by Lisa Jackson
Trevor walked across the short distance separating them and his magnetic blue eyes never released hers. Ashley’s pulse quickened at the nearness of him. When his cold lips pressed hungrily against hers, she knew that she would never find the strength to deny him again. His strong, muscular body was tense. She could feel his want in his restraint.
His tongue tested and probed and her lips parted willingly for him. She would offer everything to this exciting, mysterious man, hoping that he would care for her . . . if only a little.
A rush of liquid heat began to build within her, sending pulsating messages throughout her body. She couldn’t think or move when his warm, persuasive lips lingered on her neck and nibbled at the sensitive skin near her ear.
“Tell me you want me,” he whispered, his demand gentle.
“You know—”
“Say it!”
“I want you,” she admitted hoarsely.
“Why?”
“I don’t know—”
“Why, damn it!” He gave her shoulders a shake and forced her to look in his eyes. “Tell me it’s not just a game with you. That you’re interested in more than a quick one-night stand with the son of Robert Daniels.”
The words stung, but she bravely returned his gaze. “Oh, Trevor, it’s not because you’re a Daniels,” she whispered. “I know that I want you and not just for the rest of the afternoon.”
His relief seemed genuine and the lines of frustration marring his brow relaxed as his lips found hers in a kiss that was as tender as it was urgent.
His fingers slowly unbuttoned her blouse and he paused only to kiss her downy white skin when the fabric began to gap. Her breasts strained against the wet cotton and tingled in swollen anticipation when his tongue probed near the lace edging of her flimsy bra.
“No more excuses,” he whispered against the ripeness of her aching nipples.
Ashley swallowed against the dryness settling in her throat. “I only want to be with you,” she murmured, sucking in her breath as he unhooked the front clasp of her bra and pushed both it and her blouse over her shoulders to be discarded in a wrinkled heap on the floor. Then, gently, using his weight, he forced her to the floor and let his hands run in sensual circles over her smooth, white skin. Though the ache in his loins burned uncomfortably, he forced himself to go slowly, to give as much pleasure as he would extract from the voluptuous daughter of Lazarus Stephens.
She was lying next to him, and her damp, black hair fell over the white mounds of her delicious breasts, brushing over the taut, protruding nipples when she moved her head.
Slowly he descended, and when his mouth covered one rosy point, she moaned in pleasure, running her fingers through the thick, damp strands of his hair. Never had she felt such ecstasy and torment. Without considering her actions, she began to unbutton his shirt, forcing it off his shoulders and letting her fingers run over the tight muscles, the mat of curly black hair and the hard male nipples. His breathing became as ragged as her own and Ashley knew that there was no going back. Tonight she would give herself willingly, gloriously to this man. The fiery union of their bodies would be equaled only by the blending of their souls.
When his fingers toyed with the waistband of her jeans she didn’t resist. She belonged to Trevor and she felt an overwhelming sense of relief when his strong hands forced the denim fabric to slide easily over her hips, down her legs and past her ankles to find the same fate as her crumpled blouse.
His fingers lingered on her legs and the warmth within her grew. His eyes held hers as he slowly unzipped his jeans and kicked them off. She saw the reflection of the fire in the passion of his gaze. They were naked together, one man and one woman, high in the privacy of the proud Cascades. The smell of coffee and pitchy wood mingled with the scents of rainwater and sweat to blend together in a sensual aroma.
When he came to her, it was the most natural act she had ever experienced. Slowly he lowered his body over hers, positioning himself so that he could read the expression on her face, withholding the urge to take her in a quick eruption of desire.
At first he had planned to bed her quickly and forget her, but he knew now that he was forever lost to her. He wanted Ashley to feel the exquisite pleasure of their mating.
His face was tight, the lines of strain evident when his head lowered and his lips touched hers at the very moment that she felt his desire touch her soul.
