness about you, an inner beauty that I want for my own." His smile had a surprised possessiveness to it. "You've made me very happy by letting me love you, and from this moment on, I'm not going to lose you."
A week later she had moved to Dev's apartment, happy and confident that she was doing the right thing.
She relived those early months in her mind, relishing even the fights they'd had. Both she and Dev had independent natures and asserted themselves on every plane of life.
It was late when Cle's eyes fluttered shut, but there was a delightful contentment in her sleep, only lightly laced with an uneasiness that she couldn't fathom.
The next weeks were hectic for Cle and she sensed the increasing coldness in Dev as the time for his trip to Great Britain loomed close.
One evening as she dressed for a dinner they had promised to attend, she found herself nervous and all thumbs. She had put the thought of their separation into the deepest recesses of her mind but now in just days they would be parting for three weeks, maybe longer if Dev's work hit a snag.
Her hand shook as she tried to put on a sapphire teardrop earring. She dropped the screw type back that acted as a fastener to the gold posts that held the sapphires. Cursing she fell to her knees, feeling around on the smooth surface of the Aubusson carpet. She knew they were antiques and even Dev's casual reference to them as mere trinkets he had picked up didn't lessen their value in Cle's eyes. If they had been glass from a wholesale junk dealer she would still have treasured them because they came from him.
"What the hell..." The low key anger in Dev's voice seemed to bounce off Cle's skin.
"I've dropped the sapphire earring back and you know it's the screw type and not the ordinary push fastener," Cle babbled, not looking up from her search. In her peripheral vision she saw Dev's black silk coated leg bend, showing the black silk of his socks as he came
down next to her.
"Don't get too excited. They're just—"
"Don't you dare call them trinkets or I'll hit you,"
Cle's voice grated out, her eyes frantic as they combed
the rug for the tiny gold screw.
"Ah, here it is, love. It was behind the leg of your dressing table stool. Here, let me do it for you." Dev smiled at her, holding the gold culprit in the palm of his hand.
Relief at having Dev smile at her after days of coolness and her own dejection over his departure brought the tears welling in Cle's eyes.
"Oh, Dev, I'm going to miss you when you go to London." Then she was in his arms, held tight to that strong chest.
"Then come with me. I want that so much. I want you to see my home, Larren. I want you to see my flat in Mayfair. Darling, there's so much I want to show you. Won't you come?"
"Dev, I can't. I told you..." She stopped speaking as she watched a now familiar shuttered look take away his smile. "Well, maybe, just maybe I could ask Jaime if I could pass this show and maybe he would let me do the spring one—"
Before Cle could finish she was clamped close to him, his mouth seeking hers. It was as though someone had released the flood gate. Dev's passion washed over her. In seconds she had forgotten the dinner, forgotten her earring, forgotten everything but Dev and that he wanted her with him.
He lifted his head, his strong mouth shaking. "Oh, darling talk to him right away, call him now. My God, you don't know how happy I'd feel if I thought you were coming with me."
"Me, too." She glowed. Her hands threading through his crisp black hair, the waves held in tight control, springing back in her fingers just as the grandfather clock boomed from the front foyer that it was seven o'clock.
Dev looked up, an irritated expression on his face. "We're late." He looked back down at her. "And I don't want to go at all." His eyes had that melted emerald look that always jammed Cle's pulse rate into overdrive.
"We promised. Clive Lawson is your best friend and he has to return to the embassy in Washington tomorrow," Cle said not even trying to hide the wistful note in her voice.
"Tough."
Cle laughed up at him as he let his fingers wander over her back. "You sounded like an American there for a moment."
"I feel like a man who could commit mayhem at the moment. I'm bloody sick of so many people deciding when we can be together. That has to change." Dev's eyes took on an opaque glint.
Cle lifted herself on her tiptoes to give him one last kiss before she turned to repair her lip gloss. "One of these days we'll run away to a desert island." Her voice lilted as she looked past her own image in the mirror to stare at Dev.
"Damn right." He let his hand slide down her back and gently cup her buttock. With a sigh then he stepped back and let her precede him out of the room.
In the warmth of Dev's Ferrari, their mute closeness was like electricity between them. Cle refused to let the doubts surface. How would she approach Jaime? Would he let her go? If she did go, how would Dev's family receive her? She might be an outsized sore thumb among the numerous Carstairs who would be called together to look her over. Then, would Dev see her as she really was—an ordinary upstate New Yorker who knew how to work hard and love harder?
