Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One (41 page)

“The Hamilton jet is designed to be a business aircraft that, upon completion, will fly at nearly the speed of a jet, using only one-third to one-quarter of the fuel,” she said.

A buzz went up in response to her remark. The next question was about how this could be possible. Was there a magician in the fuselage or in the jet engines, or was the plane really made of paper as rumored?

“No,” Pat said with a smile, “cloth.” She looked around at the bewildered and bemused faces. “To make the terminology simple for you, the plane’s outer shell is made of cloth and glue.”

“How about making the terminology complicated?” someone shouted from the background without waiting to be called on. Obviously there was doubt as to the truth of Pat’s statement.

“Okay,” she said gamely, “the entire structure is to be made of an advanced carbon fiber and epoxy composite. This cloth,” she said, nodding at an employee who stood waiting off to the side; he came forward, carrying a sample of the material she was talking about, “is half the weight of aluminum.” She saw the skepticism in the eyes of some of the people closest to her. “And twice as strong,” she concluded firmly.

Pat motioned for the young employee to pass the cloth along the first row, which he did. The cloth was gingerly touched and poked in disbelief.

“And this’ll fly?” someone else wondered out loud as he had his turn at feeling the material.

“This’ll fly,” Pat replied with conviction.

A woman had the floor next and she rose in front of Pat, looking like the epitome of the “new woman.” It was obvious that she was more interested in Pat’s role in the project than in the project itself. “Two years ago, you were a ‘homemaker,’ and now you’re the chairman of the board of a multi-million-dollar business. Does this situation frighten you?” she asked.

“When progress is involved,” Pat said carefully, “you have no time to give vent to or even to think of personal feelings,” she said, glancing unconsciously at Blaise.
Think of your own words, Patrissa
, she warned. “My personal fears, whatever they might be, cannot stand in the way of finishing this project.”

“Won’t your plane jeopardize a lot of other small-plane manufacturers?” another man challenged. “How do you feel about putting them out of business?” he pushed harshly.

“About the same way the advocates of the Industrial Revolution felt, I suppose,” she said tersely, refusing to back down. She noted a look of admiration from a few of the people. “There’ll be new jobs available, different jobs, manufacturing planes just as good as this one. Better, someday,” she said proudly.

The man sat down, put well into his place.

Pat felt Blaise’s approval as his eyes cheered her on and an excitement surged through her.

Questions of a more technical nature were then asked, just before someone brought up the subject of money and funding. Pat licked her lips, about to answer that they were hoping for backing—begging was more like it, she thought. But suddenly she felt Blaise stirring next to her. She looked at him.

“I’d like to answer that,” Blaise began, then looked at Pat. “May I?” he asked, and she knew he was having fun with her, recalling last night’s conversation about “Simon Says.”

“Yes,” Pat replied, keeping a straight face as she nodded. What was he going to say? she wondered. She was totally unprepared for his statement.

Blaise shifted in his seat and immediately the room was his without a word. Pat marveled at his command.

“For those of you who don’t know me,” he said, his eyes warmly encircling the crowd, turning it into a social group, “I’m Blaise Hamilton, Mrs. Hamilton’s cousin-in-law. I’ve recently been appointed special financial adviser to Hamilton Enterprises.”

Pat tried to hide her surprise at his words, but she was sure Blaise saw the fire that appeared in her eyes.

“And funding for the project is generously coming in from several sources. One, of course, is the Hamilton Corporation itself. Roger Hamilton provided quite handsomely for his newest ‘baby.’ We are also getting large sums from advance orders. And presently we are about to close negotiations with another government that is willing to advance us thirty million dollars in exchange for having a Hamilton jet factory built there.”

“What government?” a reporter asked.

Blaise raised his hands in a quieting gesture. “Entirely friendly, I assure you. But at the moment, negotiations are delicate, and until they are finalized, details have to be kept confidential. Sorry. You’ll be the first to know when everything is settled,” he promised with his charismatic smile, and for some reason, that was that.

