Satin Pleasures (5 page)

Dan's smile told her he wasn't fooled in the least.

An hour later the clinic doctor followed her back into the waiting room, handing her chart to the receptionist as she continued the disagreement they’d been having in the examination room. “Tess, I said I don’t see a skull fracture in the x-rays. That doesn’t mean you’re free and clear. It’s still a good idea to keep an eye out for symptoms of concussion. There must be someone who can check on you for the next twenty-four hours."

The sad thing was there was no one unless she drove to her parents’ house on the coast or called her secretary back to work to babysit. Tess had had it with all the fuss. There were a multitude of things to do before she could go home and crawl into bed. "Anthony will watch me when I get home." She crossed her fingers behind her back. Her male canary would watch her, although he was hardly the support the doctor meant. If there wasn't a concussion, there wasn't a problem.

“Excellent!” The doctor nodded her satisfaction. “If you run into any problems tonight, have him take you directly to the emergency room.” She handed her a small prescription bottle. "Here are your pain pills. Don't take them without eating something substantial first. They can pack a wallop on an empty stomach."

"I'll stop at the food court." She’d intended to grab a bite to take back to her desk anyway.

Much to her dismay, Dan rose unexpectedly from a chair in the corner. Why was he still here? "I'll make sure she gets home okay," he assured the doctor.

His look dared Tess to contradict him, yet she wasn't prepared to reassert her independence. Not then. She waited until she stared at him across a food court table, not quite sure how she came to be sitting there, a huge gyro stuffed with chunks of beef, tomatoes, and onions clutched in her hands.

"Okay, lay it on me."

Irritated at his highhanded manner, she played dumb. "What?"

His expression was wary in the glare of overhead lights that brightened the food court. "You've been fighting the need to bite my head off since you laid eyes on me again."

"Fine."
Tess propped her overflowing Greek sandwich in the plastic serving basket. "Let's start with why you lied to me."

"I never lied to you."

"Dan, you told me you were a fisherman. I spent two hours with you, and I don't know who you are!"

His gaze didn't waver. "I said I fished and, until this week, that's what I've been doing. I never claimed to fish for a living."

She thought over their meeting. "I'll accept that. But you said nothing about owning a store in my mall."

"I didn't know until I followed you here, and then it was too late. There's a lot we didn't discuss...world peace, fashion, Anthony."

That observation snatched the wind from her sails. How could she be upset with Dan considering the whopper she’d told the doctor? She should have corrected Dan's impression, then and there. A second look at his handsome face made her hesitate. A canary was a flimsy barrier to throw between them, but she was afraid to trust in her ability to keep the man at a distance. She was taking all the help she could get! "I'm sorry. Can we start this conversation over?"

He stared pointedly at the abandoned gyro in her basket. "Not until you eat everything in front of you."

She frowned at him, then picked up a fry and ate it.

As good as his word, Dan didn't speak again until she popped the last piece of pita into her mouth. She hated to admit that she felt immensely better by the time he asked her to grab the ketchup off the table behind her.

Her nose wrinkled when he drowned his remaining French fries in red goo. "That can't be good for you."

Dan raised an eyebrow. "You're a fine one to talk."

"I don't know what you mean."

He jabbed a lone fry into the air. "What have you eaten today besides that gyro?"

When she fidgeted silently in her chair, he nodded. "You can't remember because there's nothing to remember."

Her defenses snapped into place. "I drank your tea."

"Tea is not food!"

The remark echoed, almost verbatim, one recently made by her mother. Only she'd been referring to Tess's breakfast coffee habits. Her parents were known to be overly protective—it came with the territory as the only child of older parents—and she wasn't about to argue about it in the food court with a man she hardly knew.

"No one's going to rescue you, you know."

He was a mind reader, too? "I don't need rescuing."

"A year ago, I'd have said the same thing." Dan grew more serious than she’d ever seen him. "Tess, you've got to slow down."

"I don't have time."

"Make time!" His hand settled naturally over hers. "Do you have any idea what it's like when you've pushed too far? I do, and I don't want to think of the same thing happening to you."

Too susceptible to the man's touch, she extricated herself from his clasp. "What happened?"

Briefly considering her question, he shrugged. "I crossed the line. Until a year ago, I worked as a financial consultant for an international firm." He mentioned a well-known corporate name, his smile cynical. "I was the classic executive with an eye on the top.

"Somewhere along the way, I lost my perspective. I became obsessive.
Driven.
I was one step away from a senior partnership when I got sick."

And he'd walked away altogether? Everyone got sick on occasion. To simply throw it all away as he'd done was arbitrarily extravagant. Her disapproval was impossible to hide. "No one makes it to the top without a little drive."

Dan shook his head, frowned. "At what cost? Who determines which goal is important?"

"There's always a price to pay, no matter what your choices."

Who would know that better than her? She'd been paying for her choices, one way or another, most of her adult life. It became the driving force behind everything she did the instant she'd looked down on her father's broken body in that emergency room ten years ago. Her ex-fiancé hadn't stood firm against that force. Evan left her in ICU holding her father’s cold, motionless hand and never returned. The bastard had moved out of their apartment before she learned her father wouldn’t actually die from his injuries.

"Well, I won't pay that price anymore." Dan's vow rang with conviction. "It's taken me a year to recover my health, rethink my priorities. My only regret is that I didn't leave Chicago sooner."

"Why San Francisco?
And, why lingerie?"

