by Anne Stuart
Why should she care? Wouldn’t she rather spend the early-morning hours slogging through mud than writhing beneath a demanding male body? That was not what she wanted, was it? She turned to smile at Jeff, testing her reaction like someone prodding a sore tooth. Again, all she could come up with was a mild attraction. A lack of fear. If Marita had kept her beautiful, long-fingered hands off him, he might still be the answer to her frustrations. Someone safe enough to fall in love with.
He smiled back, clearly at a loss. “You look wonderful today,” he said, ignoring the woman at his side. “I like that dress.”
“Oh, dear,” Susan murmured in the background, barely audible.
There was no time like the present for a little education. “It’s not really my style,” Laura pointed out.
“Oh, no, I think you look beautiful,” Jeff protested, absolutely serious.
Laura grinned, suddenly relaxed as she turned to the enigmatic Marita. “I love this man. Let me know when you’re finished with him, and I’ll take him off your hands.”
Marita’s answering smile held just the right amount of shared humor. “You can have him.” She leaned over, kissing him on his strong, smooth-shaven jaw. “Just be good to him. He deserves it.”
With an effortless grace she had to admire in herself, Laura moved between the two erstwhile lovers, put her hand on Jeff’s strongly muscled arm and moved him away. “You’ve been dumped, darling. Let me help you drown your sorrows. Any man who says I look good in Laura Ashley deserves help. I’ll take you to dinner and soothe you.”
He stared down at her, clearly entranced, ignoring the world-class beauty watching them. It had been years since Laura had entranced anyone, and she liked the feeling.
“I can’t,” Jeff said.
“You can’t?”
“I’m going back to Kansas. I’m booked on an afternoon flight. There’s no reason for me to stay any longer.”
Isn’t there, Laura thought. “Susan,” she said out loud. “See if you can arrange an airline strike.”
He laughed then. He had a thousand beautiful white teeth and a dimple. God, a man with a dimple, Laura thought. His babies would have dimples. “You wouldn’t want to do that. Think of all the trouble you’d cause.”
“I’m ruthless when it comes to something I want.”
She’d really startled him that time. He licked his lips, cleared his throat, and stared at her. “I could always change my flight,” he said.
“You do that,” she murmured, testing her voice, seeing if she could make it shy and seductive at the same time. She could. “Susan will help.”
“You’ve had an offer from Revlon?” Marita waited until Jeff was busy on the telephone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not anything we’re going to move on. They want you as part of a group picture. Just another pretty face. We’re going for more than that, and the best way to go about it is to use mystery. Make them hungry for you. Of course, if you want to work your way up...?”
“No.” Marita’s smile was dazzling. “I trust you completely, Laura. I’ll do anything you say.”
Laura wished she could have found that declaration more reassuring. “You don’t mind me taking Jeff out? You don’t want to join us?” Don’t you dare, she added mentally.
“I’m going out with Michael Dubrovnik. He called first thing this morning. He is such a forceful man, isn’t he?”
“He is that,” Laura agreed wryly, ignoring the sudden, irrational pang somewhere in the region of her solar plexus.
“I’ve heard,” said Marita, leaning closer and enveloping Laura in a cocoon of Opium, “that he’s absolutely voracious in bed.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Laura kept her voice polite, kept herself from stepping back from the miasmic cloud.
Marita’s smile was small and smug. “I imagine I’ll find out soon enough.”
Laura opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again. Had Rigby, Kansas, really produced this exotic creature? This was no Barbie doll standing in front of her, this was a black widow ready to devour its mate. She’d need someone like the Whirlwind to stand up to her. They’d make a perfect pair, Laura thought grumpily.
“It’s all set.” Jeff had come up behind her, his voice rumbling from some point over her head. “I can take the five forty-five tomorrow instead of today.”
