Forbidden Dreams (15 page)

The butler—Jase had been more than just a little taken aback to learn that the Landry family had a real butler—gave a little bow. “Miss Landry, your grandmother and Mr. Graves have just arrived. You asked to be informed.”

“Thank you, Whittier,” Shell said, and the man bowed again and disappeared.

Shell looked at Jase, her eyes wide with worry and anxiety.

“Sweetheart …” He wished he had never involved her in this. He hated what it was doing to her, and he abandoned his plan of having her introduce him to Sterling. “Listen. I’ve been thinking. Your grandmother doesn’t have to know you and I are … connected in any way. I’ll simply stay away from you. She won’t notice another strange face in this mob, and as soon as Sterling has a drink, I’ll find a way to get the glass, then I’ll leave unobtrusively. There’s no reason for you to be involved.”

“I have to be involved.” Her gaze, her voice, were resolute. “For one thing, I haven’t shown you yet where I stashed your equipment. And if you aren’t wrong, then Grandma’s going to need me.”

She faltered for just a moment. “Oh, Lord, Jase, I hope you are wrong! I don’t want to see my grandmother hurt.”

Briefly cupping her cheek, he offered what comfort he could in such a public setting. “I know. And maybe I am wrong.”

He wasn’t. The moment he saw Sterling Graves, his head thrown back, laughing as he clapped Elwin on the shoulder, Jase knew he had his man. He didn’t need fingerprints to satisfy him. He would get them though, if only to satisfy Shell. And her grandmother.

The introductions went smoothly enough, except for one touchy moment when Sterling gave him a sharper look than was required. Jase had known all along Sterling might say something like “Have we met?” or “I seem to know your face.” It wouldn’t have surprised Jase, nor would it have fazed him. He had his reply ready. Apart from that momentary narrowing of his eyes, though, Sterling said nothing.

Maybe Sterling was like Shell, Jase thought, and didn’t read the daily newspapers.

“Got it,” he said to Shell half an hour later. He was carrying Sterling’s glass gingerly, trying to look casual, as if he were on the way to the bar for a refill.

“All right,” she said. She slipped her arm through his and led him through the throng. “In here.” They had slipped out of the main reception area and into a corridor, and she opened a heavy door, gesturing him in.

They passed through a library with walls of books that looked as if they had been read often over the years, but she didn’t stop there. She led him past a fireplace with logs laid ready for lighting, past several leather sofas and chairs, to a locked door.

“This is Dad’s office,” she said as she unlocked and opened the door. “You can use that table for whatever you have to do, and there’s the fax machine you said you’d need.” She opened the bottom drawer of an oak filing cabinet. “I stored the things you asked me to smuggle in, in here.”

Then, as if she couldn’t bear to watch him, she spun on the spike heel of a gold sandal and strode to an embrasured window, well outside the pool of light from the one lamp she’d turned on for him. When he was done, he switched off the lamp and came up behind her. She was watching a parade of brightly decorated boats glide by along the shore of Point Gray.

“Carol ships,” she said as he slid his arms around her waist, drawing her back against his chest. “This is what I wanted to show you earlier. It’s too bright in the conservatory to do them justice. “Look, Jase. Aren’t they beautiful?”

“Very beautiful,” he said. The boats came in a steady stream, in every size from cruise ships to runabouts, and each one celebrated Christmas. There were sailboats with Santa’s sleigh and reindeer dancing up through the rigging, power boats with fully adorned trees on their cabin roofs, and others merely outlined in bright colored lights.

“I love to see them.” Shell’s voice wobbled, but she went on. “If we were outside, we could hear the music they broadcast. Thousands of people line the shores of False Creek, English Bay, and Burrard Inlet to see and hear the ships every year, regardless of the weather. They sail most weekends through December. People pay to ride on the bigger boats, have dinner parties aboard, while others are small family groups, even individuals who just want to be part of the scene. They—” Her voice cracked, breaking on a sob, and she spun around and dug her fingers into his biceps. “Dammit, Jase, how long will we have to wait?”

He hugged her, rocking her from side to side. “It shouldn’t be much longer.”

She let out a ragged sigh, and he tucked her head under his chin, wishing she didn’t have to go through this agony of waiting. He wished he didn’t have to go through the agony of holding her and not obeying his instincts, but she wouldn’t want that from him right now. All she wanted from him was reassurance that her grandmother’s life was not about to be shattered, and that was something he couldn’t give her.

