Fire and Ice. Diana Palmer

      One

      Margie Silver had known she would draw interested glances from male diners in the exclusive Atlanta restaurant where she sat waiting. The vivid color of the green satin dress she wore was stunning enough in itself, but the cut was its real attraction. Long-sleeved, the wraparound dress had a plunging neckline, and its front edges were joined only by a wide belt at the waist. The effect, with Margie’s long black hair and green eyes, was dynamite. The skirt peeked open to above the knee, revealing long, graceful sheer nylon stockings, that tapered down to small feet in sexy black high heels.

      She sipped a glass of ginger ale, held in long, artistic fingers with pink-tipped nails. Margie might have looked like a high-fashion model, but she made her living writing sensuous historical romance novels as the notorious Silver McPherson. She wasn’t allowed to mention that fact tonight, however, because revelation of her flamboyant alter ego might put a damper on her sister Jan’s new romance. She had a hunch that this spur-of-the-moment dinner invitation cloaked a confrontation with Jan’s future brother-in-law, the tycoon, and Margie had deliberately set out to provoke, choosing her dress to startle.

      Margie’s full red lips pursed irritatedly. She’d been in the middle of writing a particularly difficult scene when Jan called, breathlessly demanding to be met at the restaurant at seven. It was now half past seven, Jan was nowhere in sight, and Margie was furious.

      She shifted in her chair, looking down at the satin dress in amusement. Jan would be horrified. She’d tried to impress on Margie the Van Dynes’ very conservative public image, and the older brother’s opinion of brassy women. She’d cautioned her older sister to be demure and had suggested that she dress like a nun. So naturally, Margie, being Margie and hating anything that sounded like an order, dragged out her brassiest dress and proceeded to use makeup like a sixty-year-old tart on the town.

      Imagining Jan’s reaction—to say nothing of young Andrew Van Dyne’s and his elder brother’s—made her eyes sparkle. If Jan had really sprung an impromptu meeting between them, Margie was going to enjoy herself.

      “Oh, Margie, please act your age!” Jan would groan when Margie did something characteristically zany—like standing that nude statue of Venus in the middle of the flower garden where poor old Mrs. James would be shocked by it every afternoon on her way to water her own flowers. At least the photo inside the cover of her latest novel, Blazing Passion, was only of her face—Margie had threatened to have it done in a negligee, and Jan had threatened to leave the country.

      But Margie would go right ahead living as she pleased and thinking up new ways to shock Jan. Margie’s brief marriage had been responsible for much of that wild behavior. Her zaniness was a kind of camouflage to keep the world at bay, to cover her vulnerability. The sudden death of her husband after two long months of marriage had been almost a relief, leaving her disillusioned about men and intimacy and marriage. It had taught her one very real lesson—that you never knew other people until you lived with them. And she had every reason in the world to remember it.

      She’d thought herself in love with Larry Silver. He was young and seemed to have a pleasant personality and a promising future as an attorney. They dated briefly, got married and soon discovered that they were completely unsuited to one another. When he died in a plane crash two months later, she had felt more guilt-ridden over the failed marriage than heartbroken. That had happened five years ago, when Margie was just twenty; she hadn’t taken life seriously since. It was, she told Jan, mental suicide to be serious, although she often thought that her younger sister saw right through her.

      She took another sip of the ginger ale and sighed. If Jan and Andy didn’t arrive in the next ten minutes, she was leaving. She had a month left to meet her publisher’s deadline, and she didn’t have time for socializing with strangers. Despite Jan’s growing attachment to Andy, Margie had no desire to meet his brother.

      She glared around her, feeling trapped. She knew “the tycoon,” as she had dubbed him, disapproved of his brother’s involvement with Jan. Jan was working as a legal secretary. The tycoon, however, wanted his brother matched with the debutante daughter of some Chicago society friends—not a nameless little Atlanta secretary. The debutante’s people were in retail clothing, while the Van Dynes were clothing manufacturers. It would be a merger made in heaven for Andrew’s brother.

      She felt a tingling at the back of her neck, and turned to find herself staring into the piercing dark eyes of a man in the doorway. The impact of those scowling eyes, even across the width of the room, almost made her drop her glass. She’d never seen eyes like that, in a face like that. The man was huge, and he had a broad, hard face that might have been carved out of teak. His eyes were instantly hostile. Margie found herself fascinated by them. Why should a total stranger stare at her like that, with such open antagonism?

      The disapproval on his face amused her and without thinking, she pursed her full lips and formed a very visible kiss, batting her long eyelashes and then sending him a come-hither smile before she turned back around.

      She put down her glass to smother an attack of laughter. The look on that man’s face had been worth gold. Bored and irritated herself, she was just beginning to enjoy this. Jan was going to be horrified when she learned how her sister had been passing the time.

      A shadow fell across her, and she looked up to find the stranger looming over her with a face so stern it would have stopped traffic.

      “Well, if it isn’t Mount Rushmore,” Margie murmured with a wicked smile. She half turned, leaning one arm over the back of her chair to look him up and down. “Sit down, honey, and have a drink with me.”

      He didn’t smile. He looked as if he never had. His eyes wandered over her with growing disapproval. “No thanks. I have a prior engagement with a young lady.” He stressed the last word, as if to imply that it could not be applied to Margie.

      She liked his voice immediately. It was deep and faintly rough, very masculine and cultured. “Blind date?” She laughed.

      He shook his head. “Social