“I was thinking the same thing.” He pushed his sandwich aside. They seemed to swing between attraction and antagonism, and he was finding it tough to keep his balance. “We’re both being defensive, and there’s no reason for it.” She had been watching him closely, those hot and intense eyes of hers riveted to him, but now she looked away. “Our lives are an open book here.” Her eyebrows shot skyward, and he laughed.”Our professional lives, I mean.”
“That’s better. You had me worried there.”
He shot her his best lascivious grin. “No more worried than I. If you knew my sordid past, you’d never spend a night under the same roof with me.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she shot back, raising her hands. “These are registered weapons. I can handle myself.”
Her fingers were long and slender, the pale beige nails tapered into ovals. They were beautiful hands, the hands of an artist or musician, nothing he would think of as weapons. But she had such a look of independent strength about her that despite her slender body and fair-haired beauty, he had a feeling he was in much more danger than she. His days of fantasizing about her had left him feeling awkward around her, almost as if he’d been caught peeking through a keyhole into her mind. “Why don’t you start?” he said.
She folded those lovely hands on top of the table, looked him straight in the eyes, and began, “I always wanted to be a photographer. I worked very hard to win those contests you mentioned, and I’m still very happy I did. For whatever reasons, when my sister died, I decided a photographic career was not for me. I traveled around for a year and finally ended up living in my friend Elysse’s guest house and driving a limo for her husband.” Her voice was softer, almost as if she were speaking to herself. “That was a little over a year ago. The camera is my hobby now.”
“Was it money that made you stop?” He couldn’t control his need to know more. “Fear of failure?”
“Nothing so dramatic,” she said easily. “I was tired of changing time zones and packing suitcases. So Elysse and Jack ‘adopted’ me.”
Saying nothing while telling all was an art, and she had it down cold. She had set the parameters of their relationship, and he would respect them for now. He had to remind himself that a constant flow of words, of analysis, was his way and not hers.
“Your turn,” she said. That wonderful mouth of hers, which had intrigued him from the first morning at the church, tipped in a smile he felt deep in the pit of his stomach.
“I’ve written four books as Angelique Moreau and I’m working on the fifth. I’ve traced Italian families and Jewish families and Polish families.” He laughed. “I think I have the market cornered on descriptions of Ellis Island.”
“Didn’t you say you’ve written some Westerns?”
She had a good memory. Something to note. “Thirteen Westerns as Bret Allen, thirteen Star Trek novels as Alex Dennison and more slick porn under more weird names than I’m going to tell you. What I’ve never done is write under my own name.” Good going, Alessio. Spill your guts on the table. “Don’t ask me why,” he went on, despite himself, “because I sure as hell don’t know. Maybe it’s Vietnam or—“
Meg raised her hand to stop him. “Just the facts, sir, just the facts.”
He was glad she stopped him, because he’d probably be telling her next that the only barometer of success his family understood was money, that being a middle child meant never quite measuring up, that being verbal in a family who read the Daily News and TV Guide had kept him half in fantasy, half in torment throughout his adolescence. It was this ability to disappear into a fantasy world of his own design that got him through the very real horrors of Vietnam and cushioned his uneasy reentry into civilization. He created fictional families to make up for not creating one of his own.”Those are the facts,” he said, turning his hands palms up in surrender. “I make all the best-seller lists, and no one knows my name.”
She was leaning forward, elbows on the table, chin in her hands. Her eyes were so dark against the delicate peach of her skin that they seemed to draw him in as if to an inexhaustible source of warmth. A quick series of fire-and-flame metaphors popped up, and he hoped he’d remember them later when he got back to work. “Surely someone does?” she asked.
“My editor and my agent.” He dragged his hand through his hair and wished he had his notebook with him. Ideas were beginning to hammer at him as he watched the way the sunlight from the kitchen window glittered in her flaxen hair. “Sometimes I feel like a journeyman,” he said. “All things to all people.”
