The Bridal Suite, page 15
“I hate you, McKenna,” she whispered shakily.
“Oh, Dana.” Arthur was almost moaning with anguish. “Mr. McKenna. She doesn’t mean—”
“She does,” Griffin said coldly, “and that’s fine, Coakley. I demand results from my employees, not affection. And now, if yon and Cynthia will come with me, I’ll have the doorman call a cab.”
“Dana?” Arthur said. He licked his lips. “Dana, shall I leave?”
Dana jerked her chin up. “If you have to ask such a question, Arthur, you don’t need me to give you an answer.”
She turned on her heel, marched across the lobby and into the waiting elevator, holding back her angry tears until the doors slid shut on the sight of Griffin McKenna clasping both his charges by the arms as he herded them to the door.
CHAPTER TEN
DANA rammed her electronic key-card into the lock on the door of the Bridal Suite. The little light in the panel blinked green and she pushed the door open, then slammed it shut.
“McKenna,” she said, flinging the key-card across the empty room, “you are a first-class, dirty, rotten skunk!”
Her shoes went sailing after the key-card...shoes McKenna had chosen, shoes no sensible woman would have gone near except in a teenage boy’s fevered dreams. Skinny straps, skinny, spike heels... Walking in shoes like that could become an Olympic event. Sexist stilts, she thought coldly, just the sort of thing a man like McKenna would like.
The nerve of him.
“The nerve,” Dana said, storming into the bathroom, peeling off the ivory silk suit and drop-kicking it into the corner. Ordering her around. Telling her what to do. Telling everybody what to do! Buying her an outrageous outfit buying her underwear—underwear, for heaven’s sake, and then asking if she were wearing it.
Of course, she’d worn it. What else could she do? She couldn’t have worn her own things under the ivory silk, not when the top was cut down to her whatsis and the skirt was cut up to her whosis...
...Not when she could close her eyes and imagined McKenna seeing her in it.
Dana snatched one of the terry-cloth robes from its hook and put it on.
What a ridiculous thought! She’d sooner find herself the love object of a baboon! McKenna had been right about one thing, anyway. It had, indeed, been a long day. What she needed now was a good night’s sleep, and to hell with his ordering her to get to work on the code tonight. What did he know about codes and programming, anyway?
“Nothing,” she muttered as she marched through the living room again. Not one miserable thing. So far as she could tell, the only thing Griffin McKenna knew was how to run a dictatorship.
Dana opened the sliding-glass doors that led onto the terrace. The air was warm. rich with the scent of the ocean that foamed against the shore below. She sighed, leaned her elbows on the terrace railing and gazed out over the dark water.
Such a sweet thing Arthur had done, flying down to join her. She’d never have imagined him doing something so impulsive.
“What ever possessed you?” she’d asked him as they’d danced, and Arthur had blushed and replied that he’d just wanted to surprise her.
“You see?” he’d said with a little smile. “I’m not always a cautious stick-in-the-mud.”
The evening had been so nice, until McKenna had—
Oh, hell.
Dana turned her back to the night, sank down into a wicker chair and rubbed her hands over her eyes.
Why kid herself? The evening had been horrible, from the minute she’d spotted Arthur in the lobby, straight through to when McKenna had sent her packing.
What a farce! Pretending it was fun to watch Arthur damn near clicking his heels and saluting each time McKenna opened his mouth.
“Yes, Griffin.” Dana dropped her chin, and her voice, to her chest. “Whatever wine you prefer is fine, Griffin. You’re going to have the red snapper? Well, then, I’ll have it, too.”
Cynthia’s performance had been even worse. The little-girl voice. The demure looks. The way she’d hung on McKenna’s every pronouncement as if he were giving the Sermon on the Mount.
Not that he’d said much. What he’d done most was glower. That was why, when Cynthia had nervously suggested it might be fun to peek into the hotel’s nightclub, Dana had jumped at the chance.
