by Laura Leone
Wayne’s eyes bulged.
Ross remembered those sweet moments with Shelley, hot kisses stolen in the shadows of a busy street—something he hadn’t done since he was a kid. What had she done to him? Suddenly there was a new depth between them, one he wasn’t used to. She had opened herself to him and was demanding the same of him. In the middle of what should have been a casual embrace in broad daylight, she had really unnerved him.
She was so warm and giving. She didn’t even know better than to give it all to a man like him. What exactly was she seeking in him? What if she didn’t find it? He’d known from the first that she was different, that he couldn’t keep her at arms’ length if he wanted her, that there would be nothing casual about their relationship or easy about their parting.
He genuinely liked every woman he’d ever been involved with. But he was realizing that a woman like Shelley would require more than a little liking. What if he couldn’t give more than that? What if he let her down? What if he hurt her?
“Language training with hypnosis must be very expensive,” Wayne ventured.
“Oh, once we cover the cost of the psychic it’s not too bad. All the equipment is being donated by a research institute.”
Come on, Tanner, who are you kidding? he thought with self-disgust. What he was really afraid of was that she would hurt him. What if he let her get close and she didn’t like what she saw? He’d always been in control of every relationship, and he knew instinctively that Shelley would make him toss control out the window in favor of honesty. What if he tried his best to give and take in an honest relationship, and she was disappointed in him? He winced inwardly at the thought. What if she was disillusioned with the man beneath the guise? What if she wound up despising him?
Come on, get a grip, be a man if it kills you, he chided himself silently. Surely he had faced more intimidating prospects in his life than this small, earthy woman with her tumbling copper hair. But, looking across the room at her, none came to mind.
“Psychic?” Wayne said weakly. “Do you need a psychic for hypnosis?”
“For channeling,” Ross said. “You know, in case the student spoke the target language in a past life. It makes things so much easier.”
Wayne’s jaw dropped. After a moment he narrowed his eyes and studied Ross with dawning suspicion. Ross smiled. Shelley was right; he was incorrigible.
Losing interest in the conversation, he glanced back at Shelley. Her spine had stiffened and she looked bemused. So Ute had broken the news, he thought. This might be a good chance to press his advantage with Shelley. However much he might want her—or want to run from her—personally, his attempt to hire her was still a good business decision. She really was the best choice. She would be a smashing success at Elite. He was sure that within a year she’d be promoted to a bigger school, perhaps to one of the ones he visited regularly for briefings and business meetings...
He walked toward her, wondering whether this would be his chance to clinch the deal. As he approached, Shelley looked up at him. Her expression changed from one of patient understanding to one of barely controlled fury. One look at those big gray eyes burning with anger and hurt told him he’d miscalculated badly this time. He cursed her impractical sense of loyalty, even as he acknowledged that it was part of what made her so special.
“I am sorry, Shelley,” Ute was saying. “You know it is not personal.”
“Of course, Ute. I understand,” Shelley said in such an even tone that Ross wondered whether anyone else realized how upset she was.
“But Ross has offered me the pay that Babel should be giving me after all the years I have worked for them.”
“I know. You have to choose the employer you feel is fairest,” Shelley answered calmly.
“You know I like working for you, Shelley. If only they weren’t so inflexible at headquarters...”
Shelley looked at Ross with ill-concealed hostility. “Congratulations, Ross. You’ve just hired an excellent German teacher.”
“If Babel won’t pay its employees what they deserve, it can’t reasonably expect to keep them,” Ross said with quiet force. His oblique reference to her own position only seemed to make her angrier.
“Have you also hired a Japanese teacher today?” she asked steadily, looking at the pretty, young Japanese woman who worked for her.
Hiroko shrugged, looking distressed. “I don’t know, Shelley. I don’t want to quit you, but he’s offering better pay. I’ve got to pay my tuition, my car, my rent... I just don’t know.”
“Me, I will stay with Shelley,” said Pablo Gutierrez. “You saved my neck, no?” he added with a grin.
Shelley smiled gratefully at him. Her other teachers shifted uncomfortably. Then she said to them all, “Look, I didn’t come here to make a scene. I wish I could convince you to stay at Babel. I’ll keep trying to talk New York into raising your pay. But... you have your own lives and pocketbooks to consider, and I certainly can’t blame you for being enticed by Elite’s promises of higher pay. Just come and talk to me first, okay? If only to say goodbye.”
Shelley turned away from the group. She felt a pressing need to get out of the room, away from all of them, away from Ross.
“Can we talk about this?” he said, following her.
“No!” she said sharply. “Just leave me alone.”
She saw Wayne embroiled in conversation with some woman and decided to leave without interrupting him. She had to get out of here. She needed time to regroup. It was the end of a long day, and she was too overworked to cope rationally with this right now.
She went directly to the coat closet and rifled through it, looking for the beige jacket she’d hung up upon arriving. As she ripped it off the hanger, strong hands took it away from her. She looked up into Ross’ serious gaze.
“Will you come into my office and talk privately with me?”
“So you can justify this with your verbal acrobatics?”
