Not Even for Love

by Sandra Brown

  He raised his head and peered at her suggestively. “I have an idea,” he drawled.

  “No!” she exclaimed, and tried to push him off. When she realized the futility of that, she tossed her head from side to side, but his mouth chased her relentlessly. “Reeves, what happened with us before—”

  “Defies description.”

  “Yes…I mean, no. It was wrong. I don’t know how I …” His mouth had caught up to hers now and was teasing it with small kisses in the corners. She tried to talk around it. “I…We can’t …We mustn’t …”

  “Yes we can. Yes we must.”

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  “And you’re a liar. Liar.” He finally tired of the foolishness and closed his mouth over hers, trapping inside any words of affected protest.

  Their mouths met with a hunger too long denied. The tip of his tongue flicked over her parted lips, tormenting them mercilessly before pushing past them into her mouth and sampling its delights.

  She wasn’t idly submissive. Her lips closed around his tongue, entrapping it tightly, until he was moaning his pleasure. When at last he pulled away, it was only to allow them to breathe. She turned her head onto his pillow as his lips journeyed over her neck to her ear and paid it homage.

  “Reeves,” she whispered. “I love this bed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s still warm from your body. It smells like you.”

  “Oh, God,” he grated.

  He wrapped his arms around her and rolled her over until she lay atop him. With eager hands he peeled off her jacket. He found the bottom of her sweater and worked it over her stomach and breasts and shoulders, then pulled it over her head. Laughing with him, she disengaged her arms from the sleeves.

  He flung the offending garment aside, riveting his eyes on her breasts, which were offered to him so enticingly. His fingertips grazed over the top curves with an almost reverent touch. “Beautiful breasts.” His voice was low and deep. His hands slipped to the undersides and cupped her, lifting her, enjoying the full plumpness that filled her. His thumbs gently skimmed cross the dusky pink nipples. “I love to watch that,” he said when they puckered prettily.

  Jordan arched her back and gasped her pleasure. One hand clamped her around the neck and pulled her face down to his. Hotly, his lips sipped at hers while his other hand stayed at her breast to coax responses from it that left her breathless.

  At first, she thought the sinking feeling came from the intoxicating kiss, but she realized that he was easing her onto her back once again.

  When her head was nestled on his pillow, his mouth left hers and nibbled its way down her neck and chest. Her nipple disappeared between his lips. By gently flexing his cheeks, he fed on her sweetness. His tongue became a darting, flicking instrument of sensuality that brought her to a level of arousal she had never known before.

  She trembled beneath him.

  “Jordan. I want you. I’ve wanted you since I left your apartment early that morning after the storm. The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life was to leave you in that bed. God, I wanted you so bad yesterday I hurt.”

  He raised himself until his face was hovering over hers. His eyes never left hers as he gently nudged her knees apart and settled himself between her thighs. They fit together with a cohesion so unique that it was awesome.

  “Feel how right it is,” he whispered urgently.

  “Yes,” she said, and moved against that hard strength that declared his need.

  “Ah, Jordan, Jordan… take me inside you.”

  His lips came down on hers possessively. The metallic whisper of a zipper was the only sound in the room as he worked at the fastening of her jeans. Then his hand was sliding leisurely over her stomach, past her navel, and finally beneath the lacy band of her bikini panties. Satin skin. A downy tuft. Then…

  He sighed. “So soft. So female. I need you, Jordan. And you need me. Now.”

  Then he touched her with startling accuracy and involuntarily she closed around his stroking fingers, groaning her acquiescence. “Yes, Reeves. Now.”

  “Jordan, you must know—”

  The shrill ring of the telephone cut off his words.

  CHAPTER 7

  Reeves cursed expansively when the telephone rang a second and then a third time. They froze, staring at each other. She smiled with sad resignation. He eased himself away from her and jerked the receiver from the ringing telephone.

  “Grant,” he barked. His eyes swung to her as the caller identified himself. Reeves said, “Hello, Helmut.”

