Silk on the Skin: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Linda Cajio

  “You seem to have lost your way, Carter,” Ned began in stiff, outraged tones. “You are supposed to be in Europe, negotiating new business for the company. I do believe that’s what you were hired for.”

  Cass finally glanced at Dallas, who was standing in the storeroom doorway.

  “You should know, Ned,” he replied with an easy smile. “You were the one who hired me.”

  “I’m beginning to think your reputation is vastly overrated,” Ned said, positively glowering.

  Dallas chuckled and leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb in a totally comfortable pose. His eyes were hard, giving Cass the distinct impression that he was deliberately being nonchalant to aggravate Ned.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Ned,” he replied. “Rumor has it that reputations are earned. I try very hard to earn mine. Very hard.”

  The stony expression on Ned’s face never once changed as he glanced first at her, then at Dallas. Cass suddenly felt like a traitor. Despite her anger with the man a few minutes earlier, he didn’t deserve this. She knew, though, that nothing could innocently explain Dallas’s being here with her. She stared down at the floor.

  The terrible silence continued for one full minute; then Ned whirled on his heel and stalked away. Looking up, Cass winced when she saw him trip over the edge of a two-by-four, tearing a hole in his elegant trousers and completely shredding his dignified leave-taking. He kicked impotently at the wood before continuing past the workmen and out the front door. He slammed it with such force that one of the panes shattered.

  Oblivious to the others in the room, Cass furiously jerked around to Dallas. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “From the back, where else?”

  “That wasn’t what I meant!” she exclaimed. “How dare you come in like that? Lord only knows what poor Ned thinks now!”

  “ ‘Poor’ Ned damn well better be thinking what he’s supposed to be thinking,” Dallas said in a low, stiff voice.

  “And just what is that supposed to mean?” she demanded, stalking over to him.

  He gazed down at her and smiled. “That your shares are not for sale.”

  The fight suddenly went out of her, and she rubbed her temples. “You heard that part.”

  “I heard everything.”

  “That doesn’t mean what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking it means you’re fighting for what’s yours.” He laughed. “Hell, you were as business-bland as they come. You didn’t give away a thing.”

  “There was nothing to give away, so don’t act so pleased with yourself,” she muttered. “I just wasn’t interested in selling the shares, that’s all.”

  “It was enough.” He took her arm. “I’m sorry about what happened outside, Cass. You’re under pressure, and I had no right to add to it.”

  She glared at him. “Of course you apologize now, after you heard everything with Ned.”

  “Cass, dammit!” He was nearly shouting. “My apologizing has nothing to do with Ned! I love you, and I acted like a complete jerk out there, and I’m damn sorry I did!”

  The words instantly dispelled her anger. She stared at him … then uttered a barnyard curse.

  Dallas made a face. “Not exactly the emotional response I was hoping for.”

  “You certainly know how to complicate matters,” she said, blinking back tears of joy and despair.

  “It’s my specialty.” He paused for a moment and brushed her hair back behind her ear with a gentle hand. “Would you prefer to forget I said it?”

  “I … no.” She sagged against him, and he wrapped his arms around her. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “I could make several suggestions.”

  She cleared her throat. “Would you be upset if I weren’t up to any of them? Right now I’m feeling confused and rotten. I just want to wallow in my misery.”

  He chuckled. “I think you’ve had enough for one day. I’ll take you home, and you can wallow in a nice hot tub at the same time.”

  “I can’t,” she said, raising her head. “The workmen have to be supervised—”

  “Cass, you’ve been getting in their way for the past few days. Why don’t you cut them a break.”

  “But the store—”

  “—will be fine,” he finished. “And Jean will be back from Hammonton with those new display stands in a while. She can handle things here.”

  She was too drained of energy to argue, and had enough sense to know she’d lose anyway.

  Dallas cursed silently and thoroughly as he drove a quiet Cass home.

  He could think of a thousand romantic ways for a man to tell a woman he loved her. Unfortunately, yelling in fury wasn’t on the list.

  He shouldn’t have told her at all until after the board meeting. Still, while her reaction hadn’t been the one he’d been hoping for, at least it wasn’t the one he’d dreaded.

  He told himself he ought to be satisfied with that. It wasn’t fair to expect more from her, especially after Ned’s very interesting visit.

  Now, that, he thought with great satisfaction, was quite another matter. She had refused Ned’s offer for the shares. Damn good thing she had. The moment he had heard Ned’s pompous tones, everything had come together for him.

  He glanced over at her as she stared blankly out the side window. Instantly he steeled himself to keep himself from saying anything about the suspicions—no, certainties—he had now about “poor” Ned Marks. Cass was in no mood to believe him.

  A thought occurred to Dallas, and he smiled to himself as he turned his eyes back to the road. Cass could say all she wanted to the contrary, but she had chosen her side today.

  And it wasn’t Ned’s.

  Twelve

  It seemed like forever before Cass was finally able to settle in her bathtub. The warm water enclosed her in its snug cocoon, slowly replacing the numbness inside her with a limpid contentedness. She sighed and closed her eyes.

  This, she decided, was the perfect place for a confused person. And after the day’s events, she was about as confused as she could be. One confusion, though, stood above all the rest.

