by Diana Palmer
“You don’t look at me as other men do,” she said hesitantly. His eyebrows arched and she laughed self-consciously. “I mean,” she amended, “that you don’t make me feel inferior or cheap. Women are rather defensive when men wolf whistle and make catcalls. Perhaps they don’t realize how threatening it can be to a woman when she’s by herself. Or perhaps they do.”
“You’re very attractive. I suppose a man who lacks verbal skills uses the only weapons he has.”
“Weapons.” She tasted the word and made a face. “They are, aren’t they? Weapons to demean and humiliate.”
He moved closer. “You’re destroying my illusions,” he told her. “I was just thinking that you were unique—a woman comfortable in her femininity.”
“Oh, I am,” she said. “I enjoy being a woman. But there are looks and words that make me uncomfortable. I dislike harassment.”
“Would you believe that men can be made just as uncomfortable by aggressive women?” he asked softly.
She laughed a little. “I suppose so. But one doesn’t think of women making men uncomfortable.”
“You’d be amazed,” he confessed.
Her thin eyebrows drew slightly together. “Is she aggressive?”
He stilled. “She?”
“The woman you…your lover.”
She was perceptive, he thought. Too perceptive. He smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “Yes,” he said. “She’s learned how to make me impotent, in fact, and she seems to enjoy it.”
She flushed. “Sorry.” She sat down on the sofa, busying herself with arranging the pillows.
“Oh, hell, I’m sorry, too,” he said gruffly. He sat down in the armchair across from her, his arms crossed on his knees as he stared at her until she met his dark eyes. “You’re remarkably inhibited for a woman your age.”
“Am I?” She smiled vacantly.
It should have discouraged him. It didn’t. His eyes narrowed as his mind started adding up discrepancies between her flirtatious nature and her reaction to blatant comments. “The man you’re living with,” he began. “You are lovers, aren’t you?”
She stared at him while her mind struggled with answers that wouldn’t give her completely away.
His lips parted and he let out a slow breath. “There’s only one answer that fits this whole setup,” he said quietly. “The man you share this beach house with…is he gay?”
She shifted uncomfortably. She couldn’t let him think that about the owner of the beach house, in case he found out somewhere down the road that it belonged to Clayton Seymour. On the other hand, her face had already given away the fact that she didn’t sleep with the owner of the beach house.
“No,” she said shortly. “He most certainly is not gay.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then how can you be committed to him when he’s never here? Or are you just a one-night stand he can’t shake off?”
She got to her feet, her eyes blazing. “You make a great deal of assumptions for a man who knows nothing about my situation.”
He got up, too. He shrugged, sticking his hands in his pockets as he studied her. “You don’t add up. All I want is a straight answer. Do you have a lover or not?”
He’d put it in such a way that she could answer it if she wanted to, without implicating her brother. “I’m no maiden,” she said—and it was true, because she’d been married to Mosby.
“I hardly supposed you were,” he returned. His eyes slowly wandered over her. “I want you,” he said bluntly.
She stared at him levelly. Well, what had she expected, professions of love eternal and a sparkly diamond? She drew in a slow breath. “For how long?”
“Until we get tired of each other,” he said.
He was ruthless. She’d suspected that he was, but it was disconcerting to have proof. It was a good thing that she hadn’t dashed in headfirst. She studied the floor at her feet, her eyes idly on her sandals and her pink-tipped toes. “I told you at the outset that I don’t sleep around.”
“Yes, you did. But I’m offering you more than that. I’ve given you the impression that I’m poor. I’m not.” He moved closer, his powerful body intimidating as he stood just in front of her, so that the scent of his cologne teased her nostrils. “Nikki, I can pay for you to finish college. I can buy you a place of your own, one that you won’t have to share.”
She was almost shaking with indignation. Had he no idea what she was like. He knew that she was intelligent, but that counted for nothing. It was a body he wanted in bed, nothing more. She felt cheap, and she didn’t like it.
