Champagne Girl

by Diana Palmer

  He reached up and drew her down across his lap, turning her, cradling her. “Put this…here.” He took her free hand, the one that wasn’t curled around his neck, and slid it into the opening of his shirt, watching her expression as she felt his warm hair-roughened skin.

  “Yes, I like that,” he whispered, bending to her mouth. “I like it a lot. Stroke me, Kit.”

  “I hate you,” she managed with a shaky breath.

  “Sure you do. Open your mouth and kiss me.”

  She did, her neck arching at the wild, warm hunger of his open lips as they moved hungrily against hers. Her fingers caught in the thick hair over his chest and tugged at it, spearing into its thickness, feeling the hardness of muscle beneath it, the hard pulse of his heartbeat.

  “Oh, God,” he breathed unsteadily. He moved one hand to rip open the remaining shirt buttons and took her fingers on a journey of discovery right down to the taut, rippling muscles of his stomach.

  “Matt.” His name sounded like a moan, and her eyes opened, looking up helplessly into his.

  “I could make a meal of you, right here,” he whispered roughly. His hand pressed hers against his chest. “You make the blood rush to my head when you touch me.”

  She pressed closer, wondering where along the way she’d lost her resolutions. All that seemed to matter now was getting as close to him as she could. His arms wrapped around her, riveting her torso to his, and his face pressed into the curve of her throat and shoulder. He curled her into his lap, rocking her gently against him, while she drowned in his warm strength and the spicy scent of his body.

  Where it might have gone from there was anyone’s guess, but there was a sudden commotion in the yard as two of the ranch pickups arrived together, apparently in a race. That and their loud voices broke the spell, giving Catherine a chance to collect herself and push out of Matt’s enveloping arms.

  She got a little distance away and made an effort to reorganize her wild hair and mind, her breath coming all too quickly. She had to stop letting him do that. It was her own fault. The problem was that he was playing and she wasn’t.

  With her pride carefully in hand, she shot a glance at him as she pushed back the loosened strands of hair. “What’s the matter, aren’t you getting what you need from the lady in Laredo, Matt?” she asked as carefully as she could, when inside her blood was rippling like white water. “Or am I just a novelty?”

  That seemed to take him by surprise. He cocked his head at her, his dark Spanish eyes piercing and level. “Why don’t you work on that for a few days, honey, and tell me what you come up with?” He actually grinned at her as he buttoned his shirt and smoothed his own hair. “You’d better do something about your hair,” he added. “And a little lipstick might help that pretty, swollen mouth. God, it’s sweet to kiss!”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream. She stared at him with her mind whirling, her body throbbing.

  He stood up. “Don’t look so worried, Kit, it’s all pretty simple. But I keep forgetting how young you are.”

  “I’m old enough to know that you’re one of those men Mama’s spent the past six years telling me about,” she returned.

  He lifted a cigarette to his curving lips and lit it. “Am I?”

  “I won’t have an affair with you,” she told him bluntly, her green eyes throwing off sparks.

  His eyebrows jackknifed. “My God, how would we manage that around here?” he asked. “This place is worse than Grand Central Station! Hal’s forever playing tricks, sticking his nose in. Annie’s as bad. And your mother, God love her, is as curious as she is the image of you! We’d have to conduct it under the house and even then, Hal would drill holes in the floor to get a better view!”

  She tried not to laugh, but her eyes gave her away.

  “An affair,” he scoffed. His eyes went up and down her. He pursed his lips in mock thoughtfulness. “Although, maybe if we got in the truck and painted the windows black and locked it from the inside—”

  “Matt!” she said sharply, her eyes glowering.

  “Oh, well, I’ll work on it, Kit, You just give me some time.” He chuckled, ignoring the fury in her eyes. “Go fix your face. I’ve got a cattleman coming to look over some culls.”

  With a sigh, she turned and went toward the stairs. Trying to talk to Matt was like trying to talk to a wall, and about as satisfying. She didn’t know any more about his intentions now than she had last night. The only thing she knew for sure was how vulnerable she was. She’d have to keep out of his way from now on or grow a shell. Matt, in pursuit, was formidable.

