Any Man Of Mine

“He’s nice,” Larry had defended.

“My God, maybe he is, but he’s as dull as a winter day, just like his skinny daughter. She’s plain and stupid, and she’s practically flat-chested to boot. Believe me, it was like making love to a man...”

She’d felt Larry’s shock, even at a distance. “Making love?” he breathed.

Keena hadn’t stayed to hear any more. With her eyes full of tears and her makeup running down her white face, she’d left the house and walked every step of the way home in the dark without thinking about danger. And those cold, hurting words had stayed with her ever since. They’d been indirectly responsible for her success, because her hatred for James Harris and her thirst for revenge had carried her through the lean, hard times that had led up to her enrollment in the fashion design school. All she’d wanted in life from that terrible night forward was to become something more than a mill worker’s daughter—an outsider. And she had.

There was a discreet tap on the door before Mandy came in like a small, dark-haired whirlwind, her dark eyes sparkling.

“Brought you some coffee,” she said, placing a tray on the coffee table. A plate of doughnuts rested temptingly beside it. “Come on, you’ve got to eat something.”

Keena grimaced at her housekeeper. “I don’t want food,” she said. “Just coffee. You be a love and eat the doughnuts.”

“You’ll blow away,” the older woman warned. “Why bother to bring me down here with you if you aren’t going to let me cook?”

“It gets lonely here,” she replied. She gazed around her at the towering near-ruin of a house. It must have been a showplace years before her father bought it, but lack of care and deterioration had taken their toll on it. Without some substantial repairs, it was going to fall in.

“Did you reach the construction people?” Keena asked as she stirred cream into a cup of steaming coffee.

“Yes,” Mandy replied, looking disapproving. “Look, it’s none of my business, but why are you going to funnel good money into this white mausoleum?”

Keena ran a lazy hand over the faded, worn brocade of the antique sofa. “I’ll need to have the furniture redone, as well. See if you can find an upholsterer while you’re at it.”

“How long are we going to be here?” Mandy asked curiously.

“A few weeks.” She laughed at Mandy’s obvious shock. “I need a break. I can run the company from here. Ann can call me if she needs help. And meanwhile, I’ll play with mending this pitiful house.”

“I wish I knew what you were up to,” Mandy sighed.

“It’s a kind of game,” Keena explained with a smile.

“And is Nicholas going to play, too?”

Keena glared at her. She didn’t want to think about Nicholas right now. “He’s a friend, nothing more. Just because we go out once in a while...”

“Twice a week, every week, and he protects you like a mother hen,” Mandy corrected.

Keena shifted uneasily. “Nick’s like a brother. He feels responsible for me.”

“Some brother,” Mandy scoffed. “You should have noticed the way he was watching you at that Christmas party we gave. He started scowling every time another man came near you. He’ll be along, Miss Independence, or I miss my guess. No way is Nicholas going to let you spend several weeks down here without doing something about it.”

“What do you expect him to do, come and drag me back home?” Keena asked curtly.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” came the equally brusque reply.

“You,” Keena told her with a mock scowl, “are a professional busybody.”

Mandy grinned. “Thanks. About time you paid me a compliment or two for these gray hairs you’ve given me.”

Keena laughed, studying the little salt-and-pepper head. “Not so gray,” she returned.

“You going to see that Harris man?” Mandy asked suddenly with narrowed eyes.

Keena met that gaze levelly. “Maybe.”

“Good thing, too. Get him out of your system once and for all.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Memories are dangerous, you know. They’re always better than reality.”

“That’s why I came back to face them,” Keena admitted.

She stretched hugely and got up from the sofa. “We’ve been getting some interested glances since I had the corral and stable fences repaired and bought that mare.” She smiled. “I think I’ll go for a ride.”

“Didn’t you tell me once that this property joins the Harrises’?” Mandy asked.

“In back,” Keena agreed. “I used to rent a horse to ride. I saved all my money just to catch a glimpse of James Harris in the woods. Maybe I’ll get lucky today,” she added with a smile and a wink.

