The Bride Means Business

She stared at him a minute. “I hope you’re joking.”

He looked puzzled. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

She couldn’t eat here. No. Absolutely no way. “Dax...the past few times I’ve been in this house haven’t exactly been easy moments for me. I thought you meant we were eating out or I’d never have agreed to come with you.”

He uncoiled himself from the driver’s seat and came around the car to open her door. “Get out.” His voice was clipped.

He was determined to make her life a living hell, she thought in resentment. She never should have told him coming to the house bothered her; he was far to quick to seize on things and rub them into her skin.

“Get out or I’ll get you out.” The menace in his voice convinced her he meant it.

Slowly, she swung her legs out of the car and stood, ignoring the hand he extended, and walked up the wide, shallow flagstone steps before he could touch her.

Following her up, he reached around her to open the door. As he turned the knob, he hesitated and looked down at her.

She averted her eyes, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing the pain she was feeling, and after a moment, he pushed the door inward and she preceded him into the spacious foyer. Mrs. Bowley, the housekeeper who’d been there since they were small, bustled through the swinging door from the kitchen and hurried down the hall, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Jillian!” The older woman enfolded her in a warm, cinnamon-y smelling embrace that catapulted her back in time. Funny how some smells always made you remember certain things. Mrs. Bowley’s scent always relaxed her and gave her the warm, secure feelings she’d known in childhood. When the housekeeper stepped back, her faded blue eyes were swimming with tears. “How are you, honey?”

“I’m fine.” She gripped Mrs. Bowley’s hands. “I’ve been worried about you. Have you been all right?”

The housekeeper gave her a watery smile. “It’s been hard. I keep expecting Miss Alma to come flying down the steps, or Charles to come out of his study with his nose buried in the paper.”

“I’m sure.” Jillian draped an arm around her sloping shoulders. “I can’t quite accept it yet, either.”

“Having Dax come home has been wonderful. And of course, there’s—”

“Mrs. Bowley.” Dax’s voice was warm but firm. “Could you please bring us the hors d’oeuvres?”

“Right away, dear.” The older woman gave Jillian one last fond smile as she turned away.

Dax crossed the hall and opened the door of Charles’s study. Only she supposed it was his study now. She looked at him, uncomprehending, before she realized he wanted her to go into that room, rather than into the parlor opposite it, where guests were usually entertained. Or at least, where Charles, and Dax’s parents before him, had entertained. It was difficult to remember that this was Dax’s home now.

As she passed him and entered the room, he asked, “Would you like a drink?”

“A glass of sherry would be nice,” she said. He disappeared again, and she dropped her purse in a wing chair as she idly walked to the window and pulled back the heavy drapes. She couldn’t stand to sit in here in the dark, and it was still light outside. Perching on the wide ledge, she stared at the familiar scene without really seeing it.

Crossing her arms, she lifted each of her hands to the opposite shoulder and massaged her neck for a moment. If she spent much more time in Dax’s company, she was going to need a massage therapist on a permanent basis.

He returned with her drink, and one of his own, and walked across the rug to hand it to her. At the same moment, Mrs. Bowley bustled in with a small tray. She deposited it on the table beside Jillian and left again.

As he switched on the floor lamp behind the desk, Dax said, “Come sit down. There are some things I want to ask you about.”

She frowned as she settled into the wing chair, trying to ignore the way his casual olive pants pulled across his thighs when he propped one hip on the edge of the massive cherry desk. Across his definitely-all-man thighs. She swallowed. She should have smacked his face when he’d taken her hand in her condo.

Why hadn’t she? She couldn’t explain it, even to herself. It was as if she’d lost all willpower, all independent thought, when he’d looked at her with those lazy, sexy eyes of his. They’d told her, without words, that he was remembering how wild and incredible their lovemaking had been. And she’d felt her body softening, yearning for him even though she knew he despised her.

And she despised him, of course.

