Storm Over the Lake (2 page)

She closed her eyes and lurched as the bus accelerated. Adrian. Adrian! It was definitely Tahiti time. When things got so bad that even the silver lining of the dark clouds was black, she threatened to chuck it all and go to Tahiti. Of course, she never did. It was an old joke, and everybody on the paper accepted it as such. But this time, if she'd had the money, she might just have gone.

Sure, she thought, I could chuck mother and the job to go live on a beach and eat bananas. I could scale Mt. Everest naked and barefoot, too. She sighed and opened her eyes. Her stop was coming up. As she got off, she wondered for the fiftieth time why Adrian had sent for her.

She was still wondering the next morning. Sitting aboard the Atlanta flight as it ate up the miles between Miami and the champagne city of Atlanta, she stared out at the clouds with eyes that didn't see. If
only she could turn the clock back. If only she didn't have to get off the plane. If only elephants could fly…

It was raining when she left the plane at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta. A nice, slow drizzle, the kind that always made her want to curl up under a fuzzy blanket with a good book. But this particular day the rain seemed very much like tears….

She clutched her purse like a lifeline as she entered the terminal, nervously darting glances around the crowded, spacious interior with its sprinkling of booths. Jack had said that someone would meet her. He hadn't said who.

As she froze in her tracks, staring wildly ahead, she realized why he hadn't said who. Adrian Devereaux was coming straight toward her, and for one wild moment she thought she was going to faint.

H
e looked older. There were lines in his face that hadn't been there the last time she saw him. The gray at his temples had spread into his thick, black hair. He was still husky and muscular, his build making him seem much taller than he actually was. He was, she thought dazedly, so good to look at. He always had been.

She gripped the purse as he stopped just in front of her. His dark, somber eyes took in her soft beige dress, her bare arms, the
tight bun of her hair from which taffy-colored wisps hung rebelliously. He looked until her heart was shaking with its pounding, until her legs felt like spring saplings under her.

“Afraid, Meredith?” he asked gruffly, still using her surname for her first name, a holdover from her disguise as “Meredith Cane.”

Her knuckles turned white on the purse. “No, sir, I'm not,” she said in a husky voice, addressing him as she always had.

It brought back her first meeting with him, when she'd come sneaking in under his nose in the guise of his new private secretary. It had been a bold move, but with all the enthusiasm of a young reporter on her first major assignment, she'd carried the deception off with pure bravado.

“Can you take dictation?” he'd asked curtly, easing his husky frame into a chair that swallowed him but left space all around when she sat in it.

“Yes, sir,” she'd returned just as curtly. “Backwards, forwards, and upside down, if you like.”

“Upside down?” His dark, insolent eyes had traced a frankly sensuous path down her slender figure. “Won't your slip show, Meredith?”

She'd blushed. And he'd thrown back his head and roared like the lion he was. A lion, and she hadn't shown fear, and he'd respected her for that. Perhaps it had been just a bit more than respect, although he never went past skillful innuendos in their boss-secretary relationship before he found her out. Before he threw her out. Before he…

“You're thinner than I remember, Meredith,” he said, his eyes narrow and glittering under the broad scowl. “Skinny might be an apt description.”

“And you're heavier,” she threw back, not pulling her punches. “And older,” she added deliberately.

Something very like a flash of amusement touched the dark eyes. “I'm forty, in case you need reminding,” he said. “I can give you eighteen years, little girl.”

“Seventeen,” she replied. “I'll be 23 this month.”

He looked her over again, speculatively. “Aren't you going to ask why I told Charlie to send you?”

Her lower lip trembled despite her best effort at control. “I don't have to ask.”

He searched her wan, tired face, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep. “No, you don't, do you?” he replied grimly.

She drew a deep breath. “Jack said I was to stay with you and Lillian,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “I'd prefer a hotel.”

“No doubt. But, you don't have a choice. You gave that up when you agreed to come, Persephone,” he said, eyeing her coldly. “You always reminded me of her, Meredith, with your hair like honey and your face so damned innocent!”

She flushed to the edges of her hairline. “Why didn't you just hire a hit man and have me shot?” she asked shakily.

