by Karen Docter
Desire. White-hot, searing desire.
A shudder trickled beneath her skin. Her blood thickened with unaccustomed need. It was as if Dan were lying beside her, his hard, callused fingertips strumming a lazy tune against her sensitive nerve endings. She moaned when she remembered the way his taste lingered on her lips all afternoon, teasing her with the certainty she'd never see the provocative stranger with the sinful kisses again. Sweet mercy, the man could kiss up a storm.
You don't need any more storms in your life.
Throwing back her covers against her thoughts, she turned on the brass lamp at her bedside. Then, she stomped into the bathroom and ruthlessly brushed her teeth a second time, erasing Dan from memory with each stroke. Satisfied with her efforts, she slid back into bed and leaned over to switch off the light.
She grabbed the colorful plastic card off her nightstand instead. Why hadn't she left it on the food court table under her discarded napkin where it belonged? Dan had no idea what he was talking about. Look at his lackadaisical approach to life. The man was living in the back of a truck!
How could he fish for months on end, especially after engaging in such a demanding career? She would think he'd get bored eventually. She'd certainly go nuts.
His illusion of balance was an illusion. A fantasy. He'd lost touch with the real world and didn't even know. Poor man.
The whole thing was nonsense anyway. She wasn't stressed and a piece of plastic couldn't tell her otherwise. She'd prove it. Pressing her thumb in the middle of the box, she closed her eyes and counted. For good measure, she counted again. When her eyes opened, she threw the card across the room.
Black. She'd always hated that color.
***
Late the next afternoon, Dan yawned under cover of his hand and watched the conference room fill up. The air conditioner blew overhead, but the sunny room had obviously been closed for some time and too many bodies made it worse. A nap on the balcony of his newly leased cliff house overlooking the beach, the warm sun caressing his naked chest, sounded like the only prescription worth swallowing.
He smiled at the thought of his productive morning. The first thing he'd done after signing the papers on the house was to buy a couple of double chaise lounges. He was dying to try one of them out. Alone, if necessary, although it would be more fun if someone joined him.
Like Tess.
He could easily imagine her lying next to him on the ultra-soft cushion, her luxuriant curls loose and blowing every which way on the playful ocean breeze. It would trail over his bare skin as she leaned over to plant slow, drugging kisses in an erotic line from his throat down to his chest. He swallowed hard when she dropped lower and—Laughter from beside him made him tug at the knot of his tie. He shifted in his chair, grateful the conference table shielded his lap. Sporting a hard-on in front of the entire Merchants Association was not good business. "What?" he demanded of his aunt.
Aunt Mary grinned from her seat at the U-shaped line of tables. "Nothing." Her tone said 'everything'.
He'd hoped to avoid this conversation altogether. "I'm sorry you had to unlock the door at three a.m. If I'd realized the time, I'd have camped out in the truck for the night. My watch is still packed in a box."
"I don't know why you keep apologizing, Daniel." Her eyes widened with innocence. "You shouldn't feel guilty about last night. If it will make you feel better, I can assure you it's already forgotten." She suited her actions to the words and turned to a new arrival on her other side.
"I don't feel guilty," he muttered.
What he felt was hot and bothered and frustrated as hell. He'd met a woman who brought his blood to a hard boil with one look, hell, one thought, and she was a workaholic with a boyfriend. A live-in boyfriend. For all he knew, she was married to the guy.
After speaking to Tess on the phone last night, Dan ordered himself to walk away. It wasn't any of his business if the woman chose to work herself to death. He told himself to let Anthony worry about her.
Did it work?
No.
What had he done?
He'd spent hours in the middle of the night, traipsing an unfamiliar area looking for twenty-four hour stores that carried car parts. Car parts! All those hours in a bass boat, frying in the sun, must have baked his brains into peanut brittle!
