No Longer a Dream
By
Carole Mortimer
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
"I haven't changed my mind about you, little Cat."
"Neither have I." Cat's eyes flashed.
Caleb nodded appreciatively. "Bringing you round to wanting what I want could prove an interesting battle."
"One you would be predestined to lose," she assured him.
"Ah, yes," he said knowingly. "Any man would find it difficult to fight the ghost of a previous lover!"
Cat stiffened. "Harry was my life!" she bit out.
"And would he have wanted you to waste what's left of it?"
She breathed raggedly. "I told you. I enjoy my life as it is."
"Do you know how long Its been since I allowed thoughts of any woman to disturb my nights? Years," he murmured self-derisively. "I'm sorry the man you loved died, Cat. But I'm very much alive, and wanting you is killing me!"
CAROLE MORTIMER, one of our most popular—and prolific—English authors, began writing for the Harlequin Presents series in 1979. She now has more than forty top-selling romances to her credit and shows no signs whatsoever of running out of plot ideas. She writes strong traditional romances with a distinctly modern appeal, and her winning way with characters and romantic plot twists has earned her an enthusiastic audience worldwide.
Books by Carole Mortimer
HARLEQUIN PRESENTS
757—UNTAMED
773—AN UNWILLING DESIRE
780—A PAST REVENGE
786—THE PASSIONATE LOVER
797—TEMPESTUOUS AFFAIR
804—CHERISH TOMORROW
812—A NO RISK AFFAIR
829—LOVERS IN THE AFTERNOON
862—THE DEVIL'S PRICE
860—LADY SURRENDER
877—KNIGHTS POSSESSION
892—DARKNESS INTO LIGHT
For John
Matthew and Joshua
Harlequin Presents first edition August 1986
ISBN 0-373-10909-1
Original hardcover edition published in 1986
by Mills & Boon Limited
Copyright © 1986 by Carole Mortimer.
CHAPTER ONE
'You have a delicious body, one of the most perfect I've ever seen, but I'm not in the mood for you right now, so could you get out of bed and get some clothes on?'
The velvet roughness of that American-accented voice, and the things it was saying, were enough to wake Cat from her heavy sleep, but it was the sharp slap on the tender flesh of her bottom that caused her lids to fly open.
For a moment she just lay there, the feel of the chocolate-brown silk sheet beneath her, sensuous against her nakedness. Nakedness! She looked down sharply, sure she blushed from head to toe as she saw she was indeed completely naked. She looked away quickly, falling on to her back, only to see herself again in the smoky brown glass of the mirrors directly above her. The whole ceiling was covered in mirrors!
Where was she? And who had that silky rough voice belonged to?
She was alone in the room now, so she could only put the questions to herself. And a couple of dozen more like them! Who's bedroom was this? What was she doing here? Who had undressed her? And why?
The last seemed the easiest to answer. Her first time in bed with a man and she didn't even remember it, didn't even remember the man! She covered her eyes with a groan, feeling sick.
'It must have been some party.' The velvety voice spoke with harsh amusement. 'Would you like me to get you a hair-of-the-dog?'
She lowered her arm, didn't actually need to turn in the man's direction, could see his reflection in the mirrored ceiling. He was as naked as she was!
'Have you gone back to sleep?' he prompted hardly.
She wished she could sink through a hole in the floor and disappear, at the very least go back to sleep and forget this had ever happened. But she doubted she would ever sleep peacefully again, would always be frightened this nightmare was going to be repeated. For it had to be a dream; she didn't wake up in the bedrooms of men she didn't even recognise, let alone remember!
'I can see that you haven't.' He moved to stand over her, looking down at her. 'I realise that you probably have a terrible hangover, but you've only yourself to blame.'
His voice definitely lacked sympathy, and Cat blinked hard as she looked up at him, unaware of just how much like her name she looked at that moment, her tumble of long blonde curls wilder than usual after a night in bed, her green eyes still sleepy.
'Do you know where the bedclothes are?' Her voice was a pained rasp, her throat feeling totally devoid of moisture, her tongue swollen and dry.
Dark brows rose over cold black eyes. 'On the floor where you kicked them last night.' He was totally indifferent to the fact that neither of them was wearing a stitch of clothing. 'You're a restless sleeper.'
She wasn't usually—but then she had never shared a bed with anyone for the night before! She took advantage of his turned back, as he looked through the wardrobe that took up the whole of one wall, to pull the sheet from the floor over her body and up to her chin, sitting up to watch the man over its softness.
He had thick black hair, lightly sprinkled with grey, a finer, softer looking hair covering the whole of his body, and it was the rest of that body that made Cat gulp. This man was lean and powerful rather than muscular, his shoulders wide, his back taut with strength, his waist slender, his buttocks a muscular curve to his body, his legs long and fleshless. He was completely at ease, and yet the latent power was there.
Had she experienced that power? She didn't feel any different, but then that was no guarantee; maybe you weren't supposed to feel different! She had spent the last twenty-four years 'saving herself and now she didn't even know what she had saved herself for!
The man turned impatiently. 'Are you going to stay in there all day?'
