Raven on the Wing (3 page)

She was a tall woman, yet he was taller and certainly much stronger; he hadn’t used that strength in order to get what he clearly wanted—she’d seen desire in men’s eyes before, and had recognized it in his intense gaze. He had proposed countless times in various ways, chased her playfully around a table or two, and told anyone who’d listen that she was going to marry him. By turns grave and comical, he had gotten everyone in the tavern to cheer him on.

But at no time was his pursuit in any way clumsy or crude. If he swore, it was mildly and with no heat. Far from making any physical pass, he had touched only her hand—and that
with a curious kind of courtly deference and restraint that had been strangely moving and had made her oddly aware of restraint. Not a single vulgar word or crass joke had escaped his lips. And in spite of her amused rejection of his proposals, he had remained amiably determined.

All that—and he’d been quite wonderfully drunk.

“Marry me.”

He didn’t seem to be much different sober. Raven turned and surveyed his tall, dark, and handsome self as he stood in the kitchen doorway. Jeans, she decided, suited him admirably. In fact, if they’d suited him any
more
admirably, he’d have gotten mobbed in the streets by rabid women.

Raven ignored her weak knees just as she’d ignored them when he had appeared in a towel. “Coffee’s over there,” she said, gesturing. “Help yourself. Breakfast is ready.”

Josh headed for the coffee, apparently undisturbed by this continual rejection. “Do you need coffee to start the day?” he asked with interest. “I do.”

Setting two filled plates on the neat oak table, Raven murmured, “Then maybe you’ll be rational in a little while.” She didn’t sound very hopeful.

“I’m rational now,” he said, holding her chair.

Disconcerted, Raven sat with more haste than grace. She’d met men with manners, yes, but at
breakfast?

He set coffee before them both, then took his own chair. “So tell me why we’re in an apartment that isn’t yours,” he said chattily.

Raven gazed into his warm blue eyes for a moment, then began eating.
“We
are here,” she said, “because I’m staying here while my friends are back east. You’re here because the only identification you were carrying last night didn’t name a Los Angeles address. You don’t even carry a driver’s license with you—just business cards with your name and a phone number.”

Josh didn’t tell her that he rarely needed any other identification. “I’m visiting,” he explained, digging in to his own meal with every sign of enjoyment.

“From where?” she asked, wondering at her
own curiosity. Was it because she wanted to get rid of him? Or because she wanted to understand this strangely intense, completely charming man?

“I spend most of my time in New York. How about you? A native of Los Angeles?”

“No,” she said. “Where are you staying?”

“A hotel. Where
are
you from, then?”

“Back east. Which hotel?”

“Downtown. Where back east?”

Parry and thrust.

Raven bit back a giggle. Placidly, she said, “I was born in a Gypsy caravan in Romania, except that
really
I was the child of a baron, stolen by the Gypsies. He’d thrown them off his land, you see, so they decided to get revenge by stealing me. But they already had too many mouths to feed, so they sold me to an Irishman who needed a dancer in his tavern. Then one day while I was dancing on the bar, a Greek shipping tycoon wandered in and offered me a job being the target for a knife thrower in his circus. The Irishman wouldn’t sell me, so the Greek bought the tavern with all contents included—meaning
me—and spirited me away to London, then to the States. For a year I dodged knives, until the knife thrower pierced my left ear by mistake and I ran away. I ended up on a Mississippi riverboat, where a dissolute gambler taught me how to cheat at cards and look good in feathers. But it turned out that I was allergic to feathers and my nose quivered revealingly whenever I stacked a deck, so I left there and became a guide taking tourists to the floor of the Grand Canyon on muleback. After three trips I became a victim of vertigo, so that ended that job. I then hopped a freight train, headed west, and fell in love with Los Angeles at first sight. There didn’t seem to be much demand for tavern dancers, targets for knife throwers, untalented gamblers allergic to feathers, or mule riders, so I ended up being a computer programmer at IBM.”

Josh burst out laughing.

Raven, who had talked very quickly as she’d spun the tale out of thin air and a vivid imagination, took a deep breath, a sip of coffee, then asked gently, “And how was
your
life?”

