Authors: Janet Dailey
Tamara started to say something and forgot
completely what it was. She stared into her coffee cup, empty now. “It’s very difficult to make intelligent conversation when you’re touching me like that,” she informed him with stiff candor.
He chuckled softly and let his fingers tighten on her ribs. “You surely don’t believe that I’m only interested in your mind,” Bick chided in deliberate provocation. “How do you think I feel? It’s impossible to sit beside you and
not
touch you. In fact, it’s difficult to sit here and not do more than that, Tamara.”
A quiver of pure pleasure went through her at the huskily disturbed way he spoke her name. When she turned to look at him, he dragged his gaze from her lips. She was captured by the virile, passionate look in his eyes and swayed toward him. His head bent a fraction of an inch.
“Your check, sir,” came the discreet murmur of the waiter.
Bick moved abruptly away, removing his hand and swearing under his breath. He scrawled his signature across the bottom of the tab and thrust it to the waiter. Then his gaze stabbed Tamara.
“Shall we get out of here?” he suggested with barely concealed impatience.
“Yes.” After the embarrassing reminder that they were in a public place, Tamara had stolen a glance at her watch. It was already well past one o’clock, which meant she had considerably extended her lunch hour.
Pushing the table away from them, Bick rose first and helped Tamara out from behind the table. As he guided her out of the restaurant, his
hand remained firmly clamped on the side of her ribs so that she was constantly being brushed against his length. He even maneuvered the door so they could walk through it together, as if he was determined not to let her out of his reach for a second.
Tamara sensed a coiled tension about him that she could appreciate. Her own nerves seemed to be wound as tightly as a spring. He walked her briskly to his car, helped her into the passenger seat, slammed the door, and walked around to climb in on the driver’s side.
Once inside, Bick reached for her and hauled her unceremoniously into his arms. His mouth took possession of her lips and banished all her defenses, demanding that her mouth open to the invasion of his. He strained to hold her closer while her hands slipped inside his jacket to seek the support of his hard body. Nerve centers exploded under the probing, penetrating fire of his kiss. Tamara was dazed by the mad excitement pounding through her veins when Bick finally brought a halt to the relentless kiss and trailed his mouth across her cheek to her neck and ear.
“You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to do that ever since I walked into your office this morning.” The ragged edge to his voice reassured Tamara that she wasn’t the only one aroused to the point of pain.
When she opened her eyes, she was blinded by the glare of the sun bouncing off the polished hood of the car. It returned some of her sanity and her hands pushed against his chest in mute
resistance to his teeth nibbling at her sensitive skin. He lifted his head for an instant to let his eyes devour her face.
“My house isn’t far from here. Shall we go there?” As he asked the question, his firm lips moved to tease the corners of her mouth, making them tremble for his possession.
Tamara breathed an affirmative answer against the intoxicating warmth of his mouth before a cold splash of responsibility cooled her ardor. “No.” She took back her initial agreement and pulled away from him. “No, I have to get back to the office.” How could she have forgotten that Adam was doing the audit at this very second? “And … and you undoubtedly have appointments this afternoon.”
“So speaks the sensible, professional Miss James,” he taunted with malicious sarcasm as his fingers bit into her neck. “Who the hell cares? I’m the boss. I’m giving us the day off. Appointments and work be damned.”
She stiffened at his veiled insult. “That isn’t fair, Bick.”
His fingers relaxed and slipped away as he took a deep breath and raked a hand through the copper lights glinting in his dark hair. “No, it wasn’t. And you are right. It’s business before pleasure.” The grudging admission was low and taut. “Your kisses don’t exactly arouse the sensible side of a man’s nature.”
“Neither do yours,” Tamara retorted, still feeling defensive.
“Really? You turned it off pretty easily,” Bick accused.
She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. “Believe what you like,” she said curtly, and squared her shoulders against the seat to stare straight ahead.
His hard gaze bored into her for several seconds before he turned the ignition key to start the motor. It was a heavy, oppressive silence that dominated the atmosphere on the incredibly long ride to the office. Tamara felt crushed by it, but didn’t know how to ease its weight.
