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“God help your poor husband,” he growled.
“My husband is dead, Mr. Van Dyne,” she said quietly, sobering at once. “He was killed in an airplane crash five years ago. Now if you don’t mind, it’s a subject I’d rather we closed. It’s very painful.”
He looked embarrassed, studying her for a long moment before turning his disconcerting gaze to his menu.
Margie studied her own. Even though she could now afford the prices at better restaurants, these staggered her. Nothing was under twenty dollars and the least expensive item was a simple chicken breast stuffed with a ham and cheese filling. She wasn’t fond of chicken, but she wasn’t going to allow herself to be obligated to Cannon Van Dyne, even for a meal.
“Shall I translate for you?” Cannon asked with grudging politeness when the waiter returned and stood beside her.
She smiled with studied sweetness. “How kind,” she murmured demurely, “but I think I can struggle through it.” She looked up at the waiter. “Je prends la poule cordon bleu, s’il vous pla;afit,” she said in flawless French, “des pommes de terre Louis et des choux de Bruxelles.”
The waiter grinned at her, writing it all down. “Avec plaisir, madame,” he replied. “Monsieur?”
Cannon shot her a glare while he ordered himself a steak, a baked potato, and a green salad. The order was given in clipped English and he was still glaring at her when the waiter went around to take the rest of the order from Andy.
“Not bad,” he said coolly, studying her. “Your French is quite good. Do you speak other languages?”
“Spanish,” she told him. “Italian. A little Arabic and some Hebrew. I love languages. They were my passion when I went to college.”
“What was your major?”
“Journalism,” she said. “I only went for two years, though.”
He frowned. “Why did you leave?”
Her face closed. “I got married.”
“Margie’s a gourmet cook,” Jan told Cannon when the silence lingered after the waiter had departed. “She’s quite good at it.”
“Is she?” Cannon asked, glancing toward Margie. “What’s your specialty?”
“Goose,” she shot back.
Something flared briefly in his dark eyes. “Thinking of mine?” he murmured softly. “Forget it, honey, that’s been tried by experts.”
Her green eyes sparkled. “I do pretty well with buttered toadstools and deadly nightshade,” she added. “But you’d probably thrive on that kind of diet.”
“Margie!” Jan groaned.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cannon told the younger woman. “She can handle herself, and so can I.” His dark eyes gleamed as he leaned back in his chair, carelessly holding the wineglass in his graceful hand. “I don’t mind stimulating conversation at the dinner table. It’s rather refreshing.”
“Why?” Margie asked sweetly. “Do people usually dive under the table when they disagree with you?”
He cocked his head. “It’s safer,” he murmured.
“By the way,” Andy interrupted, taking matters into his own hands, “I called Mother earlier this evening to tell her Jan was coming down to Panama City with us.”
Cannon lifted a bushy eyebrow at Andy’s confident tone. “So she told me. I had a conversation with her myself, and I’ve decided it might not be a bad idea for Jan to visit, after all. As a matter of fact, I suggested that Mrs. Silver might want to accompany her sister.”
The three of them stared at him in surprise, Jan and Andy elated, Margie horrified. “I don’t do a great deal of traveling, Mr. Van Dyne,” she finally said quietly. “And I do have certain…obligations.”
“You can take the typewriter with you,” Jan promised, her eyes pleading. Margie knew her sister was hoping she wouldn’t do anything to upset the apple cart.
Cannon’s eyebrows rose. “Do you have some new kind of fetish?”
“I most certainly do not,” Margie replied tightly. “I simply take my responsibilities seriously. The newspaper depends on my column….”
“You may certainly bring your typewriter, then,” he said.
“You can teach it to surf,” Andy put in, grinning.
Margie grinned back. “I’m still trying to teach it the alphabet,” she returned, winking at Jan.
“At least promise that you’ll consider the invitation,” Jan begged, and Margie nodded her agreement.