The rest of the press conference passed quickly, and soon Pat was watching the men and women file out, with several of the reporters still hovering around Blaise. Mainly women, she noted, gathering up her notes from the table and slowly, deliberately, putting them in order.

Sam rose quietly. “What country?” he asked as soon as there was no one near them.

“News to me,” Pat admitted, a grimace playing at the corners of her mouth as she watched Blaise talking easily to the circle of people around him.

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know about him, boss lady.”

“Neither do I, Sam, neither do I,” she said with a sigh. “Sam, could you—“

“I’m already gone,” he said, second-guessing her and starting to clear the room of the other employees who had been present.

Pat caught Pardy grumbling to someone about being kept in the dark and not being trusted. She found Sam again and whispered, “Explain to him that I’m as much in the dark as he is.” She knew he didn’t like the task, because he and Pardy did not get along, but she also knew that Sam would do anything she told him to, for which she was grateful.

Pat turned her attention back to Blaise. There were only two reporters left now, one of whom was the “new woman,” who was very obviously taken with Blaise. Pat began to wonder if any woman was truly immune to him.

She hung back, waiting, feeling like a schoolgirl who had to wait her turn with the handsome professor. Finally, everyone was gone and Pat and Blaise stood in the empty room.

Blaise turned, sensing her presence. She was surprised that he even knew she had stayed behind, considering the attention he had gotten from the other women. But he was not one to be drunk on his own prowess. Business was first, always first, with someone like him.

“I think it went very well, Lady Pat. You handled yourself like a champion. I’m proud of you.”

His words of praise almost made her forget her anger at not having been informed. But she managed to pull some of her fire back into her eyes. “What country?” she asked.

“Hmm?” he asked mildly as he handed her neatly stacked notes to her.

“What country is funding us?” she asked more clearly, her tone a little more demanding.

“Oh. I don’t know yet,” he replied truthfully, the admission not troubling him in the slightest.

It did Pat. “What!” she cried.

“Easy, Lady Pat,” he said soothingly. “Some country will come through. As a matter of fact, with that little item mentioned in the articles, we’re sure to get several offers hoping to counter the ‘offer’ we already have.”

“But what if we don’t?” she demanded.

He looked at her patiently, and said slowly, as if to a child in need of educating, “You have to think positively, Lady Pat. If you don’t believe you’ll win, there’s no reason to get into the game.”

“This isn’t a game, Blaise. This is very, very important to me and I won’t have you treating it as if it’s an afternoon’s diversion!” she said hotly. “This may be small potatoes to you, but it’s not to me.”

Blaise seemed unaffected by her tirade. “Did you see the way those reporters looked when they left the room?” he asked mildly. “They were impressed, Lady Pat.”

Pat beckoned to the part of her that was the successful manager, and was able to respond to him softly but assertively. “I acknowledge your glowing background in high finance and accept the possibility that you had sound reasons for saying what you did. But if you’re going to help me, which was your idea in the first place, you’ve got to keep certain things in mind. How do you think I felt when you announced a financial agreement of which I was unaware? Certain members of my staff now believe that I have been withholding information from them. I just can’t have you ruining the atmosphere of cooperation and trust that has kept this project moving so far.”

A flicker of regret passed over Blaise’s otherwise stoic expression, and he put his hands on her shoulders. “I must confess that you’ve got a point. In all honesty, the idea of a foreign investor never occurred to me until I started speaking. But you’ve got to admit that it was a brilliant move. With another government coming into the picture, we’ve taken the Eagle out of the realm of ‘small potatoes,’ as you call it, and made it an international project. Something your staff is going to be proud of working for—not just their shares or their memory of Roger. Now they’re working on something that is seriously going to be looked at as a piece of history. Is that so bad?” he asked.

Pat considered his words carefully, and his boyish enthusiasm won her over. “I never doubted your instincts, Blaise,” she said with an indulgent smile. “I suppose you’re right on that count.”

He took his hands from her shoulders. “Of course I am,” he told her, grinning. “It’s my business to be right—about everything,” he said with a wicked wink, making Pat think fleetingly of his prophecy last night that she would be his.

