Man of the Hour: Night Of Love

“It gets results,” he replied, indicating that he was aware of the stance and probably used it to advantage with his people. “Have you seen a balance sheet lately? Aren’t you interested in what I’m doing with your stock?”

“Finance doesn’t mean much to me,” she confessed. “I’m much more interested in the ballet company I’m working with. It really is in trouble.”

“Join another company,” he said.

“I’ve spent a year working my way up in this one,” she returned. “I can’t start all over again. Ballerinas don’t have that long, as a rule. I’m going on twenty-three.”

“So old?” His eyes held hers. “You look very much as you did at eighteen. More sophisticated, of course. The girl I used to know would have died before she’d have insinuated to a perfect stranger that she was sharing my bed.”

“I thought she was one of your women,” Meg muttered. “God knows, you’ve got enough of them. I’ll bet you have to keep a computer file so you won’t forget their names. No wonder Jane believed I was one of them without question!”

“You could have been, once,” he reminded her bluntly. “But I got noble and pushed you away in the nick of time.” He laughed without humor. “I thought we’d have plenty of time for intimate discoveries after we were married. More fool me.” He lifted the cigarette to his mouth, and his eyes were ice-cold.

“I was grass green back then,” she reminded him with what she hoped was a sophisticated smile. “You’d have been disappointed.”

He blew out a soft cloud of smoke and his eyes searched hers. “No. But you probably would have been. I wanted you too badly that last night we were together. I’d have hurt you.”

It was the night they’d argued. But before that, they’d lain on his black leather sofa and made love until she’d begged him to finish it. She hadn’t been afraid, then. But he hadn’t. Even now, the sensations he’d kindled in her body made her flush.

“I don’t think you would have, really,” she said absently, her body tingling with forbidden memories as she looked at him. “Even so, I wanted you enough that I wouldn’t have cared if you hurt me. I was wild to have you. I forgot all my fears.”

He didn’t notice the implication. He averted his eyes. “Not wild enough to marry me, of course.”

“I was eighteen. You were thirty and you had a mistress.”

His back stiffened. He turned, his eyes narrow, scowling. “What?”

“You know all this,” she said uncomfortably. “My mother explained it to you the morning I left.”

He moved closer, his lean face hard, unreadable. “Explain it to me yourself.”

“Your father told me about Daphne,” she faltered. “The night we argued, she was the one you took out, the one you were photographed with. Your father told me that you were only marrying me for the stock. He and your mother cared about me—perhaps more than my own did. When he said that you always went back to Daphne, no matter what, I got cold feet.”

His high cheekbones flushed. He looked…stunned. “He told you that?” he asked harshly.

“Yes. Well, my mother knew about Daphne, too,” she said heavily.

“Oh, God.” He turned away. He leaned over to crush out his cigarette, his eyes bleak, hopeless.

“I knew you weren’t celibate, but finding that you had a mistress was something of a shock, especially when we’d been seeing each other for a month.”

“Yes. I expect it was a shock.” He was staring down into the ashtray, unmoving. “I knew your mother was against the engagement. She had her heart set on helping you become a ballerina. She’d failed at it, but she was determined to see that you succeeded.”

“She loved me…”

He turned, his dark eyes riveting to hers. “You ran, damn you.”

She took a steadying breath. “I was eighteen. I had reasons for running that you don’t know about.” She dropped her eyes to his broad chest. “But I think I understand the way you were with me. You had Daphne. No wonder it was so easy for you to draw back when we made love.”

His eyes closed. He almost shuddered with reaction. He shook with the force of his rage at his father and Meg’s mother.

“It’s all water under the bridge now, though,” she said then, studying his rigid posture with faint surprise. “Steve?”

He took a long, deep breath and lit another cigarette. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you wait and talk to me?”

“There was no point,” she said simply. “You’d already told me to get out of your life,” she added with painful satisfaction.

“At the time, I probably meant it,” he replied heavily. “But that didn’t last long. Two days later, I was more than willing to start over, to try again. I came to tell you so. But you were gone.”

“Yes.” She stared at her slender hands, ringless, while her mind fought down the flood of misery she’d felt when she left Wichita. The fear had finally defeated her. And he didn’t know…

“If you’d waited, I could have explained,” he said tautly.

