Paper Rose

by Diana Palmer

  He drew on his briefs and his slacks, glancing down at her with amused delight. “One of us has to be sensible,” he told her. “Colby’s probably on his way back right now.”

  “But he just left…”

  “Almost an hour ago,” he finished for her, nodding toward the clock on the bedside table.

  She sat up, her eyes wide with surprise.

  “I took a long time with you,” he said gently. “Didn’t you notice?”

  She laughed self-consciously. “Well, yes, but I didn’t realize it was that long.”

  He drew her off the bed and bent to kiss her tenderly, nuzzling her face with his. “Was I worth waiting for?” he asked.

  She smiled. “What a silly question.”

  He kissed her again, but when he lifted his head he wasn’t smiling. “I loved what we did together,” he said quietly. “But I should have been more responsible.”

  She knew what he was thinking. He hadn’t used anything, and he surely knew that she wasn’t. She flattened her hand against his bare chest. “There’s a morning-after pill. I’ll drive into the city tomorrow and get one,” she said, lying like a sailor. She had no intention of doing that, but it would comfort him.

  He found that he didn’t like that idea. It hurt something deeply primitive in him. He scowled. “That could be dangerous.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  He traced her fingernails while he tried to think. It seemed like a fantasy, a dream. He’d never had such an experience with a woman in his life.

  She closed her eyes and moved closer to him. “I could never have done that with anyone else,” she whispered. “It was even more beautiful than my dreams.”

  His heart jumped. That was how it felt to him, too. He tilted her face so that he could search her soft eyes. She was radiant; she almost glowed. “Kiss me,” he murmured softly.

  She did. But he wasn’t smiling. She could almost see the thoughts in his face. “You didn’t force me, Tate,” she said gently. “I made a conscious decision. I made a choice. I needed to know if what had happened to me had destroyed me as a woman. I found out in the most wonderful way that it hadn’t. I’m not ashamed of what we did together.”

  “Neither am I.” He turned, his face still tormented. “But it wasn’t my right.”

  “To be the first?” She smiled gently. “It would have been you eight years ago or eight years from now. I don’t want anyone else—not that way. I never did.”

  He actually winced. “Cecily…”

  “I’m not asking for declarations of undying love. I won’t cling. I’m not the type.” She moved in front of him. “You have to go home,” she told him.

  He seemed puzzled. “I am home.”

  “You know what I mean. I’ll dig whatever Colby’s discovered out of him, and I’ll tell the right people what they need to know.” She reached up and tangled her hands in his long, thick hair, loving the feel of it in her fingers. She smiled and then touched his mouth gently. “You said that it would be the two of us from now on, if this happened. That there would be no more Audrey, no other woman. That you’d come to me to be comforted, to be cared for.”

  He took great handfuls of her own wonderfully soft hair and framed her face in his lean hands. He bent to kiss her with breathless tenderness, savoring her warm mouth. “I will. Even if I don’t know that I can cope with that again,” he said huskily.

  “With lovemaking?”

  He took a long, long look at her. “You don’t know much about this,” he said finally. “There are…degrees of pleasure. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s even great. Once in a lifetime or so, it’s sacred.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You were a virgin,” he whispered solemnly. “But we joined souls. I was inside you, but you were inside me, too.” He nuzzled her nose with his. “I remember wondering if a man could die of pleasure, just at the last. It was so good that it was almost painful.”

  She smiled. “I know. I love you,” she said softly.

  He looked away from her. His hands on her shoulders were bruising.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, pulling away. “You don’t want to hear that. But it’s a fact of life, like middens and projectile points and horizons in archaeology. I can’t help it, and it isn’t as if you didn’t already know. I couldn’t have slept with you only because I wanted you. Not with my past.”

  He knew that. He knew it to the soles of his feet. He was confused and afraid and overwhelmed by the passion they’d shared. It was an addictive, narcotic experience that left him shaken and uncertain for the first time in his life.