  He seemed to sense her unease, her wariness, because when she came back downstairs, he slipped back into the old, familiar camaraderie and kept it up all the way to the office. She was visibly relaxed by the time they started work.

  “Having any trouble with that?” he asked, gesturing toward the computer.

  She remembered the crashed program disk and hoped Angel wouldn’t give her away. “No,” she said airily. “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you using a backup program disk?” he asked casually, lifting the backup diskette in a lean, tanned hand.

  She swallowed. “Why not?”

  He chuckled and handed it back. “Everybody crashes a disk now and again. Don’t sweat it. How’s the listing coming? Got a printout yet?”

  How would he react, she wondered, if she showed him her listing of his award-winning cattle? Debutante heifers…She cleared her throat. “Actually,” she began, “I’d really rather not worry you with it just yet. I have some more work to do before it’s ready.”

  “Okay,” he said easily. “Just don’t take too long, honey. It needs to be at the printer’s next Monday morning.”

  “Oh, I’ll have it by then, don’t worry.”

  “Angel has last year’s booklet. That might help.”

  “I’ve already asked her for it,” she replied, one jump ahead of him. Her eyes involuntarily dropped to his hard mouth, and she couldn’t help the way she stared at it with remembered pleasure.

  “Not now,” he murmured softly, wickedly. “I have to keep my mind on my work.”

  He sauntered off before she could manage a sharp comeback.

  While he was with his visiting cattleman, she drew out the file of cattle he was selling off and quietly changed it so that it read as it should. She was going to give up the idea of sabotaging his sale. After all, if she wanted to get to New York, her best bet, she decided, was to prove her worth as a public relations expert and then make Matt keep his promise. Fouling up things would only prolong the agony. And if he was going to start pursuing her, she’d have to work fast. She knew she’d never be able to hold out against him.

  Angel poked her head around the door just before noon. “Want to come out with Gail and Dorothy and me for a sandwich?” she asked with a smile.

  “I’d love to, but I promised to have lunch with my mother,” Catherine said apologetically. “Another time?”

  “Fine! If you want to run along now, I’ll lock up. Matt went out with Mr. Landers for a business lunch, so he won’t be back until afternoon.”

  “Okay, I’ll just close down here.” Catherine took out the disk and turned off the machine.

  It wasn’t until she was on her way to town with Betty that she remembered she hadn’t stored the changed information on the disk. She’d cut off the machine with all the changes still in limbo.

  “Oh, no,” she groaned. “Now I’ll have to do it all over again!”

  “Do what, darling?” Betty asked.

  “Never mind.” Catherine sighed, shaking her head. “Just something else I’ve fouled up. Oh, well, it will all come right in the end, I guess.”

  The rest of the way into town Betty kept the conversation going all alone. And after they sat down to eat she noticed that Catherine sat and played with her food and did little more than nibble.

  Catherine’s mind was awash with new images of Matt, with feelings she didn’t know
how to handle, with longings that made her young body burn. She hadn’t felt these sensations before. They were alien and sweet and heady. And she was sure that Matt was only playing, that he wasn’t serious. How could he be, when everyone knew he was a confirmed bachelor? Besides, there was the real estate agent from Laredo. Layne. Catherine grimaced at the picture Matt had conjured by talking about the woman. “Experienced,” he’d said. Sure. And probably even more experienced by now, after sleeping with Matt. Her eyes closed. She couldn’t bear to think of him with another woman. It had hurt for years when he went on dates, but having experienced his ardor for herself, it was so much worse. From now on, she’d be able to picture exactly what he was doing, and it would pierce her heart every time. How would she bear it? She had to get away. And what if the mysterious Layne got through his defenses and he married her? Tears stung her eyes, shocking her.

  “I said, how is it going at the office, Catherine?” Betty prodded. Then she saw the distress on her daughter’s face and she frowned. “Darling, what’s wrong?”

  “I crashed a system disk,” she blurted out.

