Passion (14 page)

She was lying on her side, her knees drawn to her chest, her arms tucked so that her hands were clasped beneath her chin.
There was a red streak around each wrist where she had tried to free herself from the cord, along with the nasty bruises he’d
left this morning around her left wrist. Her nose was red, and her eyes were puffy, their expression bleak and hopeless. She
looked like a woman facing death, dishonor, or worse.

Remembering the revulsion that had colored her expression earlier, when he had been lying against her and she had first become
aware of his arousal, he knew she considered him much, much worse.

He reached out, intending only to dry the dampness from her cheeks. She didn’t move away—she was all out of fight for the
night—but her eyes widened slightly and her breath caught in her chest. He withdrew his hand without touching her and got
to his feet, retreating to the mattress blocking the door. “Get ready for bed, Teryl,” he said grimly. “We’ve got another
long day ahead of us.”

He shut off the lights on his way, sliding down onto the mattress in complete darkness. For a time, the only sound in the
room was his own settling in; then the other bed creaked. Her suitcase opened.

He discovered that he could follow her movements by the sounds, that—to his supreme discomfort—his writer’s imagination readily
supplied pictures to match. That little whoosh was her vest coming off, those soft little thuds her shoes hitting the floor.
The metallic rasp of the zipper of her shorts. The delicate rap of the buttons on her blouse coming in contact with the wood
of the night table as she draped it over it. The rubbing of something—a T-shirt, maybe—tugged on,
the glide of skin against cotton sheet, the rustle of covers being pulled up and tucked, a pillow being plumped.

Then silence.

Not complete silence, of course. The air conditioner was running. Water was dripping in the sink. She was breathing, and so
was he… barely. He counted her breaths, measuring them as they deepened and slowed, guessing when she finally went to sleep.
Then he turned onto his side, facing her in the darkness, and spoke in little more than a whisper.

“I’m sorry, Teryl.”

T
hursday had started out to be a very good day for Rebecca Robertson. The weather was unusually mild for a Virginia summer
day. Her ex-husband Paul was in town on business and had taken her out last night for a dinner date that hadn’t ended until
morning. Simon’s interview on “New Orleans Afternoon” had earned the best ratings in the show’s history and was being seen
all around the country. The fans’ response had been overwhelming, and the media… They were getting a national—hell, an international—promotional
blitz of the sort money couldn’t buy. Simon was going to pick up thousands, tens of thousands, of new readers.
Resurrection
would be the biggest selling release in publishing history.

And Rebecca Robertson would be
the
agent of choice for every soul in the country who thought he had a story to tell.
She
would be the agent to the stars. She would have the power. The clout. The glory. As if she didn’t already have enough.

Yes, this morning had started off just fine.

And then Teryl hadn’t shown up for work and hadn’t answered the phone at her house.

And Lena had just buzzed and told her that Debra Jane Howell was here to see her.

Drumming her nails on the desktop, she waited for the
woman to make the long walk from the front desk through to the big office at the back. She had known when she hired Teryl
five years ago that she was getting a good worker. She
hadn’t
known she would also be getting regular exposure to a pain in the ass like D.J. Howell. She knew D.J. and Teryl were close—best
friends, sisters, stepsisters; she’d never been completely sure of the nature of the relationship and she didn’t care. She
just didn’t understand how someone as sweet, as hardworking, loyal, and just plain
nice
as Teryl could stand to be around a man-hungry bitch like D.J. It was an odd friendship, one Rebecca wouldn’t mind seeing
bite the dust. Teryl deserved better.

But Teryl’s personal life was none of her business. As long as Rebecca didn’t have to see D.J. on a regular basis, other than
for her weekly lunches with Teryl, she would deal with business and leave her employees’ personal lives to them.

The click of heels in the hallway signaled the woman’s approach—very high heels. Other than her nickname, D.J. did everything
in her power to play up her femininity. She was flamboyant in her dress, outrageous in her behavior. She somehow managed,
even when doing absolutely nothing, to exude pure sex appeal. Paul, who had no particular interest in petite women, in aggressive
women, in extremely sexually aware women—even Paul, who had
always
preferred women so totally the opposite of D.J., who had
always
found her kind of blatant sexuality unappealing, had been attracted to her.

Even Paul had had a brief fling with her.

The footsteps quieted as D.J. strolled through the door, stepping from hardwood floors to plush cream-colored carpet. She
paid no attention to her surroundings. To her, furnishings, lush carpets, and rich wall coverings were merely backdrops to
showcase her own assets. She ignored the two chairs in front of Rebecca’s desk and went to the sofa against the far wall instead,
forcing Rebecca to leave her desk and take a seat in one of the wing chairs that flanked the sofa.

“Good morning, Rebecca.” Everything about her was business as usual. Her smile was catty, her hair unrestrained.
Her makeup was artfully applied, her dress outrageously revealing, her manner so perfectly unconsciously seductive that it
couldn’t be anything but conscious.

Most men didn’t see that. Even the few who did recognize it—like Paul—fell under her spell anyway, for a time at least.

She pushed thoughts of Paul with Debra Jane to the back of her mind and coolly, politely asked, “What can I do for you, D.J.?”

“Teryl asked me to come by. She wanted me to let you know that she’s taking a few vacation days and staying over a bit in
New Orleans.”

“That doesn’t sound like Teryl.”

The younger woman smiled a curious smile, part amusement, part pleasure, and part pure malice. “No, it doesn’t, does it? But
I’ll let you in on a secret: Teryl’s found herself a man. She went off on a simple little trip and turned wicked on us. It’s
funny, you know. It’s always the innocent and predictable ones who surprise us the most.” The smile took a chilling turn.
“Isn’t it?”

