Fire And Ice (6 page)

“Not where they show,” she mused.

“Now you’ve intrigued me,” he replied, and his dark eyes did a slow, bold survey of her body. She was wearing a strappy little white dress and suddenly her body felt as if someone had stroked it.

She wished she could give him the same kind of sensual appraisal, but she wouldn’t have dared. He was wearing a blue silk shirt, open halfway down the chest, with white slacks, and he looked good enough to star in any motion picture.

“I’m having a group of men here tomorrow night for dinner and a business discussion,” he said out of the blue, pausing to light a cigarette and take a draw from it before he went on. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t hang from the chandelier or wear a backless gown.”

“I don’t own a backless gown,” she informed him.

One corner of his mouth curled up. “Not even to shock Mrs. James?” he taunted.

“I have to draw the line somewhere,” she said defensively.

He watched her hands pleat the wispy fabric of her skirt. “I like your hair loose like that,” he remarked, letting his eyes lift to the long, deliciously disheveled length of it. “It’s sexy.”

She colored and all but jumped to her feet. “Shouldn’t we go on in?” she asked.

He got up too, lazily, dangerously, and moved toward her like a jungle cat, with a grace of movement that was peculiarly his own.

“You’re afraid of me,” he said, as he approached her. “Why?”

She backed away with a laughing shrug. “Not afraid, just wary. You make me feel hemmed in sometimes.”

“Do I?” he mused, watching her from his superior height. “What an interesting reaction.”

She glared at him. “I thought you had a meeting somewhere tonight.”

He chuckled deeply. “Trying to get rid of me, Margie? Yes, I do have a meeting, but not until after dinner.”

“Business seems to take up most of your life,” she remarked quietly.

He nodded, lifting the cigarette to his wide, chiseled lips. He was watching her, classifying her, and it made her shaky. “The universal panacea, Margie,” he returned.

“Do you need one?” she blurted out.

He searched her wide eyes. “Do you?” he asked. “You spend a great deal of time at that typewriter for someone just doing the occasional article. Does it compensate?”

“For what?” she asked, resisting the urge to move away.

“For a lover,” he said bluntly, and smiled mockingly as the shock registered in her green eyes.

Four

S
he felt her breath stop momentarily as she looked up into his dark, laughing eyes.

“I don’t want a lover,” she said coldly.

“You make that quite obvious. But you need one,” he said, unabashed. “You look like a woman who hasn’t been touched in years. Or stroked,” he murmured, reaching out to run his fingers down her cheek.

She jerked wildly away from him, her eyes dilating, her mouth parted. “Don’t…!” she warned.

He lifted his dark head and studied her with narrowed eyes, the cigarette making a tiny smokescreen between them. “You don’t like to be touched, do you?” he asked. “Which only goes to prove my point. How long has it been since a man kissed you—really kissed you, with passion?”

She felt as if she were choking. “Sex isn’t everything, Mr. Van Dyne,” she ground out.

“Spoken like a nun,” he applauded.

She lashed out at him. “That’s all you men ever think about,” she accused. “What do you care about a woman’s needs?”

“What do you know about a woman’s needs?” he challenged. His eyes wandered over her taut body. “Tell me something, Silver. Did your husband really die in a plane crash, or did he freeze to death in your bed?”

She lifted her hand automatically, an involuntary response, a purely passionate act. But he was fast. He caught her wrist in a grip like steel and halted her fingers just inches from his tanned cheek.

“Lift your hand to me again, wildcat, and I’ll throw you down on the floor and teach you lessons in passion you’ve never learned,” he warned softly.

“What would you know about passion, you walking business machine?” she threw back, her hair wild as she struggled to free herself, her face alive and desperately beautiful.

He laughed softly. One big arm shot out to catch her and drag her against his taut body, holding her there with effortless ease.

She looked up at him with frightened eyes, her struggles intensifying, her face mirroring the apprehension she was feeling.

“Damn you,” she breathed, trying to kick his shins.

“Finally,” he murmured. “The real wom-an, under the facade.”

She pushed at his massive chest and her hands came in contact with his muscles under their covering of curling, crisp hair. She froze at the unfamiliar contact. She had always avoided touching Larry. But her hands liked the feel of Cannon’s flesh, and because of that, she dragged her fingers away as if they’d been burned.

