Читать книгу Betrayed by Love - Diana Palmer - Страница 10

The brief vacation from work seemed vaguely unreal to Kate once she was back at her desk at the Chicago daily newspaper where she worked. And, as usual, everything was in a virtual frenzy of confusion.

Dan Harvey, the city editor, was the only man functioning at full capacity. There was an unwritten law somewhere that city editors didn’t fall victim to insanity. Kate often wondered if that was because they caused it.

Harvey presided over the newsroom, and he managed story assignments as if it were delicate choreography. In the hierarchy of the newsroom, there was a state news editor who dealt with breaking stories outside the city and worked with the few stringers, or correspondents, the paper maintained outside the city proper. There was a feature editor, a wire services editor, a society editor, just to name a few, with all of them—Harvey included—under the watchful eye of the managing editor, Morgan Winthrop. Winthrop was a veteran reporter himself, who’d worked his way up the ranks to his present position. Next to the editor in chief, James Harris, and the publisher, Winthrop was top man in the paper’s power structure.

At the moment, Kate was under Harvey’s gimlet eye while she finished the last, grueling paragraph in a rapidly unfolding political story about a local alderman who’d skyrocketed to fame by spending a week in a local neighborhood besieged by crime.

It was just hard to think with a tall, bald man standing over her, glancing pointedly at his watch and tapping his foot. She hoped he’d get bunions, but he probably caused those, too.

“Okay.” She breathed a sigh of relief and showed him the screen on the terminal.

“Scroll it,” he instructed, and began to read the monitor from his vantage point above her left shoulder as she started the scrolling command. Since the word processor screen would only show a portion of the whole story, this command was used to move each line up so that another appeared at the bottom until the end. Harvey pursed his lips, mumbled something, nodded, mumbled something else.

“Okay, do it,” he said tersely and left her sitting there without a tiny word of praise.

“Thanks, Kate, you did a great job,” she told herself as she entered the story into the memory of the computer. “You’re a terrific reporter, we love you here, we’d never let you go even if it meant giving you a ten-thousand-dollar raise.”

“Kate’s getting a ten-thousand-dollar raise,” Dorie Blake yelled across the bustling city room to Harvey. “Can I have one, too?”

“Society editors don’t get raises,” he returned with dry humor, and didn’t even look over his shoulder. “You get paid off by attending weddings.”

“What?” Dorie shot back.

“Wedding cake. Punch. Hors d’oeuvres. You get fed as a fringe benefit.”

Dorie stuck out her tongue.

“Juvenile, juvenile,” Harvey murmured, and went into his office and closed the door.

“Tell Mr. Winthrop that Harvey goosed you behind the copy machine,” Bud Schuman suggested on his way to the water fountain, his head as bald as Harvey’s, his posture slightly stooped, his glasses taped at one ear.

Dorie glared at him. “Bud, they took out the Linotype machine ten years ago. And our managing editor doesn’t listen to sob stories. He’s too busy trying to make sure the paper shows a profit.”

“Did they take out the copy machine?” he asked vaguely. “No wonder I don’t have anyplace to leave my files…”

“Honest to God, one day he’ll lose his car just by not noticing where he parked it.” The older woman shook her red head.

“He’s still the best police reporter we have,” Kate reminded her. “Twenty-five years at it. Why, he took me to lunch one day and told me about a white-slavery racket that the police broke up here. They were actually selling girls—”

“I should be lucky enough to be sold to Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Dorie sighed, smiling dreamily.

“With your luck, they’d sell you to a restaurant, where you’d spend your twilight years washing plates that had contained barbecued ribs,” Bud murmured as he walked back past them.

“Sadist!” Dorie wailed.

“I’ve got three committee meetings, and then I have a news conference downtown.” Kate shook her head, searching for her camera. “Alderman James is at it again.” She grinned. “He’s just finished his week in the combat zone and is going to tell us all how to solve the problem. With any luck, I’ll get the story and have it phoned in to rewrite in time to eat supper at a respectable hour.”

