“I thought I would,” she confirmed cheerfully.
Brian made a sound indicative of despair.
“Why don’t we walk in the garden?” she suggested.
“You’ll catch your death in that gown,” he retorted.
“I never catch cold.”
“Who said anything about a cold?” he muttered, signing the check and then following behind as Serena glided—there was no other description for the way she walked—from the restaurant. As they passed Long and his blond companion, Brian saw the other man shoot Serena a quizzical look, eyebrow lifted and amusement gleaming in his eyes; since Brian was behind Serena, he couldn’t see her response. But she had probably, he thought sourly, given Long a come-hither look to end them all.
Brian was feeling somewhat put-upon. Being an honest man, he acknowledged inwardly that he was also feeling angry, sorely abused, bewildered, slightly anxious over the possibility of a kidnapping in the near future, and jealous. And he wanted Serena Jameson until he couldn’t think straight anyway.
He was hardly in the mood for a quiet stroll through a discreetly lighted garden. But when Serena slipped her hand beneath his arm and when he looked down at the top of her sable head and at the silver gown she hadn’t bothered to cover with a wrap, he couldn’t seem to form a protest.
“Why is it,” she asked thoughtfully, “that we always seem to fight in restaurants? Have you noticed?”
“We weren’t fighting. I was just trying to hold on to my sanity,” he corrected.
They walked slowly in silence for a few moments. Then Serena stopped, turning to gaze up at him almost as if she’d never seen him before. The whitewashing moonlight and shrubbery lighting might have been deceptive, but she looked both pale and oddly uncertain. And she spoke with unusual seriousness. “Go back to California, Brian.”
He was more than a little startled, since her voice sounded shaky, and very small. He saw an expression on her delicate face he’d never seen before: a strange, masked vulnerability.
She looked up at him, her expression naked. “Go back,” she repeated softly. “I’ll be all right here. Daddy said they were closing in on whoever it is. I’m not in any danger now. And you’ve put up with me long enough.”
“I told you.” He found his hands lifting to her bare, tanned shoulders. “I’m in for the duration.”
“You said that,” she agreed wryly. “But you didn’t know then what the duration entailed. You deserve combat pay, Brian. Even for just this far, these last weeks. I’ve put you through hell.” She laughed shakily. “I’ve said and done ridiculous things, I know. Oh, I know.” Her chin dropped, and there was something bewildered and childlike in the gesture. “I get things all tangled and confused. Sometimes,” she confessed softly, “I do it deliberately. But not always.”
“Rena—”
She cut him off, speaking rapidly, her voice suddenly taut. “Dammit, I’m trying to warn you. I play tricks, Brian. I plot and I scheme—and I always get my own way. You don’t know—”
“I know,” he interrupted gently, “that you’re kind and softhearted and generous. I know that, Rena.”
Her chin lifted and her gray eyes shimmered wetly. “You’re not listening to me.”
He was, but more than that, he was looking at her. Looking at her and wondering if the dredged-up memories of her mother and her mother’s violent death had opened the wound he saw hurting in her eyes. Brian had felt protective impulses toward her before, but those impulses had always been tinged with exasperation. Not this time, not now.
He wanted to draw her into his arms and hold her, protect her. And that feeling swirled oddly among the tendrils of the desire he felt for her, confusing him with the tenderness both combined to produce. He’d never felt this way before.
His hands lifted to frame her face warmly.
“Why are you telling me this now, Rena?” he asked gently, gazing into her wet, shadowy eyes. “Because you feel guilty that I was named watchdog without being told about it? Is that it? Because if that is it, you may as well shut up. I’m not leaving you.”
Her hard voice contrasted sharply with the wet misery in her eyes. “I’m after Josh, remember? You’ll just get in my way, Brian.”
He might have been hurt or angered by the words, but he was concentrating on trying to understand what reasoning lay behind them. Serena was suddenly wearing a new hat, one he’d never seen or even suspected she owned before, and it intrigued him. Was it deliberate? Somehow he didn’t think so.
