Renegade Player

by Dixie Browning

  “Well, I must admit I’m disappointed, but then, maybe I rate higher as a soporific than poor Jasper,” Kiel growled sarcastically as he dropped his gleaming raincoat into a heap on the floor.

  She caught at the door facing to keep her knees from buckling. “What are you doing here?”

  “Under the circumstances, that’s a damned stupid question,” Kiel retorted, taking her arm and steering her unerringly across to the sofa. “Sit down, Willy! If I have to hog-tie you, you’re going to sit there and listen to me until I’m through talking. Is that clear?”

  “No, it is not clear!” she flared back, jerking her arm vainly against his relentless grip. “This is my home and you have no right to come barging in here when I’ve locked the door! That’s breaking and ent—”

  He interrupted her and his voice was not pleasant to hear. “You opened the door willingly enough, even if you did think it was Jasper.” He sneered the name. “Who’s Jasper, another string to your bow?”

  So he didn’t know. Well, be damned if she was going to straighten him out on that score. If he thought that of her, then she may as well be sure he didn’t change his opinion. At least she’d get rid of him before she did anything irreparably stupid, like squandering the last thing she had left—her pride. “If he is, it’s no concern of yours,” she told him haughtily, the aftermath of the brandy strengthening her dignity.

  Kiel was quiet for so long that she was strongly tempted to rush into speech just to fill the uncomfortable silence, which was probably just exactly what he was waiting for. Oh, he’d make a great lawyer; give them enough rope and all that!

  Grimly, she crossed her arms and clamped down on her bottom lip. She could wait just as long as he could and then we’d see who’d be the first to crack.

  Outside, the storm seemed to be abating. Here on the banks, it could rain inches in mere minutes, the weather changing with dizzying speed, thanks to the conflicting currents of the warm Gulf Stream and the cold Labrador Current, and right now she felt as if both influences were raging through her body: the brandy-induced heat making her feel uncomfortably flushed, and the chill in her heart growing more noticeable by the moment.

  “Where were you?” he asked after a while. The harsh anger seemed to have left his voice and now it held only the most impersonal sort of interest.

  “I went to Hatteras,” she admitted grudgingly. “Any particular reason, or just a whim?”

  “A whim. Now, if you’re satisfied, maybe you’ll leave me to get some sleep.”

  “Are you certain you can sleep without a—what did you call it, a session?” Before she could register her shock and disgust, he barked out a question. “Did your going have anything to do with Melanie?”

  She caught her breath as that one hit her in the solar plexus. “Why should my actions have anything to do with Melanie?” she asked, her voice tight and several notes higher than usual.

  “No reason at all, except that she had a rather self-satisfied smirk on her pretty little mug when I drove her to Norfolk to see Randy this morning.”

  It took a minute to digest this latest news, and even then she wasn’t at all sure how to take it. So Melanie was gone. Certainly she hadn’t gone without a protest, not when she had already declared her intention of having Kiel as a replacement.

  “No questions?” he taunted in the oppressively still darkness.

  She shrugged, unseen. “Why should I have any questions? What you and Melanie choose to do has nothing at all to do with me.”

  “I thought you might just possibly be wondering why she was going to visit Randy Collier in the hospital, but since you aren’t at all curious, I take it you’ve been satisfied on that score.”

  Cautiously, she ventured, “What score?”

  “The fact that you already knew that Randy was my half-brother and Melanie’s fiancé—off and on—leads me to believe you’ve had a cozy little chat with Melanie herself. Knowing that puss, she wouldn’t pull any punches, so what I want to know is, did what she told you have anything to do with your deciding to run away?”

  “I didn’t run away!”

  “No?” The one word was loaded.

  “No! Now, if you’re finished, I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of here! What you and Melanie and Randy Collier work out among the three of you is of no possible interest to me, and I don’t intend to waste an evening being bored with a lot of silly soap-opera plots!”

  “Whew! She must really have drawn blood with those kitten claws of hers. What did she tell you, Willy?”

