Lady Be Bad (8 page)

Quickly he caught her hand and pressed a
warm kiss into her palm. "I apologize. You must think me an
insensitive brute." His eyes darkened and hungered over her every
feature. "But I am very, very determined not to let you slip
away."

Her attempt at a smile was feeble. There was
no denying the threat underlying his statement Marlayna turned the
conversation back to her surroundings. "Arthur, what a magnificent
carpet."

"Thank you. I picked that up in Dubai last
year. The soft blending of red and gold is warm and welcoming, and
I do like the 'tree of life' motif." Arthur suddenly slapped his
cheek. "God, what a fool! Here I am making you stand around. Let's
go into the lounge area and relax with a drink. Or perhaps you'd
like to go to your room and freshen up? Maybe change and take a
swim? Or…"

He was interrupted by the opening of an
elevator door at the far end of the entry hall. "Hi, Daddy." A
dark-haired young woman wiggled her hand in greeting. "Noah and I
are headed for the pool. There's a half dozen phone messages for
you and . . ."

Marlayna was no longer listening to the
rapid-fire exchange between father and daughter. Her eyes were
riveted on the tall dark-haired man standing next to Gwen
Kingman.

A man she had not seen in six years but
still knew intimately. A man named Noah Drake.

She took him by surprise. In fact, he hadn't
really noticed her until she took a step out of Arthur Kingman's
shadow and made herself completely visible. Even then Noah Drake
found himself unsure.

Perhaps it was only an optical illusion. A
mix of his imagination and the sun's rays slanting through the
stained glass ovals that flanked the main door. His brown eyes
concentrated on a figure that was cast in a hazy, colorful
retrospect. He kept staring at her face, anxiously trying to
corroborate all the evidence.

Then the elevator door began its languid
sweep to the right. Slowly and steadily the metal block began to
wipe her from his view, but, undaunted, Noah flowed with the
movement. Leaning from the waist, he slid just as slowly and
steadily until the door bounced shut. Then his right shoulder
slammed into the wall, his damp palm slipped from the handle of his
cane and he found himself flailing to regain his balance.

"Noah!" Gwen made a grab for the raglan
sleeve on his yellow beach jacket. "What happened? Are you hurt?"
She expended considerable energy trying to help him straighten up.
"Did ... did you break anything?"

"No. I... uh ..." He took a deep breath and
realigned both his body and his fractured thoughts. "It was
nothing. Really." Noah exchanged embarrassment for annoyance.
"Gwen, I've repeatedly told you that I'm neither a piece of Dresden
china nor an invalid."

"I'm...I'm sorry." Her whispered apology was
barely audible when the elevator doors clanked open on the heavily
populated indoor pool grotto. "Please…" she placed her hand on his
bicep, "don't be mad at me again. I know you were upset when you
discovered Daddy had turned the housewarming into a surprise
engagement party but …"

"I am upset about this damn engagement,
period," came his taut rejoinder. Taking her elbow, Noah guided her
into a sheltered area away from the loudly festive crowd. "It's
usually the man who proposes, Gwen. You've really got me in a
corner about this whole thing."

"So you keep saying."

"That's because I still don't remember how
this mushroomed into an engagement."

Her brown eyes shifted under his narrowed
gaze. "Well. . . you were in one of those black moods of yours . .
. having trouble reworking that design on the boat house Daddy
insisted on, and your back was giving you a problem and . . .
well... we were sitting and you were drinking that night and
...I...just. . .sort of. . ." Ten magenta-painted toenails
scratched against the pebbled decking as Gwen's voice trailed
off.

"That probably means I was quite a few
scotches over my limit," Noah finished. His disgusted tone was
meant to encompass them both. A weary hand rubbed his face, then
moved to the back of his neck to try and massage away the dull ache
that had developed during the last ten minutes. "Look, Gwen, you
and I are going to have to sit down and discuss a few things."

"You keep saying that, too."

That whining tone she could so quickly
manufacture grated in his ears. "I've been saying it for the last
six weeks, and you've consistently and persistently been flitting
off for parts and places unknown and avoiding me."

