Song Without Words Page 10
Shauna had been kissed before, but never this thoroughly, and never by a man as confidently male as Michael Sebastian. In some elemental way, his confidence gave her the courage to put aside—for the moment at least—her own insecurities and inhibitions. Instinctively, she parted her lips, inviting further intimacies. Her palms slid up his chest, learning its hard- muscled strength through the luxuriously fine knit of his sweater.
She was, in a way, testing herself as a woman—finding the keys to her long locked-up emotions. Michael allowed her to make her discoveries at her own speed … accepting, guiding, but never forcing the pace.
He was the one who pulled back at the point where their embrace began to arouse more hungers than it satisfied. Only the look in his eyes—a look Shauna was too bemused to interpret—betrayed how much of an effort he was expending in order to put her away from him with such firm gentleness.
'I said we should get to know each other today,' he said huskily. 'I think we've gone about far enough.'
'You do?' Shauna didn't know what she was feeling. She only knew she had never been so aware of her body and its sensations. She had never felt so utterly alive… and so totally unprepared.
'Yes, I do.' He stepped back and picked up his bag, watching her intently. She stared back at him, her fair skin softly rosy with a flush of arousal and her wide hazel eyes luminously, innocently eager.
She didn't want him to leave. But if he didn't leave…
Far enough, he had said. She wondered, dazedly, if he had any idea how far that was for her. She raised one hand and touched her lips delicately. Too far.
'Good night, Michael,' she said.
He nodded, accepting and understanding the situation better than she did herself. Without speaking, he turned, opened the door with a jerk and walked out. There was a click as he shut the door behind him. The sound was like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. A period.
Not really seeing anything, Shauna walked to the door, touching its slick painted surface with newly sensitised fingertips. She started, her heart jolted into her throat, when she heard Michael's voice from the other side.
'Put the chain lock on, Shauna,' he instructed.
She did so.
'And the bolt.'
She obeyed him again, her fingers not quite steady.
'Good night.' The thick pile of the hall carpeting swallowed up the sound of his receding footsteps.
Shauna leaned her head against the door. She felt stripped of her long-standing defences, with her nerve endings quivering.
She stayed that way, trembling, for a long time.
CHAPTER SIX
The events of the weekend were very much on Shauna's mind as she reluctantly but resolutely reported for work on Monday.
A man kissed you, nothing else, she told herself fiercely as she waited for the lift in the lobby of the SEE building. All right, he kissed you twice—three times! But it didn't mean anything to him. And it shouldn't mean anything to you, either!
Because she'd made it a point to arrive at the office early, she had the lift to herself on the way up. She slipped off her coat, making a minute adjustment in the fall of the moss green, burgundy, and cream paisley dress she was wearing. A co-ordinating Chanel-style cardigan jacket completed the outfit.
But why had he kissed her that third time?
She smoothed her palm slowly down the length of her hair as the lift glided to a stop. She hadn't done her hair up into its customary chignon this morning. Instead, she'd swept the front off her forehead and clipped it in place with a barrette. The remainder of it cascaded over her shoulders in soft chestnut waves.
He was trying to charm you, she thought. It will be different when you're working with him. You'll see him for what he really is.
The reception area was done in cool shades of grey and furnished in leather, glittering chrome and smoked glass. The polished sleekness of the walls was punctuated by dozens of framed album covers and clusters of award plaques.
The colour scheme and the potently contemporary aura carried over into the area where she would be working. It was not an atmosphere Shauna found particularly comfortable, but she decided it would make it easier for her to maintain a realistic, businesslike attitude.
It wasn't until she sat down, mentally gearing herself for the day ahead, that she saw a small bouquet of flowers sitting in a vase on the corner of the desk. The blossoms—a cluster of daisies, a handful of white chrysanthemums, and a single red rosebud—were casually arranged. Her features softening in puzzled delight, Shauna leaned forward to sniff the delicate perfume of the rose. She recognised the bouquet as the sort of thing sold by street vendors. It was not what she'd expected to find here.
