Dance of the Crystal (3 page)

He turned her face toward him and brushed his lips against hers. Once, twice. So soft, so pliant.

He shifted his angle and deepened the kiss. Her eager yet unschooled response sent flames to his groin.

His tongue licked the seam of her lips.

“Oh.” Her breathless sigh opened her mouth just enough for him to delve into that delectable cavern.

He wanted to drown in her, wallow in the scent of her hair, the femininity of her. He let his tongue taste the inner softness of her mouth, felt the rasp of her tongue, the sharpness of her teeth as he explored.

Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he nudged her closer to him and felt her tilt off balance.

Instinctively she planted a small hand on his thigh, much too close to his zipper. Heat exploded into fire in the vicinity of his cock.

Danger signals blared across his mind even as he drove more deeply with his tongue. What the hell was he doing? These were the actions of a seducer, not a businessman supporting his community. Not a man who didn’t even want a woman. He was just supposed to have dinner with her, for God’s sake.

The heat of her small hand on his thigh intensified his lust as she kneaded his flesh in uncoordinated, jerky movements. Without breaking the kiss, he skimmed his hand down her shoulder, her arm and wrist, until his fingers covered hers. Without a thought of where he was, Soren nudged and prodded until she covered the unbearably hard bulge under his jeans. Vaguely he wondered how long it would be before the tablecloth burst into flames from his raging erection.

He felt a jolt run through her as she realized what her hand was caressing. He opened his eyes in time to see her eyelids flutter upward. She looked at him, eyes unfocused, mouth all ripe and wet and soft, breath coming in short gasps. Damn, he had to reach hard to find the gentleman lurking behind the seducer, but he managed to release her hand.

“Oh.” She blinked as if coming out of a trance, still rubbing his cock like the magic lamp that would produce a genie to do her bidding. “It’s so…hot.”

Through gritted teeth, he hissed out, “Baby, I’m barely two seconds away from spontaneous combustion.”

Oblivious to his pain, she continued rubbing his cock in soft, squeezing motions. Her eyes took on a dreamy quality. “It feels like…”

“Ah, there you are, young lady. You left your wrap on your chair. I was hoping I could catch you before—”

Crystal jumped to her feet at her grandmother’s voice. And bumped the table with her hip. Her teacup clattered in its saucer, then toppled over, spilling its contents over the edge of the table. Soren didn’t move quickly enough to avoid having the lukewarm liquid drip smack-dab on his jeans-imprisoned cock.

“Oh dear,” the young woman said. “I’m so clumsy. Here,” she grabbed a linen napkin, “let me wipe it off.”

Soren grimaced.
Not bloody likely. At least not with your chaperone watching.
“It’s fine,” he said hastily. “No harm done.” Yeah, right. If he was lucky, he’d be able to walk in about an hour.

“I must say, young man, you made quite an exit. In fact, you brought down the house. A couple of the bidders asked me if my granddaughter and I planned this.” She shifted Crystal’s red silk wrap to her other arm and offered a hand to Soren. “My name is Rowena D’Angelo. I’m happy to make your acquaintance.”

Soren swallowed. What the hell was he supposed to say now? He cleared his throat, reached across the table reluctantly and accepted her handshake. “I’m sorry if I messed up the auction. I wasn’t—”

Rowena waved away his objection. “You did the audience a favor. All those old fogies were ready for a shake-up, if you ask me.” Without missing a beat she turned to Crystal. “Did you get what you needed?”

“I haven’t—”

She ran right over Crystal’s words. “No, you probably didn’t. My granddaughter’s kind of an ethereal thing, you know,” she switched her attention to Soren, “like a wood nymph—or a sylph. I can never remember which is which. She doesn’t get the nitty-gritty out of the way first. Do you have a business card? She’ll need to be able to contact you to set up the dinner. You haven’t set a date yet, correct? It’s a good thing I found you in time to help, dear. We’ll just exchange particulars and then you can give me the keys to the Beetle so I’ll be able to get myself home and you two young ones can get acquainted without worrying that I’m losing my beauty sleep.”

Crystal blinked. “Grandma, it’s a stick shift.”

“Yes, dear, I know. It’s a perfectly sturdy car that will get me where I’m going.”

“I can take her—” Soren said at the same time that Crystal said,

“But you can’t drive a stick—”

“Bosh! Your grandmother can do anything she sets her mind to.” She turned to Soren with what he thought was a gleam in her eye. “Besides, this young man has just offered to take you home, so we’re all set.”

