When Next We Love Read online

  “Dammit, Leigh!” Derek snorted impatiently. “Don’t play games with me! Are you going to stay and see this through?”

  “I—I don’t know,” she faltered.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why don’t you know?”

  “Oh, Derek, what a stupid—”

  “Not stupid at all!” he ejaculated, gripping both her arms and flinging her around to face him. “And I’ll tell you why. You’re afraid of me and that’s stupid.”

  “I keep telling you you’re as crazy as a June bug!” Leigh countered defiantly, her hazel eyes blazing. She didn’t attempt to break his grip. “You tell me not to be afraid of you, but you’re constantly throwing accusations at me or—or attacking me.”

  “Oh. And you’re Madam Tact when you talk to me?”

  “You started it all!” Leigh flared.

  “And attacking?” He laughed dryly. “You threw your purse at me, you tried to slap me, and then you appear in my bed! Who’s attacking whom here?”

  “I—”

  “And on top of all that, you make a sound effort to destroy my sex life forever by scalding me! Think of my poor parents! They would be heartbroken to think all chance of future Lord Mallorys was wiped out by a viciously thrown coffee cup!”

  “Derek! Stop! I beg you!” He had to be teasing her, but she couldn’t be sure from his unrelenting features. “I swear to you, it was an accident! I wouldn’t have really harmed you on purpose!”

  “Perhaps.” The faintest ghost of a smile played upon the corners of his mouth. “But I owe you for that one!”

  She was absurdly happy as he placed his arm around her shoulder and led her out the door. The idea tingled in the back of her head that Derek’s attitude had improved because he slowly was coming to realize that Richard had been capable of telling less than the truth.

  “You do want to work on the album,” he said thoughtfully, as they followed the U shape of the house to the game room on the opposite side flanking the pool. “I can feel it, no matter what you say. So come on, commit yourself.”

  She hesitated no longer. “All right, I’m committed.”

  “Good. As soon as the roads clear, I’ll drive to Key West with you and we can pick up the music and the things you’ll need.”

  “I can drive back myself.”

  “But I don’t trust you to return here. Anyway, I could use a few days’ vacation. I’d like to do a little fishing and diving.”

  Derek, when he chose to be, was capable of selling air conditioning to Eskimos. Although she could hardly say they had come to any real understanding, Leigh was lulled into believing they could become, if not friends, at least amiable partners.

  Until they neared the game room. Then he stopped her once more. “Oh, Leigh.” He spoke as if in afterthought. “Stay away from John. He’s just started with the group, you know, and I’d hate to have any trouble.”

  “John?” Leigh echoed dumbly.

  “Always the sweet innocent!” Derek scorned her confusion. “You were coming on to him at breakfast. All those smiles and the shy encouragement. You keep forgetting—I know you!”

  Leigh stood stock-still, her muscles wired within as fury boiled to her head with a dizzying pain. Her low, controlled voice was an amazement to her when she spoke.

  “Derek, you do not know me at all, because you do not care to. But I’ll tell you this, I won’t stay away from anyone on your say-so! And if there is any trouble, I can guarantee you’ll be the cause of it.”

  They stood for what seemed like forever, glaring at one another, both aware of the cocoon of hostility generated between them. Derek finally broke the heated silence.

  “Well, love,” he drawled. “Then I’ll guarantee there won’t be any trouble at all. I’ll see from the beginning that I never give it a chance to exist!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE HURRICANE WHIPPED AND roared and wreaked havoc throughout the day, but by nightfall she had passed on, weakened as the eye itself had hovered inland, and only the outer circumference had played up on the coast. Star Island lost electricity, but few of the inhabitants suffered discomfort. Most had their own emergency generators, as did Derek.

  Telephone lines, however, were down. The bridge was impassable. Property damage had been great in many places, but even in the smaller Keys, which had first been struck in the United States, no lives had been lost. A gentle toll for a hurricane of such force.

