September Morning

by Diana Palmer

  “Nothing,” she said defensively. “We just enjoy each other's company, that's all.”

  Blake's dark eyes seemed to explode in flames. “By all means, we'll take Phillip. You'll have to have someone to play with!” His voice cut.

  “I'm not a child, Blake,” she said with quiet dignity.

  “You're both children.”

  She squared her slender shoulders. “You didn't treat me like one yesterday!”

  A slow, faint smile touched his hard mouth. “You didn't act like one.” His bold, slow eyes sketched her body in the becoming suit.

  She felt the color creeping into her cheeks at the words, remembering the feel of his warm chest, the hair-roughened texture of it against her breasts.

  “Phillip,” he scoffed, catching her eyes and holding them. “You'd burn him alive. You're too passionate for him. For Donavan, too.”

  “Blake!” she burst out, embarrassed.

  “Well, it's true,” he growled, his eyes narrowing on her face, darkening with memory. “I barely slept last night. I could feel your hands touching me…Your body like silk, twisting against mine. You may be green, little girl, but you've got good instincts. When you finally stop running from passion, you'll be one hell of a woman.”

  “I'm not running…” she whispered involuntarily before she realized what she was saying.

  She stood there watching him, suddenly vulnerable, hungry as she remembered the touch of his hands against her bare skin and the violence of his emotion. She wanted to touch him. To hold him. To feel his mouth against hers…He read that surge of longing accurately. His eyes darkened violently as he rose and came around the desk toward her. There was no pretense between them now; only a thread of shared hunger that was intense and demanding.

  “You'd damned well better mean what I read in your eyes,” he growled as he reached her, his big hands shooting out to catch her roughly by the waist and pull her close.

  She gloried in the feel of his big, muscular body against the length of hers. Her face lifted to his and her heart floundered as her eyes met his from a distance of scant inches. His head started to bend, and she trembled.

  His mouth was hungry, and it hurt. She reached up, clinging to him, while his lips parted hers and burrowed into them ardently.

  “Blake,” she whispered achingly.

  His big hand moved up from her waist to cover her breast, taking its slight weight as his tongue shot into the warmth of her mouth.

  “You're in my blood like slow poison, Kate,” he whispered roughly. His fingers contracted, and he watched the helpless reaction on her flushed face. “I look at you, and all I can think about is how you feel under my hands. Do you remember how it was between us yesterday?” he whispered against her mouth. “Your breasts crushed against me and not a stitch of fabric to stop us from feeling each other's skin…”

  “Oh, don't,” she moaned helplessly. “It isn't fair…”

  “Why isn't it?” he demanded. He lifted her until her eyes were on a level with his. “Tell me you didn't want what I did to you in the gazebo. Tell me you weren't aching every bit as much as I was when I let you go.”

  She couldn't, because she had wanted him, and it was in every line of her flushed face, in the wide green eyes that searched his helplessly in the silence of the office.

  “I'd like to take you to Martinique alone, do you know that?” he breathed huskily. “Just the two of us, Kate, and I'd lay you down in the sand in the darkness and taste every soft, sweet inch of your body with my lips.”

  Her breath caught at the passionate intensity in the words. “I…I wouldn't…”

  “Like hell you wouldn't,” he whispered. His mouth took hers hungrily, his hands slid down to grasp her hips and grind them sensuously into his until she cried out at the sensations it caused.

  “Want me, Kate?” he taunted in a deep whisper. “God knows, I want you almost beyond bearing. It was a mistake for me to touch you the way I did. Now all I can think about is how much more of you I want. Kiss me, honey. Kiss me…”

  She did, because at that moment it was all she wanted from life. The feel of him, the touch and taste and smell of him, Blake's big arms riveting her to every inch of his powerful body while his mouth took everything hers had to give. It seemed like a long time later when he finally raised his head to let his eyes blaze down into hers.

  With a suddenness that was almost painful, the door swung open and Vivian's high-pitched voice shattered the crystal thread of emotion binding them.

