Jennifer Greene - Silver and Spice

“The image just doesn’t always work the way I think you want it to, princess,” he murmured thoughtfully. “You’re a striking woman, no matter how you dress. Sometimes I like the formal Anne best, actually. All marble surface, all softness underneath. A contrast that very honestly reflects the lady… Anne?”

She was picking up her briefcase from beside her small desk. “Hmm?” His comment confused her. He’d always mocked her clothing styles, always teased her about them.

“I really have come back to marry you.”

Her heart stopped. She took a silent breath. “Last night I had a few glasses of champagne. This morning I won’t be so easily rattled, Jake. You can take your insanity-and your suitcase-over to your grandfather’s, after you’ve had your coffee.”

“Very assertive,” Jake admired gravely.

In spite of herself, Anne’s lips curled in a smile. “Thank you so much.”

“I haven’t decided whether to try for a long, drawn-out battle or to play low-down and dirty. Do you have a preference?”

“Only for you to move away from the door.”

“Low-down and dirty then,” Jake decided absently.

“But it takes two to play, and one of us isn’t playing.” She brushed past him, her eyes averted from the mat of masculine hair on his chest. The smell of his sleep-warm flesh assaulted her nostrils. She headed rapidly for the door.

“Anne?”

“No,” she called back to him. That seemed to cover everything.

“I love you to distraction.”

In less than a minute, she’d snatched up her coat and let herself out the front door. Crisp September air greeted her, a dew-drenched lawn, and the special silence of the morning. She was far too early for work, but she could always pick up a cup of coffee and a newspaper somewhere… Her heels click-clicked on the pavement as she strode toward her MG, shivering just a little from the morning chill. She slid into the driver’s seat, stuck the key into the ignition and started the engine. For just an instant, she caught her reflection in the tiny rearview mirror. A suspicious brightness glittered in her eyes. And her fingers were trembling annoyingly on the wheel.

She and Jake were chalk and cheese. She valued stability; he was a hopeless rover. He was lazy-sleep-in to her rise-and-shine, jeans to her business suits, lackadaisical chaos to her well-ordered world. She knew exactly what she required in order to survive; she had learned the lessons when she was very young, and the lessons had been very hard and very painful.

It was not amusing to have fallen in love with the wrong man.

Slipping the car into reverse, she backed out of the drive. You’re thirty-one, Anne reminded herself. Mature enough to know certain relationships can go only so far. Plenty mature enough to say no to a dead-end physical relationship that has already brought more than enough heartache.

Again her eyes met their reflection in the mirror; this time there was a trace of humor in their haunted green depths. Mature? Jake could bring out the terrible two’s in a hundred-year-old saint. Anne had lost control the moment she’d seen him at the party. Mature?

She loved that man. And she heartily wished that he’d never come back.

At midmorning, Anne stepped out of her office with a sheaf of papers in her hand. The trust department of Yale Bank and Trust was carpeted in teal blue and paneled in dark walnut; the mood of the place, particularly on the second floor, was efficient, quiet and formal. It suited Anne. Yale was an old-time, small, well-established bank, not in competition with the major conglomerate banks of the metropolitan area. Its specialty was trusts and estate planning; its assets were varied and closely guarded; and its stock was so zealously held that shares were rarely for sale. Conservative was the name of the game.

Anne had a nice block of that stock, and in the six years she’d been with the bank had acquired more. Trust officers were typically over fifty and balding, a stereotype that was important, actually. Authority and experience were critical to gaining the customers’ trust. Fred Laird would never have given her the title two years ago, no matter how much he respected Anne, if she hadn’t demonstrated her ability to bring in the high-powered accounts that the bank specialized in. Gil Rivard had been her first estate. Jake’s grandfather. Anne had wanted to do that work for him, but had been uncomfortable when he later sent his friends to her. She had too much pride to want anyone’s help, and she wished to owe no one favors.

She no longer needed favors from anyone. Anne was conservative, inventive, knowledgeable, and could find loopholes no one else had ever heard of in the tax laws. One customer had told her jokingly that she was more concerned with his security than he was. True.