When Bick braked the car to a stop in front of the building, her hand unerringly found the door handle. Before she could slide out of the car, his fingers were gripping her elbow.
“I’m sorry.” Bick ground out the words as if he’d never said them before. Tamara remained poised on the edge of the seat, the door open, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “I am sorry!” he repeated angrily. “Is it so wrong that I wanted to be with you, that I wanted to spend an entire afternoon with you? I lashed out at you in frustration. That was wrong and unfair. And I admit it. And I’m sorry.” He spelled it all out in concise, angry words. “Will you accept that?”
Tamara sensed it was the closest he had ever come to humbling himself. It soothed the hurt he had inflicted. She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “Yes.”
With a groan, he leaned across the seat to press a hard kiss on her lips. Before it could develop into something deeper, Bick straightened. “You’d better go before I decide to forget to be sensible.”
That desirous light in his green eyes had her spirits soaring into the clouds as she stepped from the car and hurried into the building. If Bick wanted her that much, if he cared that much, then surely everything would work out better than she could ever hope.
This feeling of confidence made it hard for Tamara to be unduly concerned about the continuing audit that afternoon. She tried to keep her feet on the ground, but she kept floating off. The only question mark in her mind was when she would see Bick again.
That was answered when she left the office at quitting time. As she turned to walk to the bus stop, a car pulled up to the curb. Tamara needed only one glance to recognize the car and the driver. She slid into the passenger seat, her heart skipping beats at the way Bick automatically leaned over to give her a quick kiss of greeting. Then he was turning the car into the traffic flow.
“Where would you like to go tonight?” He gave a sidelong look that was guaranteed to make her bones melt.
But it was his question that made Tamara swallow in apprehension because she knew what her answer had to be. “I’d like to go out to dinner with you, but I have to go home.”
“Are we going to go through this again?” Bick sighed in irritation.
“I’m sorry, but I do,” she insisted quietly.
Bick didn’t argue as he concentrated his attention on the rush hour traffic, but Tamara knew the discussion wasn’t over. He was waiting until
he could devote all of his energies to changing her mind. She only wished she could let him.
In front of her house, he stopped the car and turned in the seat to face her, draping one arm over the steering wheel. “All right. Now I want you to explain why you can’t come out with me tonight.” His mouth was compressed into a thin line that said her explanation had better be a good one.
“In the first place, my mother isn’t well and can’t be left alone for an entire evening. Plus, I earn extra money by typing in the evenings and I have some legal contracts to do for an attorney who needs them by tomorrow morning. So, you see, I honestly can’t go out with you,” she reasoned and met his searching gaze.
“All right.” He conceded that her argument was sound. “If you can’t have dinner with me, then I’ll have dinner with you.”
His suggestion sorely tempted her, but Tamara breathed in deeply and shook her head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said with a wistful smile of regret.
“Why?” Bick demanded. “Who else is in the house? Do you have a live-in lover that you don’t want me to meet?”
The gleam of jealousy in his green eyes kept the question from stinging. “No. There isn’t anyone … any man living with me.”
“Has anyone made an offer recently?” A warmth had entered both his voice and his look.
“Not recently,” she admitted on a breathless note.
“Not until now,” he corrected.
His mouth began a slow descent toward hers and Tamara moved to meet it. Her hands eased their way around his neck to link up and curl into the sensual crispness of the hair at the back of his neck. The silk material of her dress allowed his hands to glide over her ribs and lift her with a twisting motion until the upper half of her body was molded to his.
The long, sensuous kiss made her feel warm and weightless in his arms. His hands were spreading and shaping, flattening her breasts against his chest, the buttons of his shirt digging into her tender skin. When his mouth left hers, she tipped her head back to permit his easy exploration of her throat and the hollow below her ear. Exquisite shivers of joy danced over her skin, drawing an unconscious sigh from her lips.
