“Your temper’s more in danger of a sprain than my neck is,” she countered coolly. “If you’d rather brood for a while, I can get a cab back to my apartment,” she added. “I’ve had a pretty rotten day so far, and tonight isn’t making up for it.”
“Stop it,” he growled, nodding to Jimson as they reached the car. He opened the door for Keena as Jimson got in under the wheel and cranked the engine.
“I didn’t start it,” she returned, avoiding his hand as she got into the seat that he was holding the door open to. She moved as far away from him as possible when he got in beside her and closed the door.
“Don’t pout, for God’s sake,” he shot at her with a hard glare.
She returned the glare with interest. It was the first major argument they’d had, and it was beginning to set records for antagonism.
“I’ll pout if I damn please!” she flared up, hunched in her corner. “Why don’t you go find Maria if you want a sparring partner? I didn’t try to lure you into my bed and then refuse to let you go when you were tired of me.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with me if you got me into your bed,” he returned with malice.
She started to make a smart remark back, but she was suddenly too tired to make the effort. It had been a perfectly horrible day; and it was just getting worse. Now her only friend was furious with her, and she wanted to wail.
They rode in a tense silence until Jimson pulled up at the curb in front of her apartment house and sat looking straight ahead while Keena reached for the doorknob.
But a big, warm hand got there first, holding hers where it rested on the handle.
“Not like this,” he said heavily, his tone strained. “I can’t leave for Europe tomorrow with a sword between us.”
“Why not?” she countered, not looking at him. “I’ve seen you walk away from worse—and laugh.”
“Not you,” he said quietly. “Never you.”
The tone of his voice more than the words calmed her. She turned slowly and looked up at him. He was closer than she’d realized, his dark eyes only inches away, the warmth and fragrance of his big body permeating her, drowning her in sensation.
“I don’t think you’re old,” she whispered unsteadily, affected by him as she’d never been before. “I’ve never paid any attention to the age difference. It never mattered.”
His dark eyes searched hers with a scrutiny that made her nervous. “Tease me about my size, or my money, or my temper. But leave birthdays out of it from now on.”
She swallowed. “All right, Nicholas.”
He removed his hand from hers as if it burned him. “I’ll see you when I get back. It may take two weeks to close this deal, so don’t expect me before the middle of February.”
Two weeks without him. The bleak winter was going to move even slower until he returned, and she was just realizing how empty her life was going to be without those unexpected visits and phone calls. He’d been away from the city for long periods before and it hadn’t bothered her. But suddenly it did, and she looked up at him with a curious frown above her pale green eyes.
“You look strange,” he remarked.
“We haven’t argued in a long time. In fact, I don’t really think we ever did,” she said gently, her eyes troubled.
“Perhaps we’re more aware of each other now,” he said, his voice unusually quiet as he looked down into her eyes.
“Aware?” she whispered.
His breath came hard and quick as he looked down at her soft mouth with an intensity that made her heart race. It was as if he was kissing it, and her lips parted involuntarily, her eyes half-closed at the intensity of the gaze.
“I can almost feel your mouth under mine. Do you know that?” he murmured in a voice like deep velvet. “Your lips trembling, your breasts swelling against me...”
“Nicholas!” she burst out, half gasping, half angry, at the intimacy of it.
“If Jimson wasn’t sitting up front trying not to see us, I’d give you a damned sight more than words to remember me by,” he growled harshly. “I’d wrestle you down on the seat and teach you things about your body you’ve never dreamed it could feel. And you want it,” he added with a level gaze that made her knees melt. “Don’t you?”
Her body was trembling madly. She gaped at him, hating her own reactions, hating him for sensing them.
“You’re my friend,” she choked.
“I’m going to be your lover,” he replied curtly. “Think about that while I’m gone.”
She got out of the car quickly, almost tripping in her haste while Nicholas sat there and watched her with unholy amusement, his eyes glittering with triumph. He knew how he affected her. He had too much experience, damn him, not to know.
“Maybe I won’t be here when you get back,” she cried with a pitiful attempt at self-preservation, at pride.
“You’ll be here,” he said, and closed the door.
“You’ll be lucky,” she muttered as the elegant taillights of the Rolls disappeared into the night. She didn’t realize how prophetic the words were. The next morning her father’s doctor called to tell her that her only surviving relative had been found dead in his bed. Her father was gone.
* * *
THE FUNERAL HAD been harrowing, and Keena was grateful when it was over at last, when her father’s few well-meaning friends had gone and the house was finally peaceful.
She thumbed through the documents on his desk with a faint smile. It had been so like him to leave everything neat, in order. It was almost as if he’d expected the massive coronary that had taken his life.
The will was just as straightforward as Alan Whitman had always been. It left the house to Keena, along with pitifully few possessions. It saddened her that the entire estate barely amounted to the profits her business realized in one day.
She got up from the desk and stood at the window. Her father had never allowed her to give him any money to provide him with even a new car. He and his daughter had been close, but like her he valued his independence. He wanted nothing that he hadn’t earned himself, although he was pleased with her success and frequently told her so.
She looked through the window at the narrow road that ran by the front of the house to the small town beyond. How many of her old classmates would know her now? she wondered. In adolescence she’d been a gangly, painfully shy girl with clothes that always seemed to hang on her, and an eternal slump. Most of the other students had laughed at her, boys and girls alike, and had made fun of the way she dressed, the walk that they said had the grace of a pelican running. She was as out of place in the small town as a sparrow would have been in a den of hawks. Alan Whitman had moved here from Miami, settling in this pleasant section of south Georgia with a mind toward starting his own business. But illness had slowed him down, diminished his resources, and he’d had a daughter to support. So he’d taken a job at the local textile mill, just until he could get on his financial feet again. But he’d been trapped by house payments and car payments and doctor bills into keeping the hated job, and he’d found all too soon that there was no way out. He was stuck.
His spirit was all but broken by the long hours, and there was no laughter in the big house he’d spent his life savings on. He had dozens of get-rich-quick schemes that fell through quickly. He spent his life looking for the rainbow, but all he found was the pants line of the manufacturing company.
Keena sighed bitterly at the irony of life. Her father had gotten poor making clothes, while she’d gotten rich. Even now she looked the part of the wealthy career woman in her chic designer jeans and