Satin Pleasures

by Karen Docter

  "A year ago, I'd have said the same thing." Dan grew more serious than she’d ever seen him. "Tess, you've got to slow down."

  "I don't have time."

  "Make time!" His hand settled naturally over hers. "Do you have any idea what it's like when you've pushed too far? I do, and I don't want to think of the same thing happening to you."

  Too susceptible to the man's touch, she extricated herself from his clasp. "What happened?"

  Briefly considering her question, he shrugged. "I crossed the line. Until a year ago, I worked as a financial consultant for an international firm." He mentioned a well-known corporate name, his smile cynical. "I was the classic executive with an eye on the top.

  "Somewhere along the way, I lost my perspective. I became obsessive. Driven. I was one step away from a senior partnership when I got sick."

  And he'd walked away altogether? Everyone got sick on occasion. To simply throw it all away as he'd done was arbitrarily extravagant. Her disapproval was impossible to hide. "No one makes it to the top without a little drive."

  Dan shook his head, frowned. "At what cost? Who determines which goal is important?"

  "There's always a price to pay, no matter what your choices."

  Who would know that better than her? She'd been paying for her choices, one way or another, most of her adult life. It became the driving force behind everything she did the instant she'd looked down on her father's broken body in that emergency room ten years ago. Her ex-fiancé hadn't stood firm against that force. Evan left her in ICU holding her father’s cold, motionless hand and never returned. The bastard had moved out of their apartment before she learned her father wouldn’t actually die from his injuries.

  "Well, I won't pay that price anymore." Dan's vow rang with conviction. "It's taken me a year to recover my health, rethink my priorities. My only regret is that I didn't leave Chicago sooner."

  "Why San Francisco? And, why lingerie?"

  "I've been A Touch of Silk & Satin partner for years. When Mom opened her first boutique after Dad died, I financed her. After that, I slipped to the background while she and Aunt Mary did their thing. When mom got engaged in the middle of their west coast expansion, my aunt hunted me down and browbeat me off the lake."

  "Lake?"

  His entire demeanor changed. "I was in Florida on one of the prettiest lakes you ever saw. The fishing was great, but it was the sunrise each morning that kept me from moving on. The way the mist rose off the water...I can't begin to describe it. You'd have to see it."

  It sounded peaceful, restful. Nothing to do all day besides savor the scenery. With her fear of water she'd never tried fishing, but she loved camping. It was one of the few pleasures her parents could afford as she grew up. They'd pack up the tent and take Tess whenever they could get time off from work. The last time, they'd traveled the coast for her eighteenth birthday. It was the last trip her father had been able to manage.

  So much was lost in that following year, including Michael Emory's mobility and most of Tess's fairy tale illusions.

  The memories, her regret, were as vivid—as painful—as if they weren't ten years old. "So, what are these new priorities of yours?"

  Dan lifted a finger for each point. "Learn to play. Keep a closer eye on my health. Get a personal life." He stopped to elaborate. "Someday, before I'm too old to appreciate them, I'd like a wife and a couple of kids." Another finger came up. "And more immediately, help my family launch their new store."

  A couple of kids. That's all that got through to Tess. She could see Dan's children. Too clearly. One boy. One girl. Both with their daddy's thick auburn hair and a devilish gleam in their brown eyes.

  Wait. Her eyes were brown. Dan's were that bold shade of green that made her think of—

  She pushed away the image of lying naked upon a thick nest of fern leaves, Dan's soft mustache feathering over her sun-flushed skin. The audacity of her imagination left her shaken and hot all the way down her body to her toes. The most lurid fantasies had taken over her mind since this man kissed her this afternoon. She never—well, almost never—thought of sex, and she'd always kept her fantasies under a tight rein.

  At least, she had...until Dan came into her life and made her go crazy.

  Chapter Three

  Tess blinked back all the hot, fuzzy feelings blanketing her judgment to focus on the gloomy count of fingers Dan held up. "That's not by order of importance. Business doesn't come fourth, does it?"

