“Seals and chimps, huh?” She looked up. Zach was smiling at her. It would take only the simplest movement to lift her hand to his cheek…“What else goes on at these shindigs?”
Eve told him. She dredged up every strange, funny story she’d ever heard. If she could keep talking, keep him laughing, then maybe she could stop thinking about how it would feel if he suddenly gathered her into his arms and kissed her…
Keep smiling, Zach told himself, keep laughing, Landon, even if it feels as if the muscles in your face are freezing, even if you don’t know what in hell the woman leaning against you is saying.
He could hardly feel the weight of her, but that didn’t keep him from being aware of every soft, feminine inch. Her breasts brushed his chest, her belly brushed his loins, and if he didn’t find a way to move away from her soon, he was going to disgrace himself.
What the hell was this? He was not a randy kid. Eve was attractive, yes. A man would have to be dead not to see that, but so what? This room was full of attractive women. The world was full of them.
He’d married one, hadn’t he?
Eve was telling him another story, something about a basketball tournament between starlets. Her face was animated, her cheeks flushed with color. She laughed softly and tilted her head back, exposing the long, clean line of her throat, and he had to fight the urge to bend his head, to touch his mouth to that throat…
A man balancing a pair of highball glasses filled to the brim with amber liquid edged past them. Eve moved closer, although Zach wouldn’t have thought it was possible. She lay her hand on his arm for balance.
He looked down at her fingers with their ivory-tipped nails and wondered what she would do if he took her hand, brought it to his body and let her feel exactly what she was doing to him.
Zach stifled a groan. Hell, he thought, oh, hell. You’re being an ass, Landon. Think about something else. Think about—about what Eve’s telling you. Concentrate, dammit. Concentrate!
He forced himself to hear her voice, not just as a soft, musical drone but to hear the words.
“And then,” she said, “I thought, who’s kidding who? This isn’t just ridiculous, it’s audacious.”
“Audacious,” Zach repeated stupidly, nodding his head as if he had a clue to what she was saying.
She smiled, and he watched the way her lips curved in a soft, sweet line. Her mouth was a deep, lush pink, her teeth white and perfect. He remembered the taste of those lips, wondered how it would feel if those teeth closed lightly on his flesh in the heat of passion.
Dammit, was he crazy? He knew what this woman was. He’d been married to one like her—although compared to Eve, his former wife was an amateur. Eve was twice as beautiful and ten times more devious. Just look at the games she’d played with his father…
“…pointless to pretend it wasn’t happening,” she said, and laughed. “We both knew it. What was the point in playing games? So I took a deep breath and I said…”
“You said, this is all a waste of time.” Zach’s voice, harsh and edged, rasped from his throat. “You said, why don’t we cut to the chase, Tom? Or Dick, or Harry, or maybe it was even Ed. You said, I want something from you, you want something from me, so let’s just go back to my place or yours, take off our clothes, get into bed and——”
He stopped, stunned by his own cruelty, by his coarseness—and by the shock and horror registering on Eve’s face.
“Eve,” he said, reaching out his hand, “Eve——”
But she was already gone, spinning away from him and pushing through the crowd that still thronged the room.
Zach cursed himself for a fool and went after her.
“Eve!”
She couldn’t hear him, or didn’t want to. He couldn’t tell which. The music was blasting loudly again and the noise of the crowd was almost unbearable.
“Eve, wait!”
She was still ahead of him, a blur of golden hair and a flash of blue skirt. He shoved past a knot of people blocking the open doors to the brick patio and broke free into the night.
Where in hell was she?
Zach stood still and looked around him Eve had been right; it wasn’t half as crowded out here. People were standing around in little clusters, talking and drinking, and he could see that she was not one of them.
There was an enormous pool off to his right, rimmed on one side by a series of pseudo thatched-roof huts he supposed were dressing rooms. A bar and a series of elaborate buffet table were behind the pool, and a DJ in a flowered Hawaiian shirt and candy-striped shorts was working his ear-splitting magic over a pyramid of audio equipment beside a parquet dance floor just to the left.
And, beyond that, where steps led down from the deck and fell away into darkness, he saw a flutter of blue and gold.
“Eve,” Zach said harshly, and set off after her.
He caught her at the bottom of the steps, clasping her shoulders and whirling her toward him.
“Let go of me!”
“Listen to me, Eve.”
“No!” She pounded her fists against his shoulders. “You bastard, let me go!”
“Eve!” Zach trapped her hands in his and dragged them down the sides of her body. “Dammit, will you listen?”
“I did listen! But I’m not going to anymore.”
She was panting now, and struggling, and he fell back against the wide trunk of a eucalyptus tree and took her with him, wedging her between his legs in an effort to keep her still.
“I should never have said what I did. It was wrong, I know it was.” Zach clasped her face in his hands. “Dammit,” he said gruffly, “will you look at me? I’m trying to apologize.”
“You already did that once tonight, remember? And I, like a fool, let you.” Eve wrapped her hands around his wrists and tried to break free of his iron-hard grasp, but it was useless. “Let go of me, Zach!”
“Eve, hell, I don’t know why I said——”
“It’s because you’re an insulting, domineering, insensitive son of a bitch!”
“Yes. All right. I’m not denying——”
“And stupid,” she said, trying not to let loose the tears building inside her even though they were surely just tears of anger. “Blind, dumb, male stupid!”
“Yes. I admit it. It’s just that—that I was standing there going crazy, thinking about how every man inside that damned room wanted you——”
“You are crazy! Did you see who’s at this party tonight? Did you take a good, hard look?”
Zach’s thumbs traced the high, delicate arcs of her cheekbones.
“—and of how glad you were to see that macho bag of wind, Dex Burton——”
“Dex Burton?” Eve almost laughed. “He makes me sick to my stomach.”
Zach’s mouth twisted. “That was some greeting to give a guy who makes you sick to your stomach.”
“Dex practically mugged me! He grabbed me before I could do anything to stop him—and how could I have stopped him, when we were packed in like sardines in a tin?”
“But I saw——”
“You’re a fool, Zachary Landon, that’s what you are.” Her voice cracked. “A damned miserable fool.”
He drew back a little, his hands still cupping her face.
“Yes.” His voice was very low. “Yes, I think I am.”
Eve took a deep breath. “I want to go home now.”
“No.”
“Fine. You stay and have a good time. I’ll take a taxi.”
Zach turned with Eve still in his arms, so that now it was she who was leaning against the tree.
“No,” he whispered, and his hands slid down and cupped her shoulders.
“What do you mean, no? The night’s over, and so is our deal. I’d sooner work for the devil himself than——”
The rest of her words were lost as his mouth took hers.
Eve was not a child. She was a woman and she had been kissed before. By boys, by men—even, on more than one occasion, by screen legends
whose kisses should have been enough to have set her world spinning.
It had never happened—until now.