“They weren’t games. Lord, I thought you knew that.”
Sara refused to look back at him as she crossed the terrace. She could feel his gaze on her naked back and a hot shiver ran through her. Her body had once been so sensually attuned to him that he had only to look at her for her breasts to swell and the hunger to begin to stir between her thighs. It was happening again now, she realized and acute anxiety welled up in her. Just another minute and she’d be back in the apartment and could lose herself in the crowd. Just another minute.
“I’m not letting you go.”
“You don’t have any choice.” She opened the door. “Good-bye, Jordan.”
Jordan’s hands slowly closed into fists at his sides. He could see the pale gleam of her hair through the sheer panels that curtained the French doors and then she was lost to view. He had made a complete botch of it, he thought with profound self-disgust. He had planned on being gentle and understanding, of telling her he realized what an idiot he had been. Instead, he had argued and defended himself and, as the piece de résistance, had actually stated his claim on her. After this fiasco he’d be lucky if she didn’t go to the police and get a restraining order to keep him from bothering her.
He should have known he would blow it. He had only to be in the same room with Sara to respond with instinctive possessiveness. He’d hoped their time apart would have tempered his reaction, and heaven knew he had been battling his nature for the last eighteen months.
It was clearly still too soon. His body wanted her too much and old habits were hard to break. He should have forced himself to wait until he was sure he could act with discipline and restraint. But circumstances had placed him in a position in which he could no longer wait. A cold chill had touched him when Cam had told him about the deserted warehouse where Sara now lived; there was no way he could let her go her own way while she lived in such a dangerous place and that madman from New York still on the loose.
That memory suddenly brought another possibility to mind. Sara had been very upset when she had left him just seconds ago. He had learned to read every nuance of her responses and recognized that her control was barely skin deep. What if she had left the party to drive alone back to that damned warehouse on the docks? Hell, she might have left already.
He muttered a curse beneath his breath as he strode swiftly across the terrace and jerked open a French door, his gaze anxiously searching the crowd.
Two
The dark blue Mercedes pulled into the warehouse directly behind Sara’s Honda, its tires screeching on the tarmac.
Sara’s heart jerked with fear. Then, as she saw Jordan step from behind the wheel, it jerked again with an entirely different apprehension. She had hoped it was over. She wanted it to be over, dammit.
She got out of her car and slammed the door shut. “This is private property, Jordan. That means you have to be invited on the premises.”
“It’s too private. I couldn’t believe it when Cam told me about the setup here. Don’t you have any sense? This is a perfect place for an attack. Talk about invitations.”
“This is a very well-patrolled neighborhood,” she said defensively. “And it’s none of your business anyway. Go away, Jordan.”
“When you’re safely in your apartment.”
“No, I don’t—” But he was already striding toward the elevator and she found herself hurrying after him. “I don’t need to have an escort to my front door. I’ve gotten along quite well without you for some time.”
“Sure you have.” He turned to face her, his expression grim under the illumination of the bulb over the elevator. “You position yourself so that you’re number one on a serial killer’s hit list and then move into a deserted warehouse on the waterfront. Why don’t you go back to New York and hand him a knife to cut your throat?”
She gazed at him in bewilderment. “How did you know about Kemp?”
Jordan didn’t answer.
“How, Jordan?”
“It was in all the newspapers,” he said evasively.
“I doubt if the Australian papers would have carried it. That’s not how you knew, is it?” She studied him intently. “Were you in Sausalito yesterday?”
The slightest flicker of expression crossed his face.
“You were following me,” she whispered. “How long?”
“I’ve been here for only three weeks.”
“Three weeks? Cam didn’t even know you’d left Half Moon.” She suddenly remembered Cam’s odd expression when she had questioned him about Jordan’s whereabouts. “Or maybe he did know. Was he lying to me?”
Jordan was silent a moment and then slowly shook his head. “You should know better than that. Cam doesn’t lie.” His smile was bittersweet. “He has all the scruples in the family, remember?”
“But there was something he wasn’t telling me?”
“Is this how you conduct your interviews for World Report?” He shrugged. “Cam probably suspected I was here. He knew I’d been here several times in the last year.”
“Several times …” She shook her head dazedly. “Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I wanted to be near you,” he said simply.
She felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her. Her initial anger was beginning to melt away, but she tried desperately to hold on to it. “So you followed me? What right did you have to do that?”
“I wanted to keep you safe. Kemp—”
“It sounds obsessive.”
“I didn’t trail after you like a hungry wolf. I do have my own work, too, you know. I hired an agency to make sure you were safe when I couldn’t be on the spot.”
“Detectives? You hired detectives to follow me?” She shook her head in wonder. “You always did keep an eagle eye on your possessions.” She fumbled desperately in her purse for her key ring. “But this is the one who got away.”
Jordan flinched. “I never regarded you as only a possession, Sara.”
“Really? You could have fooled me.” She laughed shakily as she unlocked the elevator and pushed back the gate. “How did you regard me?”
“As my love.”