Rebecca tensed at the pointed reference to Paul. Yes, for a grown man, he had been somewhat naïve and comfortably predictable.
It had never occurred to him that a sultry, sexy young woman like D.J. could be interested in an older man like him; his first
clue had probably come when he’d found her naked in his bed. And yes, news of their fling had come as a major surprise. She
had thought Paul was immune to sweet young things and the games they played.

She had been wrong. She doubted any living, breathing male was immune to D.J.

So Teryl was extending her vacation. Rebecca found it hard to believe. In all her years in business—more than she wanted to
count—she had never had an employee more reliable, more dependable, or more conscientious than Teryl Weaver. The girl never
came in late, and she’d never taken a sick day without having plenty of aches and miseries to go with it. It would be easier
to believe that Simon Tremont was giving up writing to become a garbage collector or that D.J.
Howell was giving up men for the church than to imagine the Teryl
she
knew pulling a stunt like this.

But why—for once—would D.J. lie? Why would she tell a story that Teryl, upon her return, would expose as a lie? Why would
she deliberately create a situation that would force her best friend to face the truth about her own untrustworthiness?

“And when did Teryl make this decision?” she asked.

“Last night. She called as I was getting ready to leave for the airport. She said she’s having a wonderful time with a wonderful
man, and she asked me to let you know she was staying over a few days.”

“She couldn’t call me herself this morning?”

D.J. crossed one leg over the other, revealing a generous expanse of slender, muscular thigh, and swung her foot languorously
from side to side. “I don’t guess she knew exactly what it was she would be doing this morning. Maybe she thought she would
be having too good a time to interrupt for business.”

Rebecca smiled faintly. She could relate to that. Leaving Paul’s bed this morning to come to work had certainly been one of
the harder choices she’d made recently. It wasn’t until she’d caught herself wondering whether they should give their marriage
a second chance that she’d managed to untangle herself, throw back the covers, and get up. Dealing with their divorce and
the problems that had caused it had taken her a long time; getting over the hurt and disillusionment had taken even longer.
Sure, these little interludes were nice, but they weren’t anything to base a marriage on. Sex, no matter how good, wasn’t
a reason to get married.

And while many of her more positive feelings for Paul had survived his infidelity, D.J., and the divorce, she wasn’t sure
love was one of them.

She wasn’t sure she wanted it to be.

Abruptly, she forced her thoughts back on track. “When can I expect to see Teryl back in the office?”

D.J. responded with a shrug that made her hair shimmer in the morning light—dark red hair, and so much of it. “She said she
would let me know.” She gave a lascivious grin. “I imagine whenever this guy’s given all he’s got to give.”

Disliking her response—disliking
her
—Rebecca got to her feet, hoping D.J. would have the courtesy to acknowledge that this meeting was over. “I appreciate your
coming by to tell me, but, you know, you could have called and saved yourself a trip.”

She was already seating herself behind the desk again when D.J. finally rose from the couch. “Coming by was no problem,” she
said, moving with such fluid grace toward the door. There she paused and looked back. “Oh, by the way, I hear Paul’s in town.”
Another brief pause, another smile, devious in its innocence. “Give him my best, will you?”

Rebecca felt a surge of anger at the mention of her ex-husband that she concealed only through sheer force of will. Clenching
her hands into fists out of sight in her lap, she sat motionless as D.J. walked out of the room, listening until the sound
of her heels on the pine flooring had grown too distant to hear. Only then, finally, did she force the tension from her hands,
from her neck and her jaw and breathe a sigh of relief.

Why had D.J.’s remark caught her off guard? She knew the woman was predatory, knew she had no class, no morals, no ethics.
Debra Jane Howell had a mean streak, a cruelty that hid behind all that blatant sexuality. She took pleasure in taunting others,
sometimes brazenly, other times so exquisitely subtly that her poison seeped in, unnoticed and untraceable. Like with Teryl.
How many of Teryl’s notions that she wasn’t pretty enough, sexy enough, ambitious enough, et cetera, were legitimate conceptions
formed on her own, and how many had been put into her head by her friend?

Rebecca would bet the majority had come from D.J. She had a need for attention, to be the prettiest, the sexiest, the one
people looked at first, last, and longest. It was a testament to Teryl’s innate strength that, after a lifetime together,
D.J. hadn’t done her more harm.

From the parking lot behind her, Rebecca heard the starting of an engine. She didn’t turn around, but merely sat and listened
as D.J. backed out, then drove away. Only when the other woman was gone did she allow herself to respond, softly, vehemently,
viciously, to the comment about Paul.

“Bitch.”

* * *

Mornings after were supposed to be awkward. Teryl hadn’t gotten a chance to experience with John the morning after they’d
made love, since he’d left her room sometime in the night, but she thought it might not have been so bad. She would have felt
a little shy, of course—after all, they would have been strangers waking up in a most intimate situation—but she didn’t think
it would have been too awkward or uncomfortable.

But
this
morning—this morning after nothing had happened, this morning after they’d slept in separate beds on opposite sides of the
room—was totally uncomfortable. She couldn’t even look at him, which was all right, since he was doing a pretty good job of
avoiding her. He had already been dressed when he’d awakened her; while she’d gotten dressed in her last clean outfit, he
had returned the mattress to the bed, piled the covers on it, and stuffed his dirty clothes into his suitcase.

Now he was standing at the foot of the two beds, the telephone cord in his hands. She leaned closer to the mirror, seeking
the best light as she applied blush to her cheeks but at the same time watching him, waiting for him to pick up the phone
from the night table, to plug the cord into the jack on the back. As he hesitated, toying with the cord, her breathing turned
shallow, and a slight tremble developed in her hand. Please put it back, she silently prayed, feeling once more the queasiness
that had assaulted her last night when she’d realized what he intended to do with the six-foot length of plastic-encased wire.