Blue-Eyed Devil (19 page)

I waited with panicked impatience, ready to flee. But Hardy paused before opening the door.

“Haven.” He waited until I turned toward him, the front of my body aligned with his, not quite touching. The awareness between us was so intense that I could almost feel the pressure of him against my skin, the hardness and weight of him. I couldn’t keep from wondering what sex would be like with him, if he would crush and hurt, if he would be gentle.

And then I wondered if he had ever hit a woman.

Somehow I couldn’t imagine it, those powerful hands inflicting damage on someone more vulnerable than himself, rupturing vessels, leaving bruises. But Nick had taught me that unimaginable things were possible.

When I did gather the courage to try again, it would not be with some excessively masculine creature. But maybe that was part of the attraction, knowing deep down that real feelings, real attachment, could never happen with Hardy.

I looked up into his eyes, mesmerized by the blueness. Even knowing how wrong it was, I wanted to melt into him, just flatten myself against that big, sturdy form and . . . let go. Breathe. Trust.

“Stay,” he said softly, “and share the wine with me.”

“You . . . you need to shower.”

A slow grin crossed his mouth. “You can share the shower too.”

“Right,” I said darkly, while my mind filled with visions of soapy male skin and water-slicked muscles. “As if.”

Hardy opened the door and let me escape. “Would have been fun,” he called after me as I went down the hall.

And I had to hide a smile, not daring to look back.

After that I felt restless all night, my sleep fractured by dreams, and in the morning I woke up aching and moody. I realized that every encounter I had with Hardy Cates was beginning to feel like foreplay.

“Starlight experience” was the theme of the night, featuring singers and musicians all paying homage to the Gershwin brothers. At least five hundred people milled through the building while breezy, jazzy music filled the air. Gershwin was a perfect choice for the evening, giving it a feeling of spontaneous, thrown-together pleasures.

The Harrisburg actually consisted of two stages, the upstairs one about four stories high, a large traditional proscenium theater for spectacle productions. But the lower theater was the one I found more interesting. It was a modular stage with a segmented floor, each section mounted on its own independent pneumatic pistons. That way the floor could be reconfigured into any shape a production required. The walls were segmented too, allowing for a multitude of design possibilities.

Although I was immune to Todd in any romantic sense, I enjoyed the sight of him in a tux. Judging from the looks he got, most other people did too. He was sleek and feline, the tux hanging with elegant looseness on his lean body.

Todd had taken me shopping and picked out my dress, a simple long black sheath with a cowl neckline and black velvet straps. The front was relatively demure, but the back plunged so deeply that I couldn’t wear anything underneath.

“That’s the good thing about not having big breasts,” Todd had told me. “You don’t need a bra to look perky.”

“I’m not worried about the front,” I’d said. “Or looking perky. What worries me is that I’m feeling breezes in places where the sun doesn’t usually shine.”

But Todd had inspected my rear view and assured me that I wasn’t revealing any posterior cleavage. Nothing would show, he said, as long as no one stood above me and looked straight down my back.

As I had expected, most of my family was there, including Dad, Liberty, and all three of my brothers. Liberty looked ravishing in a red silk gown, the shimmering fabric draped and twisted all around her voluptuous body.

“I can’t stop looking at your wife,” Todd told Gage. “It’s like staring into a fire.”

Gage grinned, sliding his arm around Liberty. The band began to play “Embraceable You,” and Liberty looked up at him. “You want to dance,” Gage said, interpreting her expectant glance, and she nodded. He took her hand and murmured, “Come on, then,” in a low tone that made her blush. Their fingers tangled tightly as he led her away.

“She’s got you well trained, boy,” Todd called after them, and sat beside Jack and me. On the other side of the table, a never-ending parade of people came to pay homage to Dad.

“She’s good for him,” Jack commented, watching Liberty dance with his brother. “He’s loosened up a lot since they got married. And I never thought I’d see Gage so crazy about anyone.”

I grinned at Jack. “It’ll be that way for you too. Someday you’ll meet someone, and you’ll feel like you’ve been hit on the head with a two-by-four.”

“I feel like that every Saturday night,” Jack informed me.

“Your date’s a hottie,” Todd said as Jack’s girlfriend-du-jour made her way to our table, back from the ladies’ room. “What’s her name? Is that Heidi?”

