An Independent Wife (5 page)

Abruptly she realized that she was waiting for the elevator and the lights showed that it was coming up. Muttering to herself for her stupidity she turned on her heel and headed for the stairs, but just as she reached them the elevator doors slid open and a voice called, "Sallie Jerome! Wait a minute!"

Her head jerked around and she stared at Rhy for several seconds, frozen in her tracks with horror, then she pulled the heavy door open and took a step, intending to run before she realized the futility of it.

Rhy had taken a good look at her and the arrested expression on his face told her that she'd been recognized. She couldn't avoid it any longer; he now knew who she was and he wasn't a man to let the matter drop. She released the door and swung back to face him, her delicate jaw tilting upward pugnaciously. "You wanted to see me?" she challenged.

He moved from his stance in front of the elevator and strode the few short yards that separated them.

He looked taut, his skin pulled over his cheekbones, his mouth compressed into a thin line. "Sarah," he whispered savagely, his gray eyes leaping furiously.

"Sallie," she corrected, flipping her braid over her shoulder. "I'm called Sallie now."

His hand shot out and he gripped her wrist, his long fingers wrapping about the fragile bones as if to measure them. "You're not only called Sallie instead of Sarah, you're Jerome again instead of Baines,"

he hissed, and she shivered with alarm. She knew Rhy's voice in all of his moods, the well-remembered husky quality made it distinctive. It was a voice that could sound whispery and menacing when he was angry, rasping when he was hammering out a point on television, or low and incredibly seductive when he was making love. A wild little frisson ran along her nerves at the tone she could detect in his voice now. Rhy was in a dangerous temper and it paid to be wary of him when he was angry.

"I think you'd better come with me," he murmured, sliding his fingers from her wrist to her elbow and moving her to the elevator, "We've got a lot to say and I don't want to say it in the hallway."

He retained his light but firm hold on her as they waited for the elevator to return to the floor and a copyboy stared at them as he walked down the hall to disappear into one of the offices. "Let go of me,"

she whispered.

"No way, Mrs. Baines," he refused in a soft tone. The bell sounded as the elevator reached their floor and the doors slid open. He moved forward with her into the box and the doors slid closed, leaving her totally alone with him in that small space. His forefinger jabbed the number for the administrative floor and the elevator lurched into movement.

Sallie summoned all of her poise and gave him a polite little smile, deten-nined to hide the sudden coiling of fear in her stomach. I 'What do we have to talk about? It's been seven years, after all."

He smiled, too, but his smile wasn't polite; the savagery of it sent shivers down her spine. "Then let's talk about old times," he said between his teeth. "Can't it wait?"

"No," he said softly. "Now. I've got a lot of questions and I want answers to them."

"I've got work to do-"

"Just shut up," he warned, and she did.

The elevator lurched to a halt and her stomach lurched with it. Rhy's manner made her uneasy and she didn't want to be alone with him, much less go through the inquisition she knew she was in for.

He ushered her out of the elevator and down the corridor to his private office. His secretary looked up and smiled when she saw them, but the words she started to say were halted when Rhy hurled "No interruptions" over his shoulder as he followed Sallie into his office and closed the door firmly behind them.

Sallie stood only a few feet away from him and blinked, trying to adjust herself to the reality of his presence. She had been forced to accept his absence and now she just could not accept his presence. He was a mirage, a figment of her imagination, far too virile and forceful to be real.

But he stood by the door, watching her with those unnerving gray eyes, and he was very real and solid.

Rather than meet those eyes she let her gaze drift over his body and she noted automatically the way his dark brown suit fit him impeccably, the trousers molding themselves to the muscled length of his legs. Her pulse began to beat a bit faster and she caught her lower lip with her teeth.

"Rhy..." Her voice quavered and she cleared her throat, then began again. "Rhy, why are you acting like this?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, his eyes glinting dangerously. "You're my wife and I want to know what's going on here. You've obviously been avoiding me. Should I have ignored your presence, as you seem prepared to do with mine? Forgive me if I was slow on the uptake, baby, but I was surprised to see you and you caught me off-balance. I didn't think to pretend that I didn't know you."