  She didn’t want to discuss it. She didn’t want to remember because, if she went into that hateful subject at all, she’d end up either howling her eyes out or taking a swing at him, damn his tough, tormenting hide!

  “Well?” he prompted softly, and then, when she still refused to be drawn, he reached for her, and in the darkness she hadn’t enough warning to escape until it was too late.

  “There’s one surefire way of getting a reaction from you, you damned little cat. You’ve claws of your own, enough to take care of a spittin’ kitten like Melanie, and the very fact that she came out of the fray with her fur unruffled and her purr intact leads me to believe she must have dealt you a really stunning blow.” He inhaled against her newly washed hair as he held her struggling body in an entirely effective grip. “What was it, Willy?” he asked softly. “What hurt you so badly you had to run away? Or shall I tell you?”

  “No ... no, I don’t want to hear it!” she blurted turbulently, her voice thickening with the emotion that was beginning to destroy her self-control.

  He ignored her outburst, turning her deftly in his arms, and when for an instant her own arms were freed, she began to pound on his chest with her fists. Struggling against his superior strength only seemed to excite him and the low laugh that feathered along her cheek did serious damage to her resistance. She moaned his name, but he caught it with his mouth and forced it back against her teeth, grinding a kiss into her lips that seemed to go on and on.

  “By this time, I know how to handle you, Willy Silverthome,” he growled long moments later when he finally raised his head for air. His arms still held her captive, not that she would have had the strength to try and escape now—as he darned well knew, to her eternal shame!

  She lay limply in his arms and one of his hands came up to stroke the hair from her damp forehead. “Getting a little steamed, aren’t you, love?” he taunted, and when she would have risen indignantly, he held her in place easily by the simple device of a well-placed hand on her chest. “No you don’t, not yet. We still have some pretty important ground to cover and you’re not getting up from here until you hear what I have to say. Shall we make it the hard way or will you cooperate?”

  Her lips thinned determinedly, not that he could see them.

  “Speechless? Good,” he commented. “Now, to get down to it, you know by now what I’m doing down here. That irresponsible half-brother of mine came down to get established in the area; then he was to dash home, marry his childhood sweetheart and bring her on down here to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, he stopped writing and stopped calling, and since the Colliers, the Fredericks and the Faulkners—at least, this Faulkner—are pretty closely tied in business affairs as well as family matters, I began to get a lot of flak about it.” He took time to shift her more comfortably and she weakly allowed herself to settle down against his warm, hard, clean-smelling body. “After my father died, to give you a brief background, my mother married Ed Collier, a young engineer. Randy came along a year later, and then, when Ed died a few years ago, it was natural for Randy to take over. I’d already established a firm of my own with several offices along the East Coast and we kept a loose connection, along with another firm of marine engineers owned by Melanie’s father. Melanie’s been in and out of the Collier household since she was a baby, and as a sort of big brother to her, I was elected to sort out this latest in a long line of hassles between the two of them.”

  �
�Oh, so it wasn’t the first time Randy had given his girlfriend a spot of trouble?” Willy asked with smug satisfaction.

  He ignored her. “When someone from CCE—I don’t think we need to mention any names or look far for a motive—anyway, when we got a letter from someone in the office saying that Randy was making a fool of himself over some woman—”

  In spite of herself, Willy broke in again. “As I understood it, the woman was making a fool of him, for what she could get out of him,” she said bitterly.

  A hand closed over the back of her neck and, before she could protest, began kneading muscles that she hadn’t even realized were hard with tension. “It takes two,” Kiel went on smoothly, his hand working its magic on her nape. “Randy’s a full-grown man, and as you once mentioned, a man doesn’t wear an engagement ring. There’s nothing to warn a girl if he decides to play around a little.”

  She squirmed, feeling the heat stealing over her as the hand continued its hypnotically soothing work. “Then you don’t blame the girl in question?” she ventured.

  “No, nor do I blame Randy too much after meeting the girl in question,” he said. “Willy, my sweet girl in question.” He leaned over and brushed a kiss over her eye and she shivered helplessly, tom with that dreadfully familiar longing in spite of all reason. “Is the slate clean now?”

