Double Entendre, Page 2

  She was struggling to clothe herself with the too-big bedspread. He turned around to watch her laconically, in control again. He leaned against the glass door to the pool, plunged his hands into his pockets and said dryly, “Aren’t you being a little overmodest? I’ve more than seen everything you’ve got, you know.”

  Her eyes fell on him with lethal vehemence. “What are you doing here?” she demanded tensely.

  He waved an arm toward the pool. “I was watching that touching scene.”

  “How dare you!” she cried, stalking toward him, the spread wrapped around her like a toga. It was a beautiful attack: she was proud and enraged and looked just like a queen until she tripped over one corner of the spread and catapulted hard against his naked chest. Bret laughed and tried to straighten her. She made a choking sound as if she were strangling and pushed herself away from him. “I mean it, Bret. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I want you out now. Out of my bedroom, out of my house—”

  He raised one brow, very politely. “Or you’ll call the police?”

  She floundered a bit; her lashes, dark and thick and beautifully rich, fell over her cheeks for a brief moment. Then she raised her chin to him. “No. I—I wouldn’t want to call the police on you. But,” she warned, “I will call Jerry.”

  “Jerry? Jerry?” Bret queried, and then he doubled over with laughter, looking at her again as he moved to the foot of the bed to sit and hold his stomach. Of course, there really wasn’t anything so funny about Jerry. He just couldn’t stop himself from seeking some way to ridicule the guy who had just been kissing her. “Jerry?” he asked again, gazing at her incredulously. “That skinny little weasel who just left?” He didn’t have a damned thing against Jerry, except that he’d been with her.

  She stood very tall and very proud despite her absurd costume. “So he doesn’t spend his days and nights hacking his macho way across hill and dale. He’s still quite a man, I assure you.”

  He was tempted to laugh again, but God, it would be bitter laughter, defensive laughter. Bret sobered instead and ran his fingers through his tousled hair. He hadn’t played fair; he hadn’t expected her to catch him in the house. But he was here, and naturally the meeting was going badly.

  He ran his fingers through his hair again, suddenly very weary. “I wouldn’t call Jerry if I were you, Colleen,” he said flatly, gazing up at her. “It would be rather foolish, don’t you think?”

  She pursed her lips stubbornly. A range of emotions passed swiftly through her gold-flecked eyes. What were they? he wondered a little bleakly.

  She took a deep breath, and he could see that she was struggling to speak coolly and calmly. Just like Colleen! She was by nature impetuous, passionate, tempestuous, but she always wanted to behave rationally or at least give the illusion that she did. But it seemed that tonight she was expecting trouble. Well, she was going to get it, he decided, whether she was expecting it or not.

  “Bret, get out,” she said quietly, almost with a whisper of pleading. But that whisper was quickly gone as she continued angrily. “I don’t know what you’re doing here—the last I heard you were in the Middle East—but I want you out now. Off my bed, out of my room and out of my house.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked her wryly.

  “Am I?” she challenged.

  “Oh, yes,” he told her lightly, uncrossing his arms and starting to saunter casually toward her. “Your house is half my house. Your room, half my room. Even your bed is half my bed.”

  “No! No more!” she cried furiously. “You wanted out and you left.”

  “It’s still my house—my design, as a matter of fact, which you neglected to tell your friend Jerry.” He kept moving toward her; Colleen, clutching the blood-red bedspread about her, began to back up. He smiled as she stepped on a trailing edge of the material again and plummeted backward to the bed. It was an advantage he could ill afford to lose.

  Bret quickly scrambled over her, straddling her hips. He saw her eyes narrow and knew he was pushing her to a real battle, but since he was way off base and knew it, he had to attempt the bluff. She was very busy trying to untangle her arms—to strike him, he was certain—so he quickly caught her shoulders and leaned low to speak brusquely.

  “Let’s get a few things straight, Mrs. McAllistair. I—”

  “I’m not your wife anymore, Bret,” Colleen interrupted him heatedly, still struggling with the spread, but getting nowhere with her limbs not only entangled by the material but held beneath the force and weight of his body.

