Double Dealing (21 page)

Sitting in front of a dying fire, a glass of Samantha’s excellent
brandy near at hand, Gabriel settled into a huge, old, overstuffed chair and
began taking a serious look at what he had found.

Samantha Maitland was one surprise after another.

Loyalty. Nerve. “I’d trust her with my life,” Eric had concluded,
outlining his sister’s redeeming characteristics.

He’d forgotten to mention one other aspect of Samantha’s personality,
Gabriel decided an hour and a half later as he tossed aside the last of the
printouts in disgust. She was definitely a little soft in the brain.

Because unless he was totally misreading the situation, it
looked very much as if Eric was engaged in faking a whole set of Thorndyke
industries financial data. And he’d called on Samantha to help him.

Gabriel gazed deeply into the embers of the fire, his mind
pulling together all the facts and figures he’d just been through. What was
Eric up to? Sabotaging the family firm? Stealing from it? Doctoring its
computer files of financial data? Or was he preparing to steal from another
firm’s computer files?

What the hell was going on?

But that question, he freely admitted, didn’t bother him
nearly as much as the fact that Eric had involved Samantha. He’d come scurrying
up here to Seattle to drag Samantha into whatever scam he had going.

And because somewhere along the line in her crazy family
history Samantha had decided she owed her half brother her loyalty, she had let
herself get mixed up in God knew what for his sake.

Gabriel thought about that kind of loyalty. Eric had claimed
he’d trust his sister with his life. The embers glowed on the hearth for a few
more minutes as Gabriel followed the path of his own logic to its ultimate conclusion.

He wanted that kind of loyalty for himself.

With an unfathomable hunger, Gabriel realized abruptly that
he longed to possess Samantha’s loyalty. He wanted to be able to say he could
trust her with his life, his fortune, his honor.

His large, competent hand curled into a fist as it rested on
the tattered arm of the chair. In return for those invaluable gifts he was
prepared to protect her. He would keep her safely out of the clutches of men like
William Oakes or Eric Thorndyke. Her first loyalty would he with Gabriel
Sinclair. After that fact was established in her head, she would no longer be
vulnerable to others.

The wave of possessiveness and masculine hunger rolled over
him in a pounding fury, leaving behind a cold determination that was shocking
in its intensity. He had known he wanted Samantha, had realized he wanted to
guard her from the dangers her own impulsive nature would lead her into, but he
hadn’t admitted until now just how completely he wanted to claim her.

He wanted to be able to sit at the dinner table and casually
announce with absolute conviction that Samantha owed her loyalty first and
foremost to him, Gabriel Sinclair. Then he would tell mooching half brothers
like Eric Thorndyke to get lost. Samantha was no longer vulnerable to men who
would take advantage of her.

Loyalty. Nerve. Trust. He’d married once without taking any
of those qualities into consideration. He’d married for other kinds of reasons
entirely. Thoughts of Glenna stirred up a few ashes in his mind now, but no glowing
embers. It was difficult to feel any warmth for a woman who’d demonstrated no
bonds of courage or trust.

What Glenna had going for her had seemed enough at the time.
She was a beauty. Gabriel remembered the sight of her undressing for bed, her
long black hair falling down the length of her slender back as she brushed it
in front of the mirror. Green eyes that reminded him of a cat had watched him
in the mirror, reflecting Glenna’s knowledge of what her naked image did to
him.

Yes, they reflected her awareness of her own sensual beauty,
but those eyes had never mirrored a passion of her own; merely a pleased
satisfaction at the knowledge of her power. Gabriel allowed himself to
luxuriate in the memory of the undisguised desire and need which had blazed in
Samantha’s eyes that night in California. His body grew warm just at the
thought.

