Song Without Words Page 8

It frightened her because she realised she wanted him to touch her… she also wanted to touch him.

  But that was impossible. She didn't know where to begin, and even if she did…

  Exhausted, she finally drifted off into a restless slum­ber, curling up like a hurt child beneath the covers. It was a deep sleep, but a sleep troubled by disturbing snatches of dreams.

  The twisted, disordered condition of the bedclothes testified to her emotional turmoil when Michael entered the room several hours later. There was a curiously guarded expression on his face as he stood by the bed, watching her silently for nearly a minute. Michael had learned to hide his own vulnerabilities at a very early age, and if he had had trouble sleeping, he gave no sign of it.

  The hem of Shauna's nightdress had ridden up re­vealingly during her restless turnings, leaving a slender, creamy length of leg exposed. With an odd smile, Michael leaned over and gently tugged the gown down until she was modestly covered once again. Then, with a small shrug, he went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Shauna stirred a little while later as an insistent ringing penetrated her slumberous state. It was a jangled, dis­cordant sound that nagged through her nervous system without fully awakening her.

  She groaned protestingly, but to no avail. The shrill, demanding noise continued even as she sought to ignore it. Shauna burrowed her head against the pillow. The sound went on.

  'Oh, all right,' she said, opening sleep-clouded eyes. She sat up groggily, trying to force back a shuddery yawn with little success.

  She glanced around. For a few awful seconds—she could practically time them by the thudding of her heart—she had absolutely no idea where she was or how she'd got there. Everything was unfamiliar. There was a closing-in rush of childhood dread; she'd known this feeling all too well in the first months after her parents' deaths when she'd woken up in the middle of the night in her bedroom in her Aunt Margaret's stiff, strange house.

  Then she remembered. In a way, what she recalled was almost worse than the disorientation and the con­fusion. Dear Lord, had she—? And had Michael—?

  She pressed a trembling hand to her face, feeling the tell-tale heat of a blush. Her long, loose hair was tum­bled in wild disorder and she brushed at the chestnut tresses distractedly. She vaguely registered the sound of running water coming from the direction of the bath­room. Did that mean—

  If only the telephone would stop ringing!

  'The telephone!' she exclaimed. She realised the in­strument was just about jumping off the hook on the stand beside the bed. Pausing long enough to click on the bedside lamp, she picked up the receiver with unsteady fingers and murmured an uncertain greeting.

  There was no reply. Shauna thought she heard an angry intake of breath on the other end, but she wasn't sure.

  'Hallo?' she repeated hesitantly.

  'Who is this?' The question crackled through the line in a throaty, imperious tone, implying that, whom­ever she was, she had no business answering this phone.

  'Th-this is Shauna Whitney. I—ah—' The water in the bathroom had been shut off.

  'Shauna—?' There was no mistaking the unpleasant­ness of the tone. 'I want to speak to Michael. Right now. I know he's there. Tell him it's Carla.'

  The last sentence was unnecessary. As inefficiently as her mind was performing at the moment, Shauna had already correctly deduced the caller's identity. Her momentary resentment of the singer's rudeness was lost in an upsurge of infuriated embarrassment. Here she was, in Michael Sebastian's hotel room, blithely answer­ing a phone call from his girlfriend! And she wasn't even dressed!

  Michael wasn't dressed either when he sauntered casually out of the bathroom. He was wearing nothing but a towel knotted low around his lean hips. The white of the towelling contrasted vividly with the smooth bronze of his skin. He was briskly rubbing his moisture-spangled hair with a second towel.

  Again, Shauna was struck—and shaken—by his effortlessly virile charisma. She felt shy and strangely excited at the same time.

  There was a classic power about his well-proportioned body that reminded her of a highly trained endurance athlete—a distance runner or a swimmer. The impact of his compelling physical appeal was heightened by his apparent nonchalance about it.

  Michael stopped drying his dark hair and slung the second towel around his neck. He gave her a lazily charming smile.

  Shauna's first impulse was to gather the bedcloth around her for protection. Then she recalled his remarks about the provocative qualities of modesty and she controlled the urge.

