by Nora Roberts
“Never mind.” Resigned, she picked up the soap and began to rub it lazily over her body as she watched him. “You seem very cheerful tonight. I thought you were annoyed with me this morning.”
“Did you?” He’d given some thought to strangling her. “Why would I be?” He took the soap from her and began to do the job himself.
“When we were talking…” The soap was warm and slick, his touch very thorough. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you came by.”
That was more than he’d come to expect from her. “Really?”
She smiled, then wrapped her arms around him and kissed him under the hot, steamy spray. “Yes, really. I like you, David. When you’re not being a producer.”
That, too, was more than he’d come to expect from her. And less than he was beginning to need. “I like you, Aurora. When you’re not being an agent.”
When she stepped out of the shower and reached for towels, she heard the bell ring again. “Damn.” She gripped a towel at her breasts.
“I’ll get it.” David hooked a towel at his hips and strode out before A.J. could protest. She let out a huff of breath and snatched the robe from its hook on the door. If it was someone from the office, she’d have a lovely time explaining why David Brady, producer, was answering her door in a towel. She decided discretion was the better part of valor and stayed where she was.
Then she remembered the clothes. She closed her eyes on a moan as she imagined the carelessly strewn articles on her living room floor. Bracing herself, she walked down the hall back into the living room.
There was candlelight. On the ebony table she kept by the window, candles were already burning in silver holders on a white cloth. She saw the gleam of china, the sparkle of crystal, and stood where she was as David signed a paper handed to him by a man in a black suit.
“I hope everything is satisfactory, Mr. Brady.”
“I’m sure it will be.”
“We will, of course, be back for pickup at your convenience.” With a bow to David, then another to A.J., he let himself out the door.
“David…” A.J. walked forward as if she weren’t sure of her steps. “What is this?”
He lifted a silver cover from a plate. “It’s coq au vin.”
“But how did you—”
“I ordered it for eight o’clock.” He checked his watch before he walked over to retrieve his pants. “They’re very prompt.” With the ease of a totally unselfconscious man, he dropped the towel and drew on his slacks.
She took another few steps toward the table. “It’s lovely. Really lovely.” There was a single rose in a vase. Moved, she reached out to touch it, then immediately brought her hand back to link it with her other. “I never expected anything like this.”
He drew his sweater back over his head. “You said once you enjoyed being pampered.” She looked stunned, he realized. Had he been so unromantic? A little uncertain, he walked to her. “Maybe I enjoy doing the pampering now and then.”
She looked over, but her throat was closed and her eyes were filling. “I’ll get dressed.”
“No.” Her back was to him now, but he took her by the shoulders. “No, you look fine.”
She struggled with herself, pressing her lips together until she thought she could speak. “I’ll just be a minute.” But he was turning her around. His brows were already knit together before he saw her face.
“What’s this?” He lifted a fingertip and touched a tear that clung to her lashes.
“It’s nothing. I—I feel foolish. Just give me a minute.”
He brushed another tear away with his thumb. “No, I don’t think I should.” He’d seen her weep before, but that had been a torrent. There was something soft in these tears, something incredibly sweet that drew him. “Do you always cry when a man offers you a quiet dinner?”
“No, of course not. It’s just—I never expected you to do anything like this.”
He brought her hand to his lips and smiled as he kissed her fingers. “Just because I’m a producer doesn’t mean I can’t have some class.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She looked up at him, smiling down at her, her hands still close to his lips. She was losing. A.J. felt her heart weaken, her will weaken and her wishes grow. “That’s not what I meant,” she said again in a whisper, and tightened her fingers on his. “David, don’t make me want too much.”
It was what he thought he understood. If you wanted too much, you fell too hard. He’d avoided the same thing, maybe for the same reasons, until one late afternoon on a beach. “Do you really think either of us can stop now?”
She thought of how many times she’d been rejected, easily, coolly, nervously. Friendship, affection, love could be turned off by some as quickly as a faucet. He wanted her now, A.J. reminded herself. He cared now. It had to be enough. She touched a hand to his cheek.
“Maybe tonight we won’t think at all.”
9
“‘Item fifteen, clause B. I find the wording here too vague. As we discussed, my client feels very strongly about her rights and responsibilities as a new mother. The nanny will accompany the child to the set, at my client’s expense. However, she will require regular breaks in order to feed the infant. The trailer provided by you must be equipped with a portable crib and…’” For the third time during her dictation, A.J. lost her train of thought.
“Diapers?” Diane suggested.
“What?” A.J. turned from the window to look at her secretary.
“Just trying to help. Want me to read it back to you?”
