Fire Brand. Diana Palmer

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      “Just because you and I were raised with eighty-year-old attitudes doesn’t mean the rest of the world was,” she said with a rueful smile. “They’re engaged, and although it’s been a bit rocky, they’ve been together for a whole year. It’s a new world, Bowie.”

      He looked down at her. “When I care enough to live with a woman, I’ll care enough to give her my name first.”

      She stared into his black eyes, trying to imagine Bowie in love with a woman. He seemed completely self-contained on the surface—a man’s man with everything going for him, to whom a woman would be only an amusement. But Aggie said that he read love poems sometimes in the silence of his own room, and that he liked Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto—a romantic piece if ever there was one. He was fascinating in his complexity—a modern man with a very old-fashioned outlook on life. Aggie had raised him that way, just as Gaby’s father had raised her in the church, even though he’d dragged her from pillar to post until that tragic night they’d parted.

      “What are you thinking?” he asked curiously.

      “That you’re not like any man I’ve ever known,” she blurted out.

      “Should I be flattered?”

      “Yes, I think so,” she said honestly, her voice soft and quiet in the stillness, broken only by faint strains of music.

      He found himself smiling at the admission. In all the years he’d known Gaby, she’d always backed away from anything personal. This had to be something of a milestone. Perhaps she was lonely, and the loneliness was breaking through that shell of reserve she wore. He knew the very color of loneliness. It drove him sometimes. He’d been by himself for a long time, but there had always been the need for another voice in the darkness—a hand to reach out to when the world came too close. Gaby stirred that need in him, but he hesitated to let her get close. There was something vaguely mysterious about her. It attracted him, even as it made him wary.

      Without replying, he turned and guided her along the driveway with him, pretending a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He smoked his cigarette quietly. “Looks like a Florida setting, doesn’t it?” he mused, nodding toward the grove of palm trees.

      She leaped at the normalcy. The tension between them was growing. “Yes. Someone told me once that there were no palm trees around here a hundred years ago. They aren’t native to Arizona—they’re supposedly imports.”

      “Do tell?” He smiled down at her. “How about the rattlesnakes?”

      “They’re natives,” she said dryly.

      He chuckled, easing her between two parked cars, so close that her breasts brushed against his chest just briefly in a contact that made him distinctly aware of her.

      The smile faded as he held her there, looking down into her puzzled eyes with an equal curiosity. His body throbbed to the beat of the music inside the house while his eyes held hers in a new, different kind of look. Without really understanding why, he moved deliberately closer for just a second, pressing her back against the car behind her, and he felt her breath catch as his body touched hers in a contact neither of them had ever sought before.

      Her perfume drifted up into his nostrils. He could feel the faint tension in her posture, the drawing back as her hands came up to her waist in an almost defensive position. He wondered idly if the nervousness was caused by fear or attraction. His eyes fell to her soft mouth and he was surprised to find it trembling.

      Gaby had never allowed herself this close to Bowie before, and now she understood why. His size was intimidating, but there was something more—something deep and still and frightening. He made her tremble. It was the second time in her life that she’d felt the sting of pleasure that came from a man’s warm, strong proximity. She wanted to run away and toward him at the same time, and her confusing feelings puzzled her.

      For long, static seconds, neither of them moved. It took the sudden opening of the back door to break the spell.

      Embarrassed, Gaby went ahead of him to be hugged and kissed by Mary, while Ted looked on with something less than joy in his expression at the guests. Mary worked in the composing room of the newspaper, while Ted was assistant sales manager. She’d known them both ever since she’d gone to work at the paper.

      “This is Bowie,” she introduced the tall, handsome man beside her, hoping she didn’t look as disoriented as she felt.

      Mary’s Ted wasn’t bad-looking, but there was only one Bowie. Mary stared up at him with undisguised fascination, barely aware that he shook her hand and said all the polite things.

      “My goodness,” Mary exclaimed, and then caught herself and laughed. “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. McCayde. Gaby talks about you all the time.”

      “Does she?” Bowie looked at a beet-red Gaby with undisguised amusement that hid the remnants of an explosive tension.

      “She threatens the other reporters with you,” Ted said with faint sarcasm, grinning wickedly at Gaby.

      “I do not!” Gaby exclaimed.

      “Liar.” Ted laughed. “She waves you like a flag when anybody comes too close. She’s the original ‘Miss Don’t Touch’ at the office.”

      Bowie’s eyebrow went up in an expressive arch, not only at the implication, but at Ted’s frankly insulting way of putting it. His black eyes kindled as he stared at Ted.

      “Stop embarrassing my friend,” Mary said with a nervous laugh, nudging Ted. “Come on in and have some champagne and canapés,” she added, taking Gaby away. “You’ll have to overlook Ted. He’s been sampling too much punch,” she added, with a cool smile in her fiancé’s direction.

      “That’s what impending marriage does to a man,” Ted replied with just a little too much venom, despite his forced smile. “Why women think all the trimmings are necessary is beyond me. She’s got a house and a man and a good job, but she has to have a wedding ring.”

      Mary flushed and got Gaby out onto the balcony. “He doesn’t want to go through with it,” she confessed miserably. “He says that marriage is just a social statement. But my parents don’t feel that way, and neither do his.” Mary fiddled with the soft ruffle at her bodice. “Plus, I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

      “Mary!” Gaby said. “Congratulations...!”

      “Ted says he doesn’t want the responsibility of a wife and child. But it will just kill my parents if the baby’s born out of wedlock,” she groaned, lifting her eyes to Gaby’s shocked ones.

      “Ted will get used to the idea,” Gaby said gently. “And everything will work out just fine.”

      Mary laughed coolly. “Will it?” she said. “He’s started talking about that new girl with long hair who’s working with the Sports Editor.” She looked resolute. “If he wants out, he can go and move in with her. My parents said that if I didn’t go through with the wedding, I could come home, and I think I will.” Her face tautened. “I’m going to let him go. I know that’s what he really wants.”

      “If it’s what you really want, too,” СКАЧАТЬ