Heather Graham (10 page)

“Like it?” he asked, pulling the car to a stop right before the excuse for a road ended and became pure sand.

Yes, of course she did. It was the type of place one dreamed about. The sand and the sea, the sun and a cool breeze. A gentle scent of freshness and salt. It was the type of place they advertised in travel brochures, secluded, remote …

He was watching her closely, she knew. She turned to him politely, gripping her door handle. “Where are we? This can’t be a public beach?”

“The property belongs to a friend of mine,” he said briefly.

They got out of the car, and Katie looked around while he opened the car’s small trunk.

“Want to give me a hand?”

“Sure.”

He gave her a huge worn quilt to carry and picked up a wicker picnic basket himself and started toward the beach. Katie tried to follow his long strides, but sand kept filling her shoes. She paused to take them off; he waited patiently, then started walking again.

“This suit you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

They were about thirty feet from the water, sheltered from the breeze by a stark rise of rock.

Kent set down the basket, then helped her with the quilt. He used her shoes to hold down two of the corners, then pulled off his sneakers for the remaining two.

Katie didn’t sit right away; she pretended a great interest in the water, crossing her arms and shivering a little as she stared out at the waves.

“Are you cold?”

“No, not really.”

“Have a glass of wine. It might warm you up.”

She turned around at last. He appeared languidly comfortable, leaned on an elbow, his length stretched over one side of the quilt with a wineglass in his hand. He offered it to Katie.

She sat gingerly on her own side of the quilt, annoyed with the cynical amusement in his dark eyes. “Wine in glasses?” She inquired cattily, accepting the glass. “I was expecting beer bottles.”

“Ah, yes! And I could open them with my teeth, right?” he asked her.

Katie shrugged. “It would go with the macho image.”

“Do I have a macho image?”

“Aren’t you supposed to?”

“My day for the questions, Miss Hudson,” he told her, stretching out to pick up the second glass of wine he had apparently poured while she was watching the ocean, lifting it to touch it to hers. “I asked you—do I have a macho image?”

“Yes, I suppose so!” Katie snapped irritably. “Men who drag women around over their shoulders don’t usually get reputations for being gentlemen.”

“And what about women who like to sit around waiting to get stripped by a number of men?”

He would look wonderful right then with his damned wine dripping all over his face, Katie thought, her temper—so easily kindled by him—rising dangerously again. She did, however, manage to refrain from tossing the contents of her glass over his head.

“I refuse to go into it again,” she said coolly. “Perhaps I was wrong, but you were obnoxious.”

“I tend to be obnoxious that way—assuming that young women don’t want to be attacked.”

“Don’t assume anything about me in the future,” she told him.

“So, there is to be a future?”

Katie cast him an exasperated glance, then decided he was right—she could use the wine herself. She gulped down half the glass in one long swallow. It was a smooth wine, a bit dry, and it gave her a quick and pleasant rush of warmth.

“You said you were asking the questions today. If I answer them, I’m assuming you’re going to give me a chance to ask mine.”

“That’s true,” he murmured, sipping his own wine and watching her assessively, his dark eyes hiding all the conclusions he might have come to regarding her. Then his gaze left her as he inclined his head toward the picnic basket. “Are you ready for brunch?”

More because she wanted something to do than because she was hungry, Katie opened the basket. Plates and forks were neatly strapped to the sides; brunch consisted of rolls, fruit, and various sandwich meats and cheeses.

Feeling his eyes on her once again, Katie pulled out the breadboard at the bottom of the basket and began arranging the food.

“What do you want to ask me?” she snapped out after his prolonged silence began to wear on her nerves.

“You can start with telling me about your life since you were twelve years old.”

