Temptation's Kiss (21 page)

“Get out,” she repeated firmly.

He took several steps toward her, but she gave him a venomous look that stopped him stock still in his tracks. “You know I didn't mean it.”

She snorted a laugh. “Yes, you did.”

“I was angry, Megan!”

“So am I, angrier than I've ever been in my life. Not at you, but at myself. Why I didn't keep my mouth shut about Clancey and let you get your just desserts I'll never know. Now, get out!”

In one sweeping motion he picked up the rest of his clothes. “I'll leave you alone for a while to cool off. I'm going to call Atlanta, but I'll be back, and then we'll sit down and finish this discussion calmly.”

He went through the sliding glass doors, wearing only underwear and carrying his pants and shirt. The vague thought crossed her mind that neither could appreciate the humor of the situation now. When he returned to her room, she intended to be far away. Indeed, she felt deadly serious.

The story made the newspapers the next morning. Megan couldn't avoid learning about it when Arlene rushed in waving a copy of the
“Have you read this?”

Megan didn't think she could stand any more emotional blows, but her heart twisted with pain for the man she once again told herself she despised. It was all there—how his disenchanted employee had taken all the work already done on the heretofore secret ad campaign for the burgeoning airline and handed it over to the executives of Powell Associates with their promise of an outlandishly high increase over what Josh was paying him.

The reporter, as Megan thought reporters were inclined to do, painted Josh's future as blacker even than it would probably be and hinted at overindulgences such as women and booze as the causes of his lack of astuteness.

Josh's only quoted remark—and Megan suspected it was his only quotable comment—was, “I'll have something to say when the deal is complete.”

She looked at the picture of the man who scowled up at her from the newspaper and smoothed her finger over it as though to erase the lines of worry from his face. There was no sense in wishing away the emptiness she felt inside. It only yawned wider.

She had packed her bags the moment Josh had retreated to his room. She had stuffed all the clothes she'd so carefully folded into the bags, dressed hurriedly, and, looking to see that she'd left nothing behind, gone to the check-in desk at Seascape.

Getting someone to drive her to the airport had been no problem. Even the paper work involved in renting a car for the rest of the trip home was handled smoothly. Or was it that she was so immersed in her heartache that she didn't notice the hassles?

With every mile that had clicked off between Hilton Head and Atlanta, she'd sworn that she hated Josh. He had mocked her, insulted her, made something sordid out of the splendor they'd shared, cheapened her unrestrained, loving responses to him.

But by the time she reached her dark, lonely house, she admitted that she'd provoked him to say what he had. It would have been so easy to reasonably suggest that he call Barnes himself and have him repeat verbatim what Clancey had said. Josh could have evaluated it himself. Maybe Barnes
had
been overreacting.

But she hadn't made such a suggestion. She had let pride and stubbornness blind her once again. At his first sign of indifference to her news, she'd gotten her back up. Once that happened, Lord help anyone who tried to dissuade her from the position she'd taken.

God help Josh,
was her prayer all week. The newspaper accounts grew less informative, and by Wednesday they disappeared altogether. Then she had to rely on the grapevine for information. Filtering rumor from truth became a time- and energy-consuming enterprise, but she was eager to hear the latest developments.

“I think Clancey is seeing the error of his ways,” Barnes told Megan and Jo Hampson at the coffee machine. “Seems the folks at Air South aren't convinced that Powell can carry off the campaign with the panache that Bennett can. Clancey's hearing his own death knell.”

As Megan left them to return to her office, she heard Barnes say, “Hey, Jo, how about dinner some night?”

Megan's lips lifted into a smile, which seemed to be rare these days.

Time dragged by as she waded through the paper work that had collected during her brief absence. At night, exhausted but unable to sleep, she longed for Josh. She cursed her body's aching need for him. He flitted in and out of her mind in glorious memories of their days together at Hilton Head. She saw him in every attitude—teasing her as he dragged her into the ocean, his eyes alight with mischief; laughing, his head thrown back, his eyes shining with delight as they sailed over the ground in the swing; languorous, as they lay enmeshed on her bed, his eyes glassy with the aftermath of loving her.

