Fortune in the Stars (14 page)

She turned restlessly and found Lexy's mischievous face
smiling down at her.

'It's not funny,' she heard herself protest irritably. 'If
this is the sort of thing that's liable to happen to Leos under stress,
the least you could have done was warn me.'

'Falling in love with my beautiful brother?' chuckled
Lexy. 'There's nothing you could have done about it…it's
written in the stars.'

'But I'm not in love with him, you idiot—I'm not
even sure that I like him! It's simply a question of a most
inconvenient infatuation—and it's all your fault! But I'm only this cross with you because I know you're all
right…'

She awoke from that dream-filled sleep to the shrill ring
of the telephone and to the sight of Dominic heaving his tall frame
almost off the foot of the bed in his rush to answer it. And with
waking, too, came the sluggish uncertainty of how much had been
dreaming and how much reality.

It was mercifully a long conversation, though Dominic's
contributions to it were no more than the occasional monosyllabic
utterance. But it gave her time to sort out her thoughts and accept the
unpalatable fact that she was undoubtedly the innocent victim of a most
unwelcome dose of infatuation…which he would get wind of
over her dead body!

'Any news?' she asked when he replaced the receiver. Her
faith in her instinctive conviction that Lexy would be all right was
now unassailable—her friends eventual appearance, safe and
sound, was merely a matter of time. And she wanted that time to be as
brief as possible so that her every link with him could be severed
without delay.

'I suppose there is…sort of,' he muttered
cagily.

Penny sat bolt upright. 'What do you mean, sort of?' she
demanded.

He rose, ramming his hands into his pockets as he moodily
inspected his feet.

'There's a positive lead on Lexy and a
man—though it's not certain that he's Langton. Unfortunately,
they've had to pull back and have a bit of a re-think, as it seems
there are others covering the same ground as they are.'

'I don't understand,' whispered Penny, almost holding her
breath lest the solidity of her conviction be disturbed.

'Neither do they,' mumbled Dominic wearily, seating
himself down on the edge of his bed, his eyes still on his feet. 'When
you're probing around what are the fringes of just about the sickest
part of what amounts to the underworld, you can't afford to make
mistakes. They're fairly sure these other people asking around have
Lexy's well-being in mind, but fairly sure isn't enough to take the
risk of confronting them.'

'Lexy has no end of friends,' said Penny. 'And I'm sure a
number close enough to start worrying over her disappearance
and—'

'I contacted just about every friend she has, before
leaving Mallorca,' he interrupted quietly.

'How?' exclaimed Penny. 'You probably wouldn't even know
half of them!'

'I don't know ninety per cent of them,' he agreed. 'But
Lexy left her address book at my place in Paris the last time she was
there. As it was only a duplicate there wasn't any need to rush to
return it to her, but I took it with me to Mallorca with the intention
of doing so there.'

As he spoke, Penny's attention was only partially on his
words…the greater part of it was centred solely on Sarah.
No, she told herself firmly. Sarah simply wouldn't have the first idea
how to initiate such a search. And besides, Sarah knew Dominic was
doing everything possible.

'Perhaps it's someone not listed in Lexy's address book,'
she suggested, confident that whoever it was it certainly wouldn't be
Sarah.

He shrugged, saying nothing as his eyes rose to hers,
shrewd and piercing.

'Well, it's certainly nothing to do with me!' she
exclaimed in defensive response to a ghostly twinge of guilt despite
all her certainty.

'I'm not aware of having implied it has,' Dominic
murmured, steel in his look. 'Though I wouldn't care to be in your
shoes if it had—the last thing we need is a load of redundant
cooks spoiling this particular broth.'

'I'd have thought anything was preferable to it being a
load of crooks,' she snapped, then instantly clapped her hand over her
mouth in horror at such a thought.

'Why the sudden consternation?' he drawled. 'It's only the
truth.'

'I
know
it's the truth,' wailed
Penny exasperatedly. 'It's just… Heavens, I'm beginning to
wonder if you're capable of discussing the weather without turning it
into something contentious! Why does any conversation we have always
end up sounding like all-out warfare?'