“Boring, compared to yours,” he told her.

“You mean you’re not going to give me any of the details?” She was incredulous. “After I bared my soul and past to your cruel laughter?”

“I’m trying to entice you with my mystery,” he explained gravely.

“It isn’t working.”

“Well, dammit, you seem to be above bribery; you were hardly impressed by the offer of my kingdom. An aura of mystery isn’t getting me anywhere. My bare and manly chest obviously didn’t affect you; you removed half my clothes last night and apparently felt not one pang of lust, and when I paraded before you clothed only in a towel, you never so much as blinked.”

Raven choked on a laugh.

“I see I haven’t been going about this the right way.” Purposefully, Josh rose from his chair, came around the table, and took her arms to pull her up from her chair. “Clearly, what is needed here,” he said sternly, “is a little old-fashioned persuasion.” And he bent his dark head to hers.

C
AUGHT OFF GUARD
, Raven didn’t have a chance to struggle. And, bewildering though the thought was, she wasn’t at all certain that she would have struggled, given the chance. His lean, handsome face filled her vision, his arms closed around her, and Raven found her body swaying toward this stranger as though drawn by an irresistible magnet.

Even remembering his exemplary behavior of the night before, she half-expected an onslaught, a passionate demand. But when his lips met hers, it was with a gentle, seeking, almost tentative
touch, soft and warm. Her body, braced for abrupt shock, found instead an insidious sweet warmth, and she felt her bones melting. Seduced, her mouth opened to his and her arms lifted to encircle his lean waist.

His head lifted a moment later, and Raven gazed rather dreamily into blue eyes that were hot now instead of warm. “This,” she said, “has got to stop.” Something told her the statement should have emerged more forcefully, and she tried again. “I mean it. I don’t kiss strangers. Especially first thing in the morning.” Not much better, she decided critically.

Josh smiled very slowly and his head bent again. And this time the demand came, hot and urgent. His lips slanted hungrily across hers while his hard arms pulled her so close she could feel the strong male contours of his body imprinting themselves on her own quivering flesh. Her senses exploded in a violent burst of inner sparks, the stark possession of his tongue and the pressure of his body against hers igniting something red hot and powerful deep inside of her.

She made a soft sound in the back of her throat without meaning to, her hands clutching his back, moving unconsciously to press herself even closer.

For a moment it seemed as though he would accept her mindless invitation. His mouth grew even more fierce, his arms tightening around her—and then he suddenly lifted his head and stared down at her with feverish blue eyes. “That doesn’t happen between strangers,” he said roughly. “Marry me, Raven.”

There was nothing playful or amiable about him now, nothing to be taken as an amusing jest; he was utterly and completely serious, and she knew it. Within two seconds she also knew she was in trouble. The distant cool part of her mind began working with its hard-won logic, presenting one problem after another to her with depressing clarity. And there was no time … no time at all. She carefully dropped her arms and stepped back away from him, gathering the threads of control tight until her breathing steadied and she could trust her voice.

“Sometimes it does,” she said, and made it
sound like a statement of experience. “They call it chemistry. Finish your breakfast, Josh.”

He sat down as she did, but didn’t seem perturbed. “I’ll convince you,” he said easily. “I’m a patient man, and I’ve got all the time in the world.” He wondered, on some dim and distant plane of his mind, how on earth he could sound so calm. His heart was pounding, and every thudding beat of it urged him to take her in his arms again and finish what he’d started.

Raven wanted to tell him that he might have time, but she didn’t. However, experience had taught her only too well the dangers of confiding in anyone. She made her protest a dry and commonplace one. “I’m afraid I have little spare time,” she told him. “I have to earn my living, which demands the bulk of the day.”

“What do you do?” he asked casually.

“I’m a secretary.” She had long ago stopped crossing her fingers while saying that. It no longer bothered her to lie. “A temporary secretary; I tend to have odd hours, and I take jobs within a three-hundred-mile radius of Los Angeles. What do you do?”

He grinned suddenly, his expression peculiarly amused. “Told you. I run a kingdom.”

“Oh, right.” She shook her head with the air of someone who’d forgotten some tiny detail. “You did tell me that. Is it an international kingdom, or domestic?”

