Tidewater Lover (20 page)

"That's what I'm calling about," she began hesitantly. "I'm not at the beach house. I've moved out."

"Good heavens, what happened?" Maryann asked with instant concern.

"It's a long story." Her friend already knew part of it from the visit Lacey had made the previous Friday night. "I was wondering if I could sleep on your couch for a few nights."

"Of course," was the puzzled reply, "but I thought you were going to Richmond to visit your parents this weekend after Margo came back."

"I was, but I've changed my mind."

The thought of explaining to her parents all that had happened was too daunting, and Lacey knew she would never be able to keep it from them. They were too close. And she couldn't stay in her apartment. Cole would keep phoning and possibly even come over.

"What happened, Lacey? Did—"

"I'll tell you all about it tonight," she promised. "What time will you be getting off work?"

"I shouldn't have any trouble leaving by five, but I have to stop at the bank and the store." Maryann paused. "Why don't you stop by the office and I'll give you the key to my apartment? That way you won't have to wait for me," she suggested.

"Thanks." Lacey swallowed, her throat suddenly constricting.

"Oh, I have a motive," her friend laughed. "If I have to wait until tonight to find out what happened, I'll be insane with curiosity. When you stop by, you can give me an outline at least."

Chapter Ten

RETURNING TO work on Monday morning, Lacey hoped her job would take her mind off the dead ache of her heart. So far that hope hadn't shown much promise. She had difficulty concentrating. Typing a letter was proving to be an impossible task as her fingers constantly hit the wrong keys.

"You look as if you could use some coffee. Shall I pour you a cup?" Mike offered, pausing beside her desk to reach for her coffee mug.

"Please," Lacey sighed, then bent over her typewriter to erase her latest error.

Mike filled her cup as well as his own and set it back on her desk. "It's only ten o'clock in the morning and you look bushed. I think that's a symptom of what's known as the first-day-back-from-vacation malady," he teased as his hazel gaze made an assessing sweep of her.

"Probably," she agreed, and removed the corrected letter from the typewriter carriage to add it to the stack on her desk. "Here are the letters you wanted out this morning."

"Mmm, good," said Mike between sips of his coffee. He gathered up the pile of letters and walked to the connecting door to his private office. He paused in the doorway. "It's good to have you back, Lacey."

"Thanks." It was a weary smile that accompanied her reply, etched with strain.

As he closed the door behind him, she rested her elbows on the desk top. Her shoulders slumped as if the weight of keeping up the appearance that she was her normal self had become too heavy to maintain when no one was around to see.

With the tips of her fingers she rubbed the throbbing pressure point between her eyebrows. She blinked at the tears that unexpectedly sprang into her eyes.

The door to the main office area opened and she straightened to an erect posture. The forced smile of polite greeting she had affixed to her lips drooped as Cole walked into the office.

He looked haggard and worn, but there was a relentlessly unyielding set to his jaw. It seemed to match the determined glitter in his indigo blue eyes.

Recovering from her initial shock, Lacey reached for the phone, ringing the interoffice line to Mike. "Cole Whitfield is here to see you, Mike," she said the minute that he answered her buzz.

"What?" His stunned reaction indicated that he had not expected Cole.

Lacey's pulse skyrocketed in alarm, "I'll…"

Cole reached over her desk and pushed the button to break the connection. "I'm not here to see Bowman," he stated. "It's you I want to talk to, Lacey."

Hastily she replaced the receiver and gathered the miscellaneous folders and papers from the filing basket. She rose quickly from her chair to walk to the filing cabinet, wanting distance between herself and Cole.

"Did Margo and Bob get back safely?" She tried to make the question sound nonchalant, pretending an indifference to his presence as she pulled open a file drawer.

Cole was right behind her to push the drawer shut. Her heart began leaping like a jumping bean. Raw, aching nerves were crying out for relief.

"As a matter of fact, they did," he said tersely. "But that's not why I'm here and you know it."
 

The connecting office door opened and Mike stepped out, frowning bewilderedly at Cole. "I'm sorry about the confusion, Cole, but Lacey's replacement must have forgotten to leave a message that you were coming this morning. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

Cole flashed an impatient look at him, annoyed by the interruption. "It isn't you I'm here to see," he repeated. "I want a few words with Lacey, if you don't mind."

The latter phrase was merely a polite gesture. Lacey had the impression Cole would stay whether Mike gave his permission or not.

"We have nothing to discuss," she told him stiffly, and brushed past him to return to her desk.

"That's where you're wrong," Cole stated flatly. "We have a great deal to discuss."

"This sounds private," Mike muttered, and retreated behind his office door.

Lacey turned to call him back and came face to face with Cole. All her senses were heightened by his closeness; she was quivering in reaction to his forceful presence.

"Why don't you go away and leave me alone?" she demanded hoarsely. "Can't you see I'm working?"

"You chose the time and place. I didn't," Cole informed her. "You knew I wanted to speak to you. I've been trying all weekend to get hold of you, but you've been hiding somewhere."

"I was not hiding!" she lied, and angrily shoved the papers back into the filing basket.

"Oh?" A dark brow was raised in mocking skepticism. "What do you call it?"

"Enjoying what remained of my vacation," Lacey retorted, and started to walk away from him again.

His hand caught at the soft flesh of her upper arm to stop her. "Will you stand still?" he demanded in an exasperated breath.

His touch burned through her like a branding iron and Lacey reacted as violently as if it were, trying to wrench her arm out of his grip. Cole merely tightened his hold.

"Let me go!" she hissed, pathetically vulnerable to his touch.