  "I still dip my hand into investments when the spirit moves me, and I won't let my family down, but I'm searching for a more equitable balance in my life now."

  His answer was as bad – no, worse – than she'd expected. That kind of balance was a mirage. There were always tradeoffs. She’d learned that the hard way.

  "No comment?"

  "No comment." It was pointless to argue such basic philosophical differences.

  Not that it mattered. One deliciously potent kiss notwithstanding, the only relationship the two of them could have was a business one. It was almost a relief to discover Dan was a merchant in her mall. She was a businesswoman first, a woman...well, never. Not since Evan. She'd come within a gnat's eyebrow of losing herself then, of destroying her father's chances of ever regaining his mobility. She’d thought she loved Evan so much she’d be willing to give in to his demand she choose between his needs and her father’s. Never again.

  Guilt prodded her to her feet. "I have to return to work."

  Dan frowned. "The doctor said to take it easy. It's after eight o'clock. Why don't you call it a day? I need to swing by the store to check on Aunt Mary. Then I can follow you home."

  "I promised Harry—"

  "Who's Harry?"

  The edge on the two words startled her into resuming her seat. If she didn't know better, she'd say Dan sounded jealous. And she felt a twinge, just a twinge, mind you, of feminine satisfaction at the thought this man might be as attracted to her as she was to him. "Harry Rollens is my boss, Thorgram Group's west coast regional manager."

  "Is he tall, with thick, white hair? Shrewd blue eyes and a quick wit?"

  "You met?"

  "Before I left Chicago, we signed the lease on this store. Rollens took us to dinner afterward." His gaze pinned her in place. "The man didn't strike me as the slave-driver type."

  Her fingers fiddled with her soft drink cup. "Look, Dan, I want you to understand my position so I'm going to tell you something that isn't general knowledge on the mall grapevine."

  For some reason, she trusted him to keep the confidence, yet she chose her words with care. "Shortly after that trip last year, Harry's wife became ill. She's been stabilized, but needs lots of care."

  Tess shrugged. "Anyway, Harry's winding things up at Thorgram Group so he can stay with her full-time. Problem is he won't go anywhere until his successor is chosen."

  "He wants you."

  "He's groomed me for the job. The directors are a tough bunch though."

  "Meaning?"

  "Let's say they're resistant to changing their way of doing things." She lobbed her crushed napkin into the empty food basket. She sighed. "The truth is my competition for the job is related to Thorgram's president." She hated the lack of control she had over her career. Too much of her personal life depended on her professional success.

  "Uh-oh."

  "Right. Trouble in paradise." Tess wasn't free to reveal the significance of today's meeting with Dan because he was one of her tenants. She couldn't blurt out the retail sales of some of the stores had slipped along with the beleaguered economy.

  Although she wasn't to blame for the revenue loss, her job prospects were weakened by any decrease in mall sales. As far as her superiors were concerned, her position could be axed at any time. The shopping center’s age, lack of exposure, and archaic management practices only made her situation worse. Harry ran interference when he could but, the bottom line was, she needed to pull retail sales out of the slump or kiss her promotional future good-b
ye. At this point, with her father's next surgery already scheduled, the thought of failure made her stomach ache.

  "The meeting you missed was important," Dan observed.

  "Simply getting six directors from all over the country in one conference room at the same time is a challenge." Her lips curved, although she never felt less like smiling. "Harry expected it to tip the scales in my favor."

  "I do understand your position." It sounded like he was picking his way through a mine field. "It doesn't change the fact you took a bad knock to your head today."

  Sweet mercy, the man was persistent. "Why do you care so much what happens to me?"

  An intense, unreadable emotion flickered in his eyes. "Maybe I don't like to see my friends hurting."

  Her heart melted. If this were the kind of concern he showed a friend, what would he do for a lover? Would he cajole and entice her into resting or throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to the nearest bed? She could think of half a dozen worse things than being personally tucked in by Dan McDonald.

  Don't go there, Tess.

  "I'm a big girl, Dan. I know how to take care of myself." Her newly revived hormones were giving her fits though!

