“Nothing ever goes as smoothly as a producer would like it to,” he consoled her.
“Maybe not,” she said wryly. “But I think tonight was a bit beyond the norm.”
“You could have handled it if I’d stayed out of your way.”
She grinned at him impudently. “I know I could.”
“From now on, if you’d prefer, I’ll stay away from the tapings.”
“Promise?”
He gave her his most beguiling smile, and her heart flipped over. “Well, I might just peek in occasionally….”
“Michael!”
“I won’t stay. I promise. You can handle each and every crisis on your own without any interference from me. Write that on a piece of paper, and I’ll sign it in blood.”
The tension finally broke, and she laughed at his solemn oath. “You don’t have to go that far. I trust you.”
“I’m glad,” he said, gathering her into his arms and holding her tightly. He whispered into her ear, “Now what was it you were saying about wanting someone’s shoulder to lean on?”
“Not here,” she murmured as his hands caressed her back, sending a shiver of sparks cascading down her spine.
“Why not?”
“We do have a taping to finish,” she reminded him. “This delay is going to drive production costs up.”
His hands fell away from her immediately. She grinned up at him. “I thought that might get to you.”
“Later?” he suggested.
“Later.”
It was three hours before the taping finally ended, and by then Barrie was completely drained. Michael had been true to his word and had stayed out of the way for the remainder of the taping, but, perversely, there had been times when she wished he’d ignored her earlier warning and taken charge. By ten o’clock she was awfully tired of being competent and independent.
“You all set?” Michael asked when he found her sitting on the audience bleachers staring at the set.
“Almost.”
He followed the direction of her gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“There was something odd about the set tonight. Melinda kept bumping into things. I can’t figure it out, I’m sure this is the way it was last week.”
“No, it’s not.”
Barrie looked at him in surprise. “It’s not?”
“Nope. You’ve moved the sofa off-center. It looks better, but it’s not as easy for her to walk around it where it is now. The aisle’s too narrow, and the desk gets in the way.”
He walked onto the set and nudged the sofa about two feet to the left. “That’s the way it was before.”
“You’re amazing.”
He beamed at her. “That’s me.”
“Remind me never to try to sneak something out of your office. You probably know down to a tenth of an inch where each piece of paper is.”
“I remember the symmetry, but I don’t always recall the content.”
“That’s reassuring. I’ll just have to replace what I take with another piece of paper.”
“You sound as though you’re planning a burglary in the near future. Wouldn’t it be easier to ask for whatever you want?”
“Not in this case.”
“Why not?”
She hesitated, then finally admitted in a rush, “I want those notes you made the other day on Karen.”
He chuckled. “I think I see why you didn’t want to ask. Are you ready to make the changes?”
“Let’s just say I’m beginning to agree that there’s room for some modification. She seemed a little strident tonight. I thought Heath and I could take another look at her.”
He sat on the bleacher next to her and cupped her chin in his hand. “Thank you,” he said softly. “I know how hard it was for you to admit that.”
“I’m not promising we’ll make any changes,” she countered quickly. “Just that I want to go over what you had in mind again.”
“That’s a start.” He leaned forward and kissed her, a hungry, urgent kiss that drew her into his arms and left her wanting more as her blood roared in her veins.
“That was quite a start, too,” she murmured with a sigh. She grinned at him impishly. “You’re turning into quite a tease, Michael Compton.”
“Me? A tease?” he squawked indignantly.
“Yes, you. First you back out on living together. Then twice in one night you start something you apparently have no intention of finishing.”
“Who says?”
“Well, then?”
“You mean now? Here?”
He was examining the hard bleacher warily. “I suppose it’s possible.”
“Oh, I think we can do better than this. Come with me.”
“But my car is here. I’ll follow you.”
“No way. Your car will be here in the morning. The guards wouldn’t dare let anyone steal it.”
“Okay,” he finally agreed enthusiastically, apparently determining that the wicked gleam in her eyes could only work in his favor. “Lead on, Miss MacDonald. I’m all yours.”
“I wish,” she murmured under her breath as they got into her car.
“What’s that?”
“Never mind.”
Barrie had always enjoyed driving as long as she wasn’t competing with a bumper-to-bumper collection of maniacs, and at this hour the road was relatively free of traffic. As she zipped west toward the beach, she and Michael chatted easily about everything but television. Despite the casual, innocuous conversation, however, she didn’t let him forget for a minute that she had something far more intimate on her mind. Each time she shifted gears, she allowed her hand to caress his inner thigh or left it resting gently on his knee, her fingers seeking an interesting little erogenous zone she’d discovered along the curve of his muscle.
After one of these none-too-casual assaults, Michael moaned softly, and she glanced over to find him leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed and a satisfied smile on his lips. She took her hand away.
“Uh-uh,” he protested, grabbing it and putting it back, this time a little higher where she could feel the hard surge of his arousal. Her pulse pounded. Her little game was getting out of hand. If she wasn’t careful, they’d end up trying to make love in a gas station parking lot with a gear shift poking in her ribs. Somehow there was no romance in that particular image.
