JAKrentz - Uneasy Alliance (24 page)

"Torr, did you mean it?" Abby broke in to ask.

"Of course I meant it. You think it's pleasant to walk in and find your woman being assaulted by another man? You think I want to make a practice of that kind of thing? Abby, if you ever do that to me again I'll lock you up and throw away the key. Where was I? Oh, yes. Ward also said that the investigator concluded that Randolph is nuts. A little late with that analysis, too, if you ask me. Apparently about six months ago Randolph lost his position as vice president of that real estate firm he was with. Got a reputation for being unreliable and erratic on the job. The trauma of being fired was what probably pushed him far enough to start thinking of revenge. Tomorrow I'll phone Tyson back and see if he's got any idea who in his firm might have sold information to Randolph. Randolph must have been bribing someone to tip him off about the progress of the company."

"He was. He said he had a pipeline into Ward's firm." Abby brushed that problem aside in her haste to get to the main issue at hand. "Did you mean what you said about marrying me?" She got to her feet, holding the ends of her bathrobe sash in both hands. Urgently she regarded him. Her honeyed hair was knotted in a loose, tousled bun and the robe was rather ancient. She undoubtedly did not look at all as a woman should look when she was receiving a proposal of marriage but, then, this was hardly a normal sort of proposal.

Torr eyed her narrowly. "I never say anything I don't mean. I'm going to marry you all right. I was going to give you time to get used to the idea of living with me, but I have decided that more stringent steps are required. I'm going to tie you to me so thoroughly you won't ever be able to run. I realize that sort of possessiveness undoubtedly offends your finer sensibilities," he mocked roughly, "but as far as I'm concerned you had your chance to do this slowly and you blew it. If you can't be trusted to obey a lover then we'll see how well you can learn to obey a husband. And I'm warning you, Abby Lyndon, husbands are not to be trifled with. Husbands aren't like lovers who have to be gallant and gentlemanly all the time. Husbands have a lot of rights lovers can't claim."

"You seem to know a lot about the subject."

Torr stepped toward her and sank his fingers into her shoulders, his amber eyes almost golden with the intensity of his words. "I know exactly what kind of husband I will make, Abby. I'm going to be demanding and possessive and overbearing and possibly even downright domineering at times. But I will love you for as long as I live and that, my wary little wife-to-be, will make all the difference."

She smiled tremulously up at him, knowing he spoke the truth. "Yes, with you that makes all the difference."

Torr's expression of grim determination warmed into softer emotion. "Abby?"

"I love you, Torr. You know that."

He appeared to have difficulty collecting his words. "No. I didn't know that. Not for certain. How could I have known?"

"You told me that second time we made love that you thought I could be controlled with love."

"I meant my love for you," he groaned. "I didn't realize at the time that you loved me."

Abby reached up to touch his cheek. "And here I thought you understood me so well because you could seduce me so easily. I decided you must have known exactly how far I'd fallen."

He shook his head. "When I asked you to come and live with me, you almost refused," he reminded her.

"Only because I wasn't certain of your feelings. I wanted a commitment, and it took me a while to realize that you had already made one. Oh, Torr, do you really love me?"

"I think I must have fallen in love with you the first night of class," he murmured as he pulled her close. "Everything you did fascinated me. I could have spent the entire class just watching you create your wild flower arrangements. Mine always seemed so stark and uninteresting by comparison."

Abby laughed softly. "Yours always seemed so elegant and strong. Anything but stark and uninteresting and you know it. I still think you should enter that competition Mrs. Yamamoto told you about."

"We'll talk about that later. Right now all I want to discuss is you and me. Abby, honey, put me out of my misery and tell me how long you've known you loved me?" He crushed her warmly against his chest, his cheek resting on her hair as she willingly snuggled close.

"I've been sure for several days. I fell in love with you sometime during the days we spent at the cabin. Probably before that. It was just that during that time at the cabin I knew for certain."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he ground out, sounding both vastly relieved and vastly annoyed. "If you knew what I've been going through trying not to scare you off…"

"I wasn't sure how you felt about me," she admitted. "I thought when you asked me to live with you rather than marry you it meant you weren't sure yet of your own feelings. I was going to give you time. All the time it took to make you fall in love with me."