Between her peaceful bailiwick and the noise of the new computer at the opposite end of the second floor, there was a central room where three assistantss worked, flanked on three sides by filing cabinets. In principle, the computer was supposed to reduce the number of files required, but banks, Mr. Laird had once told her wryly, have an intrinsic need to justify any transaction they make ten times over. Throwing away anything was anathema, a no-no. The computer regularly spit out reports someone was dying to file, even if they were never read again.

A gross exaggeration, Anne admitted dryly, but judging from the pile of paperwork on Marlene’s desk, not far enough from the truth.

“You need something, Miss Blake?”

“Just a report copied.” Anne waved the brunette back to her chair. “I’ll do it myself-I can see you’re swamped.”

“Typical Monday,” Marlene admitted.

A half-hour later, Anne returned from the first floor’s photocopying room, juggling the folders and two cups of coffee, one of which she left on Marlene’s desk. The girl looked up with a surprised thank-you, but Anne was already passing.

It was not, for Anne, a typical Monday, but she was trying to get through it. At work she invariably projected a smooth, quiet-voiced serenity; she never flaunted her authority, but it was there. She’d earned it. No one could conceivably tell by looking at her that her calculator had come up with whimsical figures all morning, that she’d lost three files, that she’d read and reread emails in her inbox and still didn’t know what was in there. She had snagged her panty hose. Being Anne, she had a replacement pair in her desk drawer, but she spilled coffee on them on her way back from the photocopying room… The day was just not going well.

Distractedly, she pushed open the door to her office. Her eyes were instantly drawn to the silver-wrapped package with its gay streamers of pink ribbons. Frowning, she set down the files and her coffee and closed the office door. An unsteady pulse throbbed in her throat as she slowly started to undo the bright wrappings.

Memories of other surprise gifts through the years raised the color in her cheeks. The presents never arrived on her birthday, never at Christmas. Never when she was expecting them. Never anything that was suitable to be opened in one’s office, even if one locked the door and pulled the shades over all the windows…

One peek inside the box and the pulse in her throat went into double time. She glanced up nervously to make sure the door was closed before carefully unfolding the treasure. The camisole was designed like a Victorian corset, the old-fashioned kind that cinched up the figure.

Except that there was no whalebone to viciously sever breath. Just satin, a luscious oyster-colored satin, and a low bodice tucked and gathered to deliberately display the wearer’s breasts so brazenly that she would certainly catch a cold.

Unconsciously, she stroked the soft folds, her palms stroking the luxurious satin, the fabric whispering a subtle, erotic call to her senses. Her rational mind, of course, was already crisply cataloging objections. The gift was terribly inappropriate. Anne’s choice of lingerie was not unfeminine, but always simple and practical. Lace and satin-she just wasn’t the type. Jake knew that. And yes, it was from Jake. She didn’t even need to look at the card.

No one else would have given her a gift that was so blatantly a sexual invitation. No one else persisted in inviting her to be the kind of woman she simply wasn’t. Very rapidly, she folded the camisole back into the box, feeling oddly breathless. When the lid was back on, she caught her breath again. If anyone had seen him bringing that in…

She buried the wrappings in her wastebasket, praying no one would knock on her door until she was done, and then hastily picked up the envelope. The note had been boldly scrawled in black ink. “Since I must have missed you, love, I went to see your Mr. Laird. All I wanted to know, was if you were free for lunch. He said you were free to come to Idaho with me for two weeks.”

She had to read it twice, because the first time she had obviously misunderstood. Jake would never have gone to see Laird, not even as a joke. Jake was unscrupulous and arrogant and, God knew, impulsive, but their affair had always been strictly private; he had always shown a respect for her that Anne had never questioned. She read the note a third time, sank back in her desk chair, closed her eyes and murmured to herself, “I am a mature, rational, practical woman in full control of my life.” One could not feel stalked unless one allowed oneself to become prey. She was not prey. For anyone. There was no logical reason she should feel a shudder of primitive fear dance up her vertebrae.

The thing to do was…open her eyes. Get up, for heaven’s sake, and hide the camisole in the bottom drawer of her file cabinet, bury the note in her purse… Those things done, she straightened an imperceptible wrinkle in her skirt and opened the office door.