*'The door's open," Kayla said coolly. 'Talk. You have—" she glanced pointedly at her watch ''—five minutes."
Matt stared at her. She was wearing a short plaid skirt, black tights with suede ankle boots and a black shirt covered by a long red blazer. Her long curly hair was pulled high into a thick pony tail. "You look more like a college girl than a sUck media wizard," he blurted out.
"Slick media wizard," she repeated tautly. "That's it. You just forfeited your five minutes." She started to close the door, but he was too quick for her. He caught it with both hands and pushed, keeping it open.
"We're going to talk," he said firmly.
"Why? I've already heard your opinion on political handlers and slick media wizards. So why waste your precious time talking to me?"
Matt frowned. *'Look, can I come in? I'm getting tired of standing out here in the hall arguing with you."
*'So you want to come inside and argue with me? I'd rather not, thank you. I'm in the middle of my dinner."
Matt gave up waiting to be asked inside and simply came in on his own. Unless she wanted to block him physically Kay la had no choice but to stand aside and let him in. She was not about to risk any physical contact whatsoever. Scowling, she returned to Kristina's small kitchen table where her sandwich laid unappetizingly on the plate.
Matt followed her. ''That's your dinner?" He made a face. ''Ugh. Not much of a cook, are you?"
"I can defrost and heat things in the microwave as well as the next person," Kay la retorted.
"Well, it looks like you nuked that sandwich. Want to get some Chinese takeout? My treat."
Kayla picked up her sandwich. It was hard and cold. She laid it back on the plate. "I can't. I'm leaving for Washington tonight. As soon as possible." She sent him a withering glance. "If you'll excuse me, I have to finish packing."
It was definitely a cue for him to leave. Kayla started out of the kitchen, expecting him to follow her so she could show him the door. Instead, he sat down on one of Kristina's ladderback kitchen chairs.
Kayla whirled around to glare at him. "You have to leave right now, Matthew Minteer."
"First, answer one question for me, Kayla. It's something that's been bothering me and I need an answer."
Kayla sighed. "I'm probably going to regret this, but go ahead and ask."
He leaned forward, his gaze intense. "Why are you in the field you're in, Kayla? Whatever made you to want to work in such a—"
"Some little girls dream of growing up to be ballerinas or nurses or teachers," Kayla cut in. "/ dreamed of being a political handler. From the time I was in kindergarten, I
pictured myself mapping out campaign strategy, crafting newsworthy sound bites for the six o'clock news."
*'Turning American politics into a corrupt big-money game," Matt interjected sharply.
''Oh well, there's that, too," she said flippantly. "All part of the dream."
"You can make jokes, but it's not funny, Kay la." Matt stood up, balling his hands into fists. "Don't you see what's happened? In politics today, it's no longer a matter of what a candidate has to say, but how many millions he can raise from special interest groups and how those millions are spent by the vultures who create slick media pieces. The ordinary voter feels powerless and left out and he is, because of dissemblers Hke Dillon and Ward and—and—"
"Me," Kayla said flatly.
"Yes. You." He walked toward her. "Kayla, I've thought about this. Hell, I've thought of nothing else since Friday when you told me what you do, what you are." Matt came to a stop a few inches away from her. He was breathing fast and hard, his pulse pounding. "I firmly believe that a person is what he or she does, Kayla."
"You believe that a person's occupation is directly linked to his character, or the lack of it?" She gave a derisive laugh. "How simpHstic can you get! What about corrupt cops or nurses who kill their patients? And where do those television preachers who bilk their believers fit into your tidy scheme of things?"
"I don't think occupations define character as much as actions do. And there are exceptions to every rule, of course, but-"
"Then you'll have to agree, won't you, that it's possible for someone in the public relations field of political image-making to be honest and ethical and not be bent on duping the voters at any price?"
'Td hate to debate you in front of an audience," Matt said, frowning. *'You're very skilled at arguing your position."
'*It's not that I'm so very skilled, it's that your position is so blindly stupid it takes very little to strike at it."
His frown deepened. "And somehow you manage to make me feel defensive when I know I'm right. You're very clever, Kayla."
Kayla groaned. ''Obviously, I'm not clever enough to make a stubborn, prejudiced blockhead like you consider changing his mind, though. Is that what you came here to tell me—that I am what I do?''
Matt cleared his throat. "I came to tell you that I—I can't see you anymore, Kayla."
