The Case of the Missing Secretary (9 page)

“Why would I do a stupid thing like that?” he asked, amazed. “If I’d mentioned that you were being wasted in my office, you’d have quit and gone to work for a detective agency or something.” He glowered at her. “As it happened, you did it anyway.”

“After your beloved threw scalding coffee all over me and you took her side against me!”

“Of course I did, damn it!” He bit off the words. “I wasn’t trying to get you into bed, was I?”

She went scarlet. Her palm itched to land against that massive jaw, but she restrained it-barely.

“You hopeless little prude,” he said shortly, dark eyes blazing. “To you, like Emmett, sex is something that only happens between married people, I suppose?”

“Yes, it is. Or it should be,” she said forcefully. “I suppose you think it’s right that carelessness produces thousands of unwanted babies? Or that it’s all right to sleep around indiscriminately and spread terrible diseases?”

He didn’t reply immediately. “No,” he said finally. “I don’t think it’s right. I believe in prevention and safety, and I practice them.

The Case of the Missing Secretary 361 She didn’t have a comeback for that. She started walking again.

“How’s your secretarial staff?” she asked. “Are they coping with your absence?” “Chris is having something of a problem with one of them.” “Which one?” “Margo.” “The one with the cleavage who can spell.” He chuckled. “That’s right. She likes rich men.”

She bit her tongue to hold back a remark about another woman close to him who did, too.

“Don’t hold back,” he told her, smiling as if he knew what she was doing and thinking. He stretched lazily. “The chain-smoker has bronchitis, but she’s still dragging in to work. The other one seems to be managing, too, now that you’d shown her where you hid all my most important files.” “I didn’t hide them.” She gritted her teeth. “I filed them.” “Only an idiot would file an oil account under T for Texas.”

She glared at him. “It isn’t T for Texas, it’s T for Texas Premium Oil Company!”

“Well, I had the girls refile things so that I could find them. Oil accounts under Oil, tax accounts under Taxes and clients under the last names.” “Not under the company names?”

“It’s none of your business anymore,” he said smugly. “You quit.” “I did not! You fired me!”

He shrugged his broad shoulders. “We had those potted things moved out into the hall, too.”

She gasped. “They’ll die! They were by the window so that they could get sunlight! They can’t live in the shade.” He frowned. “So that’s why they’re wilting.” “My poor plants!”

“There’s probably still time to save them,” he remarked casually. He glanced at her. “You could come back. I’d give you a raise.”

“And stand by while darling Betsy practices her Napoleon impression.” ”She is not tyrannical!”

Diana Palmer

“Ask Melody or Margo or Harriet,” she shot back. “I dare you! She may be sweetness and light to you, but she’s poison to everyone else-especially to her own sex! What she did to poor old Bill Kingsley she’s going to do to you, and I’ll be the last one crying when you’re sleeping in a downtown mission!”

His chest rose and fell roughly with anger. Damn, she was a bossy woman! He had no intention of letting her lead him around, tell him whom to date, what to think!

“Betsy is my business,” he said harshly. “You’re only jealous, because she’s beautiful and you aren’t!”

He’d never said that before, even if he’d always thought it. Kit was used to people looking through her. She knew she wasn’t pretty. But that was hardly why she disliked Betsy.

She didn’t fight back. It would have been admitting that he was right. She walked on, alone, her eyes sad and quiet.

Behind her, Logan slapped his fist angrily against his thigh. Damn his tongue! He’d been furious, but those hurtful words had really slipped out unconsciously.

It was pure cussedness, he knew, but he couldn’t think of any way to take it back-and still save face. Kit went very quiet when she was hurt. It was the only time she didn’t spit and claw. He remembered how she’d responded to him earlier, and how protective she was. She was probably in love with him, and he had more power to hurt her than anyone else on earth.

He watched her with a gnawing hunger. Love wasn’t an easy thing to throw away. All the same, he was getting married and Kit was off-limits. He shouldn’t have kissed her like that. She’d said that it was unfair to Betsy, and it was.

