Silk on the Skin: A Loveswept Classic Romance (14 page)

“You don’t know my ‘distributors,’ ” Cass commented with a wry smile. “Dallas, a lot of my stock was handcrafted. I’d hate to owe any of those people money.” She sighed. “That’s the other half of the problem. Even if I came out of this with no financial loss, I still won’t be able to recoup the inventory loss from them in time for this season. I start hoarding their work in September, just to make the next summer’s demand.”

“I have connections with several banks, Cass,” he said quietly. “I can arrange for whatever money you might need.”

She straightened away from him. Rising to her feet, she turned to face him. “A straightforward loan?”

“Very straightforward,” he said, smiling. “With the standard astronomical interest rate.”

She smiled back. “I was hoping you weren’t going to suggest I use my M & L stock as collateral.”

“I didn’t. I wasn’t.”

She went into his arms. “Thank you, Dallas.”

Holding her, he vowed never to admit that the thought had occurred to him. It had. He knew he could have taken advantage of the wrecked store in some way. Getting her to use her stock as collateral, and then calling the loan in, was only one of them. Other, equally nasty tricks had come to mind, and he acknowledged that a few short weeks ago he would have tried them all, if necessary. But he had been instantly revolted by the mere idea of using corporate skullduggery with her. He wanted her to attend the board meeting because she cared about him. What was important to him also had to be important to her, just as what was important to her was now important to him. Whatever they had together didn’t stand a chance unless they both compromised.

He was in love with her. The realization was shocking, and yet not surprising at all. Holding her even more tightly, Dallas buried his face in her sweetly scented hair and smiled wryly to himself. He should have known, he thought. Cass had turned him inside out. He’d told her things he’d never told anybody before. She made him laugh. He’d never realized before how important that was between a man and a woman. From the beginning, he hadn’t been able to keep his personal feelings for her out of what he had to do for
M & L. He wondered if he had been in love with her even then. Probably. She had certainly taken him by surprise.

He wanted to tell her how he felt, then realized he couldn’t. Not yet. Not until after the board meeting.

Suddenly she pulled out of the embrace and began pacing restlessly around the now-cleared storeroom. He watched her, knowing that her energy hid the tension inside her.

“What I can’t understand,” she said, “is why anyone would get a kick out of doing something like this.”

“I’ve been wondering about that,” he said slowly. “And about that scare you had last week. Maybe the cop was right about somebody’s having it in for you.”

“But I don’t have any enemies,” she said, stopping and shaking her head.

He made a face. “One coincidence I can buy. Two, no.”

“Dallas,” she began firmly, “you know as well as I do that anyone can be the victim of a crime. It happens every day. That it happened to me twice
is
an unlucky coincidence. They’re not related in any way. How could they be?”

He eyed her for a moment. “Why couldn’t they be?”

“Because I don’t have anyone after me. I’m not in trouble with some underworld kingpin who wants to teach me a lesson, or anything equally nefarious. Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I had an anonymous phone call. I’m a perfectly
normal woman, with a perfectly normal lifestyle. Period.”

“Still, a little extra protection wouldn’t hurt. A bodyguard sounds like just the thing.”

“I don’t think Arnold Schwarzenegger would be interested,” she said, glaring at him.

Dallas chuckled. “Not a body-builder, you nut. A bodyguard. Besides, I was thinking of someone a little smaller, but just as intimidating. I’m one hell of an intimidator.”

She stared at him for a long minute, then burst into peals of laughter.

“Thank you for your vote of confidence,” he muttered, ready to strangle her. He wasn’t
that
out of shape.

“I’m sorry,” she said, gasping and wiping tears from her eyes. “It’s just that I had this vision of you trying to beat some guy to a pulp with your key to the executive washroom.”

“M & L doesn’t have executive washrooms,” he said. “Just an executive dining room. And I plan to use something more formidable than a quiche to take care of someone. Let me ask you one question, Cass. You’re tough enough now, but what are you going to do when you’re home tonight? Alone.”

“Turn on my …”

Her voice trailed away, as she obviously realized her home’s alarm system was no more impervious to a knowledgeable intruder than the store’s was.

“I’ll be damned before I’m scared out of my wits again,” she stated, curling her hands into fists.

“And I’ll be damned before you are,” he said. “Which is why I think I ought to be around all the
time. If nothing happens you can just put it down to my overactive imagination.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Cass, you’re a very smart woman,” he added. “You know you’re not going to be foolishly stubborn over a little extra safety precaution. In fact, you’re going to agree to my playing bodyguard simply because it is an eminently sensible precaution to have another person around.”

“I hate it when you do that,” she said, glaring at him all over again.

He smiled in satisfaction.

“I know.”

“What the hell do you mean, I can’t even bring a toothbrush?” Dallas demanded as they left the store that evening. He had insisted on driving the Jeep, claiming she wasn’t up to it.

“Just what I said,” she replied airily. Having lost the argument over who would drive, she wasn’t about to lose this one. “You’re a bodyguard, not a boarder. When you need to brush your teeth, you go home and do it, just like all the other bodyguards do.”

“Cass, that’s not logical—”

“Yes, it is. It’s very logical to me.”

“Dammit, Cass!”

She listened with deaf ears to his arguments as they drove to her house. She had realized earlier that her thoughts about being punished for sleeping with him had been an irrational attempt to find some reason for her store’s being vandalized. It was amazing, she decided, what the shocked
brain could come up with. But now that she was working to bring the store, and herself, back to normal, her sense of logic had returned. She couldn’t deny that she would feel better with Dallas present. If anyone were singling her out, having a man around might deter him. After last night, Dallas would naturally think he should be the one to protect her. After last night, she couldn’t tell him he wasn’t.

