Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One Page 30

  Blaise shook his head as he closed the door softly behind him. “Poor old Roger. What a fool,” he said almost under his breath.

  “What?” Pat stopped in her tracks and turned to face Blaise.

  “I said he was a fool,” Blaise repeated more audibly. “To be so wrapped up in his work that he didn’t see what he was allowing to go to waste right in his own home.”

  “Blaise, you’ve been wonderful for my ego,” Pat began, walking over to the huge glass doors that led out to the terrace. She pulled the ceiling-to-floor drapes with a decisive, swift motion. “But you needn’t waste your words on me. I don’t feel cheated—“

  “Don’t you?” Blaise asked, coming toward her.

  She realized as she turned to face him that he had taken off his tie and had undone the three top buttons of his shirt. A light layer of downy, dark hair was exposed. She caught herself wondering, just for a moment, what he would look like in swimming trunks. Most men looked passably good in three-piece suits but were a terrible disappointment in swimsuits. Roger had been athletic-looking when they were first married, but as the years had passed and his involvement with work grew, he had neglected himself. Her husband had eventually joined the ranks of flabby-bodied men whose trousers hung loosely behind them while almost straining against a little round belly in front, gained from eating the wrong foods on the run. Somehow, Pat instinctively knew that Blaise offered no such disappointment.

  He whispered again, “Don’t you feel cheated?”

  She shrugged indifferently and responded to his question. “Just by the fact that he’s gone, of course. Even though he wasn’t here that often, I do miss him. And at the office, I still expect him to come marching through that door, dirty shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, talking excitedly, trying to tell me how he improved on his line of planes.” She sat down on the long blue and white sofa, looking up absently at the original impressionist painting that hung above it.

  Unconsciously, she began to massage her feet. Blaise sat next to her.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, looking at her hands as she rubbed her toes.

  “It’s my feet,” Pat said, a little embarrassed. “I don’t think they enjoyed this evening as much as the rest of me. I haven’t been dancing in a long time,” she confessed.

  “Here,” Blaise offered, drawing her feet onto his lap, “let me.”

  “No,” she protested, trying to pull back, but he held firm.

  “I promise I won’t take them away,” he told her as he began to knead.

  Despite herself, Pat liked the wonderfully relaxing effect of his fingers as they methodically massaged away the ache in her small feet. It felt marvelous. Too marvelous, she realized, suddenly drawing back and sitting up on her knees.

  Blaise merely grinned.

  “Roger really did have a very ingenious mind,” she said, nervously retreating to the topic of her husband. “I don’t think his family appreciated that.”

  Blaise nodded his dark head slightly. “I don’t think his family is capable of appreciating anything except more money.” His eyes seemed to pull her closer and make her feel totally exposed before him. “So I take it you were happy with him.”

  “Yes,” Pat answered softly. Well, she had been, even though at times she had been jealous of his work’s claim on him. Although he forgot her birthdays and anniversaries, Roger could remember all the parts of any plane he manufactured. Still, she had loved him, right up to the end, and her loyalty to him was unswerving.

  “How happy?” Blaise pressed.

  “Blaise, if you came here expecting to find a frustrated, unhappy widow who would throw herself into the arms of the first man who offered her sympathetic words ...” she began, her annoyance showing.

  But his smile erased the rest of her words. “I came expecting to find the same pluck I always saw in you and I’m not disappointed. I think I would have been disappointed if you had knuckled under to Aunt Rose and given up the plant. I’m glad to see you’re still ‘dynamite,’ “ he said fondly.

  She looked at him in surprise. How had he known her nickname? Pat’s friends had called her that in high school and the name still aptly described her. She was petite and lithe—compact, she liked to put it—but she always made a difference when she became involved in something.

  “How did you know my nickname?” Pat couldn’t help asking.

  “I know a lot of things about you. I made it a point to know.”

  “In between the harem girls and wading in the fountain with the contessa?” she asked, amused.

  “In between everything,” he said.

  “Then why didn’t you come to the funeral?” She remembered looking for his face at the time, feeling sure he would come to pay his respects rather than just send a wire of condolences and a flower arrangement. She realized now that unconsciously she had wanted him there to support her. Somehow, she had instinctively known that he would have been on her side.

  “I wasn’t sure that you needed me then,” he said honestly.

  “Well, I did,” she answered, being more frank with him than she thought she should be.

  “I realize that now,” he replied. “Delia’s letter took me to task for that.”

  “Delia’s been wonderful,” Pat said, “but she’s somewhere in her late eighties, I think, and I don’t want to tax her with any of my problems.”

  “You don’t have to say anything to her. She’s a sharp cookie. Has her fingers on the pulse of everything.” He smiled. “She’s kind of what I imagine you’ll be like in another fifty years.”

  Pat realized that he had taken her hand in his. Moreover, his other arm had slipped around her shoulders. She was surrounded. A tightness gripped her throat. She had to get up. She had no business being here alone with him like this, feeling as nervous as a teenager in the presence of the school “hunk.” The thought made her smile. She had not been like this even as a young girl. Except for the time he had asked her to dance at her engagement party.

  “You’ve got the smile of an angel,” he said, his eyes mesmerizing her. “Makes you look like a little girl. A delectable, saucy little girl,” he said as he slowly and expertly began to draw the pins out of her hair.

  Pat felt her golden-brown mane come loose. “What are you doing?” she asked, startled, as her hand flew up to stop him. But somehow there was no force in her words or her action. Perhaps something within her was even urging him on.

  “Pulling the pins out of your hair,” he said softly.

  “Don’t,” she began, the word disappearing.

  “Shh,” he whispered. “Don’t argue with me, Lady Pat,” he said, placing the pins on the coffee-table. Deftly, he fanned out her shoulder-length hair, running his strong, sure fingers through it. “There. Now you look like the girl I first met.”

  “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.