Authors: Barbara Delinsky
He was right—and that angered her even more. Yet, deep within one distant part of her, a fight was the last thing she wanted at the moment. Turning to lower the fire beneath the coffeepot, she busied herself gathering mugs, milk, and sugar, totally ignoring his contention. For the time being, her withdrawal was accepted. Silence reigned as she filled the mugs with coffee, then carried them to the kitchen table, a handsome piece of butcher block. It was surrounded by chrome-armed chairs. As she took a seat on one side, Drew eased himself down on the other, his gray eyes following her steadily, relentlessly.
Steam from the fresh brew, rising then dissipating into the air, seemed to be the only sign of life in the room. Daran’s eyes held stubbornly to her fingers rimming her mug, studying them as though they were something strange and new to her. It was an awkward situation, to say the least. For, just when Daran gathered the courage to confront Drew as to his intentions, he deftly stole the wind from her sails with a word or two, spoken softly and often on an entirely different matter, thereby diverting her long enough for her fuse to spend itself harmlessly. A pro at handling people, he was a born diplomat.
For those first minutes the silence seemed cacophonous. Slowly and with feigned calmness, she sipped her coffee. Slowly and with genuine composure, he did the same. Daran’s anger grew greater with every second that he failed to take the first step. Then, once again, as it had that afternoon in the car, the absurdity of the situation closed in on her. Laughing in spite of herself, she raised her eyes to those of the senator.
“You aren’t at all what I expected,” she offered softly.
“Is that good or bad?”
A shrug shook her slim shoulders as a shaft of distress passed across the erstwhile smoothness of her forehead. “I’m not sure.”
He smiled. “There it goes again—the war.” Then he executed another diversionary tactic. “This serenity is no less than a luxury. Do you come across it by design or by chance?”
Daran was quick to pick up on his implication. “If you are asking whether I choose to be alone on Saturday night, the answer is yes. I was actually planning to do some work.”
His sandy head bent toward his watch. “It’s pretty late. Did you get done what you wanted?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have no idea,” she blurted back coolly, though indeed she did. It was the presence of strange and unbidden thoughts in her mind that blocked her usual creative mood, and this man was in no small way responsible.
“You mean,” he challenged, “you have not yet made those lists I asked you to compile?”
It was only when she turned on him in dismay that the twinkle in his eye caught hers. He was goading her, baiting her. Should she fight? Even as she pondered the first blow, the voice that was her own came to her with unexpected evenness. “For a minute there, I thought you were serious.”
“But I am. If you’re going to spend the summer as a member of my staff, you’ve got to be prepared to produce.”
Suddenly her temper triumphed. “I have no intention of spending the summer on your staff. My Lord, do you ever make wild assumptions! I have other plans—”
“Such as…?”
“Such as lobbying for the Child Advocacy Project. Such as continuing to see my private patients at the hospital. Such as writing all of the journal articles that should have been done on any number of Saturday nights, but were thwarted for one reason or the other.” Furious now, her eyes were bright, her features animated. Here was one person whom Senator Charles did not have in his pocket! Yet her words to that effect died on her lips, halted abruptly by the inexplicably admiring glance which the man subsequently bestowed upon her.
“That’s great!” He grinned, shaking his head in wonder. Intuitively Daran knew that he was not referring to her summer plans. His next words elaborated on that point. “You look terrific, all fired up like that! And I like your outfit, by the way. With your hair down, I mean.” He reminded her of the wayward curls that had fallen from their coil that afternoon. “
Really
down. You look barely twenty-one.” His grin, stretching with brilliant whiteness from ear to ear, jolted her far more than his words. Abruptly she stood and stormed from the kitchen toward the living room, clenching her fists in a bid for self-control. This was not going at all as she had expected, she mused, then caught herself up short. She had expected nothing! It had all been his doing. And exactly what did he expect—in addition to her traipsing down to Washington for the summer?