This time when she staged a more forceful retreat, he let her go, but she could tell from the grin tugging at his lips that he knew he’d gotten to her just as effectively as she’d stirred him. When she pulled the car to a stop and switched off the engine, he opened his eyes and peered outside.
“Where are we?”
Barrie shook her head. “For a man who only a short time ago could tell that a sofa was slightly out of place, you seem to have lost your powers of observation. That is the Pacific Ocean.”
“I recognized that much.”
“Well, then?”
“I suppose a more appropriate question might be: What are we doing here?”
She leaned over and brushed a tantalizing kiss across his lips, and her fingers nestled in the warm curve where thigh and hip met. “What do you think?”
Michael’s eyes widened. “Here?”
“It’s softer than the bleachers.”
“It is also sandy.”
“I have a blanket in the trunk.”
“Were you planning this, or do you come here often?”
“I come here quite a bit.”
“Like hell, you do,” he growled.
“Alone, Compton. Alone,” she said soothingly. “It’s a good place to sit and think.”
“Oh.”
They took the blanket into a secluded cove and spread it out. While Michael stretched out, Barrie stood over him, bathed in moonlight, and slowly removed her clothes. As each item was discarded, his breathing grew increasingly ragged. When she’d tossed aside the last item, her lacy bikini panties, Michael reached for her, but she stepped just beyond his reach.
�
�Last one in has to fix breakfast,” she taunted, racing for the water.
“Why you…” Michael sputtered as he tried to pull off his clothes while chasing after her. His pants tangled around his legs, and he fell, sprawling, into the sand. By then she was already waist deep in the water, laughing at his expression of pure frustration.
He stripped off the rest of his clothes then and stood, and suddenly the laughter died on her lips. With soft moonlight bathing him in a silvery glow, he looked like some sort of an impressive god standing on the shore, his athletic body trim, firm and very, very masculine.
“If I have to come in after you, you are in a lot of trouble, Barrie MacDonald,” he warned in a low, provocative voice that sent a shiver racing through her.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she retorted bravely, though with each step he took toward her, her racing pulse told her she ought to be. When he dove into the silver-highlighted darkness of the midnight sea and disappeared from view, she tried to gauge his approach to elude him. But it was impossible, and she knew it. She gasped when his hands glided up her legs, circled her waist and then brushed upward against the taut slipperiness of her already aching breasts.
Burning lips caressed hers, blazed a path over slender shoulders to the full curve of her breasts. Each sensitized tip was suckled in turn as Barrie’s back arched to give him full access.
“Barrie MacDonald, I want you,” he murmured in a husky growl that inflamed her, “I want to make love to you, to feel you come alive to my touch.”
With great urgency and tenderness he scooped her up into his powerful arms and carried her to the blanket. Lowering her gently, he knelt poised over her, and Barrie felt a growing tension in her abdomen. Her body was ready for him, needed him. She held her arms up to him.
“Love me,” she pleaded urgently. “Now.”
He shook his head. “Not yet. We have all night.”
His touches began then with her face. Gentle lips were followed by caressing fingers that teased and taunted until her skin seemed on fire. There was no part of her that did not receive his loving adoration, not one square inch of her flesh that had not felt the moistness of his tongue, the gentleness of his hands.
“Please,” she murmured, her body arching toward him, seeking the fulfillment he withheld.
“Not yet,” he whispered again, his fingers seeking, probing, delighting until she cried out with pleasure. The tension subsided with the release, but then it was building again, urged ever higher by his relentless, knowing touch. She was bathed in a sheen of perspiration that glistened in the moonlight. Michael’s eyes darkened with passion as he watched her, and Barrie felt more beautiful, more desirable, more beloved than she’d ever imagined possible.
Once more the flames of passion engulfed her, and she moaned as she sought Michael’s body, tried to draw him to her. This time he relented, and with a powerful surge he filled her. Their rhythmic movements were perfectly timed, creating an exquisite tension that built and built until Barrie felt a scream tear out from someplace deep inside her as the tension exploded into a thousand glittering bits. Michael held himself poised as the tremors rocked her, increasing her satisfaction. And, then, when her own pleasure was complete, he took his, his body trembling with violent shudders as his excitement peaked.
The unbearable intensity of the experience left them both breathless and seemingly speechless. They were wrapped in each other’s arms, and it was a long time before Barrie finally murmured softly, plaintively, “Michael, what do you want from me? What is it you really want?”
He sighed deeply and held her tighter.
“Sweetheart, I don’t have an answer to that,” he confessed honestly. “At least not the definitive kind you’re looking for. I know that I need you, that I care about you. You’ve brought something into my life that I hadn’t even known I was missing. I just know that now that I’ve found it, I can’t do without it. You are so special to me. You’re warm and intelligent and feisty. You’re incredibly sexy. Yet there’s a vulnerability about you that makes me want to protect you. I want you with me, where I can keep an eye on you. I need you.”