She looked at him sadly. “Steve, what could you have said? It was perfectly obvious that you weren’t ready to make a real commitment to me, even if you were willing to marry me for your own reasons. And I had some terrors that I couldn’t face.”

“Did you?” he asked dully. He lifted the cigarette to his chiseled mouth and stared into space. “Your father and mine were involved in a subtle proxy fight about that time, did anyone tell you?”

“No. Why would they have needed to?”

“No reason,” he said bitterly. “None at all.”

She hated the way he looked. Surely what had happened in the past didn’t still bother him. His pride had suffered, though, that might explain it.

She moved closer, smiling gently. “Steve, it was forever ago,” she said. “We’re different people now, and all I did really was to spare us both a little embarrassment when we broke up. If you’d wanted me that badly, you’d have come after me.”

He winced. His dark silver eyes caught hers and searched them with anguish. “You’re sure of that.”

“Of course. It was no big thing,” she said softly. “You’ve had dozens of women since, and your mother says you don’t take any of them any more seriously than you took me. You enjoy being a bachelor. If I wasn’t ready for marriage, neither were you.”

His face tautened. He smiled, but it was no smile at all. “You’re right,” he said coldly, “it was no big thing. One or two nights together would have cured both of us. You were a novelty, you with your innocent body and big eyes. I wanted you, all right.”

She searched his face, looking for any trace of softening. She didn’t find it. She hated seeing him that way, so somber and remote. Impishly she wiggled her eyebrows. “Do you still? Feel like experimenting? Your bed or mine?”

He didn’t smile. His eyes flashed, and one of them narrowed a little. That meant trouble.

He lifted the cigarette to his lips one more time, drawing out the silence until she felt like an idiot for what she’d suggested. He bent his tall frame to put it out in the ashtray, and she watched. He had beautiful hands: dark and graceful and long-fingered. On a woman’s body, they were tender magic…

“No, thanks,” he said finally. “I don’t like being one in a queue.”

Her eyebrows arched. “I beg your pardon?”

He straightened and stuck his hands deep into his pockets, emphasizing the powerful muscles in his thighs, his narrow hips and flat stomach. “Shouldn’t you be looking after your roast? Or do you imagine that David and I don’t have enough charcoal in our diets already?”

She moved toward him gracefully. “Steve, I dislike very much what you’ve just insinuated.” She stared up at him fearlessly, her eyes wide and quiet. “There hasn’t been a man. Not one. There isn’t time in my life for the sort of emotional turmoil that comes from involvement. Emotional upsets influence the way I dance. I’ve worked too hard, too long, to go looking for complications.”

She started to turn away, but his lean, strong hands were on her waist, stilling her, exciting her.

“Your honesty, Mary Margaret, is going to land you in hot water one day.”

“Why lie?” she asked, peering over her shoulder at him.

“Why, indeed?” he asked huskily.

He drew her closer, resting his chin on the top of her blond head, and her heart raced wildly as his fingers slid slowly up and down from her waist to her rib cage.

“What if I give in to that last bit of provocation?” he whispered roughly.

“What provocation?”

His teeth closed softly on her earlobe, his warm breath brushing her cheek. “Your bed or mine, Meg?” he whispered.

2

Meg wondered if she was still breathing. She’d been joking, but Steve didn’t look or sound as if he were.

“Steve…” she whispered.

His eyes fell to her mouth as her head lay back against his broad chest. His face changed at the sound of his name on her lips. His hands on her waist contracted until they bruised and his face went rigid. “Mouth like a pink rose petal,” he said in an oddly rough tone. “I almost took you once, Meg.”

She felt herself vibrating, like drawn cord. “You pushed me away,” she whispered.

“I had to!” There was anger in the silvery depths of his eyes. “You blind little fool.” He bit off the words. “Don’t you know why even now?”

She didn’t. She simply stared at him, her blue eyes wide and clear and curious.

He groaned. “Meg!” He let out a long, rough breath and forcibly eased the grip of his lean hands and pushed her away. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared for a long time into her wide, guileless eyes. “No, you don’t understand, do you?” he said heavily. “I thought you might mature in New York.” His eyes narrowed and he frowned. “What was that talk about some man wanting to keep you, then?”

