Temptation's Kiss

by Sandra Brown

  She sniffed back the remaining tears and smiled. “Thank you for that.”

  He smiled softly. “Don't mention it.” His thumb skimmed along her bottom row of teeth.

  “I transferred all my guilt to you,” she admitted. “I saw only what I wanted to see, heard only what I wanted to hear. I saw only your vices and was blind to your virtues.” She lay on her back, urging him to his side with a compelling hand on his shoulder. “I'm not sure you have any vices.”

  “Oh, I have plenty.” His eyes began a lecherous trek down her body. “One being…”

  “Yes?” she hummed when his hands joined in the carnal activities his eyes had initiated.

  “One being a naked lady with cinnamon-colored hair, perfect breasts, satiny skin, pink nipples that…”

  Megan knew that the night was far from over.

  Ten

  She woke to the sound of her shower running and tuneless whistling. A smile played about her lips, becoming full-blown. Suddenly she laughed out loud and hugged the pillow that retained the scent of Josh's cologne. She buried her nose in its soft depth and inhaled deeply.

  Had she ever known contentment like this? Never. Had her body ever been so satisfied? Never. Had her mind ever been so expanded, her senses so alert? Never. Had she ever so looked forward to a new day? Never.

  Having had very little sleep, she didn't know why she wasn't exhausted. Instead, tiny capsules of energy were exploding inside her, filling her body to overflowing with enthusiasm for living.

  She swung her naked legs to the floor and bounded out of bed, intent on joining Josh in the shower. Indeed, he had his nerve, using her shower without first asking permission! She laughed again before assuming a perturbed expression and stalking toward the bathroom, where the whistling was increasing in volume.

  She was brought up short by the strident ringing of the telephone. “Damn,” she cursed before lifting the receiver to her ear and saying an impatient good morning.

  “Uh, good morning, Ms. Lambert. This is Barnes.”

  Megan's brow wrinkled with puzzlement. Whatever could he want, calling long-distance at this time on a Sunday morning? “Hello, Barnes.”

  “I guess you wonder why…. You see, I was really calling Mr. Bennett, but there was no answer in his room. I knew I could count on your giving him a message.”

  Her heart slowed after having lurched in panic. Had Barnes known Josh was in her shower at this very minute? She wasn't ashamed of it; she just didn't want it to be made public yet. “What kind of message?” she asked.

  “Well, it's kind of complicated,” he began.

  ‘Try it out on me.” She shifted her weight impatiently from one foot to the other. Damn it, she didn't want to talk business; she wanted to jump in the shower with Josh, to caress with lathered hands the body she now knew so well.

  “Well, one of Josh's men, his name is Clancey—his last name, not his first. Anyway this Clancey is in charge of the new Air South campaign. You know they're ready to launch a new fleet of airplanes to—”

  “I know all about Air South's expansion and the ad campaign that will go with it. I also know that Josh's ‘agency is handling their advertising. Now, what's the message for Josh?”

  “This guy Clancey was at a party last night and got slightly sloshed. Actually, he got very sloshed. Anyway, seems Josh came down hard on him just before he left for Seascape. It's not the first time. I've heard Clancey bad-mouthing his, quote, ‘high and mighty’ boss before. No one pays any attention. I mean, everybody complains about their … uh … their…”

  “I get the point, Barnes,” Megan said dryly. “Please get to yours.”

  “Well, last night was different. He was really vindictive, you know? He threatened to take the ad campaign and sell it to Powell Associates, which is—”

  “Josh's chief competitor,” Megan finished in a hushed voice as she sank onto the bed. Her mind, catapulted out of her impatience with Barnes, was now churning with the possible repercussions such an embezzlement would have on Josh's agency. It happened, though rarely, when an ad man from one agency worked on a campaign and then auctioned it to the highest bidder. Such espionage could bring ruin to an ad agency.

  “Are you sure about this, Barnes? You're not exaggerating, are you?”

