Diana Palmer - Fire Brand

Without replying, he turned and guided her along the driveway with him, pretending a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He smoked his cigarette quietly. “Looks like a Florida setting, doesn’t it?” he mused, nodding toward the grove of palm trees.

She leaped at the normalcy. The tension between them was growing. “Yes. Someone told me once that there were no palm trees around here a hundred years ago. They aren’t native to Arizona—they’re supposedly imports.”

“Do tell?” He smiled down at her. “How about the rattlesnakes?”

“They’re natives,” she said dryly.

He chuckled, easing her between two parked cars, so close that her breasts brushed against his chest just briefly in a contact that made him distinctly aware of her.

The smile faded as he held her there, looking down into her puzzled eyes with an equal curiosity. His body throbbed to the beat of the music inside the house while his eyes held hers in a new, different kind of look. Without really understanding why, he moved deliberately closer for just a second, pressing her back against the car behind her, and he felt her breath catch as his body touched hers in a contact neither of them had ever sought before.

Her perfume drifted up into his nostrils. He could feel the faint tension in her posture, the drawing back as her hands came up to her waist in an almost defensive position. He wondered idly if the nervousness was caused by fear or attraction. His eyes fell to her soft mouth and he was surprised to find it trembling.

Gaby had never allowed herself this close to Bowie before, and now she understood why. His size was intimidating, but there was something more—something deep and still and frightening. He made her tremble. It was the second time in her life that she’d felt the sting of pleasure that came from a man’s warm, strong proximity. She wanted to run away and toward him at the same time, and her confusing feelings puzzled her.

For long, static seconds, neither of them moved. It took the sudden opening of the back door to break the spell.

Embarrassed, Gaby went ahead of him to be hugged and kissed by Mary, while Ted looked on with something less than joy in his expression at the guests. Mary worked in the composing room of the newspaper, while Ted was assistant sales manager. She’d known them both ever since she’d gone to work at the paper.

“This is Bowie,” she introduced the tall, handsome man beside her, hoping she didn’t look as disoriented as she felt.

Mary’s Ted wasn’t bad-looking, but there was only one Bowie. Mary stared up at him with undisguised fascination, barely aware that he shook her hand and said all the polite things.

“My goodness,” Mary exclaimed, and then caught herself and laughed. “It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. McCayde. Gaby talks about you all the time.”

“Does she?” Bowie looked at a beet-red Gaby with undisguised amusement that hid the remnants of an explosive tension.

“She threatens the other reporters with you,” Ted said with faint sarcasm, grinning wickedly at Gaby.

“I do not!” Gaby exclaimed.

“Liar.” Ted laughed. “She waves you like a flag when anybody comes too close. She’s the original ‘Miss Don’t Touch’ at the office.”

Bowie’s eyebrow went up in an expressive arch, not only at the implication, but at Ted’s frankly insulting way of putting it. His black eyes kindled as he stared at Ted.

“Stop embarrassing my friend,” Mary said with a nervous laugh, nudging Ted. “Come on in and have some champagne and canapés,” she added, taking Gaby away. “You’ll have to overlook Ted. He’s been sampling too much punch,” she added, with a cool smile in her fiancé’s direction.

“That’s what impending marriage does to a man,” Ted replied with just a little too much venom, despite his forced smile. “Why women think all the trimmings are necessary is beyond me. She’s got a house and a man and a good job, but she has to have a wedding ring.”

Mary flushed and got Gaby out onto the balcony. “He doesn’t want to go through with it,” she confessed miserably. “He says that marriage is just a social statement. But my parents don’t feel that way, and neither do his.” Mary fiddled with the soft ruffle at her bodice. “Plus, I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

“Mary!” Gaby said. “Congratulations...!”

“Ted says he doesn’t want the responsibility of a wife and child. But it will just kill my parents if the baby’s born out of wedlock,” she groaned, lifting her eyes to Gaby’s shocked ones.

“Ted will get used to the idea,” Gaby said gently. “And everything will work out just fine.”

Mary laughed coolly. “Will it?” she said. “He’s started talking about that new girl with long hair who’s working with the Sports Editor.” She looked resolute. “If he wants out, he can go and move in with her. My parents said that if I didn’t go through with the wedding, I could come home, and I think I will.” Her face tautened. “I’m going to let him go. I know that’s what he really wants.”

“If it’s what you really want, too,” Gaby replied.

“When you love someone, isn’t that the same thing?” Mary asked with a tired smile. She pressed Gaby’s arm. “Come and have some champagne. And don’t worry about me,” she added when she saw the concern on the other woman’s face. “I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

Gaby took a glass of champagne punch, but she didn’t touch it. She wandered around, talking halfheartedly to the other guests while her eyes searched for Bowie. She found him, finally, by the picture window, looking bored. Which was odd, because he’d been cornered by one of the prettiest women who worked at the office—Magda Lorne, the Society Editor.

Magda was small and dark and beautiful. Gaby secretly envied her that petite beauty and her success with men. Although there’d never been any friction between them, the sight of her long, red fingernails crawling on Bowie’s sleeves made something explosive stir in Gaby.

She moved toward the two of them, surprised by the expression on Bowie’s tanned face when he looked at her. She was afraid her irritation was showing, and she wasn’t sure she liked that faint pleasure in his smile.

“I wondered where you’d gone,” he murmured as she joined them.

“I was talking to Mary. Hello, Magda,” she said politely.

“Hello. I was just getting to know your stepbrother,” she sighed, her dark eyes flirting with Bowie’s.

“Bowie isn’t my stepbrother,” Gaby said politely, surprised at the anger that remark produced in her. “We aren’t related.”

“Really, dear?” Magda asked. “I didn’t realize. I’m sure you said something about having a big brother...”

“There’s Art,” Gaby said, nodding toward the reporter Magda was currently dangling from her string. “He’s looking this way.”

“Oh, brother,” Magda muttered. Then she forced a smile and glanced up at Bowie. “Perhaps I’ll see you again. I’d love a ride home...”

“I came with Gaby,” Bowie said, his eyes saying more than he did. “I’ll leave with her.”

He never dressed up his words, Gaby mused, watching Magda blush at the bluntness of the remark. She stammered something and beat a path over to Art, who beamed at the sight of her.

“Does she make a habit of that?” Bowie asked as he lit a cigarette.

“Of what?”

“Trying to steal men away from their escorts.”

“She’s very popular...” she began.

“Popular, the devil,” he said with a narrow, half-amused gaze. “She’s a born flirt with acquisitive eyes and an ego that probably has to be fed ten times a day. She’s the type who runs a mile at the first suggestion of intimacy.”