While the Fire Rages (6 page)

The question of whether he wanted Jo because she
was,
or had been, Wolf’s reared its nasty little head. Instantly, Brett assured himself that their past relationship had nothing to do with his present yearnings. Hard on the heels of that self-assurance came the fervent hope that he was not lying to himself.

Brett was well aware of the depth of feeling he held for his older brother. He had idolized Wolf for as long as he could remember, had always tried to emulate him. But to carry his hero worship to the point of wanting to possess Wolf’s mistress was not only ludicrous, it was downright unhealthy.

The fact remained that Jo had belonged to Wolf; in his own mind Brett was now certain of that. He had uncovered just too damned many incriminating signs during the previous three weeks for their liaison to be strictly business. One of those signs now lay snugly in a long envelope inside his breast pocket, crackling faintly every time he moved. Brett had even had the fanciful idea that the blasted envelope was laughing at him every time it crackled.

You
are sick!

The self-admonition was silently issued in an attempt to quell the strong urge gripping him to turn and feast his eyes on Jo’s tall, delicately formed body.

Feast his eyes, hell! He wanted, longed, ached to feast his mouth, tongue, hands, and body on top of hers.

Again his tongue flicked at his teeth, barely withdrawing in time to prevent being lacerated by his descending hard upper teeth. Will you knock it off? She belongs to him! His hard white molars clamped together in frustration and self-disgust.

She belongs to him.

Without conscious thought, Brett’s spine straightened and his shoulders squared. Face it, chum, he advised himself reluctantly. When Wolf comes back, should he so choose, it will be to take over Jo as well as the region.

Hot rebellion, more fierce than he’d felt throughout his rebellious teenage years, seared Brett’s emotions. In an effort at maintaining control, he breathed in, slowly, deeply repeating the same phrase over and over in his mind:
You’re out of line here, she is his.

His ploy at self-chastisement was a total failure, for the rebel in his mind chanted back:
He can no longer have her, I will make her mine.

Back and forth, the battle raged between control and rebellion, rendering him temporarily motionless while both vied for supremacy. The deciding factor came not from within but from without.

“Brett, I’m sorry to bother you.”Jo’s voice was entirely free of facetiousness. She genuinely sounded sorry about having to intrude on his thoughts; she also sounded genuinely confused. ‘There’s something here I don’t quite understand.”

His given name, coming voluntarily from her soft lips, whipped Brett around as if he were attached to a string she held tightly in her slim fingers. Brett breathed a sigh of relief on realizing Jo had not witnessed his humiliatingly swift snap to obedience. Gleaming head bent, Jo scowled in consternation at the folder in her hands.

“Concerning what?” Strolling slowly—to make up for his earlier quickness?—to the desk, Brett held out one hand for the source of her confusion.

“The Vermont project.” Unaware of his outstretched hand, Jo pursed her lips at the printed words under her perusal. “I thought Wolf had decided to scrap the idea of yet another condominium complex aimed at the skiing set, but, from the info here, he must have continued the preliminary investigation on his own.”

Halting at the side of the desk, Brett leaned toward her. For a fleeting half instant he hesitated, fighting the impulse to slide his hand under her chin, tilt her head up, and taste her pursing lips with his own. The effort required to bypass her head and pluck the folder from her hands was evidenced by the barely discernable tremor in his fingers.

Jo had the good sense to remain quiet while he studied the folder’s contents. Gradually, the tension eased out of Brett as his eyes skimmed the printed lines on each successive sheet of paper contained within the folder’s cream-colored covers.

Yes. Yes.
A tiny smile played over Brett’s lips in appreciation of the thorough investigative job Wolf had done on the proposed project. Before he came to the final sheet, Brett fully agreed with his brother’s conclusions. The location was good. Wolf’s figures, if accurate—and Brett knew they would be—were well within reason for a complex of this size. The time for action was now if the groundwork was to be completed and excavation begun by late spring.

Behind the printed sheets were several handwritten pages. Brett’s smile grew on recognition of Wolf’s slashing, straight-line penmanship. In a bold hand, Wolf had outlined a comprehensive, detailed directive on exactly how the official prospectus should be blocked out.

