Keeping Company (14 page)

This wasn’t the room of a tough, cynical attorney. This was the room of a woman who was sensitive, vulnerable, perhaps a little shy. A week ago
he wouldn’t have said any of those words applied to Alaina. Now he didn’t question the probability. He’d guessed from the first there was more to Alaina than met the eye. He was seeing it here.

There was a petite black cat curled up on the window seat, a mystery novel on the table by the bed. The bookmark indicated Alaina was halfway through the paperback, but the book’s cover was smooth, unmarred, uncurled. Beside the book on the lace runner lay the Crystal of Kalamari, the wedge of glass filled with rainbows by the amber light falling through the window. Behind the Crystal stood a photograph in a sterling frame.

Dylan ran his fingertips over the coveted pin, but he didn’t pick it up. Instead, he lifted the picture frame carefully and studied the photo in the fading light. He recognized Alaina and Jayne and their friend Faith Kincaid. There was a fourth person, a young man he didn’t know. The four stood in graduation caps and gowns, smiling, their expressions wistful. Behind them a rainbow hung in the sky.

This was the only photograph in the room, the only one he’d seen anywhere in the house. Alaina
and her college friends. He hadn’t seen anything anywhere indicating that she had a family someplace. There were no snapshots of brothers or sisters because she had none. There was no portrait of her parents, no picture of the mother who’d had no time for her. It made him sad. He’d grown up in a large, happy family. The walls of his house practically bowed under the weight of all the photographs of the Harrison clan.

“I look like a blowfish,” Alaina lamented as she emerged from the bathroom wrapped in her gray silk dressing gown, her bloated bare toes peeking out from under the hem.

Dylan set the photograph down and turned to face her, his heart flipping over. His fiercely proud Princess of the Zanatares looked as close to tears as anyone could come, but she blinked at them furiously in the attempt to keep them from falling.

“Oh …” He crossed the room to take her puffy hands in his. “It’s not that bad, honey, really it’s not. I think the pills are starting to help already. I can almost see your eyes.”

That did it. Abruptly Alaina lost her battle. Tears gushed down her cheeks. She felt utterly
miserable, rejected, humiliated, lost, and furious about it all. She stamped her foot and muttered a stream of virulent curses.

“I hate this! I just hate it! I hate being puffy and I hate being allergic and I hate crying and I hate having you see me do it!”

Dylan pulled her into his arms and held her against him, rubbing her back while she sobbed and swore. “I know, sweetheart. I know you hate it.” If he hadn’t already figured it out for himself, Alaina was telling him now—she didn’t like anyone seeing a weakness in her. Misty-eyed, he smiled and kissed her hair. “I know, honey. You’re a tough cookie.”

“I am,” Alaina declared, diminishing the effectiveness of her statement with a watery sniffle.

“Yeah, well, even tough cookies have to crumble every once in a while,” Dylan told her. “You’ve had a hard day, haven’t you, Princess?”

He didn’t know the half of it, Alaina thought glumly as she nodded against his broad shoulder. Aside from the more obvious catastrophes, she’d gone and fallen in love with him—Dylan Harrison, all-around goofball and proprietor of a bar
and bait shop, a man who had sworn to settle for nothing short of a domestic goddess in a woman. He had stayed with her, but every time he did something nice for her he had to remind her it was because he was duty-bound by the deal they had made. All things considered, a day couldn’t get much worse than the one she’d just had.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Dylan murmured. “What you need is a good night’s sleep.”

Not bothering with the pillows or bedcovers, he sat on the bed, pulling Alaina down beside him. She let him move her around as if she were a mannequin, simply not possessing the strength of will to fight him. He lifted her feet up and tipped her over so she was lying on her side facing the nightstand and the window, then he settled himself behind her, spoon-style, slipping his arm around her waist.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t agree.

“Of course I have to do this.” He gave her a hug. “You don’t think I’d pass on the chance to say I slept with the Elephant Woman, do you?”

Alaina couldn’t help but chuckle, although the
sound didn’t contain much energy. “You’re a smart-ass, Harrison, and perverse in the extreme.”