He caught a handful of her silky hair and held her head where he wanted it. His eyes had gone darker while she fought him, until now they were almost black, and there was no smile in them. His gaze dropped to her soft, parted lips and his nostrils flared.

“Let me go, Cannon,” she whispered shakily.

“We fought, honey,” he replied in a husky, deep tone. “And you lost. Haven’t you ever heard to whom the spoils belong?”

His head was already moving down, and she was afraid of him, afraid of being forced into submission.

“Oh, please, no…!” she cried, her face going white as she saw Larry’s face above her, insensitive, intent with sexual need….

Cannon was supporting her weight suddenly, lifting her all at once to carry her to the sofa and hover over her with puzzled, concerned eyes.

“Want a brandy?” he asked softly.

She shook her head, drawing in quick breaths. She closed her eyes, hoping he’d go away.

“Then will you tell me what the hell is the matter with you?” he asked shortly. “I move toward you and you back away. I touch you, and you look as if I’ve stripped off your skin. And just now…my God, did you think I was going to rape you?”

She couldn’t look at him. “I don’t like being held against my will,” she breathed. “I can’t bear it.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“Then why do it?” she blazed, her voice breaking.

He drew in a harsh breath. “You chip at my pride,” he ground out. “I don’t like being told I’m a walking business machine with no feelings.”

She sat up and sighed wearily. “It isn’t you,” she said in a fatigued tone. “Not you at all.”

“Then what?” he demanded.

She laughed bitterly. “Stop trying to storm the gates, will you, Attila the Hun?” she asked. “I don’t pry into your life, do I?”

He scowled darkly. “No, you don’t. And that irritates me just as much,” he murmured as he turned to watch the others saunter in, oblivious to the tension in the air.

“Saved!” she whispered to irritate him.

“Only for the moment,” he promised.

* * *

Margie was just about to go up to bed later that evening when Cannon returned from his business meeting. He went to the padded bar and poured himself a brandy, hardly sparing her a glance. His shirt was still undone almost to the waist, and he had a white jacket slung over one shoulder. He threw the jacket onto the bar stool and tossed back the drink. His dark hair was ruffled, as if by the sea breeze, and his eyes were bloodshot and shadowed with fatigue.

Margie edged away, hoping to make her escape without speaking to him, but Cannon moved between her and the door with a smile so mocking that she seated herself on the couch instead.

“What is it about me that gives you these impulses to turn around and run?” he asked curtly, dropping down on the sofa beside her and crossing his powerful legs.

“I don’t like your approach,” she threw back, rubbing her upper arms.

“My God, what approach?” he growled. “You started to hit me, remember?”

Her face went cold. “And do you remember what you said to me?”

“Not all of it,” he admitted. “It wasn’t important enough.” He took a deep breath while she fumed silently. “God, I’m tired. The older I get, the more I’m convinced that lower-level executives were created to drive men mad.”

“You’ve been dealing with one, I gath-er?” she asked, clenching her hands in her lap. She wasn’t about to run from him.

He laughed shortly. “That’s a pleasant way of putting it.”

Her eyes fell on his well-shaped hand holding the cigarette he was smoking. He had strong hands, she thought, very masculine hands. Her eyes involuntarily lifted to his broad, half-bare chest, and she felt a tremor go through her body as she remembered the feel of it under her hands. She hadn’t meant to touch him, she hadn’t wanted to, but that fleeting contact with his hair-roughened flesh had done incredible things to her. Embarrassed at her own thoughts, she dropped her eyes back to his hands and felt her cheeks coloring.

“Do my hands embarrass you?” he asked quietly. “I can always stick them in my pockets.”

She cleared her throat. “I was thinking of something,” she mumbled.

He finished the cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray beside him. “You don’t drink, do you?” he asked conversationally. “You never touched your drink at Louis Dane’s, and you always leave your wine untouched at meals.”

She glanced up at him. “I don’t like alcohol,” she admitted. “You’ll never know the names I called you when you ordered me that drink I didn’t touch the first night we met—and left me stuck with the bill.”

