by Diana Palmer
“Her boyfriend doesn’t like me,” he murmured absently, and smiled icily, lifting his glass.
Jodie looked behind her. Kirry had turned away, but Alexander was suddenly making a beeline across the room toward them.
Francisco made a face. “There’s one man you don’t want to make an enemy of,” he confided. “Are you a relation of his, by any chance?”
Jodie laughed a little too loudly. “Good Lord, no.” She chuckled. “I’m the cook!”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
By that time, Alexander was facing her. He took the crystal champagne flute from her hands and put it gingerly on a nearby table.
“I wasn’t going to break it, Alexander,” she muttered. “I do know it’s Waterford crystal!”
“How many glasses have you had?” he demanded.
“I don’t like your tone,” she retorted, moving clumsily, so that Francisco had to grab her arm to keep her upright. “I had three glasses. It’s not that strong, and I’m not drunk!”
“And ducks don’t have feathers,” Alexander replied tersely. He caught her other arm and pulled her none too gently from Francisco’s grasp. “I’ll take care of Jodie. Hadn’t you better reacquire your wife?” he added pointedly to the younger man.
Francisco sighed, with a long, wistful appraisal of Jodie. “It seems so,” he replied. “Nice to have met you—Jodie, is it?”
Jodie grinned woozily. “It’s Jordana, actually, but most people call me Jodie. And I was glad to meet you, too, Francisco! I never met a real race car driver before!”
He started to speak, but it was too late, because Alexander was already marching her out of the room and down the hall.
“Will you stop dragging me around?!” she demanded, stumbling on her high heels.
He pulled her into the dark-paneled library and closed the door with a muted thud. He let go of her arm and glared down at her. “Will you stop trying to seduce married men?” he shot back. “Gomez and his wife are on the cover of half the tabloids in Texas right now,” he added bluntly.
“Why?”
“Her father just died and she inherited the car company. She’s trying to sell it and her husband is fighting her in court, tooth and nail.”
“And they’re still married?”
“Apparently, in name, at least. She’s pregnant, I hear, with another man’s child.”
She looked up at him coldly. “Some circles you and Margie travel in,” she said with contempt.
“Circles you’d never fit into,” he agreed.
“Not hardly,” she drawled ungrammatically. “And I wouldn’t want to. In my world, people get married and have kids and build a home together.” She nodded her head toward the closed door. “Those people in there wouldn’t know what a home was if you drew it for them!”
His green eyes narrowed on her face. “You’re smashed. Why don’t you go to bed?”
She lifted her chin and smiled mistily. “Why don’t you come with me?” she purred.
The look on his face would have amused her, if she’d been sober. He just stared, shocked.
She arched her shoulders and made a husky little sound in her throat. She parted her lips and ran her tongue slowly around them, the way she’d read in a magazine article that said men were turned on by it.
Apparently they were. Alexander was staring at her mouth with an odd expression. His chest was rising and falling very quickly. She could see the motion of it through his white shirt and dinner jacket.
She moved closer, draping herself against him as she’d seen that slinky blond woman in the red dress do it. She moved her leg against his and felt his whole body stiffen abruptly.
Her hands went to the front of his shirt under the jacket. She drew her fingers down it, feeling the ripple of muscle. His big hands caught her shoulders, but he wasn’t pushing.
“You look at me, but you never see me,” she murmured. Her lips brushed against his throat. He smelled of expensive cologne and soap. “I’m not pretty. I’m not sexy. But I would die for you…!”
His hard mouth cut off the words. He curled her into his body with a rigid arm at her back, and his mouth opened against her moist, full, parted lips with the fury of a summer storm.
It wasn’t premeditated. The feel of her against him had triggered a raging arousal in his muscular body. He went in headfirst, without thinking of the consequences.
If he was helpless, so was she. As he enveloped her against him, her arms slid around his warm body under the jacket and her mouth answered the hunger of his. She made a husky little moan that apparently made matters worse. His mouth became suddenly insistent, as if he heard the need in her soft cry and was doing his best to satisfy the hunger it betrayed.
Her hands lifted to the back of his head and her fingers dug into his scalp as she arched her body upward in a hopeless plea.
He whispered something that she couldn’t understand before he bent and lifted her, with her mouth still trapped under his demanding lips, and carried her to the sofa.
He spread her body onto the cold leather and slid over it, one powerful leg inserting itself between both of hers in a frantic, furious exchange of passion. He’d never known such raging need, not only in himself, but in Jodie. She was liquid in his embrace, yielding to everything he asked without a word being spoken.
He moved slightly, just enough to get his hand in between them. It smoothed over her collarbone and down into the soft dip of her dress, over the lacy bra she was wearing underneath. He felt the hard little nipple in his palm as he increased the insistent pressure of the caress and heard her cry of delight go into his open mouth.
Her hands were on the buttons of his shirt. It was dangerous. It was reckless. She’d incited him to madness, and he couldn’t stop. When he felt the buttons give, and her hands speared into the thick hair over his chest, he groaned harshly. His body shivered with desire.
His mouth ground into hers as his leg moved between hers. One lean hand went under her hips and gathered her up against the fierce arousal of his body, moving her against him in a blatant physical statement of intent.
