Song Without Words Page 5

  Shauna stared at him. He was serious! There was an air of creative excitement—and something else she couldn't quite read—about him. But what he was sug­gesting was so—

  She shook her head, dispelling the momentary dreams his interest aroused. 'No, no, I couldn't. It would never work.'

  'Ah, but it already has.' Michael rose in a lithe move­ment and crossed to the piano. He sat down, considered the keyboard with an odd, abstracted expression for a moment, then began to play.

  Shauna clenched her hands together as his voice picked up the melody. There was no effort in the way he sang—no attempt to 'sell' the number. There was just an intimate blending of words and music.

  It was a poem she'd written shortly after she'd come to New York: a poem full of contradictory and painful emotions. The music reflected this with aching clarity.

  She stared down at her tightly interlaced fingers as Michael half-spoke, half-sang the words she knew so well:

  Some think for each, there is a lover—

  to hold them through the night.

  To keep them safe, and give them comfort,

  'til the dark gives way to light.

  Until you find the one you're meant for…

  you go through life apart.

  You are alone. You are an island—

  The keeper of an untouched heart.

  Even if she'd know what to say when he finished, the words would not have come out. Her throat was dry and she could feel the pricking of tears at the corners of her eyes. A man she barely knew—a man who disturbed her on so many different levels—had gained access to a very guarded part of her life. She would have felt less re­vealed if he'd seen her stripped naked.

  'Well?' Michael asked quietly, breaking the silence but not the tension. Shauna knew he was watching her, but she refused to look at him. She was terrified of what she might see in her face—and of what he might read in hers.

  'Well, darling,' came a throaty, feminine voice from the other side of the room. 'I think it's terrific and I want to sing it.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  Startled, Shauna half-turned to face the source of the interruption. She didn't need to be told who it was. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Michael rise from the piano, his expression guarded.

  'Carla,' he said pleasantly. 'This has to be a first for you. I didn't think you got out of bed before noon.'

  Carla Decker smiled. 'I don't, darling, if there's a reason to stay there.' She gave a husky laugh and strolled into the room as though she owned it.

  She had a mop of dark, curly hair, creamy skin, and wide, pansy-hued eyes. The gamine effect was in con­trast to the ripe, knowing curve of her mouth and the unmistakably voluptuous thrust of her very female body. She was wrapped, none too securely, in a man's towelling bathrobe. Carla was only an inch or two over five feet tall, and the garment was miles too big for her.

  Shauna felt a hot flush of embarrassment colour her cheeks. That emotion gave way almost immediately to a flare of anger. How dare he put her in this kind of position?

  Reaching Michael, Carla went up on tiptoe and kissed him, very thoroughly, on the mouth. He did not, Shauna noted with distaste, appear to object to the caress, nor to the way that Carla pressed herself up against him.

  'Really, Michael,' Carla said in a mock accusatory voice, smoothing her fingertips down the front of his sweater, 'don't you ever sleep? I'd think you'd need some rest after last night. I certainly did.'

  The sly innuendo made Shauna uncomfortable in the extreme. She had no doubt it was being done deliber­ately: Carla had to be aware there was a third person in the room.

  'Carla, darling,' Michael cut in drily, 'I think you're embarrassing my secretary-to-be.' He disengaged him­self with a wry smile. 'I've had enough trouble soothing her ruffled sensibilities this morning without you coming on to the scene in your usual uninhibited style. Meet Shauna Whitney. Shauna, Carla Decker.'

  Carla did not seem at all offended at being described as uninhibited, but there was a cool—even unpleasant—quality to the assessing look she gave Shauna. 'So sorry,' she drawled with sweet insincerity. Although she'd allowed Michael to put a few inches between them, she'd linked her arm possessively through his. 'I didn't see you.'

  Shauna could feel herself withdrawing behind the impenetrable wall of good manners that had served her so well in the past. She had no idea why Carla Decker was going to such trouble to stake a claim on Michael Sebastian—nor did she care to find out. And she cer­tainly had no intention of being drawn into some kind of verbal jousting match.