Katie compressed her lips. “I dropped out of high school when dad was injured and went with him to Europe, where he saw one doctor after another. They all thought they could do something for him … None of them could. His spinal cord was damaged, then he developed a cancer that attacked his nervous system.” Katie spoke flatly, but then she had to pause, taking a deep breath. “By the time I was nineteen we both knew the chase was finished. Dad just wanted to … to hide out. We moved up to New Hampshire, where I finished high school. After my father died, I went to college, then spent a year writing up obituaries and garden parties for various small papers. I decided to go to New York. I did some game coverage there …” She paused again, buttering a roll while she gazed at him covertly from beneath her lashes. Had he heard anything about her life in New York? She didn’t think so. His expression hadn’t changed—it was grim, but it had been grim since the beginning. And his eyes were just on her. He was listening attentively to everything she said, still performing some kind of a secret assessment. “Then”—she drew in a deep breath—“I sold a freelance article to
World
and was invited to do another. After that, well, they decided they wanted an article on you.”

“Because they knew who you were?”

“Yes.”

“But you wanted to refuse.”

Katie stopped buttering the bread and looked at him. “Obviously.”

“Go on.”

“You’ve got it. That was my life.”

“All right, I’ll ask more direct questions, then. Why didn’t you answer my letters when you knew damned well your father was too sick to do so?”

Katie stared at him incredulously. She picked up her wineglass and finished off the liquid, watching him over the rim of her glass. “Dammit, that’s not fair! I was very young and trying to make him happy. I was following his wishes, and—”

“You were still busy hating me, judging me, because you had become jealous of me as a kid?”

“No!”
Katie flared. “If you’d really cared—if you’d cared at all!—
you
would have come to him. Our trail wasn’t hard to follow. You must have known he’d been hurt in that last game. You had to know! If you were his friend, you would have seen through his lies. Don’t blame me because you couldn’t spare any of your precious time!”

She’d pushed it too far. Kent was no longer stretched indolently over the blanket; he had moved like mercury, sitting to face her, clenching his fists as if he longed to reach out and shake her. His mouth was a compressed line, white and stark in the copper hardness of his jaw; his eyes looked like gleaming jets.

He did reach out a hand. Katie started, certain he intended to strangle her and that she was an idiot to be sitting here with him on a deserted beach, goading his temper.

But he didn’t touch her. He reached past her to the picnic basket and pulled out the wine bottle and refilled her glass. Her fingers were trembling.

“Hold it steady!” he snapped as the glass wobbled. He replaced the wine bottle, sipped from his own glass, then set it down carefully on the quilt and folded his hands over his crossed legs. “I’ve been an anathema to you for the majority of your life, but a magazine suggests that you come after me, and you do.”

There was contempt in his tone. So much so that Katie found her temper flaring once again. “Yes! I need a job. And though I can survive off obituaries, I’d rather not spend my life that way. I want and deserve a chance for a career. Don’t you dare presume to judge me. What was your last contract for? A million? More? You’re doing exactly what you want to do, and you’re swimming in money, so don’t look down your nose at the peasants who have to work to survive! The entire world can’t get paid outrageously for playing a stupid game!”

For a minute she thought she had made him so angry that his powerful hands
would
close about her throat, but then, surprisingly, he laughed.

“Yes, I suppose I am paid outrageously for playing a game. But I still don’t understand this—not completely. Surely your career can’t hinge on one story?”

“A lot of careers have hinged on one story,” Katie replied with a sigh, allowing her lashes to fall as she stared down at her glass. “Am I done now? Have I left anything out?”

“I’m sure you’ve left out lots of things,” he told her dryly. “And, no, you’re not done yet, but I’ve only got a few questions left.”

She glanced up at him uneasily, then made a pretense of bored disinterest and shrugged. “Go on. Let’s get this over with.”

“All right. This still doesn’t quite cut the mustard. I might have been one of your father’s best friends, but I’m notorious for being rude to the press. I only ever speak when it has a direct bearing on a game and is crucial for the goodwill of the team. Why would these editors of yours decide that I was going to turn around and be a nice guy to you?”

“Because of my father.”

“Not good enough. I have this feeling that you were supposed to come out here, use your father’s name to get to me, and then use your own considerable assets to get to the nitty-gritty.”

“What do you mean by that?” Katie flared.

Kent arched a brow, his disbelief and cynicism unmistakable. “Oh, come on, Katie. There was no suggestion that you just might be able to seduce out of me what they wanted?”

“You really are an arrogant bastard,” she told him heatedly.

“Hey—you just said your career was at stake. I’m just trying to find out how important it is to you.”