Jodie’s head was spinning. All her dreams of love were coming true. Alexander wanted her! She could feel the insistent pressure of his body over hers. He was kissing her as if he’d die to have her, and she gloried in the fury of his hunger. She relaxed with a husky little laugh and kissed him back languidly, feeling her body melt under him, melt into him. She was on fire, burning with unfamiliar needs, drowning in unfamiliar sensations that made her whole body tingle with pleasure. She lifted her hips against his and gasped at the blatant contact.
Alexander lifted his head and looked at her. His face was a rigid mask. Only his green eyes were alive in it, glittering down at her in a rasping, unsteady silence of merged breathing.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered, moving her hips again.
He was tempted. It showed. But that iron control wouldn’t let him slip into carelessness. She’d been drinking. In fact, she was smashed. He had his own suspicions about her innocence, and they wouldn’t shut up. His body was begging him to forget her lack of experience and give it relief. But his will was too strong. He was the man in control. It was his responsibility to protect her, even from himself.
“You’re drunk, Jodie,” he said. His voice was faintly unsteady, but it was terse and firm.
“Does it matter?” she asked lazily.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He moved away, getting to his feet. He looked down at her sprawled body in its disheveled dress and he ached all the way to his toes. But he couldn’t do this. Not when she was so vulnerable.
She sighed and closed her eyes. It had been so sweet, lying in his arms. She smiled dreamily. Was she dreaming?
“Get up, for God’s sake!” he snapped.
When her eyes opened, he was standing her firmly on her feet. “You’re going to bed, right now, before you make an utter fool of yourself!”
She blinked, starin
g up at him. “I can’t go to bed. Who’ll do the dishes?”
“Jodie!”
She giggled, trying to lean against him. He thrust her away and took her arm, moving her toward the door. “I told Francisco I was the cook. That’s me,” she drawled cheerfully. “Cook, bottle-washer, best friend and household slave.” She laughed louder.
He propelled her out the door, back down the hall toward the staircase, and urged her up it. She was still giggling a little too loudly for comfort, but the noise of the music from the living room covered it nicely.
He got her to the guest room she was occupying and put her inside. “Go to bed,” he said through his teeth.
She leaned against the door facing, totally at sea. “You could come inside,” she murmured wickedly. “There’s a bed.”
“You need one,” he agreed tersely. “Go get in it.”
“Always bossing me around,” she sighed. “Don’t you like kissing me, Alexander?”
“You’re going to hate yourself in the morning,” he assured her.
She yawned, her mind going around in circles, like the room. “I think I’ll go to bed now.”
“Great idea.”
He started to walk out.
“Could you send Francisco up, please?” she taunted. “I’d like to lie down and discuss race cars with him.”
“In your dreams!” he said coldly.
He actually slammed the door, totally out of patience, self-control and tact. He waited a minute, to make sure she didn’t try to come back out. But there was only the sound of slow progress toward the bed and a sudden loud whoosh. When he opened the door again and peeked in, she was lying facedown in her dress on the covers, sound asleep. He closed the door again, determined not to get close to her a second time. He went back to the party, feeling as if he’d had his stomach punched. He couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to let Jodie tempt him into indiscretion. His lack of control worried him so much that he was twice as attentive to Kirry as he usually was.
When he saw her up to her room, after the party was over, he kissed her with intent. She was perfectly willing, but his body let him down. He couldn’t manage any interest at all.
“You’re just tired,” she assured him with a worldly smile. “We have all the time in the world. Sleep tight.”
“Sure. You, too.”
He left her and went back downstairs. He was restless, angry at his attack of impotence with the one woman who was capable of curing it. Or, at least, he imagined she was. He and Kirry had never been lovers, although they’d come close at one time. Now, she was a pleasant companion from time to time, a bauble to show off, to take around town. It infuriated him that he could be whole with Jodie, who was almost certainly a virgin, and he couldn’t even function with a sophisticated woman like Kirry. Maybe it was his age.
The rattle of plates caught his attention. He moved toward the sound and found a distressed Margie in the kitchen trying to put dishes in the dishwasher.
“That doesn’t look right,” he commented with a frown when he noticed the lack of conformity in the way she was tossing plates and bowls and cups and crystal all together. “You’ll break the crystal.”
She glared at him. “Well, what do I know about washing dishes?” she exclaimed. “That’s why we have Jessie!”
He cocked his head. “You’re out of sorts.”
She pushed back her red-tinged dark hair angrily. “Yes, I’m out of sorts! Kirry said she doesn’t think I’m ready to show my collection yet. She said her store had shows booked for the rest of the year, and she couldn’t help me!”
“All that buttering up and dragging Jodie down here to work, for nothing,” he said sarcastically.
“Where is Jodie?” she demanded. “I haven’t seen her for two hours, and here’s all this work that isn’t getting done except by me!”
He leaned back against the half open door and stared at his sister. “She’s passed out on her bed, dead drunk,” he said distastefully. “After trying to seduce the world’s number one race car driver, and then me.”
Margie stood up and stared back. “You?”