  Leigh wandered from the house just as dusk was descending. The wild lashing of the sea had subsided to slow ripples; the merciless wind had died to a softly blowing breeze. Shades of crimson and gold streaked across the heavens, casting a glow of peace upon the battered land. The air was crisp and incredibly fresh, as it could only be after the cleansing effect of a storm.

  She ambled idly down to the dock and sat despite the dampness of the wooden planks. She was glad to see that Derek’s yacht, ironically called Storm Haven, had weathered the wind and thrashing sea remarkably well. She stood now like a regal lady, proudly silhouetted against the setting sun, rolling lightly in the lapping waves. Behind her the pale streams of a rainbow jetted in a magically disappearing arc.

  Hugging her knees to her chest, Leigh watched until the sun sank into the sea. The day, after Derek’s cryptic remark, had been a tense one for her. She had been careful to stay away from him, choosing to interrupt Emma and James in the middle of their gin rummy game and assist with lunch rather than enter the game room with Derek. She had played a game of eight ball with Roger when Derek had gone to radio the guardhouse and check on Tim and Nick, the generally invisible employees who nevertheless held considerable import as they manned the electronic eye and assured the safety of Derek’s property and privacy and cared for the kennels. When he returned, she yawned and excused herself for a nap.

  She had slept for a spell, and when she awoke, it was to hear the rasp of the shutters being lifted. She knew then that the storm had moved on and crept downstairs to sneak outside alone.

  “Not too bad, huh?”

  She started and went rigid at the sound of Derek’s voice. He had the terribly annoying habit of addressing her as if nothing ever went wrong between them.

  “The damage here,” he continued, taking a seat beside her and wincing as the dampness crept through his clothing. “I’ve lost a few palms, and the pool looks like a deserted shambles, but that’s about it.”

  “Good for you,” Leigh muttered. Maybe he could act like all was peaches and cream, but she surely couldn’t!

  “Nasty little witch, aren’t you?” he queried lightly, hesitating over the “witch” with deliberation.

  “Leave me alone,” Leigh suggested, “and you won’t, have to hear any nasty comments.”

  “Can’t leave you alone at the moment, love.” He gave her one of his wide smiles, which sent a rush of unease trickling down her spine. It was not a smile one could trust.

  “Well …” She dusted her palms on her jeans. “If you’re going to sit here, I’m going to go back in the house.”

  “Oh, no, darling, let’s stay out here a few moments longer.”

  Leigh was not alarmed at the sudden rise in Derek’s voice, but rather quizzical at the out-of-character endearment. She arched a brow at him, ready to ask if he were feeling all right, when he swiftly reached out and drew her into an intimate embrace. She opened her mouth to shout her outrage, but he, sensing her intention and his own advantage, claimed her lips with his own, forcing her teeth farther apart with his steely jaw even as she attempted to bite him in a bid for freedom. Her hands were useless to her, for he caught them both expertly as he pushed her back upon the pier and held her secure with the weight of his torso.

  As she struggled against him vaguely, she sensed that he was not kissing her for the pleasure of the experience. He made no effort to entice or to seduce her, but held her rigidly, tense himself, giving only a fraction of his attention to her. His eyes, like hers, were not closed; they stared
intently toward the house, a direction from which she could hear the remote sound of voices.

  It was an act, a carefully planned and staged act. She was supposed to be seen in Derek’s arms, seen in a position where it would appear that she was perfectly happy, perfectly content, perfectly willing!

  The remote voices became more so. In the distance she could hear a sharp click … a door closing. Derek removed his muzzlelike hold from her lips, but maintained his clasp on her hands.

  She would definitely have struck him if she could have.

  Her breathing was ragged and uneven from her struggles, her chest heaving with indignation, making her speech barely coherent, which might have been a blessing. The things she had to say were certainly not nice. She raved in gasps, trying to shout but unable to, casting upon him every name of abuse that would come to her mind. And he sat and stared and listened, never releasing his hold upon her a hair, never interjecting a comment of his own. She cursed him on and on, until her fury sputtered itself out in a final, enervating exhaustion. When she had spewed forth her last words of contempt and scorn, she felt as if she had just run the Boston Marathon.

