Once again Yale was all good manners, sober suit and charm. The only clue to the devil in him lay in the gleam of hazel eyes through the lenses of his glasses and the flash of gold in his smile.
Dara was ready for him in more ways than one. She flung open the door and hurled the accusation at him before he'd even managed to step across the threshold.
"You followed me to work this morning!"
He arched one amber brow in polite inquiry. "I don't think that was me," he offered. His eyes swept her sleekly parted burnt-russet hair, the sun-bright, long yellow dress which flowed over her full curves and the sparkling challenge in the gray-green eyes.
"Of course it was you! I couldn't mistake that car, and you know it! It was the same you who came prowling into my bedroom uninvited last night!"
"Like I said, it wasn't me. Not quite. What honest, Internal-Revenue-Service-fearing accountant would go around doing things like that?"
"You're going to stand there and deny you're... trailing me?" she snapped, dumbfounded. "Stop playing games, Yale."
"You really ought to take this up with him," Yale advised helpfully, lifting the shawl from the back of a nearby chair and placing it solicitously around her shoulders.
"I don't believe this," she gasped, whirling to stare at him in confusion and annoyance. "Stop pretending you're some sort of split personality!"
"Why not? Two hunters are much more effective than one. Come along, Dara, I've got reservations in half an hour."
"Yale," she protested weakly, uncertain how to handle the bizarre situation. A part of her found it vastly intriguing in spite of the danger she felt. "Yale," she went on determinedly, allowing him to guide her out to the car, "this is ridiculous!"
"I agree. You can call it off any time you wish," he informed her lightly as she slid into the leather interior.
"I can call it off! You're the one who's behaving in such a crazy fashion! They put people in strait-jackets for this sort of thing!"
"Let's hope you don't let it go that far," he growled feelingly, starting the engine. "In the meantime, would you mind if we don't talk about him? This is my evening and I'd prefer to have your full attention."
She caught the hopeful, whimsical note in his gently accented words and stared at him in a combination of disgust and amusement.
"Don't tell me you're jealous of...of that hunter who was in my room last night!" she dared.
He flashed her a slanting, enigmatic glance. '"Why not? He's had memories all day long of how you felt in his arms last night. As a proper Southern gentleman, I couldn't have barged into your bedroom without being invited. Is it any wonder?"
"Why should it bother you?" she demanded tartly. "You had the same memories!"
"This could get confusing, couldn't it?" He chuckled warmly, downshifting for a light.
"Does that mean you'll give up this crazy charade?" she said quickly.
"No, but let's talk about something besides me," he retorted easily. "Tonight you're on a date with a man whose manners you can rely on implicitly. Why not enjoy it? Have all those conversations you wanted to have that make you think we're developing a normal relationship."
"Are you making fun of me?" she muttered suspiciously.
"A gentleman never makes fun of a lady," he intoned piously.
It took a violent effort of will for Dara to stifle the laughter which threatened to bubble over inside her.
As it was, the humor was clear in her eyes although she managed to keep her expression suitably haughty.
"And you, of course, are the perfect gentleman. Forgive me. I don't know how I could have made such an accusation. You'll have to understand, I've had a rather upsetting few days," she murmured with social apology.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he returned commiserat-ingly. "Life is full of the unexpected, though, isn't it?"
"Yes, but those with fortitude and endurance can cope."
"You have both?" "Definitely!"
"Excellent. How did work go today? Did you put together the information on those securities you mentioned?" he asked politely.
"Yes. I have it at home, as a matter of fact. Remind me tonight and I'll give it to you." She eyed him coolly, assessing her decision to treat him exactly as he wished.
"What else are you following besides electronics? I want to keep the portfolio diversified," he began conversationally.
“Some of the new medical-research stocks may be good but very risky. The new emphasis on gene technology is bound to revolutionize the field, but a lot of starters are going to get left behind in the dust," she mused.
"I don't mind some high-risk stuff. I've got enough of the blue chips as it is," he told her easily, pulling into the parking lot of the restaurant he'd selected.
"Just how gutsy do you feel?" she asked chal-lengingly.
"Whenever a stockbroker gets that particular gleam in her eyes I get nervous," he said, parking the Alfa Romeo with second-nature precision. "What are we going to short?"
"How did you guess?" She grinned.
"I've been burned on one short sale," he warned her, assisting her out of the car with male grace. "It would have to be a very, very sure thing...."
"There is no such animal as a 'sure thing'!"
He sighed. "Tell me about it."
"Well, there's this small computer company which got caught up in the run-up of technology stocks last year. But I happen to know they're on very shaky ground now. Their financial base is practically nonexistent. It can't be long before the market realizes just how precariously balanced the firm is," she said enthusiastically as they were shown to their seats.
"You enjoy your work, don't you?" Yale smiled, sitting down across from her and scanning her eager, excited face with amused interest.
"Love it. Knew I would the first day on the job! All the challenge and excitement and thrills..." She shrugged self-deprecatingly. "There's nothing quite like the day-to-day highs and lows of the securities business."
"So tell me more about this little computer company you're proposing to short," he murmured.