Impressive bit of work, old son,
Brett silently congratulated his elder sibling, then he mentally telegraphed a promise:
You very obviously wanted this. I’m going to get it for you. It may not be much in exchange for your oh-so-exquisite plaything here, but thems the breaks, bro.

Raising his head, Brett focused his attention on the hazel-eyed plaything sitting very quietly, very patiently at Wolf’s desk. Gazing into the amber-flecked depths, Brett reiterated what he’d known for a very long time. One could never fault Wolf’s taste in women. It seemed his taste in assistants was faultless as well, for Jo Lawrence was every bit as efficient at her work as his own paragon, Richard Colby. And that was a compliment Brett had bestowed on no other.

“You’re staring, Brett.”

Jo’s tone conveyed enlightenment, not censure. Smiling wryly, Brett brought the cream covers together with a businesslike snap before handing the folder to her.

“Slide this into your briefcase,” he ordered as he started to turn away from the desk.

“We’re going to pursue it?”

“We’re going to pursue it,” he repeated, tilting his head back to her. “Can we wrap it up here soon?” he went on, deliberately stifling any attempt she might have made at questioning him further. “I’d like to be on the road by lunchtime, and I want to stop by the house on our way out.”

“This apparently not-to-be-discussed report was the last of it.” Jo held up the folder. “Are you positive you feel safe leaving it in my care?” Her tone betrayed her slightly out-of-joint, but adorable, nose.

“Simmer down, Ms. Assistant.” Brett sighed. “We will discuss the thing, probably to your screaming point, after we’re back in the city.” Stepping back, he indicated she was free to leave the desk without fear of having to get too close to him. “Are you packed?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Brett ran a quick glance over her and took another step back, advising himself not to tempt fate or his own swiftly dissolving control. “So am I. Let’s get this place in order and get out of here.”

Working together, the apartment was quickly restored to the neat condition they had found it to be in on their arrival two days previously. It was when Brett strode into the hall toward the bedroom to collect his suitcase that he felt the now-familiar tightening in his stomach muscles. The juices inside that particular organ began to roll, much like the gray-green waves pounding against the shoreline.

Brett didn’t see the waves, or the shoreline; he didn’t even see the long wide window that took up most of one of the bedroom’s walls. A grimace twisting his lips reflected his inner image. His eyes, a moody dark gray, were fastened on the oversized bed. The figures his actively churning imagination projected onto that bed were the cause of sudden nausea.

Within the luxury of that rich man’s couch, Wolf had consummated his marriage to Micki. Brett knew that. What he didn’t know and what had tormented him throughout most of last night was whether Wolf had also consummated his liaison with Jo Lawrence there as well.

God damn!

Standing perfectly still, his long body rigid with tension, Brett was not even aware of the fingers of his right hand curling into his palm; was not conscious of the urge that sent that hand hurtling out to make painful contact with the solid wood that framed the doorway. Consciousness came with the tongue of fire that shot from his knuckles to the base of his skull.

Eyes mirroring disbelief, Brett stared at the abraded skin covering his fingers. Although the door frame had been the recipient of his lashing blow, Wolf’s face had been his mental target.

Wolf?

As he stared at his still-balled hand Brett’s expression changed from disbelief to incredulity. Good God! Was he cracking up completely? He had never ever felt anything but near adulation for Wolf. Now, because of a woman ... a shudder rippled through him. With a concentrated effort Brett uncurled his fingers.

Brett felt the sickness roil again as against his will his gaze drifted back to the opulent bed. Did he want Jo because of who she was, or because of
what
she was to Wolf?

Moving with an unusual jerky swiftness, Brett clutched the handles of his supple leather case and swung out of the room. There were connotations here he didn’t want to examine at the moment. Later, when he was back in New York, and alone, he’d pick his mental and emotional feelings to pieces.

Jo stood patiently waiting for him in the hall, her tall, sleek body an invitation, her cool, aloof expression a denial of same.

