by Sandra Brown
“It was so nice of you to offer me a ride home. The party was nice, but then the guest of honor didn’t show up.” She softened the reproach with a wink. “Things were getting a little wild. It was nice to get out of there.”
Irritably he wondered if she knew any other adjective besides “nice.” And just as irritably he wondered why they had to act out this charade. He hadn’t thought he’d be expected to make small talk. Why couldn’t she just say, “I’m glad you’re taking me home to bed. I understand it’s good therapy to work another woman out of your system.”
Then he would feel at liberty to say, “That’s right and I appreciate your candor, uh, Marilyn? Yes, Marilyn. You see what I’m after is a hard and fast roll in the hay. No emotion. No conversation. Just fun and games. You’ve come highly recommended.”
But he didn’t say any of that. Instead he smiled across the car at her and said, “You’ll have to give me directions to your place.”
She found them much easier to give when she was plastered against his right side, one of those legendary breasts tucked under his arm. Uninhibitedly she laid a hand on his thigh and began to rub it up and down.
He felt nothing but a mild annoyance. With each passing minute, his aggravation grew and unfairly it was directed toward her. He didn’t particularly like the color of her hair, or her eyes. The notable body didn’t seem so voluptuous and desirable now, but rather bawdy and blowsy, too much of a good thing.
A trimmer silhouette, a more compact figure, a slenderness with soft womanly curves. Riotous curly blond hair, green eyes. That was what appealed to him.
Kari Stewart appealed to him.
It was her hand he wanted to be flirting with the fly of his trousers. And only when he imagined it to be hers did he feel the first stirrings of arousal.
“Ummm,” Marilyn said and squeezed him.
He pulled the car to the curb in front of her building. As he went around to open her door, he breathed in great quantities of air to clear his lungs of her perfume. He realized just how much he disliked it.
Subtlety was an art Marilyn had never mastered. But she was quite agile. Upon getting out of the car, she managed to brush the back of her hand against his crotch, shimmy her breasts against his chest, and find his ear with her lips. “My roomie is going to be away for the night,” she promised seductively, before undulating up the sidewalk.
Suddenly he was furious with himself. What was the matter with him? Why didn’t he want her? Why wasn’t his body burning with lust?
Angrily, to prove that he wasn’t hopelessly besotted with another woman, he reached for Marilyn, spun her around, and ground his mouth down on hers. After an instant of surprise, Marilyn responded.
Her mouth was slack and wet. Her hands seemed to crawl over him like furtive spiders. The embrace was thoroughly distasteful and repugnant. Trying not to show just how repulsed he was, he tore his mouth free of her sucking lips and broke away. He had the almost irresistible urge to wipe her sloppy kiss off his mouth.
“It’s late and tomorrow is a workday,” he said lamely.
Marilyn’s face collapsed into a comic mask of stupefaction. “You’re not coming in?” she whined. “I thought you wanted to, uh, you know, have a drink or something.”
He forced himself to grin and ask with a mischievous lilt, “On the first date?”
“Oh, well.” Apparently Marilyn wasn’t acquainted with dating protocol. The idea seemed foreign to her. “Maybe you’ll call me up sometime.” She took a step toward him and laid a hand on his lapel. “Then it wouldn’t be a first date, would it?”
He wasn’t about to commit himself. He cuffed her gently under the chin. “Good night.”
Let her read into it what she might. He had behaved like a jerk. It didn’t matter if her morals didn’t bear close scrutiny, he hated to treat any woman abusively. She was innocent. He was the heel.
He drove away feeling like a damned fool. If anyone found out about this, he’d be made a laughingstock. But he didn’t think Marilyn would boast of her one failure to lure a man into bed.
And why hadn’t he felt inclined to go to bed with her?
Because he knew it would have served no purpose. When he woke in the morning, he would feel only disgusted with himself. The longing would still be with him. Marilyn’s body wouldn’t ease his desire for another. His heart would be left empty.
