She waited, not daring to move, knowing that if he took her in his arms and kissed her again, her pathetic show of bravado might collapse—but he didn’t. He studied her in silence, a muscle bunching in his cheek, and then he gave a curt nod.
“As you wish, of course. Actually you’re quite right. Too much of anything is never good.” He smiled politely, though she suspected the effort cost him, and turned toward the bedroom. “Just give me a minute to dress and I’ll see you home.”
“No! No, I’ll take a taxi.”
Damian swung toward her. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m perfectly capable of seeing myself home.”
“Perhaps.” His voice had taken on a flinty edge, as had his gaze. He folded his arms over his chest and she thought, fleetingly, that even in the splendor of his nudity, he managed to look imposing. “But this is New York City, not some little town in Connecticut, and I am not a man to permit a woman to travel these streets, alone, at this hour.”
“Permit? Permit?” Laurel drew herself up. “I don’t need your permission.”
“Hell,” he muttered, and thrust a hand into his hair. “This is nothing to quarrel about.”
“You’re right, it isn’t. Goodbye, Damian.”
His hand fell on her shoulder as she spun away from him, his fingers biting harshly into her flesh.
“What’s going on here, Laurel? Can you manage to tell me that?”
“I have told you. I said—”
“I heard what you said, and I don’t believe you.” His touch gentled; she felt the rough brush of his fingertips against her throat. “You know you want more than this.”
“You’ve no idea what I want,” she said sharply.
He smiled. “Tell me, then. Let me get dressed, we’ll have coffee and we’ll talk.”
“How many times do I have to say I’m not interested before you believe me, Damian?”
His eyes darkened. Long seconds passed, and then his hand fell from her shoulder. He turned, strode into his bedroom, picked up the telephone and punched a button on the dial.
“Stevens? Miss Bennett is leaving. Bring the car around, please.”
“Why did you do that? There was no need to wake your chauffeur!”
He looked at her, his lips curved in a parody of a smile as he hung up the phone.
“I’m sure Stevens would appreciate your thoughtfulness, but he’s been with me for years. He’s quite accustomed to being awakened to perform such errands. Can you find your own way to the lobby, or shall I ring for the doorman?”
“I’ll find my own way,” she said quickly.
“Fine. In that case, if you’ll excuse me...?”
The door shut gently in her face.
She stood staring at it, feeling a rush of crimson flood her skin, hating herself and hating him, and then she spun away.
Would she ever forget the stupidity of what she’d done tonight? she wondered, as she rode to the lobby in his private elevator.
More to the point, would she ever forget that the only place she’d ever glimpsed heaven had been in Damian Skouras’s arms?
* * *
In the foyer of the penthouse, Damian stood at the closed doors to the elevator, glaring at the tiny lights on the wall panel as they marked Laurel’s passage to the lobby. He’d put on a pair of jeans and zipped them, but he hadn’t bothered closing them and they hung low on his hips.
What the hell had happened, between the last time they’d made love and now? He’d fallen asleep holding a warm, satisfied woman in his arms and awakened to find a cold stranger getting dressed in the hallway.
No, not a stranger. Laurel had metamorphosed back into who she’d been when they’d met, a beautiful woman with a tongue like a razor and the disposition of a grizzly bear. And she’d done her damnedest to make it sound as if what had gone on between them tonight had no more importance than a one-night stand.
The light on the panel blinked out. She’d reached the lobby, and the doorman, alerted by the call Damian had made after he’d closed the bedroom door, would be waiting to hand her safely off to Stevens.
Still glowering, he made his way to the terrace in time to see Laurel getting into the car. Stevens shut the door after her, climbed behind the wheel and that was that.
She was gone, and good riddance.
Who was he kidding? She wasn’t gone, not that easily. Her fragrance still lingered on his skin, and in his bed. The sound of her voice, the way she’d sighed his name while they were making love, drifted like a half-remembered tune in his mind.
He had lied to her, when he’d said Stevens was accustomed to being roused at all hours of the night. Being at the beck-and-call of an employer was something he’d hated, in his youth; he’d vowed never to behave so imperiously with those who served him.
Besides, waking Stevens had never been necessary before.
No woman had ever risen and left his bed so eagerly, Damian thought grimly, as he strode into his bedroom. His problem was usually getting rid of them, not convincing them to stay.
Not that he really cared. It had been pleasant, this interlude; he’d have been happy to have gone on with it for a few more weeks, even for a couple of months, but there were other women. There were always other women.
Something glittered on the carpet. Damian frowned and scooped it up.
It was Laurel’s earring.
His hand closed hard around it. He remembered the flushed, expectant look on her face when he’d taken the earrings from her, when he’d begun undressing her, when she’d raised her arms to him and he’d knelt between her thighs and thrust home...
“Home?” he said. He laughed, then tossed the earring onto the night table.
It was late, he was tired, and when you came right down to it, the only thing special about tonight had been the sheer effort it had taken to get Laurel Bennett into his bed.
Whistling, Damian headed for the shower.
CHAPTER SIX
SUSIE MORGAN sat at Laurel’s kitchen table, her chin propped on her fist as she watched Laurel knead a lump of sourdough batter.
