Silver and Spice (2 page)

He was moving slowly toward her, enjoying the stalk. Behind her host’s back, Anne set her plate down, took a single quick step and felt Link’s hand curl around her wrist like a velvet handcuff. “Come on, sweetheart,” he whispered. “There’s someone I’ve been wanting you to meet for a long time.”

With Link hugging her shoulder, Anne turned, smiling weakly as she stared with deliberate disinterest at a chin made of steel. Just a small distance up from that chin was a disconcertingly sensual mouth, curved in a half-mocking smile. “Anne Blake, is it?” She had to lift her head to meet his gaze. He had the advantage of looking down, his silvery eyes hooded for
Link’s benefit. Not for hers. He was staring at her mouth, as if the only thing on his mind was crushing it…very softly, very thoroughly.

“This is Jake Rivard, Anne. I never did understand how the two of you never happened to meet up before,” Link said jovially. “Heck, you both had parents that hopped the globe, but your grandparents lived just three doors away from each other. And in the last few years Anne’s even done business for your grandfather, Jake.”

“Mr.…Rivers?”

He took the hand she had not extended, chuckling appreciatively at her deliberate mistake. “Rivard,” he corrected lazily. “Fine party, Link.”

“I noticed you were having a good time, Jake,” Link said with satisfaction.

Anne had also noticed that Jake was enjoying himself. First with the brunette, and then with the redhead. And he was still having a good time, imprisoning her small hand neatly in his larger one. She could feel the grain of calluses on his palm, and she could also feel her control begin to slip, the control she always resented losing. The stalk had been going on for more than an hour. Her humor was beginning to give way to an attack of nerves. A delicious adrenaline was coursing through her bloodstream; she was well aware of the danger. She felt high, light-headed. He was a powerful sexual animal. She valued that in the same way that she respected any predator—as long as he understood that she wasn’t prey.

His hand slowly freed hers, his thumb gently rubbing against her slender wrist as he let her go. “You don’t mind if I take Anne away for a dance, do you, Link?”

“Of course not. You just show her a real good time, Jake. She’s one special lady to me.”

Anne smiled weakly. “Actually, I sort of left a friend all alone in the house. If you would mind just for a moment, Mr.—”

“Rivard,” he supplied.

“I’ll be right back to claim that dance,” she assured him.

“I’m sure you will.”

There would be a snowstorm in hell before her cool, calm flesh would come in direct contact with his lean, hungry body—and he knew it. She could feel his eyes on the open spaces in the back of her dress as she walked away.

It didn’t matter. Anne was leaving. Well, in a minute she was leaving. She wanted to see one last person before she left.

Angela Stone was a white-haired wisp of an aristocrat, dressed in a plain white gown with a blaze of sapphires at her throat. “How’s your grandmother, Anne? I spoke to her on the phone last week, but neither of us really had a chance to talk…”

Anne tried to relax, taking the straight chair next to the older woman. “I miss her when she goes south,” Anne admitted. “In fact, I’ve been worried about her lately.”

“Now, she has a horde of people to take care of her, dear. You’re so very like her, Anne, never letting anyone do a thing for you. One doesn’t quibble with that kind of character. One simply tries to relax and not worry. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Anne automatically shied from talking about herself. Instead, she switched to Mrs. Stone’s favorite subject—her artists and the scholarships she’d set up for budding sculptors. Occasionally, people came by to interrupt; Link, for one, bent over to kiss Angela’s cheek, and another neighbor did the same to Anne. The later it grew, the cooler the breeze became, and more and more people wandered inside. Still, it wasn’t until Anne felt a curl start to slip on her neck that she realized he’d been there again.

With a flush in her cheeks, she stood up—but not soon enough. She could feel all the snaky coils of long hair begin to unwind. “I’ll tell Gran everything you said, Mrs. Stone. How good it is to see you again.”

“So few people take the time for an old lady these days, Anne. Give Jennie my love.”

Anne managed to reach the front door before her hair actually tumbled. She reached up frantically; there were three pins left. Irritably, she wrenched those out, and the rest of the tumbling mane promptly cascaded down her back, all soft and tickly through the silk latticework of her dress.