Sex with Marilyn wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted love with Kari.
“This is a great lunch, Kari. How’d you know it was my birthday?”
“I made it my business to know.” She smiled at Mike Gonzales as he sliced into the thick steak he had ordered. Eating at one of Denver’s finest restaurants was a real treat for him. His wife had just had a baby and on his photographer’s salary, the household budget was tight. “How are Becky and the baby?”
“Doing fine, I guess,” he said around a mouthful. “Becky’s depressed. My mother told me that’s to be expected.” He laughed. “She’s up to her eyebrows in diapers and bottles and heat rashes. I guess she’s entitled to be a little cranky.”
“I guess so,” Kari said, listlessly stirring her crab salad. Reminders of babies always brought a pain that she didn’t think would ever go away. Her own pregnancy would have been well advanced by now.
“Don’t look now, but your nemesis just walked in.”
Disregarding Mike’s suggestion, she turned her head. Hunter McKee was being seated at a table across the room. He was with several dignitaries from city and county government.
He must have sensed her presence in the dining room, for his eyes sliced directly to hers. It was the first time they had seen each other in weeks. Both froze until Kari was made uncomfortably aware of how long they stared at each other. She glanced away just as he nodded a silent greeting and sat down to join the men with him.
She was shaken and admonished herself for letting the sight of him upset her. But why was she so upset? His good looks would be unsettling to any woman. He was dressed in a gray suit that fit his athletic body to perfection. His hair had been wind-tossed, and she knew that up close he would smell of expensive cologne and the outdoors.
But she had met many attractive men. Her heart usually didn’t stumble over itself at the sight of a handsome man.
No, what disturbed her most was the way he looked at her. He didn’t look at her as though she were his enemy, someone he had tangled with many times. There was no sneering, gloating look on his chiseled mouth.
He looked at her as though she was a woman he knew something about, a woman he had shared a secret with, a woman he had been intimate with.
And rightly so. Because there was no other word to describe the way he had kissed her that night at her house. It had been intimate. She detested him for forcing that kiss on her, but detested herself more for remembering it in such explicit detail. Since that night, there had been idle moments when she had dwelled on thoughts of that kiss.
Even now, as she lifted her wineglass, her hand was trembling. All the color had drained from her face, but her eyes glowed feverishly. She could still feel the hard pressure of his lips. His tongue had possessed her mouth in a thoroughly masculine way. The taut lines of his body seemed engraved on hers. Much as she wanted to forget, she couldn’t. The memories wouldn’t be banished.
“Gee, Kari,” Mike said, noticing her distress. “If his being here is going to upset you that much, let’s leave.” Regretfully he glanced down at his half-eaten steak.
She shook her head and smiled at him with affected buoyancy. “Don’t be silly. This is your birthday party. Would you like more wine?”
“I may not be able to get you in focus this afternoon,” he warned, grinning as he raised his glass.
“That’s all right.” Unintentionally she spoke aloud her afterthought. “I haven’t been in focus for a long time.” She wasn’t referring to Mike’s camera work.
They finished their meal. Kari signed the check and they made their way toward the door. As t
hey drew close to Hunter’s table, he laid his napkin beside his plate and stood.
“Hello, Kari.”
Behind his eyeglasses he was looking at her with that intensity that never failed to unnerve her. It automatically made her feel threatened. She reacted defensively. “Mr. District Attorney, I haven’t seen you since the election. I suppose congratulations are in order.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. You earned it the hard way. But then, you don’t have any qualms about murdering children, do you?”
Those within hearing distance lapsed into one of those awkward silences that occur when someone disgraces themselves in public. No one but Hunter knew about her miscarriage. Everyone assumed she was referring strictly to the recent trial that had ended with a sixteen-year-old being given a death sentence, a sentence she had editorially protested in her television news reports.