“You’re being—”
“Don’t you dare tell me I’m being unreasonable,” she snapped.
“Your teachers are smart enough—”
“I am not an underpaid part-time employee just passing through, so don’t equate me with them. I’m the director. I’m the captain of the ship that you’re sinking, and I do not want to talk again about why I should desert it to come to work for the guy who’s masterminding this mess!” She tried to yank her coat away from him.
He held it open for her, a frown creasing his brow as she thrust her arms inside the sleeves and pulled away from him. “What has Babel ever done to make you so damn loyal?”
“How can you talk about it that way? As if there’s something wrong with my sticking with it?” she retorted.
“To the bitter and inevitable end,” he snapped.
“Spoken like a man who has never seen anything through to the end,” Shelley said as a parting shot, and stormed out the door.
As the door swung shut behind her, something uncontrollable escaped inside of Ross. He didn’t know whether it was caused by the sight of her walking out of his office—and probably out of his life—for good, or a personal reaction to the insult she’d just flung in his face. Or even a simple desire to comfort her for what he inevitably had to do to her business.
All he knew was he couldn’t let her get away that easily. Not after all the sleep he’d lost over her. Not after all the questions she’d raised in his mind. Not after all the desire she’d stirred in his body. He brusquely told his bemused secretary to lock up when she left and walked out of his own party.
Shelley hadn’t even reached the street corner yet when she realized she wasn’t alone. She glanced behind her in time to see Ross catch up with her just as she stopped to wait for the light. She glared at him in exasperation.
“You can’t take a hint, can you? You can’t even take a rude dismissal! Is the word ‘no’ anywhere in your vocabulary? In any language?” she raged, throwing her arms up.
“In twenty-seven languages,
actually.”
“Don’t start with me!”
“It’s too late, we’ve already started. This is something I’m going to see through to the end,” he said grimly.
She looked at him and suddenly felt contrite. “I’m sorry I said that,” she said in a much softer voice. “It was an inexcusably personal criticism based on... on a written report put together by strangers.”
Her anger about his trying to hire her, her regret for hurting him, and the wary glow in her gray eyes reached out to Ross and gave him a surge of cocky confidence. He wasn’t the only one who was wary of what was happening between them. He suddenly believed everything would be all right.
“Have dinner with me,” he urged.
“Stay away from me,” Shelley said as she stepped off the curb.
“Shelley!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her backward just before she was flattened by rush-hour traffic. “Are the words ‘don’t walk’ anywhere in your vocabulary?”
“Don’t you have a party to host?”
“It’s almost over. Besides, I’ve accomplished everything I wanted to get done today. Except for getting through to you.”
“And you won’t accomplish that,” she said as the light changed. She stepped off the curb and walked as fast as she could.
“What are we doing this evening?” he asked, easily keeping pace with her.
“We are not doing anything. I am going to pamper myself to make up for all the stress I’ve been under since you came to town.”
“Pamper? How?” He eyed her figure appreciatively. “I could give you a rubdown.”
“Go away,” she said, enunciating the words clearly. “Va t’en. Split. Vai via. Am-scray. Be gone with you.”
“No. Nein. Non. Lo. Negative. Forget it. No way, baby.”
She stared at him stonily. “I have reached a new depth of sympathy for your parents,” she said at last.
He gave her a smoldering look. “Has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”
“Urrgh,” Shelley said and turned to enter the clothing boutique they were standing near. Unperturbed, Ross followed her inside.
He pursued her to a rack of dreary tan skirts. He frowned. He couldn’t, in good conscience, let her waste her hard-earned money on something that ugly.
“Not that you’ve asked, or even given me the benefit of the doubt,” he said conversationally as Shelley looked through a row of boring white pullovers, “but I didn’t purposely steal Ute away from you. She came to see me earlier this week to apply for a job. Of course, we talked about her circumstances. She likes you and is unhappy about leaving, but she’s right, Shelley. Babel should pay her more.”
“Until you came, Chuck’s teachers made less than my teachers. Don’t try to pretend to me that Elite has a higher moral sense than my bosses. You’re just raising everyone’s pay here because it’s expedient.” She picked up a brown dress that was much too long for a woman of her petite size.
“That’s true,” he admitted. “But you can hardly blame the teachers for jumping on the bandwagon. They’ve got to eat. And I didn’t invite the other teachers to the open house today. Ute did.”
“But you went ahead and told them how much you’d pay them.”
“Of course I did. That’s what they came to find out. Be reasonable, Shelley.”
“Don’t say that to me again. Anyhow the working day is over. I don’t have to be reasonable or polite or understanding if I don’t feel like it. And I definitely don’t!”
“I’ll watch my step.”
“See that you do.” Shelley held up a sensible tweed skirt that would do nothing for her lovely coloring or the feminine swell of her hips. Ross couldn’t stand it anymore.
“You’re not going to try that on, are you?” he demanded.
“Well... yes,” she said, surprised by his exasperated tone.
“Absolutely not,” Ross said, taking the skirt away from her.
“What are you doing?”
“Shelley, Shelley...” He shook his head, a pained expression on his face.
