A Daring Proposition (10 page)

“Very unusual,” Brian agreed dryly. His voice was less than three feet behind her. She refused to turn around and look at him. How long had he been standing there? How much had he overheard?

“Your wife’s been telling me about your prowess as a lover,” Steven supplied lazily, his composure never lost. Leigh stared disbelievingly at him.

“Someday I’ll tell you about her prowess as a conversationalist. Right now we’re going home.” A strong hand grasped hers, drawing her to a standing position. Where was Janet? “Terrific dinner, Steven, and I’ll see you again as soon as the attorney has a chance to draw up the contract. Be nice to work with you again.”

Casual, normal words continued between the two men while coats were fetched and put on. Brian buttoned Leigh’s with none of the patience he showed in his conversation, and almost roughly pushed her out the door ahead of him. On the brightly lit porch, with a gentle snow falling around them, Brian paused and grasped her shoulders. She looked up at him, frightened and wary and totally mute. She assumed he was angry, the way his eyes blazed into hers, and then for an instant she thought it wasn’t anger at all, but frustration and…something else.

The moment was broken. “That damned woman! And damn Rawlings, too.” With his hand imprisoning hers, he half dragged her to the car with long, swift strides. He opened her door and slammed it once she was inside. When he got in, he was hardly seated before he had turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the driveway.

“And am I also on your list of the damned?” she inquired, wondering at his fury. “Or are you just taking your anger at them out on me?”

“Red, you have one hell of a nerve,” he said with a short, impatient laugh that made her shiver inside.

Leigh sensed, from the deepest recesses of her mind, too many things that she was not sure she wanted to know: that he had not made love to Janet, though the offer had been there; that he was sexually frustrated as well as enraged; and that the control she always associated with him was at this moment barely on the edge—a very ragged edge. They stopped at a red light, long enough for Brian to turn the full force of those glinting black eyes on her. “Did he lay a finger on you, Leigh?” His jaw was clenched and his lips tight; he was a stranger she had never met before.

She took a breath. “Of course not,” she said quietly. “Brian, how could you think that? I would never let anyone—”

“Wouldn’t you?” he challenged. The light changed and his eyes left hers, but the tension in his tall, broad shoulders was unmistakable.

She remembered, suddenly, the way his eyes had trailed hers at dinner. She had thought he was trying to tell her what he wanted her to do in relation to the Rawlings, but she knew now that wasn’t it. It was something between the two of them, and a fleeting instinct whispered that he was telling her that if anyone ever touched her it would be him, her husband. And was he also warning her that he
was
going to touch her, was going to rewrite the rules in that area as he had rewritten the rules of their social life? She felt a wild fluttering in the pit of her stomach and clenched her fists.

Silently, she huddled against the door of the car, feeling as unsafe and unsettled and thoroughly unhappy as she could remember, and said nothing at all to him for the entire ride home.

***

Two weeks before Christmas, a Saturday morning, Brian tracked her down in her study, where she had been working on a client’s accounts. Now that the morning sickness had abated, she had begun working again, but as a freelance accountant and only part time. To return to White’s and a full-time schedule would have been too demanding, and she had planned to work at home after the baby’s birth anyway, as she would want to be around at least until the child was old enough for nursery school. It made sense to start accepting clients now.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Brian apologized, “but I thought you’d want to see the letter we got from my mother this morning.” He held out a sheet of yellow stationery.

Leigh took the missive and eagerly began to read it. Just after Brian had moved in with her, they had called his mother to tell her of the marriage. Despite her disappointment at having missed the ceremony, Mrs. Hathaway had been delighted with the news, and she and Leigh had immediately warmed to each other over the phone. At the older woman’s suggestion, they had begun a correspondence, just the two of them, in addition to the letters Mrs. Hathaway often addressed to both Leigh and Brian. In that initial phone conversation, they had also arranged that Brian and Leigh would spend Christmas in Minnesota, so Leigh could meet her mother-in-law as well as Brian’s brothers and their wives. The letter Leigh was reading now was full of happy anticipation over the upcoming visit.

“There’s really no way we can get out of the trip,” Brian commented, watching her intently. “As you can see, my mother’s very excited about meeting you.”

Leigh shot him a quizzical look. “I had no intention of trying to get out of the visit,” she said calmly. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting your family, especially your mother. I already like her so much from her letters.”