  'Good morning,' Michael said, his voice resonant and pleasant. Except for a small, teasing glint in his green eyes, there was nothing in his manner that indicated anything out of the ordinary had ever passed between them. In fact, there was nothing to indicate he found anything unusual about their current situation.

  Shauna summoned up her defences, but she was unprepared to respond to this type of urbane civility. Caught off-guard, her natural courtesy triumphed over caution.

  'G-good morning,' she answered, gazing at him wide-eyed. Common sense warned her that a polite, well-mannered Michael Sebastian might turn out to be the most dangerous Michael Sebastian of all. 'What are you—'

  'Is that Michael?' Carla's voice jerked her abruptly back to reality. Shauna started to colour, her delicate features tightening.

  'Private call?' Michael enquired blandly, one brow going up slightly. 'I can leave.'

  'I want to speak to him!'

  Shauna pulled the phone away from her ear and extended it to Michael. 'It's for you,' she informed him with cool distaste. 'Carla Decker.'

  He took the receiver with a nod and sat down on the edge of the bed. She caught the faint scent of his subtly spicy aftershave.

  A rush of words—unintelligible—issued from the phone.

  'And good morning to you, too, Carla,' Michael said eventually, shifting his position. The towel he had wrapped around him hiked up as he did so, baring a hair-roughened expanse of rock hard thigh.

  'What?' he questioned. 'No, you heard right.' He laughed. 'Well, babe, what do you think she's doing here?' There was a pause. Michael studied Shauna consideringly. 'Not necessarily,' he said. 'She's full of surprises.'

  That did it! Thoroughly nettled by his no doubt de­liberately double-edged banter, Shauna scrambled off the other side of the bed, not caring that she revealed more than a discreet flash of leg in her haste. She stalked angrily into the bathroom he had just vacated, slamming the door shut behind her.

  'What is the matter with me?' she demanded in a goaded undertone, confronting her reflection in the mirror. 'I've got to stop letting him affect me like this!'

  Did she affect him at all? The question crept into her mind unbidden. That her poetry intrigued him in a professional sense, she was willing to accept. As for anything else… it had to be a simple matter of proxim­ity and Michael's strongly sexual nature. Perhaps he did find something perversely attractive about her naïveté and his ability to overcome her characteristic restraint. It was a cat-and-mouse game for him, no doubt—a diver­sion. But, in the long term, cats stuck with their own kind. Mice were only their victims.

  Shauna sighed. Escaping into the bathroom had been ill-considered. Once again, she'd let him get to her. She'd also boxed herself in. She was stuck in the bath­room wearing nothing but her nightgown and she had no intention of walking out until she was positive Michael was gone.

  She decided to take a shower. Slipping off her night-dress, she caught a look at herself in the mirror. With a curious feeling in the pit of her stomach, she paused to study her image more closely. What she saw was a cameo-classic face atop a slender figure.

  She'd lost a few pounds over the last week, and it showed in the faint hollowing of her cheeks. That hol­lowing, along with the slight, smudgy shadows beneath her long-lashed hazel eyes, gave a new fragility to her looks.

  The weight loss had also slimmed an inch or so off her already narrow waist. That, she saw
, seemed to empha­sise the gentle curves of her hips and the delicate fullness of her rose-tipped breasts. Still, she thought with a wry grimace, her figure was downright boyish when com­pared with Carla Decker's voluptuous femininity. She wondered if Michael—

  An irritated exclamation passed her lips as she pivoted away from her reflection. Why did every line of thinking have to lead back to him? And why in heaven's name should she compare her body with Carla Decker's?

  Shauna turned the shower on full blast. After gather­ing her tumble of hair up underneath the plastic cap provided by the hotel, she stepped into the pulsing spray. Under different circumstances, she would have found the warm, luxurious feel of the water soothing. This time she was conscious only of her agitation and her desire to scrub herself clean.

  Damn Michael Sebastian! And damn his half-brother, too, for good measure! Shauna had already made up her mind to get away from Hartford and back to Manhattan that very day but, before she left, she wanted to have a few words with Jamie Cord.

  She soaped herself thoroughly then rinsed off, finishing with a quick jet of cold water. Stepping care­fully out of the shower, she reached for a towel. She had just finished blotting her skin dry when there was a knock on the door.

