Hot Shot (6 page)

"No one would ever know it," Susannah replied graciously. "You have a wonderful figure. Tell me about your gown? It's Italian, isn't it?" Skillfully, she deflected her guest from worries about her waistline to a rapturous description of Valentino's last collection.

She heard her father's laughter at the other end of the table. By tilting her head ever so slightly, she could observe Joel sharing a joke with Cal. She nodded agreeably at the countess's description of a two-piece dinner ensemble, and at the same time noted Cal's hand resting lightly on the stem of his wineglass. His fingers looked sun-browned and strong. She could see the starched edge of his shirt cuff showing beneath the sleeve of his dinner jacket. He was wearing the monogrammed gold cuff links she had given him, and his fingers were sliding up and down the stem of the wineglass. She felt a hot rush of sexual excitement.

"You're absolutely right, Countess," she said. "The Italian designers have been so much stronger this year."

She remembered the first time she and Cal had made love. She had been so excited, so pitifully grateful that she had finally found a man who would relieve her of her burdensome virginity. But it had been over with quickly and wasn't nearly as thrilling as she had thought it would be. It was her fault, of course. After indulging in so many lewd fantasies, was it any wonder that Cal's all too human touch had seemed vaguely antiseptic and somehow perfunctory?

She remembered her embarrassment afterward.

"You nearly poked my eye out, darling," he had said. "I didn't imagine you would be quite so… athletic." And then he'd smiled, as if a smile could take the sting out of his words. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you. Just rather surprised, that's all."

He had made her feel as if her passion were a breach of etiquette, and she'd been more restrained ever since. Now the bedroom was one more place where she had to mind her manners.

She took a small bite of truffle cake and nodded at the countess. While she chewed she envisioned herself licking a line from the hollow at the base of Cal's throat down his chest and over his hard belly. She saw herself using the tip of her tongue as a sharp, pointed dart, making little stabs at his skin and then softening her tongue to dip lower and lick again.

"More sherry, Countess?" she inquired.

"That would be lovely, dear."

With the barest tilt of her head, Susannah caught the attention of one of the waiters she had hired for the evening to supplement her regular staff. The glow of the candles glimmering in her fine auburn hair touched the strands with gold just as candlelight had illuminated the gracious heads of women of wealth and privilege for centuries.

Another burst of laughter rang out from the head of the table, and Cal called down to her,

"Susannah, your father is telling lies about you."

She smiled. "My father never lies. He just colors the truth to suit his purpose."

Joel chuckled and gazed at her fondly. "Not this time, Susannah. I was telling Cal about your hippie period."

Her fingers clenched in her lap, but no trace of agitation was evident in her voice or in the calm, smooth line of her brow. "Be careful what you say, Daddy. You'll scare poor Cal away before we get him to the altar."

"He's made of stronger stuff. He won't be frightened by a little mushy-headed liberalism."

Susannah took a sip from her wineglass, maintaining her cool, careful smile even though she was having difficulty swallowing.

"I can't imagine Susannah going through a hippie period," Paul Clemens said. He was FBTs Vice-Chairman of the Board and Joel's oldest friend.

"She wasn't wearing beads and living in a commune," Joel quickly interjected. "But when she was twenty, she came to me and—with great solemnity, mind you—announced that she was thinking about joining the Peace Corps."

There was a momentary silence, and then the sound of several chuckles.
Please don't do
this, Daddy
, Susannah silently pleaded.
Please don't trot out my confidences for dinner
party conversation
.

She touched her napkin to the corner of her lips, smearing her lipstick on the gold crest of Czar Nicholas I. "I'm certain no one wants to hear about my boring youth," she said.

The flicker of a frown passed briefly over Joel's features, and she knew her interjection had displeased him. He disliked it enormously when anyone interrupted one of his stories.

Madge Clemens, Paul Clemens's wife, turned toward Susannah. "Why on earth did you want to join the Peace Corps? It's so—I don't know—
bacterial
or something."