“What are you to yourself?” Her eyes flickered across his face, searching with the relentless focus of the all-knowing camera. Her curiosity was evidently a match for his.
“I can’t answer that, can you? How do you see yourself?”
“I don’t. As I said before, analysis doesn’t interest me.”
The hell it didn’t. She was electric with curiosity, her mind as vital and active as his, but for some reason she was trying to cloak her real personality behind a cool and calm exterior. But those burning dark eyes gave her away every time.
He stood up and stretched. His sweater rode up, exposing a few inches of lean muscle above his waistband. He wasn’t an exhibitionist, but he caught her glance returning again and again to his body, and he took a swift, sharp pleasure in the fact.
She stood up to help him clear the table, and when she moved past him, he caught the sweet scent of her hair and felt the softness of her breast as she brushed against his arm. The real Margarita was every bit as passionate as the Margarita in his fantasy who refused to be trapped by the limits of his imagination.
For the first time in months, he found himself eager to get to work.
Chapter Six
“I checked the library this morning,” Meg said as they abandoned the kitchen for the drawing room at the front of the big house. “There must be ten reams of material on writers alone.”
Joe stopped near the doorway so she could precede him into the room. “Is any of it organized yet?”
She sat down at the piano bench and ran her fingers quickly up and down the ivory keys simply for the cool satin feel beneath her hands. “Some,” she said, trying not to notice the beautiful muscles of his shoulders and arms, the powerful legs. “From what I could see, Anna finished poets and almost finished playwrights and essayists. She’d only done preliminary work on journalists and novelists.”
Joe sat down on the edge of the bench and idly picked out a simple version of the Bonanza theme song with two fingers.
“I remember that,” Meg said, laughing. “Ben Cartwright and Hoss and Little Joe and Adam—“
“You’re too young to remember Adam,” he broke in. “Nobody remembers Adam.”
“Pernell Roberts.” She grinned at him. “I saw him on the reruns.”
He groaned. “That hurt, Margarita.” He turned back to the piano and riffed through the theme songs from Cheers and Happy Days.
“You like television.”
“Guilty. Old movies are my favorite, but I’ll even watch Gilligan’s Island in a pinch.”
A kindred spirit. “I’ve never admitted this to a living soul,” Meg said, “but when I was in college, I used to sneak back to my room on Tuesday nights and watch Laverne and Shirley.”
His thick black brows arched, and that sexy grin she was growing fond of slid across his face. “You should be ashamed of yourself, watching that kind of trash. How could you?” He paused a moment. “Now, The Honeymooners! That was a show.”
He got up and did such a credible impression of Ralph Kramden sending Alice to the moon that in seconds Meg was helpless with laughter. She shot lines from the show at him, and he quickly shot back the next ones. Joe was successful and talented and sexier than he had a right to be, but he hadn’t forgotten how to have fun, how to be silly, and that fact endeared him to her against her better judgment.
“Enough!” She leaned back against the edge of the piano and held her stomach. “I
think I hurt myself.”
Joe, who was standing next to her, reached out and put the flat of his hand against her taut midriff. Her breath caught abruptly in her throat.
“You’ll live,” he said, the heat from his hand turning her skin to fire.
Want to bet on it? Gently, she placed her hand on top of his and removed it. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Please don’t.”
He moved closer to her, his clear green eyes framed by thick dark lashes that made her gnash her teeth in envy. “I know what the problem is.”
“What?” That one simple word was all she could manage, all she could think of.
“This.” He dipped his head slightly, and without touching her anywhere else at all, his lips brushed her cheek, her jaw, then, inevitably, her mouth. His eyes were wide open and she found herself hypnotized by the sudden flare of desire she saw there.
He moved away a fraction of an inch; she could feel his breath warm against her skin “That kiss has been between us since we met.”