Idiot, Laura thought to herself, not bothering to consider if she meant Jeff or herself. “Then we’ll have to make a night of it,” she murmured, batting her spiky black eyelashes at him, ignoring the ringing of the phone and Susan’s quiet voice.
Jeff stared back at her, transfixed, and Laura was beginning to feel like a black widow spider herself, when Susan interrupted. “That was your mother. She said she’ll take a rain check for lunch.”
“Typical,” Laura muttered. “She must have come up with a better offer.”
“She said to warn you that Michael Dubrovnik is going to eat your liver for lunch. She said she’ll come back when the dust settles.”
Laura grinned. Things were lurching and staggering along, not exactly as she’d planned, but they were at least moving in the right direction. “That means I’m free for lunch,” she said to Jeff, knowing she couldn’t afford to waste one minute. “Why don’t we...?”
“Don’t count on it,” Susan said. “Here comes the Whirlwind, and I think he’s out for blood.”
Laura looked up, startled, as Michael stormed into the office, and her hand tightened on Jeff’s arm. Jeff’s quiet yelp told her that she was digging her fingernails into his arm, and she carefully released him, greeting Michael with a serene smile.
It didn’t take him long to assimilate the situation, she had to grant him that. His dark blue eyes swept over the motley group of people, taking in Susan’s red eyes, Marita’s instinctive preening, Jeff’s faint and totally unwarranted air of possessiveness. And then his gaze swept over Laura from the top of her shiny black hair down the length of ruffled calico to the flat black shoes, and the thunder left his gaze, replaced by something that was uncomfortably close to amusement.
Then the polite veneer was back as he greeted Marita with instinctive charm, tolerated an introduction to Jeff, and bestowed a surprisingly sweet smile on Susan. At Laura he crooked a finger in an arrogant male demand that she treated with stony noncompliance.
“What?” she asked, with more truculence than grace.
“We’re late for lunch. Come along, Laura.”
“I’m not going to lunch with you. I’ve already promised to have lunch with my mother to celebrate her divorce.”
“Your mother has stood you up for my thirty-three-year-old assistant, Peter McSorley. Try again.”
“We were just discussing lunch.” Jeff stepped forward, ready to be assertive.
“Discuss it with Marita,” Michael said flatly. “Laura and I have business. If you think Laura puts anything before the Glass House, you have a lot to learn. Are you coming?” Impatience was eroding his earlier amusement, and Laura would have given anything to have simply told him no. Anything but the Glass House.
“Coming,” she said demurely. After all, she was going to have to face him sooner or later, listen to his threats and his fury over the damage done to his expensive machinery. Might as well get it over with.
He didn’t say a word as the elegant old elevator carried them down the twelve stories to the street below. When they stepped out into the lobby he simply took her arm, guiding her past the dried, muddy footprints that she’d forgotten to have eradicated. She could see the Bentley waiting out on Sixty-sixth Street, and began to feel the first tendrils of uneasiness.
“Where are you taking me? To jail?” she muttered, knowing she was betraying herself, no longer caring.
“Without passing Go or collecting two hundred dollars. I’d love to, but as you well know, I have no proof.” He stopped just outside the door. It was a warm fall day with just a hint of crispness in the air, and the breeze immediately ruffled Michael
’s longish black hair. “And if you think I’m going to be fooled by those ridiculous clothes, you might as well forget it. I’d say you looked like a little girl dressing up in her mother’s clothes, but even I know Jilly wouldn’t be caught dead in something like that.”
Laura caught her full skirts in one hand and swirled them gently. “I think I look adorable.”
He glowered down at her feet. “You’re too short.”
“That’s nothing new.”
“Get in the car.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t trust you. Get in the car, or I’ll pick you up and throw you in.”
At that she grinned. “Go right ahead,” she said amiably. “Then I can charge you with assault, get some nice new restraining orders, and not have to worry for ages.”
“Don’t count on it. And don’t count on my temper remaining this mellow.”
“This is a mellow temper? I’d hate to see you when you’re riled.”
