Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One (38 page)

“Not unless I have a portrait in the attic, doing my aging for me—and I have no attic,” Pat said. She wanted to pull away, but she was caught against the corner of the sofa. She felt the warmth of his nearness coming through to her own body.

“Maybe not, but there’s a girl trapped in there, the same bright-eyed girl I met back then,” Blaise said seductively. “Patti,” he whispered, sending a shiver all through her. “Anyone ever call you Patti?”

“No,” she whispered back, riveted to the spot, making no effort to escape now.

“Someone should have called you Patti and pulled the pins out of your hair a long time ago,” he said as he turned her face up and kissed her.

In Pat’s experience, anticipation had been the best part of everything, because reality had always carried a great deal of disappointment. But now she experienced something quite different. Blaise’s kiss was both sweet and sensuous, and rather than satisfying her long-dormant curiosity, it brought an excited rush to her brain, making her pulse race until she could only crave for more. She had thought herself too mature for the sensations that had suddenly burst open like thirsty beings at the first hint of water.

She tried to pull back, but found herself enveloped in his embrace that blocked out the immediate world. She felt his kiss flower in intensity, pulling her out to sea in a craft that she could not control. The room was suddenly unbearably warm as she felt Blaise stroke her cheek tenderly. She had been lonely for so long that she devoured the warmth Blaise offered without realizing what was happening.

The kiss grew, and her remaining thoughts were chased away by shades of red, gold, and dazzling white. The colors swirled about in the inky blackness, forming and reforming glorious rainbows within her.

Engulfed. She was being engulfed. Wait. No, wait. What was she doing? Summoning the great inner strength that had seen her through the past year, Pat gripped Blaise’s arms and pushed him away. She blinked, as if calling the world back, beckoning to rational thought.

“I—I don’t think you should do that again,” she said, rising on legs that felt foreign to her.

“Why?” Blaise asked, watching her for a moment. “Didn’t you like it?” He rose, came up behind her, and placed his hands on her shoulders. Pat fought hard to keep from melting back against him. When she gave no answer, he said, “I did.”

“Blaise,” she began. Blaise. How well he was named. That was what he had kindled within her. A blaze. A blaze unlike any other. No wonder women fell at his feet. Well, she had no time for that. She had a mission, an urgent mission entrusted to her by the man she had spent so much of her life with. She owed Roger her loyalty and a clear head. And if she gave in to this feeling that had suddenly burst upon her, she wouldn’t be able to devote herself to her husband’s dream. She had to be true to her word.

Blaise waited for her to go on, giving her time, as if he knew she needed to piece herself together. Another man, she felt sure, would have pressed his advantage. She felt her fondness for him grow.

Pat stared at the tiny crack where the drapes did not quite meet. “You do what you do very well, Blaise,” she said, choosing her words very carefully. “But I wish you wouldn’t practice on me.”

“Practice,” he repeated, amused, turning her around to face him. “I thought I had it down perfect.” His eyes teased her, twinkling and peering into her soul. She found him terribly hard to resist. “I know I didn’t offend you, Lady Pat.” He said her name almost formally. “You kissed me back, whether you’ll admit it to yourself or not.”

She felt it best to keep silent for the moment.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for twenty-one years,” he said.

“How could you remember me with all the women in your life?” she asked, trying to be light.

“I remembered,” he said, and the seriousness of his tone frightened her for some unknown reason. This was all very melodramatic, she told herself, wanting to step away—but she was riveted to the spot.

“Perhaps you’d better stay at the hotel in town,” she found herself suggesting, forcing a steel edge into her voice.

“Where’s your famous hospitality? Delia told me you take in stray dogs and cats and feed them.”

“You’re hardly a stray,” she pointed out. Why didn’t he withdraw his hands so that she could think clearly?

“Yes, but I’m homeless at the moment nonetheless.”

“Can’t you stay with Delia?” Pat persisted, searching for a way out.

“She’d want me to be with you,” he said simply, his eyes burning into her.

