Kane (20 page)

No family, or at least none who cared about her. She had apparently taught herself not to mind, but it had affected her, Kane thought as he watched the flicker of emotions that crossed her face. Sympathy was not going to help him, however.

He said, “So who was it took care of you after your mother died?”

“An aunt.”

“But I thought you had no contact with either your
mother's or your father's families.” His tone was carefully neutral, though he watched her closely.

“Actually, she wasn't related, but only a friend of my mother's, a woman she met soon after she came to New York,” she answered, her gaze wary, as if she suspected what he was doing. “She decided we should tell people she was my aunt to avoid trouble with the child-service people. She was afraid they wouldn't let me stay with her if there was no blood tie, though I doubt they cared. Anyway, it became such a habit that it almost seemed true.”

“I think you said before that this woman died?”

She dropped the hull of the strawberry she had just eaten onto her plate and didn't reach for another. In toneless agreement, she said, “Five, almost six years after I went to live with her.”

“What then? You must have still been fairly young since you were only—what? Ten, wasn't it—when your mother died?”

“The woman had a son who was like a brother to me. I stayed on with him.”

“So the two of you made a family of sorts.”

“Of sorts,” she echoed, her gaze on the strawberry hull she nudged around the edge of her plate with the tip of one finger.

“Except he isn't really a cousin.” Kane wanted to accept that the situation was as she said. The surprise was how much he wanted to believe it.

“You've no idea what a hassle finding an apartment can be in New York. I keep meaning to move out on my own, but somehow, with the traveling and everything else, I've never gotten around to it.” She aban
doned the strawberry hull. “I suppose it must seem strange to you, considering the size of your family.”

“It's a bit hard to imagine.”

“Having so few people close to you makes you cling to those who are there,” she said, lifting her gaze finally and holding it level.

Kane refused to be affected by the undercurrent of stress in her voice. “Especially your son, I imagine,” he added quietly. “Who takes care of him when you're out on the road like this?”

“He's in a special boarding school because of a learning disability. It makes him frustrated and hyperactive, and…resistant to discipline or control of any kind, which is dangerous in a place like New York where he might dart into traffic or wander away from the apartment and be found by anyone, any kind of creep. He takes medication, but still needs constant supervision.” She made a helpless gesture as she trailed into silence. The sheen in her eyes had the look of unshed tears before she glanced away toward the strawberry bowl. She reached for another berry and took a bite, though he didn't think she wanted it.

“Is the boy the reason you never married, never started a real family of your own?”

She swallowed and licked some sugary dip from a finger before reaching for a napkin. “Part of it, I suppose,” she answered, “though you know the rest.” She looked up, her face changed, hardened. “What is this interrogation? If you're going to keep asking questions, maybe I should call in another lawyer.”

“Only if you have something to hide,” he said, and waited with a suspended feeling in his chest for her answer.

She hesitated a millisecond and her eyelids flickered, then she gave a low laugh tinged with irony. “I don't suppose I have any more secrets than the average person. You, for instance.”

She was good, he thought. So far, she had told enough of the truth to be plausible while still concealing the facts by omission. Yes, she was very good, but so was he.

“The only thing I'm hiding,” he said, smiling ruefully as he propped an elbow on the table and rested his chin on his palm, “is a strong urge to see how you taste with Aunt Vivian's dip on your mouth.”

“Like coconut and strawberries, I'd imagine,” she said, her voice suddenly uneven.

“Two of my favorite flavors.”

She licked her lips. “Are they?”

It was all the encouragement he needed. He got to his feet and moved to her side of the table. Taking her hand, he pressed the palm to his lips, then placed it at his waist as he bent over her. With a knuckle under her chin, he tilted her mouth and settled his lips on hers.

The luscious mixture of tastes, including her own nectar, melted on his tongue, spread through him with the power of some mystical elixir. It made him yearn for more, even as he knew it would never be enough. Bemused by the magic, he lifted his head and saw the same glazed wonder in her face.