“Trevor,” she moaned in resplendent agony as he slowly moved within her. “Please . . . please . . .” Her words were fuel to the fire of his white-hot desire. The rhythm quickened until, at last, he could hold back no longer. With a rush of unbound passion, he let go, and Ashley felt the shudder of his release as he collapsed upon her. His weight was a welcome burden. She wrapped her arms around his torso and closed her eyes against the tears of joy threatening to overtake her.
Was it love she felt for this man or merely lust?
* * *
The affair had run a torrid course through the rest of the summer. Whenever Ashley would get the chance, she would leave the Willamette Valley and meet Trevor in a private tryst of love in the Cascades: After that first moment of triumph and uncertainty, Ashley knew that she loved Trevor Daniels, not because his father was a rival to Stephens Timber Corporation, but because he was the most exciting and wonderful man she had ever met.
It was a glorious summer filled with dreams and promises, laughter and love. For the first time in her life, Ashley learned how to care for someone other than herself. It felt wonderful. She wanted to shout her love for Trevor from the mountaintops.
Somehow—Ashley suspected that Claud was the source—Lazarus found out that she was having an affair with Trevor. Her father was livid.
“How could you do this to me?” he had raged. Seated at the scarred wooden desk in his den, he seemed suddenly old.
“It just happened, Dad,” she had tried to explain.
“Just happened! Don’t tell me you’re that naïve, for God’s sake! All that schooling in France—didn’t you learn a damned thing! I’ll bet Daniels planned this affair all along.”
“That’s preposterous,” Ashley replied indignantly, but a niggling doubt entered her mind. Hadn’t Trevor as much as admitted that he had been looking for her, that he had wanted her for years? Was their affair just a way to seek revenge against her father?
“You’re so blinded by love that you can’t see the truth when it stares you in the face,” Lazarus charged, his complexion turning scarlet. His hands raised into the air in a gesture of defeat and supplication for divine intervention. “That son of Robert Daniels is just using you as a weapon against me! He’s obviously trying to dig up some dirt on our family and find some way—no matter how obscure—to blame me for his father’s disappearance!”
“This has nothing to do with Robert Daniels,” Ashley insisted, but she couldn’t forget her first heated conversation with Trevor at Sara Lambert’s party.
“The hell it doesn’t!” Lazarus’s fist crashed onto the desk, rattling the drawers.
“Dad, I love him!” Ashley cried.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” Lazarus braced himself against the desk in his office. His eyes slid from Ashley to the view of the Portland city lights before returning, condemningly, to his only child. “Can’t you see that he’s using you? If that bastard can’t find a way to ruin my reputation, he’ll settle for you and yours. He knows that by seducing you, he’s wounding me.” He ran agitated fingers through his thinning hair and his large shoulders slumped in defeat.
Though Ashley’s heart went out to him, she couldn’t deny the love she felt for Trevor. “You’d better get used to this, Dad,” Ashley warned rebelliously, though her faith in Trevor was beginning to waver.
“And why’s that?”
“Because I’m going to marry him.”
“Out of the question!” Lazarus’s watery blue eyes flamed in indignation. “The man isn’t even your social equal, for Christ’s sake!” He tapped his fingers
restlessly on the desk. “If I were you, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Trevor Daniels has no intention of marrying you. To him, you’re nothing more than a quick affair. Take my advice and get rid of him. If you want to get married, why not someone with a little class, like Richard Jennings?”
Ashley stormed out of her father’s estate, intent on proving him wrong. Trevor was waiting for her at Neskowin on the coast and she was sure, with just the right amount of persuasion, she could coax him into marrying her now, before he finished law school.
She was sadly mistaken.
The weekend at the beach was wonderful and she kept the fight with her father a secret. They spent the days walking on the rain-drenched sand, and during the nights they lay together, sipping imported wine, warming their feet on the bricks of the fireplace and staring out at the black waves crashing furiously in the winter’s storm before making incredible love and promising their lives to each other.
It was heavenly and it ended.
When Ashley finally explained that she wanted to get married right away, Trevor was adamant. He wanted to finish law school and establish his career before taking on the added responsibilities of a family.
