by Diana Palmer
It sounded like absolute heaven. She could almost taste it. “Oh, please!”
He left the room, and Dana was alone with the fragile fleshy shell of her mother. She sat down beside the bed, her eyes scanning the pronounced cheekbones, the sharp eyebrows, the thick, long eyelashes that had never needed mascara. There was nothing of the brown sparkle of those eyes that had loved life, nothing of the active woman whose endurance and vivacity were a watchword.
Dana laid her fingers on the cold, unmoving hand spread out on the white sheet. “I love you, Mama,” she whispered.
But the lilting voice that had always answered her as a child answered her no more.
An hour later they left the hospital. Adrian had given the hotel number to the nurses’ station and the business office, assuming the responsibility with customary nonchalance.
He propelled her toward the hotel restaurant firmly.
“Please, I can’t eat anything,” she protested as he seated her at a table in the cozy, dimly lit room. Red candles glowed softly against the stark white of the tablecloth.
“You’ve got to,” he said matter-of-factly, seating himself across from her. “I talked to the doctor.”
Her heart froze. “And…?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I think you already know, honey. I think you knew when Jack called you. It’s just a matter of time. Minutes. Hours. A few days. There’s nothing more they can do. You know that, don’t you?”
Tears welled in her eyes. She caught her lower lip in her teeth and stared at the tablecloth. She nodded silently.
The waitress came and Adrian ordered coffee and steaks and a salad for them. The waitress left, and he leaned back in his chair to light a cigarette, studying Dana through the smoke.
“I’m having her moved to a private room,” he said. “And I’ve engaged ’round the clock nurses. She won’t be alone for a minute.”
“But…!” she began, torn between wanting the best for Katy, and being unable to pay for it.
“We’ll talk later. Right now, I’m going to feed you. Then you’re going to lie down and rest for an hour or so. We’ll go back to the hospital tonight, when you’re rested.”
“Are you going to tuck me in and give me a bottle, too?” she asked, irritation rising to camouflage the grief.
A tiny smile tugged at his hard, sensuous mouth. “Would you like me to?” he asked pointedly.
She felt her cheeks catch fire. The waitress came back just in time to save her from a reply.
That day set the pattern for the two that came after it. Adrian was with her almost every minute, only leaving her alone at bedtime. He propelled her from one place to another, propped her up, made her eat, stayed by the bedside with her. He was her mind for those horrible, cold days of impotent waiting, her consciousness, her guiding hand. And when the end came, quietly, at the end of a long, gray afternoon, he took her gently into his big arms and held her while she cried.
She sat on the edge of the bed that night, her eyes wide open, her heart aching as she remembered the still little form under the sheets, the doctor’s comforting voice.
Adrian made arrangements for Katy to be taken back to Atlanta. In the morning, the hearse would come to take Katy Meredith home. In the morning, Dana would fly home with Adrian. In the morning…
But it was still night, and the first night she’d had to live with the loneliness of having no family left. And tears streamed down her pale cheeks as she sat there in her lace-trimmed brief nylon slip, her taffy-colored hair cascading around her shoulders in brilliant disarray.
She heard the door open and saw Adrian through a mist. He was still dressed, in well-fitted brown slacks and a white shirt open at the throat. His thick dark hair was rumpled, his face heavily lined, his eyes shadowed and quiet. He needed to shave; there was a faint hint of beard on his broad, leonine face. But all in all he was the most attractive man she’d ever known. He was so good to look at…
It took her a full minute to realize that she wasn’t dressed. She started to get up and go after the robe at the foot of the bed, suddenly nervous, but he blocked her way.
“It’s a little late for false modesty between us, Meredith,” he said quietly. “I’ve seen you in a hell of a lot less.”
“I…I know, but…” she murmured, feeling those dark, bold eyes run up and down her slenderness.
His big hands caught her shoulders gently. “I want you to forget convention for tonight. I want you to trust me in a way you’ve never been asked to trust a man before.”
