Silk on the Skin: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Linda Cajio

  He chuckled. “Been peeking, have you?”

  Cass flushed bright red. She was saved from replying, when the answering service came on the line. She gave the information, and the service promised the doctor would call back promptly. He did, and when she hung up the phone after talking to him, she said, “The pharmacy is going to send over a prescription for you. In the meantime I’m supposed to give you some aspirin and put on an analgesic to numb the burn. Also, you have to have fluids.”

  He managed a grin. “I can’t wait. Your hands all over my body, smearing on the ointment—”

  “It’s a spray, Dallas,” she interrupted, with a chuckle. If she didn’t know better, she’d think the sunburn had turned him into a sex maniac.

  “Party pooper,” he muttered.

  “Never mind.”

  She had no sooner dosed him with aspirin and the analgesic spray, when the delivery boy showed up with the prescription. Taking it out of the bag, she read the label and sighed in resignation at the big blue sticker proclaiming the medication might cause drowsiness. It looked as though Dallas were about to become an overnight guest. She filled a pitcher with water and ice, put it on a tray along with the prescription and a glass, and carried everything into the bedroom.

  She set the tray on the nightstand, then got out two tiny capsules, and poured water into the glass. Handing them to him, she said, “Here.”

  After he swallowed the medication, he said, “Thanks, Cass.”

  He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. She stared at him for a moment, then decided rest was the best thing for him at that point.

  Out in the kitchen, she finished fixing her dinner. She saved Jaws for Dallas. After all, she figured, the crab had tried to eat him, so it was only fair that he have the final victory over the beast.

  The rest of the evening brought not a sound from the bedroom, and when she tiptoed in to get a nightgown for herself, he was sound asleep. When she was finally able to settle into her makeshift bed on the sofa, she sighed gratefully and closed her eyes. Her body was aching with exhaustion, and she knew she’d drift right off to sleep.

  Outside somewhere a piece of wood creaked.

  Cass’s eyelids snapped open, and she bolted upright. Her stomach churned with anxiety; her muscles poised stiff and ready to move. Wide-eyed, she turned and watched the patio deck for long minutes. No shadows deepened or re-formed into a human shape. Nothing moved.

  “Hell,” she muttered, realizing that she’d probably heard a normal house noise she’d never noticed before.

  She tried to relax, but her ears were attuned to the tiniest creak, swish, or groan, and she mentally jumped at the slightest of noises. When a car engine suddenly roared to life, she literally leaped off the sofa, her heart pounding frantically.

  She would never get any sleep this way: Her burglar, real or imaginary, was definitely winning. She glanced toward the hall leading to the bedroom, wondering if it would be wise to spend the night in there.

  Immediately she cursed her foolish thought. After all, the man was in pain, and when he wasn’t, he was unconscious from the medication. He probably wouldn’t even know she was there. And if he did, he was in no condition to do anything about it. Promising herself she’d have an alarm installed first thing in the morning, she snatched the pillow and sheets off the sofa and headed for the bedroom.

  Dallas lay just as still as before, and, not wishing to disturb him, she walked softly to the other side of the bed and made a place for herself on the shag carpeting. Crawling into her makeshift bed, she firmly told herself that sleeping on a hard surface was good for one’s back. Her body already relaxing, she sighed quietly. The room was peacefully silent. She closed her eyes.

  “What are you doing?”

  Dallas’s voice jolted her to a sitting position. “Dallas!” She peered at his shadowy form in the darkened room. “You scared ten years off my life.”

  “What are you doing?”

  She cleared her throat. “I can’t hear you in the living room, so I thought I’d better bunk near you, just in case you needed something. Go back to sleep, Dallas.”

  “You thought of your burglar, and you didn’t want to be alone, right, Cass?” he guessed accurately. He pulled back the sheet on the empty side of the bed. “Get in. Trust me—you’d be less safe with a three-year-old.”

