Love in the Air (2 page)

Kay gritted her teeth. She could take what he dished out. She was no longer a nineteen-year-old kid to be bossed around by him. He’d almost totally controlled her from the moment he gave her the much-coveted job as his partner on the morning show. She’d been only seventeen years old then, and everyone was more than a little shocked when he’d chosen an inexperienced teenager to be with him on the air.

Sullivan paid no attention to the gossip and told her not to concern herself with it. She’d sent in an audition tape just like all the other hopefuls. Sullivan had patiently listened to each and every one and when he’d played hers, something in her voice intrigued and impressed him. He had no idea, he assured her and his boss, Sam Shults, that the melodious, confident voice on the tape belonged to a seventeen-year-old who had no broadcasting experience.

Impressed by what he’d heard, Sullivan called Kay Clark and asked her to come in for an interview. She could still recall the startled look on his handsome face when she shyly entered his office. Quickly regaining his cool composure, he smiled warmly, offered her a chair and went about letting her down as painlessly as possible.

“Sweetheart,” he’d said very softly, “let me first say to you that you have a lovely voice and a lot of talent, but—”

“But what, Mr. Ward?” she’d brashly cut in.

“Honey, you’re a little young to be working anywhere, don’t you think? You should be in school.” His dark, flashing eyes held a slightly bemused look that annoyed Kay. “How old are you, Kay?”

Kay lifted her small chin. “I’ll be eighteen on my next birthday, Mr. Ward, and as for school, I graduated from high school a year ago and I’m a part-time student at the University of Denver.” He was still smiling and he threw back his head and laughed aloud when she said, “Just how old are you, Mr. Sullivan Ward?”

“I’ll be thirty my next birthday, Kay, so as you can see, the age difference between us—”

“Has nothing whatsoever to do with what I came here for this morning. I sent in an audition tape; you listened and you liked it. Now I deserve the promised opportunity to cut a demo tape with you and you’ve no right to back out on me simply because I’m not…”

“Okay, okay.” He lifted his hands in the air, palms out. “You win, Kay Clark.” Grinning, he’d circled his big desk, pulled her to her feet and guided her down the hall to the production studio. “Let’s go cut that tape, honey. I can see you’re a mighty determined young lady.”

“Is that so bad?” Kay had tilted her blond head to look up at the towering man leading her down the hall.

Sullivan Ward looked down into her young, upturned face, shook his dark head and admitted, “I hope not, because I’m the same way.”

“Well, will you come, Kay?” Betty Shults’s slightly shrill voice pulled Kay back to the present.

“I…I’m sorry, Betty. What did you say?”

“Are you all right, Kay? You seem a million miles away.” Betty patted at her short chestnut hair, took a sip of her sweet pineapple drink and stared at Kay.

“I’m just fine, really,” Kay apologized. “Now what did you ask me?” She smiled engagingly and vowed she’d keep her mind on what her table companions were saying.

“I just suggested that you come out to the house on Sunday. We could charcoal some steaks and swim in the pool.”

“For goodness’ sakes, Betty, she just got off the plane,” Sam Shults intervened. “Give her a chance, will you? She’s got to hunt for an apartment, have meetings at the station and…I wonder what’s keeping Sullivan. I’m starving and I’ll bet you are, too, Kay.”

Feeling as though she never wanted to eat again, Kay said, “A little, yes.” Her eyes once again darted toward the room’s entrance. It was past time for Sullivan’s arrival. Any second now he’d walk through that door, duck his head to pass beneath the low-hanging plants and come toward her. Kay took a hurried gulp of wine as her heart tried to pound its way out of her chest.

“Mr. Shults.” A tall tuxedoed man, manager of the restaurant, stepped up to the banquette. “Sorry to disturb you.” He nodded graciously to the ladies. “You’ve a telephone call.”

Kay knew.

She knew who was calling Sam Shults at the Turn of the Century. Cold fingers curled tightly around the fluted wineglass, she smiled calmly when Sam Shults returned, looking sheepish and embarrassed.

“That was Sullivan on the phone.” He glanced first at Kay, then at his wife. “He can’t make it this evening. He’s terribly sorry, but it seems…”

Kay never heard the rest of the explanation. Sullivan wasn’t coming. He wasn’t coming because he did not want to see her. She was both relieved and disappointed.

This was going to be harder than she thought.