“What do you mean?” she asked weakly, looking no higher than the buttons on his shirt, pearly white buttons that were partially undone so that the hair-covered muscles were tantalizingly displayed. He smelled of tobacco and tangy cologne, and he was warm. Big and warm and solid.
“I want you to sleep with me.”
Shocked, her red-rimmed eyes met his, asking questions her mouth couldn’t shape.
He studied her face, her paleness, with a tenderness she never expected to see. “No strings, little taffy kitten,” he said gently. “I’m offering you a shoulder to pillow your head, and an arm to hold you when the hurting breaks through that mask you wear. You’re not going to close your eyes as long as you’re alone in here, now, are you?”
“No,” she admitted with a reluctant sigh. “Adrian, I…I really don’t want to be alone,” she added in a whisper. “But I…”
“I may be a devil, Persephone,” he murmured deeply, “but I’m not quite a monster. Seduction in these circumstances would be beneath most men.”
She met his eyes and read them. When he reached out and took her hand, she followed him back into his own room. He closed the connecting door and switched out the top light, leaving only the bedside lamp to light the way.
Turning back the covers, he put her under them and stretched himself out on top of them, drawing her close so that she could pillow her head on his broad, powerful shoulder.
“All right?” he asked gently.
“Yes, thank you,” she murmured, feeling the tension slowly drain out of her as her drawn muscles relaxed. The strain of the past days caught up with her all at once, and she felt suddenly drowsy.
“Adrian, how old were you when your mother died?” she asked, her voice muffled against his warm shirt front.
“Ten,” he said.
“Is that why your father took you on hunting trips with him…to make up for it?” she asked gently.
“Probably.”
She nuzzled her cheek against the warm hardness of his chest. “Adrian, you’re such a blabbermouth,” she added with just a bit of her old cheek.
Soft, deep laughter shook the hard pillow under her ear. “Am I?” he taunted, and she felt his lips brushing her forehead.
Her fingers toyed with the button on his shirt as the drowsiness washed over her like warm bathwater. “I’ve got nobody now,” she whispered, feeling the ache come back.
His big arms tightened, protectively, possessively. “Haven’t you, Persephone?”
“Adrian.”
“Hmm?” he murmured against her hair.
“What finally happened in the legend? Did Pluto let her go?” she asked on a yawn.
“I don’t remember, honey. He was stubborn as all hell. I don’t imagine he’d have set her free without putting up a fight—not if he cared as much as the legends say he did.”
“That’s funny.”
“What is?”
“The devil caring about anyone,” she explained. “Maybe he just had a good public relations department back then. Some old salt of a reporter who didn’t get to heaven and had to earn a living somehow…”
He chuckled. “Go to sleep, little one.”
“I don’t usually sleep with men, you know,” she murmured sleepily.
“This is a first for me, too, Meredith,” he said with a trace of amusement in his deep, clipped voice. “I don’t usually sleep with women.”
“You ought to get more rest,” she
told him lazily. “A man of your advancing years needs his sleep.”
“Why, you damned little impudent…!”
She laughed softly. “Touchy.”
“My God, you’d try the patience of a saint, do you know that?”
“But, then, we’ve already agreed that you’re not one,” she reminded him.
“Damn you.” He said it on a ripple of laughter, his big hand catching her hair to jerk her face back on the shoulder that was pillowing it. His dancing dark eyes met hers, something sensuous and just faintly dangerous burning in them. “Baby girl, you’re touching a match to straw, do you know that? It’s not going to take much more.” His other hand came up to brush her flushed cheek, his fingers lightly tracing her soft mouth. “Do you understand me, or do you want me to spell it out?”
She blushed. “I think it might be a very good idea if I go to sleep.”
“So do I,” he murmured softly. He pressed her cheek back against his hard chest and put both arms around her. “Goodnight, little one.”
“Goodnight, Mr. Devil,” she whispered impishly.