Jack paled. “No. God, please don’t call her that. That’s Lola. She and Heidi had a public catfight last week.”

“Over what?” I asked, and rolled my eyes as I saw the guilty look on my brother’s face. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“There’s something else you probably don’t want to know,” Todd told me.

In response to my puzzled look, he nodded toward the other side of the table, where Dad was still holding court. My heart clutched as I saw Hardy Cates standing there shaking hands with him. Hardy didn’t wear a tux with the languid ease of an aristocrat, but instead with the vague impatience of someone who’d rather be having a cold one with the boys. Leashed and restrained in civilized clothing, he seemed more a force of nature than ever.

My father was staring at him with narrow-eyed interest. As usual, he was as subtle as a pickax. And as usual, everyone held their breath when he spoke. “You plannin’ to mess with the Travises?” Dad asked in a tone of amiable interest. “You tryin’ to put something over on us?

Hardy met his gaze squarely, a young scoundrel sizing up an old scoundrel, not without respect. “No, sir.”

“Then why have you taken up livin’ in my building?”

A slight smile touched Hardy’s lips. “Travises aren’t the only ones who want a view from the top floor.”

I didn’t have to look at my father’s face to know he loved that. Loved it. On the other hand, he wasn’t one to forget old scores. “All right,” he said to Hardy. “You paid your respect to the big dog, you can go along now.”

“Thank you. But you’re not the Travis I came to see.”

And Hardy looked at me.

I was being pursued, right in front of my family. I threw Todd a quick, desperate glance, pleading silently for help. But he was enjoying the show way too much.

While the collective gaze of the Travis clan focused on me, I looked back at Hardy. And in as normal a tone as I could manage, I said, “Hello, Mr. Cates. Are you having a good evening?”

“Hoping to.”

A world of trouble lurked in those two words. “Hey, Cates,” Jack said, standing and clapping Hardy on the shoulder. “What do you say we go get a beer at the bar?”

Hardy didn’t budge. “No, thanks.”

“It’s on me. I insist.”

As if things weren’t bad enough, Gage and Liberty returned to the table. And Gage, who was more than a little territorial where his wife was concerned, fixed Hardy with a stare that promised death.

Liberty seized Gage’s hand and gripped it tightly. “Hardy,” she said with a relaxed smile, “it’s been a long time. How are you?”

“Great. You?”

“Wonderful,” she said. “We have a little boy now. Matthew.”

“I heard about that. Congratulations.”

Gage stared at Hardy in a way that raised the hairs on my arms. “What do you want?” he asked quietly.

Hardy’s gaze turned to me, and held, as he answered. “I want to dance with your sister.”

Before I could even answer, Gage said, “Not a chance.”

And Jack said almost simultaneously, “I don’t think so.”

My father glanced at me from across the table and raised his brows.

And my brother Joe chose that moment to come up behind my chair and rest a hand on my shoulder. “We having a problem?” he asked of no one in particular.

I felt smothered by them, the men in my family, who were so determined to protect me that they weren’t even considering my opinion on the matter. I pulled away from Joe’s hand. “No problem,” I told him. “Mr. Cates just asked me to dance. And I’m going to — ”

“No way in hell,” Joe said putting his hand back on my shoulder. Irritably I dug my elbow into his side. “I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

“Maybe you should,” Joe muttered, giving me a hard look. “Need to talk to you, Haven.”

“Later,” I said, mortified. We were causing a scene. People were looking.

“Now,” Joe insisted.

I stared at him in disbelief. “For God’s sake,” I said, “even for a family of crazy Texan control freaks, this is ridiculous.”

Hardy had begun to scowl. “While you have a committee meeting to decide if you’re allowed to dance,” he told me, “I’ll be at the bar.”

And he sauntered off while I glared at Joe, who was usually the least interfering brother.

Of course, that wasn’t saying much. But still.

“‘Scuse us,” Joe said to the rest of the Travises, and he led me away from the table.

“What’s going on?” I demanded in a taut whisper as we meandered through the crowd. “Why is it such a big deal if I dance with Hardy Cates?”

“The guy’s trouble,” Joe said calmly, “and everyone knows it. With all the men here to choose from, why give him a second thought? Are you that determined to push the family’s buttons?”