  “Oh. Well, I don’t suppose Matt will yell too much,” she comforted her daughter, patting her hand gently. “Don’t worry about it.”

  It wasn’t that, but even as she stared hopefully at her mother, she knew she couldn’t share her problem. Betty was a loving mother, but she couldn’t keep secrets. She’d blurt it out to someone, probably Annie, who’d tell everyone else. That would make it much worse. The only person Catherine had ever been able to tell secrets to was Matt, who was a clam. But she couldn’t very well tell Matt she was in love with him.

  Catherine finished her coffee and gave a wistful sigh. Well, she’d get through somehow.

  * * *

  The other girls were already hard at work when Catherine arrived back at the office. Angel gestured toward Matt’s closed office door and looked toward the ceiling, a warning if ever there was one. Catherine nodded conspiratorially and eased his door open, then sneaked to her own desk just as a tight, very controlled burst of blue language colored the air around Matt.

  He glanced at Catherine, the pencil between his fingers bouncing up and down against the desk as he listened and nodded.

  “All right. Meet me at the airport in an hour. I’ll talk to him. Sure. Bye, honey.”

  He hung up, and Catherine made a production of booting up her computer and inserting the program disk.

  “I have to fly to Dallas,” he said abruptly, rising. “There’s been a hitch in the deal for that ranch property I’m trying to buy. Layne said the landowner is trying to jack up the price.”

  Her pulse leaped as he came to stand beside her. “I thought your real estate agent was from Laredo,” she said, trying to sound calm though her pulse was all over the place.

  “She was born there, but she lives in Dallas,” he said, clearing up the mystery. He stared down at her. “Hal’s due back today.”

  “Is he? How nice.”

  “I don’t want you going out with him.”

  That brought her head up. She stared at him uncomprehendingly. “What?”

  “You heard me.” He wasn’t teasing now. His gaze was dark and unblinking, his face hard. He was the stranger again, not the familiar jovial man she thought she knew.

  “But—”

  He reached down, caught her by the upper arms and drew her slowly but relentlessly to her feet so that she was all too close to his powerful, hard-muscled body. His breath was warm and spicy just above her mouth, his eyes watchful, strange.

  “Hal competes with me. He always has. If he thinks I want something, he’ll do his damndest to beat me out of it.”

  “But, I don’t even feel that way about Hal,” she began hesitantly. He was making her feel the wildest hungers. Her hands pressed against his shirt and felt the hard beat of his heart. “And anyway, what…what business is it of yours if I…?” Suddenly her voice faltered.

  “You’re trembling, Kit,” he whispered, his mouth against her lips. His fingers trailed along her throat, inciting, wildly sensuous as he bent his head. “And I can make it even worse.”

  He did. His mouth covered hers, exploring every soft inch of it with his tongue, biting tenderly at the curve of her upper lip, and all the while his hands smoothed her body to his, so that she could feel the warm muscle, the strength of him. Her hands clutched at his shirt as if she were drowning.

  His hands slid down to her hips as he brought her close enough to feel how aroused he was. She protested, but he held her there and lifted his head to stare into her turbulent eyes.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered. “Think of it as nonverbal communication.”

  Her breath was coming in soft gasps; it disturbed her to know how hungry he was for her. It was new, just as everything with him seemed to be.

  “Such big eyes,” he murmured, smiling.

  “I’ve never…been like this with a man before,” she confessed.

  His hands came up to smooth back loose wisps of her hair, but she didn’t try to move away. She felt a sudden tremor in his powerful, jeans-clad legs, and her eyes asked a question.

  “I’d like to lie with you, Kit,” he whispered, then searched her eyes in the hot silence that followed. His eyes slid sideways to the sofa and back again, and his jaw clenched as his breath came roughly. “I’d like to strip you down to the waist and put my mouth…here.” One lean hand moved between them. His knuckles drew lightly up and down over the very tip of her breast. He felt it harden, and heard the shocked surge of her breath as it caught.

  “Matt,” she moaned. Her eyes held his; she was beyond thought, beyond reason. Her body tingled, and she wanted him to see her, to pull off her blouse and look at her as no other man ever had.