“I’m not leaving you, Rena.” He found a smile. “I couldn’t if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”
Her eyes closed briefly, and she spoke in an oddly suspended voice. “What would you say if I told you I loved you?”
He felt his heart stop, then begin pounding against his ribs. “I’d say: Then why’re you after Long?”
“Maybe you’d better think about that, Brian.” Her arms went around his waist beneath his jacket, and her warm body pressed against his. “Maybe you’d better think about it.”
He couldn’t think about anything except the touch of her, the feeling of her against him. And the sight of those enigmatic gray eyes gleaming up at him filled his vision. If his body had been stone, he might have resisted her; being human, he just couldn’t.
“Rena …” His head bent, his lips seeking and finding hers in a touch that was gentle only for an instant. Her response was immediate, total; she became a slender flame that scorched him until every nerve ending shrieked awareness. He felt the smooth skin of her back beneath his hands and the thud of her heart against his chest, and his mind reeled with a wave of hot, savage desire. Her lips returned his kiss fiercely, as hungry as his own, as desperate.
And then, wildly, she wrenched away from him. There was something pagan about her as she stood staring up at him, breasts heaving and eyes flashing.
“I won’t lose control,” she gasped out, anger and bewilderment filling her voice. “Damn you, I won’t lose control of this!” And then she was gone, disappearing around a bend in the path leading back to the building.
Brian stood where she’d left him, his body taut and his mind bewildered. After a while, slowly, he started back to the building. Thinking. Wondering.
Serena was still moving quickly, though no longer running, when she reached the lobby. And when she met Josh as he was coming back into the hotel, her voice emerged as brittle as fragile crystal.
“What? You mean you didn’t even invite her to stay the night? Josh, I’m surprised at you.”
“Not every evening,” he said dryly, “has to end in a bedroom.” He looked down at her for a moment, then caught one of her cold hands and tucked it into the crook of his arm. “Come on. I’ll walk you up to your room.”
“Thanks.” She stared straight ahead, not speaking, while they went up in the elevator. Still in silence she unlocked her door before glancing up at him.
“How about a nightcap?” he asked quietly.
Serena nodded, preceding him into the room and closing the door behind them. While he wandered over to the window and stared silently out, she fixed two drinks at the compact bar. She didn’t ask what he wanted, but automatically prepared straight Scotch for them both. Then she handed him a glass and sank down on the foot of the bed to swallow half her drink.
Still gazing out the window, Josh said softly, “The watchdog has teeth, eh?”
Serena gazed at her glass without answering.
Josh crossed to half sit on the low dresser in front of her. “Serena?”
Reluctantly, wryly, she met his steady gaze.
“You caught a tiger by the tail this time, didn’t you?”
FOUR
SERENA GRIMACED. “THE laugh’s on me,” she said, her voice low. “Go ahead, Josh; you said you would laugh.”
“When you got tangled in one of your own plots?” He looked at her, grave. “It’s odd, but I don’t seem to find it very funny. What happened?”
Serena finishe
d her drink and stared at the empty glass. “I don’t know. He asked about Mother during dinner, and I told him all that. I also told him the rest.”
“About Stuart’s troubles?”
“Yes.”
“How’d he take it?”
“He was angry. Worried.” She smiled a little. “Feeling a bit ill-used, I think.”
“Can’t blame him for that.”
“No.” She sighed, then added abruptly, “I told him … In the garden I told him to go back to California.”
Josh’s rather hard blue eyes sharpened. “That doesn’t sound like you,” he commented, thoughtful. “Did Ashford decide to leave?”
“No. Oh, no. He’s an honorable man, you know. He promised Daddy, and he’s staying.”
“You think that’s his reasoning?” Josh asked mildly. “That he’s just keeping a promise?”
“Well, he isn’t staying for love of me,” she retorted bitterly. “Dammit, he’s got more walls than you have.”
