Perfect Partners (13 page)

“Strokes.” Joel altered the pattern.

“Oh, my
God
.”

“Which do you want, boss?”

“I don't know. Either. Both. Just keep doing it.”

“Whatever you say.”

For long, glorious minutes Letty gave herself up to the incredible sensations that were budding swiftly within her. Occasionally Joel asked for further instructions. She gave them eagerly, trying different patterns until she found the ones that seemed to have been designed precisely for her body.

“Joel, it feels so good. So good. I can't believe it.”

“Neither can I,” he muttered. His fingers were wet and slick with her essence. He whispered something else, but Letty did not catch it.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing, honey. Anything else you want to try?”

“I don't know. This is good enough. Better than anything I've ever felt before. Wonderful. Joel, I don't think I can stand much more.” Letty arched her hips up off the bed, pushing against his fingers. One of them slid just inside her. “
Joel
.”

“I'm still here, babe. I'm not going anywhere. Are you sure there isn't anything else you want to try? No other commands you want to give me tonight?”

There
was
something else about which she was extremely curious, but there was no way on earth she could ask him to do
that
. Not this first time, at any rate. Not until she knew him a lot better. Not until she'd had a chance to feel him out on the subject.

“I'm fine, Joel. This is wonderful. Oh, my God.”

“You ever read any articles on this?” Joel kissed her stomach, and then she felt his breath fanning the curls of hair that shielded her softness.

“
Joel
.”

“Did you?”

“Well, yes. Yes, I read something about it, but I wouldn't ask you to do that. I couldn't.”

“You're giving the orders tonight, remember? You have to be very specific.”

“Good grief, Joel, this is hardly the kind of thing a woman orders a man to do.”

“Try it.”

She could not stand it any longer. His breath was so warm, and his fingers felt so good. “All right,
do it
.”

“You got it, boss.”

And then his mouth was on her in the most intimate, the most exotic, the most passionate caress Letty had ever known. It robbed her of breath for a single, exquisitely painful moment.

It was too much. It was all far too much.

“
Oh, my God, Joel
!” Letty screamed as everything inside her came undone and shattered into a thousand bright shards. The world fell away.

When it was over, she collapsed like a rag doll.

She wanted to laugh.

She almost burst into tears.

She did not have the energy to do either, so she closed her eyes and floated.

At some point Letty realized that Joel was sliding up alongside her and pulling the covers up over her. She turned on her side and nestled into his warmth, utterly exhausted. A part of her registered the fact that he was still wearing his jeans.

“Joel?”

“Go to sleep, Letty.”

“Philip thinks I need therapy.”

“What kind of therapy?”

“For this kind of thing. You know. To improve my sexual responsiveness.”

“Lady, if you were any hotter or more responsive, we would have set the damn motel on fire. Now go to sleep.”

She relaxed blissfully. Then she belatedly realized what the fact that he was still wearing his jeans meant. “Joel, you didn't…”

“Yes,” Joel growled. “I did. I'll admit the last time I came in my jeans was when I was sixteen, but what the hell. I'm only a man, and you are pure dynamite.”

Letty smiled. She felt suddenly content and sure of herself in a way she had never been before. A heady sense of feminine power swept through her. “You really think so?”

“I know so. I've got the singed fingers to prove it.” It was Joel's turn to fall silent for a moment. Then he stirred slightly, pulling her more firmly into the cradle of his thighs. “Letty?”

“Hmm?”

“I didn't thank you for what you did tonight.”

She yawned. “What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about you walking out on Victor Copeland because you wouldn't tolerate your CEO being insulted in public.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that. Thanks. I doubt if anyone has ever walked out on Victor Copeland. And as for me, I've never had anybody try to protect me like that.”

“Noblesse oblige,” Letty said grandly. Then she started to giggle.

Joel gave her a small admonishing squeeze. “Shut up and go to sleep, boss.”

This time she did as he said.

The ringing of the bedside telephone awakened Letty the next morning. She groped for it without opening her eyes.

“Hello?” A dial tone was the only response.

“Wrong phone,” Joel muttered into the pillow. He was sprawled on his stomach beside her, taking up three-quarters of the available space.

When the phone rang again, Letty realized what was happening. “It's my phone.”

“Don't worry about it.”

But Letty was already scrambling out of bed. She blinked as she caught sight of herself in the mirror and realized she was stark naked.

The phone rang again.

Letty found her glasses and pushed them onto her nose. Then she grabbed her nightgown up off the floor and pulled it on over her head as she hurried through the connecting door into her own room.

“Hello?”

“'Morning, Letty. Victor Copeland here. Hope I'm not calling too early?”

“No.” Letty sat down on the edge of her bed and tried to blink herself awake. “No, this is fine. What can I do for you?”

“I'd like to buy you breakfast if I may. I want to apologize for my daughter's behavior last night.”

“That's not necessary, really.”

“Please.” Victor sighed wearily into the phone. “Look. We both know there's a hell of a lot at stake here. To be real blunt, I don't think there's any way I can do business with you as long as you've got Blackstone hovering over your shoulder. In case you don't know it by now, he hates my guts.”

“Look, Mr. Copeland—”

“Victor. I have to talk to you, Letty. You're the president of Thornquist Gear, and I'm in charge of Copeland Marine. Let's do business together like a couple of normal, rational human beings. You owe me that much, don't you think?”