It didn’t matter; she was through with the party anyway. From the front steps, she could see the long line of cars parked along the road; the cement walk that led down to them was bordered by hedges trimmed into animal shapes. One bush was a wolf. The long slope of grass had the sheen of dew; fall leaves whispered as she hurried through the darkness toward the shores of Lake St. Clair. She had parked her car a block away.

As she approached her little red MG, her step faltered. He was already there, leaning back against the car directly ahead of hers. The dark green Morgan had not been there when she parked; her MG had barely fit between two monstrous gas guzzlers, and she remembered both well. His sleek car was of classic vintage, long and low, not the type of car she was likely to forget.

He was leaning back, arms folded lazily across his chest. Even in the darkness, she could make out the silvery eyes, glinting directly on hers, the waiting in them controlled. Barely. Impatiently, she reached her car, leaned over to toss in her purse, and then, with exasperation, slipped off one shoe and hurled it at him. Then the other. He was picking up the silver sandals when she vaulted into the driver’s seat, hitching up her skirts in a motion that proved she had given up on ladylike modesty.

Her stockinged toe pressed lightly on the accelerator as she started the engine, and with practiced finesse she edged the MG rapidly out of the parking space. In seconds, she was roaring down the quiet boulevard, her long hair spinning a cloak around her. She saw from her rearview mirror that he hadn’t even gotten in his car yet.

During the fifteen-minute drive to her condominium, nearly all of Anne’s image of perfection was destroyed. Her stockings were snagged, her skirt was hitched up over her knees, her hair was a witch’s tangle around her, she’d bitten off the shiny lip gloss, and the wind had whipped away most of her other makeup. She was exceeding the speed limit, so she hugged the dark side roads where no one was likely to notice her. The police had little to do in this affluent suburb of Detroit except catch speeders.

Braking sharply as she reached her condo, Anne felt a moment of triumph when she saw that there wasn’t another car in sight. Certainly not a long, low Morgan. Holding her skirts up, she sprinted over the wet, grassy yard to reach her door, breathless as she worked the key in the lock.

In seconds, she was inside and throwing the dead bolt, and then she leaned back against the door until she could breathe normally again. Every nerve ending was tingling. Laughter was trying to bubble up inside of her.

The condo was dark, with only the pale light from the small lamp falling on the pair of white velvet couches with their scattering of shocking pink pillows. Her fig tree was getting huge, playing a marvelous game of Shadows on the thick white carpet. The chrome and pewter appointments gleamed, giving evidence of her meticulous care. Magazines were neatly aligned on small, elegant tables. Somewhere along the way she seemed to have accumulated a collection
of marble eggs; their pearly pink surfaces shone from the far corner of the French bookcase. Everything was in its place, all feminine perfection. She loved the look of the room.

Usually.

Switching off the small lamp, Anne ran her fingers back through her hair with a little sigh. A desperate feeling of disappointment came from nowhere to clutch at her heart. The chase had set off a confused kaleidoscope of emotions, none of which she wanted to deal with. Taking a brush from her purse, she restored at least basic order to her hair as she wandered into the kitchen. Suddenly thirsty, she took a long drink of water and listened, for a moment, to the lonely silence. A neighbor’s light went off in the distance across the courtyard, the only other light that had been on besides her own.

Slowly, she made her way to the bedroom and pushed open the door.

He was there. Lying back against her pillows, his shoes off and the tux jacket opened, his unbuttoned shirt baring several inches of that sand-silver mat of hair on his chest.

Her heart skipped two beats and then raced; a small fist clenched in the folds of her skirt. “To begin with, there isn’t any
possible
way you could have gotten here ahead of me, and don’t even
tell
me how you got in,” she said furiously. “And to end with, Jake, the answer is
no. Not again. Not this time.”

“Now, Anne.” His tone was coaxing, lazy. Slowly, he swung his legs over the side of her bed, taking three long strides before he reached her, her silver sandals dangling by their straps from one finger. “You didn’t really think the dead bolt would keep me out?” The hardness left his eyes, taking in that odd blend of vulnerability and stubborn determination that was Anne. “I’ve come better than two thousand miles to tell you I think it’s about time we got married,” he told her. “Let’s not start off with a quarrel.”

