Dangerous Attraction

by Melinda Cross

  ‘Not much of a job for a young girl.’

  Rebecca shrugged. ‘It paid the bills for five years.’

  Marcus was silent for a time, but she could still feel his eyes on her. She pretended not to notice. ‘You were kicked out of your own house, weren’t you?’ he asked finally, and surprise made her look at him.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He rolled on his side to face her, bracing himself on his left elbow. ‘When your father died, you stepmother inherited, right?’

  Rebecca frowned down at her beer can. ‘She was his wife.’

  ‘And you were his daughter. And yet she ended up in your house, and you ended up in a room over a laundry.’

  She pressed her lips together hard, her frown deepening. ‘It turned out all right.’

  Marcus’s eyes were narrowed, dark with a hint of the same kind of rage she’d seen in them last night when he’d sprung to Johnny’s defense. ‘You should have had a lawyer. That was your house, not hers. She should have been living over that laundry, not you. Someone should have seen to it that your rights were protected. Someone should have.’

  ‘It turned out all right,’ she repeated slowly, enunciating each word.

  ‘It didn’t turn out all right. You were cheated. For God’s sake, you were just a kid…’ He stopped abruptly when he noticed her peculiar expression, then looked away. ‘I can’t abide injustice,’ he finished in a mumble.

  For the first time in years past counting, Rebecca felt that strange, twisted kind of warmth one only felt when standing in the shadow of a protective guardian. She had stood alone for so long that the feeling almost overwhelmed her.

  She looked down at his strong, embittered profile, then blinked slowly, like someone recovering their vision after a blinding flash of light. For the briefest of instants she had what amounted to an epiphany—a sudden, strobe-like image of the heart of Marcus Flint—and what she saw contradicted everything the man was supposed to be. ‘Do you always champion the underdog?’ she asked quietly.

  He turned back to look at her, fixing her with those chameleon-like gray eyes. They were even darker now, like the angry rolls of the Pacific when storm clouds made a black ceiling over the waves. ‘Me? Hell, no. I’m Marcus Flint, remember? Betrayer of trusting friends and seducer of innocent women.’ He held her gaze for a little too long then, and Rebecca felt a flush rising from her neck to blossom across her cheeks. She looked away abruptly, and only heard the long sigh that must have filled his cheeks before escaping through his lips. ‘What are my chances of talking you out of writing this screenplay?’ he asked quietly.

  Surprise made her look back at him. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’

  Perhaps if his gaze hadn’t been so earnest; perhaps if her resolve hadn’t been weakened by physical exertion and her senses clouded by those few sips of beer-perhaps then she might have reacted differently. But as it was, when his right hand left the beer can to touch her face, she remained perfectly still. She didn’t even blink.

  ‘Because I don’t want you involved in this, Rebecca.’ It was the second time he’d used her first name, and something about the way those syllables rolled off his tongue made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  His fingers were wet from the beer can, cool on her cheek. She felt an icy droplet of moisture trickle down over her jaw to pool in the hollow of her throat. He was staring at her throat now, at the droplet of moisture sparkling there in the sun, touching it with his eyes in what seemed an inevitable prelude. It was the singular most erotic moment Rebecca had ever experienced, and that it rocked her so profoundly was a measure of her innocence.

  Are his fingers trembling on my cheek, she wondered, or is my cheek trembling beneath his fingers? Why is he staring at that drop of water? Is he going to touch it, and if he does will it sizzle?

  They were childish, naïve questions, and, even unspoken, they embarrassed her.

  Nothing is happening here, she berated herself, even as her eyes remained wide and fixed and her breath struggled for release from her throat. He is not trying to seduce you—first, because it would be stupid, in the circumstances, and second, because you’re about as sensual as a fencepost—and if it feels as if he is it’s only because you’re so hopelessly inexperienced you don’t know what being seduced is supposed to feel like.

