by Janet Dailey
Her heart was pounding against her ribs like a jackhammer when Brandt re-entered the room with their coats in his arms. She wished desperately that she could steal a bit of his calmness, but then he wasn't affected by her the way she was by him. No man had ever made her senses come alive the way Brandt did.
Joan felt the need to speak, but the impulse died in her throat as Brandt glanced at her and smiled, a lazy smile that seemed to understand her schoolgirl apprehensions. She chided herself for worrying. It was all one-sided.
Rising to her feet, she helped him drape the coats over the side chairs so the inner linings would be exposed to the heat. When that was completed, she clasped her hands together, holding them above the heater as if they were cold.
"I almost wish we'd decided to use your office today so at least the room would be warm." Her mouth curved weakly into a smile.
"If the sofa wasn't so heavy and cumbersome, I'd move it in here." Brandt's gaze was centered on the middle point between her shoulderblades. She could sense it as surely as if she had eyes in the back of her head. "In a few minutes", he continued in that same quiet, assuring voice, "I'll take the heater in my office and get the worst of the chill off the room."
If there had been a clock in the room, Joan didn't think its ticking could have drowned out the sound of her heartbeat. Last night there hadn't been any real opportunity to dwell on the thought of sleeping with Brandt. There had been no premeditation involved. Now, knowing that within a few minutes she would be walking into the office, slipping off her shoes and lying down on the sofa to wait for Brandt to stretch his form beside her, she feared she would betray her intense awareness of him.
She started visibly when Brandt stepped forward to remove the coats from the chairs. Except for a darting glance, he made no comment as he wrapped the jackets together to retain their heat. Behind the veil of her lashes, she watched him pick up the heater and carry it into his office.
When he hadn't returned in a few minutes, Joan knew she couldn't wait any longer. Her nerves were already scraped and raw. Extinguishing all but one candle, she draped the coats over her arm and picked up the remaining lit candle.
"Leave the door open." Brandt said, not even glancing up when she entered the room.
He was bending over the heater and she could only guess that he was turning it off. She sat the candle on the table beside the sofa, not letting her gaze be pulled by the magnetic attraction of his presence. The air in the room was still decidedly brisk, but much warmer than it had been.
"I'll go and shut the window in your office while you get ready." His voice came from the direction of the open door.
"Okay," acknowledged Joan, since there seemed to be a necessity for a reply to his clipped statement.
Taking up her position along the back of the sofa, she arranged the coat over her legs and was trying to keep an ample amount of the top coat available for Brandt when he softly entered the office. There was an electric quality about the air, like the charged moments before a thunderstorm.
The candle was blown out, draping the room in darkness. For a moment Joan was completely blinded by the lack of light. Then there was the supple controlled movement as Brandt's weight was lowered on to the cushions. Instinctively she held her breath, bracing herself for the contact with his hard form. There was no hesitation in the way he familiarly settled himself beside her, adjusting the curves of her body to fit his. Her breathing, when it returned, came in fitful spasms of blissful pain at being so near and forcing herself not to reveal the effect he had on her.
"Comfortable?" he asked with a deep husky quality to his voice that caressingly moved the air near her face.
"Yes," Joan breathed with difficulty.
"It's warmer than last night." The light tone was supposed to relax her.
"Yes," she answered again, but it was the heat in her cheeks and neck that was causing her the most discomfort. A fire seemed to have been kindled somewhere in her mid-section.
"Goodnight, Joan," Brandt said at last.
"Goodnight … Brandt." She couldn't help hesitating over his name. Yet, in the circumstances, it seemed ludicrous to refer to him as Mr. Lyon.
Closing her eyes, she listened to and felt the steady rise and fall of his chest. Her nose was intoxicated by the strange mingling of tobacco smoke, spicy after-shave lotion and his heady masculine scent. She prayed for sleep to deaden her senses. Her muscles ached from trying to hold herself away from him, or at least not to relax against him.