The fact that she had never seen a man's body this intimately before was nothing to the shock she received when her embarrassed gaze finally reached his face. Caleb Steele! She couldn't believe it, but she would know that harshly attractive face anywhere. Even when he was standing across the room from her stark naked!
Black hair that was usually meticulously brushed back from his face fell forward in a damp swathe, eyebrows the same jet-black jutting out over cold black eyes, his nose an arrogant slash between high cheekbones, his sculptured mouth a hard, forbidding line. At almost forty he looked older, a cynical twist to his mouth, the same emotion reflected in those chilling eyes. He was also considered one of the most powerful—and dangerous—men in Hollywood!
He shrugged at her lack of reply, turning back to the wardrobe, taking a brown silk shirt from a hanger to shrug his shoulders into it. 'Breakfast is out in the dining room. If you want any I would advise you to get up and get dressed,' he rasped. 'I don't sit down to eat with women who are only half-dressed!'
Caleb Steele, owner of the Steele film studios, an exclusive hotel and casino in Lake Tahoe, and with tremendous influence in some quarters of the media. He was also the man she had come to the party last night to meet. Well she had met him; God, how she had met him!
She cleared her throat painfully. 'Mr Steele—'
He turned around, tucking the dark brown shirt into the waist of black trousers, before sliding the zip up with a firm movement, his hands dropping down to his hips. 'Caleb,' he bit out in that Atlantic drawl. 'Mr Steele is a little formal in the circumstances. That is my bed you're
lying in,' he pointed out mockingly.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but he was still there when she opened them again. She had guessed it had to be this man's room, from the sinfully mirrored ceiling, to the wide double bed, and erotic silk sheets. He gave the impression of a man who liked to be comfortable when he took his pleasure with a woman.
'You also seem to have me at a disadvantage.' He quirked those rugged dark brown brows enquiringly.
Oh my God, he didn't even know her name! 'I'm Cat,' she told him flatly. 'Catherine Howard. And I've heard all the Henry the Eighth jokes I need, thank you.' This occasion neither warranted nor necessitated one of the endless jokes she had been subjected to concerning her name over the years.
The firmly moulded lips didn't move by a fraction of an inch, and yet something, she thought it was the expression in his eyes, told Cat that he was amused. She agreed, this was hardly the time for outright laughter, about anything!
'Was she one of the ones that lost her head?' he derided, dealing with his unruly hair now as he stood in front of the mirror gracing the big oak dressing-table, looking more like the photographs Cat had seen of him: the film mogul that made even the most temperamental director or actor quake in their shoes.
She had attended the party given by this man's son with such high hopes after Luke Steele told her his father was going to 'show up' some time during the evening, knowing that Caleb Steele was probably the only man who could get her an interview with his father, Lucien Steele, the writer. Maybe if she had satisfied him in bed he still could, she thought bitterly.
'Yes,' she snapped, knowing that history claimed Henry the Eighth's fifth wife had even been guilty of the adultery he had accused her of, unlike a couple of the others, who had just outlived their attraction. 'Was I—satisfactory?' she asked with much more bravado than she felt. They said that your subconscious would only let you do what you really wanted to do; had she wanted to go to bed with this man that caused a shiver of apprehension down her spine even though he had only been casually mocking?
He slowly replaced the brush on the dressing-table before turning to look at her, arching one dark brow, the black eyes unfathomable. 'Don't you know?' he asked softly, that black gaze looking at her with new interest, playing over the tumble of honey-blonde hair, deep green eyes shadowed with embarrassment now, the small classical nose, and wide kissable mouth, only her shoulders bared to his view now as she clutched the sheet tightly to her, although the warmth of his gaze as it moved to meet hers seemed to say he approved of what he could see.
Cat moistened her mouth nervously. 'I—er—I think someone must have put something in one of my drinks.' Her throat was getting easier now, although she knew the reason for its dryness only too well. 'I only drink orange juice, you see.' She became flushed at his sceptical snort. It's true,' she insisted indignantly. 'I'm allergic to alcohol!'
'What happens when you drink it?' His eyes were narrowed now.
She grimaced. 'I pass out.'
He gave a derisive inclination of his head. 'That would seem to be what you did.'
Before or after? She swallowed down her growing feelings of panic. 'I tell you my drinks must have been tampered with,' she defended, her cheeks still red. 'I haven't drunk alcohol since I found out it puts me flat on my back.' She drew in an angry breath at his knowing look. 'I meant it makes me lose consciousness! After it happened to me the first couple of times I went to a doctor and he told me my body just won't accept alcohol.'
'I would say that's a pretty shrewd analysis,' Caleb Steele mocked arrogantly.
She glared at him. 'You needn't sound so damned disapproving,' she snapped. 'You were the one that took an unconscious woman to bed!' She gasped once she had made the accusation, although Caleb Steele didn't move a muscle.
'You responded OK when I touched you,' he drawled uninterestedly.
Her cry of horror was preceded only by the return of the heated colour to her cheeks. She had gone to bed with this man, made love with him. Oh God!
Caleb Steele showed little concern for her disturbed state. 'What did you do the last couple of times it happened?' he asked drily, leaning one hip against the dressing-table, completely relaxed, his arms crossed in front of his powerful chest.