  She took a halting, shallow breath that made his eyes jerk from her throat up to her face. Instantly her awareness of any real physical sensation was lost. She felt disembodied, no longer connected to the cheek beneath his hand or that hollow in her throat where the drop of water still shimmered.

  Now she felt only the fiery heat of his gaze; she saw only the mysteries burning there, begging to be explored.

  When he finally spoke she had the vague impression that the words had not really been said aloud; that they had only been passed through the air from his body into hers.

  ‘If I did what I wanted to do now.’ he started to murmur, and the sentence hung unfinished between them.

  A single blink seemed to take forever, her eyelids lowering with such excruciating slowness that she could see the curtain of her own lashes setting like the evening sun, then rising again like the light of morning. She waited, during that timeless blink, for him to do what it was he wanted to do, because she was the female animal now, and her role was to wait for the male act.and then suddenly the reality of what she was waiting for struck her, and she took a tiny, shocked breath.

  Good God, he was doing it. With no more effort than it required to breathe, he was seducing her-her—a woman so suspicious of all men that she had been touched by none.

  Was it such a stretch to believe he had done the same with the infinitely more desirable Charity Lauder?

  She spoke just as he lifted his hand from her cheek, thinking she would never know the next act in this drama everyone had played but her. With a skill born of rejection she donned that old false cloak of haughty indifference. ‘You’re very good at this, aren’t you?’ she said coldly, and his hand froze in mid-air. ‘It’s a wonder that Charity could resist you.’

  His hand snapped back and his eyes flashed like silver coins igniting in the sun. ‘I knew this would happen,’ he said, his voice strangely resigned. ‘I knew it the minute you stepped through my front door.’

  A distant part of her mind wondered why he chose that particular moment as a reference in time, but she shunted the question aside. ‘You knew that you were going to make a pass, or you knew that I was going to turn you down, just as Charity did?’ she demanded hotly.

  His eyes narrowed and he sat up, turning his head away.

  He turned away. They always turn away when you catch them in the web of their own lies, a voice inside her said.

  ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ The words clattered from his throat like a string of badly connected railroad cars. He jerked his head sideways to glare at her. ‘You think wanting to touch you automatically means I wanted that bitch, too? Have you ever met Charity Lauder?’

  The question caught her off guard, and Rebecca’s carefully cultivated expression crumbled into one of wide-eyed confusion. She watched Marcus fling his head back to drain the rest of his beer, then jumped when he crushed the can in his hand and threw it forcefully down the slope toward the road. ‘Come on.’ He grabbed her hand, jerked her to her feet and began pulling her down the slope.

  ‘Wha—? Wait! Stop it!’ she shouted, digging her heels into the soft soil and leaning backward, her free hand trying to pry his fingers from her wrist. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’

  ‘Yes, you are!’ he hissed, pulling until she was off balance and had to take a running step just to remain upright. ‘We’re going to get this over with right now!’

  Rebecca’s breath caught in alarm and she did the one and only thing she could think of to do. She sat down in the dirt.

  The act so surprised him that he released her hand and stopped to look down at her. ‘What the hell a
re you doing?’

  Blinking rapidly, her lips trembling, she clutched her hands together to keep them from trembling and tried to shout at him. ‘What the hell are you doing, dragging me off like some…?’ She swallowed hard, aborting the outburst because her voice had quavered so much.

  He scowled impatiently. ‘I’m taking you back to the house, that’s what I’m doing. Then you can get out your goddamn notepad or tape recorder or whatever the hell you use, and then, as you agreed, you’re going to listen to what I have to say.’

  He paused for a breath, then looked away into the distance. ‘And then you can do what you’ve wanted to do since you first set foot on this place. You can climb into your little rent-a-car and get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Well!’ she tried to huff importantly, but her voice squeaked. She got to her feet and stopped herself before she performed the indignity of brushing dirt from the seat of her pants. ‘Well,’ she said again, glaring at him furiously.

  He returned her stare, but the corner of his mouth was twitching. ‘Very well said,’ he mumbled, then turned away just a little too late. She’d already seen the beginnings of a smile.

