Cloud Waltzer Read online

  “Mr. Hanson, we’re so glad you and your . . .” The maitre d’ paused, scrutinizing Meredith. At last a smile of comprehension lit his face and he burst out, “Your sister could make it.”

  Meredith glanced up at Archer. His face glowed with a secret amusement that he shared by winking at her. With their matching blondness, it was easy to understand why the man had taken them for brother and sister. It appeared to be a misunderstanding that Archer was enjoying.

  “Your table is right this way.” They followed the maitre d’ toward a section of tables that was roped off and designated “Fiesta Dignitaries.”

  “Excuse me,” Archer said, halting the man’s pleased progress toward the celebrity section. “My sister and I would prefer a more isolated table.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Archer, but the board will be disappointed.”

  “A more isolated table, if you please.” Archer reiterated his request in a way that left no doubt that he was not accustomed to hearing his judgments questioned. They were swiftly led away from the spotlit section to the most remote table in the darkest corner of the ballroom. A boisterous, carnival atmosphere reigned that reminded Meredith of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. As they made their way back to their table, Archer was hailed from every side. Meredith was relieved when they finally melted into the shadowy corner.

  Archer swept a damask-upholstered chair away from the table for Meredith. The moment they were both seated, Meredith felt as if they were marooned together on a tiny island of light. The ocean of people and merrymaking beyond ceased to exist.

  “Hello there, Meredith Tolliver.” He stared deeply at her as if it were a pleasure too long denied.

  “Hello there, Archer Hanson.” His name felt deliciously intimate on her tongue. It was almost as though she were completing a ritual that washed away their respective roles and reservations. She was no longer the dogged reporter and he the elusive prey. All that had gone before seemed now to be simply the route they had both taken to arrive at a cherished destination. All that was important was that they were here now, together; the mode of conveyance mattered not at all.

  His unearthly eyes were dark now, colored by his vision of her and its effect upon him. Meredith wondered if the evidence of her arousal was as blatant. She was sure as she looked at the bold, unforgiving slash of his full mouth that it must be obvious that she was yearning to know its taste. To trace her fingertips along the hard thrust of his jaw, the high, Apache slant of his cheekbones. That she ached to feel the unruly spring of his hair beneath her palms.

  “I trust your dance card isn’t completely filled, m’lady,” Archer teased as the lyrical strains of a waltz penetrated the silken cocoon they were spinning around themselves.

  “I might be able to squeeze a humble petitioner like you in,” Meredith answered with a mock aloofness.

  “I should hope a sister could accommodate her brother.” The little joke wrapped them in an intimacy that was far from brotherly. Archer’s smile was a dazzle of whiteness against the sun-burnished planes of his face. At the edge of the dance floor, he paused and faced Meredith, taking her eyes with his so that a mutual understanding flowed between them that what they were about to embark upon was far more than a waltz.

  Meredith understood and acquiesced, the heat of that understanding flooding her with a drowning weakness. When Archer held his arms open to her and she stepped into them, she did so knowing that she had willingly taken the first step on a journey of passion that could have only one final destination.

  She was trembling with the knowledge of what she had entered into as Archer took her in his arms. His sure hand on her back steadied her and prepared her for the assault of his nearness. They waited for the music to launch them as a ship awaits high tide. And then they were surging into the sea of swirling dancers. Archer was a masterful dancer who led with a gentle strength. They pirouetted around the cavernous hall with the thoughtless grace of a couple that has danced together for decades.

  Meredith was surprised at how solid, how large he felt guiding her through the crowd. After a few seconds of reacquainting her feet with the box step, she abandoned herself to Archer’s fluid guidance. The instant she did so, she was inundated by his feel, his smell. The hard bulwark of his chest brushing against the tips of her breasts was maddening. His warmth, scented with his clean male smell, embraced her. She fought the desire to turn her head to his neck and bury her face in the intoxicating aroma.

  Almost as if responding to her suppressed desire, Archer pulled her closer, pressing his hard contours against her gratefully yielding softness. She felt the rigid fullness of his desire and her own answering hunger with no surprise.