“I wish I could impress on you how tired I am of finding Jodie underfoot every time I walk into my own house,” he said coldly. “We can’t have a party without her, we can’t have a holiday without her. My own birthday means an invitation! Why can’t you just hire a cook when you need one instead of landing me with your erstwhile best friend?”
“I thought you liked Jodie, a little,” Margie stammered.
“She’s blue collar, Margie,” he persisted, still smarting under his loss of control and furious that Jodie was responsible for it. “She’ll never fit in our circles, no matter how much you try to force her into them. She was telling people tonight that she was the cook, and it’s not far wrong. She’s a social disaster with legs. She knows nothing about our sort of lifestyle, she can’t carry on a decent conversation and she dresses like a homeless person. It’s an embarrassment to have her here!”
Margie sighed miserably. “I hope you haven’t said things like that to her, Lex,” she worried. “She may not be an upper class sort of person, but she’s sweet and kind, and she doesn’t gossip. She’s the only real friend I’ve ever had. Not that I’ve behaved much like one,” she added sadly.
“You should have friends in your own class,” he said coldly. “I don’t want Jodie invited down here again,” he added firmly, holding up a hand when Margie tried to speak. “I mean it. You find some excuse, but you keep her away from here. I’m not going to be stalked by your bag lady of a friend. I don’t want her underfoot at any more holidays, and God forbid, at my birthday party! If you want to see her, drive to Houston, fly to Houston, stay in Houston! But don’t bring her here anymore.”
“Did she really try to seduce you?” Margie wondered aloud.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said flatly. “It was embarrassing.”
“She’ll probably be horrified when she wakes up and remembers what happened. Whatever did,” Margie added, fishing.
“I’ll be horrified for months myself. Kirry is my steady girl,” he added deliberately. “I’m not hitting on some other woman behind her back, and Jodie should have known it. Not that it seemed to matter to her, about me or the married racer.”
“She’s never had a drink, as far as I know,” Margie ventured gently. “She’s not like our mother, Lex.”
His face closed up. Jodie’s behavior had aroused painful memories of his mother, who drank often, and to excess. She was a constant embarrassment anytime people came to the house, and she delighted in embarrassing her son any way possible. Jodie’s unmanageable silliness brought back nightmares.
“There’s nothing in the world more disgusting than a drunk woman,” he said aloud. “Nothing that makes me sicker to my stomach.”
Margie closed the dishwasher and started it. There was a terrible cracking sound. The crystal! She winced. “I don’t care what’s broken. I’m not a cook. I can’t wash dishes. I’m a dress designer!”
“Hire help for Jessie,” he said.
“Okay,” she said, giving in. “I won’t invite Jodie back again. But how do I tell her, Lex? She’s never going to understand. And it will hurt her.”
He knew that. He couldn’t bear to know it. His face hardened. “Just keep her away from me. I don’t care how.”
“I’ll think of something,” Margie said weakly.
Outside in the hall, a white-faced Jodie was stealthily making her way back to the staircase. She’d come down belatedly to do the dishes, still tingling hours after Alexander’s feverish lovemaking. She’d been floating, delirious with hope that he might have started to see her in a different light. And then she’d heard what he said. She’d heard every single word. She disgusted him. She was such a social disaster, in fact, that he never wanted her to come to the house again. She’d embarrassed him and made a fool of herself.
He was right. She’d behaved stupidly, and now she was goin
g to pay for it by being an outcast. The only family she had no longer wanted her.
She went back to her room, closed the door quietly, and picked up the telephone. She changed her airplane ticket for an early-morning flight.
The next morning, she went to Margie’s room at daybreak. She hadn’t slept a wink. She’d packed and changed her clothes, and now she was ready to go.
“Will you drive me to the airport?” she asked her sleepy friend. “Or do you want me to ask Johnny?”
Margie sat up, blinking. Then she remembered Lex’s odd comments and her own shame at how she’d treated her best friend. She flushed.
“I’ll drive you,” Margie said at once. “But don’t you want to wait until after breakfast?” She flushed again, remembering that Jodie would have had to cook it.
“I’m not hungry. There’s leftover sausage and bacon in the fridge, along with some biscuits. You can just heat them up. Alexander can cook eggs to go with them,” she added, almost choking on his name.
Margie felt guilty. “You’re upset,” she ventured.
Keeping quiet was the hardest thing Jodie had ever done. “I got drunk last night and did some…really stupid things,” she summarized. “I’d just like to go home, Margie. Okay?”
Margie tried not to let her relief show. Jodie was leaving without a fuss. Lex would be pleased, and she’d be off the hook. She smiled. “Okay. I’ll just get dressed, and then we’ll go!”
Four
If running away seemed the right thing to do, actually doing it became complicated the minute Jodie went down the staircase with her suitcase.
The last thing she’d expected was to find the cause of her flight standing in the hall watching her. She ground her teeth together to keep from speaking.
Alexander was leaning against the banister, and he looked both uncomfortable and concerned when he saw Jodie’s pale complexion and swollen eyelids.
He stood upright, scowling. “I’m driving Kirry back to Houston this afternoon,” he said at once, noting Jodie’s suitcase. “You can ride with us.”
