An Independent Wife (9 page)

But before the day was over she had sweated eight pages out of her imagination and she glared impatiently at the clock, which insisted that it was time she left. She slid her precious eight pages into a folder and tucked it under her arm. She would work on them at home, on her own typewriter.

Seldom had anything held her concentration in such a tight grip and when she finally went to bed that night the plot and scenes kept darting around in her mind. This was a challenge that equaled the most dangerous of assignments, and she felt the same enthusiasm, the same drive to get it accomplished. She almost resented the hours she was forced to waste sleeping, but at last she drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep, the most restful she'd had in weeks.

For a week she worked on the manuscript during every spare moment, taking it to work with her, sitting up late at night and typing until she was so tired that she had to sleep. Rhy didn't call her and she was so caught up in her project that she ceased waiting for him to make a move. She was aware of his silence only with the outer edge of her consciousness, and she didn't worry about it. So long as he didn't try to resume their relationship she was content to let time slide by and, judging by the number of times she saw Coral Williams either entering or leaving the building, Rhy felt no sense of urgency either.

She was ready to leave one afternoon when her phone rang, which startled her, as that had become a rarity. Since Brom was still away she snatched it up and heard Rhy's gravelly voice say tersely, "Get up here, Sallie. We have a problem."

Staring at the phone after he'd hung up, Sallie wondered about the nature of the "problem." Did he mean that they personally had a problem-if so, she had to agree--or did he mean that the magazine had a problem? Had something come up that required her personal qualifications? Was Rhy backed into a corner where he would have to use her or lose a story? She relished that thought as she made her way up to Rhy's office, wondering just how he would handle that situation.

Amanda waved her into Rhy's office with an urgent "They're waiting for you!" and when she entered she saw that Greg was also present, prowling restlessly about the office while Rhy was sprawled back in his big chair with his feet propped on his desk; he looked physically relaxed, but the glitter of his eyes revealed his mental alertness.

Greg turned as she entered and glared at her, his jaw belligerent. He always looked like that when he was upset and Sallie caught her breath in alarm.

Without greeting Rhy she said huskily to Greg, "What's wrong? Has anyone been hurt?" Two years ago one of her closest friends had been killed in South America while covering a revolution, and the tragedy had made her highly sensitive to the risks they all took. She never worried about herself, but now she braced herself to receive the news that another reporter had been wounded, perhaps killed.

Her tension was evident in her low-toned voice and Greg picked it up immediately.

"No, no one's been hurt," he assured her gently, remembering the only time he'd ever seen her break down, when he had told her that Artie Hendricks had been killed.

She sighed in relief and sank into a chair, glancing at Rhy to find his face still, his eyes furious.

Puzzled, she looked back at Greg. "Then what's wrong?"

"The Sakaryan charity ball is next week," Greg informed her, crossing the office to sit down beside her.

"Yes, I know. I was supposed to cover it," she said dryly and shot a scathing look at Rhy. "Who're you sending in my place?"

"I was sending Andy Wallace and Patricia King," Greg snapped. "But Marina Delchamp has refused to grant a personal interview. Dammit!" he exploded in frustration, pounding his fist on the arm of the chair. "It was all set up and now she refuses!"

"That doesn't sound like Marina," Sallie protested. "She's not at all snobbish. There must be a reason. "

"There is," Rhy drawled the answer from his relaxed position. "She won't talk to anyone but you, or so she says. Why does it have to be you? Do you know her personally?"

Sallie grinned as she realized that her wishful thinking had come true-Marina had placed Rhy between a rock and a hard place, and he wasn't enjoying the situation.

"Yes, she's a friend of mine," she admitted, and if Rhy thought it strange that she knew the gorgeous ex-model he said nothing. Now Marina was the wife of one of the most powerful men in Sakarya and in charge of the charity ball, and she could choose any reporter she wanted.

"Talk to her, convince her to talk to Patricia King instead of you," Rhy ordered. "Or get the interview over the phone." The satisfaction in his tone revealed that he thought he'd just solved the entire problem and she bristled, but struggled to hide her temper.

