Authors: Sorcha MacMurrough
Brad gazed out the window for a
moment, and then shrugged his shoulders.
“Come on, now, we have better
things to do than discuss Zoe Dominick and her love life,” he said huskily, and
gathered the papers together none to deftly into a neat pile.
“Lack of love life, you mean,”
Zaira said, and pretended to be absorbed in her screen.
“Are you planning to stay up all
night?” Brad said, coming up behind her and resting his hands on her shoulders.
“I’ll finish this part, then have
a hot drink and go to bed.”
“I tell you what, I’ll make it,”
he offered, and kissed the top of her head before he left the room.
In truth Zaira was exhausted.
As soon as he had gone she saved her
work and turned the computer off.
She rubbed her aching eyes, and put her head down on the desk. She felt
cold and bone tired, and couldn't summon up the energy to go next door.
She could feel herself drifting
and floating, and she heard her name called once or twice by a deep thrilling
voice.
She whispered a name in
reply, and felt her lips and forehead brushed gently.
Zaira felt warm strong arms around
her, and raised her arms around the muscular neck as she was carried she knew
not where.
An incredible softness
and warmness enveloped her, and she stretched herself out and shivered with the
cold and desire caused by the nearness, the maleness of the presence beside
her.
She felt her hair smoothed
back and a hand run down the length of her curves before sleep captured her
completely and she became oblivious to everything around her.
Zaira struggled to open her eyes
the next morning, as she heard the loud buzzing of her alarm clock signaling
the start of another day.
She
moved her hand, and smoothed it over a massive chest, and then, searchingly, up
the neck to the thick silky hair. She moved closer, and suddenly realized she
was not alone, but in contact with a figure which could only be male.
Brad
!
He was looking down at her, and
his green gaze caressed her confused grey one in the dim half-light of the bedroom.
His arms came up around her, and he
kissed her gently but firmly.
She
tried to wriggle free, alarmed at the nearness of him, and the complete
confusion she felt as to how she had ended up in such a position despite all of
her attempts to fend him off.
Zaira pulled her head back far
enough to avoid his kisses by arching her back, but this only made the
situation worse, for it brought her lower body into even closer and more
intimate contact with his solid maleness, which burnt into the softness of her
stomach like a red hot poker.
“Brad, please! What are you doing
here!” Zaira gasped.
“Calm down,” he whispered, “it was
an innocent enough mistake to make.”
She still struggled to get free,
but he soothed his hands down her back, and pulled her head towards him to tuck
it next to his chest.
He eased the
lower half of her body away so that she could breath more freely, but she still
felt deeply embarrassed and aroused by the incredible body she had caught herself
caressing in her sleep.
“I’m sorry to give you such a
start, but honestly, I went into the study to give you your cocoa, and you were
sound sleep.
Rather than leave you
there all night, I brought you in here to your own bed. But you were shivering,
so I just lay down for a few minutes with you to warm you up.
I guess I fell asleep. I swear I didn’t
do anything to take advantage of the situation.”
He began to pull away, and Zaira
unthinkingly reached out to him and held him by the collar of his unbuttoned
shirt.
She looked up into his
green eyes as they loomed over her, and she said, “No, I’m sorry, it is a bit
odd, but honestly, I'm sure you were only trying to be kind.”
“Thank you. But you know, I'm not
that chivalrous after all.
As long
as we’re here, we might as well make the most of it,” Brad said with a grin.
His mouth took hers in a fiercely possessive kiss which sent her mind
reeling.
Zaira tried to struggle, but he
bundled her so tightly to him, that she could only loop her arms around his
neck, and her body pressed itself closer to him of its own accord.
He ran his hands down her sides,
cupping her full breasts, which he began to nibble at through the fabric of her
blouse.
He shifted his weight,
and his hand slipped down between her thighs to knead the sensitive flesh
there.
An incredible wave of
pleasure overwhelmed her, and Zaira could hear herself cry out in a voice she
didn’t recognize as her own as she shuddered weakly under him.
“Brad! Stop! Don’t!” she rasped
huskily, but it was too late, and she caught a flash of his green eyes as they
looked down at her in wonder.
He
kissed her softly on her mouth and cheeks, and kissed away the tears that had
sprung from her eyes, as she floated back down to earth.
God, what must he think of me,
Zaira wondered miserably as he
kissed her once again and eased himself off the bed.
He sat on the edge of the bed, and
held one of her hands in both his own.
“I’m sorry, that went a bit too far.
I didn’t want to take advantage of the situation, but I
ended up doing it anyway.
I need
to sort things out with you, but it’ll have to be later.”
He got up and left the room
without a backward glance, and Zaira felt she had driven him away with her
undisguised passion for him.
Damn
him, he could have just got up, instead of playing his little games with her to
test his power over women.
Zaira waited until she heard the
apartment door shut before she ventured out for a cup of coffee, which she took
back to her room.
She stripped off
the clothes she had worn the day before, and stood under a hot shower until her
skin tingled.
Just as she came out of the
bathroom, she heard the doorbell ring.
She wondered if Brad had left something behind, but then she remembered
that the posters he had bought were supposed to arrive that day.
She pulled her dressing gown tightly
around her and put on her spectacles.
