by Janet Dailey
As she swung a leg over the crossbars, Dirk half turned to ask, "Is something bothering you?"
"You," she answered shortly without lifting her gaze from the handlebars.
"That's a start," he murmured and pushed the bike forward to walk it to the road.
There was no conversation during the long ride back, yet Dirk dominated her thoughts. A few short days ago she had actively disliked him. If asked whether she regarded him as an enemy her answer would have been an unequivocal yes. Now, when he had almost breached her defenses, Victoria found that she didn't resent him for it. There was a part of her that was sorry he failed.
The smear of yellowy green grass stain on the back of his shirt taunted Victoria. The thin cotton material hid the taut flesh her hands had so eagerly caressed, and longed to do again. Dirk wasn't the enemy. The enemy was within. Victoria didn't have to be on guard with him, but on guard against her own wayward inclinations.
At the garage Victoria got off the bike as soon as Dirk braked it to a stop. Eager to escape his unnerving company she was in a hurry to put the bike away, but Dirk took his time wheeling it into the garage.
"It's unsettling, isn't it?" He tossed out the curious remark with deceptive casualness.
"What is?" In spite of a little voice insisting that she didn't want to know the answer, Victoria asked the anticipated question.
"To…like someone that you were determined to dislike." Dirk hesitated deliberately over the word to imply the attraction was stronger than the word indicated.
"I really wouldn't know," she lied and hurriedly left the garage to let him maneuver the unwieldy bike into its rightful place.
In the breezeway she was confronted by her younger sister. Jealousy was behind the disdainful look Penny gave her, and only Victoria knew how much cause her little sister had to be jealous.
"A bicycle built for two? Really, Tory, how juvenile can you get?" Penny declared contemptuously.
"Don't look at me." Victoria attempted a cool defense. "It was Dirk's idea, not mine."
Surprise mixed with chagrin in her sister's expression. Victoria took advantage of the speechless moment to slip inside the house and upstairs to her room.
SHIFTING THE TENNIS RACKET to her other hand, Victoria pushed open the front door and walked inside. It had been unusually hot and sticky on the tennis court that afternoon. Foremost on her mind was a desire for a Cold drink and cool shower.
Her rubber, soled shoes barely made any sound as she crossed the foyer, ignoring the stairs in favor of the vestibule and its door to the kitchen area. Pausing at the door Victoria was struck by the silence of the house, so strangely quiet. Even the kitchen was empty when she entered it. She looked curiously around, then walked to the refrigerator to take out the pitcher of lemonade. As she filled a tall glass from the cupboard, out of the corner of her eye she saw the housekeeper entering the kitchen.
"Hello, Josie."
"Mon Dieu!" The woman nearly dropped the bundle of neatly folded towels stacked in her arms.
"Did you think I was a ghost?" Victoria laughed and took a refreshing sip of the lemonade. "Where is everybody?"
The housekeeper was obviously suffering from shock since she lapsed into English to answer curtly, "I have more important things to do than keep track of the comings and goings of this family."
"Sorry I asked," Victoria murmured with an exaggerated lift of an eyebrow. "It's so late that usually everyone is home by now."
The comment drew the housekeeper's sharp glance at the wall clock. By her dismayed expression Victoria guessed that Josie hadn't realized what time it was. There was a sudden haste to her footsteps as she crossed the kitchen and unceremoniously forced the folded bath towels into Victoria's arms.
"I have to begin dinner," she explained. "Take these towels to M'sieur Ramsey's room."
Victoria hesitated, but it was a reasonable request since she was on her way upstairs to shower and change. She took another swallow of the lemonade before setting the glass down to arrange the towels in their previously neat order.
"I'll come back for my tennis racket," Victoria promised and received a grunting acknowledgement.
Leaving the kitchen through the door to the vestibule, she climbed the stairs to the second floor. As she neared the top, Victoria heard the tap-tap-tapping of a typewriter coming from Dirk's room. She paused at the head of the stairs. Her family might be gone, but Dirk obviously wasn't. Nibbling at her lower lip she wavered, then crossed the upper foyer to knock on his door. The towels were held in front of her like a shield.