Why? Why did it have to be so good? Why couldn't he have found this amazing physical affinity with some simple, loving female who believed in all the things he believed in, who understood his values, hopes and dreams? Why did he have such bad luck
with women? Were there no honorable ones, or was he simply, inevitably, attracted to the wrong kind because of some inner flaw?

It was a useless question, one that vanished from his mind the instant he took her mouth again. His senses expanded as he realized there was no shrinking, no denial in her touch. She was all giving grace and accommodation. She allowed him entrance, followed his lead, swayed a little and caught his arm for balance with a touch that seemed to burn through his skin to the bone.

His heart was on fire, and his lower body, as well. He needed her as he had never needed another person in all the accumulated days and minutes of his life. Against all common sense, he wanted to lavish her with love.

Impossible. But he could do the next best thing. He could show her a different kind of loving, teach her the intense communication of selfless physical passion.

He went down on one knee, at the same time placing a drift of small kisses along the point of her chin to the pulse in the long sweep of her neck, down to the hollow of her throat. She wore a rust silk blouse that glided open beneath his questing fingers. To pull it free of her skirt took less than a second.

Her breasts were milk white and blue veined under a covering of peach lace, gentle globes that fitted his hands as if molded for them. Their warmth and delicate fragrance mounted to his head with narcotic force. His senses reeling with it, he pressed his hot lips to the valley between them while he slid her bra straps down her arms.

It had been too dark to see the night before. Now
the beauty of her nipples, like tight and tender rosebuds, moved him beyond words. To touch them, it seemed, was to risk damaging them, yet his mouth tingled with the need to capture their perfection. Unable to help himself, he bent his head and wet first one, then the other, with his tongue. That glistening moisture was the ideal enhancement. A faint smile curved his mouth before he tasted them again.

But there was another variation lying like a gem in his mind. Moving with slow care, he reached to scoop his finger into the bowl of coconut-flavored dip. Applying it to the nearest nipple, he spread it in a slow circle.

“What are you—doing?” she asked with a catch in her voice.

“Anointing you,” he said distractedly.

“Why?”

“For this,” he said, then began to lick the lovely treat he had created. She brought her hand up to run her fingers through his hair, but didn't interfere. Nor did she object again.

How he moved her from the chair to the table was a mystery. It was also an improvement. By then, it seemed, her doubts had faded away. With a glance from under the veiling of her lashes that was as daring as it was wary, she dipped her fingers into the milky coconut concoction, too. Dabbing it in interesting spots on his chest, she chased the drips with her small pink tongue, catching the errant drops with maddeningly efficient flicks.

He loved it, loved her delicacy and shy participation, and encouraged both with his hands on the firm curves of her hips. Nudging her thighs open with his
own, he pressed against her feminine heat, trying to assuage the ache in his groin. And the feeling that rose inside him was both earthy and sublime, a desire to possess in fast, hard coupling and the need to lose himself in her, a passion to take and a need to cherish.

Minutes ago, or perhaps it was vast eons of time past, he had held a motive in his mind for this particular form of seduction. It was gone. Long gone. Caught in her sensual spell, he didn't care what she was doing to him or why so long as she didn't stop.

Hot, he was so hot, and so on fire with need and pleasure that he lost all trace of finesse, abandoned the last vestige of mental deliberation. All that was left was instinct and power, hard muscles and moist, yielding flesh, rising passion and inventive explorations seasoned with coconut and exhaustive self-control.

Until he was tested too far. Then he pressed into her and set a rhythm that taxed his muscles and shivered his soul—a slow, endless testing of her silken depths, her arching acceptance, her achingly gallant response. He wanted to go on and on, connected, fused in a mutual bonding of heart and mind that was sealed with body heat and desperate intentions.

Mindless, disregarding time and place, he was lost in the wonder. Absorbed in the blood pounding in his veins and the wet, hot contact, he knew only the blessed striving that made them one for a single explosive instant.