“Jase …” She lifted her head and looked up at him. After a moment’s hesitation she slid her hands up around the back of his neck, pulled his head down, and kissed him. With a shudder of need he wrapped her in a deep embrace and parted her lips with his tongue.

When he lifted his head, moments later, she let out a tremulous sigh and traced the outline of his mouth with one fingertip. He caught it, sucked on it, and felt her shiver. “When you kiss me,” she whispered, “I forget everything. That’s one talent of yours I’m beginning to know quite well.”

He smiled. Linking his hands at the small of her back, he leaned against a mullion and drew her in between his legs. “Too well?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think kissing is something that can be overdone.”

“Well, certainly not when you and I are doing it,” he murmured, and took her lips again, thrusting deep with his tongue, dipping and stroking and teasing until she moaned and went heavy in his arms, as if she wanted to lie down. He trailed his mouth across her face, down her neck, over her shoulders, then back to her lips. She rose up on tiptoe, straining against him, pressing close, moving in a rhythm that pounded through him like heavy, throbbing music.

“Oh, Lord, sweetheart, stop,” he said, tearing his mouth away and holding her back from him.

“Stop? Why?” She slid a hand inside his jacket and placed it unerringly over his heart. Her fingers toyed with his hard nipple, rotating it; then she raked over it with a thumbnail. “I like to feel you go as wild as you make me.”

He liked it too. “But if we don’t cut this out, things are going to escalate, and …”

“And …?” She nipped the skin of his neck with her teeth, then kissed away the sting.

He groaned. “And I’m going to give in to temptation and do… this.” He unzipped her dress, folded it down, and stroked his tongue over one of her nipples.

“Ahhh!” It was a cry of pure ecstasy as she arched to his mouth. “Jase!” Her hips rocked against him as he tugged, sucking the nipple deep into his mouth. He took her hand and placed it over his hardness, and after a moment’s hesitation she curled her fingers around him while he licked and sucked her other nipple.

Her hand tightened, moving in an erotic rhythm, and it was his turn to shudder and whisper her name. He backed up to a leather couch that stood facing the window embrasure, carrying her with him, then sank down, pulling her astride his lap. He held her tightly, his hips pumping insistently as he palmed her breasts and kissed her deeply, again and again, until his head spun and she clung weakly to him, whispering his name like a plea.

He rested his head on her shoulder, arching his neck to the delicious sensation of her hands in his hair. When she leaned back, urging his mouth to her breasts again, he shook his head. “We … have … to stop,” he gasped. He slid her onto the cushions beside him but couldn’t resist bending to kiss her breasts again, lingering on each nipple before sitting up. “Hide those luscious breasts, my darling, or I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

She groaned, then laughed unsteadily. “You’re the one who exposed them.” She pulled her dress back up and turned so he could zip it. “Lord, Jase! I can’t believe we did that. In my father’s office. Without locking the door.”

He kissed the back of her neck before spinning her around to face him. He buried his face for a moment in her cleavage, then looked at her again.

“I only did it because your breasts have been tempting me all evening, ever since I arrived for dinner and realized you couldn’t possibly be wearing a bra under that dress.” He laughed. “Oh, what am I saying? All evening? Hell!” Leaping to his feet, he returned to the window and looked out, wondering how long it would take him to lose his erection this time. He turned back to her. “Since the moment I woke up with your hands on my thigh,” he said, “I’ve been in a constant state of arousal.”

“I’m sorry ….” It sounded, he thought, as if she were asking if she should be.

And she should not. He drew a deep breath, seeking calmness. It didn’t help. Returning to her, he crouched before her, his hands on the cushions by her hips, not touching, not daring to touch. “Shell—” He sounded breathless, like a randy kid about to ask a girl for the first time if she’d come and park with him on a lovers’ lane. “Do—do you have to stay here tonight? In your father’s home?”

“Jase … I …” He heard her swallow. “No,” she whispered. “No. I don’t have to.”

He went weak with desire. “Come back with me,” he said jerkily. “To my hotel. I want you, Shell, and I think you want me.”

She leaned back as if she had gone weak, as weak as he felt. “You
think
?”