“I’ve just always had a liking for inflatable women.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

A moment of comfortable silence passed between them. Alaina lay there relaxed and savoring the feel of Dylan snuggled behind her, solid and masculine, his arm draped over her waist.

“Feeling better?” he asked, his voice warm and soft with genuine concern.

“A little.”

He really was a sweet guy. Too bad she was all wrong for him, she thought. Too bad for her, because it hurt like hell to think nothing would ever come of this arrangement they’d entered into. It was her own dumb fault. She hadn’t read the fine print, hadn’t considered the possibility that she might just fall in love with Dylan Harrison.

It had seemed too remote a possibility. She’d never been in love, not really. She had always sort of wondered if she was even capable of falling in love. Too many years of practice had taught her to guard her heart even while she’d still wanted
someone to make the effort to win it. The risk that she might find yet another imitation of love had far outweighed the chance of stumbling across the real thing.

There had been her affair with Clayton, of course, but she had never really loved him. What she had felt for him had been mutual respect—until Mrs. Collier had turned up—and compatibility. As had been pointed out to her incessantly over the course of the last few days by Jayne and Marlene, she and Dylan didn’t rank high in compatibility, but what she felt for him was love nonetheless. Nothing else could have hurt this way in the face of hopelessness.

“How stupid of me!” Dylan said suddenly.

Alaina cringed at the thought that he had no doubt been mulling over their situation too. Poor guy. She couldn’t blame him for having regrets about the deal. She’d been an unqualified failure at all the things he’d wanted her to do. Just as she started to apologize, Dylan raised up on one elbow and leaned over her, reaching for something on the nightstand. Alaina’s heart bolted against her ribs at the feel of his lean, hard body pressing against
hers. He smelled faintly of the sea, and she wanted to turn and bury her face against his chest and have him hold her as he had earlier. She cursed herself under her breath. This was no time to develop a penchant for chasing rainbows.

“The Crystal of Kalamari,” he said as he settled back down on the bed. He held the pin between his thumb and forefinger so Alaina could see the colors that burst inside it.

“Take it,” he said, pressing it into her open palm. “It has all kinds of powers. All you have to do is hold it in your hand and make a wish. You’ll be deflated in no time.”

“Is that a fact?” Alaina said without hope. She took the bit of glass, a sad smile touching her mouth at Dylan’s attempt to lighten her mood.

“Absolutely. The wizard Danathamien imbued it with the ability to heal. It can also bore a hole through the head of a cyclops, but that’s another story. The point is, it’s full of magic.”

“Magic.” The word had a very unmagical flatness coming from her lips.

“Magic,” Dylan said resolutely. “I think it might do you some good to believe in magic.”

Alaina almost laughed at his words, words that rang too familiar in her ears. More than once during the course of their Fearsome Foursome days, Bryan Hennessy had told her the very same thing—that she ought to believe in magic. How could she believe in it? she wondered. To date she had never seen any evidence of it in her life.

If there had been magic, then she would have grown up in a normal family with parents who loved her and Clayton Collier would never have taken advantage of her and Dylan Harrison would think of her as something other than a means to an end.

If there were magic, she thought as she closed her fist around the warm vee of glass and closed her eyes against the threat of tears, then Dylan would take her in his arms right now and make love to her and make her feel cherished and chase away the loneliness that haunted her heart.

“Let’s see if it’s working,” he said, gently turning Alaina onto her back and combing her hair back from her eyes.

She was beautiful. He didn’t bother to wonder
whether it was the Crystal or the allergy medication that had done the trick, but the swelling in her face had reduced to a slight fullness that merely softened the angles. Her eyes were closed, revealing a tracery of fine blue veins in the delicate skin of her lids. Tears clung to her lashes, turning them to soft, dew-kissed black spikes against her cheeks. Her lips were full and red and trembling ever so slightly, like rosebuds in the wind.

All her barriers were gone. Her shields were down. The ice, the polish, the sarcasm, had all fled. She was completely defenseless in this moment as he stared at her. A shiver coursed through him at the realization that this was the woman the bedroom had told him about. This was the woman who hid her fragility from a world that must have hurt her more than once.

Tracing his hand along the porcelain oval of her face, Dylan felt his own defenses drop. In this still, quiet moment of revelation, he opened his heart and fell in love.