“Do you think he’s really got answers, or is he just doing some politicking under the watchful eye of the press?” Dorie asked.

Kate pursed her lips. “I think he cares. He dragged me out of a meeting at city hall and enlisted me to help a black family in that ward when their checks ran out. You remember, I did a story on them—it was a simple computer error, but they were in desperate straits and sick…”

“I remember, all right.” Dorie smiled at her. “You’re the only person I know who could walk down back alleys at night in that neighborhood without being bothered. The residents would kill anybody who touched you.”

“That’s why I love reporting,” Kate said quietly. “We can do a lot of harm, or we can do a lot of good.” She winked. “I’d rather help feed the hungry than grandstand for a reputation. See you.” She slung the shoulder strap of the camera over her shoulder, hitched up her little laptop computer in its plastic carrying case, and started off. She could use the computer for the committee meetings and even the alderman’s breaking story. She had a modem at home, so when she fed the notes into it, she could just patch them into the newspaper from the comfort of her living room. It certainly did beat having to find a phone and pant bare facts to someone on the rewrite desk.

Unfortunately for Kate, the little computer broke down at the last committee meeting, just before she was to cover the alderman’s speech. She cursed modern science until she ran out of breath as she crawled through rush-hour traffic toward city hall. There was no time to go by the paper and get a spare computer; she’d just have to take notes by hand. Great, she muttered, remembering that she didn’t have a spare scrap of paper in her purse or one stubby pencil!

She found some old bank envelopes under the car seat while she was stuck in traffic and folded them, stuffing them into the jacket of her safari pantsuit. It was chic but comfortable, and set off her nice tan. With it, she was wearing sneakers that helped her move quickly on crowded streets. She’d learned a long time ago that reporting was easier on the feet when they had a little cushioning underneath.

As she drove her small Volkswagen down back streets to city hall, she wondered if Jacob had been in town and had tried to get her but failed, since she’d been working late. She’d been so excited about that remark he’d made that she’d been crazy enough to invest in a telephone answering machine, but she knew many people would hang up rather than leave a message. She spent her free time sitting next to the telephone, staring out the window at the street below. And when she wasn’t doing that, she haunted her mailbox for letters with a South Dakota postmark.

It was insane, she kept telling herself. He’d only been teasing. He hadn’t really meant it. That reasoning might have convinced her except that Jacob never teased.

He had to mean it. And all her brother’s well-intentioned arguments and warnings would go right out the window if Jacob ever knocked on her door. She’d follow him into burning coals if he asked her to, walk over a carpet of snakes… anything, because the hunger for him had grown to such monumental proportions over the long, empty years. She loved him. Anything he wanted, he could have.

She was curious about his feelings. Tom had said that Jacob didn’t know what he felt for Kate. But Jacob wanted her, all right. Her innocence didn’t keep her from seeing the desire in his dark eyes. It was what would happen if she made love with him that puzzled her. Would he be flattered when he knew she was a virgin? Would he even know it? They said only doctors could really tell. But he was a very experienced man—would he know?

She parked in the municipal parking lot, glancing ruefully at all the dents on the fenders of her small orange VW Beetle. They were visible in the light from the street lamps.

“Poor little thing,” she said sympathetically, glaring at the big cars that surrounded it. “Don’t worry, someday I’ll save up enough to get your fenders smoothed out.”

Someday. Maybe when she was ninety… Reporting, while an exciting job, was hardly the best-paid profession in the world. It exerted maximum wear and tear on nerves, emotions and body, and salary never compensated for the inevitable overtime. It was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job, and nowhere near as glamorous as television seemed to make it.

What was glamorous, she wondered as she made her way up to the alderman’s offices, about covering a story on an addition to the city’s sewer system? One of the meetings she’d just come from had dealt with that fascinating subject.