  “Dallas, I’m fine right here,” she protested. “Really. Besides, I occasionally sleep on the floor. Good for your back and—”

  “Get in the damn bed,” he said wearily.

  “Yes, Dallas,” she said meekly.

  She lay down right on the edge of the bed, keeping her back to him. A very different type of awareness surged through her body.

  “Relax, Cass. I promise not to bite.”

  She rolled over onto her back and lay stiffly next to him, all too conscious of the bare inches separating them. The mingled scent of soap, sunburn spray, and virile male filled her nostrils. She swallowed. “This is as good as I get.”

  He sighed loudly, his exasperation evident. The bed dipped slightly, and he hissed in obvious pain. She heard water being poured. “Are you thirsty?” she asked.

  “No, just taking more pills. Ten minutes, and you could have a party in here and I’d never know it.”

  “I’m being silly,” she said, embarrassed by her juvenile actions. “I’m sorry, Dallas. It’s just …”

  “I know.” He was silent for a moment. “Damn Ned Marks!”

  “What?” Cass wasn’t sure if she’d heard him right.

  “I said, ‘Damn Ned Marks.’ If he could run M & L properly, you and I would have no problems.”

  She wondered if he was right, whether things would have been so different if they’d met under other circumstances. But they hadn’t. He wanted her to turn her back on years of loyalty for a problem he perceived at M & L.

  “Tell me about your daddy, the colonel,” she said, in an attempt to change the subject. “What was it like growing up in a military home?”

  He chuckled. “My father, the colonel, was born and bred above the Mason-Dixon line. Chillicothe, Ohio, to be exact. As for our home life, we saluted him at breakfast every morning.”

  “Really?”

  He laughed outright this time. “Actually, except for the constant moving, it was a pretty normal life. I have two brothers and a sister, all older. I don’t see them much. We’re all scattered now.”

  She envied him his family. “The moving must have been hard on your mother, especially with four young children.”

  “I think she enjoyed it. She’s gathered quite a collection of local art. Lately, she’s been hinting they’ve been too long in one place. My father’s been stationed at Andrews, in California, for the past ten years. I think she wants something new for her collection.” She felt his head turn toward her. “What about you, Cass?”

  She smiled. “Six stepmothers tend to keep one on one’s toes. And I have a young stepsister. She’s nineteen. I don’t get to see her much.”

  “I heard about the marriages,” he admitted in a soft voice. “How did you grow up so sensible?”

  She smiled. “Boggles the mind, doesn’t it? The truth is, I was a mess until I was thirteen. Stepmother number three had just arrived, and naturally I was a threat to her newlywedded bliss, so it was back to boarding school again. I asked my father why he kept marrying those women, and he looked at me so sadly and said that they were nothing like my mother. That stuck in my brain, and eventually I understood he was a desperately lonely man who had only loved once. After that, acting like a spoiled brat just seemed silly, somehow.”

  “It sounds like your father is some romantic ideal. Is that why you’ve never married? Because no man could match your father’s love for your mother?”

  Cass stared at his barely visible face, then burst into laughter. “Lord, but you make me sound like some antique spinster. I’m only twenty-eight, and I’m not waiting for some Prince Charming.”

  “But you’r
e waiting for something.”

  “Dallas, I’ve had a business to start up. Pardon me if I’ve been a little busy to be thinking of getting married. And if the fact that my father is best friends with his divorce lawyer adds to my being an old maid, then I think that caution is normal. Anyway, I don’t see you driving around a station wagon full of kids. What’s your excuse?”

  “I haven’t found the right woman?”

  Cass gave a satisfied laugh. He joined her.

  “I see your point,” he said.

  The silence stretched, and she sensed a tension in him. Finally she said, “I guess neither of us has found someone we liked well enough to marry.”

  “You mean love.”

  “That, too,” she said. “But I think it’s just as important that you like the person you marry. Otherwise, how would you live happily with that person?”

  “You’re probably right.”