  “Yes, you’d let me, wouldn’t you?” he breathed, looking down at her yielding body, where his fingers now gently searched one perfect, high breast. His thumb rubbed slowly over the throbbing tip and she bit her lip to keep from crying out, her body stiffening, shuddering with unexpected pleasure.

  His eyes searched her face, seeing and appreciating the helpless reaction there. “Oh, Kit,” he breathed. “What a hell of a time to go all-woman on me. Here I am with a plane to catch and all I want to do is back you up against the wall and crush your body with mine and make your mouth swell with my kisses.”

  Her lips parted spontaneously at the imagery. “The…wall?” she whispered shakily.

  She saw the flash of his eyes, felt herself shudder. He moved, backing her past the sofa, holding her eyes, until they reached the bare wall beside the door.

  “Yes. The wall.” His body arched down, and he held her eyes as his hips and thighs flattened hers in an intimacy that widened her eyes, opened her mouth, that made her body burn and throb and shudder with frank desire.

  The pleasure was almost pain. She made a wild little sound under her breath and felt it go into his open mouth as he bent to her trembling lips and took them. It was an incredible kind of kiss, without pressure, without tangible hunger. It was so tender that she tasted the moist brush of his lips and could feel their very texture, could feel them tremble with the most terrible longing. His eyes were open, and so were hers, and they watched each other in a burning silence as his hips moved suggestively, tenderly, against hers. She felt the wildest kind of ache, and in the throes of it, her hips began to rotate sharply against his, and she moaned, pleading with her eyes as her nails bit into him. She felt him go rigid, heard the rough groan, and she stopped the hungry motion abruptly, apparently just in time.

  “What sweet agony that was, Kit,” he whispered shakily near her mouth. “And if you move that way again, I’ll take you standing up.”

  She stood quite still, reading the truth in his dark, hot eyes, in the sudden bruising grip of his fingers as they found her hips. And she knew that the slightest movement on her part would cost him his self-control.

  He took slow, harsh breaths until he got back the control he’d lost, until
he finally collapsed against her, his face at her throat, his body shuddering with the effort.

  “Matt,” she whispered at his ear. Her arms were around his neck, though she had no idea how they’d got there. She could hear the thunder of his pulse, the rasp of his painful breathing. She didn’t move a muscle because Betty had once told her how it was for a man. And this was her fault because she’d forgotten. “Matt, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, baby, you burn me up,” he whispered roughly. “You make me so damned hungry. Kit, that was a near thing.”

  She blushed and clung closer, nuzzling against his warm throat. “Are you all right?”

  “I’d be a hell of a lot better if we didn’t have so many clothes on,” he said, nibbling at her ear. “I’d like to feel your skin touching mine, all the way up and down, little virgin.”

  Her nails bit into him, and she pressed her face closer in an agony of longing.

  “Don’t,” he whispered. His hands bit into her back, pulling her away from the wall even as he put some little distance between her legs and his.

  “Then stop making me feel this way,” she whispered back. “You do it with words.”

  “Verbal lovemaking,” he breathed into her ear. “I could make you give yourself to me without ever touching you. I could describe it to you…every single detail.…”

  “No,” she moaned. She pulled back, and he bent, catching her mouth with his.

  He lifted her in a bruising embrace, and she gave him back the kiss without the slightest protest, her arms clinging, her mouth opening sweetly to the probing demand of his. Somewhere in the distance a phone was ringing, voices murmured, the wind blew. And all she knew was the scent and feel of Matt.

  A long minute later, he let her slide back to her feet and lifted his dark head. The look in his eyes surprised her a little because it was so blatantly possessive.

  “You’re going to be my woman,” he said under his breath, staring into her dazed eyes. “Remember that when Hal comes home.”

  He let her go abruptly and watched her grab the back of a chair for support.

  He laughed mockingly, dragging a cigarette from his pocket with fingers that were slightly unsteady. “Can’t you stand, Kit? I feel trembly myself. My Lord, you’re sweet to make love to!”