'I took a chance that you weren't allergic to flowers,' a velvet soft male voice said.
Shauna started, hot colour flooding up into her cheeks. She turned. 'Michael!' she gasped. 'I mean, Mr Sebastian—'
'You mean Michael, Shauna,' he said tolerantly. He'd been lounging against the frame of the door to his office, watching her through half-lidded eyes. He straightened now, his tall, lean body moving with deceptively lazy grace.
Shauna stiffened unwittingly, feeling as though the size of the room had shrunk by about fifty per cent.
The casual clothes she was accustomed to seeing him wear were nowhere in sight this Monday. Today, he was clad in an impeccably styled charcoal grey suit, a white silk shirt, and a discreetly patterned tie. The obviously custom-tailored fit of his jacket enhanced his natural masculine elegance and also hinted at the muscular power of his body. A strand of dark hair had fallen over his brow. Shauna watched, mesmerised, as he brushed it back in a careless gesture.
'M-Michael,' she stammered out. Forcing herself to look away from him, she glanced down at her hands. They were clenched, white-knuckled and trembling, on the top of the desk. She moved them down into her lap. 'I—You—' She took a deep breath, willing herself back into control. 'Thank you for the flowers,' she said finally. A fraction of a second later, she glanced up at him.
He smiled. 'You're welcome. You're also early.' There was a faint enquiry in the last observation. Shauna felt his green gaze rove over her, ticking off each detail of her appearance.
'I wanted to familiarise myself with a few things before the day actually got started,' she explained. 'Dee went over your calendar and most of the basics last week before she left, but I thought I'd refresh my memory.' Dee had been very helpful and friendly, but she had, indeed, been caught up in what Michael had described as a 'pre-honeymoon haze'. Shauna suspected there had been some things left out of her briefing, and she wanted to discover what they were before the work day got underway.
Michael nodded. 'Good idea. Did she remember to leave you her VIP list?'
'Yes.'
'Good. If it has her usual dose of editorialising, I suggest you keep it locked up in a safe place.'
Shauna laughed. He knew his secretary well. Dee had entrusted her with a list of people who were to be given kid-glove treatment. Next to a number of names she had written in comments—some complimentary, some critical, and most scathingly funny. Carla Decker's name was near the top of the list, followed by several asterisks, exclamation marks, and the notation 'Immediate Access—any time, any place'.
'Actually, I'm planning to burn it at the end of the two weeks,' she told him.
'Smart lady.'
There was a brief break in the conversation. Again, Shauna felt the room grow smaller.
'Are you—do you normally arrive this early?' she asked eventually. Surreptitiously, she pressed her hands against the fabric of her dress. Her palms were damp.
'I had trouble sleeping,' he replied laconically. He crossed over to a grey metal filing cabinet on the opposite side of the room and pulled open the top drawer.
'Oh.' It was a perfectly unexceptional explanation. Why did she find herself conjuring up all kinds of disturbing images in response to it? She shook her head. 'Is there—Is there
something I can do for you?'
He extracted a folder and slid the drawer shut. 'Coffee,' he replied, leafing through the papers in the file. 'You can make some.' He frowned over something he was reading. 'After you've done that, bring your pad into my office. I've got a backlog of correspondence to catch up on.'
She rose gracefully. Making coffee would give her enough time to get a good steady grip on herself. 'How do you take your coffee?' she asked.
'Black with sugar.' His mouth quirked suddenly as he looked over at her, the gold gleaming in his narrowed eyes. 'Hot and sweet, Miss Whitney.'
Professionally, Michael Sebastian led a pressure-cooker existence, and Shauna was plunged right into the middle of it with him. Within an hour of her arrival, she was inundated by what seemed to be a ceaseless stream of instructions from Michael and an endless variety of calls and visitors for him.