"I was young," Susannah replied with a trace of a smile and a casual shrug. "Young and idealistic." Her fingers tightened in her lap.

"You little rebel." Cal winked at her as if she were a mischievous ten-year-old.

Joel leaned back in his chair, the worldly-wise patriarch protecting foolish females from their silly little mistakes. "A stern lecture on the political facts of life from Old Dad put an end to it, of course. But I haven't stopped teasing her about it."

The smile never left Susannah's face. No one watching her could guess at the humiliation she felt.

"If everyone has finished," she said smoothly, "let's have our after-dinner drinks in the living room."

Everyone was finished, and the party moved on.

An hour later one of the waiters came up behind her as she stood chatting with several of the FBT wives while a string quartet from the San Francisco Symphony played discreetly in the background. The waiter whispered, "There's a man who wants to see Mr.

Faulconer. He wouldn't leave, so we put him in the library."

What now? she wondered. She excused herself from the group before her father became aware that there was a problem and headed for the library. As soon as she opened the doors she saw the worn soles of a pair of motorcycle boots propped on top of Joel Faulconer's massive walnut desk.

"Un-fucking-believable," a male voice murmured.

For a fraction of a second she thought he was talking about her, and then she realized his head was turned upward toward the hand-embossed copper ceiling that had come from an old French tavern.

"May I help you?" she asked, her voice cool and distinctly unhelpful.

Somewhat to her surprise, he didn't jump up in embarrassment when she spoke. Although he swung his boots to the carpet, he remained seated as he studied her.

He was so obviously foreign to her world that she felt a combination of unease and fascination. He wore an old leather motorcycle jacket over a black T-shirt, and his hair was long. It wasn't the fashionable length of a young executive's hair, but Apache-long, falling straight as the blade of a knife until it curled up on the shoulders of his jacket. He was perhaps a year or so younger than she was, and brash—she saw that, too. His cheekbones were high and flat, his mouth thin. But it was his eyes that ultimately held her attention. They were hard black marbles flecked with amber. And they were incredibly vulgar.

It wasn't a lecherous vulgarity she saw there. He didn't try to undress her visually or make an exploratory trip down her body. Instead, she saw the vulgarity of too much intensity of expression for too short an acquaintance.

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave," she said.

"I want to see Joel Faulconer."

"He's unavailable."

"I don't believe that."

Why did he keep looking at her as if she were some sort of exotic species on exhibit at the zoo? "If you'd like to meet with him, i suggest you call his office for an appointment."

"I did that. The bitch who answers his phone keeps brushing me off."

Her voice passed from cool to cold. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do."

"That's bullshit."

A small pulse began to throb in her throat as he slowly rose from the chair. She knew she should call for help, but she had grown so very tired of talking to overweight countesses and gouty vice-presidents. Would it be so terrible—not to mention dangerous—to wait just a few more minutes and see what the outspoken stranger who had invaded her father's library had in mind?

"Saying you can't do anything is bullshit," he repeated.

"I'm asking you to leave."

"You're what—his wife, his daughter? You can do anything you want." He snapped his fingers in the air in front of her eyes. "Just like that, you can arrange for me to see him."

She raised her head ever so slightly, so that she was looking down the length of her nose at him in the deliberately hostile fashion her father employed so effectively. "I'm his daughter Susannah, and he's entertaining tonight." Why had she told him her name?

Whatever had possessed her?

"Okay. Tomorrow, then. I'll meet him tomorrow."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible."

"Christ." He looked at her with disgust and shook his head. "When I first saw you—those first few seconds—I had this feeling about you."

He fell silent.

It was as if he'd tapped out the initial seven notes of Beethoven's Fifth, but left off the eighth. She waited. The white organdy ruffle rose and fell over her breasts. She was frightened so badly that her palms had begun to perspire. Frightened, but excited, too, and that frightened her even more. She knew all too well that disaster could appear from nowhere—on the sunniest of June days, from behind the merry mask of a clown. Still, she couldn't seem to force herself to break away from him and go for help. Perhaps it was the aftereffect of her meeting with Paige, perhaps it was simply a reaction to spending too many evenings with people who were so much older than herself.