“Which explains, I take it, why you decided on this very tangled web you have us all enmeshed in?”
Serena gestured helplessly with one slender hand. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” She brooded silently for a moment, then looked up to find him watching her intently. “It did seem that way, Josh. After three weeks I knew—Well. I knew. But it was painfully obvious he thought of me as some troublesome kid with half a brain. Kid!” she finished incredulously.
“I don’t think,” Josh commented, “anyone else has treated you as a kid since you were seven. Troublesome, yes. A kid, no.”
“Well, I did give him a lot of trouble,” she said fairly. “I mean, I really pulled out the stops and chewed the scenery. But I just wanted to make sure he could handle it. When I get like that, I mean.”
“And did he handle it?”
“Oh, he handled it beautifully. Even when he yelled at me, he didn’t really lose his temper.” Smiling suddenly, she added, “But you should have seen his face when he bailed me out of jail.”
“You are a difficult woman,” Josh observed judiciously.
“I know.” She sighed.
After a few moments of silence—brooding, on Serena’s part—Josh spoke again. “How is the jealousy ploy working?”
Serena looked at him. “I wish I knew.”
“What?” He laughed. “You mean he isn’t a victim of the green-eyed monster, and isn’t filled with visions of decking me for corrupting the innocent?”
“I think he’s wanted to deck you once or twice,” she answered thoughtfully. “But that’s probably just his sense of responsibility working overtime.”
“No green-eyed monster, though?”
She was silent for a moment. “I don’t think so. He’s attracted. I don’t have to tell you about chemistry.”
“No,” Josh said very dryly. “You don’t have to tell me about that.”
“Yes, well … He got quite stiff about the whole situation when I asked him to teach me how to seduce you, and—”
“When you asked him what?”
Serena avoided his incredulous stare. “It seemed like a good idea. At the time.”
Josh looked plaintively toward the heavens, wondering vaguely if Brian Ashford had noticed how men invariably tended to do that in Serena’s presence. Finally he returned his gaze to her. “My dear Serena,” he said politely, “you need a man who’ll beat you silly. Twice a day.”
She studied his expression thoughtfully. “Funny, but Brian reacted in a similar way. Different words, though. And when I just happened to mention I’d never slept with a man before, he—”
Josh closed his eyes and swore solemnly for several long moments.
“I shouldn’t have told him that?” she ventured.
“I think I’ll call Stuart,” Josh murmured. “It’s way past time to have you committed.”
“Josh—”
“Serena,” he interrupted gently, looking at her with the despairing gaze of a man who knows explanations are pointless, “you’ve just told the man you’d like him to be your first lover, with the express intention of learning how to become another man’s lover. Now, don’t you think that just might have bothered him a little?”
She reflected for a moment, then looked at him uncertainly. “I know it bothered him. He said it sounded cold-blooded, and that sex should never be that.”
“To which you replied?”
“Well, I drew a comparison with his life. Short-term relationships he knew would be nothing more from the beginning. He defended that, just as I thought he would, by saying it was an understanding of adult relationships and his own goals. I told him to apply those words to me.”
Josh sighed. “Serena—”
“I know, I know. It’s different. You want to tell me how it’s different?”
“You’re using him,” Josh answered promptly. “Or at least it seems that way to him.”
After a moment Serena sighed, and gestured bewilderedly. “And I’m tangled in my own damned plot! Josh, when he said he wouldn’t teach me, I wasn’t worried. He—well, I knew he wanted me. But when we were in the garden, something happened. And I don’t know what it was. I couldn’t think. I looked at him, and … and I just couldn’t think. That was when I told him to go back to California. And I asked him what he’d say if I told him I loved him.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked why I was after you, then. I told him he should think about it.” She looked at Josh confusedly. “Why did I do that?” She felt the same bewilderment she’d felt then, the same panicky sensation of having lost the threads of her plot.
