Angels on Zebras, (Forever Friends, Book 4 of 4)

by Webb, Peggy

  She could easily have escaped while he made his way around the car, but she didn’t. Scrunched deep in the leather seats on her side of the car, she watched the man who had taken her captive. What form of insanity caused her to acquiesce? What was she doing sitting in Joseph’s car when she could be in her own, racing to the safety of her own home?

  He drove in tight-jawed silence while Maxie pretended an interest in the landscape. Finally she could no longer stand the suspense.

  “I suppose you’ve seen your house.” He didn’t say a word, just stared straight ahead. What did his silence mean? Oblivious of the wet clay on her hands, Maxie wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shivering. “All right. So I got a little carried away. But you were the one who told me to do it exactly as I wanted to.”

  Still, nothing from Joe. The long shadows of evening closed in around the car. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where they were going. The streets to Joseph’s house were all too familiar.

  Soon his Tudor mansion loomed before them. Maxie knew only too well what waited inside, a monster of her own creation, a playground for Tupelo’s newest playboy.

  But she also knew Joseph. She hoped. It was time to gamble.

  “I’m not going inside,” she said.

  “Go in under your own power, or under mine. Take your choice.”

  This time of evening most of his neighbors were sitting down to dinner at their antique tables in their fancy dining rooms under the glare of Grandmother’s oil portrait and her eight-light chandelier. And all in front of wide French windows that provided a sweeping view of the neighborhood, including the Tudor mansion so prominently displayed on top of a small rise.

  Joseph Patrick Beauregard might be willing to use caveman tactics in front of people he didn’t know in a small art studio on the wrong side of town, but he wouldn’t dare pull such a stunt in his own ritzy neighborhood in front of his own snooty neighbors. Or would he?

  Maxie glared at him. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Are you challenging me, Maxie?” His voice was soft and deadly.

  She lifted her chin. “Yes. If you want me inside your house, you’re going to have to make a spectacle in front of your own friends and neighbors.”

  For a fleeting moment, she thought she had won. Then Joe bailed out of the car and slammed his door. She shivered as he stalked her, but she didn’t budge. In this battle of wills she might not win, but she was determined to go down fighting.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Maxie didn’t resist as Joseph scooped her out of the car. For a moment he thought of tossing her over his shoulder again, the neighbors be hanged. But his habits of conservatism were deeply ingrained, and deep inside was an element of caution that would not be denied. Instead, he carried her over the threshold the way a man might carry a bride. Let the neighbors chew on that.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Maxie said.

  He glanced down at the bundle in his arms, red lips as enticing as ripe plums, soft skin washed with gold from the lights that automatically came on outside his house at dusk, body unbelievably lush in his arms. As furious as he was at her betrayal, as determined as he was to make her pay, he had to fight to control his passion.

  “Believe it, Maxie.”

  “I thought you cared about public opinion.”

  “It won’t work,” he said.

  “What won’t work?”

  “Trying to sidetrack me.” Joseph strode through his front door then kicked it shut behind him. “Now there’s no one to see us.”

  He felt the shiver that ran through her. Was it fear? Anger? Passion?

  “You’ve got me where you want me. Put me down.”

  That would be the smart thing to do: set her on her own two feet so he wouldn’t be tempted to turn loose the beast that raged in him. Instead he pulled her closer, holding her so tightly, she sucked in her breath. It was a dangerous thing to do, but then, so was kidnapping.

  “I’ll put you down when I’m ready.” Her eyes widened. “Haven’t you caught on, Maxie? Tonight I’m calling all the shots.”

  “What game are you playing?”

  “This is no game. This is real.”

  He strode toward the stairs with Maxie in his arms, resolute. In his bedroom the music was playing, just as he’d left it, a bawdy, raucous song that set the mood for this evening where anything could happen.

  He kicked his bedroom door open and strode to the middle of the room.

  “Take a good look, Maxie.”

  “I’ve already seen it. I’m the one who did it, remember?”

  “How could I forget.”

  Keeping a tight grip on her, he went to his bed and held her suspended over the wild jungle animal that passed for a coverlet.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Testing my new lair.” He lowered her a few inches. “Feel the bedcovers, Maxie.... Go on... put your hand on them.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, she spread her fingers and swept them over the velour coverlet.

  “What does it feel like, Maxie?”

  “A wild animal.”

  “Very good. And what do wild animals do to bad little girls? Come on. Don’t you remember your fairy tales?”

  “This is not a fairy tale. This is real, and you’re being a beast.”

  “Right again, Maxie. A beast you created.” He dipped her until her bottom was touching the mattress. “You still haven’t told me what wild animals do to bad little girls.”

  Her chin went up. “They eat them.”

  “That’s exactly right. And I’m very hungry.”

  He let that bit of information sink in, watching her closely, judging her reaction by the widening of her eyes, the flaring of her nostrils, the flush of her skin. His passion stirred. What had he expected? Maxie always ignited him.

  Still, he wasn’t about to be sidetracked. His aim was revenge, not release.

  But Maxie was a worthy opponent. Clenching her jaw, she closed her fist around a wad of velour.