Alderman Barkley H. James was talking to people as reporters crowded in. People from print and broadcast media had begun setting up, most of them wearing the bland, faintly bored look that seemed to hallmark the profession. It wasn’t really boredom, it was repetition. Most of these reporters were veterans, and they’d seen and heard it all. They were hard, because they had to be. That didn’t mean they were devoid of emotion—just that they’d learned to pretend they didn’t have it.

She slid into a seat beside Roger Dean, a reporter on a local weekly. Roger was nearer forty than thirty, a daily reporter who’d “retired” to a weekly. “Here we are again,” she murmured as she checked the lighting in the office and made corrections to the settings on her 35-mm camera. “I saw you yesterday at the solid-waste-management meeting, didn’t I?”

“It was a foul job, but somebody had to do it,” Roger said with theatrical fervor. He glanced at her from his superior height. “Why do they always send you to those meetings?”

“When it comes to issues like sanitary-disposal sites, everybody else hides in the bathroom until Harvey picks a victim.”

He shuddered. “I once covered a sanitary-landfill-site public meeting. People had guns. Knives. They yelled.”

“I have survived two of those,” she said with a smug grin. “At the first, there was a knock-down-drag-out fight. At the second, one man tried to throw another one out a window. I was jostled and shoved, and I still think someone pinched me in a very unpleasant way.”

The alderman interrupted the conversation as he began to speak. He told of mass unemployment, of poverty beyond anyone’s expectations. He told of living conditions that were intolerable, children playing in buildings that should have been torn down years before. Slums, he told his audience, were out of place in the twentieth century. The mayor had started the ball rolling with his excellent program of revitalization, Alderman James said. Following the mayor’s example, he vowed to continue the program in this crime-stricken neighborhood.

He’d interested a group of businessmen in funding a mass renovation of the neighborhood, citing figures that showed a drop in crime corresponding directly to the upgrading of slums. He threw statistics at them rapid-fire, and outlined the plan.

When he was through, there was the usual sprint by reporters to call in stories to the rewrite desk on newspapers or to anchor people at radio and television stations. This was the culmination of a story they’d all been following closely for the past week, and that made the alderman’s disclosures good copy.

Kate was almost knocked down in the stampede. She managed to find a quiet corner to phone the office and give them the gist of the speech so that they’d have time to get it set up for the next edition.

She collapsed back against the wall when she was through, watching Roger come toward her slowly as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“I thought you had a computer,” he said.

She glared at him. “I did. It broke. I hate machines, not to mention you weekly reporters,” she muttered. “No wild dash to file your story, no gallop back to your desk to do sidebars…”

“Ah, the calm and quiet life,” he agreed with a grin. “Actually, they say weekly reporting kills more people than daily reporting. You don’t have to write up your copy then proof it again and do corrections and make up ads and answer the phone and do jobwork in the print shop behind the office and sell office supplies and take subscriptions—”

“Stop!”

He shrugged. “Just letting you know how lucky you are.” He put his pen back into his shirt pocket. “Well, I’m off. Nice to see you again, Kate.”

“Same here.”

He glanced at her with a faint smile. “I could find time to work you in if you’d like to have dinner with me.”

She was tempted. She almost said yes. He wasn’t anybody’s idea of Prince Charming, but she liked him and it would have been nice to talk over the frustrations of her job. “Come on, I’ll buy you pizza.”

She loved that. But when she thought about the unwashed dishes and unvacuumed floors and untidy bed at her apartment, her chores were too much to walk away from.

“Thanks, but I’ve got a mess at home that I’ve got to get cleaned up. Rain check?” she asked and smiled at him.

“I’d start rain for a smile like that,” he said with a chuckle. “Okay. See you, pretty girl.”

