Body Heat (Vintage Category Romance) (21 page)

“
Blaire!” Someone grabbed her arm from behind and spun her in the opposite direction, crowding her body up against his. “Blaire, I’ve been looking for you.”

And now she was
face to face with Alan Cromwell. “Alan…” she tossed her head back to Darian’s direction just long enough to see him dip his head lower to Emiline’s.

Alan swept her away from the scene and placed one arm around her waist
; with the other hand, he grasped one of hers. “Dance…?” he questioned.

Blaire brought her gaze back to his when she realized that they were doing just that.
“Uh…okay,” she replied.

“
So where have you been keeping yourself?” He pulled her closer. Much too close.

She swung his body around so she faced Darian and Emiline fully over his shoulder, not missing a beat to the music.
“Uh…working.”

He boldly nuzzled his chin into the croo
k between her neck and shoulder. Blaire hardly even noticed, her eyes still on the couple across the floor. “I’ve been thinking, Blaire,” he whispered in her hair. “We got off on the wrong foot. Why don’t we start over?”

Blaire tightened her grip on Alan
’s hand. Emiline Harris will die! She watched as the hussy swept a hand through the grown-out length of Darian’s hair in the back and then caressed his jawbone and laid her hand seductively on his shoulder. She felt Alan tighten the grip around her waist.

“
I’ve been calling you, you know. There have been times during the day when I just needed to hear your voice. Just to hear you say ‘hello.’ Did you realize that was me? You could tell, couldn’t you?” He blew a warm breath into her ear.

Suddenly, Blaire focused on the senator and stopped dancing.
“You what?”

“
I’ve been calling you. Ever since your father showed me your picture in D.C., I’ve been trying to get up the nerve to ask you out.” He pulled her closer to him again, his hand making circles on her lower back, and started to brush his cheek alongside hers. “Let’s start over, baby,” he whispered and then stuck the tip of his tongue into her ear.

Blaire forcefully pushed him away.
“Get away from me!” she screamed.

He lunged for her again;
she slapped him. Then before she realized what she was doing, a number of guests watching her progression across the room, she found herself directly beside Darian and Emiline. She cuffed him on the shoulder.

“
Darian, we need to talk,” she ordered.

They stopped dancing and he stared blankly at her.
“I’m dancing, Blaire. You’ll have to wait your turn.” She watched as he turned back to Emiline and smiled and then swept her to his right, away from Blaire.

She followed
and then grabbed his left arm. “
Now,
Darian. We need to talk now.” Her gaze flashed from Emiline and back to him, trying to send him the message.

“
Darling, another time, didn’t you hear? We’re dancing,” Emiline purred sweetly.

Blaire mocked her voice back at her.
“Darling, I don’t think so.” She pushed Emiline out of the way and shoved her body between Darian and the tramp. She grabbed his lapels. “We’ve got to talk.”

He grasped her upper arms, pushed her out of the way, and glared into her eyes.
“I don’t think so.”

He reached for Emiline.

Not thinking, Blaire shoved her again. This time, the woman stepped backward on Carolyn Van der Meter’s heel, who screeched and threw the contents of her wine glass on Harold Wittenberger, who then bellowed loud and long about his new Armani suit. By now, quite a crowd had gathered. She turned her attention back to Darian. “Yes, I do think so.”

“
Blaire,” Darian began quietly. “You’re making a scene.” He smiled over her head at the other guests.

“
I am not!” she returned.

“
I think you are, Miss Kincaid.” This came from the cotton-candy queen to her left.

Blaire threw a nasty look Emiline
’s way. “You stay out of this.”

Emiline stepped forward.
“A little possessive of your little finding, aren’t you Miss Kincaid?”

Blaire knew exactly what she was doing and she didn
’t care. “Possessive? I don’t possess Darian, Miss Harris, and neither do you. He’s a man with quite a mind of his own. And if you can penetrate that beast of an exterior, then you’re a better woman than I.”

“
Without question. Oh, and is that an invitation?”

Blaire watched with wide eyes as the twit sidled up to Darian and lifted her face to him, turned his face to hers with a light fingertip touch at his chin, and planted an extremely wet, extremely long kiss on Darian
’s lips
. And he let her.
Blaire’s blood boiled; the crowd murmured.

“
Don’t you know what she’s doing, Darian?” she urged, looking at the red lipstick smudges around Darian’s lips. By now the music had stopped and everyone, yes, everyone was gathering around. Blaire didn’t care. Not at all. She would just have to apologize to Mastin in the morning.

Emiline turned a saccharin smile back to Blaire then and smirked.
Blaire’s anger was out of control. Way out of control. “That, was a kiss?” She stepped up to the two of them. Without a thought or a moment’s hesitation, she punched Emiline in the nose with her right fist, knocking her into Alan Cromwell who was standing behind her. Blaire took advantage of the element of surprise, swiped two fingers across his lips to rid them of Emiline’s Passion Red, and grabbed Darian’s label with both hands. Pulling him into her body with such force she thought they’d both land on the floor behind her, she let loose with one hand and jerked his head down to hers.

When her lips met his, she thought she
’d been overcome by heat. Fire raced through her as his lips softened and nibbled and rubbed across hers. Then the kiss deepened, his tongue thrust into her mouth and mingled with hers. She felt his hands snake up her back and tangle in her hair, pulling her closer into him. Her body rubbed against his torso and she could feel him, arousal and all, as she melted into him. Before she realized it, her arms were around his neck, his lips were devouring hers in a kiss so sweet she thought she might die, and she felt light-headed from the thought of where this kiss might lead.