“No.”

“Now, Crystal, don’t get uppity with me. You know how I get headaches if you’re cross with me.”

“Grandma, I respectfully request that we continue this discussion
in private
.” She tossed a meaningful look Soren’s way. He bit back a smile at the subtle way her spine straightened, the way her mouth firmed. Apparently she didn’t often best her Grandma, but it wasn’t for lack of gumption.

“Here’s your wrap, dear. Now give me—”

Soren saw the flash of rebellion in Crystal’s eyes as she ignored her grandmother’s outstretched hand. “I
will
drive you home. Just give me a minute.” She turned to him with determination written on her face. “

Do
you have a business card? It will make things simpler than having to write your phone number on a cocktail napkin.”

The smile crept up one side of his mouth at her prim tone of voice. He dug into his back jeans pocket and fished out a wallet that had seen so many years of wear, it conformed to the shape of his butt. He pulled several cards out and shuffled through them. “Ah. Here. This one has my private office number on the back.”

“Thank you.” She accepted the card, careful, he noted, to keep her fingers from touching his. “Do we do the ‘my assistant will contact your assistant’ thing? Or can I call you direct?”

“By all means, Ms.
Dubois
, please feel free to call me yourself. I’m usually at Thor’s Hammer by noon, and more often than not, I’m the one closing up at two a.m. My days off, when I take them, are Monday and Tuesday. So you can reach me most anytime.”

“Thank you,” she said again, then turned to Rowena. “May I have my wrap?”

The sly old woman pushed the swath of red silk into Soren’s hands. It took him a moment to realize her meaning. Hell, he wasn’t a gentleman, what did he know from wraps? He fumbled with the fabric, wondering if there was a right and a wrong side, an up and a down, then thought,
the hell with it
.

Holding it up helter-skelter, he draped it over those delectable shoulders, wondering if shoulders could blush or if it was just a reflection of the silk.

* * * * *

Sitting at the vanity table of her art deco bedroom set, Crystal paused in the act of brushing her hair and stared at herself in the mirror. What did her Bachelor see when he looked at her? Unruly corkscrew curls that would touch her shoulder blades if she ever decided to iron her hair. A rather large mouth. Porcelain skin that blushed too easily. A little too ample in breast and hip.

What had Grandma called her—a sylph? Wood nymph? Where did she get such ideas? They conjured up a vision of Audrey Hepburn flitting through a wooded glade in a diaphanous negligee. Not a thirty-year-old slung over a lumberjack’s shoulders like a log he’d just felled with an axe. Not a woman wearing a granny nightgown printed with tiny, boring daisies.

She laid the brush down on the vanity and pushed to her feet. She was really too wired to sleep, but tomorrow would be a busy day. Maybe a cup of warm milk…

The ringing phone startled her. She glanced at the bedside clock. It had to be a wrong number, someone calling at two in the morning. She hovered near the answering machine, just in case she needed to pick up after the beep.

Her blood ran cold when she heard the message.

“Slut! Have you no shame?”

Chapter Two

“Whoooo-eee! Here comes the man himself!”

Soren stopped in his tracks and groaned at the uproar that greeted his entrance. Ordinarily the pub was a refuge, a place where he could keep the bar between himself and humanity and blend into the background.

Not today. It was barely eleven on Saturday morning. The bar had just opened its doors to the public, although the kitchen staff had been working for an hour. And the place was packed. He scanned the smiling faces. It seemed all the regulars had come by to add to the cacophony. “What the hell—”

Rolf stepped to his side and thumped him on the back. “Boy, does your still water run deep! We never knew you had it in you.”

“What in blazes are you talking about? And what are you doing up before the crack of noon? I never see your homely face around here before dinnertime.”

Instead of answering, Rolf lifted his sudsy mug of beer. “Hip hip!”

“Hooray!” the crowd answered as one. Soren dazedly noted that each person hoisted a drink as well.

And all the grinning bunch of them were staring at him as though he were a celebrity.

“Dammit, have you all gone mad? What’s going on here?”

“You, my dear, silent, back-of-the-room brother, made the front page of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
this morning.” Rolf slapped said newspaper on the bar in front of him.