Cat's gaze dropped from the bored interest she could read in his eyes as he waited for her answer. 'I was with friends—'
'And this time you weren't.' He straightened, the casual movement causing Cat to press back against the pillows, the sudden gleam in those fathomless black eyes mocking her nervousness. 'This time the little cat was left amongst the wolves!' he scorned contemptuously.
Wolf! She would lay odds on this man being the only wolf at the party last night, for all that it had turned out to be a little wild; and now that he had had her he was spitting her out again!
His eyes narrowed, on her flushed face. 'You aren't one of Luke's college friends, are you?' He sounded as if that thought didn't please him at all.
'No, I—' She broke off, the real reason she had gone to the party the previous evening, the remembered wish to make a good impression on this man, still paramount. She couldn't blurt it all out now, not when she had just spent the night with him. I'm just an acquaintance, really,' she amended.
He gave a slow nod. 'And do you usually look this good in the mornings?'
She gazed back at him in alarm. Surely he hadn't changed his mind and was now in the mood to repeat what had happened between them last night? She clutched the sheet even tighter to her.
'Relax, Cat,' he drawled, the amusement back in his eyes, even if his mouth only showed a cynical twist. 'I was referring to the fact that most women I know can't wait to run to the mascara bottle in the mornings.'
Most women he knew! She would bet that amounted to several hundred. Caleb Steele was known for the short and not always sweet affairs he had had since his divorce from his wife fifteen years ago. Any of those women showing the least sign of wanting permanence in his life was out like an old pair of shoes. Any women that tried to take on this man, even temporarily, was a braver one than she!
'You have naturally black lashes, hmm?' he mused as she made no answer.
'No,' she denied abruptly. 'I have them dyed.'
'You do?' He didn't even bother to try to hide his surprise.
She nodded, all the time conscious of that reflected image above her, hating the mirrors, feeling as if she had no place to hide. 'At the hairdressers,' she supplied. 'It's done all the time,' she claimed at his cynical expression.
'I know that,' he derided, shaking his head in disgust. 'I just didn't think you—there soon won't be many parts of a woman's body that are completely natural!' he rasped.
His scorn irritated her. 'The rest of me is real!' she snapped. 'Although what you said earlier isn't true; my body is far from perfect. My legs are too long for one thing—'
'I wouldn't know,' he mocked. 'I'm a breast man myself. And yours are a pair of the finest I've ever seen. Not too big, but not too small either, ,with a dusky rose nip—'
'Please!' she groaned her dismay at his familiarity with her body.
'Oh I did,' He moved forward with a feline grace, sitting down on the bed, one arm resting on the bed across her, the other beside her. 'Do you have any idea of the pleasure a man can get from the taste of your breasts, the soft little moans you give in your throat as your nipples are kissed and caressed to—'
'Please!' He was making her feel giddy, his proximity alarming, what he was saying even more so, a mental picture of them the way he was describing burning in her brain, able to imagine his dark head bent over her as he sipped from those life-giving peaks, as she cradled him to her and—.
'Yes, Cat.' His black gaze held hers as he gently released the sheet from her suddenly relaxed fingers, as he softly pulled the sheet down to throw it back on the floor, leaving Cat's naked body exposed to him in all its silken glory. 'It was just like that,' he murmured huskily as his head slowly lowered and that hard mouth claimed one tau
t nipple with surprising softness and warmth, the rough rasp of his tongue sending aching pleasure down between her thighs.
Her head fell back, and as it did so she could see him in the mirror above exactly as she had imagined him, her skin creamy white in contrast to his black hair, her hand moving up even now so that her fingers could entwine in his hair as she held him against her, groaning anew as he moved to claim the other dusky nipple, drinking his fill of that one, too, Cat unable to look away from the beauty of their reflections above.
'Dad, I—bloody hell!'
The shocked English-accented voice of this man's son as he burst into the room unannounced was what brought her back to her senses, gasping her dismay at what had happened, and at the identity of the intruder to their pleasure. Caleb Steele's son. Oh God, she groaned for what must have been the dozenth time since waking up to find herself in this man's bed.
Caleb slowly eased himself back, holding her horrified gaze with steady intensity. 'Get out of here, Luke,' he instructed coldly, not even turning to look at his son.
'But, Dad—'
'I said get out!' He didn't raise his voice, and he still didn't turn towards the door as his body partly shielded Cat's, but the icy anger was obvious in the tersely spoken order, every muscle in his body tensed in challenge of his authority. 'We'll talk about this later.' There was a threat rather than apology in his voice.
'OK,' Luke Steele sighed, the soft click of the door telling them he had obeyed the first instruction, too.
Cat's eyes were squeezed tightly shut as she denied the reflection of her nakedness, not in the mirrors this time, but in coal-black depths. Caleb Steele's eyes. She didn't know what had possessed her, what had possessed him; she wasn't exactly his usual type. She was too young to be one of his women; he had publicly stated on more than one occasion that any woman under thirty didn't have the experience or maturity he liked. Surely at twenty-four she was too young!
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