“Domestic mostly,” he explained in a conversational tone. “But I do own most of an airline, and it’s international.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You don’t believe me.”

She smiled gently. “How often does a woman meet a prince?”

He chuckled. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You aren’t the kind of woman to be impressed by money or power.”

Finishing her breakfast more by rote than any sense of hunger, Raven rose and carried her plate to the sink. Along with all the other violent emotions tangling inside her, she felt vaguely uneasy. Josh Long didn’t strike her as a braggart, and his talk of wealth was just a bit too matter-of-fact to be a delusion. Still, she told herself, it hardly
made any difference. He’d be out of her life very soon now.

That was a depressing thought, she decided.

“You haven’t told me your last name,” he observed, carrying his plate to the sink.

Her hesitation was fleeting. “Anderson. Look, I have a lunch appointment for this afternoon. I can drive you to your hotel.”

“Thank you,” he said gravely.

All Raven’s instincts warned her that there was absolutely nothing meek about this man, warned that he had no intention of vanishing from her life. She ignored the warning, and ignored the scornful voice that told her
why
she was ignoring it. “Keep the clothes,” she offered lightly. “Jud won’t miss them.”

“Jud?”

“My friend’s husband.”

“Ah.” He nodded, then stepped over to the phone on the kitchen wall, lifted the receiver, and briefly studied the plastic-covered strip bearing the number. Then he replaced the receiver and smiled at her. “Got it. I assume you want to
leave now? I’ll get my things.” And he strode from the kitchen.

Frowning a bit, Raven stowed the plates in the dishwasher. She didn’t doubt he’d memorized the phone number; he would probably make a mental note of the address when they left. “Damn,” she murmured.

Oddly enough, the curse didn’t sound as fierce as she wanted it to. Not nearly as fierce …

Almost half an hour later, she pulled her battered Pinto to a halt before the imposing glass-and-steel hotel he had named. The doorman, his well-trained face impassive, came forward, only to be waved away by Josh. Turning in the bucket seat, he gazed intently at her.

“Go out with me tonight?”

She kept the smile on her face. “Sorry, I’m booked.”

“Then I’ll call you.” He leaned toward her suddenly, kissing her gently but with more than a hint of the raw fire he had earlier unleashed. “Tonight.”

Raven said nothing. She watched him gracefully unfold his length from the cramped little
car and shut the door, then waved vaguely and drove away. Several blocks down the street and out of sight, she pulled her car over to the curb and sat for a moment, contemplating her shaking hands. “What lousy timing,” she murmured. “Damn.”

She thought of the night before, of laughter and an easy companionship she’d never known before. She thought of warm blue eyes and a passion that still tingled within her. She thought of proposals, drunken and sober. Then she thought of a phone ringing in an empty apartment.

Swearing in a soft, toneless voice, she pulled back out into traffic and went on her way.

“I never made it to the party,” Raven said. She was sitting at a picnic table, the paper clutter of lunch between her and the man opposite. Absently, she poked a finger at the horn-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose.

“Why not?” His voice was low and deep and his face boasted the open, ingenuous expression
of a man with no secrets and few wits. It was a deceptive expression, to say the least.

Raven studied him for a moment in silence, although she knew his face almost as well as her own. “Well, ridiculous as it sounds, Kelsey, I knocked a man down in the hall at the hotel.”

Kelsey ran blunt fingers through rusty hair. “You would. Did you kill him?”

“Funny.” She decided not to explain the remainder of the night. “Anyway, I missed the party.”

“There’ll be questions.”

“Yes. I know what I’ll say, don’t worry.”

He nodded, then pushed a flat envelope across the table toward her. While she casually studied the contents, he studied her. Not a strand of her long black hair showed beneath the drab brown wig she wore, and her loose blouse and shabby jeans effectively shrouded a figure that normally caught every eye in passing. The heavy-rimmed glasses changed her features remarkably, leaving her with a curiously harried, fretful appearance, which was enhanced by her frequent, seemingly nervous gesture of pushing the rim up her nose.

Her own mother would have passed her without a glance.