Snowflakes on the Sea (8 page)

The cosmetics transformed Mallory from a very pretty woman to a beauty, but they could do nothing to mask the weariness in the depths of her green eyes. In hopes of drawing attention away from them, she brushed her lustrous dark taffy hair and pinned it up into a loose Gibson girl.

Once again, she felt pain and remorse; Nathan loved her hair in that particular style.

Where was he now? Stranded on the island, with no idea where his wife had gone? Lying in some love-rumpled bed with Diane Vincent? Mallory brought herself up short. She had enough trouble without borrowing more.

She went back into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the neatly made bed, hurriedly dialing the number of the house at Angel Cove. Maybe Brad had been wrong about the telephone service being out. But an operator broke in to say that emergency line repairs were being made.

So Brad had been right, after all. Frustrated, Mallory wandered back to the living room and distractedly petted a whimpering Cinnamon. She had wanted so badly to reach Nathan, to hear his voice, to apologize. Now, it might be hours, or even days, before she reached him.

Mallory went to the windows and, for the first time in her life, cursed the snow.

Cinnamon made a low, whining sound in her throat, and then barked uncertainly. A moment later, Mallory heard the opening and closing of the front doors. She turned, frowning, from the windows, expecting to see the woman who came in to clean twice a week.

Instead, she was confronted with a scowling, disheveled, unshaven Nathan. His dark eyes swept over her, leaving an aching trail wherever they touched.

“I chartered a boat,” he growled, neatly dispensing with the first question that rose in Mallory’s mind. “What are you doing here?”

Mallory’s throat closed and, for a moment, her mind went blank and she honestly didn’t know what she was doing there. “I—I—” she stammered.

Nathan slid out of his suede jacket and ran one hand through his rumpled hair. “Damn it, Mallory, what is going on with you? Everybody on the island is out of their mind with worry—”

Suddenly, Mallory found her voice. Hot color pounded in her cheeks. “Was that before Diane’s latest crisis or after?” she snapped.

Some of the fierce anger drained from Nathan’s lean, towering frame, and he sank into a chair. “Is that why you did the disappearing number, Mallory? Because of Diane?”

His tone was so reasonable that Mallory felt ashamed of her outburst. She dared not approach him, but she did try to match his decorum with her own. “Yes,” she admitted. “I called y-your house—at the Cove. One of the guys said you’d taken Diane back to Seattle. I—I know I was hasty, but—”

Nathan thrust himself out of his chair and made a hoarse, contemptuous sound in his throat. “Spare me, Mallory. I’m tired and mad as hell and I really don’t think this is a good time to discuss your paranoia about Diane.”

Mallory was instantly furious. Her
paranoia!
How dare he shift all the blame to her, when none of this would have happened if he hadn’t been so quick to come to Diane’s aid! “Damn you,” she swore. “Nathan McKendrick—”

But he was striding around her, on his way toward the bedroom. By the time she recovered enough composure to storm in after him, he was in the shower.

Outraged, Mallory pounded at the thick, etched-glass doors with both fists. Through the barrier, she could see the shifting blur of his tanned flesh.

“Nathan!” she yelled, in anger and in pain.

Suddenly, the shower doors slid open and, with a lightning-quick motion of his hand, Nathan pulled Mallory under the pounding, steaming spray. Water plastered his ebony hair to his face and dripped, in little rivulets, down over his muscular, darkly matted chest. Mallory dared look no farther.

“You wanted to talk,” he shouted over the roar of the shower. “So talk!”

Mallory’s makeup was smeared, and her hair clung to her neck. Her sweater, slacks and boots were all drenched. She threw back her head and shrieked in primitive, unadulterated fury.

Gently, Nathan thrust her backward against the inside wall of the shower and out of the spray of water. His hand caught under her chin and lifted. “So I
can
make you feel something, lady—even if it is rage.”

Mallory stared up at him, stunned by his words, by the situation, by the alarming proximity of his naked, beautifully sculptured frame. Her throat worked painfully, but she could say nothing.

Nathan bent his head to kiss her, and the sea-breeze scent of his wet hair caught at her heart. His lips moved gently on hers, at first, and then with undeniable demand. She trembled as his tongue laid first claim to total possession. “Mallory,” he rasped, when the devastating kiss broke at last. “I want you.”