She smiled sheepishly. “He’s the caretaker of my apartment house. He wanted to adopt me.”

“Good God!”

She rested her fingers on his arms, feeling their strength, loving them. She leaned against him gently with subdued delight that heightened when his hands came out of his pockets and smoothed over her shoulders. “There really isn’t room in my life for complications,” she said sadly. “Even with you. It wouldn’t be wise.” She forced a laugh from her tight throat. “Besides, I’m sure you have all the women you need already.”

“Of course,” he agreed with maddening carelessness and a curious watchfulness. “But I’ve wanted you for a very long time. We started something that we never finished. I want to get you out of my system, Meg, once and for all.”

“Have you considered hiring an exorcist?” she asked, resorting to humor. She pushed playfully at his chest, feeling his heartbeat under her hands. “How about plastering a photo of me on one of your women…?”

He shook her gently. “Stop that.”

“Besides,” she said, sighing and looping her arms around his neck, “I’d probably get pregnant and there’d be a scandal in the aircraft community. My career would be shot, your reputation would be ruined and we’d have a baby that neither of us wanted.” Odd that the threat of pregnancy no longer terrified her, she thought idly.

“Mary Margaret, this is the twentieth century,” he murmured on a laugh. “Women don’t get pregnant these days unless they want to.”

She turned her head slightly as she looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Why, Mr. Ryker, you sound so sophisticated. I suppose you keep a closetful of supplies?”

He burst out laughing. “Hell.”

She smiled up at him. “Stop baiting me,” she said. “I don’t want to sleep with you and ruin a beautiful friendship. We’ve been friends for a long time, Steve, even if cautious ones.”

“Friend, enemy, sparring partner,” he agreed. The smile turned to a blank-faced stare with emotion suddenly glittering dangerously in his silver eyes. His chest rose and fell roughly and he moved a hand into the thick hair knotted at her nape and grasped it suddenly. He held her head firmly while he started to bend toward her.

“Steve…” she protested uncertainly.

“One kiss,” he whispered back gruffly. “Is that so much to ask?”

“We shouldn’t,” she whispered at his lips.

“I know…” His hard mouth brushed over hers slowly, suggestively. His powerful body went very still and his free hand moved to her throat, stroking it tenderly. His thumb tugged at the lower lip that held stubbornly to its mate and broke the taut line.

Her hands pressed at his shirtfront, fascinated by warm, hard muscle and a heavy heartbeat. She couldn’t quite manage to push him away.

“Mary Margaret,” he breathed jerkily, and then he took her mouth.

“Oh, glory…!” she moaned, shivering. It was a jolt like diving into ice water. It burned through her body and through her veins and made her go rigid with helpless pleasure. He was far more expert than he’d been even four years ago. His tongue gently probed its way into the warm darkness of her mouth and she gasped at the darting, hungry pressure of its invasion. He tasted of smoke and mint, and his mouth was rough, as if he’d gone hungry for kisses.

While she was gathering up willpower to resist him, he reached down and lifted her in his hard arms, crushing her into the wall of his chest while his devouring kisses made her oblivious to everything except desire. At the center of the world was Steve and his hunger, and she was suddenly, shockingly, doing her very best to satisfy it, to satisfy him, with her arms clinging helplessly around his neck.

He lifted his mouth to draw in a ragged breath, and she hung there with swollen lips, wide-eyed, breathing like a distance runner.

“If you don’t stop,” she whispered unsteadily, “I’ll tear your clothes off and ravish you right here on the carpet!”

Despite his staggering hunger, the humor broke through, as it always had with her, only with her. There had never been another woman who could make him laugh, could make him feel so alive.

“Oh, God, why can’t you shut up for five minutes?” he managed through reluctant laughter.

“Self-defense,” she said, laughing, too, her own voice breathless with traces of passion. “Oh, Steve, can you kiss!” she moaned.

He shook his head, defeated. He let her slide down his body to the floor, close enough to feel what had happened to him.

“Sorry,” she murmured impishly.

“Only with you, honey,” he said heavily, the endearment coming easily when he never used them. He held her arms firmly for a minute before he let her go with a rueful smile and turned away to light another cigarette. “Odd, that reaction. I need a little time with most women. It was never that way with you.”

