farthest away from home I’ve ever been is Daytona Beach. And all I remember about it is sun and sand and Leda pushing me in the swimming pool at the hotel with my clothes on.” She smiled at the memory. “She was so much fun, always into something...” The smile faded and she took another, longer swallow from the glass.
“Don’t look back,” he said gently, meeting her eyes across the table.
“It’s hard...” she said tightly.
“It gets easier,” he countered. “Take it one day at a time.”
“Just like that?” she asked.
He reached across and touched her fingers with his. “Exactly like that.”
The touch of those warm, hard fingers made her tingle with sensations she hadn’t felt since he’d kissed her. She studied the back of his hand, the darkness of it sprinkled with crisp, curling hair, the fingers broad and long.
“Look at me,” he said curtly.
She raised her eyes to his and found him watching her. His fingers brushed against hers sensuously, lightly teasing them until they trembled, caressing the soft length of them until they parted and began to respond.
Her lips parted at the awesome surge of emotion the simple action ignited. Her fingers arched under the brush of his, and he eased slowly, sensuously between them in a silence that seemed to cancel out the world and every single thing in it.
He contracted his hand so that it was palm to palm with hers, with all five fingers securely interwoven, and pressed it hard and close while his eyes teased hers.
“Your heart’s going like a watch,” he murmured lazily. “I can feel it.”
“You’re not playing fair,” she whispered breathlessly. “It’s like shooting ducks while they’re asleep.”
His fingertips were at her pulse, feeling the rough rhythm of it, and his hard mouth was pulled up at both corners.
“Wrong, honey,” he said softly. “I’m not playing at all.”
She tried to catch her breath, but there was magic in the clasp of that big, warm hand and she couldn’t have torn hers away on penalty of death.
“I don’t think I could handle it,” she protested weakly, her eyes frankly pleading.
“What?”
“An affair,” she whispered.
He lifted her hand in his and ran his lips over the back of it with a slow, sensuous pressure. “You’ve got ten more days to think about it,” he murmured. “While I put on the pressure,” he added with a wicked grin. “And to pass along a trite expression, ʻif you think this is my whole routine...’”
“What...what about your business meetings?” she asked.
“Let me worry about that. Finish your drink. You’ll need an early night.”
“Why?” she asked, grateful for small miracles when he let her hand go so he could finish his own drink.
“I’ll tell you in the morning,” he said mysteriously.
Her mind was working overtime all the way out of the lounge. He was interested in her—that was obvious. But she couldn’t handle an affair with him; she couldn’t. On the other hand, what if he had something more permanent in mind? What if they spent a lot of time together, and he decided that he couldn’t live without her? The thought was pure delight. To live with him. To get to know him. To belong to him and have him belong to her, permanently. She glanced up at him as they walked. It couldn’t happen this quickly, could it? People didn’t get involved so quickly. But she had. She had!
They were just passing the desk when the clerk called out, “Mr. Steel? Mr. Callaway Steel? There’s a message for you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Wait for me,” he told her as he strolled toward the desk.
Nikki stood there like a young fawn confronted by her first hunter. Callaway Steel. More accurately, Callaway Regan Steel, founder and president of the Steel companies, which included such diversified interests as oil, construction, real estate and a hotel empire of which this very hotel was a part. More than one national magazine had featured the first-generation American whose uncanny business sense had amassed a fortune from some old oil shares and two small filling stations.
But that wasn’t all Nikki had read about the tycoon. His wife had supposedly suffered a fatal stroke soon after the accident that killed the couple’s young daughter, Genene. But one tabloid had brazenly called it a suicide resulting from heavy drug use. All that was two years and more ago, but the press still hounded him, because he was always in the middle of some big business venture. Callaway Steel made headlines wherever he went. And this latest