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Morgana seemed to hesitate. Then she took the outstretched hand, leaned forward and pressed her cheek lightly to Joanna’s.
“What a lovely surprise.” She drew back, looked at David and smiled, and it struck Joanna that the smile seemed strained. “You never said Joanna would be joining us, David.”
“No.” His eyes held Joanna’s. “But then, it’s a surprise to me, too.”
Joanna flushed and disentangled her fingers from Morgana’s. “I only decided to come at the last minute,” she lied. “I was just telling David, I…I suppose I should have let him know…”
“Ah-ha! Here we are. Tico, I do believe that this is the lovely lady we have to thank for tonight’s marvelous party!”
Joanna swung around and blinked in astonishment. A man and a chimpanzee, dressed in identical tuxedos and trailed by a crowd of onlookers, had appeared at her side.
“You are Mrs. Adams,” the man said, “are you not?”
“Why…why yes, I—”
“Joanna,” someone called, “yoo-hoo, over here!”
Joanna looked past the man in the tux. A woman with diamonds blazing at her ears and throat was waving at her.
“I’m sorry,” Joanna said, “I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Tico insisted you weren’t Mrs. Adams,” the man in the tux said. Joanna turned toward him again and he shot her a blazing smile. “But I said, yes, of course you were, and I was right.” He sighed dramatically. “Tico can be so stubborn.”
“Jo? Over here. It’s so great to see you again. You remember me, don’t you?”
Joanna’s gaze flew from face to face. “No,” she said, “actually, I’m afraid that I—”
“Anyway, Tico was determined to meet you.”
“Are you talking about, ah, about the chimp?” Joanna said, looking at the man in the tux again.
“We don’t call him that. Not to his face, anyway. It tends to upset him, but then, you know how artistes are, they have such delicate…”
“Oh, Joanna,” a voice squealed, “I didn’t know they’d let you out. How lovely!”
“No one ‘let me out’,” Joanna said, staring at the blur of faces. “I mean, I’m not sick. Or crazy. I’m just—”
“…egos.”
She swung back to the man with the chimp. “Egos?”
“Egos,” he said, and nodded. “Delicate ones. All artists are like that, don’t you agree?” He stepped closer and breathed into Joanna’s face. She pulled back from the scent of…bananas? “Tico, particularly. It truly upsets him to be referred to as a primate.”
“As a primate,” Joanna repeated stupidly. She looked down at the chimp and it looked back at her.
“Exactly. Oh, do forgive me for not introducing myself. My name is Chico.”
“Chico,” Joanna repeated. A nervous giggle rose in her throat. “He’s Tico? And you’re…?”
“Mrs. Adams.” A youngish man with his hair sprayed firmly into place shoved forward and stabbed a microphone into her face. “Tom Jeffers, WBQ-TV news,” he said with a self-important smile. “Would you care to tell our viewers how you’re feeling?”
“Well…” Joanna blinked as the hot lights of a video camera suddenly glared into her eyes. “Well, I’m feeling—”
“Is it true you lost your memory and that you were in a coma for two weeks?”
“No. I mean, yes, but—”
A lush, bleached blonde in a miniskirt jammed a tape recorder under her nose.
“Mona Washbourne, from the Sun. Mrs. Adams, what about the rumors that you’d broken all the bones in your body?”
“That’s not true. I didn’t—”
“How about the plastic surgery they had to do on your face. Any comment?”
“Actually, I—”
“Mrs. Adams.” Chico and his tuxedo were all but bristling. “Tico is not accustomed to being kept waiting. If you wish to meet him, you’ll have to—”
“All right,” David said brusquely, “that’s enough.”
His arm, hard and warm and comforting, swept around Joanna’s waist. She sagged against him, her knees weak.
“My wife has no comment.”
“Of course she does,” the blonde snapped. “Women are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Adams?”
Joanna shook her head in bewilderment. “Please,” she whispered, “I don’t…I can’t…”
A flashbulb went off. Joanna cried out, turned and buried her face in David’s chest.