As if conjured up by her question, his tall form moved across the reflective surface of the window she faced. Beneath her intent eye he lowered himself into a corner of the sofa, stretched his legs out before him, crossing them nonchalantly at the ankles. Then he laid his head back on the cushion. For a breath stopping moment she wondered if he was asleep. They had a knack, these politicians, for catching a few winks here and there, so she had read, so she had seen in Bill. His particular skill had been to doze off just when an argument between the two grew heated, as they most often had. It had been insufferable then. She would not stand for it now!
Pivoting sharply, she stalked to the side of the sofa. “Oh no, you don’t! No sleeping in my house!”
A lazy eye opened in amusement. “None? What do
you
do for rest?”
With a sigh of exasperation at the manipulation of her words, she threw her hands up. “I give up. What is it you want? Why are you here?”
The force of the gray orbs now held her. “We didn’t have enough time this afternoon.”
“Please, Senator. It’s almost eleven. This is no time to discuss anything. I’m exhausted and you look half-asleep yourself.” Half-asleep and half-awake; it was the latter that suddenly alarmed her more than the former.
Lithely he drew himself to a seated position. “You’re right. Let’s get to it. Come over here.”
Standing no more than five feet from where he sat, Daran prayed that he could not hear the thunderous pounding of her heart. It shook even her with its sudden intensity. Drawing on what meager poise remained in the storehouse of her life’s experience, she pushed her hands into her pockets and stepped sideways into a more casual stance. Her eyes held his, not from desire, but from helplessness.
“Come on,” he repeated softly, cocking his head to the side.
“Wh-what?”
This time he merely pointed a strong forefinger toward the cushion beside him. In other circumstances it might have been an innocent request. There was, in this instance, however, no innocence in the eyes that lured her, in the coiled readiness of his outwardly casual pose. Mutely she stood and stared at him, nonplussed as never before. At the risk of making an utter fool of herself, if his intent was an honorable one, she waited for his next move. It was a maddeningly small one, mammoth in its implication. Raising his hand again, he crooked the same tan forefinger, ordering her to come to his side. Slowly she shook her head. Both knew precisely what he wanted, but, Daran, for one, could not possibly acquiesce.
It seemed an eternity that he pondered her reluctance. His eyes never left her face, nor did hers leave his. The trembling of her limbs was but a token show of the battle waging within the slender form. Aware of some inner torment, he was fully in ignorance of its cause. Her words did nothing to enlighten him.
“I think you’d better leave now,” she whispered softly.
Where she had feared resistance to her suggestion, there was only a loud and exaggerated sigh. “Maybe I’d better,” he murmured; rising from the sofa and starting slowly for the door, scooping up his jacket as he passed the chair on which it lay. Dutifully she followed him, showing him out in perfect hostesslike form. That was her mistake. For, at the door, he turned swiftly and unexpectedly, startling her into silence as he seized her shoulders and held her close before him.
A husky drawl sealed her fate. “That’s better now. This really was cut much too short this afternoon.” For the first time, she understood the full meaning of his banter about unfinished business. The gleam in his eye was unmistakable. He was no different—no different at all!
As fear surged through her veins, she tried to pull from his grasp. The fingers on her shoulders merely tightened their hold, digging mercilessly into her skin. His gaze mirrored that same intensity of feeling, terrifying her all the more.
“Please, Senator…” she begged in a whisper, imploring him with every bit of feeling her wide-open amber eyes could convey.
Her plea went unheeded as his eyes moved in a slow caress of her features. As though touched by fire, her cheeks flamed, then her chin, the delicate line of her jaw and her ears, until finally the searing brand came to rest on her lips. Struggling to escape the invisible bond, she pulled back again, only to be hauled in closer this time on the rebound.
Again she pleaded with him. “I don’t want this. Please, let me go. Just leave.” Her breath came in short bursts, her voice sounding weaker by the minute. The hands on her provided the support now that her own shaky legs could not. It was happening—it was happening all over again.
Then something different occurred. Slowly and subtly the fine line between fear and excitement merged; the two became indistinguishable from one another. As his lips lowered to hers, she vacillated, needing to pull back, wanting to lean forward. Reflexively her hands moved to his arms, maintaining that distance between them, allowing no more.