  Archer’s voice was husky when he leaned down to whisper into the soft crown of her fragrant hair, “Shall we leave?”

  She turned her face up to him. Her need for him was nakedly stamped in her expression. Without letting herself think, without allowing time for all the psychological demons that customarily haunted her to slither out of their hiding places, Meredith nodded assent.

  They were making their way toward the exit when a rotund man wearing a plaid vest and cummerbund intercepted them. “Archer, thank God I found you. Tony at the door told me you’d arrived, but you weren’t at your table. Listen, is your crew getting Cloud Waltzer ready for the tethered ascension? I hear there’s already a sizable crowd gathered at the field and the television people are slated to show up and, of course, all they care about is whether the famous unicorn balloon is going to be there.”

  Archer smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. “It completely slipped my mind, Andy.”

  The chubby man’s face fell.

  Archer looked at Meredith with frustrated longing. “Don’t worry, Andy, I won’t botch your P.R. ploy. I’ll phone Phil and have him pick up the balloon and meet me out at the field. I’ll take Cloud Waltzer up myself.”

  They hurried away. Outside the ballroom, Archer turned to Meredith. “I know this is inexcusable, but it looks as if the rest of my evening is going to be spent aloft. Would you be too offended if I asked you to come along on an earthbound flight?”

  “I’d be offended if you didn’t.”

  “Fantastic. Just let me rouse Phil.” When Archer returned from the phone booth, they wound their way through the maze of shopping arcades that led to the private lot Archer had parked in. All the stores were open, keeping extended hours during the Fiesta. “How stupid of me,” he exclaimed, stopping abruptly. “You’ll freeze without some kind of wrap.”

  Meredith winced, not wanting to admit that all she had was her battered parka.

  Archer looked around as if searching for inspiration. A shop window at the corner caught his eye, and grabbing Meredith’s hand, they rushed toward it. “I’d like to see the cape in the window,” Archer directed the saleswoman, who obligingly stripped a sumptuous emerald-green, velvet hooded cloak off of the mannequin in the window. She handed it to Archer, who draped it tenderly around Meredith. It was lined with taupe-colored velvet that immediately warmed and caressed Meredith, wrapping her even more securely in the luxurious fantasy of an evening unlike any other she had ever lived before or expected to duplicate again in her life.

  “It’s even better than I thought it would be,” he declared. “It’s so right on you, Meredith,” he added in a voice intended only for her ears. “So right for this evening. I would be honored if you’d take it.”

  His courtly proposal contained a note of urgency reinforced by the pleading tilt of his eyebrows. Meredith was as powerless to refuse the extravagant gift as she was to break the enchanted spell woven by Archer Hanson’s compelling masculinity. “Archer, it’s gorgeous.”

  He beamed. “Then that settles it.” Turning to the saleswoman, who had tactfully moved away during their exchange, he said, “We’re in a bit of a hurry. Could you send the bill to Archer Hanson at Hanson Development?”

  The name of the man who had built the labyrinthine center she worked in rang a bell of
recognition with the saleswoman. She visibly perked up and chirped back her agreement.

  Meredith hugged the voluminous cape to her as she slid into Archer’s classic Porsche roadster. Archer captured her hand and drew it out from beneath the folds of the cape to rest on her knee, cradling his far larger hand. His long, powerful fingers with their clean, squared-off nails curled over her hand and lightly grazed the sensitive area inside her thigh. Tendrils of sensation spiraled out from his glancing touch and shot upward, bringing her secret core alive with a tingling awareness.

  I’m a madwoman. The thought registered in a remote corner of Meredith’s besotted mind. The barest touch from this man excited her more than all of Chad’s most ardent maneuvers. She reflected on how different it was with Chad. Of their long, rational discussions about whether or not to, as Chad invariably put it, “have sex.” Of the dry, clinical act itself. The comparison only heightened her uncontrollable response to Archer Hanson.