That she could handle the work, and handle it well, both surprised and delighted her. She'd absorbed more than she'd realised working in the Legal Department. Her common sense got her through the unfamiliar territory.
She found herself studying Michael, trying to anticipate his needs and orders, looking for clues about the way his mercurial mind was working. He was not an easy man to decipher. Tough, ambitious businessman… talented musician… practised and practising charmer—there was something of the chameleon about him. And for all his directness and varied moods, he revealed very little about his inner thoughts and feelings. Michael guarded himself very well.
Any hopes she'd had that seeing him at close quarters would reawaken her initial hostilities towards him quickly vanished. By the time she'd been in the job three days, she'd come to respect his energy, his judgment, and his restless desire to achieve and create.
His attitude towards her was difficult to gauge. While they seemed to mesh well professionally, she was uneasily aware of an unspoken undercurrent at the personal level. There were times when Shauna had the feeling Michael was testing her and probing her defences. He had a habit of asking her questions about her past at the most unpredictable moments. He also had an unnerving way of looking at her, his green eyes waiting and watchful.
Still, it was nothing she could quite put her finger on. And each time she was about to challenge him on his behaviour, his manner would change, leaving her to wonder if she'd been imagining things.
Late in the afternoon on Wednesday of her first week substituting for Dee, Michael informed Shauna he wanted her to accompany him to a Greenwich Village club that evening to hear a musician who had been recommended as a possible client for SEE. There was something faintly aggressive about the way he extended the invitation; although he phrased it as a request, Shauna sensed Michael was not about to take no for an answer.
'This is part of the business,' Michael said, seeing her instinctive hesitation. Part of her wanted to accept eagerly. Another part, the part that had controlled her behaviour for so long, warned she needed to be cautious. 'I told you before you agreed to work for me that the job meant long hours. You said that wasn't a problem.'
'Well—'
'Do you have a date?'
'I—'
'Do you, Shauna?' His green eyes had gone emerald as he leaned forward on her desk. The question was sharp, almost angry.
Shauna's brows came together. 'N-no, I don't have a date,' she replied, nettled by his tone.
'Then there's no problem about your coming with me.'
You're the only problem, she thought, forcing herself to look away from his compelling and far too perceptive gaze. She fiddled briefly with a stack of correspondence she had been typing up when he'd come into her work area.
'I'm not sure I'm dressed properly,' she said finally, glancing down at herself. She was wearing a demure, grey flannel shirt-waister dress with crisp white collar and cuffs. A silky, wine paisley neck scarf softened the garment's starkness a bit. Her long hair was neatly coiled into a knot at the nape of her neck and small pearl earrings nestled in the lobes of her ears.
'You're dressed too properly for my taste,' Michael replied. He said it so mildly that the implication of the comment did not strike Shauna for several seconds. When it did, she looked up at him, her expression both apprehensive and questioning. His face was composed, but his eyes held that disconcerting look of assessment once again.
'I don't think—' she began.
'If you're uncomfortable with what you're wearing, go home and change.'
'Now?'
He nodded.
'But—it's not quitting time yet. I can't leave early.'
'Why not? Afraid you're going to get in trouble with the boss?' His tone was gently mocking.
'Mr Sebastian—' Instinctively, she sought refuge in formality.
'Miss Whitney,' he countered silkily, reaching across the desk and brushing a silencing finger over her lips. 'Go home—now,' he instructed. 'Change your clothes. I'll pick you up at seven. We'll get something to eat before the show.'
'That's not necessary,' she protested.
'Probably not,' he agreed, shrugging. 'But it's what I want, and it's what you're going to do. You've got to stop saying "no" to me all the time, Shauna.'
The slow, deliberately sensual smile that accompanied the last sentence made her colour hotly. Yet there was an odd pensiveness lurking in the depths of his eyes as he spoke. It hinted at a totally unexpected vulnerability in a man whose instinct for emotional self-preservation was ruthlessly and relentlessly evident.
