Temptation's Kiss (7 page)

“I'm sure that, if a couple was so inclined, a private stretch of beach where
no
rules applied could be found.” Josh spoke the words secretly into her ear and she closed her eyes to ward off a wave of dizziness.

She had to get out of here. The darkness was too absolute. The curtained walls of the room made her feel claustrophobic. The presence of the man behind her wreaked havoc on her emotional stability.

But there was no escaping. Terry Bishop was already directing another anxiety-ridden question to her about the commercials. How many were there? Five? A dozen? Megan could only hope that they would soon be finished.

They had seen only about half of the commercials when the receptionist stepped discreetly into the darkened room. “Mr. Bishop? I hate to disturb you, but you have an important call. I've put it through on the telephone in the office across the hallway.”

Terry sighed, and stood up. “Thank you,” he said to the retreating woman. Megan stood up as well, grateful that she'd been rescued, but it wasn't to be. “No, no, please, Mrs. Lambert. Watch the rest of them. I'll be back as soon as I can.”

He inched out of the row of seats and opened the door only wide enough to slip out. The wedge of light decreased with the closing door, until the room was once again plunged into darkness. Megan sat frozen in her chair, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.

In the velvet darkness that surrounded them, she felt Josh move. His arms came around to enclose her. His hands linked across her breasts. “If you had as rough a night as I did, you have no right to look as gorgeous as you do.”

When his breath ghosted over her ear that way, she was powerless to move away from it. “I…I slept very well.”

He caught her lobe in his teeth and worried it tenderly. “You really should do something about this habit you have of lying, Megan. Lord, you taste good.” He was taking small bites from the fragile skin behind her ear.

“Josh…” What should have sounded like an admonishment came out like an entreaty. What power did he have over her, that he could reduce her to a quivering heap of raw nerves? With him she lost touch with the woman she was to everyone else. Her professionalism flew…

Professionalism. Professionalism.

Her mind focused on that word and repeated it like a catechism until it registered. How dare he insult her as a professional by using her as a sexual toy? Reaching up, she threw off his hands from around her neck and vaulted out of the seat. The animated picture showed up watery and diffused on her torso, and a huge shadow of her was cast on the screen.

“You really are a loathsome bastard. Joshua Bennett. How many professional women do you lure into your den under the auspices of business and try to seduce? Well, count me off. I'm above playing footsie with a client.”

She picked up her purse from the next seat and made to move out of the aisle, but Josh threw one long leg over the back of her seat and, with an agility that impressed her, jumped over it. He blocked her exit in the narrow aisle.

“This has nothing to do with professionalism, and you damn well know it. I'm not fooled by that excuse, and I don't think you are either. What's between us—”

“There's nothing between us except antipathy and a debt I didn't even know I owed.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What debt?”

“You got me my job!” she shouted.

She could tell by his startled expression that he hadn't expected that. “Who told you?” he asked warily.

“Doug Atherton, just yesterday. When I expressed my reluctance to become involved with the Seascape account, he strongly urged that I reconsider. I was then informed of your power play to land me my job.”

The expletive that hissed through his angry lips normally would have shocked her, but rage made her immune to such trivialities.

“I never wanted you to know about that.”

Her chin jutted out belligerently. “Well, now I do. And I don't know who's been disgraced the most, you for so shamelessly throwing your weight around, or me for unwittingly letting you get away with it. Did you think getting me a job would absolve you from guilt for my husband's death?”

His fingers bit into the tender flesh of her upper arms as he gripped them hard. “I've already told you, James did nothing here that he didn't want to do. As for getting you a job, yes, I wanted to help you out. I would have wanted to help out the widow of any of my employees.”

“I didn't want your help! I didn't need it.” She shook her head furiously.

“Maybe you didn't, but it didn't hurt you any either.”

“You're the last person on earth I would choose to be indebted to.”

“You're not indebted to me, damn it,” he said through clenched teeth. “I only got you there. You did the rest yourself. I knew you had the talent to carry out the job and to succeed at it. If you were old or ugly, fat or frumpy, I'd have smiled proudly over your accomplishments and at myself for making the right decision and that would have been the end of it.”