Tess chose that instant to enter the room and clue him in as to why he couldn't keep thoughts of her at bay. Each time he saw her it became more difficult to see her as the consummate businesswoman he knew her to be, rather than the answer to some teenage boy's midnight fantasy. His fantasy. Unnerved by the raw power of his own desire, Dan stared.
The day had taken its toll on her hair, pulled into a knot on top of her head. Playful tendrils had escaped confinement, framing her face in romantic curls like those a lover's exploring fingers might leave behind. Her attempt to push hairpins more securely into the slipping mass only made the image more potent.
A groan lodged in his throat when he caught a hint of ivory lace and satin peeking between the lapels of her tailored, blue linen suit jacket, one of his middle-of-the-night questions answered. Tess Emory most definitely did not wear plain cotton underwear.
The air dammed in his chest until her gaze sought him out. Her eyes widened when they swept over his clean-shaven face and his charcoal gray suit. A tiny smile appeared on her lips. His heart kicked over and began to function again.
A brighter smile pulled him to his feet and held him there until she came around the bank of tables to his side. "Mr. McDonald." Tess held out her hand for a handshake. "It's good to see you again."
The temptation to kiss the starch right out of her lapels tore at his resolve to keep his distance. He murmured a polite response, entirely too pleased when she took the vacant chair on the other side of him. "Aren't you sitting at the head table?"
Tess greeted a merchant passing by them before shaking her head. "The president of the merchant organization runs the meeting. I'm here as a liaison to represent Thorgram however this group is set up by, and for, the shopping center tenants."
Her spicy perfume slipped into his lungs and wove around his senses. "Which one's the president?" Dan didn't care in the least.
"Right now? No one." Her slim hand waved toward a woman across the crowded room. "See the redhead in the corner? Roxy's the vice-president. She'll stand in until the election is held next month." Tess grimaced. "Assuming there is an election."
"Why hasn't the V.P. taken over?"
"Roxy doesn't want the job." She sat back with a sigh. "No one does. There's too much work involved."
"Like what?"
"Ideally, it means serving as liaison between the merchants, and between the merchants and Thorgram Group. Realistically, the president ends up with most of the work and all of the headaches. Gratis, of course."
Dan laughed. "In other words, the president has to please all of the people, all of the time. With a smile."
"You have an amazing grasp of the principle involved."
His amusement faded. Yes. He used to be like that, running around like Superman, solving everyone's problems. Always flying to the next crisis without a backward glance. He hadn't had a Lois Lane on the sidelines to slow him down though. He'd found flying solo exhausting, not to mention lonely, which was an interesting commentary on his relationship with Charlotte since she'd moved into his penthouse eight months before he walked away from it all.
"Dan?"
"Mmm?" His gaze fixed on Tess's parted lips. He should never have kissed her on the bridge, teased himself with impossibilities. Now he could think of little else but holding her, kissing her, and banishing the shadows from her eyes.
"Before the meeting starts, I wanted to thank you. You helped me yesterday. You fed me, followed me home."
"You were angry about that last part."
"I was," she admitted, "but I believe your intentions were good. You’re forgiven."
Would her forgiveness extend to the kiss he wanted to plant on her
smiling mouth, right now, in front of a room full of strangers? Would she forgive him if he lifted her onto the conference table in front of him and unbuttoned her suit jacket so he could see more of the camisole she wore underneath? What would she do if he pulled her breast into his mouth and suckled her through the satiny material warmed by her skin?
Tess stared at him like she could read the wild thoughts crashing through his lust-soaked brain. "I also wanted to thank you for going to all that trouble to fix my side view mirror. I found the packaging and your note on my windshield this morning." A smile lit her face. “Although, I should point out you might reconsider your life as a stalker. Leaving evidence of your crime is bound to cut your career short.”
Dan dragged his gaze away from her delectable lips before he gave in to the impulses testing his restraint. It was long past time to remember a few inescapable facts.
The two of them sat in the middle of a crowded conference room. The meeting was about to begin. He was leaving in three months and couldn't get involved with another woman clearly locked into a relentless drive for promotion. After the changes he’d made in his life this past year, the mere thought of jumping on that merry-go-round again was impossible.