Anne heard him; she even had a vagrant urge to try a swinging left hook to wipe the uneven grin off his face. For one helpless moment, though, she couldn’t stop herself from making a quick, fierce study of the man. Her eyes swept over the familiar planes of Jake’s face, resenting the new, unexplained crease between his brows, scanning the hook nose and sensual mouth and the chin so inevitably peppered with evening stubble. If there had been the slightest sign that he had been ill over the past three years; if by any chance he had been ill and she hadn’t known… Jake was such a terrible fool when it came to taking care of himself.

About the instant her eyes were finally reassured that he was perfectly fine, she was uncomfortably aware that the devilish spark in his own eyes had increased to a full-fledged flame. Clearly, he was delighted by whatever emotions her transparent face had given away. And about that same instant, the word
married
finally registered in her brain like the surprise little bomb that it was.

“Married?” she echoed lightly. Her vulnerable eyes turned cool, and her tone deliberately radiated concern. “So you’ve finally flipped out, have you, Jake?”

He chuckled as he handed her the sandals. She wasted no time putting them on. His hand on her shoulder was undoubtedly intended to offer her balance…except that the feel of that hand threw her
off
balance. Behind all the lazy laughter in his eyes was a stark, steady glint of determination. “Now, don’t get scared,” he said teasingly.

“Scared?”

“Like the little girl who’s lying in bed waiting for the alligators under the mattress to come and get her. Marriage doesn’t have to be like that, honey.” Absently, Jake pushed the hair back from his forehead, a gesture that failed to restore order of any kind. “I figured it was about time I came home and finally did something about you, Anne. You’re thirty-one. A female bachelor, getting fussier and more set in your ways every day. Pretty soon you’ll be over the hill—”

“True.” She added with a remarkable amount of compassion, “Perhaps age is your problem, too? Maybe you’re going through a midlife crisis, Jake. I think you can get pills for that.”

“Not until I’m forty. I still have six years to go. Speaking of pills, are you taking any?”

“Brewer’s yeast,” she said sweetly. “And occasionally wheat germ.”

Damn that crooked smile of his. It was the sexy eyes that had initially led her down the primrose path to his bed a very long time ago, but it was the impossibly crooked smile that had made her fall in love with him. Memories flooded her consciousness as if a dam had burst.

She plugged the hole in the dike and headed for the door. “Out you go,” she said cheerfully. “It’s been a wonderful conversation, Jake, after not seeing you for three whole years. I won’t even mention that it’s two in the morning, that you had no right to pick my locks—”

“Window.”

“Pardon?”

“I came in through the window.”

“What—?” But it was obvious which window he had come in—the one near the bed where the curtains were fluttering in the night breeze. Anne found herself staring, suddenly lost. Jake had climbed in another window another time, when she was eighteen. And made love and made love and made love and… She lifted her face to his, jade eyes turned emerald. “Go away, Jake. Just go completely away.”

“Now, Anne.” Jake’s hand brushed the small of her back as he urged her through the door. “You know we’re both dying for a cup of coffee.”

“You are
not
staying.”

“Of course not.”

Despite the seeming meekness of his tone, Jake’s words echoed in the hall with the reverberation of a detonated grenade. Anne had waged war with Jake before. She wavered momentarily, weighing the dangers of spending fifteen minutes with Jake over a cup of coffee in the same way a general might calculate the risk of sending his troops over a minefield. A good general, of course, would send the troops
around
the minefield.

Anne let out a breath. “One cup of coffee,” she said flatly. “Only so you can tell me what trouble you’ve gotten yourself into the last few years.”

“Lots,” he assured her. His slashed-on smile was her reward. Jake always rewarded terrible judgment.

Her unwilling heart turned a cartwheel. Her heart had turned cartwheels for those special private smiles three other times in her life—not counting that first time Jake had loved her and left her, when she was eighteen and he twenty-one. “I’ll just bet you have,” she said lightly. “So where have you been raising hell this time?”