He chuckled delightedly. “I’ll make amends one of these days.” He leaned a long, powerful arm across the back of the sofa and studied her, the action widening the gap of his shirt so that Margie had to look away or be hypnotized by the blatant masculinity of his bareness. “Why don’t you drink?”

“I can’t get the stuff past my nose,” she told him.

“Is that the truth? Or is alcohol attached to some unpleasant memory in your past?”

She thought of her father’s alcoholism and felt herself turn pale. “I like your mother very much,” she said, changing the subject. “She’s a character.”

He hesitated before he let her change the subject. “She had to be,” he said after a minute. “My father was a retired army colonel who saw service in two wars. He was miserable in peacetime and amused himself by regimenting the people around him.”

“Especially you?” she probed softly.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Perceptive, aren’t you?” He chuckled. “Yes, especially me. At least until I outgrew my adolescent yearnings for his praise. We fought like hell until he died—and he loved every minute of it.”

She searched his dark eyes. “And Andy?”

He shrugged. “Andy fights no one, least of all me,” he added challengingly.

“Is that a warning?” she asked.

“You might take it as one.” He lit a cigarette without offering her one. “Andy isn’t strong willed. He needs a woman sophisticated enough to keep the wolves at bay.”

“You’re insinuating that he’s a weakling who needs a built-in battle axe,” she shot back. “That’s insulting and it’s untrue. Andy may be full of fun, but he’s no marshmallow. You may find that out someday.”

He lifted both eyebrows insolently. “Are you presuming to describe my brother to me?”

“Just because you’ve lived with him, don’t sit there so smugly and assume that you know him like the back of your hand,” she returned sharply. “You never really know other people. We all have a deeply private side that even our closest kin don’t see.”

“Then how do you know about Andy’s other side?” he taunted.

“I learned to read people when I worked on the newspaper staff,” she informed him. “Andy’s got a lot of steel under that easy friendliness. You just haven’t discovered it because he’s never wanted anything before that you told him he couldn’t have. Tell him he can’t have Jan and watch what happens,” she challenged.

His dark eyes narrowed menacingly, and the forgotten cigarette sent curls of gray smoke into the air between them.

“My God, you’ve got nerve.”

“What’s wrong, Mr. Van Dyne,” she chided, “aren’t you used to people talking back to you?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Well, you may intimidate your board of directors, but it’s going to take a lot more than an underwear manufacturer…oh!”

She gasped as his hand shot out and caught her by the nape of the neck, jerking her face under his.

“Keep pushing,” he said under his breath. “I’m tired and out of humor, and you’ve already gotten under my skin once this evening.”

“Let go!” she ground out, pushing furiously at his chest, as she had earlier in the evening when she’d fought and lost. But now there was something different—her excited pulses were racing, but not out of fear.

His hand contracted, forcing her cheek onto his shoulder. He didn’t touch her in any other way, only with that relentless hand as inflexible as steel.

“Go ahead, honey, fight me,” he murmured, holding her gaze as his head started to bend. “But the only thing you’re going to accomplish by twisting your body against mine is to arouse me even more….”

She caught her breath at the suggestive remark, and while her lips were parted, he took them.

She felt her body freeze in a shocked arch as his warm, hard lips crushed down on her mouth, his teeth faintly bruising against the soft flesh. She breathed in the smoky, brandied taste of him, the aura of expensive cologne, and felt a strange new emotion burning at the ice around her body. He was incredibly strong, his hand holding her neck still, his mouth deliberately insulting, his tongue doing things to her that made her blush. She could have gone for him with her long nails, but she didn’t. They were clenched at her own chest, locked there.

She groaned, opening her eyes to find him looking back at her, amused mockery in his gaze as his mouth controlled and dominated hers.

It was the most serious thing she could ever have imagined. Never before had a man looked into her eyes while he kissed her, and a surge of the most unbelievable warmth shot through her. That frightened her more than his strength did. Suddenly she tore her mouth away from his and ducked, escaping his hand. Her movement was so quick that she lost her balance and fell backward, catching the sofa arm to halt her descent. She was breathing hard, her eyes wild with fear and outrage and excitement, her lips bruised, her body trembling. She looked at him like an animal at bay.