She hadn’t thought about it in four years. Now she had to, and he was right. The minute he’d touched her, he’d been capable. She’d convinced herself that he never wanted her, but her memory hadn’t dimmed enough to forget the size and power of him in arousal. She’d been a little afraid of him the first time it had happened, in fact, although he’d assured her that they were compatible in every way, especially in that one. She didn’t like remembering how intimate they’d been, because it was still painful to remember how it had all ended. Looking back, it seemed impossible that he could have gone to Daphne after they argued, unless…

She stiffened as she remembered how desperately he’d wanted her. Had he been so desperate that he’d needed to spend his desire with someone else?

“Steve,” she began.

He glanced at her. “What?”

“What you said, earlier. Was it difficult for you,” she said slowly. “Holding back?”

“Yes.” His face changed. “Apparently that didn’t occur to you four years ago,” he said sarcastically.

“A lot of things didn’t occur to me four years ago,” she said. She felt a dawning fear that she didn’t want to explore.

“Don’t strain your memory,” he said with a mocking smile. “God forbid that you might have to reconsider your position. It’s too damned late, even if you did.”

“I know that. I wouldn’t…I have my career.”

“Your career.” He nodded, but there was something disconcerting in the way he said it, in the way he looked at her.

“I’d better see about the roast,” she murmured, retreating.

He studied her face with a purely masculine appreciation. “Better fix your lipstick, unless you want David making embarrassing remarks.”

“David is terrified of me,” she informed him. “I once beat him up in full view of half our classmates.”

“So he told me, but he’s grown.”

“Not too much.” She touched her mouth. It was faintly sore from the pressure of his hard kisses. She wouldn’t have expected so much passion from him after four years.

“Did I hurt?” he asked quietly. “I didn’t mean to.”

“You always were a little rough when we made love,” she recalled with a wistful smile. “I never minded.”

His eyes kindled and before he could make the move his expression telegraphed, she beat a hasty retreat into the kitchen. He was overwhelming at close range, and she couldn’t handle an affair with him. She didn’t dare try. Having lived through losing him once, she knew she’d never survive having to go through it again. He still wanted her, but that was all. She was filed under unfinished business, and there was something a little disturbing about his attitude toward her. It wasn’t quite unsatisfied passion on his part, she thought nervously. It was more like a deeply buried, long-nurtured vendetta.

It was probably a good thing that she was going back to New York soon, she thought dimly. And not a minute too soon. Her knees were so wobbly she could barely walk, and just from one kiss. If he turned up the heat, as he had during their time together, she would never be able to resist him. The needs she felt were overpowering now. She was a woman and she reacted like one. It was her bad luck that the only man who aroused her was the one man she daren’t succumb to. If Steve really was holding a grudge against her for breaking off their engagement, giving in to him would be a recipe for disaster.

Supper was a rather quiet affair, with Meg introspective and Steven taciturn while David tried to carry the conversation alone.

“Can’t you two say something? Just a word now and again while I try to enjoy this perfectly cooked pot roast?” David groaned, glancing from one set face to the other. “Have you had another fight?”

“We haven’t been fighting,” Meg said innocently. “Have we, Steve?”

Steven looked down at his plate, deliberately cutting a piece of meat without replying.

David threw up his hands. “I’ll never understand you two!” he muttered. “I’ll just go see about dessert, shall I? I shall,” he said, but he was talking to himself as he left the room.

“I don’t want any,” she called after him.

“Yes, she does,” Steve said immediately, catching her eyes. “You’re too thin. If you lose another two or three pounds, you’ll be able to walk through a harp.”

“I’m a dancer,” she said. “I can’t dance with a fat body.”

He smiled gently. “That’s right. Fight me.” Something alien glittered in his eyes and his breathing quickened.

“Somebody needs to,” she said with forced humor. “All that feminine fawning has ruined you. Your mother said that lines of women form everywhere you go these days.”

His eyes contemplated his coffee cup intensely and his brow furrowed. “Did she?” he asked absently.

“But that you never take any of them seriously.” She laughed, but without much humor. “Haven’t you even thought about marrying?”

He looked up, his expression briefly hostile. “Sure. Once.”

