Hidden Talents

from hers. He had to let her go.
    “Not, not yet.” Serenity wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his lips back down on hers.
    Before Caleb realized what she intended, Serenity was kissing him back with a heady intensity that sent shock waves through him and drove out all thoughts of the past or of the future. She wanted him . In that moment it was suddenly all that mattered.
    Caleb lowered his hands to her small waist and started to lift her up against his heavily aroused body.
    “That's enough.” Serenity tore her mouth free and removed her arms from around his neck. She leaned back and pushed against his chest.
    “Let me go, Caleb. I've changed my mind. You're not very nice at all.” Her eyes glowed with anger and passion. “You've ruined everything. Everything . How could you do this? I thought we understood each other. I thought we could trust each other.”
    He could not seem to breathe. “Damn it, Serenity.”
    “I said, let go of me.” She tugged at his hands.
    Caleb released her. Serenity reached down, scooped up her briefcase and ran for the door. She opened it and bolted through the opening into the outer office. Caleb's secretary, Mrs. Hotten, looked up, startled.
    “Serenity, wait.” Caleb started forward.
    “I wouldn't wait one single minute for you, Caleb Ventress.” Serenity whirled around to face him.
    “What are you going to do?” he demanded.
    “First, I'm going to track down the blackmailer. And then I'm going to find myself another business consultant. One who doesn't feel that he has to maintain such impeccable standards.”
    Serenity swung around again and stalked past Mrs. Hotten's desk. She wrenched open the outer door and vanished into the hall.
    She was leaving.
    Acting on blind instinct rather than logic, Caleb followed her.
    The phone rang shrilly on Mrs. Hotten's desk. She snatched up the receiver. “Ventress Ventures.” She paused for a few short seconds. “Yes, Mrs. Tarrant. He's right here. Please hold.”
    Caleb gained the entrance and looked out into the hall. It was too late to catch Serenity. The elevator doors were already closing on her. “Damn.”
    “Mr. Ventress?” Mrs. Hotten cleared her throat anxiously. “It's your aunt.”
    Caleb closed his eyes for an instant and took a deep, steadying breath. The family was calling. Mrs. Hotten knew that he was always available to any member of the Ventress clan.
    The sense of detached calm slowly returned. He was once more a remote, untouchable ghost in a realm where there were no dangerous emotions, no burning passions, no uncontrollable desires. He was safe. He was in control. Nothing could reach him here in this place where he was spending more and more of his time.
    “I'll take the call in my office.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    There was an odd expression in Mrs. Hotten's normally placid, efficient, middle-aged gaze. Caleb had never seen that look before. Belatedly he realized it was sympathy.
    Annoyed, Caleb ignored her to walk back into his inner sanctum.
    He leaned across the desk and picked up the phone. “Good afternoon, Aunt Phyllis. Is there something I can do for you?” As always when he spoke to any of the family, he kept his voice deliberate and very, very polite.
    “Good afternoon, Caleb.” Phyllis's brisk, nononsense voice came crisply over the line. “I called to make certain you haven't forgotten the annual Ventress Valley Charity Drive. It's that time of year, I'm afraid, and we Ventresses must do our part.”
    She was fifty-nine years old, and she had made a career out of sitting on the boards of every major charity in Ventress Valley. As one of Gordon Ventress's cousins, she was not technically Caleb's aunt, but he had always addressed her by that title. In a similar fashion, he had always called his father's other cousin, Franklin, uncle.
    “I haven't forgotten, Aunt Phyllis. I'll make the usual family contribution.”
    “Yes, of course. The community depends upon us, you know.”
    “I know.”
    The Ventresses had been one of the most influential families in Ventress valley for four generations. As the heir apparent to Roland's lands and fortune, Caleb had taken control of the Ventress investments, most of which had originally been in land, but now were carefully diversified, soon after he had graduated from college. The family income had promptly doubled and then tripled under his management.
    Roland still interfered whenever he felt the urge, of course. He would never really