  “Yes, you are,” Bret corrected lightly, pausing to smile grimly. “Until the twenty-eighth of the month, or so my lawyers tell me. So until that time, don’t bring Jerry back into my house, huh? I feel sorry for the guy, you know, but somehow I just don’t want him around.”

  “Bret McAllistair, get off me!” Colleen seethed, the gold in her eyes sizzling like sparks. Her hair spilled over the bed like waves of shimmering black silk, and he clenched his jaw, aware that he couldn’t stay so close to her long without either killing her or giving in to the temptation to remember just how heated her passion and beauty could be.

  “Who do you think you are to come in here like this?” she demanded, fighting his hold and struggling with the spread. Bret realized that he needed little effort to restrain her; the massive spread was doing the job with the efficiency of a straitjacket. He sat back on his haunches, keeping his weight off her as she continued to twist and challenge him. “How dare you tell me what I can or can’t do? It’s my house because I’ve lived here—”

  “Yes, that’s another thing, isn’t it?” he asked calmly. “I didn’t walk out, Colleen. I went to work, and you chose to end it all.”

  “Oh! This is a ridiculous conversation! You’ve finally lost your mind, Bret McAllistair. Totally. Completely. Fine. It’s your house! Move—and I’ll get out!”

  “Not on your life,” he told her softly, but there was menace in his tone and a promise or a threat as deep as that menace.

  She went still and stared at him with comprehension and suspicion. God, she was beautiful, he thought, staring at her fine, flawless features, the smoothness of her skin, the depths of her eyes. His voice caught in his throat, and for a moment he could barely breathe. Then something in him hardened. She was beautiful and bright. Determined, tenacious and cunning. She could laugh and capture a heart, smile and steal away a man’s soul.

  But he’d already lost his soul once.

  “What are you after, Bret?” she asked flatly.

  “The Rutger Miller story,” he answered, equally bland.

  She laughed suddenly, and the brittle, humorless sound might have been an echo of his own bitterness.

  “Ah, yes, a story! What else?” she reflected dryly, sweeping her lashes over her eyes. “That’s your life, Bret, isn’t it? I get the honor of your presence because of a story! My Lord! This is just like d;aaej;aga vu! You thrive on excitement and assume that you’re the only person capable of handling even the slightest hint of danger. You’ve done this to me before, Bret.” She gave him a small frozen smile. “Not again. No way, Bret McAllistair,” she told him coolly. “It’s my story.”

  “No. Not anymore, it’s not.”

  “And why is that?” she challenged.

  He moved off the bed, releasing her from the weight of his body and standing idly before her. “Because Rutger Miller’s body was found last night—dredged up from the river.”

  “What?”

  She paled so quickly and so completely that Bret was sorry he had spoken so harshly. Inwardly he winced. But it was for the best. She was going to get hurt if she didn’t learn to stay away from the danger zones.

  “Dead!” she said with a gasp, and he saw that her lips trembled, her fingers clutched convulsively at the spread. His words had hurt her even though she hadn’t fully comprehended them. She had cared about Miller. That was obvious. And it was also natural for Colleen. For all her professionalism, she
never managed to stay uninvolved emotionally.

  “He is dead, Colleen. Rutger Miller is dead.” Bret didn’t mean to be cruel, but he had to make her understand the implications. “Colleen, I want to see everything you’ve got on him. I want to hear every tape, and I want to know every little thing he ever said to you in private.”

  “It’s…still my story,” she whispered, and he knew that fighting him had become instinct to her because her eyes were glazed; she was still in shock from his words.

  “Colleen?” He reached down and touched her cheek gently with his knuckles. For a moment, as she stared up at him, she looked lost and vulnerable, soft and innocent, her eyes wide and luminous and trusting….

  Almost as if she needed him.

