by Janet Dailey
IT WAS AN ORDEAL getting through dinner and making the necessary small talk to hide the fact that there was anything wrong. It was even worse after dinner when the three of them sat around with their coffee in the living room. Each tick of the clock was like the swing of a pendulum, bringing nearer the moment when Blake’s threatened discussion would take place.
The telephone rang and the housekeeper answered it in the other room. She appeared in the living room seconds later to announce, “It’s for you, Mr. Blake. A Mr. Carl Landstrom.”
“I’ll take it in the library, Deirdre,” he responded.
Dina waited several seconds after the library door had closed before turning to Mother Chandler. “It’s a business call.” Carl Landstrom was head of the accounting department and Dina knew that his innate courtesy would not allow him to call after office hours unless it was something important. “Blake is probably going to be on the phone for a while,” she explained, a fact she was going to use to make her escape and avoid his private talk. “Would you explain to him that I’m very tired and have gone on to bed?”
“Of course, dear.” The older woman smiled, then sighed with rich contentment. “It’s good to have him back, isn’t it?”
It was a rhetorical question, and Dina didn’t offer a reply as she bent to kiss the relatively smooth check of her mother-in-law. “Good night, Mother Chandler.”
“Good night.”
Upstairs, Dina undressed and took a quick shower. Toweling herself dry, she wrapped the terry cloth robe around her and removed the shower cap from her head, shaking her hair loose. She wanted to be in bed with the lights off before Blake was off the telephone. With luck he wouldn’t bother to disturb her. She knew she was merely postponing the discussion, but for the moment that was enough.
Her nightgown was lying neatly at the foot of the as she entered the bedroom that adjoined the private bath, her hairbrush in hand. A few brisk strokes to unsnarl the damp curls at the ends of her hair was all that she needed to do for the night, she decided, and sat on the edge of the bed to do it.
The mattress didn’t give beneath her weight. It seemed as solid as the seat of a wooden chair. Dina was motionless as she assembled the knowledge and realized that the new mattress and box springs she had ordered for Blake had arrived and hers had been removed.
She sprang from the bed as if discovering a bed of hot coals beneath it. No, her heart cried, she couldn’t sleep with him — not after that last humiliating experience; not with his anger simmering so close to the surface because of today.
The door opened and Blake walked in, and the one thing in the forefront of her mind burst out in panic. “I’m not going to sleep with you!” she cried.
A brow flicked upward. “At the moment, sleep is the furthest thing from my mind.”
“Why are you here?” She was too numbed to think beyond the previous moment.
“To finish our discussion.” Blake walked to the chair against the wall and motioned toward the matching one. “Sit down.”
“No,” Dina refused, too agitated to stay in one place even though he sat down with seemingly relaxed composure while she paced restlessly.
“I want to know why you were meeting Chet.” His hooded gaze watched her intently, like an animal watching its trapped prey expend its nervous energy before moving in for the kill.
“It was perfectly innocent,” she began in self-defense, then abruptly changed her tactics. “It’s really none of your business.”
“If it was as perfectly innocent as you claim,” Blake said, deliberately using her words, “then there’s no reason not to tell me.”
“What you can’t seem to understand, or refuse to understand, is that I need Chet,” she flashed. “I need his comfort and understanding, his gentleness. I certainly don’t receive that from you!”
“If you’d open your eyes once, you’d see you’re not receiving it from him, either,” Blake retorted.
“Don’t I?” Her sarcastic response was riddled with disbelief.
“Chet doesn’t comfort. He merely mouths the words you want to hear. He’s incapable of original thought.”
“I would hate to have you for a friend, Blake,” she declared tightly, “if this is the way you regard friends when they aren’t around, cutting them into little pieces.”
“I’ve known Chet a great deal longer than you have. He can’t survive unless he’s basking in the reflected glory of someone else. When I disappeared, he transferred his allegiance to you, because you represented strength. He’s a parasite, Dina, for all his charm,” Blake continued his cold dissection. “He lived on your strength. He persuaded you to take charge of the company because he knew he was incapable of leading a child, let alone a major corporation.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Dina breathed, walking away from his harsh explanation.
