Handful of Dreams (3 page)

And she had the gall to defy him now!

He gave her a little shake, clenching his teeth against the gamut of emotions that threatened his sense of control. The shake dislodged her perfect little hat; a stream of fiery rich hair, waving with the russet hue of a sunset, fell over her shoulders and down her back. That hair, tangling over his fingers, carried a subtle and haunting scent of perfume, like a drug that played upon the senses and made a man take pause, assessing her again, noting the elegant beauty of her features.

He offered her a grim smile as her eyes widened with the slightest touch of alarm.

“Miss Anderson, my father is dead now. I remember you attacking my manners once before. Well, sister, my manners are fine. I treat a lady like a lady. But you’re not a lady, Miss Anderson, not in my book. I call a young woman who attaches herself to a man for his money a whore. I—”

The alarm was out of her eyes. They seemed almost yellow now with pure rage, and his sentence was interrupted by his own startled groan as she kicked him in the shin.

David’s lips compressed ruthlessly. She wanted an all-out cat-fight, and she was going to get one. “Get your hands off of me, you arrogant bastard,” she cried.

But she was interrupted this time by his movement. His ankle quickly shifted behind her own to lift her foot from the floor and send her flying down to it—with him quickly beside her, hands pressed to her arms with relentless force as he bent over her.

“Miss Anderson, you are a regular little tigress, a huntress with all the wiles of the jungle. But I’ve had all I’m going to take from you. You attacked me once and walked away from it with your nose in the air. Not again—lady.” He sneered. “You see, my father is gone now. He’s not around to protect you anymore. So if you go at it with me, you’re going to get it right back.”

She barely blinked; she just stared at him with hate in her eyes, her breasts rising and falling, her delicate jaw set with anger.

“There’s not an ounce of your father in you,” she said at last, and the lilt in her voice made it the gravest insult he’d ever received.

“No?” David inquired politely. “I really don’t think you were around long enough to tell. You knew and used a broken old man, Miss Anderson. You preyed upon him when he was weak and lonely and vulnerable. You should have known him in his prime, but then, you wouldn’t have, would you? Because he would have known you for what you are if he had met you in his younger days!”

She returned his glare, undaunted by his words, and he had to admit that she had courage. She had to be aware that he knew she had brought on the heart attack that had killed his father, knew that he considered her little more than a cold-blooded murderess and deserved any violence the pain and tempest in him could deliver.

But she still defied him, loathed him. Offered him no remorse, only her sizzling stare of smoldering scorn…

Sizzling. Hot. Her whole body was warm, vibrant, and alive. And touching her, leaning over her … seeing her, he knew something of it. She was both slim and shapely. Narrow-waisted, full in the breasts, long and elegantly limbed. Kinetic with passion and anger, trembling, all her heat and fury shooting from the emerald sparks of her eyes…

To David’s horror he found himself shuddering. The fire in her eyes raked his body. Incredulously he wanted her in a primal way that knew no logic or thought. His body grew tense and hot, then a pulsing sensation stirred in his groin.

So this was it, he thought. This was the web that ensnared. This promise of sensuality, of a pleasure that was unique and heightened above any other, of a passion that was as wild as a tempest…

He closed his eyes quickly, amazed that a man of his age and experience could be so touched by such a practiced huntress. He shook slightly again, disgusted with himself. His father’s mistress! And he was actually here with her, pinning her to the floor in fury, only to discover that he envied his father because he had known what it was to touch her, to fill his hands with the weight of her breasts, taste her lips, know the searing fulfillment of that promised fire….

He released her suddenly, as if she had burned him. She barely seemed to notice but quickly folded her legs beneath her to sit, facing him like a spitting, wary cat.

“I think I knew him far better than you did,” she said coolly. “I never considered him a fool, and I never thought of him as senile, which quite apparently, Mr. Lane, you did. And, for the record, I never ‘attacked’ you. I made an attempt once to discuss a matter of importance.
You
attacked—with verbal blades, intending to draw blood.”