Somehow she made it through the week.

She arrived home late Friday evening after battling traffic that, had it been choreographed, couldn't have become more entangled. Shrugging gratefully out of her clothes and pulling on a thin cotton robe that zipped up the front, she padded barefoot into the kitchen to eat the pizza she'd ill-advisedly crossed six lanes of traffic to pick up.

“Damn.” As she pulled the top of the cardboard box away, the mozzarella she'd paid an extra dollar for stuck to it. It was the proverbial last straw. Dropping dejectedly into a chair, she laid her head on the butcher-block table and wept.

Her thin shoulders shook convulsively; tears coursed down her cheeks. She wept for the husband she hadn't loved enough, for the man she loved now. She cried for their lost love. She wept because she couldn't go to him now, when he needed her most.

Mascara dripped onto the surface of the table, and she smeared it even more when she tried to wipe it up with her hand. “What the hell difference does it make?” she sobbed. “Who ever sees it?”

“Did you say something?”

She spun around on the chair seat, fear clutching in her throat at the low, masculine voice. Josh was leaning against the doorjamb. His face looked almost as ravaged as hers must. There were dark circles under his eyes, his cheeks seemed sunken, and his rakish brow had lost some of it's cockiness. His suit coat was slung over one shoulder and held there by a crooked index finger. His vest hung open. White shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows and his tie was loosened. It gave her a vague sense of comfort to know that Joshua Bennett's clothes could wrinkle just like anyone else's.

She swiped at the tears on her face and stood up slowly. For once she didn't bristle, didn't squawk. She didn't demand to know what he was doing there. She did exactly what she wanted to do.

She walked into his arms.

They came around her like a protective cloak and hugged her tight. For long moments they clung to each other, not speaking, not kissing, not caressing, only rocking together. She imbibed his strength. He was what she wanted.

“Why were you crying?” he asked at long last, taking her face between his palms.

“My pizza,” she said, gesturing offhandedly.

A corner of his mouth twitched. As she had been all week, he seemed unable to smile. After a moment he tried it again, and grinned narrowly. “What's wrong with it?”

He maneuvered them backward toward the table, sliding his feet, careful not to step on her bare toe. He lifted the box top and saw the damage. He made a regretful sound, then pinched off a string of the cheese and popped it into his mouth. “Salvageable. Maybe.” He swallowed noisily and coaxed a smile from her trembling lips. “Why were you crying?” he asked again. His eyes probed hers, searching for answers.

“For me.”

“Why?”

“I'm abysmally unhappy.”

“Why?”

“The man I love is going through a very difficult time and I'm afraid he wouldn't want my offer to help him in any way I can.”

“What an arrogant ass he is. As a matter of fact I think someone once called him that. Why wouldn't he want your help?”

“Because the last time I saw him I said things to him that shouldn't have been said.”

“He said something too. Something ugly. No one would blame you for despising the jerk.”

“He didn't mean it. I know he didn't.” She drew in a breath that rippled like a sob. “I should have been standing by him this week, supporting him, helping him.”

Josh crushed her against him and, bending from his great height, laid his head on her shoulder. His nose burrowed in the silky hollow of her throat. “You tried, my love, you tried. I wouldn't listen and you were right. I was so damned sure of my own power.” His arms squeezed as though to impress her into his body.“I need you, Megan.”

His head came up, and his amber eyes studied each feature of her face intently. “I've never said that to another human being in my life,” he admitted. “I've never confessed to needing anyone or anything, but I need you.”

Her hands clasped the sides of his head, and she threaded her fingers through his dark hair. “I need you too. I need you to cure me of stubbornness and pride.”

“Pride.” He shook his head in self-deprecation. “I could give you lessons in having too much pride. I've had a chip on my shoulder since I was about ten years old, and the harder someone tried to knock it off, the larger it grew. What I wanted I went after. Come hell or high water, I got it. I just couldn't give you up. I had to have you.”

