Destiny Unknown Read online

  He pressed himself against her, probing greedily for the moist warmth of her desire. Closing her eyes, she wrapped her arms and legs around him, taking him in, his need a hard shaft of primitive impulses. She cried out against her will, the sound a surprised gasp, and he stilled, holding himself where he was.

  "No." She groaned, not wanting him to stop. "It's all right. It's just been a long time."

  "I'm glad." He kissed her neck and her shoulder, and nuzzled her cheek. "So very glad." He kept kissing her, nibbling and licking varying spots on her face and neck . . . giving her time for her body to accept him.

  She reached down to touch him, but he caught her hand. "No. It's been a long time for me, too. How much control I have, I'm not really sure."

  Yet, when he again moved, his thrusts were controlled, each going just a little deeper, slowly stretching her to accept him. For a moment, she saw the analogy, her body resisting even as her mind had, yet in the end, giving in. She started to smile, but didn't have time. A searing kiss stole away her breath, his lips igniting a fire only one thing could quench. She knew then the time for gentleness and control was over.

  Why making love with Cody was different, she wasn't sure. The anatomy was the same, the basics of kissing and touching, the thrusts and retreats. It wasn't as though she'd done it a thousand times before, but she had made love with enough men to consider herself experienced and perhaps even jaded. She'd been prepared to put on the show, to make the right sounds. She hadn't been prepared for the sizzling heat that surged through her, or the molten sensations that turned her wet and hot.

  She'd never known this desperate urgency that took her breath away and erased all possibility of control, not even the first time she did it in the backseat of Parker's car, both of them hot with desire and scared to death they might be caught. She'd never known making love could be so frenzied and wild. Cody had unleashed something untameable, and it frightened and excited her.

  The throbbing of his climax took her beyond pleasure. She heard his voice, felt the room spin and dug her fingernails into his back. Squeezing her legs tight against his thighs, her cry rose as a sob of submission, and she shook under him, the waves of release leaving her totally vulnerable.

  Only slowly did the tension ebb, a sweet exhaustion taking its place, and her body melting into the comforter. "Yes," he murmured into her ear, giving her one more kiss, this one tender and brief.

  He eased himself to her side and pulled the comforter up so the edges covered her. Cuddling her close, he nuzzled her hair and blew soft kisses against her forehead. Close to her ear, he murmured something she didn't quite understand.

  She didn't ask him to repeat it, afraid to trust her voice. The emotions welling inside of her threatened to spill over and expose her. He'd touched her in a way she hadn't expected, had discovered a part of her she'd never known existed. Lovemaking had never been that uncontrolled, not for her. The need had never been that desperate.

  In silence, she stared up at the ceiling. What could she say to him? What was he thinking?

  Had he felt what she'd felt?

  She waited, expecting him to speak. She heard the rhythm of his breathing slow and grow deeper, and then she knew there would be no conversation, no purging of the mind and baring of the soul. William Cody Taylor was asleep.

  Obviously what they'd just experienced hadn't affected him the same way it had affected her. What a fool she was. What an idiotic fool.

  Careful not to wake him, Bernadette slipped out from under the comforter and off his bed. She grabbed her scattered clothes and tiptoed into the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind her. For a moment, she stood in the dark, then she ventured a command. "Light on," she said, and the light came on.

  The whirlpool at the far end of the room looked tempting, her body still sensitive and tense, but she knew she didn't dare the luxury of bathing. Quickly, she dressed. If all went well, she would be gone by the time Cody awoke. Then there would be no need for explanations, no need for talk. Oh, he'd be upset. He would probably show up tomorrow morning at her office or her apartment demanding an explanation, but by then she'd have some answers. By then she would understand what had happened.

  Those were her plans, except when she reached the bottom of his stairs, she knew her legs weren't going to take her any farther, not as weak as they felt. Sinking down on the bottom step, she hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face against her slacks. Raw emotions poured out, the floodgate opened. Control was the mainstay of her life, but somehow she'd lost it.

  She wasn't aware of Cody, not until he sat beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. His body still held the scent of their lovemaking, and she squeezed her lids tighter, willing him to disappear. Nothing was going right tonight. Nothing had gone right for the last two weeks.

  "I'm sorry," he said, and she heard the remorse in his voice. "Just call me Dumb John."

  She said nothing, afraid to speak.

  "Only an oaf falls asleep after something that wonderful."

  "Don't—" The one thing she didn't want was a lie.

  "You were leaving. Why?"

  "I need to get home." Away from the danger he posed. "Mopsy—"

  "Did you leave papers on the floor?"

  She could lie about that, but she didn't. "Yes."

  "Then Mopsy's fine."

  But Bernadette wasn't. Cody knew from the tears and the tension that she was anything but fine. "Did I hurt you?"

  "No." She glanced his way, then back at a spot somewhere between the toes of her tan pumps.

  "Did I say something I shouldn't have?" It wouldn't be the first time.

  "No." She kept her gaze on that spot.

  "Then why were you leaving?"

