“Yes, the roses.”
“They were delivered.”
“When?”
“About ten minutes ago. There's a…uh…card.”
Without another word, Megan closed her office door stridently behind her and marched toward her desk. The vase hadn't come from a florist. It had been bought elsewhere and taken to the florist to arrange the roses in. Crystal of that quality didn't come out of a flower shop.
She jerked the card from the holder and ripped it open. The singular initial leaped off the card to mock her. It was in his own handwriting. He'd gone to a lot of trouble to have roses delivered to her this early in the morning. Had her kiss been that good? she thought scathingly. Was this paym
ent for services rendered?
Tempted to crush the card and toss it into the wastepaper basket, she laid it on her desk instead and stared at it as she took a seat in the leather chair. “Thank you for the evening. J.” The words implied so much more than there had been. He could make even a courteous gesture seem tawdry.
“Damn him,” she cursed under her breath. Unobtrusively, Arlene came in carrying a cup of coffee. Megan barely noticed when it was placed in front of her. She continued to stare at the card and curse the man who had kept sleep at bay all night
More than she wanted to admit, his kisses and caresses had affected her. Over the past years, while she'd been married to James, and after his death, she'd told herself that the kisses she'd shared with Josh in the gazebo had been embellished by her imagination. That night her emotions had been running high. As a soon-to-be bride, she was feeling loved, desired, beautiful, romantic. No wonder a tall, dark stranger had been able to sweep her off her feet. It was the perfect cliché. But it had only been a fleeting encounter. No big deal.
Why, then, had she never been able to forget it? No, more than that, why was the memory of it never far from her conscious thought? It lurked on the outskirts of her mind, pouncing out periodically with taunting reminders of her culpability.
“You don't like Josh, do you?” James had asked her one evening over dinner.
Her fork had clattered to her plate. She had laughed nervously. “Of course I like him. What made you ask that!”
“I've hounded you to invite him over for dinner. You've always got an excuse why we can't. Every time he's asked us out, you've found a good reason not to go, but insist that I go alone. It looks to me like you're avoiding him. Why, sweetheart?”
James had been concerned. He had liked the man he worked for. She had teased him about imagining things and promised to have Joshua Bennett over for dinner at the next opportunity—an opportunity that had never come.
At the Bennett Agency office Christmas party, which James begged her to attend with him, Josh's eyes had seemed to follow her like those of a hawk. When he asked her to dance, she was obliged to do so or cause James to wonder at her rudeness. Josh had taken her into his arms with the detachment of an employer dancing with an employee's wife, yet she had sensed the tension in his sleek muscles.
“You look beautiful in Christmas green, Megan,” he had said. Instead of speaking over the music, he spoke under it, intimately.
“Thank you,” she murmured, wishing he had changed colognes since the night before her wedding. The fragrance filling her head as he held her within the circle of his deceptively loose arms was far too potent a reminder of how it felt to be pressed firmly against that virile physique.
He had returned her to James the moment the dance ended. As he wished her a Merry Christmas, he kissed her on the cheek. It was a platonic kiss that even the stodgiest spinster couldn't object to. Everyone had laughed, because they were standing under a sprig of mistletoe. But the touch of his warm lips against her skin had robbed Megan of laughter. For some insane reason she had wanted to weep.
And she had. Late that night, lying beside a snoring James, who had celebrated a little too much, she had cried. When they had arrived home, she had seduced him into making love to her. Her uncharacteristic aggression had been desperate and brazen, to the delight of her tipsy husband. Afterward, silently, she had wept bitter tears of remorse. Their lovemaking had never given her the breathless rush of joy, the loss of equilibrium, that Josh's kisses had.
James's embraces left her with a mildly pleasant glow. Josh's sent splinters of feeling missiling through her mind and body, setting off tiny flames that combined into an inferno that wouldn't burn itself out.
Josh had confessed that he'd wanted her in spite of the fact that she was his friend's wife. If she were honest with herself, she'd have to admit that she'd dallied with thoughts of him too. She had loved James, had grieved over his premature death, and missed him still. But always Josh Bennett had stood between them.
There had never been, nor would there ever be, a place for him in her life.
Grimly Megan carried the vase of roses to the credenza under the window. She couldn't ignore them altogether, but she could put them in a less conspicuous place, where she wouldn't have to look at them constantly and thus think about their sender.
The morning passed quickly. Two of her salespeople came in to briefly discuss the peculiarities of specific accounts. Then an advertiser called, irate because, during the evening newscast, his commercial had run for a good ten seconds without audio.
Megan called the production chief, who sheepishly confirmed it. “I'll have to arrange for a make-good, Harry. This is the third one in a month. Don't you realize that every time I have to make good a spot, it costs us a few thousand dollars? Especially if the commercial airs during a newscast.”
“Hell, yes, I realize it,” he grumbled. “I told you I'm training a new director.”
“That's your problem, but I don't think the eleven o'clock news is a good training ground.” His muttered curse didn't intimidate her in the least “Get your act together, Harry.”
“It's not fair, you know. You look like an angel, but you've got a heart of stone.”
“No one said life was fair.” she clicked off the line, only to notice that another call was coming through. Pressing down the blinking lighted button, she said, “What now, Arlene?”