Little White Lies (13 page)

“I want you,” he whispered hoarsely.  “God, you have no idea how much I need you right now.”

She gasped when his hand slid beneath her skirt and started to pull her pantyhose down, but she did nothing to stop him.  Her shoes hit the floor with a dull thud just a fraction of a second before her hose were removed and fluttered to the ground after them.  And then he was kissing her again; hard, demanding kisses that promised more than she could ever have imagined.  She felt his hand move between them and knew he was unbuckling his belt.  Miranda squirmed beneath him, wanting him, needing him, knowing that in a matter of seconds she would have him. 

Holt lifted his head to look at her, to drink in the beauty of the woman he was about to claim as his own.  He hadn’t meant for it to go this far, but the way she’d kissed him had thrown him totally off balance and he’d lost all self control.  He’d spent the last week agonizing over her, wondering if she felt for him the way he did for her, and now he knew. 

She wanted him.  She wanted him to make love to her so badly that she’d pushed aside her prim little nature and given into desire in spite of the fact it was broad daylight and that just outside his door there were any number of people who could come knocking and interrupt them. 

Miranda opened her eyes slowly, drugged by his kisses and the heat of his body.  A sexy smile curved his lips and raw desire burned in his eyes, and for one brief moment Miranda’s heart surged with the power of her love before reality hit her square in the gut and knocked the wind out of her.  It wasn’t Holt’s face she saw just inches above her own but Jack’s. 

Jack, who had rescued her from an attacker and brought her to the Penthouse to make sure she was okay.  Jack, who had made love to her and taken her to heights she’d never known before.  Jack, laughing with her as they strolled down the beach, flying her to Vegas, pouting about losing at strip poker, asking her to move in with him.

“Stop,” she cried, “please, Holt.  Oh, God, what am I doing?”  She pushed against his chest, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Confused by her sudden rejection, Holt braced her face in his hands searching her eyes for some clue.  “Miranda, what’s wrong?”

“
This
,” she sobbed, “this is wrong, so wrong.”

“No, baby, it’s incredibly right.  Is it because we’re in my office?  We could go up to the penthouse…”

“No!  Oh Holt, I never should have let it go this far.”

“But you want me, Miranda, you can’t deny it.”

“I d…do,” she choked, “but I can’t do this. I
won’t
do this.  There’s someone else and I just can’t betray him.  He doesn’t deserve it, and I’m a horrible, horrible person for doing this to him.”  She dissolved into a fresh round of tears as Holt lifted his weight from her and gathered her nylons and shoes.

“Here, you can fix yourself up in my bathroom.”

The gentleness of his voice only confused her more.  Shouldn’t he be angry or hurt by her rejection?  But he wasn’t.  The only discernable emotion she read on his face was sadness, and somehow that seemed even worse than if he had shouted at her for working him up only to push him away at the last minute.  He helped her up then gripped her around the waist when she swayed unsteadily.  She couldn’t look at him; the shame was just too great.

“I’m sorry, Miranda.  I’m the one who let things get out of hand so you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened.  It was inappropriate, especially in the work place. I wouldn’t blame you if you walked out or wanted to file charges for harassment.”

“I could
never
do that to you,” she said vehemently.

“So I wasn’t imagining it?  You do feel something for me, don’t you?”

Her voice was with laced with misery, “It doesn’t matter how I feel, Holt.”

“It matters to me,” he said softly.

Miranda drew in a deep breath.  Even now she wanted him so bad it hurt, but she wouldn’t act on it ever again and had to make sure he didn’t either.  “Don’t say things like that to me, Holt.  There’s someone else in my life, someone I care about deeply and I won’t allow sexual attraction between the two of us ruin what he and I have.”

“Is that all it is, Miranda, sexual attraction?”

“Not for me,” she met his gaze, “but then you already know that, don’t you?  Be honest, Holt, once you saw me in that dress I became just another conquest to you.  Your love life is like a revolving door with women coming and going so fast it’s a wonder you can remember any of their names.  I’m nothing to you, and if we had made love, you would have regretted later.”

Holt shook his head.  “You’re wrong, Miranda. It’s much more than sexual attraction for me and I wouldn’t have regretted a single moment of making love to you.”

Her resolve wavered for a few seconds before the image of Jack’s bone melting smile imprinted itself in her mind’s eye. “We both would have regretted it.  I’m not the type who cheats and you’re not the type of man who tries to seduce a woman who is spoken for.”

“This is different, Miranda.  Whether you want to admit it or not, what’s happening between us is more than physical.  If this other man meant so much to you, I wouldn’t have been able to kiss you like I did, and you certainly wouldn’t have been writhing beneath me as if you couldn’t wait another second to have me inside of you.  You wanted the intimacy of becoming a part of me because you have feelings for me, and I wanted that too.  I
do
care for you, Miranda, and I want more than just a brief affair.”     

Tears brimmed her eyes once more.  “I can’t.”  She pulled away from him and headed for the bathroom, pausing in the doorway to look back at Holt.  “This never happened,” she said unevenly, then went into the bathroom and quietly closed the door.

“Oh, it happened all right,” he mumbled under his breath.  “And it’s going to happen again and again until you admit that Jack is just a substitute for me.”

He was still standing where she’d left him when Miranda emerged from the bathroom.  Without a word, she walked briskly past him to retrieve her hair clip and the papers he’d dropped on the desk.  She looked so miserable, all Holt wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her, but she was far too emotionally unstable right now to accept even the slightest gesture of intimacy.  She left as quietly as she’d entered, and after staring at the door for quite some time, he finally went back to his desk and sat down. 