She wanted to meet his gaze head on, the way she did whenever she was under fire, which was quite often these days. But she found herself leery of his power over her. She wondered what Delia could be planning. The older woman knew Blaise’s reputation. Was she deliberately throwing them together? Or was Blaise merely telling her that in order to remain at Pat’s house?

“All right, stay,” Pat said slowly. He moved to kiss her again, but she put her hands against his chest and pushed him away. “But you’ll have to behave yourself.” This time, she looked him straight in the eye and tried very hard to muster the proper amount of indignation. Who did he think he was, Casanova? It might be a game to him, an interesting pastime, but her affections were not to be toyed with.

“I haven’t behaved myself since I was fourteen years old,” he said mischievously.

“Then it’s time you learned how,” she said firmly.

He looked at her, obviously amused by her words and the seriousness of her tone. Playfully, he pushed back the hair that had fallen into her eyes. “Okay, Lady Pat, I’ll put on my ‘crowned heads of Europe’ behavior, but it’ll be dull,” he warned.

“I’ll chance that,” she said, wondering if she could let her guard down for a moment as she tried to read the expression on his face.

“Can one old family member kiss another goodnight? After all, what could happen? You’re almost forty-one,” he teased.

“You’ve already done that,” she replied, arching her brow.

“You’re a hard woman, Lady Pat,” Blaise said with an indulgent smile.

“I’ve been told that,” she answered, her eyes shining a little. Despite everything, she could not help liking him. Perhaps, she told herself, that was what she was unconsciously afraid of.

He kissed his finger and touched it briefly to her lips. “There, that safe enough, mon Capitan?” he asked.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

“As early as you like,” he answered. “You know my room number.”

Pat watched him go down the long hallway that led to his room. She realized that Angelica had put him in the room next to hers—or had he put himself there? She waited a few minutes, then picked up her discarded wrap, walked quietly to her bedroom, and closed the door softly behind her.

Tonight, the king-sized bed felt twice as empty as usual as Pat lay in the center of it, propped up with three pillows. On her nightstand was a report about the failure of one of the preliminary tests early last week. Pat thumbed through it, but the words danced meaninglessly in front of her. Instead, she kept seeing Blaise’s smile. And each time the image renewed itself, her pulse raced. No doubt about it, Pat thought, he was every bit as overwhelming as he’d always been, and she, sad to say, was not immune to him. Before, there had been Roger, nice, protective, safe Roger. But now the task before her was a poor shield against the charms of a suave world traveler who was, after all, a womanizer. She wondered why Blaise had never married.

She cast the wordy report aside and slid beneath the downy covers. What would her children think if she gave in to the temptation that so clearly existed for her? The thought made her laugh out loud. Usually, such feelings were accompanied with the thought of what one’s mother would think, not one’s children. By the time you had children to worry about, you had passed the time for smoldering feelings and accelerated heartbeats.
At least
, she thought,
glancing at the wall that separated his room from hers, you should be.

After a while she fell asleep and dreamed of the feel of his lips on hers.

“Did you enjoy yourself last night?”

Startled, Pat looked up from her desk. Sam had come into her office rather quickly. She felt a blush rise to her face before she could stop it. Sam looked at her curiously—or was it knowingly?

“It was all right,” she said offhandedly.

“He really part of Mr. Hamilton’s family?” Sam asked.

“He’s his cousin,” Pat told him, putting down her pen. She smiled. “Hard to believe, isn’t it? That the family tree that spawned Jonathan and Allen Hamilton could also come through with Blaise as an offshoot.”

“He seemed pretty nice,” Sam agreed. “Hope you got some of the rest you need.”

Rest? No, she hadn’t exactly gotten rest. Her nerves were tuned to a high pitch, as a matter of fact. But it certainly had been a pleasant change from her daily routine. She roused herself from her thoughts and looked at Sam’s weathered, impassive face. A hundred years ago, a man like that would have been sitting at a campfire, planning an attack to fend off the white man. Today, she and this stoic, silent person were on the same side. The world was strange, she thought.

“Did you come to quiz me about my ‘date,’ or is there some other reason for this visit?” she asked with a smile.