Anything, she’d figured, was better than sitting around like a bunch of mourners at a wake.
“Let’s,” she’d said quickly, before Griffin could frown and cast his royal veto.
But when not even the noise and the music in the small, artificially darkened room had been enough to lift the gloom, Dana had grabbed Arthur’s hand and said she wanted to dance.
“Dance?” Arthur had replied as if she’d suggested they go parasailing over the Atlantic.
“Dance,” she’d said firmly. “Remember those lessons you told me about? Why let them go to waste?”
It had been an argument Arthur could not resist. He’d followed her onto the stamp-size dance floor, where she’d practically had to beg him to put his arms around her.
“I already have them around you,” he’d insisted.
It was an accurate assessment, by his reckoning. His right arm encircled her waist, hand planted neatly in the middle of her back. His left arm was upraised, elbow out, so that his hand could hold hers. A chaperone at a high school prom would have applauded, but Dana wanted something else.
“Hold me as if you meant it,” she’d said, trying not to make it sound like a command. “Look around you at other people, Arthur. See what I mean?”
He looked, he saw, but he went on leading her around the floor with enough space between them to have parked a bus. In the end, she’d resorted to a pure, unadulterated lie.
“I want you to hold me close,” she’d whispered, batting her lashes.
Dana groaned at the memory.
Oh, what a rotten thing to have done! She hadn’t wanted Arthur to hold her at all. She’d wanted to drive McKenna crazy.
And she’d succeeded.
Her pulse quickened at the memory of Griffin’s face once Arthur’s arms had finally enfolded her. The narrowed eyes. The flared nostrils. She’d read a description once, of a stallion preparing to defend his mares against an interloper...
In another time, another place, she knew he’d have come for her, torn her from Arthur’s embrace, carried her off to his castle and made passionate love to her until she pleaded for mercy, until she clung to him and whispered the truth, that she wanted him, that she’d never stop wanting him.
Dana bowed her head. She sat still for a long moment. Then, slowly, she rose to her feet.
She was tired. That was why she was thinking these wild thoughts. What she needed was a good night’s rest, without sight or sound or thought of Griffin McKenna, and there was only one way to guarantee that.
Resolutely, she marched to the door of the Bridal Suite and pulled the Do Not Disturb sign from the knob. Let him sleep in the lobby. Let him sleep on the beach. Let him curl up outside the door, like the cur he was.
The one place he was not going to sleep, was here.
She felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Of course, he wasn’t going to sleep here. Why hadn’t she put her foot down when this craziness all began? He could take a room at another hotel. So what if he had to gallop back and forth once the conference began?
Dana’s chin rose as she opened the door. She was the programmer, not Griffin. He might like to think he had to be available every minute of every hour, but the simple truth was that she was the indispensable one, this weekend, not—
The elevator doors whooshed open. Griffin stepped into the corridor.
“Dana?”
She froze, but only for an instant
“Griffin,” she said politely, and then she looped the Do Not Disturb sign over the knob, slipped inside, and slammed the door.
His footsteps pounded down the corridor.
Safe inside, she fumbled for the security chain. She heard the swish of his key-card in the lock, but she was quicker. The chain fell into place and, triumphantly, she pushed the door closed.
“Dana.” The doorknob rattled. “Open this door.”
“No.” She shook her head and flattened her palms against the door. “I’m not opening it.”
“Don’t be an idiot. Open the door.”
“That’s how you’ve been treating me, as if I were an idiot.” She drew a shuddering breath. “Well, I’m through letting you get away with it, McKenna. You think you can boss people around, have your own way all the time—”
“Open the door, Anderson.”
Dana shut her eyes. Oh, that voice. She could just imagine the face that went with it, the burning eyes, the thinned mouth...
“Anderson!” Griffin’s fist slammed against the door. “Do you hear me? Open it, I said.”
“Try hearing me for a change,” she said. “I loathe you. I hate you. I despise you. Am I getting through to you, McKenna?”