He winked and walked off. She stared after him, wondering how anyone in her right mind could turn down a free meal. She made her way out of the building, her thoughts full of the broken computer and of how much information from the meeting would be lost for the follow-up story she had to turn in tomorrow. Well, fortunately, she could always call and talk to the committee members. She knew them and they wouldn’t mind going over the figures for her. People in political circles were some of the nicest she’d ever known.

She drove back to her apartment thinking about the new lease on life that crime-ridden neighborhood was going to get. The story she’d done for the alderman had concerned a black family of six who’d been removed from the welfare rolls without a single explanation. The father had lost his job due to layoffs, the wife had had to have a mastectomy, there were four children, all barely school age.

The father had tried to call and ask why the checks weren’t coming, but the social workers had been pressed for time. Someone had put him on hold, and then he’d gone through a negative-sounding woman who’d informed him that the government didn’t make mistakes; if he’d been dropped from the rolls, there was a good reason. So when Kate went to do the story, the first thing she did was to call the social agency to ask about the situation. A sympathetic social worker did some checking and dug into the case, refusing to accept the superficial information she was given. Minutes later, she called Kate back to report that a computer foul-up was responsible. The family had been confused with another family that had been found guilty of welfare violations. The error had been corrected, and now the small family was getting the temporary help it needed. That, and a lot more, because Kate’s story had aroused public interest. Several prominent families had made quick contributions, and the family had been spared a grueling ordeal. But the story had haunted Kate. Society was creating more problems than it was solving. The world, Kate philosophized, was just getting too big and impersonal.

She parked her car in the basement of her apartment building and checked to make sure her can of Mace was within reach. It gave Kate a feeling of security when she had to go out at night. She lived in an apartment building that had a security system, but all the same, crime was everywhere.

It had been a long day. She wanted nothing more than to lie down after a hot bath and just read herself into a stupor. Even with all the difficulties, though, she had a feeling of accomplishment, of contributing something. God bless politicians who cared, and Chicago seemed to be blessed with a lot of them. She wondered if the other reporters who’d been following the story were as pleased as she was.

The elevator was sluggish, as usual. She hit the panel and finally it began the slow upward crawl to the fourth floor. She got off, ambling slowly to her door. She felt ancient.

The phone was ringing, and she listened numbly until she realized that she’d forgotten to turn the answering machine on. She unlocked the door and grabbed the receiver on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” she said, her voice breathless and curt. “If that’s you, Dan Harvey, try the rest room. That’s where everybody runs to hide when you need a story covered—”

“It isn’t Harvey,” came the reply in a deep, familiar voice.

Her heart slammed wildly at her rib cage. “Jacob?”

She could almost hear him smiling. “I’ve been ringing for the past hour. I thought you got off at five.”

Her breath was sticking in her throat. She slid onto an armchair by the phone and tried to stop herself from shaking. It had been two weeks since Margo’s wedding, but it felt like years. “I do,” she heard herself saying. “I had to cover a story at city hall and the traffic was terrible.”

“Have dinner with me,” he said in a tone she’d never heard him use. “I realize it’s short notice, but I didn’t expect to be in town overnight.”

She could have died when she remembered almost accepting Roger’s offer of a meal. If she had… It didn’t bear thinking about!

“It’s going on six-thirty,” she said, glancing at her digital clock.

“Can you be ready in thirty minutes?”

“Do birds fly?” she croaked. “Of course I can!”

He chuckled. “I’ll pick you up then.”

“But, wait, you don’t know where I live,” she said frantically.

“I know,” was all he said. And the line went dead.

She looked at the receiver blankly. Well, so much for being cool and poised and keeping her head, she thought ruefully. She might as well have taken an ad in her own paper, a display ad that read: I’m yours, Jacob!

It took her only ten minutes to shower and blow-dry her hair, but finding the right dress took fifteen. She went through everything in her closet, dismissing one outfit as too demure, another as too brassy, and still another as dull and disgustingly old. The only thing left was a silky black dress with no sleeves and a deeply slit bodice that laced up. It was midknee, just a cocktail dress, but she liked its sophistication. She wore the garment with black velvet pumps and a glittering rhinestone necklace. And even if she did say so herself, she looked sharp. She left her hair long, letting it fall naturally around her shoulders like black satin, and she didn’t wear much makeup. Jacob didn’t like cosmetics.