Her smile faded as he said, “You’ve got trouble, boss lady.” Sam’s tone was always the same, sometimes a bit louder, sometimes a bit quieter, but never expressive of joy or sorrow. She wondered how he managed to keep everything in control.

“What kind of trouble?” she asked, trying to prepare herself for the worst.

“The press is back,” he said.

Pat sighed, pushing herself away from her desk as she hunted for her shoes with her bare feet. “Time to pull the wagons in a circle,” she said, squaring her shoulders and rising as she slipped on her navy pumps. “No offense,” she said, glancing up at him.

“They look like they’re out for more than scalps,” Sam said, following her to the door.

She turned to look at him, her hand poised on the doorknob. “What are they after now?” she asked.

“Somebody leaked about the component failure.”

“And they’ve come for more pictures of the albatross,” she said bitterly. “Any idea who broke the story?”

The incident bothered her greatly. She had come to think of the hundred or so people involved in this project almost as family, certainly a lot closer and more supportive of her than were her actual relatives. To think that one of her employees had turned Judas was almost as difficult as losing the loyalty of Bucky and Sara.

“I’m working on it,” Sam said. “Whoever it was, I figure that one of your brothers-in-law has them on the take.”

Pat nodded. That made sense. If this project failed, their claim that she was incompetent would be more likely to hold up in court.

Pat walked quickly past Alice, who looked at her nervously. Was it she? Pat wondered. She was privy to all the memos that Pat issued, and the secretary would have seen the report that had been on Pat’s nightstand. Alice hadn’t been with them all that long, and . . .

No
, Pat thought,
the young girl was probably just nervous because of all the excitement.

The noise from the workshop was growing as Pat swept down the long steel staircase that led from her office to the ground floor of the plant— the heart of the building, Roger had always called it. At the moment, colorfully dressed representatives of the news media, both T.V. and newspaper, were surrounding Wade Pardy, the head foreman of the project.

When they saw Pat descending the stairs, followed by Sam, they immediately regrouped and encircled her, firing questions and sticking microphones in front of her face. Pat’s head began to pound.
 

“What does this failure mean to the project?” “Will you be able to finish on time?” “How about money, Mrs. Hamilton? Story is that there’s no more money.” “How are you paying your people?” “Do you think this was deliberate?”
 

The last question hit her like a bucket of cold water, sticking out far above the rest. It had been uttered by a bespectacled, thin man who made her think of Allen. He looked as cold-blooded as her brother-in-law, seeming to relish the question he so callously tossed her way.

“No!” she said loudly, although a voice within her would not let the statement go. What if it was true? What if someone was deliberately putting in the wrong components?

“How can you be so sure?” the man pressed, smirking.

“Because I know my people,” she snapped.

Sam elbowed the man out of the way, trying to free Pat from the tangle of reporters who were swarming around her, still shouting to get her attention.

“The lady will gladly answer all your questions at the press conference she’ll be holding here tomorrow afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Right now, I’d advise you to leave before the security staff gets nervous.”

Pat looked up and saw Blaise coming toward her, parting the crowd with his words as smoothly as Moses parted the Red Sea. Behind him were some guards she had never seen before.

Chapter Four

Pat’s brows arched as she watched Blaise take control of the situation. He looked like the ideal corporate executive, dressed in his custom-tailored light blue suit, his camel-colored suede coat slung casually over his arms.
Perhaps the picture was a little too masterful
, Pat thought, feeling unsettled.

“When did you put him in charge, boss lady?” Sam asked, his usually expressionless dark eyes revealing a hint of surprise.

“I didn’t,” she replied quietly, her face gaining a determined look as the last of the reporters were ushered out the doors. The unfamiliar security guards looked pleased with themselves at the expulsion, as did Blaise, who strode toward Pat. The twenty or so employees looked on, a silent Greek chorus to the mini-drama that was unfolding in front of them.

“Any more dragons you want slain?” Blaise asked lightly as he joined her. He was smiling the easy, radiant smile that made her blood run hot—except that now she was growing increasingly troubled.