He pressed a damp version of the European greeting on both her cheeks as his hands deliberately snaked their way up her torso to the sides of her breasts. Nausea burgeoned. She hadn’t had the nightmare in months, but if he wasn’t David Hines’s son, he could have been.
“My wife, Janet…”
The blonde was kissing a hello to Brian. She wore a leather jumpsuit, designed to be worn over a shirt or sweater that she had apparently forgotten to put on. Her every movement revealed not just the curve of a stark white breast but its nipple as well. “Brian, honey, you haven’t been to one of our parties in so long! I thought you’d forgotten all about us!” She turned with a distinctly cooler smile to Leigh, taking in her attire and looks. “Nice to meet you, Leigh. I hope you’re going to help me keep our boys off business for at least a little while. I’m up for some fun tonight!”
Janet made manhattans for herself and Leigh and martinis for the men. The pair of long, tall pitchers would have served quite a crowd. The living room, in scarlet oak paneling, had been designed to imitate an English pub, and though Leigh found it attractive in its way, there was a strange absence of books and personal effects that might have made it warm.
“Leigh?”
She glanced at Brian, who had seated himself on one of three short sofas. Clearly, he was offering her the place next to him, but she didn’t believe it was because he wanted her close. Smiling with deliberate vagueness, she stayed where she was, feeling like a feather in the wind. Still, she would handle the situation; she’d made it a long time without anyone’s protection.
“Do you like modern art?” Janet questioned from behind the bar where she was getting herself a third drink. She motioned vaguely to the copper sculpture that stood on the coffee table in the midst of the couches. “I picked that up in Paris last year. I’m getting a pretty extensive collection if you like that sort of thing.”
The copper man and woman were twisted in an explicitly erotic mode. Leigh wondered fleetingly if Janet collected pornography or modern art. “It’s interesting,” she said politely.
Janet grimaced. “Oh, well, you don’t like it.” She sighed and leaned back against the bar with a look of dissatisfaction as she listened for a moment to the business discussion Brian had initiated with her husband. “It looks like we’ll have to do something to stir them up,” she said lightly.
Quick as a cat, Janet curled up in the empty place next to Brian, with one long arm extended on the back of the couch so that her red-tipped fingernails rested languidly on his cashmere coat. She said something, leaning forward, giving him a clear glimpse of both breasts. In a moment, the two of them were laughing.
Leigh stepped forward with a smile that already ached from effort, set her glass down next to the contorted faces of the copper lovers and sat on the scarlet velvet couch next to Steven Rawlings. If Brian was comfortable with these people, she was not going to let him see that she felt otherwise. With practiced ease, Steven drew an arm around her shoulders to hug her close. “I love newlyweds,” he whispered teasingly. “They’ve always got just one thing on their minds. We don’t believe in much formality around here, darling…”
Dinner was easier. At Brian’s insistence, the two men did settle down to business, and Steven quickly changed into a model professional. He knew his electrical business and he talked it up well; in fact, he talked nearly all of the time. The contrast between the two men became more and more apparent to Leigh. Brian was a man the way her father had been a man. He didn’t need to tell the world how strong and tough and good he was; he had nothing to prove. Steven, however, had something to prove every minute; her stepfather had been of that same mold.
Thoughtfully, she raised the wineglass to her lips, suddenly catching Brian’s eyes on her from across the table. He was still talking to Steven, but the intent look on his face made her uneasy. She had been quiet; was she failing him? At the other dinners they’d gone to she’d had the chance to ask questions and to listen, to encourage his clients to talk about themselves; there had been anecdotes, laughter. Tonight she felt out of her element, but if Brian expected something from her…
He did. She could see it in the haunting depths of his eyes. As if he were trying to tell her something, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t understand. He had the most beautiful eyes. Beautiful, dark, intimate eyes, eyes that touched her perfumed hair, and her nose and chin and slant of cheekbones, her lips… She found herself staring back almost wistfully, desperately trying to figure out what he wanted, so caught up in the black-fired depths that she could not look away.