He took one of her hands from his hair and kissed the palm. “But winning you isn't worth your despising me in the process. You won't have to give up one thing in your life for me. I swear it. Not your career, not your ambition, nothing. Just be a part of my life. Please.”

“I wanted to despise you from the first moment I met you, because you saw right through me. More than that, you were always ready to point out my shortcomings.”

“For pure meanness, just to get a reaction out of you. Anger was better than nothing.”

“It was always a sweet anger.”

His eyebrow had regained some of its confidence and curved upward. “Sounds a lot like love to me.”

She leaned toward him provocatively. “Why don't you kiss me and find out?”

He needed no second invitation. His mouth opened over hers, and his tongue delved inside with rapacious need. It scoured her mouth, taking away all the bitterness that had risen between them, and leaving behind only the sweet taste of their love.

“Where's the bedroom?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

She pointed in the general direction, and he urged her to lead him. “How did you get in?” she asked, unfastening the buttons of his shirt as she walked backward in front of him.

“Through the door. Later I'm going to give you a lecture on leaving it unlocked.” He raked her with a lewd look. “Any sex fiend could come walking in here.”

On the brink of a laugh, she stopped abruptly. “Josh, what about Air South and Powell?”

“I'm mad as hell at the whole bunch. If it weren't for them, I'd have been here Sunday night. By the way, remind me to give you another lecture about sneaking out of resorts, renting a car, and driving alone across the whole state of Georgia.”

He was pushing her inexorably toward the bedroom. “But what about Air South?” she asked.

His sigh was one of weary surrender when her heels dug into the deep carpet. “I've been in boardrooms all—”

“Bedrooms?”

“Boardrooms”

“Just checking. Proceed.”

He gave her a withering look. “Just for that crack, I'm not going to tell you anything else now except to say that, by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, the newspaper reporters who had me dead and buried will be forced to write retractions.”

“I have every confidence in you,” Megan said, coming up on her tiptoes and looping her arms around his neck.

With their mouths fused and their bodies melded together, his hands curved under her bottom and lifted her off the floor as he carried her the rest of the way into the guest bedroom. He knew she would have felt uncomfortable with him in the room she had shared with James, and her heart overflowed with love. How could she have ever thought him insensitive?

He set her down slowly, and she slid against him, meeting the hard urgency of his desire on her descent. Lifting heavy eyelids, she looked up at him bewitchingly. She peeled the vest off his shoulders and dropped it to the floor. She slipped the tie over his head and began taking off his shirt. He eased off his shoes with the toe of one foot on the heel of the other and kicked them aside.

When his shirt had joined the heap of clothes on the floor, she ran her fingers through the mat of hair on his chest. Her sensitive fingertips fluttered over his nipples, which sprang to life, growing erect beneath her touch. With deliberate leisure, she leaned forward to kiss him. Her tongue batted against him lightly. “Do you like that?” she whispered.

“Find out” he challenged.

She laid the back of her hand on his chest and shd it down slowly until her fingers went past his belt and into his trousers. He smiled smugly when she raised naughty eyes to his. Closing a fist around his buckle, she began backing toward the double bed, dragging him with her.

“You're going to marry me, aren't you?” she asked.

“Will you greet me at the door every night in a sheer robe with nothing on underneath?”

“How did you know?”

“I could see your nipples,” he said softly. “And a shadowy hint of this.” His hand touched the top of her thighs with the overabundance of arrogance she'd always accused him of having.

She could only sigh his name as a familiar liquid fire began to seep through her body at his touch. She sat down on the side of the bed while he rid himself of pants and underwear.

When he was standing before her with the magnificence of his form revealed, she rested her hands on the slight curve of his waist and leaned forward to press her lips against the silky shaft of hair that pointed down his abdomen. Her head moved, nose nuzzling, lips nibbling. Her tongue danced over his navel and beyond…

Her name came out of his throat like a prayer, and he dropped to his knees beside the bed. “I've got to love you. For the rest of my life, I'll love you. This is the way it should have been years ago.”

“It couldn't be then.”