When Dev led her up the wide fan shaped steps leading to the double doors of the Georgian mansion, she looked around her, amazed at the contrasts on Long Island. On the forty five minute ride here, she had seen pockets of real poverty and neglect almost back to back with opulence. She paused for a moment under the stone portico and looked out over the grounds. "This is some weekend pad your friend Clive has."
Dev chuckled, his breath ruffling the hair at her temples. "Clive always had more money than he could handle. This place belonged to an American aunt of his. Naturally Clive inherited when she died. I say naturally because he is the only male member of his family, not that his three sisters suffer in any way. They don't. Come along, love." Dev smiled down at her as though he could feel her reluctance to meet his friends. Cle was always more relaxed with her friends rather than Dev's. With Dev, it was different. He was his smooth and sophisticated self with anyone.
Clive was on the heels of the butler who answered the door. "Devon, you dog, you're damn late. Ah, you have the beautiful Cleora with you. You'll have every woman here jealous, my lovely one. The ones that won't hate you for having that luscious body and face will hate you for having Devon Carstairs in tow. Come along, dear, I'll show you where the powder room is. Shall I?"
"No thank you. Just give me directions." Cle smiled her widest professional cheek stretcher.
Dev laughed, slapping his old friend on the back, the sudden glitter in his eyes a warning. "Cle is well aware of your wolfish ways, my friend. She doesn't like that type of treatment. I don't like it either." He turned to Cle. "I'll wait for you in the foyer, darling." His smile had a proud possessive tinge that had Cle reeling as she went to the powder room.
Dev was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when she started to descend, but now there was a group of people around him. Despite the speed with which she'd straightened her hair and checked her makeup, Dev had already collected a crowd. Cle felt a bitter taste in her mouth as she watched a chiffon swathed creature fasten her hands to Dev's neck and attempt to pull his head down for a hello kiss.
"Will I have to wrestle them for you, darling?" Cle drawled, pausing on the stairs, letting her voice wrap like silk around the people below her. She was well aware of the theatrical effect she was having, being told by Jaime hundreds of times the value of stairs, the value of looking down on people in a queenly way. Cle used every trick in the book, letting her brows raise slowly, letting her eyes widen in surprise, then letting her mouth melt in a smile as her gaze rested on Dev.
His twist of a smile held complete comprehension. Not one whit of the irritation that he would be feeling was showing, but Cle knew only too well: he hated the artifice of modeling.
"Darling, you know the
only one you have to wrestle is me." Dev's softly intimate tone made the others laugh. If some of the laughter had a brittle sound, no one would wonder, since most of the women there would have gladly traded places with Cle.
She continued her glide down the stairs right into Dev's outspread arms. She could feel his fingers digging into her.
"Very nice," he whispered. "Jaime would be proud of you but I would rather you didn't draw any more attention to yourself in front of these slavering fools. I would hate to have to break jaws at such a lovely function." Dev let his tongue just touch the edge of her ear, then he drew back, keeping one arm close around her.
The cocktail hour seemed to go on too long to Cle. As was her usual way, she was drinking Perrier and lime, the very notion of having any alcohol made her shudder as she thought of her last evening out with Dev. Booze was not for her.
The crowds of people shifted her away from Dev and more than once she found herself fielding Clive's remarks. She took every chance to keep people other than him next to her and kept changing her position just to do that. At the same time she found herself farther and farther from Dev. At intervals
she would see that strong head make a circuit of the room, then fix on her for a moment, the slight smile calling her back to his side.
It was during one of these dodging maneuvers, which she hoped would bring her closer to Dev, that she was edged into a small alcove. Before she could reenter the melee and get to Dev, she heard voices on the other side of a huge potted plant.
"She certainly can't hold him. No Carstairs would be caught dead married to a shop girl." The tones were sulfuric.
"Don't be an ass, Lydia. This isn't Victorian times and he isn't the Prince of Wales. Dev can marry whom he damn well chooses. And it seems to me, he's chosen Cle."
"He's stuck with her, you mean. Oh, it's all right in this country, but can you see her taking her place at Larren! God, even the horses wouldn't accept her, Clive. You know what it's like there. The people will despise her."