He was prompt. The buzzer rang at precisely seven o’clock, and with trembling hands she pushed the button that would unlock the front door of the apartment building.

Minutes later, he was at the door. She opened it, shaking all over, while she tried to pretend that she was poised. And there he was, resplendent in a black dinner jacket and trousers, with a pleated white shirt and elegant black tie, the polish on his shoes glossy enough to reflect the carpet.

“Nice,” he murmured, taking in the black dress. “I’m glad you didn’t want a fast-food hamburger.”

She flushed. It sounded as though he had expected her tastes not to be simple. “I…”

“Get your purse and let’s go,” he said tersely. “I’ve booked a table for seven-thirty.”

She didn’t argue. She felt on the sofa for her purse, locked the door behind her and followed him into the elevator.

“You didn’t say what to wear,” she faltered, stopping short of admitting that she’d dressed to the teeth just to please him, not because she expected to go anywhere fancy.

He leaned against the rail inside the elevator and stared down at her with easy sophistication. He looked like a predator tonight, and she realized with a start that she’d never been alone with him before. It was an entirely new kind of relationship, being a woman in his eyes. Everything was different suddenly, and her heart was beating like thunder.

“You’re nervous around me,” he said finally. “Why?”

Her slender shoulders rose and fell. “I always have been,” she said quietly. “You’re very intimidating.”

“You’re not a child anymore,” he replied, his dark eyes narrowing in that bronzed face. “For tonight, you’re my date, not Margo’s best friend. I don’t expect to have to quote etiquette or tie a bib on you.”

He was being frankly insulting now, and she felt her pride reassert itself. “If you’d rather go alone…?”

He glared at her. “I might wish I had, if you don’t stop this shrinking-violet act. If I’d wanted a shy little virgin, I’d have found one.”

But she was! She almost told him so, too, and then she realized that it might ruin her whole evening. For years she’d wanted to be with him, to have one magical night to live on. And here she was about to send it up in smoke.

She managed a smile for him, hoping it was coquettish enough. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

He accepted her excuse after a cursory appraisal. They got off the elevator and he took her arm to lead her to his car. He’d rented a Mercedes, silvery and elegant.

“It’s like yours,” she said slowly as he helped her into the car. The Cade family had two cars—a black Lincoln and a silver Mercedes—as well as other ranch vehicles.

“It is mine,” he corrected her. “You know I hate airplanes. I drove here.”

“It must have taken all day,” she faltered.

He got in beside her. “Two days,” he said. “But that was because I stopped in Wisconsin. I had some business with a dairy farmer there.”

Knowing how Jacob drove, she was surprised that he’d made it to Chicago alive. She peeked at him. “No speeding tickets?”

His eyebrows arched. “I beg your pardon?” he asked coolly.

She stared at the purse in her lap. “How many cars was it you wrecked during college?”

“I am not a bad driver,” he replied arrogantly. He moved out into the traffic, barely missing a passing car. The driver sat down on his horn and Jacob glared at him. “Idiots,” he muttered. “Nobody in this city can drive worth beans. I’ve had five close calls tonight already, just like that one.”

Kate was trying not to double over laughing. It wouldn’t do, it really wouldn’t.

“And it wasn’t three cars,” he added. “It was two.”

She glanced up to find a frankly amused gleam in his dark eyes. She smiled at him in spite of herself, marveling at the way the motion drew his eyes briefly to her lips.

“Who did you think I was when you answered the phone?” he asked carelessly.

“My city editor,” she told him. “I get stuck with all the terrible assignments because the other reporters hide out when he wants a victim.”