  'That's quite all right, Miss Decker,' she said politely, standing up with quiet grace. She was acutely aware of the fact that Michael was watching her with undisguised and somewhat amused interest. 'My business with Mr Sebastian is done.'

  'Oh, I wouldn't say that, Shauna,' he put in. 'As you've accepted my proposition, I'd say your business with me is just starting.'

  Shauna's well-learned lessons in deportment almost went out the window with that blandly voiced remark. Then she saw the devilish light glinting in the green depths of his eyes. He was baiting her again.

  'Proposition?' There was a definite edge to Carla's distinctive voice. 'But, didn't you say secretary?' She pronounced the word with barely veiled condescension.

  'Yes,' Michael confirmed. 'I've seduced Shauna away from Emmett Barkley—on a temporary basis.'

  'A very temporary basis,' Shauna clarified. She knew he was being deliberately provocative in his choice of words.

  Carla's violet eyes narrowed. 'Emmett Barkley?'

  'SEE's chief legal adviser,' Michael said.

  Unexpectedly, Carla gave a trill of laughter. There was more than a trace of malice in it. 'Of course, now I know who she is! Outraged virtue!' She laughed again, slanting an appealing look up at Michael. His expres­sion had gone stony. 'Don't you remember? You must! It was the day I got upset over that stupid contract clause.'

  'I seem to recall your getting upset over a number of different contract clauses on a number of different occasions.'

  'Don't be mean!' She pulled a small pout. 'I'm talking about the time you came and straightened everything out. Then we went down in the elevator together—' She let her voice trail off significantly.

  Shauna knew precisely what Carla was talking about. It had been the first time—the only time before the previous Friday—that she'd seen Michael Sebastian in the flesh. She'd only had the job about a month and had been coming back from her lunch hour. She'd been more than a little shocked when the lift she'd been waiting for in the lobby of the SEE building slid silently open to reveal a couple locked in what could only be described as a torrid embrace.

  It had been Michael Sebastian and Carla Decker and they'd gone on kissing for what seemed like an imposs­ible period of time. Shauna had stood there, rooted to the spot.

  What had been the worst thing about the incident—and in retrospect, what had made her the angriest—was that when Michael and Carla had finally broken apart, they had not been at all disturbed to discover they had an audience. In fact, judging from the gurgle of laughter Shauna heard issuing from Carla as she and Michael strolled away, they'd been monumentally amused by the whole episode.

  It was only after Shauna got back up to her office that she learned what had led up to the embrace. It seemed that Carla had been causing a scene in the Legal Depart­ment when Michael, with uncanny timing, appeared. He had proceeded to calm her down by, as one admiring male witness described it, doing everything but making love to her in full view of three lawyers, her manager, several secretaries, and a miscellaneous assortment of clerical workers.

  'Oh, you must remember,' Carla prompted. 'The elevator doors opened and there we were… and there she was—' She laughed again. 'The look on her face!'

  'Carla, that's enough,' Michael interrupted. There was a definite edge to his voice.

  The singer blinked, stroking her fingers up his arm. 'But, darling,' she said insinuatingly, 'it was funny.
You said she made you understand the meaning of the phrase "outraged virtue" for the first time in your life.'

  'Virtue has never been one of my strong points.' There was an oddly bitter undertone to the comment.

  Carla's thinly plucked brows contracted. 'Michael—'

  Michael wasn't paying any attention. 'Of course, I may have been a little hasty in my assessment, too,' he observed, his expression enigmatic as he gazed thought­fully at Shauna.

  A fine line of puzzlement appeared on Shauna's smooth forehead. She had had the strange impression in the recording studio that Michael had somehow recog­nised her. But she'd dismissed it as absurd. There'd been nothing memorable about her that day. Yet it seemed he had remembered her. Why?

  And his comment about making a hasty assessment: it was such an unexpected thing for him to say. There could be an apology implicit in those words. Then again—

  Then again, she didn't think she'd been hasty in her assessment of him! His behaviour at the studio—and during the past thirty minutes—confirmed her judgment that, while Michael Sebastian was undoubtedly brilliant at what he did, she did not like the way he did it!