  But then she closed her eyes and twisted from his touch. “Leave me alone, Bret. Rutger was my friend. The story is still mine.”

  “No, Colleen. And the longer you fight me on this one, the longer you’ll be plagued with me in your life. In your house. And who knows, I might even wind up in your bed again. So be a good kid, huh? I’ll give you a few minutes to get dressed, then you can come out and show me the videos, okay?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He sauntered from the bedroom through the sitting room to the kitchen, where he shrugged, opened the refrigerator and helped himself to a beer.

  Bret leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. He knew her. Right now she would still be lying there in turmoil, aching for Rutger Miller and trying to decide whether to attempt to strangle Bret or to graciously pretend that she had decided to be magnanimous and allow him to share her information. He hoped that by now she would have decided that she couldn’t get rid of him, and she knew she couldn’t strangle him.

  Bret sighed, wincing as a little shudder shook him. He was staying. She didn’t know yet what she had gotten herself into; she didn’t realize the deathly extent of the danger.

  Yes, he was staying, no matter what. Because he was still—like it or not—in love with her.

  CHAPTER 2

  Colleen stared up at the ceiling, stunned and aching. Her heart and mind were spinning. Rutger was dead. Poor old Rutger, so torn with conscience over the past! That conscience had brought him to her, to the law, and because of it, he had paid with his life.

  And she had received the news from Bret.

  Bret! What was he doing here? She didn’t dare think about it too much. She would either dissolve into ridiculous and futile tears or grow so angry that she would become as combustible as a can of high-octane gas. How could he be so cruel? He had walked out on her without a backward glance and returned with such confidence and audacity that he might never have left.

  The story, she told herself dully. Bret was after the story. What was Bret ever after, but the story?

  Tears burned in her eyes. She stood quickly, blinking with fury. Not this time, Bret, she promised herself. Not this time. You’re so damned sure I’m going to come waltzing through that door and spill my guts to you! Well, it isn’t going to happen.

  Decisive thought and action—that was what she needed! Colleen quickly tore through her drawers for a pullover and a pair of jeans, slid into them, raced to her closet, and then hobbled around with a total lack of grace as she tried to tie both sneakers without sitting down. A determined look was etched across her features as she did so. Damn him! He’d decided that he wanted to be married, and so they had been married. He’d spoken and assumed that his word was law. And when she’d dared just once to try to defy him, he’d turned his back on her as coldly as a winter freeze. Oh, God! What a fool she’d been! She should have known not to marry him. He’d been around; he was experienced. And from the very beginning she’d fought against her sense of insecurity because of it. They could be at a party in London, Madrid, Paris or New York—anywhere in the world—and a svelte beauty would walk in and approach Bret, and Colleen would be left to wonder just what their relationship had been before she and Bret had married.

  Or would be again, she thought bitterly.

  God! She had never wanted to hurt a man, never wanted to strike out at anyone as she wanted to strike out at him. But then, she’d never been hurt herself as she had been hurt by Bret. And hurting, she had learned to grow a tough shell. Facade though it might be, it had gotten her through.

  “Not this time!” she whispered aloud to herself. He was back, but she wasn’t handing over her story. She owed more than that to Rutger Miller. Rutger had come to her. And now he was dead. She owed him, and she didn’t owe Bret a damned thing.

  Colleen tiptoed past the sitting room and stared through the kitchen into the living room. How like him! She could see the back of his tawny head. He was sitting on the sofa, which faced the hearth, his legs comfortably stretched out on the coffee table, sipping a Miller Lite. Waiting, with his supreme confidence. His shoulders were still bare, broad and bronzed and gleaming in the soft light of the room.

  Instantly her heart seemed to stick in her throat. All the heartache and loss she thought she had learned to live with rose to encompass her in a shudder of pain. She longed to reach out, to touch his gleaming tanned flesh, to feel the ripple of muscle there, and the sweet fainting sensation of being held in his arms. Strength and tenderness combining. Soaring passion and electric heat along with laughter and the inner ecstasy of being loved.