But it stung her pride that he’d been the one to move away. He’d been quick to spoil the magic in the moment, too, and old hurt rose in her throat. Why was he so determined to think the worst of her? It struck her that he’d been just as determined to condemn her seven years ago. It was almost as if he wanted to believe she was a woman with fewer morals than the owner of the infamous Chicken Ranch.

“What do you know about Piersall Industries?” The curt question scattered her whirling thoughts, and she had to consider it for a minute.

“Other than the fact that it’s your family’s business that manufactures steel beams for construction?” She shrugged. “Not much. If you’re hoping I’ll walk you through the family finances, you’re out of luck.” And she couldn’t resist adding, “Charles and I didn’t talk much about business when we were together.”

“Don’t be childish,” he told her. “You don’t need to prove anything to me. I already know about your affection for my brother. What I want to know is whether or not you can explain to me how Charles dug this company into a hole so deep I may not be able to get it out.”

She had been staring at him angrily until his last words penetrated, and she sat up straighter, unable to believe her ears. “What? You must have misread something. The company should be in great shape. Charles was always looking for charitable causes that would help offset the chunk of change the IRS demands. He’s been one of Baltimore’s most generous patrons of a number of community projects.”

Dax smiled grimly. “Yeah? Well, it looks like he’s been a little too magnanimous. Although it’ll be a while before I know for sure. He seems to have been the world’s worst record-keeper.”

“He hated that end of it,” she admitted. “Charles was a people person, remember? But he had employees to manage the finances. Have you talked with Roger Wingerd about this?”

“Not yet. I wanted to get familiar with the current setup before I started questioning people.” Dax rubbed the back of his neck as he picked up a thick sheaf of papers and handed them to her. “You probably won’t understand this, but it’s a copy of the quarterly financial report. It’s not good.”

“I studied accounting, remember?” she said examining the numbers with growing dread. “I’ve kept my C.P.A. certification even though I don’t practice any more.”

“Any more?”

She looked up, shooting him a grim smile. “I worked for Arthur Andersen for almost five years before Marina and I opened our store.”

One black eyebrow rose. “I’m impressed.” But his tone was mocking.

Refusing to respond in kind, she said, “Thank you.” Then she waved the report at him, concern mounting. “I’d have to see a lot more than this to get the whole picture, but it does look as if Piersall is in trouble.”

“In trouble?” Dax snorted. “If something isn’t done, this company will have to declare bankruptcy by the end of the year.”

She was shocked and for a minute she simply gaped at him. “My God, Dax. Do you realize how many people will lose their jobs if Piersall sinks?”

He pivoted and picked up another piece of paper from the desk top. “Four hundred, more or less, with about ninety per cent of them full-timers who would lose benefits.”

“I had no idea,” she whispered.

“Apparently, neither did Charles.” For once, Dax appeared unconcerned about continuing their verbal battles. “I was hoping you could shed some light on this.”

She started to shake her head, and then the light dawned. “No, you weren’t.” She drained her glass of sherry and set it on the table beside her with a snap. “You didn’t see my name on the list of employees, and you wanted to know if I’d been helping Charles to mismanage his funds. You jerk.”

Springing out of the chair, she stalked toward the door, but she’d forgotten how fast he could move. He was laughing as he took her elbow and steered her toward the dining room. “Caught by a master of deception. What can I say?” He barely twisted out of the way when she rammed her elbow backward toward his ribs. “Calm down, honey-bunch. I don’t recall making any accusations.”

“Then you had a memory lapse.”

“Anyway,” he said, staying out of range, “You can relax. I don’t think you had anything to do with the company’s problems.”

“How generous of you,” she said bitterly. “You’ll have to excuse me for thinking that you assessed my reaction before rendering such a magnanimous opinion.”

“But I need you to help me solve them.” He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “There’s been a little movement of the company’s stock in the week since Charles died. Probably normal reaction, but it bears watching. In the meantime, I’ve been looking over the minutes from recent board meetings and I can’t say I’m impressed with the general direction they’ve been going.”

“And naturally, you have a solution.” She couldn’t resist.

