Читать книгу A Memorable Man - Joan Hohl - Страница 10

Three

Sunny’s prosaically delivered suggestion had an electrifying effect on Adam.

Did she realize the connotations he could... was attaching to her proposal? he reflected, staring at her expectant expression in surprised disbelief. Or, he further mused, had she tossed out a deliberate proposition?

The concept didn’t seem to fit what Adam had thus far garnered about her character—but on the other hand, what he actually knew about Miss Sunshine Dase was in fact sorely lacking in evidence.

“Of course, if you prefer one of the seating areas...” she said, shrugging when his silence lengthened.

“Not at all,” Adam was quick to assure her, taking a deep swallow of his coffee in hopes of relieving the sudden dryness in his throat. “You just caught me off guard,” he admitted, draining the cup before continuing, “I...er, you’re not afraid or even uncertain of being alone with me?”

“Not at all,” Sunny mimicked, softening her gentle mockery with a confident smile. “I have never, would never, will never be afraid or uncertain of being alone with you.”

“Why not?” he asked at once, his voice harsh with demand. “What assurance do you have?”

“Because I know you...so well.” Her voice held a note of wistfulness, her eyes, those deep green windows to her soul, were shadowed with regret. “I know you would sacrifice yourself before you would deliberately hurt me.”

Oh, God. What had he gotten into here? Adam asked himself, feeling torn between conflicting, yet equal desires. While part of him, the down-toearth, logical part, urged him to retreat, another part, the captivated, fascinated part, demanded he forge ahead, explore the possibilities.

The inner conflict must have been written plain as day in his expression; it became obvious that Sunny had no difficulty reading him like an open book.

“You can always change your mind,” she offered, keeping her expression devoid of whatever she might be feeling.

“No.” The instant decision made and voiced, Adam placed his napkin on the table. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

Sunny didn’t respond verbally; she made her intent clear by mirroring his act of discarding her napkin.

After signing the check and tipping the waiter, Adam escorted Sunny from the restaurant and directly to the elevators.

In a silence fraught with questions, doubts and a building desire he could not deny, Adam stood beside her during the brief ascent to his floor and walked beside her along the hallway to his suite.

Tension crawled along his nervous system as he pulled shut the door behind them, enclosing them in privacy. A wry smile touched his lips at the thought that at least the bed wasn’t the first thing they saw on entering the sitting room.

“Very nice,” she murmured, glancing around the room before raising teasing eyes to his. “Do you always take a suite of rooms when you travel?”

“No.” Adam shook his head. “I usually don’t spend enough time in the room to care, either way. I took this suite simply because it was all that was available.” He flicked a hand to indicate the cozy grouping of settee and two chairs. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“In a moment,” she said, tossing her cape over the back of a chair as she crossed to the wide window, framed by the open drapes. “The pool area looks rather desolate,” she observed, turning her head to smile at him. “Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, wondering how much time she would waste on small-talk inanities before getting around to meaningful explanations. “But, then, despite the mild weather, it is December, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She turned her back on the window, as if dismissing the scene beyond the pane. “Less than two weeks to go until Christmas.”

“Hmm.” Adam nodded; one subject closed. “May I get you a drink? There’s a good selection in the mini bar.”

Sunny started to shake her head no, then appeared to change her mind. “Yes, why not. I have a lot to tell you. It’ll keep my throat moist. I’ll have the white wine...” She paused to smile. “You may have the red.”

So, she wasn’t planning to procrastinate, he thought, going to the small drinks cabinet while Sunny settled into one corner of the settee. Breaking the seal, he unlocked the cabinet, removed two small bottles, then emptied the contents into the stemmed glasses set on a tray atop the cabinet.

After handing one of the glasses to her, he settled into the other corner of the settee.

The way Sunny sat, knees together, legs turned into the settee, gave him a tantalizing view of her shapely calves and trim ankles, revealed by the gap in her side-slit skirt. The sight both excited and amused Adam. Here he was, unbelievably turned on by the everyday look of a woman’s legs below the knee. Incredible.

“Your health,” he murmured. Suddenly very thirsty, he raised the glass to her before bringing it to his lips to sample the dark red liquid.

“And yours,” she said, following his example.

