by Anne Stuart
“Marita.” He acknowledged her presence, knowing he should make a move before the hungry hordes surrounding them attacked her. He opened his mouth to say something, but instead he turned back to Laura, to the look of smug pride in her eyes. “How do you like the renovations so far?”
If she was disappointed that he hadn’t made more of a fuss over Marita, she hid it admirably. “I’m deciding whether to sue you or not,” she said pleasantly, nodding toward Marita. The tall model moved off through the room, and the crowd surrounding them followed, leaving Laura and Michael temporarily isolated. Even Frank and her assistant had disappeared, though Michael could still see the mane of too-long hair drifting over the perfectly cut tuxedo.
“Is he your lover?” He hadn’t meant to ask that. He couldn’t understand why he had, unless he’d simply wanted to startle her. The private investigator’s report hadn’t mentioned any romantic or sexual involvement, but as she’d already pointed out to him, the report had missed a few important details.
“Frank?” she echoed, highly amused. “No. Why do you ask?”
His first mistake, he chided himself, his expression giving nothing away. He’d have to recoup his losses. “What about Marita?”
“I believe both of them are at present uninvolved.” She glanced over the crowds with deliberate care. “I doubt it will stay that way for long with Marita. She’s caused quite a stir.”
“I noticed,” he said wryly, not bothering to follow her gaze.
“You aren’t interested?” There was no anxiety in her face, only a mild curiosity, but Michael wasn’t fooled. “I thought you liked beautiful women.”
“I do. And Marita is very beautiful indeed. I just don’t think there’s any rush.”
“Don’t you?”
“I’m not really vain, Laura, but how many unmarried multimillionaires are there who are younger than forty? And I’m considered passably attractive, besides.”
Her eyes widened for a moment, just a tiny start of shock that he couldn’t quite interpret. “Maybe you can afford to wait,” she conceded.
“Besides, I’m more interested in you right now.”
“You’re more interested in my building right now,” she corrected him. “I’ll blow this place up myself before I let you have it.”
“Why?”
She looked genuinely startled, as if she’d never considered the question before. “Why?” she echoed.
“I mean, is it just me, or is it developers in general, or anyone not devoted to your sainted grandfather’s heritage, or what?”
“All of the above.”
He was suddenly very, very angry. “Lady,” he said, biting off the words, “you are going down in flames.”
“Mister,” she said, her manner just as deadly, “I’ll take you with me.” And without another word she spun on her high heels and swept away. Within seconds she was gone, her tiny figure swallowed up by the crowd, vanished as if by magic.
It took him a moment to remember that she knew this building better than anyone. She knew, for example, where the freight elevators and utility staircases were. She could disappear faster than a magician, but there was no trick to it at all.
And then he realized that while a great number of people were trailing around after the mysterious Marita, there’d been still enough guests left to follow his brief conversation with Ms. Laura Winston with great interest.
If he’d been a man with less self-control, he would have ordered out all the curious, chattering parasites. But he hadn’t let either his emotions or his anger get the better of him for close to fifteen years, and he would be damned before he let a supercilious little girl like Laura make him lose his cool.
There were a great many tall men and women in the room. After all, his guest list had included the rich and powerful, and a great proportion of them were tall. But no one had a curtain of sunlit hair, no one moved with such mysterious grace. His eyes narrowed as he took in the crowd surrounding her. He would have preferred to continue sparring with his nemesis, but that option had been summarily removed. For once he’d have to settle for second best. And if second best looked like Marita, it wasn’t such a hardship, after all.
“Where do you think you’re going, darling?” Frank’s voice was lazy in her ear, but the hand on her wrist surprisingly strong and inflexible.
“I’m going after Laura,” Susan replied, tugging uselessly at his grip. She hadn’t realized Frank was quite so strong.
“Laura’s a big girl. She can take care of herself. Relax and enjoy the party.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Shouldn’t you be working the room?”
“I’m not in the mood for it.”
“Neither am I.” She tugged again, and this time he released her. “I really do think I should see how Laura’s doing.”
“I really think you should forget about work for a change.” He reached for her again, slipping an arm beneath hers and steering her toward the elevators. “Let’s go find something to eat, and I can tell you all my troubles.”
“I thought you didn’t have any money,” she said, allowing herself to be convinced.
“I don’t. But you have, don’t you, darling? You can treat a poor starving model to dinner?”
“If you like McDonald’s.”
“Susan!”
“I’m kidding. We’ll go to someplace nice and middle-class and eat home cooking.”
“I’d rather die. We’ll go to a place near my apartment. A vegetarian place. Maybe I’ll even be generous and go dutch.”
Susan looked up at him in mock admiration. “You’re a prince.” She shouldn’t go, she knew it. She’d worry about Laura, and two or three hours of Frank telling her about his love life and treating her like a sister would be at best a mixed blessing. It was, however, one she couldn’t resist. For tonight Laura would have to survive on her own. She cast one last, worried glance toward the center of the room and Marita’s tall, graceful figure. “I’m not sure about Marita. She’s not used to New Yorkers.”
“She can handle herself,” Frank drawled.