  He made her wait in the Jeep, her arms folded into an angry cradle for her breasts, while he scoured the underbrush for the crushed can he’d thrown earlier.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  REBECCA was silent during the bone-jarring Jeep ride back to the house. In a way she couldn’t have imagined yesterday, she was almost dreading listening to the story she had come all the way across the country to hear, for fear that she wouldn’t believe it.

  With a touch and a look and a few words, Marcus Flint had opened her to feelings she had never expected to experience in her lifetime, and if he was indeed the bastard Charity Lauder claimed in the book she didn’t want to know it yet. If her heart could be awakened by an evil man, then where was the goodness in love? In her?

  No wonder she’d postponed the trip back to the house with that lame remark about it being a beautiful day. She would have chopped and stacked a forest of wood rather than face the possibility that Marcus Flint was less than she hoped.

  Oh, lord, she thought miserably. What if his version of that fateful day’s events was totally unbelievable? What if it was so contrived, so transparently false, that she would recognize it immediately as the pathetic backpedaling of a guilty man?

  The Jeep bounced into a deep pothole in the track, awakening her old defensive instincts. Then you’ll know the truth, she answered her own questions coldly. And better that you learn it now, before it’s too late.

  The corners of her mouth tightened with resolve, but there was a pensive longing in the Pacific-blue eyes that had not been there before. As the Jeep traveled forward, her mind traveled back to the hillside beneath the shed, to those moments that sparkled like iridescent jewels in the desert of her life.

  Marcus Flint, this man accused of betraying friendships and destroying lives, had somehow drawn her into a fairy-tale encounter of tender, burgeoning passion. He had spoken only of wanting her, wanting to touch her—there had been no mention of love, no pretense that any deeper emotion fueled his desire—but, for a woman who had never felt the fiery breath of a man’s passion, that feeling alone was a gift.

  She closed her eyes briefly and clenched her jaw just as the Jeep pulled to a stop in front of the house.

  ‘Get what you need,’ Marcus said quietly once he’d shut off the motor. ‘I’ll meet you on the front porch when you’re ready.’

  She hurried into the house without looking at him, for fear that some of what she was feeling would show in her face.

  ‘Get what I need,’ she mumbled miserably as she mounted the grand staircase and padded silently down the hall to her bedroom. ‘Terrific. What I need is for Victor to be here. What I need is to be back in California in my own little house. What I need is for Marcus Flint to be squat and ugly with mean little eyes—’

  She stopped abruptly when she realized she was talking out loud to an empty room, and looked around helplessly. Her eyes came to rest on the battered old briefcase that contained her dog-eared copy of Test of Courage, bristling with pages of her scribbled notes. She pulled it out and sat down in front of the dresser, looking at the engagement photograph on the book’s back cover, at the image of Charity Lauder that had been torn away from the photo on Marcus Flint’s desk.

  What man wouldn’t try to seduce such a woman? she thought, staring down at Charity’s classically beautiful features, the intricately coiffed dark hair, the eyes afire with that bewitching combination of haughtiness and sensuality that epitomized all truly glamorous women. Of course he must have wanted her. He’s a man, isn’t he? And all men want women that look just like this…

  But even as her surface thoughts were traveling down that path, her subconscious was taking another. Almost of its own volition, her hand rose to touch her cheek where he had touched it, and her eyes fell closed, recalling that sensation so vividly that her breath caught in her throat.

  Her fingers trailed down to that hollow where his eyes had lingered on the drop of moisture, and her imagination continued the scene reality had begun, envisioning his head moving toward her, feeling his hair brushing against the bottom of her chin as he burrowed his face into her neck, trembling at his lips moving against her wet skin…

  Suddenly her heart thumped in a violent double beat and her eyes flew open. They stared back at her from the mirror, strangely bright, a startling, crystalline blue in the flush that colored her face.