  She looked up at him, matter-of-fact now, even if she was shattered inside. “Listen to me, you have to go home,” she said quietly. “There’s a reason, a good one, that you shouldn’t be here.”

  “That’s what Holden said. Why? I know how to be discreet. If there’s something going on here, I have every right to help find out what. You know how I feel about the casino. How can you be sure that Holden hasn’t engineered this so-called renegade gambling syndicate idea to get support against gambling on the res?”

  “I’m sure he hasn’t,” she replied. “But either way, it isn’t my secret to tell,” she lied. “Just by being here, you’re jeopardizing an innocent person’s future.”

  He frowned down at her, with both hands in his pockets. He looked as if he hadn’t really heard her. “Cecily, I want you to move in with me when you come back to Washington,” he said with sudden decisiveness.

  Her heart turned over, but she shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve already been your financial responsibility for too long. I’m my own woman now. I’m independent. I can take care of myself.”

  “And once with me, like that, was enough?” he asked in a soft, sensual tone.

  She smiled. “It would never be enough if we did it four times a day for the rest of our lives, and you know it,” she said. “But I won’t be your mistress, Tate.”

  “Cecily…” he began hesitantly.

  “Go home and stop feeling guilty about something we both wanted. I’m not going to intrude in your life. I haven’t asked for anything, and I won’t.” She reached up and kissed him just below the jaw. “And you needn’t worry about consequences. There won’t be any. Okay?”

  He felt those words right through the heart. He’d forced her into that decision with his fanaticism about not mixing blood. He knew that if she did anything, she’d never be able to live with it. She wasn’t the type to put her own needs first, regardless of the trouble it caused. He finished dressing while she got her own things back on. He didn’t speak, but he was thinking, worrying. When they were back in the living room, he hesitated. “Listen, you don’t need to do anything,” he said abruptly.

  “What?”

  “That pill,” he said stiffly. “I don’t like the idea of it.”

  She liked having him worry about her. She wondered if he usually made love like that, to other women. She wished she knew more about men. It had been an incredible experience for her, the most beautiful of her entire life. She felt whole. But she didn’t want Tate to suspect that she had no intention of taking any sort of preventative measures.

  Her voice was soothing. “Whatever you say. Go home.” She caught his hand in hers, opened the front door and led him right out to the side of his rented sport utility vehicle. “Everything’s fine. You have nothing to worry about.”

  “Stop pushing me toward the airport, damn it!” he said angrily.

  “I’m not pushing. I’m coaxing.”

  “I don’t want to go,” he said, and whether or not she realized it, that statement came straight from his heart.

  “Sometimes we all have to do things we don’t want to,” she reminded him. “I’m going to be all right. It’s absolutely the wrong time of the month for anything unexpected to happen,” she added firmly, lying through her teeth.

  “It is?” he asked, with some vague sense of disappointmen
t.

  She smiled and nodded. “It is. Now have a nice trip.”

  He gave in. He got in under the wheel and slammed the door. “If it’s the wrong time of month, then you won’t need to put yourself at risk with some chemical, will you?”

  “No, I won’t,” she assured him.

  “Or any other way?” he persisted.

  She smiled at him. “No,” she promised.

  He smiled back, framing her in his memory like that, with her glorious long blond hair loosened and blowing around her soft oval face. Her glasses were still off, and he wondered if she could see him clearly. “If you need me, I’ll come back. All you have to do is call me.”

  “I know that.” She moved closer so that she could search his black eyes. It was different, the way he looked at her now. It was…possessive, but not in the old way.

  He reached out and touched the collar of her blouse, the clean one she’d grabbed up from the chair in her room, the one that she’d put the crab pin on. “Do you like it?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Yes. Thank you. He’s beautiful. I’m, uh, sorry about the lapful of crab bisque,” she said belatedly and with a helpless chuckle.