He rose, glancing down at his watch.

'For several reasons,' he replied, his tone almost bored.

'Your downright rudeness being the main one,' she ,
retaliated furiously, swinging her legs off the bed and standing up.
'Quite frankly, I'd prefer it if you dispensed with talking to me
altogether.'

'Are you absolutely sure of that?' he enquired, walking
round to where she stood and cupping her face in his hands before she
had the remotest inkling of what he was about to do. 'I think a much
better solution would be for the two of us to hit that sack here and
now and get on with doing what promises to come delightfully naturally
to us.'

'You—' Her words of outrage were cut short as
his mouth descended on hers, impatient in its intimate exploration and
exuding utter confidence of its welcome.

It was this casual and altogether humiliating assurance he
embodied that forced her to clamp her lips in denial of the welcome
they threatened to display and that brought her hands clenched and
pummelling against his chest.

'Stop being silly and put your arms around me, Penny,' he
coaxed lightly.

'I don't want to!'

'Liar,' he taunted, his arms capturing and stilling her.

'Damn you, Dominic—I hate you!'

'But you want me a good deal more than you'll ever hate
me,' he chuckled, falling back on to the bed and carrying her with him.
'In fact, I've a feeling the wanting is what constitutes one of our
most irksome problems,' he whispered, his words soft and breathy
against her ear. 'So why don't we do the sensible thing and solve that
problem?'

'I've heard some corny lines in seduction,' she retorted,
frantically turning her face from the seductive search of his lips,
'but that one's really in a class of its own… Dominic, stop
it!'

'Why?' he muttered, his mouth coaxing on hers, his tongue
teasing against her lower lip. 'Instead of hurling abuse at me, why
don't you just put your arms around me?' he cajoled, laughter in his
voice.

Penny clenched her fists, a silent groan of protest
winging its way through her as her treacherous arms strained to obey
his teasing suggestion. She was lying sprawled half on top of him, a
line of fire burning down the length of her body where it made contact
with his.

'Come on, Penny,' he teased. 'Put your arms around
me…you know you want to.'

'No, I—' She bit back her words of denial just
in time, suddenly aware that the upper half of his body had begun
undulating gently against hers, the material of his clothes grazing
against the prominently taut peaks of her breasts in a way she was
finding shockingly erotic.

'What were you about to say?' he murmured with feigned
innocence.

'You think this is all a huge joke, don't you?' she
accused him in strangled tones, hating him for his ability to play
games at a time when every shred of her concentration was on trying to
keep her increasingly uncooperative body in check. 'Dominic, for
heaven's sake, grow up!' she pleaded, the warm masculine scent of him
playing havoc with her already intoxicated senses as her face pressed
against him.

'I promise you, I'm as grown up as I'm ever likely to be,'
he whispered, his body turning and shifting hers till she was on her
back.

He gazed down at her, the sultry gleam in his heavy-lidded
eyes contrasting disturbingly with the curiously expressionless set of
his features. 'And as for my regarding this as a huge
joke…just how wrong can you get, Penny?'

He lifted her against him, his mouth taking hers in the
slow sensuousness of a kiss completely at variance with the urgent
arousal of the body against which his impatiently tightening arms now
drew her.

'Please, Penny.' It was the choked softness in his plea
that lost her the battle, driving her arms up to cling around his neck
and causing her lips to part in guileless welcome to the impassioned
search of his.

And, once her resistance was gone, her lips remained
locked with his even in that brief instant when faint ghosts of alarm
sounded in the recesses of her mind, as he impatiently removed first
his jacket and then his tie, before drawing her once more into the
seductive haven of his embrace.

'You excite me more than any other woman ever has,' his
lips whispered against hers as he then proceeded to remove his shirt to
the tune of warning bells now tolling a lot more distinctly within her.