"With both of us bent on giving each other time we're lucky the whole problem got resolved so quickly. I'm warning you now, though, that you'd better not make a habit out of creating a crisis whenever you want something resolved."

"Yes, Torr."

He grinned with sudden wickedness. "You're learning. Just keep saying 'yes, Torr' and we'll have a nice long, placid marriage."

"Placid?"

"Ummm. You know me. Reserved, quiet, placid." He turned her halfway around in the curve of his arm and gently began undoing the sash of the robe.

"Reserved, quiet and placid," Abby repeated thoughtfully, leaning back against him. "Sounds wonderful."

"Actually, knowing you, it sounds impossible. I have a feeling my life is in for something of a change." He slipped the robe off her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor at her feet. His fingers toyed with the prim, crocheted collar of the flannel nightgown she wore.

"Will you mind?" she asked as she turned to face him.

"The only thing I could possibly mind is losing you for any reason. Abby, honey, you're the most important thing in my life. I'm not even sure there was anything at all important in my life, in fact, until you came along."

Abby looked up at him through her lashes as she carefully, methodically undid the bodice of the nightgown. "Are you going to make love to me instead of finishing the lecture?"

"Would finishing the lecture do any good?"

"Not nearly as much good as making love to me," she assured him lovingly. Her fingers curled up around his neck.

"That's what I decided, too." He lifted her up into his arms as the nightgown fell away. "Sweetheart, I'm going to take you to bed and make love to you all night long. I need you so much."

"I think you are going to prove more manageable than you realize," she teased throatily, aware of the exciting roughness of his chest hair against her bare breast.

He started toward the hall with her in his arms and his amber eyes gleamed down at her. "If this is your management technique, feel free to pursue it at any time."

"The only problem with it is that I'm not sure which of us is managing the other," she sighed.

"Just remember that I'm the one who always got praised in flower-arranging class." He paused by the kitchen counter, balancing her precariously for a moment as he reached toward the vase of erratically arranged flowers Abby had put together earlier in the evening. Carefully he chose one of the orchids and dropped it on her bare stomach.

Without a word he continued down the hall and into her bedroom, settling his burden in the center of the turned-back sheets. Aching with love, Abby watched him undress, the sight of his strong solid body creating an unbearable excitement in her.

"You're just like one of your own flower arrangements," she breathed as he came down beside her. "Strong and sure and incredibly masculine."

He laughed huskily as he lazily reached out to adjust the orchid between her breasts. "I wonder how many women would see a man in terms of flowers." He lowered his dark head and kissed the peaking tip of one gentle globe.

"For the record, Torr Latimer, let me make it clear that I don't want any other woman seeing you the way I see you," Abby declared with surprising fierceness as she fit her palm to the muscular planes of his thigh.

"That sounds suspiciously possessive to me."

"It does, doesn't it?" Abby wasn't particularly concerned by the fact and it showed. She drew her fingertips up along the inside of Torr's leg with slow, tantalizing movements that elicited a heavy groan from him.

"Does that mean I'm not going to have to walk on eggs around you in the future? No more having to be cautious about offending you or scaring you or making you withdraw?" He shifted slightly, inserting his leg aggressively between hers.

"Since when have you ever had to walk on eggs around me?" Abby let her head fall back on his arm, challenging him with love and laughter in her eyes.

"I'll have you know I've been exceedingly careful right from the start. You can't possibly know what a strain it's been," he rasped.

"And to think I never realized," she murmured wonderingly.

"There are a lot of things you never realized. But I intend to bring each and every one of them to your attention during the next sixty or seventy years."

"You're going to teach me to control my impulsive, undisciplined approach to life?"

"No. I figure that's an impossible task. I'll just have to be content with showing you all of the infinite number of ways there are to arrange flowers."

Abby pulled his head down to hers and the orchid between her breasts was fragrantly crushed as Torr took loving possession of his woman.

^