She couldn’t deny it. She just let the touch of him linger against her lips and the sight of him delight her eyes. It was a weakness, she knew, but she worshiped beauty in all its forms, and male beauty moved her more than was wise.
“I thought if we—“ his sensuously mobile mouth hesitated around a smile “—got it over with, we’d be okay.” His eyes slid over her face, and she had the sensation of being caressed. “We’re not okay, are we?”
Meg shook her head, “No, we’re not.” She had to force herself to move away to the other side of the room so she could think. “We don’t need complications, Joe.” She met his eyes. “I don’t need complications.”
“It wouldn’t have to be complicated. I’m not asking for promises, Margarita.”
He didn’t understand.
“I don’t want promises either,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “And I definitely don’t want complications. I’m a careful woman, Joe, and I don’t want to start something I’m not sure about.”
They stood on opposite sides of the room, and despite her well-chosen words, her mouth still felt warm and soft from his kiss. But as she’d said, she was a careful woman, and careful women didn’t begin flings with men they barely knew even if they’d be living in the same house for a month or longer. It simply didn’t make good sense.
It simply couldn’t work.
“I’m not sorry I did that,” he said.
“I’m not sorry you did either.” Meg had never mastered the art of the polite social lie.
“I’d like to do it again.” He wasn’t smiling but there was a definite sparkle in his eyes.
“That’s not a good idea.” She sounded less certain than she had expected.
“I’m attracted to you, Margarita. I want to get to know you better.”
She laughed out loud. “You sound like every lonely guy on Friday night.” The quick vision of herself rising from a rumpled bed still warm from their bodies stopped her in her tracks. “You’ll know me well enough after we start working together.”
“But I won’t know how you feel in my arms.”
“Practicing your characters’ dialogue again, Angelique?”
His smile was quick and wicked. “There’s one way to find out.”
“I don’t think this is what Anna had in mind when she asked us to be here.”
He leaned against the windowsill a few feet away from her. “Are you sure? I’m starting to think there might have been a lot more to this idea than meets the eye.”
The idea that Anna had hoped they would become romantic was absurd, totally and completely crazy. Joe was verbal; Meg, visual. Meg was careful, while Joe defined impulsive. He vibrated with creative energy while Meg’s energies were at a low simmer. Anybody who knew them could see it would never work.
“Our concern has to be the Lakeland history,” she said, breaking the silence. “Our personal feelings come a distant second.”
“Are you admitting you have personal feelings about this?”
Her temper, unpredictable at best, heated up. “We both know I enjoyed kissing you.”
“Wrong, Margarita. You didn’t kiss me. I kissed you. That’s an important difference.” His gaze lingered for a brief moment on her mouth. “I don’t think it will always be that way.”
“You’ve been writing too many pirate romances,” she snapped.
“I don’t write pirate romances but if you want me to. . .”
She had no answer at all for that. He was sparring with her, enjoying every second of the sexually-charged repartee, while she wondered if she should kiss him quiet or bring him up on harassment charges. She had never felt more off-balance in her life.
Maybe it was the fact that she was reading his wildly sexy best-seller. Or maybe it was the fact that he was the most sensual man she’d ever met. Whatever it was, it was definitely knocking her off her game. Even when he wasn’t touching her and was actually a few feet away, she felt his presence like a caress.
The silence between them was grown long and uncomfortable. Joe stifled a yawn with the back of his left hand and looked at his watch.
“No wonder I’m wiped,” he said casually, as if they’d shared nothing more than a couple of sandwiches. “I’ve been up almost forty-eight hours.”
“It doesn’t take that long to drive up here from New Jersey.”
“I had a deadline to meet. I made it to JFK with seconds to spare.”
“Why didn’t you drive yourself?”
“My niece needed a car so I gave her mine.”
“You gave her your car.”
He shrugged. “It seemed like the thing to do.”
“You could’ve rented a car.”
“Why rent when there’s a limo on prem.” Again that wicked flash of a smile.