  Probably the only reason he recalled her from the lift incident was that her hot-faced embarrassment had seemed so quaintly amusing to someone as jadedly sophisticated as he was.

  She glanced pointedly at her watch. 'Mr Sebastian, I have to get back to work. And you plainly have other affairs to attend to.' Two could play the double entendre game! 'About my—ah—' she didn't want to say 'poetry' in front of Carla Decker.

  'Your papers?' he filled in. 'I think I'll hang on to them for a bit longer. If you don't mind?'

  She did mind, and she was certain he knew it. But she wasn't up to challenging him… not with the other woman present. She recalled what Carla had said about the song she'd overheard. The thought of having her words sung by Michael Sebastian's mistress made her sick.

  'If you're certain that's what you want,' Shauna said finally, her tone as stiff as her posture.

  'That's what I want,' Michael assured her, his green eyes glinting suddenly. 'For the moment.'

  'Well, then—' the basic civilities struck in her throat. She'd choke if she tried to say she'd enjoyed the last half hour—or that there'd been anything remotely pleasant about meeting Carla Decker.

  'Yes?' he prompted.

  Shauna arranged her face into a polite expression by sheer force of will. 'Until Monday, Mr Sebastian.'

  'Until Monday, Miss Whitney,' he agreed. His sudden reversion to formality carried a mixture of warning and anticipation in it. 'I look forward to working with you.'

  It wasn't until Shauna got back to the office that she realised she'd not only been manoeuvred into leaving her poems with Michael, but that she'd also neglected to reclaim her glasses from him. She added that fact to the mounting list of grievances she was chalking up against her employer.

  So, he was looking forward to working with her, was he? She could just imagine what he had in mind!

  On second thoughts, she probably couldn't. Shrewd and experienced, Michael Sebastian undoubtedly could come up with schemes she'd never dream of in her worst nightmares and he'd have no compunction about carrying them out.

  Yet this same man—this man who intimidated yet intrigued her—had composed music that caught and complemented the spirit of the words she had written. It was as though he understood… as if some kind of instantaneous communication had sprung up between them. On the whole, she found that more disturbing than anything else. Taken with his very potent masculine magnetism, it made him all too attractive, and she did not want to be attracted to a man like him.

  Attracted! Shauna's eyes turned crystalline with inner anger as she sat down at her desk. She advised herself to abandon that course of thinking immediately. Michael Sebastian might very well have a good opinion of her secretarial skills and he might genuinely believe she had writing talent, but he'd plainly told her that, on a personal level, he thought her a prude and a snob.

  Don't be an idiot, she ordered herself. You don't even like the man! All you have to do is get through two weeks of temporary work with him… that's all!

  Naturally, word of her reassignment got around the Legal Department before the day was out, and she was subjected to a number of speculative stares and pseudo-casual questions. She ignored the stares and dealt with the questions in her usual cool but polite manner. To her relief, except for a few envious sighs from one of the filing clerks and a renewal of the flirtatious attentions of a SEE lawyer who'd tried to date her in the past, the matter seemed relegated to the dull category of old news by the end of the following day.

  Then Jamie Cord strolled in and perched himself, in a very familiar fashion, on the corner of her desk.

  She was so engrossed in proofing the contract she'd just finished typing that she didn't even register his presence until a small tape cassette bounced on the desk in front of her. She glanced up, eyes widening in surprise.

  'Hi, Shauna,' he greeted her cheerfully, giving her a grin that was the essence of boyish charm. 'Am I inter­rupting something?'

  'Hello, Jamie,' she responded. 'Yes, as a matter of fact, you are.'

  He made an apologetic gesture and ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair in a movement that reminded Shauna of his half-brother. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I just wanted to give you that.' He pointed to the cassette. 'I had the guys at the studio dub it off for you. It's the song we did the other night, thanks to you. I thought you'd like a copy.' He unzipped the front of his leather jacket, apparently settling in for a visit.

  'That was very nice of you, Jamie,' she said with a small smile. It was a thoughtful gesture, even if it was a reminder of an incident she'd just as soon forget. 'Thank you.'

