by Janet Dailey
"A shill," she repeated in growing indignation.
"A shill is a gambling term. It refers to a partner, a decoy used to dupe the victims, into a game—usually a crooked game," he explained.
"I know what it means," Glenna retorted. "But I don't happen to be one."
"It's possible that your purpose could be to divert my attention. You are a very attractive diversion." His glance was swiftly assessing.
Glenna didn't trust herself to look at him, certain she would strike at him again. "But that isn't my purpose."
"So you said," he nodded.
"You really have a very suspicious mind," she stated in a low angry breath. "Does everybody have to have an angle, some ulterior motive?"
"They don't have to but they usually do." His delivery was smoothly offhand, but there was a wealth of cynicism in his words.
"Maybe it's because you do most of your business with underhanded people instead of honest ones like my father," Glenna suggested dryly.
"Get burned a few times, and you'll get leery of fire, too."
Her gaze slid to his face, noting the grimness of his mouth and the forbidding set of his jaw. Glenna realized that his toughness, his hardness came from harsh experience. It lessened her irritation.
"I don't have to be at the meeting," she pointed out. "If it would make you feel more secure, or less suspicious, I'll go for a swim or something. There isn't anything I can contribute to the discussion. And I certainly don't want you to regard me as a distraction. Neither would dad."
As they stopped in front of the elevators, Jett studied her for a long second before commenting on her suggestion. "I have no objection to your presence at the meeting with your father. If you want to attend, you can."
"If it's up to me, I'll be there." Because she knew her presence would provide moral support for her father, which was of greater importance than Jett's distrust.
The elevator doors slid soundlessly open as a bell chimed overhead. Glenna stepped to one side to let its passengers walk by her before entering the empty elevator ahead of Jett.
Chapter Five
THE MEETING was a nerve-racking experience for Glenna. She was curled in a chair off to one side, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Her father had begun the meeting by first establishing the profitability of the mine, producing studies and reports for Jett's examination. From there he had gone on to explain previous years' financial difficulties, then the inspection order for safety improvements and the long appeals in order to raise the money to comply with the required standards.
All the while Jett had listened, looked over the papers and reports, and studied the man doing the talking. And all the while his face had been devoid of expression. Never once had he glanced at Glenna since greeting her shortly after he had arrived. She shifted in her chair to ease a cramped leg, yet the movement didn't attract his attention.
"I think that gives you a fairly good idea of my present dilemma." Her father leaned back in his chair to study Jett and try to read his reaction. After an instant's pause he laid out his proposal. "And why I am anxious to form an association…a merger with your firm, to obtain the financial strength I need."
Jett glanced over a report in his hand before leaning forward to set it on the table atop others. "You have explained that your credit has been overextended because of recent economic reversals in the industry. While your operation can't be classified as lucrative, it appears to be stable. Lending institutions have made loans on less strength than what you've shown me. Their reason for refusing you can't be based on your indebtedness or lack of collateral. What was it?" There was something very casual and indifferent about the way Jett shook out a cigarette from its pack and lighted it.
"As you know, a single-mine owner is in a precarious position. He virtually has a one-man operation. If something happens to that one man, there is no operation. On the other hand—" her father shrugged "—your company is made up of a team of men. If something happens to one of them, you replace him, but the loss of one man does not jeopardize your company's existence."
"True," Jett agreed and waited for him to continue.
As Glenna studied her father she noticed the tightening of his mouth. She was well aware of the effort it took for her father to finish his explanation.
"In the last three years I've had two heart attacks. A year from now I may not be here. That's why I can't get a loan," he explained. "If I'm gone, who would run the mine? Glenna certainly couldn't. Not because she's a woman. Her skills happen to be in another field. Without me there's no one to run the operation and make sure the debts are paid."
His statement prompted a question that Glenna unwittingly offered aloud. "What about Bruce?"
Tired gray eyes sent her a rueful look. "Bruce is a competent individual when he has someone to give him directions. He's a stopgap, capable of holding things together alone only over a short period of time," he explained to both her and Jett.
Her gaze was magnetically drawn to Jett. He was eyeing her with quiet contemplation, but she was struck by the emotionless set of his features. When his gaze broke contact with hers, it was to slide downward and linger on the soft outline of her lips. This betrayal of interest was the first he'd shown toward her. It was quickly gone as his attention reverted to her father.
"Without this merger I stand to lose a great deal," Orin said, which was an understatement. "But I'm not the only one who would suffer. The economy of our small community has barely recovered from the last shutdown. I don't know how many could survive if the mine is closed again for an extended period of time."
"I can appreciate what you are saying." Jett exhaled a stream of smoke and tapped his cigarette in an ashtray.
"Naturally I don't have to point out to you the tax advantages your company would enjoy by absorbing my operation. I wouldn't even make this proposition if there wasn't a way you could benefit from it," her father insisted, then paused as if suddenly realizing he had no more arguments to make. "I don't expect you to give me an answer right away. You need time to consider it."
"If I may, I'd like to take a copy of the reports you've shown me so I can go over them." He gestured toward the papers on the table.
"You can take those," her father offered.