  She shifted, trying to escape the coercive hand. “I’m not sure, Kiel. You say Melanie has gone to see Randy. Does that mean they plan to get back together again?”

  “Whatever they plan is their own affair. I did my bit for family and business relations, and now it’s up to the two of them. I’m much more interested in recent developments in my own life.”

  His words brought a quivering sort of hope and she had to test it before she dared venture out of her shell again. “Aren’t you afraid the girl in question might look on you simply as an even better catch? You did say—or rather, Melanie did—that she was only out for what she could get.”

  “I am—an even better catch, that is,” he admitted with a total lack of self-consciousness, “and anyway, it’s not too hard to understand a girl’s being influenced by that sort of thing. By her very nature, a girl has to think of security, but don’t think I’m blaming you, darling. I understand—”

  He got no further. Twisting herself away from his arms, she drew herself up and away from him just as the lights blinked back on and the reluctant refrigerator groaned back into service once more. “Oh, so you understand, do you?” she blazed. “How very noble of you! All ready to forgive and forget just so you can lure the mercenary little working girl into your bed! Men! You give me a pain!” She turned away from him, her shoulders rigid as she crossed her arms over her chest in an effort to keep from swinging at him.

  She was so furiously disappointed she could have howled! For a minute there she was so sure he had come to know her better, to like her as a person and to realize that if she loved a man, it wouldn’t matter to her if they had to live in a tin-roofed shack on collards and croakers.

  “Get out,” she said in a voice that was devoid of feeling. “Just get out and leave me alone before I call the sheriff and have you put out.”

  “Dammit, Willy, what have I said this time? It seems to me you spend too damned much time analyzing every word that passes between us! When I make love to you, you understand me well enough; it’s only when we get all tied up in words that you turn into some skittish little hedgehog! Now make up your mind, for God’s sake, because I can’t take a hell of a lot more from you!”

  “Nobody asked you to take anything from me!” she charged, turning to glare at him from blazing eyes. The yellowish overhead fixture cast shadows across her cheeks from her thick, long lashes and it served only to emphasize the effects of too many sleepless nights. She looked dragged out and she knew it, and it didn’t make things any easier for her, especially as she had a damned good idea that his world was running over with women who looked like Melanie.

  Without another word, she turned and stalked off into her bedroom, slamming the door and dragging a chair up under the knob in case he had any ideas about carrying the fight further.

  Evidently he hadn’t, for she heard him slam out the door and the house practically shook with his stormy exit, and she told herself she was glad to be finally, irrevocably finished with him. She would allow herself exactly one night to cry her stupid heart out and then, come tomorrow, she’d dry her eyes and never shed another tear over any man!

  Chapter Ten

  By morning Willy had convinced herself that it had all been her own fault. Whatever had happened to her usual easygoing dispositon? She had never been this way before, flying off the handle at the slightest provocation, backing herself into a comer with her quick defensiveness. Before she had time to come to her senses, she dialed Kiel’s number. It rang several times and she could picture the black, utilitarian phone on his bedside table. She had been in his room only once, but it had been impressed, every feature of it, indelibly on her mind.

  Could he have gone to work already? As usual, she had no idea of the time, for the alarm clock was electric and functioned according to the vagaries of the power system. The sullen sky outside gave no real clue as to the time of day, and suddenly terrified lest she awaken him, she was on the verge of hanging up when she heard the click that indicated that the receiver had been picked up. Her breath caught in her throat and she steeled herself not to slam down her own receiver with cowardly haste.

  “Hello,” came a muffled mumble at the other end, and she stiffened. “Hello, who is this?”

  The voice was clearer now in its impatience, the feminine drawl unmistakable, and with her soul shriveling like a flower after a killing frost, she slowly replaced the receiver.

  It rang almost immediately and she ignored it. Finally it stopped, and as if she were released from a spell, she moved away, her bare feet silent on the cold linoleum. So much for last night’s cool, pat explanation. Melanie and Randy—Kiel might have thought he had the two of them all lined up to fit back into the same old slot, but hadn’t Melanie herself said she’d decided she’d rather have Kiel than his brother? Little Melanie, for all her deceptive fragility, was a very determined lady, and regardless of what Kiel might have decided, he obviously wasn’t proof against a willing female in his own bed, especially not when she looked like the magnolia-skinned Melanie.