"What kind of feeling?" The words seemed to have left her mouth of their own volition—

she who never spoke impulsively.

He walked around to the front of the desk, those dark, amber-flecked eyes never moving from hers. When he spoke, his voice was low and intense, barely more than a whisper. "A feeling like maybe you'd understand."

She heard the sounds of the string quartet playing another world away. Her mouth felt dry. "Understand what?"

Now his eyes did roam over her, suggestively, unapologetically, as if he alone could see the red-hot wanton who was hidden beneath her composed exterior. An erotic image flickered unbidden through her mind of his hand reaching out and lowering the bodice of her dress. The image lasted only a second, but the effect was almost unbearable—

flooding her body first with heat and then with self-disgust.

He grinned—as if he had read her mind—and his brash young lips parted. She became aware of a tapping sound and followed the noise with her eyes. He was bumping the toe of one of his motorcycle boots against an old leather sample case that was leaning against the side of her father's desk.

"Do you know what I've got in here?" he asked, still tapping his toe. His voice was intense; his eyes blazed like an Apache warrior about to take a scalp. Unable to draw her gaze away from him, she shook her head.

"I've got the key to a new society in here."

"I—I don't understand." The stammer was back. She hadn't stammered since those first few years after her kidnapping. It was as if her unconscious were sending her danger signals.

Unexpectedly, his face shattered into a grin that was charming, boyish, and completely disarming. He whipped the sample case from the floor and laid it on the highly polished surface of Joel's desk, paying no heed at all to the neat stacks of papers he sent flying. He patted the case with the flat of his hand. "I've got the invention of the wheel in here. The discovery of fire. The first steam engine. The cotton gin. I've got the genius of Edison and the Wright Brothers, Einstein and Galileo. I've got the entire fucking future of the world in here."

His casual obscenity barely registered as he mysteriously telegraphed his fervor to her.

"This is the last frontier," he said quietly. "We've built condos in Alaska and McDonald's in Africa. China sells Pepsi. Blue-haired old ladies book weekend trips to Antarctica.

There's only one frontier left, and I've got it."

She tried to keep her expression cool and guarded-revealing nothing of what she was thinking—but for the first time in as long as she could remember, she couldn't quite pull it off.

He came closer until they stood nearly eye to eye. She felt the vitality of his breath on her cheek and wanted to trap it in her own lungs for just a few moments to see what all that energy would feel like.

"The frontiers of the mind," he whispered. "There's nothing else left. And that's what I've got in this case."

For a moment she didn't move, and then his words gradually penetrated the cool, logical part of her brain. At that moment she finally realized he was making a fool of her, and she felt both cheated and angry. "You're a salesman," she said, overwhelmed with the irrational notion that a bright, shining star had been snatched from her fingers. He was only a salesman. All this time she had stood here and let herself be conned by the Electrolux man.

He laughed. It had a youthful sound to it, rich and full, much different from the subdued masculine chuckles she had grown accustomed to. "I guess you could say that. I'm selling a dream, an adventure, a whole new way of life."

"My father doesn't need any more life insurance." The sarcastic bite to her words felt good. She was hardly ever sarcastic. Her father didn't approve.

He rested his hips against the front edge of the desk, crossed his ankles and smiled at her.

"Are you married?"

The question took her by surprise. "No, I—I'm engaged. That's really none of your business, is it?" There was no reason for her to be stammering. She had been handling difficult social situations for as long as she could remember, and her awkwardness unsettled her. She hid her discomfort behind cool hostility. "Let me give you some advice, Mister…"

"Gamble. Sam Gamble."

A perfect name for a con artist, she thought. "It will be nearly impossible for you to get to my father. He keeps himself well insulated. There are, however, other people at FBT—"

"I've already seen them. They're turkeys. Real three-piece suit deadheads. That's why I decided to crash your party tonight. I have to talk to your old man in person."