Ulterior Motives (24 page)

They were silent for most of the rest of the drive, each lost in thought. As they neared Cincinnati, Ross said, “Would it be entering forbidden territory to ask what future you would like for yourself at Babel?”

“I don’t mind. I like running the school. I’d like to be promoted so I could operate with less of a stranglehold. Eventually I’d like to go to a bigger school with more challenges and a more diversified clientele. Sometimes I think I’d like to have one of the administrative jobs, because I think I could do a better job than the people doing it now. But I like my day-to-day dealings with people, so I think I’m probably happiest as a school director.”

“Hmm,” Ross said absently, and for once Shelley wondered whether he’d been listening to her. They were both silent again until they reached her apartment.

She parked the car near her building. Ross pulled her overnight bag out of the car and carried it up to her apartment for her. She made a pot of coffee and offered him some.

“Let’s have it on the balcony,” he suggested.

It was a small balcony, but the view was lovely. Shelley had once fantasized about sipping coffee out there on a Sunday afternoon with an exciting man. She wondered whether Ross knew. How like him to make her fantasies spring to life.

After a pleasant interlude on the balcony, he stood up. He met her questioning eyes. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a lot of phone calls to make.”

“You can use my phone,” she offered, reluctant to see him leave.

“Business calls, Shelley.”

“Oh. I see.” She stood up.

“But it won’t take more than a few hours. Why don’t you take a long hot bath...”

“Uh-huh,” she said, her interest perking.

“And get into that sexy little black dress I bought for you...”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I’ll be by at about eight o’clock to show you what I had in mind when I talked you into getting it.”

“I’ll be ready, willing, and waiting,” she murmured against his lips as his strong hands massaged her back. She burrowed against him, loving the hard feel of his body, the musky smell of his skin, the way his smooth voice vibrated deep inside his chest.

It was only after he had left that she wondered what business he was making on a Sunday afternoon. Something important was brewing. She tried to quell the sense of dread rising inside her. It was silly, since it had no basis in fact. But it wouldn’t go away.

Ross showed up at eight o’clock, looking elegant and handsome in his evening attire. His comments about her appearance made her insides melt, and she suggested they just stay home and explore his theories. He grinned wickedly and said anticipation would create the necessary conditions for their experiment later this evening. Besides, he added, she would hospitalize him if she kept making so many demands on him. She reminded him in graphic detail just how unfair that accusation was.

He took her to a special performance given by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra for a charity that night. Afterwards they ate a late dinner at an elegant restaurant.

“I’m getting so spoiled,” she confessed. “Before I knew you, men usually just took me out for pizza and a movie.”

“Before I knew you, no one forced me to do laundry or eat reheated Chinese carry-outs.”

“It’s been a broadening relationship for both of us.”

She talked him into taking her back to his hotel suite. She was surprised by his acquiescence, since he had always been adamant about preferring her apartment. She’d insisted that they were too well dressed to end the evening in her cluttered little apartment, and he had good-naturedly agreed.

His hotel room was as spacious and luxurious as she had expected, based on the hotel’s reputation. Ross dimmed the lights and swept her up in his arms, telling her the suite wasn’t what he had brought her here to admire. He carried her to the bed, and there she discovered all the potential he had seen in her little black dress when he bought it.

With slow-burning sensuality he pulled the straps down her shoulders and hiked the skirt up around her waist. Later, when she was moaning and tearing at his clothes, he unzipped the dress and pulled down her silky panties.

Shelley woke up hours later, disoriented at first, since she was lying diagonally across a strange bed in a strange room. She recognized the weight on her stomach as Ross’ head. One heavy arm was slung across her legs, and he lay naked above the covers, sleeping peacefully after the turmoil of their passion. The uncomfortable stricture around her middle was her black silk dress, now bunched around her waist in a thick, wrinkled band.

She closed her eyes, astonished at how wild he had made her, at how she had begged and demanded and devoured. She took a deep breath, straining against the weight of Ross’ head and the silk band around her waist. Tonight had been another fantasy—one of his, since her imagination had never before conjured up some of the things they’d done together in this bed. Like all the moments she had known with him, however, it was too earthy, too real, for fantasy. It was love.

The thought surprised her at first, then blossomed into certainty. She glanced down at his sleeping face, his features pressed trustingly against her body. He was a magnificent lover and a fascinating man, true, but she could never have abandoned herself to him the way she had done tonight if she hadn’t been in love with him.

She smiled wryly. In love with Ross Tanner. She should have realized. She had taken so many risks to be with him, had demanded so much of him, and offered so much in return, more than she had ever offered to another human being. She was pressured every moment at work and enthralled by every moment in Ross’ company, so she hadn’t even stopped the whirlwind long enough to realize why she was doing all this.

Of course, this complicated matters. But for now all she could do was bask in the warm knowledge that she had found the man she was meant to love and that she was lying in his arms the moment she realized it. She stroked his dark hair, lightly so that she wouldn’t disturb his sleep, and dwelt on all the wonderful, fascinating, exasperating qualities that made up the man she loved.

And Ross? Did he love her? she wondered suddenly. He adored her; he had said as much. And she knew instinctively that he was more honest with her than he had been with anyone else in his life. But he was a complicated man, and she didn’t know how deep his feelings for her ran. She also didn’t know what love meant to him and what he would want out of it.

His story about his time in Provence had told her one thing: he wasn’t the settling-down type. He’d recognized the pleasures of a settled existence and had made a good effort at it, but he’d become restless and dissatisfied within six months. He had returned to his globe-hopping life at Elite, the job to which he said he was best suited. Where did a woman fit into that?