The typing stopped; so did her heart. The scrape of a chair leg was followed by footsteps crossing the room to the door. She mentally braced herself and fixed a composed expression on her face as the door was opened. The preoccupied light left his dark eyes the instant he saw her. His gaze took on a velvet quality, stroking her as he surveyed her length and the bareness of her legs beneath the short white tennis skirt.
"I would have sworn you were the type who would bolt at the sight of a man's bedroom, he taunted.
"Josie asked me to bring you some clean towels," Victoria smoothly explained the reason for her presence.
She would have preferred to hand him the towels, but he stepped out of the doorway so she could enter. His arm made a casual sweep in the direction of the private bath.
"Hotels never seem to hire chambermaids who look like you," Dirk remarked. "Nor do their uniforms resemble yours."
"Probably with good reason." As she walked briskly past him toward the door to the private bath, her gaze was drawn to the typewriter on the narrow desk and the paper sticking out of its carriage. There was an intense curiosity to know what he was writing. Another article about her father, perhaps?
Dirk followed her as far as the door to the bathroom and leaned against the frame. "I take it you've been playing tennis."
"Yes, with some friends." Victoria arranged two sets of the towels on the brass racks and knelt to store the rest in the cupboard of the glazed tile lavatory.
"We still haven't played that tie breaker with your parents, have we?" he remembered. "We should set that up for tomorrow."
"I can't. I have other plans." She didn't know what those other plans were, but she would think of something. Straightening, she walked toward the doorway, arching an eyebrow in a silently arrogant request for Dirk to move.
With a faintly mocking nod of his head, he made a ninety-degree pivot to allow her past. "I have noticed that you have arranged to be busy these last couple of days," Dirk admitted with a knowing glint. "I guess I could ask your sister to partner me in a match with your parents."
"I'm sure she'd like that!" Victoria snapped, then halted to glare at him. "Why don't you leave the poor girl alone? You are old enough to be her father."
He feigned a wince. "An older brother, surely."
"Penny happens to be only sixteen," Victoria informed him.
"That young?" he mocked. "Then it is definitely a brotherly affection I have for her."
"Brotherly, ha!" There was a wretched tightness in her throat. "I doubt that you have ever regarded any female in a brotherly fashion."
Dirk eyed her with a lazily narrowed look. "Do you know you almost sound jealous, Tory?"
"That's absurd!" she denied. "Personally, I couldn't care less how much attention you pay to her. My only concern is the effect it's having on Penny."
"Of course," he murmured dryly in a tone of outright skepticism.
In agitation, Victoria turned away and took two steps. It was purely by accident that she had happened to move in the direction of the typewriter. The white paper with its typed words beckoned for her attention.
"I see you haven't been spending all your time corrupting my sister," she remarked and moved closer so she could read the words. "You have obviously managed to do some writing, too."
Before her hand could reach out to straighten the sheet of paper so she could read it, Dirk was there to cover it with the thick volume of
a dictionary.
"Sorry." But the unyielding blackness of his eyes said he wasn't.
"You act as if you have something to hide," Victoria accused and reached to move the book. "What are you writing?"
His fingers closed around her wrist to stop her. "I don't let anybody read any of my material until I'm finished."
"Are you one of those temperamental creators?" she mocked and strained to twist her wrist free of his talonlike hold without success.
"Could be" Dirk shrugged noncommittally.
"What's the subject?" Victoria challenged, certain that it had to do with her father.
"Maybe my imagination is running rampant again," he suggested with a wicked glint.
"I wouldn't be at all surprised," she retorted.
"What do you suppose happens when two people who have always got what they wanted, are unexpectedly thrown together?" he mused, exerting just enough pressure on her arm to force her a few inches closer.
"I really wouldn't know." She heard the breathless catch in her voice, but couldn't do anything about it.