  Meredith cleared her throat of its passion-betraying huskiness. “It’s funny, right now, if this were a normal ‘first date,’ if such a thing even exists, I would be asking you questions about yourself, where you grew up, what you do, except I knew all that before I ever met you.”

  “And you filled me in with a pretty detailed outline of your life, complete with work samples.” He squeezed her hand to signal the joking intent of his reference to their first meeting. “I suppose the most ponderous question weighing on my mind right now about you, Ms. Tolliver, is why, aside from the obvious fact that you are stunningly beautiful, am I so incredibly attracted to you?” As they drew up to a stoplight, Archer turned to face Meredith.

  She was on the verge of giving voice to a flippant comeback, but the intensity blazing in Archer’s face silenced her. He had meant every word he’d just spoken. What little will she had left was utterly sapped by the naked wanting flaming in his eyes. In that instant, Meredith was lost. She leaned toward him the barest fraction of an inch.

  Archer’s strong, weather-roughened hands captured her gently tilting face. He marveled at the silken feel of her cheeks, barely believing that human skin could be so soft. He could have been cradling a magnolia blossom except for the vibrant life that pulsed beneath this unspeakably fragile skin, beneath those endlessly puzzling sapphire eyes, those tremulous, irresistibly swollen cherry lips.

  Meredith felt time crack in two as Archer’s magnificent, leonine head descended toward her. They were lost together in a place beyond the rule of clocks and watches. A lifetime and no time at all passed as his lips moved to taste hers. As they met, time was resoldered and years of sensation hurtled through Meredith. All the breathless nights of adolescent discovery she had denied herself were caught in the first touch of Archer’s lips on hers.

  As Archer tasted the limitless depth of Meredith’s response, the image of her as a magnolia-frail vision evaporated. She was, every inch of her, a woman in all the most exquisite, responsive meanings of the word. He gathered her to him, taking her lips more fully, pulling her to his chest.

  Meredith’s hands found the straining columns of his back as he leaned out of his seat to cover her with a kiss that unloosed a flood of passion. His hot, ragged breaths, fiery against the sensitive down of Meredith’s cheek, were answered by her own staccato exhalations. She was drowning in a wave of sensation. The smell of the leather seat covers mingled with the scent of Archer’s breath and his undisguised male smell. As he leaned forward, the dizzying crush of his chest against her breasts awoke vortexes of tingling anticipation. A sweet ache deep within her told of the ultimate flowering of her desire for Archer.

  He seemed to sense even that, her most intimate response. His kiss deepened. He demanded more of her and Meredith yielded it, parting her lips to him. His hands were now wild, seeking things, running with a frenzied desperation through her hair, along the arch of her neck, her trembling sides. His hands blazed new trails of wanting. Everywhere they passed, Meredith ached for their return. She heard herself as if from a great distance making faint, pleading sounds deep in her throat. Her hands were on the corded expanses of his broad shoulders, hugging him to her tighter.

  His hands moved across the shimmering front of her dress, barely grazing the swells of her thighs, the gentle valley of her pelvis, the budding tips of her breasts, igniting flash fires wherever it went. Her body was raging now with wanting him, awake and flaming for a man with a heat she had never known possible. It burned so brightly that all the mental hobgoblins that had haunted her every other experience with a man were frightened away by the blistering light. Then, even the awareness of discovery was obliterated as Archer’s palm curved over the straining fullness of Meredith’s breast.

  She had to have air. Moving her kiss-swollen lips to his ear, she caught shaky breaths. Archer trembled and groaned, answering her in the language of desire they were both learning to speak so eloquently to one another.

  The jarring blare of a horn was a rude intrusion, startling them both. It took a second for them to realize that the world really hadn’t stopped after all. Other cars had streamed past them as the light had changed several times, leaving them uninterrupted until the impatient driver behind them had broken the spell.

  “Meredith Tolliver,” Archer said, grinning sheepishly as he rammed in the clutch, adroitly found first gear, and got the Porsche moving, “what you do to me is clearly dangerous and probably illegal.”