Gwen's expression was sullen, her tone
peremptory. "Now is hardly the time, Noah." Her hand made an
all-encompassing gesture. "I do have an obligation to entertain
Daddy's guests. After all, I am his hostess and …" a neatly arched
eyebrow lifted, "…did you forget that you are
the
honored
guest?"

"The castle is the honored guest."

She sucked in her cheeks. "I hate it when
you get cynical." Gwen turned her face away and chewed on her lower
lip while her fingers played with her long dark braid. "What gets
into you, anyway? A few minutes ago you were just fine and now you
are like a volcano ready to erupt. And men have the nerve to say we
women have moods!" She blinked rapidly, trying to stall tears that
came both from anger and fear. "I love you, Noah, and I know you
like me." Gwen sniffed. "That'll be enough."

Noah found that it was his turn to look the
other way. He shuffled his body backward, not stopping until the
solid presence of a marble colonnade was felt against his spine and
legs. God, how could he have let himself get tangled in this
web?

His dark gaze shifted to study a petulant
Gwen. She had arrived on May Day, fresh from the Sorbonne and
determined to show off various degrees in art by decorating the
castle. Noah had found her more child than woman, always in the
mood to sulk; her mouth naturally formed a pout. He should have
kept his distance but couldn't. The reason: Arthur Kingman's
twenty-three-year-old daughter bore a remarkable resemblance to his
wife.

Wife! Noah's smooth forehead rippled in
concentration; that woman certainly looked like his Mimi. Then
again, maybe he just wanted her to. No. There were too many
striking similarities, or were there? This woman had short hair and
was much slimmer than his wife and yet...

Noah cleared his throat and tried to sound
casual. "Gwen, who was that in the hallway with your father?
Another magazine reporter?"

She moved closer to him, her hands playing
with the zipper on his jacket. "So that's what set you off?" Gwen
gave a relieved sigh. "You shouldn't get so uptight about giving
interviews. What's one more picture? One more recitation? You're
going to have to get used to it, Noah. Daddy loves press
coverage."

"Was it another reporter?" He persisted.

"To tell you the truth, I didn't really get
a good look." She gave him a wide smile. "Could have been. Daddy's
like a cat on a hot tin roof, himself. Won't tell me anything.
Although I did see a letter from
Architec
tural
Digest.
What a coup for you both!"

"Yeah. I suppose." His fingers fanned
through the dark hair at his temples. "Maybe I'll just go back
upstairs and take a look-see."

"But. . . but I thought we were going for a
swim." Gwen quickly shrugged off her flowered cover-up. "I'm
wearing my new bikini." Her lashes fluttered suggestively.

"Nice." Noah gave her well-rounded figure a
cursory inspection, then patted her head. "You go and see if those
little scraps of fabric can handle water." He limped a wide circle
around her scantily clad body. "I'll be back in a while, unless of
course it is the
Digest.
At any rate," his finger pressed
the elevator button, "I'll see you at the cocktail party on the
back patio before dinner."

When he finally reached the entrance hall,
Noah found it empty. He hobbled into the nearest lounge but found
that that, too, was unoccupied. The prospect of checking over one
hundred rooms and ten acres made him decide to ring for the head of
the household staff. The house manager promptly responded.
"Perkins, could you tell me what happened to the dark-haired,
attractive woman who arrived about…" Noah checked his watch, "Ummm
. . .twenty minutes ago with Mr. Kingman?"

"I wasn't in attendance at that time, sir."
The regal, impeccably dressed Englishman was thoughtful for a
moment "Let me do a bit of checking. Will you wait in here?"

"Yes." He collapsed into an antique
Shepherd's Crook open armchair and laid his cane across the top of
his thighs.

Perkins looked concerned. "May I get you
something, sir? Perhaps a drink?"

"Yes. No. I…uh, may need a double later
thought."

"Very good, sir."

In less than three minutes, Perkins
returned. "A Miss O'Brian was the new arrival, sir. She's retired
to the Queen Anne suite in the west wing."

Miss
O'Brian.
Noah exhaled a
pent-up breath.

"And where is Mr. Kingman?"

"On the phone in the library."

"Thank you, Perkins. Fine job as usual."

The butler nodded, then halted. "Will you be
needing that double now, sir?"

"Not just yet, Perkins, and depending on how
things go, I may need a triple."