“Believe me,” Michael said grimly, “you would. Get in the damned car.”,
“Not until you tell me where we’re going.”
“I’m going to introduce you to homemade jam.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said you didn’t know people actually made jam. My sister still does. I’m taking you up to her apartment for lunch. I’m sure it’s an area of New York you’ve never seen. Consider it an educational excursion.”
“Why?” she demanded suspiciously.
“Why not? But first—” he whipped out a white silk handkerchief “—we have to make you look a little more presentable. My sister is quite a bit older than me and very old-fashioned. She’ll probably think those stupid clothes are just charming, but she won’t like the lipstick.” Holding her chin in his ruthless grip, he took the handkerchief and scrubbed at her brightly painted mouth. He eyed her defiant face with a critical air. “You’re too pale,” he decided, and rubbed the lipsticked silk against her cheekbones.
She batted at him, but he was quite amazingly strong, capturing her hands with his one free hand. “And these,” he said, filching her oversized glasses, “have to go.” To her horror he took them and flung them over the top of the Bentley, under the tires of the oncoming traffic.
Laura’s reaction was brief and colorful. “You rotten, overbearing, manipulative son of a...”
“Try that with my sister and she’ll wash your mouth out with soap.” He shoved her into the Bentley, followed her, almost landing on top of her before she scuttled out of his way, and tapped on the smoked glass panel in front of him. “My sister’s place, George. She’s expecting us by one.”
“As you say, sir.” The Bentley pulled into the traffic, Laura, who was in the midst of trying to scramble out the other side, was thrown back into Michael’s lap, and within seconds they were careening up Fifth Avenue.
“I’ll get you for this, Dubrovnik,” she snarled, as his hands unaccountably held her in place.
“I’d say you already did,” he drawled.
Chapter Twelve
Laura decided that a sulky silence would serve her best as the Bentley dodged and darted its way through midtown traffic, heading northward. During her thirty-some years she’d been through every section of New York City, including the murderous South Bronx, but she hadn’t ventured outside her own, familiar neighborhoods too often. As they crossed the park and headed up the West Side, the streets grew narrower, more ethnic looking, the buildings older, the stores tinier, the whole area pulling in on itself, huddling against the bigger, noisier presence of mid-town Manhattan.
She stole a glance at Michael’s averted profile. He was looking out the window, a distant, abstracted expression on his face.
“Did you grow up here?” she asked, her husky voice breaking into the silent ride of the limousine.
He turned to her, and the faintly surprised expression in his eyes told her he’d forgotten her presence. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I was born in the apartment we’re going to. My mother didn’t make it to the hospital.”
“You mean the same apartment’s been in your family for forty years?”
“I’m thirty-nine.” His smile was wintry. “And the same apartment has been in our family since 1922. My father was part of the merchant class from just outside of Moscow. He escaped after the revolution and came here. He always wanted to see the west, see cowboys and Indians. I don’t think he ever got west of New Jersey.”
“Did he die young?”
“Hell, no.” Michael leaned back against the leather seat, a reminiscent smile softening the usually harsh lines of his face. “He was fifty when I was born. He made it to eighty-three, and he would have lasted longer if my mother hadn’t died. He didn’t want to live without her, so he didn’t.”
“I’m not going to sit here and try to work out the math in my head,” Laura said in a crabby tone. “And I don’t remember what People magazine had to say about your past. Explain.”
“That’s why I’m going to end up with the Glass House. I do my homework, and I pay attention to minor details. I can tell you the names of everyone in your immediate family, where they went to college, and, more importantly, how much money they have.”
“So I’m making a vain, noble effort at keeping this battle on a straightforward, businesslike level.”
“Putting sugar in the gas tanks of machinery with a combined value of close to a million dollars isn’t my idea of a straightforward, businesslike level. I wouldn’t call it noble either.”
“So sue me.”
“My lawyers are looking into it.”