  “You’re forgetting one thing, Joseph Beauregard. I’m no Little Red Riding Hood. If you think I’ll lie on this bed for you to paw over, you’d better think again.”

  He laughed without mirth. “I never believed you would be an easy prey. You’ve just proved me right.”

  He lowered her all the way to the mattress and pinned her to the bed, arms stretched over her head, legs weighted down with his knee.

  She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Look, I admit I might have gone too far, but I can put it back to its original condition. No charge, of course.”

  “What you’ve done is perfectly suitable for my purposes.”

  He’d thought she might come up scratching and clawing. Instead she lay still, matching him stare for stare.

  “You left some nice toys in the bathroom,” he said. She defied him with stillness. “Can you be trusted to stay here while I fetch them?... I thought not.”

  He reached into the bedside table and pulled out the handcuffs. “You know what these are for, don’t you?”

  A trickle of sweat rolled down the side of her cheek.

  “You know, Joseph, there was a moment when I almost changed my mind about doing this bedroom.”

  Blood roared in his ears so loudly, he wondered that he could hear. What if she really did feel something for him, something besides contempt? What if he still had one slim chance with her, only one, and he was blowing it tonight?

  “I almost backed out.” She bathed her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue. “I almost changed my mind, right after we started that telephone relationship.”

  The words hung in the air between them. He remembered those late-night calls, the passion that bloomed swiftly, surely, the hot words that teased, incited.

  They stared at each other, riveted, uncertain. Her chin came up.

  “I’m glad I didn’t,” she said.

  The last vestige of hope shattered inside him, and Joseph hardened his heart. H
e snapped on the cuffs and chained her to the bedpost.

  “So am I,” he said. With slow deliberation he unbuttoned her blouse.

  “What are you doing?”

  He’d have to hand it to her. Maxie was either totally unmoved by his actions or she was a great actress.

  “I’m taking what you promised.” He pushed the material aside and ran his fingers lightly across the tops of her breasts. She shivered. At last, a reaction.

  “I never promised you anything. We had an agreement: All sex would be confined to the telephone, and then only as long as we both wanted it.”

  “This is not about telephone sex.”

  She waited, watching him. Long ago he’d learned that often the best tactic with an opponent was to let him squirm.

  He waited, watching her. But she didn’t squirm. In fact, if the soft flush that came over her skin was any indication, she was as excited as he was.

  It was too bad, and too late. Once Joe committed himself to a course of action, there was no turning back.

  She was the first to break the silence. “All right, then. I apologize. Is that what you want? I’m sorry I ever turned your nice conservative bedroom suite into a jungle playground, and I’ll have it put back in two days.”

  “Maxie... Maxie...”

  “What? What is it you want from me? A pound of flesh?”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  He unsnapped the front of her bra then rubbed his palm over her skin, testing her, testing himself. But there were limits to what a man could endure without caving in.

  He stood up, pulled her note out of his pocket, and let it flutter to the bed.

  “This is what I want, Maxie.” He held it in front of her face so she could read it. “You gave your personal guarantee, and I’ve brought you here to collect.”

  A flush the color of roses crept across her skin. Her eyes were so bright, he didn’t dare return her stare.

  Leaving her handcuffed to the bed, he went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. Then he leaned over the sink and reined in his galloping hunger.

  What was she doing out there on his bed? What was she thinking? He straightened up, listening, but there were no sounds from his bedroom except the music.

  He grabbed a handful of toys from the mirrored shelves. As he turned to go back into the bedroom he glimpsed himself in the mirror. With his disheveled hair and burning eyes he looked every inch the beast she’d called him. Was this what happened when a man fell in love only to have all his dreams shattered? Had he turned into some sort of wild animal who could think of nothing but his own monstrous passion?

  He cracked the whip against his thigh so hard, he felt the sting of leather through his trousers. Through an opening in the beaded curtain he could see Maxie on his bed, every enticing inch of her reflected in the mirrors on his ceiling.

  When he’d brought her to his house earlier in the evening he’d had some half-cocked idea about exacting revenge. About teaching her a lesson.

  The person who had learned the lesson was himself. He couldn’t go back in there and take her like a beast. She was wild and free, as uninhibited as any woman he’d ever met. She didn’t give a whit for public opinion, and never passed up an opportunity to defy convention, to shock her onlookers. Hauling her out of the art studio caveman-style was no humiliation for her. Nor had he intended it to be. He was saving all that for the privacy of his bedroom. And she lay chained to his bed, waiting.

  But suddenly he had no heart for his task, no taste for revenge. The game was over. All bets were off.

  For a brief shining time, he and Maxie had been lovers. But only on the telephone. Only in his dreams.

  The dream had ended the moment he’d stepped into his bedroom suite. Instead of designing a cozy retreat for two people in love, she’d designed a lair for a lone wolf. Maxie not only didn’t share his dream, but she disdained the dreamer.

