When Next We Love (6 page)

She stood for a long time, thinking. She would never forget the day that she had met Richard and Derek either. She had been idly snorkeling in the surf off her father’s beach house when she had risen from the water to discover the two handsome young men wandering along, apparently lost. She had informed them that they were on private property, but they had quickly cajoled her into entertaining them. Their names—first ones only were given—didn’t mean a thing to her. She knew of the London Company—everyone did. They had cut their first gold album when all were still in their teens. Their work in the first years came out sporadically as each spent time in acclaimed music schools. Then, as graduates, they began to put out a constant flow of quality work. Before the oldest member, Richard, reached thirty, all five members were millionaires and celebrities. They had scored movies and plays, appeared on prestigious television specials, and performed before president and queen.

But when Leigh came across Richard and Derek, she accepted them as a pair of poor, confused British tourists. They had talked awhile, flirted in the gently rolling waves, and then Leigh had invited them for dinner. Her dad had been alive then, and the occasion had been tremendous, her father showing a definite interest in Derek. Both men had courted her teasingly, but Derek had been involved with a buxomy stewardess at the time and it was Richard who pursued her, a little awed at the discovery of his fame, to the altar. Richard wanted a wife. A wife, she discovered, to be a centerpiece. But he was, at times, good to her. He had been her buffer from pain at her father’s death; he had chosen Key West as his permanent home because she loved it. For certain kindnesses, she loved him.

And yet, she thought guiltily, she had never felt for Richard what she did for Derek. Her blood had never boiled at the near sight of him, she had never reached the plain of heaven in his arms …

No! Although she didn’t scream aloud, the word reverberated in her mind. She clenched her teeth and shivered, miserably regretting the folly of her masquerade with Derek. The night air didn’t seem to be helping at all. She would be better off getting back into her room, calling downstairs and requesting a good stiff drink and a couple of aspirins.

She turned to do just that, but the glass wouldn’t slide. She tried again, then considered the possibility of literally kicking herself. How could she have been so foolish? Only an idiot could lock herself out!

And she was locked out. She looked at the glass angrily and realized it must lock automatically when closed. Damn!

She pounded on the glass and yelled, but quickly ascertained the futility of such action. No one could hear her. She had only one choice, and that was to follow the stairs down to the patio and pool and re-enter the house on the ground floor. If she was lucky, she would avoid Derek and his date and only encounter Emma or James.

She took a deep breath and rushed down the stairs. If she had to run into someone, she might as well get it over with. She would certainly get nowhere fast by standing on the balcony shivering, her arms clasped tightly around herself.

The pool raced in silent ripples from the ever-increasing wind as she reached the empty patio, the palms bent low with each approaching salt-riddled gust. Leigh’s hair whipped about her face in furious dishevelment as she hurried to the house, only to stop with abrupt confusion as she heard Derek’s voice come clearly to her.

He was entertaining his guest in the rear salon. If she entered here, she would have to walk past them both and surely offer an explanation. “Damnation!” she muttered aloud. If there was anything she didn’t want to do, it was to run into one of Derek’s girl friends! And what would his girl friend think of a half-clad woman running about his house?

Cursing beneath her breath, Leigh decided to skirt around to the front of the house. Either James or Emma would answer the door—the front door was always kept locked—and meeting one of the household staff was definitely preferable.

She had not rounded the first corner before she heard the sound of vicious barking. Derek had not lied. The dogs were out. And she knew for a fact that they were Dobermans, mean and nasty unless they knew you and knew you belonged.

She did not belong. There was no time to lose. She ran like she had never run before in her life, back to the patio, straight into the salon. She slammed the door behind her, heart beating like a hunted rabbit’s, beads of perspiration breaking out on her forehead. She had made it with just a few feet to spare. Two of the magnificent black creatures had been on her heels. They were now jumping on the door and howling their wrath.

The great gasps of her breathing began to subside, and she swept a stream of tangled auburn hair from her face and focused with dread on the room. Derek was standing; apparently he had been about to check on the cause of the frenzied animals. She expected he would be angry. Her presence in such attire could do little to enhance the romanticism of his date.

