“I see… well, that’s wonderful,” she mumbled stupidly. Brilliant, simply brilliant, Brenna! she thought, nervously clutching the delicate crystal between her palms.
“May I come in?” Garrett finally asked when it became apparent she wasn’t going to extend the invitation on her own.
“Yes, of course you can come in,” she replied testily, suddenly feeling very foolish indeed.
He purposely stepped by her, his tall form dwarfing the entranceway as he looked around with undisguised curiosity. “Your home is very—feminine,” he observed.
“Thank you.” Her response was polite, if a bit stilted. She wasn’t certain he’d meant it as a compliment. “I’ve just finished redecorating the entire house, as a matter of fact. Would you care for a glass of Chablis?” she asked as she ushered him into the living room.
“Yes, I would,” he replied in a loud voice, trying to make himself heard over the music blaring from the next room.
“Please make yourself comfortable,” Brenna heard herself shout at him. “I’ll be right back.”
Then she turned and practically ran from the room, snapping the radio off on her way to the kitchen. Taking another wineglass from the cupboard, she quickly filled it with pale, light Chablis, spilling half of it in the process. Good Lord, she had to get a grip on herself! There was no reason for her hands to be shaking, or for her heart to be beating like a big bass drum. She was reacting like an overanxious schoolgirl faced with her first date.
Planting a civil smile on her face, Brenna made her entrance into the living room with what she hoped was casual, yet dignified grace. She placed the glass of wine on the soft-edge coffee table in front of Garrett and settled herself in the opposite corner of the sofa.
“So,” she began with a sociable air, tucking the caftan around her feet, “how was your trip?”
“Interesting, informative, profitable and tiring,” Garrett told her.
“All of that?” she murmured with dry amusement, regarding him over the gold-trimmed edge of her glass. “You do look tired,” she added, failing to mention he also looked outrageously handsome. The blue shirt and casual dress slacks he wore only served to emphasize his dark, intense masculinity.
“A mild case of jet lag,” he conceded, raising the wineglass to his lips. “I watched the sun come up in Tokyo this morning and again somewhere over the Pacific. It makes for a long day.”
“I’ve never traveled across the international date line,” Brenna said conversationally. “In fact, I’ve never been west of L.A. We did most of our vacationing in the Caribbean and Europe.”
“Let me tell you, the Atlantic Ocean is a mere puddle compared to the Pacific,” Garrett informed her as he leaned back against the lavender blue cushions.
“Yes, I’m sure it is.”
At the sound of her cool, half-amused words, Garrett blushed—if the slight tinge of color spreading from the column of his tanned neck up to his face could be termed a blush, that is.
He pushed himself up and said almost cordially, “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Not in the least,” she assured him, watching the graceful ease with which he extracted a cigarette from the pack and lit it.
“May I have an ashtray?” he asked finally, having scanned the room without locating one.
“Of course,” she sniffed, leaning over to push an ashtray from her end of the coffee table to his. It was a distance of no more than a few inches.
Garrett stared down at the piece of dainty porcelain for a moment and then put his head back, laughing. “You call that an ashtray?”
Brenna gritted her teeth as she got to her feet. “Let me see if I can’t find you something a little bigger, then.” Say, something about the size of the unmitigated gall of the man, she told herself, stalking off to the kitchen.
She stood in the middle of the tiled floor for a minute, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her lip. Now, where in the devil had she put that plastic monstrosity from her last patio party? Dropping to her knees, Brenna began to rummage among the odds and ends she kept under the kitchen sink. Surely it had to be there somewhere!
“What in the hell are you doing down there?” Garrett boomed, his tall form hovering over her like a dark cloud on a rainy day.
“I’m looking for an ashtray,” she shot back without glancing up at him. “I know there has to be one here somewhere.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Brenna, never mind!” He reached down and grabbed her by both arms, hauling her to her feet.