  Dallas said he loved her.

  She was desperate to believe him, and yet she couldn’t help wishing that he’d said it before he’d prodded her for a decision about the board meeting.

  Or better still, if he had said it after whatever happened at the board meeting. Then she would have no doubt about his sincerity. She couldn’t help but doubt, and she hated herself for it.

  She knew it was simply to preserve her own emotions. She had spent too many years being so damn cautious that she couldn’t let go now. Pain shot through her that she might be hurting him. She hated herself even more.

  Blind trust was a terrifying thing, she thought.

  “Those damn shares are making me crazy,” she muttered.

  If she had a lie detector, she admitted she’d hook him up to it in an instant. She needed a little proof that his love was separate from whatever her final decision about the board meeting was. Just one final, irrevocable proof that he really did love her. Something that would show her he wasn’t saying it as an attempt to get her to do what he wanted with her proxy. Something …

  She had a wild idea, and her eyes flew open.

  There just might be a way.

  She instantly hoisted herself out of the tub, wrapped a towel around her wet torso, and headed for the door.

  Dallas studied the leaking cold-water faucet in Cass’s kitchen. Yesterday he’d noticed water dripping out between the collar and the base, but now it trickled steadily. The last thing he wanted to do was sit around and think while he waited for Cass to finish her bath. A nice, simple household chore ought to keep him occupied. Hell, he thought, maybe he could find a few other things to fix while he was at it.

  Granted, he’d never actually fixed a sink before, but he’d once watched his father do it just by tightening the valve with a wrench. He could certainly do that, an
d Cass would appreciate not having to call in a plumber. He knew there was a tool kit out in the BMW. It probably had a wrench. One little twist, and no more leaky faucet.

  Several minutes later he was happily unscrewing the faucet handle and removing it. The valve itself was a simple straight-up-and-down mechanism with screw threads running the length of it. Probably the continual twisting and turning had loosened it, allowing water to seep out, he decided. Adjusting the wrench around the base of the valve, he began to twist it back into place.

  He frowned as the water continued to flow unabated.

  “Dallas! I have to ask you …”

  He turned around to find Cass dripping wet, with only a towel wrapped around her. He glowed at the beautiful sight of her exposed flesh, damp and gleaming. Especially her legs. Lord, but she had great legs.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Fixing a leak,” he said absently, admiring the way the tops of her breasts swelled over the towel she clutched against her body.

  “Oh.” She waved her free hand in dismissal. “Dallas, I have to ask … no. Dallas, I’m taking back the proxy from Ned.”

  “About damn time,” he muttered as more water suddenly squirted out of the valve. He would have to start playing plumber. Now he couldn’t leave it. He tried twisting the valve down farther, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Dallas, stop fooling around with the faucet. I need to talk to you about this.”

  “Trust me, I’m listening intently,” he said, bending down to study the leak at eye level. The valve probably wasn’t seated properly. He straightened and began loosing it to try again. All his attention, however, was on her. “I know that this wasn’t an easy decision for you to make. You made the right one, Cass. When can you be ready to leave for New York? We have a lot to go over before the meeting.”

  “You don’t understand. I want you to have the proxy, Dallas.”

  Taken completely by surprise, he jerked around. “You’re giving … Cass, I don’t want your proxy.”

  “But you could counter Ned with it, and get the boutique thing defeated. You said the other stockholders weren’t crazy about it. They’ll vote with you as easily as they would have voted with me. And the proxy would also help you turn the company around. You could get in anything you felt was needed. I want to give it to you.”

  “I won’t take the damn proxy, Cass!” he exclaimed in frustration. Even as the words came out of his mouth, a part of him cursed himself for turning it down. She was quite right about the power it would give him at M & L. But he knew that if he took the proxy, it meant that he loved Cass less. He loved her all the more for trusting him with it. Desperate to get the stupid faucet fixed so he could really talk to her, he turned back to the valve and gave it several more twists until it began to tighten again. The leak slowed to its original dribble.

  “But, Dallas—”

  “No proxy, Cass.” He gasped as he put his weight behind the wrench in a last attempt to seal off the leak. “And that’s final!”

  At the same moment, the valve snapped completely away from the sink. A geyser of water shot straight up, splattering everything in sight. Dallas uttered a barnyard curse as he tried frantically to force the valve back into place with his hands. The water squirted sideways, soaking him within seconds.

  “I love you, Dallas.”

  Dallas cursed again. “Dammit, Cass! Now’s one hell of a time to tell me!”

  “I thought so.”

  One kiss turned into two, then three. Towel and clothes were slowly shed, as hands explored with loving tenderness … until, at last, their bodies blended together in final commitment. And then the sweet darkness overtook them.

  Much later, when they lay together on Cass’s bed, Dallas nuzzled her throat and said, “I love you.”

  Cass tightened her arms around him. “I love you.”

  The words seemed to give her so much freedom, she thought. The last of her caution had been washed away … along with half the kitchen. Helpless laughter suddenly bubbled up out of her as she remembered Dallas furiously cursing both her and the water for their timing.