  She smiled as he yawned widely. Obviously the pills were taking effect. She realized her own body was relaxed and heavy-limbed. Their talk had disarmed her. As the quiet lengthened into minutes, Cass whispered, “Dallas?”

  No answer.

  Realizing he was asleep, she rolled onto her side, facing the wall. She considered the man on the other side of the bed.

  Dallas was nothing like her father.

  The thought was terrifying.

  Seven

  As the morning sunlight penetrated his sleep, the previous day’s events tumbled through Dallas’s fogged brain. Cass, he thought. Beautiful, delicious Cass was sleeping next to him. He rolled over and stretched out an arm.

  The bed was empty.

  He opened his eyes and sat up. “Cass?”

  The silence in the house told its own story. She was gone.

  With growing disappointment, Dallas shoved back the bed sheet and got up, gingerly wrapping the towel around his waist. He was still an angry-looking red, but the pain was tolerable. He’d felt worse as a teenager after a high-school football game.

  In the kitchen the only sign that she’d even been there was the coffee left warming in the pot. Then he spotted a note lying on the counter. Picking it up, he was disappointed to read the tepid words that she hoped he was feeling better and would lock up when he left. He tossed the paper aside.

  Dammit, he thought as he absently scratched at his upper arm. He appreciated her allowing him to stay on and sleep while she went to her store. But the least she could have done was to shake him awake long enough for a “good morning.”

  After pouring himself some coffee, he returned to the bedroom. His clothes, neatly folded on the dresser, only aggravated his temper. He forced it under the surface and slowly dressed. Looking in the bedroom mirror, he saw his skin had the bare beginnings of the peeling process, and he resisted the urge to fool with the few whitish blisters. Then he realized that, in the last twenty-four hours, he’d barely thought about the job he had to do for M & L.

  Dallas sipped the last of his coffee and frowned at the admission. His work had always been his first priority, and he had never completely lost sight of it before. But something had changed. Somehow the laughter, the talk, and the caring of yesterday had brought him to a more intimate level with Cass. His mind was having trouble keeping everything in neat little compartments, and what was happening between her and him was becoming increasingly important.

  He was being entrapped by her, he thought. And to do his job also meant losing Cass, yet he was nowhere near ready to let her go.

  Taking his empty coffee cup out to the kitchen, he decided he’d better get the damn job over with and get the hell back to New York. First thing, though, was to go to his hotel and get dressed. He doubted Cass would want him waiting on customers in his present attire.

  But no shower, he told himself. He might be ready to face the day, but he definitely wasn’t ready for a repeat of the night before.

  Unless, of course, it included Cass in bed beside him.

  Cass opened the back door of WinterLand and slipped into the storeroom. When the heavy door clanged shut, returning the room to darkness, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  Coward.

  Waking up next to Dallas Carter was enough to inspire anyone to run for the Yellow-Stripe Award. She hadn’t been able to get out of the house fast enough that morning, and she still wanted to run.

  Cass leaned her head back against the cool metal door and closed her eyes. The tension slowly left her body, and she finally began to relax. For long moments she let herself enjoy the peaceful silence. Then her drifting thoughts began to take shape, and she remembered all too well waking up to discover herself curled against his warm body … the mingling scents of man and woman … their quiet voices in the night.

  Moaning, Cass covered her face with shaking hands. They couldn’t have been more intimate if they had made love!

  She’d always known Dallas was a threat. Not this kind of threat, though, she thought. More and more she found herself separating the man from the executive. And it had seemed so … right to have him in her bed.

  She wondered if it was the Florence Nightingale effect. She had let down her guard with him when she’d seen that sunburn. Maybe that was it. Maybe she was just suffering the throes of a “nursing the wounded” crush.

  “Forget it,” she said aloud, knowing her attraction to him hadn’t made a sudden quantum leap. It had been there from the beginning, and had been intensifying ever since. Last night had just been the final bloom.