Mallory stiffened and thrust him angrily away, even though a desire equal to his was raging inside her. She turned, let her forehead rest against the water-speckled tiles lining the inside of the shower stall. “Don’t, Nathan. Don’t touch me—don’t talk—”

But his hands were hard on her shoulders as he turned her back to face him. “Listen to me, Mallory. We’ve played this game long enough. I didn’t spend the night rolling around in Diane Vincent’s bed!”

Mallory arched one eyebrow and looked up at him in silence.

His muscular shoulders moved in a defeated sigh. “I was wrong not to call you and let you know what was going on, and I’m sorry.”

Mallory believed him. She looked down at her soaked clothes and laughed, at herself, at Nathan, at the ludicrous insanity of the situation.

And he kissed her again.

The ancient heat began to build in Mallory’s slender body, just as she knew it was building in Nathan’s powerful one. She trembled as he removed her sodden garments, her boots, the few pins that had held her hair in place, and discarded them in the separate world beyond the shower doors.

Nathan surveyed her waiting body for a long moment, missing nothing—not the full sweetness of her firm breasts, the narrow tapering of her waist, the trim but rounded lines of her hips and thighs. Making a sound low in his throat that must have dated back to the beginning of time, he reached out for her again.

His tongue traced the pink hollow of her ear, flicked briefly at her lobe. Mallory shuddered with reflexive pleasure as he nibbled at the softness of her neck and kissed the tender hollow of her throat. She arched her back and cried out when the warmth of his mouth strayed over the rounded tip of her breast and then claimed the waiting nipple. With one hand, he cupped the breast he was consuming, with the other, he sought the very core of her womanhood. When he knelt, Mallory entwined both her hands in the thick darkness of his hair to keep herself from soaring away on the crest of her own fiercely undeniable need.

Her release was so savage in its force that it nearly convulsed her.

She was in a spell as Nathan turned off the spray of the shower, as they dried each other with soft, thirsty towels, as her husband lifted her into his arms and carried her into the adjoining room to the bed, where the final and most intimate sharing would take place.

They lay facing each other, naked and still warm from the shower, and Nathan groaned as Mallory circled one masculine nipple with a mischievous tongue. She worked her own magic, loving him fully, savoring the responses she stirred in him.

When the outer boundaries of ecstasy had been reached, she lay back to await his claiming. A low moan escaped her as he parted her legs with one knee and poised above her, and she saw the reluctance in his eyes, along with a fathomless need.

“Mallory, if you don’t feel—”

She shook her head, almost feverishly, and clasped his taut buttocks in her hand, urging him to her. She gasped with delight as their two bodies became one.

Nathan’s control was awesome, his entry and withdrawal calculated to prolong the sweet misery for them both.

When she could bear the waiting and the needing no longer, Mallory lifted herself to him, prevented his retreat with strong, desperate hands. The steady rhythm of her hips caused him to plead with her in a soft, ragged voice.

Mallory’s passion flared within her like fire, compelling her on to a fulfillment she couldn’t have escaped even if she’d wanted to. In one glimmering moment, shattering release was upon them, flinging them as one beyond the charted regions and into a world of streaming silver comets and crimson suns. They drifted downward slowly, linked spiritually as well as physically among the fragments, their mingled cries of triumph echoing around them like music.

The insistent buzz of the doorbell signaled their return to the real world.

Nathan groaned, and Mallory laughed, soft and pliant beneath him, smoothing his damp hair with a tender hand. “Our public,” she said.

Nathan swore, stood up and wrenched on a hooded maroon velour robe. “I’m coming!” he shouted angrily, and Mallory dissolved in a fresh spate of giggles.

If Brad Ranner had any idea what he’d interrupted, he did an admirable job of hiding the knowledge. When Mallory and Nathan emerged from the bedroom, one at a time and as subtly as possible, he made no comment. Of course, he couldn’t have helped noticing that Nathan, now clad in jeans and a red T-shirt, had answered the door in a bathrobe.

His shrewd blue eyes did catch, just momentarily, the flush in Mallory’s cheeks, before moving on to politely assess the silken lines of her pink-and-gold caftan.