She closed her eyes. “Don’t do this to me, Jordan. Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” he said huskily. “Come back to me and let me show you how good it can be for us.”
She whirled to face him, her lids opening to reveal eyes blazing with anger and desperation. “How can I trust you? I know you, Jordan. You can’t bear to give up anything that belongs to you. You’d do anything to get your own way.”
“You’re right, I’d do anything to get you to come back to me.” He paused. “Anything.”
Everything he said was like raw acid on an open wound. “It’s no good. We had nothing on which to build a relationship.”
“You didn’t give us a chance,” he said hoarsely. “You could have talked to me, told me how you felt. You didn’t have to run away from me.”
“Every time I tried to talk to you we ended up in bed. We wanted different things from our marriage. It would never have worked out.” She stepped into the elevator. “Good night, Jordan.”
He was right behind her. “I’m coming with you.” Then, as she started to protest, he said roughly, “Don’t worry, I’ll leave you pristine pure at your front door. I just want to make sure no one is waiting upstairs.” He closed the gate and pressed the button. The elevator started with its characteristic lurch and then began its snail’s-pace ascent.
“How could someone get upstairs to wait for me since the elevator is locked?”
“There are such things as master keys.”
He was too close. He wasn’t touching her but she could still feel the heat emanating from his body and smell the clean fragrance of soap and that lemony aftershave that was as familiar to her as her own favorite perfume. Why did the blasted elevator have to move so slowly?
She could feel his gaze on her face and knew he was aware of the quickening tempo of the pulse in her temple.
He had always been aware of the slightest betrayal in her responses and used that knowledge to launch his assaults with devastating effectiveness.
“Do you remember the first time you rode in the private elevator at my office in Sydney?”
She stiffened and felt the muscles of her abdomen tense as an explosion of heat tore through her. “No.”
“I do.” His voice was velvet soft in her ear. “We’d been married only a few weeks and you decided you wanted to visit Bandor Tower and see where I worked. We’d just made love that morning but it hadn’t been enough for either of us. Something exploded between us. I stopped the elevator between the floors …”
Sara felt her breasts tauten and swell beneath the soft velvet of the bodice of her gown as the memory of those wild and primitive moments in the elevator replayed in her mind: Jordan’s frantic urgency as he had pulled her down on the carpeted floor of the elevator, his face strained with hunger above her, her own cries as he had driven into her again and again and again.…
He took a half step back in the elevator, and she could feel his gaze on her naked flesh as she had on the terrace. “Lord, you have beautiful skin.” His index finger touched her with whisper lightness in the exact hollow of her spine. “Pale and satin smooth.”
His finger moved slowly up her spine to her shoulder blades, leaving a trail of fire and aching pleasure in its wake.
The elevator had stopped. She should open the gate, she thought desperately, but she couldn’t seem to move. She was rooted, bound by the gossamer pressure of Jordan’s finger on her flesh, captured by the pleasure he was giving her. His finger moved down again, tracing the line of her spine past her waist to the point where her gown ended and her buttocks began to swell gently against the velvet. “And your bottom is absolutely magnificent.” She could hear the harshness of his breathing behind her, and its roughness stroked her, readied her with the same power as the gentleness of his finger. “I have only to watch you walk across the room to get turned on. Not that you wriggle, you just have a little swing that’s full of joy and freedom. I could never get enough of watching you move, Sara.” His hands suddenly slipped beneath the velvet of the gown to cup her buttocks in his palms.
She gasped, her spine arching as she felt a tingle of hunger that was like an electric shock.
“It’s been so long.” Jordan’s low voice held a note of torment. His hands squeezed gently, rhythmically. “Sometimes I thought I’d go crazy if I couldn’t come inside you and feel you moving.”
Her eyes closed as she half-leaned back against his shoulder. She wanted to part her legs and feel Jordan’s hands slide around to cup, tease, satisfy. All she had to do was to make the move and Jordan would give her what she needed. Jordan always knew how to please her. He seemed to read her mind when it came to physical pleasure. It was the only time she felt close to him.
Because that physical nearness was the only part of him that he would share with her.
The thought brought a rush of pain that chilled the heat of the desire Jordan was building so skillfully. “No!” She pulled away and he slid his hands quickly up her back. She fumbled at the gate until she finally managed to get it open. Then she was across the corridor unlocking the door to her loft. “No way!”
“Sara …” Jordan was beside her, his voice urgent in her ear. “Let me come in. You know you want it. You know you want me.”
She turned to face him, her eyes blazing in her pale face. “Yes, I want you. But it doesn’t matter. Do you understand? I want a husband who can give me more than you’re offering me. I want to know what my husband is thinking, what he’s feeling. I want to be so close to him that there’s a oneness, a sweetness, a kind of—” She could feel the tears stinging behind her eyes and was forced to stop. “Oh, what’s the use? You probably don’t even know what I mean.”
“I know.” Jordan’s voice was halting. “But I’m not sure I can give you what you want.”