“Yes, please.”
While Diane read the words back, A.J. frowned down at the contract in her hand. “‘And a playpen,’” A.J. finished, and managed to smile at her secretary. “I’ve never seen anyone so wrapped up in motherhood.”
“Doesn’t fit her image, does it? She always plays the heartless sex bomb.”
“This little movie of the week should change that. Okay, finish it up with ‘Once the above changes are made, the contract will be passed along to my client for signing.’”
“Do you want this out today?”
“Hmm?”
“Today, A.J.?” With a puzzled smile, Diane studied her employer. “You want the letter to go right out?”
“Oh. Yes, yes, it’d better go out.” She checked her watch. “I’m sorry, Diane, it’s nearly five. I hadn’t realized.”
“No problem.” Closing her notebook, Diane rose. “You seem a little distracted today. Big plans for the holiday weekend?”
“Holiday?”
“Memorial Day weekend, A.J.” With a shake of her head, Diane tucked her pencil behind her ear. “You know, three days off, the first weekend of summer. Sand, surf, sun.”
“No.” She began rearranging the papers on her desk. “I don’t have any plans.” Shaking off the mood, she looked up again. Distracted? What she was was a mess. She was bogged down in work she couldn’t concentrate on, tied up in knots she couldn’t loosen. With a shake of her head, she glanced at Diane again and remembered there were other people in the world beside herself. “I’m sure you do. Let the letter wait. There’s no mail delivery Monday, anyway. We’ll send it over by messenger Tuesday.”
“As a matter of fact, I do have an interesting three days planned.” Diane gave her own watch a check. “And he’s picking me up in an hour.”
“Go home.” A.J. waved her off as she shuffled through papers. “Don’t get sunburned.”
“A.J.—” Diane paused at the door and grinned “—I don’t plan to see the sun for three full days.”
When the door shut, A.J. slipped off her glasses and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t seem to concentrate for more than five minutes at a stretch before her attention started wandering.
Overwork? she wondered as she looked down at the papers in her hand. That was an evasion; she thrived on overwork. She wasn’t sleeping well. She was sleeping alone. One had virtually nothing to do with the other, A.
J. assured herself as she unstacked and restacked papers. She was too much her own person to moon around because David Brady had been out of town for a few days.
But she did miss him. She picked up a pencil to work, then ended up merely running it through her fingers. There wasn’t any crime in missing him, was there? It wasn’t as though she were dependent on him. She’d just gotten used to his company. Wouldn’t he be smug and self-satisfied to know that she’d spent half her waking hours thinking about him? Disgusted with herself, A.J. began to work in earnest. For two minutes.
It was his fault, she thought as she tossed the pencil down again. That extravagantly romantic dinner for two, then that silly little bouquet of daisies he’d sent the day he’d left for Chicago. Though she tried not to, she reached out and stroked the petals that sat cheerful and out of place on her desk. He was trying to make a giddy, romantic fool out of her—and he was succeeding.
It just had to stop. A.J. adjusted her glasses, picked up her pencil and began to work again. She wasn’t going to give David Brady another thought. When the knock sounded at her door a few moments later, she was staring into space. She blinked herself out of the daydream, swore, then called out. “Come in.”
“Don’t you ever quit?” Abe asked her when he stuck his head in the door.
Quit? She’d barely made a dent. “I’ve got a couple of loose ends. Abe, the Forrester contract comes up for renewal the first of July. I think we should start prodding. His fan mail was two to one last season, so—”
“First thing Tuesday morning I’ll put the squeeze on. Right now I have to go marinate.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Big barbecue this weekend,” Abe told her with a wink. “It’s the only time my wife lets me cook. Want me to put a steak on for you?”
She smiled, grateful that he’d brought simpler things to her mind. Hickory smoke, freshly cut grass, burned meat. “No, thanks. The memory of the last one’s a little close.”
“The butcher gave me bad quality meat.” He hitched up his belt and thought about spending the whole weekend in bathing trunks.
“That’s what they all say. Have a good holiday, Abe. Just be prepared to squeeze hard on Tuesday.”
“No problem. Want me to lock up?”
“No, I’ll just be a few more minutes.”
“If you change your mind about that steak, just come by.”
“Thanks.” Alone again, A.J. turned her concentration back to her work. She heard the sounds of her staff leaving for the day. Doors closing, scattered laughter.