  And that, of course, was exactly what Derek had intended.

  “Why?” she breathed, when she had drawn air again.

  He shrugged, clearly amused despite the venom that had been rained upon him. “Nothing personal. I told you I’d make sure there was no trouble.”

  “I see,” Leigh said icily. “This was a little act staged for John. But don’t you think you’re jumping the gun a bit? What makes you think John is interested in me anyway?”

  Derek smiled nicely. “He’s a man, a young man at that.”

  Leigh laughed, the sound dry and bitter. “What flattery! Every man is going to fall head over heels for me?”

  “Like I said, John is young.”

  “No one here is young!” Leigh snapped. “I’m twenty-seven, John has to be at least thirty, and you, you—”

  “Bastard?”

  “Thanks, it will do—will shortly be thirty-seven! All adults! We’re all capable of looking after ourselves!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Derek said indifferently, but there was a smug look, like that of a contented cat, in his eyes. “I won’t have anything to worry about anymore.”

  “I see. John will think there’s something between us.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  “Certainly. Dislike and bitterness.” Leigh tried to shift but his weight and restraining hands still held her firmly. “Could you move now, please? Your little charade went off quite well. John and Roger are long gone.”

  “I’ll move as soon as I’m sure you’re calm,” he replied flatly.

  “Then you may be here a long, long time!”

  “It’s a nice night” Derek might not have had a care in the world.

  Leigh emitted a low moan of exasperation. “What if I assured you that I have no designs at all upon John Haley? That I promise not to make a problem in any way for any member of the band?”

  He moved one hand, securing both of hers in the other with a twist of a long finger, and scratched his chin, mocking her in slow deliberation.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “I’m thinking.” His free hand moved from his chin to her cheek and he traced the fine bone structure of her face and brushed aside a lock of loose auburn hair. “You’re quivering.”

  “I am not quivering!” she retorted, dismayed at the way her flesh so easily gave her away. “I’m shuddering!”

  “That’s not a shudder,” Derek murmured in correction, his head lowering over hers. “It’s a decided quiver …”

  It was indecent, Leigh thought vaguely before giving herself over to the delicious sensation, that anyone should kiss so well, that the mere blending of lips, the meeting of tongues, could destroy all rational thought, could create a boundless heaven of damp wooden planking …

  It was a very long time before she realized she was no longer restrained. His hands were too busy—exploring the form beneath the material of her skirt, enticingly creeping, touching each shivering rib, and molding over firm breasts that willfully arched to him—to be involved with keeping her in place.

  And there was certainly no need. Her own arms had risen to. embrace his back, to feel the warm, taut muscles there, to hold him closer to her as she mindlessly slipped into obedience to the demand of aroused sensations. Her fingers crept into his hair, tantalized by the clean crispness, delicately tracing the breadth of his chest to his flat waist, feeling keenly his heat through the thin material of his shirt. …

  The pearl snaps on her shirt were, coming undone, but she didn’t notice, except, maybe, to appreciate the loss of their restriction. It had been so long since her flesh had felt his tender, sensual touch, so long since she had felt such delicious heat burn within her, the ecstatic fulfillment of longing, love, and desire. So right. So very, very right.

  But it wasn’t right. She loved him; he scorned her. The passion he showed^ her was just that. Desire, and the arrogant belief that he could use her and manipulate her as fitted his will.

  His expert lovemaking—which had just allowed him to undo the snap of her lacy bra and to handle and tease the creamy mounds of her breasts and their rosy, hardening nipples—was skill, learned from years of practice. She, Leigh Tremayne, panting beneath his knowledgeable touch, meant nothing to him. Certainly not love … if anything at all, only revenge.

  And what better revenge than to make her love him, need him, long for him with every fiber of her being? Then he could repudiate her—as she supposedly had Richard!

  He was off guard now. She pushed him with all her strength and he went rolling over, grabbing for her instinctively. Together they plunged off the side of the dock—and into the frigid water below.