  Jordan covered her face with her hands and rolled over onto her side. A tiny sob was the only sound she made.

  “No, you didn’t awaken me,” Reeves said. “I was up.” The double entendre didn’t escape her. Nor was it meant to. The scornful tone in his voice was intentional.

  She sat up and scooted to the other side of the bed, hastily picking up her sweater and pulling it on. Without looking back at Reeves, she refastened her jeans and smoothed trembling, ineffectual hands over her hair.

  Reeves listened to Helmut. Jordan walked to the window and stared out unseeingly at the lake water, which now sparkled in the first sunlight. She clutched the pull cord of the drape when she heard Reeves ask, “Have you tried to reach Jordan?”

  She whirled around and met his steely gaze from across the room. He was holding the telephone at his ear, pausing, silently asking her what he should say next. One look at her shattered face and he knew. In the depths of her gray eyes he saw her plea for him not to tell Helmut she was there. His lips hardened into a bitter line, but his voice remained cool as he answered, “No, she probably isn’t awake yet.”

  He listened while he stared at Jordan, where she stood im-mobile at the window. “That sounds great. Where should I meet you?… All right…an hour is fine…Yes. See you then.”

  Long after Helmut had broken the connection, Reeves held the telephone to his ear, piercing Jordan with his implacable stare. Then he juggled the receiver from one hand to the other and replaced it.

  He leaned down and scooped her jacket from the floor, then stood up and went to the door. He stood there with one hand on his hip, the other extended, holding her jacket toward her.

  She took the less-than-subtle hint. With false bravado, she lifted her chin and stalked toward him. When she was within a few feet of the door, he threw the jacket toward her so forcefully that her hands had to come up quickly and grasp it.

  “Your fiancé,” he said slurringly, “wants to go hiking on the mountain today. I suggest that you scuttle home like a good little girl and await his call, which will come in about twenty minutes. Always a true gentleman, he is allowing you an extra few minutes of sleep.”

  The mockery in his voice was wounding, and reflexively, she flinched under it. He wasn’t finished yet.

  “I’ll see you in about an hour. We’re to converge here on the porch of the hotel.” She walked past him. When her hand was on the door knob, he added, “Remember to sound sleepy and surprised when he calls.”

  She shot him a withering look and then flung the door open. She almost made it into the hall before he grabbed her elbow and swung her around. “As for waking me up, you beat a cup of coffee all to hell, Jordan.” The scathing insult dripped with disdain. Before she could respond to it, he shoved her through the door and slammed it behind her.

  She didn’t waste any time returning home. The obliging concierge was busy with a guest who was checking out, so he didn’t see her as she skirted past his desk and out of the hotel.

  Breathless and humiliated, she reached home just as the telephone started ringing. Reeves’s words came back to haunt her as she picked up the phone and answered brightly, “Good morning.”

  “Darling, are you up and about?” Helmut asked.

  It gave her a sense of relief and salved her conscience to answer truthfully rather than to lie to him. “Yes, I’ve been up for a long while. Bill called this morning,” she added.
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br />   “I have an idea,” Helmut said, and invited her on the hiking expedition.

  “That sounds great,” she enthused.

  “That’s exactly what Reeves said.”

  Oh, God. Had it been? Yes. He had said those exact words.

  “Can you be ready by nine?” Helmut asked. “I told Reeves we would all meet at the Europa. Do you mind too terribly going there alone?”

  In light of the fact that she had already walked through the gray shadows of predawn to the hotel, she almost succumbed to the hysterical laughter she felt building in her chest. “No, not at all,” she answered with amazing calm.

  “I’ll see you then, darling.” He hung up with his usual abruptness.

  Mechanically, she dressed. She kept on the jeans she was already wearing, but tucked them into the hiking boots she had purchased soon after coming to Lucerne. Hiking in the foothills was a popular pastime.

  She went into the bathroom and whipped the ski sweater over her head. Her breasts were chafed in spots where Reeves’s whisker stubble had abraded her. At seeing them she tried to conjure up angry resentment. Instead, to her shame, her insides melted and liquified at the recollection of his kisses. Actually she thrilled to this raw evidence of his masculine aggression.

