“Yes, he’s called every other day or so,” Stuart Jameson said in an absent tone. “He seemed to think I’d be angry that he hadn’t kept you out of jail and out of the Mississippi.”
“He’s being very stuffy,” Serena told her father severely.
“Rena, stop playing your tricks on the man.” Her father’s tone matched hers now. “I’ve had twenty-six years to learn how to cope, but he hardly knows you.”
“He’s learning.” She was unrepentant.
“In self-defense, I’m sure.”
She laughed. “He’s holding up, Daddy. He may be calling you tonight, by the way.”
“What’ve you done now?”
“Nothing,” Serena answered placidly. “Not yet, anyway. It’s just that I’ve decided to get married, and Brian thinks I’ve chosen the wrong man.”
As her father had said, he had been granted some years to become accustomed to her sudden fits and starts. So he didn’t deafen her with exclamations of horror or surprise. He merely said politely, “You’re getting married?”
“I thought I would.”
“And who is it that Brian disapproves of?”
“Joshua Long.”
There was a long silence, and then her father murmured, “Joshua Long. I see. He’s in Denver? You are still in Denver?”
“Yes to both questions.”
“And you told Brian you’d decided to marry Joshua Long?”
“Uh-huh.”
“He believed you?”
“He doesn’t know me very well,” Serena explained tranquilly. “Not yet, anyway.”
“I see,” her father murmured. “I think. Brian disapproved—uh—strongly of these impending nuptials, I take it?”
“Well,” she said, faintly dissatisfied, “not strongly enough. But I expect he’ll get better at it.”
“With a nudge from you?”
“That,” she said, “is the plan.”
There was silence, and then a soft chuckle. “Rena, when you were a child, I believed you’d gotten few of my brains but all of your mother’s sweet temperament. Through the years, I’ve had to revise that deduction. You got your mother’s temper, all right—and my brains—and the cunning of the two pirates and three politicians on the family tree.”
“Thank you,” she responded gravely. Then her amusement faded. “Daddy? Any more calls?”
Stuart Jameson sobered as well, but his voice was reassuring. “No mention of you since New York, honey. You’ve lost them, I’d say. Does Brian know—?”
“No, I haven’t really found the right opportunity to tell him. I think it’s time, though. He’s going to be angry when he finds out he’s been in the dark during all of this.”
“I have a feeling,” the elder Jameson said dryly, “you’ll know how to handle him.”
“Well, I’ll certainly try. D’you think it’ll be all right for us to stick around here for a while?”
“Yes, but keep your eyes open, honey.”
“I always do.” Serena smiled to herself. “We’ll stay awhile, then, Daddy.”
He laughed again. “Then I won’t look for you until I see you. Should I start shopping for a wedding present?”
“Just be ready to give me away.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he offered dryly. “Otherwise I’ll have to get ready for a funeral. Yours. One of them’s bound to kill you.”
“Oh, I think I know what I’m doing. See you, Daddy.”
“Bye, honey.”
She had barely cradled the receiver when a knock sounded on her door. Smiling, she went to answer it, and found a tall, dark, undeniably handsome man leaning against the jamb.
“Thanks for the champagne,” he drawled, blue eyes quizzical.
Coat and tie discarded, Brian paced his room restlessly. He was briefly tempted to call the genius who was in charge of the research and development division of Ashford Electronics and give him a piece of his mind. Several reasons kept him from making that call, one of which was Stuart Jameson’s probable response. He’d laugh.
Brian had already given up attempting to understand the workings of Jameson’s mind. On the one hand, he’d seemed indulgently amused by Serena’s plan for a leisurely trip across the country; on the other hand, he had hinted strongly that if someone—unnamed—didn’t watch out for his daughter, he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on his work. His important work.
He was not the type of genius who threw temper tantrums in order to get what he wanted, or threw his weight around in any other fashion; Brian simply assumed strong paternal feelings and volunteered to escort Serena home from Europe. Jameson accepted the offer instantly, fixing Brian with his vague gray eyes and assuring him that he knew his daughter would be safe in his hands. Completely safe.