“But I know I have a bigger ashtray somewhere in the house,” she wailed, unconsciously toying with the buttons on the front of his shirt.
“It doesn’t matter, honey,” Garrett insisted, pulling her closer. “I tell you it doesn’t matter. I don’t give a damn about the ashtray or the wine or the polite conversation we’ve been having in your living room. Don’t you understand?” he grated fiercely. “I haven’t seen you in a week, and I’ve been going out of my mind the whole time!”
The man was mad, utterly and certifiably mad, Brenna decided. Still, his words sent a rather pleasant chill racing down her spine.
“It hasn’t been a whole week,” she whispered, tossing her head to one side as she at last dared to look up at him. “It’s only been six days and a few odd minutes.”
For a moment Garrett seemed to be on the verge of losing his composure. “Don’t make a joke out of it, Brenna,” he warned her, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her upper arms.
“I wasn’t,” she quickly relented, surprised at the bitterness in his voice. “Not really. It’s just that sometimes you frighten me,” she acknowledged quietly.
“I assure you, it’s mutual.” He spoke quickly, almost harshly.
“Then what are we going to do?” She swallowed, her heart slamming against her chest.
“I don’t know about you, honey, but I intend to kiss you until you can’t think straight,” Garrett admitted truthfully, his dark eyes engaging hers.
“And from there?”
“And from there I guess we’ll have to improvise. Now shut up and kiss me, Brenna,” he growled close to her ear, his arms encircling her waist. “I’ve waited a whole week to feel your sweet mouth melting under mine like honey in the hot sun.”
Then his mouth was on hers. It was a kiss born of his hunger, of his need for her. A kiss that created that selfsame hunger and need in Brenna.
She found herself kissing him back without reserve, wanting, needing, to know the excitement only he could give her.
Was it only last weekend she’d told this man she never wanted to see him again? What a fool she’d been! Her own response made a mockery of that claim.
Yet, he was still a stranger to her. There wasn’t any way of getting around that fact. The past week hadn’t changed anything. She knew no more about this man now than she had then.
“Brenna, hold me, kiss me as if we had only this night together,” Garrett softly commanded, his teeth taking stinging little bites of her mouth, his tongue seeking to invade its moist recesses.
Only this night? No! she silently shrieked. No! For once she let him into her life—even for one night—how could she bear to let him go again? And he would go, sooner or later, leaving her alone with a terrible emptiness that nothing could fill. It would be so easy for her to become addicted to his kisses, to his caresses. Yes, it would be so easy and so very dangerous.
The thought sent a chill coursing down Brenna’s spine. She felt herself stiffen in Garrett’s embrace, retreating before the onslaught of his passion.
“Garrett, please …” She tried reasoning with him, but the words caught in her throat.
“Please what? Please kiss me, Garrett? Please touch me, Garrett?” he murmured into the warmth of her mouth.
“No, please stop! I can’t think straight when you do that!” she cried out, panic-stricken.
“I thought that was the whole idea,” he muttered a little thickly, raising his head.
�
�We both know nothing has changed,” she charged, her face white with distress. “There’s so much we don’t know about each other. This past week hasn’t changed that for either of us.”
He made an exasperated sound. “You’re bound and determined to make this as difficult as you can, aren’t you?”
“I’m not trying to be difficult,” she countered, refusing to be put on the defensive. “But I do think we should get to know each other better.”
“Lady, that’s exactly what I had in mind,” he murmured, pressing his lips to the soft, vulnerable spot beneath her ear, his hands spanning her rib cage.
“I don’t mean in that way,” Brenna got out faintly, fighting to regain some measure of control over herself and the situation.
“Somehow I was afraid you were going to say that.” Garrett drawled, reluctantly disengaging himself. “So you want us to get to know each other better.” He seemed to be giving it some thought. “What did you have in mind?”
“Now you’re the one who’s making a joke out of it,#x201D; she said accusingly. “I’m perfectly serious about this, Garrett.”