His right arm was resting lightly over her waist. Unbidden the thought came to her, wondering what it would be like to be the recipient of his caresses. A quicksilver shudder of delight danced over her skin to her shoulders.
"Are you cold?" Brandt inquired softly.
Automatically her head moved in the direction of his voice, freezing abruptly when her cheek encountered his mouth and chin. "A little," she lied, unable to explain it any other way.
He edged the rest of his body closer, scorching her skin through the material of her clothes. There didn't seem any part of him that wasn't touching her and filling her with dangerous longings. Her heart stopped, then started again with a swift rush.
"Is that better?" The movement of his mouth against her cheek, so very close to the corner of her mouth, seemed to paralyze her.
The affirmative "yes" was choked from her parched throat.
"What's the matter?" The soft guarded tone added to her confusion.
Opening her darkening eyes, Joan tried uselessly to focus them on the face next to her. "Nothing," she denied, but in a weak, faltering voice.
In an effort to free herself from the disturbing closeness of his mouth, she drew her head back into the corner of the sofa, keeping her face towards him. His right hand left her waist to brush the tangle of amber from her cheek.
"You're trembling," he accused gently.
"Please, it's nothing," she whispered. Tears of humiliation burned her eyes.
"I don't accept that, Joan," he said flatly.
"Please. Let's just go to sleep, Brandt," she insisted with a throbbing quiver in her voice.
"Not until you tell me what's wrong."
The firmness of his low voice sent a bubble of hysteria into her throat to lodge there. How could she possibly tell him she wanted him to make love to her, to feel the caress of his hands and the warmth of his lips?
"Brandt." The aching sigh of his name was more revealing than she realized.
The sudden tenseness of his muscles was communicated immediately to her. In the darkness she could only sense the slow movement of the head beside her as it came closer. Her lips trembled at the light touch of his mouth, against them, feather light, not a kiss but a hesitant caress.
When his mouth moved an inch away, it was the moment to rebuff his advance. But she couldn't. She had fought so long against his attraction that she simply didn't have the willpower to deny it any longer.
His hand curved around the side of her neck, his fingers curling into her hair as he raised her head the fraction of an inch that was needed to meet his descending mouth. There was a bursting wave of heat at the immediate possession of his kiss, a dazzling unleashing of explosions.
As his body weight shifted above her, Joan slipped her arms around his waist, spreading her fingers over the taut muscles of his back. His mastery and sensuous passion gave him unlimited power and she moaned softly in surrender as the command of his mouth parted her lips. She was a captive, a willing slave to his wishes, and Brandt rewarded her by letting her see the dizzying heights.
But it wasn't only with her lips that he demanded a response. The gentle exploratory caress of his hands was deliberately kindling more flames in the rest of her body, slowly building to a crescendo that would match the urgency of his hunger. Yet his very gentleness, his sureness persuaded her to sweep aside any fear.
When his fingers undid the last button of her blouse and pushed the material aside, Joan could only sigh with gratification at the to
uch of his hand on the rounded curve of her breast. The heady gloriousness, the supreme sense of rightness at what was happening, banished all modesty. The whole universe could have collapsed at that moment and she would not have cared as long as she was in Brandt's strong arms.
As his mouth ravaged the hollow of her throat, beginning a slow meandering trail to the shadowy cleft between her breasts, a bursting light filled the room. For a moment, Joan thought she had only imagined the sudden illumination of light on her closed eyes. Then the cessation of Brandt's caress prompted her to open her eyes. The fluorescent overhead lights were on!
His head remained buried in her neck for an instant longer. Then he cursed briefly beneath his breath and pushed himself upright and away from her. She stared at him in tortured stillness, watching him as he sat on the edge of the sofa, his breathing ragged and uneven, raking his hands through his brown hair before using them to cover his face.
"That's as effective as the cold light of day!"
