Seduced and Betrayed (12 page)

She was no more immune to him now than she had ever been, she realized as she stood at the sink running hot water over the dishes. He still had the power to move her in ways that no one else ever had. Raw animal lust, her mother had called it when Ariel had first fallen for him all those years ago. And maybe she had been right. Maybe it
was
simple chemistry, just the basic biological pull of woman to man. Pure unadulterated sex. But it felt neither simple, nor basic, nor pure.

Instead, the feeling was rich and complex, full of nuance and subtlety. It was as hot and sweet as young love, as wickedly provocative as an illicit affair. It was vital and alive and powerful. And dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

Because Zeke's masculine appeal spread out like an interstate, in a dozen different directions, toward a dozen different women. Almost any woman, as far as she could tell. They were all drawn to his powerful life force, to the blatant sex appeal and charm he radiated like the sun radiated warmth. And, like the sun, he happily, generously, bestowed his abundant charm on any flower who turned her face to him. He always had....

* * *

"Thanks, babe," Zeke said and delivered a smacking kiss to the hand of the young female hairdresser who'd just finished blow-drying his hair into carefully artless disarray around the red bandanna he wore as a headband. "You can run your talented little fingers through my hair any time."

The hairdresser giggled and jerked her hand away, reaching out as if to slap him on the arm. The playful blow looked more like a caress from where Ariel was sitting, having her own hair redone for the next scene. The woman's fingers seemed to linger on Zeke's biceps for a moment, and then he yelped and reached out, grabbing her around the waist and tumbling her into his lap.

"Pinch me, will you?" Ariel heard him say, just before he bent his head to the hairdresser's neck. The woman shrieked, squirming around in his lap without, Ariel thought, really trying to get away. And then the tall director's chair tilted, listing backward, and with a laugh Zeke leaned forward and set her on her feet. "That'll teach you to mess with a star," he said, reaching out to smack her on her fanny as she sashayed away.

She turned and cheerfully gave him the finger.

Zeke laughed again and turned to look at Ariel.

She quickly averted her eyes, shifting her gaze from Zeke's mirrored image to that of the hairdresser standing behind her, brushing out her long blond hair.

"You 'bout ready there?" Zeke asked her as he propelled himself out of the high, canvas-backed chair. "It looks like Hans is about set up for us." He put his hand on Ariel's shoulder as he spoke and gave it a little squeeze. She stiffened, just slightly, but enough to let him know his caress wasn't welcome. Zeke lifted his hand and looked down at her. "What's the matter, sweetheart?"

She shook her head and glanced significantly at her hairdresser.

"Would you excuse us for a minute, please, Marsha?" Zeke said politely, waiting until the hairdresser had moved away. Then he swung around in front of Ariel's chair and leaned in, a hand balanced on either wooden arm. "Okay, sweetheart, give. What's the matter?"

"Really, Zeke," Ariel said primly. "This isn't very discreet. I thought we agreed that we'd keep our..." She hesitated slightly, still a little uncomfortable with the new intimacy between them and not sure of what to call it "...our relationship a secret."

"No,
we
didn't agree," Zeke reminded her. "You insisted and I went along with it. For now," he added warningly. "And, just so you know," he said, leaning forward until they were almost nose-to-nose, "I don't intend to put up with this secrecy for very much longer. I want the whole world to know about us and how we feel about each other."

Ariel couldn't help it, her gaze slid sideways to where the two hairdressers stood talking. "And how do we feel about each other?"

"Oh, so
that's
what this is all about," he murmured knowingly, following her glance. "You're not giving me the cold shoulder because you're worried about somebody reporting back to your mother about us. You're jealous," he crowed, obviously delighted with the discovery.

"I am not jealous."

"Yes, you are," he countered gleefully. "You're practically turning green with it."And then, when she didn't respond to his lighthearted cajolery, he reached between them and lifted her chin with the tip of his finger. "There's nothing for you to be jealous of, sweetheart, don't you know that? I was only teasing her. The same way I tease all the ladies."