  "Fine. Go back to your office." He shook his head. "I want you to do something for me first."

  His acceptance threw her off guard. Then she realized he was simply changing tactics. Her lips curved up in admiration. "I'm laying odds you were a formidable force in the boardroom. Maybe I’d better escape now while I can."

  He grinned, reached into his pocket. "You can spare two minutes to humor me."

  She bit her lip when he tugged her hand close and pressed something into her palm. Her fingers curled automatically, his warmth seeping under her skin, alternately exciting and soothing.

  "Now, close your eyes and count to ten."

  Tess mentally tallied the stacks of work waiting for her in her office.

  "Okay, look down," Dan instructed. "What do you see?"

  "A card?"

  Scooping up the plastic square, he waggled it in front of her face as though he were a world-renown magician about to reveal all his wondrous secrets. "Ah! This is no ordinary card. See the words at the top?"

  "Yes."

  "What do they say?"

  "The Stress Factor."

  "See the chart?" He waited for her nod. "Each color means something. Blue, for calm. Green, for normal. Red is tense. Black is marked STRESS.

  "When you held the card, it registered your stress level. What's the color in the box?" He dropped the card, face up, in her hand.

  She sat rigidly in her chair, staring down at it like it was a snake coiled to strike. "It's black."

  "What does that tell you?"

  Throwing the card on the table between them, she wiped her damp palm on her skirt. "It doesn't mean anything! It's like a mood ring of the 70s. It's all very colorful, but not too scientific or accurate. If you're saying I'm a strung out woman on her way to the padded room on the say-so of a little piece of plastic, I'll deny it every step of the way."

  "Okay, say it is all hokum. Let me show you something." Dan picked up the card, pressed his thumb to the appropriate square, and locked his gaze on hers.

  From the first bold contact, she was lost. His cool, sea green eyes looked calm, placid, and she felt as if she'd stepped, chin-deep, into a pool of overheated water with a powerful current rushing below the surface. It dragged her in one direction, then another, then another, until she grew dizzy with emotions she refused to identify.

  Breathing became difficult. Her heart pumped frantically to catch up. Dan said something she didn't quite hear. "What?"

  Without looking first, he held the card up in front of her. "What color do you see?"

  His display of confidence was aggravating. "It's green. So what?"

  He frowned at her unwillingness to grasp his point. "I spent the better part of a year learning to do that. Yeah, it’s not too scientific but it forced me to find ways to let go of my stress. I can pull this baby out of my pocket any time I want now, and it's always blue or green. This is what's important, not whether or not you get that next promotion, that new perk."

  Boy, did they have a difference of opinion!

  Dan held up his hand. "I'm not saying you shouldn't strive for the things you want, Tess. But, to get there with your sanity and health intact, you must protect yourself."

  Enough was enough. "Maybe you can rest on your laurels, Dan. I can't. Too many people rely on me. The one-hundred-fifty-plus merchants in this mall. Harry and his ailing wife. Thorgram's directors and stockholders."

  Her parents.

  The vivid, mental image of her mother's bowed shoulders and her father's pain-etched face pried her from the seat. "I really must go, Dan." She paused. "Thanks for dinner."

  "You're welcome."

  She was afraid she'd disappointed him and wasn't quite sure why it mattered so much.

  Dan's smile blurred the impression. He reached across the table to press the card back into her hand. "Keep this. You need it more than I do. Every chance you get, take it out, close your eyes and focus on pleasant thoughts and deep, slow breathing. When you get it down, consistently, to the cooler colors, you can give it back to me."

  Tess didn't question why she walked away with the silly thing burning a hole in her palm. It was enough to know his pleased smile had somehow unraveled those tiny knots between her shoulders, the knots she'd refused to acknowledge...until now.

  ***

  It was after eleven o'clock when Tess finally locked the door on her deserted office. Her desk cleared, she was ready for tomorrow's merchants meeting. She'd given up trying to decipher the twenty-page roofing analysis she'd requested from a local contractor. Her eyes burned from too many late nights, and she couldn't get excited about black goo and rock sizes.