"I've been
A Touch of Silk & Satin
partner for years. When Mom opened her first boutique after Dad died, I financed her. After that, I slipped to the background while she and Aunt Mary did their thing. When mom got engaged in the middle of their west coast expansion, my aunt hunted me down and browbeat me off the lake."

"Lake?"

His entire demeanor changed. "I was in Florida on one of the prettiest lakes you ever saw. The fishing was great, but it was the sunrise each morning that kept me from moving on. The way the mist rose off the water...I can't begin to describe it. You'd have to see it."

It sounded peaceful, restful.
Nothing to do all day besides savor the scenery.
With her fear of water she'd never tried fishing, but she loved camping. It was one of the few pleasures her parents could afford as she grew up. They'd pack up the tent and take Tess whenever they could get time off from work. The last time, they'd traveled the coast for her eighteenth birthday. It was the last trip her father had been able to manage.

So much was lost in that following year, including Michael Emory's mobility and most of Tess's fairy tale illusions.

The memories, her regret, were as vivid—as painful—as if they weren't ten years old. "So, what are these new priorities of yours?"

Dan lifted a finger for each point. "Learn to play. Keep a closer eye on my health. Get a personal life." He stopped to elaborate. "Someday, before I'm too old to appreciate them, I'd like a wife and a couple of kids." Another finger came up. "And more immediately, help my family launch their new store."

A couple of kids.
That's all that got through to Tess. She could see Dan's children.
Too clearly.
One boy.
One girl.
Both with their daddy's thick auburn hair and a devilish gleam in their brown eyes.

Wait. Her eyes were brown. Dan's were that bold shade of green that made her think of—

She pushed away the image of lying naked upon a thick nest of fern leaves, Dan's soft mustache feathering over her sun-flushed skin. The audacity of her imagination left her shaken and hot all the way down her body to her toes. The most lurid fantasies had taken over her mind since this man kissed her this afternoon. She never—well, almost never—thought of sex, and she'd always kept her fantasies under a tight rein.

At least, she had...until Dan came into
her life and made her go crazy.

Tess blinked back all the hot, fuzzy feelings blanketing her judgment to focus on the gloomy count of fingers Dan held up. "That's not by order of importance. Business doesn't come fourth, does it?"

"I still dip my hand into investments when the spirit moves me, and I won't let my family down, but I'm searching for a more equitable balance in my life now."

His answer was as bad – no, worse – than she'd expected. That kind of balance was a mirage. There were always tradeoffs. She’d learned that the hard way.

"No comment?"

"No comment." It was pointless to argue such basic philosophical differences.

Not that it mattered. One deliciously potent kiss notwithstanding, the only relationship the two of them could have was a business one. It was almost a relief to discover Dan was a merchant in her mall. She was a businesswoman first, a woman...well, never. Not since Evan. She'd come within a gnat's eyebrow of losing herself then, of destroying her father's chances of ever regaining his mobility. She’d thought she loved Evan so much she’d be willing to give in to his demand she choose between his needs and her father’s.
Never again.

Guilt prodded her to her feet. "I have to return to work."

Dan frowned. "The doctor said to take it easy. It's after eight o'clock. Why don't you call it a day? I need to swing by the store to check on Aunt Mary. Then I can follow you home."

"I promised Harry—"

"Who's Harry?"

The edge on the two words startled her into resuming her seat. If she didn't know better, she'd say Dan sounded jealous. And she felt a twinge, just a twinge, mind you, of feminine satisfaction at the thought this man might be as attracted to her as she was to him. "Harry Rollens is my boss, Thorgram Group's west coast regional manager."

"Is he tall, with thick, white hair?
Shrewd blue eyes and a quick wit?"

"You met?"

"Before I left Chicago, we signed the lease on this store.
Rollens took us to dinner afterward." His gaze pinned her in place. "The man didn't strike me as the slave-driver type."

Her fingers fiddled with her soft drink cup. "Look, Dan, I want you to understand my position so I'm going to tell you something that isn't general knowledge on the mall grapevine."

For some reason, she trusted him to keep the confidence, yet she chose her words with care. "Shortly after that trip last year, Harry's wife became ill. She's been stabilized, but needs lots of care."

Tess shrugged. "Anyway, Harry's winding things up at Thorgram Group so he can stay with her full-time. Problem is he won't go anywhere until his successor is chosen."

"He wants you."

"He's groomed me for the job. The directors are a tough bunch though."

"Meaning?"

"Let's say they're resistant to changing their way of doing things." She lobbed her crushed napkin into the empty food basket. She sighed. "The truth is my competition for the job is related to Thorgram's president." She hated the lack of control she had over her career. Too much of her personal life depended on her professional success.

"Uh-oh."

"Right.
Trouble in paradise."
Tess wasn't free to reveal the significance of today's meeting with Dan because he was one of her tenants. She couldn't blurt out the retail sales of some of the stores had slipped along with the beleaguered economy.

Although she wasn't to blame for the revenue loss, her job prospects were weakened by any decrease in mall sales. As far as her superiors were concerned, her position could be axed at any time. The shopping center’s age, lack of exposure, and archaic management practices only made her situation worse. Harry ran interference when he could but, the bottom line was, she needed to pull retail sales out of the slump or kiss her promotional future good-bye. At this point, with her father's next surgery already scheduled, the thought of failure made her stomach ache.

"The meeting you missed was important," Dan observed.

"Simply getting six directors from all over the country in one conference room at the same time is a challenge." Her lips curved, although she never felt less like smiling. "Harry expected it to tip the scales in my favor."