“But what if no country comes forward!” she persisted.

“About everything,” he repeated, then kissed her and walked away.

The room echoed his voice and his presence long after he was gone. Pat walked to the wall of windows and looked down at the parking lot two stories below. She saw Blaise get into his car and speed away. Was this her knight in shining armor at long last? Or was she going to be bitterly disappointed? With her mind in turmoil, she walked out of the conference room.

When Pat got home that night, Blaise was not around. Angelica informed her that he was “out,” which was the only message he had left. He was “out” the following night as well. And the following. Pat did not see him for four days and began to believe that he had either decided to leave or was avoiding her. In either case, she had too much to do to be concerned about his presence, or the lack of it.

But she was.

And then, almost a week later, she was awakened by someone knocking on her bedroom door. She glanced at the luminous dial on her clock and saw that it was just a little past midnight. Was it Angelica? she wondered, switching on the light and finding her way to the door quickly, entirely forgetting her robe.

But as she opened the door, she found Blaise standing there, an excited light in his eyes. A different sort of light came into them for a moment as the words on his lips hung suspended while he looked at her appreciatively.

The lavender nightgown she wore was sleeveless, its lace design coming up around her breasts, which were ripe and full and still proudly high. The lacy material hugged them, adding to the desirable air about her as the folds of nightgown fell gently to the ground.

“The prodigal son has returned with good news,” he said flippantly, his eyes never leaving her body.

Pat suddenly realized that she was not wearing her robe and that, illuminated by lamplight, her nightgown was fairly see-through. She swallowed to take the dryness out of her throat. “Just a second,” she said, turning around to pick up her robe.

But when she turned back, Blaise was in the room and the door was shut behind him. Pat’s nerve endings tingled, sounding an alarm. She tried to remind herself that she had always been able to laugh off advances when they had come from other men, both before and after Roger’s death. But there was no laughter now as an excitement fought to take hold of her.

“Did you miss me?” he asked in a sultry, husky voice.

“Well, I did wonder where you were,” she admitted, trying to sound disinterested. “Most of my houseguests don’t just disappear into thin air without leaving some kind of word behind,” she said, walking away from him.

“I left word,” he said, coming closer to her, almost stalking her, Pat thought desperately.

“’Out’ is only one word. Usually I get at least a whole sentence,” she said dryly.

“Next time I’ll leave a postcard in twenty-five words or less,” he promised. “’Dear Lady Pat, I’m out, tilting your windmills.’ How’s that?”

“What?” she asked, shaking her head. His statement made no sense to her. Neither did the growing longing she was feeling. She was getting increasingly nervous over the realization that she wanted him—had always wanted him.

Blaise reached for her hand and pulled her closer to him.

Chapter Six

Blaise’s long, sweeping fingers slid up and down Pat’s body, pulling her against him as he once more captured her lips, draining words of reproach from her and pulling forth the sweetness that had never before been allowed to blossom. Pat felt engulfed and overpowered by him, and the determination to keep business uppermost in her mind died a sharp, quick death as the hungry woman within her opened up to him.

Pat thought she was on fire as his hands explored the softness that was hidden by the gauzelike nightgown, which comprised the flimsy barrier between them. Somehow, it was no longer on her shoulders, held up only by the force of his body pressing against hers. As Blaise allowed a tiny space between them, the lavender material loosened from its final perch on her nipples and floated to her waist as its place was taken by his cupped hands, which rubbed a sea of molten lava over Pat with each caress.

His lips were everywhere, kissing her neck, the hollow of her throat, the delicate points of her shoulders, tenderly yet hungrily devouring her as she felt herself pulled closer and closer to him. How long had it been since she was desired, truly desired, by a man? Roger’s lovemaking in total had never even approached this plateau. It had been tender, but awkward at times, and far from satisfying. She had believed that that was all there was—until Blaise.

Drunkenly, Pat made a stab at control. “Whe— where have you been?” she asked.