  “No. Clancey was drunk, but he knew exactly what he was saying. His wife was there. She kept begging him to shut up before he ruined everything. No, he meant it.”

  “Why would you call and tell Josh about this?”

  She could imagine the chagrined look on Barnes's face as he sighed. “I guess I feel I owe him. He didn't have to warn you about the Dixieland account. He could have let me hang myself, and it would have been no skin off his nose. As it was, well, he was responsible for my getting chewed out, but I needed chewing out.”

  Had it not been for her concern about Josh's business, she would have smiled. As it was, she said tersely, “Don't talk about this to anyone.”

  “I won't.”

  “I'll be back in the office tomorrow. We'll talk then.” She'd almost hung up when she heard him again.

  “Ms. Lambert?”

  “Yes?”

  “I had a date with that woman who was giving me a hard time.”

  “And?”

  “She won't be doing that anymore.”

  “You set her straight?”

  “No, I saw the light. I can do better.”

  Megan did smile then. “I always thought you could.”

  “Thanks for… well, you know, for everything.”

  “No. Thank you,” she said, referring to his tip on the traitor, Clancey.

  She was just replacing the receiver when two hard arms came from behind her to wrap around her waist and an avid mouth adhered itself to her neck. “That better have been a female caller, and do you know just how saucy your little rear end is?”

  “Oh, Josh,” she said, whirling around to face him. It suddenly occurred to her that she had the ammunition that she'd have given anything for even a few days ago. She had the power to totally defeat Josh if she wanted to. Withholding this information about Clancey's betrayal would cause a serious setback to his career. He'd face public ridicule for letting such a precious account slip through his fingers. He'd lose tens of thousands of dollars in revenue.

  Right there on the tip of her tongue was the secret that, left untold, would assure her of a revenge greater than any she could have dreamed. By smiling beguilingly up at him and wrapping her arms around his neck, pressing her body to his, and passing off the telephone call as a wrong number, she could lead him like a lamb to slaughter—innocent, unaware, incognizant of the disaster that was waiting for him.

  But Megan didn't even entertain the thought. She knew only an urgent need to help the man she loved.

  “Something terrible has happened, Josh.”

  His mouth swooped down on hers for a hard kiss.“You got pregnant last night? Don't worry. I'll marry you. I hope it's twins.”

  She tore her mouth free from his persistent lips. “Please. I mean it.”

  “Who was that?” he asked, snapping his head up, instantly alert to her distress. He gripped her arms.

  “Barnes.”

  The irregular brow shot upward. “Barnes!” he said scoffingly, with no small amount of relief. “Don't tell me. His girl friend's left him again.”

  “Josh, listen.” Her hands wrapped as far as they could around his biceps and shook him slightly. “You have a man named Clancey working for you.”

  “Yes,” he answered with a puzzled frown.

  “He's going to take all his work for the Air South Airline to Powell Associates.”

  He stared at her for a moment, his face expressionless. “What?” he asked at last, his voice a disbelieving whisper.

  “He and Barnes were at the same party last night. Clancey got drunk and started spouting off unflattering comments about you. Barnes said he was disgruntled over some argument you'd had with him and was threatening to take his
ideas to your competition.”

  She didn't know what to anticipate, but it wasn't the booming laughter that shook the ceiling. Josh collapsed on the bed, pulling her down with him. She was so dismayed by his absurd reaction to the disastrous news that she was almost unaware that he hadn't bothered to dress after his shower. His body hair was still slightly damp.

  “I didn't think Barnes was that ingenious,” he said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes.

  “Ingenious? Josh, don't you see—”

  “Don't you see. This is Barnes's way of getting me back. He probably even had a spy here who tattled on us. He had the bad grace to call at this time of the morning, hoping to interrupt something.” His arms closed around her back and drew her hard against him. “We won't let him, will we?”

  But she pushed the heels of her hands against his chest, her arms stiff. “Barnes isn't like that. He wasn't lying.”

  “I'm not saying he was being malicious,” Josh said in a conciliatory tone she found highly irritating. “I'm just saying he's playing a little joke on us, paying us both back for the hand-slapping we gave him.”