Desperate, she grabbed for the first item on her desk top that could be used as a weapon. It turned out to be the stapler. She raised it to strike him, but Cole captured her wrist before she could even begin the swing.

"This is where I came in, isn't it?" The grim line of his mouth twisted wryly as she was pulled close by her struggles. "Only the other time you were trying to bash my head in with a poker."

"I hate you, Cole Whitfield!" Her voice was breaking. "You are the rudest, most arrogant—"

"You said something similar to that before, too." He pried the stapler free from the death-grip of her fingers and replaced it on the desk top. "Now, do you think we can sit down and talk this out like two civilized human beings?"

Averting her head from the tantalizing nearness of his well-formed mouth, she nodded reluctantly. "Yes."

"Sit down." Cole more or less pushed her into her chair and drew a second for himself opposite hers.

"I still don't see that we have anything to talk about," she insisted stubbornly, her pulse behaving not quite as erratically as it had seconds ago in his arms.

"For starters—" the direct blue eyes studied her closely "—why didn't you tell me that you didn't go to the hotel to meet Vic Hamilton?"

"You weren't in any mood to listen to me and I didn't see why I should explain." After the defensive answer, she hesitated and asked, "How did you find out?"

"From Vic, after a little prompting," Cole answered with a half smile. "Luckily for him, he was too concerned about having his handsome face messed up, so it took only a few threats. As angry as I was, I would have beaten the truth out of him."

"It wasn't any of your business," Lacey muttered, looking away. She refused to read any implication into his personal involvement in her affairs.

"Wasn't it?" he asked quietly, his low voice rolling over her skin.

The interoffice line buzzed and she reached for the phone, grateful for the interruption. But Cole took the receiver out of her hand.

"Hold all the calls. Don't put any more through," he ordered and hung up.

"You can't do that," Lacey protested in astonishment.

"That's funny—I thought I just did," he countered with a laughing glint in his eye.

"You know what I mean," she retorted impatiently.

"But do you know what I mean?" His voice was wistfully soft and enigmatic.

Its tug on her heartstrings was more than she could bear. Agitatedly she rose from her chair, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.

"There isn't any point to this conversation," she insisted. "Everything has been said. Our little interlude, affair, whatever you want to call it, is over. You are free to go your way and I'm free to go mine."

"Is that the way you want it?" Cole sounded skeptical.

Lacey knew she had to convince him somehow that it was what she wanted, even though she knew with all her heart that it wasn't.

"Yes, that is the way I want it," she repeated stiffly. "So I don't see what there is for us to discuss."

In a fluid move, Cole was behind her, his hands settling lightly on her shoulders to turn her to face him. Lacey could find no strength to resist his undemanding touch.

"The point to this conversation is that I miss you," he said quietly. He ran his gaze over her face, and she caught her breath at the fires smoldering in his eyes. "It's been pure and simple misery since you left. You're not there in the mornings anymore to wake me up when I sleep through the alarm. No coffee, no orange juice made. I never minded before coming home to an empty house, but I do now after having you there to greet me. And in the evenings, I can't get any work done without you sitting quietly in a nearby chair."

"You make me sound as if I've become a habit." There was a painful lump in her throat, choking her.

"A very pleasurable habit that I don't want to give up," Cole responded, stroking a hand over her cheek into the silken brown of her hair.

"What are you suggesting, Cole?" Tears were misting her eyes when she met his look, doubt stealing pleasure from his words. "That we should resume our arrangement of living together, throwing out the ground rules?"

"And if I said yes, what would you say?" That glowing look in his eyes was tugging at her heart.

Lacey struggled with her pride. "I would say, thanks but no thanks. I'm not interested in taking on a lover at the present time." Just for a moment she weakened to ask, "That is what you're suggesting, isn't it?"

"In a sense, yes." His slow smile was disarming. "I want to marry you, Lacey. I want you to be my wife."

"Oh!" The tiny word escaped in an indrawn breath of surprise as she melted slightly against him. "Are you serious? What about Monica?"

"Monica?" A curious frown creased his forehead. "Why should she have anything to do with it?"

"I don't know." She was confused and uncertain about the conclusion she had previously drawn. "You dined with her all last week, didn't you?"

"At her parents' home, yes, and she was at the table, but it was her father I was meeting, not Monica," Cole explained in amusement. "Who told you I was there? Vic, I suppose."

"Yes," Lacey nodded, and sighed when his arm tightened around her waist. "He said that ever since you broke your engagement with Monica, you had continued to go on seeing her."

"And you believed him," he concluded.

"I believed him. You were there at the hotel with her, having lunch. He said your relationship with her had been an on-again-off-again affair and that I had met you during one of the off-again times. It seemed logical," Lacey said, trying to defend the erroneous conclusion she had reached.

"I should have known he would make mischief of some sort," he concluded, bending his head to brush his mouth over the warmth of her skin, teasingly near her lips. Her lashes fluttered in tempo with her heart. "I have business dealings with Carter Hamilton, her father. That's the only reason I was there."

Her hands slipped nearer to the collar of his shirt. "I didn't know," she whispered. "I thought—at the hotel, you looked so happy with her. Not like the other time when you were…"

"Rude, is that the word you're looking for?" Cole finished, mockingly. "That Sunday at the beach house, Monica arrived uninvited. I saw no reason to be polite to a woman who wasn't welcome in my home. And if you had the impression I was happy to be with her at the hotel, I'm a better actor than I realized. Regardless of how it looked, I was merely being polite to the daughter of a business associate, even if she's an ugly old crow."