“I know,” he said guardedly. “But you haven’t forgotten what I told you about her?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she murmured. He would have his mother believe they were a loving couple, which would mean a fair amount of physical contact between them. Affection. She glanced up at Brian, then away. Something was changing within her that she could not quite identify. More and more, she found herself eager for Brian’s company, and at the same time the idea of touching him was beginning to haunt her, like an echo of something she couldn’t have, would never have. “Since Robert’s arranged to have one of his cronies spend the holidays here with him, and I’m feeling quite well enough to travel, I really see no problem about the trip,” she said finally, looking directly into her husband’s eyes.

His look was probing. “You have no problem with the idea of playing the loving couple?” he asked bluntly. “We’re a demonstrative family, Leigh. My mother will expect us to be physically affectionate—more so than we’ve been in front of Robert or at the parties we’ve been going to lately.”

“I understand that.” Then she added softly, “I trust you, Brian.”

For a moment, there was a stark, hollow look on his face that she’d never seen before, a tiny crack in the mosaic of her inscrutable husband. “I know,” he said as he stood up. “I remember,” he went on, “when I was a kid, one time I put together a model Jaguar. It took hours, all those tiny pieces, glue and wait, glue and wait. And when it was done, it was beautiful, Leigh, but very, very fragile. I took pride in having made it but there wasn’t much joy in possessing something I couldn’t play with or touch for fear of breaking it.”

His tone was absent, almost as if he were thinking aloud instead of speaking to her. He paused momentarily in the doorway, and Leigh groped for something to say, not quite sure why he’d brought up the little anecdote. “Perhaps you should have played with it,” she said lightly. “With all that glue and all…”

“That was a damned hard risk to take at eight years old.”

She still didn’t understand, but in a moment he was gone and she immersed herself in her accounts again, thinking with anticipation of the trip to Minnesota.

It was only
five
o’clock in the morning when Brian opened the trunk of the car in the parking lot of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Blustery cold and still blue-black as night, there was nevertheless something about the crystal air that belonged to Christmastime.

Leigh’s door was wrenched open as she knew it would be, and she looked unrepentantly at the grim set to Brian’s features that she knew by now indicated a steel control on his emotions.

“Did I somehow neglect to mention to you that we’re only going to be gone for two days?”

“I need every one of the suitcases,” Leigh said calmly.

“You do
not
need five suitcases. We aren’t taking them. And we’ve hardly got time to sort through the mess at this time of night!”

“They’re presents, Brian,” she explained.

“I
told
you…” He had told her to forgo buying presents, except for his mother. He didn’t exchange gifts with his three brothers and their wives; they considered it a waste of time when it was so difficult to ascertain the needs, desires and sizes of people living so many miles apart. Brian was shouting at Leigh, but only because the wind made normal voices inaudible, and she was shouting back. The presents were for the children. He had four nephews and two nieces, and one never forgot a child at Christmas, and there’d be no time for shopping once they got there. She was not going anywhere without the suitcases.

“So you hid them in the back, thinking I wouldn’t find out until it was too late, did you?” He calmed visibly with an effort. “Leigh, we can send the presents later,” he said patiently. “They won’t let us take that much extra weight on board, can’t you see that? At the very least, we’re putting one suitcase in the trunk.”

“All right.” She motioned to the last, and then started out. Even though most of the cases were quite light, they were still bulky and cumbersome to carry. She had two, one of which slipped when Brian suddenly shouted out one more “
Leigh
” from behind her. She turned, feeling the icy wind on her cheeks.

“Just what was in the one you left behind?” he demanded ominously.

“My clothes,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“My clothes!”
she yelled, trying to make herself heard above the shriek of the wind.

He looked absolutely enraged with her for a minute, but it didn’t last. It was becoming as fascinating as it was infuriating to watch him carefully don his figurative kid gloves, hiding his every emotion from her. He stomped back to the car, but did not say another word.

They were barely inside the crowded terminal before the loudspeaker announced that their flight would be delayed due to weather conditions. As Brian took care of the tickets and luggage, Leigh viewed the crowded terminal with mixed delight and dismay. People were everywhere, and there were no empty seats in sight. The enthusiasm of the holiday mood was catching, but it was also loud and boisterous.

“This way,” Brian said abruptly, taking her arm as he led her past and through the milling crowd.

“Did you have trouble?” she asked guiltily, oddly conscious of the pressure of his fingers on her arm. His stride was impatient; Brian hated chaos. He flashed her a dark look, saying nothing. Obviously, he had handled it, and the children would have their presents. He led her down an all-but-empty corridor, pausing before a door into which he fitted a key. Inside was a small, windowless room, outfitted with a cot and huge, overstuffed chair, a coffeemaker, simple tables—and an instantly peaceful relief from the madding crowd.

“What is this?” Leigh asked curiously.

Brian removed his coat and settled in the chair with his briefcase. “Just put your feet up, Leigh. It’s going to be a long day.”