Letty looked up and saw that Joel was filling the doorway between the two rooms. He was still wearing his jeans. His face was harsh in the watery morning light. She knew that Copeland was right about one thing: it would be difficult to talk business in any normal fashion with Joel nearby.

“All right, Victor. I'll have breakfast with you. Forty minutes?”

“Forty minutes is fine. There's a café one block down from your motel. I'll meet you there.” Victor paused. “Thanks, Letty. I appreciate this.”

“Good-bye, Victor.” Letty hung up the phone.

“That son of a bitch thinks he can charm you into letting him off the hook,” Joel said quietly.

“He just wants to talk.”

“Bullshit.”

“I owe him a chance to present his side of the situation before I make any final decisions, Joel.”

“The final decision has already been made, and you don't owe Victor Copeland a damn thing. Don't meet him for breakfast, Letty.”

She crossed her arms tightly beneath her breasts. “I'm going to hear what he has to say. It's only fair. It's why I came down here. If I were in his shoes, I'd want to talk, too.”

“I'll come with you.”

“I'm sorry, but I don't think that's such a good idea, Joel. I'm afraid your presence will make it difficult to get a clear picture of the situation.”

“You've already seen the spread sheets. The picture is clear enough, and you know it.”

Letty drew herself up proudly, wondering where all the sweet, hot passion of last night had gone. “I'm going to talk to him, Joel.”

The room was suddenly alive with a menacing silence.

“Suit yourself,
boss
.” Joel closed the door between the two rooms with a soft, dangerous thud.

Letty barely resisted the impulse to dash across the room, fling open the door, and hurl herself into his arms. She wanted to say she was sorry. She wanted to beg him to explain the messy situation in Echo Cove to her so that she could understand and side with him. She wanted to plead with him to hold her close and touch her the way he had last night.

Letty stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes grew round with shock as she realized just where her thoughts were heading. She was not going to let Joel Blackstone use sex to gain her cooperation. She was not that much of a twit.

If he thought for one minute that she was under his thumb now because of what had happened last night, he could damn well think again.

Letty leaped to her feet and stalked into the bathroom.

So what if it had been good? So what if it had been terrific? So what if she felt like a new woman this morning?

She had called the shots last night. She had given the orders. All Joel had done was follow instructions.

Who was she kidding?

Letty groaned and stepped under the full blast of the shower.

Forty minutes later Victor Copeland picked up his mug of coffee and studied Letty across the small table. The café was busy at this hour, but Copeland had told the waitress he wanted privacy, and she had hurried to provide it.

Nearly everyone in the restaurant had looked up and nodded in respectful greeting when Copeland lumbered heavily down the aisle between the rows of booths.

The effect was not lost on Letty. Victor Copeland was definitely an important man in Echo Cove.

“I reckon you've probably figured out by now that me and Joel Blackstone go back a long way,” Victor said gruffly.

“Yes, I got that impression.” Letty noticed that Victor's color did not appear any better in the morning light than it had last night. She wondered if he had recently been ill or if his obvious weight problem was the cause of his florid skin.

“I'll be the first to admit that our association ain't exactly been what you'd call real pleasant,” Victor allowed with a deep sigh. “He used to work for me in the yard, you know.”

“No, I didn't know.”

“Him and his pa, both.” Victor shook his head at some old memory. “Hank Blackstone worked for me his entire adult life, until he got drunk one night and drove off a cliff just outside of town.”

Letty absorbed that information. “Joel's father is dead?”

“Yeah. Been gone some fifteen years.”

“I see.”

“I liked Hank. Good man. Hard worker. Always gave an honest day's labor for an honest day's pay. Too bad his son didn't cotton to the same values. But young Joel, he was always looking for the fast way, you know what I mean?”

Letty thought about the ten years Joel had sweated to turn Thornquist Gear from a tiny storefront business into a major corporation. “No, not exactly. And I don't see that it matters. I'm not interested in your opinion of Joel.”

Victor gave her an injured look. “I just wanted you to understand the reason for all the bad blood between us. Old Hank was a good solid, honest-as-the-day-is-long kind of guy, but that boy of his was trouble right from the start. Just ask anyone who remembers him. And that's a lot of people in town, I guarantee you.”

“Mr. Copeland, I think we should confine our conversation to business, don't you?”

He shook his head slowly, small eyes almost disappearing as he narrowed them. “The thing is, you got to understand why me and him can't ever do business together. He's out for revenge, Letty. Pure and simple.”

“Revenge?”

“Yep. That's the way it looks to me. Knew it as soon as I saw him walk into the restaurant last night. Now that Charlie Thornquist is gone, Blackstone wants to use his position to try to screw me out of Copeland Marine Industries. What's more, it don't matter none to him that in wiping out my company he's going to wipe out this whole town.”

“You think that's what will happen if your boatyard closes?”

Victor eyed her speculatively, obviously sensing a weak point. “I know so. Hell, Echo Cove wouldn't even exist without Copeland Marine, and that's a fact. Just ask anyone. Whole damn town will go down the tubes if the Copeland boatyard closes.”

Letty had been afraid of that. She took a swallow of the bad coffee. A few weeks ago she would have said the brew tasted fine. But today she found it weak and totally lacking in character. She had apparently become addicted to Seattle-style coffee.

“Maybe you'd better tell me just why Joel wants to destroy your company,” Letty suggested after a moment.