“The next time you’re with him, take a good look at him, Dina,” he ordered. “And I hope you have the perception to see that you’ve been supporting him through all this, not the other way around.”
“No!” She shook her head in vigorous denial.
“I should have stayed away for a couple more months. Maybe by then the rose-colored spectacles would have come off and you would have found out how heavily he leans on you.”
Pausing in her restless pacing, Dina pressed her hands over her ears to shut out his hateful words. “How can you say those things about Chet and still call him your friend?”
“I know his flaws. He’s my friend in spite of them,” Blake responded evenly. “Yet you were going to marry him without acknowledging that he had any.”
“Yes. Yes, I was going to marry him!” Dina cried, pulling her hands away from her ears and turning to confront him.
“Only when I came back, he dropped you so fast it made your head swim. Admit it.” Blake sat unmoving in the chair.
“He wanted me to be happy,” she argued defensively.
“No,” he denied. “My return meant you were on the way out of power and I was in. Chet was securing his position. There was nothing chivalrous in his reason for breaking the engagement. He wasn’t sacrificing anything, only insuring it.”
“So why did you hound him into admitting he was meeting me today?” challenged Dina.
“I didn’t hound him. He was almost relieved to tell me.”
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” She refused to admit that anything Blake was saying made any sense. She fought to keep that feeling of antagonism, without it, she was defenseless against him. “It’s been like this ever since you came back,” she complained, uttering her thoughts aloud.
“I knew when everyone discovered I was alive, it was going to be a shock. But I thought it would be a pleasant shock,” Blake sighed with wry humor. “In your case, I was wrong. It was a plain shock and you haven’t recovered from it yet.”
Dina heard the underlying bitterness in his tone and felt guilty. She tried to explain. “How did you think I would feel? I’d become my own person. Suddenly you were back and trying to absorb me again in your personality, swallow me up whole.”
“How did you think I would react when you’ve challenged me every minute since I’ve returned?” His retaliation was instant, his temper ignited by her defensive anger, but he immediately brought it under control. “It seems we’ve stumbled onto the heart of our problem. Let’s see if we can’t have a civilized discussion and work it out.”
“Civilized!” Dina laughed bitterly. “You don’t know the meaning of the word. You spent too much time in the jungle. You aren’t even civilized about the way you make love!”
Black fires blazed in his eyes. The muscles along his jaw went white from his effort to keep control. “And you go for the jugular vein every time!” he snarled, rising from the chair in one fluid move.
Dina’s heart leaped into her throat. She had aroused a beast she couldn’t control. She took a step backward, then turned and darted for the door. But Blake intercepted her, spinning her around,
his arms circling her, crushing her to his length.
His touch sizzled through her like an electric shock, immobilizing her. She offered not an ounce of resistance as his mouth covered hers in a long, punishing kiss. She seemed without life or breath, except what he gave her in anger.
Anger needs fuel to keep it burning, and Dina gave him none. Gradually the brutal pressure eased and his head lifted a fraction of an inch. She opened her eyes and gazed breathlessly into the brilliant darkness of his. The warm moistness of his breath was caressing her parted lips.
His hand stroked the spun gold of her hair, brushing it away from her cheek. “Why do you always bring out the worst in me?” he questioned huskily.
“Because I won’t let you dominate me the way you do everyone else,” Dina whispered. She could feel the involuntary trembling of his muscular body and the beginnings of the same passionate tremors in her own.
“Does it give you a feeling of power —” he kissed her cheek “— to know that —” his mouth teased the curling tips of her lashes “— you can make me lose control?” He returned to tantalize the curving outline of her lips. “You are the only one who could ever make me forget reason.”
“Am I?” Dina breathed skeptically, because he seemed in complete control at the moment and she was the one losing her grip.