“You mentioned you were out covering a story,” he recalled, pausing at a traffic light. He drew a cigarette from the pack in the glove compartment and lit it lazily. “What was it?”

She told him, outlining the alderman’s plan for the neighborhood and the mayor’s successful program of revitalization in problem areas of the city. “Cities seem pretty impersonal, and then something like this happens. It makes me feel better about urban areas,” she said with a smile. “I like Chicago.”

He glanced at her curiously, but he didn’t say anything.

Her eyes sought his dark face, noticing how handsome he looked as the colorful city lights played over his features. “You’ve never asked me out before. In fact,” she said softly, “I used to think that you hated me.”

He pulled the car into a vacant space in front of a plush downtown restaurant, cut the engine and turned to look at her, his dark eyes steady and faintly glimmering. “Hate and desire are different sides of the same coin,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t very well seduce my niece’s best friend.”

Her heart went wild. “I…didn’t realize,” she faltered.

“I made damned sure you didn’t realize,” he said softly, watching her intently. “I’ve tried to protect Margo. That’s why I never brought women home. You were a tough proposition, anyway—the first woman I ever wanted who was completely off-limits.”

He said wanted, not loved. She had to remember to make the distinction as Tom had warned. Careful, girl, she told herself, don’t let him get under your skin.

The trouble was, he was already there, very deep. She loved him too much.

“But now Margo’s married,” he said softly, reaching out to stroke a long strand of black hair in a way that made her body ache. “And I don’t have to hide it anymore. You’re almost twenty-five. You’re a responsible, independent woman and you live in the city. I don’t have to handle you with kid gloves, do I, Kate?”

She didn’t mind how he handled her. That was the whole problem. Part of her wanted to clear up his misconceptions, to tell him about her childhood, about her very strict upbringing. But another part of her was afraid that if she told him the truth he’d hightail it back to South Dakota and never come near her again. And so she bit her tongue to keep from denying what he’d said.

He finished his cigarette leisurely, leaning forward to stub it out. The movement brought him so close to Kate that she could see the thickness of his black eyelashes, the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. She could smell the expensive cologne he wore and the fainter tang of the soap and shampoo he used.

He turned before he leaned back, catching her eyes. It was the closest she’d ever been to him. Her heart felt as if it were going to burst when he put one lean hand at her cheek and began to slowly, sensuously rub his thumb over her soft lips.

“You don’t wear layers of makeup,” he said softly. “I like that. And you dress like a lady.” His gaze went down to the laces of her bodice, lingering there before moving up again to meet her eyes. “Are you wearing anything under that witchy dress?”

It was too intimate a question. She averted her face, trying not to look like the gauche innocent she was. “Why don’t you feed me?”

He laughed softly. “All right. We’ll do it your way.”

Do what? She didn’t even ask; it was safer not to know the answer.

The restaurant was crowded, but they had a nice table on the upper level of an interior that featured exquisite crystal chandeliers and an atmosphere of affluence that made Kate feel frumpy even in the expensive dress she was wearing. She’d had to save money for weeks to afford it; most of the other women who were sitting around this restaurant looked as if they could lay down cash for a Mercedes.

“Don’t look so intimidated,” Jacob mused as they were seated. “They’re just people.”

She laughed nervously. “If you knew how I grew up…” she began.

“I do. I’ve seen your grandmother Walker’s house,” he replied easily. “It was an old Victorian, but still elegant in its way.”

“I grew up,” she repeated, “in Nebraska. On a farm. My father was—” she almost said “a lay minister,” but she changed it to “—poor. My mother left when Tom and I were just babies. Dad kept us until his death.” Of a brain tumor, she could have added, one that made him crazy. She shuddered a little at the painful memories. After all these years, she still had a very real fear of male domination. She could hear her father shouting, feel the whip of the belt across her bare legs whenever she triggered his explosive, unpredictable temper.