  "I have to." The desperation was still there. "We agreed. This was just for tonight."

  "The night's still young." And sitting beside her, he knew his need for her hadn't lessened.

  "It's late." Once again, she looked at him. "Please, Cody, don't make this any more difficult than it has to be."

  "And why does it have to be difficult at all?" Her responses in his bedroom certainly hadn't been ones of indifference. Unless she was a consummate actress, what they'd just shared had been pretty spectacular. "Stay the night. Let me get to know you better."

  "Why? We did it. It was good. Let's leave it at that."

  "Maybe it can be better. Maybe it doesn't have to be for just one night."

  Her finely shaped eyebrows rose. "What are you suggesting? An affair? A long term relationship?"

  He wasn't sure what he was suggesting; he simply didn't want her to leave.

  "And what do I do when you decide to leave? Once again, pretend it doesn't hurt?"

  She bit her lower lip, quickly looking away, and he suspected she hadn't meant to let that slip out. "What makes you think I'll leave?"

  "Because it happens."

  A simple answer. He'd bet there was more. "When has it happened?"

  He received a glance, nothing more. Her reluctance to talk was clear, but he'd run up against that reluctance before. Persistence, he knew, was his best defense. "Who left you?"

  "Others."

  Her response was a start. "I want names."

  "Why?"

  "Because this is something we need to get out in the open."

  "We don't need to do get anything out in the open. My coming here tonight was a mistake. Now I'm leaving."

  She started to rise to her feet. He caught her hand, stopping her. "Bern. You can't keep running. And you can't pretend there's nothing between us."

  "And why not?" She remained poised between standing and sitting, his hold balancing her, but the pull definitely against him. "I keep pretending my father loves me. Pretending I'm in control of my life. You want to know why you'll leave?" Her gaze was locked on his face, her eyes a watery blue. "I don't know why. It just happens. If I let myself love someone, they either die or leave. Even if I don't love someone, they leave.
Maybe it's my fault, I don't know." Her chin trembled. "After a while, you learn to protect yourself. Maybe I drive them off . . . or maybe I'm cursed."

  She had her demons, and he wished they were living a fairy tale. How much easier it would be if he could simply keep his mouth shut and end the spell. His silence, however, wouldn't chase away her self-doubts. "You're too intelligent to believe in curses."

  "You believe in fairy tales."

  "I believe in what fairy tales teach you."

  She rolled her eyes toward his ceiling. "And what did you learn? That women who wear green need your help?"

  If so, Bernadette was resisting his help. "The point my sister was trying to make when she told me that story was don't listen to what others say because it might not be true. Believe in what you know." Cody rose to his feet, keeping a tenuous balance between them, his grip on her arm never loosening. "It took me a while to accept that idea, especially with so many around me making fun of me, but you know what, it's true. My stepbrothers and stepfather are all architects. They don't take chances, don't bungle jobs, and don't fail. They've never had wild and fanciful daydreams, and I doubt anyone has ever called an idea they have dumb. But I'm now worth twice what the three of them are worth together, and I believe in myself."

  "Give the man another gold star."

  Cody shook his head, afraid there was no way to get through to her. "I think you're right. I think you do drive people away."

  "So let me go." She looked down at his hand on her arm.

  "Your wish is my command, Princess." He released his hold slowly so she wouldn't lose her balance, then he bowed.

  Chapter Ten

  Bernadette overslept. She never overslept, but then, she never stayed up half the night making love when she knew she had to be at work the next morning. She never did any of the things she'd done lately, and going to work with her hair down was as symptomatic of her mental state as her lack of time that morning. She knew it was a mistake the moment she saw Ben.

  He was talking to Kevin Lutz, the head of the men's department. As Bernadette walked down the aisle toward the escalator, she felt their gazes. The way they were looking at her, she wouldn't have been surprised to discover her skin had turned green. Chin high, she veered toward them. Control came only from facing situations, and she needed to regain control.

  "Were you in your office last night?" she asked as she neared the two men, her question clearly directed at Ben. "Late last night. Around midnight."

  The smile Ben gave her was close to a smirk, and Bernadette knew he'd heard she was in his office, and not alone. She'd expected he'd know. How much that security guard had seen and related was the question. Too much, she was sure.

  "I left the store right after I called you last night," Ben said. He gave Kevin a quick glance, and Bernadette knew Ben's absence from his office and her presence in it—with a man—was exactly what the two had been discussing.

  "Someone was in your office."

  Ben's attention came back to her, his smile most definitely a smirk. "So I understand."

  She went on as if she hadn't noticed. "I came back here last night and sent an e-mail to Parker and Effie, then caught up on some work. It was close to midnight when I left my office. I talked to two of the women on the cleaning staff." They would verify she was alone at that point in time, and she hoped Ben would question them. "It was when I was coming down the escalator that I noticed a light on in your office."

  "Could have been more of the cleaning staff," Ben said.

  "My thoughts exactly . . . until the light went off and whoever was in there took off through the side door at a run."

  Ben looked toward shipping and receiving and the side door. A frown replaced the smirk. "What about security?"