Even so, her stinging comment exceeded the bounds of every code of professional conduct. Had she been a man, Hunter would have been justified in slugging her. As it was, his eyes went as hard as flint, his body tensed, and his lips compressed.
Unperturbed by his anger, she gave him a terse nod, spoke a polite “Gentlemen” to the others, and moved toward the exit. Mike, flabbergasted and embarrassed, stumbled along behind her. He knew they would catch hell when Pinkie heard about the incident.
That was putting it mildly. Unfortunately the station manager heard of it first. One of Hunter’s colleagues telephoned him that afternoon. He immediately sent word to the newsroom that he wanted to see Pinkie and Kari.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” Pinkie asked her as he huffed down the carpeted hallway on the second floor, far removed from the gritty, noisy news-room.
She had come away from the restaurant feeling worse than she had ever felt in her life. She didn’t know herself anymore. The Kari Stewart she used to be could never have behaved that badly, never been that malicious and rude to anyone, no matter how bitter an enemy.
What was happening to her? Each day she felt little pieces of herself falling away. She didn’t seem able to get them back. Soon there wouldn’t be enough of her left to recognize. The thought frightened her.
Why hadn’t she listened to Pinkie? He had been right. She had set out to destroy, and was destroying herself in the process.
“Yes, I think I know why he wants to see us,” she said softly.
Pinkie stopped dead in his tracks and faced her. “Lay it on me. I’d rather hear it from you first.”
He taught her a whole new vocabulary of obscenities when she finished with her account of the incident. “What the hell were you thinking about?” he shouted.
She shrank from his anger. “I wasn’t thinking, I just—”
“Save the explanations. You’re gonna need them,” he snarled as he dragged her the rest of the way to the manager’s office.
The secretary showed them in to the inner sanctum and discreetly closed the door behind them. Not only the station manager, but the sales manager, and the president of the company were there. No one was smiling.
“Please sit down,” the station manager said. “I received a telephone call today from an old friend of mine. I could hardly believe what he told me. I hope, Ms. Stewart, that he was mistaken in what he heard you say to our district attorney today at lunch.”
She wet her lips, threw an apologetic glance at Pinkie and replied, “He heard correctly.”
Pinkie thought he was alone when he eased open the bottom drawer of his desk and reached for the secreted flask. He took a long pull on it and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. When he looked up, Kari was standing in the doorway of the glass office. Everyone had cleared out after the ten o’clock news. The news-room was quiet and shadowed behind her.
“Don’t let them do this to me, Pinkie.”
He hadn’t seen her since they left the station manager’s office. He had returned to the newsroom to find a fresh crisis on his hands. The producer of the early news show was ninety-seconds short of material. Should they run the story about the pregnant elephant at the zoo or the one about the blind typing teacher?
He had put out that brushfire and the myriad others that flame up during the production of a newscast. But Kari was constantly on his mind. He wondered where she had gone to lick her wounds. Now he could see that wherever she had been, she’d been crying.
He tilted the slender silver flask in her direction, but she shook her head. She dropped into the chair opposite his desk. He took another swig before capping the flask and returning it to its hiding place.
“You did it to yourself, Kari.” He settled his bulk more comfortably in his chair. “I warned you, but you didn’t listen.”
“I’ll apologize to him, publicly if I have to.”
“You should do that anyway. But it’s not going to change their minds. They’re furious with you. And they should be. What you said to that man was inexcusable.”
“All right. I did something wrong. I confess.” She swallowed a sob. “But suspension for three months! Isn’t that a bit severe? I thought maybe for a week. Two. But three months! I’ll die, Pinkie. My job means everything to me. I’ve lost my husband, my baby. My work is all I have left.”
She placed her hands flat on his desk and leaned forward in a pleading attitude. “Intercede for me, Pinkie. Tell them some of what I’ve gone through at the hands of that man.”
“No.”
She yanked her hands away from his desk as though it had suddenly burned her. “You won’t help me?”