“Anderson. If you want to keep your job—”
“You can’t fire me. Not now, anyway. You need me to debug that program.”
“I’m going to count to ten. And then you’d better open this damned door because if you don’t—”
“I’m not listening,” she said, and turned the lock. “Go away.”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re so ticked off about, but—”
“That’s exactly the point. You don’t know. You should, but you don’t.”
He sighed. With her ear to the door, she could hear it as clearly as if he were in the room with her.
“Is this about my suggesting Cynthia and the Bow—and Coakley leave, so we could call it a night?”
“Suggesting?” She stepped back and folded her arms. “Suggesting?” she said, and gave a little laugh.
“Okay. Okay, maybe I was a little abrupt—”
“It’s too late for apologies. You’re a horrible person, Griffin McKenna, and I hate you.”
“You already said that.”
“I despise you.”
“That, too.”
“Well, it’s worth saying again.”
Griffin shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the door. “Dana, for God’s sake, be reasonable. Where am I going to sleep?”
“What do I care? Sleep on the beach. Sleep in a telephone booth. Sleep with Cynthia.” Her voice quavered, though there was no reason for it. “Why miss a night, if you don’t have to?”
“I don’t sleep with—” He heard a door crack open somewhere behind him. Oh, hell, he thought miserably. “I don’t sleep with Cynthia,” he said in a low voice. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“You’re right. It’s absolutely none of my business. Why don’t you?”
How many times had he asked himself that same question? “What kind of question is that? I don’t know why I don’t sleep with her. Why don’t you sleep with the Bow Tie?”
“How do you know I don’t?”
“I just do,” he said, and wondered why he felt so damned relieved. “Why don’t you?”
Why, indeed? “Our relationship’s on a higher plane than that.”
“Well, I’m delighted for you both, but I still need a place to bunk for the night.”
“Try the lobby. Some of those chairs looked pretty comfortable.”
Another door creaked open down the hall.
“Anderson.” Griffin did his best to sound like the very voice of reason. “Let me in.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Dammit, Anderson, I’m telling you for the last time—”
“What’s the problem, young man?”
Griffin stepped away from the door and looked around. A woman was peering out from behind the door of her hotel room. She had curlers in her hair and a look of perplexity on her face.
“Problem?” he said.
“Yes. Why are you talking to that door?”
“I, ah, I’m not. I’m talking to, ah, to—”
“What does it say there?” The woman peered nearsightedly at the brass plaque on the door of Room 2010. “Brindle Suit? What’s a brindle suit?”
Griffin cleared his throat. “No. I mean, it says—it says—” He gestured helplessly. “I’m sorry we disturbed you, madam. Why don’t you just—”
“Ah, I can make it out now.” The woman’s wispy brows lifted. “It says Bridal Suite.”
“Yes. Yes, it does. Look, just go on back to bed. I apologize if—”
“My, oh, my, did you forget your key? Are you locked out?”
Oh Lord, Griffin thought, why me? “Madam, really, I appreciate your concern, but really—”
“You just wait there, young man. I’ll phone the desk and have them send someone up to open that door for you.”
“No,” Griffin said...and then he cocked his head. “Why, yes. Yes, thank you, madam. If you’d just wait a second, while I tell my—bride—the good news... Darling?” He leaned closer to the door. “Dana, dearest? Did you hear that? One of our neighbors has offered to call the desk. They’ll send someone up to open the door.”
“No one’s going to open this door, McKenna. I’ve got the chain on, remember?”
Griffin sighed. “You say the chain is stuck? Well, I’ll tell our Good Samaritan to have the desk send up a maintenance crew. They can take the door off the hinges.” He folded his arms and stared at the door, his face a study in concern. “That should draw quite a crowd.”
A second passed. The chain rattled free, the lock turned and the door swung open. Griffin looked at the woman with the curlers in her hair.
“Isn’t that remarkable? My bride’s managed to open the door, all by herself.”
