Love Game (11 page)

Chris did a finger-drum on his chest. “Jelly beans.”

“Say again?”

“Audrey has a weakness for jelly beans. I have a weakness for you. One pound of the suckers—bubblegum, her favorite flavor—and maybe we can reach a compromise.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Don’t cancel the reservations anyway. Only, don’t you think we should move to another room? This suite must cost a mint and we’re spending all our time in bed anyway.”

“You’re watching my checkbook?” Greg laughed around
a groan. How many women would push for a Motel 6 when they had the Ritz? None that he’d ever met. Served him right, for Chris to end up screwing with his head. Had to get it on straight before he lost his heart to a woman who took no prisoners. “It’s this joint or a fast flight to Lubbock. I’d like to check out this Jerry So-and-so and warn him that he’ll have me to deal with if he’s not good to you. Take a second and choose.”

“I choose…you.” She kissed him soundly. “You have smoker’s breath.”

“So
do you. Want to share a toothbrush?”

“And give you girl germs? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I like your germs. Admit it, Chris, a champagne bottle’s safer for you than getting toothbrush cozy with me.”

“Like I said, you won’t let me lie. As for whichever way I want to work it, tell me,
exactly,
how you’d like me to.”

As she felt for him beneath the covers, Greg stared at the ceiling. Options…strategy…. He could make sure she thought of him tomorrow with every step she took. He could make her salve his bruised ego and pump hers up so much she’d realize she had too much going to settle for a wing-tipped bore. He could make her think. He could make her pay.

If he did it right, he could possibly manage all four.

“Get dressed if you want to come with me. If you don’t, I’ll be glad to order up a bottle of champagne to keep you company while I’m gone.”

S
TUFFING HIMSELF INTO
his pants, he watched Chris shimmy into her bra, then reach for the panty hose—
ug-ly,
whoever thought those up deserved to be shot. Greg slipped into his favorite pair of loafers—
Forget the socks.
She pinched her own feet into the high heels and raced him to the door.

There, he zipped her dress—damn, but he could get used to this easy—while she adjusted the shoe that fit no better than Cinderella’s glass slipper had on the bitchy stepsisters.

Chris wasn’t a bitch but he’d be tempted to give up his considerable nest egg if she could see her way to becoming a bitch first-class. Then they could split, no problem.

“Where are we going?” she asked, panting.

“Shopping.” He punched the Down arrow, then pinched her butt. Glancing around, she made sure no one had seen.

“Go shopping for what? It’s nine o’clock.”

“So?” The elevator was empty. As the doors slid shut, he pressed her against the leather-cushioned wall. Palms on her hips, he shoved his own against her and rubbed.

“What do you think you’re doing? Someone could—”

“Don’t worry.” Hitting the Stop button between floors, he pushed up her skirt and insinuated a hand beneath her ugly panty hose. Fingering her, he said roughly, “You’re wet. First time tonight. Maybe I should rent out the elevator.”

“I thought we were
going shopping.” She clutched at his hand, but he waylaid her efforts with a persuasive entry that left her poised on tiptoe.

“What are you hungry for? I might not be The Great American Daddy, but I am one helluva cook and since you’re so concerned about me wasting my hard-earned bucks, far be it from me to let the kitchen go to waste. How about leg of lamb with mint jelly—back up. No time to marinate. A tray of canape´s? Perfect. They look tempting, taste delicious, and whet a person’s appetite for more.”

“Hamburgers,” she gasped. “Hamburgers are fine. Sonic burgers are my favorite.”

“Quit worrying about my financial status, would you?” Pretending to remove his hand, she gripped his wrist and squirmed down. His laugh was low and immensely satisfied. “I’m plenty solvent even if you have to be so stingy that you can’t afford me. What about smoked salmon with white sauce and a few capers for garnish? Should be just your speed.”

He released the Stop button.

Her hand slammed down. One on the button, the other shoved his retreating fingers back under her panties.

“Finish it,” she begged with such demand that Greg decided he could be generous.

“I’m crazy about you, Chris. Every time I think of you, I want you. When we’re together, I can’t hold you tight enough or get in you deep enough. Crazy, you’re making me crazy and I want you just as crazy for me. Only for me.”

Okay, Jerry, match that. And if by some miracle you can, let’s see you top this.
Thumb to cleft, fingers spread against inner walls and moving, he knew how to make them weep.

Mouth open, her breath a shuddering, silent cry, she climaxed with an
intensity he felt in his fingertips and else-where—in a place he couldn’t locate but still it was there, warming him, touching him, making him feel more vulnerable and more a man than he’d ever felt before.