  'Shauna?'

  She froze, clutching the towel to her as though it was a protective shield. She'd forgotten to lock the bathroom door! All he had to do was—

  'Don't come in here!'

  'Don't worry,' he replied. 'I'm leaving now. I thought you might like to know so you don't feel obliged to stay holed up in the bathroom all day in your nightgown.' Shauna gritted her teeth, sure she heard a chuckle. 'I'm going to talk to Jamie. You can have the pieces after­wards.'

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Shauna finished dressing and repacking about forty-five minutes later. Gone were the loose hair and casual clothing. Her neatly groomed chignon was back in place and she'd donned a grey flannel skirt and a matching crew-neck sweater layered over a buttoned-down white Oxford-cloth shirt. A light application of make-up banished all traces of her turbulent night. She was herself again—back in control.

  She phoned Jamie's room but got no answer. As she was debating what to do next, her stomach gurgled and she suddenly realised she was hungry. Except for a few odds and ends she'd snacked on backstage after the concert, she hadn't eaten since late afternoon the day before. She made another unsuccessful call to Jamie's room then decided to go downstairs to the hotel coffee shop. Perhaps she'd find him there…

  As it turned out, he found her. She was sitting alone at a table by the window reading a fulsome review of the Tempest concert in a copy of the local paper while she waited for her breakfast order to arrive when she re­alised someone was standing at her elbow.

  It was Jamie. The expression on his face held equal parts of embarrassment and apology. Involuntarily, Shauna glanced about, looking for Michael. He was nowhere to be seen.

  'Hi,' Jamie said tentatively. 'Are you—uh—talking to me?'

  'I don't think you'd enjoy what I want to say to you.' It was the kind of cool, distant tone her aunt had used on her.

  Jamie winced. 'I deserve that. I guess I goofed up, huh?'

  'What do you think?' she retorted then sighed, sud­denly tired of the whole thing. 'Oh, never mind. It doesn't really matter.'

  'Come on, sure it does!' he said quickly. 'Look… can I sit down?'

  Reluctantly, she nodded once. He slid quickly into the seat opposite her. There was a silence as both of them fiddled with their silverware.

  'I am sorry,' he said finally. 'I invited you up here because I think you're a special lady and I wanted you to have a good time. After I asked you to come, I found out the hotel was booked up. The only thing I could get for last night was the suite.' He made a doleful face. 'Every­thing would have been just fine if Michael hadn't shown up ahead of schedule.'

  His obvious misery touched Shauna, but she wasn't ready to forgive him. 'You led me to believe he wasn't going to show up at all,' she reminded him. 'When I asked you, you said he was in London.'

  'We-ell… actually, I said he'd left for London. You inferred—'

  'You implied!'

  'Yeah, OK, I did,' he admitted. 'I was afraid you'd turn me down if you knew he was going to be here.'

  'I would have.'

  'So, you see—' He spread his hands.

  'Just what did you think would happen when he did show up?'

  He drummed his fingers on the table. 'I was hoping you'd be having such a terrific time you wouldn't mind. I was going to arrange for another room… some­place—'

  'Oh, Jamie!'

  'Well, you are going to work with him, right?' he defended himself. 'And even though you didn't—ah—hit it off, I thought everything was straightened out.' He paused. Shauna remained silent. 'I know last night was a mess,' he went on unhappily. 'Michael said—'

  Shauna paled. 'What did he say?'

  'He said you'd forgotten to throw the bolt, so he didn't realise anyone was in the suite until he turned on the light in the bedroom and woke you up.' Jamie studied her curiously. 'That is… Michael… er—Nothing happened, did it?' he asked hesitantly.

  Shauna bit her lip. She supposed by Michael's soph­isticated standards—and probably by Jamie's as well—nothing had happened. But by hers…

  'No, Jamie,' she said quietly. 'Nothing happened.'

  He looked relieved. 'I didn't really think so. Michael wouldn't—'

  At that point, a pastel-uniformed waitress bustled up with Shauna's food. She served it deftly then asked if Jamie wanted anything. After taking his massive break­fast order, she served him a steaming cup of black coffee then moved off.