The bitterly spoken words drew a silent gasp of dismay from Joan. Brandt felt nothing but regret. The desire had been of the moment only, and intense shame washed over her. Foolishly she had thought his passion had been sparked by more than just lust.
Hot tears of humiliation scalded her cheeks as she fumbled beneath her coat with the buttons of her blouse, her skin still betrayingly tingling from the intimate caresses of his hands on her nakedness.
"Joan, I'm sorry." His low voice rumbled from some deep, dark pit. "You must think I'm —"
"Please don't apologize!" She lashed out sharply, knowing she couldn't bear to be degraded any further. "It really isn't necessary!"
Partially covered, sufficient for modesty's sake, she pushed herself upright on the sofa, driven by an overwhelming need to run before the heat in her cheeks was drowned by a gulf of tears. Before she could complete the movement that would bring her to her feet, Brandt's arm was pinioning her against the sofa, his fingers digging roughly into the flesh of her arm.
"You aren't going anywhere!" Blue fires blazed in his eyes, their flames licking over her startled face and the lips warm and swollen by his kisses. "Not until we talk this over."
The hard set of his features indicated the tight hold he had on his temper and emotions. The sight of his masculinity carved face could still raise havoc with her senses, but she kept her expression cold and proud.
"There isn't anything to talk about," she stated, refusing to flinch under his painful grip.
"You damn well know there is!" It was spoken softly, almost under his breath.
"Please." But the polite word was not spoken as a plea as she reached up to push his hand away from her arm. "You're putting too much importance on what happened."
"What nearly happened, you mean," Brandt reminded her with a cutting edge to his tongue.
In spite of herself, color stained her cheeks in admission and she quickly averted her head, letting her tousled hair fall forward to cover her face.
"But it didn't happen," she added firmly. "We're both normal, healthy human beings who happen to be members of the opposite sex," she argued logically, trying to regain some measure of her own self-respect. "Propinquity and an unusual situation simply prompted us to do things we wouldn't have done in normal circumstances."
"Do you believe that?" His eyes narrowed as he withdrew his arm.
"Of course I do." It was partially true, Joan believed, on Brandt's part, but not on hers.
"I never met anyone as coldly analytical as you are." Brandt shook his head grimly, blue sapphire chips gleaming at her angrily before they sliced away and he rolled to his feet. "You just turn your emotions on and off at will, don't you?"
Sheer nerve was the only thing keeping Joan from turning into a blubbering mass of tears. "Don't you, Mr. Lyon?" she challenged. The furnace had kicked on, sending warm draughts of air shooting through the room. "You hired me because I was efficient, practical and not subject to panic at the unforeseen. Are you about to fire me for the same reasons?"
She almost wished he would. In fact she prayed that he would, so she wouldn't have to face him day after day, remembering always those moments when he had made love to her.
"No, Miss Somers." There was sarcastic inflection on the impersonal term of address as Brandt remained turned away from her. "I am not going to fire you."
The moment of immobility had passed and his long strides ate up the distance between himself and the connecting door. Joan intuitively knew he was ending the conversation to assume his former sleeping place in the chair in her office. The bitter forces of revenge made her lash out at him one more time.
"Would you turn off the light when you leave? I want to get some sleep." It was a request that bordered on a command.
Brandt halted stiffly by the door before reaching out to viciously flick off the light switch. Then the door was jerked open and he was in her office, violently slamming the door behind him.
Darkness enveloped the room. Joan wanted to curl up in the black shroud and die. Instead she huddled deeper into her coat, letting the tears of misery, shame and heartbreak drench her face. The silent release could not assuage the terrible ache. Nothing could.
Neither of them was truly to blame. Both had played an equal role for different reasons. Yet Brandt's cardinal rule had been broken. The line between his business and personal life had been crossed. The involvement of the two had occurred and it wouldn't be forgotten.
Joan couldn't forget. She loved him. Foolishly, impractically, futilely, she loved him.