  He shrugged. 'What can I say? I'm a wonderful guy.'

  'And modest, too,' she retorted.

  'Well, I'm working on that,' he conceded slyly. He cocked his head, regarding her with interest. 'You look—different,' he observed. 'Hey, I know—no glasses!'

  Shauna's momentary feeling of goodwill evaporated. She still hadn't got her glasses back and she'd had a number of comments about her sudden switch to con­tacts. Most of them had been flattering, but more than a few had held an undertone of curiosity about just what had prompted the change.

  'Anything you want to say about my glasses should be directed at your brother,' she said tartly. 'He seems to have developed some kind of fetish for my property.'

  Jamie looked startled. 'But, I—uh—I thought you two had kissed and made up.'

  Shauna glared at him, her fine features tense. 'Is that what he said?' she demanded icily. It seemed Jamie was familiar with his half-brother's tactics for dealing with women!

  'No, no, of course not,' he assured her hastily. 'It's just that—I mean, you are going to be working with him, aren't you? Filling in for Dee?'

  Shauna sighed. Jamie really didn't deserve to have his head snapped off. It wasn't his fault he was related to the man who currently topped the list of people she'd least like to be stranded on a desert island with.

  'I am,' she told him in a more moderate tone. 'But I'm doing it on a strictly temporary basis.'

  Jamie relaxed, a mischievous look flickering in his brown eyes. 'That should be interesting.'

  'I can think of other words to describe it.'

  'Yeah,' he nodded understandingly, an odd ex­pression on his face. Shauna could see definite facial similarities between Jamie and Michael, but there was still a boyish immaturity about the younger half-brother's looks. Michael's strong features bore the ham­mer marks of arrogance and experience; Jamie's, though confident and attractive, still seemed open to moulding.

  'Jamie, I think—' She was about to suggest that she had to get back to work.

  'Look, Shauna,' he interrupted. 'The real reason I stopped by was to find out if you're going to be busy this weekend.'

  'I—I beg your pardon?'

  'If you're not busy, I thought you could come up
to Hartford.'

  'Hartford?' she echoed, mystified.

  He nodded. 'Right. With Tempest.'

  She could feel herself start to blush. Clearly, Jamie had got the wrong idea about her. Strangely enough, she didn't feel insulted. On the other hand, if the suggestion had come from Michael—

  She bit her lip. 'Jamie, I don't think so. It's not a good idea.'

  'Why not?' he countered bluntly.

  'Well—' She hesitated, knowing that whatever she said, it was going to come out sounding hopelessly outmoded and probably a bit judgmental. 'I—ah—I'm not the type—'

  Jamie picked up on her anxiety almost instantly. 'Oh, hey, no!' he exclaimed. 'This isn't a come on. I mean, I know you're—I wasn't suggesting anything like that, really. God, no. This is an effort to apologise.'

  'Apologise?'

  'Yeah. The guys—Tempest—well, we feel lousy about what happened Friday night.'

  'That wasn't the band's fault.'

  'Maybe not. Then again, I was the one who made that crack about you to begin with. And you got a rough deal because of it. But we got some solid inspiration from you, and we'd like to say thanks.' He paused, gauging her reaction. 'Besides, if you're going to be in this industry—and especially if you're going to work for Michael—it'd be a good thing for you to see what it's like backstage and on the road.'

  There was a definite appeal to the idea, Shauna realised. Except for one major consideration—

  'Is your brother—?' she began carefully.

  'He took off for London yesterday,' Jamie laughed. 'To tell the truth, I think he was glad to get out of the country.'

  'Why's that?' she asked curiously.

  'Carla Decker. Do you know her?'

  'We've met.'

  'Well, take it from me, a little of that lady goes a long way. Now, I can understand why Michael—uh, you know—' he pulled a face, obviously trusting Shauna to fill in the blank. After the little scene she'd wit­nessed at Michael's apartment—and the one she'd stumbled on that day in front of the lift—she, too, could understand 'why Michael' where Carla Decker was concerned.