Sullivan Ward slowly replaced the receiver, set the phone aside and frantically tore at the perfect knot in his silk tie. He shrugged out of his expensive suit coat, wadded it up as though it were a shapeless sweatshirt and threw it across the room. It fluttered down the pine-covered wall into a dark, discarded heap on the gray carpet. The maroon tie followed the jacket.

Jaw set, eyes cold, Sullivan jerked furiously at the buttons of his white dress shirt, sending a couple of the small pearly disks flying. He lifted the toe of his left shoe to the heel of his right, pushing it from his foot. He repeated the action on the other. From the glass-topped table he took a half empty package of cigarettes and a gold lighter. He jammed a cigarette between tight lips, flicked the lighter and inhaled. Slowly he lowered the slim lighter and stared at the shiny gold. A thumb idly rubbed back and forth over the small script on the lighter’s smooth surface. “SUL” was all it said. No one but Kay Clark had ever been allowed to call him that.

The tiny gold lighter was hurled after the coat and tie. When it hit the pine wall, it made a resounding thud that sounded like a minor explosion in the quiet, twilight-bathed room.

Sullivan Ward felt the explosion in his aching heart.

Feelings bruised by Sullivan’s obvious desire to put off their imminent reunion for as long as possible, Kay said breezily, “I’m just as glad Sullivan can’t make it, gives me the chance to visit with you two.” She smiled warmly at a frowning, flustered Sam Shults.

Lips pursed, a hint of satisfaction in her tone, Betty Shults looked accusingly at her displeased husband. “I told you he wouldn’t show up, Sam. I knew darned well he’d—”

“Betty, Sullivan didn’t come because something unexpected came up and—”

“Oh, sure,” she said flippantly, “the president and the first lady dropped by for drinks just as he was walking out the door.” She smiled at Kay. “Or his closet caught fire and he could find nothing to wear.”

“That’s enough.” Sam gave her a scathing look. “Let’s eat.”

The food at the Turn of the Century had always been superb, but tonight Kay had to struggle to eat enough to keep from arousing the suspicion of the two hearty eaters seated across from her. While the Shultses successfully dismissed the absent Sullivan from their minds, it was not so easy for Kay. Telling herself that perhaps he did have some unavoidable business, she knew, deep down, that he decided at the last minute not to join them because he dreaded seeing her again.

Kay felt relieved when the evening was finally over and the Shultses had dropped her back at the Brown Palace, and sighed when she stepped inside the suite and locked the door. Feeling weary and wilted, Kay kicked off her shoes and eagerly unzipped her silk dress, letting it slide down her arms and over her hips. In seconds she’d completely stripped and stood under a pelting shower, eyes closed, face turned up to the pounding spray.

Yawning, Kay toweled herself dry, slipped on a pair of eggshell crepe pajamas, sat down on the edge of the turned-down bed and stretched her arms lazily in the air. Certain she was so exhausted from the long, tiring day that she would fall immediately asleep, Kay switched off the lamp on the bedside table and crawled in between the cool, ice-blue sheets.

She’d left the drapes at the window across the room open. Only transparent sheers of filmy white covered the tall plate glass. The big, cool suite was suffused with soft light streaming from the tall downtown skyscrapers and into the quiet privacy of this fifth-floor room. Everything in the well-appointed suite took on a soft, ethereal form.

Kay, alone in the big blue bed, let her gaze slide slowly around the room. The scent of roses wafted to her from the big bouquet on the bureau, the fragrance but one more reminder of that other fateful night she’d spent here. Then, too, there’d been roses, dozens of roses, all sent by Sullivan Ward.

Roses and champagne and Sullivan. Tears slowly slipping down her cheeks, Kay, as she had a thousand times over the past five years, again let time turn back. She was nineteen years old and she was in this very room. Soft lights washed over the bed and the scent of roses made her dizzy. The taste of champagne was on the heated lips that kept kissing her. A deep male voice, its timbre caressing, persuasive, had murmured passionate words into her ear. Warm, sure hands had glided tenderly over her trembling flesh.

It had been her last night in Denver. She was to depart very early the next morning for Los Angeles and the new position at one of the top radio stations there. Sullivan had taken her out to dinner on that last evening, a night of dry August heat and bright moonlight. She’d worn a cool cotton sundress, its sheered bodice hugging her braless curves, narrow straps going over her tanned shoulders to tie in a bow at the back of her neck. Her almost waist-length hair had been pulled into a casual shiny twist and pinned atop her head.