This part of her belonged to him and him alone and not even The Great American Daddy could take it away. Greg’s smile was grim. Maybe he couldn’t stop her from throwing in her lifetime lot with another man, but he could still come between them if she called for “Greg” at the best possible wrong moment. His desperation for that hold over her, his need to intimately triumph over a dead man, was a little sad, pitiful to him. That he had come to this did not make him feel proud. It was wrong, and he knew it; but he was hurting in a place she’d created, an empty spot she was refusing to fill.

The elevator phone rang.

“Should I answer?” he asked quietly as Chris put herself back together and moved to the far end. Hands gripping the shiny brass bars, she seemed to shrink into the corner. Even from his position by the doors, he could see her shaking.

“I don’t care. Just hit floor number three so we don’t have to face anyone who’s making that call from the lobby.”

At the third floor several people stepped on. When she made to get off, Greg caught her arm.

“Wrong floor,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear, then whispered, “Hang loose, okay?”

Chris worried her ringless ring finger. She reminded him of himself as a kid, stealing a candy bar at the five-and-dime, then being marched by his mother to the manager’s office where he was sure a policeman with handcuffs was waiting. A confession and an apology had won his freedom, but he’d taken a good lesson home to remember.

If he could do the same with Chris, he might have a prayer for an extension of time.

A “ding” and
an illuminated L marked their arrival.

“Let’s go.” Greg gave her a gentle shove and she reluctantly went. From the side, he could see her eyes darting around for a watchful guard, her feet slow but ready to run at the first accusing finger. “No one knows who we are.” He felt her arm tense under his grip.

“I feel like it’s written all over my face.” She looked at the floor and he subdued the urge to give her a shake. “What we did was insane. What if we’d gotten caught?”

“But we didn’t. The desk’s over there if you want to turn us in and clear your conscience.”

Her glance at him was sharp. “I can’t believe you’re so calm, like this doesn’t even bother you. It doesn’t, does it?”

“Bother me? Hell, no.” He wanted her to admit what she’d so obviously enjoyed; her shame over it maddened him, dug and bit at that empty spot of his. “I loved every gasp out of your mouth, every wet grip of my fingers, every—”

“Stop it,” she snapped.

“Last I remember, it was your hand on the Stop button.”

“That’s right, rub it in.”

“Once we get back to our room, I’ll do more than that.”

“Don’t be so sure, you cocky bastard.”

He stopped her near the exit, palms firm on her shoulders. When she tried to break away, Greg held fast.

“Unless you want to make a scene and bring the concierge over here, settle down.”

“Why? So you can feel me up while he watches?”

Hmm. Chris wasn’t a bitch as far as bitches went, but there was enough bitchiness there for a yelling match to clear the air. Hell, she might even have it in her to throw a thing or two. Fine line between love and hate; one could trip into the other. If he couldn’t have her love, he’d take hate over indifference any day.

Greg took heart since
there was nothing indifferent about the grinding of her teeth.

“You’re right, Chris, I am a cocky bastard. Cocky enough to hold out on you until you ask for it. Even then, I’ll hold out until you get mad and demand I give you what you want.”

“The last thing I want right now is your smug attitude.”

“Talk about attitude, you’re pissed. And why? Because I don’t play clean but you still want me. And that scares you.”

“Damn right, I’m scared. I’m scared of what I do when I’m with you.” Waiting for a couple to pass them, she shivered, then whispered, “Last night it was bondage—”

“But you wanted it, babe,” he reminded her.

“Greg, please, listen to me,” she said urgently. “I was as much to blame for what happened in the elevator as you—”

“Blame implies guilt for some harm done. No one was there but us, so it comes down to you and me, and I’m fine. Did I hurt you somehow? Is there blame to be had that I don’t know about? Tell me, because I’m confused.”

“
I’m
confused. Maybe blame was the wrong word, but I do know that we’re pushing the envelope a little more each time and what seemed right when it happened leaves me in a cold sweat once I step back and ask myself, ‘Good God, what have I done? This isn’t me.’ But it
was
me, and I’m having trouble dealing with that.”

“Then let me help you deal with it and tell you where the
trouble really is. It’s in your secret garden, the one you neatly tend after dark with me. If you hadn’t noticed, I like the light. Because it’s the light, Chris, that makes your garden grow.” He softly knuckled her jaw. “Think about it.”