* * *

IT WAS CHILLY in the woods, and Keena was glad of her jodhpurs and boots, the thick cashmere sweater she put on over her silk blouse, the warm fur-lined gloves on her hands and the thick tweed hacking jacket. She’d never been able to afford a decent kit in her youth, so it was something of a thrill to be able to wear it now. It almost made up for those rides she’d gone on with Jenny Harris, James’s sister, in worn jeans and a denim jacket that Jenny was too sweet to make fun of.

She paused by a small stream, her eyes closed, taking in the cold, sweet peace of the woods, the sound of water running between the banks, the sudden snapping of twigs nearby.

Her eyes flew open as another horse and rider came into view. A big black horse with a slender man astride him, a dark-haired man with blue eyes and an unsmiling face. He was wearing a tweed jacket, too, over a turtleneck sweater. The hands on the reins were long-fingered, and a cigarette dangled in one of them.

“You’re trespassing,” the man said. “This is private property.”

She lifted an eyebrow at him, ignoring the wild beat of her heart as she felt the years between her last sight of him fall away.

“The property line is two paces behind you,” she replied coolly. “And if you care to look, there’s a metal survey stake—quite a new one. I had the property lines resurveyed two days ago.”

His eyes narrowed as he lowered them to her slender body, past her high, firm breasts to her small waist and flaring hips, clearly outlined by her tailored riding gear.

“Keena?” he asked as if the thought was incredulous. His eyes came back up to her lovely, high-cheekboned face framed by black hair that feathered around it, her pale green eyes like clear pools under her thick lashes.

She allowed herself a smile. “That’s my name.”

“My God, you’ve changed,” he murmured. His eyes went to her wrist, and he smiled faintly. “Except for that habit of wearing gaudy costume jewelry. I’m glad something about you hasn’t changed.”

She wanted to hit him with the riding crop, but that would have been more in character in her adolescence than it was now. She’d learned control, if nothing else.

“Old habits die hard,” she replied with a bitter smile.

“How true,” he murmured. “I was sorry to hear about your father. He was a good worker. There’s a small insurance policy, of course. You might check with the personnel office about that. You got the flowers we sent? A potted plant, I think...”

“They were very nice, thanks,” she replied.

“Are you still living in Atlanta?” he asked politely.

“New York,” she corrected.

He made a distasteful face. “Nasty place. Pollution and all that. I prefer Ashton.”

She stared at him, letting the memory merge with the reality. He’d changed. Not just in age, but in every other way. He looked older, less imposing, less authoritative.

“How’s Jenny?” she asked quietly.

“Doing very well, thanks. She lives with her husband and son in Greenville. Larry’s married,” he added pointedly. “He lives in Charleston.”

“I heard that you and Cherrie married,” she said.

His face drew up. “She and I were divorced two years back,” he said coldly.

She shrugged. “It happens.”

He was staring at her again, his eyes thoughtful. “I can’t get over the change. You’re different.”

“I’m older,” she replied.

“Married?” he asked, openly curious.

She shook her head. “I have a career.”

“In textiles?” he asked with a faint smile.

She paused. “In a matter of speaking, yes.”

He laughed shortly. “Sewing, I suppose.”

“That, too.” She patted the mare’s mane. “I’ve got to get back. Nice seeing you,” she said with a parting smile.

“I’ll drop by before you leave for home,” he said unexpectedly.

She gave him her best smile. “That would be nice,” she managed huskily. “But you needn’t rush. I’ll be here for several more weeks.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Can you spare that long from your job?”

“I have a wonderful, understanding boss,” she returned. “See you.”

And think about that, she laughed to herself as she let the mare have her head on the way back to the stable.

What Ashton needed, she decided, was a party. A big, lavish, New York, society-type party, so that she could show her dear old friends how much the gangly textile worker’s daughter had changed. Just thinking about it brightened her dark mood. Before she got back to the house, she was already planning her strategy, from redecorating and renovation, to the caterers. This was going to be an absolute delight.

* * *

IT WAS LIKE having a houseful of relatives come to stay when the carpenters and decorators descended on them. Keena couldn’t move without bumping into a ladder or a pile of lumber.

“They’re multiplying,” Mandy moaned one morning, watching two carpenters hard at work trying to replace a portion of the kitchen ceiling. “And how can I cook?”