David sat back, idly lacing his fingers around his knees. “You don’t believe in calling a spade a spade, I take it?” he inquired.

“Your arrogance and insolence are both incredible,” she returned after a moment’s disgusted surveillance of him. With natural grace she rose, then stared down at him. “It’s truly amazing that Peter could have created such a son.”

She spun around. David was on his feet quickly, halting her with a sharp command as she reached the doorway. “Whatever it was you left behind, Miss Anderson, get it and get out.”

She turned, smiling with a true glint of triumph and amusement. “Mr. Lane, I’m afraid that you’re the one who is going to have to get out.”

“What’s your game now, Miss Anderson?”

No woman could have appeared more innocent, more guilelessly enchanting as she stared back at him with that sweet smile still curving her lips.

“The beach house is half mine, Mr. Lane. Check with your lawyers—your father left it to us.”

No physical blow could have stunned him or hurt him with such thorough precision. He wasn’t aware that he moved; he didn’t even know that he had walked to her, gripped her elbow, and locked his fingers around it like steel shackles.

“
What?
”

His face had gone starkly pale; apparently she realized his menace at last when he was unaware of it himself, for a pallor touched her cheeks, making her eyes seem enormous, her lashes appear like a forest of fire and pitch around them.

“My father left you an interest in this house?” he thundered.

She tugged at her elbow. “Yes! Now get your hands off me. And if you touch me again, so help me, Mr. Lane, I’ll have a warrant sworn out against you!”

He released her not because of the threat, but because he was too stunned to do otherwise. He wandered, dazed, back to the desk where he sat in the chair and picked up the brandy bottle. Heedless of her perusal, he drank deeply, then drank some more.

And then he began to laugh, eyeing her afresh.

“I have to hand it to you, Miss Anderson. I considered you a nuisance, a bloodsucking parasite, and a few other things. But I really underestimated you! You must be very good at what you do!”

She kept smiling, the glitter of loathing touching the intriguing depths of her eyes once again, heightened by the array of dark and blazing hair that still fell, unheeded, in disarray around her.

“I am very good,” she said blandly.

“I still don’t believe it.”

“Call your lawyers.”

“I will.”

Keeping his eyes locked with hers, David reached across the desk for the phone. In seconds he had tapped out his attorney’s number; in another few seconds he was talking to Barney Smith. Barney spent several long moments eulogizing Peter; David was grateful, but he cut Barney off a little quickly.

“Barney, what’s the status with the beach house?”

He knew she had been telling the truth when Barney cleared his throat uneasily.

“Uh … joint ownership, David. It’s been left to you and Miss Anderson.” Barney cleared his throat again. “I tried to talk your father out of such a provision, David, but he insisted that it was her home and your birthright.”

Barney was saying more. David didn’t hear him.

“Thanks, Barney,” he murmured distractedly, and replaced the receiver.

“I’ll be damned,” David whispered, rising and smiling crookedly at her without taking his eyes off her as he started toward her. It was as if something sacred had been touched. It had been his mother’s home; the family home. It was probably the only possession that had ever mattered to David. It was his childhood; his parents laughing; it was Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and Euripides and all the things that had been his parents. It was growing up; it was a reminder of youth, of the happiness and pain that comprised personal lives….

He stopped right in front of her.

“You conniving little whore!” he exclaimed softly.

She stiffened. The smile slipped from her features to display saddened and weary features that, despite all his scorn and fury and pain, somehow touched him again. She was unique. So enchanting that even while a man despised her, he wanted to reach out and crush her against him and taste the sweet hint of passion that curved her lip….. She backed away from him. He smiled.

“You are an insufferable bastard,” she retorted with a touch of uneasiness. “But you think what you like—I really don’t give a damn. You’re even welcome to say what you like. But touch me again and I’ll have the police on the phone.”

He laughed bitterly. “If I were to touch you again, Miss Anderson, you wouldn’t be able to get the police on the phone.”

He turned away from her, startled and dismayed by both the violence and tempest of his thoughts.