He released her and walked on. Hard as it was, he left her behind to retreat to the room; a room that would be empty when he returned if she hailed a cab instead.

Needing the crisp night air to clear his head, Greg waved away a valet’s offer to deliver the car.

Only willpower kept his feet from racing in reverse, and that almost made him hope she’d be gone. Chris was scared?
He
was scared, more scared than the time he’d pissed his pants when a covert operation had him in a foxhole, hearing a kid on his first mission crying for Mama while four of his other men lay mangled all over his feet.

He got out with the boy. Shell-shocked, the kid ended up playing tiddledywinks in a nut ward. As for himself, he wrote to the families of the deceased, then did his damnedest to purge it all away in two weeks of R-and-R hell-raising. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow ye may die.

He’d had a better chance to survive than most, sensitive situations being his specialty. But none so sensitive as this. Yeah, Chris had him scared. Even more scared than dying.

As he rounded the car, the strike of his fist on the hood coincided with the rapid click-click of high heels that went off like a machine gun in his head.

It took everything he had and then some to slide into the driver’s seat without a glance in her direction. Greg gave her long enough to get in before he cranked the engine.

Breathless, she took off the shoes she never should have tried on, much less bought.

Seemed those shoes and he had a lot in common: giving Chris hell while she broke them in against the laws of nature.

The silence was taut as he drove, his pride demanding she be the one
to reach out first. So far, he’d been doing all the reaching. Her turn. It was her turn, damn it, and until she took it, he was doing what he’d been trained to do so well: show no emotion while he picked up the remains of unbeating hearts and their shattered dreams of a future.

If he could do it for a few good men, he could do it for himself.

C
HRIS STARED
out the
window, the passing streetlights with Christmas decorations on their posts a blur. All she could see was Greg in bed, in the elevator, in the lobby where she’d sensed his anger was really hurt.

Terrified, she was terrified to touch it. Still, she did touch him, his hand tight on the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry,” she ventured.

“For what?” Voice curt, eyes straight ahead.

Actually, she wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for, just that he’d seemed to expect one and she felt badly for calling him a cocky bastard. Only he’d deserved it; had even agreed and taunted her with her weakness for him in bed.

“I’m sorry that we had words. Our time together is so short, I don’t want to spend it arguing.”

His profile could have been carved from marble. He wanted more than an apology, she realized. Why she should be surprised, she didn’t know. He
always
wanted more. For every inch she gave he wanted a dozen, and she wasn’t up for the distance. Why couldn’t he understand that? Him, of all people, who’d twice proved that he was no long-distance runner himself. Did he think she could break his no-win marital streak? Surely not.

Even the thought of marriage to Greg was absurd. As absurd as the Kissin’ Don’t Last, Cookin’ Do sampler she’d embroidered for her kitchen warmed up to his spare, spotless style.

Chris wrinkled her nose
with a slob’s snobbish distaste for immaculate addicts. Everything in order, their obsession for just-so neatness, as if their lives would fall apart if a dish was put in the wrong cabinet—
pu-leez.
Greg was one of
those,
and what made it worse was him being a man, for Chrissakes. Last night, after he’d stripped for her, he’d folded his clothes and eyed hers on the floor. And before they’d left, he’d cleaned up the glasses they’d thrown, then checked for stray popcorn kernels. But it was his making up the bed and tightening the coverlet when the coin didn’t bounce that pronounced him a neat freak of the highest order.

Funny, it hadn’t bothered her last night. Then again, his demands had been of a different nature. Ever since he’d picked her up, he’d kissed with too much feeling, touched her with an emotional hunger that was all the more piercing because it was tentative, as if he was new to touching that way and wasn’t quite sure how. As for his jealousy, his pressure to expand their relationship, her head was still spinning and her heart was still pounding.

Marriage to Greg?
Banish the thought. He would want to possess her, consume her, and the more he pushed, the further she’d retreat. Just like tonight. And just like tonight, he’d punish her for denying him what he wanted.

Punish her; yes, that’s what he’d done. He’d punished her by pleasuring her and making her admit to the dark side of her sensual nature. He was punishing her now. With his straight-ahead stare at the road, his heavy silence, he was bullying her into a confrontation.

And then, she realized. Greg wanted a fight. He was setting her up to take him on.

Chris’s lips twitched with amusement as she plotted her revenge. Besting Greg at his own game was too tempting to resist. And besides, this way they could both win.

“I…Greg, I thought
about what you said, about my secret garden and wanting to tend it in the dark. I decided you were right. That’s why I came after you.”