  Her face bore further traces of his lovemaking. Her lips had that full, pouting, well-kissed look. What small amount of makeup she had applied to her eyes earlier had been smudged by their turbulent kisses. Hastily she cleaned her face and began again.

  When she was done, she swept her hair into a ponytail. Determinedly she put on a bra, a shirt with a button-down collar, and a V-necked navy-blue sweater. Nothing about her attire connoted femininity. That was paramount in her choice of wardrobe.

  Since the day promised to be clear and warm, she left her fur parka behind and took a flannel-lined khaki poplin jacket. After stuffing some grooming articles in a backpack, she was ready.

  Traffic had picked up on the streets now as she walked to the hotel. Helmut and Reeves were waiting for her on the porch, sitting in the comfortable chairs and sipping coffee.

  Warily her eyes sifted over Reeves as Helmut embraced her with conditioned familiarity. She mumbled a good morning and skittishly stepped away from him.

  “You’re angry with me.” Helmut’s unexpected sentence wasn’t a question.

  “What?” she asked in bewilderment.

  “Our engagement. The secret is out, my darling. It’s in newspapers all over the Continent, maybe America, too. I’m sorry. Apparently one of my guests couldn’t keep a secret.” He took her hand conciliatorily.

  She risked looking at Reeves, but he was engrossed in cleaning one of his lenses with more thoroughness than it warranted. “I—”

  “I hope you aren’t too angry,” Helmut interrupted her. “For myself, I’m delighted that the world knows you belong to me.”

  His chauvinistic declaration of possession rankled, but she didn’t want to cause a scene with Reeves sitting right there, so she said, “Well, anyway, the damage is done.”

  Helmut turned her hand over and kissed the palm. When he straightened he asked, “Would you like some breakfast, my dear? You have plenty of time. The hotel’s kitchen is packing us a picnic lunch.”

  “Just some chocolate and a croissant, please,” she said as she stowed her backpack in the chair next to Reeves and settled herself in another.

  While she nibbled at her breakfast, the two men ignored her and debated the pros and cons of OPEC’s latest oil price increase. She took the unguarded opportunity to look at Reeves. He was wearing a pair of lederhosen. Over the gray suede shorts, he had on a white cable-knit sweater. He even wore dark green knee socks that matched the leather trim on the shorts and brown suede hiking boots with red laces. A bright yellow wind breaker lay across his camera case. He was ruggedly handsome. The morning breeze off the lake stirred the dark hair with its russet highlights shining in the sunlight. He squinted against the shimmering water of the lake and his eyes were screened by thick, curled lashes.

  Absently he tugged on his earlobe as he listened carefully to what Helmut was saying. It came to her quite unexpectedly then that she loved him.

  It wasn’t possible, of course. Men as vital and attractive as Reeves existed only in the movies. They didn’t stumble into the lives of shopkeepers. But he had. Only he hadn’t stumbled. He had been thrust into her life with the impetus of a thunderstorm. She realized now as she continued watching him that she had loved him from the first moment she had seen him. Otherwise she couldn’t have done what she had that night.

  Sleeping with him was no casual thing for her. She had done it out of an emotion she now recognized as love. Had Helmut not called this morning, she might very well be in Reeves’s bed this minute.

  But for Reeves it was different. He was motivated by no such emotion. He found her attractive, yes. And he wanted to make love to her, yes. But when he left Lucerne for his next project, she would soon be replaced by another woman in another town, another country, another continent.

  Jordan wasn’t disillusioned. Balloons, beautiful as they were, burst easily. Sand castles were swept away with the tide. Reeves would leave her and then where would she be? Without Helmut, for she must tell him soon that she wouldn’t marry him. Without a job. Bill, as much as he liked her, would look after his own security in Mr. Bauerman’s favor.

  Without Reeves.