“She’s really quite young and unsophisticated,” Susan said earnestly, shocked by Frank’s unsympathetic tone. “Maybe we should keep an eye on her.”
“If you think she’s coming along, you can forget it. Trust me. Mary Ellen Murphy can take care of herself. She’s got an innate sense of self-preservation that not even the toughest New Yorker is going to be able to dent. I’d worry more about the other people here.”
Susan could see Michael Dubrovnik’s dark head bent close to Marita’s, his narrow, clever face seemingly rapt. “At least Laura’s getting what she wanted,” she murmured.
“Is she?” Frank asked cryptically. “Come on, sweetheart. I need to unburden my boyish heart, and you’re the perfect listener.”
“Everyone’s mother,” Susan agreed, half under her breath as she stepped onto the elevator.
Frank heard her. The gilt and glass box was crowded, pushing him against Susan, and the expression in his aquamarine eyes was thoughtful. But he never said a word.
Chapter Five
Laura usually slept till nine, waking slowly, grumpily, sipping black French roast coffee until her eyelids were propped open. It took her half an hour to even contemplate anything more demanding than her coffee, and she was seldom dressed before eleven. The morning after Michael’s party she was particularly in need of sleep. Alone in her wide bed, she’d tossed and turned all night long, listening to the sound of traffic far below, listening for the sound of voices one flight below. She’d finally drifted off sometime around three, cursing Michael Dubrovnik and his assembled ancestry.
At seven-thirty that morning her eyes flew open, her hands reached out to grip the side of her bed, and her heart pounded against the cool cotton sheets. For a moment she lay there, dazed, not knowing what had ripped her from the thick cocoon of sleep.
The sound came again, thunder rumbling in the bright morning sky, shaking her bed, shaking
the building. She stared in horror as the hairline cracks in one panel of glass slowly, gracefully glided upward.
She sat up, instantly, furiously awake. Jumping from bed, she grabbed the mauve silk kimono, pulled it around its matching teddy and ran from her bedroom in rage, her bare feet scurrying across the thick carpeting.
She slammed back her door, leaving it wide open for potential thieves and muggers, and ran down the utility stairs, two flights, her anger white-hot, blotting out any rational sense of who and where she was. She pounded on the ninth-floor door with both fists.
“Dubrovnik!” she shrieked, her voice hoarse with early morning fog. “Open the damned door, you creep! Open it!”
She kept pounding, making too much noise to hear the footsteps approach on the other side. The door open, she stumbled in, and it took all of the tiny bit of self-control she still possessed to keep from pounding on Michael Dubrovnik.
He was wearing a smug smile, a towel around his hips, and nothing else. “Good morning,” he said, his voice even. “Can I get you some coffee?”
She slammed the door shut behind her, and the spidery network of cracks in the glass panels spread in response. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I was taking a shower. Now I’m going to have a cup of coffee. Can I get you anything?” Another rumble punctuated his polite question, and Laura clenched her fists, clenched them so tightly that she almost drew blood.
“Stop them,” she said.
“Stop whom?”
“Don’t play games with me. You’re having people blast too close to the Glass House. Don’t you realize what you’re doing? Can’t you see the damage you’ve already caused?” She gestured toward the cracked glass.
“I’m not doing that. The building is unsafe—it should have been condemned decades ago. Just because you’ve managed to pull strings doesn’t mean it can go on forever. This building is half glass, and that glass is old and dangerous.”
“The glass facing Sixty-sixth street has been replaced,” she defended herself.
He moved closer, a brave move, considering she was close to murder. “Not good enough, and you know it.”
“I don’t have the money to replace the rest of the glass.”
“I know you don’t. You own a safety hazard, and you’re holding on to it from sheer stubbornness. Face it, Laura, the time for this anachronism is over. Give it up.”
“Go fuck yourself, Dubrovnik.”
“Watch your mouth, lady,” he said, his tone dangerous now. “I don’t like being cursed at.”
Another rumble shook the building. “You don’t, do you?” she replied. “You asshole. You slimy, sleazy, soulless, heartless dickhead. You can take your likes and dislikes and put them where the sun don’t shine. You son of a—”
He stopped her mouth—by the simple expedient of grabbing her silk-covered arms, hauling her against his shower-damp body, and kissing her.
She was too shocked to do anything more than stand there, feeling his hard, strong hands digging into her upper arms, feeling the dampness of his chest against hers, feeling the unfamiliar, shocking heat of his mouth on her own.
He released her a moment later, having taken her lips but not her mouth, and she stood there, silenced for the first time in years.
“Why did you do that?” she finally demanded, her rage replaced by confusion. He’d moved away from her, pouring himself a cup of coffee, pouring one for her, too.
“It seemed the best way to shut you up,” he said, handing her the coffee.
She took it without realizing what she was doing. “Try that with my lawyer,” she said, “and he’ll deck you.”
He grinned. It was the first time she’d seen him smile, and it made him suddenly more human. “I have better tactics for lawyers.”
