More Than Friends (37 page)

She stayed with Zoe until the girl was nearly asleep, then kissed her and crept out. The kitchen was dark. The den was empty. She found Sam in their bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed, still in his turtleneck sweater and slacks. His knees were spread, an elbow on each.

"When does it end?" he asked with an anguished look. "When do the dominoes stop falling? When do the screams stop echoing?" She didn't know, and it wasn't for lack of wondering. She wondered each time she saw Teke, each time she saw Michael. She wondered each time she saw Jon turn his back on Sam, and Zoe avoid his eyes. She wondered each time she saw Jason Faust and felt shame.

And she wondered each time she saw Sam. She wondered when she would be able to see him as the

man she had fallen in love with rather than the man she was forgiving.

The only thing she knew for sure just then was that Sam was suffering and she couldn't bear to see it. Silently she crossed the carpet, came between his legs, and brought his head to her chest, and there, with his breath warm and his scent familiar and arousing, she knew one other thing. She desired him more than she was angry, or hurt, or ashamed. The beat of her heart must have told him so, either that or his own desperation, because his arms closed around her. He held her tightly at first, then loosened his hold so that he might move his head against her breasts. She kept her face buried in his hair while he did that, while he unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra, and she might have felt embarrassed, remembering Jason, if the brush of his mustache against her breasts hadn't excluded all other thought. She felt herself swell to him, heard herself sigh, let herself ride with the heat that surged in her blood.

Sam led the way. She sensed it was what he needed, knew it was what she needed. She needed to know that he found her attractive. She needed his mouth hot and his tongue wet. She needed--so much that each one stroked her inside--the soft, sexy words that he whispered against her skin.

He took his mouth from her only long enough to drag his turtleneck over his head. "Oh, baby," he whispered against her flesh once more. His hands were behind her, under her. They dispensed with her skirt and helped her free herself of her under things.

Catching her face, he brought her mouth to his. He used his tongue to bind her to him while he unfastened his pants and released her only to push them off, but the moment was long enough to give

Annie a look at his body. He was magnificent, so much more so than she could ever be that she would have shrunk back if Sam hadn't lifted her then and set her gently down on the spread.

Her insides were trembling, making her fingers less than steady when she touched his mouth and his mustache, but she couldn't not touch, she had been missing him so much. In her eyes, his body was perfect. She ran her hands through the hair on his chest, over the broad swells where his nipples lay small and hard, and along the tapering line down his middle. Her palms felt hot and achy. They wouldn't stay still. So she let them loose on her favorite parts, those ones of his that tightened and grew on the outside while she tightened and grew on the inside. She loved touching him there, loved stroking him, loved feeling the way his whole body tensed when she did it, the way his breathing shallowed.

She wondered if Teke had touched him there.

With a small cry she squeezed her eyes shut.

"Oh, no, you don't," Sam said in a ragged rumble. "I can guess what you just thought, but I won't have it. There's no room for anyone else in our bed. Just you and me, and what we do for each other, because that's all there's ever been. Look at me, Annie." He laced his fingers through hers and anchored them by her shoulders. "Look at me." He eased her legs farther apart.

It was too much. Her body was on fire, the flame too hot to deny herself the pleasure of Sam's possession. Wayward thoughts went up in smoke when she opened her eyes. Seeing him above her, feeling naked and open beneath him, she clutched at his fingers. "Tell me you love me," she whispered.

"I love you," he said, looking into her eyes. His penetration was slow, smooth, and so divine that a great sound of relief slipped from her throat.