"The stock is almost bound to go down, and soon," she confided, leaning forward intently. "As a matter of fact, I'm going to short it in my own portfolio."
"You manage your own account?"
"Naturally. I don't intend making all those profits for other folks and not taking some of the benefits for myself!"
"So you're proposing we borrow some of this computer firm's stock, sell it while it's high and then buy it back when it tumbles. Our profit being the difference," he clarified, picking up the tasseled menu.
"A lot of people forget there's money to be made on a stock that's going down as well as on a stock that's going up," Dara reminded him.
"There's a hell of a lot more risk involved selling a stock short," he grumbled. "Ask me—I know!"
"How badly were you burned?" she asked sympathetically.
"I panicked when the stock was guaranteed to tumble started going up a point a day!"
She winced. "How many days before you bailed out and took the loss?"
"Ten," he told her wryly. "I lost about five thousand."
"Oh, dear. I suppose you're really not interested in trying another short sale, then?"
"A gentleman can nearly always be talked into anything by a woman he'd like to seduce." Yale grinned, glancing up from the menu with a deliberately sardonic expression in his eyes.
"I'll keep that in mind," she managed to fling back spiritedly.
The evening passed with surprising swiftness, the conversation moving quickly from one topic to another. Dara was astounded to realize hours later on the drive home that she had almost forgotten about the strange game Yale was playing. She was too involved in getting to know her Southern gentleman better and in getting him to know her.
She was floating on a contented haze created by what she told herself was the success of the evening when they reached her front door. Smiling, she turned on the step.
"Would you like to come in for a brandy?"
"Yes." He smiled back. "I would."
She hesitated briefly as he took the key from her hand and inserted it in the lock.
"You will remember which role you're playing tonight, won't you?" she drawled in liquid tones.
"I'm still able to keep it straight," he assured her softly as she slipped past him to enter the apartment. "I'm hoping you'll let the two aspects of my personality reunite before any lasting damage is done to my psyche!"
Dara eased the shawl from her shoulders and knew a moment's inexplicable pleasure as his hand reached out to assist her, touching her nape lightly in the process.
"I refuse to take the blame for this double life you're intent on leading," she informed him coolly, walking toward the kitchen to get the brandy.
"You caused it."
He followed her, coming to lean negligently in the doorway as she went about the small domestic busi-ness. She could feel his eyes on her every move and determinedly refused to let it affect her.
"Do you suppose there was someone around when Pandora opened her box? Someone who forever after kept telling her that everything that happened was her fault?" She sighed.
"Probably," Yale said idly. "But, then, she deserved it."
"A woman can't help her natural curiosity." Dara handed him the snifter and led the way back out into the cozy living room.
"Then she should learn to live with the consequences."
"What a pompous thing to say," she chided, sinking gracefully into a far corner of the sofa. The yellow skirts of her dress flared around her.
"Accountants sometimes seem a little pompous," he apologized, lowering himself casually across from her.
"Men sometimes seem a little pompous!" she corrected firmly.
"Whatever you say, ma'am," he drawled, his eyes laughing at her as he lifted his brandy glass.
"Now, there's a proper gentlemanly attitude. The lady is always right," Dara teased, inhaling the aromatic fumes trapped in the bell of the glass.
"Or else she's afraid," he added agreeably, sipping his drink.
"Afraid!"
Dara stared at him, the lighthearted teasing dying in her eyes.
"Umm," he confirmed as if he hadn't noticed her sudden irritation. "What else can I call it when, having opened the box, Pandora tries very hard to shut it again, even though she liked what she found inside?"
"Caution! Common sense! Intelligence!"
“All good qualities in a stockbroker, but when they appear in the woman behind the broker, one has to ask why."
"Yale, what exactly are you trying to say? Do you think you can talk me into bed by calling me a coward?" Dara's eyebrows drew together in warning.
"No, I'm only trying to understand your actions. The only way they make any sense is if we accept the fact that there's a measure of cowardice involved here.'' He smiled at her in a lofty way that irked Dara.
"You might be feeling a little cowardly yourself if you found yourself the victim of a...a two-pronged hunt!" she gritted, swallowing a larger part of the brandy.
"No, that won't serve as an excuse," he told her softly, leaning back against the cushions and stretching out his legs contentedly while he considered the problem. "You can cope with both pursuers if you wish." He turned his head to look at her searchingly. "Tell me the truth, honey: Why are you trying to back off from the relationship we began this past weekend?"
"I've told you, Yale. I want a normal, properly developed one. I never meant to wind up in bed with you that first night, and you know it. It got everything off on the wrong foot," she said, speaking into her snifter.
"Maybe things between us didn't start out following the acceptable pattern, but that doesn't mean they're not right..." he started earnestly, breaking off when she flung up her head, brilliant eyes almost pure green.
"I let myself get rushed into a whirlwind relationship once before, and it was a disaster! I'm not going to let it happen again, and that's final! This time it will go along a reasonable, natural path, or it won't go at all!"
For a few assessing seconds he watched her, studying the grim resolution in her set face.
