His Girl Friday

“Arrogant old dinosaur,” Danetta muttered, all too aware of the biting grip Cabe had on her arm even through the thick cloth.

“You escalated things, honey,” he reminded her. “Now get in there and keep quiet until I get you out of earshot.” He gave her a faintly amused glance. “You’ve never talked back to Harry before.”

“Maybe it’s the smell of oil and grease that did it,” she offered, smiling impishly. She felt free, now that she’d finally stood up to the old devil. Maybe working for Mr. Ritter had given her that bit of extra self-confidence. She’d had to stand up to him, and now it was getting to be second nature to stand up to other people. She’d…expanded emotionally, she thought.

He chuckled softly as he put her in the Lincoln, leaving his jacket in her hands as he went around and got in. He was still trying to get the grease off his big hands.

“Damned old-line riggers,” he said on a heavy sigh. “Harry needs to fire that son of a—”

“Mr. Ritter!” She glared at him.

“Sorry, Miss Lily-White.” He glanced at her as he started the car. “You ought to be used to my language by now.”

“I ought to,” she agreed. She leaned back against the cushy seat with a long sigh and closed her eyes. “Just when I think I’ve heard it all, you invent new words.”

He chuckled softly. “Do I?” He sat watching her with the engine running, his eyes curious. He slowly turned her face toward him, with a big, grease-stained hand. The smile left his hard lips. “You’re a little wildcat when you get started, aren’t you?” he asked in a tone he’d never used with her before. “You didn’t have that fire in the beginning. It took a few tears to bring it out, but you don’t back away from anything these days, do you?” he mused. His big thumb moved to her mouth and suddenly dragged across her lips while he watched her reaction with narrowed, intent blue eyes.

The sensation that deliberate action caused shocked her. Her body went taut and hot all at once, and her breath caught audibly.

Her response was sheer delight. He’d forgotten that a woman could be that sensitive to his touch. She was innocent, not like the jaded, very sophisticated women who frequently passed through his life. Almost everything sensual was new to her. His thumb moved again and pressed against her mouth so that she could taste tobacco and the faint smell of grease on it. He felt his body tighten as her face told him exactly how much pleasure she was feeling. His blue eyes glittered into hers at a proximity that made her muscles clench.

“Did you know that your mouth was that sensitive, little one?” he asked huskily, searching her wide eyes. “That it could arouse you when a man played with it?”

She swallowed nervously, her body tingling with new sensations. “The…men on the rig…” she whispered.

“The windows are tinted,” he reminded her in a slow, deep undertone. His thumb moved again with sensual pressure and he bent closer, so that the cologne scent of his big body overwhelmed her. Her scent was in his nostrils and he wanted nothing more in life than her soft mouth. Reason and sanity seemed to go out the window as he watched with masculine delight the helpless reaction of her innocence to his experience.

“Mr. Ritter…!” she murmured. He was overwhelming her, and she was afraid.

“Have you ever been kissed properly?” he whispered, letting his eyes drop to her parted, swollen lips. “With your mouth open under a man’s lips?” he breathed, and she actually moaned. His jaw tautened. “It would be so easy. I could lower my head, just an inch or so,” he drawled softly, moving closer, “and let you taste my breath. And then I could slide my hand into your hair, like this—” he drew her face up under his with the pressure of his fingers at her nape “—and I could kiss you like that. I could part your lips with my mouth and drag you against me so hard that you could feel my heart beating…”

She panicked at the mental pictures he was putting into her mind, and in one last burst of sanity she pushed at his chest, trying not to feel the hard warmth of hair-roughened muscles under the thin white shirt. “No! You…mustn’t,” she pleaded. “I work for you…!”

“Work for me,” he echoed, his voice barely audible. He stared down at her soft mouth and felt his body clench with the need to take it. Work for him. The words echoed in his mind and he blinked and scowled down into Danetta’s shocked eyes. Danetta! His head jerked up.

“My God, what am I doing?” he asked harshly. He let go of her abruptly and sat up, moving away from her to light a cigarette. He managed it with a brief fumble, which she was too shaken to see. “I’m sorry, Dan,” he said stiffly. His heart was shaking him, and the tautness of his body was unexpected and disturbing. She was only a child. “That won’t happen again.”

He put the car swiftly into gear and pulled out onto the road without looking at her.

Danetta tore her eyes away from his hard features. She could hardly believe that had happened at all, except for the faint soreness of her mouth and her tingling scalp. No wonder women flocked around him, she thought miserably. He had an infallible technique. He’d barely touched her and yet he’d made her knees weaken. She could still taste his smoky breath in her mouth and hear the deliciously shocking things he’d said to her. She almost groaned at the fever he’d kindled and left unsatisfied. She’d wanted his hard lips to crush down on hers, to feel his arms go around her, his chest pressing roughly against her soft breasts. She wrapped her arms around her, trembling a little in the aftermath. What was wrong with him?