“Make two plates full of sandwiches.” Keena laughed. “Maybe if we feed them enough, they’ll work faster. And don’t spare the coffee.”

“You’re the boss,” Mandy sighed, shaking her head as she moved toward the cupboard.

“Hey, lady, somebody’s at the door!” one of the electricians called, pausing with a length of cord in one hand.

She squeezed past a painter on a ladder, her jeans and pale blue T-shirt making her look younger than her years, clinging outrageously to her long, graceful legs and the soft, full curves of her body. Her hair was curling softly around her face, and some of the strain of big business had fallen away despite the grief this trip had started with. She felt younger, more relaxed and more feminine.

“Hey, guys, there’s a Rolls-Royce out there!” one of the carpenters whispered to his friends, stunned.

Keena paused with her hand on the doorknob. It couldn’t be James Harris, even though that was whom she’d expected after their confrontation two days ago. The Harrises had money, but not enough to run a Rolls. She knew only one man with that kind of careless wealth, and she hadn’t dreamed—despite Mandy’s prediction—that he’d come here.

She twisted the crystal doorknob and pulled the wide door open. The man standing there towered over her, as broad as a wrestler, all hard muscle and determination, with a craggy face and dark eyes that were devouring every inch of her.

“So here you are,” he growled, his voice reminiscent of the last time she’d seen him, and remembering it made her flush slightly. “I’ve had a hell of a time finding you. Mrs. Barnes said you called the apartment to see if I’d come home, but all you told her was that you were going home to Georgia.”

“And you couldn’t remember where that was?” she asked with a sweet smile.

“It’s a damned big state,” he replied curtly, staring past her at the gaping workmen who were openly curious about the newcomer in the gray suit. “I had to hunt through your old personnel file to find out your hometown. I couldn’t remember it.”

“You didn’t think to call my office?” she asked.

“I got back only yesterday,” he said under his breath. “Sunday, madam, and your people don’t work on Sunday.”

She drew in a steadying breath. Seeing him again was causing her heart to do acrobatics. “My father died,” she said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” he said curtly. “Was it quick?”

She nodded. “Very.” She looked up at him with sad eyes, and wished she could have run to him when they’d called to tell her. His arms would have felt so good, and she could have cried in them. “Did you think I was in hiding?” she added with a mirthless laugh.

“Hide, here?” He glared at the workmen. “You’d have hell trying with this crowd. It looks like a damned construction site in here.”

“Would you like to come in?” she asked.

“My insurance company wouldn’t like it,” he said bluntly, with a wary eye on the two carpenters up on ladders just inside the open door.

“Well, we could sit in the porch swing,” she suggested, gesturing toward it.

His eyes followed hers. Two boards were missing in strategic places. His dark eyes danced and just for an instant she caught a glimpse of something different in them.

“Not unless you want to sit on my lap and give your audience something to stare at,” he replied. “Besides that, it’s blasting cold out here, and you aren’t dressed for it.” He caught her arm. “We’ll sit in the car and talk for a minute.”

“Lecherous thing,” she murmured, following him to the car quickly to get out of the biting cold. “You’ll probably lock me in and try to seduce me.”

“There’s an idea,” he agreed, putting her in the passenger side of the Rolls. “Slide over.”

She made room for him, feeling swallowed as he slid one huge arm around her and gave her the benefit of his warmth against the faint chill of the car.

“Some idea,” she murmured. “You’ve never even made a real pass at me.”

He leaned down, his face suddenly closer than it had ever been before, so close that she could see the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, the thickness of his eyelashes, the faint shadow around his firm, chiseled mouth. An expensive fragrance, a familiar fragrance, clung to his big, warm body.

“You never wanted it before,” he reminded her. His eyes went to her mouth, pale without lipstick, and her heart rocked at the sensuous look in his glittering eyes. “Not until the night I left for Paris. But this is as good a time as any to satisfy your curiosity, little Miss Purity. Let me show you how I kiss.”

He leaned closer, brushing his parted lips against hers before she had time to protest. The tenderness of the action paralyzed her, and in a trance, she watched his mouth touch and lift and brush against hers in a silence that was suddenly sparkling and alive with new sensations, new awareness.