“I had a lot of time to think while I was trying to fight my way out of that tropical hell. I kept remembering all our violent quarrels that got started over the damnedest things. I kept telling myself that if I ever made it back, they were going to be a thing of the past. Yet within hours after I saw you, we were at each other’s throats.”
“I know,” she nodded.
As if believing her movement was an attempt to escape his lips, Blake captured her chin to hold her head still. With languorous slowness, his mouth took possession of hers. The kiss was like a slow-burning flame that kept growing hotter and hotter.
Its heat melted Dina against his length, so hard and very male. Her throbbing pulse sounded loudly in her ears as the flames coursed through her body.
Before she succumbed completely to the weakness of her physical desire, she twisted away from his mouth. She knew what he wanted, and what she wanted, but she had to deny it.
“It won’t work, Blake.” Her throat worked convulsively, hating the words even as she said them. “Not after the last time.”
“The last time…” He pursued her lips, his mouth hovering a feather’s width from them, and she trembled weakly, lacking the strength to turn away. “I hated you for becoming engaged to Chet, even believing I was dead. And I hated myself for not having the control to stop when you asked me not to make love to you. This time it’s different.”
“It’s no good.” But the hands that had slipped inside her robe and were caressing her skin with such arousing thoroughness felt very good.
For an instant Dina didn’t think Blake was going to pay any attention to her protest, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted him to take note of it. Then she felt the tensing of his muscles as he slowly became motionless.
He continued to hold her in his arms as if considering whether to concede to her wishes or to overpower her resistance, something he could easily accomplish in her present half-willing state.
A split second later he was setting her away from him, as if removing himself from temptation. “If that’s what you want, I’ll wait,” he conceded grimly.
“I…” In a way, it wasn’t what she wanted; and Dina almost said so, but checked herself. “I need time.”
“You’ve got it,” Blake agreed, his control superb, an impenetrable mask concealing his emotions. “Only don’t make me wait too long before you come to a decision.”
“I won’t.” Dina wasn’t even certain what decision there was to make. What were her choices?
His raking look made her aware of the terry robe hanging loosely open, exposing the cleavage of her breasts. She drew the folds together to conceal the naked form Blake knew so well. He turned away, running his fingers through the wayward thickness of his dark hair.
“Go to bed, Dina,” he said with a hint of weariness. “I have some calls to make.”
Her gaze swung to the bed and the quilted spread that concealed the rock-hard mattress. “The new box spring and mattress that I had Deirdre order for you came today, and she put it in here. I’ll… I’ll sleep in the guest room.”
“No.” Blake slashed her a look over his shoulder. “You will sleep with me, if you do nothing else.”
Dina didn’t make the obvious protest regarding the intimacy of such an arrangement and its frustrations, but offered instead, “That bed is like lying on granite.”
There was a wryly mocking twist of his mouth. “To use an old cliche, Dina, you’ve made your bed, now you have to lie in it.”
“I won’t,” she declared with a stubborn tilt of her chin.
“Am I asking too much to want my wife to sleep beside me?” He gave Dina a long, level look that she couldn’t hold.
Averting her head, she closed her eyes to murmur softly “No, it isn’t too much.”
The next sound she heard was the opening of the door. She turned as Blake left the room. She stared at the closed door that shut her inside, wondering if she hadn’t made a mistake by giving in to his request.
Walking over to the bed, she pressed a hand on the quilt to test its firmness. Under her full weight it gave barely an inch. It was going to be quite a difference from the soft mattress she usually slept on, but then her bed partner was a completely different man from the urbane man she had married. Dina wondered which she would get used to first — the hard bed or the hard man?
Nightgowned, with the robe lying at the foot of the bed, she crawled beneath the covers. The unyielding mattress wouldn’t mold to her shape, so she had to attempt to adjust her curves to it, without much success. Sleep naturally became elusive as she kept shifting positions on the hard surface trying to find one that was comfortable.