For the first time she really looked at him. She would have thought he’d be covered with a pelt of black fur, but he was smooth-skinned, only a thin trace of hair on his chest and disappearing into the monogrammed towel that encircled his narrow hips. His body was lean, wiry, almost vibrating with energy, and Laura absently thought that she could see why women would find him so attractive. Women who liked sex, that is.
She took a sip of coffee, more to give herself time to think than to actually partake of his hospitality in any way, shape or form. A small, sensual moan of pleasure escaped her lips. “French roast,” she sighed.
His grin broadened. “I have a machine that’s more of a computer than a coffee maker. It roasts the beans, grinds them and brews the coffee, all without me having to do anything but pour. I imagine sooner or later they’ll have a machine that pours, too.”
She should put the coffee down, she knew she should, but there were some things that were simply too much to ask of flesh and blood. She took another sip, just managing to stop moaning in delight again. He was looking at her over the rim of his own cup, his dark blue eyes speculative, and she suddenly realized she was wearing a thin silk teddy, a matching wrap, both of which came to the top of her thighs, and nothing else. Not even the high heels she always wore to bring herself up to a height where she could deal with threats like Michael Dubrovnik.
The blasting had stopped, at least for the moment, and she considered being reasonable. “If you destroy this building, you might very well be in it,” she said calmly.
“I’m willing to take that chance. I have my own engineers on the job. They know when to stop.”
“Just before the building needs to be evacuated.”
Michael only smiled. It was an attractive smile, and Laura recognized the wolf behind it. Ready to rip into the throat of the first innocent victim who stood in its way.
She, however, was no innocent victim, and she was used to dealing with wolves. “My lawyer will get an injunction. New York City is full of rules and regulations. Once the city finds out you’re endangering lives...”
“Then they’ll know this building is unsafe, has been unsafe for years, and they’ll condemn it,” he filled in smoothly.
She drained the coffee, setting down the cup. “You think you’ve got me beat.”
“I know I’ve got you beat.”
She shook her head. “It’s not going to be that easy. I’ll take my chances with an injunction. It takes bureaucrats forever to check into things. They won’t get around to condemning this building for weeks. Weeks of costly delay, Mr. Dubrovnik. And I can be very creative in a few weeks.”
“Give it up, Laura.”
“Over my dead body. If it’s condemned, I’ll sell it to someone else.”
“There’s no one you can sell it to who won’t accept my higher bid.”
There was no way she could refute that. She looked around her, at the spare, almost monastic feel of the apartment. There was nothing there of a personal nature, just a crushed leather sofa, a vast walnut desk littered with papers, and the kitchenette. Through the doorway she could see a huge, rumpled bed and nothing else.
“Do you always live this sparsely?” she asked. “Or are you expecting to have to camp out for just a few days?”
“A little bit of both.”
Her own smile was just as dangerous as his. “You’d better bring in a few comforts of home, Mr. Dubrovnik,” she said, heading for the door. “It’s going to be a long haul.”
He reached it before she did, putting his hand on the doorknob. Once more she cursed her lack of shoes as she felt him tower over her. “You may as well be a little less formal. Call me Michael.”
“I’ve already called you a great many informal names. Open the door.”
“Call me Mischa,” he suggested. “Dubrovnik’s too long a name.”
“We’re not going to be friends,” she said.
“My enemies can call me Mischa,” he murmured. “I don’t open the door until you say it.”
“Mischa,” she replied promptly. “Open the door.”
He opened the door with a flourish, and she wished she could wipe that smug look off his face. She turned
and was about to say something else, anything that would put a dent in his damned sense of triumph, when the elevator door slid open. Zach Armstrong stepped off, Susan Richards stood inside. Both of them stared in astonishment at Michael and Laura.
Laura’s reaction was a muttered curse under her breath. “Hold the elevator, Susan,” she said, slipping past Michael and his associate without a backward glance, pulling the silk wrap around her body. The door slid shut, closing her in with her shocked assistant. “Don’t say a word,” she said, as the elevator moved upward.
“Don’t say a word,” Michael warned, ushering Zach into the apartment and closing the door behind him. “Coffee’s ready. I’m going to get dressed.”
“I think that’s a wise idea,” Zach observed in a neutral voice. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Not this time,” Michael muttered under his breath, tossing the damp towel onto the floor and reaching for his clothes. Why the hell had he kissed her? That was the damnedest, stupidest, most quixotic act he’d ever performed.
Of course, it had worked out rather well. She’d been so taken off balance by that kiss that she hadn’t realized he was equally astonished, both by the act and his own reaction to it. If he was going to go around kissing all his female competitors, he was going to run into grave trouble.
Maybe he was going through a midlife crisis after all, he thought, shrugging into the bespoke Egyptian cotton shirt and buttoning it. If he was going to get distracted by someone like Laura Winston, he was going to run into big trouble when he went up against the heavyweights who’d like nothing better than to see him fall.
He’d already decided that he needed to be married again, that he needed children. He should have paid more attention to Marita, he thought, reaching for the jacket of his silver-gray Armani suit. At first glance it seemed as if she would fill the bill perfectly. Decorative, silent, mysterious enough to be entertaining, she would make the perfect wife. He’d been a fool to send her home in his Bentley without even making a pass.