“Idaho. Northern Idaho, where the mountains are so steep they can barely build roads. Where the whole area’s deserted. You can walk for hours and have the feeling no one has ever been there before you.”

“Sounds perfectly dreadful.” They fell into old habits in the kitchen. Jake opened cupboards and drawers, finally finding the instant coffee and cups.

“A minute,” she told him when the cups were filled and he was staring at the dials on her microwave oven.

He punched the button. “This is nicer than your last place.”

“I like it,” she agreed, trailing after him with spoons, place mats, napkins, cream in a sterling pitcher and a matching sugar bowl. All the things she considered appropriate for serving coffee, knowing full well Jake would have been content to sit near a campfire with a mug.

“It’s nicer…but the kitchen’s still just like you. Your grandmother’s hand-painted china and everything in its place, all the cups lined up just so.”

“I’m the same old frantic neatnik,” Anne agreed. “So how long have you been back in town?” she asked casually.

“Since late this afternoon. Just long enough to find out where you were, pick up the Morgan from Gramps, and get to Link’s party.” He set both cups on the table, but didn’t seem interested in drinking from his own. He was still trying to undress. Not that Anne didn’t understand that Jake had an honest antipathy for formal attire, but one could stretch understanding only so far. His shoes and tie had been off when she came in; somehow the jacket was off now. Jake was looking very, very comfortable as he leaned back against the counter, his shirt cuffs folded back, the silver hair on his chest showing in the V of his open shirt. All settled in. He had the wolf’s ability to move slowly and lazily when he was clearly up to no good.

Anne settled in a chair and lifted her coffee cup. “Either you heave your suitcase out the back door onto the porch, or I will,” she said pleasantly.

He chuckled. “Did you get all the presents I sent you?”

“I mean it. You can’t just come back here—”

“In a minute, Anne. Meanwhile, what on earth are you doing living alone?” Jake asked conversationally.

“The same thing you are. Being very happy in my own way.”

“I counted at least twelve men at the party who would have been happy to convince you otherwise.”

“Thirteen,” she said mildly. Her palms curled around the warm cup, suddenly needing that warmth. “I only counted one brunette and one redhead in your corner, but then you weren’t there more than an hour. Either one, I’m sure, will be happy to store your suitcase for the night.”

“Come here, Anne.”

His voice was a husky, seductive tenor. A call from the north woods, a low, primitive mating call that echoed through wind and night and silence…and had nothing at all to do with a brightly lit, spotless kitchen in an affluent suburb. A drop of coffee splashed on Anne’s wrist as she set down her cup and stood up.

“All right.
I’ll
put your suitcase on the porch,” she said reasonably.

She moved swiftly, so swiftly that she almost made it to the doorway before his fingers curled around her wrist and tugged, very gently. Just as gently, the rest of the room suddenly went out of focus. Her meticulous kitchen with its bright porcelains and immaculate chrome all blurred; Jake’s face was the only thing in focus. She took in the fan of character lines around his eyes and the grainy texture of his sun-weathered skin, the shaggy brows… A helpless murmur escaped her throat as his lips touched hers, once, soothingly, his mouth soft and smooth, the taste of him something she’d never been able to forget. “God, I’ve missed you, Anne. God,
 
I’ve missed you…”

Her hands hung limply at her sides as she fought the rush of a thousand memories. The smell of Jake, the look of the long, curling hairs on his chest, his Adam’s apple and the cords of his neck, the feel of being wrapped up in a world of senses where nothing else mattered… His fingers combed back her hair, clenching and unclenching in the long, silken strands as they had done so many times before.

Their relationship had never worked, and never would work except on this one level. She knew that far too well, far too painfully…but his lips were so warm, brushing over and over on hers until they trembled, until they parted and his mouth molded itself to hers and his tongue slipped inside. God, she’d missed him. No one had ever even come close to filling the emptiness but Jake. Love, hate, frustration, laughter and sheer wild passion…a thousand emotions were involved in her feelings for her roguish wolf, only half of them pleasant, none of them comfortable, not one of them having the least thing to do with the well-ordered life in which she took such pride and satisfaction.