There were a number of reasons not to explore this unreasonable attraction between them. It was the last two that clinched it. Tess isn't yours to kiss. She belongs to someone else.
"I didn't think Anthony would have time to fix it before you drove to work this morning," he said. "I was already in the neighborhood. It's no big deal."
She shifted in her seat, looking oddly pained by the reminder of what, rather who, stood between them. "Anthony is...I mean...he isn't...mechanically inclined. Thank you."
"You're welcome," Dan said, subdued by the thought of Anthony's possible inclinations. The idea of Tess making love to some faceless, mechanically disinclined man made Dan's jaw clench into a hard knot.
Damn.
Chapter Four
The meeting was long and tedious, and Tess was never more fidgety in her life. A strange phone conversation with her parents before she left her office was partially to blame. It wasn’t until after she’d hung up that she realized they’d adroitly avoided her inquiries about their welfare, while their none-too-subtle probes about her job indicated her lack of success in keeping her problems from them.
This brought her to her hard-won marketing campaign on today’s agenda. Once she presented her report, she hoped to kick back while months of effort paid off in increased retail sales, and in her promotion. With the promotion’s bonus package in hand, she could stop worrying about covering the shortfall in her father’s insurance coverage. She’d have the surgeon’s fifteen-thousand dollar deposit before the September deadline.
No, she didn’t dare relax. Not yet.
Her distraction was unacceptable, if readily explained. Every time she moved, her leg bumped against Dan’s, their shoulders rubbed. Her lungs filled with his scent when she took the smallest breath. The conference room, always too small to accommodate these meetings, was becoming smaller, hotter, more airless, by the minute.
She longed to strip off her jacket. She didn’t dare. Although her lace-trimmed camisole doubled as a blouse, the satin wasn’t thick enough to hide the way her nipples tightened when she walked into the room and spotted the man who’d featured in her dreams last night. Incredible dreams overflowing with lingering touches and intensifying passion.
Whatever had possessed her to sit next to Dan? She should have taken a seat as far from him as possible. Across the conference table, across the room...across the planet wasn’t far enough if she couldn’t control her fantasies better than this!
Her gaze slid sideways to Dan’s charcoal gray suit jacket stretched across his broad chest, the red power tie lying beneath his square jaw. Here was the man she’d conjured in her mind yesterday. In command. Powerful. The tailored look fit him as perfectly as jeans and flannel.
Her imagination hadn’t prepared her, however, for the loss of his mustache. Behind that softness, Dan’s sculpted upper lip was concealed. Beneath the hair, the two indentations that framed his mouth and gave his face strength and character were blurred. Revealed, the combination was downright devastating.
Dan affected her as no other man had before. With one look into the depths of his eyes, her heart began to flutter in her breast like a trapped butterfly, her skin flushed with the heat of a sun-scorched beach. She didn’t know whether to fly away or sink into the fire.
Was it any wonder she’d taken steps to protect herself?
Guilt made her squirm in the chair. She’d lied to Dan. Twice. Although, technically, she hadn’t actually lied about anything. Still, dangling a non-existent lover in his face was a cowardly thing to do. It was frightening to know her half ounce canary, Anthony, was her sole defense against her growing desire for A Touch of Silk & Satin’s co-owner.
“Tess.” Dan nudged her knee. “Are you ready?”
Of course, she was ready and willing and—
She read the anticipation in his expression, on every face around the conference ta...sweet mercy! “Yes! I’m ready.”
Staring blindly at her notes, she took two breaths to smother her misbehaving hormones, and then launched into a review of her marketing plan, ready to kick off now that her superiors had given her a grudging green light to proceed. Their support could disappear at the first sign of trouble, but she didn’t expect any immediate problems.
Her confidence was ill timed. She’d barely finished speaking when Arnold Sawyer, manager of the shopping center’s largest clothing store, shook his head. “I’m sorry, Tess, my marketing department can’t get around this plan.”