“Because I've waited a long time for this,” he told her, “and I plan to enjoy every minute of it. Give me your claim check and I'll have Frank pick up your luggage.”

She handed it to him automatically. He gestured, and a tall, thin man in a chauffeur's uniform joined him, took the baggage claim check and left.

“I didn't think you'd bother coming to fetch me yourself,” she said coldly as he took her arm and walked her briskly toward the terminal entrance.

“The look on your face when you saw me was worth it,” he said flatly.

She preceded him out the door to the gray Rolls parked at the curb, and let him put her inside. He went around the rear of the sleek automobile and slid in beside her.

She felt the car shake as Frank put the luggage in the boot, and again as he got in the driver's seat and the Rolls surged forward.

He shifted in the seat to face her, his jacket falling open over his broad chest under the white silk shirt he wore. “A reporter,” he chided. “My God, it was the last thing I'd ever have guessed you were.”

She stared down at the champagne-
colored upholstery of the seat. “I'd like to tell you why I did it…”

“I already know.”

She glanced at him quickly. How could he have known that the magazine promised her enough money to pay her mother's hospital expenses and doctor bills…

“I had you followed,” he said darkly. “You were seen giving the money to a man, in a hotel restaurant! You damned little…!”

“Please, it wasn't what you…!”

“Shut up.” He said it quietly, but in a tone that dared her to challenge him. “I didn't bring you back to think up bigger and better lies to explain yourself, Meredith.”

She wanted to tell him that the man she was giving the money to was her father's attorney; that after her father's death, everything had to go to pay off debts. There wasn't enough to begin paying the specialists who were trying to repair what massive strokes had done to her mother. The money she earned from the magazine
exclusive would have done that—although she refused the check when the story was run. She couldn't have borne to take it after what she'd done to Adrian. But he wouldn't listen. And even if he did, what difference did it make now whether he believed her or not?

“It was an insurance check from my father's death I was signing over to him,” she wanted to say, “not blood money I got for selling the story that ruined you.” But it was no use.

A large, darkly beautiful masculine hand with its ruby ring propped itself on the seat behind her. “Charlie mentioned you had responsibilities in Miami—someone you were supporting. Are you still keeping him up, Meredith?” he asked cruelly.

She met his eyes evenly. “My private life is none of your business, Mr. Devereaux. It never was.”

“That's the damned truth. But mine was yours, wasn't it, little girl?” he growled. “I trusted you, dammit!”

She swallowed. “I know.”

They were nearing the house, now. She watched the wooded, flowering grandeur of the long, paved driveway out the window as they neared the big brownstone house in its nest of oak, pine, and magnolia trees. There were flowers everywhere. Lillian's work, no doubt, because the thin little woman loved them so.

Lillian met her at the door. The wiry, silver-haired woman was just as Dana remembered her—brusque and efficient, but her brown eyes were as warm as a cozy fire in the hearth.

“Yes,” Lillian said with a smile, eyeing the younger woman as they stood in the spacious foyer. “You're a bit older, but you haven't gained a pound. I'll have to fix that. Have you eaten?”

Dana managed a shaky smile, her ears listening for movement in the den where Adrian had gone as she stood in the light from the crystal chandelier that crowned the winding staircase.

“Yes, thank you,” she told Lillian. “I had breakfast on the plane.”

“You'll want coffee, though.” The
smile faded as the older woman took stock of Dana's nervousness. “Don't worry now,” she whispered stealthily. “It's not…”

“Lillian!” The voice was deep, curt, like rumbling thunder in the den, and so familiar that Dana wanted to cry. “Get some coffee and bring me a danish!”

“Yes, sir!” Lillian called back, and with a reassuring pat, she urged Dana toward the open door of the den. “He doesn't bite, remember,” she said
sotto voce
.

“The hell he doesn't,” Adrian answered. “Coffee, Lillian!”

“I'm going, I'm going, you don't have to yell….”