“Then what am I supposed to do, sit around and wait while you decide whether you want to run for the presidency?” she replied caustically, the pain of his rejection cutting her to the bone.
His features hardened at the mention of his politics. “Of course not—”
“Then you still want me to wait for you.”
“Only a few years.”
“A few years.” It sounded like the end of the world. All of her fears and her father’s prophecies were coming true. For the first time in three months, Ashley doubted Trevor’s love.
“Look, Ashley,” he whispered, gently running his fingers through the silken strands of her hair. “I love you—I’m just asking you to be patient.”
“Patience isn’t my long suit.”
“It’s not forever.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Of course.” His eyes were clear blue and honest. For a moment she was tempted to believe him.
“Then what about the reason you got to know me in the first place—to try to get me to admit that my family was involved in your father’s disappearance. The reason you took the time to get to know me at all was just so that you could get some information from me, information to discredit my father.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
Ashley could tell that he was lying through his straight white teeth. The veiled hatred in his eyes at the mention of Lazarus convinced her that the love she thought they had been sharing was all based on a lie.
“I think it’s over for us,” she stated, tears stinging her eyes.
“Only if you want it to be.”
“There’s no other way,” she murmured, slowly gathering her things and throwing them into her suitcase. Silently, she prayed that he would back down and apologize, that he would beg her to stay. But it didn’t happen.
She left the cottage in the middle of the storm, regretting that she had ever laid eyes on Trevor Daniels.
Chapter Eight
The thoughts of the past took their toll on Ashley and she had to remind herself that what had happened didn’t matter. She and Trevor had a bargain and she was going to do her damnedest to prove that all of his accusations about her father, Claud and the timber company were unjust. If he had given her nothing else, Trevor had granted her the chance to clear her family’s name. For that much, she supposed bitterly, she should be grateful.
She placed her hands on the floor and straightened from the position she had assumed when Trevor had left her. The cabin was cold. She managed to light a fire in the wood stove in the kitchen to give her a little heat as she packed her things and secured the cabin against the winter weather. She worked without really thinking about what she was doing. Her thoughts, still filled with pain, continued to revolve around the past.
Disgusted with herself for being so maudlin, she walked to the window and looked out at the snow-covered ground. Winter birds, dark against the backdrop of white snow, flitted through the pine needles, chirping out lonely cries as they landed on the ground and foraged in the powdery snow.
“You really can’t blame Trevor,” she whispered to herself as she saw a bird find the seeds she had placed on the deck. Ashley’s breath condensed on the window, clouding the clear panes. “You only got what was coming to you.”
Most of the agony she had endured was her own fault. If she had just forgotten Trevor, as she had promised herself that stormy night in Neskowin, the following events never would have occurred. But as it was, blinded by fury and disgrace, Ashley had stormed out of the beach cottage and had returned to Portland.
In the following few weeks after the breakup with Trevor, Ashley had resumed working for her father and had secretly hoped that she might be pregnant. She wanted desperately to have Trevor’s baby, a lasting memory of the love affair that wasn’t quite strong enough to survive. At the time, she had been sure that a child, Trevor’s child, was all she needed to heal the pain.
It hadn’t happened. Ashley cried bitter tears of anguish when her monthly cycle resumed and all her hopes of bearing Trevor’s child were destroyed. Her dreams of the future had been shattered as easily as if they had been delicate sea shells crushed by the tireless anger of the sea.
Ashley had married Richard out of spite. Richard Jennings was the man she had been dating before she met Trevor. Richard worked for Stephens Timber and was the only son of rich, socialite parents. It hadn’t taken long for him to propose to the beautiful and headstrong daughter of Lazarus Stephens.
For her part, though at the time she had suspected that she might be deluding herself, Ashley had hoped that another man would replace Trevor. It didn’t take her long to realize that she had been wrong.
The marriage had been a mistake for both Richard and herself. Richard had expected a doting wife interested only in supporting him in his engineering career, but Ashley had shown more interest in the timber business than in homemaking.