  She pushed off the bed, stomped over to a chair where she'd left her caftan, and pulled it over her head. “This is no joke,” she said tightly.

  “All right. So he heard someone griping about me and took his mutterings and ran with them, built a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “I think you should consider Clancey's threats as more than mutterings.”

  Josh propped up on his elbows, nonchalant in his nakedness. “Megan, why are you getting angry?”

  Again his tone annoyed her. “Because you're implying that my employee is either a spiteful sneak with a warped sense of humor or an imbecile. If you think I'd hire such a person, then I have a fair indication of the credibility you give me as a businesswoman.”

  “That's not true.”

  “The hell it isn't,” she flared. “Have you or have you not argued with Clancey?”

  “It wasn't an argument. I told him his copy for the print ads stank to high heaven and gave him two weeks to revise it.”

  “And you question his holding a grudge? I know how you can put people down. Apparently Clancey's had enough.”

  Angry in his own right now, Josh rolled off the bed, picked up his underwear from the floor where he'd shed it the night before, and tugged it up his legs. Megan's mouth grew dry as she watched him adjust himself to fit comfortably in it.

  “Clancey knew that copy was pure crap and needed changing. Usually he's a good man, with creative ideas. But too often he starts thinking of himself as a prima donna, and he can't tell good from bad because his ego gets in the way. I've taken him to task before and he always comes around. He's loyal. He'd never go over to the competition.”

  She ground her teeth. “You're so arrogant, so damn sure of yourself. I'm amazed at your self-esteem. Is everyone in the world supposed to share it, to think you're somebody special?”

  He cast a sly glance toward the bed. “You do.”

  The blood rushing to her head made her dizzy, and she gripped the edge of the dresser. “Get out,” she rasped.

  He cursed with more imagination than she'd ever heard in her life, and ran agitated fingers through his hair. “I'm sorry I said that, Megan. You made me so angry—”

  “Get out,” she repeated firmly.

  He took several steps toward her, but she gave him a venomous look that stopped him stock still in his tracks. “You know I didn't mean it.”

  She snorted a laugh. “Yes, you did.”

  “I was angry, Megan!”

  “So am I, angrier than I've ever been in my life. Not at you, but at myself. Why I didn't keep my mouth shut about Clancey and let you get your just desserts I'll never know. Now, get out!”

  In one sweeping motion he picked up the rest of his clothes. “I'll leave you alone for a while to cool off. I'm going to call Atlanta, but I'll be back, and then we'll sit down and finish this discussion calmly.”

  He went through the sliding glass doors, wearing only underwear and carrying his pants and shirt. The vague thought crossed her mind that neither could appreciate the humor of the situation now. When he returned to her room, she intended to be far away. Indeed, she felt deadly serious.

  The story made the newspapers the next morning. Megan couldn't avoid learning about it when Arlene rushed in waving a copy of the “Have you read this?”

  Megan didn't think she could stand any more emotional blows, but her heart twisted with pain for the man she once again told herself she despised. It was all there—how his disenchanted employee had taken all the work already done on the heretofore secret ad campaign for the burgeoning airline and handed it over to the executives of Powell Associates with their promise of an outlandishly high increase over what Josh was paying him.

  The reporter, as Megan thought reporters were inclined to do, painted Josh's future as blacker even than it would probably be and hinted at overindulgences such as women and booze as the causes of his lack of astuteness.

  Josh's only quoted remark—and Megan suspected it was his only quotable comment—was, “I'll have something to say when the deal is complete.”

  She looked at the picture of the man who scowled up at her from the newspaper and smoothed her finger over it as though to erase the lines of worry from his face. There was no sense in wishing away the emptiness she felt inside. It only yawned wider.

  She had packed her bags the moment Josh had retreated to his room. She had stuffed all the clothes she'd so carefully folded into the bags, dressed hurriedly, and, looking to see that she'd left nothing behind, gone to the check-in desk at Seascape.