And it was true, she knew, he teased every female on the set from the fifty-two-year old wardrobe mistress to the nine-year-old actress playing Laura Simmons's younger sister. And they all teased him back, charmed and delighted to be the object of his attentions.

"It's just the way I am," he said, his dark eyes sincere and serious. "I like the ladies and the ladies like me. But it doesn't mean anything. Honest."

And he was right, Ariel thought as she stood there at the sink, watching soap bubbles billow up around the dirty dishes. It
was
just the way he was. And it
didn't
mean anything. Not to him, anyway.

But it meant a lot to her and, she suspected, to any number of other women who'd been foolish enough to give him their hearts over the years. It wasn't that he broke them deliberately. She realized that now, although she hadn't twenty-five years ago. Zeke wasn't cruel; he was just... careless. Not, Ariel admitted to herself—rather magnanimously, she thought—that the blame for the trail of broken hearts behind him could be laid
entirely
at Zeke's door. He was so effortlessly charming and so blatantly, unabashedly male that women gave their hearts to him whether he asked for them or not. It wasn't his fault if they followed him around like willing, wiggling puppies with their tongues hanging out, begging for the tiniest scrap of his attention and affection.

He
could
be blamed, however, for the easy, heedless way he accepted what they offered without, apparently, sparing a single thought for the consequences. She certainly blamed him for the careless way he'd accepted her naive offerings of love—and then turned right around and stepped into bed with another woman on that awful night at the Wilshire Arms.

Well, she wouldn't make that mistake again. So, okay, she wasn't immune to him—not by a long shot, she thought with a shiver—but she was a levelheaded, clear-sighted adult now, not a wide-eyed woman-child with a head full of dreams.

She turned off the water with a hard twist, wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and let herself out the back door of the kitchen, onto the smooth quarry stone tile of the patio surrounding the pool. The pool lights were on, wavering seductively under the surface of the water. The night air was soft and warm, perfumed with the scent of the orange and lemon trees planted in tubs strategically placed around the perimeter of the patio.

Zeke was there, waiting for her, sitting at one of the wicker and glass tables. He'd taken off his oatmeal linen sport coat and rolled the sleeves of his soft brown silk shirt halfway up his hair-dusted forearms. His right ankle was propped negligently atop his left knee. His brandy glass was balanced against the inside of his powerful thigh. His thick, sable hair, always too long, curled over the tops of his ears and down the back of his neck to touch the collar of his shirt. There was silver in the temples now, just a touch, and the very fact that he hadn't felt the need to color it only added to his rugged masculinity. Something about the way he was sitting there reminded her, suddenly, of the way he had perched atop that big black Harley-Davidson all those years ago. Cocky, self-assured, aware of his almost irresistible appeal to the opposite sex.

Ariel took a deep breath and reminded herself that, although she might not be immune to his charm, she'd been vaccinated. And one dose of heartache, administered by Zeke Blackstone, was more than enough.

He rose as she approached him, instinctively polite, and she waved him back down, reaching to pull out her own chair before he could put his brandy down and do it for her. It scraped across the stone tiles and then the old wicker creaked comfortably as she sat down. Zeke sat back down too and reached out with his free hand, pushing the crystal snifter he'd filled for her across the table.

"Did I tell you how absolutely stunning you look tonight?" he said as she picked it up.

Ariel tried, very hard, to control the spurt of pleasure that zinged through her at his words. She'd taken special pains with her appearance this evening. Because it was a special occasion, she told herself. But also because she was just vindictive enough to hope Zeke might feel some regret for what he'd so carelessly thrown away all those years ago. "It isn't necessary to flatter me," she said dismissively, and lifted the snifter to her lips for a small sip.

"It's not flattery when it's the truth," Zeke said. "You're an exquisitely beautiful woman. You always have been." He lifted his glass to her in a silent toast and then brought it to his nose, swirling the contents to release more of the heady fumes, and took a deep drink.

The expression in his eyes when he lowered the glass and looked at her was wry and self-deprecating. "Before we get started on the peace negotiations, I want to apologize."

"Apologize?" Ariel said, startled. After all these years he wanted to apologize? Now?