Bick raised his head, satisfaction and desire flaring his nostrils before his mouth returned to seductively cover hers. Shifting, he laid her across his lap, cradling her head on his arm and shoulder. A loving languor stole over Tamara. One hand slipped from his neck to curve inside his open jacket. She could feel the heat of his hard flesh burning through the material of his shirt and the drumbeat of his heart.
The male hand that had been cradling her hipbone left it to unbutton his shirt and guide her hand inside. Her heart thudded wildly against her ribs as her fingers came in contact with the living bronze skin of his chest. A
springing vee of hair tickled the palm of her hand, stimulating another moan from her throat, which his mouth muffled and absorbed.
Reduced to a state of helpless desire, Tamara felt a shameless pleasure when his hand cupped a breast, molding it into his palm and exploring its slopes and peak through the material of her dress. Her own caressing hand wandered across the hard, flat muscles of his stomach and drew a violent shudder from Bick. Forsaking her lips, his mouth moved to her ear, his tongue darting out to start violent tremors between the love nips of his teeth on her earlobe.
“My God, Tamara,” he breathed against her skin, speaking with a labored effort. “I can think of a lot more satisfactory place to make love to you than the front seat of the car in broad daylight.”
“Yes.” There was an aching throb in her voice. “The steering wheel …”
“The steering wheel, the zipper on your dress—why couldn’t you have worn something that buttoned down the front?” Bick criticized with mock gruffness and punished her with a sweetly hard kiss.
His hand ended its exploration of her breast, gliding across her stomach to her hip to leisurely knead the soft roundness of her cheek bottom. The skirt of her dress gradually worked its way past her knee to display the beginning curve of her thigh.
Tamara was past the point of resisting anything. It came as a surprise when Bick abruptly
broke off the embrace and sat her up in the passenger seat. His hands clasped the steering wheel at the top curve as he lowered his head to conceal it between his arms. Dazed, she watched the deep, shuddering breaths he took to gain control of himself.
“Invite me into the house, Tamara,” he ordered thickly. “We’ll have dinner. You can do your typing—”
“I would never get past the first ‘Whereas the party of the first part,’” she laughed softly at his suggestion. “You would be too much of a distraction, Bick.”
“Then don’t do the typing.” He lifted his head to send her a hotly disturbed look of sheer passion.
“I … can’t. I promised Mr. Symington I’d have it done for him and … I need the extra money.” Tamara tried to explain.
“Call this Mr. Symington and tell him to find someone else.” He dismissed that argument. “If it’s the money … how much would you make? Whatever it is, I’ll double it.”
Tamara recoiled as if he had slapped her. Bick slammed his fist against the steering wheel and cursed savagely. He could have killed himself for making such a blundering remark.
“Tamara, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I was only trying to tell you that I’d give you the money if you needed it. I’m not poor.” He glanced at her wary expression, proud and apprehensive. “No matter what I say you are going to think I’m trying to buy you, aren’t you?”
She hesitated. “No … not if that isn’t what you meant.”
“It isn’t.” He reached to caress her cheek with the back of his fingers, stroking its curve to the line of her jaw. Her lashes fluttered down. “I know what I went through last night all alone. I don’t know if I can take it tonight.”
“Bick … there is something I have to tell you,” she began.
“No.” He pressed his hand against her mouth, restraining the rage that suddenly burgeoned inside him. “I don’t want to hear any confessions. I know it’s supposed to be good for the soul, but it would play hell with my peace of mind. I know I won’t be the first man who has made love to you. I can accept that. But spare me the details. I don’t want to know who or when or why!”
She pulled his hand away from her mouth and leaned forward, an earnest frown tracing lines in her forehead. “But I—”
“Do you want proof?” Bick interrupted angrily. “All right, I’ll give you proof. Have your dinner and do your typing. I won’t interfere because I won’t be around. I’ll be in my own home going quietly out of my mind. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But—”
He sighed and smiled at her wearily. “Then please get out of the car before I change my mind.”
She opened the door and hesitated. “Will I sound terribly shameless if I ask whether I’ll see you tomorrow?” A smile played with her lips,
lips that Bick would have preferred to have against his own.