Pulse racing, she awaited his kiss. But as before, he teased her, moving to within a breath of her, then pausing, brushing his lips against the corner of her mouth, then pulling back. He had to know exactly what effect his toying had on her; his hands could feel the trembling that had little now to do with denial. Yet he continued, determined to evoke a response to his liking.
Within Daran the war still raged on, the lines of battle now clearly drawn between the adversaries—mind and body. As noble as were the standards of the mind, they were doomed. As the sensually powerful onslaught went on, her body very slowly edged closer to his until, finally, her hands eased upward to eliminate the barrier between them.
Only then did his lips capture hers in full domination, devouring them with a hunger indicative of the backfire effect of his own teasing. One hand slid along her spine, curving her body to the lines of his. The other wound through the thick mane of hair at the back of her head to hold it still beneath his kiss. The vortex of his passion was mind-boggling; drawn into its core, she surrendered to the flames that licked at her nerve endings and heated the blood within.
When his lips gentled on hers, she responded, slowly at first, then with growing conviction as the sense of giving heightened her own momentary bliss. It was something she had never experienced before. Awestruck, she yearned for more. Her long fingers crept from the sinewed strength of his arms to his shoulders, then his neck, thrilling in the warmth that awaited them. But best of all was their arrival at the hard muscles of his back, for, in reaching that far side and holding tenaciously there, she found herself more snugly crushed against his chest, a delightfully safe and heady haven.
Locked in fierce embrace, the two were mindless of the escalation of their kiss. No longer were lips the sole players; now tongues joined in, then teeth as well. It was a kiss that demanded full commitment, one that allowed no equivocation. When it ended, Daran was breathless. If there was any consolation to be had, it was in the ragged gasp of the man now towering above her.
With this temporary release came a resurgence of the old inbred fear. What would he demand next? Lips, moist and passion-rouged, trembled as her eyes looked plaintively up at him. His kiss had robbed her of the strength to resist; would he use that edge to compromise her further?
A frown creased his brow, drawing the lips that moments before had been full and warm and active into a thin hard line. His eyes searched hers in vain; the cause of her fear was a mystery to him, though the shadow that haunted her features was all too real. When, after agonizingly long moments of silence, a gentle smile curved his lips, the breath she had subconsciously held slipped slowly out. His hands fell to her shoulders, her arms, her hands, then dropped to his own sides by way of retreat. With a sideway sweep he retrieved his jacket, fallen victim to their kiss, then straightened a final time.
“I’ll be in touch,” he murmured, velvet smooth, then turned and let himself out. For a mindless blend of seconds the blank expanse of the vacant doorway held Daran speechless. Then, slowly, clarity returned. In a wild flash of reality Daran sensed that she had just submitted, freely but unknowingly, a résumé of her qualifications to the handsome senator from Connecticut. All that remained was to await his next step. Infuriated with the thought, she was to be obsessed with it through the long and sleepless night ahead. If only she understood what it was he wanted. Her outspoken criticism of his proposed legislation had initially caught his attention; that much was certain. Yet it seemed the last topic he wished to discuss when he was with her. More disturbing even was the suspicion that discussion, in any form, had been far from his mind when he so boldly materialized on her doorstep this evening. If so, she vowed stubbornly, he was in for a disappointment. In truth, after long hours of brooding on the matter, she had to admit that there was a definite biological attraction between them. Or rather,
she
reluctantly admitted the undeniable fact of his utterly virile magnetism. From
his
point of view, she was one of many, by all imaginable estimates. The responsibility, if such was the case, fell on her shoulders to rechannel his energies toward those others by her own refusal to play the game. Recalling how mindlessly her own response to him had surged forth earlier that evening, she feared her task to be easier said than done.
* * *
The battle resumed early the next morning as the weight of exhaustion fought the bright yellow shards of sunlight that streamed into Daran’s room. Turning her head to the pillow, the events of the day before awakened her consciousness as the glaring daylight had not done. The soft coverings of her bed bore the brunt of her frustration, thrown back in a fit of annoyance as she stalked toward the bathroom.