Soren grabbed it and stared at the full-color photo in disbelief. Feeling the blood drain from his face, he groped for the nearest barstool and slid his sorry ass onto the leather seat. The first thing to catch the eye was the red-covered derrière facing the camera. Then came the shapely calf kicking up from the side slit of her gown. He groaned. The photographer caught not only her bare foot but the questionable location of his huge hand keeping her from sliding off his shoulder.

He tossed the paper aside, plunked his elbows on the bar and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. God, how could he have been so stupid? How could a pair of innocent brown eyes make him such a laughingstock?

A glass of seltzer over ice appeared at his elbow. “Here,” said Rolf, chuckling, “you might as well get it over with. We’ll drink to your celebrity, ask you all sorts of embarrassing questions then let you get on with your work.”

But Soren wasn’t listening. He was reading the caption and groaning again.

At the highly successful Dinner With a Bachelor Auction, Soren Thorvald, owner of the Allendale bar-restaurant Thor’s Hammer, carries his date off to their rendezvous. Socialite Crystal D’Angelo, highest bidder of the night, paid $2,200 for the privilege. The auction raised over $75,000 for the Battered Women’s Shelter of Philadelphia. Story on page 3.

Twenty-two hundred…

Soren shook his head like a dog shedding water after a bath. “The world’s gone mad. How can some broad pay more than two grand for a freakin’
date
!”

“Hey, if Magnus can hook up with a rich one, why shouldn’t you?”

Soren glared at Rolf. Magnus, oldest of the three siblings, had just gotten engaged to the Main Line art dealer who handled his wood sculptures. “Magnus didn’t get embarrassed on the front page of the
Inquirer
.”

Unrepentant as usual, Rolf shot back, “What Magnus did to Kat at the Platinum Society couldn’t be reported in a family newspaper.”

“Mind your audience.” Soren glanced meaningfully around him.

“So tell us,” Rolf segued neatly, “what did she do to merit this Tarzan reaction?”

Soren closed his eyes for a moment. “Guess I just got hot under the collar. I was the next-to-last one on the auction block. Spent over an hour listening to the auctioneer jabber away. Looking at all the rich women in the audience, with their fancy gowns and fancier jewelry, hearing their sexist comments, I wondered what the hell I was doing up on the stage.”

“So you chucked your purchaser over your shoulder as a kind of revenge?”

Soren clenched his fist around the glass. It wasn’t until he’d actually seen the shoe in her hand that he realized she’d just been searching for her shoe under the table, and not hiding from him. He raised the glass and downed half the seltzer, more to postpone further talk than to quench a thirst.

“Phone call for you, Soren,” Trang, the day bartender yelled in a singsong voice that hinted of a certain woman on the other end.

An anticipatory hush fell over the revelers. Soren tamped down a hint of panic. Why had he given her the pub’s number? Why hadn’t he just told her to leave a message on his private office number? Why hadn’t he just made the damn dinner arrangements last night?

Hell, why hadn’t he opened a bar in Oregon instead of in Pennsylvania?

“I’ll take it out back,” he bit out, and headed for the kitchen, which had no more than three pairs of ears eavesdropping on every word.

He picked up the cordless extension and said, “I’ve got it, Trang,” and waited to hear the click that ensured she had hung up. After a deep breath, he said into the phone, “Soren Thorvald here.”

“Oh, Mr. Thorvald,” gushed a breathy feminine voice, “I’m so glad I caught you. I’m Sarah Lane from Channel Five. What a great human-interest story in today’s
Inquirer
. I’m on my way to Thor’s Hammer with a cameraman and wonder if you’d kindly grant us an interview for tonight’s news. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“No! I mean, no,” he said with slightly less panic. “I’m afraid I have an appointment that will take up most of my day.”

“Oh, please, just a few minutes. We’ll be in and out before you know it.”

“No, really, I’m leaving soon.”

“But you’re still here, right?” said the perky voice. Suddenly he heard a lot of commotion through the phone. He snuck a peek through the window in the kitchen’s swinging door in time to see a guy with a videocam on his shoulder, doing a slow pan of the bar area.

Shit!She had sneakily kept him on the phone to be sure she’d catch him there. Well, she guessed wrong.

With a couple of panicked hand motions to the chef, he slunk out through the employees’ entrance while talking to the reporter. “Look, Ms. Lane, why don’t you talk to the bartender. Trang, her name is. She’ll set something up on my calendar for next week. I really, really can’t take the time now to talk with you.”