  “Well, hello,” she said in her clear British accent. “I do hope I'm not interrupting anything?”

  “Of course not,” Blake said, turning to her with magnificent composure and a smile. “I promised you a tour, didn't I? Let's go. Kate,” he said over his shoulder, “you come along, too.”

  She was still trembling, and she longed to refuse. But Vivian's eyes were already suspicious, and she didn't dare.

  Blake escorted them through the huge manufacturing company, pointing out the main areas of interest—the training room where the new seamstresses were taught how to use the latest modern equipment; the pants line, where each sewing machine operator performed a different function in the manufacture of a pair of slacks; the cutting room, where huge bales of cloth were spread on long tables and cut by men with jigsaws through multiple layers of thickness. Kathryn remembered the terms peculiar to the garment industry from her childhood: “bundle boys” who carried the bundles of pattern pieces out to the sewers; “foreladies” who were the overseers for each group of seamstresses; “spreaders” who spread the cloth; “cutters” who cut it; and “inspectors” who were responsible for catching second- and third-quality garments before they could be shipped out as “firsts.” Then there were the pressers and packers and the “lab lady” who washed test garments. Hundreds of sewing machines were running together in the room where the shirt line was located, and this section had button-holing machines as well as the other equipment found on the pants line. Kathryn's eye was caught by the brilliant colors.

  “That shade of blue is lovely!” she exclaimed.

  Blake chuckled. “I'll have to take you through the yarn mill sometime and show you how it's made. Bales of cotton go through a process that takes a rope of raw material and runs it through a volley of spindles in different rooms to produce a thread of yarn. We use cotton and rayon now. In the old days, the mill ran strictly on cotton.”

  “How interesting,” Vivian said with little enthusiasm. “I've never actually been in a mill.”

  Kathryn gaped at her. This wasn't her first trip by a long shot. She was forever tagging along after Blake and Phillip in her younger days, because the whole process of making clothing had fascinated her. But she hadn't been in a yarn mill since her childhood, and she'd been too young to understand much of what she'd seen then.

  “How many blouses come out of here in a week?” Kathryn asked, watching blouses in different states of readiness at each machine row as they walked past. She had to practically yell in Blake's ear to make him hear her above the noise.

  “About ten thousand dozen,” he told her, smiling at her shocked expression. “We've added a lot of new equipment here. We have over six hundred sewing machine operators in this plant, and it takes about a hundred and fifty thousand yards of material a week to keep these women busy.”

  Kathryn looked back the way they'd come. “The slacks…?”

  “That's a separate plant, honey,” he reminded her, glancing toward the door that linked the two divisions. “We only have about three hundred machines on the pants line. Our biggest business here is blouses.”

  “It's enormous!” she exclaimed.

  Blake nodded. “We do a volume business. We have contracts with two of the biggest mail-order houses, and you'll remember that we have our own chain of outlet stores across the country. It's a hell of a big operation.”

  “It must make lots of money,” Vivian commented, and Kathryn saw dollar signs in the older woman's eye
s.

  Blake's eyebrow jerked, but he didn't reply.

  When they finished the tour, Vivian persuaded Blake to take her out for coffee, and he left Kate with a dictaphone full of letters to be typed. It rankled her that Vivian, who had gotten her breakfast at home, was being treated to coffee and doughnuts while Kathryn, who had been dragged away from her breakfast, got nothing. She was somewhat mollified a half hour later when Blake came back and set coffee in a styrofoam cup and a packaged pastry in front of her on the desk.

  “Breakfast,” he said. “I seem to recall making you miss yours.”

  She smiled up at him, surprised and pleased, and her face lit up.

  “Thanks, Blake,” she said gently.

  He shrugged his powerful shoulders and strode over to the dividing door between her office and his. “Any problems with the dictaphone?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “Only with your language,” she remarked, tongue-in-cheek.

  He lifted an amused eyebrow at her. “Don't expect to reform me, Kate.”