He wanted to install her at Elite. Maybe in his mind that was as close to marrying her as he could come. Or maybe he just figured his infatuation for her would wear off when it was time for him to move on. Always one for the direct approach, Shelley nevertheless didn’t think she could ask him a straight question about all this. She could be too hurt by the wrong answers.

She sighed, slowly returning to reality. She was in love with the man from Elite, but she was still the director of Babel. She was a woman of commitments, and despite her feelings, her only definite commitment was still to her job.

“Oh, my God,” she said suddenly, realizing that the sky was starting to lighten. Her job! She couldn’t leave Ross’ hotel room and go to work in a little black silk dress. Especially not one in this condition. “Ross, wake up.”

“Hmm?” He grunted sleepily, and burrowed against her side.

“Wake up. You’ve got to take me home,” she insisted, struggling to sit up.

It took considerable determination and a little ruthlessness, but she got Ross awake enough to get dressed, help her straighten her dress, and drive her home. When they reached her apartment, she told him they could probably still grab another hour of sleep if he wanted to come upstairs.

“No thanks, honey,” he said groggily, running a hand over his unshaven face. “The day has already started in Europe, and I have a lot of calls to make there.”

As was their custom, they didn’t have any contact during the business day. Shelley wondered from time to time what Ross was up to with all these calls to Europe. Memories of their night together flashed through her mind at totally inappropriate moments, and she could feel her body stir. Her imagination was becoming awfully fertile. She was eager to tell him how special last night had been for her; at the time, she had fallen asleep immediately afterward in total exhaustion, and this morning she had nagged him to take her home. He was so tolerant, she thought fondly. She cherished her love for him like a delicious secret.

She would tell him she loved him, of course. She didn’t know when or how, but whether he loved her or not, he should know that someone thought so highly of him that she had fallen in love with him. It would be her gift to him, whatever happened. But for now it was her secret and her comfort.

That was just about her only comfort that Monday. An old and profitable client told Shelley that they had decided to meet with Elite before renewing their contract with Babel. She overheard another client, a woman, telling Francesca that she had met that Mr. Ross Tanner and he was such a charming man, and so handsome it could make a woman think twice about her marriage vows!

Shelley gritted her teeth, trying not to let a very understandable resentment spoil her inner happiness or her erotic memories of the night before. But why did he have to be so very, very good at this?

She sighed, knowing she wouldn’t respect him so much if he weren’t so good at his job. The she frowned. And could he respect her, when he was so much better at their profession than she? The thought troubled her, since she wanted his respect, had always wanted it. And though he had assured her a number of times that she had it, how could it continue if he wiped her out so easily?

Having wrestled with these thoughts all day, and having broken the news to Jerome about another regular client considering Elite, Shelley was feeling frustrated and tense by the time she met Ross in her apartment. His exuberance, his cheerful smile, his irrepressible good mood annoyed her unreasonably.

“I thought about last night all day today,” he told her, his voice low, his eyes intimate. He brushed his lips across hers, and her response to him was so immediate, so uncontrollable, that she felt alarmed by it. She pulled away, suddenly resenting the vulnerability he created in her.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No, I’m just tired.”

He grinned seductively. “I can believe that. After the way you—”

“Can we eat out?” she interrupted. She had a sudden feeling that talking about last night would make her cry.

“Sure,” he said, studying her, aware that she was shutting him out. Had something gone wrong at work? He knew better than to ask.

Their time together usually flew by, yet tonight dinner at Shelley’s favorite Chinese restaurant that evening seemed to drag by. Shelley picked at her food, which was unusual for her. Ross kept trying to draw her into conversation, but she didn’t respond with her usual enthusiasm. He grew increasingly concerned, unwilling to let her bear her trouble alone, whatever it was.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she snapped at him when he prodded her. His eyes widened. She was sometimes impatient with him, but never curt. She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“Did something happen at work? Is that it?”

She shrugged. It was work, and it was him. She loved and respected him, and she didn’t know whether he could respect her if she kept losing out to him. She didn’t know whether he could love her at all. She didn’t know how long he’d be around, or whether he even thought about such things. Since they had agreed not to talk about a very important area of their lives, they had left a lot of important things unsaid, despite their intimacy.

She was in love with him, and that meant this carefully defined relationship with its uncertain future wasn’t enough. Couldn’t he see that? she thought with rising irritation.

They drove back to her apartment in tense silence. There had never been tension between them before, she thought sadly. She knew it was her fault, and she was miserably aware that she couldn’t help it. She was tearing herself apart inside.

Ross glanced at her in the dark car. He couldn’t stand the doubts nagging at him. He felt all the hurt and despair of a rejected lover. He’d have to be a fool not to realize that she had maneuvered him into a restaurant this evening specifically to avoid being alone with him. And the restless, unhappy look in her eyes and the tired slump of her shoulders tore at his heart.

They had been so close last night, so completely involved in each other, that their passion had reached a new level, a new depth. A new kind of trust and openness had blossomed between them, making their experience together richer than anything that had gone before. Inflamed by their ardor, plundering the depths of her body, giving her all the dark passion and hidden vulnerability that was inside, he found that she became, somewhere in the midst of her sighs and cries and demands, the answer to every longing he’d ever known.

He couldn’t give her up, he thought with fierce determination, and he wouldn’t let her slip away. In that hotel room in Kentucky this weekend, he’d discovered why all other hotel rooms had always seemed so lonely. The answer was obvious: Shelley wasn’t in them. It was also the reason his lovely farmhouse in Provence had seemed barren, despite the care he’d put into it.