The last comment Brian had taken to mean that Jameson wasn’t worried his daughter would acquire an electronics magnate as a lover along the way. It hadn’t been an implied warning; Stuart Jameson never implied anything. He either said something flat out or said nothing at all. If he said his daughter would be safe in Brian’s hands, then that was what he meant. Period.
Finding his charge waiting for him at Heathrow in London, Brian had mentally reminded himself of Stuart’s confidence. He’d had no idea of Serena’s age then, and had assumed she was leaving school in Europe to come home. When he’d found her in the airport surrounded by the baggage she’d just brought over from Paris, he’d seen instantly that Daddy’s little girl was little only in terms of physical size; there was nothing small about her effect on people. Particularly men. Like an oasis of calm in a violent storm, she sat atop a large suitcase and listened with apparent interest while a Frenchman and an Englishman argued in earthy terms about who would have the privilege of carrying her luggage out to the taxi queue. Since both men were dressed in immaculate three-piece suits, Brian gathered they didn’t usually do this sort of thing.
Their meeting, Brian knew now, should have warned him of things to come. She had sweetly dismissed her knights-errant upon spotting Brian—she’d seen his picture in the newspapers, she told him blithely—and two skycaps had appeared out of thin air when she glanced around once with a lifted brow.
“Would you have let them fight it out?” Brian had asked her curiously on the way to the hotel they would stay in for several days.
Serena had smiled guilelessly at him. “Of course not, Brian.”
She hadn’t explained how she would have prevented it, but Brian knew—now—that she would have.
They were three weeks into the trip at this juncture, and Brian had learned that Serena Jameson could do just about anything she wanted—the consequences be damned. He had bailed her out of jail for punching a policeman in the eye, fished her out of the muddy Mississippi River—“But I’ve always wanted to swim in it, Brian.”—watched her single-handedly start a soup kitchen for street people in one large city and refurbish an orphanage in another city, and carried her bodily from a picket line she’d joined after hearing ten minutes of passionate rhetoric on a street corner.
He was torn between an urge to tie her up and load her instantly on a plane to California, and the fascinated desire to see what she’d do next.
Serena never tried to get into trouble, Brian thought with a sigh as he paced. She was soft-spoken, sweet-natured, tenderhearted, polite … and somewhere underneath all those gentle layers was the soul of a kamikaze pilot.
She could punch a cop in the eye for threatening to arrest a derelict old man (whom Serena had just met), then tie on an apron and ladle out soup in a kitchen founded—in a single afternoon out of Brian’s sight—in an abandoned building while various bewildered businessmen found themselves unloading their personal cars full of contributions of canned goods or their personal wallets of dollars for Serena’s cause.
She could dive gleefully over the side of a steamboat on the Mississippi because she wanted to swim, then offer to baby-sit three toddlers so that their mothers could have an hour or so of peac
e on the boat. She could defeat Brian soundly at poker by dealing with a dexterity that would have had her instantly blackballed in any casino in the world, then drag him to a movie during which she could cry silently over the death of the hero.
She could stand up to the Scrooge-like administrator of a tumbledown orphanage and call him names that had made Brian blush, then sit among a group of enthralled children while telling gentle fairy tales.
Three weeks …
Brian felt that he hadn’t quite dared to breathe during those weeks. It was an emotion somewhere between fascination and horror, leaving him with sleepless nights but a smothered chuckle somewhere deep inside him.
And now—now—this enigma of a woman, this gentle, kind, compassionate, sweet, ruthless woman had her sights set on the playboy of the Western world. She thought she’d get married. As simple as that.
Restless, Brian paced over to the sliding glass door leading out to his balcony. He went out into the warm night, leaning against the railing and gazing absently over the secluded garden three floors below. Moments later he stiffened unconsciously, his eyes following two people as they walked along one of the winding paths.
