When Next We Love Read online

  “Really, Leigh!” Derek admonished in a lazy drawl. “If you wanted to join us, you could have simply dressed and come down the staircase.”

  Leigh shot him a look of pure hostility, but he seemed not to notice. Turning to the woman on the couch, he said, “Miss White, I believe you’ve met Leigh Tremayne before.” He glanced back to Leigh. “Leigh, you must remember Lavinia White. She interviewed Richard several years ago for her magazine.”

  If there had been a hole in the floor anywhere, Leigh would have found it and crawled into it. This was ten times worse than breaking up the most passionate of romantic interludes. Derek’s words reminded her immediately of where she had seen the woman before. Lavinia White. The queen of gossip columnists. Untouchable because she made sure all her articles were based on researched fact.

  There was no hole in the floor to crawl into. Leigh winced with every nerve in her body, then forced herself to move away from the door. “Hello, Miss White,” she said, sailing toward the woman and offering her hand as if she were dressed in heels and the most becoming of hostess gowns. “How are you?” Not waiting for a reply, she went on gaily to them both, “Please do excuse me. I’m afraid I locked myself out on the balcony. Terribly foolish, I know. Forgive me for the interruption.”

  “Oh, not at all, dear!” Lavinia White was smiling as smugly as the cat that had just caught the canary. Her twinkling green eyes told Leigh plainly that she was already planning the words of type to describe the state of dress in which she had found Leigh Tremayne in Derek Mallory’s household. “In fact, I would have never forgiven Derek if you hadn’t made an appearance. Why the rogue! He didn’t even tell me you were here.”

  “Excuse me, ladies, if you will,” Derek interrupted. “I want to see to the dogs.” He grinned wickedly at Leigh before he exited and she knew exactly what he was thinking: You got yourself into this—now get yourself out of it!

  Despite the sinking sensation in her heart, she smiled at Lavinia brightly. “Derek and I had some business to discuss this afternoon,” she explained calmly, “then something went in my car. My home is in Key West, you know, and Derek didn’t think it safe for me to drive back late with the storm so close and all …”

  She had run out of her words of excuse and they were ringing false to her own ears anyway. She was in Derek’s shirt, she was standing barefoot and bare-legged in his salon.

  Of all the miserable luck!

  “Business?” Lavinia queried doubtfully. “What kind of business?”

  Leigh was spared a reply by Derek’s timely re-entry. “Musical business, of course,” he assured the reporter with his charm in full swing. “Leigh is a very talented artist in her own right, Lavinia. We’re planning to do some work together.”

  Leigh glanced at him angrily but his expression remained guileless and easy. She checked her own telltale features and slipped back into her mask of a smile.

  Lavinia White clapped her hands ecstatically. “Is that true, dear? How wonderful! And I’m the first to know!”

  Leigh hesitated only slightly. If she said yes, she was cornered. She would have to complete the project with Derek. But if she said no … she knew her presence could only be construed in one way and her face and name would appear shortly in magazines across the country in a not-very-flattering light.

  “Yes, Miss White. I started something with Richard several years ago and Derek thinks it’s worth picking up again. Actually, we’re not sure yet. We met on this today for the first time …”

  “Leigh is overly modest,” Derek said. “Her work is excellent and we’re going to plunge right into it.”

  Leigh could almost feel bars closing in around her. How had she allowed all this to happen? Her headache was becoming acute. She felt as if a thousand drummers were playing a march behind her eyes. “It was nice to see you again, Miss White—”

  “Lavinia.”

  “Lavinia, but I think I’ll excuse myself. I’ve had a long day and—”

  “A terrible headache,” Derek supplied sympathetically. He had gotten his own way, he could afford to be magnanimous. “Do go on up to bed, Leigh. You certainly look like you need some sleep.”

  “Oh, must you?” Lavinia wheedled.

  “Yes, she must,” Derek answered firmly. He grinned amiably. “Leigh has a rotten temper when she’s overtired.”