“What?” Her eyes narrowed. She wondered whether he was up to something again.
“Didn’t anyone ever explain these things to you?”
“What things?”
“Look,” he said, dragging her in front of a mirror. “Look and tell me what you see.”
“Ross, how much champagne did you have?”
He held her still and looked at her reflection with her. “Pale skin. Gray eyes. Copper hair, lots of it. Short stature.”
“Petite,” she amended.
“Of course, forgive me. Petite,” he said. “And beautifully rounded.”
“Is that a wisecrack?”
“With all this good raw material, why smother it in drab clothes that do nothing for you?”
“You have some nerve—”
“Shelley, it would be immoral of me to let you buy any of the things you’ve been looking at since we walked in here.”
“You have no business...” She looked at him, suddenly remembering that his mother was French. He’d probably been around when his mom was teaching his two sisters these things. French women were always the best dressers. Shelley decided she’d be foolish to let this opportunity slip by. As casually as she could, she said, “What would you suggest?”
He grinned. Shelley scowled. He’d probably be insufferable about this.
“I thought you’d never ask,” he said.
“Well?” she prodded.
“Let’s see...” He took her hand and looked around the store. He led her to several more racks of clothing, obviously seeing nothing that satisfied him. Shelley tried to look at a couple of sturdy, simple items that had been marked down. “Absolutely not,” Ross said inflexibly.
Finally he discovered something: a blue-gray cashmere dress with a narrow belt and wide neckline.
“I can’t wear this, Ross,” she protested. “It has no shape.”
“Can it possibly have escaped your notice all these years that you have plenty of shape? You look like my adolescent fantasies.”
“I don’t think—”
“And there’s no point in hiding the best curves in town under tweed skirts and starched blouses.”
She agreed to try the dress on, but only because she realized that a number of saleswomen and customers were listening with interest to Ross’ comments about her body. He insisted she come out of the dressing room to show him how the dress looked, and he gloated when Shelley admitted that it was the best she’d looked in years. The blue-gray color highlighted her eyes better than make-up and brought out the darker red shades in her hair. The soft cashmere clung to every line and curve, making her look somehow slimmer and shapelier at the same time, and the style made her look just a fraction taller.
She studied the neckline with a thoughtful frown. Although it emphasized her delicate collarbones, there was certainly nothing immodest or suggestive about it. She could easily wear this dress to work.
“If the shop owner had seen that dress on you first, she’d be charging twice the price,” Ross told her. His eyes gleamed with an admiration that made Shelley flush.
“Even at this price it’s a bit steep for me.” She took one more look in the mirror. “But I have to have it.” She glanced at him hesitantly. “Have you... uh... seen anything else I might want to try on?”
He smiled knowingly and handed her three more items he’d noticed while waiting for her to change. She tried each one on and dutifully came out of the dressing room each time to get his opinion. He was aware that everyone in the shop had grown interested in their quest by now, but it didn’t bother him. He was enjoying himself, and he thought it was about time Shelley started realizing how beautiful she was.
“Why did you pick this one? I can’t wear something like this,” Shelley insisted as she stepped out of the dressing room wearing the last of the clothes he’d selected for her.
Ross caught his breath. Even he hadn’t realized
what she would do for the simple little black silk dress. She had such a strong effect on him.
“You look beautiful.” He heard the husky rasp of his own voice. Shelley looked at him curiously. What was there about this woman that always melted his practiced savoir faire? Her plump breasts pushed upward against the low-cut dress, her smooth, firm flesh calling forth fantasies he couldn’t seem to control. He saw himself slipping the spaghetti straps off her gleaming white shoulders, saw himself pulling the short skirt up over her hips to touch and explore and—
“Are you listening to me?” she prodded.
“Sorry, what?” he asked, uncomfortably aware of the sudden snugness of his trousers. The tailor hadn’t taken Shelley Baird into account when he’d made them, Ross thought ruefully. Slow down, you can’t throw her to the floor and ravish her here. That would be a definite faux pas.
“I said it’s lovely, Ross, but I haven’t got any use for a dress like this.”
“We’ll find a use for it,” he assured her, his fantasies bursting back to life despite his best efforts to quell them. Shelley, what have I been wary about? It’s going to be so damn good between us.
“Take it, honey,” said one of the other customers. “Your man knows what he’s talking about. I only wish I could look half as good as you do in that dress.”
“Oh. Thank you,” Shelley said weakly. Her man? To avoid looking at Ross, she looked in the mirror again. That clinched it. So what if she couldn’t afford it? So what if she’d probably never have a chance to wear it? It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever worn, and she was here to pamper herself. Feeling full of firm and decadent resolve, she said, “Yes, I’ll take it.”
“Thank you,” said Ross.
She glanced up at him. Her blood raced through her veins and she felt her face flush. She suddenly knew why he’d chosen this dress, knew what plans he had for her in it. It was written all over his face, overwhelming his usually controlled features. His look of raw desire burned through her, thrilling her. She felt a sudden contraction deep inside her most secret places. A moist throbbing started within her, a persistent ache that only he could reach. And he could reach it only by—