But he wasn’t angry at all. If anything, his eyes were light and amused. She glanced apprehensively at his date. She wasn’t a bit like Leigh would have imagined either. She was a woman of at least thirty-five or forty, attractive, but extremely businesslike and staid. Her rounded features bothered Leigh; she was sure she had seen the woman before.

“Really, Leigh!” Derek admonished in a lazy drawl. “If you wanted to join us, you could have simply dressed and come down the staircase.”

Leigh shot him a look of pure hostility, but he seemed not to notice. Turning to the woman on the couch, he said, “Miss White, I believe you’ve met Leigh Tremayne before.” He glanced back to Leigh. “Leigh, you must remember Lavinia White. She interviewed Richard several years ago for her magazine.”

If there had been a hole in the floor anywhere, Leigh would have found it and crawled into it. This was ten times worse than breaking up the most passionate of romantic interludes. Derek’s words reminded her immediately of where she had seen the woman before. Lavinia White. The queen of gossip columnists. Untouchable because she made sure all her articles were based on researched fact.

There was no hole in the floor to crawl into. Leigh winced with every nerve in her body, then forced herself to move away from the door. “Hello, Miss White,” she said, sailing toward the woman and offering her hand as if she were dressed in heels and the most becoming of hostess gowns. “How are you?” Not waiting for a reply, she went on gaily to them both, “Please do excuse me. I’m afraid I locked myself out on the balcony. Terribly foolish, I know. Forgive me for the interruption.”

“Oh, not at all, dear!” Lavinia White was smiling as smugly as the cat that had just caught the canary. Her twinkling green eyes told Leigh plainly that she was already planning the words of type to describe the state of dress in which she had found Leigh Tremayne in Derek Mallory’s household. “In fact, I would have never forgiven Derek if you hadn’t made an appearance. Why the rogue! He didn’t even tell me you were here.”

“Excuse me, ladies, if you will,” Derek interrupted. “I want to see to the dogs.” He grinned wickedly at Leigh before he exited and she knew exactly what he was thinking: You got yourself into this—now get yourself out of it!

Despite the sinking sensation in her heart, she smiled at Lavinia brightly. “Derek and I had some business to discuss this afternoon,” she explained calmly, “then something went in my car. My home is in Key West, you know, and Derek didn’t think it safe for me to drive back late with the storm so close and all …”

She had run out of her words of excuse and they were ringing false to her own ears anyway. She was in Derek’s shirt, she was standing barefoot and bare-legged in his salon.

Of all the miserable luck!

“Business?” Lavinia queried doubtfully. “What kind of business?”

Leigh was spared a reply by Derek’s timely re-entry. “Musical business, of course,” he assured the reporter with his charm in full swing. “Leigh is a very talented artist in her own right, Lavinia. We’re planning to do some work together.”

Leigh glanced at him angrily but his expression remained guileless and easy. She checked her own telltale features and slipped back into her mask of a smile.

Lavinia White clapped her hands ecstatically. “Is that true, dear? How wonderful! And I’m the first to know!”

Leigh hesitated only slightly. If she said yes, she was cornered. She would have to complete the project with Derek. But if she said no … she knew her presence could only be construed in one way and her face and name would appear shortly in magazines across the country in a not-very-flattering light.

“Yes, Miss White. I started something with Richard several years ago and Derek thinks it’s worth picking up again. Actually, we’re not sure yet. We met on this today for the first time …”

“Leigh is overly modest,” Derek said. “Her work is excellent and we’re going to plunge right into it.”

Leigh could almost feel bars closing in around her. How had she allowed all this to happen? Her headache was becoming acute. She felt as if a thousand drummers were playing a march behind her eyes. “It was nice to see you again, Miss White—”

“Lavinia.”

“Lavinia, but I think I’ll excuse myself. I’ve had a long day and—”

“A terrible headache,” Derek supplied sympathetically. He had gotten his own way, he could afford to be magnanimous. “Do go on up to bed, Leigh. You certainly look like you need some sleep.”

“Oh, must you?” Lavinia wheedled.

“Yes, she must,” Derek answered firmly. He grinned amiably. “Leigh has a rotten temper when she’s overtired.”

