“Well, my little sausage, haven’t you had a wonderful day?” Geoff said to the dog, who wriggled in response and tried to shake some more dampness from her coat. “And what about you, Bess? Interesting, at least?”
“I had a wonderful day too,” she replied.
Then she shivered delightfully inside. Because it had been wonderful. She only hoped he’d interpret her remark as applying to this part of the day.
If honest, Bess had to admit that Geoff’s brief foray into love-making had been the true highlight. No, damn it, she reminded herself, not lovemaking. Sex. Yet, as they drove homeward, it was all she could do to keep from staring at Geoff, drinking in his features, memorizing them…not that she needed to.
His buccaneering good looks disguised a sensitivity and a gentleness that showed him to be well-balanced, mature, caring. But still a man, and his mouth and touch had imprinted that fact on her far more than any words could do.
She had told him – was it only this morning? – that romance was in the courting and everything else was sex. She had to believe that, couldn't let it slip away, otherwise it would mean she'd had no romance in her life. None at all.
Admittedly, Paul's wooing had been non-aggressive, which she had attributed to an inherent shyness. But now, thinking about him objectively – could she think about him objectively? – she realized that his hugs had been respectful, his kisses diplomatic. Never, not once during their courtship, had his tongue danced inside her mouth. Never had she felt even the semblance of an erection.
She hadn't been untouched when Paul began pressing his suit. Other men has openly expressed their lust, if not love, for her. And, in the back of her mind she'd always thought: “They want something from me. They want something from my father.” But Paul already worked for her father, so he must have loved her for herself alone... at least, that's what she had believed.
Warren Cornwall, even then, had been molding Bess into his corporate whore, although she hadn't thought of it in those terms, preferring the word “merger.” How could her own father sell his daughter's body to the highest bidder? She had appreciated Paul's restraint and adored him for it. She had idolized his...formality. Love, she reasoned, would come later. And actually believed it had when Paul's passivity turned to passion. If she didn't respond, she told herself, the fault was hers, not his. In other words, sex had raised its ugly head and romance had gone down the drain. Which was natural in a marriage, she justified over and over again. Hadn't Mother been totally malleable, her one and only rebellion the squashy-faced cat?
Geoff didn't want anything from her father, Bess thought, admiring the ripple of his thigh muscles as his foot found the clutch pedal. So, what did he want from her? The book? He'd already secured her cooperation. Her body? If he wanted a body, there were barmaids, and unless she was terribly mistaken, Geoffrey Barrett wasn't the kind of man who enjoyed conquest for its own sake.
Had she goaded him into his seduction with her thoughtless jibes? Of course she had. But after his icy-eyed glower, after his angry transference of her body to his chair, after the urgent plunder of her mouth, he'd turned surprisingly tender. Not passive. Tender. Every time she conjured up the scene in his office, which she'd done on and off all afternoon, she could feel him gently sculpting her jaw line, caressing her cheek, stroking the arch of her neck. Even now, as the twilight vista blurred past her open window, she could feel her nipples strain against her bra.
They finished the day with a slapped-together meal of cold meats and cheese and bikkies – biscuits – then Geoff, thankfully, excused himself to “go hide in the office and attend to some work that can’t wait.”
Which left Bess free to call it an early night, although it was one in which the sleeping time available to her was disrupted by too many thoughts and a body that suddenly held too many disruptive memories.
And the dreams! If she hadn’t climaxed in Geoff’s arms, on his lap, she surely did so within the sanctuary of sleep. When she looked in the mirror next morning her face was flushed, her eyes radiant, her body tingling. And her mind not one whit more settled than it had been the day before.
CHAPTER SIX
Rambo was, at heart, a braggart. Right now he wanted to crow, considering how easy it had been for him. And yet he knew it was better to be valued for having completed a tough assignment.
“Piece of cake,” he finally said, unable to swallow one small boast. “I mean, the identification part. She's definitely the girl you want. The girl anybody would want,” he added with a sly grin. “Talk about drop-dead bloody gorgeous!”