  The floodtides of desire still churned within Meredith, but she made herself give a feeble laugh. “I guess my professional objectivity has just been blown.”

  “Not to mention my characteristic wariness with you ‘media’ types.”

  “Who knows what might happen now that we’ve dropped our poses and defenses,” Meredith hazarded. She felt like a skater sticking a toe onto ice marked with a danger sign.

  “Who does know, Meredith? Do you?”

  Meredith tried to interpret his expression, his tone, but found few clues to his cryptic questions. They drove on in silence until she spotted a cluster of orbs blinking on and off like gigantic, round fireflies glowing in the night. The Porsche rocked off the highway as they cut down the road to the launch site. Phil, with the help of several TV cameramen and late night spectators, was already inflating the unicorn balloon.

  The emerald cape swirled around Meredith like the tangible evidence of the cloud of enchantment she felt wrapped in as they made their way through the crowd.

  “Fantastic work, Phil,” Archer congratulated his employee. “You’re in for time and a half and then some for this. I really do appreciate it.”

  Phil shrugged, pleased with the public recognition, but still not looking away from the high-powered fan he was using to direct a current of air into the expanding balloon. “These guys,” he said, pointing to the TV people, “are on deadline. They need to get some footage for the late night news, so they pitched in to get the thing airborne. Are you and Meredith going up?”

  “Yeah,” a short cameraman in a newsboy cap interjected. “The cape and”—he made a vague gesture that took in Meredith’s face and figure—“everything would make a great shot.”

  “Why don’t you take over here, then,” Phil suggested, moving the fan out of the way as he and Archer changed places. Archer took over, opening up the burner to begin warming the air trapped in the envelope.

  “Hang on to the basket, boys,” Archer directed as the balloon rose from the earth, righting the basket with Archer in it. “Meredith, care to step aboard?”

  She gathered her cape around her and took the steadying hand Archer held out to her as she climbed into the basket.

  “Phil, are the lines all tied down?” Archer asked.

  “Aye, aye, captain, your anchors are weighed. You won’t be going out on high tide.”

  “Good work—then you can turn us loose.”

  The television crews turned their lights on and called out for the ascending balloon passenger and pilot to wave and smile. Meredith and Archer complied a
s the Cloud Waltzer slowly lifted off. Above them the balloon shone like a Japanese lantern as Archer kept the burners on so that the cameramen could film the popular unicorn prancing in all his splendor across the radiant globe. Soon, however, they were beyond the reach of even the most powerful light. In darkness and ever deepening silence, they continued to rise. By the time they reached the end of the ground tethers, the crowd noises far below were a dim blur.

  Meredith felt an instinctive tightening in her stomach as the earth fell away, but even that slight apprehension dissolved as she surveyed the panorama below. The crowd immediately below her was lost altogether in darkness. She would have thought the field deserted except for the people clumped around the lighted concession booths ringing the field a mile away. Beyond them, Albuquerque was a splash of twinkling phosphorescence churned up against a sea of velvety blackness. The scene was unutterably peaceful. Meredith thought that in all the world, there was nowhere else she’d rather be than here, with Archer Hanson, rocking gently in a tethered balloon above a darkened world.

  The blast of the burner ceased and his arms trapped Meredith from behind. They both looked out over the lights twinkling in the distance. “There is no way I could improve on this moment,” Archer whispered, clasping his hands below her breasts and pulling her against him.

  Meredith folded her arms on top of his, covering a part of his large, tanned hands with her much smaller, far paler ones. He rested his chin on her head, the silken down of her baby fine hair caressing the curve of his throat. He was astonished at how the brush of the undersides of her breasts against his hands excited him. No, he corrected himself, what he felt was beyond excitement. He was quite familiar with mere arousal and had known it in many different ways and to many different degrees with an equally diverse number of women. This was something else. It was closer to a delirium, a compulsion. It had an uncontrollability that was new to Archer Hanson, that tantalized him and, he noted with slight alarm, frightened him a little.