He laughed. Was she saying yes? “All right, I know. But I don’t know if you’re willing to give in to that … desire. Are you? Will you? Can—”

“Sterling,” Elwin Landry’s unmistakable voice sounded from the library, “you must be mistaken. Shell would never entertain a newsman. In my home or anywhere else. She hates them. It’s almost pathological with her! He said during the family dinner you and my mother missed, that he works for the U.S. government. He was a bit cagey, I admit, so I assumed it was the IRS and didn’t press him. Many of my guests tonight, are, like you, wealthy US citizens who might feel uncomfortable sharing a social evening with someone from the IRS. But he’s Shell’s guest, and I refuse to hear ill of him.”

Shell twisted around on the couch as her father entered the dark office with Sterling Graves. “Wha—” she whispered, then broke off as Jase’s hand wrapped tightly around her upper arm, silencing her.

“T
HE IRS BE DAMNED!”
Sterling exclaimed, his voice quavering with indignation. “The minute we were introduced, I knew I’d seen that face somewhere. I may be old, but I’m not senile, and it took me a while, but I remembered where I’d seen him. On page six of the
Los Angeles Echo
. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I tell you, Elwin, the man’s a reporter, and I felt you should be warned, that Shell’s dear mother should be warned.”

“Lil has met the man.” Elwin’s own voice was curt. “If he were what you suspect, don’t you think the secret would be out by now?”

“He may just be biding his time,” Sterling huffed. “After all, a major scoop on the anni—”

“Sterling,” her father interrupted, “the matter can be cleared up in short order.” He switched on a light. “I’ll simply ask the publisher of the
Echo
to fax me a picture of—Why Shell! What are you two doing in here?”

“Snooping, no doubt,” said Sterling, sweeping an accusing glare over both her and Jase. “Maybe helping her reporter boyfriend find whatever it is he came for.”

“Reporter?” Shell finally found her voice and whirled out from behind the sofa to confront Sterling. “You’re crazy! Jase is no such thing. He’s—”

“A columnist with the
Los Angeles Echo
,” Jase said smoothly. At that moment the fax machine gave its two distinctive rings. He walked over to it, picked up the paper as it rolled into the basket, scanned it, then folded it and slid it into his inside jacket pocket.

“May I ask what that was?” Elwin asked coolly, anger underlying his tone.

“Personal business,” Jase said, just as coolly. “Shell offered me the use of your machine.” He turned to Sterling. “I see you’ve recognized me.”

Shell stared at Jase, feeling faint.

“Has he.” Neither Elwin’s tone nor expression betrayed his emotions. He flicked a glance at Shell and took a step toward her. She stiffened and kept her gaze pinned on Jase’s face as he answered her father.

“Yes, sir. I write a thrice-weekly column for the
Echo
.”

No, no, no!
Something in Shell sobbed like a beaten guitar.

“A thrice-weekly gossip column,” Sterling put in with a sneer, his normally laughing blue eyes as icy as a Winnipeg winter. “He finds weak spots in the lives of celebrities, politicians, anyone who is anyone, and exploits them. He makes even the strong vulnerable, because if he can’t find an opening, a chink in a man’s armor, he creates one by insinuation and foul innuendo, then pounces and devours his prey. He’s a jackal.”

Shell found her voice at last, but it was ragged, hoarse. “Jase! Tell Dad why you’re here.” Inwardly, she begged him,
And tell me none of this is true!

He smiled. “Your father knows why I’m here, Shell. Sterling told him. He’s quite correct. I work for the
Los Angeles Echo
. I’m after a story.”

Her eyes burned. Pain ran up the back of her neck into her head. “A story? About my father?” He shrugged negligently. “A man can’t be as simon-pure as your father makes out he is. If he and his bank weren’t part of the money laundering scheme, how did he know so much about it? Somebody here tonight has the answer to that, Shell, and I intended to find it. If not at this party, then later, through contacts I’d hoped to make while you were busy entertaining your potential suitors. I only regret that it didn’t work out that way.”

She backed away from him, feeling sick. He wasn’t going to quit fooling around and explain things to her father. He wasn’t going to turn on Sterling and call him a liar.

He couldn’t. Because he was the liar. He had lied to her. All along. About everything!

Her mind reeled. And she had exposed her mother to him? Exposed her father? Though she knew he’d never find anything true to write about that could harm Elwin, what if, as Sterling said, he printed just enough innuendo to ruin what was becoming an illustrious, internationally respected career that could well end up with an ambassadorship?