When he glanced at her, she removed her conciliatory touch from his ungiving hold on the wheel. He quickly recaptured her hand and brought it to his thigh.

Voice soft, with just the right hint of innocent seduction, she explained, “This garden of mine was awfully barren until you came along and gave me a taste of forbidden fruit. It scares me because…well, I do run the risk of getting snake bite. You know how snakes like gardens.” She felt his thigh flex against her smooth upward brush, and then his immediate thickening beneath her cupping palm.

“I have a garden at home, Greg, a small vegetable patch, and a snake slithered out while I was hoeing one day last spring. I chopped its head off and then its tail when it kept on wiggling.” The flinch in his groin did not go unnoticed.

“Anyway, after you left me, I thought about how much gardens need both night and day to grow. And how it’s the same but appears so different in the dark when I can’t tell what’s what without a light. I’m a little night blind, so I eat a lot of carrots. I decided you’re like a carrot for me.”

“A carrot, huh?” His slight chuckle told her she had gained the advantage. “A fat one, I hope.”

“Long and fat, definitely a major-league carrot,” she assured him. “It’s a real joy to me, Greg, seeing all those colors and shapes leave my garden in a big wicker basket that’s headed for my kitchen. So, there you have it, the reason I ran to you, instead of away.”

“A basket of vegetables is why you’re here?”

“Why, sure. I knew if I left, I’d keep seeing you as all
those veggies in the basket and kick myself because—” she clicked her tongue “—oh, gee, I could have had a V8! And there I’d be rummaging in the pantry for some junk food I didn’t even want.” She leaned down and kissed the straining of his fly. “I want you, Greg. You
are
my secret garden. Let’s harvest everything we can, while we can. Please.”

She looked up to beseech him and saw everything he didn’t say. The frustration, the distress of a man who was not a graceful loser. Maybe he didn’t want her to see, or maybe he simply decided to take what he could while he could, but his palm gently stroked her head as he pressed it down.

“We’ll be there soon, but it won’t take much.” His voice had an odd sound, like sandpaper brushing velvet.

He covered her head with a portion of his coat. It took a minute perhaps, before he came. The muffled groans she heard were quickly followed by the sound of tissues pulled from a box on the dashboard and nudged toward her mouth.

Chris pushed off the coat and sat up, heedless of any oncoming traffic. Greg, backhanding sweat from his brow, appeared confused as she shook her head at his offering.

Sure he was watching, she swallowed.

“H
EY, GUESS WHAT
!”

“What?” Greg called back from the kitchenette as he tossed a cherry tomato into the air and caught it in his mouth. A snap of his teeth and down his throat it went. If only Chris’s defenses were so easily downed…. Had to be a way; he just hadn’t figured it out yet.

“There’s a Harvard prof who swears Earth women have given birth to alien babies and an intergalactic race is only a generation away. Neat, huh?”

Laughing, Greg put the finishing touches on the platter and, balancing it on fingertips raised high, strolled into the living area. There he paused, absorbing the pure pleasure
of seeing her sprawled on the couch, wearing his shirt and nothing but, a heap of trashy tabloids scattered on the floor.

Grinning, Chris looked up from the one she was reading. Their gazes caught and held. Her expression sobered.

“Why are you looking at me that way?”

“I like what I see.” He placed the tray on the coffee table, wondering as he did what sort of home Chris had. Probably a quaint bungalow with pine floors and vintage furniture, some worn white wicker rounding out the spaces as soft and warm and invitingly messy as herself. And a porch swing. Yeah, she’d have a porch swing. One that needed painting and creaked. But she’d like it that way—lived-in.

“So, come nice weather, do you drink lemonade and sing to Audrey while you swing on your front porch?”

“How did you know I do that?”

Greg shrugged. “I just do. The same way I know you sit out there alone in the dark and listen to the crickets while you try not to think too hard but end up doing it anyway.”

With a look akin to amazement, she said, “Are you sure you haven’t been spying on me?”

“Not yet. Scoot over and make room for—”
Daddy.
One of his favorite old re-runs as a kid, but Danny Thomas he wasn’t. Or at least, he hadn’t been. Chris made him want more than ever that second chance to be the kind of father who’d swing on a porch while he read a fairy tale to his kid.

Jeez, talk about fairy tales.
The odds of that happening were on a par with spinning gold out of straw.

It felt like straw clogged his throat, a whole roomful of it, and he coughed dryly as he pulled Chris onto his lap.