“I do.” He picked up his drink and took a slow sip, watching her over the rim of the glass before he spoke again. “But it may not be one that the current board will embrace unless I can force them to yield by outvoting them at the table.”

Comprehension began to glimmer in the back of her mind. “Just how much stock do you own, Dax?”

“Together, the family held fifty-one percent,” he said. “Now that Charles has left his shares to you, I still control twenty-eight percent.”

“So...” She made a show of crossing her legs and settling back in her chair. “Without my votes, you can’t be sure of enough support to control the board.”

Dax’s mouth was a grim line. “No. I can’t.”

She raised one brow in a mocking manner as she made a production out of recrossing her legs the other way. “Ah. How...interesting.”

“‘Interesting’ isn’t quite the word I’d use,” he grated. “God, I could kill you. And I could kill Charles for creating this mess if he weren’t dead already.”

Abruptly, any satisfaction she’d found in the verbal sparring drained away. Sorrow and a profound depression filled her. She’d worked so hard to make a life for herself after Dax had left, and now she felt as if she had moved no farther in time than mere hours from the day he’d gone.

She almost demanded that he take her home then, but she knew it would only give him pleasure to refuse. So when he set his glass on the desk and motioned for her to precede him, she moved ahead of him into the dining room without a protest. There were three places set, and despite her irritation with him, she was touched. She knew Charles and Alma had taken most of their meals in the kitchen with Mrs. Bowley. It was thoughtful of Dax to include her.

As they cleared the doorway, she moved to the far end of the room and through the open French doors. Being so close to him was torture. Half of her wanted to kill him, but the other half ... the other half wished in vain that she could walk into his arms and let him touch her with those long magic fingers that wreaked havoc on her system.

A gentle evening breeze wandered across the pretty stone patio. Beyond a green carpet of lawn, the pool reflected evening’s approach on its smooth face. The sight of that pool brought memories flooding back...more of the uncomplicated happy moments from childhood, anxious yearnings from adolescence as she wished Dax would notice her in her newest bathing suit, and other memories—giddy, heady, heart-pounding recollections that were better left forgotten.

Would this evening ever end? she thought in despair. They hadn’t even eaten yet and already she felt like someone had flayed every inch of her skin with a cat-o’-nine-tails. She turned to move from the view, desperately seeking some innocuous subject that wouldn’t carry any more bits of her past.

Dax was standing directly behind her.

She barreled into him with a muffled exclamation of surprise; his hands gripped her upper arms to steady her. But when she automatically tried to step back, he held her against him. His big body, where hers was pressed into it, was achingly familiar and enticingly strange. Her breasts knew the planes of his torso, his hips found their old familiar pillow just below her navel. She sucked in a breath of dismay and delight, her body arrested in motion, quivering with the wondrous feel of his form against hers again.

This was what they’d had between them. Since the first time he’d taken her into his arms to dance on her seventeenth birthday, they’d had this. She could still remember the look on his face that night, the stunned need that accompanied his body’s unmistakable response. And she could remember the helpless, melting feeling she’d known, along with the heady sense of power she’d felt when his lips had descended on hers right there on the dance floor.

“You’re too young,” he’d growled against her skin. And despite her protests, he’d stayed away, even going to Europe to do his graduate work at a university there. He had never even asked her out until the summer he’d turned twenty-four.

He’d come to her house the day he’d returned from Europe, and they’d dated steadily from that point on. It had been two months before he’d made love to her for the first time. Two long months, when the only thing that had saved her virgin state was Dax’s self-control. She’d had none. And it was a not-quite-pleasant realization to recognize that she still didn’t.

She could have stood there all day. She barely resisted her body’s pleas to rub herself against him in surrender. Dignity had no place here. Elemental recognition flowed between them. Rib of my rib, bone of my bone—she was his missing half, he was the answer to the unfinished equation in her life.

Above her head, Dax muttered something, and she lifted dazed eyes to his. “What?”