“What are you doing now?” she demanded, and he was glad that she sounded nervous—very nervous.

“I am going to get drunk, Miss Anderson. As drunk as I possibly can!” He smiled, sat on the edge of the desk, and picked up the brandy bottle, swigging deeply to prove his intent. He lifted the bottle to her and gave her a frigid, mocking smile.

“How rude of me! Won’t you join me, Miss Anderson? A toast—to your absolute and amazing victory?”

She ignored him with distaste.

“How long are you staying here? Don’t you have to go back to New York?”

“Maybe,” David replied. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that for the moment I’m going to finish off my dad’s brandy. Unless this bottle, too, is yours?”

Susan turned around and started walking to the door.

“Where are you going, Miss Anderson? Surely you didn’t sell yourself for a spit of property just to desert it?”

“I’m going out!” she called back without turning. If he hadn’t seen her, hadn’t come to know her fervor and outrage, he might have suspected a sob in her voice.

But he had seen her. And he’d been signing checks to her for the last year.

He was drinking brandy again as the wooden door slammed, then the screen door.

Brandy … Guzzled like this, it burned the throat and created an inferno in the chest. It made him feel afire. He prayed that it would dull his senses. All the pain, all the grief.

All the anger.

And the worst of it, all the incomprehensible desire. A fever not of the heart or the mind, but somehow of the soul.

A door slammed again. He looked up. Had she come back already? No, he realized dimly, it was the wind. A storm was brewing. He had known it when he came. A northeasterly from the force and sound of it. Even now he could hear the waves pounding on the sand and rocks with a fury to match his own. Soon the rain would come down as if the heavens had opened.

He knew the weather here. He had loved it as a child; loved it still as a man. Fierce gales; roiling, gray skies of clouds that billowed and rumbled.

About to take another long sip of the brandy, David hesitated.

She was out there.

He shrugged. She’d been living here awhile. She should have learned the weather. And if the wind should take her, the devil would be welcome to her too.

He didn’t drink the brandy. He set the bottle down, trembling with a sudden vision of that blazing mahogany hair spread against the whiteness of the sand, her features as ashen as the bleached driftwood along the beach. Long limbs, tangled and lifeless…

“Damn it all!” he swore violently.

Then he strode across the room, through the foyer, and out the doors, allowing them to slam behind him.

The sky had become patterned in surly gray and black. Trees were bending, sand was flying, and the waves were rising high, like white kites against the vicious swirl of the heavens.

David’s long gait carried him quickly along the walk to the sand, and there he hesitated, raising a hand against the wind.

He should just let her go … because the strangest feeling rippled through him. It was as if he had come face-to-face with a crossroad and she beckoned him with a force he couldn’t deny. She had some kind of power, like a Circe whispering a sweet melody that cut through wind and water and tempest….

Should he go after her now, he knew he would be inextricably involved. One more step and he would never be able to turn back.

Ridiculous, he thought, scolding himself. All he wanted to do was make sure that the fool woman didn’t drown. Even if she did kill his father.

At least Dad had gone out smiling, he reminded himself bitterly.

Smiling … He wanted to see her smiling. Laughing, filling the air with the melodious sound of joy.

He gave himself a shake. For God’s sake! The woman had been his father’s mistress!

The rain started just as he headed onto the beach.

S
USAN WAS CHOKING BACK
tears as she stumbled out of the beach house; tears she had sworn she would never shed. After all, she had met Peter Lane because he knew he was dying, and she had known exactly what to expect from the son…

Those logical, determined thoughts helped her a bit, but she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand why. She didn’t care what people thought; she never had. So why, she wondered, was she so disturbed now? Especially since she had known for months now exactly what David Lane’s opinion had been.

Her shoe caught in the sand, twisting her ankle. She swore softly, then allowed her tears to join with mist that surrounded her to dampen her cheeks. She realized that she had come right up on the beach, where the water was spewing over boulders and sand—and her shoes.

They were ruined, of course. Leaning against one of the gray rocks that rose over her head, she pulled them from her feet and slammed them viciously against the rock.