She stared at him, transfixed. She was overwhelmingly conscious of the fresh country air redolent of the scent of weeping willows, of the mossy creek bank and shadowed stillness around them. Encroach-ing trees from downstream etched fluid reflections on the motionless surface of the shallows, and a curious dragonfly beat its wings at her ear. Deke brushed it away and then gently touched his fingers to her face, tilting it toward his.
As if in a dream, she felt his breath ruffling her eyelashes. His lips brushed hers, softly at first, then more surely. Her stomach fluttered, but this time it had nothing to do with motion or altitude. She was feeling very down-to-earth indeed.
Cool, clear creek water swirled unheeded around their feet, the sound of it singing in their ears. It seemed to Dorian that her heart stopped beating, her brain stopped thinking, and the world stopped spinning.
The moment was shattered by a shout from nearby and the beat of running feet racing toward them. Deke and Dorian sprang apart.
“Deke? You all right?” The man who must be Jimmy rushed around the overturned gondola.
“Everything’s fine,” Deke said smoothly. He guided Dorian across the rocks and up the bank.
“Good! You had me worried,” Jimmy said. He turned to survey the balloon. “I guess we might as well pack it up.”
When Deke looked down at her, Dorian was unbelievingly touching her fingers to her lips, which still tingled from his kiss. They had shared only one kiss. Just one. But it promised a taste of heaven.
“To be continued,” Deke said to her in a low but meaningful tone, and then he went to help the chase crew right the gondola.
* * *
“I‘D BETTER GET HOME and out of these wet clothes,” she said when they were in the car and headed toward the highway.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your place is more than an hour’s drive from here. Besides, I think we could both use a good hot drink. We’ll stop off at the penthouse and you can put on your dry clothes there. I want you to see my place,” he said.
“But—”
“No buts. Besides, we still haven’t talked.”
Dorian was curious to see how Deke lived. Or would live, once he moved into the penthouse. And then there was the intriguing thought of continuing what had gone on before. Part of her, the sensible side of Dorian Carr, knew that Deke should be taboo, that it was inappropriate for her to be thinking of anything other than a friendship with Deke Washburn. The reality of it was that he was the boss, the owner of the company. But at the moment, reality seemed to have lost all importance.
“Dorian, you’re going to keep this car. I am not going to take it back,” he said suddenly as they reached the outskirts of the city.
By this time, she felt that she’d earned it. “I can’t keep the car. It’s too expensive a gift,” she felt compelled to say, coveting the Miata’s racy shape and cunningly arranged dashboard even as she spoke.
“Think of it as a company car. You’ll need it to get to the studio,” Deke said.
“Jill’s going to let me drive hers when I need it. She says she can ride to work with a friend.”
“Why inconvenience her when you wouldn’t have to?” he wanted to know.
“Because I’m inconvenienced all the time by having to pick up after her. She’s the sloppiest roommate alive, and she owes me,” Dorian said.
By this time they had reached the heart of the city and were stopped at a stoplight. Deke glanced over at her, not seeming to mind that her hair was drying in clumps or even the sad and soggy state of her new clothes.
“So Jill is the messy type, is she? How about you?”
“Oh, I’m reasonably neat.” She looked down at herself. “Well, except for today,” she added ruefully.
The light switched to green and Deke gunned the motor.
“Someone who brushes every hair of her eyebrows in the right direction would have to be,” he agreed. “I had that figured out the moment I first saw you.”
“You’ve given me that much thought? Right down to every last hair of my eyebrows?” she asked in surprise.
He glanced over at her. “I have thought about you, Dorian, in great detail. I have thought about kissing you, in fact, more times than I can count.”
“And...and did the actual experience of kissing me live up to your expectations?” she asked with a certain amount of trepidation.
“Better than,” he told her, and she looked over at him out of the corner of her eye to see if he was joking, but his expression was entirely serious.
They were driving through a neighborhood of high-rise condominiums where she’d always admired the buildings. Soon he was whipping the car into a driveway between two imposing pillars bearing the gilt-lettered name Europa.