And that, she silently admitted, was her problem.

Her mind filled with a collage of the laughter and tenderness they had shared together. And the quiet talks in between. She knew about the little things now. He’d fallen out of a tree at age seven and broken both legs; kissed Barbara Summers behind the garden when he’d been eleven; failed his first driver’s test—the unpardonable of macho teenage sins. She knew all about his shortlived marriage; she hadn’t been able to stop the questions once they’d started. And he knew things about her that even she had forgotten. Like the time she’d given her second stepmother a heart attack by camping out in the drawing room during Easter vacation.

She wished she could say she had made love with him out of pity. She’d even be happy with good old lust as an excuse. Some other factor had caused the total collapse of her normally sound defenses. Something more …

Mentally shying away from the thought, she had a distinct feeling it would cause a granddaddy of an earthquake. She’d had quite enough of a shake-up today anyway. No more, she thought.

What she needed now was time and emotional
distance. Dallas’s moving in his things wouldn’t give her that. She had given so much of herself the night before. So little was left. Still, she couldn’t deny she was grateful he would be at the house. Despite her refusal to be scared, she couldn’t help feeling a certain underlying queasiness at the thought of being alone. She wasn’t quite as independent as she’d always thought.

But what would she do when he wasn’t around to guard her?

“You’re not listening to me,” he said, gaining her attention.

“No, I’m not.” She turned to him. “Dallas, please. The truth is, I’m grateful you’ll be with me. But I wouldn’t feel … right folding your jockey shorts or seeing our deodorant cans side by side in the medicine chest.”

“I never asked you to fold my shorts,” he reminded her. “And I can keep my deodorant in the refrigerator.”

She smiled. “Somehow, I don’t think that will work. Everything’s happened too fast, and I have to have time to … adjust.”

He was silent at first, before finally saying, “All right. I’ll keep my room at the hotel for a bit longer.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. Deciding she would concede on one point, she added, “By the way, I just bought a new toothbrush. You’re welcome to it. But just the toothbrush!”

He smiled.

Cass leaned back against the passenger seat and closed her eyes. She hoped she never had to relive this day. She was exhausted in mind, body,
and spirit. Tonight, at least, she had nothing to look forward to but sleep.

Somehow, the thought didn’t appeal.

And when she woke up in the morning, snuggled next to Dallas’s warm body, she finally admitted she was glad the idea hadn’t appealed to him either.

Eleven
 

His time had nearly run out.

Dallas stared at the storeroom calendar in near disbelief. The carpenters’ hammers seemed to pound through his brain, suddenly intensifying the headache he’d had all morning. He immediately yanked open the back door and stepped out into the sauna bath masquerading as a sunny day. The steel door clanged shut behind him. Better out here than in there, he thought while breathing a sigh of relief. Then he muttered a string of curses.

In a few days he had to be back in New York—with or without Cass.

With her, he firmly told himself. But as he remembered the amount of work done to the store over the past two days, and the amount still left to do, he cursed again. Cass wouldn’t leave, with the store in a state of confusion. Hell, his chances of getting her to the board meeting hadn’t exactly
been terrific, even when WinterLand had been in perfect condition.

He wondered yet again if there was some other way to stop the boutiques from going through without Cass’s stock vote. Maybe he had overlooked something … maybe if he had …

He shook his head, knowing he was grasping at nonexistent straws. With Cass’s proxy, Ned had the board locked up. Dallas acknowledged that his original idea of Cass’s being the key to saving M & L was still the best one. The only one.

And he hated it.

He looked out over the back lot to the marshes beyond the tarmac. Damn the whole fiasco to hell and back, he cursed silently as an unaccustomed restlessness overtook him. He needed to talk to Cass again about M & L. A final talk. But he hadn’t had the heart to do it during the daytime, when she was coping with her store. At night he hadn’t wanted to do anything to spoil the passion—or the peace—between them.

Leaning back against the hot cinder-block wall, he closed his eyes and let the relentless heat beat against him. He ought to damn well retire, he thought. He was definitely losing his edge. But from the moment he’d walked into WinterLand he hadn’t once been objective about the job he had to do. That was bad. Very bad. Hell, he thought. He was so off, he’d reduced himself from corporate executive to bodyguard—and was enjoying it, too.

The job itself had been quiet so far. Still, the lack of disturbances only made him uneasy. He felt as if they were in the eye of a hurricane, a
kind of temporary calm before the storm renewed itself.

The back door suddenly swung outward, and he opened his eyes to find Cass standing on the threshold. The mauve-and-white-print sundress she was wearing hugged her breasts and slender waist before flaring out over hips and thighs. He had to force his gaze to her face. It wasn’t the first time. The simple garment had been driving him to distraction all morning.

“Dallas, what are you doing out here?” she asked, frowning at him.

“I decided I needed a steam bath, and it beats driving to a club,” he said, glaring at her as he remembered how the carpenters had eyed her little nothing dress with equal male fascination.

Frustration rose up inside him, and he didn’t know whether to strangle her or kiss her. Opting for the second, he pulled her into his arms. The door clanged shut the instant his mouth found hers. Lord, he thought, her lips were so soft. His tongue dipped inside to find the unique taste of her.

She made an incoherent noise and pushed against his arms, breaking the kiss.

“Dallas, what’s the matter with you?” she asked, staring at him in puzzlement.

“Now, that should be obvious,” he said, while deciding to shelve his worries momentarily. One thing at a time.

Her eyebrows rose in a perfect arch. “What is obvious is that your brains are fried. How long have you been out here?”

“Just enough to get hot,” he murmured, pressing himself against her.