But it couldn't last, that oneness. Wouldn't. Didn't.

And its passing left him as empty and lost as he had been before. Left him weary and disgusted by his search for truth and glory where none was to be found.

T
he shrilling of the phone woke Regina. She lay in the semidarkness as her brain roused from the deepest, most complete sleep she had known in a long time. It was a strange feeling. Stranger still was the realization that she was naked under the blanket that covered her, and that Kane, whom she was using as a warm and embracing pillow, was in the same condition.

The phone rang again. Alarm struck through her like the blade of a knife. There was only one person who would call her here.

Gervis.

Kane was awake; she could sense the alertness in his nerves, feel the muscles under her cheek shift as he lifted his head. He stretched a long arm toward the phone that was on the opposite side of the bed from where she lay.

She sprang up in panic. Flinging herself across his body, she caught the receiver a split second before he touched it. Her voice was breathlessly tight as she spoke into it.

“What the hell's going on down there, Gina? Why am I not hearing from you?”

“Sorry,” she said in swift answer, “but you have the wrong room.”

“Now that's a stupid—” The man on the other end of the line halted. “Got somebody with you, that it? How about that, this time of night. Call me ASAP, baby, because you've got some explaining to do.”

“No problem,” she said in dismissive tones. As the line went dead, she reached to hang up again. She held the position a second, feeling her heart banging against her ribs and thanking God for experience with hotel nuisance calls that had given her an excuse for this one. Then she glanced back to Kane.

He was watching her. For an instant, she thought she saw accusation in the dark pools of his eyes. It must have been no more than the reflection of her own guilt, for she blinked and it was gone.

She started to squirm backward off him, but he clamped a hard hand on her backside. The sound she made was somewhere between a yelp and a gulp. In protest, she said, “I'm squashing you.”

“That's not how I'd describe what you're doing.” He began to massage the curve he held, smoothing his warm hand in slow circles, creating strange sensations in the pit of her stomach.

What was happening to him was not exactly a mystery if the heated hardness under her abdomen was any indication. “Let me up.”

“I don't think so.” The scar beside his mouth, the scar she had traced with her tongue a short time before, stood out as a small half-moon.

“Turn me loose.”

His grasp tightened. “You're driving me crazy, do you know that?”

“It's all in your mind.” She wriggled, trying to move, but he was holding her down.

“I know. That's the worst thing about it.”

There was a note in his voice that she didn't like. She stilled, spoke with more determination. “Let me go. Right now.”

He rose up in bed with a sudden wrenching of muscles, using his momentum and leverage to flip her onto her back. In a coiling glide, he followed her, landing on top of her with his body pinning her to the bed though he rested his weight on his elbows. She lay staring up at the dark shape of his face, stunned yet entranced by the nudge of something very purposeful against the softness between her thighs.

“Am I bothering you?” he asked, his voice dulcet, but carrying an undercurrent of steel.

Was he? She hardly knew for the race of excitement and anticipation in her veins. To hide it, however, seemed pure mother knowledge. “No. No, you're not bothering me. Exactly.”

“You don't feel the least bit of an inclination to go into panic mode and pound me between the eyes?”

She saw what he was getting at and couldn't believe he'd needed to make the point so plainly before she remembered. In some irritation, she said, “We aren't shut up in a coffin together.”

“No, but we're certainly in the dark, with me holding you confined and with even less between us and final jeopardy than there was that day.” He pressed inside her a teasing inch to show her exactly what he meant. “Maybe you weren't bothered then, either. Maybe it was an excuse to get away from me.”

“Or maybe,” she countered with a pugnacious jut of her chin, “it's just that you're not a threat anymore.”

“Wrong,” he said, and slid into her with a strong twist of the hips that took him to the hilt. “Wrong,” he repeated as he withdrew, then mimicked the same motion. Then again. And again. Endlessly, until the refrain echoed in Regina's brain with the rising tide of perilous pleasure and she thought she might hear it in her dreams.