“Nice place,” Dorian said, taking in the Bentleys and Beamers in the parking garage as she got out of the car.
Deke was putting the convertible top up. “I wonder if I ever will feel at home in a place called Europa. It sounds mighty foreign to someone who grew up in Mabry, Georgia,” he said.
On the way up in the elevator Dorian asked, “You lived in Mabry all your life?”
“Well, when I was about six, after Daddy died, Mama and Bob and I moved to nearby Toccoa for a while when Mama got a job at Castle’s Five-and-Dime, before she opened her own dress shop. And later I got a scholarship to Beckett College way up north. I only lasted two and a half years there.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “My major wasn’t challenging enough. I decided to take a semester off while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, hiked through Europe, then came back to the U.S. when my Granny Nan got sick. You know the rest. I never went back to college.”
The elevator deposited them in a cavernous marble-floored hall. “It doesn’t look as if the lack of a college degree has hurt you,” she observed.
“I can’t say that I missed college after I left, but I sure missed the other STUDs. Come on, let me show you what kind of pad Larissa thinks appropriate for a man-about-Atlanta.” He inserted a key in a lock and swung open double doors to a large living room.
Dorian had seen rich. Dorian had seen elegant. She had even, during one modeling job in Italy, lived the rich and elegant life for a week. But nothing had prepared her for Deke Washburn’s bachelor digs atop Europa.
In the living room, a vast floor-to-ceiling window bordered by curved soffits opened up on a view of the city. Ceilings were high, lending a clean uncluttered feeling, and colors were subdued. Behind the bar, a mirrored wall reflected Atlanta.
The bedrooms were huge, especially the master bedroom with its handmade Mexican bed and lacquered furniture. Deke showed her into a bedroom across the hall, smartly decorated in blue and white. “You can change in here. There’s a bathroom on the other side of the closet, and you can take a shower or a bath if you’d like,” he told her.
Dorian shook her head. “I’ll just be a minute,” she said.
She peeled off her wet clothes and dressed in the navy suit skirt and simple white silk blouse she’d worn to the corporate offices that morning, leaving the top two buttons undone. A quick once-over with the wall hair dryer and a brisk brushing fluffed up her hair, and her stomach, amazingly enough, felt normal.
“Forget Dorothy and Toto. I feel like Dorian in Wonderland,” she said as she joined Deke in a kitchen full of the latest technology. The cabinets were a sleek European style, and recessed overhead lights beamed on glossy tiles.
“If you’re Dorian in Wonderland, who am I?”
“The Cheshire cat, always popping up where least expected.”
“Do you realize that you say some very peculiar things?”
“You do some very peculiar things. Whisking me away from the restaurant for a balloon ride, for instance,” she retorted as she wandered back through the living room, pausing to admire bibelots here and there. A silvery plaque hung on the wall beside the bar. It was inscribed “The World’s Last Bachelor. Fight the Good Fight, Deke.”
> Under that, it was signed STUDs.
“My STUDs buddies gave that to me when Ki got married,” Deke said. “I’m supposed to uphold the honor of the STUDs. Keep the faith. And all that.”
She laughed at this and continued to walk around, looking for more clues to his personal life. “What’s this?” she asked, picking up a tennis-ball-sized sphere consisting only of twisted wire.
“I have no idea. It’s probably something that Larissa’s decorator thought I needed.”
“Maybe it’s a Brillo pad that’s having a bad hair day,” she said doubtfully, turning it over and over in her hand.
“Maybe it’s a psychotic Slinky.”
“Why would anyone make such a weird thing?” she asked, putting it back where she’d found it.
“So they could sell it to unsuspecting men like me who don’t know better than to pay the bill,” he told her.
“It doesn’t sound as if you’re enjoying the experience of decorating this place very much,” Dorian said.
“What’s to enjoy? I’m more at home rocking on the front porch of my house on Blue Lake. Let’s see if Larissa stocked the tea cupboard. Bless her heart, she did. Would you care for a cup of tea?”