The problem was that Kit aroused him even more than Betsy did. He couldn’t let that situation develop. He had principles, even if he was only just discovering them. He might as well let Kit think he had a low opinion of her looks. Perhaps it would spare her any more hurt at his hands if he could turn her infatuation to dislike. He was going to marry Betsy. All he had to do was keep that in mind, then perhaps he could stop having these inconvenient urges to seduce Kit. But she didn’t hate him. That was all too apparent when he stared

The Case of the Missing Secretary 363 at her across the supper table and her eyes fell in blushing confusion to her plate. His heart began to race in his chest as he realized how easily he could disconcert her. His eyes fell to her mouth. He remembered much too vividly how it felt to kiss her, to hold her. He’d tried for the rest of the day to put that sweet interlude out of his mind, but he couldn’t. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted it again.

With an angry movement of his hand, he reached for his coffee cup and accidentally hit it, sloshing hot coffee right across the table onto Kit’s white blouse.

She gasped, grabbing a napkin to dab at it. While Logan tried to apologize, she glared at him. “Been taking lessons from Betsy, have we?” she asked with cool sarcasm. “No need to worry, it will wash out. Excuse me, please.”

She was grateful for the incident in a way, because it gave her the opportunity to escape. Everyone was looking at her. The kids were probably recalling every lurid minute they’d witnessed from the barn, and Emmett was speculative and a little sad. Tansy was hiding amusement. Logan-well, Logan was a puzzle altogether. But Kit had felt like a lab specimen. By the time she changed and went back downstairs, supper would be over and she could escape.

After she stripped off the blouse, she soaked it in the bathroom sink. Her flimsy bra was wet, too, from the coffee. That, she thought resignedly, would have to be washed as well. As she unfastened it, her elbow caught a bottle of shampoo and knocked it across into the bathtub with a heavy thump. The noise concealed a brief knock at the door, and her own movements, as she retrieved and replaced the shampoo, masked the sound of footsteps.

She slid her bra into the sink and was swirling it through the water when a soft sound beside her made her turn her head.

Logan was holding the door open, and he was making no pretense of not looking. His eyes, dark with surprise and fascination, slid over her breasts as if they belonged to him, savoring their firm, tip-tilted contours, enjoying their dusky hard tips and creamy texture.

He hadn’t expected this when he’d come after her, albeit reluctantly, to apologize. Seeing her half nude had knocked every sane thought right out of his mind. He was enthralled by the utter beauty

Diana Palmer

of her. He leaned against the door frame and gave his eyes free rein. “I don’t think there’s any work of art in the world that could com-pare favorably to a woman’s bare breasts,” he said quietly, and without offensive intent. “Yours are beautiful, Kit. Absolutely breathtaking.”

They must have been, because she actually saw his breathing change. Her eyes fell and she saw something else change, too, before she quickly lifted her eyes again and quickly folded her arms over her breasts.

“I won’t embarrass you any more than I have,” he said softly. “It’s all right. I only came after you to apologize. Spilling the coffee really was an accident.”

“I knew that,” she said. Her voice was husky and she felt her body ache with new sensations, new hungers. Her breasts began to swell and tingle and throb. His hands were like plates, she thought as she stared at him. They would cover her breasts completely. They would be warm and a little rough, and her body would tremble because it would feel so sweet to have them on her bare skin.

The feelings frightened her. She shivered, her eyes wide and a little apprehensive as she looked at him.

Logan saw her hunger and reacted to it. He wanted her. God, he wanted her! And if her vulnerability was any indication, she wanted him just as much.

“You’ve never known a man’s eyes or hands before, have you, Kit?” he asked very gently. She couldn’t get a word past her tight throat. She shook her head.

His eyes traced her body with quiet, aching appreciation. He had to touch her. He couldn’t help himself; he had to! “There is, as they say, a first time for everything, little one,” he said.

He sounded almost solemn. And as she watched, he pushed away from the doorframe, walked slowly inside and closed and locked the door behind him.

Chapter Six Kit couldn’t find the right words to express what she felt. It would have been muddled if she had. She wanted him to look at her; she ached for him to touch her. But it was wrong, because he was only interested in the physical intimacy, and because he was going to marry Betsy. She should scream her head off and order him out of the room, and her brain wanted to, but her body trembled helplessly as he walked toward her. Her eyes told him that he could have anything he wanted.