He was quiet all the way back to the office, keeping the radio between them. But all the while she was thinking, and wondering if he’d done it on purpose, to show her how vulnerable she was to him. Maybe it was revenge for calling him a womanizer. To show her that even she was wide open to his practiced technique. By the time they got into the underground garage, she felt sick all over, certain that he’d been trying to humiliate her.

She reached for the door handle the minute he parked the car, but his big warm hand caught hers, staying it.

“Not yet,” he said quietly. His eyes searched hers in the tense silence between them. Something in her eyes made him feel guilty. “I’ve hurt you.”

“I called you a womanizer,” she reminded him, dropping her eyes to his chest. “Was that…why? To teach me a lesson?”

“No, it wasn’t. And I got the lesson, honey,” he said shortly, then sighed heavily. “I’m used to jaded, experienced women who take everything a man does for granted. I’ve never had any experience with shy, fascinated virgins who make it all seem new and exciting.” He managed a wry smile at her blush. “Just for the record, Miss Marist, have you ever kissed a man with your mouth open?”

She went beet red and averted her face. “That’s none of your business!”

“In other words, you haven’t,” he mused, chuckling gently. “All right, chicken, run for it.”

“I don’t need teaching!” she threw at him as she wrestled the car door open.

“Oh, but you do,” he replied softly, his hand preventing her from jumping out. “You don’t know what I’d give to be your teacher,” he added with narrowed, glittery eyes. “But that would be disastrous for both of us. I’m too jaded and you’re too pure. The best I could offer you would be a few hours in my bed, and I wouldn’t insult you with that kind of proposition. You need a good, steady man to cherish you and give you children.” He shrugged heavily, staring at the glowing tip of his cigarette, and for a few seconds he let down his guard. “That would require a kind of trust I can’t give a woman. I don’t want to be vulnerable, Dan.”

“Nobody’s asking you to be!” she said angrily, so embarrassed that she could hardly sit still.

He caught her eyes. “Are you vulnerable?” he asked quietly. “Was my father right? Don’t you have a flaming, king-size crush on me?”

“No!” she cried.

There was a world of experience in his slow, knowing gaze. “Then why didn’t you fight me?” he asked in a tone as smooth as warm honey.

She darted out of the car and into the building so fast that she could barely breathe when she reached the office. The first thing she planned to do was type out her resignation. But when she opened the door, Eugene Ritter was sitting impatiently in the waiting room, looking like a thundercloud.

“What have you done with my son?” he demanded belligerently.

Danetta stopped short, her hair disheveled, her mouth red from the hard pressure of Cabe’s thumb, out of breath and almost shaking from what he’d said to her in the car.

“On second thought,” Eugene murmured thoughtfully as he studied her, “what has my son been doing to you?”

Cabe came in the door behind her, looking smug and so damned arrogant that she could have thrown the typewriter at him.

“Hello, Dad,” Cabe said absently. “Need something?”

Eugene stared at his son, looking for traces of lipstick probably, Cabe thought amusedly. The older man’s face fell. “Not really,” he said. “I wanted to know if you’re coming to our anniversary party tomorrow night. Nicky’s expecting you.”

Nicky? Danetta had heard that name once or twice. Was it a man’s name or a woman’s? Probably a woman’s, she thought miserably.

“I’m busy tomorrow night,” Cabe said shortly. “I’m taking Karol to the ballet,” he added, with a long, silent stare at Danetta’s averted face.

“So that painted woman is more important to you than I am,” Eugene said angrily. “And what about Cynthia? Is she going to suffer for the rest of your life because I had the audacity to marry again?”

Cabe turned on the older man, his eyes dangerous. “She’ll never be my mother, and Nicky will never be part of my family! Damn you, I loved my mother! You couldn’t even get her in the ground before you had Cynthia in front of a justice of the peace!”

“That’s a lie and you know it,” Eugene said in a surprisingly calm tone. “Cynthia did work for me while your mother was alive, but it wasn’t until after her death that we fell in love. Nicky was a delightful surprise, not an accident, and I won’t apologize for him. My God, boy, he isn’t taking anything away from you! He doesn’t even inherit anything except a share of my total estate. Cynthia and I agreed on that from the start! She’s got money of her own to settle on him, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I’ve forgotten nothing,” Cabe told his father in a tone like shattering ice.

Eugene started to speak and then just shrugged, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “It wouldn’t kill you to spend one night with us, all the same. It hurts Nicky that you ignore him.”

“I owe him nothing!”

The older man grimaced and turned away.