“I was right to hate you when I was twelve,” Katie retorted. She was really angry now. It was all she could do to keep her voice level and her nails out of his flesh.

“Katie, I’m extremely fond of honesty. Lie to me, and you won’t get a thing.”

She lifted her chin, her eyes hard as flint, her tone icy. “I never intended to seduce you.”

He laughed again. “No, maybe you didn’t. But your editors intended for you to.” He sobered slightly, looking at her curiously and, as strange as it seemed, caringly. “That’s harassment, you know. You could fight it.”

She suddenly felt drained of anger. “Possibly,” she murmured, “but it’s impossible to prove innuendo. And with my luck I’d lose a court battle and be out of a job with no prospects for even a future in obits.”

He gazed at her several seconds longer, then rose with a supple grace and walked down to the shore. Katie stared after his long, broad back, wondering a little desperately what was going on in his mind. At last she could bear the anxiety no longer; she stood and followed, feeling the cool sand against her bare feet.

She didn’t touch him, but he knew she was behind him. Kent turned to her, and his speculative dark eyes gave away none of his feelings. “We’ve got to head back as soon as we’ve eaten.” His voice seemed to grate, as if that fact made him a little angry.

Or was it just she who made him angry?

“But you want a full-length, knock-’em-dead article, and if you’re willing to go for it, I’ll see that you get it. Tuesday we have to be back in Sarasota; Wednesday we head out to Denver to warm up for the last playoff game. Come out to Denver. I won’t be able to see you much before the game, but when it’s over, win or lose, I’ll be going up to my place in the Rockies for a few days. I can give you all the time you can possibly handle then.”

He didn’t speak angrily or sardonically, nor did he touch her. But he looked at her, the ocean making his eyes so dark that they were jet again, a jet touched by fire. His eyes seared into her, warming her, making her tremble and shake. His words hadn’t been a dare, and yet a challenge had been issued. Katie didn’t want to be challenged—she wanted to run. He made her blood run hot and cold with unwanted excitement; he could ignite her temper to a roaring blaze, then turn that fire to something else …

His lips curled into a taunting grin. “Are you afraid of me, Miss Hudson?”

“Yes,” she told him truthfully, making him laugh.

“If I’d been going to tan your hide, lady, I would have done so fourteen years ago.”

“Humph,” she murmured. She lowered her lashes and stared down at the cool tide, now running up to her toes.

“Ah, poor Katie!” he teased. “We’ll have to see, won’t we, if you’ve got the spine to go after what you really want?”

That did it. She pulled her eyes back to his and planted her hands firmly on her hips.

“Oh, I’ve got the spine, Kent Hart,” she said regally.

He laughed again. And then, before she quite knew what was happening, his arms were around her. She was pressed to the hardness of his body, feeling all its sinewed strength. She tilted her head back to protest, but the parting of her lips only served as an invitation to his. Firm, warm, compelling, his mouth mastered hers, and her protest died unspoken. The waves bounced around them; the breeze was cool; all she knew was a delicious heat and the strong, searing seduction of his tongue in her mouth, coaxing hers firmly to play in return. His hands, moving on her with such assurance, made her feel liquid and weak, and she groaned deep in her throat as they unerringly loved her breasts through her sweater, then found her naked flesh beneath it and the lace of her bra …

His lips moved from hers, trailing little kisses over her cheek then down, where his teeth nipped and raked lightly against her throat. She heard his whisper, erotically warm and moist against her ear, “So … you are willing to seduce me for a story.”

She went dead still. Heat left her as if she had been blanketed by ice as she heard the amused contempt in his voice. Furiously, she jerked away from him, tripping in the sand. When Kent reached down to help her, she venomously slapped his hand away.

“Don’t! You son of a—”

“Does that mean you won’t be coming to the Rockies?” he interrupted her. Only the midnight sheen of his eyes portrayed anger; his voice was rich with sarcasm.

Katie was halfway across the sand in a moment. She retrieved her purse and shoes and started walking to the car, snapping out over her shoulder, “I don’t know what it means yet. Except that I pegged you just right from the very beginning. You’re totally despicable.”