  “I don’t have to ask what’s so funny,” he grumbled, nipping at her shoulder. He raised his head. “I think I’ll stick to fixing companies. It’s easier than fixing a leaky faucet. Good thing you found the cut-off under the sink; otherwise we’d be six feet under water by now, instead of doing this.”

  Cass chuckled. “I still don’t understand how you managed to break the valve.”

  “Damned if I know either. I guess we better call an expert for the sink.”

  She cleared her throat and said, “I have a feeling a five-year-old would qualify compared to you.”

  He made a rude noise. “Just for that, smarty, I hope he doesn’t come before the turn of the century.”

  “You know the big beach house three doors down?” she asked. He nodded. “That’s my plumber.”

  He raised his head. “You’re kidding.”

  She laughed. “No. He’s got the biggest plumbing service in the area. I’ll give him a call later.”

  “Much later,” Dallas suggested, trailing his finger around her nipple.

  It immediately budded at the sensual gesture, and languid heat spread through her veins.

  “I’ll call tomorrow,” Cass said, pulling his mouth down to hers.

  “If this is what you do when you’re feeling confused and rotten, you’d probably kill a man when you’re happy.”

  Cass laughed, and propped up her pillows. “It’s amazing what a little water can do for a person.”

  Silently, she vowed never to tell him about her test. She knew she shouldn’t have done it, but she was so glad she had. He had refused the proxy.

  “Having other things on my mind,” Dallas said, rolling over and leering comically at her, “I didn’t ask when you’re going to let Ned know you’re taking back the proxy.”

  Cass swallowed back a sudden jolt of fear. She hadn’t thought about that. Unfortunately, she hadn’t prepared a logical excuse to replace the real reason.

  “Well …” she began, thinking furiously, “I don’t really have to let him know. The agreement just says that he has the power to vote in my absence. If I’m there, then I’m not absent.”

  “What do you mean, ‘if’? This is not a game, Cass,” he snapped, sitting up in bed. “That board meeting is in two days, dammit!”

  “No,” she said, frowning. “It’s the twentieth.”

  “The fifteenth.”

  She shook her head. “I just got the notice, and it says the twentieth.”

  “Cass, it’s the fifteenth.” His glare turned to a frown. “Did Ned send it?”

  She flushed with embarrassment, remembering when and why she’d requested it. “Yes.”

  “And it says the twentieth?”

  She nodded.

  “Go get it.”

  She frowned, but got out of bed, dragging the spread around her body. She found the notice just where she’d left it, on top of the desk in her home office, and returned to the bedroom.

  He took it from her hand, while commenting, “Maybe M & L ought to start a line of sexy bedspreads.”

  “Oh, brother,” she muttered, crawling across the bed. She glanced over his shoulder and pointed to the date in the letter. “See, it says the twentieth.”

  He pointed to another date just underneath the letterhead. “But the meeting date was set long before this. In fact, this is a very recent notice.”

  She blushed hotly. “I called Ned about then to ask him about Lusty Lingerie. I also asked him to send me copies of any board notices.”

  Dallas’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “That clinches it.”

  “Look, I know it was a nasty thing to call him about what you’d told me,” she said in a rush, hoping she could explain herself. “But I’d never heard of it before lunch that day. I had to confirm it.”

  “It’s okay, Cass.” He leaned over and kissed her soundly on t
he mouth. “Just tell me what you two talked about.”

  She closed her eyes, trying to conjure up the conversation. She could barely remember; it seemed like months ago. “I told him I’d seen the line in one of the stores down here, and that I didn’t remember ever reading anything about it in my M & L stuff—”

  Dallas chuckled. “He must have swallowed his teeth on that one.”

  “He told me he’d sent me the announcements.”

  “Interesting.”

  “That was about it,” she finished, opening her eyes. “What’s so interesting?”

  “After years of silence, you call him to ask about the company, and right before a crucial board meeting. You ask for copies of board notices. Did you get them, by the way?”

  “Just that one, with a note that he’d send me the others later.”

  “Nice of him,” Dallas muttered, staring at the letter.

  “Just what are you getting at?” she demanded.

  “Your phone call threw him into a panic, Cass. You asked questions about the company and wanted to know when the board meeting was. Obviously you’re interested in M & L. That’s not good for him, because if you are, then you might come to the board meeting and vote your shares. You may not vote his way. But he can hardly refuse to send the notice, so he puts down the wrong date. If you do decide to come, it would be way after the meeting’s over and the boutiques are voted through. He could just apologize for the mix-up and send you back home, with no harm done to his plans.”

  She shook her head. “Dallas, that’s pretty farfetched. Look, the chairman of the board ought to know his own meeting date.”

  “And so should the president of the company. Call any of the other stockholders. They’ll tell you the meeting’s on the fifteenth. You’re the last one he wants there, Cass. Because if you’re there, then you’re not absent, and he can’t vote your shares.” Dallas looked sheepish. “I’m sorry I snapped at you about that earlier. You were perfectly right.”

  She sank back against the pillows and stared at the ceiling. She knew it had to be true, if she could confirm it through the other stockholders.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, while gently brushing the hair back from her cheek, “your phone call to him also started another chain of nasty events.”