His strong white teeth nipped softly at her lips, tugging them deftly apart as his tongue tasted, slowly, the inner curve of her upper lip.

She gasped at the contact, her eyes looking straight into his, seeing shadows that had never been there before.

“You taste of coffee,” he said in a deep, sensuous tone.

“I...had it...for breakfast.” Was that her voice, that high-pitched, husky stammer? She felt as rigid as a board, tense, waiting for something with a hunger that was as shocking as the look on Nicholas’s face.

“I think I’ll have you for breakfast,” he murmured, and she watched his mouth open slightly as it fitted itself expertly to her soft, tremulous lips. “Open your mouth,” he whispered against the silken softness. “Don’t make me force you.”

“Nicholas?” His name came out as a gasp when she felt his big, warm hands cupping her face, barely aware of his body half covering hers, crushing her back against the soft leather in a warm, breathless embrace.

He didn’t answer her. His mouth was hard and warm and faintly cruel as it moved with slow deliberation deeper and deeper into hers. Her heart felt as if it were on a merry-go-round. She was spinning, flying.

“Oh,” she whispered, shaken, into the hard mouth laying claim to her lips.

His tongue went into her mouth, teasing, withdrawing, causing sensations she’d only dreamed about before. Something devastating was happening to her.

One of his big, warm hands left her cheek and eased down to the soft cotton fabric over her breast. He took the weight of it into his cupped palm, savoring its softness, testing its firmness, and she gasped at the newness of his touch, drawing back to look into his dark eyes.

“You don’t wear a bra, do you?” he asked in a slow, tender voice. “You don’t need one, either. Your breasts are so soft, Keena, firm and soft and warm under my hands.”

“Nick...” she gasped, drowning in the sure touch of his fingers, probing, caressing.

She caught his hand and stilled it, half-frightened.

“Please, don’t,” she whispered. “Nick...”

“I like the way you say my name,” he murmured deeply. “Say it again.”

She felt like a fish out of water, floundering. She couldn’t get her breath at all, and her mouth throbbed with both his possession of it and her own hunger to have him do it again. She lowered her eyes to his white shirt.

“Shy of me?” he asked softly. “After all these years?”

She looked up at him warily. “We’ve never made love before,” she whispered unsteadily, keenly aware of his fingers still resting lightly on her breast.

“I wouldn’t call this making love,” he corrected quietly, studying her wild eyes. “Why don’t you want me to touch you?”

She blushed furiously, hating her foolishness, her lack of sophistication, hating his mocking laughter.

“You liked it, didn’t you?” he asked, removing his hand to ruffle her dark hair.

“I’ve got to go back inside,” she ground out.

“Not yet. When was the funeral?”

“A week ago.”

He scowled. “And you’re still here?” His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Her lips compressed stubbornly. She wasn’t going to be talked out of this, not now. She told him why she was staying, in no uncertain terms, tacking on, “And the first guest I’m inviting to the party is James Harris.”

His dark eyes seemed to burst with flame as he stared down at her.

He knew that Keena had loved James Harris and that he had hurt her badly because Keena had cried her heart out on his shoulder one night after too many whiskey sours on an empty stomach—one of those rare occasions when she drank hard liquor. But he’d never learned exactly what Harris had done to her to cause her so much pain. All he knew was that he’d never let James Harris hurt her again.

“You’re crazy as hell if you think I’m going to let that creep get his hands on you,” he said in a cutting voice.

“And just what do you think you’re going to do about it, Nicholas?” she demanded with more courage than she felt. The long, searching kiss and the touch of his big hands had knocked half the fight out of her.

He moved away from her, got out of the car and stood back to let her get out of the car. “I fight with no holds barred,” he reminded her with a strange, cool smile. “And I’ve put in a lot of years on you. I’m not about to stand by and watch you put your pretty neck into a noose.”

“It’s my neck,” she murmured.

He tilted her chin up and bent down to her, brushing his mouth slowly, softly, against hers with something like possession in his dark eyes. He watched her helpless reaction with a smile. “I told you before I left for Paris that one day I was going to be your lover. That day’s closer than you think, sweetheart, and you’re hungrier for me than I’d imagined. Ripe, ready to be picked.”