  Getting someone to drive her to the airport had been no problem. Even the paper work involved in renting a car for the rest of the trip home was handled smoothly. Or was it that she was so immersed in her heartache that she didn't notice the hassles?

  With every mile that had clicked off between Hilton Head and Atlanta, she'd sworn that she hated Josh. He had mocked her, insulted her, made something sordid out of the splendor they'd shared, cheapened her unrestrained, loving responses to him.

  But by the time she reached her dark, lonely house, she admitted that she'd provoked him to say what he had. It would have been so easy to reasonably suggest that he call Barnes himself and have him repeat verbatim what Clancey had said. Josh could have evaluated it himself. Maybe Barnes had been overreacting.

  But she hadn't made such a suggestion. She had let pride and stubbornness blind her once again. At his first sign of indifference to her news, she'd gotten her back up. Once that happened, Lord help anyone who tried to dissuade her from the position she'd taken.

  God help Josh, was her prayer all week. The newspaper accounts grew less informative, and by Wednesday they disappeared altogether. Then she had to rely on the grapevine for information. Filtering rumor from truth became a time- and energy-consuming enterprise, but she was eager to hear the latest developments.

  “I think Clancey is seeing the error of his ways,” Barnes told Megan and Jo Hampson at the coffee machine. “Seems the folks at Air South aren't convinced that Powell can carry off the campaign with the panache that Bennett can. Clancey's hearing his own death knell.”

  As Megan left them to return to her office, she heard Barnes say, “Hey, Jo, how about dinner some night?”

  Megan's lips lifted into a smile, which seemed to be rare these days.

  Time dragged by as she waded through the paper work that had collected during her brief absence. At night, exhausted but unable to sleep, she longed for Josh. She cursed her body's aching need for him. He flitted in and out of her mind in glorious memories of their days together at Hilton Head. She saw him in every attitude—teasing her as he dragged her into the ocean, his eyes alight with mischief; laughing, his head thrown back, his eyes shining with delight as they sailed over the ground in the swing; languorous, as they lay enmeshed on her bed, his eyes glassy with the aftermath of loving her.

&n
bsp; Somehow she made it through the week.

  She arrived home late Friday evening after battling traffic that, had it been choreographed, couldn't have become more entangled. Shrugging gratefully out of her clothes and pulling on a thin cotton robe that zipped up the front, she padded barefoot into the kitchen to eat the pizza she'd ill-advisedly crossed six lanes of traffic to pick up.

  “Damn.” As she pulled the top of the cardboard box away, the mozzarella she'd paid an extra dollar for stuck to it. It was the proverbial last straw. Dropping dejectedly into a chair, she laid her head on the butcher-block table and wept.

  Her thin shoulders shook convulsively; tears coursed down her cheeks. She wept for the husband she hadn't loved enough, for the man she loved now. She cried for their lost love. She wept because she couldn't go to him now, when he needed her most.

  Mascara dripped onto the surface of the table, and she smeared it even more when she tried to wipe it up with her hand. “What the hell difference does it make?” she sobbed. “Who ever sees it?”

  “Did you say something?”

  She spun around on the chair seat, fear clutching in her throat at the low, masculine voice. Josh was leaning against the doorjamb. His face looked almost as ravaged as hers must. There were dark circles under his eyes, his cheeks seemed sunken, and his rakish brow had lost some of it's cockiness. His suit coat was slung over one shoulder and held there by a crooked index finger. His vest hung open. White shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows and his tie was loosened. It gave her a vague sense of comfort to know that Joshua Bennett's clothes could wrinkle just like anyone else's.

  She swiped at the tears on her face and stood up slowly. For once she didn't bristle, didn't squawk. She didn't demand to know what he was doing there. She did exactly what she wanted to do.

  She walked into his arms.

  They came around her like a protective cloak and hugged her tight. For long moments they clung to each other, not speaking, not kissing, not caressing, only rocking together. She imbibed his strength. He was what she wanted.