Want. Need. Barrie listened to Michael’s words, tried to hear what he wasn’t saying, as much as what he was. As much as she yearned to hear it, he wasn’t saying he was in love with her. A couple of months ago that wouldn’t have mattered to her. Moments such as those they had just shared would have been more than enough.
With each day that had passed, however, she had fallen more deeply, more hopelessly in love with him. Admitting that finally had been such a relief. Overcoming all those years of fearing heartbreak hadn’t been easy. In fact, she doubted that a lesser man than Michael could have brought her to this point, and she was grateful to him for forcing her out of her emotional hiding place.
But now she desperately wanted his love in return. She sighed and curved her body into his, listening to the reassuring beat of his heart. Surely a love to match hers was there. He had only to find it.
Now she was the one who would have to wait patiently. And hope.
Chapter Eleven
A week later, Barrie and Michael were sitting across from each other at her desk, eating the take-out Chinese food he had brought over for lunch, when the phone rang. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the intrusion.
“Not again,” she moaned. “You’re going to eat every bit of this fried rice before I get my first grain, if this blasted phone doesn’t calm down.”
“You could ignore it,” he suggested, scooping more rice out of the container with exaggerated glee. “You know it’s not your boss or your lover.”
“Who says?” she countered wickedly as she picked up the phone and said in a pointedly low, seductive tone, “Barrie MacDonald.”
“Hey, sweetheart, how’ve you been?”
She immediately recognized the voice of Jeff Taylor, a sweet, intelligent attorney with whom she’d spent several pleasant but unexciting evenings. She grinned to herself. Perfect. She would teach Michael Compton a thing or two about smug overconfidence!
“Jeff, sweetheart, how are you?” she said enthusiastically, noting that Michael’s brows lifted quizzically, and his interest in the conversation seemed to pick up dramatically at the mention of a male’s name. His chopsticks were poised midway to his mouth, and the shrimp and rice were dribbling back unnoticed onto his plate. She practically groaned out loud. Men! What predictable, territorial creatures they were.
“I’m terrific. I’ve been away on business for the past month.”
“Really. Anyplace interesting?”
“Hawaii. One of my clients was having some problems with his properties over there.”
“Nice work, if you can get it. I wouldn’t mind being sent to Hawaii on business,” she said, looking pointedly at Michael. He made a face at her.
“Now that I’m back, I thought maybe we could get together. I have tickets for a play tomorrow night. Are you free?”
Barrie had expected such an invitation from the moment she recognized Jeff’s voice. She’d certainly known that he wasn’t calling to chat about the weather or his trip to Hawaii. Still, she had no idea how to answer him. Certainly she was free enough. Michael hadn’t made any plans with her for tomorrow or the rest of the weekend. He rarely planned much in advance for their evenings together, seeming to take it for granted that she would be available. Nor had they made any commitments to see each other exclusively since their disastrous discussion about living together.
So why was she hesitating? Only because he was sitting right there in front of her? No. She’d be torn by indecision even if he were well out of sight.
Common sense told her there was absolutely no reason to turn down a date with another attractive man. Her gut told her she’d have a lousy time and that she’d spend the whole evening comparing Jeff with Michael, to the attorney’s tremendous disadvantage. Common sense and his current reaction to a mere phone call told her it might do Michael even more good to realize he was
not the only man in her life interested in taking her out. Her gut told her it would be a game, and it was childish to start playing it now.
“Barrie? Are you still there?”
“Sorry. I’m here, Jeff. I was just checking my calendar.” She flipped the page over and looked at the vast emptiness on Saturday and Sunday.
Michael was no longer even making a pretense of eating, and he was scowling at her with an expression that would have kept even Romeo and Juliet apart. She ignored him and debated her response.
“And?” Jeff said hopefully. “Don’t say no, Barrie. I’ve really missed you.”
The sincerity in his voice, more than anything else, clinched it. It would hardly be fair to go out with a man who’d just admitted to missing her, when she hadn’t given him a thought since their last date over a month ago.
“I wish I could go, Jeff, but I’m busy,” she said at last. To her amazement, Michael breathed what sounded like a sigh of relief at her polite rejection.
“Another time, then.”
“Sure. Another time,” she said, knowing that that time would never come. “You take care, Jeff. It was good to hear from you.”
“Who was that?” Michael growled before she could even put the receiver back into place.
“A friend.”
“Were you serious about him?”
“Why do you put that in the past tense?”
“Because I assume you’re no longer serious about him.”
“Don’t assume anything, Mr. Compton,” she taunted. “It makes one too complacent.”
“Very cute,” he muttered as he glanced at his watch and jumped to his feet. “I’m late.”
So much for concern about his competition. It seemed to have vanished in a puff of renewed self-confidence. Barrie glared at him and wished she’d kept him dangling a little longer. She sighed. It was too late now. He had already surmised that the faceless Jeff was not important in her life.
“See you later,” he announced casually.
“Oh, really?” she asked innocently, hoping to stir some new doubts. The man was definitely getting to be too sure of himself. She glanced pointedly down at the blank page of her calendar again. “Did we have plans?”
Not at Eight, Darling Page 11