  “As you saw in the bedroom,” he said with a wicked glance, “it didn’t do any lasting damage to the area it flooded.”

  She flushed and he laughed.

  “I suppose I’m leaving,” he murmured dryly. “Come here and kiss me goodbye and I’ll go, if I must.”

  She stepped on the running board and let him kiss her, savoring the wealth of black hair in her hands and the slow, sweet hunger of his mouth. “Why did you take your hair down?” she asked breathlessly when his head lifted.

  “You don’t know? Ask my mother.” He pursed his lips. “Or better yet, ask Colby. He knew the minute he saw me why I’d done it.” His eyes began to darken. “If he touches you, I’ll cost him more than a few stitches next time. You belong to me now.”

  He started the vehicle and she moved back. He waved one last time as he drove away before she could give him a speech about people not being possessions. She watched him go with vestiges of pleasure still rippling through her body. She wished she could go with him. He’d have time to think, and he’d convince himself that he’d taken advantage of her. Or maybe, she thought optimistically, he’d convince himself that he couldn’t live without her. After all, he had asked her to move in. She turned with a sigh, troubled. She didn’t want to live with him unless they were married. It might be a modern world, but Cecily wasn’t modern. And he wouldn’t marry her. She knew that for a fact. He wouldn’t marry her because there weren’t going to be any children; not any that he knew about, she amended.

  As she started up the porch she recalled abruptly what loosened hair meant. In the old days, just before going to war, some Plains warriors unbound their hair even as they added war paint patterns to their faces, their own special “medicine” to protect them from wounds in battle. She laughed softly to herself as she realized the significance of what Tate had done. Without a word, he’d told Colby that he was in for a fight.

  Chapter Eight

  Cecily was very calm by the time Colby returned, despite the shattering events of the past hour.

  “How did you get him to leave?” he asked amusedly.

  “I gave him a quarter,” she murmured dryly.

  “That never worked for me.”

  “I wouldn’t try it if I were you,” she advised with a forced smile.

  He grinned at her. “I can’t help but agree, considering that unbound hair. Nice of him to make his intentions clear. I suppose you’re off-limits now.”

  She chuckled. “That’s what he meant. But I’ll decide that for myself.”

  He smiled, but he could see the look in her eyes. There was never going to be anyone except Tate for her. He understood. He had his own ghosts. But it was nice that Tate had finally realized and accepted Cecily’s importance in his life.

  She motioned him to a seat on the couch. “I want to know, I have to know, what Tom told you.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t,” he said. “You’ll have to trust that he’s being threatened with something concrete. He stands to lose everything if he’s exposed.”

  Tom, Senator Holden, Leta, Tate…everyone stood to lose something. She felt furiously impotent. “I hate blackmailers,” she said through her teeth. “There must be something we can do!”

  “There is,” he assured her. “I’m going to do a black-bag job.”

  “A who?”

  “You’ve been hanging around Tate long enough to know what I’m talking about. It’s covert ops. And I’m not telling you anything more,” he added firmly. “I’ll have you a name by tomorrow. Maybe even a location. Will that do?”

  She brightened. “Oh, yes. That will do.”

  Tate had a meeting with Pierce Hutton in Washington the day after he flew back from South Dakota. His head was still spinning, and he still felt guilty about taking advantage of Cecily’s feelings for him—in between exquisite dreams of her that got worse by the hour.

  “Your mind isn’t on this,” his broad-shouldered, dark-headed boss muttered when he kept staring into space.

  “Sorry,” Tate said at once. “I’ve had a…diversion lately.”

  “So I recall.” His eyes narrowed. “I hear she’s staying with your mother and looking for new exhibits for the museum.”

  Tate glowered at him.

  “Why don’t you take a few days off and go out there?”

  “I did. She practically lifted me into my truck and sent me on my way.”

  “Amazing girl. Carried you there, did she?” Pierce mused.