“I said, ‘Damn.’” His thumbs lightly rubbed over the soft flesh he had seized to steady her, flesh he had yet to release. His eyes searched hers. “My life would be easier without this.”

When he spoke, her gaze moved to watch the fascinating motions of his lips as he formed his words. She knew, with no explanation, exactly what he meant. “A lot easier.” She sighed. “Of all the men in the world, why are you the only one?”

“Because you were made for me.” His voice was a guttural acknowledgment as his head slowly lowered.

She lifted her face the barest increment, knowing it wasn’t smart, unable to resist.

Their lips met. Shivers of wild excitement connected that point of contact with a dozen others, all descending to the junction where her legs met.

In one instant, she forgot every hurtful lesson she’d learned from this man. Her arms came up to his shoulders as he pulled her against him. One big hand swept across her back and the other splayed wide just above the swell of her buttocks. She sank against him in total surrender, a surrender he recognized and accepted without a word passing between them. He couldn’t get her any closer to him; her fingers speared into his short hair and cradled his scalp as his tongue renewed every intimate motion, explored every silken corner of her mouth.

She was a twig, carried away in the raging winds of a hurricane; a hapless pebble in the path of an avalanche. When he dragged his mouth down her neck, her head dropped back helplessly, though her hands pressed him to her.

“Do you remember our first time?”

The low words were punctuated with kisses that strayed down over her sweater to the tip of her breast. His hand left her back and came around, sliding surely onto the slight mound that already begged for his attention.

She moaned. “Down by the pool.”

A chuckle of breath huffed over her. When he pulled the thin sweater away from her waistband and put his hand beneath it, against her skin, she jumped and moaned. His palm left a trail of heat behind, and as it traveled inexorably upward, she pressed her lips to the black silk of his hair.

“Daddy?”

Dax jerked away from her in one shocking movement, yanking his hands from beneath her clothing and holding her arms in an iron grip. He pivoted, placing his body between Jillian and the doors behind them, and pressed her head into his chest with one strong hand.

Ordinarily, she might have protested. But speech was beyond her.

“Just a minute, Christine.” His voice was a deep growl, and she could still feel the hard strength of his desire pressing into her. Tremors began to shudder through her.

But the childish voice came again. “Who is that, Daddy?”

Dax sighed and released her. Jillian straightened her clothing with trembling hands. Slowly, she forced herself to turn around.

Dax stepped aside, and if she’d been shocked before, every thought fled now. Shock dribbled ice down her neck, sending goose bumps up her arms, leaving a cold ball of lead in the pit of her stomach. The world swam and she instinctively put out a hand, then snatched it away again when it landed on his forearm.

Distantly, she saw him turn, heard him say, “Christine, this is my friend Jillian.”

The child was fair, the straight, shaggy strands as blond as Jillian’s own. There was no mistaking her parentage, though. Dax’s dark eyes under identical brows, drawn now into a suspicious scowl, studied her resentfully. She had his lean frame as well, though on his child it was going to translate into a killer pair of legs one of these days.

How could it hurt so much? She’d put Dax behind her, buried all her imaginings of a family of her own with the remnants of her love for a man who hadn’t trusted her enough to believe in her. Now she realized that in holding herself aloof from the possibilities of another love, she’d been punishing herself, not Dax, all these years. She was the one who’d been alone for the past seven years, while Dax clearly hadn’t spent his life in misery over her.

Her breast heaved; a sob burst out without warning and she only kept another from erupting by clamping one hand over her mouth. Abruptly turning from his daughter, Dax reached for her.

But she reared back as if he were a poisonous snake, continuing to inch her way backward until the cold marble of the low railing around the patio kept her from going farther. He stopped and raised his hands as if to reassure her that he wasn’t coming any closer, and she stared at him, futilely battling an agony as deep as she’d known the day he’d stared at her with hot rage and hatred burning in his eyes before he’d walked away forever.

She bowed her head and closed her eyes, taking the deep breaths that had gotten her through Charles’s and Alma’s funeral and a thousand other moments of despondency over the years.