David stood in the doorway and watched her. The rest of her staff was pouring out of the door as fast as they could, but she sat, calm and efficient, behind her desk. The fatigue that had had him half dozing on the plane washed away. Her hair was tidy, her suit jacket trim and smooth over her shoulders. She held the pencil in long, ringless fingers and wrote in quick, static bursts. The daisies he’d sent her days before sat in a squat vase on her desk. It was the first, the only unbusinesslike accent he’d ever seen in her office. Seeing them made him smile. Seeing her made him want.
He could see himself taking her there in her prim, organized office. He could peel that tailored, successful suit from her and find something soft and lacy beneath. With the door locked and traffic rushing by far below, he could make love with her until all the needs, all the fantasies, that had built in the days he’d been away were satisfied.
A.J. continued to write, forcing her concentration back each time it threatened to ebb. It wasn’t right, she told herself, that her system would start to churn this way for no reason. The dry facts and figures she was reading shouldn’t leave room for hot imagination. She rubbed the back of her neck, annoyed that tension was building there out of nothing. She would have sworn she could feel passion in the air. But that was ridiculous.
Then she knew. As surely as if he’d spoken, as surely as if he’d already touched her. Slowly, her hand damp on the pencil, she looked up.
There was no surprise in her eyes. It should have made him uneasy that she’d sensed him there when he’d made no sound, no movement. The fact that it didn’t was something he would think of later. Now he could only think of how cool and proper she looked behind the desk. Of how wild and wanton she was in his arms.
She wanted to laugh, to spring up from the desk and rush across the room. She wanted to be held close and swung in dizzying circles while the pleasure of just seeing him again soared through her. Of course she couldn’t. That would be foolish. Instead she lifted a brow and set her pencil on her blotter. “So you’re back.”
“Yeah. I had a feeling I’d find you here.” He wanted to drag her up from her chair and hold her. Just hold her. He dipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against the jamb.
“A feeling?” This time she smiled. “Precognition or telepathy?”
“Logic.” He smiled, too, then walked toward the desk. “You look good, Fields. Real good.”
Leaning back in her chair, she gave herself the pleasure of a thorough study. “You look a little tired. Rough trip?”
“Long.” He plucked a daisy from the vase and spun it by the stem. “But it should be the last one before we wrap.” Watching her, he came around the desk, then, resting a hip on it, leaned over and tucked the daisy behind her ear. “Got any plans for tonight?”
If she’d had any, she would have tossed them out the window and forgotten them. With her tongue caught in her teeth, A.J. made a business out of checking her desk calender. “No.”
“Tomorrow?”
She flipped the page over. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Sunday?”
“Even agents need a day of rest.”
“Monday?”
She flipped the next page and shrugged. “Offices are closed. I thought I’d spend the day reading over some scripts and doing my nails.”
“Uh-huh. In case you hadn’t noticed, office hours are over.”
Her heart was drumming. Already. Her blood was warming. So soon. “I’d noticed.”
In silence he held out his hand. After only a slight hesitation, A.J. put hers into it and let him draw her up. “Come home with me.”
He’d asked her before, and she’d refused. Looking at him now, she knew the days of refusal were long past. Reaching down, she gathered her purse and her briefcase.
“Not tonight,” David told her, and took the briefcase to set it back down.
“I want to—”
“Not tonight, Aurora.” Taking her hand again, he brought it to his lips. “Please.”
With a nod, she left the briefcase and the office behind.
They kept their hands linked as they walked down the hall. They kept them linked still as they rode down in the elevator. It didn’t seem foolish, A.J. realized, but sweet. He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t held her, and yet the tension that had built so quickly was gone again, just through a touch.
She was content to leave her car in the lot, thinking that sometime the next day, they’d drive back into town and arrange things. Pleased just to be with him again, she stopped at his car while he unlocked the doors.
“Haven’t you been home yet?” she asked, noticing a suitcase in the back seat.
“No.”
She started to smile, delighted that he’d wanted to see her first, but she glanced over her shoulder again as she stepped into the car. “I have a case just like that.”
David settled in the seat, then turned on the ignition. “That is your case.”
“Mine?” Baffled, she turned around and looked closer. “But—I don’t remember you borrowing one of my suitcases.”
“I didn’t. Mine are in the trunk.” He eased out of the lot and merged with clogged L.A. weekend traffic.
“Well, if you didn’t borrow it, what’s it doing in your car?”
“I stopped by your place on the way. Your housekeeper packed for you.”
“Packed…” She stared at the case. When she turned to him, her eyes were nar
rowed. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, Brady. Just where do you come off packing my clothes and assuming—”
“The housekeeper packed them. Nice lady. I thought you’d be more comfortable over the weekend with some of your own things. I had thought about keeping you naked, but that’s a little tricky when you take walks in the woods.”