"Your marriage?" he hazarded coolly. "Or this other man?"
"What other man?" she clipped.
"The one you told me about last night," he said dryly.
"Oh, him." She bent over her brandy, swirling it carefully in the bottom of the glass. "I was...was referring to my marriage," she confessed at last, surprised at herself. She had never told anyone about the fears which had haunted her since that early mistake.
"Tell me about it," he whispered persuasively, putting out a hand to trail soothing fingers down the length of her yellow sleeve. "You said he was charming, kind, that you had a lot in common, but that you never felt the click...."
"It was all a long time ago, Yale. I told you, I hardly ever think about it anymore. I'm not bitter, just cautious."
"He rushed you off your feet? Pushed you into marriage and then, six months later, admitted he'd changed his mind?"
"That's it in a nutshell." She shrugged. "Not his fault or anyone else's except, possibly, mine for not slowing things down and letting the relationship develop more before committing myself."
"Your fault!" he muttered harshly. "How can you blame yourself? My God, woman! He used you! Can't you see that? How old were you at the time?"
"He didn't... At least, he never meant... I was twenty-two," she finished lamely.
"And how old was he?"
"Thirty-one."
"That settles it," Yale bit out succinctly. "You were used. He was old enough to have more integrity than to sweep a young woman off her feet and marry her just to punish his ex-fiancée! And you've spent the last eight years somehow thinking the disaster was all your fault, haven't you?"
She drew a deep breath. "I had six months, Yale, and I couldn't make it work. It started going downhill from day one. If I'd demanded that we get to know each other better before the marriage, not let him talk me into it until we'd developed our relationship into something besides a romance, it all could have been avoided. I would have learned about the ex-fiancée and, perhaps, understood what he was going through...."
"That's garbage," Yale informed her with complete assurance. "And if I ever meet the guy, I'll flatten him. Not for divorcing you—I'm grateful to him for that—but for leaving you saddled with this ridiculous guilt and fear!"
"You're starting to sound like your other half!" she managed flippantly, wondering how she'd ever let the conversation veer off into this particular channel. It was a channel which had been closed for a long, long time.
"Sorry, but even we accountants have our hmits!'
"Yale," she began placatingly, not quite knowing what to say next.
"Sweetheart, I know what I'm talking about. I know what it means to be used. I know what it means to be married for an ulterior motive!"
"Did you love her very much?" Dara breathed, thinking of the young woman he had brought out of the hills with him.
"No," he said quietly, his eyes on the unicorn tapestry as if the truth were woven into it. "She was a pretty little thing and I was attracted to her. We'd known each other all our lives. I guess I felt some sort of responsibility to take her with me when I left the mountains. She wanted out as much as I did. I knew exactly how she was feeling and I couldn't leave her behind. We had everything in common, you'll have to grant us that," he said sardonically. "We knew everything there was to know about each other. And it wasn't enough to save the marriage."
There was a short silence.
"Is that why you mock my efforts to build a more solid relationship before we go back to bed?" she prodded in a surprisingly steady voice. "You don't have any faith in my approach?"
He shook his head slowly. "What I'm saying is that time and propinquity won't make much difference if two people simply aren't right for each other to begin with. As for the argument o
f getting to know each other well before the relationship moves to the bedroom, I don't have any problems with that—"
Dara interrupted with a quick, grateful smile. "Then you do understand something of what I'm trying to say!"
He eyed her consideringly. "I was about to say that in our case, we didn't violate your strictures the way you seem to think we did!"
"What are you talking about? We hardly knew each other a few hours before we found ourselves in that...that sleazy motel room!"
"Don't call it sleazy," he said with a lazy grin. "I have very pleasant thoughts of that motel room. What I meant was, even though we only spent a few hours together before we checked into that motel, we knew an awful lot about each other. You knew more about me by that time than you knew about your first husband when you married him!"
"Well, you didn't know much about me! The next morning you were convinced I'd gone to bed with you in order to secure your stock account!" she retorted icily. "And the next night you were willing to pay an even higher price! In both cases you acted as if you were involved in a business transaction!'
He set his snifter down on the glass table and reached to remove hers from her fingers. "Doesn't the fact that I was willing to pay any price you asked tell you something important?" he whispered, pulling her gently, coaxingly into his arms.
"It tells me you may not be a very good businessman!" she attempted bravely as his hands closed around her.
"Think what a fortune in commissions you'll make off me! I'll probably wind up buying any off-the-wall stock you pitch at me!"
He cut off any retort she might have made by sealing her mouth with his. The tip of his tongue probed persuasively at the gate of her fiercely clenched lips and his fingers began working their way suggestively down her spine to her waist.
"Oh, Yale," Dara murmured and heard his pleased masculine chuckle. An instant later he had gained the territory of her mouth. She gave in to the heated call of his body, nestling into the curve of his arm.
The intoxicating male scent of him was like a drug on her senses, senses that had already been seduced by an evening of tantalizing conversation and the undeniable excitement a woman feels in the presence of a man who wants her. She felt him free a hand to remove his glasses.
Reckless Passion Page 13