  She held her breath for a moment, shaken by the power of her own imagination. For years she had used that creative power to weave words into images that moved an audience of strangers—but never, until this moment, had she fallen prey to its force herself.

  She blinked, stunned, and terribly afraid. The realization that she wanted him—not only emotionally and spiritually, but physically as well—left her momentarily paralyzed.

  How brutally ironic, she thought, that when I finally fall into the fairy-tale I miss Prince Charming altogether, and tumble into the arms of the Black Prince.

  She shrugged out of her denim jacket and smoothed the front of her white sweater, brushing at a dried leaf that clung stubbornly to the knit on the rise of her left breast. Friction generated static, and the sweater crackled and molded itself around the silky fabric of her bra cup, outlining the nipple beneath. Seeing it in the mirror, she plucked frantically at the garment, pulling it away from her chest’ to deny the visual evidence of a body hungry for a man’s touch. She hurried to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face, fluffed her short hair with her fingers, then went downstairs.

  She found Marcus on the porch, his boots propped on the railing, his eyes fixed on some point in the distance. He turned to look at her when she took the chair next to his, then gestured at a drinks tray on the table between them. Rebecca glanced at the full glass of whiskey he cradled in his lap, noticing he hadn’t drunk from it yet. It seemed more a prop than anything else.

  ‘Nothing for me,’ she said, placing a tape recorder on the table, hesitating before she pushed the button, hoping he didn’t notice the quaver in her voice. ‘Are you ready?’

  He stared at her for a moment, indifferently, she thought, then simply nodded.

  She started the machine, then stared down at the empty notepad on her knees, listening to the tape hissing through its heads, waiting.

  Marcus released a prolonged sigh, then spoke quietly. ‘I never tried to seduce Charity Lauder. Why the hell would I?’

  Rebecca’s scowl deepened as she recalled the photograph, the stunning image of a woman almost too perfect to be real. ‘She’s a beautiful woman.’

  He made a derisive sound. ‘The world’s filled with beautiful women.’

  ‘But she was here.’

  She felt his eyes on her long before he spoke again, and wished, for once, that she had long hair to hide behind.

  ‘Is that the criterion? I try to seduce all women who get wi
thin range? Is that what you think is happening between you and me?’

  Her lips tightened as she touched pen to paper. It made a little blue dot that looked oddly pathetic on the blank page. ‘Nothing is happening between us.’

  ‘Really?’

  Rebecca reached over and stabbed the ‘stop’ button on the recorder. She didn’t want him to explain his motives for what had happened up there in the woods. Whatever he said, the brutal reality of words would only sully the magical, romantic memory she clung to. ‘Are you going to tell me your side of this story or not?’

  He hesitated for a moment, gray eyes fixed on hers, then tipped his head begrudgingly toward the recorder. He looked off into the distance once the tape was rolling again. ‘Charity Lauder was trying to seduce me that day.’

  Rebecca looked up in surprise. It was the one thing she hadn’t imagined him saying. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she murmured without thinking. It was an automatic response, an instinctive defense of her gender.

  The muscle along his jaw tightened, and his words dropped like stones into a still pond. ‘Not so ridiculous if you know Charity. She was marrying Johnny for his money, and then she found out I had more than he did. It’s that simple.’

  Rebecca remained frozen for a moment, confused. ‘But…she’s a debutante,’ she insisted, as if that would automatically negate his characterization of Charity as a gold-digger.

  ‘A destitute debutante,’ Marcus amended. ‘A more common species than you might think. Her family’s money was gone a generation ago.’

  Rebecca scowled hard down at her pad, her thoughts scrambling to find the hole in what he was saying. ‘So…Johnny walked in on Charity trying to seduce you?’

  He nodded slowly, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose. ‘I suppose I was stupid not to see it coming. When I look back, she wasn’t even very subtle about it. A look, an off-color remark, “accidentally” brushing against me—that kind of thing had been going on all day. Finally she got impatient and said it flat out.’