She felt uncomfortable. “It wouldn’t have worked,” she said stiffly. “I wouldn’t have shared you, even when I was eighteen and naive.”

His eyes narrowed. “You think I’m modern enough in my outlook to keep a wife and a mistress at the same time?”

The question disturbed her. “Daphne was beautiful and sophisticated,” she replied. “I was green behind the ears. Totally uninhibited. I used to embarrass you…”

“Never!”

There was muted violence in the explosive word.

She glanced up at him curiously. “But I did! Your father said that’s why you never liked to take me out in public…”

“My father. What a champion.” He lifted the cold coffee to his lips and sipped it. It felt as cold as he did inside. He looked at Meg and ached. “Between them, your mother and my father did a pretty damned good job, didn’t they?”

“Daphne was a fact,” she replied stubbornly.

He drew in a long, weary breath. “Yes. She was, wasn’t she? You saw that for yourself in the newspaper.”

“I certainly did.” She sounded bitter. She hated having given her feelings away. She forced a smile. “But, as they say, no harm done. I have a bright career ahead of me and you’re a millionaire several times over.”

“I’m that, all right. I look in the mirror twice a day and say, ‘lucky me.’”

“Don’t tease.”

He turned his wrist and glanced at the face of the thin gold watch. “I have to go,” he said, pushing back his chair.

“Are you off to a business meeting?” she probed gently.

He stared at her without speaking for a few seconds, just long enough to give him a psychological advantage. “No,” he said. “I have a date. As my mother told you,” he added with a cold smile, “I don’t have any problem getting women these days.”

Meg didn’t know how she managed to smile, but she did. “The lucky girl,” she murmured on a prolonged sigh.

Steve glowered at her. “You never stop, do you?”

“Can I help it if you’re devastating?” she replied. “I don’t blame women for falling all over you. I used to.”

“Not for long.”

She searched his hard face curiously. “I should have talked to you about Daphne, instead of running away.”

“Let the past lie,” he said harshly. “We’re not the same people we were.”

“One of us certainly isn’t,” she mused dryly. “You never used to kiss me like that!”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Did you expect me to remain celibate when you defected?”

“Of course not,” she replied, averting her eyes. “That would have been asking the impossible.”

“Fidelity belongs to a committed relationship,” he said.

She was looking at her hands, not at him. Life seemed so empty lately. Even dancing didn’t fill the great hollow space in her heart. “Being in a committed relationship wouldn’t have mattered,” she murmured. “I doubt if you’d have been capable of staying faithful to just one woman, what with your track record and all. And I’m hardly a raving beauty like Daphne.”

He stiffened slightly, but no reaction showed in his face. He watched her and glowered. “Nice try, but it doesn’t work.”

She glanced up, surprised. “What doesn’t?”

“The wounded, downcast look,” he said. He stretched, and muscles rippled under his knit shirt. “I know you too well, Meg,” he added. “You always were theatrical.”

She stared at him without blinking. “Would you have liked it if I’d gone raging to the door of your apartment after I saw you and Daphne pictured in that newspaper?”

His face hardened to stone. “No,” he admitted, “I loathe scenes. All the same, there’s no reason to lie about the reason you wanted to break our engagement. You told your mother that dancing was more important than me, that you got cold feet and ran for it. That’s all she told me.”

Meg was puzzled, but perhaps Nicole had decided against mentioning Daphne’s place in Steven’s life. “I suppose she decided that the best course all around was to make you believe my career was the reason I left.”

“That’s right. Your mother decided,” he corrected, and his eyes glittered coldly. “She yelled frog, and you jumped. You always were afraid of her.”

“Who wasn’t?” she muttered. “She was a world-beater, and I was a sheltered babe in the woods. I didn’t know beans about men until you came along.”

“You still don’t,” he said flatly. “I’m surprised that living in New York hasn’t changed you.”

“What you are is what you are, despite where you live,” she reminded him. She looked down again, infuriated with him. “I dance. That’s what I do. That’s all I do. I’ve worked hard all my life at ballet, and now I’m beginning to reap the rewards for it. I like my life. So it was probably a good thing that I found out how you felt about me in time, wasn’t it? I had a lucky escape, Steve,” she added bitterly.