  She was tempted to slug him despite the reporter’s observant eyes. Her face was strained from the effort of maintaining her false smile. “I am frightfully tired. And I’m not exactly dressed for tea or cocktails!” She shook Lavinia White’s hand briefly and attempted to walk across the room nonchalantly. “Good night!”

  “Good night, Leigh,” Derek called. His eyes followed her up the stairway and they were gloating and triumphant. She returned his stare with shimmering venom until she could no longer see him. Damn him straight to hell! she thought balefully. He would find out just how bad her temper could be in the morning!

  But her troubles for the night were still not over. She grimaced as she remembered that she had also bolted the hallway door to her room. She tried the knob anyway, but as she had expected, it was locked tight.

  She wasn’t going back downstairs. Not for anything. Sighing with exhaustion and resignation, she tried the door to the next room. It opened welcomingly at her touch.

  She didn’t switch on a light. Her body and mind ached and all she wanted was the solace of sleep. She walked in the dim light until she found the bed, pulled back the covers, and collapsed. She hoped, as she drifted quickly and mercifully into a sound doze, that Emma wouldn’t mind terribly that she had made a mess of two rooms …

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHE WAS DREAMING, AND it was a pleasant dream. She was floating on an azure sea, kissed by the sun and caressed by the breeze. The water lapped by her side in perfect tranquility, a feeling of relaxation to be matched by none. Overhead white clouds moved across the sky in soft, billowing puffs; they seemed to reach down and cradle her with a tantalizing warmth …

  She hurled herself up in the bed with a gasping cry. She was being touched and it wasn’t by clouds. There was a body beside her!

  She heard a muttered oath and then an impatient movement. Light flared through the room from a bedside lamp and she found herself face to face with Derek.

  “You bastard!” she hissed, shaking so with surprise and anger that her voice wavered even in its harshness. “You are incredible! Get out of my bed. I know you’re capable of dirty tricks, but this is too much. How dare you? And you have the nerve to condemn me …” Her words trailed away, not because she had run out of venom, but because he was staring at her very peculiarly. and not saying a thing in his own defense.

  “Would you please get out of here?” she begged in exasperation and confusion.

  “I’d be happy to, madam,” he replied with maddening deliberation. “Except this is my bed that you are in.”

  If a bomb had fallen in the middle of the room, she couldn’t have been more shaken. She stared back at him helplessly, her eyes registering dismay as she remembered how haphazardly she had chosen a place to sleep. “Oh, Derek …” she stammered, venturing to glance around the room and note that the dresser was neatly covered with his toiletries and that the half-opened closet door displayed rows of pressed shirts and trousers. If only she’d turned on a light! “Derek, I am sorry. My door was locked, you see, I mean both doors … and I didn’t want to come back downstairs, and—and, well, I am sorry.”

  “Don’t bother to be sorry,” he drawled lazily. His curious look had become speculative and his eyes, golden with sardonic amusement, roamed from her mane of sleep-tossed hair, to the deep vee created by the open buttons of the tailored shirt, and down to the long slender length of bare legs displayed beneath the tails. “Finding you in my bed has been a surprise, but a most pleasant one.” He ran a finger along her kneecap.

  Leigh pushed his hand aside angrily. “Damn you, Derek, I explained what happened—”

  “Yes
, I know.” He smiled calmly. He was propped on an elbow and rested his head on his other hand. “You picked this room by chance.”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, yourself, and take the fast route to hell,” Leigh snapped irritably. “Yours is the last bed I’d crawl into on purpose.”

  “Really?”

  He posed the word like a perfectly polite question, but Leigh could sense the stifled laughter he was containing. She attempted to rise, only to discover she had one foot still caught in the sheets. With impatient force she ripped them aside, making a far worse discovery. Derek slept in the nude.

  As Leigh gasped in an echo of horrified embarrassment, Derek chuckled, not in the least disturbed by the events that were mortifying to her. “Control yourself, love!” he mocked. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Fury choked back any reply Leigh might have made. She emitted a low growl, hurriedly tossed the sheet back over his bronze body, and unscrambled her own legs to make a hasty retreat. But in redraping her unexpected bedmate, she had retangled her own limbs. Her efforts did little but land her unceremoniously on the floor.