“So am I, honey. If you want to play twenty questions, then we’ll play twenty questions. What do you want to know about me?”
Brenna took a steadying breath. It was almost impossible to know where to start. There were so many things she wanted to learn about him. “All right. What did you do after you were graduated from high school?”
“Good Lord, you are serious!” He leaned back against the kitchen counter and stared down at her, shaking his head with disbelief.
She fixed him with large, reproachful eyes. “Did you doubt for even a moment that I was?”
“All right, Brenna. If you need to talk, then we’ll talk,” he conceded wearily. “But if I’m going to be faced with an interrogation at this time of the night, I could sure use a drink.”
“Do you want another glass of Chablis?” she offered.
“I was thinking of something a little stronger, like a straight shot of Scotch on the rocks,” he replied.
“Then you’re in luck,” she informed him with a triumphant smile, opening the cabinet door above her head. “I just happen to have a brand-new fifth of Scotch on hand.”
“That should do for a start,” he muttered dryly, digging in his shirt pocket for another cigertte.
“You go ahead and make yourself at home,” she added, making a gesture toward the other room. “I’ll join you in a minute.”
“On second thought—” Garrett paused in the doorway and looked back at her—“make that a double Scotch on the rocks. I have a strange feeling I’m going to need it.”
“Now, where were we?” Brenna said briskly, curling up on the sofa a minute later and turning to the man beside her. “That’s right. You were about to tell me what you did after graduating from ole Mansfield High.”
“Ah, honey, do we really have to go through all of this tonight?” he purred seductively, tracing a random pattern along her arm with his finger, watching with satisfaction as he left a trail of goose bumps behind on her flesh. “Couldn’t I just send you a complete resumé in the morning?”
She threw him a withering glance. “Talk!”
He stared at the glass in his hand for a minute and then took a drink. “What did I do after high school?”
“Take your time,” Brenna interposed in a low, mocking tone. “We have all night if necessary.”
For a moment Garrett hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders. “The summer after we were graduated, I did what every other cocky kid with more guts than brains did. I joined the Marines.”
“And?” she prompted, biting her lip.
“And I ended up celebrating my nineteenth birthday on top of some damned stinking hill in ’Nam, fighting off malaria and dysentery and cockroaches the size of a man’s hand.” He raised the glass of Scotch to his lips and downed a good-sized gulp. “Needless to say, it wasn’t much of a birthday.”
“Dear God,” Brenna groaned. “Were you hurt?”
“I wasn’t physically wounded, if that’s what you mean,” he finally told her with an unmistakable tone of bitterness in his voice. “I was one of the lucky ones. I came back alive and in one piece.”
Something told her this wasn’t the time to ask him about the ones who hadn’t come back. That time would only come if and when he was ready to talk about it.
“Did you stay in the military after Vietnam?” she asked instead.
“For a while. You see, the Marines gave me something I’d never had before—a belief in myself as an intelligent human being. The one good thing that came out of my tour of duty in ’Nam was the discovery that I had a real facility for languages. I didn’t realize it at first, but apparently not every soldier picked up the local dialects the way I did For some reason, languages come easily for me.” Garrett put his head back, rubbing a hand across his eyes in a gesture of weariness. “Anyway, after I was discharged from the Marines I decided to get an education; and I enrolled in one of the few colleges that would take me.” He opened his eyes a fraction and looked at her with a wry smile on his face. “Can you imagine me in college? I barely made it through Mansfield High School.”
“Strange as it may seem, I think I can,” Brenna said, giving him her full attention.
“Well, I’ll tell you, it wasn’t easy, honey. I worked my butt off trying to make up for all the time I’d lost. I even managed to get my business degree in three years instead of the usual four by going summers,” he told her, rousing long enough to place his empty glass on the coffee table in front of him. “I got a job offer in Chicago after graduation and you know the rest of the story, more or less.” He sat back, his eyes closing again the instant his head hit the cushioned sofa.