  Shaking herself out of her stunned lethargy, she began, almost by accident, to give the apartment a thorough turnout. Spilled coffee led to a smeary wipe-up, which led to a mopping, and once she got into the swing of things, she found the unusual exertion was just what she needed to work off an excess of energy.

  By the time the phone rang again, bringing her back to the present, the windows were sparkling, the refrigerator defrosted, and she had tackled the cabinets, where for almost six months she had jammed and juggled things in an effort to fit everything into her skimpy kitchen space.

  “Hello,” she answered warily. After all, she couldn’t hide forever, and if it was Kiel, she’d simply hang up, but she rather thought she’d seen the last of that gentleman. From the looks of her, Melanie could keep him occupied for the immediate future, at least.

  “Mina? May we please talk now?” her father demanded with exaggerated patience.

  She had forgotten all about Jasper’s being here, something he would have found impossible to believe, and she promised to be ready to go out to breakfast with him in half an hour. “What time is it, Jasper?”

  “It’s seven-twelve. Why?”

  She could almost see his perplexed irritation when she suddenly burst out laughing and hung up the phone. Seven-twelve, and it had been at least two hours ago that she had called Kiel. Good Lord, no wonder Melanie had been asleep. A little earlier and no telling what she would have blundered into.

  She selected one of her few really nice day dresses, a brown linen sleeveless with white binding, and she was glad to discover that her foot had healed enough for her to wear white p
umps. May as well spread it on a bit for Jasper, so he’d at least accept the fact that she hadn’t gone native.

  By the time she heard the low growl of her father’s Ferrari, Willy was all ready and she pulled the door closed after her and ran lightly down the stairs, congratulating herself on an award-winning performance. She had even gone so far as to make up her face with more than the usual dash of lipstick, and was surprised at the difference it had made. Her father should be flattered, had he but known it.

  Jasper waited for her beside his low, muscle-bound car and Willy immediately noticed the change in him. At first she thought he looked younger, for he had lost a few pounds and his health-club figure showed no hint of his excesses. Not only that, but the sunlamp tan he achieved year round, which Willy thought somehow pathetic, considering he lived in Florida, covered the slight flush that had increased with the years. The greatest change was his hair. Prematurely white, he had always taken great pride in the thick crop of hair that contrasted so dramatically with his dark skin, but now it had gone a medium shade of brown and she was suddenly aware that he looked every one of his forty-nine years, and then some. Poor Jasper ... it seemed his very zeal to make himself appear younger had the opposite effect.

  “Hello, darling,” she said with more warmth than she had done in years. She embraced him easily, with none of the restraint she had expected, and it came to her that she felt a little bit sorry for him. “How’ve you been? You look marvelous?”

  He kissed her on the forehead. As tall as she was, she had inherited that height from him and his arm fit easily across her shoulders as he turned her face up to study it. “I’ve been well enough, and off-hand I’d say the same applies to you—contrary to my fatherly fears. Looks as if you might have been having too good a time partying lately, but on the whole ... I approve.” He laughed and she hugged him to her side.

  “I’m starved, Jasper. Where do we eat?”

  “My hotel does a pretty good spread. Lord knows, I’ve had time enough to check it out while I cooled my heels waiting for you to turn up. When you go for independence, you don’t use any half-measures, do you?” He held the door open for her and she tucked her skirt in, allowing her eyes to stray to the brown shingled cottage across the way. Was that a movement behind the screen? Impossible to say from this angle, but she hoped it was. She hoped that it was Kiel Faulkner and that he saw her being solicitously tucked in by an attractive and obviously wealthy man. Another string to her bow, he had suggested. Well, just so he didn’t think he was her only hope! If she could maintain this fine edge of anger, she just might make it till she grew enough scar tissue so she didn’t bleed to death!