"Two people like us," Dirk continued. His free hand curved around her waist to enclose her inside the circle of his arm, indifferent to her at- tempt to keep a small space wedged between them with her arms on his chest. "You, who have always been given what you wanted, and me, who's always had to fight for what he wanted."
"I don't see the point," she protested.
"Don't you?" He released her wrist to let both of his arms gather her in, trapping her hands between them. "The solution would be to join sides, so we could both want the same thing."
He held her fast. To be in the sensuous clasp of his arms was like being in a velvet-lined straight jacket. The lower half of her body was firmly shaped to his length, her hips fitted into the cradle of his. Victoria felt the succumbing weakness spreading through her limbs.
"Will you please let me go?" Her voice was low and trembling in its demand.
"No, I don't think so." Dirk smiled and lowered his head.
She turned her head away, but he was satisfied to let his mouth trail over the curve of her neck, pausing to nibble sensually at an earlobe along the way. Shivers of pure delight danced over her skin to send tremors through her system. Dirk was in no hurry to find her mouth, letting his lips tease and tantalize every inch of her neck, ear, and cheek. All the while his caressing hands were roaming her back and hips, stirring raw needs and confusing her thoughts.
"Kiss me." His husky order came when Victoria's resistance was at its lowest ebb.
The sensual firmness of his mouth was only inches from her own. With masterful ease he had tuned her senses to his desire. Her lips parted even before they felt the warm contact of his. While she strained to respond to the demanding ardor of his kiss her hands glided around his neck to thread her fingers through the virile thickness of his black hair.
Dizzying waves of rapture rocked her until Victoria had to lean heavily against him for balance. The scorching fires ignited by his hard kiss swept through her bloodstream to curl her toes and melt her shape to his unyielding form. Dirk shifted her slightly in his arms, the driving force of his mouth tilting her head back onto the curve of his shoulder. His hands had slipped beneath the knit tank top of her tennis outfit and were exploring the pliant softness of her flesh. The ever-growing intimacy of his caress plummeted peaks and valleys and circled, rosy crests until Victoria was driven to the edge of her endurance by the wild yearnings assaulting her. Through it all, a slender thread of sanity weaved into her consciousness.
"Dirk, stop," she breathed against his mouth, feeling the heat of his breath mingling with hers.
"Why?" He took a fraction of a second to answer as he let his mouth move over her lips, tracing their outline with his.
This half kiss was devastating to her train of thought. It was several seconds before Victoria could come up with a reason. "It's late. Josie is fixing dinner."
"I have the only thing I'm hungry for right here." His teeth made tiny love bites on her lower lip. Her own appetite wanted the same fulfillment as his.
Victoria tried once more. "I have to shower yet…and change," she whispered the weak excuse.
"We'll shower together. You wash me and I'll wash you." His hand slid from her rib cage to the center of her spine as he crushed her to his chest with a stifled groan and covered her mouth in a searing kiss.
Chapter Eight
IN THE FOYER the front door slammed. Someone came rushing up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. Locked in a pair of arms she never wanted to leave, Victoria was only half-aware of the sounds intruding on the raw bliss of the moment.
"Dirk!" Penny's voice stabbed through the golden haze with a glaring white light. "I don't hear the typewriter." Her voice and half-running footsteps approached the guest room. "Have you finished the…" Her voice stopped in midsentence as her footsteps halted at the open door.
Until that second Victoria had forgotten Dirk's bedroom door wasn't closed. Tearing her lips from the heady possession of his, her widened eyes sought the stricken face of the young girl in the doorway. The pain of disbelief and betrayal was in the suddenly brimming eyes of her sister. As if indifferent to the intruder Dirk continued to nuzzle Victoria's cheek. His arms were locked even tighter around her to pre vent her from straining free of his embrace.
"Did you want something…Laurel?" Dirk asked without ever glancing at the doorway.
"How could you?" Penny accused on a choked sob. "She's so stuckup and prissy…" There would have been more, but she couldn't hold back the tears. With a muffled cry she turned and fled to her room.