He moved closer and drew her against his solid body. “That's not the case, though, is it?”

She pleaded with her heart not to knock so solidly against her ribs, for surely he could feel it.
Fight back, Megan.
“It's collection time, is that it?” she demanded. “Why did you wait three years? I'd have thought you wouldn't let a debt ride that long. Am I to thank you for your generosity, or were you just letting the interest, which I'm sure is usurious, accrue? Tell me now, Mr. Bennett, what's the price of my job?”

In the room's dim light his eyes glinted hard and brassy. “I've told you one has nothing to do with the other,” he said menacingly. “If you were car-hopping at the local root beer stand, I'd still want you. I don't know what happened to us that night before your wedding, but something did.”

“No.”

“Yes. Nothing like that has happened to me before or since, and I couldn't have felt as strongly as I did unless you had felt it too. Deny it all you want to, Megan, but you know you're lying—to me and to yourself.”

“I felt nothing,” she denied hotly, mortified to realize that scalding tears were flooding her eyes.

A stricken expression crossed his face. “Don't cry,” he pleaded, crushing her against his chest and stroking her back soothingly. “The last thing I want is to make you cry. I've acted high-handedly. I admit it. But only because I didn't know any other way to get your attention. Please, Megan, don't cry.”

His hands cupped her face and tilted it up to his. As the moving picture of a little boy and his father riding a bicycle built for two wavered across their bodies, his lips molded onto hers. His tongue invaded the sweet interior of her mouth even as his body moved suggestively against hers.

Beyond conscious thought, responding purely out of physical and emotional need, she arched against him, fitting her femininity to his complementing masculinity. The contact was exquisite and breathtaking, and their soft gasps of pleasure and pain harmonized. Their hungry mouths refused to be denied as the kiss mellowed to a controlled violence. His arms wrapped around her like bands of steel. Her hands disarranged the soft cloth of his shirt as she scoured the muscles of his back with greedy hands.

They were so lost within their embrace that, when the voice boomed out at them from the overhead speakers, they separated in startled disbelief. Megan stared at Josh with wide, unblinking eyes as her chest heaved like a bellows.

“Will that be all, Mr. Bennett?” the projectionist asked again, apparently unaware of what he'd interrupted.

Megan looked blindly toward the blank screen at the front of the room. The commercials had finished, yet she hadn't viewed one since Terry had left the room. Jolted back into reality, she covered her tingling lips with a shaky hand.

In extreme exasperation, Josh raked his fingers through his hair. “Yes. Thank you, Tad.”

The microphone clicked off, and they were left alone in the dark, silent room. “Megan—”

“No,” she said shortly, backing away from him. “I don't know what … what happens to me when you … Consider the debt paid. I think the insults I've suffered from you are more than enough recompense. From now on we're even, Mr. Bennett.”

She pivoted on her heels, grabbed up her purse a second time, and groped her way out the aisle to the door. She flung it open, escape uppermost in her mind.

“Megan,” Josh shouted from behind her. The name reverberated off the walls of the projection room and was still echoing when she all but collided into a startled Terry Bishop, who was reaching for the doorknob from the other side.

Megan didn't know who was the most dumbfounded. Terry took in her tear-streaked face, her well-kissed swollen lips, the frantic look in her eyes. She followed his gaze to Josh, whose shirttail was half in, half out, his loosened tie lying at a sharp angle on his chest.

“I'm … uh … excuse me,” Terry stuttered apologetically. “That was—was Gayla, my wife. She, uh, wanted me to get your address so she can send you a formal invitation to the grand opening of Seascape, on June first. You're both coming, aren't you?”