His own eyes were stormy, not easily read at all. His broad face was without humor or teasing. It was as solemn as if he were in church.

Without a word, he reached and disengaged her hands from her breasts. He moved them away from her body and brought them to her sides. Then he looked at her, with awe and quiet delight while she struggled to breathe normally and failed.

When one big hand came up and gently touched just the tip of her breast, a weak cry escaped her throat.

“This is where you’re most sensitive,” he said, tracing the hard, erect tip. He watched her eyes while he touched it, savoring its heat and hardness with his fingers and then with his palm. “It frightens you to be vulnerable, doesn’t it?” “Yes,” she whispered. “Don’t you think I am?” he asked surprisingly. His fingers went

Diana Palmer

to the Western-cut shirt he was wearing and flicked open the pearly snaps.

Her eyes lit up with pure delight as she gazed at the thick dark hair on his broad, bronzed chest. “Here. Touch me where I’m touching you.”

He drew her fingers to his chest, and let her feel the hard tip over his heart.

She traced it and he caught his breath, laughing softly at her surprise.

“When men and women make love, there’s no real master,” he said, moving so that his big hand could completely cover her soft breast. “Both become vulnerable. Fragile…”

He bent and kissed her parted lips with a tenderness that was indescribable. His hands were gentle on her body, tracing, learning, exploring, until he knew every centimeter of skin above her waist.

Kit, too, was learning. Her hands buried themselves in that thick pelt and tugged at it with a pleasurable rhythm. But all too soon, it was no longer enough, and without conscious intent, she stepped even closer to him and relaxed completely against his aroused body.

“No,” he whispered. His big hand dropped to her hip and gently moved her back. His mouth teased hers again. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

She looked up into his dark, patient eyes. “It makes me ache,” she whispered, trying to put her feelings into words.

“Yes. Me, too.” He drew his face against hers. Both hands slid over her breasts and gently caressed them. “You’re like silk all over, aren’t you?” he whispered. His mouth slid down her throat, over her shoulders and her collarbone. It eased down, down, until it suddenly opened on her soft breast. He touched it with his tongue, producing new and volatile hungers that arched Kit’s body like a bow. “Hold on, baby,” he whispered roughly.

While she was trying dizzily to comprehend what he meant, his head lifted. For an instant, the coolness of the room was uncomfortable on the moist place he’d left on her skin. Then he burrowed against her, found the hard nipple, took it completely into his mouth and began to suckle it.

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For a few seconds, Kit froze. Then she tautened until her muscles felt in danger of shattering. Her body arched and drew in and she pushed up against his mouth as if it were the source of life itself.

Her hands were in his thick, dark hair. They clung, trembling, as the fever he kindled burned high and bright. She shivered, and shivered again, and began to moan. He made a fierce sound and the suction grew harder, more insistent.

Something snapped in Kit’s body. She shuddered as a wave of pleasure hit her right in the core of her body and convulsed her into utter satisfaction.

She couldn’t stop trembling. Her legs were too weak to hold her up. Logan had lifted his head and was looking at her, but she was too busy trying to get her breath back and stop her heart from shaking her to bits to notice. Gently he pressed her bare breasts against his equally bare chest, starting up new sensations as she felt the sexy abrasiveness of his body hair against her warm skin.

He held her cheek there, and under his muscular chest she could hear the irregular beat of his heart as he smoothed her hair back, and brushed soft kisses against her temple.

She thought that she could never look him in the face again. Her abandon had embarrassed and sickened her.

She tried to pull away, finally, but he wouldn’t let her. He tilted her shamed face up to his eyes and searched it quietly. It was somehow more profound because he didn’t speak. His fingers touched her face, cherished it, while he examined every facet of her from the chin up as if he’d never looked at her before. “I’m plain,” she said in a brittle tone. “You said so.”

“You infuriate me at times. I say a lot of things I don’t mean and you know it.” His voice deepened. “You know me better than anyone else in the world does, except in one way. In the ultimate way.” Her cheeks burned with heat.