Fire And Ice (14 page)

He let her slide down his body until her feet reached the floor, and his eyes probed hers for a long time. “All I have to do is look at you,” he said in a deep, quiet tone, “and I ache to the soles of my shoes. Sorcery. Witchcraft.”

“You cast a few spells of your own, you know,” she replied. Her hands flattened on his chest, feeling the powerful muscles contract at the light, sensuous touch. “I wondered when we met if you were as hairy all over as your forearms were. Did you know?” She laughed suddenly, her eyes lighting mischievously as she looked up.

He burst out laughing and linked his hands behind her to swing her with rough affection from side to side. “I am,” he murmured, “as you almost found out last night.”

“I’ve decided that I like hairy men,” she returned. “It gives me something to do with my hands.”

“What does, pulling all the hairs out?” he chided. He jerked her close. “My God, you’re tying me in knots. I don’t want commitment, but I’ll be damned if I could stand a brief affair with you. In between making money and giving it away, you’re all I think about.”

“I’m very glad,” she said. “Because you’ve been all I’ve thought about since the first time I saw you.”

“Oh, honey,” he whispered shakily. He took her mouth with such tender sweetness that tears welled up in her eyes. She held his face between her hands, holding his mouth over hers while the kiss went on and on and on.

After a long minute, he gently pushed her away from him with a heavy sigh. “No more of that for the moment,” he said huskily. “For the next few days, we’re going to get to know one another in a strictly verbal sense.”

She studied him quietly. “And then?”

He smiled slowly. “I think you already know. I do.”

Her eyes were troubled. “There’s so much you don’t know about me.”

“I’ll learn,” he murmured. He kissed her softly. “Let’s go.”

“Cannon…”

He turned at the doorway, with her suitcase in his hand. “What, honey?”

“What about Andy and Jan?” she asked quietly.

He laughed at her worried expression. “You know damned well I’d give you anything you wanted right now. I’ll give them my blessing, all right?”

Her face lit up. At least one good thing was going to come out of all this subterfuge, she thought miserably. At least Jan would be happy.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling.

He drew her to his side as they went toward the door. “I only hope they’ll be as happy as we are,” he said softly.

Eight

S
he was to remember those words later, when they landed in Panama City. And remember them vividly. She followed him into the air terminal, holding the sleeve of his lightweight tan jacket as she tried to keep up with his long strides. It was there that providence overtook her.

“My gosh, it’s you!” a wild voice gushed out as a woman with white hair positioned herself directly in front of Margie and looked back and forth from the inside cover of
Blazing Passion
to Margie’s face.

Margie quelled the urge to run. It wouldn’t do a bit of good.

“Isn’t it a marvelous likeness?” the woman asked, handing the book to Cannon. He stared in fascination at the small photo of Margie inside the front cover of the bestselling book. “I’d have known her anywhere! When is your next book coming out, Miss McPherson?” the woman continued, blissfully ignorant of the disaster she’d just precipitated. “I read everything you write!”

“It, uh, it will be out early next year,” Margie managed. “Excuse me, please…”

She rushed past the woman, who was just getting the book back from a glowering, harsh-faced Cannon. She felt her world coming to an end, and she fought back a flood of hot tears as she waited outside in the blazing heat for him to join her.

It didn’t take long. She felt him before she saw him, raising her eyes to his reluctantly.

“Well, well,” he said coldly. “A few political articles for the local paper, didn’t you say?”

She dropped her eyes to his shirt and drew in a deep, slow breath. “I thought you were a very conventional man,” she said quietly. “I was afraid of spoiling Jan’s chances with Andy by telling you the truth. I’m…I’m fairly notorious.”

“Yes,” he agreed curtly, “you are that. I’ve seen the damned book on half the desks in the secretarial pool, and the cover’s been screaming at me from bookstore counters all over the country. Too bad I didn’t take the time to look inside it, wasn’t it?”

She drew back from him, her eyes showing her pain. “Does it matter so much, Cal?’ she asked hesitantly.

His expression was cold. He didn’t even smile at her. “You lied to me.”

“Not a lie,” she protested. “Just…an omission.”

“It amounts to the same thing,” he said shortly. “And the worst damned thing of all was that you did it for your sister. Was that what last night was about as well?” he added coldly.