Almost two hours later she was still awake, but she closed her eyes to feign sleep when she heard Blake open the door. It was difficult to regulate her breathing as she listened to his quiet preparations. Keeping to the far side of the bed, she stayed motionless when he climbed in to lie beside her, not touching but close enough for her to feel his body heat.
Blake shifted a few times, then settled into one position. Within a few minutes she heard him breathing deeply in sleep. Sighing, she guessed she was still hours away from it.
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Chapter Seven
A HAND WAS MAKING rubbing strokes along her upper arm, pleasantly soothing caresses. Then fingers tightened to shake her gently.
“Come on, Dina, wake up!” a voice ordered.
“Mmm.” The negative sound vibrated from her throat as she snuggled deeper into her pillow.
Only it wasn’t a pillow. There was a steady thud beneath her head, and the pillow that wasn’t a pillow moved up and down in a regular rhythm. No, it wasn’t a pillow. She was nestled in the crook of Blake’s arm, her head resting on his chest. She could feel the curling sun-bleached hairs on his chest tickling her cheek and nose.
Sometime in the night she had forsaken the hardness of the mattress to cuddle up to the warm hardness of his body. Her eyelids snapped open at the familiarity sleep had induced. Dina would have moved away from him, but the arm around her tightened to hold her there for another few seconds.
A callused finger tipped her chin upward, forcing her to look at him, and her heart skipped a beat at the lazy warmth in the craggy male face.
“I’d forgotten what it was like to sleep with an octopus,” Blake murmured. “Arms and legs all over the place!”
Heat assailed Dina at the intimacy of her position. Sleep had dulled her reflexes. When his thumb touched her lips to trace their outline, Dina was too slow in trying to elude it. As the first teasing brush made itself felt, she lost the desire to escape it. Rough skin lightly explored every contour of
her mouth before his thumb probed her lips apart to find the white barrier of her teeth.
It became very difficult to breathe under the erotically stimulating caress, especially when his gaze was absorbing every detail of his action with disturbing interest. Situated as she was, with a hand resting on the hard muscles of his chest, afraid to move, Dina felt and heard the quickening beat of his pulse. Hers was racing no less slowly.
The muffled groan of arousal that came from his throat sent the blood rocketing through her heart. The arm around her ribcage tightened to draw her up. His mouth renewed the exploration his thumb had only begun. With a mastery that left her shattered, Blake parted her lips, his tongue seeking out hers to ignite the fires of passion.
In the crush of his embrace, it was impossible for Dina to ignore the fact that Blake was naked beneath the covers. It was just as impossible to be unaware that her nightgown was twisted up around her hips. It was a discovery his roughly caressing hands soon made.
As his hands slid beneath it, his fingers catching the material to lift it higher, Dina made a weak attempt to stop him. It seemed the minute her own hands came in contact with the living bronze of his muscled arms, they forgot their intention.
More of her bare skin came in contact with his hard flesh. The delicious havoc it created with her senses only made Dina want to feel more of him. Willingly she slipped her arms from the armholes as Blake lifted over her head. His mouth was absent from her lips for only that second. The instant the nightgown was tossed aside, he was back kissing her with a demanding passion that she eagerly returned.
Blake shifted, rolling Dina onto her back, the punishing hardness of the mattress beneath her. His sun-bronzed torso was above her, an elbow on the mattress offering him support. His warm, male smell filled her senses, drugging her mind. When he dragged his mouth away frown hers, she curved a hand around his neck to bring it back. Blake resisted effortlessly, the burning darkness of his gaze glittering with satisfaction at her aroused state.
At sometime the covers had been kicked aside. As his hand began a slow, intimate exploration of her breasts, waist and hips, Blake watched it, his eyes drinking in the shapely perfection of her female form. The blatant sensuality of the look unnerved Dina to the point that she couldn’t permit it to continue. Again came the feeling that it was a stranger’s eyes looking at her, not those of her husband.