"Between tonight and tomorrow I'll have a chance to study them." When Jett uncoiled his length to stand, it signaled an end to the meeting. Whatever followed was merely a formality. "I'll let you know tomorrow afternoon whether I think your proposal is something my company would wish to pursue."
"That sounds fair enough to me." Orin rose with difficulty to shake hands.
Glenna stood, too, as Jett picked up the stack of reports. Her gaze searched his face, but whatever opinion he had, he was keeping it strictly to himself. With a nodded farewell in her direction, he let her father escort him to the door.
When the door was closed behind him, her father turned back to the center of the room, glanced at Glenna, and sighed heavily. "We only have twenty-four more hours to wait before we have a decision. At least we won't be kept dangling for days."
"Excuse me, dad." She hurried to the door that Jett had just exited. "I'll be right back."
"Where are you going?" He blinked in confusion.
"I just want to have a word with him for a minute," Glenna rushed and disappeared into the hallway. She walked swiftly, the poise of maturity giving her an air of confidence. In the corridor ahead of her she saw him opening the door to his suite. "Jett." The firm ring of her voice requested him to wait for her. He paused on the threshold of his suite, an eyebrow slightly quirked in silent inquiry and speculation.
As soon as she reached him Jett entered his suite, sending an invitation over his shoulder for her, "Come in." From the doorway Glenna noticed a second person in the sitting room of Jett's suite. A conservative suit and tie covered his portly figure. His balding head made the man appear considerably older than she suspected he was. When he saw Glenna following Jett into the suite he stood up quickly
, self-consciously smoothing his tie down the front of his protruding stomach and trying not to show his surprise.
"This is Don Sullivan," Jett introduced the man in an offhand manner. "He works for me in an organizational capacity. Don, meet Glenna Reynolds."
"How do you do, Mr. Sullivan," Glenna murmured as the man bobbed his head in her direction with faint embarrassment. She bit at the inside of her lip, wondering how she was going to speak to Jett alone.
But he was already arranging it. "Would you mind stepping into the other room for a few minutes, Don?" It was an order, phrased as a question. Before the man could take a step, Jett was handing him the reports her father had let him take. "I want you to look these over, too, so we can discuss them later."
"I will." Again the man bobbed his head at Glenna as he moved his stocky frame toward an inner door.
When it was closed and they were alone Jett turned slowly to meet Glenna's steady look. "You wanted to speak to me?"
"My father told you the whole truth. He didn't leave anything out," she said evenly. "I wanted to be sure you knew that, considering how suspicious you have been."
"I ran a check on your father. The report came back before I met with him this afternoon," he stated. "So I was already familiar with his present situation."
"Then why didn't you let him know?" Glenna frowned.
"If your father is the businessman that I think he is, he has already guessed that I had him checked out. He would have done the same thing in my place." Jett picked up a sheaf of papers that Don Sullivan had been working on when they had come in, and glanced through them.
The implied compliment for her father eased some of her tension. "Then you do believe he is honest."
"Your father mentioned two negative facts that I had no information about…and would probably have had difficulty obtaining. So, yes, I believe he gave me a fair picture." He replaced the loose papers on the table where he'd found them and allowed a faint smile to touch his mouth when he looked at Glenna. "Does that reassure you?"
"Yes." There was an inward sigh as that possible prejudice had been eliminated. A noise in the adjoining room reminded her of the man waiting for him. She took a step toward the hall door. "I won't keep you any longer."
"What? Aren't you going to add your voice to your father's appeal?" A gentle mockery gleamed in his dark eyes, taunting but not cruelly so.
"Would it do any good?" Glenna countered in light challenge.
"It might prove entertaining," he replied with a raking look that was deliberately suggestive. Then his expression sobered. "I will consider it as seriously as I would any business proposition."
Glenna didn't feel she could expect more than that. "Thank you," she murmured and left the room to return to her father's suite.
Despite the reassurance from Jett, the waiting for his decision was difficult, both for Glenna and her father. Throughout the evening she wavered between a certainty that Jett would agree and a cold fear that he would not.
She slept restlessly, waking with the first glint of dawn. After lying in bed for nearly an hour trying to go back to sleep, Glenna climbed out of bed and dressed in a pair of dark blue slacks and a cream white velour sweater. It was half-past five when she ventured into the corridor to take the elevator downstairs.
In the hotel lobby Glenna skirted the restaurant with its aroma of fresh-perked coffee in favor of the invigorating crispness of the early morning air, seeking its quiet serenity to soothe her troubled mind. She wandered through the dew-wet grounds with no particular destination in mind, yet aware her steps were taking her in the general direction of the stables.
For a while it seemed she had it all to herself, sharing the yellow morning only with the twittering birds in the trees, until she noticed a man strolling alongside an inn road. She recognized Jett immediately, her pulses quickening. Her meandering path intersected the road, and she turned onto it to walk toward him, neither hurrying her pace nor slowing it.
As she drew closer, she saw that he was dressed in his evening clothes—or had been. The tie was unknotted and hanging loosely around his neck, the top buttons of his white shirt unfastened. His suit jacket was slung over one shoulder, held by the hook of his finger, and his sharply creased slacks looked wrinkled. There was even a dusty film dulling the polished sheen of his black shoes.