Actually, Susie thought with a lifted eyebrow, Laurel was closer to beating the life out of the stuff than she was to kneading it. Susie glanced at her watch and her brow rose another notch. Laurel had been at it for fifteen minutes, well, fifteen minutes that she knew of, anyway. Who knew how long that poor mound of dough had really been lying there? When she’d come by for Laurel’s if-I’m-home-and-haven’ t-gained-any-weight-the-camera-might-notice Friday morning bread-baking session, there’d already been a dab of flour on Laurel’s nose and a mean glint in her eye.
The flour was one thing, but the glint was another. Susie frowned as Laurel whipped the dough over and punched it hard enough to make her wince in sympathy. She’d never known her friend to look so angry, not in the three years they’d known each other, but that was the way she looked lately...though there were times when another expression chased across her face, one that hinted not so much of anger but of terrible unhappiness.
Laurel had alternated between those two looks for four weeks now, ever since the night she’d gone out with Damian Skouras, whose name she hadn’t once mentioned since. He hadn’t come by again, either, which didn’t make sense. Susie had seen the way he’d looked at Laurel and, whether Laurel knew it or not, the way she’d looked at him. Any self-respecting scientist caught between the two of them would have had doubts about carbon emissions being the only thing heating up the atmosphere.
Susie had given it another try, just the other day.
“How’s Adonis?” she’d said, trying to sound casual.
Laurel had tried to sound casual, too. “Who?”
“The Greek,” Susie had replied, playing along, “you know, the one with the looks and the money.”
“How should I know?”
“Aren’t you seeing him anymore?”
“I saw him once, under protest.”
“Yeah, but I figured—”
/> “You figured wrong,” Laurel had answered, in a way that made it clear the topic was off limits.
“Well, if you say so,” Susie had said, “but, you know, if anything’s on your mind and you want to talk about it...”
“Thanks, but there’s nothing worth talking about,” Laurel had replied with a breezy smile, which, as Susie had tried to tell George that night, was definitely proof that there was.
“I don’t follow you,” George had said patiently. So she’d tried to explain but George, sweet as he was, was a man. It was too much to expect he’d see that if there truly was nothing worth talking about, Laurel would have said something like, “What are you talking about, Susie?” instead of just tossing off that meaningless response. She’d even tried to explain that she had this feeling, just a hunch, really, that something had happened between Laurel and the Skouras guy, but George’s eyes had only glazed over while he said, “Really?” and “You don’t say,” until finally she’d given it up.
Susie’s frown deepened. On the other hand, even George might sense there was a problem if he could see Laurel beating the life out of that poor sourdough. A couple of more belts like the last and the stuff would be too intimidated to rise.
Susie cleared her throat.
“Uh, Laurel?”
“Yeah?”
“Ah, don’t you think that’s about done?”
Laurel gave the dough a vicious punch and blew a curl off her forehead.
“Don’t I think what’s about done?”
“The bread,” Susie said, wincing as Laurel slammed her fist into the yeasty mound again.
“Soon.” She gave the stuff another whack that made the counter shudder. “But not just yet.”
Susie’s mouth twitched. She sat up straight, crossed her long, dancer’s legs and linked her hands around her knee.
“Anybody I know?” she said casually.
“Huh?”
“Whoever it is you’re beating to death this morning. I figure there’s got to be a face in that flour that only you can see.”
Laurel ran the back of her wrist across her forehead.
“Your imagination’s working overtime. I’m making bread, not working out my frustrations.”
“Ah,” Susie said knowingly. She watched Laurel give the dough a few more turns and punches before dumping it into a bowl and covering it with a damp dish towel. “Because,” she said, going with instinct, “it occurred to me, it might just be Damian Skouras you were punching out.”
Laurel turned away and tore a piece of paper towel from the roll above the sink. She thought of saying, “Why would you think that?” and looking puzzled, but she’d barely gotten away clean the last time Susie had raised Damian’s name. Susie knew her too well, that was the problem.
“I told you,” she said flatly, “I’m making bread.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Susie cleared her throat again. “So, have you heard from him?”
“Suze, you asked me that just the other day. And I said that I hadn’t.”
“And that you don’t expect to. Or want to.”
“Right again.” Laurel took the coffeepot from the stove and refilled Susie’s cup. She started to refill hers, too, but when she saw the glint of oil that floated on what remained, her stomach gave a delicate lurch. Wonderful. She had definitely picked up some sort of bug. Just what she needed, she thought, as she hitched her hip onto a stool opposite Susie’s. “So, where’s that handsome hunk of yours this morning?”
“At the gym, toning up his abs so he can keep his devoted fans drooling. And don’t try to change the subject. It’s your handsome hunk we were talking about.”
“My...?” Laurel rolled her eyes. “What does it take to convince you? Damian Skouras isn’t ‘my’ anything. Don’t you ever give up?”
“No,” Susie said, with disarming honesty. She lifted her cup with both hands, blew on the coffee, then took a sip. “Not when something doesn’t make any sense. You are the most logical, levelheaded female I’ve ever known.”