She smiled. “Sweet dreams, young man.”
“The same to you, madam,” Griffin said, and stepped inside the Bridal Suite. The door slammed shut, and he came face-to-face with Dana.
“The only thing more horrendous than spending the night in the same suite as you,” she said, “would be having everyone on this floor know that I was spending the night in the same suite as you.”
Griffin’s jaw tightened. He’d never been so angry at a woman in his life. It seemed impossible to think that this—this undersize wraith in an oversize robe had kept him cooling his heels in a hotel corridor. He could have pushed her over with one finger, if he’d been into pushing women, and, dammit, he wanted to do exactly that. Hell, he thought, jamming his hands into his pockets, he most certainly wanted to do exactly that!
“For once,” he said, “we agree. You ever try and make a public spectacle of me again, you’ll pay the price.”
“Oh, give me a break, McKenna! If there’s anybody into making public spectacles of people, it’s you!”
“I beg your pardon,” he said coldly.
“Bossing me around. Telling me to go to my room, as if I were a ten-year-old!”
“You have a job to do, in case you’ve forgotten.” He stalked past her, yanked off his jacket and tossed it on a chair. “I know you’d rather pretend this is a holiday weekend, that the only thing you’ve got to do is—is climb all over that boyfriend of yours on a public dance floor, but—”
“I was not climbing all over anybody!” Dana skidded around Griffin and stopped in front of him, her hands on her hips.
“No?”
“No.”
“Did you finish working on that code?”
“Are you kidding? I just got up here. I haven’t even had time to take off my makeup.”
But she’d had time to get undressed. The long robe kept gaping open. Not even the slit in the skirt of the ivory silk suit had showed as much long, luscious leg as the robe was showing now.
Griffin felt a sudden tightening in his grin.
“Get out of my way,” he growled.
“First, we talk. Then, I’ll be happy to oblige!”
Did she have to do that? Tilt back her head, so that her hair slid down over her shoulders?
“Dammit,” he said through his teeth, “step aside!”
“I have no wish to see your face or hear your voice, McKenna.”
“Amen to that. Now, get out of—”
“As for the code, I’ll be up at dawn to work on it.”
He pulled off his tie and tossed it after the jacket. “I expect as much.”
“Now that that’s settled, I’m going to bed.” She glared at him. “And I promise you, I’m going to take your advice and bolt my door.”
“Why?”
“Why? What do you mean, why? Because...” She hesitated. He was undoing his shirt, peeling it off his shoulders, and dropping it to the floor. “What are you doing, McKenna?”
“I’m getting undressed.”
“Well, stop.” She swallowed, glared, snatched up his shirt and held it out. “Would you please put this on?”
He looked at the shirt, then at her. “What for? I’m getting ready for bed. I don’t sleep in my clothes, Anderson. Do you?”
“No. Of course not. I mean...” What did she mean? She couldn’t think, not with him standing around shirtless. Such golden skin. Such beautiful muscles. And that curling dark hair, stretching over his chest, down his flat, taut belly, into the waistband of his trousers...
“What do you sleep in, then?”
Her gaze flew upward. He was looking at her, his eyes dark and heavy-lidded.
“That’s a ridiculous question.”
“Is it?”
Those eyes. So dark. And so focused So tightly fixed on her...
“Why are you so angry at me, Anderson?”
His voice was soft, caressing. She felt a flutter along her spine.
“You know why. You treated me like—like a slave. ‘Anderson, do this. Do that...’”
“You were all over him on that dance floor.”
Dana colored. “I wasn’t!”
“He’s in love with you, the poor bastard.” Griffin moved toward her, his steps slow and deliberate, his eyes never leaving hers. “But you’re not in love with him.”
“Don’t be silly. You don’t know anything about... What are you doing?”
His smile was slow, dangerous, and heart-stoppingly sexy. “You never did answer my question, Anderson.” He reached out and took hold of the sash on the robe. “Did you wear the lingerie I sent up?”