She was tempted to slug him despite the reporter’s observant eyes. Her face was strained from the effort of maintaining her false smile. “I am frightfully tired. And I’m not exactly dressed for tea or cocktails!” She shook Lavinia White’s hand briefly and attempted to walk across the room nonchalantly. “Good night!”

“Good night, Leigh,” Derek called. His eyes followed her up the stairway and they were gloating and triumphant. She returned his stare with shimmering venom until she could no longer see him. Damn him straight to hell! she thought balefully. He would find out just how bad her temper could be in the morning!

But her troubles for the night were still not over. She grimaced as she remembered that she had also bolted the hallway door to her room. She tried the knob anyway, but as she had expected, it was locked tight.

She wasn’t going back downstairs. Not for anything. Sighing with exhaustion and resignation, she tried the door to the next room. It opened welcomingly at her touch.

She didn’t switch on a light. Her body and mind ached and all she wanted was the solace of sleep. She walked in the dim light until she found the bed, pulled back the covers, and collapsed. She hoped, as she drifted quickly and mercifully into a sound doze, that Emma wouldn’t mind terribly that she had made a mess of two rooms …

S
HE WAS DREAMING, AND
it was a pleasant dream. She was floating on an azure sea, kissed by the sun and caressed by the breeze. The water lapped by her side in perfect tranquility, a feeling of relaxation to be matched by none. Overhead white clouds moved across the sky in soft, billowing puffs; they seemed to reach down and cradle her with a tantalizing warmth …

She hurled herself up in the bed with a gasping cry. She was being touched and it wasn’t by clouds. There was a body beside her!

She heard a muttered oath and then an impatient movement. Light flared through the room from a bedside lamp and she found herself face to face with Derek.

“You bastard!” she hissed, shaking so with surprise and anger that her voice wavered even in its harshness. “You are incredible! Get out of my bed. I know you’re capable of dirty tricks, but this is too much. How dare you? And you have the nerve to condemn me …” Her words trailed away, not because she had run out of venom, but because he was staring at her very peculiarly. and not saying a thing in his own defense.

“Would you please get out of here?” she begged in exasperation and confusion.

“I’d be happy to, madam,” he replied with maddening deliberation. “Except this is my bed that you are in.”

If a bomb had fallen in the middle of the room, she couldn’t have been more shaken. She stared back at him helplessly, her eyes registering dismay as she remembered how haphazardly she had chosen a place to sleep. “Oh, Derek …” she stammered, venturing to glance around the room and note that the dresser was neatly covered with his toiletries and that the half-opened closet door displayed rows of pressed shirts and trousers. If only she’d turned on a light! “Derek, I am sorry. My door was locked, you see, I mean both doors … and I didn’t want to come back downstairs, and—and, well, I am sorry.”

“Don’t bother to be sorry,” he drawled lazily. His curious look had become speculative and his eyes, golden with sardonic amusement, roamed from her mane of sleep-tossed hair, to the deep vee created by the open buttons of the tailored shirt, and down to the long slender length of bare legs displayed beneath the tails. “Finding you in my bed has been a surprise, but a most pleasant one.” He ran a finger along her kneecap.

Leigh pushed his hand aside angrily. “Damn you, Derek, I explained what happened—”

“Yes, I know.” He smiled calmly. He was propped on an elbow and rested his head on his other hand. “You picked this room by chance.”

“Yes!”

“Oh.”

“Oh, yourself, and take the fast route to hell,” Leigh snapped irritably. “Yours is the last bed I’d crawl into on purpose.”

“Really?”

He posed the word like a perfectly polite question, but Leigh could sense the stifled laughter he was containing. She attempted to rise, only to discover she had one foot still caught in the sheets. With impatient force she ripped them aside, making a far worse discovery. Derek slept in the nude.

As Leigh gasped in an echo of horrified embarrassment, Derek chuckled, not in the least disturbed by the events that were mortifying to her. “Control yourself, love!” he mocked. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Fury choked back any reply Leigh might have made. She emitted a low growl, hurriedly tossed the sheet back over his bronze body, and unscrambled her own legs to make a hasty retreat. But in redraping her unexpected bedmate, she had retangled her own limbs. Her efforts did little but land her unceremoniously on the floor.