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Chapter Five
THE clouds outside were grey, not the slate-grey that held snow, but the oyster-grey of high overcast. The wind had subsided to a baby's breath that sent the top snowflakes dancing and swirling over the drifts piled by the harsh north wind.
The shimmering gold of Joan's long hair was subdued to a dull shade by its return to the severe bun at the nape of her neck. Her glasses were set primly on the bridge of her nose, more to conceal the telltale redness of tears and the blue shadows of sleeplessness than to improve her vision.
A soapy wash in warm water had restored much of her courage, but not a sufficient amount to allow her to meet Brandt's face squarely when she walked into her office from the outer corridor. Fortunately she didn't have to as his gaze flicked briefly over her with blue remoteness.
"The snowploughs are out clearing the streets," Brandt told her, shrugging into his heavy sheepskin jacket. "I'm going to shovel the car free."
An acknowledgement of some type seemed necessary, so Joan issued a crisp "All right." As she walked towards her desk, he walked into the hallway.
Only yesterday morning, Brandt had thoughtfully provided breakfast and persuaded her to leave her hair down and curling about her shoulders. His teasing cajolery and attentiveness were gone and Joan wanted to cry at the loss. But tears wouldn't ease the desolation, as had been proved last night. The fault was hers. She should not have let his virile masculinity swamp her common sense. She had known of her feelings towards him and should have guarded more completely against him, but his warm, friendly attitude had melted her defenses.
Brandt had said he wasn't going to fire her. But wouldn't it be best for her to hand in her resignation? Or would it be construed as an admission on her part that what had happened had gone deeper than what she had led him to believe? The answer seemed to lie in whether she had the strength to meet him in the daily routine of the office without letting him discover the depth of her emotion. After a few months, she could resign in favor of a better job offer somewhere. It would be suicide to stay working for him forever, knowing the way she felt.
"Damn!" she whispered, clenching her hands into tight fists on the desk top. The problem would be in surviving those pride-saving weeks.
Then she got hold of herself. These constant recriminations over her actions had to stop. To keep reliving those painful moments after the electricity had been restored was serving no purpose. S
he had no idea how long Brandt would be gone, but she had to occupy her mind with something other than thoughts of him. She pulled the plastic cover off the typewriter and began typing the letters Brandt had dictated the first night. She was barely through the third letter when he walked into the office.
"Are you ready?" His quiet, calm voice stopped her fingers for a split second before they continued their flight across the keys.
"I'll be finished in a moment," she replied, not letting her gaze stray from the shorthand pad.
When the letter was finished and it and the carbon copy were placed with the other two, Brandt was beside the desk, handing her the fun-fur coat that had been in his office. Her already wounded nerves smarted at his eagerness to be rid of her, but a swift glance at his rugged, aquiline face revealed none of the impatience she had believed she would see. He stood silently by as she put the coat on, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his own jacket, a withdrawn expression in his eyes.
He ushered her without haste to his car parked in front of the building, its motor still running. The coldly invigorating air made the warm interior seem stifling as Joan settled into the passenger seat.
"Where do you live?" Brandt slipped the car into gear and turned into the street.
Joan gave him the directions and leaned back in the seat. Her side vision gave her an unobstructed view of his hawklike profile, but she kept her gaze firmly to the front. In other circumstances, she might have enjoyed the white purity of the landscape that had transformed the city streets into a wintry wonderland. The snow was firmly packed in thin layers on patches of the street, making the driving still slightly treacherous in spite of the considerable efforts of the snowplough. The lean hands on the wheel were competent and experienced and the nearly two miles to Joan's apartment were without mishap.
The pavement leading to the front entrance of the old brick structure had not been cleared of snow. The untouched white drifts indicated that no one had as yet ventured out on this grey morning. Pushing open the car door, Joan silently wished that some premonition last Friday had warned her to wear snowboots. Wading through those drifts would not be pleasant.