“Come on now. Business is over and we’ve all had our coffee,” Janet said petulantly. “I’ve got a new group of paintings I’ve been dying to show Brian, but first let’s get some cognac from the living room.” They all stood up at Janet’s direction, Leigh lethargically feeling as if she were waking from a witch’s spell. Janet was all vibrant sexual energy, winking at Leigh as if to say, I’m sure this is all right with you, as she wound an arm around Brian’s waist.
“You two just go on then,” Steven encouraged lazily. “Leigh and I will find some way to amuse ourselves.”
“Perhaps Leigh would like to see—”
“Brian, Leigh doesn’t like that sort of art,” Janet scolded. “Surely you two have been married long enough to know her likes and dislikes? Or have you been spending all your time in bed?”
Leigh watched dispassionately as the two left the room. Inside she felt an unexpected jolt of panic at finding herself alone with another man. Brian had spelled protection for so long that she’d almost forgotten what that fear felt like.
“You like music, Leigh?” Steven’s languorous appraisal of her figure suddenly became more personal, more threatening.
“Very much,” she said softly.
“They’ll be some time,” he assured her. “The studio’s an entirely separate building from the house.”
She stood rather than sat once they moved into the other room. She couldn’t deny that Steven had excellent taste in music or that his stereo was outstanding. But there was only so much time she could spend mulling over his eclectic record collection and exploring the curios in the room, and the minutes kept ticking by.
“You’re very different than I thought you’d be. You’re beautiful—of course I expected that in Brian’s mate. And you’re remote, cool, yet also…” He smiled appreciatively at her, slouching on the couch with his legs extended. Leigh had the impression he’d tried the position before and knew it gave him an image of casual elegance. “Come on and sit by me,” he coaxed, “while I try to think of the word to describe you.” Abruptly, he snapped his fingers. “Demure. That’s the word I’m looking for. Demure, despite that flashy copper hair of yours. If you don’t mind my saying so, it’s sexy as all hell.”
His words sounded so like a line that they almost had a boring ring to them. “Brian thinks so, too,” she said pleasantly.
His eyebrow raised and a little of his smile faded. “We could find more amusing ways of spending our time than discussing what Brian thinks,” he suggested.
Rather than roam a room she had already thoroughly roamed, she perched uneasily on the couch across from him, trying to look relaxed. “I envy you your music system, Steven. Have you had it long?”
He burst out laughing, but there was an annoyed look in his blue eyes. “Never let it be said that I can’t take a hint,” he said dryly.
More minutes went ticking by. Deliberately, Steven refused to initiate any conversation; an awkwardness settled in—in, around, all over.
“They’ve been gone a half hour now,” Steven drawled finally.
She nodded. Long enough? Brian was a very sexual man—she’d never doubted that—who’d had to stay in a month of evenings because of her. Was that really how it was for him, a moment taken with a woman who was willing? Was that why he’d tried to talk her out of accompanying him tonight? “They have,” she agreed quietly. “Your wife evidently has quite an exte
nsive studio.”
“Couch and all.”
She reminded herself that Brian had to work with this man, and that she might have to dine with him again. “You seem to take a certain kind of pride in hinting at the…contemporary sort of marriage you have?” she queried carefully.
He mixed himself a drink, coming back to stand in front of her. “You want to talk about marriages, darling, let’s talk about yours. Maybe that’ll get your mind off the time,” he grated, with a strange smile that held no warmth.
She smiled back with an aching jaw, and picked up the cup with her coffee in it. She didn’t know whether all of his guests regularly switched partners with their hosts, but she could feel a dangerous thread of adrenaline in her bloodstream as he continued to stare at her suggestively. She was simply out of her depth. “I’d like to tell you about Brian and me,” she managed calmly. “We have a sort of…contemporary marriage, too, you see. I don’t know what he’s doing at the moment, but I do know that it has nothing to do with our relationship.”