“That’s it,” he said grimly, and he swung her into his arms. She made a strangled sound and wound her arms around his neck. Another flashbulb went off in her face. “Bastards,” David snarled, and without any apologies he shouldered his way through the mob.
Joanna didn’t lift her head until she felt the sudden coolness of the night air on her skin. Carefully, she looked up and peered behind her.
“Oh, God,” she moaned.
The crowd had followed them with Chico and Tico, in their matching tuxedos, leading the parade.
“Mrs. Adams!” Chico’s high-pitched voice trembled with indignation. “If you don’t speak with Tico this instant, he’s going to be dreadfully upset!”
“Give him the banana you were saving for yourself,” David muttered. “How did you get here, Joanna? Did Hollister bring you?”
She nodded. “He said he’d wait around the corner.”
“At least you did something right,” he snapped.
A moment later, they were safely inside the Bentley, with the privacy partition up, racing through the darkened streets toward home. Joanna was still in David’s arms, held firmly in his lap.
Her heart thumped. He was angry. He was furious! She could feel it in the rigidity of his body, in the way he held her, so hard and close that it was almost difficult to breathe.
“David?” She swallowed dryly. “David, I’m sorry.”
In the shadowed darkness, she could just make out the steely glimmer of his eyes as he looked down at her.
“Really,” she said unhappily, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry. I never dreamed…I mean, I never thought…”
“No,” he growled, “hell, no. You never dreamed. You never thought. Not for one damned minute, not about anybody but yourself.”
“That isn’t true! I didn’t mean to make a scene. It never occurred to me that—”
“What did you think would happen, once the sharks smelled blood in the water?”
“I’m trying to tell you, I never imagined they’d—”
“What in bloody hell was the point in my working my tail off to keep them away from you in the hospital?”
“David, if you’d just listen—”
“And what were you thinking, showing up looking like this?”
Joanna’s cheeks flushed. “OK, I suppose I deserve that. I know you prefer me to dress more demurely. It’s just that the other night…I thought you said…I realize now, I must have imagined it, but I thought you said you didn’t like my hair in a chignon and the kind of dress I was wearing, and…and…”
“Dammit, Joanna, you should never have showed up tonight!”
A rush of angry tears rose in her eyes. She put her hands against David’s chest and tried to push free.
“You’ve made that abundantly clear,” she said, “and I promise you, I won’t bother you and your little playmate again.”
“Playmate? What playmate?”
“Morgana,” she said stiffly, “that’s what playmate. Damn you, David, if you don’t let me go I’ll…I’ll…”
“What?” he said, and suddenly his voice was low and soft and almost unbearably sexy. “What will you do, Gypsy?”
She tried to tell him, but she couldn’t think of an answer. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had because his arms tightened around her, his mouth closed on hers, and suddenly he was kissing her as if the world might end at any second.
Joanna hesitated. Then, trembling with pleasure, she buried her fingers in her hu
sband’s thick, silky hair and kissed him back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HIS mouth was hot, and so were his hands.
And she was burning, burning under his touch.
This is wrong, Joanna’s brain shrieked, it’s wrong…
How could it be wrong, when the searing flame of David’s kiss felt so wonderful?
She whispered his name and he drew her even closer, until she was lying across his lap, her hair spilling over his arm, her hands clutching his shoulders desperately as his mouth sought and found the tenderness of hers.
“Open to me, Gypsy,” he breathed and she did, parting her lips under the heat of his, moaning softly as he nipped her bottom lip, then stroked the sweet wound with the tip of his tongue.
He groaned and she felt his fingers at the nape of her neck, undoing her zipper, sliding it down until the bodice of her dress fell from her shoulders.
“No,” she said, clutching at the silky fabric, “no, David, we can’t…”
He cupped the back of her hand, his fingers tangling almost cruelly in her hair as he tilted her head back.