“I’m not your personal driver, Alessio,” she snapped.
“I was joking,” he said, barely stifling a yawn. “Patrick said I can drive one of Anna’s cars while I’m here.” He was unable to stifle the second yawn. “Sorry. I’m going to hit the sack for a while. I’m beat.”
The thought of sitting down to finish the Angelique Moreau novel she’d been devouring sounded good to Meg. “How about we meet back here around six and draw up a battle plan. The freezer’s stocked with enough food to feed three armies.”
Joe, looking completely wiped out, nodded. “You’re on.” An odd expression she couldn’t easily identify crossed his face. “We’ll be okay, Meg. There won’t be any problems.”
She listened to the sound of his retreating footsteps. He’d said they would work well together, and she believed him. He’d called her Meg, after all, not Margarita. She’d told him to back off and he did.
“You got what you wanted,” she said out loud.
So why did she feel so disappointed?
#
The palms of Eryk’s hands were roughened from his work, but none of that mattered to Isobel as he drew them slowly up the ivory length of her inner thighs and drew closer to her heat.
Her breath grew quicker as her body arched toward him, eager to know the fulfillment that lay just moments away.
“You’re ready,” he said, pausing for one maddening instant. “How warm and eager you are—“
It was no use!
Meg closed the copy of Against All Odds and tossed it down on the floor next to the sofa where she was curled up beneath the quilt Anna had made the year she broke her hip. Meg had thought she would be able to lose herself again in the delights of the nineteenth-century adventures of Isobel and her lover, Eryk, the piratical demon who plagued the Hawaiian Islands and ultimately joined with Isobel to found a twentieth-century dynasty.
Instead, she found herself unable to concentrate. Those escapist delights were totally overpowered by the memory of Joe’s simple kiss. It the two hours since he went upstairs, she’d replayed that moment over and over, shivering with pleasure at the memory of the feel of his lips on hers. She’d been kissed soundly by other men, bu
t never had one elicited such a fiery, sensual response. Their differences, and there were many, didn’t matter when she thought of that wild surge of pure lust that rocketed through her when he drew near.
Reading about the lusty Eryk and the willing Isobel had done nothing to cool the flames. She was edgy, irritable, and wishing she hadn’t been quite so hasty before. Why not say yes? Why not throw caution to the winds for once in her life and take a walk on the wild side? Other women her age had flings. She was single. She had nobody to answer to. What was stopping her from taking what Joe offered simply because it was there?
The idea of giving in was intoxicating but it went counter to her basic personality.
Joe said he wanted nothing of her. No commitment, no lifelong promises. He simply desired her. But some instinct, some gut-level survival instinct she’d sharpened over the last few years told her nothing was as it seemed.
She thanked God and Patrick McCallum for letting Huntington Kendall IV stay an extra two weeks at Lakeland House to finish his collection. Maybe with a third party to keep things from getting too intense, she’d be able to skate by without falling through the ice.
Besides, they were still new to each other. Mysterious strangers brought together by Anna’s whim. After a few days of working closely together, the magic was bound to disappear.
“And maybe pigs can fly,” she muttered as she pulled the quilt up over her head and wished she could blink herself back to Long Island.
There was a rustle at the doorway then, “I don’t think they can, Margarita.”
She pulled the quilt down as Huntington Kendall, still in his bright blue jumpsuit, strolled into the room.
“I believe you need a refresher course in barnyard lore,” he said, sliding down onto the other end of the couch.
“I didn’t hear you come in.” She tossed aside the quilt and sat up, straightening her sweater.
“Evidently not.” Hunt leaned forward and plucked the paperback from the polished oak floor. He inspected the cover. “Divine-looking couple,” he said, flipping the book over to read the back cover blurb. He stopped abruptly, flipped back to the front, then looked at Meg. “How interesting,. “Doesn’t this look a lot like our very own Joseph?”
The Edge of Forever Page 6