Cannon didn’t say anything, but he watched her. It was unnerving, that steady, unblinking scrutiny. Against her will, she looked up, and found her gaze trapped. Some faint sensation began to flower inside her—a tickling along her nerves, a trembling excitement that she’d never before felt. Electricity seemed to flow from his eyes to hers, so that she had to tear her gaze away before she burned up.
She lifted her fork and almost dropped it. She was more unsettled than she’d thought, she told herself.
After dinner, they went across the street to a disco, where Margie found herself alone with Cannon when Jan and Andy wandered off to dance to the throbbing, deafening music.
Cannon lit a cigarette with steady fingers and sipped the coffee he’d ordered for himself and Margie. He looked as out of place as Margie felt. She would rather have been back sitting by that little waterfall—she had only belittled it to irritate him.
“Having fun, honey?” he asked mockingly.
She gave him her sweetest smile. “Just as much fun as you are, Mr. Van Dyne,” she replied, raising her voice to make him hear her. “Don’t y’all just love this quaint little place?”
He glared at her and took another sip of his coffee. He apparently liked it black, because she hadn’t seen him take cream all evening. It wasn’t surprising. Somehow it suited his image.
“My God, I’m going deaf,” he said after a minute, pushing the cup aside. He had an actor’s voice, soft dark velvet even when it was raised. “Drink your coffee and let’s get out of here.”
She obeyed him only because the noise was deafening her, too. He went and said something to Andy before he came back to escort her out the door into the warm night air. She moved away from his hard fingers as soon as possible, disliking the sensations their touch caused on her bare arm.
“Where are we going?” she asked, glancing up at him. She was of above-average height, but it was a long way to his face. Just the sight of him would frighten away nine out of ten muggers, and she felt oddly safe with him.
He cocked an eyebrow and glanced down at her with a vague smile. “Forget it,” he murmured, erroneously assuming that her look was flirtatious. “You’re not well-rounded enough for my taste.”
Her eyes felt as if they were bulging. “Mister, you are not only insulting, you are insufferable,” she bit out.
“What happened to the sweet little Southern belle I picked up at your home?” he queried.
“She’s just fired off that cannon in Charleston harbor,” she flared back. “And you can forget that hundred-year-old conflict. I don’t lose.”
His eyes gleamed back at her. “Neither do I.”
“There’s always a first time.”
He chuckled softly as he escorted her back to the big Lincoln. He put her in the passenger side and climbed in at the wheel.
“Where are we going?” she asked again.
“Nowhere. I told Andy to finish that dance and come on out.” He threw a careless arm across the back of the seat and looked, really looked, at her, until a faint flush rose in her cheeks.
“I have all my own teeth,” she said. “And despite your opinion of it, everything you see is genuine.”
“A far cry from the lady of the evening,” he said, watching her eyes glitter at him. “Where did you put her?”
“Back into my Halloween bag of disguises,” she muttered. She shrugged. “Jan told me to dress conservatively and rush down to that restaurant for dinner last night. I was in the middle of a…of something, and I didn’t want to be dragged out….”
“So you set out to embarrass her as much as possible?” he asked.
“I had a feeling she’d invited you and Andy,” Margie admitted with a wry smile. “She’d told me you were very conservative yourself and that I must behave.”
“Conservative.” He mulled over the word and a faint smile momentarily softened the hard lines of his broad face. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, but I think conservative is a new one.”
“You wear traditionally styled clothes and drive a classy car,” she pointed out.
“It puts my adversaries into a false state of ease,” he murmured.
She was beginning to realize that. He was a worrying puzzle; none of the prefabricated pieces she’d imagined him to be seemed to fit together.
“You’re devious, Mr. Van Dyne,” she said.
“I’m careful, Mrs. Silver,” he returned. “If I make a mistake, people lose their jobs. I give the image the corporation needs—in public.”
She studied the unyielding lines of his body. “And in private?” she asked absently.
He half turned in the seat and looked straight into her eyes. “Do you make a habit of flirting with strange men?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“Not really,” she replied honestly. “You looked instantly hostile and disapproving. It got my dander up.”