His eyebrows flickered up sardonically. “You don’t give a hoot in hell if he has sex on the side—and yet you’re too pure to do likewise?”
His crudeness offended her. She had her back to the door as she raised the cup. “I’m just saying that there couldn’t be anyone else but Brian for me.”
“Well, I hate to have to tell you this, darling, but people just don’t have marriages like that anymore. Miss Goody Two Shoes went out about a decade ago, haven’t you heard? They used to say that men couldn’t live without variety, but these days women, too, play that game every day.”
“Yes,” she agreed, and again reminded herself that Brian wanted to do business with this man. She knew that if she’d been the least approachable Steven would have made a pass, and she knew exactly what he thought Janet and Brian were doing. She had not felt so desolate in a long time. Yet pride urged her to prove she could handle the man—perhaps not well, perhaps not at all well—but at least to the extent that there was no question in his mind of where she stood. The words came of their own volition. “Yes,” she repeated, “and I told you we have a very contemporary relationship—based on no one’s standards but our own. I know what Brian brings to me. I just can’t imagine wanting anyone else. But if he does want someone else, on occasion, and as long as it doesn’t take anything away from what he brings to me…” She shrugged expressively.
“A very unusual attitude,” Steven said sarcastically.
“Very unusual,” Brian agreed dryly. His voice was less than three feet behind her. She refused to turn around and look at him. How long had he been standing there? How much had he overheard?
“Your wife’s been telling me about your prowess as a lover,” Steven supplied lazily, his composure never lost. Leigh stared disbelievingly at him.
“Someday I’ll tell you about her prowess as a conversationalist. Right now we’re going home.” A strong hand grasped hers, drawing her to a standing position. Where was Janet? “Terrific dinner, Steven, and I’ll see you again as soon as the attorney has a chance to draw up the contract. Be nice to work with you again.”
Casual, normal words continued between the two men while coats were fetched and put on. Brian buttoned Leigh’s with none of the patience he showed in his conversation, and almost roughly pushed her out the door ahead of him. On the brightly lit porch, with a gentle snow falling around them, Brian paused and grasped her shoulders. She looked up at him, frightened and wary and totally mute. She assumed he was angry, the way his eyes blazed into hers, and then for an instant she thought it wasn’t anger at all, but frustration and…something else.
The moment was broken. “That damned woman! And damn Rawlings, too.” With his hand imprisoning hers, he half dragged her to the car with long, swift strides. He opened her door and slammed it once she was inside. When he got in, he was hardly seated before he had turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the driveway.
“And am I also on your list of the damned?” she inquired, wondering at his fury. “Or are you just taking your anger at them out on me?”
“Red, you have one hell of a nerve,” he said with a short, impatient laugh that made her shiver inside.
Leigh sensed, from the deepest recesses of her mind, too many things that she was not sure she wanted to know: that he had not made love to Janet, though the offer had been there; that he was sexually frustrated as well as enraged; and that the control she always associated with him was at this moment barely on the edge—a very ragged edge. They stopped at a red light, long enough for Brian to turn the full force of those glinting black eyes on her. “Did he lay a finger on you, Leigh?” His jaw was clenched and his lips tight; he was a stranger she had never met before.
She took a breath. “Of course not,” she said quietly. “Brian, how could you think that? I would never let anyone—”
“Wouldn’t you?” he challenged. The light changed and his eyes left hers, but the tension in his tall, broad shoulders was unmistakable.
She remembered, suddenly, the way his eyes had trailed hers at dinner. She had thought he was trying to tell her what he wanted her to do in relation to the Rawlings, but she knew now that wasn’t it. It was something between the two of them, and a fleeting instinct whispered that he was telling her that if anyone ever touched her it would be him, her husband. And was he also warning her that he was going to touch her, was going to rewrite the rules in that area as he had rewritten the rules of their social life? She felt a wild fluttering in the pit of her stomach and clenched her fists.