"I suppose when you're the wife of the finance minister you can give interviews or not, whichever you want," she said casually.

"Sallie," Rhy infon-ned her with deadly calm, "I'm ordering you to get that interview over the phone."

"But it won't work!" she said, widening her eyes in innocence. "Marina can talk to me whenever she'd like if that's all she wants. She wants to see me. And I have an invitation to the ball anyway," she finished smugly. She had been intending to take on part of her vacation next week and fly to Sakarya at her own expense, but now she saw a way of defeating Rhy and it was all she could do to stop herself from laughing aloud.

"It won't work," Rhy warned softly. "I said no foreign assignments and I meant it. You can't go."

Beside her, Greg cursed beneath his breath in frus-

tration and got to his feet, shoving his fists into his pockets. "She's the best reporter I've got!" he said in restrained violence. "You're wasting her!"

"I'm not wasting her," Rhy snarled, coming out of his chair with a lithe twist of his body that had him instantly poised, ready to react. In that instant Sallie read danger in his narrowed eyes. "I've told you before, Downey, she's off anything that even smells like it might be dangerous, and that includes any damned party in an oil-rich desert where every power in the world is jockeying around trying to figure out how to get control of that oil!"

"Are you blind?" Greg bellowed. "She thrives on danger. She carries it around with her! Darnntit, man, she can't even catch a bus in a normal manner! Her everyday life would turn a sane person's hair gray!"

Deftly Sallie put herself between the two big, angry men and tilted her delicate jaw at Rhy. "If Marina refuses to see Patricia I suppose you just won't get an interview," she said, bringing the conversation back to its original subject. Triumph gleamed in her dark blue eyes. "It's me or no one. How much of a newsman are you?"

His jaw clenched in anger, but he shot a look at Greg. "Get out of here," he ordered harshly, jerking his eyes back to her. "My answer is still no."

"Suit yourself." She left the office with more poise than she would have thought possible, but chuckled to herself as she collected her belongings and left the building.

She wasn't surprised the next morning when she was directed to Rhy's office as soon as she entered the building. She stalled for a few moments, enjoying making him wait while she put up her shoulder bag and locked the manuscript in her desk, then she carefully wiped all traces of amusement from her expression as she went to meet him.

Instead of the frustrated anger she'd expected to see on his face he wore a look of intense satisfaction, and she felt a twinge of uneasiness. "I've solved our problem," he almost purred, moving close to her and reaching out to stroke her hair.

Diverted, she slapped his hand away in irritation. "I'm going to cut my hair!" she said curtly. "Maybe then you'll keep your hands to yourself."

"Don't cut it," he advised. "You wouldn't like the consequences."

"I'll cut my hair if I feel like it. It's nothing to you! "

"We won't argue that now, but I'm warning you, don't cut your hair or I'll turn you over my knee."

With that threat he left the subject and quirked an inquiring eyebrow at her. "Don't you want to hear about my solution?"

"No. If you like it that well I know I'll hate it," she said, admitting fantastically that he'd obviously thought of some way to get around Marina.

"I wouldn't say that," he munnured. "You used to like it quite well. You can go to Sakarya, darling."

He paused and watched her eyes fight up with delight, then he delivered the bomb. "And I'm going with you. "

Aghast, Sallie stared up at him. Her thoughts whirled madly as she tried to think of some way out of this situation, but all she could say was, "You can't do that," in weak protest.

"Of course I can," he said, smiling in a predatory manner that gave her chills. "I own this magazine and I'm a newsman. Other than that, I'm your husband-all excellent reasons why I can go to Sakarya with you."

"But I don't want you along! I don't need you." "Poor baby," he said in mock sympathy, then reverted to his normal tone. "T'here's no way out of it. If you go, I go, I want to make certain that silky skin of yours stays whole."

"I'm not a child or an idiot. I can take care of myself."

"So you say, but you still aren't changing my mind. Sorry if I've messed up your plans. Did you have it set for your boyfriend to go along with you? What's his name-the photographer?"