“I grew up rich,” Jacob replied. “We inherited money from my great-grandfather. He made a fortune back in the late 1880s, when a blizzard drove out half the cattlemen in the West. The old devil had a knack for predicting bad weather. He managed to get his cattle east before that devastating snowfall. He made a fortune.”

“Money seems to bring its own responsibilities,” she remarked, studying his hard, lined face and cool, dark eyes. “You never seem to have any time to yourself.”

A corner of his mouth tugged up. “Don’t I?”

She looked down at the white linen tablecloth. Piped music was playing around them, very romantic, while white-coated waiters tended to the crowded tables. “Not during the day, at least,” she said, qualifying her words. “When Margo and I were girls, you were always being hounded by somebody.”

He was watching her, his gaze purely possessive. “It goes with any kind of business, Kate. I’d hate a life of leisure.”

He probably would. He didn’t keep his body that fit and muscular by sitting behind a desk.

“I guess I would, too,” she mused. Her slender fingers touched the heavy silver knife of her place setting. “Sometimes my job gets unpleasant, but there are compensations.”

“I suppose there would be. You work with a lot of men, don’t you?” he asked.

There was an unflattering double meaning in his words. She looked directly into his searching eyes, trying not to be affected by the increase in her pulse from his magnetism. “Yes,” she said. “I work with a lot of men. Not just at the office, but in politics, rescue work, police work—and in all those places, I’m just one of the boys.”

His gaze dropped to her bodice. “So I see.”

“I don’t work in suggestive clothing,” she fired back. “I don’t make eyes at married men, and if you’re going to start making veiled remarks about what you saw in the bathhouse six years ago, I’m leaving this minute!”

“Sit down.”

His tone was like ice, his eyes frankly intimidating. The cold note in his voice made her feel sick inside. She sat down, shaking a little with reaction.

“I know what it looked like to you,” she said half under her breath, coloring as she realized the interest she’d raised in other diners, who glanced at the dark man and the pretty woman obviously having a lover’s quarrel. “But it wasn’t what you thought.”

“What I saw was obvious,” he returned. “Gerald was damned lucky. If it had been my niece, even if she’d invited it, I’d have broken him like a toothpick.”

That was in character. He fought like a tiger for his own. But not for Kate. He thought that she was little more than a tramp and that she didn’t need any protection. It surprised Kate sometimes that he was so willing to believe the worst about her, when everything pointed to the contrary. He’d known her for years and he’d been so kind to her. And then, in one afternoon, he’d done an about-face in his attitude toward her. She’d never understood why.

“Lucky Margo, having you to spoil her,” she said, with a wealth of pain in the words. She stared at her lap. “Tom and I never had that problem.”

“Your grandmother wasn’t poor,” he argued.

She clenched her teeth. “I didn’t mean money.” It was love she and Tom had lacked. Grandmother Walker, not a demonstrative person, had never made any concessions in her way of life for them. She’d demanded that they grow up without frills or the handicap of spoiling.

He paused while the waiter brought menus. Kate studied hers with no enthusiasm at all. He’d killed her appetite stone dead.

“What do you want?” he asked carelessly.

She glanced up at him with a speaking look, and he actually laughed.

“Talk about looks that could kill,” he murmured. “Were you wishing I was on the menu?”

“I hate you,” she said, and meant it. “The biggest mistake I’ve made in years was to agree to come out with you at all. No, I don’t want anything on the menu. I’d like to leave. You stay and enjoy your meal, and I’ll get a cab—”

“That isn’t all you’ll get if you don’t sit down, Kate,” he replied quietly. “I hate scenes.”

“I’ve never made one in my life until tonight,” she said shortly. Her green eyes were huge in her ashen face as she stared across the table at him. How could he treat her this way when she loved him to distraction?