She caught her breath in relief. "Oh, that," she said, sighing, weak now that she knew what he wanted.

"Yes, I was avoiding you. I didn't know how you'd take the idea of my working for you and I didn't want to risk losing my job."

"Have you told anyone that we're married?" he barked.

She shook her head. "Everyone knows me as Sallie Jerome. I went back to my maiden name because I didn't want to use the influence of your name."

"That's big of you, Mrs. Baines," he murmured sarcastically, moving to his desk. "Sit down, I won't bite."

She took a chair, more than ready now to answer his questions. If he had been going to fire her he would already have done so; her job was safe and she relaxed visibly.

Rhy didn't sit down but instead leaned against his desk, crossed his long legs at the ankle and folded his arms across his chest. He was silent while his glittering gray eyes looked her over thoroughly from head to foot and Sallie began to tense again. She didn't know why, but he made her feel threatened even when he wasn't moving. Then his silence irritated her and she said tartly, "What did you want to talk about?"

"You've changed, Sarah-Sallie," he corrected himself. "It's a drastic change, and I don't mean just your name. You've grown a mane of hair and you've lost so much weight a good wind would blow you away. And most of all, you're doing adamned good job at something I would've sworn you'd never touch. How did you get to be a reporter?"

"Oh, that was just luck," she said cheerfully. "I was driving on a bridge when it collapsed and I wrote it up and turned it in to the editor of the newspaper and he changed my job from clerk to reporter."

"You make it sound almost logical for you to be

one of the top correspondents for a first-class news magazine," he said dryly. "I gather you like your job?"

"Ob, yes!" she said, ieaning forward eagerly. Her big eyes sparkled and she tripped over her words in her enthusiasm, "I love it! I never could understand why you were always so anxious to get back to work, but then I was bitten by the same bug. It gets in your blood, hooks you, doesn't it? I suppose I've become an excitement junkie, I only feel half-alive when I'm stuck here in the office."

"Your eyes haven't changed," he muttered almost to himself, his gaze locked on her face. "They're still as dark blue as the sea and so big and deep a man could drown in them. Why did you change your name?" he demanded abruptly.

"I told you, I didn't want to trade on your name," she explained patiently. "I wanted to stand on my own feet for a change and I found that I liked it. As for Sallie, somehow Sarah was changed to Saflie at college and I've been Sallie ever since then."

"College?" he asked, his eyes sharpening.

"Yes, Ifinally got my degree," she said, laughing a little. "After you left I took a lot of courses-languages and creative writing-but when I began reporting it took up so much time that I had to get my degree in fits and spurts."

"Did you go on a diet, too? You've changed everything else in your life, why not get a new figure?" He sounded almost resentful and she stared at him in bewilderment. Surely he didn't mind that she'd lost a little weight? It hadn't even been that much.

"No, I didn't go on a diet, losing weight just happened," she said, her tone reflecting her lack of understanding of the question. "I became so busy that I didn't have time to eat and that still holds true."

"Why? Why did you change yourself so drastically?"

A sudden tingle told her that this was not a casual conversation, a catching-up on old times, but that Rhy had deliberately brought her around to this question. For what reason she didn't know, but she didn't mind telling him the truth. After all, the laugh was on her. She raised her eyes to his. "When you left, Rhy, you told me to call you when I thought I was woman enough for you. I nearly died. I wanted to die. Then I decided to fight for you, to make myself into a woman you'd want, so I took a lot of courses and learned how to do a lot of things, and along the way I also learned how to do without you.

End of story."

"Not quite," he said sardonically. "Your rascally husband has reentered and another chapter has started, and to make the plot really interesting he's now your boss. Let's see," he mused, "is there a company policy against employing relatives?"

"If there is," she returned clearly, "I was here first."