Glenna’s charms were only skin deep. Gabriel had soon grown
frustrated and then bored with the games she played in bed. After a while her
beauty had no longer commanded his body’s reaction. By the time the political
and social disaster had engulfed his father, there had been little left of the
marriage to Glenna. She had taken quick action to avoid being caught up in the widening
ripples of the Sinclair family financial calamity and ensuing social
humiliation. Weston Sinclair’s political career had been destroyed. Glenna had
felt no loyalty toward Gabriel who, by the mere fact that he was Weston
Sinclair’s son, had been involved in his father’s scandal. She had left town
the day the first headlines had hit the newspapers and had filed for divorce
from the sanctuary of her parents’ Boston home. Gabriel had been too busy
trying to deal with disaster to bother fighting for a woman who owed her
loyalty to no one but herself.

The factor which had always been missing in his relationships
with women, he realized, was commitment. He supposed he couldn’t really blame a
woman for not wanting to commit herself completely to a man, especially a man
such as himself. His mouth tightened. But that didn’t lessen the fact that he
wanted that kind of commitment from Samantha. He was proud enough, egotistical
enough, uncompromising enough, to go after it.

She had only whetted his appetite with their night of lovemaking.
Now he ached for a far more thorough commitment. He wanted her to give herself
completely, no strings attached.

Which, when you thought about it, was one hell of an unlikely
possibility, given the fact that Samantha Maitland had been raised to be an
independent woman who didn’t need a man. How was he supposed to go about asking
this creature of nerve and dash and energy to yield herself to a man who
offered a plodding sort of protection in return?

He got the distinct impression that Samantha wasn’t even
interested in being protected. She was far too accustomed to standing on her
own two feet. She’d fight any man who tried to tell her she needed him.

With a decisive surge of resolute energy, Gabriel thrust
aside the printouts and got to his feet. Out of habitual caution he checked the
screen on the fireplace, closing it properly, and then he walked through the living
room, turning out lights in order.

When he reached the staircase, he started up the steps with
a firm, steady pace that reflected his own inner decision. He knew he had a
battle on his hands taming Samantha on an intellectual level, but his body remembered
all too well that he had already gained her physical surrender. He could at
least give himself the satisfaction of having that much again. His pulse began to
pound heavily as he contemplated Samantha’s room at the top of the stairs.

In the darkness Samantha lay very still, listening to the
sound of Gabriel’s footsteps on the staircase. For an hour and a half now she
had been shifting restlessly in bed, her tension too great to allow for sleep.
She should have been exhausted after being up most of the previous night. She
was exhausted.

But the thought of Gabriel Sinclair’s presence in her home
was more than enough to keep her awake. He wanted her. She had seen it in his
eyes the moment she had opened the door, had felt her own reaction to the desire
in him.

It was crazy, idiotic, to lie here wondering if he would try
her door or go on down the hall to his own room. What was the matter with her?
She had barely regained some small edge of control in their precariously balanced
relationship. How incredibly foolish it was to even think about succumbing once
again to the undeniable attraction which had flared between them.

Damn it, she thought, sitting up to pound the pillow into a
more comfortable shape; everything was getting so complicated. What would Vera
say if she saw the emotional chaos her daughter was in because of a man?

That thought hardened Samantha’s resolve. She was a fully
adult woman, in charge of her life and of her revenge. Furthermore, she had her
hands full at the moment helping Eric out of his mess. She had no business
lying anxiously awake like some primitive woman a cave awaiting the arrival of
the male animal who owned her.

That image was ludicrous enough and sufficiently mortifying
to restore her tension-distorted perspective. Cave woman, indeed! Samantha
smiled grimly to herself and flopped back down on the abused pillow.

At precisely that instant Gabriel’s steady footsteps in the
hall came to a halt, and Samantha’s door opened.

Samantha lay blinking in the shaft of light which angled
across her bed and silently cursed old houses with bedroom doors which no
longer locked because the keys had been lost. She didn’t dare move. The atavistic
reaction which causes a hunted creature to freeze at the approach of the
predator seemed to have a hold on her muscles.

Gabriel stood filling the doorway, his face in impenetrable shadow.
His solid physical presence overwhelmed her senses, and Samantha remembered the
way she had once let herself cling to him.

“Gabriel?” she finally managed faintly, gathering the courage
to try and break the ancient spell with a prosaic question. “What do you want?”