“More or less,” Brenna agreed in a gentle tone. She knew now there would be other times, other opportunities to find out all the details. But there was one question she’d been wanting the answer to ever since that night at the country club. This seemed to be the very chance she had been waiting for. “It’s a wonder you never got married,” she said thoughtfully, wetting her lips with her tongue.
“Never had the time,” Garrett murmured so quietly that she could barely hear him. “Never found the right woman,” he added after a brief pause.
Then there was nothing but silence between them. A silence that stretched into one long minute after another. It was some time before Brenna was willing to admit to herself that the man beside her had fallen fast asleep.
She spoke his name in a mere whisper. “Garrett?”
But she knew she wouldn’t have the heart to disturb him now. Not when he looked so relaxed, so peaceful, so heartbreakingly vulnerable in sleep. She simply couldn’t bring herself to awaken him and send him on his way at this hour of the night.
Brenna finally got to her feet and quietly went about turning off the lights in the house, checking the locks on each door, as was her nightly custom. She returned one last time to the living room and covered Garrett with an afghan.
Then she stood there a moment, looking down at the man stretched out on her sofa, knowing he would still be there in the morning. And knowing in her heart it was what she wanted most of all.
6
Where the devil was his pillow? Garrett grumbled, laboring his way out of sleep. And what was the matter with this lousy mattress? Every bone and muscle in his body seemed to be begging him not to move. God, he felt awful! As though an armored tank had run over him in the night. And his mouth tasted as though a platoon had marched through it in combat boots.
Sensing bright sunlight pouring into the room from some unidentified source, he tentatively opened his eyes a fraction of an inch.
Where in the hell was he, anyway? Then the answer dawned on him: he was in the living room of Brenna Richards’ house. And it was her sofa he’d been sleeping on all night Obviously, it wasn’t intended to accommodate any man over five and a half feet in height. His legs dangled over the end by a good six inches.
What was the last thing he could remember? That’s right. He’d been sitting here on the sofa talking to Brenna. Apparently that double Scotch on top of a case of jet lag had been too much for him. Worse, he wasn’t sure if he’d simply gone to sleep or passed out In the end, it was all the same. He’d managed to make a damned fool of himself and to spend an uncomfortable night sleeping on a rock-hard sofa.
Stretching his arms above his head, Garrett slowly sat up on the edge of the cushions and ran a hand across the rough stubble of his beard. He needed a shower and a shave. And, he noted dispassionately, a change of clothes. His looked as though he’d slept in them.
It would probably scare the living daylights out of Brenna if she saw him now. He wasn’t exactly the image of the suave, sophisticated man-about-town this morning.
The house seemed to be quiet Maybe she was still asleep. He glanced down at his watch, trying to decipher the time with what he was sure were bloodshot eyes. Seven o’clock? No wonder it was quiet. Who got up at this hour on a Saturday morning if they didn’t have to?
What he could really use was a cup of good, strong black coffee. But since he had no intention of prowling around her kitchen uninvited, it would just have to wait Everything was so damned neat around here and so feminine. Brenna had mentioned something last night about redecorating the place. It looked to him as if a determined effort had been made to erase any evidence that a man had ever lived in the house.
He couldn’t help but wonder what her husband had been like. There didn’t seem to be any pictures of him sitting around, but she probably kept that kind of personal memento in her bedroom, anyway. He had to admit to a mounting curiosity about Daniel Richards. Brenna didn’t talk about him much, but that didn’t mean anything. Sometimes the deeper the hurt, the less you wanted to talk about it. He was pretty sure she’d loved her husband. A woman like that would only marry for love.
The question was, Did she still love him? From what he could gather, Daniel Richards had been dead for several years now. But it didn’t follow that the man’s death meant the death of Brenna’s love for him as well.
Only This Night (Silhouette Reissued) Page 9