Trying to work was a waste of time and after a few hours, he gave up.  He couldn’t stop thinking about her, not with the taste of her still lingering on his lips and the memory of her passionate response to his kisses.  He’d never wanted any woman the way he wanted Miranda and was determined to have her.

Considering his past and his aversion to commitment, he supposed it should have scared him to death to be dreaming of marriage and children and white picket fences, but somehow it seemed to bring him an inner peace he’d never known before.  It could have all been so simple if only he’d recognized sooner that what he felt for her was more than just desire.  But in his own defense, he’d never been in love before.

Restless and wanting an excuse to make sure Miranda was all right, he decided to go to lunch early.  Normally, he would have her order take-out, but he was too wound up to remain in the office.  Besides, he needed to come up with a bullet proof plan to get Miranda to own up to her feelings for him.  Holt shook his head.  The tables had certainly been turned on him this time.  Usually,
he
was the one running like a scared rabbit when being pursued by a woman determined to get him to the altar. Now, it was him doing the chasing. 

For the first time in his life, Holt felt compassion for all the women he’d seduced into his bed and then avoided like the plague afterwards.  Of course, he never dated anyone more than two or three times because he didn’t want the emotional involvement that inevitably arose, but even keeping his encounters brief hadn’t always worked. 

He’d felt nothing but disgust and irritation whenever one of them cried and begged him not to cut them out of his life.  And he had been downright cold if they demanded to know why he was ending it or what they’d done wrong.  Had they been consumed with this abominable sense of desperation just as he was?  Because he
was
desperate, Holt realized.  His insides churned with it whenever he considered the possibility that Miranda might never come around.

Holt grabbed his jacket and slipped it on.  No, he would not allow himself to think like that.  She was his, they belonged together, and he was going to take whatever steps were necessary to make her his wife.  All he had to do was keep her off balance until the scales tipped his way.  It shouldn’t be too hard, he reasoned, considering how strongly she reacted to his touch.  He would have to be careful not to overdo it though; he didn’t want her so confused she couldn’t figure out what she was feeling or even worse, send her running in the wrong direction.  Slow and steady, that was his course of action.

Holt stopped at her desk on his way out and was relieved to see she seemed to have pulled herself together.  Even the tight bun was back in place, but that was okay with him.  That’s all he needed was to have one of his male employees start sniffing around her and throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing. 

Not that he thought Miranda would be interested in another man, but he’d discovered he had a jealous streak a mile wide when it came to her, and it wouldn’t do to have rumors started about him and his lovely assistant.  At least not until after they were married. Then they could gossip and speculate all they wanted, and he had no doubt they would since there had never been anything even remotely romantic about his relationship with Miranda before.

“I’m going to lunch, can I bring you anything?”

Miranda didn’t look at him.  “No, thank you.”

“You
are
going to eat, aren’t you?”

“Actually, I planned on working through lunch.  I’ve got a lot to do and I’m not really hungry anyway.”

He leaned over the desk hoping she’d turn those beautiful jade eyes to his, but she remained rigid as a statue. “You need to eat, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that,” she hissed.

Holt couldn’t resist baiting her.  “Do you prefer honey, or perhaps darling?”

Miranda did look at him then, but her irritation died instantly at the lop-sided grin he wore. “You’re not funny,” she snapped, but couldn’t quite keep a smile from forming.

“I’ll bring you lunch.  No arguments,” he cut her off when she opened her mouth to protest.

Miranda watched him until he disappeared around the corner.  He was incorrigible, impossible, domineering, and…she was still hopelessly in love with him.  Oh, God, what was she going to do?  She might have been able to lock her feelings for him away in a small corner of her heart if he had remained as aloof towards her as he’d been over the past three years, but how could she possibly keep them contained if he continued to unleash that seductive charm on her? 

She’d seen how Holt went after something he wanted.  He was relentless, and failure was not an option.  She doubted he even knew the meaning of the word, and more than anything Miranda was terrified she wouldn’t be able to hold out against him.

                       ***

Jack had been pacing like a caged animal for almost forty-five minutes, stopping occasionally to check the time.  This whole love thing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.  For one thing, going practically the whole day without kissing Miranda had been pure torture.  Not being able to reach out and touch her whenever he wanted was nothing short of hell.  Slowly but surely, she was driving him insane and he hadn’t gotten one solitary thing accomplished at work all day. 

At least he’d managed to get the furniture in place so the condo would look more like a home than a storage unit.  Jack glanced at the clock, a dark scowl beginning to form. 
Where the hell was she?
  The chiming of the doorbell sent him bolting from the room.  He was out of control and he knew it, but right now he simply didn’t give a damn.

Miranda’s breath caught in her throat the minute the door was thrown open and she got a brief glimpse of Jack’s face.  She’d seen that look before, but never had it been so intense, so…animalistic.  He dragged her into his arms, his mouth devouring hers with a hunger that was so fierce she was instantly swept away by the sheer force of it.  Vaguely, it registered that he’d inched her through the doorway and closed the door, but every nerve and fiber in her body was acutely aware that he was frantically trying to tug off her clothes.

It might have been easier to undress her if he didn’t have her pinned against the door, but Jack couldn’t seem to stop kissing her long enough to finish the job.  He got as far as peeling her nylons and panties off before the burning need to be inside of her became as crucial to his life as his next heartbeat.  After hastily shoving his jeans and boxers down to his knees, he cupped Miranda’s bottom and lifted her up, a feral groan of exquisite pleasure tearing from his throat when he thrust into her. 

Nothing in his entire life had ever felt so good or so incredibly
right
.  Her muscles clenched around his heated flesh and he groaned again, thrusting harder and deeper, her muted cries pushing him over the edge with a violent shudder that seemed to go on forever before leaving him utterly drained.