  “Poor Leigh!” Derek taunted, rolling across to gaze down at her pityingly. “Doesn’t seem to be your night, huh?” He patted the bed invitingly. “Why don’t you give up this ridiculous charade of touch-me-not chastity and get back up here?”

  “This isn’t a charade!” Speechlessness deserted her as she shouted into his smugly leering face. “I don’t like you, Derek, is that so difficult to comprehend? I don’t want to be near you. I don’t want to be in this house and I particularly don’t want to be in your room and I especially don’t want to be in your bed! I—”

  She was rudely interrupted as Derek’s hand clamped over her mouth. Then, with one swift movement, he was on top of her, and when he spoke, his eyes blazed into hers and his voice was a wrathful whisper.

  “You, Mrs. Tremayne, are a perpetual liar! When I kissed you earlier, love, you certainly responded. With amazing eagerness and expertise, I might add. Of course, you have had your share of practice.”

  The scathing things she had to say in return were effectively muffled by the force of his hand on her mouth. She twisted her head and struggled and writhed in a frenzy of energy born of anger so intense it filled every nerve and limb of her body. All to no avail. Between the confinement of the sheets and his rock-muscled strength, she was helpless. All she accomplished was to bring them closer together, to dislodge more of the thin material that was all that separated them and bring more flesh against flesh.

  Finally she lay still, spent, frustrated, and frightened of the growing heat between them. She closed her eyes, refusing to meet his. When she had been quiet for several minutes, he took his hand from her mouth. Yet he didn’t move. She opened her eyes imploringly.

  “Derek, please, let me get out of here.”

  Her answer was an unyielding stare.

  “Damn it, Derek, you are a crazy man! Why are you doing this when your opinion of me is so poor? I might be contaminating!”

  “I find you very desirable.”

  “But you hate me!”

  He shrugged. “Like you said, all black cats look alike in the dark.”

  “I’m not your average black cat, remember? I was Richard’s wife, the cold, cruel mercenary.”

  “Richard has been dead a long time.”

  “And you still haven’t forgiven me!”

  Derek went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “You responded to me, Leigh.”

  “But I didn’t want to! Don’t you understand?”

  “No, love, I don’t. There’s a chemistry between us. Nice and normal. Two consenting adults—”

  “No!” Leigh was close to tears. Moisture gleamed on her eyelashes. “Please?” A sob caught in her throat. If he didn’t release her soon, she would be seduced by the nearness of him, by the raw masculinity she knew could become so demanding and possessing, yet tender. “Please, Derek.”

  He sighed and rose nimbly to his feet, wrapping the sheet decorously around himself as he did so. He extended a hand to help her up. “Get back in bed,” he said. “There’s nowhere else to go, at the moment. The room keys are in the kitchen somewhere, and it could take me the rest of the night and half of tomorrow to find them without asking Emma or James where they are. None of the other rooms are made up. Emma believes in making up a bed fresh when a guest arrives.” He turned and stalked toward his closet.

  “Where are you going?” Leigh asked hesitantly.

  His back was to her and she saw his shoulders rise and fall in an unconcerned shrug. “It’s almost five. I’ll make myself some coffee.”

  “Five? It can’t be!” Leigh exclaimed.

  “Well, it is. I guess we both slept quite comfortably for some time before discerning one another’s presence.” He pulled a shirt and a pressed pair of jeans from the closet. Turning to glare at her impatiently, he added in a growl, “Go back to bed. Get some sleep.”

  Leigh pushed a billowing strand of hair behind her shoulder and remained standing awkwardly. “No—no, Derek,” she stammered. “I’ll go back downstairs. This is your room.”

  “Get in bed,” he said firmly. “Unless you want me to put you there.”