"Penny!" Victoria called after her and struggled to get loose. "You heard her coming," she accused Dirk. "Why didn't you remember the door was open? Why did you let her see us like this? That was cruel."
Dirk continued to hold her in the iron hook of one arm while his other hand captured her face and held it still. His knowing eyes examined her flushed face and lips swollen and soft from his kisses.
"It wouldn't have made any difference. She would have taken one look at you and guessed that I had been making love to you."
"But she didn't have to see," Victoria protested.
"Yes, she did," he insisted, "because she saw it was what I wanted. I don't want her having any delusions about which one of Charles Beaumont's daughters I’m interested in."
"You could have been more subtle," she accused.
"I could have," Dirk conceded with a careless shrug. "but this was swifter and more effective."
"You're a brute," she declared angrily. "Let me go. I have to talk to her and try to make her understand."
"Now?" he sighed reluctantly and let his gaze linger on her mouth.
"Yes, now!" Victoria wouldn't be sidetracked by more of his lovemaking and strained against his hold.
His arm loosened to let her go and Victoria didn't give him a chance to change his mind as she hurried out of the room into the second floor foyer. At her sister's bedroom door she stopped. From inside the room she could hear Penny weeping uncontrollably. She tried the door, but it was locked.
Glancing over her shoulder she saw Dirk leaning against the framework of his door watching her. It was a certainty that Penny was no longer infatuated with him, Victoria was sure of that, but she considered his tactic to be callous. Considering who he was, she should have expected it.
With an abrupt pivot she walked to her bedroom. She and Penny shared an adjoining bathroom. Since those doors could only be locked from inside the bathroom, it was unlikely that her younger sister had even given them a thought. She hurried to the door and the knob turned easily in her hand. Her sister's muffled cries grew louder as Victoria crossed the fluffy carpet to the other connecting door.
When she opened it she saw Penny sprawled across the bed on her stomach, her face buried in the neck of a stuffed elephant. Her waist-length blond hair was fanned across her shoulders and arms, trembling like a golden silk curtain in a strong breeze
as the young body heaved in wracking sobs. Penny was at such a sensitive age When feelings could be hurt so easily. Only this time they had been stomped on. Victoria moved toward the bed, her heart wringing in sympathy…and guilt because of the unwitting part she had played.
"Penny, I'm sorry," she murmured.
A blotched, tear-drenched face was lifted from the furry hide of the stuffed toy. "Go away!" Penny pushed the long strands of hair from the corner of her mouth, choking on the sobs that wouldn't stop. "I don't want you here!"
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Penny." Victoria knew the words were inadequate, but she wanted to comfort her young sister somehow. "It's the last thing I would do intentionally."
"You don't care!" Penny accused. "Neither do I because I hate you! I hate you!" Those words hurt, even though they were issued in the heat of unbearable pain. Unable to stop the tears Penny hid her face again in the toy elephant.
"Penny—" Victoria tried again.
"Go away!" Penny hurled the elephant in her direction, then wrapped her arms around a stuffed giraffe, part of her menagerie of toy animals that adorned the room, and hugged it tightly, shielding her face behind its slim neck.
Her aim was poor and the elephant missed Victoria by a foot. It was a second before she realized that she hadn't heard it hit the floor behind her. She turned and Dirk was standing inside the room, holding the stuffed animal he'd caught.
"What are you doing here?" she hissed under her breath, "Penny doesn't want to see you."
"I am exactly the person she wants to see," he corrected. "It's my apology she wants, not yours." He stepped out of the doorway to the bathroom so Victoria could leave.
"I'm staying," she insisted, continuing to speak in the low undertone as he had done.
Tossing the elephant in the corner, Dirk caught at her hand and pulled her toward the door. When she was level with him, he took hold of her shoulders and pushed her toward the bathroom.
"No, you aren't. Penny and I are going to talk this out in private," he stated. "Since we aren't going to be able to have that shower together, you might as well take yours now and get cleaned up for dinner."