  The storm had left the normally tepid channel as cold as ice. The chill stabbed Leigh through and through like the savage edge of a knife as she sputtered to the surface. They were not in deep water. Derek was standing as he shot her a furious oath and a glance more chilling than the water. He hooked his arms onto the dock and chinned himself up to shimmy back on the planking. Leigh couldn’t stand, nor could she pull herself back up. She swam to where he now stood, hoping his wrath wouldn’t be so great that he would leave her foundering in the cold water.

  He didn’t. His hand shot down and he cruelly pulled her up, his grip merciless, his expression shocked and livid. “What’s the matter with you, woman?” he demanded, shaking with his rage, his eyes as gold and hard as newly minted pennies. “You’re as hot as a coal one minute and the next … You’re a vicious tease, just like Richard said!”

  Leigh’s mouth flew open with a stunned denial. Surely Richard couldn’t have said that! “Derek, I—”

  “You what? There is no excuse for you!”

  “Don’t force people and you won’t get any surprises!”

  “Now you’re flattering yourself! That sure as hell wasn’t force!”

  “But it was!” she cried. “It is force because—”

  “Because you don’t want me touching you?” He laughed, deep, disdainfully. “You are a perpetual liar, Mrs. Tremayne. You fit to me like a hand in a glove. You lie through your teeth, but your flesh and blood tell the truth.” He pulled her inexorably to him and her breasts were pressed to his chest, forming to his heat and strength. He possessed her again with burning kisses that stripped her of will as they moved along her face and down the length of her neck to push aside negligently the wet clothing that covered her collarbone and shoulders. His hot kisses were not an act this time, but nor were they gentle. They had their revenge as they fastened upon her with humiliating ease, audaciously claiming her nipples and breasts. Yet Leigh was a spellbound captive, seething with horror at the realization that he could not help but see the physical response he elicited despite the roughness with which he used her. Her tremulous lips, her rigid nipples, her erratic, gasping breaths—were all dead giveaways.

  Then h
e pushed her away. “So you don’t want me, Mrs. Tremayne. I know it is not love for your husband that makes it so. It must be that your lover still waits in the Keys. The same lover for whom you cast aside Richard Tremayne.”

  Leigh was so stunned that she couldn’t speak. And as she stood staring at him, her hair plastered against her face, her lashes dripping the saltwater, and her clothing in dishevelment, she began to understand. It had all been Richard. He had created fictions to suit his convenience. He didn’t want her singing; he told her she sounded like a frog. He didn’t want a divorce, but he wouldn’t change his ways. So he blamed it on her. He told Derek the divorce was her fault—that she wanted it unconditionally; that she had a lover, rather than himself having several.

  And she had filed the papers. Derek knew it. It was only natural that he believe Richard on everything else. Richard had been his partner, his associate, his lifelong friend.

  Derek mistook the wide-eyed shock on her face as an admission of guilt. She knew as his jawline hardened that he thought her surprised only at his knowledge of her affairs. His next words verified this.

  “So you thought no one knew, huh? Sorry, I was the closest thing to a brother Richard ever had. He was a broken man, Leigh, he had to talk to someone. But don’t become overly alarmed. I am the only one he ever talked to. And out of respect to Richard, I’ve never mentioned any of this before. When he died, I let the pretty lies go. I let the world go on thinking that Richard had been a happily married man, that his widow had closeted herself away in her grief, that she had stayed sweet and loving to the end. You’re safe, Mrs. Tremayne. I am the only one who knows that Richard might have purposely gone off that cliff because the woman who he had adored and married cared only for his money and status and was using them to support a bum of a lover—”

  Leigh slapped him with the strength of a madwoman. Had he not been so vicious, had hate not glittered so clearly in the gold of his eyes, she would have tried to explain, she would have told him they had all been duped. But what good would that have done? He would never have believed her. The only man who could have cleared her in Derek’s eyes was Richard, and Richard was dead. And now she understood with pathetic clarity what had happened, what had changed the kind and gentle man who had been her friend into a towering volcano of seething animosity bent on justice. She knew that the tender and caring lover she had had so briefly as another woman could never exist for her in truth.