Uneasiness settled into the pit of her stomach. “Arnie, you were the first to agree to the concept.”
“That may be. However, now I have doubts. Some of the scheduled events do not seem...appropriate.”
Was he referring to the week of May Day festivities she expected to draw young and old alike into the common areas? Maybe it was the Renaissance Festival scheduled for summer’s end he didn’t approve. These were only two of the upscale, ambitious programs lined up through August. Her strategy wasn’t particularly new. It simply demanded variety and pizzazz to garner interest for her stores.
She was almost afraid to look at the other merchants seated around the room. “Do any more of you have concerns?”
Laura Beckett, owner of the beauty salon on the first floor, wiggled her long, neon blue fingernails in the air. “A bazaar doesn’t help me. I provide a service, not a product.”
“I never said each event will directly benefit every store. This plan is specifically designed to entice more customers to the mall. Once they’re here, it’s up to you to grab them.”
Support came from an unlikely source when Dan introduced himself. “I haven’t met all of you yet, but I’d like to put my two cents in here, if I may.”
He smiled at Laura, who promptly colored to the dark roots of her cotton candy, blond hair. “Ms. Beckett—”
“Call me Laura.”
‘Call me to bed’ was what she meant! Tess was tempted to throw something, preferably at the beautician’s sickening sweet smile. She’d heard the rumors about the woman’s escapades. If the swift grapevine were to be believed, Laura had dated every single and several far-from-single males in the mall. Thoughts of rescuing Dan, however, faded from Tess’s mind an instant later when he chuckled.
“Laura,” he repeated obediently. “All of us with smaller stores or special interests have the same problem, but we can’t depend solely on our own advertising. We can spend thousands of dollars and never realize the promotional benefits of Ms. Emory’s strategy.”
“You’re sure it will work?”
“Nothing’s sure in this volatile business climate, but, yes, I think it will increase foot traffic and draw customers into our stores.”
Laura’s lips pursed into a pout. “I still can’t use anything like a bazaar.”
> Refusing to look too close at her motivation—she certainly didn’t care Dan hadn’t used her given name in that provocative, come-hither tone—Tess broke in. “Of course you can, Laura. Place your retail supplies outside the door. Set up a manicuring table and give customers a special rate. If you want to go all out, raffle off a complete makeover for some lucky woman.”
“Once you bring attention to your services,” Dan agreed, “your customers will come back.”
Laura batted her eyelashes at him. “Maybe we can get together over coffee, and you can give me a few more ideas.”
Ideas weren’t what Tess wanted to give her. A swift kick to an ample area came to mind. How dare the woman use this forum as her own personal dating service? “I’d like a show of hands. Who isn’t completely satisfied with the marketing program I’ve outlined?”
Only half a dozen hands went up, Laura’s among them. But, of those, two were major retailers and one was an anchor store. It was their profits she most needed to salvage!
Resigned to another rash of eighteen hour workdays, she kissed her weekend plans with her parents goodbye. “I’ll be happy to address each of your concerns,” she told the rebelling ranks. “Either talk with me before you leave today or call for an appointment.”
Several nodding heads told her there were others with doubts that hadn’t raised their hands. She fingered Dan’s stress card in her skirt pocket, tempted to pull it out. Not to give it back, as she’d intended when she placed it there this morning, but to test it once again.
Yet, she knew pleasant thoughts wouldn’t begin to calm the sea of acid now churning in her belly. She hadn’t a clue where to shake more time from her schedule. One thing was clear, though. Longer hours would become the rule not the exception if, when, she got her promotion. She’d better get used to it.
Not that her mind didn’t stage its own mini-rebellion. Her plate was full. She’d been fighting headaches and indigestion for months. And, although she spoke on the phone with her parents several times a week, she hadn’t seen them in over a month. Was it any wonder they’d begun to suspect something was wrong?