  Hot, prickly tears stung her eyes and she turned her head toward the lake, where the bright sunlight reflecting on the water would provide an excuse for her streaming eyes should anyone notice them. She couldn’t let Reeves know. Steeling herself against him would be difficult if not impossible, but she must do it. He couldn’t ever guess how she felt. In reminiscence, he could tell his buddies that she had been attractive, that she had been “easy,” but he would never be able to tell them that she had been a fool.

  She jumped guiltily when Helmut spoke her name. “Are you finished?” he asked, indicating the now cold roll and chocolate.

  “Y … yes. I guess I wasn’t very hungry.”

  “Then let’s be off.” Helmut picked up the basket that one of the hotel’s staff had brought out to him and led them down the steep steps toward the waiting limousine.

  “Jordan, you haven’t commented on Reeves’s costume. He looks like one of us natives, doesn’t he?” Helmut asked.

  She looked at Reeves as if noticing him for the first time. “Yes, he does,” she said brightly.

  Reeves grinned. “I went shopping yesterday and came away with these.” He indicated the lederhosen. “I only hope my knees don’t get cold.” His smile was so boyish that Jordan’s heart swelled and she forgot the resolution she had so recently made.

  She looked down at the long, lean legs with their rock-hard muscles. His knees were sprinkled with dark, springy hair. She remembered kissing them on that rain-drenched night they had spent together. She had been kneeling beside him, leaning over. Her hair had swept across his thighs. He had caught the silky skein in his hand and told her how good it felt against his skin. Her cheek had rested on his thigh.

  Unbearable heat bathed her body as she raised her eyes to Reeves’s face. He must have been remembering the same incident, for his eyes fairly smoldered with green fire. The hostility of that morning dissolved and they smiled at each other with recollection of a shared secret.

  Then, as Reeves watched, the radiant glow in Jordan’s eyes dimmed. Her smile diminished to a sad grimace, then vanished altogether. She turned away quickly.

  His camera case, her backpack, and the picnic basket were placed in the trunk of the car and they got into the back seat. Henri let them out at a convenient spot where there was a gradual grassy incline into the foothills. “It’s not too arduous,” Helmut said, smiling genially.

  Indeed it wasn’t, even loaded down as they were with their cargo. Families with small children trooped up the hill, enjoying the Sunday outing. Sweethearts, more interested in each other than in vigorous exe
rcise, strolled with arms around each other’s waists up the hill. A group of adolescent boys was playing with a soccer ball. One would kick it up the incline several yards. When it rolled back down, another would kick it, and so on. It looked like an exhausting effort and Helmut said as much.

  They climbed, resting periodically, for about two hours until they reached a plateau at the timberline and decided that it was an ideal place to spread their lunch. Helmut had brought a blanket from the trunk of his car and now spread it out on the grass that was already losing some of its verdure due to the lateness of the season.

  Jordan eased off her backpack and set it on the ground. Reeves deposited his camera case nearby after first taking out the Nikon. He plopped down on the blanket, but not in a relaxing posture. Instead he began snapping pictures of Jordan and Helmut with the mountain scenery in the background.

  They rested for a while, chatting and teasing each other about their lack of physical prowess and stamina, before Jordan began unloading the picnic basket. She was swatting away two pairs of impatient hands that pilfered the dishes as soon as she uncovered them when two young men raced up toward them. They were both dressed in jogging shorts and tank tops. They were wearing hiking boots, which seemed incongruous to their runner’s garb.

  One of them heaved a deep breath and asked Helmut in German, “Are you Mr. Eckherdt?”

  Helmut sat up from his half-reclining position and answered affirmatively. The young man reached into the waistband of his shorts and extracted an envelope that was now somewhat soggy with healthy perspiration.

  At Helmut’s quizzical expression the young man rushed to explain. “Your chauffeur gave me this to bring to you. I’m a marathon runner in training. When he saw I was going to run up here, he asked me to find you and give you this message.” He looked toward his companion, who nodded in agreement.

  “Thank you,” Helmut said, and dug in the pocket of his pants. As he shook hands with the young men, he pressed a bank note into each of their palms.