Deceptive Love (8 page)

"Pleased with yourself, are you?" he spoke into the silence.

Keri debated internally for a fraction of a second and decided incomprehension was her safest course. "Pleased with myself?" she questioned quietly. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"The butterfly has burst forth in glory. You're a lovely woman, Keri. It must be a relief to put away that childish masquerade and shed the drab skin. Was it fun playing dress-up, or in your case, dress-down?" There was a savage bite to the words which belied the even tone.

"Mr. Randolph, I began my masquerade as you term it, for good and sufficient reasons, the validity of which I still have no cause to doubt. I am sorry you were offended by my former appearance, but I was perfectly happy to remain Mr. Simonds's secretary. My appearance was a matter of indifference to him!" Keri was in a fine rage by the time she had finished the scathing words. By now she didn't care if he fired her on the spot.

Surprisingly, he laughed. "Calm down, little fireball," he advised her. "You're my secretary now and your appearance is not a matter of indifference to me. Just why did you begin this masquerade? I presume you didn't carry it over into your off-duty hours as well."

"No," she responded tautly. "It wasn't necessary. I simply got tired of having to leave jobs because the boss thought it was fun to chase me around the desk." She shrugged slightly and continued. "So I asked my godfather, Charles Lawson, to find me a boss who looked at no woman but his wife and then I took steps to ensure that even if he looked a first time, he'd see nothing worth a second glance. It was an arrangement that suited both of us."

"Do you mean to tell me that Carleton Van Metre chased you around the desk?" he asked probingly.

Keri's face closed tightly. She didn't want to talk or even think about Schyler! "No," she admitted shortly. "I left Van Metre's for personal reasons which I have no intention of discussing, but they don't concern Mr. Carleton Van Metre except indirectly."

That blunt statement didn't seem to offend Dain, but he did let the subject drop, much to Keri's relief. It was bad enough to be hounded
by
Schyler. To be hounded
about
him too would be more than she was prepared to stand for. There was a taut set to Dain's mouth, but his next conversational gambit was merely to compliment her on the precision of her transcription of the meeting's notes and to thank her for the extra position summations and extraction of discussion points for easy reference.

By the time she had responded suitably, they had reached the hotel where the reception was to be held. The doorman assisted Keri from the car and another man took Dain's place behind the wheel to park the car. Dain drew Keri's hand through the crook of his elbow and held it there with the pressure of his covering hand. They mounted the steps together, a striking couple.

The manager came gliding forward to greet Dain and assure him that all was in perfect readiness. Keri was duly introduced as one of Dam's secretaries as well as the hostess for the evening. She received the first of the speculative looks she had braced herself to endure. Knowing they were coming didn't make them any easier to take with equanimity.

The manager was a shade too effusive and he held on to Keri's hand a fraction too long, so her nod acknowledging the introduction was regally chili In an effort to emphasize the formality of the relationship, she turned to Dain, whose narrowed eyes hadn't missed a bit of the byplay, and said, "Mr. Randolph, I would like to inspect the buffet and the placement of the flowers. I'm sure you and Mr. Garson will excuse me."

She was not to escape that easily. Dain grasped her hand again and inexorably drew it back to rest again in the
crook
of his arm. "We'll look over the arrangements together, Keri," he said firmly and drew her forward with him. Mr. Garson led the way obediently, sure now his first impressions were correct. The look he shot at Dain held more than a trace of envy.

Keri was exasperated. By subtle, cunning methods, which she was at a loss to know how to counteract, Dain Randolph was implying an intimacy between them. If he continued as he had begun, no one would have any doubts as to the quality of their relationship by evening's end. But how could she voice an objection to a possessive look or a simple courtesy which somehow assumed a proprietary air, without making herself look a hysterical idiot? A glance, a tone of voice . . . how best to fight their insidious impression?

Something in Dain's expression told her he recognized her dilemma and was amused by it . . . and would do nothing to extricate her.

They stood together to greet the first guests and from that beginning the reception followed the predictable pattern. Keri soon realized that many of the men hadn't made the initial connection between the machinelike secretary who had been present at the conference and the vivid woman who was propelled from group to group, willy-nilly, by Dain's pinioning arm, but some did, and they would spread the word to their less observant brethren.

Keri tried, time and time again, to slip away from the close confinement of Dain's hand at her waist, but found that unless she was prepared to make an obvious scene, her efforts were to no avail. She decided to bide her time. When the dancing started she would have her chance to escape him. As hostess she would have duty-dances with the principals of the conference and even the most determined Dain could not keep her at his side then. Cheered by that happy thought she could perform her duties graciously, a credit to her mother's tutelage.

The dancing started. The members of the conference claimed their duty-dances with flattering alacrity. By now they were all aware of her transformation and their reactions generally took one of two directions. Most, and they were the easiest to handle, took it as a joke, and while the heavy jocularity was wearying, it was far more welcome than the second reaction.

The second reaction was found among those of the group, a minority, fortunately, who perceived her new improved appearance as a come-on. Keri handled this group with a polite hauteur and blank incomprehension of their more suggestive innuendos. Unfortunately there were several, as there always are at every party, whose consumption of alcohol raised their spirits, lowered their inhibitions, and deafened them to any negative reaction short of one reinforced by a brickbat.

Keri caught Dain watching her several times as she did her best to preserve a neutral distance while dancing with one of this latter group. Anything less blatant than an outright knee to the groin hadn't a hope of getting through f to Keri's current partner. When her eyes clashed with j Dain's bland stare as she danced past, desperately trying
J
to evade her partner's attempts to grind his hips against hers, Keri shot him a glare of such malignancy that her eyelashes should have smoked. He got her into this! She called down plagues and pestilence upon his head.