His fingers smoothed her flyaway hair. “Dana.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t call me sir.”
“No, sir.”
“Dammit…!”
“What?” she asked, feeling reality fade in and out as blessed sleep began to claim her.
“Are you going to call Jack in the morning?”
She tried to focus her mind. “I’d like to, if you don’t mind. He was…he was very good to Mama, and to me.”
“I don’t mind, honey.”
She burrowed closer. “Adrian, she’s better off, isn’t she?” she whispered, feeling the pain come back. “Isn’t she?”
“You know that already.” He drew her up closer, cradling her, rocking her gently in his warm embrace. “Now go to sleep. Just go to sleep. I’ve got you, and nothing can hurt you. Sleep, my…”
His voice faded into nothingness in her mind.
She called Jack and had him meet them for breakfast at the hotel before they left. She was calmer now, the mask firmly in place over her raw emotions, coping.
“I’ll never be able to thank you enough,” she told him while Adrian went to pay the check. “Never.”
Jack looked vaguely embarrassed. He fingered his coffee cup. “You know when you come back, your job’ll be waiting, don’t you?” he asked. He darted a glance toward Adrian’s broad back at the counter. “Meanwhile, maybe he’ll keep your mind busy. You needed a break before. You need it even worse now. This business can be hell without periodic absences.”
She managed a smile for him. “The phone rings and it’s for him, now. I’m enjoying that. Nobody calls me to tell me about bank robberies. Or threatens to blow up my car. Except him,” she added with a hint of a grin.
“He isn’t what I expected,” Jack said.
“What did you expect?” she asked.
“We’ll go into it another time. Say, remember that flying saucer nut I was having fits with when you were here?”
She nodded. “Don’t tell me he got kidnapped by little green men?”
“He says he did. Had the wire services all over us last week,” he laughed. “You’d have loved it.”
“Loved what?” Adrian asked, rejoining them.
“A story I was telling her,” Jack grinned. “The newsroom sure is quiet these days. I kind of like it. Phyl doesn’t threaten to stock my pool with guppies and give my unlisted number to high school journalism students.”
“It was only once,” Dana reminded him.
“He had friends,” Jack recalled. “All would-be poets. ‘I hear the gut-pounding rhythm of the slippery slimy surf slobbering…’ Remember, Miss Meredith?”
“This shy, retiring, dignified little girl?” Adrian asked curiously. “My God, I’d never have believed it. She’s sedate and efficient, but I didn’t realize she was that dangerous.”
“Sedate?” Jack had the expression of a man who’d been hit between the eyes with a scoop of ice cream. “Dana?”
Adrian studied her in a long silence. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, and they didn’t leave her as Jack launched into more reminiscing. It kept her from thinking, and that was what she needed most of all.
The graveside service was held at the small cemetery of a Methodist church out in the metropolitan area of northwest Atlanta. A rolling, green slope of land with trees and tiny bronze markers instead of tombstones. A prayer was said. The minister took her hand and murmured words of comfort. The few Miami staffers who’d flown up for the funeral patted her on the back. Jack hugged her. And it was over. Adrian hustled her into the back seat of the Lincoln and held onto her hand as if it were made of gold while Frank turned the big car and headed it for the manor.
Dana closed her eyes and felt the last of the tears easing away the grief. It was over. It was over.
Seven
The nights were long at first, and there were occasional tears when she let herself remember. But Adrian wasn’t shouting at her so much anymore. Lillian was kindness itself, and the grief was slowly fading.
“What the hell is this?” Adrian asked late one afternoon, his leonine face scowling blackly at something he saw on his appointment calendar. He traced it with a long finger and glanced at Dana. “You’ve got me down for dinner with Mendolsen Thursday night. You know I hate Mendolsen’s guts, how the hell do you expect me to eat?”
“But, you said…” she protested.
“I said, I wanted to talk to him, not that I wanted to wine him, dine him, and sleep with him!” he returned. “Get me out of it.”