"If you are just coming in, it must have been some party," Glenna remarked when Jett was within hearing. "What happened? Did you decide to go horseback riding at midnight and get thrown?"
"No, I haven't been riding. Only walking," he corrected dryly, both stopping when only two feet separated them. "You're an early bird this morning."
"I couldn't go back to sleep so I got up." Her gray green eyes inspected the weary lines in his face and the rumpled blackness of his thick hair. "Haven't you been to bed?"
"No. After dinner I went over some business with Don. It was around two A.M. before he left the suite. I went for a walk out in the hills to do some thinking, and stayed around to watch the sun come up." His features took on a faraway look when he partially glanced over his shoulder in the general direction he'd just come from.
Glenna leaned toward him, reading something in his expression that gripped her throat. "Have you decided about the merger?" she asked tightly.
His gaze glided to her face, moving over it for an instant, the line of his mouth slanting. "I'll give your father my answer this afternoon." He deftly avoided the question.
"Are you still considering it?" A breeze came whirling out of the trees to blow across her face, briefly lifting the chestnut hair away from her neck before it danced away.
Jett rested a heavy hand atop her shoulder. "There is a lot to consider, Glenna."
"I'm sure there is," she agreed on a subdued note, lowering her gaze to the front of his shirt. "It's just the waiting to find out that's so hard."
"All decisions are hard. Life is hard." His voice was gentle, but the grip of his hand applied pressure to her shoulder bone, drawing her half a step closer. He swung his jacket behind her in order to lock both his hands behind her neck. "It would have been easy if you had been the one to suggest a merger with me." The seductive pitch of his voice made it plain that he had something much more intimate in mind than a business liaison. "You present a very attractive package."
Glenna was conscious that he had bent his head toward her, but she didn't lift her gaze. If he was trying to divert her thoughts from her father, he was succeeding with his closeness. The flattery wasn't necessary.
"You didn't have to say that. I don't need to be sweet-talked out of asking questions about your decision. I can accept the fact that you haven't made up your mind," she told him.
"Glenna, I never say anything I don't mean." The firmness of his tone enforced his statement, compelling her to tip her head up to examine his face.
There were still signs of tiredness and lack of sleep etched in his features, but the smoldering intensity of his eyes shallowed out her breathing. Jett eliminated the last few inches to claim her curving mouth while his hands slid down her back to enfold her in his arms.
Her senses erupted with a wonderful rawness that needed his embrace to soothe it. Everywhere her body came in contact with his muscled frame a wild current seemed to flow between them—a current that spread its tingling pleasure through the rest of her flesh. The ache of passion knotted her abdomen. Its sudden presence tempered the ardency of her response until she regained control of her senses to end the kiss.
She had always been cognizant of the sexual attraction Jett had aroused, but their previous kisses had not led her to expect this flaming leap into desire. It shook her. Glenna felt the weakness in her knees and didn't try to immediately move away from him. Her hands were spread across his shirt front. Beneath them she could feel the thudding of his heartbeat, its tempo disturbed like hers was.
"Your volatility isn't limited to your temper, is it?" Jett mused.
"I don't know what happened. I—" Glenna ha
lf turned, self-conscious and unnerved.
"Hey, I'm not complaining," he chuckled and caught at her hand, clasping it warmly within his fingers. "That looks like a comfortable tree. Why don't we sit down, rest a little before making the long walk back to the hotel?" He led her toward a large tree on the lawn.
"The grass is wet," she pointed out, the green blades of grass glistening with the sheen of dew. Jett solved that problem by spreading his suit jacket on the grass. "It'll get grass stains on it."
"So? I'll send it to the cleaners." He lowered himself to the ground and pulled Glenna down beside him on the other half of his jacket. The trunk of the tree served as a backrest for him, but it wasn't wide enough for Glenna to lean against it, too. Instead Jett shifted her so she was resting diagonally across his chest, his arms overlapping around her waist. "Mmm." He nuzzled the curve of her neck. "Maybe I couldn't sleep last night because I was missing this," he suggested.
The stubble of his beard growth was pleasantly rough against her sensitive skin. It conveyed the rasping caress of a cat's tongue as he rubbed his chin and jaw along her neck. The hard support of his chest and arms, and the pressure of his hipbone began to embed themselves on her flesh. Glenna felt herself slipping again into that mindless oblivion of sensation. She changed her position to elude the mouth exploring the sensitive hollow behind her ear, turning sideways in his arms to rest a shoulder against his chest.
"Is something wrong?" Jett cupped a hand to her cheek, tipping her head so he could inspect her face.
"Not really." It seemed impossible that she had only known him for two days. The angled planes of his features seemed so very familiar to her. It was just that the pace of their relationship had just accelerated, and Glenna wanted to slow it down before it carried her away.
His hand idly left her face to reach down to lift her left hand. His gaze studied the bareness of her fingers, his thumb running over the tops of them. When he lifted his gaze there was interest, curiosity, and the banked flame of desire gleaming in his look.