  Illusion! she reminded herself cruelly. And if she was stupid enough to be his entertainment because he had walked back in to take her story, she deserved whatever heartache came her way.

  No, not again.

  Colleen swallowed fiercely and silently slipped back to her bedroom. Her bedroom. He had walked out. He had no rights.

  She paused for a minute, glancing around for her purse. She remembered then with dismay that it was out in the living room, where she had tossed it when she came in. She winced, then shrugged and moved to the nightstand at the left side of the bed. There was only about twenty-five dollars there, but she wouldn’t need a fortune to go buy herself a cup of coffee somewhere. She had extra keys to the back of the house—how the hell had he gotten in anyway? she wondered with a shudder of fury—even if she didn’t have a set for the Ferrari. All she had to do was leave for a while. Surely he was too busy to sit in the living room forever.

  Colleen made one last check on his position. He was still sitting very comfortably on the couch. Then she went back to her room and reminded herself that she had to move silently. She winced when she tripped as she slid out to the patio. She stood dead still, listening to the pounding of her heart. But she heard nothing else; her awkward movement hadn’t been as loud as she thought. Trying very hard not to make any more mistakes, she tiptoed across the patio to the screen door. There was a lock on the handle and another at the top, but neither seemed to make any noise as she lifted them. Then she was out on the grass, shaded by the giant oaks at the back of the yard.

  “Up yours, McAllistair!” she whispered, a bit giddy with her victory. He could wait all damned night if he wanted. She wasn’t coming out to tell him a thing.

  Her lips curled into a little smile, but she found that she was blinking again as she trotted past her Ferrari and out to the gently lit sidewalk. Even as she smiled, she paused, bending over for a moment, fighting a pain in her stomach and an overwhelming dizziness. How could he do this to her? How could he come back into her life when she had just started to learn how to live without him? It hurt, oh, it hurt so badly!

  She straightened, gritting her teeth, and hurried along the sidewalk. Most of the houses were dark and silent, she noticed. It was almost midnight. It was, in fact, probably a little dangerous and maybe even stupid for her to be out like this. It wasn’t a crime-free neighborhood. No neighborhood was. But the way she was feeling right now, if a mugger were to come after her, he would be damned sorry that he had.

  She glanced up as she came to the Lords’s house. There was a light on above the porch. Joe and Marge had probably gone to the movies. Colleen narrowed her eyes a little against the m
uted light. She waved suddenly, seeing that Marge’s dad, down from Minnesota for a vacation, was rocking away in the coolness of the night. He waved back to her, then suddenly frowned.

  Colleen hadn’t heard a thing. All she felt was a sudden rush of wind. Then her feet were off the ground, and the breath was knocked out of her so thoroughly that she could only gasp when she intended to scream. A hand clamped over her mouth as she was lifted and held taut against a naked chest.

  She heard Bret’s strident whisper. “Fool!”

  She pushed against his chest, trying to wrest her mouth free of his hand. “Let me down, Bret!” she managed to grate out. “I’ll scream bloody murder, and I mean it.” Marge’s dad was probably getting to his feet right now. “Mr. Pierson—” She started to shout, but Bret was already spinning around to face the old man. “I tell you, Mr. Pierson, what is a man to do with the modern woman? Colleen just doesn’t realize the dangers that stalk the street at night! She never listens to me.”

  There was a false, plaintive tone to his voice, as if he were begging the more experienced man for advice.

  Colleen heard Mr. Pierson chuckling.

  “I think you’ve got the right idea, young man! Take her home, give her a little loving, let her know it’s her welfare that concerns you.”

  “Yes, sir!” Bret responded respectfully.

  Colleen had had enough. She caught some of the tawny hair on his chest between her fingers and wrenched it as hard as she could.

  “Ouch!”

  She tried to sink her teeth into his flesh. He was still smiling at Mr. Pierson, but he gave a low groan through that smile as he pretended to bow tenderly toward her for the sake of his audience.