Kane was gone when she roused again an hour later. It was the closing of the door behind him that caused her to surface through layers of darkness this time. She lay still with her eyes closed, listening to the sound of his truck as the engine roared into life and he drove off.

It had been courteous of him to try to let her sleep, but she would rather have had a chance to say good-bye. She would also have preferred a chance to look him in the face before he left her.

There was something about the evening she had just spent with Kane that made her restless, uneasy. Something had been going on beneath its surface, she was sure of it. As she thought back, it seemed every word, every movement, carried some disturbing message if she could only see it. At the same time, she didn't really want to think about it, didn't want to investigate Kane's behavior or her own too closely. Fear of what she might find was too real and threatening.

She sat up and pushed the hair back from her face with a tired gesture, then reached for the travel clock on the bedside table. After twelve. It would be past one in New York. Replacing the clock, she leaned back against the headboard and closed her eyes.

She should call Gervis. He would be awake, waiting to hear from her. Her cousin was a night owl who
liked to stay up until the wee hours, then sleep in. That had been one of the things that had bothered him most about having a child in the house after Stephan was born—that he had to change his sleeping habits to accommodate a small human being who rose at dawn.

The nagging worry about Stephan caught at her. She hoped he was all right with Gervis. She'd never left her son alone with him before. Gervis was fond of him in his way, but Stephan made him tense. He seemed to resent the amount of time and attention he took. At the same time, it was almost as if Gervis was afraid of him, afraid of not doing what was right around him.

A sudden longing swept over her to hold Stephan, to snuggle his warm, bony little body against her and feel his quick, hard hug. To hear him say he loved her. She had taught herself not to think about such things ever since he'd been in his hospital-like boarding school, but it was hard, so hard. She had let Gervis talk her into the arrangement, had listened to the expert he'd insisted on bringing in to examine Stephan and who said it was necessary for him to attend the special school. She wanted her child to have what was needed, wanted what was best for him. Still, she missed him so much. And in her mother's heart she wasn't sure such intense therapy was necessary for Stephan. Like the evening just past, it felt all wrong.

Everything seemed wrong, really: being separated from Stephan, coming to Turn-Coupe under false pretenses, conning Lewis Crompton, becoming involved with Kane for what she could learn from him. It was also a mistake to allow herself to feel much too much
for a man who was going to hate her when he found out who she was and what she had done.

She couldn't stand it, she really couldn't. It was time she stopped, time she told Gervis she wouldn't do it anymore.

Did she dare?

Gervis wasn't reasonable these days. Whatever friendship and family feeling he might have had for her after years of treating her like a younger sister seemed submerged in his need to win this suit at all costs. Sometimes, though, she wondered exactly what he felt, whether he considered her a convenient hostess or just a responsibility inherited from his mother, an accepted part of his life, or a habit from which he could find no way to break free.

If Gervis deserted her, she would be alone. Could she stand that solitude, the loneliness of having no one to depend on except herself, no one to help with the difficult decisions that cropped up in her life? She thought she could, for herself, but wasn't sure she could give her son the care he needed. She had to be sure for Stephan's sake since he was the one who mattered most.

It always came back to that in the end—what was best for her son. Always. Sighing with resignation, she reached for the phone.

Gervis answered on the second ring. As he heard her voice, he growled, “About damned time. I was getting ready to send Slater in there to find out if you were okay.”

“You wouldn't.”

“Don't bet on it.”

“If you had any idea what he's like, it would be the last thing to cross your mind.”

“Yeah, yeah. So what gives down there?”

“Nothing. Everything's the same. Is Stephan asleep?”

“What? You think at this time of night, he should be waiting up for his mommy to call him?”

“Gervis, don't,” she said as evenly as she could manage. “Don't be like this.”

“Why not? I hear you're getting it on with the hick lawyer.”

“It's what you suggested, isn't it?”

“So are you finding out anything or just having a good time?”