***

Marlayna stared up at the elaborately ruched
and swaged pink taffeta bed canopy and decided that the Queen Anne
suite was well named — it did make one feel regal. Pastel elegance
was everywhere. From the delicate pink tones that softened the blue
pattern in the antique French wallpaper panels to the tiles that
framed the fireplace hearth, the softly blended shades in the
Persian carpet and the pale roses inlaid in the Louis XV rococo
furnishings.

The nicest thing about the room, Marlayna
decided, was that it was quiet and cool and devoid of a king. Her
eyes rolled in mute appeal. Arthur Kingman hadn't been easy to
dislodge. For a while, she really had expected the man to escort
her through every room in the castle and then aid her in
unpacking.

She had dutifully listened to the history
behind this tapestry and the cost of that antique, the number of
craftsmen that had been hired to duplicate the hand-carved woodwork
and of artisans that had painstakingly blown the crystal for the
chandeliers, and all the rest of it until she could have
screamed.

"But, of course, you didn't." Marlayna spoke
her congratulatory words aloud. "You nodded and smiled and ohhed
and ahhed in all the right spots and at the proper time. Arthur was
so impressed." She twisted her nose and mouth in an exaggerated
manner.

Her savior had been the telephone and a call
from an editor for
Architectural Digest.
"I shall buy a
subscription as a thank-you," Marlayna vowed. The phone
conversation promised to be lengthy, and she used that well-timed
distraction to escape from Arthur and retire to her room. Here,
lying quietly on the bed, Marlayna thought about the man she had
seen in the elevator.

He was her Noah Drake, all right. Marlayna
closed her eyes and instantly he appeared. His hair was as thick
and dark as it was half a dozen years ago. The planes and angles of
his face were more pronounced; the shape leaner, harsher; the
complexion bronzed by the sun; and that old nemesis of a five
o'clock shadow still very much in evidence on his cheeks and square
jaw.

Perhaps the most shocking change was in
Noah's posture and his obvious dependency on a cane.
Cane.
That black curve of metal seemed part of his anatomy, like an extra
leg. Trembling fingers rubbed across Marlayna's forehead when she
remembered his body.

Despite a slight roundness, Noah's shoulders
were still broad and looked even stronger than they had when he
worked in construction. His torso was better developed, the sinewy
muscles exposed by the half-lowered zipper on his jacket. It was
his legs that became magnified in her mind. The large scars that
streaked his flesh were quite vivid despite the dark curly hairs
that matted his skin.

Marlayna knew what her fate had been, but
now she wondered about Noah's. From all appearances, Fate had not
been kind. Had all the unkindness changed the inner man? How ironic
that she was now in a profession that glorified outward perfection
and beauty. And yet, none of that mattered to her; it had never
mattered.

Despite her concern, Marlayna couldn't help
but smile. She remembered the expression on Noah's face just as the
elevator door snapped shut. "Dumb founded." An airy giggle
punctured the quiet. It was an expression that she had seen on his
face only once before - the first time they had met.

The emergency room at Grady Memorial
Hospital in Atlanta had been the scene of that auspicious occasion.
Her grin drooped when she remembered that the same room was also
the scene for their last meeting. Resolutely Marlayna pushed away
the last memory and concentrated on the first.

Eyes closed, her mind effortlessly replayed
another scene from the past. That Wednesday morning the ER had
looked exactly like a beehive gone berserk. Driving winds and rain
had caused a ten-car pile-up on one of the city's main traffic
arteries with over thirty people in need of and demanding various
medical services.

Her job, admissions and insurance supervisor
rated way above average on the verbal abuse scale, slightly higher
even than the lab technician who answered to "Dracula." She had
become quite proficient in answering those who clutched random
parts of their anatomy while moaning, "I'm dying and she wants my
insurance card and number!"

On that particular day, during the waning
hours of bedlam, another patient arrived. A dark-haired, dark-eyed
construction worker, his left arm swathed in bloody handkerchiefs,
somehow managed to circumvent the indomitable Miss O'Brian and
ended up in a treatment room before filling out the proper forms.
After discovering the infraction, Marlayna fearlessly charged into
the white-curtained cubicle.