Silently, she huddled against the door of the car, feeling as unsafe and unsettled and thoroughly unhappy as she could remember, and said nothing at all to him for the entire ride home.
***
Two weeks before Christmas, a Saturday morning, Brian tracked her down in her study, where she had been working on a client’s accounts. Now that the morning sickness had abated, she had begun working again, but as a freelance accountant and only part time. To return to White’s and a full-time schedule would have been too demanding, and she had planned to work at home after the baby’s birth anyway, as she would want to be around at least until the child was old enough for nursery school. It made sense to start accepting clients now.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Brian apologized, “but I thought you’d want to see the letter we got from my mother this morning.” He held out a sheet of yellow stationery.
Leigh took the missive and eagerly began to read it. Just after Brian had moved in with her, they had called his mother to tell her of the marriage. Despite her disappointment at having missed the ceremony, Mrs. Hathaway had been delighted with the news, and she and Leigh had immediately warmed to each other over the phone. At the older woman’s suggestion, they had begun a correspondence, just the two of them, in addition to the letters Mrs. Hathaway often addressed to both Leigh and Brian. In that initial phone conversation, they had also arranged that Brian and Leigh would spend Christmas in Minnesota, so Leigh could meet her mother-in-law as well as Brian’s brothers and their wives. The letter Leigh was reading now was full of happy anticipation over the upcoming visit.
“There’s really no way we can get out of the trip,” Brian commented, watching her intently. “As you can see, my mother’s very excited about meeting you.”
Leigh shot him a quizzical look. “I had no intention of trying to get out of the visit,” she said calmly. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting your family, especially your mother. I already like her so much from her letters.”
“I know,” he said guardedly. “But you haven’t forgotten what I told you about her?”
“I haven’t forgotten,” she murmured. He would have his mother believe they were a loving couple, which would mean a fair amount of physical contact between them. Affection. She glanced up at Brian, then away. Something was changing within her that she could not quite identify. More and more, she found herself eager for Brian’s company, and at the same time the idea of touchi
ng him was beginning to haunt her, like an echo of something she couldn’t have, would never have. “Since Robert’s arranged to have one of his cronies spend the holidays here with him, and I’m feeling quite well enough to travel, I really see no problem about the trip,” she said finally, looking directly into her husband’s eyes.
His look was probing. “You have no problem with the idea of playing the loving couple?” he asked bluntly. “We’re a demonstrative family, Leigh. My mother will expect us to be physically affectionate—more so than we’ve been in front of Robert or at the parties we’ve been going to lately.”
“I understand that.” Then she added softly, “I trust you, Brian.”
For a moment, there was a stark, hollow look on his face that she’d never seen before, a tiny crack in the mosaic of her inscrutable husband. “I know,” he said as he stood up. “I remember,” he went on, “when I was a kid, one time I put together a model Jaguar. It took hours, all those tiny pieces, glue and wait, glue and wait. And when it was done, it was beautiful, Leigh, but very, very fragile. I took pride in having made it but there wasn’t much joy in possessing something I couldn’t play with or touch for fear of breaking it.”
His tone was absent, almost as if he were thinking aloud instead of speaking to her. He paused momentarily in the doorway, and Leigh groped for something to say, not quite sure why he’d brought up the little anecdote. “Perhaps you should have played with it,” she said lightly. “With all that glue and all…”
“That was a damned hard risk to take at eight years old.”
She still didn’t understand, but in a moment he was gone and she immersed herself in her accounts again, thinking with anticipation of the trip to Minnesota.
Chapter 9
It was only five o’clock in the morning when Brian opened the trunk of the car in the parking lot of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Blustery cold and still blue-black as night, there was nevertheless something about the crystal air that belonged to Christmastime.
A Daring Proposition Page 9