She didn’t even realize that her hand had moved until she felt the sting as it connected with his tanned cheek.

He caught her wrist in a bruising grasp, but he didn’t hit her back.

“You’ll have to let me know how much I owe you,” he said in a stranger’s mocking voice, a faint, harsh smile on the lips she’d kissed so ardently the night before. “I like to pay for my pleasures.”

She couldn’t have been more wounded if he’d slapped her. Her eyes misted with tears and she turned away.

“Where are you going?” he asked coldly. “The car’s this way.” He led the way to the car, put her inside and drove all the way back to the beach house without saying another word.

She went into the house like a zombie, thankful that no one seemed to be around, and headed straight for her bedroom. She’d no sooner walked inside and put down her purse than Jan came rushing in, her face hopeful, her eyes troubled.

“Did you talk to him?” she asked quickly, oblivious to the fact that the bedroom door was still open. “Did all that `buttering up’ work any miracles?” she added in a light tone, referring to the gentle teasing of days past, which had only been a joke between them.

However, to the coldly furious man standing at the doorway with Margie’s suitcase in his hand, her words were the final confirmation of his suspicions.

“Come into the living room, both of you,” Cannon said quietly. He turned and left the room abruptly.

Margie felt tears well up in her eyes and run down her cheeks while Jan stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“He knows who I am.” She swallowed, and Jan’s image blurred. “And what’s worse, he thinks I was only playing up to him for your sake.”

Jan’s face crumpled. “You’re in love with him,” she whispered.

Margie managed to nod, before she broke down completely. “He’s going to send us home, Jan.” She wept on her sister’s sympathetic shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

Suddenly Jan was the strong one, comforting, despite her own fears and apprehension. “It will be all right,” she said, echoing the words Margie had so often spoken to her in times of distress. “It will all work out.”

“I let you down.”

Jan held her tighter. “Andy and I will find a way. It’s you I’m worried about. Oh, Margie, forgive me for dragging you into this! If I’d stood up to him in the beginning…!”

But Margie wasn’t listening. Her heart was breaking inside her shaking body.

* * *

Andy was glowering at Cannon when Margie and Jan joined them in the living room.

Cannon barely spared Margie a glance. He was smoking a cigarette, and never had Margie seen him look more unapproachable.

“I’m leaving for Chicago in the morning,” he told them without preamble. “Under the circumstances, I think it would be wise if your…guests left for Atlanta at the same time,” he advised Andy.

“My fianc;aaee and her sister,” Andy corrected, his eyes bright with anger.

“Over my dead body,” Cannon returned coldly.

“If that’s what it takes,” Andy said agreeably.

“Andy, don’t…” Jan said softly.

“I love you,” the younger man told her, completely unembarrassed at the admission. “I won’t have a life if it doesn’t include you. If it means fighting my brother, all right. I’d rather lose his respect than your love.”

Cannon shifted, glowering at Andy, but there was a glimmer of admiration in his dark eyes all the same.

“I’ll go home with you,” Andy said quietly, “and Jan will come with me. She still has vacation time coming. We’ll hash it out there.”

Cannon lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “Ganging up on me?” he muttered.

“I’ll call in the neighbors, too, if I need to,” Andy said with a weak smile. “I’ve got as much right to live with someone as you have to live alone. Just because you’ve gone sour on women, that doesn’t mean I have to be doomed to bachelorhood.”

“Women are treacherous,” Cannon returned, and his eyes went straight to Margie.

“Why do you say that?”

“Don’t you know who our houseguest is?” Cannon asked sarcastically, glancing toward his mother who was just joining the commotion.

“Of course I know who she is,” Victorine said haughtily, glaring at her eldest. She put a comforting arm around Margie. “She’s probably one of my favorite novelists.”

Margie stiffened, and Victorine patted her comfortingly. “It’s all right, dear,” she said softly. “I’ve known from the beginning. I have all your books, you see.” She glanced toward Cannon. “And if you’d ever once bothered opening one of them, you would have known her on sight. I did.”

Cannon didn’t smile. “What a pity someone didn’t fill me in.”

