Silver Miracles (19 page)

Taking his top hand away, the man turned his other hand palm up to clasp hers lightly in a new hold.

Now she could see a heavy gold watch around his wrist and part of the brown tweed of his jacket sleeve. Her eyes trailed downward to view a pair of long legs covered with coffee-colored slacks and crossed at the knee. So far so good.

Retracing her route, Morgan turned her head cautiously and encountered a pair of brown eyes looking out at her from an arrestingly attractive face. Parted on the side, his dark brown hair was brushed appealingly back across his well-shaped head and he had an intriguing cleft chiseled into the middle of his well-defined chin. Definitely, tall, dark and handsome!

Morgan smiled slowly at the man, for some unexplained reason feeling instantly at ease with him. "I would have been disappointed if you had looked any other way."

His full, sensual mouth turned upward into a grin. "I couldn’t lose. I had a bet going with myself that you would either have blue or green eyes, and now I can see that they’re blue-green."

Morgan’s attention switched curiously to the vacant seat beside him. Not only that, the row across from them was unoccupied!

"I heard the stewardess talking to you. Are you supposed to be in First Class?"

The gold flecks in his eyes seemed to sparkle for her. "My ticket does say First Class, but when I saw you in the lounge, belting down that Scotch, I decided it would be more fun to sit with you."

Laughter lurked in her voice as Morgan inquired politely, "Do you often do things like this?"

"I have to admit I don’t. Most of the time, I’m too wrapped up with my work. What about you? Is this an everyday occurrence for you?"

"What?" she bantered easily. "Finding a tall, dark and handsome man beside me?"

"I should imagine that you often find men of all descriptions around you."

Morgan’s face colored slightly at his compliment, but she chose to ignore the remark. "I don’t usually drink like that. It’s just that I’m terribly afraid of flying."

"I noticed," he commented dryly.

Morgan looked down at her hand still clasped in his. "Thanks for the moral support. I suppose a psychiatrist would say I need extensive analysis, and I know that my mother views my fear of flying as a major flaw in my character."

"Your mother?"

"My mother is a very proper Bostonian. Her life is devoted to my father, her clubs and charities and improving me—in that order."

His hand reached out to tilt her chin up, and he studied her face thoughtfully through half-closed eyes. "It doesn’t look as if there’s too much wrong with you."

Morgan grinned. "I like to think there’s not. But you see, I have a checkered past. I committed a huge indiscretion, almost unforgivable in fact, and my mother never lets me forget it."

"I knew I was going to like you. What did you do?" —He actually looked hopeful!— "Murder someone?"

"Oh, no. That she could have forgiven. You see, my parents’ very best friends in the whole world, another leading family of Boston, have a son my age. We grew up together and it was expected that we would eventually marry."

"I see." He nodded sagely.

"Exactly. Not that Sebastian wasn’t a very nice person."

"Sebastian!"

Morgan giggled at his arched brows. "The only problem was that I didn’t love Sebastian. He was too much like a brother."

"I’d like to go on record as saying I understand perfectly."

The man was absolutely charming! Morgan thought, and gave him a lovely smile in appreciation of the fact. "Unfortunately my parents didn’t. Or at least mother didn’t. If it had been just my dad, I might have been able to get around him."

"Daddy’s little girl, huh?"

Morgan was thoroughly enjoying herself. Remarkably, she had forgotten all about her deathly fear of flying. Feeling the warmth of her hand in his and seeing the golden glow in his brown eyes, she continued talking to him as if she had known him all her life.

"Dad was generally on my side," she admitted. "Or maybe it would be closer to the truth to say that he was just too busy to really make a fuss, one way or the other. But Mother accused me of having him wrapped around my little finger, anyway."

He spread her hand out. "Such a nice little finger, too. It might be an interesting experience to be wrapped around it." He took it up to his mouth, running it across his bottom lip.

A quick thrill of heat ran through her at the touch of his lips on her finger and Morgan’s heart skipped a beat or two. The atmosphere between them had just shifted perceptibly. All at once, their brief relationship seemed to be put on a new plane.