Dana stiffened her spine and walked numbly into the familiar cozy room with its Mediterranean decor, the huge oak desk, the leather sofa, and the big easy chair that bore the imprint of a big, husky body. He was standing with one arm resting on the mantle. There was a fire in the hearth to ease the chill of the room, and he was punching at it with a black poker.

“Sit down,” he said without looking at her.

She perched herself on the very edge of the sofa, her purse crumpled and smudged under her restless fingers as she watched the way Adrian's dark hair gleamed in the firelight, a half-smile on the curve of his mouth. The ruby ring emphasized the darkness of that hair-sprinkled masculine hand that held the poker.

He put the poker away and turned to her. His fingers searched in his pocket for a cigarette. He dug out a slim gold lighter to put a flame to it, and inhaled deeply. His eyes narrowed on her wan face.

“Three years,” he said quietly, “and I don't think you've been out of my mind for two days in all that time. Last month there was a feature story by you in that Florida magazine. It brought you back into my life with a vengeance, and I knew I had to see you again.”

“What for?” she asked bitterly. “You had the picture.”

“I could answer that question in a way that would turn you red from the roots of
your hair all the way to your ankles,” he said with a dark smile. “Can you still blush, I wonder, or have you lost the ability as well as your innocence?”

“I haven't lost either,” she wanted to say, but Lillian came in with a tray of coffee and pastries, saving her a reply. By the time it was served and Lillian had gone again, the subject was forgotten.

“How long will I be here?” she asked dully.

His eyes studied her face intensely. “That's hard to say. Months, perhaps,” he told her.

“I'd like a straight answer.”

“You're getting one.” He leaned back in his chair, the coffee cup in one hand, a cigarette smoking in the other. “I need a secretary.”

“Not me.”

“Don't bet on it.” His eyes narrowed at her gasp of apprehension. “Charlie said Jack's been handling you with kid gloves ever since you covered some disaster last year, and he thinks you need a rest leave.”

She blanched. “I don't…!”

“On the other hand,” he continued calmly, “I lost my secretary about three weeks ago, and I can't replace him with just anyone. I need someone I can trust,” he added deliberately. “And I doubt very seriously you'd make the mistake of betraying me a second time.”

“I'm a reporter, not a…”

“You're not a reporter any more,” he said coolly. “I called Charlie this morning.”

“My job…” she croaked.

“…is being advertised in this morning's paper.”

She jumped to her feet. “You can't do this!”

“The hell I can't. Sit down,” he said, the old curt authority in his voice.

She collapsed down onto the soft leather. “Will you really take revenge this far?” she cried. “You don't understand, I can't stay here, away from Miami…!”

“You won't leave this house until I tell you to get out,” he said coldly. “If you walk out that door, I'll break you. You won't ever get another job.” He said it
calmly, without ever raising his voice. And he meant it, every word.

Her eyes closed against the nightmare that was happening. “Please, I have to go home…!”

“This is home for the next six months.” He finished the rest of his coffee. “You'll draw a salary, you'll be the private secretary you only pretended to be once before.” His eyes narrowed, glittering, as he watched her reaction. “I want you for six months, Persephone. You caused me a hell of a lot of trouble, and I want recompense.”

“I…I'll get a salary?” she managed weakly, her spirit completely gone as she realized just how completely she was at his mercy.

“More than you deserve,” he replied, dropping heavily into the armchair across from her. He crossed his legs and watched her through narrowed eyes. “Enough, probably, to support your lover.”

Her mouth trembled, and not for all the world would she have spoiled his vivid image of her. “Will I have…days off?”

“Occasionally.”

“Can I go home…occasionally?”

“To see him? I don't think so.”

Her eyes went misty. Mother…! “Oh, you can't…!”

“I can. I have.” His dark eyes backed her down. “You owe me!”

She closed her eyes. Six months. To see him, be near him, be hated by him. Six months. Maybe she could get Jack and the boys to see about Mrs. Meredith. But six months…!

“I don't seem to have a choice,” she whispered.

“In point of fact,” he replied mildly, “you don't have any.”

Her face jerked up rebelliously, one last flash of fury. “You damned Yankee!” she threw at him, referring pointedly to his Chicago origins, to the accent that lingered after half a lifetime spent in this city.