Slowly he lowered his mouth to Alaina’s, brushing his lips across hers with exquisite care. When she offered no protest, he tasted her again.
She was satin and warmth and a taste like wine, and he thought he would never get enough of her.

Alaina didn’t question his kiss, she accepted it. She let her lips part at the request of his and welcomed him into her mouth. Still clutching the Crystal in her fist, she slid her arms around Dylan’s neck and pulled him down to her, needing nothing in this instant so much as to hold him. She savored every nuance of the moment—the feel of his muscles beneath her hands, the tingling in her breasts as his chest pressed against them, the gentle thrust of his tongue against hers, the growing ache of need deep in her belly.

A sigh whispered through her lips as Dylan trailed the kiss across the line of her jaw and downward to the smooth, cool column of her throat. She turned her head to allow him better access to the sensitive spot.

This was bliss, to have him touching her this way. Whatever else it might have been didn’t matter now. All that mattered was the mutual feeling flowing between them, the need to touch, to communicate in a way that had nothing to do with words or logic. It was as if their souls spoke to
each other. Their needs reached out to entwine around each other.

The light that filtered through the window gilded them in tones of gold and sepia. It was that time when day hung on to its last moment before sliding into night, when time seemed suspended in the last rays of the sun. And it was the kind of moment Alaina knew would become suspended in her memory, unrelated to anything that had happened to her before or would happen after.

Dylan raised up, his dark gaze intent as he looked down at Alaina. She met his stare, her blue eyes warm with a certainty that went soul deep. With one hand she tugged loose the belt of her robe and let the garment fall open. Desire swirled through Dylan, robbing him of whatever sanity he may have had left as he feasted his eyes on womanly beauty.

The dress she’d been wearing the night they met had hinted at this. Dylan had imagined the hidden details more than once, but the reality took his breath away. She was every dream he’d ever dreamed. Her large, ripe breasts strained to be free of the mauve lace bra she wore. Her waist
was slender, her hips perfectly curved. French-cut mauve lace panties only accented her feminine lines. Beneath them hid her womanly secrets, and below them stretched the shapely legs he had longed to touch, longed to feel wrapped around his hips.

Her invitation was unmistakable. Dylan accepted without hesitation or question. He loved her. Caution kept him from voicing the words. Love wasn’t what they had agreed to. In fact, they had both stated it was something they wanted to avoid. Just because his own mind had changed didn’t mean Alaina’s had … yet. So he wouldn’t frighten her by telling her of the feelings that had snuck up and hit him like a freight train, but he would sure as hell show her. Where they would go from there, he didn’t know; his impulsive nature wasn’t given to thinking far beyond the moment. The important thing was this was right.

Slowly he lifted a hand to Alaina’s breast, tracing his fingertips along the scalloped edge of her bra, then slipping them inside to lift the full globe out. As he had imagined, she was warm and heavy in his hand.

Alaina watched him, her breathing shallow, as he bent his head and touched his lips to her nipple. A shudder passed through her when he took the distended peak into his mouth and sucked deeply. She moved restlessly beneath him, anticipation singing along hypersensitive nerves just beneath the fevered surface of her skin.

Her fingers tangled in the unruly curls of his chestnut hair, then roamed to drag his T-shirt up his back. More than her next breath she wanted to feel his skin against hers. As she removed that barrier, Dylan’s hand swept down her belly to catch at her panties. His thumb hooked beneath the waistband and dragged the garment down. Alaina lifted her hips to accommodate their descent, gasping as Dylan’s thumb delved between feminine petals of flesh to rub against the most sensitive part of her.

Need exploded within her like fireworks, sparkling and brilliant. This was like nothing she had ever known or imagined. Her usual need for control over her passions was vaporized by the heat of this more basic need, the need to come together with this man, only with this man.

She pulled his shirt off and flung it, not noticing or caring that it landed on the window seat and sent her cat running for cover. All her attention was focused on Dylan and the incredible sensations he was conjuring up inside her. She ran her hands over the long muscles of his back, reveling in the tension she found there. He was trembling with desire just as she was. The knowledge gave her a feeling of power and wonder and kinship with him. It was a feeling she shared with him in her kiss when he returned his lips to hers.