  Tate gave him a hard glare. “She’s doing something risky. I don’t know what. Nobody will tell me anything.”

  “It’s probably an elaborate birthday celebration in the planning stages,” he commented, stretching out his long legs in a deck chair. “Brianne did the same thing to me on my birthday.” He grinned. “We had a major opera star and two famous baseball players, not to mention a string quartet and a French chef.”

  “Decadent, absolutely decadent,” Tate scoffed.

  “You can come to the next one. Bring Cecily.”

  The thought of going out with Cecily made him feel warm inside. They’d rarely gone anywhere together. As she’d once said, he ordered in food to her apartment and they watched television on his free days. His life had been unspeakably lonely without her. Now, it was worse. In the old days, he’d never had any intimate memories to torment him. He missed her badly, in every way there was. He thought ahead to a time when she might fit quite nicely into his life.

  “I might do that,” he mused absently.

  Pierce leaned back. “Now, if you can spare the time to listen, I’ll tell you what needs doing.”

  Tate leaned forward with a faintly apologetic smile. “Sorry. Go right ahead.”

  When he got back to his apartment, it was unlocked. Frowning, he opened it and walked inside. Audrey was in the small kitchen, taking food out of the oven.

  “There you are,” she said brightly, as if he’d never told her their relationship, superficial though it was, had ended.

  “How did you get in?” he asked curtly. He was angry because she had a habit of invading his privacy and he’d just had the locks changed.

  “The manager let me in, of course, just as he always does,” she said. “Here, I fixed supper.”

  “I’ve had supper,” he said flatly. “I had it with my boss. You can leave whenever you like.”

  She looked shocked and there was a strange glitter in her eyes. “Why? Tate, I’m cultured, I’m talented, I’m quite beautiful, and I’d be willing to do anything you liked in bed.”

  He just stared at her. His eyes were colder than they’d ever been. “We’ve been friends, Audrey. I hope we still are. But no one encroaches on my privacy without an invitation. That includes you.”

  She took off the oven mitt and turned off the oven. Seconds later, tears were running do
wn her cheeks. “Oh, dear,” she said. Her lower lip trembled and she managed a brave little smile. “Are you mad at little Audrey?”

  He opened the door and stood holding it. He couldn’t imagine touching her again, even innocently, after what he’d shared with Cecily. He was still reeling mentally from an experience that surpassed any interlude he’d ever had with a woman.

  Seeing that the ruse wasn’t working, Audrey wiped the crocodile tears off her cheek and shrugged. “Well, don’t think I’m giving up,” she said as she swept up her coat and started past him. Her blue eyes lifted to his and she smiled coquettishly. “Just imagine how many men would love to be in your shoes. I’m rich.”

  On her ex-husband’s money, he thought, but he didn’t say it. “So am I.”

  She laughed a little hollowly. “You’re Native American,” she said. “They aren’t rich.”

  “This one is.” Her belittling words wounded him, but it didn’t show on his face. “Good night, Audrey.”

  “You aren’t going to humiliate me with the brush-off,” she said suddenly, staring at him with fixed eyes. “I won’t be dumped by a man with your background! I’m not some pitiful little archaeology nerd that you can just cast off when you feel like it!”

  He could have cursed his own stupidity at that moment. What had he ever seen in this woman that had made him let her into his life, even in a minor way?

  “You’ll never be half the woman that Cecily is,” he said curtly.

  She smiled coldly. He couldn’t know that Cecily had phoned while he was out; that Audrey had answered the phone. He didn’t know that she’d told Cecily all about the designer wedding dress she was having made, or the purring insinuation about how wonderful a lover Tate was. And he wouldn’t know. Cecily’s pride wouldn’t let her mention it to him, and Audrey wasn’t talking. Tate belonged to her. She wasn’t going to lose him.

  “I’ll be around when you come to your senses, darling,” Audrey purred. “But, of course, you don’t really mean to throw me out of your life. You’ll come back. They always do.”