'I—Do you know where I live?' she faltered.
'I had your personal folder pulled.'
'Oh.' It was a perfectly reasonable and understandable thing for him to have done. Yet the idea of it disturbed her. Don't be an idiot, she berated herself. He knows more about you from reading your poetry than a personnel folder could ever tell—
'Shauna?'
The concerned intensity in his voice told her how much of her internal turmoil must be showing on her face. She struggled to get herself under control, calling on the bitterly unhappy lessons she'd learned under Aunt Margaret's stern tutelage.
'I—Nothing,' she got out. 'I—I'll see you at my apartment at seven, then. Thank you.'
She knew, without looking at him, that Michael was on the verge of pressing her, of probing her yet again with questions. Something, however, made him back off.
'At seven,' he repeated. Pivoting on his heel, he walked back into his office and shut the door.
Shauna found herself unusually indecisive when it came to making up her mind about what to wear that evening. She sorted through her limited wardrobe three or four times, growing increasingly dissatisfied with the demurely practical garments that filled her small cupboard.
Michael's comment about the extreme propriety of her office attire had rankled. It reminded her—as if she needed any reminding!—of just how self-consciously prim she must seem compared with the sophisticated, free-wheeling women he was used to. She wished she had just one outfit…
At the same time, however, she wasn't about to go changing herself around to please Michael Sebastian! And she certainly didn't want him to think she was regarding this evening as anything other than an extension of her duties as his assistant.
And yet…
Finally, with the clock showing just fifteen minutes before seven, she settled on a country-style brown corduroy skirt and an ecru cotton blouse with a touch of crocheted lace at the collar and cuffs. Over this she added a sleeveless knitted vest in varying tones of brown, tan, and rust. At the last second, acting purely on impulse, she freed her hair from its neat coil at the nape of her neck and brushed it loose over her slender shoulders.
Michael was very prompt. He'd also found time to change, replacing a business suit with jeans and a navy turtle-neck sweater and trading his expensive, ultra-executive tan raincoat for a battered pea-jacket of obviously ancient vintage. It made him seem younger and more approachable in a way. It also emphasised the street-wise sensuality that lurked behind his prof
essional polish.
'Come in,' Shauna invited politely.
'Thanks,' Michael replied. 'I'm glad to see you're not completely cavalier when it comes to using locks,' he commented blandly, nodding at the collection of bolts and chains on her door.
'I—Oh.' She silently damned the betraying rush of hot blood that flooded up into her cheeks as she realised what he was referring to. 'No… I'm not usually careless about such things,' she said, wishing she didn't remember in such vivid detail what had happened the one and only time she had been careless.
'Good.' He nodded and looked around him with undisguised interest.
Shauna's apartment wasn't very large. The furniture she had—and her budget hadn't allowed for many major purchases—was mostly second-hand. Three sets of floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books betrayed where most of her money went. The wall opposite the shelves was decorated with a collection of inexpensive posters. Several of them were reproductions of famous Impressionist masterpieces. Shauna found their serene and airy beauty deeply appealing.
'Not exactly what you expected?' she asked Michael, recalling the question he had thrown at her that day in his elegant apartment. There was something unnervingly intent about the way he was studying the room.
'On the contrary,' he returned, running a hand through his hair. His voice was softly satisfied.
Shauna shifted awkwardly, trying not to dwell on the possible implications of this response. 'It's not much,' she said. 'Of course, I'm lucky to have any place at all, given the housing situation in New York. So, I really can't complain. But—but there are moments when I wish I had a view.' She made the admission with a trace of wistfulness, gesturing towards the room's two small windows. Both were effectively blocked by the criss-cross of a metal fire escape landing.
'The view's just fine from where I'm standing.'
His tone was so casual that it took her a moment to register that he wasn't talking about what he could'—or couldn't—see from her apartment windows. She stared at him, her eyes wide and uncertain.