Laura hoped he didn’t notice her cringe at the thought. “Tell me about your family. Don’t waste my time with useless lawsuits.”
Michael’s expression was faintly skeptical, but he seemed willing to comply. “You should pay more attention to People magazine. My parents left Russia in their late teens. They had five children, Piotr, Magda, Aloysha, Sonya and lastly Mikhail. I was more of an afterthought. My mother was forty-four and thought she was going through menopause when I showed up.”
“That must have scared the hell out of her.”
“I’ve been known to have that effect on people,” Michael agreed. “The others have moved to various parts of the country. Only Sonya wanted to stay in New York.” By this time they’d stopped outside an old, crumbling brown-stone. Laura looked up at the spotless, lace-curtained windows, noting the general seediness of the area. Down the street she could see the onion domes of a Russian-style church; the writing on the storefront window nearby was Cyrillic, and two of the old women shuffling down the street were wearing babushkas. It looked as foreign as only New York could, but she couldn’t help thinking that Michael Dubrovnik could afford better for his sister.
“Nice neighborhood,” she murmured, as Michael climbed out, holding the door for her.
He didn’t miss her implied criticism, but didn’t blink. “It’s home.”
“Mischa!” The woman who greeted them at the door of the third-floor walk-up looked more as if she could be Michael Dubrovnik’s mother than sister. She was dressed neatly but modestly, in a dress that would have come from any department store, Laura decided. The marcelled gray hair completed her dated look. She was somewhere in her late fifties or early sixties, and her Slavic cheekbones and faintly tilted eyes were her only resemblance to her more dashing younger brother. She flung her strong arms around Michael, embracing him fiercely, then turned that uncomfortably familiar dark blue gaze on Laura, taking in the ruffled clothes, the uneasy stance.
“Mischa,” she said, “You’re getting married again!” And without another word she pulled Laura into that same, crushing hug, not bothering to release her brother.
Laura didn’t know whether to struggle, to protest or to cry. Pressed against Michael, pressed against the maternal bosom of this powerful woman smelling of vanilla and flowers, she was suddenly, irrationally reminded of just how much she’d wanted a mother. Jilly had n
ever embraced her in her life.
“Sonya,” Michael said patiently. “This is not my fiancée.”
Sonya immediately released them, stepping back to take a closer look at Laura. Laura could feel her cheeks flush, but she met the intense gaze stoically enough.
“Who is she, then?” Sonya demanded.
“A thorn in my side. Laura de Kelsey Winston, meet Sonya Dubrovnik O’Reilly. My sister.”
“How do you do?” Laura was beginning to feel like Alice in Wonderland. O’Reilly?
“How’s Tim? How are the children?”
Sonya was still staring at her, bemused. She shook her head. “So who are you going to marry then? Some tall, skinny, useless girl again?”
“I’m not planning on marrying anyone right away.”
“You’re getting old, Mischa. You need children.”
“I was born when Father was fifty-three.”
“Well, if you want only one...” Sonya conceded. “I think you’re wrong, Mischa. Marry this one. She’ll give you lots of babies.”
The color in Laura’s cheeks had just begun to fade. Michael gave his sister an affectionate push. “Enough matchmaking. You promised us lunch and Russian tea. Go cook.”
“You see,” Sonya announced as she headed down the dark, narrow hallway of the apartment. “Already you’re protective of her. She’s the one to marry, Mischa.”
“You did this on purpose,” Laura hissed as she followed Michael into the apartment.
“Not really. I should have realized she’d jump to that conclusion and warned you ahead of time.”
“Why did you bring me here?”
He stopped in the middle of the crowded living room. “I’m not quite sure. At the time it seemed the best alternative to strangling you.”
“I’m not going to be impressed that you’re sending your nieces and nephews to the most expensive colleges in the country,” she said stonily. “You could afford to send several dozen to Bennington and not even notice the cost.”