Adam was barely aware of her response; he was too distracted by the sudden realization of having chosen the wine, a cabernet this time, instead of his normally preferred can of light beer.

Weird. And yet...

The astounding thing was, he found himself savoring the rich, full-bodied flavor of the wine.

Weird, indeed. But then, weird seemed par for the course ever since his first encounter with Sunny, when she had appeared to recognize him and called him Andrew.

Sunny took a sip of her wine, then glided the tip of her tongue over her upper lip.

A deliberate, seductive maneuver? Adam wondered. A flickering coil of heat in the foundation of his manhood gave ample evidence that if it was a deliberate ploy, it had definitely succeeded. He was experiencing the discomfort to prove it.

“Before I begin,” she began, “I would like you to answer a question for me.”

What game was she playing, anyway? Adam took another swallow of his wine to conceal his cynical smile.

Nevertheless, cynicism or not, he decided to play along with her—for the moment.

“Ask anything you like,” he invited expansively. “I have nothing to hide.”

If Sunny noticed the emphasis he’d placed on the “I,” she chose to ignore it.

“From your mention of friends having recommended restaurants to you and your reaction to the wagon on the street earlier, I presume that this is your first visit to the restored area of Colonial Williamsburg.” She raised her delicately arched eyebrows. “Am I correct?”

“Yes.” He frowned. “Why?”

“And...” She smiled. “You’re obviously alone.”

“Yes.” His frown deepened. “Why?”

“That’s what I’m getting at.”

“Excuse me?” Adam made a production of exhaling. “I’m afraid I missed something. You want to back that up and run it by me again?”

“You are here alone.”

Impatience scraped against Adam’s nerves. “I thought I had made that clear.” His voice and the muscles in his jaw were tight. “Yes, I am alone.”

“Why?”

When had their roles switched? Adam asked himself, striving to hang on to control. When had Sunny become the interrogator and he the interrogatee?

“Why am I alone?” His voice had a grating edge.

“Why are you here... alone.” Sunny gave a quick impatient shake of her head. “Why did you come here alone?”

Good question, Adam conceded. Too bad he didn’t have a good answer. He pondered a response for a moment, then with a mental shrug, decided to go with the unvarnished truth, odd as it might sound.

“Believe it or not, I’m here, at this family time of year, because of a whim.”

“A whim,” she repeated, her wry tone giving evidence of disbelief. “Of course.”

“A whim,” he repeated, adamantly.

“You have no family?”

“Yes, I have family,” he answered. “Two brothers and a sister, all younger and all unmarried...” He paused a beat before adding, “As I am.”

“No wife or significant other?”

“No wife or significant other,” he echoed, grimacing at the current term for girlfriend or lover. He hesitated, almost afraid to ask the next logical question, yet aware he had to know the answer. “Do you have family somewhere, your parents, siblings...a husband?”

“Parents, yes, and a brother and sister, both older, both married, with one child apiece, all living in northern California.”

“No husband?” He arched his brows. “Or significant other in your life?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I could ask the same of you.” Her eyebrows rose in reflection of his.

Adam felt caught in a trap of his own devising. He didn’t want to answer, resisted the self exposure of explaining his reluctance to commit to any one woman. And yet, he wanted to hear her reasons for remaining single.

Sunny waited in calm patience for him to respond, as if she somehow knew the inner struggle he was waging. To Adam’s way of thinking, her apparent knowing was more than unnerving, it was damn creepy.

She raised her glass and sipped at the wine, all the while maintaining eye contact with him.

Adam smiled, conceding victory to her in the silent war of wills. “I have just never found a woman with whom I wanted to share either my life or my space,” he said, hoping the explanation was enough to satisfy her. He should have known better, even after such a short acquaintance.

“Found?” Sunny pounced on the word. “Found presupposes that you’ve been looking.”

“Not actively,” he hedged. “Have you?” he shot back. “Been looking, I mean?”

“Actively,” she admitted. “For you.”

Adam heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Why do I have this feeling I’ve landed in the middle of a particularly weird episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’?” he asked, as much of himself as of her.

She laughed. “Scary, huh?”

“More like dumb,” he retaliated.