The man was tall but virtually unrecognizable in the soft lights concealed in the shrubbery, but Brian knew the woman; he would have known that midnight-blue evening gown anywhere.
He barely felt the railing cut into his hands as he gripped it, and only half heard the soft curses that escaped without his volition. Damn the woman, he thought, she was really going to do it.
She was going to try to catch a rake.
TWO
BRIAN WASN’T QUITE sure that Serena would show up as usual for their breakfast together. He was early himself, primarily because he’d decided to stay up until after five A.M., watching the sunrise with a jaundiced eye. That was sometime after he’d grown tired of reminding himself that Serena was certainly of age, and it was no business of his if she didn’t return to her room until after dawn….
If she returned to her room while he was staring moodily at a truly spectacular sunrise, he didn’t hear her. And he had his door ajar. Accidentally, of course.
Showering and shaving had given Brian time for reflection, but it hadn’t really helped. After three weeks of Serena’s nerve-racking company, he could hardly feel anything other than a strong sense of responsibility toward her. She was, he told himself fiercely while narrowly avoiding the amputation of his right earlobe, as incapable of taking care of herself as a week-old kitten.
Never mind, his intellect sneered, that she appeared to have survived quite intact for twenty-six years. That was different. He hadn’t known her then.
He did now.
By the time Brian was dressed and on his way downstairs, however, he had realized—albeit reluctantly—that his responsibilities to Serena’s father had little to do with his own anxiety. The truth was, he conceded bitterly, he was more than just anxious. And for the simple reason that she had spent the night with another man. Period.
And even though he felt a strong measure of relief when the hostess took him directly to a table in response to his question and he saw Serena waiting for him, Brian quite naturally greeted her with a scowl.
“Good morning, Brian.” Serena was cheerful, bright-eyed, and appeared to have slept a solid eight hours.
Brian knew better. With controlled violence, he took his seat, accepted coffee from an attentive waiter, then waved the young man away before he could offer to take their order. Barely waiting for the waiter to absent himself, Brian snarled, “Well, are you proud of yourself?”
“For what?” she asked innocently, sipping her coffee.
Belatedly remembering that they were in a restaurant that was rapidly filling with hotel guests, Brian lowered his voice. But the snarl, though muted, carried considerable force. “For handing Long another scalp to wear on his belt!” he snapped softly.
“Did I do that?”
“Dammit, Serena—”
“You have a very low opinion of my morals.” Her voice was extremely quiet, but something about it drained Brian’s anger.
“You didn’t sleep with him?” he asked bluntly.
Being Serena, she didn’t blush or appear to resent the personal question. “No, I didn’t sleep with him. I came back to my room a little after midnight.”
Brian studied her downbent head, feeling suddenly as if he had wounded something small and defenseless. And the apology came unbidden. “I’m sorry, Rena,” he said gently. “I guess I was thinking more of Long’s reputation than of your … standards.”
“You don’t know what my standards are.” Clearly Serena was unwilling to forgive so quickly. The misty gray eyes lifted briefly to meet his, and there was something sad in them.
“Don’t look at me like that!” he exclaimed involuntarily.
She glanced around to summon the waiter. “Why don’t we have breakfast, Brian,” she suggested softly.
Since the waiter, no more immune than the rest of his kind to Serena’s glances, was already at their table, pencil poised, Brian could do little but give his order after she had indicated her own choices. Then he stared at the top of her sable head for a few moments before he fully realized that he had irretrievably lost something by leaping to conclusions.
And it hurt, that loss. It hurt to realize that she would never again gaze at him innocently and confidingly, that she would now hesitate before reaching out to touch him. He had, with his accusation, lost a large portion of her trust.
Gone, he thought. Or was it? Serena was the most generous soul he had ever encountered, and perhaps … perhaps there would be no irretrievable loss.
Brian reached across the table to cover her slender hand with his own. “Rena”—his voice was very gentle—“I’m really sorry. After what you said last night, the only thing I was certain of was that you intended to marry Long. And I … I was angry. I’m so afraid you’ll be hurt, and I don’t want that to happen. I was worried about you, that’s all. Will you forgive me?”
