While the Fire Rages (22 page)

Daddy

At first Jo had laughed at the note, another in a long line of similar, whimsical missives. And then she had cried, because he was so dear and trying so hard to appear lighthearted in the face of his unhappiness. As fate would have it, her mother had entered the kitchen as Jo was wiping the tears from her cheeks. In response to her mother’s concern over her tears, Jo had silently handed her the note. After skimming the lines, her mother had smiled bitterly.

“All men can be charming when it suits their purposes,” Ellen Lawrence said dryly.

“Oh, Mom.” Jo sighed, beginning to feel the familiar tightness in her stomach that usually appeared on her visits home. “Why do you always use that tone of voice when talking about Daddy?”

“Because he’s a man,” Ellen retorted. “I would have thought your experience with Gary Devlin would have taught you that they’re all the same. They want one thing from a woman, then, once they get what they want, they no longer want her.”

Jo remained perfectly still in hopes that her mother would expound on her subject. To date, this outburst was the closest Ellen had come to explaining the problem between herself and her husband, Mark.

“You’d do better to concentrate on your career,” Ellen went on. “And forget the myth about finding happiness with a man. That kind of happiness exists only in fairy tales.”

Jo knew from her mother’s flat tone that the subject was now closed, and she had learned nothing of why she had always felt that she was hovering in the demarcation zone between opposing forces.

As usual, when Jo returned to New York the day after Thanksgiving, she felt depressed and vaguely responsible for the failure of her parents’ marriage. Intellectually Jo knew she was in no way at fault, just as she knew, intellectually, she was not a cold, unresponsive woman like her mother. Lord, hadn’t she lain awake night after night aching for the touch of one particular man? Somehow knowing something intellectually did not erase the scars carried over from childhood.

Jo sniffed in the silence of the bedroom. Then, as if her visit home hadn’t been depressing enough, she had received that call from Casey Delheny! Why the hell hadn’t she followed her first impulse and sent
her
assistant up to Vermont? Because she’d been hoping for a mental diversion, Jo derided herself. What she had found had had more the effect of a blow to the solar plexus. Oh, the technical problem regarding the application of one of Casey’s designer’s ideas to the existing plumbing plans had been relatively easy to unwrinkle. Relating to what Casey had confided to her over one too many drinks the night before Jo was due to return to New York was infinitely more difficult to handle.

“Are Brett and Marsha still together?” Casey had asked Jo morosely, swallowing almost half of her third martini.

“Together?”Jo had prompted softly, telling herself Casey, unhappy because of her lengthy separation from Sean, who was still in the Poconos, was talking through a gin-and-vermouth haze.

“Yes, you know, like in bed. That kind of together.” Raising her glass, Casey gulped down the remainder of her drink. “The kind of together Sean and I have been doing damn little of lately.” Waving her glass in the air, Casey indicated to their waiter that she wanted another drink. Tilting her head, she ran an assessing glance over Jo. “You know, I do believe Brett’s even more of a live wire than Wolf is.” She laughed insinuatingly. “Business-wise
and
otherwise. I swear, he and Marsha spent every night together locked inside his room. Yet he was hard at work bright and early every morning.”

Jo had returned to New York more depressed than before, even though she had suspected an affair between Brett and Marsha since he’d called her and as much as ordered her to find an apartment for Marsha. Walking into her office the morning she returned to find that insultingly terse note ordering her to “get in here” had been the absolute last straw for Jo. Suddenly bone weary, she had gone to Brett’s office in a cold rage, prepared to resign if he refused her request for a leave of absence. She had to get away, to think and to rest.

Circles, circles, circles. Would this mental merry-go-round never end? Jo sighed. Lord, she was tired of her own thoughts! How many times must she plow over the same row before she found ground fertile enough to sprout some answers? Were there any answers? Jo moved restlessly between the tangled sheets, enjoying the sensuous feel of the fine cotton against her naked skin. A smile of physical contentment softened the taut line of her mouth. Brett had given her the answer to one question, perhaps the most important one. Her initial response to him had been an outright revelation! Always before, with Gary, she had gone positively rigid the moment he began to enter. But then the moment of penetration had always come mere minutes after he had drawn her to him. Now, after experiencing Brett’s lovemaking and the infinite care he took to arouse her body to the point of readiness that equaled his own, Jo realized that Gary had only been interested in self-gratification, not mutual satisfaction. In the expertise stakes, one might say that Brett crossed the wire before Gary ever left the gate.