  She snapped on the fluorescent lights and tossed her purse on the desk. A thought occurred: could he be having the same trouble as she? He certainly seemed to want to spend time with her. And that kiss …

  Cass almost laughed aloud. Maybe he wasn’t quite as ruthless as she’d originally thought. Maybe it was hard for him, too, to stick to business. And maybe that could be deepened with a little help.

  She’d been trying so hard to keep her distance that she’d been downright cool with him. Thank goodness all her senses had been working in the right direction, she thought, or she probably would have been a total bitch. Last night, she had considered if they could be friends, and she decided that was a good beginning. Friends first, and then—lovers.

  The notion took her by surprise. She cautiously tasted it, letting it settle into her. Lovers. It felt right, and it sounded right. Her instincts told her that Dallas would take a part of her that she had never been willing to give before. She admitted she was taking a risk. A big one. She could be totally wrong about him. But if she weren’t …

  Cass smiled.

  Dallas no sooner walked into WinterLand than he wanted to turn around and walk out again. The shop was in chaos.

  Merchandise was piled all over the aisles, and the movable glass shelves were stacked against display walls. Jean was struggling to push a five-foot-high aisle display into position.

  “Did a cyclone hit?” he asked, going over and helping her slide the heavy furnishing into place.

  “No. Hurricane Cass.” Jean heaved a sigh of relief and slumped against the display. “I came in this morning to find her cheerfully tearing the place apart. Remodeling, so she says. What the hell did you do to her yesterday?”

  “I didn’t do anything to her,” he exclaimed.

  “Maybe that’s her problem,” Jean said in a very dry tone.

  Dallas chuckled. “I’ll remember that next time. Where is she?”

  “Out getting labels. After five years in business, suddenly all the displays need to be labeled. I’d like to know how we’re supposed to wait on customers with this mess.”

  “Very carefully.” He glanced around the store. “Okay, just tell me what to do, and I’ll take care of this.”

  “I doubt it. You’re redder than a cooked crab.” Jean leaned over and said in a loud whisper, “Is that what slowed the action last night?”

  Dallas just smiled.

  “Spoilsport.” She pointed to the opposite display cases. “Cass wants these to be the other half of a lon
g V, the wide opening at the door, the narrow end at the cash-register counter. She says a visible cash register will make the customers respond psychologically to the thought of purchasing. That’s bull at its most oblique. I’ll start getting these shelves back up and restocking them.” She patted his shoulder. “Have fun.”

  He smothered a groan at the contact and the thought of the chore ahead. While he felt almost normal again, he still had moments of extreme discomfort, especially when he moved too fast. The light shirt he wore felt irritating as it brushed against his back.

  Taking a deep breath, he walked over to the first case and began pushing it into its designated spot. The case was lighter than he’d thought it would be, although it was still heavy enough. This wouldn’t be a breeze, but he might just survive it.

  When Cass returned, he had managed to get two cases in place with a minimal amount of pain and a major amount of itching. His back was the worst; he couldn’t reach it. He wished he’d thought to bring some lotion to soothe his drying skin. Hoping he didn’t look like one of the undead, he turned and smiled at her as she came through the storeroom door.

  “Good morning, Dallas. I hope you’re feeling better,” she said, smiling back at him. She turned to the register and began pressing buttons.

  Dallas felt something inside him deflate at the less-than-enthusiastic greeting. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it was definitely better than that.

  “I’m just great,” he said flatly, shoving a case into place. It slid in with a loud bang.

  “Dallas! Your burn!” she exclaimed, rushing around the counter, the noise obviously drawing her full attention. She hurried toward him. “You shouldn’t be doing that. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Now, that’s better,” he said, grinning at her.

  “What’s better?”

  “Never mind.” Satisfaction ran through him at her fussing. It had been quite a while since somebody had fussed over him, and he admitted he was thoroughly enjoying it. “How do the cases look?”

  “Fine.” She frowned at him, her eyes searching his body. He enjoyed that too. “How do you feel?”