“You rented this room?” she persisted, still confused.

He shuffled through his papers, all but ignoring her. “At this time of year, an on-time takeoff would have been a miracle,” he said absently. “So rather than standing for an indeterminate period of time…”

He left the rest unsaid. Thoughtfully, she removed her coat, revealing an apricot wool dress that clung to her rounded breasts, then flowed in loose swirls to her knees. She poured his coffee and then her own, studying him. A folder was perched on his bended knee. His absorption in his work was instant, but the black hair was still rumpled from their windy walk and his face still ruddy from the cold. He was preoccupied, with a moody air he did not normally wear. She backed up, without really knowing why, to a more shadowy corner, her coffee cup held in both hands as she leaned against the wall. Always in control, her Brian, especially where she was concerned. And suddenly she was uncomfortable with that—with his quick masking of his emotions whenever she was around, his treating her with kid gloves, his emotionless caretaking.

“Take off your shoes, Red, and lie down,” he suggested idly, without looking up from his work.

“You got the room for me, didn’t you?” she asked suddenly, warily.

“Hmm?”

“Brian, what are you doing?” she whispered softly.

He looked up then. Lightning-fast, she felt his glance take in the soft, alluring lines of her dress, the rich russet of her hair, the care she’d taken with her makeup. The results of the assessment she didn’t know. She rarely knew. And that, too, was becoming irritating.

“I don’t like it,” she said stiffly. “I didn’t expect this. A conventional wife would expect all kinds of consideration—but you married me because I don’t, Brian, and you know that. So what are you
doing?
” There was a crazy desperate note in her voice that startled her.

Brian finally looked up, pinning her with a strangely intense black-eyed stare. “What am I doing?” he repeated lazily. “Taking care of you, my unconventional wife. In my own way.”

The little silence was uncomfortable. Leigh looked down into her coffee cup and saw a distressed pair of topaz eyes reflected in the clear brown liquid. “I don’t need taking care of. That’s the point. This kind of thing—this room—isn’t necessary.”

“I’ll decide what’s necessary,” he said tersely, returning to his work.

She set down her cup angrily. She didn’t understand him, and because of that he frightened her, and even after all this time she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling. Like a moth to the flame, she was increasingly drawn, increasingly repelled. Like a fool, she seemed to crave something from him, a closeness she had no right to want, more of the easiness they occasionally felt around each other. But what did
he
want? She was certain only that he wanted something different from her than what he’d originally told her.

***

It was not a long flight, hardly more than an hour. By the time they were in the air, Leigh’s normal good humor had been restored. She was delighted to be going on this short vacation, had always loved the holidays, and it had been ages since she’d been part of an old-fashioned, big family celebration—exactly the kind Mrs. Hathaway had promised in her letters.

Leigh already knew a great deal about the family from her mother-in-law. Brian was the oldest of four boys; the other three were long married and had children. His father had died when Brian was a teenager, so his mother had depended on her first-born child to control the wild and rowdy group—highly competitive and argumentative, in and out of scrapes, boisterous… Secretly Leigh thought Mrs. Hathaway approved of it all. In her letters, she came across as warmhearted, endowed with both intelligence and humor, and fiercely loyal to her sons. Richard was a doctor, Gerald owned a farm a distance from St. Paul, and Barry was an executive in business. In her letters, Mrs. Hathaway had made no secret of the fact that Brian was her favorite. When Mr. Hathaway died, she had worried that Brian was being forced to take on too much responsibility, and later she had despaired that he would ever be willing to settle down and take on a family of his own.

She’d also told Leigh that she already thought of her as a daughter, and hoped for a closeness between them that she already enjoyed with her other daughters-in-law: Jane, Julie and Sandra. She had also hinted that she hoped Leigh would find in her a second mother rather than a mere in-law.
You haven’t any parents, Leigh, and after four tries I gave up on having a daughter. As much as I love the boys, I’ve had men around me all my life, and frankly, at this point they’re too much for me.

Leigh had thought the last comment rather strange, until she stepped off the plane with Brian behind her and saw three massive men with strong-featured faces dominating the busy airport crowd, striding toward her with a relentless determination against the surge of bodies. She nestled back against Brian, and then was all but wrenched from him, swept up from the ground and hugged and kissed by all three of his brothers. Brian was treated with an equally boisterous enthusiasm, and by the time he’d grabbed her hand and returned her to his side, she was laughing as hard as his brothers were.

The names and facts Mrs. Hathaway had imparted in her letters were immediately forgotten. They all looked so much alike, with their dark hair and black eyes, and they were, en masse, quite overpowering…and not. The laughter was spontaneous and nonstop, and Leigh felt a crazy high just from seeing them so rambunctious and just plain happy.