A self-protective wall slammed down. Blessed numbness descended, and she was grateful. Emotion, feeling, was gone. Nothing could hurt her now. Later, maybe, she’d think of this, but right now all she prayed for was the fortitude to deflect this shattering blow that threatened to break her into a thousand shards of desolation.

Summoning what she hoped looked remotely like a smile, she walked toward the little girl. As she extended her hand like an automaton, she gave Dax a wide berth. “I’m Jillian Kerr.”

The child stared at the hand as if she wasn’t sure what to do with it. Finally, she put out her own and dutifully shook Jillian’s hand. “I’m Christine.”

It was slightly sullen, but Jillian barely registered the tone. “I knew your father when we were kids, even younger than you are. And despite what you just saw, we aren’t really friends at all. We had some business to discuss and I’m going now.”

Slipping past the child—Christine—she made her way out of the dining room with its three place settings and walked directly to the hall table. She picked up the phone and called a cab, telling them she’d pay double fare for immediate pickup.

As she opened the heavy front door, she heard Dax call her name. She closed the door gently and kept going. She was almost at the end of the circular driveway when he caught up to her. Walking beside her, he said, “Jillian?”

She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Tears beat at the backs of her eyes; every ounce of her willpower was directed at holding them back. Silently, she concentrated on the meaningless task of counting her measured steps. As she turned left, she started down the street in the direction she knew the cab would be coming.

“Jillian, we have to talk.”

She walked on, putting a hand to her mouth when her breath hitched and another sob threatened.

“You can’t walk home, honey. Let me drive you home.” His voice was surprisingly gentle, but she supposed he could afford to be gentle now.

The cab turned the corner at the bottom of the hill. She stopped to wait for it.

Dax stopped, too, stepping in front of her. “I meant to tell you about Christine. I wanted you to meet her this evening but not—”

“And I’ve met her.” Her eyes focused on him, and she reached for the imaginary wall she envisioned between them. “If you came back here to punish me, Dax, consider the job done.” Even she could hear the distress she couldn’t quite control in her shaking voice. “If I had one wish, I’d wish that you were the Piersall who’d been in that car last week.”

His features went from concern to stone-solid stoicism. The cab slowed to a stop at her hail and she opened the door and slid into the back seat while he watched with clenched fists. As she lay her head against the seat back, she gave the driver her address and concentrated anew on forcing back the tears.

Three

Dax sat on the edge of the pool, staring down into the water without really seeing it. It was long past nightfall and his butt was getting tired of the concrete, and still he sat. Trying to make some sense of his life.

He was still shaken by Jillian’s reaction to his daughter earlier in the evening. And as the water rippled and beckoned around his calves, he wondered how everything could have gone so wrong. They’d been happy once.

From the first time he’d kissed her to the day he’d caught her in bed with his own brother, they’d been happy. At least, he thought they had been. And damn her eyes, he’d never met another woman who could take her place. Not in his heart, because he wasn’t stupid—one lesson had been enough. But even someone he could enjoy enough to share his life with. It wasn’t as if he’d had a choice with Libby. They’d married to give Christine legitimacy, but they’d hardly enjoyed their life together.

But in all honesty, he couldn’t blame his ex-wife. She’d never had a chance against his memories. He sighed, a bitter sound on the mild night air. It would be nice, really nice, if just once, when he was in bed with a woman, he didn’t wish it were Jillian beneath him, around him. He might have been able to block her out of his waking thoughts, but she’d haunted his dreams for years.

Memories of her laughing eyes, the flash of her teasing smile, taunted his aching mind. He’d thought of her as a little sister, albeit a rather annoying one, when he was a kid. Marina had been closer to his age and they’d hung out together a lot until high school, when they’d begun to date different people. He’d always marveled at the differences between the two girls. Physically, they could have been twins if they were the same size. Marina was several inches taller than Jillian, but they’d both had that face that stopped boys in their tracks and the long, slim body that knocked them to their knees.

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