“Not this time, baby; I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
Pinkie sighed and ran his hand down his face. “Because I think you need this time away. You’re not the person you used to be, Kari. You haven’t been for a long while.”
She couldn’t take his criticism, not on top of the chastising she had already received. “I’m doing my job!” she said heatedly. “The ratings are up.”
“Not anymore. Remember my telling you that I was getting tired of your personal attacks on McKee? Well, I was only one jump ahead of our viewers. Our ratings are slipping and I can’t help but think you’re one of the reasons.”
Her pride was hurt, but she knew Pinkie was right. Hunter had won the public’s approval. The citizenry had officially endorsed him as their D.A. Her continual badgering of him would only antagonize her audience.
“I realize that I need to change the slant of my stories,” she said quietly, twisting her hands in her lap.
“The city hall beat has already been assigned to someone else, Kari. That was one of the manager’s orders.”
Panic, cold and lethal, stabbed through her. “Then give me back my entertainment slot.”
Pinkie was shaking his head. “Can’t do it. Sally’s locked into it.”
“By sleeping with one of the salesmen!” Kari shouted.
“And he’s liking it!” Pinkie roared back. “But that has nothing to do with it. Personally I can’t stand her goody-two-shoes style, but the ratings say the audience feels otherwise. I don’t know if they like her boobs or what, but the bottom line is, they like her. I warned you about this. Remember, I told you to think all this over carefully before—”
“Stop lecturing me! You’re not my father.”
“No, but I thought I was your friend.” His face went beet red and he forced himself to calm down. “Kari, if you’d been anybody else, I would have nailed your ass to a tree a long time ago. You’ve pulled one shenanigan after another with this McKee thing, but I’ve tolerated it. If I weren’t your friend, you’d be long gone by now.”
“Meaning that you’re not going to help me this time?”
“Meaning that I am going to help you. Really help you.”
“By talking them out of suspending me?”
He sighed. “No. By making it stick. Use that time away to get your head together, to get things into perspective. McKee’s become an obsession with you. It’s unhealthy. You’ve blow
n his responsibility for your hardships way out of proportion.”
“My God,” she said, bolting from her chair. “Who are you all of a sudden? His campaign manager?”
“No,” Pinkie said, trying desperately to hold on to his temper. “But the man’s only doing his job. He had been all along. He’s been like a burr under your saddle since he said things about Thomas you didn’t want to hear.”
“They were lies!” she yelled. “Would you have me mutely stand by and have him slander my husband?”
Pinkie looked at her sadly. His eyes dropped to his desktop for several moments before he looked up at her again and said quietly, “Are you sure they were lies, Kari?”
She recoiled as though he’d slapped her. “Of course they were. You … you don’t think Thomas was a thief?”
“I don’t know about that. I only know that he wasn’t the god you thought he was. He was a man. He had faults. You just couldn’t see them.”
“You believe that he entertained whores when he was out of town? You believe all that?”
He knew it would hurt her, but it was time she saw things as they really were. “I knew about some of Thomas’s flings. Everybody did.”
She folded her arms across her stomach and bent forward as though in pain. “Please tell me you’re lying, Pinkie.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
He shook his head. “I know nothing for fact. But when there’s that much gossip, it’s usually based on some degree of truth. You were vulnerable when you met Thomas so soon after your father’s death. He was just what you needed at the time, strong, indulgent, protective. I was glad you had him. Damn glad.”
She sank into the chair again. “The wife is always the last to know, isn’t she? I feel like such a fool.”
“Don’t. Wynne adored you, too. His escapades had nothing to do with your life together. You were blissfully in love and probably would have been for years to come if he hadn’t died that day. But he did.”
He came around his desk and took her hand. “You’ve been blaming the wrong guy for Thomas’s sins, Kari. McKee didn’t have any choice but to bring them to light.” He pondered his next words. “I don’t think he enjoyed it any more than you did.”