“I don’t understand—did you pick this one with room to grow?” Gerald teased. “Or are all the girls so tiny in Chicago, Brian?”

“Gerald was going to come alone,” Barry volunteered, “but we decided we’d all better size her up at once. You don’t mind, do you, Leigh?”

Three pair of midnight eyes surveyed her from head to toe, and three smiling faces beamed their approval. For once she did not care; their frank appreciation, instead of being disturbing, made her feel strangely lighthearted with laughter. She was a sister, just that quickly, a little old to be seeking the attention of big brothers, but that was part of it, too. She was surrounded by the four men as they made their way out of the terminal.

“The group’s already at Mom’s. We’ve got to get the tree yet this afternoon,” Barry told Brian. “Christmas is at Gerald’s tomorrow—he’s the only one with a house big enough to hold all of us. Mother’s orders are to feed Leigh and bring her right back, but—”

“We don’t want to do that,” Gerald interrupted. “You don’t really want to be around a bunch of gossipy women, do you, Leigh? You’ll have time for all that later. We’ll still have you home in a couple of hours. Otherwise, it’s a separate trip back there and—”

“Leigh’s not only been up since five,” Brian interjected swiftly, “but she’s hardly dressed for an outing.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she intervened just as swiftly, not wanting to upset any plans.

“I really think—”

“Brian!” As the other three forged ahead through the snow with the suitcases, Leigh murmured to Brian, “They can’t go all the way back to your mother’s just to let me off. I’m perfectly all right.” His hand on her shoulder tightened possessively and she glanced up, startled to see the warm amusement in his dark eyes.

“All the way back to Mother’s,” he repeated teasingly. “Just how far do you think that is—Siberia? You don’t have the least idea what you’re letting yourself in for, Red.”

His three brothers had stopped at a newish green station wagon, and the luggage was being stowed in back. “Besides, I know you want to go with them,” she pointed out, watching Barry and Gerald climb into the front and Richard get in the back. She glanced up again to see Brian’s jaw set at a stubborn angle. “I’m perfectly capable of deciding whether or not I’m tired,” she argued.

“Come
on,
you two!”

Determinedly, she bent to get in the backseat next to Richard, and felt an admonishing thump on her backside. Her jaw all but dropped at the unexpected familiarity, and then Brian was wedged in beside her. There was suddenly no room to breathe as she sat between the broad shoulders of Richard and Brian; the car was not the largest of station-wagon models.

“So what’s it to be, boss?” Gerald asked Brian as he started the engine.

Brian suddenly grasped her by the waist and shifted her onto his lap so that she was sitting sideways with her back to the door, facing Richard, who took the immediate opportunity to stretch out his legs. “More comfortable, Leigh?” Brian asked blandly, and to the others, “The redhead insists she’s going—as long as we’ve got some way of keeping her warm.”

She only half heard the rest of the conversation, though the men’s chatter was continuous throughout the drive. She caught certain inferences: that in some way she had surprised the brothers; that Brian was consulted on every turn as if old habits were reasserting themselves; that she and Brian were under intense and awed scrutiny, as if the brothers had never expected to catch Brian acting possessive or affectionate—or like a newlywed.

But Leigh knew it was all just an illusion, an illusion Brian had created by seating her easily on his lap, pretending there was no awkwardness to her stiff form, forcing a closeness he had never forced before. His coat was open and her coat and dress had been mortifyingly rearranged in the shift; the top of his thighs were warm and hard and intimate underneath her own. His arms were clasped loosely around her waist. When the car heated up, he raised a hand to unbutton the two top buttons of her coat as he talked, his fingers lingering on the erratic pulse at her throat, then up, brushing an errant strand of dark copper hair first from one cheek, then the other. His fingertips lingered on the soft skin of her face and then trailed down to her throat, threading in the hair just beneath her ear to encourage her cheek to the rough texture of his coat. “Relax, Leigh,” he murmured, his lips a sensual whisper in her ear.

Leigh could not move. She had been prepared to play the game of closeness for the sake of his family—a kiss in front of the Christmas tree, a hand on her shoulder, a warm hug in front of his mother, perhaps a casual caress or two. But this did not feel like a game. It felt like a very private world where only the two of them knew certain secrets, where the two of them were making secrets, and the intimacy Brian was establishing was in deadly earnest. His strength increasingly held mixed messages for her—a protective promise and yet a threat more potent than the one she had lived with in her nightmares. She wished suddenly that she had never met him, even as she found herself beginning to relax and feel comfortably cozy on his lap.