She had trained herself to expect the unexpected. In her field, anything could happen and often did. But occasionally, she was caught completely off guard. The night of Matt's fund-raiser had been one time. This was another.
"Let me get this straight," she said coldly, her hazel eyes flashing. "You came all the way over here, barging into my sister's apartment uninvited, to tell me that you can't see me anymore? When we weren't seeing each other to begin with? When I had no intention of ever seeing you again anyway?"
Put like that, it sounded ridiculous. He felt ridiculous. A slow flush crept from his neck to his cheeks. "I was trying to do the right thing. I felt I owed you an explanation," he murmured uneasily.
"You don't owe me anything! Get out of here." She gave him a hard shove. She couldn't remember ever being this infuriated, except perhaps the last time she was in Matt Minteer's presence.
"I couldn't just stop seeing you without a word," Matt protested. "I'm not the kind of guy who casually sleeps with a woman and never calls her again."
% EXDUBLE TROUBLE
''So you decided to insult me in person, to dump me facc-to-face!" Enraged, Kayla gave him another push toward the door. "How honorable!"
"I was trying to be honorable," Matt said desperately.
He was making a terrible mess of it, he conceded glumly. And no wonder. He'd been in frenzied conflict with himself since Kayla had announced that she was one of those heinous image-makers he'd always purported to despise. It stood to reason then, that he should despise her, too. But he didn't; he couldn't kid himself about that. All week he had been driving himself crazy trying to come to terms with his desire to pursue what he'd always loathed.
Finally, his cool, calm and controlled self had prevailed. Because he was a gentleman, an honorable man, instead of simply never bothering to see her again, he would do the gentlemanly, honorable thing and tell her why. After all, they had spent a night together and then he'd come on pretty strong to her at Bootleggers last week. She deserved an explanation
Or so he'd thought. But her irate reaction indicated that he had gravely erred by coming here. He had ended up quarreling with her and had inadvertently insulted her. And now she was furious—he'd never seen anyone that mad! ''Kayla, I'm sorry," he said, feeling frustrated and foolish and misunderstood.
His apology was not well received. ''Oh, you're sorry, are you? Exactly what are you sorry for. Matt? Are you sorry that I'm not good enough for you? Sorry that I fall short of your impeccably high standards?" She put both hands on his chest, and using all her strength, gave him a forceful push at the same moment he tried to step aside to dodge her.
Neither of them saw the wooden magazine rack in his path. When he zigzagged to the left, his foot caught the side of it, and the momentum from her shove sent him flying off balance. Falling backward, he stretched out his arms, try-
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ing to grab on to something to stabilize him. However, the only thing within reach was Kayla herself.
When he caught her arms, she instinctively clutched at him and lost her own footing. They landed in a tangled heap on the floor, just inches away from Kristina's glass coffee table.
Winded and stunned by the tumble, they both lay silently for a moment or two. Kayla recovered first. After all, she'd had Matt to break her fall, landing on top of him. '*You oaf!" she cried. '*We almost crashed through the glass table. We could've been cut to pieces!"
Matt gingerly drew a breath. He'd hit the wood floor with his back and his head and both were throbbing. *'You're the one who knocked me over." A humiUating admission; she was so much smaller but he'd gone down Uke a bowling pin.
*'Well, you tackled me!" she accused indignantly.
*'I did not. You lunged at me. Ouch." He disentangled his hand from beneath her hip to rub at his head. *'Damn, that hurts."
Without thinking, she touched the spot he was rubbing. His hair felt thick and clean, her fingers tangled with his. * There might be the beginnings of a very small bump," she said tentatively.
*'Small? It's swelling so fast, it'll be the size of a tennis ball soon." He swallowed hard. The pain was actually subsiding very quickly. The touch of her hand massaging his head was a blissfully healing balm. Their fingers collided again. The lump on his head might be swelling, but Matt was excruciatingly aware that something else, somewhere else, in his body definitely was. Given the intimacy of their positions, she had to be aware of it, too.
Their eyes met and held. Both were acutely conscious of the soft weight of her breasts pressing into the muscular breadth of his chest. They lay together, her atop him, stomach to stomach, thigh to thigh, loin to loin. And neither of them moved. They didn't dare.
*'Kayla." He whispered her name in a husky, gravelly voice that sounded so sexy to her that a sharp glowing ache began to tighten deep inside her. A hungry fire blazed in his dark blue eyes.