  She hastened to obey. Their recent, bruising, crossed-swords encounter was too fresh in her mind to chance arguing further. Pulling her pillow to her chest, she watched as he obtained underwear from a drawer and headed for his bathroom, unwittingly admiring the span of his tanned shoulders as she did so. When the door had closed behind him, she glanced nervously about the room, focusing on the green luminescent face of a clock radio as she scanned it. It wasn’t almost 5:00 A.M., it was only 4:30. She gnawed on a nail indecisively as she waited for him to reappear. When he did, she plunged quickly into stilted speech.

  “Derek, I, uh, I really don’t feel right about kicking you out of your own bedroom. This bed is king-size, and we did sleep well for hours before discovering one another. I mean, we could both stay on a side and go back to sleep.” She shimmied as close as she could to the edge. “See?”

  He laughed. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Rubbing his chin absently, he thought over her suggestion. Then he tossed the sheet he had been trailing to her. “Thanks. I’ll admit I’m not crazy about early hours.” He tossed off the sneakers he had just donned and crawled back into the bed, safely clad in his jeans and shirt. He switched off the light and settled in.

  There was silence for a time and Leigh believed he slept. All that she could hear was their suddenly loud breathing and the howling of the wind. She curled into her pillow, but sleep wouldn’t come.

  “Leigh?”

  She would have feigned sleep, but his question in the darkness startled her so badly that she jumped.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The gentle tone of his voice tore through her defenses as none of his harsh jeers could. The tears that had threatened before fell silently down her cheeks and she fought for control to reply.

  “It’s all right.”

  She felt his weight shift and then the touch of his finger on her cheek. She stiffened as his arm then came around her, drawing her to him.

  “Don’t,” he said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He didn’t, but held her close instead, smoothing her hair with a lulling tenderness. She began to relax against him and her tears subsided. As the wind continued to howl, she drifted back into a contented sleep, dreaming again of white puffy clouds and a beautiful azure sea.

  The sound of the wind, which had helped put her to sleep, also awakened her. She blinked the fuzziness from her eyes, yawned and stretched, and bolted up as she remembered the night. A quick look about assured her that Derek had arisen earlier and left her. At the foot of the bed lay the box with the second set of clothing he had purchased for her. She smiled with appreciation, then bounded to the window to strip away the curtains and v
iew the action of the ferocious howling.

  The sky was dead gray and the palms dipped so low from the screaming gusts that their thin, spidery leaves brushed the ground.

  If they weren’t in for the full strength of the hurricane, they were still in for some rough weather. The pool, she saw, was being drained, and as she watched, a flurry of activity became apparent. She heard a multitude of masculine voices, among them Derek’s. The house was being battened down for the approaching storm.

  She turned on the radio as she washed and dressed, hoping to catch a current advisory. She breathed a sigh of relief as she learned that Key West had been spared a direct hit; the hurricane had chosen a path across the central Keys and had taken its toll as far north as Marathon and Largo. It was now moving overland in a strange westerly pattern. It was hoped that it would wear itself out in the dense Florida Everglades, but warnings were up from Miami to Daytona and the north of the state was on hurricane watch.

  Leigh tied back her hair and hurried downstairs. Even seeing it, she had not realized the brunt of the wind until she stepped out on the patio and was backed into the wall of the house. Aware now, she moved carefully across the pool area and out to the lawn, stripped now of all rattan and wicker furnishings. Looking up at the house, she saw that all the windows were. shuttered, including the huge plate-glass doors.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  It was not the wind this time that forced her cruelly around but an irate Derek. His face reminded her of chiseled granite as she returned his glare rebelliously.

  “Listen, Mallory, I know what I’m doing, I was born here. You’re the transplant.”

  “Wonderful logic. Being a native gives you the right to be a fool.”

  “You’re out here!”

  “And I’m coming in as soon as we finish. Get back in the house!”

  “I’m not on your payroll! You can’t tell me what to do!” she retorted. That his words made sense was irrelevant. His attitude was appalling.

  Derek stared at her for a moment, noting the stubborn set of her chin. He opened his mouth as if to speak, shut it, then muttered, “Ah, hell!” The next second he tossed her over his shoulder like a limp sack of potatoes and walked her back into the house himself.