Josh leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, and gazed at her quietly. “You are tangled, aren’t you?”
Serena shrugged helplessly. “I just—dammit, I as good as told him he was the one I wanted. And now I want to run. I want to get away from him. I’m afraid. I don’t know why, but I am.”
Josh nodded, as if to confirm some private deduction. “You looked scared in the lobby; I thought something like that had happened. I thought maybe it would happen, in fact.”
“How could you think it’d happen?”
He smiled a little. “You forget. I’ve watched you work. You control things, Rena. People. You never hurt anyone, and I’ve often suspected you’re perceptive enough to guide them in directions they want to go anyway. But you’re always in control. Maybe even detached.”
Serena looked at him, anxious. “I care about people.”
“I know you do,” he said instantly. “In fact, you care more about people than anyone else I know. And that, plus the brains you inherited, makes for a somewhat Byzantine personality.” He smiled again. “Fascinating to watch. The point is, though, that you’ve never plotted for yourself. Never used any kind of scheme to get something you wanted. This time you did.”
“And so?”
“And so you couldn’t be detached from this one. Your own feelings got in the way. Any poet, honey, would be delighted to tell you what happens when a person falls in love. The mind goes first, I’m told.”
“I can’t control,” she said slowly, hollowly.
Josh nodded confirmation. “That’s what I’d say. In fact, I’ve been waiting to see if that would happen. If you could stick to your neat little plot, control Ashford and yourself, then it wouldn’t be the real thing. It would be just what Ashford thought it—cold-blooded. But it isn’t that. Not now. Your emotions are in control now, and no one ever claimed emotions were logical.”
Serena stared at him. “Josh, d’you have to leave the hotel?”
He got to his feet, setting aside his glass, and smiled down at her. “I won’t be your buffer, you know,” he told her quietly. “I was willing to go along with you on the jealousy bit—mainly because I knew it probably wouldn’t work. But you’ve pretty much shot that down anyway. You’ve very likely confused the hell out of Ashford, but I doubt he’ll take it seriously if you go on making sheep’s eyes at me. No, honey, you’re on your
own now.”
“So you’re leaving?”
He nodded. “In the morning.”
Shrewd gray eyes met his for a moment, and Serena said dryly, “But you won’t go far, not out of town.”
For the first time Josh seemed uncomfortable. “I told you I had business—”
“And I know what kind of business.” She laughed, half amused and half irritated. “Daddy played innocent too; he acted surprised you were in Denver. But it occurred to me it was just a bit too pat that you were at this hotel. I had told him earlier where we’d be staying; I knew the phone was safe. He called you in, didn’t he? Reinforcement.”
Josh sighed and folded his arms across a broad chest; he gazed down at her ruefully. “He just wanted me to be handy, Rena. In case. That’s all.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then said steadily, “This isn’t a good time for my plots, is it? Daddy’s worried.”
Josh hesitated, but he knew Serena too well to dissemble. “He’s worried. I’m worried. Stuart’s hit solid walls in trying to find out who’s behind the threats, and it looks like they’ve traced you as far as Wichita.”
For the first time since the whole thing started, Serena felt a chill. “Questions at our hotel there?”
He nodded. “Stuart pulled some strings; according to all records, you and Ashford left Denver last night on a flight to Phoenix. With any luck, they’ll buy that. The rental car could be anywhere, including on the road, being used as a decoy.”
She squared her shoulders unconsciously. “So you’re leaving this hotel, but staying nearby. In case.”
“If you leave the hotel for any reason,” he instructed firmly, “call me first.” Removing a business card from his pocket, he handed it to her. “Number’s on the back. And you’d better tell Ashford it’s more serious than we thought.”
Serena’s smile was a little painful. “Just when I wanted to run, I have to pull up the drawbridge and stay put. Great.”
“That’s not all.” He grimaced slightly at her sharp look. “I know you won’t like this—”
“A real watchdog.” She spoke grimly.