Sullivan, boyishly handsome in a white knit shirt straining across his chest and faded jeans, had honored her wish to dine on sausage pizza at a little Italian place up in the foothills of west Denver. They’d laughed throughout the meal, joking and teasing one another, both cautiously avoiding the subject of Kay’s impending move.

Long before midnight, Sullivan, knowing she had to catch an early flight, agreed they should call it a night. Holding hands and growing increasingly silent, they exited from the creaking elevator on the fifth floor of the Brown and went to room 503. Sullivan unlocked the door, motioned Kay inside and followed her.

When she reached out to flip on the lights, Sullivan’s hand stopped her. His dark, sultry eyes on her mouth, he slowly pulled her fingers to his chest and said simply, “Kay.”

When his dark, handsome head descended slowly to her, Kay tilted hers back and her mouth eagerly parted to receive his kiss. Gentle, sculpted lips settled on hers, warm and undemanding. With his mouth covering hers, Sullivan again whispered, “Kay, oh, my Kay.”

Kay sighed as his kiss became more demanding, filling her with warmth, just as it always did. Her arms went up around his neck, her fingers anxiously twisting at the black, thick hair curling over the collar of his clean knit shirt.

She loved kissing Sullivan. His kisses set her afire; they had from the first time he’d unexpectedly kissed her one frigid winter morning. She had hurried into the control room, her nose red, her eyes smarting, her teeth chattering. He’d looked up at her, grinned, rose and came to her. Wordlessly he’d taken her in his arms, held her for a minute, put a thumb beneath her quivering chin and bent to her, his lips covering her cold ones in a rapidly heating kiss.

Since that cold, snowy morning, he’d kissed her often and she never failed to respond and glory in the feel of his mouth upon hers. More than once their hunger for each other had made kissing, no matter how wonderful, seem inadequate. Still, Sullivan, though his eyes had looked tortured and his body had trembled with his need, had many times thrust her away from him, stopping short of what they both wanted. Needed.

Not tonight.

Now he was kissing her with unbridled passion and she met his hunger with her own. When their heated lips separated for breath, Sullivan, his broad chest rising and falling rapidly, urged Kay toward the bed. She willingly took a seat on its edge and watched as he pulled off his shirt. He stood looking down at her and Kay’s eyes admiringly swept over the wide smooth shoulders and the hard, muscled chest covered with a mat of crisp, black hair that gradually narrowed to a thick line down his hard abdomen.

Sullivan took a seat beside her, a long arm going around her shoulders. “Sweetheart,” he said huskily, as a big hand moved up to the swell of her breasts, “it’s our last night. Kiss me like it’s the last night, honey. Kiss me, baby.”

“Sul,” she murmured and put her palms to his smoothly shaven cheeks. Her soft, moist mouth, aggressively open, came up to his. She slowly ran the tip of her tongue inside his upper lip, just the way he’d taught her to do. He groaned and pulled her to him. Their mouths melded and while they hungrily kissed, Kay could feel the crinkly hair of Sullivan’s warm chest pleasantly tickling the rise of her breasts above the bodice of her sundress. She softly moaned as her nipples hardened and her breasts swelled. Instinctively, she pressed closer to the heat and hardness of that masculine chest.

At last Sullivan’s mouth left hers, trailing fiery kisses across her flushed cheek and finally coming to rest on her ear. “Kay, I want to feel your breasts against me. Just for a minute, sweetheart, just for a while,” he said.

Before she could answer, his mouth took hers again, his tongue thrusting between her parted lips to mate with hers. Deft fingers untied the bow at her nape and gentle, caring hands peeled down the white cotton barrier from between them as his lips left hers. He looked unwaveringly into her eyes while the dress—along with her inhibitions—was lowered.

Unhampered by clothes, Kay’s full, high breasts rose and fell with her rapid, nervous breaths, and her bottom lip trembled as she lowered her eyes from his. “Sul,” she began raggedly.

“Sweetheart,” he soothed softly, lean hands rising to cup the soft, warm mounds of creamy flesh. “You’re so very beautiful. Don’t be embarrassed with me, Kay. Look at me, darling.”

Slowly her eyes lifted to his. While his thumbs teased at the rose-hued crests, she sighed softly and shyly admitted, “That feels good, Sul. So good.”

“My sweet baby,” he murmured and slowly, gently pulled her against him. “Put your arms around me,” he instructed as his hands spread lightly on her back, pressing her tenderly to him.