Stormy Challenge (17 page)

"Trust is a fragile thing, Court," she began carefully. "It would take time—"

"How much time?" he interrupted at once, pouncing on the words.

"More time than you would probably be willing to spend on the project!"

"Tell me!"

"I don't know," she groaned, wondering how they had ever gotten into a bargaining situation like this. "I suppose we would have to get to know each other all over again

..."

"No," he declared flatly. "But you could give me another chance," he countered at once, spearing a radish in his salad as if it were threatening to attack him.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded warily.

"Exactly what it sounds like!"

"Court!"

"Have dinner with me tomorrow night at my place," he commanded intently, his eyes half-pleading, half-demanding. "Spend some time with me. Let me show you I'm still the man you were falling in love with in Oregon."

"Who said I was falling in love with you?" she demanded fiercely.

"The man you might have fallen in love with if I hadn't turned out to be such an unreliable bastard," he corrected wryly, holding up his fork placatingly. "Please, Leya?"

She hesitated. "Do you promise not to try and seduce me?" she muttered broodingly.

"No," he admitted at once, looking uncontrite.

"Then forget it!"

He sucked in his breath. "Leya, have dinner with me and I'll promise not to force you into bed or anything else you don't want. That's as much a promise as I can give. Not that you need it," he went on in obvious irritation. "You can always use your ultimate weapon if things start getting too involved!"

"My lack of trust would be enough to stop you in another situation like last night?"

Leya narrowed her eyes skeptically. He might have halted his lovemaking last night out of sheer annoyance at her unwillingness to grant him a complete victory, but that was certainly no guarantee he would do it again!

"You've known from the beginning I would never force myself on you," he told her with cold pride. "I didn't in Oregon when I probably should have and I won't do it here. At least give me that much of your trust!"

Leya stared at him, uneasily remembering that he was right. He could have pushed her into bed that night at the inn when she'd signed the contract. The electricity had been flowing heavily between them, and it wouldn't have taken much for him to overcome her defenses. That was nothing less than the truth, she acknowledged with painful honesty.

"All right, Court. I'll come to dinner at your apartment."

The corners of his mouth lifted in unexpected wry humor, and the familiar charm wanned his eyes. "The first step is always the hardest, sweetheart," he consoled her gently. "But I'll see you won't regret it."

* * *

"Don't ask, Cynthia," Leya advised dryly. "I'm not sure I understand myself."

"He, uh, wouldn't by any chance be the reason you cut the Oregon vacation short, would he?" her friend asked perceptively.

"He is," she admitted grimly.

"I like him, Leya."

"I did too. For a while."

Cynthia was a good enough friend to know when not to press an issue like this one.

Both women went back to their work without further discussion of the matter.

* * *

She was wearing a pair of straight-legged jeans with the cuffs rolled up to adjust the length. The dark sable braid lay across the breast of her cheerful yellow blouse, and a bright gold medallion glittered at the hollow of her throat.

No, there was no commitment involved in simply accepting Court's dinner invitation.

And she wanted so much to be with him, she thought self-deprecatingly. She was willing to accept his patently false assurances because it gave her an excuse to agree to the date.

But she would make certain he abided by his own promises, Leya told herself staunchly as she parked the car in front of Court's rented condominium. She would not let him lure her here and then seduce her! If he truly wanted a genuine relationship, he could darn well work at it!

"Don't look at me as if I were Dracula inviting you into his castle!" were Court's first words when he opened the door to her that evening.

"Sorry," she murmured wryly, stepping inside and thrusting the wine toward him.

"Do I look a tad cautious?"

"You look as if you're expecting me to close the door behind you and lock it," he grumbled, taking the wine and running a quick, appreciative eye over the label. "This looks terrific. Come on and I'll pour you a glass. Maybe it will relax you."

She followed him toward the kitchen, her eyes roving curiously over the dinner preparations. Two very thick steaks waited on a grill and a variety of lettuces had been torn into a glass bowl. A pile of scrubbed mushrooms waited in a frying pan.

"You really have nothing to fear tonight," he told her, deftly removing the cork and reaching for two long-stemmed glasses.

"No?"

"No. But I think you know that or you wouldn't have come. Admit you had to trust me a little in order to risk accepting the invitation this evening!" he challenged.

"Oh, I think you're busy regrouping your forces, trying to pian your strategy. I figure I'm safe enough until you decide how you're going to make your next move!" she told him with a deliberately teasing smile as she accepted the wine.

He caught the smile and his eyes returned it. "You're such a stubborn little thing," he sighed. "What am I going to have to do to make you stop fighting me?"

"Stop seeing me as a challenge," she retorted instantly. "Who knows what might happen if you simply saw me as a woman without any connection to Keith Brandon and Brandon Security?"

Court quietly helped himself to a hot pepper from the snack plate. He leaned back in the tan chair, relaxing visibly as if having gotten her this far he could afford to do so.

He was wearing a khaki cotton shirt and close-fitting slacks. The masculine essence of him struck at her senses as it always did, making her fingers tingle to touch him.

"How can I ever make you believe I want you for purely personal reasons?" he asked a little grimly.

"I've never doubted your reasons were personal," she got out with a blitheness she was far from feeling.

He groaned and set down his wine glass with a small clatter. "I think we'd better find a more neutral topic." He got to his feet and reached for her hand. "Come here, Leya."

"Where are we going?"

"The bedroom," he told her with relish.

"The hell we are!"

"The
other
bedroom," he clarified, relenting. "You showed me something of yourself today and I mean to return the favor."

Curious, she allowed herself to be guided toward the second bedroom of the condominium. He threw open the door with an expectant glance down at her face.

"You asked me once what I did when I wasn't working. Well, this is part of what I do."