“Is tea the only thing you drink?” asked Dorian, whose escorts usually plied her with something stronger.
“No, but some of the ingredients in my teas are known aphrodisiacs,” he said. “Ginseng, for instance. It’s one of the twenty-two herbs in my original tea.”
“Couldn’t I just have a whiskey sour or something?” Dorian asked plaintively.
“There’s no whiskey here yet,” he said, checking the empty liquor cabinet. He turned on the electric burner he’d had set into the bar for boiling water. “Sit down, Dorian,” he said. “We’ll watch the lights come on all over the city. What flavor would you like?”
“Surprise me,” she said as she sank into the cushions of the curved, overstuffed couch. After a few minutes, during which she wondered what Deke would think if she told him how she’d really felt on the balloon ride, Deke handed her a cup and saucer. The tea was too hot to drink, and she set it down to cool as Deke sat beside her.
She decided that telling him how she’d felt up in the balloon would serve no useful purpose. She’d pulled it off without disgracing herself; why ruin it now?
Instead she flashed him a bright smile. “I wonder if I’m allowed to refer to this piece of furniture as a coffee table in the home of the Prince of Teas.”
“Yes, you are. And if I am the Prince of Teas, you must be the Princess of Tease,” he said, reaching out and tracing the neckline of her blouse. She held her breath, waiting for his fingers to touch her skin, but they didn’t.
“I don’t think I’m the one who is doing the teasing,” she objected. “Anyway, weren’t we going to talk?”
“That’s what we’re doing,” he said, his fingers continuing on their journey. They traced the outline of one button, and she held her breath until they moved away. As she exhaled, he traced an X on the side of her throat. His touch tickled, but it also felt highly erotic.
“X marks the spot where I would like to kiss you,” he said. He moved closer, his breath displacing the fine tendrils in front of her ear. She swallowed audibly, and he cupped her face between both hands. Outside, the lights of the city began winking on in the lavender dusk, and Dorian’s right leg, which was crossed over her left leg at the knee, began to prickle.
“We have it all, Dorian. You, me, and privacy. And you like it. I see it in your eyes, I feel it in the throb of your pulse beneath my fingers, and I’m going to find it in your lips.” He brushed the pads of his thumbs against her earlobes, furrowed his fingertips through her hair. His touch made her skin catch fire and also made her wish that he’d touch her in other more intimate places.
“Dorian,” he said. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by what she was feeling. She was adept at playing love scenes with actors, of appearing to be bowled over by their charm and good looks. She could call up the required emotions at will. But this—this was different. She felt excitement, exhilaration, anticipation and yearning. And all of it was real.
She opened her eyes again.
“Yes, I’m still here,” he said. “And I plan to be around for a while, so let’s just relax and enjoy this.” He bent his head to nuzzle her neck. He rested his hands lightly on her shoulders and drew her closer until their bodies almost touched.
She wished he would kiss her and get it over with. He touched his lips to the hollow below her throat, slowly feathering his way up her neck to linger tantalizingly on her earlobe.
“Deke,” she whispered.
“Mmm,” he said. He was nipping at her chin, his lips maddeningly close to where she wanted them, yet still too far away.
She moved her hands up across his chest and slid them around his neck. “Here,” she said desperately, offering her lips, and was rewarded when he drew her into a deep and passionate kiss.
His lips and teeth and tongue took possession of her mouth as if he had all the time in the world. And then, surprising her, he relentlessly drove his tongue deeper. He caressed her through the silk of her blouse, gliding his hands down the hard ridge of her spine to rest in the hollows between her rib cage and hipbones. She wanted to feel more of him, all of him, to lie beside him, caressing and touching and...
And she must be out of her mind. Doing this with Deke Washburn, the head of the company to which she was now under contract, was stupid. One misstep, and she’d be out the door, no matter what the fine print in her contract said. She had no business getting involved with the man on whom her paycheck now depended.