Brad was a short, stocky man, and the uninitiated usually took him for a serious young accountant or a budding corporate lawyer. In truth, he was a dynamic and innovative entrepreneur, noted for his skill, insight and artistry.

“Mallory,” he began without preamble, raising his glass in a dashing toast, “we’re about to talk business, you and I.
Big
business.”

Nathan folded his arms and raked the unflappable Brad with a scorching look. Then he nodded curtly in Mallory’s direction, as though they hadn’t soared in each other’s arms only minutes before, and muttered, “This is obviously private. Later.”

The crisp words and his immediate departure for the study made Mallory blush slightly. She was still floating in the warm glow of Nathan’s lovemaking, though it appeared that her husband had already forgotten their brief, fiery union. Besides, she’d wanted him to hear the things she meant to say to Brad.

Brad pretended an almost clinical interest in his drink. There was no love lost between the two men, but they usually managed a sort of cold civility. “If you’d told me Mr. Superstar was here,” he said softly, “I would have stayed away.”

Mallory lifted her chin and offered no reply. When Brad offered, with a gesture, to make a drink for her, she nodded.

There was a short stiff silence, broken only by the clink of crystal, as Brad poured Mallory’s customary white wine. Cinnamon, fickle to the end, had left the room with Nathan.

Mallory sighed as Brad handed her her drink and sat down on the sofa beside her. “So what’s the big news?” she asked without any real interest, wondering how he was going to take her announcement that she had no intention of renewing her contract with the show.

Brad grinned and took a slow sip from his whiskey. “Cable,” he said.

Mallory frowned. “Cable?”

“The show is being picked up by a cable network, Mallory, and they’re opening with a two-hour movie. It will mean more money and extra exposure.”

Mallory tensed, staring at her producer. “Exposure is certainly the applicable word. Brad, have you
seen
those cable soaps? Everybody is naked—”

Brad’s eyes moved almost imperceptibly to Mallory’s fine bust line, and then back to her face. “You don’t have anything to worry about on that score,” he said. “If you’ll pardon the expression, love, you’d stack up against the best of them.”

Mallory shot to her feet, and some of her wine sloshed over the rim of her glass and fell onto the rug. “My God, Brad—I can’t believe you’re asking me—do you really mean—I
wouldn’t—
”

As usual, Brad was totally unruffled, absorbing her outburst without evident effort. “Calm down, Mall. It’s true that cable soaps have nude scenes, but they also have some really challenging scripts. This is your chance to grow as an actress—”

“No.”

“Why not?” Brad asked reasonably, raising one eyebrow. “Think of it as an art form.”

Mallory was pacing now, her glass clasped in both hands. “Art form! Bull chips, Brad. My God, Nathan would—”

Brad set his drink aside and folded his hands casually around one knee. “There we have it, don’t we, Mallory? Nathan. Couldn’t Mr. Macho handle the competition?”

Mallory stopped her pacing, too stunned to move. She gaped at Brad, who was watching her implacably, and then snapped. “This is
my
body we’re talking about, Brad. Don’t try to shift the blame on to Nathan.
I’m
the one who doesn’t want to flash for America!”

Brad sat back, sighing a little. From his manner, they might have been discussing some mundane, everyday matter. “Bull,” he said pleasantly. “You’re afraid of what Nathan will say—or do.”

Mallory’s heart was pounding with anger, just as it had pounded with passion such a short time before, and her breath burned in her lungs. “Damn it, Brad, I wouldn’t do what you’re asking even if I were single!”

Brad stood up, walked to the teakwood bar, and set the drink he had just reclaimed down with a thump. When he turned to face Mallory again, his eyes were snapping, even though his voice was low and evenly modulated. “Mallory, we are talking about big,
big
money here—millions.”

“I don’t care.”

“Damn it, I do!” Brad retorted. “If we have to recast your part, production will be delayed.”

“Then production will be delayed!”

“Mallory—”

“No. Damn it, Brad,
no.
I wasn’t planning to renew my contract as it was—”

Brad swore roundly. Then, without another word, he grabbed his overcoat and stormed out of the penthouse, slamming the doors behind him.

Having been wrenched, in just one morning, from one emotional extreme to the other, Mallory folded. She sank into Nathan’s chair, set her drink on the table beside it and wept softly into both hands.