“Perhaps.” She shrugged. “Nevertheless, for certain reasons we are both unattached.”

Adam slowly expelled another heartfelt sight. “So, you’re basically alone here.”

“Yes. My choice.” She smiled. “And you are here, now, in reaction to a whim.”

Adam suddenly felt funny—funny odd, not funny ha-ha. He didn’t like the feeling, and so felt compelled to explain, which wasn’t easy since he wasn’t accustomed to explaining his motives or actions to anyone and since he wasn’t certain he himself understood the whim, or impulse, or whatever.

“A couple of weeks ago, I turned on the TV to catch the news,” he began, hoping to discern some sense of it for himself while explaining to her. “As a rule, I watch little television, but, since I head up the family owned business, I do like to stay abreast of what’s going on in the business world.”

“You’re the CEO?”

“Yes—” he smiled “—which only means I ride herd over the other members of my family.” Then he laughed aloud. “We’re a diverse and farflung bunch, one running a casino in Deadwood, one managing a ranch in Montana, the youngest doing her fashion thing in San Francisco. And then there are other interests, oil, computer software,” he went on, wondering why in the hell he was babbling away to her, when he was usually closedmouth. And yet, his smile wry, he continued on, just the same.

“It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it. Since I’m the eldest of the lot, I inherited the job of holding the corporate strings and keeping them from tangling.”

“And I suspect you do it very well,” she murmured.

He shrugged. “There have been no complaints... so far.” Frowning at his sudden propensity to shoot his mouth off, Adam brought himself back to the point of discussion. “At any rate, I was in front of the TV. During a break, a commercial came on extolling the attractions of Colonial Williamsburg at Christmastime.” He gave a half laugh, half snort. “I wasn’t even paying attention... and yet...”

“You felt drawn,” she murmured into the quiet space left by his voice trailing off.

“Yes.” Adam cringed inwardly at the detectable strain in his voice.

“Yes.” The understanding in her eyes reflected her solemn tone. “I know.”

“How do you know?” he demanded, the strain in his voice rough edged.

“I’ve felt it, that compelling draw,” she replied, her voice a bare whisper. “Many times.”

“I don’t understand any of this.” Gulping down the last of the wine, Adam rose and went to the drinks cabinet to withdraw another small bottle. “Are you ready for another?” he asked, in a near snarl.

“No.” Sunny shook her head, setting her hair rippling against her shoulders and back.

Adam shuddered in response to the sight of the long, swirling strands, the gold highlights glinting in the glow from the table lamps. His hands ached to bury themselves in the silken mass. In reflex, his fingers clenched around the delicate stem of the wineglass.

“You’re angry,” she murmured, staring pointedly at his white-knuckled grip.

And aroused, he replied in silent frustration, glaring at the offending digits. When had he ever responded to a woman—any woman—like this? Never. Adam knew full well that he had never before in his life, not even as a young and admittedly horny man reacted so strongly to a woman.

“Adam.”

“What?” Startled by the harsh sound of his own voice, he sliced a quick, hard look at her.

“Come sit down, please.” She drew a slow breath, then went on, “I have a story... several stories, to tell you.”

Recalling the tales of Scheherazade, Adam smiled, wryly, took a fortifying swallow of his wine, and returned to settle again on the opposite corner of the settee.

“About what?” He raised his brows in a deliberate arch of skepticism.

“Seasons past,” she answered, her beautiful, revealing eyes filled with gut-wrenching sadness.

Shifting mental gears away from the tales of Scheherazade, Adam suddenly recalled another tale and the visit of Dickens’s fictional ghost to Scrooge. Smiling in an attempt to ease the tension in the muscles banding his stomach, he repeated the miser’s response to the specter.

“Long past?”

Sunny’s return smile was soft, melancholic.

“Our past.”

Adam had reached the point of explosion. Leaping to his feet and nearly spilling the wine in the process, he took the two steps necessary to close the distance between them. Bending down, he brought his face to within inches of hers.

“Dammit, woman,” he erupted. “We have no past. I never laid eyes on you before this afternoon.” Even as he made the claim, Adam felt a twinge of conscience, recollecting the shock of recognition he’d experienced earlier as she had come abreast of him in the street.