Four

M
egan could feel how imbecilic the expression on her face was. Absently she reached up to smooth her hair. No doubt the professional respect Terry had for her was disappearing rapidly as she stood there, dully trying to comprehend what he had said and provide some reasonably intelligent response. Her dominant thought was that her escape from Josh had been blocked.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Josh nonchalantly tucking in his shirttail and straightening his necktie. He seemed not at all upset by their having been caught like misbehaving children. Had she the ability to control the muscles of her face, her lips would have curled into the frown of contempt she felt inside. Why should his insouciance surprise her? This kind of thing must happen to him all the time.

Indeed, his voice was breezily unaffected when he said, “I wouldn't think of missing the gala opening of the resort, Terry. Thank you.”

“It wouldn't be nearly the event it's going to be if we hadn't had your help, Josh,” the developer said to him with a respect that nauseated Megan. He turned to her. “Megan, can you make that weekend with us?”

“I—I don't know,” she said. If Josh Bennett was going to be there, she certainly wouldn't attend. She'd think up a reasonable excuse later. Now she only wanted to leave. “I'll have to check it out with the station's management. You can send my invitation to the office. Now if you two gentlemen”—she shot a disparaging look in Josh's direction—“will excuse me, I'm meeting another client for dinner.” It was another lie, and Josh's arched eyebrow told her he knew it. “Good night,” she said, sailing out of the projection room with what modicum of dignity was left her.

She hurried down the hallways, deserted now save for a few diehards—like James had been.
Go home to your wife, your husband, your family. Don't give that man the best of yourself. He's not worth it,
she wanted to shout to them. She raced across the elegant lobby as though escaping a torture chamber.

Later, she didn't even remember the trip home. For once impervious to the traffic, she had driven automatically, her mind cemented oh the minutes she had spent alone with Josh. The moment she stepped into her house, she felt the emptiness like a tangible presence, like a shroud blanketing her, smothering her.

“It's his fault that I'm alone,” she said aloud in fury and defeat. Were it not for Josh Bennett, she'd still have a husband, maybe even a baby or two by now. She had him to thank for the loneliness in her life. Still he fed on her like a scavenger. When would he consider her picked clean?

He had stolen her husband from her even before his death. James had never belonged to her the way he had belonged to the Bennett Agency. Josh had taken away her dignity by obtaining her job for her. That she'd been unaware of his machinations didn't matter. How many people knew that Josh had secured her job for her? Was she laughed at behind her back? Did everyone think she'd asked for his help? And what did they think she'd done to get it? She shivered as she undressed in the air-conditioned bedroom—but not because she was cold.

Now Josh Bennett was robbing her of self-respect. Each time he touched her, she became like warm, malleable clay molded to his will. Shame washed over her as she recalled how she had arched her body up to his, how her mouth had opened to him.

“I hate him, despise him,” she sobbed, gathering her pillow close and bending her knees to her chest in an attitude of self-protection. The pillow blotted salty tears from her cheek.

Don't cry. Megan, don't cry.

“No, no.” She protested the memory of his compassionate words. She didn't want to remember the gentleness with which he'd pressed her against him, the tenderness of his hands, the sweetness of his lips. Trying to conjure up an image of a hard, calculating man, she failed. The only picture that came to mind was Josh's concerned expression as he cradled her cheeks and lifted her mouth to his.

“No,” she repeated, deeply anguished.

She hated him more than ever, yet only now would she admit to herself the true reason. Since the night they'd met, she had never been able to banish him from her mind. Tenaciously he remained. And he wouldn't be exiled now.

For two days Megan didn't communicate with either Josh or Terry Bishop. She received only a brief report from Jo Hampson. “Terry said you liked the commercials. That poor man's so uptight. If Seascape doesn't open soon, he's going to have heart failure. Thanks for filling in for me the other day.”

“Glad to do it,” Megan said with what she hoped was a sincere smile. “What kind of schedule did you work out for those convenience-store spots?”

With Seascape momentarily off her hands, she concentrated on wading through the mountain of work that had accumulated on her desk for the past several days. She made overdue telephone calls, answered correspondence, and held a sales meeting for her staff. By the third day, her self-confidence restored, she was feeling a sense of accomplishment. Coming back from a quick yogurt lunch in the basement commissary, her walk was almost jaunty.