His eyes were dozy and heavy-lidded with passion. “Don’t pull away,” he said urgently. “Don’t.”
She managed to sit up and put a respectable distance between them, straightening her blouse and buttoning one of the two unfastened buttons for good measure.
“Is something wrong? Was I doing something you didn’t like?” he said with a puzzled frown.
Like? Oh, she had liked it, all right. That was the problem.
“My foot’s gone to sleep,” she said in a small voice.
He stared at her for a moment before he burst out laughing. “That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard,” he said. But he looked amused.
“It’s not an excuse.” Didn’t he know she had wanted him to keep on kissing her? Didn’t he know she was aching to feel his hands on her body? Didn’t he know that she couldn’t allow that sort of thing, that it was entirely against her principles and all her common sense?
She stood up tentatively, carefully putting weight on her numb leg.
“Going somewhere?”
“Home,” she said, unable to trust herself to say more than the one word. She had been entirely too caught up in the moment with Deke Washburn.
“How will you get there?” he asked slyly.
“In my company car,” she said. “You insisted.”
He laughed, this time in admiration. He stood up and wrapped his arms around her, his mouth close to her ear.
“You’ve figured out a way to get away from me again, Dorian Carr,” he said. “Don’t think you can go on doing it forever.”
“Wait and see” was all she said, and then she grabbed the car keys from the top of the coffee table and ran for her life.
Chapter Seven
Dorian clutched her medical bag and peered down from a leafy branch of a banyan tree. A chimpanzee was grooming himself in a mirror propped on a weather-beaten sea chest.
Suddenly, out of the jungle swooped Tarzan, swinging on a vine.
“Oo-ee-oooo-e-ooo,” wailed Tarzan. He landed beside the chimpanzee and scooped up a straight razor. He experimentally scraped his face, looked at the razor in disgust and flung it into a clump of bushes.
“Cheetah, you’ve been using my razor again. It feels awful.”
Dorian grabbed the rope on the other side of the set and swung to the ground, skidding to a stop between
Tarzan and Cheetah.
“Cut!” cried the director. “Dorian, I want you on the other side of Tarzan so the camera will have a better view of you. And Tarzan, I want you to catch her with one arm around her waist when she lands. And for God’s sake, try not to look as if you’ve been expecting her to show up all along. You’re supposed to be surprised when this woman arrives out of nowhere.”
Dorian wiped the perspiration from her brow. The lights in the studio were hot.
“I don’t have enough room to maneuver,” she said. “Tarzan needs to be closer to Cheetah.”
“Okay, we’ll do it that way this time,” the director said as he walked away.
Dorian hoisted the medical bag again and went around to the back of the tree where a ladder had been set up. She climbed the ladder and positioned herself in the branches, hanging on to the rope.
“Ready, Dorian?” the director called.
“Yes,” she shouted back.
“All right, let’s get it right this time.”
The boy wearing the chimpanzee suit started preening himself. Tarzan yelled and swung down on the rope.
“Cheetah, you’ve been using my razor again. It feels awful,” Tarzan said.
Dorian pushed off from the tree and landed beside Tarzan.
“Feeling awful? What you need is a cup of Dr. Feelgood’s Herbal Tea.” She turned to the camera. “Good for what ails you. And no monkey business.”
“Cut!” yelled the director. “Good job, Dorian. Kid, get out of that chimp suit. Geez, they never told me it was going to be like this in film school.” He hurried away toward the offices in the back of the building, and Dorian tossed the medical bag to an assistant before making tracks in the direction of the studio parking lot. A full day’s work, and she still had to drive home through rush-hour traffic.
This was the second Dr. Feelgood commercial that she’d filmed. She loved the work. The commercials were corny, true. The days were long, true. But it was fun. This wasn’t Oscar material, but she was able to show off her talent as a comedienne. Not only that, but she had posed for print ads, and she had drunk enough herbal tea to sink a battleship. Throughout all of it, she’d thought about Deke Washburn more than she’d ever dreamed was possible.
The World's Last Bachelor Page 9