The misty gray eyes lifted to his again, and they were curiously shy this time. “I will. If … if you’ll help me.”
“Anything,” he promised rashly, even as a little voice in his head warned him desperately. Those eyes, he thought, mesmerized, those damned eyes.
In the sweet, gentle voice that sounded like satin and could stop an army in its tracks, Serena said, “Teach me how to seduce a man.”
She made it sound normal, he realized dimly. Ordinary. Not in the least dangerous. She made it sound matter-of-fact and innocent and entirely reasonable. She made it sound so reasonable, in fact, that Brian could not immediately think of a reason why he shouldn’t do it.
Brian took a deep breath. “Rena,” he said carefully, “there are some things you simply don’t ask.”
“Why not?”
He raked fingers through his hair. “Rena, you know damned well why not. You have to know. Asking me to teach you how to seduce a man is like—” Gazing into those inquiring eyes, Brian forgot what he was going to say. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You,” he said very dryly, “are twenty-six. You’ve spent the better part of four years in Europe. Correct?”
Serena nodded, her brows still lifted inquiringly.
“You’ve certainly dated?” He waited for her nod, then nodded himself. “Then you have to know the effect you have on men. Most men, in fact.”
“But you’re my friend,” she said, as if that made a difference.
At the end of his metaphorical rope, Brian fell back on brutal honesty. “Rena, if I taught you how to seduce a man, I’d be the man you seduced.”
Serena didn’t respond for a few moments, since their waiter was busy placing their meal before them. Then, in her matter-of-fact way, she said cheerfully, “Well, that’s all right with me, Brian. I don’t think Josh would be pleased by a virgin in his bed anyway. So you can teach me how to seduce a man and please him in bed. And since we’re friends, you won’t be too rough with me,
or—”
“Serena.”
She gazed at him, wide-eyed. Then those misty eyes grew even more misty, and her expression revealed how hurt she felt. “Oh. I see. I understand, Brian, really I do. You don’t have to say anything more.”
“I don’t think,” he said from between gritted teeth, “that you understand at all, Rena.”
“You don’t want me. I understand.”
“It isn’t that.” He swore roughly. “I’m responsible for you. How could I face Stuart after seducing his only daughter?”
“He wouldn’t have to know,” she offered, her tone one of anxious entreaty.
Brian stared at her for a long moment and then, very belatedly, remembered just who he was dealing with. A woman who had punched a policeman in the eye. A woman who had blithely jumped into the Mississippi River. A woman, he had learned, to his cost, who had taken the meaning of the phrase “iron hand in a velvet glove” to new and staggering heights.
He lifted his fork and began eating. Stalling for time.
“You do want me, don’t you?” Serena asked with all the natural curiosity of a child. “I mean—the thought of seeing me naked isn’t giving you the horrors, is it?”
Brian choked on his blueberry pancakes and reached hastily for his coffee. “Will you”—he wheezed—“for heaven’s sake learn to give notice of loaded questions?”
“Well, is it giving you the horrors?”
Brian’s principal reaction to the image her words had instantly provoked was hardly one of horror or revulsion, but he didn’t think the breakfast table was quite the place to give vent to his emotions. Not, at least, in a restaurant.
“Serena,” he said in a tone that had been compared by various of his friends to the sound of a saw biting into wood, “if you say another word not directly related to breakfast, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
She stared at him for a moment, then cleared her throat with an odd little sound and addressed herself to eating the meal before her.
Brian ate automatically. His bland expression was the product of stern control. But his thoughts—and his imagination—refused to be governed. He had spent the past three weeks, he now realized, subconsciously reminding himself that Serena was, in the truest sense of the words, off limits. Not only was she the most enigmatic lady he’d ever met and completely out of his experience, but she was also the daughter of a man he greatly respected—and who trusted him implicitly.