“We know that,” Coolidge snapped. He was pleased the kid had accomplished his mission, but they could do without gratuitous comments. “What about getting into the house? No problems there?”
“Well, it wasn’t the easiest job I’ve ever done. Had to take some pretty fancy risks,” lied Rambo, who had simply slipped a patio door lock, done what he’d come to do, and walked out without the slightest hitch. “But yeah, I managed to bug the phones and arrange things so I can hack into his computer. I really wanted to bug the whole house, but didn't have time. One thing for sure. I’ve got the perfect spot to lift the girl, if you decide that’s what you want to do. Before I tapped the phones, I followed them. They took this dog down along the river below Newstead, and you couldn’t ask for a better situation. Not a blessed soul around, plenty of places to set up an ambush. I don’t know if she'd walk the dog down there by herself, which would be perfect, but—”
“It’s a bit early to worry about that,” Rossiter cut in, then stared at Coolidge. “Besides, there's no way we'll do it. She knows us.”
“I’ll bring in some people from Sydney, Tom. There's really no great hurry. The old man isn’t expecting miracles. Even the great War Cornwall understands that Barrett won't give in without a fight.” Coolidge smirked at his own pun. “But at least now we’ve got something to work with, and if the bugged phones show a relationship between Barrett and Elizabeth, it will make it all that much easier.”
Turning to Rambo, Coolidge issued his instructions. “I want you to put together a team to monitor everything. Every phone call, every email. You’ll have to bring people in from Sydney for that, too, so get on it damn quick.”
“Yes, sir.” Rambo's fingernails, which had been picking at one of the many scabs that adorned his face, joined the rest of his hand to offer Gerald Coolidge a brief salute. On his way out, Rambo tried to avoid the suite's mirror. The acne he'd endured since age thirteen didn't exactly make him a candidate for beer commercials. Still, his expertise at electronics had turned him into a minor pub celebrity. Hooray for home computers. Girls needed him, and were willing to pay dearly to get him, even when he said money wasn't his toll. Problem was, none of those girls even came close to Elizabeth Carson Bradley.
“How much time are we going to give this before we decide on the next step?” Rossiter asked, after Rambo had shut the door.
“As long as it takes. I want to be sure about the relationship issue, although you wouldn’t find me with something that choice underfoot and not be making use of it. Barrett’s doing her... you can bet on it. But just to be safe, we’ll wait for proof of some kind. Pity that fool kid couldn’t have bugged the bedrooms.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that simple,” Rossiter said with a shake of his head. “I got to know Elizabeth fairly well when she worked with the old man, and she never struck me as being the type for a casual fling.”
Coolidge looked his companion up and down, eyeing with distaste the rumpled suit and tie, the un-shined shoes, the shambling, unkempt look which had always been a part of the man’s persona. Tom Rossiter was immensely clever, but obviously not clever enough to realize that appearance counted, and that he was his own worst enemy on that score. Coolidge couldn't imagine Rossiter getting close enough to Elizabeth to recognize what her character might be like.
“It doesn’t matter what Barrett values her for,” he finally said. “All that mat
ters is that he does value her, enough to come to the party when we put the screws on him.”
~~~
Bess paused to rub her eyes. She felt more exhilarated than tired, but sometimes her eyes seemed glued to the computer screen. Not that one could glue eyes, she thought, having just deleted “Kate dropped her eyes” and changed it to “Kate looked down.”
Working side-by-side with Geoff, playing this absurd game of musical chairs, actually seemed to work. He did most of the writing, and it was powerful stuff. But her job of Americanizing the language of the heroine and ensuring the accuracy of the book’s American beginning kept her own mind active, and was clearly going to be an important element in the finished product. Which, to her dismay, still didn’t have a title and hardly any plot line.
“I do wish we could put a name to our book,” she said, not for the first time. “I always like to have a title before I start. It helps me keep it together.”