The anger stirring inside her came to a sudden boil. “If this is the way you're going to be,” she said with precision, “then I'm hanging up.”

“Don't you do it!” The command was fast, but much more moderate. She could hear him breathing in short, heavy pants through his nose, as if conquering rage he didn't intend to show. He was pacing with the remote phone clamped to his ear, she thought, for she could hear brief waves of static and the slap of the leather soles of his handmade Italian house shoes on the hardwood of the penthouse hallway.

“Tell me about Stephan,” she said. “Does he like the nurse you hired? Is he all right being away from the school? You haven't talked to him about anything, have you?”

“The kid's fine. He'll be even better when his mother gets her job done and gets herself back here to him.”

“I'm trying. But I wish you'd let Stephan go back
to school where he belongs. He's bound to pick up on what's going on if he's around very long. My son is hyperactive, not stupid.”

“He's also useful, Gina, honey. I need him to keep you in line.”

The meaning behind the words wasn't subtle, nor was it meant to be. “You don't, Gervis, I promise, and I'd rather he was where he belongs. I can't do what I'm supposed to with this threat hanging over my head.”

“You'll have to, baby, because that's the way it is.”

“Why? You know you can trust me.” She hated the sound of her voice, could hardly force the pleading words from her throat.

“That so? I hear you got yourself marooned with Benedict out on some lake, spent hours alone with the guy. But did I hear about it from you? No, not a peep. I had to get it from Slater. I'm thinking maybe I should turn this whole job over to him.”

“He'd love that. In fact, I expect it's what he's after.”

“You don't like him much, do you?”

“He's the worst kind of scum. In fact, I think he may have—”

“Get the job done and he'll be out of your hair,” her cousin cut her off with sarcasm layering his voice. “Speaking of which, you sure you got nothing for me?”

The suspicion in the question sent what she was about to say out of her head. Should she tell him about the switched caskets and the lovers buried together? If she thought it would satisfy him, she might, but she didn't think it would. He would hound her for more
details, more dirt, would make something corrupt out of a generous and compassionate response to a woman who had made a mistake. “No,” she said, her voice as firm as she could make it. “I told you, there's nothing to tell.”

She had hesitated too long. He was silent for an explosive second, then he cursed. “You're lying, baby. You got something. You're just too much of a bleeding heart to lay it on the line. Slater's right. You're not cut out for this job. You've let that bunch of rebels down there get to you. I don't watch out, you'll be doing me more harm than good.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, holding the phone so tight her fingers ached.

“I mean you'll blab everything you know about me to Crompton and that grandson of his. You'll set me up.”

“For heaven's sake, Gervis, what kind of person do you think I am?”

“You're a woman. No telling what a woman will do.”

That was a far more blatantly sexist remark than anything Kane had come close to making, even if he felt it, which she wasn't sure he did. There was, she realized, consideration and protectiveness underlying most of Kane's more chauvinistic impulses. “Look,” she said, “I'm doing the best I can.”

“I don't think so. You're waffling, playing both ends against the middle and trying to keep your hands clean. It ain't gonna work, I see that now. I think it's time I pulled the plug. I want you out of there.”

“Leave? Just like that?” Distress vibrated in her voice.

“This second, babe. Get yourself a seat on the first plane out of that rinky-dink place. I want you back here as soon as you can make it.”

“But I can't just drop everything.”

“Don't give me any crap, Gina. Do it now. Don't tell anybody you're going. Don't stop to say good-bye. Be on that plane, or I'm warning you, you won't like what happens.”

The order was followed by the click of the remote phone being punched off. Regina lowered the receiver to her lap. She sat staring at nothing while his words slammed around inside her head.

Leave. Now. Leave Kane when she had just begun to know him. Leave Mr. Lewis and Elise, Luke and Vivian, even Betsy. The thought of it made her feel empty and sick. She had only been here a matter of days, but there was something about the place and the people that drew her to them, made her feel warm inside. She didn't want to leave.