No, Anne,
moaned her very rational brain, which was an expert on survival. Her hands refused to listen, slowly running up his arms, reexploring the mold of his shoulder muscles before she allowed her fingers to curl up in his thick, springy hair. Some of the tension left his body when he felt her acquiesce; his lips again softened on hers.

“I’m never leaving without you again,” he murmured. “Hear me, Anne, because you’re going with me…”

She couldn’t hear anything; in a resounding rush, her heart was pounding out a song she’d heard many times…but never with this particular chorus. Never with this particular need to force his lips back to hers, this ache for the claim of his hand on her breast, this fierce resentment of the intrusion of clothes. She’d thought she would never see him again. The last time, she’d told him never to come back, and meant it. Jake
knew
she’d meant it. Only now, like a crocus bursting through snow, she felt vulnerable and full of life again and reaching for sunlight and desperately unwilling to let go even for a moment…

“So sweet,” he whispered. “So sweet, Anne.”

His lips dipped into the hollow of her neck and his breath tickled her throat, warm and whispery. His thighs rubbed against hers in an evocative dance. Every movement he made increased the rush of sensations in her body, even his evening beard that chafed like crushed velvet against her soft skin. His hands swept up and down her spine as he trailed haunting slow kisses along the side of her neck. When his lips sought hers again, she was waiting. The pressure she returned was wanton, her fingers raking up through his hair, a fierce, racing, desperate cry of need escaping from her. How she loved this man! How she had longed for the look of him, for his touch and smell and sound and taste… She could feel his pleasure at her ardent response as intimately as she could feel the unmistakable pressure of his arousal against her abdomen. She’d denied her loneliness for so long…too long.

A flush of heat touched her cheeks as his eyes met hers, all silver, all pagan shine. Far too slowly, he wrapped his fingers in her hair to nudge the strands aside. His knuckles grazed the nape of her neck as he sought the hooks at the back of her gown. In a moment, she was naked to the waist.

The next moment he had gathered her so close that neither of them could breathe. Her arms locked around his neck; her lips burrowed in his throat. “This time,” he whispered fiercely, “you’re going to marry me, Anne. This time the ball’s in my court…”

Marry…
The word stung like the lash of a whip. Her passion chilled with lightning speed. Shaking, Anne jerked back from him, snatching for the front of her gown. “
Dammit,
Jake…” Normally it took two fingers to handle the hooks and eyes; now she seemed to have ninety and still couldn’t manage it. “Damn
you.
”
 
She held the gown up with one hand. Feeling sick and furious, she could barely look him in the eyes. “
You
started that. You know I never meant to—”

“Yes,” he said shortly, and tugged her trembling cheek to his ruffled shirt front, managing the hooks and eyes himself. When he stepped back from her, he was oddly still, his body radiating none of the tension and frustration that were pulsating through her own. The watchful look in his eyes was unfamiliar, like a terrible new trick, as if he could read her faint trembling, her pale color and porcelain profile, and see things…that just weren’t there.

“Look, I don’t find the subject of marriage very amusing.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

“It won’t
work,
”
 
she said furiously. “And you know that just as well as I do!”

“It
will
work.”

Be calm.
Anne took a breath and then another, staring in total frustration at the ceiling. “Even you, Jake, cannot expect to just walk in here after three years and—”

“And talk marriage? But I just have, Anne. Because we know each other far too well to pretend time has made any difference. You know it hasn’t.” He reached out, and the pad of his thumb very gently caressed her cheek, a touch as tender as the look in his eyes was determined. “We just proved that,” he said roughly. “We’ve always proved that, every time we touch each other.”

“You think you deserve a gold medal because I still want you?” she demanded.
“Rabbits
want each other, Jake. You want to hear me say that I missed you? Well, fine. I missed you like hell. And now you can just get the devil out of here.”

Enough was enough. Actually, enough was just past enough, because she could feel an unfamiliar, disgraceful welling of moisture in her eyes. Anne never cried. Turning on her heel, she stalked toward her room.

Jake didn’t follow. In seconds, she’d turned the lock on her bedroom door and leaned back against it, her arms wrapped around her chest, her eyes closed. Waiting for Jake to go.