  Maybe a monsoon would hit San Francisco Bay tonight. If the roof was blown to Reno, her directors would be forced to stop patching it and replace it instead, only one item on the growing list of upgrades she wanted for her tenants. She’d never understand why Thorgram Group's upper echelon was so resistant to renovating the aging shopping center to guarantee their competition in the changing market. If she had her way, they'd be happily knee-deep in architects, engineers, and construction crews.

  Her apartment door was closing behind her when her new phone—replaced by her ever-efficient secretary before she left for the day—rang. Plucking it from her jacket pocket, her heart skipped a beat when she recognized the voice.

  "Do you have a turn signal on your car?" Dan growled into her ear.

  "The right one sometimes winks out. There's a loose connection or something." Pulling hairpins from the other jacket pocket and throwing them, one by one, on the old sea chest she used as a coffee table, she flopped down on the couch. Then, she perked up. "Wait! How'd you know my signal doesn't work?"

  Silence crackled between them. "I followed you home."

  Tess bristled. The man had some nerve. "Where are you?"

  "I’m, uh, parked on the corner." He spoke quickly before she found her tongue. "I only wanted to make sure you got home okay."

  She didn’t like knowing his concern for her wellbeing warmed her insides. Too much. “How’d you get my number?”

  Another brief silence. “I ran into your secretary near the phone store and knew she’d replaced the one at the bottom of the bay. I took a chance the emergency number Aunt Mary had at the store hadn’t changed.”

  “That’s called stalking, you know,” she said, only half joking.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said, “but I did promise the doctor I’d see you home.” He paused. "Is Anthony there?"

  Stifling the giggle that threatened to escape, she glanced at the birdcage in the corner. "Yes."

  Tess could almost hear Dan's mental gears turning. Good. Serves him right, she thought. Pushy man.

  "Uh, well, since there's someone there to look after you, I'll let you get to bed." The sil
ence was longer this time. "Take care, Tess. Good night."

  She was left with the dial tone buzzing in her ear. Setting down the receiver, she stood and moved to the bay window. Anthony pulled his beak from under his bright yellow wing, chirped, then sidled along the perch until he was pressed against the sleek softness of his less-colorful mate. Cleo cheeped and fluffed her feathers before settling again.

  Envy tugged at Tess's heart. There were times, like now in the middle of the night when her defenses were lowest she questioned the necessity of her singular path. She, too, wanted to snuggle into supportive, masculine arms, hear someone whisper in her ear that she didn't have to go it alone any more. As fantasies went, it wasn't much, but the notion slipped into her head often lately.

  Maybe that was why Dan had affected her so completely today, why she kept thinking of his strong arms around her and his firm mouth brushing flames across her lips. Her longing had manifested itself in a compelling green-eyed man who wore flannel like a lumberjack and kissed like an angel.

  "It's a fantasy," she murmured, knowing better than to expect any man to shoulder her burdens. Evan had given her a chance to 'adjust' her priorities that night in ICU. After she told him what to do with his adjustments, he'd demanded his ring back and exited her life with all the finesse of a dog with his tail on fire.

  She was on her own until her father walked again, unaided, without pain. It was her fault his back was broken, her parents lost their dream nursery, and her mother still waited tables to pay the bills. Michael and Irene Emory were Tess's top priority and, if that meant spending her life alone....

  She covered her bleak thoughts, along with the birds. "Sleep well, Anthony and Cleopatra."

  Exhausted, Tess should have fallen asleep the instant her head hit the pillow. It was impossible when an attractive stranger boldly stepped into her mind every time her guard came down. In nearly thirty years, hadn't she created enough memories to pull out without reliving this particular afternoon?

  Admittedly, those two hours on the bridge were the most comfortable she'd ever spent with a man. Dan was easy to talk to, fun-loving, and she enjoyed being with him...when he wasn't telling her how to run her life. No, it was more than that. When his lips pressed against hers, firm and demanding, she'd experienced something her fiancé had never made her feel.