She lifted cold green eyes to his, and he seemed taken aback by the hostility he saw in them. “I don’t have a price tag,” she told him very evenly.
A cynical smile brushed his hard mouth. “Don’t you? Suppose I produced a wedding ring? Would that change your mind?”
At the mention of the words, nightmarish memories made her eyelids flicker. She turned away. “I have no interest in marriage,” she said stiffly.
“Then you’re a rarity in the world.” He grew more impatient and irritated by the second. She wasn’t reacting as he’d expected. “Most women would trade themselves for the right offer.”
Her hands clenched at her sides while she struggled for composure. She’d had years of practice at the polite, meaningless smile she used on overbearing people. She dredged it up now.
“Then perhaps you’d better fall back on the few you already know,” she said. “I’d like for you to leave now.”
“I thought I was doing you a favor by being honest,” he replied, because he saw her clenched hands.
She was finding that out. “You’re absolutely right, you did. It’s marvelous to find out that my intelligence and my personality count for nothing with you, that as far as you’re concerned, I’m just a slab of meat after all.”
He scowled. “You weren’t exactly a shrinking violet yesterday.”
“One kiss and you think you’re irresistible?” she asked, wide-eyed.
That did it. His eyes blazed with dark rage. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded.
“Only a woman you’ve propositioned, don’t let it worry you. I’m sure you’ll trip over willing bodies on your way back to your own house. Do drive carefully. Thank you for the fishing trip. And goodbye,” she added, smiling.
How he hated that damned plastic smile! He turned on his heel and strode angrily to the front door. He couldn’t remember ever having felt such a violent hatred of a woman.
He went home in a stupor, uncertain why he’d made such a blatant proposition to someone for whom he was beginning to feel a rare tenderness. He didn’t understand his own behavior.
It was worse when he remembered how she’d clung to him on the beach the day before, and how much he’d wanted to make love to her right there on the sand. He felt frankly threatened by his own confusion. His desire for her was growing by the second. He needed a woman tonight, badly, to get Nikki out of his thoughts.
But calling Chris was out of the question. He had two other women friends with whom he could satisfy these inconvenient longings. The problem was, they were halfway in love with him. He couldn’t take one of them to bed without encouraging her. Damn the luck, he thought furiously. It was Nikki who’d aroused him, but she was the one woman in the world he didn’t dare go to for satisfaction. What a joke fate had played on him!
Nikki cleaned up the house and went to sit on the deck. It was stormy-looking. There were dark clouds over the ocean, and she hoped the predictions of that tropical depression turning into a full fledged tropical storm were false. She had enough storms in her life.
She wondered if any other woman had ever rejected Kane Lombard after such a blatant proposition. Probably not, once they knew who he was. He had money all right, but what hurt the most was that he’d assumed that because he thought Nikki had none, he felt justified in using money as bait to get her into bed with him.
She dashed away angry tears. She doubted if h
e’d gone home to spend the night alone. He had a little black book. His photograph wasn’t well-known, but he made the gossip columns, just the same. There had been stories in the media about his flings with women, after his wife’s untimely death. He’d been almost a playboy, if the gossip columns could be believed. He wouldn’t have to go far to find consolation, she knew, and she hated him for that, too.
Mosby had rejected her because he didn’t like women. Kane had only wanted to have an affair with her. She seemed destined to spend her life alone.
She tried to tell herself that it was just as well. After all, she had no self-confidence. After her sad interlude with Mosby, she didn’t trust her judgment anyway. But Kane wasn’t like Mosby.
Well, it was for the best. She didn’t want to become addicted to a man her brother hated and that had already been in danger of happening. She was halfway in over her head and she might be grateful to him for calling it quits, she told herself. He might have just saved her heart from being completely broken. One day, Kane Lombard would have found out her real identity. But her depression lasted far into the night, and the next day, just the same.