"You didn’t marry him, did you?" His deep voice had taken on a softer timbre.

"N-no, I didn’t. Sebastian would have been willing to marry me just to please everyone. He was a very passive sort of person and liked me as well as he did anything or anyone else, but I had developed a great crush on my art instructor in college and, in a fit of rebellion, I ran off with him."

Morgan looked confusedly at the man next to her. His grip on her hand hadn’t tightened and the expression on his face hadn’t changed, but for some reason, she got the impression that he was waiting for what she was about to say next. She hunched her shoulders unconsciously. "The relationship didn’t last, naturally. It didn’t take long to realize that, well, not only didn’t I love him, but the only thing he was in love with was . . . my parent’s money."

As hard as it was to talk about, Morgan felt somehow as though it were quite normal to be telling him something that she hadn’t spoken about in years—although she had deliberately left out a few very pertinent facts.

"How long ago was that?"

"Six years. I left Boston ‘to make it on my own,’ as the saying goes."

"And have you?"

She nodded. "I’ve made a success out of a specialty store that features items from the tropics such as art, shells, plants, rattan, straw, that sort of thing."

His eyes roamed over her face, taking in the peach glow of her skin and the aquamarine beauty of her eyes. Then he spoke very quietly. "What’s your name?"

"Name?" She looked at him blankly.

"I don’t know your name."

They didn’t know each other’s names. How absurd! Here she was, flying through the night to the Caribbean, telling a man she had never met before the story of her life. Morgan could only imagine what her mother would say if she knew. But then, her mother wasn’t here, was she?

"My name is Morgan Saunders."

He brought the back of her hand to his mouth in a disturbingly personal salute. "How do you do, Morgan Saunders. I’m Jason Falco, and I consider myself a very lucky man to have taken this flight tonight."

Morgan inclined her head. "It’s a pleasure, Mr. Falco. Your name sounds familiar. Didn’t I read recently that you had been elected to the Board of Directors of the St. Paul Committee on the Fine Arts?"

He moved his head in an affirmative motion. "That’s right. So now that you know I have a somewhat reliable reputation and I’ve heard about the unforgivable indiscretion you committed, let’s get comfortable." Reaching down on either side of him, he lifted the arm rests up and out of the way. "There. Now we can have a little more room."

Except he seemed to move closer!

"You’re a very interesting lady, Morgan." Holding up his free hand, he ticked off points one by one. "You have a name that could belong to a linebacker—yet you’re deliciously feminine. You’re a smart, practical businesswoman, having made a success of your own business—yet you’re kooky enough to own a South Sea curio shop in the frozen climes of St. Paul, Minnesota. You’re fearless enough to go after what you want—yet you’re scared to death of plane flights."

He held up her hand again, examining it thoroughly, running his thumb and forefinger slowly and sensuously up and down each of her fingers, spending a great deal of time on each one. "I can’t wait to discover more about you."

A wonderfully warm sensation curled in the pit of Morgan’s stomach. Jason Falco had the curious power to make her feel as if all things were possible. Outside the airplane, the sky was midnight black; inside, the stewardesses had finished serving and the small population of the plane had begun to settle down for the night. It seemed more than a little ridiculous, but Morgan felt as if she were about to be born anew.

She hadn’t related the full story of the art instructor, Clinton Monroe, but it was the reason Morgan had felt such shock at her immediate response to a man she didn’t know. Her first night with Clinton had been a traumatic experience for the young, innocent girl she had been then. Clinton had taken her willingness to run away with him as experience, and his lovemaking had been one-sidedly brutal. Afterwards he had accused her of being cold, and nothing had happened in the intervening years to change her mind. She had dated, but she had met no one who could make her care whether she was really frigid or not—until now.

There was David, of course. David DeWitt. They had been dating for a few months. The problem was that David was quite serious about their relationship and she wasn’t. He was a very nice person, but when he kissed her goodnight, he left her nearly as cold as Clinton had. To make matters worse, David sensed her indifference and lately had been pushing for marriage as the solution. He just couldn’t seem to take her "no" seriously though Morgan had tried to break off with him many times.