The rather silly analogy amused Jo. Pushing back the covers with one hand, Jo lifted her other hand to smother a giggle. Jumping off the bed, she shook her head in amazement; she never giggled! Giggling was strictly for teenage girls, usually in connection with teenage boys! Telling herself her gray matter was beginning to flake, Jo grabbed up her robe and strolled to the bathroom.

Standing under the stinging-hot shower spray, Jo came to terms with what she had already decided subconsciously. She would accept whatever Brett offered her of himself for as long as he offered it.

Turning around, she dropped her head to allow the hot spray to massage the tension out of the muscles in the back of her neck. Her decision was probably not a very intelligent one, Jo mused, sighing blissfully as the jet fingers reduced her muscles to rubber. I want him, she argued in her own defense, even if I have to share him. An image of Marsha Wenger rose to torment Jo’s mind, and she gritted her teeth in determination. Bump Marsha Wenger! Brett’s here now, with me, and I’ll hang on to him for all I’m worth, even if it means going to Florida with him. And while I’m there, I just might have a word with that blabbermouth Wolfgang Renninger!

Applying the same sharp intellect that had earned her the position of assistant to Wolf, Jo ruthlessly refused to use the old feminine cop-out of not being able to live without Brett. She could survive very well, if not too comfortably, without him and she knew it. Then again, why should she? At this moment in her life she was deeply in love, and she was Brett’s, mind, body, and soul. When her time with him was over, she would accept the hand dealt to her without a wince. What the hell! Jo shrugged, oddly cold within the cascading hot water. She didn’t want commitment either. Did she? Of course not, she assured herself bracingly. Jo was so consumed with her own rationalizing, she didn’t hear the door being opened or feel a draft when the shower curtain was inched aside,

“Have you taken to sleeping in the shower now too, water baby?”

With a gasp that grew into a gurgle, due to water in the mouth, Jo flung her head back to glare at Brett. “Are you trying to drown me?” she sputtered indignantly.

“I don’t have to,” Brett drawled dryly, unmindful of his shirt as he reached in to turn the water off. “You’re doing a pretty good job of it yourself.” Curling a now soaking wet arm around Jo’s waist, he lifted her off her feet. “Out, water baby, before you wash yourself down the drain.”

“Brett!” Jo protested his handling of her, although she didn’t struggle. Only a complete idiot would take the chance of slipping out of one arm to land in a painful heap on the hard floor of a bathtub! “I was not falling asleep. I was letting the hot water work the ache out of my muscles!” Jo was so annoyed she was unaware of exactly what she was admitting to. As Brett set her carefully onto the fluffy bath mat, Jo shrugged off his arm. “And I wish you’d stop calling me that ridiculous name!”

“But I like that ridiculous name.” Brett grinned. “I also like to look at you when you’re all wet and slippery.” The grin grew up to be a leer. “You are one sexy baby when you’re wet.” Bending to her, he licked a drop of water from the tip of her breast. “Hmmm ... nectar,” he murmured throatily, curling his tongue around the swiftly hardening bud before, very gently, closing his teeth on it. “And ambrosia.” He passed judgment on the taste of her.

“You’re positively crazy!” Jo gasped, unconsciously arching her back to give him better access to his point of interest. “Oh, Brett... what are you doing?”Jo knew full well what he was doing; she could feel the results of his suckling lips through the nerve endings in her quickly heating core.

“You don’t know?” Brett teased, skimming his tongue across her body from one breast tip to the other. “Maybe I’m not doing it right.” Before her startled eyes, he dropped to his knees. “I guess I need a lot more practice. But first, I think I’ll get rid of this sopping sweater.” Straightening, he whipped the garment up his body and over his head, tossing it aside carelessly. It landed in the bathtub with a soft plop that neither he nor Jo heard. Then, his hands clasping her lightly around her rib cage, his eyes watching hers, Brett enclosed one nipple inside his mouth.

It was the most incredibly erotic action Jo could imagine, Brett watching her, while she watched him make love to her body! Lightheaded, feeling her knees begin to buckle, Jo grasped Brett’s shoulders to keep from falling, a purring moan tickling the back of her throat.