“And have given you another stick to beat Jan and Andy with?” Margie asked in a subdued tone. She smiled bitterly. “You might as well know it all, since this is confession time. No, Jan,” she said when her sister started to speak, “Andy has the right to know it, too.”

“Oh, I’m not arguing,” Jan protested. She moved forward, just in front of Cannon. “It’s my fault anyway. I begged Margie not to tell you what she did for a living. I had some crazy idea that I could let you think we were independently wealthy and…” She straightened, her eyes apologetic. “Mother died when I was born, and our grandmother McPherson took us in and raised us. She had to. Our father…” She paused and then plowed ahead. “Our father was an alcoholic. He drank us literally out of house and home, and when he was really high, he’d come and demand that Granny give us back to him. A couple of times,” she recalled uneasily, “he tried to take us with him forcibly. Ashton being a small town, everyone knew about him. He was…noto-rious. We had a hard time at school because of that.”

She tossed back her short hair and went ahead, and Margie had never been more proud of her. “When he died, and our grandmother followed him soon after, we had very little left. Barely enough to put Margie through two years of college. When she married Larry Silver, I had to live with them, and a lot…a lot of the problem with their marriage was me.”

“That’s not so, darling,” Margie protested softly.

Jan laughed bitterly. “You know it is. I only make things worse for you.” She looked back at Cannon. “Larry didn’t carry insurance, and his parents wanted nothing to do with us at all—they were fairly well-to-do, but our family wasn’t socially acceptable to them. So they turned their backs on us. Except to have their attorney demand their share of his small estate. He died intestate,” she added. “So Margie was left with nothing—except me and a fistful of debts and horrible memories all around.”

Jan took a deep breath. “Well, she took a job on the newspaper so that we wouldn’t starve while I finished school. I won’t tell you how many nights she was on the streets covering murders and drug busts and fires. The only job open, you see, was the police beat, so she took it.”

Cannon’s dark gaze went to Margie, and there was something in it that she couldn’t endure. She dropped her eyes to the floor.

“She did that and wrote at night,” Jan began again, “and one day she sent off a manuscript that an editor liked. The editor bought it, helped her polish it—and within months she made the bestseller list. I was so proud of her, I thought I’d die of it.” She looked at her sister with love and pride in her expression. “I still am. And I wish I’d never asked Margie to hide the truth. We aren’t rich. I make a fair salary at the law office where I work, and Margie is on her way to a Rolls-Royce if there’s any justice, but everything we’ve got she’s sacrificed for. None of our people ever made the social register, and we aren’t likely to, either.” She lifted her small chin proudly. “But we’re honest people for the most part, Mr. Van Dyne. I’ve done Andy a terrible injustice by not telling him the whole truth in the first place,” she concluded. “And I’ve compounded that error by asking Margie to pretend to be something she’s not. I’m very sorry about it all. And Margie and I will go home now. I hope we haven’t caused you any great inconvenience.” She looked at Andy with her heart in her eyes. “One thing was very true, though,” she whispered. “I love you with all my heart.”

Andy’s face contorted. He went to her, crushing her to him, burying his face in her hair. “My God, what do I care who your people were?” he said in a husky voice. “I love you, you idiot!”

Margie’s eyes filled with tears. At least Andy’s love was sincere.

“I’ll get my things together,” Margie said quietly, turning away. “I’d very much appreciate it if someone could drive me to the airport.”

“Margie, you can come with us,” Andy called curtly.

She shook her head. “I’ve got a deadline in two weeks,” she said with gentle pride, “and the reason I went to New York was to sign the contract for a movie they’re going to make of
Blazing Passion
.”

“Oh, Margie, how wonderful!” Jan burst out.

“Sure,” Margie laughed mirthlessly. “How wonderful.” She turned back toward the stairs. “One more thing to make me stand out like a blot on the family escutcheon….”

Cannon hadn’t said a word, but his eyes were following her, and there was a kind of pain in his face that Victorine hadn’t seen in years.

Her pale brown eyes looked worried as she tried to work out what to do. And all at once she smiled. It was so simple, really.

“Oh!” she cried, and let her body slump gracefully to the floor.

Nine

C
annon carried his mother to her room, and grabbed the phone by the bed while Margie sat down and held the elderly woman’s hand tightly.