"A ham radio?" Leya walked forward and surveyed the sleek transceiver and related equipment arranged on a long table.

"
I
got into it when I was a kid and I've never managed to kick the habit," he confessed, watching her closely.

"I've always wondered what people talk about on these things," she said, turning to him with a quick smile. "I mean when they're not using them in emergency situations."

"I'm afraid the conversations tend to be fairly similar. The weather, radio equipment, and things like that. After all, the important thing is making the contact. I've talked to people in Japan and Eastern Europe. There's something fascinating about communicating with other hams so far away."

"Fascinating? Or challenging?"

"Leya, my sweet, if you're not awfully careful I'm going to withhold your steak tonight and feed you hamburger, instead!"

"I'll behave!" she promised instantly, laughing up at him as she lifted the stack of QSL cards and started flipping through them. "What are these?"

"Cards from people I've talked to documenting the contact. When I get the card, I enter each communication in that logbook over there."

"Well, I must admit, I prefer the idea of you industriously bent over your radio in the evenings to the picture of you industriously bent over a blonde!" she teased lightly, setting down the stack of cards.

"Meaning you wouldn't be jealous of the ham radio?" he inquired interestedly.

"If you're trying to make me admit I'd be jealous over the blondes ..."

"No," he said quickly, brushing aside the statement. "I'm serious about the radio."

She frowned, not understanding. "Why on earth would anyone be jealous over a radio?"

"You'd be surprised," he said dryly.

"You spend a lot of time talking to blondes over the radio?" she taunted.

"Of course not. But I have been known to spend a lot of time on the equipment itself. Sometimes when I get started I can't walk away from it for hours. I've found that women aren't always so understanding about that kind of, er, involvement."

Leya laughed with sudden comprehension. "Sounds like me in my jewelry shop.

Once I get going, I often can't quit until the current project is finished."

"Somehow," he said softly, "I had a feeling you'd understand."

Their eyes met in a curiously charged moment of mutual perception and strange recognition. Leya felt the tension around them and had to force herself to break it before it grew to dangerous proportions.

"I'm getting hungry," she said lightly, moving toward the door.

He stepped back to let her pass. "What a coincidence. So am I." He turned on his heel. "Let's get those steaks ready."

As if those few moments in the "ham shack" had initiated a truce both wanted to maintain, the conversation during dinner slipped back into the easy camaraderie that had existed in Oregon. In its own way, Leya realized belatedly, it was every bit as seductive as Court's outright lovemaking.

"How are you finding things at Brandon Security?" she asked politely, helping to clear the table and stack

dishes in the sink. Neither suggested being so rash as to actually wash the plates and utensils.

"Challenging," Court retorted dryly, grinning at her as he carried in the last of the dishes from the dining-room table.

"I think I'm going to learn to hate that word," Leya complained, wiping her hands on a towel.

"Join the crowd," he invited succinctly.

"Seriously, Court, are things very bad?"

"You mean with the company or with me?"

"Court!"

"Okay," he said placatingly, his eyes laughing at her. "No, things aren't that disastrous, but there's going to be a hell of a lot of work involved during the next two years. Your father hadn't kept the manufacturing line updated."

"I thought he had started pouring a lot of money into that. There certainly wasn't much left when he died except the business."

"He'd made a start but a lot more needs to be done. And the research and development end of things has also gone downhill. It's a competitive market, security devices; a viable company has to consider research as important as manufacturing and marketing. The sales staff looks fairly decent, and your brother's commitment is total. Given that, things will work out, but it will take some basic reorganization and some rough priority setting."

"And the hope that the crime situation stays sufficiently unpleasant in the United States to produce a strong consumer demand for Brandon's products," Leya remarked wryly.

"Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any danger of a lessening in demand. One of the first things I'm going to do when I move into your house is harden it."

"Who says you're going to be moving in!" Leya exclaimed, whirling to confront him.

"And what do you mean by hardening it?"

"Sorry, slip of the tongue," he apologized meekly while Leya glared at him suspiciously. "As for hardening it, I meant make it more secure. The locks on your doors and windows would be child's play to someone seriously interested in entering illegally."

"You mean as you did that day you were waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom?" she reminded him irritably as they ambled into the living room and settled with equal lethargy back into their chairs.

"I didn't consider that a case of illegal entry," he murmured coolly, the gold in his eyes shimmering with memory. "I was coming to pick you up for a date, as I recall."

"This conversation is turning unsubtle. I can always tell when your patience is wearing thin, Court. You start losing your subtle approach," Leya declared, frowning into the fire, her arms resting along the curving back of the chair.

"That's a pity," he drawled, watching her profile. "I meant tonight to be very subtle, indeed. Why don't you come over here and let me show you?"

She turned her head-at the wistful tone in his words and met his eyes.

"Show me what, Court?" she breathed, feeling the sensual tug of unseen golden chains.

"How subtle I can be," he replied softly, eyes warming with a heat that communicated itself to her.

He didn't move, but it was as if he were reaching out to her, drawing on the ends of the chains. "Remember how it was in Oregon, honey? No force, no demands except the ones you, yourself, create. You have my word. I won't even come and get you.

I'll let you do everything on your own."

Unable to deny the restlessness his words and eyes elicited, Leya got to her feet, resolutely crossing to the fire. She didn't hear him get to his feet behind her, but she knew he was there, only inches away. He could have put his hands around her waist and drawn her back against him, but he didn't.

"Do you know how badly I want to make love to you, Leya?" he asked in a voice that had turned faintly raspy with desire.

She felt the flutter along her spine and stood very still, her eyes focused on the flames in front of her. "I thought you wanted the words first, Court. I thought you wanted to know how much I
trust
you," she said quite distinctly, knowing that if he put out his hand she would tremble beneath the touch. He probably knew it, too.