Clayton had flown back to Charleston for the weekend, taking a sulky Derrie with him. She’d had a date with a promising Washington politician for a play and Clayton had deliberately conned her into this trip and out of D.C. For some reason that he didn’t quite understand, he didn’t want his executive assistant dating anyone.
It had needled him, that acerbic comment from Bett, the woman he’d been dating casually, about his sister. Bett didn’t like Derrie, either. She considered Southern women too helpless and man-loving to be real, and she held them in contempt for what she felt was behavior demeaning to women. Derrie, on the other hand, held Bett in contempt for denying her womanhood while trying to become a man with breasts.
“Couldn’t you stop glaring at me?” Clayton asked with a hopeful smile. “Your eyebrows are going to grow in that position and you’ll look like a wrestler.”
Derrie tossed back her blond hair. “Good! Then I can work for myself and make a lot of money.”
“You wouldn’t enjoy a job that didn’t let you spar with me,” he said smugly. “You’d be miserable.”
“I don’t know. I might adopt one of those poor little spotted owls whose houses you’re going to help cut down!”
Now he was glaring back. “I’m not personally going to evict one single feathered resident of the northwest forest.”
“You’re going to vote for a bill that does,” she returned. She squared her shoulders, obviously setting down to fight.
“We have to provide jobs for the loggers,” he began halfheartedly.
“Great idea. If you want to keep those men working, fund programs to retrain them. You’ll have to do it eventually, when all the forests are gone.”
“Forests are being replanted,” he said curtly. “You’re not listening.”
“I am. You’re not. Forests are being cut down much faster than they can be replaced. Before you sit on that issue with your full weight, it wouldn’t hurt to read a few contrary opinions on it.” Her chin lifted. “While we’re on the subject, it might be just as well if you talked to a few people besides Ms. Watts about it. She is a lobbyist. They aren’t paying her to tell you both sides of the issue—only theirs. And she’s working for the timber industry.”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” he said, his voice growing strained.
“Do remember when you vote,” she added, getting out of her seat once the plane was down, “that the American taxpayers aren’t getting the benefit of having Ms. Watts in bed with them. So they might not appreciate her position in the same way you do.”
He got up in one lightning motion, more angry than he could ever remember being. “One day, so help me, Derrie…!” he burst out furiously.
“Oh, am I not supposed to know that you’re sleeping with her?” she asked with feigned innocence. “Why, how could I not know, when she’s advertised your relationship to everyone who works in the building!”
His jaw clenched. Derrie was exaggerating. She must be. “That’s unfair.”
“I wouldn’t call it that, when she pulled a pair of her lacy pink panties out of your middle desk drawer in front of an aide and two administrative assistants,” she said with fierce distaste. “Didn’t she tell you she’d done it? My, my. How thoughtless.”
While he was absorbing that blow, she turned and walked down the aisle toward the exit. Still vibrating with rage and sudden uncertainty about his entire position, Clayton left the bags for his assistant and started toward the front of the plane. But he didn’t hurry. He wasn’t anxious to catch up with her until he cooled down.
Mark Davis, a junior member of Clayton Seymour’s staff and a former investigative journalist, had uncovered an interesting little tidbit with some help from Senator Torrance’s district director, John Haralson. He was savoring it in the privacy of his apartment while he poured the remains of a bottle of gin into a glass of ice and water. Haralson had all but given him the lowdown, swearing him to secrecy about how he’d obtained his information. Haralson had said that he didn’t want to be directly connected with it, so he was giving the credit to Davis.
“Nice,” he mused to himself. “Very, very nice.” He’d connected with a representative from the biggest and best of the local waste disposal companies. The Coastal Waste Company man had told him that Kane Lombard had, without reason, suddenly dissolved his contract with the solid waste disposal group and replaced them with what was a little-known local company.