The relief was short-lived. Sam proceeded to love her with such exquisite gentleness that she was straining for release long before he allowed it. He seemed bent on showing her how high he could take her, how long he could hold back for the sake of her pleasure, how much he loved her, and if the quantity and quality of a man's passion was the measure, he loved her very much indeed. If dawn hadn't ever broken, Annie might have been satisfied to lie in Sam's arms forever. But dawn did come, casting the proverbial light on all the problems that no night of passion, however long and blinding, could erase. fifteen

JOHN STEWART IS WAITING," THE MESSAGE

read, and it came as no surprise to J.D. when he arrived at the office first thing Tuesday morning. His parents had returned from Florida the night before. He knew that his father would be wondering how Thanksgiving had gone and that his concern would be prompted not by love of his son or his grandchildren, but by dislike for Teke. J.D. wished that once, just once in his life, it wouldn't be that way. He wished that John Stewart's motivations would be positive rather than negative, that his primary concern would be his son's happiness. Cursing his jumping stomach, he crushed the message, dunked it into the wastebasket, and strode down the hall. John Stewart was reading The Wall Street Journal. He set it aside when J.D. walked in.

"You're looking rested," J.D. said, dropping onto a chair. "Tanned, too. You must have played a little golf."

"Some," John Stewart replied, sounding vaguely peeved. "I spent most of my time explaining why you weren't down there with me."

"Ahh. Well, that shouldn't have been too difficult. I was with my family." The thought of people talking about his misfortunes rankled.

"Or was it too much to ask that you not announce to the whole of Palm Beach that I'm separated from my wife?"

"Why shouldn't they know? My friends have all met Theodora. They know what she is. They were pleased that you'd finally come to your senses."

"She's still my wife," J.D. said. He looked around the office, thinking that it was a perfectly stuffy place. "I resent your bad-mouthing her to strangers."

"These people aren't strangers. You've worked with many of them, and they like you, John David. Say the word, and they'll pair you up with a different woman every night. Moreover, they admire your legal ability. Should we ever decide to open a Palm Beach office, we'll have a loyal following."

J.D. wasn't interested in being "paired up." If he wanted a woman, he could find his own. Nor was he interested in opening a Palm Beach office. If he ever decided to work there, he sure as hell wouldn't put himself smack under his father's thumb.

"What if I decided to go back to Teke?" he asked. Curiosity or defiance, he wasn't sure, but the jumping in his stomach was becoming a ping. "What would you say to all those people who like me?"

"You're not going back to her," John Stewart informed him in a full, confident voice. "You're too much my son."

"You can say that again. But don't look smug. It isn't a compliment. I'm too pompous to go back to Teke."

"That was unkind, John David."

J.D. shrugged. "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I'm pompous all right. Arrogant, too."

John Stewart pursed his lips. "You're in a bad

mood. Aren't you pleased with your apartment?"

His apartment. Ahh, that was a story in and of itself. He had hired a cleaning woman, who had proceeded to lose his toothbrush and half a pair of sneakers. The local laundry did his shirts just fine but couldn't seem to keep the starch out of his shorts. And every time he turned around, the dishwasher was full. But he would be damned if he would give his father the satisfaction of knowing any of that, so he said, "I'm very pleased with my apartment."

"Are you having trouble with a client?"

"Should I be?" he asked guardedly.

"Something has to account for your mood."

J.D. stared in amazement. "Part of what accounts for my mood is my son. He's been through an ordeal--is still going through an ordeal. You haven't even asked how he is."

"I assume he's fine, or you would have told me differently."

"He's not fine. He having a lousy time trying to accept the changes in his life." The pinging in his stomach moved to his head, goading him on. "We had an awful scene at Thanksgiving dinner. I sat at that table, just as you would have, expecting everyone to please me, and when everyone didn't, I did just what you would have done, I blamed them. God, you've set an awful example," he exclaimed, and was instantly amazed that he'd done it. His reaction to his father was getting gutsy, something new and interesting for him.

John Stewart's voice grew gruffer. "Don't blame your problems on me, John David. I wasn't the one who picked that woman for a wife."

"No, but it's everything that I inherited from you that's let her down." J.D. came out of his chair, seeming propelled by the words. "I couldn't satisfy

her, sexually or otherwise, because I'm cold, just like you. I'm boring, just like you. I'm self-centered, just like you. She probably would have divorced me years ago if it hadn't been for Sam and Annie."