Breathing heavily, she finally broke
away and frantically glanced around the room until she found Emiline. Alan was holding a handkerchief up against her bloodied nose. Each woman glared at the other. “
That
was a kiss,” Blaire spat. “Put that in your column tomorrow.”

“
You—little—bitch…”

Before Blaire knew it, Emiline was on her.
She hit the floor with a thud, cracking her head on the oak flooring. Women screamed; men shouted. Panic seized her. The baby! “Get her off me!” she screamed. Someone pulled Emiline off, and suddenly she felt herself hauled away by some brute who had hands exactly like Darian.

She kicked.
He held on tighter around her middle, her back to the man’s chest. She yelled at him to put her down as he carried her through the astonished crowd and out the door, her last glimpse of the scene was of her father helping Emiline up off the floor and Alan Cromwell shaking his head in disgust.

Then the brute shifted her to a new position over his shoulder and carried her like a sack of potatoes to
ward a car. She kicked and screamed all the way, sure she was being kidnapped and not quite understanding why her father was doing nothing to help her. Then suddenly, she found herself tossed into a tiny sports car, the door slammed shut behind her. The brute got in on the driver’s side.

The brute was Darian.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded

“
You said we needed to talk.” He looked ahead and started the ignition.

“
I didn’t say you needed to kidnap me.”

“
You were causing a scene.” He accelerated, shifted into second and gained speed down the driveway.

“
Me causing a scene? You were the one causing the scene, Darian. Do you know who you were dancing with?”

“
Emiline Harris.”

Shocked, Blaire simply stared at him.
“You knew?”

“
Of course I knew.”

“
Then why?”

He turned a cool look toward her.
“Because I wanted to set her straight on a few things. Would have too, until you had to go butt in.”

“
Butt in,
butt in?
She’s a piranha, Darian. She eats little people for snacks. She saves the big ones like you for her main entree. She would have torn you from limb to limb in her column tomorrow.”

“
And you don’t think she will now?”

Blaire fell silent and stared out the window.
He was right and she knew it. They would both be prime targets for her column. Probably her father too. Uh-oh, poor Mastin. And just when things were going a lot better between the two of them.

“
Well?”

She turned to him with narrowed eyes.
“Just don’t read the paper, then we’ll never know.” Then she turned back to the black night sailing by her window. “Where are you taking me?”

“
Home.”

Home?
“What?” she studied his profile as he drove. “Where are you taking me?’

“
Where do you want to go?”

She was confused.
“What is this, twenty questions? Take me home, Darian.”

“
I thought you wanted to talk.”

“
We don’t need to now.”

“
Oh.”

About ten minutes later they passed the corporation sign that said they
’d entered Trenton. Darian turned to her, breaking the silence. “Where’s your apartment?”

Blaire indicated directions
and then sat quietly beside him. She hated being this close to him. It confused her. The kiss confused her. It had been the single most arousing kiss she’d ever experienced. And she didn’t know what to do about it. Soon, Darian pulled up in front of her apartment. Blaire opened the door.

They should talk
; she knew it. They needed to talk about the kiss, how it made each of them feel, about how their lives were going to go from here. About how miserable they both were. About the baby. They needed to talk.

She looked into his eyes.
He simply stared back at her, stone-faced. No expression. The beast.

“
Good-night, Darian,” she murmured.

The car door slammed behind her and she never looked back as she opened the door that led to her apartment above the cafe.
Climbing the stairs in the tight dress was awkward, but she made it. Then after she let herself into her apartment, locked herself in, and dropped the dress to the floor, she collapsed onto the bed in exhausted tears and cried herself to sleep.

Chapter
Eleven

The Sunday morning paper laid lifeless on the stoop, staring back at her, begging her to open it up and read about the fiasco of her life.
Icing on the cake, she thought. Just one more disaster to add to the growing list. And now her pregnancy would only add fuel to an already growing fire. And she’d yet to talk to Mastin. Knowing him, he’d come barreling in here any time now, ranting and raving about the votes she’d cost him last night. It was clear now; she had to get out of Trenton. To save both hers and her father’s reputations. She’d be the laughing stock of the entire county, quite possibly, the state, by noon. And they didn’t even know the half of it.

It was time to go.

But there was one thing she had to do. One little, well, not so little, thing. Actually, it was quite a big thing. She had to talk to Darian. She had to know, finally, if there was hope for them. She had to give it one more chance. And if all went well, then she’d tell him about the baby. If not, well….

She
’d thought about it all night. After she’d had her crying jag, she’d woke an hour later and lain in her bed thinking about it—about Darian, about how she felt about him, about why he picked her up and took her out of there last night, about why he had stepped toward her when she entered the room. It just seemed they could never sit down and talk about things rationally. Not since…not since they’d made love.

And now there was so much they could share.
So much they should be talking about, making decisions about. So much both of them were missing out on. If only things could be different. But she doubted very much if they ever would be.

There were times back at the cabin where they could talk.
They did talk. They talked about…about his childhood, a little, and about Angelina and Nicky. Then it dawned on her: Angelina and Nicky were still at the root of the problem. He had come home. He had evidently resolved his feelings about his grandfather and Reva to his satisfaction, but he hadn’t resolved a thing about the death of his son.