Again it was the gentle seduction of his mouth against
hers that stilled her alarm, so befuddling her mind with its sweetness
that it was only when he drew away from her to enable himself to draw
her top over her head that she became aware of his intention to remove
it. And even then her arms rose in acquiescence, allowing him to remove
the top completely, the only thought in her head being to get this
interruption over and done with so that his lips could return to wreak
their heady magic on hers.

Then she felt herself torn between growing alarm and the
total intoxication of her senses as once more the ardent play of his
mouth was momentarily interrupted by his deft removal of her bra.

'You're more beautiful than any man is capable of
imagining,' he whispered huskily, his eyes drinking in the golden
softness of her beauty before his mouth began touching and tasting at
the base of her throat, then moving on in tantalising moistness to the
taut excitement of her breasts.

She clasped his head to her, a small cry catching in her
throat as his tongue teased against her aching flesh and her body began
swaying in a rhythm of invitation over which she had no control and of
which she had scant awareness.

'Penny, I want you,' he exclaimed hoarsely. 'A wanting
that began almost from the first moment I saw you…and I knew
it would be like this, almost from that first moment.'

He lifted his head, his eyes holding hers in their
impassioned darkness while his hands slid slowly down to the waistband
of her skirt.

'Almost from that first moment, I knew I would hold you
naked and eager in my arms.' His hands moved purposefully to the
fastening on her skirt. 'Just as you knew it too, didn't you, Penny?'

'Yes, I… No!' she cried out in confusion,
turning her face away from his and dragging her arms from around him to
fling them across her eyes.

She pressed her arms against her eyes in an unconscious
gesture of protection. It hadn't been the confidence of his actions
that had triggered this terrible panic of alarm in her; and the blatant
manifestation of arousal in his body had acted only as a potent
aphrodisiac on hers. It had been the pleading softness in his words
that had stripped her of her defences—but that softness had
only been surface-deep, never gentling his features, never once taming
the brittle hardness that had gleamed side by side with the heat of
passion in his eyes.

'No?' he echoed, a mocking edge banishing all softness
from his tone. 'Yet followed so closely on the heels of an altogether
uncharacteristically honest "yes".' He laughed harshly, drawing the
protection of her arms from her eyes.

'Yes, I want you,' she stated tonelessly. 'Even I'm not
stupid enough to try denying that. But no, unlike you I… I
happen to believe there has to be something more to lovemaking than the
mere gratifying of a physical urge.'

'Has there?' he drawled. 'I really wouldn't know.' He
rolled from her on to his back and lay gazing up at the ceiling.

'No, you wouldn't, would you?' she exclaimed bitterly, a
bitterness she found oddly devoid of any sense of humiliation but, far
more oddly, based on an elusive and completely inexplicable sense of
disappointment.

'Exactly what criterion do you use in order to help you
decide it's OK for you to make love?' he mused aloud.

Penny sat up, hugging her knees against her chest. She
said nothing.

'It can't be love,' he continued blandly. 'I mean, it's
not as though you're in love with loverboy…are you, Penny?'
Undeterred by her silence, he carried on. 'Or perhaps you
thought
you loved him and decided to move in with him on that false—'

'Just stop it, will you?' she exploded. 'If you must know
I'm just not capable of making love with a man I dislike!'

'If that's the case, you'd better accept that you like
me,' Dominic murmured complacently, rolling on to his stomach and
gazing up at her. 'Because you're sure as hell capable of making love
to me…wouldn't you agree?'

Almost beside herself with fury, Penny was about to leap
up and storm off into the bathroom—anywhere to be free of
him—when, very much in the nick of time, she remembered the
humiliating fact of her near-nakedness. She had to make do with giving
him a look which should have killed, but which was still no true
reflection of the fury boiling within her.

'Perhaps the best thing is to return to where we left
off,' he taunted, his eyes cold. 'Or are you determined to kid yourself
it was your will-power that brought an end to the proceedings?'

'Would you mind turning your back?' she hissed. 'I'd like
to get dressed.'

'Let me help you,' he offered, rising to kneeling position
beside her, his smile evilly mocking as he scooped up her bra on the
end of one finger and dangled it provocatively in front of her.