“Ah ... perhaps I am doing it right.” He laughed softly. Slowly, tantalizingly, he lavished attention on her midsection, stringing moist kisses down to her navel. When he dipped the tip of his tongue into the indentation, Jo shuddered and gasped his name aloud. “You’re trembling,” he breathed against the damp skin stretched tautly over her abdomen. “From the cold outside, I wonder, or the heat inside?”

Quickly losing touch with reality, Jo sagged against him and, at the feel of his tongue dancing around the edge of her delta triangle she lost all control of her legs and sank to the floor before him. It was a short, fast trip from her knees to her back. The soft fibers of the bath mat caressed Jo’s spine while the prickly hair on Brett’s chest caressed her breasts.

With her feet flat on the floor, and her knees bent and angled out, Jo should have been uncomfortable. She wasn’t. Even the chafing sensation of Brett’s jean-clad thighs against the inside of her own was more exciting than abrading. The realization of his arousal as he arched his body into hers was more exciting still. Brett’s hands captured Jo’s breasts as his mouth captured her lips. The assault on her senses was total. Spearing her tongue into his mouth, Jo dug her nails into his shoulders, glorying in the grunt of pleasure that exploded from his throat as he thrust his hips in reaction.

“I’ve got to get out of these damn jeans.” He groaned, heaving himself up and away from her with obvious reluctance. “Stay warm for me, babe,” he pleaded hoarsely, his hands fumbling with the belt buckle.

In fact, he didn’t get completely out of the jeans. As Brett was about to lever himself to his feet, Jo called his name softly, beguilingly. The jeans, along with the cotton boxers he wore underneath them, were forgotten the moment they pooled around his knees. Whispering her name in a voice made rough with urgency, Brett filled Jo’s body with his own.

The tension building inside Jo coiled tightly, and still more tightly, until, Brett’s name filling her mind in an endless scream and reverberating in the tiled room like an arching whimper, it snapped, springing her into near oblivion where she was conscious only of the ecstasy shuddering through her and the sound of her own hoarsely cried name beating against her eardrums.

Jo surfaced from the mind-blanketing fog of sensuality to the awareness of the crushing weight of Brett’s collapsed body on hers and the soothing sensation of his hand stroking her hip. She was still wet, only now the moisture that sheened her body was the natural result of strenuous physical activity. Raising a lazily limp hand, she smoothed her palm down his equally slick back, her sensitized skin monitoring the responsive shiver that followed the path from shoulder to waist.

“God! You are one exciting woman,” Brett rasped through uneven breaths, the tip of his tongue testing the saltiness of her skin. “I feel as though I’ve been pulled through the wringer and hung out to dry.”

“Is that good?”Jo murmured, gliding her hand up his back to tangle her fingers in his sweat-dampened hair.

“Extremely good. In fact, it’s what all the noise has been about all these many centuries.” Brett laughed softly, “What do the French call it? The little death or some such?”

“Some such.”Jo sighed contentedly. “It must be true because I feel a little dead right now.”

Brett’s bark of delighted laughter pried her heavy eyelids up, and Jo stared, bemused, into his laughing face. He was handsome when he laughed like that, but then, he was handsome when he didn’t laugh like that too. At that moment, Jo knew she could refuse him nothing. Apparently, possibly because of the dreamy expression on her face, Brett knew it too.

“You’ll stay here with me through the twenty-third?” Brett was all seriousness now.

“Yes.”Jo smiled as she felt his chest expand and depress on a sigh of relief.

“And you’ll go with me when I fly south on the twenty-fourth?” His chest expanded again, then became still as he held his breath.

“Yes.” Jo’s smile deepened as his sharply released breath feathered her cheek. Why ruin the effect by telling him she had decided to go with him before his exhausting inducement?

“Hmmm ... have I told you you’re beautiful?” Brett nibbled gently along Jo’s jawline.

“Not nearly enough.” Jo laughed as he nipped on her chin in tender punishment.

“And did I thank you for wringing me out so deliciously?” He teased her lips apart with his tongue.

“I think your wringing was more than enough thanks.” Jo admitted to her own intense pleasure in his body.