“Well, when I left Half Moon I swore I’d never settle for anything less again.” She turned away. “So perhaps you’d better just forget about me.”
“I can’t forget,” he said harshly. “How can I make you see that I’ll never be able to forget you?”
“You can’t, dammit.” Sara stepped into the apartment and slammed the door.
She wilted against the mahogany panels, feeling suddenly weak. She had come so close to giving in to him. She was still trembling in the aftermath of the desire and emotion he had aroused. But she had faced him and hadn’t succumbed, she told herself. Next time it would be easier. Dear sweet heaven, she hoped it would be easier.
Jordan turned away and stepped back into the elevator. A muscle in his left cheek jerked as he put the elevator in motion. Two minutes later he was in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, gazing blindly into the darkness. The pain would lessen soon and then he’d be able to think again. All he had to do was to hold on until— He leaned forward and rested his forehead on the steering wheel, his hands clasping it with white-knuckled force.
Several minutes later he lifted his head and forced his grip to loosen on the steering wheel. His control was reasserting itself. Now he would sit here and think about what Sara had said and try to make plans. Heaven only knew that he had plenty of time to do it. He had told Marambas he wouldn’t be needed tonight and there was no way he was going to leave Sara unguarded.
The ruby and diamond bracelet was delivered to Sara the next morning at the office of World Report by messenger. The black velvet jeweler’s box contained no card.
At two in the afternoon a full-length Russian sable coat arrived together with a box of long-stemmed yellow roses. No card was enclosed.
At four o’clock the manager of the parking lot downstairs phoned her to say that the keys to her Lamborghini had been delivered to him for safe-keeping. Did she wish him to send them up?
“No.” Her hand tightened on the receiver. “Was there a note with the keys?”
The answer was the one she had expected. No note. She slowly hung up the receiver and gazed numbly at the cream-colored phone on the desk.
“Jordan?” Penny asked.
“I guess it has to be. Who else would send a hundred-thousand-dollar car without a note?” Sara shook her head in bewilderment. “Why is he doing this?”
“You’d know that better than I.” Penny made a face. “But you’d better make sure it stops. You know how Mac feels about personal matters intruding at the office.”
“It will stop. I’ll make sure it stops, and damn quick.” Sara slipped the jeweler’s box into her purse and draped the sable over one arm. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Penny.”
“You don’t have to see him again. You could use a messenger service.”
“Rubies, sables, and a Lamborghini?” Sara shook her head. “Would you risk any one of those to a messenger service?”
“Jordan did.” A glint of respect gleamed in Penny’s brown eyes. “He’s not stupid. If he intended to force you to see him again, he certainly chose a unique way to do it.”
“Oh, yes, Jordan is nothing if not unique.” Sara whirled and strode out of the newsroom.
Forty-five minutes later she was standing in front of Jordan’s door at the Fairmont, pounding briskly on it.
“Why?” she asked as soon as Jordan threw open the door. She marched into the suite, handed him the jewelry box, and threw the sable coat and the car keys on the white suede couch. “You knew I wouldn’t take them.”
“You were pretty upset last night and I was afraid you wouldn’t see me again.” Jordan closed the door and leaned back against it. “I thought this would be a way to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone.”
“Two?”
He nodded. “Getting you to see me and beginning our courtship.”
She gazed at him in disbelief. “Courtship? We’re getting a divorce.”
He shook his head. “Not in the next hundred years, love. You’ll be a little gray-haired lady in a wheelchair before you untie t
he legal knots my lawyers are busy thinking up.”
“Jordan, be reasonable. I’m not going to change my mind.”
“You will.” His lips tightened. “And I would have thought you’d realize that I’m never reasonable about anything concerning you.” He straightened away from the door. “I’m trying to give you what you want from me. You said you’d never gotten to know me. Well, you’re going to know me better than you do your best friend before we’re done. I thought about it for a long time last night and I decided what you needed was a courtship.” He smiled faintly. “If you remember, we ended up in bed together the second time we met and were married by the end of the week. That didn’t give us much time for the conventional rituals.”
“Jordan …” She gazed at him in despair. “It’s too late. This isn’t going to work.”
“It will work.” Jordan’s voice vibrated with intensity. “You think I have some kinky sexual obsession for your very lovely body. Well, maybe I do find making love to you addictive, but that doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it. I love you, dammit.”
She felt the faintest stirring of hope. “I can’t believe you.”
He took an impulsive step toward her and then stopped as she took a swift step backward. “Sorry, it’s an automatic reflex to try to hold you.” His voice was suddenly fierce. “But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. What we have together sexually is damn beautiful.” He drew a deep breath. “So the courtship begins. Shall I tell you how we’re going to conduct it?”
She nodded slowly.
“No sex.”
Her eyes widened in surprise.
“I’m shocked as hell myself.” His lips curved in a smile. “I assure you, if I could accomplish what I need to do without that particular abstention, I’d move heaven and earth to do it. But sex seems to be the crux of the entire problem. You think that’s all I want from you and that it’s the weapon I use to manipulate you. Right?”