“Thank you, I think.”
“Which is the reason I keep saying to myself, how could a logical, levelheaded female turn her back on a zillionaire Apollo?”
“It was ‘Adonis’ the last time around,” Laurel said coolly. “Although, as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter what you call him.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“Susie, for heaven’s sake...”
“Okay, okay, maybe I’m nuts—”
“There’s no ‘maybe’ about it.”
“But I just don’t understand.”
“That’s because there isn’t anything to understand. I keep telling you that. Damian Skouras and I went to dinner and—”
“Do you know, you do that whenever you talk about him?”
Laurel sighed, shook her head and gazed up at the ceiling. “Do what?”
“Well, first you call him DamianSkouras. One word, no pause, as if you hardly know the guy.”
As if I hadn’t slept with him, Laurel thought, and she felt a blaze of color flood her cheeks.
“Aha,” Susie said, in triumph. “You see?”
“See what?”
“The blush, that’s what. And the look that goes with it. They always follow, right on the heels of DamianSkouras.”
Laurel rose, went to the sink and turned on the water. “I love you dearly, Suze,” she said, squeezing in a shot of Joy, “but you are the nosiest thing going, did you know that?”
“George says I am, but what does he know?” Susie smiled. “Men don’t understand that women love to talk about stuff like this.”
“Stuff like what? There’s nothing to talk about.”
“There must be, otherwise you wouldn’t turn into a clam each time I mention Damian’s name.”
“I do not turn into a clam. There just isn’t anything to say, that’s all.”
“Listen, my friend, I was here that night, remember? I saw the way you guys looked at each other. And then, that was it. No further contact, according to you.”
“Hand me that spoon, would you?”
“You can’t blame me for wondering. The guy’s gorgeous, he’s a zillionaire and he’s charming.”
“Charming?” Laurel spun around, her cheeks flushed. “He’s a scoundrel, that’s what he is!”
“Why?”
“Because—because...” Laurel frowned. It was a good question. Damian hadn’t seduced and abandoned her. What had happened that night hadn’t been a Victorian melodrama. She’d gone to his bed willingly and left it willingly. If the memory haunted her, humiliated her, she had no one to blame but herself. “Susie, do me a favor and let’s drop this, okay?”
“If that’s the way you want it...”
“I do.”
“Okay, then. Consider the subject closed.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“It’s just that I’m really puzzled,” Susie said, after a moment’s silence. Laurel groaned, but Susie ignored her. “I mean, he looked at you the way a starving man would look at a seven-course meal. Why, if Ben Franklin had come trotting through this place that night, he wouldn’t have needed a kite and a key to discover that lightning bolts and electricity are the same thing!”
“That’s good, Suze. Keep going like that, you can give up dancing and start writing scripts for George’s soap.”
“You make it sound as if you didn’t like him.”
“You clever soul.” Laurel flashed a saccharine smile.
“How’d you ever come up with an idea like that?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t believe me? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Susie rose, went to the pantry cabinet and opened it. “It means,” she said, taking out a box of Mallomars, “that lightning must have struck somewhere because I’ve never known you to come traipsing in at dawn.” She peered into the box. “Goody. Two left. One for you, and one for
me.”
Laurel glanced at the chocolate-covered marshmallow cookie Susie held out to her. Her stomach lifted again, did a quick two-step, then settled in place.
“I’ll pass.”
“I can have both?”
“Consider this your lucky day. And how do you know what time I came in?”
Susie bit into a cookie. “I went running that morning,” she said around a mouthful of crumbs, “so I was up at the crack of dawn. You know me. I like the streets to myself. Besides, these old floors squeak like crazy. I could hear you marching around up here. Pacing, it sounded like, for what seemed like forever.”
Not forever. Just long enough to try to believe there was no point in hating myself for what I’d done because it was already part of the past and I’d never, not in a million years, do anything like it again.
“Where’d he take you that night, anyway?”
“You know where he took me.” Laurel plucked a cup from the suds and scrubbed at it as if it were a burned roasting pan. “To dinner.”
“And?” Susie batted her lashes. “Where else, hmm?”
To paradise in his arms, Laurel thought suddenly, and the feeling she’d worked so hard to suppress, the memory of how it had been that night, almost overwhelmed her.
Maybe she’d been a fool to leave him. Maybe she should have stayed. Maybe she should have taken up where the blonde had left off...
The cup slipped from her hands and smashed against the floor.
“Dammit,” she said fiercely. Angry tears rose in her eyes and she squatted and began picking up the pieces of broken china. “You want to know what happened that night?” She stood up, dumped the pieces in the garbage and wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans. “Okay, I’ll tell you.”
“Laurel, honey, I didn’t mean—”
“I slept with Damian Skouras.”
Susie took a deep breath. “Wow.”
“I slept with a guy I didn’t know all that well, didn’t like all that much and didn’t ever want to see again, because—because—”
“I understand the because,” Susie said softly.
Laurel spun toward her, her eyes glittering. “Don’t patronize me, dammit! If I don’t understand, how can you?”
The Greek's Unwilling Bride Page 8