"For that little performance at dinner. It was in poor taste, especially with my own daughter sitting there."

Ariel took a careful sip of her own drink to hide her disappointment. "Yes," she said, when she lowered the glass. "It was."

"But you made me so damned mad," Zeke continued, excusing himself with his very next breath. "Pretending what we had back then was nothing."

"In the overall scheme of things, it
was
nothing."

"It gave us Cameron."

"You're right," she agreed after a moment. "And I'm sorry, too," she said simply. "I shouldn't have tried to make it seem less than it was. It isn't fair to Cameron to make it sound as if she'd been conceived in anything but love."

They looked at each other for a long moment, hovering on the edge of... something. Some earth-shattering discovery. Some startling admission. Something.

"It was love, wasn't it?" Zeke said softly, his dark eyes warm and compelling at he stared at her across the table.

Ariel looked down into her glass, fighting back sudden, inexplicable tears. "I thought so at the time," she whispered.

Zeke sighed. "So did I," he said with quiet fervor. "Dammit, so did I."

He threw back the last of his brandy with a quick, savage gesture, then set the empty snifter down on the table with a sharp click. Ariel looked at him, a little startled, waiting for what he would do next. He stretched his hand out across the table, palm up.

"For the sake of our daughter and the love we once had," he said. "Truce?"

Ariel hesitated for a moment. Uncertain. Wary. And then she set her brandy snifter down and put her hand in his. "Truce," she whispered.

They sat there in the soft night air for a moment, silent, their hands tightly clasped, staring at each other across the width of the patio table. It was almost as if they were seeing each other for the first time. And, yet, not at all like the first time.

She was no longer the wide-eyed innocent.

He was no longer the cocky young stud.

They were adults now, their youthful passion tempered by experience and heartache. And, yet, the attraction was still there, as strong—maybe stronger—than ever. They both felt it, like a jolt of electricity, running from one to the other and back again, generating a deep, wild, fast-burning fire. They both saw it, glowing, beckoning like twin beacons in two pairs of eyes. Deep, fathomless blue. Hot smoldering brown. Both full of unspoken, soul-deep yearning, unrelenting needs and a desire that hadn't dimmed in twenty-five years.

Ariel was the first to take flight, stirring restlessly, trying to slip her hand out of his. Zeke's fingers tightened.

"Ariel," he murmured achingly, his deep voice softer, more seductive, than the night air.

"No," she said, but the word was little more than a movement of her lips and her fingers lay acquiescent in his.

"Ariel." He rose on the word, drawing her up with him by the hand he still held.

"Oh, no," she murmured, but she responded like a marionette to the puppeteer's strings, allowing him to draw her around the table.

"Oh, God,
Ariel,"
he groaned and gently enfolded her in his arms.

She went to him, pliant and unresisting, melting against the hardness of his chest, mindlessly seeking the heat that had always matched her own burning desire. He held her tightly for a moment, crushing her to him, relishing the feel of her small, soft breasts against his chest, cherishing the delicacy of her slender body beneath the fragile silk that covered it. She held him just as tightly, her arms wrapped around his lean waist, her hands flat against his broad back, savoring the inexplicable, inexpressible deliciousness of his hard, male body pressed tight against the softness of hers.

There was no thought of the past between them just then. No memories. No regrets. No what-ifs or might-have-beens or if-onlys. There was just here and now. Just need and desire and intemperate, unrestrained, overwhelming heat.

He slid his hands up to her head, tilting it back for his kiss, but she had already lifted her chin, offering her lips before he could take them. They tasted each other with avid, open mouths, using lips and tongues and teeth in an orgy of nibbling and licking, nipping and plunging. They were greedy, both of them, their heads turning, their lips parting, realigning, then coming together as they sought just the right pressure and position. The pair of delicate cloisonne combs holding Ariel's hair in its fashionable twist fell, unheeded, to the stone tiles as Zeke's hands moved in her hair. The back of Zeke's shirt was crushed in her clutching fingers as she tried to pull him closer. They found the right angle, suddenly, and their mouths melded, grinding against each other, moist, eager, open, hot.