Free Strange Bedfellow by Janet Dailey Page B

coaxing words. His steadying influence was having its effect on her again.  
    “That's my girl!” he grinned.  
    “Oh, Chet,” Dina declared with a laughing sigh, and wrapped her arms lightly around him, taking care not to spill her drink. She hugged him fondly. “What would I do without you?” She drew her head back to gaze at him.  
    “I hope neither of us has to find out,” he remarked, and affectionately kissed the top of her nose.  
    The knob turned and the library door was pushed open by Blake. At the sight of Dina in Chet's arms he froze, and the same paralysis gripped her. She paled as she saw his lips thin into an angry line.  
    But the violence of his emotion wasn't detectable in his voice as he remarked casually, “Is this a private party or can anyone join?”  
    His question broke the chains holding Dina motionless. She withdrew her arms from around Chet to hold her sherry glass in both hands. Chet turned to greet him, insensitive to the heightening tension in the air.  
    “Now that you're here, Blake, we can drink a toast the last of the newspaper reporters,” he announced in a celebrating tone, not displaying any self-consciousness about the scene Blake had interrupted.  
    For a while anyway,” Blake agreed, his gaze swinging go Dina. “What are you drinking?”  
    “Sherry.” There would be no explosion now, Dina realize. Blake would wait until they were alone.  
    “I'll have the same.”  
    It was late that evening before Chet left. Each dragging minute in the interim honed Dina's nerves to a razor-thin edge. By the time he had left, she could no longer stand the suspense of waiting for the confrontation with Blake.  
    With the revving of Chet's car coming from the driveway, Dina paused in the foyer to challenge Blake. “Aren't you going to say it?”  
    He didn't pretend an ignorance of her question, his gaze hard and unrelenting. “Stay away from Chet.”  
    All the blame for the innocent encounter was placed on her, and she reacted with indignant outrage. “And what about Chet?”  
    “I know Chet well enough to be assured he isn't going to trespass, unless encouraged, on my territory.”  
    “So I'm supposed to avoid him, is that it?” she flashed.  
    “Whatever relationship you had with him in my absence is finished,” Blake declared in a frigid tone. “From now on he's simply an acquaintance of mine. That's all he is to you.”  
    “That's impossible!” She derided his suggestion that she could dismiss Chet from her life with a snap of her fingers. “I can't forget all he's meant to me that easily.”  
    A pair of iron clamps dug into the soft flesh of her arms and she was jerked to him, the breath knocked out of her by the hard contact with the solid wall of his chest. Her lips were crushed by the angry fire of his kiss, a kiss that seared his brand of possession on her and burned away any memory of another's mouth.  
    Dina was released from his punishing embrace with equal force. Shaken and unnerved, she retreated a step. With the back of her hand she tried to rub away the fiery imprint of his mouth.  
    “You—” she began with impotent rage.  
    “Don't push me, Dina!” Blake warned.  
    They glared at each other in thundering silence. Dina had no idea how long the battle of wills would have continued if his mother hadn't entered the foyer seconds later. Each donned a mask to conceal their personal conflict from her eyes.  
    “Deirdre just told me you'd asked her to bring some blankets to the library, Blake.” Norma Chandler was wearing a frown. “You aren't going to sleep there again tonight, are you?”  
    “Yes, I am, mother,” he responded decisively.  
    “But it's so uncivilized,” she protested.  
    “Perhaps,” Blake conceded, for an instant meeting Dina's look. “It's also infinitely preferable to not sleeping.”  
    “I suppose so.” His mother sighed her reluctant agreement. “Good night, dear.”  
    “Good night,