  He took one last glimpse through the curtain, and the ache of love lost almost brought him to his knees. Gone was the dream of Maxie waking beside him with the early-morning sun in her hair. Gone was the dream of her wrapped in his arms beside a winter fire. Gone was the dream of her bending over the tub, laughing as she took her first step into the hot soapy water, teasing him with a glance over her shoulder. “Now that the children are asleep, we can play,” she would say.

  He shoved aside the beads and strode to the bed, the whip still curled in his fist.

  “I might have known you’d choose that first,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you like to be in control.”

  She had no idea how close she was to the truth, and how close he’d come to losing the very thing he prided himself on.

  “Maxie, no one will ever control you. Do you know why?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I chained your body to the bed, but I couldn’t chain your mind.” He knelt beside her and brushed her hair back from her damp forehead, tenderly, in the way of a man who has loved a woman deeply and truly, in the way of a lover saying good-bye. “No one will ever be able to chain your mind, Maxie.”

  Taking the keys from his pocket, he unsnapped the handcuffs. He turned quickly, before he could see her face, before he could change his mind, and picked up the telephone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m calling a cab for you.”

  She reached around him and punched the disconnect button. It was his turn to be surprised. He looked over his shoulder at her.

  “I’ll call my own cab.” She ran her hands up the back of his neck and into his hair. He felt the shock waves all the way to his toes.

  She hopped off the bed and planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips, blouse gaping open, chin tipped back, hips thrust forward.

  “Maxie, what are you doing?”

  “I gave my personal guarantee, and Magic Maxie always delivers what she promises.”

  She bent over the bed and picked up the whip.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The handle of the whip was leather, and still warm where Joseph had gripped it. She slid her hands along the heated leather, taking courage, buying time.

  What in the world was she doing? Why wasn’t she taking the fastest exit? Joseph was letting her off easy.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, not speaking, not moving, but watching her with an expression as distant and inscrutable as the moon. From the time Maxie could walk and talk, she’d depended on her instincts. People called her madcap and spontaneous and sometimes things not so kind, but what they didn’t know was that she always did what her instincts dictated. She didn’t try to analyze, didn’t sit down and think things through, didn’t weigh the pros and cons, didn’t make long lists like her sister and then spend days revising them. Right or wrong, good or bad, Maxie did exactly what her instincts told her.

  Sometimes she regretted her actions, as she did with Joseph’s bedroom. Just as often she was thrilled, as she had been when she’d left Atlanta and set up her own firm. A rash action that appeared wrongheaded at the time had led to the establishment of Magic Maxie’s.

  She didn’t know what today’s rash action would lead to. All she knew was that she had to follow her instincts. And they all led straight to Joseph.

  She popped the whip lightly along the side of her hip. “Why, Joseph?”

  “Just leave, Maxie.”

  “No. Not without answers.”

  “I don’t even know the questions, let alone the answers.”

  The muted whisper of leather against flesh competed with the sound of music, filling the silence that stretched between them. Mirrored tiles in the ceiling caught them in poses of indecision, frozen mere inches apart from each other, paralyzed by emotions too raw, too wild, too new.

  From somewhere deep in the house a grandfather clock struck the hour, and outside a sliver of a moon floated above the oak tree and hung there, suspended on branches green with spring leaves.

  Maxie put one foot on
the path, then the other. Joseph sucked in a sharp breath. Blindly, following instinct, Maxie moved irrevocably toward the bed, toward the unknown.

  On many nights such as this they’d played games, they’d teased and taunted each other into a sexual frenzy, they’d found release via the telephone. But every time they were together, an invisible wall appeared between them. They moved toward the brink, and pulled back.

  “Maxie.” Joseph’s voice held a warning.

  “Don’t you dare say it. Don’t you dare tell me to stop.”

  “No more games.”

  “You’re right.” Maxie threw the whip and it landed with a loud clunk on the floor. “This is not a game.”

  She advanced until she was standing directly in front of him, knees touching. Body heat radiated from him, warming her, giving her courage.

  “Look at me.” Slowly she unfastened the last of her buttons. “For you,” she whispered.

  He caught her around the waist and held her back. “Don’t tempt me, Maxie.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  She covered his hands and wove her fingers between his. “All right, then. No questions, no answers, no more talk.” Kneeling in front of him, she unzipped his pants. “Just sex.”

  “Maxie... my God.”

  She held him tenderly, in the way of a woman who loves a man. The knowledge flashed through her like a comet. She loved this man. She’d loved him from the first moment she saw him, months earlier, standing in the midst of Tupelo’s elite with his fiancee at his side. Mr. Perfect, she’d called him. And he was. No matter his flaws, no matter hers.

  And now it was too late, too late for tender words, too late for proclamations, too late for commitment, too late for anything except good-bye. Maxie was determined to make it a good-bye worth remembering.

  Still on her knees, she bent her face toward the dark mysteries she’d uncovered, bent her face toward the sweet, secret warmth and touched him tenderly with her tongue. The shiver started in his legs and stretched upward, to his chest, his arms, his hands, his face, even his hair. Maxie felt this power she had over him and smiled, not with wicked glee, not with triumph, but with a sadness that came from knowing she’d made a remarkable discovery too late, far too late.