  'So,' Jamie said, taking a gulp of the dark brew. 'Everything's OK now, right? Michael's going to double up with me and you can keep the suite. Nobody has to know anything—'

  Shauna opened her mouth to tell him that she wouldn't need the suite because she wasn't staying when an appalling realisation struck her.

  'Somebody already knows,' she moaned. 'Carla Decker called Michael's room this morning. I was half-asleep and I answered the phone.'

  To her surprise, Jamie gave a snort of laughter. 'S-sorry—' he sputtered. 'I'm not laughing at you. I was just thinking about the Divine Decker phoning Michael and getting another woman. She must have thrown a fit.' He seemed inordinately pleased with the notion.

  'Jamie, she knows it was me on the other end of the line! Don't you understand? What are people going to think? Especially—especially since I'm supposed to fill in as Michael's secretary starting Monday. You know what kind of gossip this will cause.' She rested her forehead in the palm of one hand.

  'Hey, Shauna—' He reached across the table and took her other hand. 'It's all right. There's no way Carla's going to mention anything to anybody about the call.'

  'How can you say that?' She disengaged her fingers from his.

  'Simple. Carla and Michael are a hot and heavy item at the moment. She's not going to let it get around that another woman was in his hotel room answering his phone. She'd look like a fool.'

  'And what would I look like?'

  Jamie frowned. 'Yeah… well, I see what you mean.'

  His food arrived then, and there was another break in the conversation. Jamie ate his breakfast with diligent gusto. Shauna nibbled at a piece of toast. She devoutly hoped that Jamie's prediction about Carla Decker keep­ing quiet would prove accurate.

  Jamie crunched down a piece of bacon, studying her narrowly. 'So, do you think you might consider accept­ing my apology for last night?' He adopted an earnestly appealing expression. 'Forgive me, please? Pretty please?'

  His manner was so coaxingly hangdog that Shauna couldn't quite suppress a smile. He was outrageous! But it was difficult to stay angry with him. For all his exagger­ated woe, she sensed Jamie was sincere in his regret over the previous evening's turn of events.

  'Oh… You're forgiven,' she told him. 'Provided you promise never to do anything like what you d
id again.'

  'Cross my heart,' he said instantly, matching deed to words. 'After the way Michael reamed me out, I'm going to dedicate myself to winning good conduct medals for the rest of my life.'

  'What did Michael say to you?' Shauna asked after a moment, her curiosity getting the better of her. He'd obviously given Jamie a highly edited version of what had happened in the suite, and for this she was grateful. But she couldn't help wondering what else he'd said.

  'You wouldn't want to know,' Jamie said ruefully. 'It was almost as bad as seven years ago. I've still got the scars from that scene.'

  'What happened seven years ago?'

  'I got busted,' he said simply. 'Drugs.'

  She couldn't hide her shock. 'I—I had no idea. I'm sorry.'

  'So was I. Especially after Michael got through with me.'

  'Michael? But what about your parents—' She stopped, biting her lip. 'I apologise. I shouldn't have asked that.'

  'It's OK,' he assured her. 'I'd like to tell you.'

  'Jamie, you don't have to—'

  'I really would like to tell you,' he repeated. 'You know Michael and I are just half-brothers, don't you? Same mother, different fathers. Michael was raised by his dad. He was a musician. Not very successful, I guess. Always travelling with pick-up bands. But he cared enough about Michael to keep him with him after his wife—uh—walked out. He kept one step ahead of the child welfare people until he died of a heart attack. Michael was sixteen. Sixteen going on thirty-six in a lot of ways.'

  Shauna nodded, her hazel eyes cloud-soft with sympathy.

  'Michael came to live with us then, in Chicago. It was a pretty tense time for everybody. Of course, I was just a kid. Funny thing was, I liked him right from the start. He closed himself off from everybody else, but he used to play his guitar for me… music he'd written, songs he'd heard on the radio. Sometimes he'd tell me about all the places he'd been with his father. He'd made it sound like a big adventure, lots of fun. But looking back now, I can see it must have been rough on him…'He shook his head, momentarily lost in memories.

  'What happened?' Shauna probed gently.