“And I always find a title leaping out at me when the time is right,” Geoff replied, not even bothering to look up. “The title is in here someplace, and it will come to us, so stop fretting about it.”
“Fine,” she said. Only to suggest, not ten minutes later, “But couldn’t we at least give it a working title?”
“Be my guest.”
“You’re not very helpful.”
“It isn’t my problem. Call it 'The Catharsis of Kate.' How does that grab you?”
“Ah, so her name really is Kate. I was beginning to wonder. Half the time you call her Kate, but I hesitate to mention how often you’ve called her Bess. I'm constantly changing it.”
“Continuity is part of your job,” he said in a low voice that was almost too calm, too controlled. “But maybe we should call her Bess temporarily, and use the search-and-replace mechanism to change it later. Ultimately, we can't use Bess.”
“Why can’t we?” Bess knew she was being deliberately argumentative, but seemed unable to stop baiting him.
“Because you are Bess, ignorant American wench. We can’t have a heroine named Bess in a book co-written by an author named Bess, can we? First off, it’s not an autobiography. Second, it would drive the readers crazy.”
“Co-authored by Elizabeth Carson, not Bess Carson, and I was only kidding.”
“Good,” he said, his gaze still focused on the screen.
“Because I can't think of any Bess I know who would get stirred up by your incredibly pedestrian sex scenes. Honestly, Geoff, I thought this was supposed to be a collaborative romance, not a how-to manual for would-be Victorians.”
Now she had his attention! He turned and fixed his gaze on her, lifting his hands from the keyboard and flexing his long, sensitive fingers as if preparing them for the task of throttling her... or worse.
“Have you got sex on the brain or something, dear Bess? What I am writing here, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a descriptive scene of the San Francisco waterfront, from which, in the not-too-distant future, our chum Leonardo will follow his beloved fiancée to Australia. His beloved not-so-innocent Kate.”
“She was never innocent. You forget, he... we deflowered her.”
“Well then, call our book 'The Deflowerization of Kate.'“
“That's not a bad idea,” she said, and watched his damn eyebrow slant upward for the umpteenth time. “I mean, how about calling it 'The Flower of Ballarat'?”
“Sure. For now. You’re right, Bess,” he added, as if thinking out loud.
“I am? About what?”
“Pedestrian sex scenes. I'm hopeless at writing spicy stuff, at least in this book. So there’s another part of your input.”
Geoff wasn't about to admit that Bess herself was the reason why he couldn’t get into the sexy scenes the book required. She inhibited him, even though he knew she wasn’t trying to. It was just that he felt embarrassed, writing such things with her sitting there beside him. Close enough to reach out and touch, which he dearly wanted to do. Had done, with almost disastrous results. And would do again, given half a chance and the slightest encouragement. He had wondered if her Victorian-sex-scene comment had been some sort of hint, then banished the thought. No. Bess was a professional. She was merely making a point.
“Another part of my input,” Bess repeated. Although she had never been a hand-wringer in her whole life, today she wanted to wring her hands like a wet sponge. Her proximity to Geoff was becoming progressively more difficult to endure, if endure was the appropriate word. Where she had once been worried that their working so closely would result in him watching her too much, she now found that she did all the watching.
He was just so pleasant to watch. Even from a quarter-side angle, which was how she saw him most often while working. He had a habit of chewing on his lower lip when he concentrated, and the sight of those white, even teeth reminded her too often of his predatory potential. When he was satisfied with some sought-for word or phrase, his nostrils flared like those of a fine Arabian stallion, and there was an almost tangible aura of arrogant pride in the gesture.
Macho, in its finest definition, was a word that might have been coined for this man, she thought. He was totally, wholly, engrossingly masculine, but so completely confident in that element of himself that he didn’t need to overplay the role to impress anyone. He clearly thought it no sin for a man to be sensitive, gentle, caring. And yet she couldn’t help but remember his kisses, and her own still-vivid physical response to them.