Her wet hair hung loosely down her back, glinting red in the sunlight as
she opened the door.
A huge figure, nearly as big as
Brad pushed past her, and in her outrage she didn’t stop to look at the second
man standing in the doorway.
“Who do you think you are, barging
in here like this?” Zaira demanded, but one look at the man’s hawklike features
and green eyes told her who it was.
Cormac Clarke.
Cormac
Clarke, the famous Hollywood legend, Brad’s father, was standing in her living
room while she dripped all over the carpet.
“I was told my son lived her,
though I can hardly believe it.
All this university nonsense must have gone to his head if he’s slumming
it here with the likes of you,” Cormac declared with a dismissive glance at
Zaira and the apartment.
“Slumming!
How dare you!
I live here, and am working here with Brad on the screenplay
of his latest film, if it’s any business of yours!” Zaira responded hotly.
The cold green eyes, so like
Brad’s yet so different, looked her up and down as if she were a morsel about
to be devoured.
“I can see that
isn’t the only thing you and I have been working on together,” Cormac sneered,
and she felt naked despite the thickness of her terry robe.
“At any rate, I lost interest in
all his little affairs years ago, so if you’d be so kind as to fetch him out of
bed, I want a word with him in private.
You can go about your business.”
The contemptuous emphasis on certain words made her feel lower than a
prostitute. Zaira bristled at his injustice towards Brad as well.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but
he's out teaching and I’m not sure when he’ll be back.
You can check his bedroom for yourself
if you like, or our office. Now if you will excuse me, my students are eagerly
awaiting my lectures, so I have little time to spare with an ill-mannered,
unwelcome guest.”
Cormac looked surprised at her
news, but narrowed his eyes in a sinister fashion as he towered over her and
demanded, “Do you know who I am?”
“Any fool could guess from your
resemblance to Brad, though I think I’m right in saying that it’s obvious he
must have got his pleasant personality from his mother,” Zaira quipped.
She saw the flashing green eyes
lighten in amusement.
“So since you know I'm Cormac
Clarke, and you're the screenwriter, you should meet Clarke studios lawyer and
accountant, Jonathan Wyman.”
Zaira looked at the tall, thin
stranger with grey hair. The shock of recognition took her breath away.
She saw the all too familiar sherry
brown eyes glint warningly, and she heard herself say in an unnaturally
high-pitched tone, “Pleased to meet you.”
“I’ve heard all about this Dark
Lady project through the grapevine, and I'm here to tell Brad I'm not putting
the company’s money into such a complete waste of time,” Cormac declared
arrogantly.
“Have you read it?” Zaira
demanded, turning all her attention back to Cormac in an effort to avoid
falling apart completely.
“No,
but—”
“Then you obviously don’t know
what you are talking about.
For
one thing, I think the book is great, and I'm only the screenwriter,” Zaira
asserted, stoutly defending all her work, “and for another, your gossips got it
wrong.
Brad is paying for the
whole project himself out of his share of the profits from his last film.
That’s how much he believes in it.
So if you’ve come all the way here from
LA to browbeat him, then you might as well just get on the first plane back!”
Cormac stood silently observing
her, and then he smiled slightly and tried a different tack.
“Well, I was on my way to London
on business, so I thought a stopover would be useful under the
circumstances.
In view of your
heated defense of the project, even though it is entirely prompted by selfish
motives on you part, I'm willing to consider that he's not wasting his time so much
after all.
But perhaps I want to
be in on it.
If it is as big as he
seems to think, maybe Clarke Studios, with myself as head of the project,
should buy the rights from the author.”
“She’d never sell them to you,”
Zaira stated coldly.
Cormac quirked one eyebrow.
“You know the lady then?”
“Yes, I do, and I know she
wouldn’t consider letting a huge studio ruin everything she has ever worked
for.
There is such a thing as
artistic integrity, you know,” Zaira asserted, eying him with contempt.
“Fine words, my dear.” Cormac
smirked patronisingly.
“I think
you’ll find that it’s only another phrase for getting the highest price
possible.
Everyone has a price,
and I’ll find out Zoe Dominick’s.”
Zaira was outraged, and simply
said, “It will be a great pleasure to see you eat those words one day, Mr.
Clarke.
Now really, I must insist
you leave. Otherwise
I shall be
late for my lecture.
We academic
peasants have to work for a living, you know.”
“Well, I shall leave Jonathan for
a moment to scribble a message for my son, and then we shall trouble you no
further for the present, Miss, er—”
“Darcy, Zaira Darcy, Mr.
Clarke.
Goodbye.”
“I’m going on to the hotel now,
Jonathan, so leave a message and those papers that need signing, and I shall
see you shortly.”
Cormac marched
out, and Zaira suddenly found herself alone with her husband.
She sat down in the nearest chair,
and ran her fingers through her hair.
Jonathan busied himself with some
papers he had taken out of his briefcase, and said conversationally, “The boss
wants me to organize a business meeting with Brad and Miss Dominick for eight
o’clock at Tavern on the Green.
Since you’re working with her, can you get hold of her?
We tried through the publisher, but he
was very cagey.”
“I can, but it would be a waste of
time,” Zaira said quietly, drained of all emotion except surprise.