He stared at her with a mingling of emotions, the strongest of which was desire. She was, he thought, the most delicious tidbit he’d ever seen. He’d spent years chiding himself for his unbridled passion for her. Now the barriers were down, and he couldn’t seem to handle the confusion she aroused in him. God, she was lovely! All his secret dreams of perfection, hauntingly sweet and seductive. He wondered how many other men had wanted her, had been with her, and the strength of his jealousy disturbed him. It didn’t matter, he told himself, he had to have her. Just once, he told himself. Just once, to know that soft, sweet body in passion. Then the fever would be gone. He’d be free of her spell.

She couldn’t know that he’d suddenly seen her as a woman when she’d kissed that boy so hungrily. It had gotten worse when he’d confronted them in the bathhouse, and the desire he’d felt for her had almost knocked him to his knees.

He hadn’t even meant to take her out tonight. But the lure of her was irresistible. He couldn’t stop. And it wasn’t bad that she was experienced; he was even glad, in a way, because he had too many scruples about seducing innocents. If he made love to a virgin, he’d feel an obligation to marry her. It wasn’t a modern outlook, but then he wasn’t a modern man. He was country bred and raised, for all his money.

She looked sad, he thought, studying her. His own emotions confused and irritated him. He wanted her until she was a living obsession in his mind. He ached all over already, and he hadn’t even touched her. His dark eyes narrowed, studying her. She was lovely, all right. A walking, breathing temptation. Yes, it was just as well that she wasn’t innocent. If he didn’t believe her to be sophisticated, he’d never be able to seduce her.

He leaned back in his chair and let his eyes wander over her bodice, where bare skin peeked through the lacing. “Look at me.”

She stared back at him with trembling lips, almost shaking with fury. He’d ruined it. All her beautiful dreams had crumbled. Her voice choked when she spoke. “I shouldn’t have come with you. Roger Dean offered me a nice pizza. I should have settled for that.”

His chin lifted. “Roger who?”

“Roger Dean,” she shot back, gratified that he looked irritated. “He’s a reporter for one of the other papers. A handsome and very nice man,” she added. “And he likes me just the way I am.”

So she did have other men. That touched something vulnerable inside him and hurt it. Unsmiling, he stared at her. “Did you turn down a date with him to come out with me?” he asked, as if he expected she did things like that often.

“I turned him down before you called,” she shot back. “Sorry to shatter your black image of me.”

He sighed deeply and paused long enough to give the waiter an order for steak and a baked potato.

“What do you want?” he asked Kate politely.

“I’ll have a shrimp cocktail and coffee,” she murmured.

“You need more than that,” Jacob said.

“That’s all I want, thank you.” She gave the waiter the menu with a wan smile, and Jacob noticed how worn she looked, how tired. He knew suddenly that it was a sense of excitement gone sour.

“I’ve spoiled the night for you, haven’t I?” he asked with sharp perception.

Her lips curved into a rueful smile. “I broke speed records getting ready,” she said. “Went through every dress I had in my wardrobe to find something nice enough to wear for you. I suppose I was a little excited, being asked out by you after all these years, when I thought I was more of a pest and irritation than someone you…wanted to date.” Her eyes glanced off the expression of frank surprise in his. “I should have remembered how you feel about me. It’s my own fault. Nobody held a gun on me.”

His heart did odd things inside his chest at that confession. He hadn’t thought she might want to be with him. At times he’d wondered if she might feel a little of the physical attraction for him that he felt for her. But Kate was mysterious. She was close-lipped and very private, in spite of her modern outlook.

“Maybe we could bury the hatchet for once,” he murmured, feeling this way for the first time in his life. The self-confidence he’d always had with women was lacking tonight. He felt something new with Kate, and everything in him was fighting it. She confused him, disturbed him. She had to be sophisticated, but why did she sound so damned honest? She’d sworn once that she’d never lied to him, and he’d had to fight not to believe her. He couldn’t believe her, because if he did… He stared at her, feeling something tingle inside him as her face colored. He couldn’t prevent a warm, quiet smile.