“I’m not an apple,” she ground out.

“No, you’re a peach,” he corrected with a last, soft kiss. “A sweet, juicy little peach that I could eat. But first, I’m going to have to knock you out of the tree.”

She glared at him as he went around the elegant hood of the Rolls and got in under the steering wheel. “You’d better get a big stick, Nicholas Coleman!” she cried.

He only laughed. “No, honey, you had. I’ll be back.”

And before she could fire a retort, he drove off in a cloud of dust, leaving her standing there in the cold.

CHAPTER THREE

MANDY GLANCED UP from the rolls she was making in the kitchen as Keena walked through.

“Flames,” she murmured, muffling a grin.

“What?” Keena asked absently, unaware of the picture she made with her hair mussed from Nick’s big fingers, her eyes wild, her lips swollen and red.

“Coming from you,” Mandy commented drily. She started laying the rolls into a pan. “Seen Nick, have you?”

“Seen him?” she burst out. “You should have heard...” She flushed. “On second thought, you shouldn’t have heard him. But he’s absolutely unreasonable!”

“How?”

“He doesn’t want me to stay here, for one thing,” she muttered darkly, her lovely eyes narrowing. She folded her arms across her throbbing chest and leaned back against the counter. “As if he had any right, any right at all, to order me around. The nerve, talking about knocking me out of trees and getting sticks...”

“You feel all right?” Mandy asked pleasantly.

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“That’s what I’ve always liked most about you—your definite answers.” Mandy grinned.

Keena, not even half hearing her housekeeper, turned in a daze and walked under the ladder where two painters were busy on the walls and ceiling of the dining room. She was confused as she’d never been, as shy as a girl when she thought about seeing Nicholas again after that ardent kiss. He’d touched her...

She sighed, walking aimlessly up the stairs with dreams in her eyes. In all those years, not a single pass, not a touch out of the way, but overnight her whole relationship with Nick was different, exciting. He’d been her friend, but now what was he? She was going to have to rethink her entire relationship with him after today.

Funny, she hadn’t really taken him seriously the night he left for Paris, when he’d said that he was going to be her lover. Reflecting on it, she’d decided that he’d been teasing. But today was no joke. The tenderness of the mouth he’d kissed so thoroughly was very real, and her chest tingled from the long, hard contact with his big body, from the touch of his experienced hands.

Part of her, a small, vague part, was afraid of Nicholas. He wasn’t the kind of man to do anything halfheartedly. He wouldn’t stop at acquiring her for his bed. He’d want nothing less than possession. Keena liked her independence; she wasn’t sure she was ready to give it up. In that, she must have been like her mother, who died giving her birth. Alan Whitman had always spoken fondly of his late wife’s bullheaded independence. Keena was like that herself. She’d been on her own for so long, an achiever without props. Oh, there had been men; charming, attractive companions that she had always managed to keep at a safe distance—no ties, no commitments. She’d let them know that it would be on her terms, or not at all. No, she wasn’t at all sure she could manage a full-time man in her life, especially a man like Nick, in an intimate relationship. She had no doubts at all after today that he’d be everything her body would ever want. But what about the rest of her? Would he try to take her over the way he took over businesses? And if she let herself be drawn into his life, would she ever be able to break away before it was too late? She was afraid to let him close enough to find out. Perhaps it was just as well that he’d gone back to New York. But it wasn’t like Nicholas to give up without a struggle. She had a feeling she hadn’t heard the last of it, either.

* * *

“HOW OLD WERE you when you left here?” Mandy asked several days later when Keena was driving her through town in the rented car, pointing out the small high school, the public library and the modest shopping center near the house.

“Eighteen,” Keena said, veiling the memories that the admission dredged up. They weren’t pleasant ones, for the most part.

“You must have missed it.” Mandy smiled, watching two young boys ride their bicycles along the sidewalk, bundled up from head to toe against the February chill. “It’s a lovely little town.”

“Lovely,” came the absent reply.

The older woman glanced at her. “You’re quiet lately. Brooding because Nick hasn’t come back?” she probed drily.