The CWC representative was still fuming about the incident, which had been inexplicable—his company had an impeccable reputation all over the southeast for its handling of dangerous waste disposal. CWC had drivers who were specially trained for the work. They used vehicles designated for only the purpose of handling toxic materials, and the vehicles were double insulated for safety. The drivers were trained in how to handle an accident, what to do in case of a leakage. The company had even been spotlighted on the national news for the excellence of its work. And now without reason, Kane Lombard had fired them. The damage to their reputation was at the head of their concern.
Had they tried to contact Lombard to find out his reason, Mark had asked. Of course they had, the CWC representative replied. But Lombard had refused to answer the call. That, too, was odd. He was a man known for not dodging controversy or argument.
What was very interesting was the name of the new solid waste contractor. Burke. There had been a local concern under that name which had been sued only a year back for dumping chemicals from an electroplating company directly into a vacant field instead of the small town’s landfill. The contaminants had gotten into a stream on the property and some cattle on a neighboring piece of land had died. The farmer had seen something suspicious in the stream and had it chemically analyzed. His attorney had asked some questions and learned that a neighbor had seen Burke and his truck in the vicinity several times.
It hadn’t been hard to connect the electroplating residue with Burke, since there was only one electroplating company in the county and none of its refuse was permitted at the landfill. The farmer had taken Burke to court and the city attorney had an inquiry underway. But the impending litigation hadn’t stopped Burke. He was still hauling off waste in two dilapidated old trucks, and he wasn’t seen taking any of his shipments into the city’s landfills. Which raised the question of where he was taking it.
Mark smiled as he kicked off his shoes, put his glass on the bedside table, and sprawled on the bed. Lombard had already barely escaped a charge for letting sewage from the plant leak into the river. He was already on every environmentalist’s list of prospective targets. Haralson had said that he had a hunch about a dumping site, but he’d have to have outside help to do any more digging.
If they could link Burke to Lombard’s company and then to some illegal dumping site, the resulting explosion should be enough to knock the man’s socks off. Lombard would
be in over his head in no time, and the fact that Clayton would have brought the charges would help him in his reelection campaign. It might even turn attention away from the spotted-owl controversy. He and Derrie had tried their best to keep Clayton from getting involved in that debate. But perhaps this would smooth over the controversy.
Some days, Mark thought smugly, things just couldn’t help going right. He picked up the telephone receiver and began to dial Clayton’s house number. It was Friday night and Clayton Seymour was very predictable in one way: he was always home in Charleston by seven on a Friday evening.
He’d expected the candidate to sound tired, but Seymour actually snapped at him when he answered the telephone. “What is it that couldn’t wait until Monday?” he added tersely.
Mark hesitated. “Perhaps this isn’t a good time to talk about it,” he said, faintly ruffled. “But I thought you’d like to know that Kane Lombard has contracted with a fly-by-night waste disposal company that’s suspected of dumping toxic waste somewhere in the coastal marshes.”
“What?!”
That did it. Mark grinned. “Can you believe it? He’s been so careful in every other area not to antagonize anyone about conservation issues. Now here he goes and hires a local man with a really bad reputation to dump his toxic waste. And he fires a company with the best reputation in the business to do it!”
“Facts, Mark, facts.”
“I’ve got them. Give me a few days and I’ll prove it.”
“Remind me to give you a raise. Several raises.”
Mark laughed out loud. “In that case, you can have the videotapes in stereo with subtitles.”
“Good man. I knew I made the best choice when I hired you. Don’t cross the line, though,” he cautioned. “Don’t give him any ammunition to use against us.”
“I’ll make sure I don’t.”
“Thanks.”
He hung up, his former bad humor gone in a flash of delight. Lombard had publicly announced his intention to fund the campaign of Clayton’s Democratic opponent for his House seat and one of Lombard’s brothers was Democratic candidate Sam Hewett’s executive administrative aide. Not only that, Lombard had been making some nasty, snide comments about Seymour having the background but not the brains and know-how to do the job.