Nodding curtly for her to precede him, he scooped up her travel bag, thankful for the necessity of bending over and thereby concealing the evidence of the need growing even greater within.

Following her smoothly swaying, ultra-slim hips along the corridor and down the open stairs to the first level, Brett wondered what had happened to his hard-won, tightly reined control. He had not touched his wife, Sondra, once during the last six months of the farce they’d called their marriage. And his celibacy had been by choice, not by Sondra’s rejection.

His eyes caressing the enticing symmetry of Jo’s tush, Brett’s lip lifted in a sneer in memory of Sondra’s professed willingness to, in her own words, share her wealth.

“Brett?”

The voice was not the soft, languid drawl that had captivated him five years ago but the businesslike clip of a motivated woman who had worked her way up from assistant hotel manager to assistant everything. With a mental shake, Brett banished the memory of his former wife—at least temporarily.

A frown on her more-than-merely-beautiful face, Jo held the heavy glass door for his passage.

“You have the look of a man who has forgotten something,” Jo murmured as he strode by her. “Have you?”

I
wish to hell I could forget
everything, Brett thought savagely.
Most particularly you!  
He let a sharp movement of his head answering in the negative.

After a last-minute check on Wolf’s house, during which Jo remained in the car—because of an aversion to entering the home Wolf shared with Micki? Brett wondered—he headed the sports car toward New York.

To Brett the drive seemed exceptionally long and rife with tension. Being confined in such a small area with a woman as purely enticing as Jo was not exactly conducive to tranquil travel. The fact that said woman smelled intoxicating, not of perfume but of pure, sweet female tormented him to the brink of squirming in the bucket seat.

I’ve got to have her, and it’s got to be soon.
The stark realization followed the silent sigh that slipped the barrier of his lips as Brett joined his car in jockeying for position in the melee laughingly referred to as New York traffic.

Jo’s apartment, located in a fashionable if not exclusive section of the city, was relatively easy to find. Drawing the car to a halt in front of the high-rise, Brett stepped out of the low car and smiled sardonically at the doorman who moved with alacrity to assist Jo in alighting.

With a word to the obsequious man to stand by the Porsche, Brett again suffered the discomfort of trailing the delicate figure he lusted after. Confinement in the elevator proved almost as unnerving as confinement in the Porsche. Finally, after a long trek along the hall on the ninth floor, Jo came to a halt before an unmarked door. She had her key in hand. A long, oddly shaped key, the sight of which glued Brett’s teeth together. He recognized that key. Was he not in possession of one exactly like it? Was it not, at that very moment, inside his pocket, nestled among the other keys on Wolf’s gold ring?

He did.

It was.

God damn.

The emotions that welled to congregate in Brett’s throat burned with a bitter sting. Fury, disappointment, disgust merged into a choking mass. Yet, overall, frustration reigned, prompting him to snatch the key from Jo impatiently when she hesitated at inserting it into the lock.

A quick, vicious turn of the key and the door swung open. Stepping back, Brett frowned a silent order for Jo to enter her apartment, knowing he had to get her inside as quickly as possible and get himself out of there.

Jo murmured, “Thank you.”

Brett murmured, “You’re welcome.”

Then, being very careful not to look at her, he placed her bag next to the door and stepped back into the hall, one hand outstretched to her.

“I’ll have the Vermont report,” he clipped shortly. Jo’s startled look made him add, more gently, “I want to study it tonight. Come to my office first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll go over it together.” Silently he urged:
Come to my bed tonight and we’ll forget it together.

The longing that swept through him shook Brett to the core.
Hurry, damn you,
he commanded silently, watching Jo fumble with the clasps on her briefcase.
Hurry, because if you don’t I’m going to step back inside, throw you down, and take you right there on that expensive hand-loomed rug my prowling brother paid for.
The last thought brought with it a shaft of pain that blanketed Brett’s mind with shocked disbelief.

Pain!

Automatically, Brett’s fingers closed on the folder Jo extended to him.

Pain?

Automatically, Brett responded to Jo’s baffled-sounding words of farewell. And automatically, Brett retraced his tracks to the elevator.