"Where are you?" The deeply exciting voice brought her thoughts back to the man sitting next to her.

"Right here." She smiled at him.

His hand ran up the bare skin of her arm. "Tell me, is there someone waiting for you back in St. Paul?"

Just for a moment, the image of David flashed before her—nice, sincere David—and she chewed on her bottom lip indecisively.

The lights had lowered in the cabin, the majority of the people electing to sleep their way through the night hours until they reached their destination. Blankets and pillows were available above every seat and Jason had already stretched up and pulled down a few for them. Morgan, sitting at an angle facing him, with her back resting against the window, reflected on their situation. It was an oddly intimate setting, with Jason and herself isolated in their own little area of three reclining seats and one very dim light overhead—a self-contained island in the sky.

Jason reached out a forefinger to the lip caught between her teeth, releasing it from her grip and soothing the teeth marks away with the pad of his finger. "Don’t do that." The command, in itself, was a husky caress.

His touch made up her mind.

"No," she assured him breathlessly. "There’s no one."

He leaned toward her with his hand going around the back of her head. The light pressure of his lips stroked back and forth over hers, bringing a surge of unfamiliar emotions tumbling through her.

Morgan went motionless, experiencing the novelty of the sparkling bubbles of hot delight skidding along her veins. There was nothing whatsoever cold about her reaction to Jason and her heart sang with the wonder of it.

Sensing something wrong, he pulled away slightly. "What is it?"

"Nothing," she denied quite honestly. "Nothing at all."

"Here." He stood up and flicked out their light. "Change places with me."

Morgan scooted past and he sat back down, gathering her across his lap. Pulling the blanket up over them, he cuddled her against him. "Now," he questioned softly. "Where were we?"

"You forgot?"

"No. But I decided to leave it up to you to tell me."

Morgan looked deep into Jason’s brown and gold eyes and what she saw comforted her. Although he knew something was wrong, he wasn’t going to push her, evidently willing to let her set the pace. Jason Falco was an unusual man in many ways, she decided, at least he was in her limited experience.

"You were kissing me."

"That’s right," he agreed softly, his hand resting just under her breast, his thumb sweeping back and forth. "I was kissing
you
. Why?"

Morgan searched her mind and found no reason why she shouldn’t tell him, even though the only other person she had ever told was Sami. "The art instructor. . . Clinton . . . I couldn’t seem to respond . . . as he thought I should. He said I was cold."

Jason muttered a curse under his breath. Then he lowered his lips to hers, slipping his tongue into her mouth to meet and entwine with her own. A rage of need, so unexpected and so strong that it made her forget everything but the man holding her, jolted through Morgan. There, halfway to heaven, suspended on currents of air, in an isolated, dark corner of the plane, beneath an airline-issued blanket, she arched with aroused abandon against the man she had met such a short time ago. An all-encompassing heat consumed her and her body yielded completely to his.

Jason broke off the kiss and groaned hoarsely against her mouth, "The man was a fool! You’re about as cold as the Sahara at noon."

Lifting her head a little, Morgan ran her tongue daringly across his lips. "I was cold—with him," she murmured, then lay her finger where her tongue had been and moved it experimentally across the velvet firmness of his lip.

He took her finger into his mouth and began sucking gently on it. A sunburst of heat exploded inside her. "Jason," she moaned weakly, "what’s happening to me?"

"The same thing that’s happening to me and I don’t think we should fight it," he said huskily. "Do you?"

She shook her head weakly.

Jason raised his hand to unbutton the front of her dress, then, with his large palm, he covered her breast underneath the lace of her bra. Endless minutes passed as they flew countless miles, but Morgan didn’t notice. The fiery weakness that flowed through her body was the most beautiful thing she had ever experienced.

She knew that most people on vacations, who were away in strange places, among people they might never see again, usually let their reserve down. Up until now, it had never entered her mind that the same thing could happen to her. Nevertheless, back in St. Paul when she had fallen into her seat, her senses had taken over almost from the first moment, leaving her inhibitions behind, and Morgan had no intention of letting it stop.