He moved into the room and shut the door behind him, leaving
them both in deep shadow. “Some answers,” he replied, coming slowly, inevitably
toward the bed. “But most of the questions can wait until morning.”

She looked up at him, trying to see his expression. He was a
dark angel standing there beside her bed, half threat, half promise. “If the
questions can wait,” she dared softly, her blood racing in her veins, “then why
are you here now?”

“The questions can wait, but I can’t,” he said simply. Then
he calmly sat down on the edge of the bed and began taking off his immaculately
polished shoes.

The very mundane, very routine action finally jarred Samantha
out of her near-trance. “Gabriel!” she hissed, levering herself up on one elbow
and clutching the sheet to her throat.

“I told you. I can’t wait.” He tugged of one shoe and began
unlacing the other.

“Damn it!” she snapped. “You can’t just walk into my bedroom
and start undressing as if we’ve been married forty years. I’ll yell for Eric
if you don’t behave yourself We’re business partners, Gabriel Sinclair. Not
lovers!”

“We were lovers before we finalized the business side of
this arrangement,” he drawled gently, setting the shoes very neatly to one
side. He began unbuttoning his shirt. “As far as I’m concerned, nothing has changed
with the first part of that arrangement.” He hung the shirt carefully on the
bedpost of the old
fourposter
bed, standing up to
take off his slacks. “I want you, Samantha. And I’ve been remembering the way you
wanted me. I can’t get the thought of it out of my head.”

“Gabriel, I mean it. I’ll call Eric.”

“You don’t need Eric to protect you anymore, honey. You’ve
got me. I’ll take care of you.” He stepped out of the slacks and folded them
precisely across a nearby chair. “I know you don’t think you need me as
anything except a silent partner, but I can make your body need me.” With one
lean fingertip he flipped a tendril of hair from her shoulder. “I’m a patient
man. I can wait for all of it.”

Samantha’s eyes widened as he stood before her, unselfconscious,
magnificently naked. Why did it have to be this man? After three years of wary
aloofness toward all males, why did all her defenses collapse at his feet? She
did feel like the primordial cave woman of her imagination. She had to break
the hold he had on her senses before it was too late.

“No, Gabriel, I won’t let you do this to me!” She flung the
sheet aside, scrambling toward the far edge of the bed in a flurry of tangled
nightgown and disarrayed hair. She wasn’t fleeing from a pleasant physical
attraction. She was running from the chaotic depths of a passion which
mystified her. Better to stay clear of it rather than risk being engulfed again
as she had been that first time.

The bed behind her gave beneath Gabriel’s weight. Just as
she reached the unpromising safety of the opposite edge, his hand closed in a
huge, gentle manacle around her wrist.

Again, as she had that night on the beach, Samantha had the
impression she had been chained to granite. A sense of inevitability overloaded
her normal thought channels, blocking out coherent protest or angry diatribe.

“Samantha, I need you. I’m going to make love to you tonight
because on this level, at least, you belong to me. Don’t fight me, honey.
Please don’t fight me!”

He yanked her quite gently down onto her back. She sprawled
on the sheet beneath him, violently aware of the extent of his arousal. He was
a man of such powerful, uncompromising passion, she thought dazedly. And he had
the power to tap an answering level of passion in her. Samantha stopped
struggling, not only because it was useless against his rocklike strength but
because she had known tonight was going to be like this the moment she had opened
the door to him this afternoon.

Carefully he pinned her wrists on either side of her head,
lowering himself across her body until his chest crushed her small, soft
breasts. She saw the dark glitter of intent in his eyes, and then his mouth was
on hers. The groan of aroused hunger which emanated from deep in his throat
caught at her senses.

The musk of his body filled her senses as Samantha surrendered
her lips. It was a heady, tantalizing scent, every bit as primitive as the
sexual need in him. Against her thigh she could feel the unyielding pressure of
his hardening body. His tongue thrust forcefully into her mouth, establishing a
rhythm that presaged the cadence of another kind of penetration.