“But, he’s out of town until Thursday afternoon,” she exclaimed, her slender hands going out in a gesture of impotence.
“Then call him Thursday afternoon.”
“But…”
“If you ‘but’ me one more time…” he threatened darkly.
She sighed. “All right, I’ll do it. But, if I were you,” she added with a hint of her old self, “I’d look under my pillow before I laid down on it.”
Both dark brows went up. “What am I supposed to find?”
“I won’t say,” she replied, turning away. “But if you hear a hissing, rattling sound…”
“I thought you were afraid of snakes.”
“Only male snakes,” she qualified, “with blue eyes. Actually, I’m very fond of female snakes. Especially,” she added with a grin, “when they’re dead.”
He threw back his head and roared. “My God, how did that newspaper survive you?”
“I’m very sedate, remember?” she reminded him.
“Sedate, hell, you’re going to give me a nervous breakdown,” he replied with a chuckle.
“Give?” She shook her head. “I charge for those.” She flipped her steno pad shut. “Am I through for the night?”
“As far as I’m concerned, you are. I’m taking Fayre to a concert,” he added, flashing a glance her way.
She kept her expression unruffled. “Then I think I’ll have an early night. I’ve been on the phone all day.”
“Like old times, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” She sighed.
“Miss it?”
She nodded with a smile. “I’ve been doing it for a lot of years.”
He frowned thoughtfully, one hand jammed into his pocket. His eyes swept over her slender body, the youth that made her cheeks soft and flushed, gave the soft brightness to her eyes. “Honey,” he said softly, “you haven’t lived a lot of years.”
The tone of his deep voice made ripples down her spine. “I…I have to…”
“…help Lillian,” he finished for her in a harsh growl. “God, I know, don’t you always. Go ahead!”
She left him standing there, wondering silently at the harsh whip of his voice.
She went to her room after dinner and spent several restless hours there, until the walls started to close in. She remembered some typing she’d left until morning, and decided to finish it.
At least it would keep her mind from wandering to Adrian and the dragon…
Her long hair loosened, dressed in the royal blue jersey dress she kept for casual wear, she closed the door of the den behind her and settled down at the typewriter.
The big chair that swallowed Adrian’s husky form left plenty of room around hers. Her hands touched the leathery arms, feeling it grow warm under her fingers, and she leaned back, her mind full of Adrian. If only she was sophisticated, like Fayre, and bright and gay and desirable. If only she hadn’t ruined him. If only he wanted something from her besides vengeance—but, she sighed, that was the only reason he was keeping her here, and she knew it. Even though he’d been kindness itself since her mother’s death, she knew it was always there, nagging at his temper, causing those frequent periods when he sat and stared at her, his dark eyes burning in that broad face. She had to be on her guard every minute. He might even stoop to making her love him…. Her eyes closed as if in pain. What an unbearable punishment, to have him know how she really felt! It would give him the most malicious pleasure to chide her for it, to ridicule her, if he found out. Nothing, nothing, would be worse than that!
She gathered her hastily scribbled shorthand notes, and began to type.
She was so intensely involved in what she was doing that she didn’t hear the disturbance outside, or the front door open, or the whisper of the den door as it slid open to admit a familiar dark, husky form.
He stood there for a moment, his eyes sliding over the silky long hair, the unguarded vulnerability of that young face, the slender, flowing curves of her body, so graceful in the way she sat. He leaned back against the door, his eyes soft in that instant; watching her like some great, dark cat might watch its prey unobserved.
Something, a tingling awareness, made her glance up. She jumped, seeing him there unexpectedly. “You startled me!” she gasped.
“You startled me the first time I ever saw you,” he replied obscurely. He loosened his tie and pulled it off, tossing it to the couch. His fingers went to the buttons of his immaculate white shirt after he’d shed his jacket, unfastening it halfway down that massive dark chest with its covering of black hair.