“Newsflash, Joe: there are some things in life I get to decide without taking the family’s buttons into consideration.”

“You’re right,” he allowed after a moment. “But I’m still not going to keep quiet if I see you walking toward another hole in the ground. Not if there’s a chance I can stop you from falling into it.”

“Whatever I do or don’t do with Hardy Cates, it’s my business,”

I said. “I’ll handle the consequences.”

“Fine. As long as you understand that the chances of being set up and used are high.”

I glanced at him sharply. “Why do you say that?”

“Two years ago, not long after you got married, I was called to do the Texas Monthly shoot for the piece they did on Cates. At his request. I spent the better part of the day with him. We talked about a lot of stuff, but what I realized near the end of the shoot was that every thread of conversation had led back to one person . . . he kept asking questions, digging up information, wanting private details . . . ”

“About Liberty,” I muttered.

“Hell, no, not about Liberty. About you.”

“What?” I asked faintly.

“He said you two had met at the wedding.”

My heart seemed to stop. “Did he tell you how?”

“No, but it made an impression on him, to say the least. So I made it clear you were off-limits. Told him you were married. And that didn’t seem to matter to him one damn bit. He still wanted to know more. I got a bad feeling about it, even then.” Joe stopped and looked down at me with eyes the same dark brown as my own. “And now you’re coming off a divorce, and vulnerable, and he’s after you.”

“He’s not after me, he just asked me to dance.”

“He’s after you,” Joe repeated firmly. “Of all the women in this room, you’re the one he went for. Why do you think that is, Haven?”

A wave of coldness went through me. Shit. Maybe I was being the woman in the Astrodome again. Maybe my attraction to Hardy was a form of self-destructive masochism.

“He’s got some kind of plan,” Joe said. “He wants to make his mark, get back at the Travises, get something from us. And he’ll have no problem using you to do it. Because he’s figured out there’s no bigger turn-on for you than a guy your family doesn’t approve of.”

“That’s not true,” I protested.

“I think it is.” Joe dragged his hand through his hair, looking exasperated. “For God’s sake, Haven, find someone else. You want to meet guys, I know a ton of — ”

“No,” I said sullenly. “I don’t want to meet anyone.”

“Then let’s go back to the table.”

I shook my head. The idea of returning to my family’s table like a chastened child was unbearable. “You want to dance?” Joe asked.

That provoked a reluctant grin from me. “With my brother? No, that would be too pathetic. Besides, you hate dancing.”

“True,” Joe said, looking relieved.

“I’m going to the ladies’ room to check my makeup,” I said. “I’ll be back at the table in a few minutes.”

After Joe left me, I wandered disconsolately through the room. Obviously I shouldn’t have gone to the theater opening. I should have stayed home. I needed to think about things, including the question of why, in spite of my better judgment and my family’s conviction that it was a mistake, I was still attracted to Hardy Cates.

But before I was even aware I was doing it, I had gone to the bar.

It was easy to locate Hardy’s tall, rangy form. He was half leaning against the bar, a rocks glass in his hand. It appeared he was talking to someone, although his shoulder blocked the view. I approached him hesitantly, tilting my head a little as I tried to get a glimpse of his companion.

He was talking to a woman. Naturally. It was inconceivable that a man with his looks wouldn’t attract female attention. The woman was slim and busty and dressed in a sparkling gold gown. All that, along with her light blond hair, made her look like an awards show statuette.

I stiffened as I saw her face.

“Hi, Vanessa,” I said weakly.

Vanessa Flint gave me a look I was familiar with, the one that said she didn’t want to be interrupted. But her voice was warm and friendly. “Haven, how nice to see you here! Are you having fun?”

“Words can’t describe it,” I said. It was just not my night. Of all people for Hardy to hook up with, it had to be my boss from hell. Fate was trying to get it through to me that this wasn’t going to work on any level.

Hardy set his glass on the bar. “Haven — ”

“Hi, Mr. Cates,” I said coolly. “Have a good night, you two. I was just leaving.”

Without giving either Vanessa or Hardy a chance to react, I turned and pushed through the crowd. Nauseous and white-faced with fury, I acknowledged that my family was absolutely right about Hardy. He was trouble I didn’t need.