"But I'm the boss," he reminded her, a wolfish grin moving across his face. "Don't worry about it, baby. I don't intend to fire you. You're too good a reporter for me to let you go to someone else." He got to his feet and so did she, but he said, "Sit down, I'm not finished." Obediently she resumed her seat and he walked around to take his own chair, leaning back in it as he picked up a file.

Sallie recognized the file as belonging to personnel and she realized that it held her own records. But she had no reason to keep Rhy from reading it, so she watched as he leafed through it.

"I'm curious about your application," he said. "You said no one knows we're married, but what did you put down as your marital status?" he questioned. "Ah, here it is. You've been very honest. You adn-tted to being married. But your husband's name is, SEPARATED-CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.

"I told you no one knew," she replied.

He looked over the application and his brows abruptly snapped together. "Next of kin-none?" he demanded harshly. "What if you'd been hurt, even killed? That does happen, you know! How could I have been notified?, I

"I didn't think you'd care," she defended herself. "Actually, I didn't think about it at all, but I can see where you'd want to know. YOU might want to get married again someday. I'm sorry, that was thoughtless of me.-

A vein began throbbing in his temple and she watched it in fascination. It meant that he was furious, as she remembered all too well, but she couldn't think why he should be so angry. After all, she hadn't been killed, so she didn't see anything to worry about.

He closed the file and tossed it back onto his desk, his lips pressed into a grim line. "Get married again!" he suddenly shouted. "Why would I be fool enough to do that? Once was enough!"

"It certainly was," she agreed with heartfelt sincerity.

His eyes narrowed and he seemed to force his temper down. "You don't think you'd like to remarry?"

he asked silkily.

"A husband would interfere with my job," she said, and shook her head. "No, I'd rather live by myself "

"You don't have any ... er ... close friends who object when you take off for days, even weeks, at a time?" he probed.

"I have a lot of friends, yes, but they're mostly in the business themselves so they understand if I go on assignment," she answered calmly and ignored the inference he made. It was none of his business if she had any lovers or not, and suddenly she felt it was important for her pride that he not know he was the only man who had ever made love to her. After all, he certainly hadn't lived the life of a monk, as witness the gorgeous Coral Williams!

"I've read a lot of your articles," he commented, switching to a different tack. "You've been in some tight places-Lebanon, Africa, South America. Don't your friends mind that you could get hurt?"

"Like I said, they're in the business themselves. Any of us could come back dead," she returned dryly.

"It was the same with you, but you kept going. Why have you grounded yourself? You could pick your own assignments, and we heard you were offered the anchor job?"

"Maybe it's a sign of old age, but I got tired of being shot at," he said abruptly. "And I was getting bored, I wanted a change. I'd made some good investments through the years and when Review came up for sale I decided to make the change, so I bought it. I'm still signed with the network to do four documentaries for next year and that's always interesting. I have time to do more research, to build a background on my subject."

Sallie looked doubtful. "I think I'd prefer foreign assignments."

He started to say something when the phone on his desk buzzed. In swift irritation he punched the intercom line and snapped, "I said no interruptions!"

Simultaneously the door opened and a soft voice said, "But I knew you wouldn't consider me an interruption, darling. If you have some poor reporter on the carpet I'm sure you've already said all that needs to be said."

Sallie turned her head to stare in amazement at Coral Williams, who was breathtaking in a severe black dress that merely served to flatter her blond perfection. The model was a picture of self-confidence as she smiled at Rhy, fully expecting him to welcome her with open arms.

Rhy said evenly, "I see your problem, Miss Meade," and replaced the receiver. To Coral he said in the same even tone, "It had better be important, Coral, because I've got a lot on my mind."

Such as stumbling over his long-lost wife, Sallie thought to herself, involuntarily smiling as she got to her feet. "If that's all, Mr. Baines ... ?"

He looked frustrated and ill-tempered. "We'll talk about it later," he snapped, and she took it that she was dismissed. She made her exit with a triumphant grin at a visibly puzzled Coral and gave Rhy's secretary the same grin on her way out.

The first thing she had to do was relieve Greg's mind, so she stopped by his office on her way down.