“Are you okay?” she asked, putting a cool palm to his forehead. “You feel a little warm.”

Toast was more like it.
With her concerned little gesture, Chris was making him crash and burn, here and now. He was falling in love with her, he realized, wishing fiercely for some way to break the fall. Worse than bad, he could see the writing on the wall.

He was going down like never before.

But the hell if he’d suffer alone. Jaw clenching, Greg swore to himself that Chris was going down with him. Be it fellow survivors or casualties, they’d share the same fate.

Grip stern on her wrist, he bit into the heel of her palm—a soft, teething gnaw that won a sigh, and then a sharp gasp when he clamped hard on flesh and muscle.

Tracing the imprint of his teeth, he said quietly, “Good thing I can’t eat you alive since there wouldn’t be anything left. Even for me. And it sure wouldn’t be fair to Audrey, much as she needs you, along with that daddy you’re hoping to find for her. Problem is, Chris, she needs more than two parents who wrap their lives up in a child because they don’t have much else holding them together.”

Chris glanced away. “Since when were you an expert on what kids need from their parents?”

“Since I screwed up with Arlene and got the distance to realize where I went wrong. And looking back on my childhood, I can see where my own folks made some big mistakes.”

“But your family seems so stable. I assumed your parents had a good marriage.”

“Depends on what you call good. They have the kind of marriage you’re after. Passionless, but amicable. Not that I’m looking to lay blame—they did devote their lives to making mine the best it could be. But I’ve wondered at times if my problems in the relationship department weren’t rooted in being the center of attention growing up.”

“I wonder what’s on
the tube.” Chris reached for the remote. Beating her to it, Greg knocked it to the floor.

“Anyway, I don’t think that’s healthy for a kid. They can end up real selfish people who don’t know how to put someone else’s needs above their own. And what comes of those who build their lives around a child who’ll eventually be gone is a pretty sad thing to witness. My mother treats my old bedroom like it’s some kind of a shrine. Hell, Dad says he can hear her talking to me like I’m in there and—”

“Enough.”

“And there’s something wrong with that. Why isn’t she talking to him instead of a memory who picks up the phone when guilt kicks in? They don’t have anything to say to each other, that’s why. The only thing they had in common is gone, and some great job he’s done so far with his own life, right?”

“Damn it, Greg!
Enough
.” She lunged from his lap. He heard the soft whoosh of her breath as his chest came down on hers, his weight pinning her to the floor.

“Wanna hit me, Chris? Go ahead, take your best shot if you want to shut me up. You’re not doing Audrey any favors by hooking up with some man who doesn’t love you enough to demand more than a mockery of a marriage. Is that what you want to teach her—better to feel too little than too much?”

“Stop,” she whimpered.

Stilling her with fingers wound tight into her hair, Greg savaged her mouth until she returned the force of his hunger.

“That’s it,” he whispered roughly.
“That’s it, babe. Caring enough to fight and then to kiss and make up, that’s what kids need to see. They learn a helluva lot more from two people who have soul between them than a couple of emotional strangers who happen to sleep together could ever teach.”

Chris went limp beneath him. She felt as if she’d been pummeled with a stinging truth, her emotional cowardice shoved into her face and down her throat.

His palm was on her throat, fingers stroking her jugular. How easily he could break her neck with a single snap of his powerful hands.
Greg had killed.
The thought came from nowhere, but she suddenly realized she was staring into the same eyes that had no doubt looked much the same as he’d committed murder. Murder in the line of duty, but murder nonetheless.

His was the look of a man who sympathized with his victim but felt no remorse for the course of action he was compelled to take.

“You are merciless,” she whispered.

“I am.” Slowly he lifted his chest, sat astride her hips. From her vantage point on the floor he seemed larger than life, a skyscraper of a man, made of tough muscle and possessing a will of steel. From her throat to the opening of his shirt she wore, he drew down his hand. Eyes like the pinpoint sear of a laser burned into hers as he gave a fierce jerk.

The sound of buttons stripped from thread filled her ears and she felt the cool lick of air on her bared breasts. Greg reached for the tray filled with vegetables and scooped a celery stick into the brimming bowl of creamy avocado dip.

“Green, such a suitable color,” he murmured, painting her nipples with dabbing strokes. “Green as spring grass after a cold and lonely winter. Green with jealous envy. I’m jealous, Chris, jealous of any man having you except for me.” As his mouth descended he warned softly, “A lesson to remember, babe. You’re about to find out just how merciless I can be.”