"Sam," John Stewart snorted. "Sam isn't worth two cents." J.D. had heard that once too often. Facing his father with more force than he had ever mustered against the man, he said, "Sam is the only thing that has kept me sane around here. Without him, I'd have left this firm years ago--either that or jumped off a roof. Sam has been my saving grace. The good part of me comes from him, not from you." John Stewart's eyes were like steel. "So you're siding with him. I figured as much. You're a traitor."

"I'm a realist."

"You're a coward. You've walked out of two meetings now at which I've tried to bring Sam's partnership to a vote. You won't vote with me, but you don't have the guts to vote against me."

"I'm getting there fast," J.D. warned. His head flew around when the door opened without a knock. He was prepared to scowl at Mary McGonigle for the license she took, but it was Virginia Clinger's face that appeared, along with a whiff of her perfume.

"Oooops," she said, glancing from father to son and back. "Bad time. See you later."

She was gone as quickly as she'd come, but J.D. was instantly wary.

"Why is she here?" He knew that her father had already gone south for the winter, knew that other than through Stanley, she had no dealings with Maxwell, Roper and Dine, since her divorce lawyers were elsewhere.

"Stopping in to say hello, no doubt," John Stewart said.

"On her own? Just for kicks? That doesn't sound like Virginia, unless she has something up her

sleeve." The thought that she hadn't knocked--and that J.S. hadn't called her on it--worried him. He thought of what she had seen in Constance on the day Michael was hurt, and his wariness increased.

"Have you been meeting with her?"

"She drops in sometimes."

"And talks about what? Sam?"

"What would she have to say about Sam?" John Stewart replied with an innocence that J.D. didn't buy for a minute.

"Virginia would say whatever she thought you might want to hear, if it could help her cause, which is to get as much money from her father as possible. I'm the one handling Stanley's estate now, but you're his longtime friend. What's she telling you? That she saw Teke and Sam together? That she has evidence they had an affair?"

"He already admitted they had an affair."

"He admitted they were together once, which doesn't constitute an affair. What happened between them is no more Virginia's business than it is yours."

"It certainly is my business. It's my law firm he's soiling."

"Soiling? Thanks to the Dunn case, we're being talked up around town like never before. That's not soiling. It's great PR."

"And you've bought into it hook, line, and sinker. Sam's brainwashed you."

"He's been a damn good friend, a damn good friend."

"How can you say that," John Stewart boomed, "after what he did to you?"

But J.D. wasn't being sidetracked by that one afternoon's fiasco. Buoyed by anger at his father, he was feeling an odd sense of power. It enabled him to share the most personal thing he ever had with the man. "I have a nightmare sometimes. I dream that we vote Sam out, and that each day, each week, each month, without him I grow to be more and more like you. I get colder and more self-righteous, to the point that I'm standing on top of a pyramid alone, all alone, because there isn't another person in this world who wants to be with me. That's my nightmare. Pretty grim, huh?"

John Stewart rose slowly from his seat and drew himself to his full height. In the same impelling voice that had made many a strong man quail, he said, "Not grim. Childish. I've given you a life, John David. I don't deserve this kind of disrespect."

J.D. didn't quail. He simply stared at his father in disbelief. "You don't understand. You don't get the point. You don't hear what I'm saying, do you."

"I hear what I need to hear. But if I were you, I wouldn't say it again. I can vote you out of this firm right along with your beloved Sam Pope. Think of that next time you're in the mood for calling me names. This is my firm, John David, mine."

J.D. drew his head back. He might have argued that he had his own following, that he carried his weight when it came to the bottom line, that with both Sam and J.D. gone, the firm might well struggle to survive. But he didn't bother. Suddenly there seemed more important things to do than bicker with John Stewart. The pinging in his head had a ring of independence to it. He wanted to see where it would lead.

At the other end of Maxwell, Roper and Dine, Sam was returning from a sentencing hearing for a client. The judge had granted him a more lenient deal than the prosecutor wanted, but his client still had to do hard time. Sam was discouraged. His client was neither

young nor in good health. Sam wasn't sure he would make it through a single day in prison, and he liked the man. He believed him guilty only of a naive mis choice of business associates. Unfortunately a jury had believed him guilty of more.