  “Oh, I don't know a woman brave enough to try, Blake,” she said with angelic sweetness to his retreating back. Switching off the electric typewriter, she opened her steaming coffee.

  It was almost quitting time when Phillip stopped by the office to see Blake. He leaned his hands on Kathryn's desk and grinned at her.

  “Slaving away, I see,” he teased lightly.

  She sighed. “You don't know the half of it,” she groaned. “I never realized how much correspondence it takes to keep a plant like this one going. Blake even writes to congressmen and state senators and the textile manufacturers association—by the way, I didn't realize he was president of it this year.”

  “See how much you're learning?” Phillip teased. He reached out a hand and tipped her chin up, bending close to whisper, “Has Blake flicked you with his whip yet?”

  Her eyes opened wide and she smiled. “Does he have one?” she whispered back.

  It was pure bad luck that Blake should choose that moment to open his office door. He glared at Phillip so blackly that the younger man backed away from the desk and actually reddened.

  Blake jerked his office door shut. “Take Kathryn home with you,” he told his brother curtly. “Vivian and I are going out to supper.”

  And he left the office without even a backward glance, while Kathryn sat there with her heart in her shoes, wondering how Blake could have been so loving earlier in the day and so hateful now. What had she done? Or was it just that Blake was already feeling regrets?

  ***

  The days fell into a pattern. Kathryn rode to work with Blake every morning, and back with him in the evenings. Although he was business-as-usual in his dealings with her, Vivian seemed to purple when Kathryn and Blake left together. The blonde did everything except lobby for a job of her own to try to take up Blake's free time. And she succeeded very well.

  By Saturday, Kathryn was ready for some relaxation, and since Vivian had talked Blake into taking her by plane for a shopping trip to Atlanta, Kathryn asked Phillip to go with her to one of the new malls in town. The request seemed to irritate Blake, but Kathryn ignored his evident displeasure. After all, what right did he have to interfere with her life? He was too wrapped up in Vivian to care what she did. Even the thought of going to the islands with him was frightening now—although she knew she'd never be strong enough to renege on her promise to accompany him. She loved him too much, wanted to be with him too much, to refuse. He might marry Vivian, but at least Kathryn would have a few memories to tuck away.

  ***

  “You're walking me to death,” Phillip groaned, hobbling with exaggeration to the nearest bench in the busy mall. He eased down with a stage sigh and smile.

  “We've only been in five shops,” she reminded him. “You can't possibly be tired.”

  “Five shops, where you tried on fifteen outfits each,” he corrected.

  She plopped down beside him, sighing wearily. “Well, I'm depressed,” she said. “I had to do something to cheer me up.”

  “I'm not depressed,” he said with a sigh. “Why did I have to come along?”

  “To carry the packages,” she said sensibly.

  “But, Kathryn, love, you haven't bought anything.”

  “Yes, I have. In that little boutique we just came from.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “What?”

  “This.” She handed him a small sack containing a jeweler's box with a pair of dainty sapphire and diamond earrings inside. “Aren't they lovely? I charged them to Blake.”

  “Oh, no,” he groaned, burying his face in his hands.

  “Anyway, you can carry them,” she said, “so you'll feel necessary.”

  “How will I ever survive all these honors you confer upon me?” he asked with mock humility.

  “Don't be nasty,” she chided, pushing against his shoulder with her own as they sat side by side. “I really am depressed, Phil.”

  He studied her dejected little face. “What's wrong, kitten? Want me to slay a dragon for you?”

  “Would you?” she asked hopefully, her green eyes wide. “You could sneak up on her while she's sleeping, and…”

  “Your eyes need checking,” he remarked, lifting an eyebrow at her as he folded his arms and leaned back against the wooden bench. “Vivian isn't a dragon.”

  “That's what you think,” she muttered. “Wait until she's your sister-in-law and see if you still like her.”

  “Vivian? Marry Blake?” He sat up abruptly, staggered. “Where did you come by that piece of utter nonsense?”

  “It isn't nonsense,” she told him, sulking. “She's just his style. Beautiful, sophisticated and blond.”