It wasn’t all Richard’s fault that the marriage had failed, Ashley decided with a grimace. Though Ashley had hoped to purge herself of Trevor, and though she had tried to be everything Richard wanted, she had failed miserably. Even Lazarus hadn’t gotten the satisfaction of the grandchild he had expected from the short-lived union.
A divorce was inevitable. Lazarus Stephens went to his grave an unhappy, selfish man who never had suspected that his daughter was incapable of providing an heir to the Stephens Timber fortune.
Perhaps it didn’t matter, Ashley thought as she walked up the stairs to the loft and opened her suitcase. When she and Richard had divorced, she had lost all interest in owning any part of the vast timber empire. If she had learned anything from her brief but passionate affair with Trevor, it was how to be her own person and still care for other people. Trevor had helped her mature. By leaving her, he had forced her to rely on herself and become self-sufficient.
Maybe that was why her marriage had failed; she’d been too strong, while Richard was weak. It hadn’t been Richard’s obvious affairs that had finally gotten to her; it had been his lack of character and strength.
What’s the point of dredging it up all over again? she asked herself as she folded her clothes and placed them in the open suitcase on the bed. The sheets were still rumpled in disturbing evidence of her recent lovemaking with Trevor. She swallowed the urge to cry and hastily straightened the bedclothes.
Working swiftly, she managed to clean the cabin, pack her bags and bundle up all the reports from the Bend office. As she took out the garbage she noticed an empty champagne bottle and remembered how she had shared a glass of the sparkling wine with Trevor in front of the fire the night before. It seemed like weeks ago, when it had only been hours. Could so much have happened in so short a time?
When she finally had packed everything into her Jeep, she returned to make su
re the fire was no longer smoldering and to cast one last, searching glance around the interior of the rustic home. Her heart ached painfully. She wondered if Trevor was still at the Lambert cabin just a few minutes away. She pushed the nagging question aside and frowned. She couldn’t run to him—not yet. Until she had cleared her father’s name, she had nothing to offer Trevor.
“That’s life,” she muttered to herself, climbing into the Jeep. “Merry Christmas, Ashley,” she chided with a self-effacing frown. She turned the key in the ignition and the trustworthy engine sparked to life: Ashley drove away from the snow-covered cabin without once looking back.
* * *
It had grown dark by the time Ashley made it back to the Willamette Valley. The blackened skies were moist and the city streets of Portland were slick with rain. Most of the large homes in the West Hills were illuminated with colorful Christmas lights that twinkled in the gathering darkness and were reflected in the raindrops collecting on the Jeep’s windshield before the wipers slapped them aside.
Her father’s home was a huge, Tudor structure with seven bedrooms and five baths. Why he had ever purchased so large an estate was beyond Ashley, as Lazarus had never remarried and had no children other than herself. Most of the bedrooms had never been occupied. It seemed an incredible waste.
As Ashley turned up the cedar-lined drive, she noticed that the interior lights of the house were glowing warmly.
Ashley smiled to herself, knowing that Mrs. Deveraux, a fussy French lady who had been Lazarus’s housekeeper ever since Enora’s death and was still in charge of the house and grounds, must have guessed that Ashley would return tonight.
“Wouldn’t you know,” Ashley said to herself, pleased that Mrs. Deveraux had thought about her. The kindly old woman still treated her like a child. Tonight it would be appreciated. What Ashley needed right now was a warm meal and a hot bath. Once refreshed, she was sure that she could tackle the mountain of computer printouts once again.
No one answered her call when she entered. Ashley left her bags at the foot of the grand, oiled-oak staircase and walked into the kitchen, where she found a note from Mrs. Deveraux tacked to the refrigerater door. The message was simple: Mrs. Deveraux had gone out to the movies, would be back around ten and had left a crock of soup in the refrigerater. Also, as a postscript, there was a message from John Ellis, the accountant for Stephens Timber, requesting that Ashley call him the minute she was back in town.