His gaze electrified her. Her hands trembling, she skimmed her fingers over his high cheekbones, along the sharply defined line of his jaw. She was achingly aware of his burgeoning male arousal and a syrupy warmth flowed through her in response. She felt his arms come around her and it felt so natural, so right that she didn't even question it, let alone attempt to stop him.
''This is crazy," he growled. He was reeling from the instantaneous force of his desire for her, of his wild response to her. Why, why did he have to want her so much? He'd never been governed by sexual need; for years he had channeled his intensity and his energy into causes. No woman had ever come close to breaking the wall of self-control that guarded his passion—no woman until Kayla McClure. Who was everything he wanted and everything he despised combined. A tormenting paradox.
'Tve been crazy since the night I met you," he groaned.
Kayla tried to think of a snappy comeback, a biting or funny remark to lessen the fiery sexual tension gripping them. But her mind went blank. She could only stare into his deep blue eyes, knowing that a corresponding hunger was reflected in her own.
It seemed inevitable. Their mouths came together with breathtaking impact. Her lips parted for his tongue that surged bold and insistent into her mouth. They kissed deeply, fiercely, possessively, again and again. Kayla clung to him, her nails digging into his back, her mouth ardent and tender under his. The heady passion erased all sense of time and place. Forgotten as well was the war she and Matt had been waging, their mutual vows to stay away from each
Other, to end whatever was between them before it could really begin.
Except that it had already begun, much as a spark smolders quietly and unnoticed until suddenly it blazes into a conflagration too strong and too wild to control.
Seven
Later that evening, as she drove back to Washington through a steady, heavy rainstorm, Kayla wondered what would have happened if, while ardently absorbed in one of those long deep kisses, they hadn't heard voices right outside the door, then the sound of a key being inserted into the lock. If she and Matt had been left alone for the evening, would those hungry kisses they'd shared have progressed into a full-fledged session of lovemaking?
Though it shamed her to admit, Kayla knew she wouldn't have stopped Matt from making love to her. She couldn't have stopped him. She'd been too far-gone, her common sense and her self-control overwhelmed by the raging needs Matt so effortlessly evoked in her. And from the intensity and force of his own responses, she doubted that he could have stopped, either. So it was a safe bet that she and Matt would have ended up in bed again—that is, if they'd made it that far and hadn
't satisfied their tempestuous desires right there on the living-room floor.
A flash of heat streaked through her. Kayla shifted uncomfortably, clutching the steering wheel tightly. She dragged her mind from the tantalizing fantasy she was beginning to spin and thought about what had actually happened as she and Matt had lain together, wild and uninhibited, on that hard, wood floor.
Female voices, cheerful and laughing, had sounded through the door, and Kayla had instantly recognized one of them as her sister's. She pulled away from Matt and jumped to her feet, her body shaking with aroused desire and unmet needs.
'*It's Kristina!" she'd exclaimed huskily, and Matt had groaned and slowly sat up, just as the front door opened.
Kristina and two other women came in. There stood Kayla, tousled and trembling, her mouth swollen from the ardent force of Matt's kisses while he sat on the floor, looking dazed, his blue eyes glazed.
''Oh dear," exclaimed Kristina in dismay. ''I didn't mean to—I never thought that—" She exhaled and started over again. ''You see, when I got to the restaurant, I realized that I'd forgotten my wallet. Wasn't that stupid of me? I forgot to put it in this bag when I changed purses tonight and so Lorraine and Diane and I decided to—"
"Kristina, you're babbhng," Kayla interrupted softly.
"Well, can you blame me? I'm mortified! Kayla, Matt, I'm so sorry for barging in on you like this."
Matt rose slowly to his feet. Ever aware of implications, Kayla knew that he couldn't be happy to have three lobbyists find him in—well, not exactly in flagrante dehcto, but sort of close to it. She felt compelled to offer him a way to save face, to smooth over the situation and put everybody at ease.
"You're not interrupting anything, Kristina. Matt tripped and nearly fractured his skull on your glass coffee table. Luckily, there was no harm done, but he... uh... needed a little time to regain his bearings."
Too late, Kayla saw the icy disapproval in his eyes and the sardonic smile twist his lips. She could almost read his mind: there she was, the image-maker at work, distorting the truth to control perceptions, a slick facile liar who couldn't even be honest with her own twin sister! // isn't like that! she wanted to protest. Fm not like that!
Double trouble Page 9