Sitting hunched in her chair, she clenched her fists together and clamped them between her knees, fearing her knees were about to start trembling. Certainly there was that familiar stirring in her tummy, a slow, spreading warmth that seemed to flow lower and warmer the more she willed it to stop.
All she had to do was look at Geoff's broad shoulders, the flex of muscle as he occasionally stretched to ease his back, and Bess found her breath quickening. He needed a haircut, but she wanted to sift her fingers through the shock of hair at his nape before he trimmed it. Whereas she sometimes thought her own curly hair was as coarse as a horse’s mane, his was unusually soft and fine, the waves that flowed above his ears like dove’s wings, at least in her imagination.
Just as well, she thought, that Geoff usually spent the afternoons away on business, because a full day of this intensely intimate sharing of words and ideas might be more than she could handle. With him out of the way, she could edit the manuscript as it built on the computer, cutting and honing and polishing as she went along. And she knew she was doing it well. Geoff reviewed their work each day before starting anew, and hadn’t so much as commented on the changes.
Unless he hadn't even noticed!
“You do good polishing,” he said, as if reading her mind.
The remark brought her upright with a start, and she realized she'd been so lost in her own thoughts that she might as well have been asleep. “I try,” was all she could think of to say. And it seemed to be enough because he returned to his typing without continuing the discussion, much less informing her about what had stirred his comment in the first place. Sometimes Geoffrey Barrett could be so... enigmatic.
As if I'm not, she thought. We make a great pair!
The night was uneventful, the next morning productive. Kate Still-no-last-name was now situated in the Captain's cabin, due to a fever that had her lingering between life and death. A bit of a cliché, Bess thought, except Geoff's expertise at narrative saved the scene. Bess honestly felt she was inside the cabin. She could feel the sway of the ship, suffer along with Kate, and suddenly her doubts about Geoff's sketchy outline were somewhat mollified.
When he left the office to make them more coffee, she took the opportunity to log on and check her emails, knowing there would be something from Mouse. Her friendly computer maven was faithful about keeping in touch, obviously still convinced that Bess had stuck her head in the lion’s den and would need rescuing sooner or later.
She read today’s message, then had to read it again, puzzled by the cryptic langua
ge. Mouse was almost always cryptic, when he wasn’t rambling on effusively, but this...
“Do you remember the problem we had with Felix last year, Bess? I think we have to do it all over again, but in reverse this time. I should be around for the next 24 hours.”
That was it! No hello, no goodbye, not even his usual sarcastic reference to “Lucifer” – his nickname for Geoff, inspired by the cat in Disney's Cinderella.
She was still staring at the message when Geoff returned with their coffee, and he glanced over her shoulder with casual interest.
“Your little mate always send such cryptic stuff?” he asked. “I tell you, Bess, if I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s a bit paranoid.”
“That’s it!” she cried, enlightenment dawning. “Thank you, Geoff. You’re more clever than you realize. Have you got any change? I have to go into town and make a call.”
He fished out what change there was in his pockets, then raided his bedside piggy-bank when Bess insisted she might need more than they had between them. “I’ve got a phone card here somewhere that I keep for emergencies,” he said. “Why don’t you use that? It’ll be less of a hassle than standing in a phone box with twenty pounds of change.”
“I’ll take both, thank you,” she replied. And did, skipping out the front door before Geoff could question her further. Mouse’s message was crystal clear, now that Geoff had sparked her memory. It still didn’t make total sense, but it would when she talked to him.
Perhaps a year earlier, she had indulged Mouse’s intrinsic paranoia by letting him use her phone for an entire week, a week in which he insisted that a hacker named “Felix the Cat” had somehow managed to bug his phone and emails. She never did learn all the details, but Mouse had declared himself eternally grateful when the week was over. He had either solved the problem, or taken his revenge, or both.
Now he was saying... what? The “in reverse” suggested a problem at her end, Bess thought, as she trudged down the hill toward town. Oh well, a call from the security of a pay phone would soon solve the riddle.
Finding Bess Page 8