  “That's his taste, all right. But do you really think he's got marriage on his mind?” he asked with a wry grin. “That isn't his style.”

  “Maybe she's something special,” she grumbled, hating everything about the woman. She glared into space, hurting in ways she never had before. “She told me that Blake wanted her over here to meet us.”

  “I know. She's the power behind her father. She controls everything he does, or haven't you noticed her ordering him around?”

  She shifted on the bench and crossed her legs. “Blake spends all his time with her. Don't tell me it's just for business reasons,” she replied, smoothing the close-fitting designer jeans over her thighs. Her eyes dropped to her cream-colored cowboy boots and she grimaced at a scuff on the toe.

  “You and I spend a lot of time together, too,” he reminded her. “But we're just friends.”

  She sighed. “That's true.”

  “And Blake hates it.”

  Her eyes jerked up. “What?”

  He grinned. “He's jealous,” he laughed.

  She went cherry pink and averted her gaze. “You're nuts!”

  “Am I? He's crazily possessive about you. He always has been, but in the past few days I'm almost afraid to sit beside you when he's at home.”

  She felt her heart racing at the words. She hoped against hope that they were true, even while she knew they weren't. “He's just the domineering type,” she corrected nervously.

  “Really? Is that why he deliberately picked a fight with your boyfriend to send him packing?” Phillip eyed her narrowly. “When we got home from Charleston, Blake was gone and you were hiding in your room with a headache. What happened between you two while we were gone?”

  The blush went all the way to her toes. She couldn't answer him.

  “You light up when he walks into a room,” he continued, smiling. “And he watches you when he thinks no one's noticing. Like a big, hungry panther with its eyes on a tasty young gazelle.”

  She hadn't known that, and her heart went wild. “Oh, Phil, does he, really?” she asked involuntarily, and everything she felt was in the starved look in the soft eyes she lifted to his.

  He nodded quietly, studying her. “That's just what I thought,” he said gently. “Adding your heart to the string he drags behind him, k
itten?”

  “Is it so obvious?” she sighed miserably. She turned her attention to the passersby.

  “To me, because we've always been close,” he replied. “I knew why you bought that sexy dress even before you did. You wanted to see what effect it would have on Blake. Dynamite, wasn't it, girl?” he asked knowingly, with a teasing smile.

  She flushed wildly. “Do you hide behind the curtains?” she whispered, embarrassed by his perception.

  “I'm not in my adolescence, Kate,” he reminded her. “You and Blake have always been passionate with each other. You push him hard—it isn't hard to guess at the reaction you get. Blake's not a gentle man.”

  How little he knew his brother, she thought, her mind going back longingly to that lazy morning in the gazebo…

  “Or is he?” he whispered, reading her dreamy expression.

  She glared at him. “Don't pry.”

  “I'm not trying to mind your business,” he said gently. “But I don't want to see you end up the loser. Blake's a very experienced man. He may be tempted by a bud about to blossom, but he's shy of nets. Don't try to cut your teeth on him. You might as well try to build a fence around the wind.”

  “What you really mean is that I can't compete with Her Ladyship,” she threw at him.

  “That's exactly what I mean,” he said with gentle compassion. He patted her hand where it lay on the wood bench. “Kathryn, an experienced woman can attract a man in ways that an inexperienced one wouldn't even think of. I don't want to see you hurt. But you must know you're no competition for Vivian.”

  “Who said I was trying to be?” she asked. Her face shuttered. “You make Blake sound like a…”

  “Blake is my brother,” he reminded her. “And I'd do anything for him. But he's just noticed what a delicious little thing you've grown into, and he's lost his bearings. It won't take him long to find them, but that tiny space of time could be enough to destroy you.” He squeezed her hand and grimaced. “Love him as a brother. But not as a man. I don't have to tell you how Blake feels about love.”

  She felt the life draining out of her. Her shoulders slumped, and she nodded weakly. “He doesn't believe in it,” she whispered shakily.