“You aren’t used to disapproval?”
“Only from Mrs. James.”
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“My next-door neighbor,” she explained with an impish smile. “Very strait-laced, like my grandmother McPherson, who raised Jan and me. She takes exception to my nude statue of Venus in the backyard.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You keep a nude statue… I’m not surprised.” He chuckled. “It does seem to fit the picture I’m getting of you.”
And it was completely false, but she wasn’t about to admit it. Let him think her flamboyant and forward and sensual. It would keep such a man at bay.
“Do you sell a lot of…underwear?”
He sat back up, looking intimidating and calculating and just faintly amused. “You’d better leave that subject, honey, or you may get in over your head. I’m a good fourteen years your senior, and I’d be willing to bet that I’ve done a hell of a lot more living than you have.”
“I don’t intimidate easily,” she replied.
“I believe you. In fact, it makes you more interesting than I had thought at first. Women’s lib may be all the rage these days, but I hate like hell to be chased and fawned over.”
She studied his hard face for a long moment. “You are chased, aren’t you?” she asked seriously. “Because you’re wealthy and powerful, and some women would do anything to be part of that world.”
He looked as if she’d surprised him—and he wasn’t accustomed to surprises. “Yes,” he replied.
“Is that what your wife married you for?” she asked quietly.
His eyes flared dangerously. “That’s a subject I don’t discuss.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I’m a rather private person myself,” she admitted, finding him surprisingly easy to talk to.
He watched her, scowling, for a long time. He made her uneasy; he rattled her. She couldn’t remember a man ever affecting her so violently.
“Enigma,” he murmured absently. “You don’t fit into the usual category.”
“The line of women pleading to be taken into your bed?” she suggested. “Or did you have another category in mind?”
“If that was meant to shock, it fell short of the goal,” he said softly. “You’re very much on the defensive with me. Why?”
She didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. “Ladies don’t discuss such subjects, anyway,” she drawled.
“Oh, haul down the flag, Margie,” he growled. “I’m tired of the pose. A little of that accent goes a long way.”
Her eyes gleamed. “And I’m getting pretty tired of you, too, Mr. Tycoon. I don’t like being taken apart and analyzed! And by the way, I find your accent just as grating as you seem to find mine, you carpetbagger!”
He burst out laughing. “Will it ease your mind if I tell that a grandmother of mine was born and raised in Charleston?”
“Not much, no,” she said. She was losing this battle of words, and she didn’t like it. He wasn’t what she’d expected.
“What’s wrong, honey, have you given up trying to charm me?”
She glanced at him. “I’d have more luck trying to charm a sweet potato,” she commented.
He chuckled deep in his throat. “You might at that.” He reached out suddenly and caught her shoulder, jerking her close enough to smell the rich fragrance of his cologne while his head tilted back and he looked down his arrogant nose at her. “Whether you know it or not, you’re coming to Panama City. And if you try that sweet seduction on me again, you’d better remember something: I’ve been married and women are no strangers to my bed. I’m not a gentle lover, Margie.”
She actually gasped at the insinuation. “As if I care,” she managed weakly.
“I’ve known women like you,” he said levelly, his eyes holding her relentlessly. “You flirt and charm outrageously, but at the first sign of passion, you turn around and run. It took me a while to get your measure, but I’ve got it now, and you’d better look out. Throw yourself at me in Panama City and I’ll take you on the damned beach.”
She felt the threat all the way to her toes as he freed her and moved back into his own seat to light another cigarette, as calm as if he’d been out for a stroll. “And for the record, all your scheming isn’t going to help your sister. There is no way, repeat no way,” he said, his shadowed dark eyes like glittering slits, “that I am going to give my approval to that marriage.”
“Then why invite us to Panama City? For target practice?”
“I have my reasons,” he said enigmatically.
“You won’t even give Jan a chance,” she accused.
“I don’t dare,” he returned sharply. “I know the obstacles. You don’t. Your way of life and mine are as different as New York and a swamp.”