The skin on the back of her neck prickled as she caught the threat in his tone and she knew that he hadn't forgotten that day when he had seen Chris hug her. "Leave Chris alone!" she flared. "He's a good friend."

"I can imagine. He went with you to Washington, didn't he?" Rhy gritted savagely, abruptly catching her wrist and pulling her against him. "And he's the one you went to the airport to see off, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is," she admitted, surprised that he should remember that. She tried to release her wrist, and he anchored her to him with his other arm, sliding it about her waist.

"Here's another warning for you," he ground out. "You're still my wife and I won't tolerate another man in your bed. I don't care how long we've been separated. If I catch him with you I'm going to push his teeth through the back of his head and then I'm going to take it up with you. Is that what you want? Are you trying to push me into proving how much I want you?" Without waiting for an answer he bent his head and ground his mouth against hers, forcing a response from her and parting her lips to aRow his deeper kiss.

The familiar taste of his mouth tore away the years that had separated them, and she gasped at the lash of desire that sent her hands up to cling to his heavy shoulders as she pressed herself to him. It was their first kiss all over again. She melted, and her awareness of the world around her faded. Even as she responded to him she writhed inside with shame that she didn't have more self-respect than to be so vulnerable to him. He'd never really cared about her, he'd admitted it, but he liked going to bed with her, and She was too weak to resist him. it was odd that no other man had ever tempted her as Rhy did, but then, she'd never known another man like him. He was hard and brutal, but he was strong, and the force of his personality swept lesser people to the side,

But their attraction wasn't all one-sided, she realized dazedly a moment later when his hard hands slid down to her waist and clenched almost painfully on her soft flesh as he pulled her even closer to his taut frame. He groaned against her lips and a tremor rocked through him. "Sallie," he muttered, lifting his mouth a scant inch from hers. "Let's go to my apartment. We can't make love here, there are too many interruptions." His voice was a low growl, rough with his passion, and she shivered in sensual reaction.

"Let me go," she protested, her hands suddenly finding the strength to push against him as panic flared with the realization that it might be impossible to control him now. Their brief marriage had given her an intimate knowledge of his nature and now she admitted to herself that she'd forgotten none of it. She knew by the dark flush on his cheekbones, the timbre of his voice, the dilated glitter of his eyes, that he was half-wild with desire, near the point where he would take her regardless of where they were.

"No," he denied, his mouth twisting savagely. "I told you I'll never let you go."

She fought her way out of his embrace, but she had the uneasy feeling that he'd allowed her to gain her freedom, and spots of color also stained her face as she stared at him. "You'll have to," she told him fiercely. "I don't want you anymore!"

"I just proved you wrong in that!" he said on a short bark of laughter.

"I'm not talking about sex! I don't want to live with you. I don't want to be your wife. I can't stop you from traveling with me, you're the boss, but I won't sleep with you."

"Won't you?" he murmured. "You're my wife, and I want you back. Legally you can't refuse me my marital rights."

His determination, the steel in his gray eyes, alarmed her and she stepped back from him. Desperately she seized on Chris, throwing his name up like a shield to hide behind. "Look, Rhy, you're an adult, surely you can understand that my affections are elsewhere. Chris is special to me-"

A little muscle in his jaw began to twitch and she stared at it in fascination, forgetting what she'd been about to say. Rhy's hands closed painfully on her waist again and he ground out, "I told you what I'd do if I caught him with you and I meant it."

"Be reasonable," she implored, pulling vainly at his hands in an effort to ease the painful pressure. "For heaven's sake, I'm not demanding that you terminate your relationship with Coral!"

An odd expression crossed his face. "No, you're not, are you?" he said slowly.

He looked down at her with growing menace and to escape the impression she had of a time bomb ticking its way to the moment of explosion she managed a casual laugh. "I never thought that you'd live ihe life of a monk all these years." She tried to soothe the temper in him. "I've no right to object in any event."

Instead of soothing him her words seemed to inflame him more, and the tension in his arms lifted her on her toes. "I'm not that modem and openminded," he said almost soundlessly, his taut lips barely moving. "I don't want another man touching you P,