  "Evidently it's not as good as we've thought. The guard didn't show up until a friend of mine and I had checked out your office."

  "Friend?" As quickly as it had disappeared, Ben's smile returned, and he glanced Kevin's way.

  "Friend," she repeated firmly. "He'd been at a meeting at the hotel and just happened by when I was chasing down this intruder. Thank goodness he was around. I wanted to check out your office, but I wasn't wild about doing it alone. Not that we could tell if anything was missing. What about you? When you got in this morning, did you noticed anything missing?"

  "No." Ben studied her face, and Bernadette knew he was weighing her version of the incident against whatever the security guard had reported.

  "Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?"

  Ben shook his head. "No."

  "Well, I think we'd better get security to keep a closer watch on your office." She nodded Kevin's way, then started for the escalator, satisfied that she was leaving the conversation in control of the situation.

  That feeling lasted three steps. "Nice hairdo," Ben called after her. "Sexy."

  Pausing, she looked back at the two men. Both were grinning. Chin high, she gave them an icy glare. "Thank you."

  By the time she reached her office, Bernadette wondered if she would have attracted as much attention if she'd come to work without any clothes on. Over half of the sales staff she passed made some sort of comment about her hair. "I simply overslept and didn't have time to put my hair up," she said before Anne had a chance to say anything.

  Anne nodded and handed Bernadette her mail. "I understand you thought someone was in Ben's office last night."

  "News travels fast." But she'd learned that after nine years in the business. "I didn't think I saw someone, I did see someone."

  "And?" Anne waited for her to identify the person.

  Bernadette wished she could. "That's basically it. Whoever it was got away before I could see him."

  "Do you have any idea what he was doing? Is anything missing? Was anything broken into?"

  "No." That was the confusion. "Ben's files were still locked, and he says nothing's missing. The only thing out of the ordinary was his computer was on." And she hadn't asked him if he'd left it on.

  "Maybe he leaves it on all the time."

  It was the same thing Cody had said. Bernadette didn't want to think about Cody. "Maybe."

  She hoped Ben would say he'd turned his computer off before leaving the store. A call to his office dashed that possibility. He always left his computer on during the week, he told her. Didn't turn it off except when he'd be gone for a day or two, which would be tomorrow and Friday since he was working this weekend.

  "It goes into sleep mode when there's no activity for a while, so don't worry, I'm not using more electricity than I should."

  Ben's attitude might be defensive, but his comment added to her suspicions. "It wasn't sleeping when I entered your office. A screen saver was showing."

  "Probably because you bumped my desk," he snarked. "Or maybe Windows was installing an update, that will trigger a computer to come on, you know. But don't worry," he added sweetly, "no one can get into my files. Not without my password."

  "Loren said passwords aren't infallible."

  "Nothing is missing," Ben said.

  Something was missing. Either Ben had come back, and she'd nearly caught him or someone else had been in his office. And if it was Ben, what could he have been doing that he couldn't have admitted? All he would have had to say was he was working late. Ben didn't need to run off. Not unless he was trying to hide something.

  Bernadette mulled over the question for almost an hour. After that, she didn't have time to think about it. Since a fashion show without models was difficult to pull off, the call she received from the assistant manager at the Twenty-eighth Street store turned that problem into a priority.

  Morgan's Twenty-eighth Street Store Spring Fashion Show was part of their annual "After-School Special" promotion. It was scheduled to begin at four o'clock that afternoon, and Mary Elizabeth Delgato, the assistant manager at that store, didn't find out until ten o'clock that morning that they didn't have any models hired.

  Actually the models should have been
hired, and once Bernadette received the call from Mary, she contacted the modeling agency that always supplied their models to find out what had gone wrong. The answer she received wasn't one she wanted to hear. As before, the guilt appeared to rest on her shoulders. The modeling agency swore she was the one who'd cancelled the contract. They had the letter of cancellation—with her signature—in the file.

  Setting the telephone in its cradle, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. "You're in control," she repeated to herself, then laughed. She wasn't in control. Not of her life, her job, or her emotions.

  She'd run out of Cody's house like a scared rabbit. Making love with him had been the biggest mistake of her life. The tension hadn't been eased. Nothing was better.

  He'd touched emotions too raw to expose. For years, she'd protected herself, had avoided situations that might make her vulnerable. How she'd walked into this one, she would never know. One minute she knew where she was going, the next she was making out in a co-worker's office and going home with a man she barely knew, a man who turned her inside out. Twice in the last two weeks she'd cried in his arms. She never cried. Twice she'd told him things she hadn't confessed even to her sister. People saw her as strong and capable. Sure of herself.

  Cody now knew it was all a facade.

  Of all people, why had she let down her hair with him?

  Bernadette touched her hair, running her fingertips through its length. Less than twelve hours ago, Cody had been running his fingers through her hair, tangling it in his grasp. He'd been kissing her, sucking on her breasts . . . making love with her. Just the thought of it had her quivering inside, wanting. He'd turned her into a wanton woman, starved for sex.