Her current partner swept her away, so she missed the black scowl that spread over Dain's face as he grimly watched the pair of retreating dancers. He divested himself of his own partner and within moments was skillfully cutting in on Keri and her overly enthusiastic and inebriated swain.

Although she currently viewed Dain in the same light as she would a case of shingles, at first Keri felt only relief. Dain held her lightly, if a trifle closely, but nothing compared to what she had been enduring. Her relief vanished like a snowflake in a blast furnace at his first words.

"Enjoying yourself, Keri? You seem to be the belle of the ball" His voice was as smooth as cream, but his eyes mocked openly.

Keri stiffened like a steel rod in his arms while her feet automatically kept pace with his expert lead. The face she lifted to his was calm, but her lips smiled nastily as she! said pseudo-sweetly, "Of course, Mr. Randolph. I always enjoy being assaulted in public."

The music ended and she slipped out of his arms with a lithe twist. His hand went out to grasp her wrist but she had expected that he would try to recapture her and she evaded him neatly. For what remained of the evening she just as neatly avoided him. If he joined a group, she was just drifting away. She seemed to have eyes in the back of her head or some inner radar tuned just to warn of his approach. Had she been less deft it would have been farcical, but Keri was driven by sheer desperation. She didn't think her control could keep her from screaming at him like a fishwife and her pride shrank from the possibility of such a display.

She was also determined that she was not going to allow him to drive her home. She wasn't sure yet just how she was going to get out of it, but she'd maneuver. She had to!

A guardian angel, who had been soundly sleeping on some celestial cloud, finally woke up and got back on the job. The reception was nearly finished and Dain had at last managed to catch up with Keri. The last two groups of guests had coalesced into one, leaving her nowhere to run. Dain slipped an arm around her waist, pinning her to his side, and the bite of his fingers left her in no doubt that he meant to keep her there!

Salvation appeared in the unexpected form of two of the conference members who drew Dain aside for a lengthy conversation while Keri sped the last remaining guests out. The manager was hovering and Keri said, loudly enough for Dain to hear, "I would like to give our personal thanks to the hotel personnel in the kitchen, Mr. Garson. They have done an outstanding job tonight and have helped to make it a most successful party."

The manager proudly escorted her into the kitchen where Keri was sincere in her praise of the hotel staffs efforts. The pleased surprise told her that though RanCo often used this hotel's facilities for entertaining, evidently

Miss Barth had not deemed it necessary to render personal thanks before. Keri thought, a trifle cynically, Miss Barth might be surprised at the warmer "reception" she would get the next time she scheduled a function at this hotel. That had been one of the first lessons her mother had taught her about catered affairs. Always thank the kitchen workers personally.

The next step in her quickly formulated plan was easy to implement. She merely excused herself from Mr. Garson, saying that she would meet Mr. Randolph at the front desk after she had freshened up a bit.

She went to the front desk and left a message for Dain with the receptionist, the gist of which was that she had made her own way home by taxi since it was late and she didn't wish to take him out of his way. A warm smile at the doorman got her an instant taxi and she sank into the back seat, so different from the plush leather of her earlier conveyance, with overwhelming relief.

She figured that by the time Dain had retraced her trail through the hotel she would be well on her way home and so it proved true. She had been home nearly fifteen minutes before the knock came at the door. She'd taken the precaution of leaving the lights off everywhere except the bathroom, so there was nothing to betray her. He could assume she was home, but he couldn't prove it.

Five minutes after the knocking stopped, the phone started ringing. She didn't answer it either and after it stopped ringing the first time, she took it off the hook. He must have been calling from a nearby phone booth, but he didn't come back up and try his luck with the front door again. Once he started getting busy signals he'd
know
she was safely home, but she wanted an undisturbed night's sleep, and trying to ignore the ringing phone certainly wouldn't give it to her.

There was going to be hell to pay in more ways than one on Monday, but she comforted herself that she could always quit. With her typing speed she could turn out an error-free resignation letter in under one minute. Brief and to the point. An embassy job was looking more attractive by the minute. She'd been a nomad all her life. Maybe she shouldn't try to fight the system.

If she went to sleep on a downbeat, Keri awoke to an upbeat. Her natural optimism and sense of humor had both reasserted themselves during the night. Her job was challenging, the pay enticing, and she was tired of running. It was time to stand and fight.

But how? Well, to begin with, she decided, as she showered, she certainly wouldn't make the mistake she'd made with Schyler. There would be no dates with Dain Randolph, always assuming, of course, that he didn't fire her first thing on Monday morning. He couldn't force her to go out with him on a private basis. She didn't consider at the time that she might be outmaneuvered, and by her own emotions at that!

Buoyed by her resolution, she ate a hearty breakfast, pushed the phone button down for a moment to reestablish a connection, and dialed her godfather's number. When he answered she greeted him cheerfully. "Good morning to you, Charles. How'd you like to invite me to spend the weekend with you and Mary?"

"I'll tell Mary to put clean linens on your bed," was the satisfyingly prompt response. "Come when you can and stay as long as you can," he added.

"You're a love. I'll be there in time for lunch," she promised. After she had broken the connection, she left the phone off the hook while she cleared away the breakfast dishes, packed her overnight bag, and flipped through her morning mail. She slipped several letters into her purse to read at her leisure, watered the philodendron and Boston fern, put the phone back on the hook, and headed toward the front door. The phone rang. She stuck her tongue out at it and closed the front door firmly behind her. She could hear its muted summons until the elevator door closed.