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He shrugged as he felt the hand slide from his shoulder. “I don’t really like to dance.”
She knew there were men who truly loathed to dance, but there was something in his voice that had Margo not quite buying Bruce’s excuse.
She moved to stand in front of him to get a clearer view of his face. “Don’t like to dance or don’t know how to dance?”
One quick glance told her what she wanted to know. She took his hand in hers, struck by the understated power she felt. She’d always had a fondness for strong men.
“Just as I thought. Come on, let me show you.” She was already urging him to his feet. “It’s all in the hips, really.” To prove it, she placed one of his hands on her hip and moved slowly.
Bruce felt something tighten in his gut even as he found himself being charmed. “What is?” he asked belatedly.
“Rhythm,” Margo said, still demonstrating. Gently, as if she were coaxing a fawn out on the ice, she got him to the dance floor. “Let it take you over. Don’t think of it as dancing, think of it as moving with the rhythm.” Locking her hand with his, she was ready with the first lesson.
When he looked down he saw that her dress seemed to cling to her body like a second skin. The smile on her lips was inviting as her body sealed itself to his. Then she said, “You look like the kind of man who knows just how to move with rhythm.” Before he could protest again, Bruce found himself on the floor with Margo, surrounded by other couples. He didn’t want to call attention to himself, but he hated feeling like a fool.
She read the reluctance in his eyes, and felt it in his body. He was afraid of being embarrassed. She’d lost the fear of being embarrassed herself years ago. “Don’t worry, we’ll pretend you’re leading.”
Her assurance struck him as particularly baseless. “How can I pretend that I’m leading when I don’t know what I’m doing?”
The same smile he’d seen on Melanie lit up Margo’s eyes. “Simple. Presidents do it all the time.”
She winked at him, a lightning-fast flutter of dark brown lashes that had a far greater effect on him than he thought it should. In a last-ditch effort to save himself, he issued her a warning he thought was only fair. “I’m going to step all over your feet.”
Oh no, she thought, he wasn’t going to get out of having fun that easily.
“My feet can look out for themselves.” She jiggled his arm slightly. “Loosen up, Bruce. Just let yourself have a good time.”
He thought he was having a good time. “Loosen up?” he echoed. “I wasn’t aware that I was ‘tight.”’
She looked up into his eyes, wondering if she was making him tense, or if he was just that way in general.
“Oh yes, there’s tension all through your shoulders.” She brushed her hand lightly across one to make her point. “And judging from the distance from one end to the other, that’s a lot of tension.”
He took her hand into his, more to immobilize it than to conform to any proper dance position. “I’m out of practice on more than one score.” He saw the merriment in her eyes and cocked his head, forgetting to feel like a fish out of water. “Are you flirting with me?”
Amusement danced along cheekbones that a sculptor would have wept over with joy. “If you have to ask, I’m the one out of practice.” She relaxed, finding something utterly comforting about being with this man. For the moment she allowed herself to sink into the sensation. “But yes, I’m flirting with you.”
They hardly knew each other, he thought. “Why?”
She raised and lowered her slim shoulders. “Why does a woman usually flirt?” He underestimated himself about the dancing, she thought. He was dancing very nicely.
The smile on his lips was self-deprecating. “I said I was out of practice.”
Margo enumerated the reasons for him. “A woman flirts with a man to be complimented. Or because she’s with a good-looking man and would like his attention. She flirts because it feels good. Or to be friendly because that’s her way.”
They danced by Lance and Melanie. Margo felt a slight tug on her heart. She’d encouraged Melanie to be independent since she’d taken her first step, but she’d never seen how well the lesson had been learned until this moment. Melanie was all grown-up and on her own.
“Or maybe,” Margo said quietly, watching the younger couple dance, “because her only daughter’s just gotten married and she’s feeling a little world-weary, a little lost.”
Bruce waited until the pause drew itself out into silence. “Is this where I’m supposed to choose one of the above?”
Rousing herself, Margo smiled as she nodded. “Yes, this would be the logical place.”
“The last one?” He thought it was a safe guess.
She’d opened up a little more of herself than she’d meant and now retreated. Light laughter filled the air. “Wrong. To be friendly.” she told him. Purposely Margo maneuvered Bruce so that her back was to her daughter. Getting misty twice in one day was twice too many. “I like people, Bruce. I like them to like me. With men, that means a little flirting.”
Across the floor Melanie watched their progress with amusement and a touch of concern. She liked Bruce. Liked him a great deal. A man like that was completely unarmed when it came to someone like her mother. Unarmed and unprepared.
She raised her eyes to her new husband. “My mother is dancing with your father. Think I should warn him about her?”
Lance would have hated to admit it at one time, but he and his father were a lot alike. Or had been, until Melanie had entered his life. His father deserved a chance at mining that kind of treasure.
Lance shook his head. “If she’s anything like you, she’ll be the best thing that ever happened to him.”
The compliment warmed her, but it didn’t dispel her concern. That was just the problem. At bottom, her mother wasn’t like her.
Melanie bit her lower lip as she watched the pair move in slow circles on one tiny section of the dance floor. Go easy on him, Mama.
Chapter Two
Margo raised her head to look up at the man who managed to extend an attitude of respectfulness toward her even while he held her close enough to make her pulse beat in time to the music. She knew without being told that Bruce Reed was a shy man. A hundred years or so ago, he might have even been referred to as a courtly man.
There was a lot to be said for courtly, she mused, enjoying the feel of his arms around her.
The thought occurred to her that chivalry and manners had definitely been underrated in the past few decades.
Or maybe, a small voice whispered to her, it might be that she had gotten just the least bit weary of life in the fast lane. Bruce Reed, with his reluctant, shy smile, his kind eyes and polite ways was like a breath of fresh air to her.
Mentally, Margo shrugged away the choices. Whatever the cause of her feelings, it was nice, dancing like this with the tall, handsome stranger fate and the state of California had linked her to. Drifting with the music, she let herself just enjoy the moment. That had been her credo for the last twenty some odd years. Enjoy the moment, because the next one might just come by and knock you on your seat
Margo moved her hand up along his arm, resting it lightly on his jacket. Even so, she could detect the hard muscle that was just beneath. Handsome and strong, she thought. That was unusual in a man over thirty.
The smile she directed Bruce’s way was slow, deep and, some had told her, lethal. His unspoken reaction to it pleased her, as well.
She studied his face. “How old are you?”
Leery about where this was going, he asked, “Why?”
She shrugged, her shoulder brushing against him. It was a nice sensation. Going with it, Margo laid her head against his chest. “You don’t look old enough to have a son like Lance.”
This was nice, he thought, surprised by her familiarity and his own reaction to it. They were hardly moving on the floor and yet it felt nice. His cheek brushed ever so slightly against the top of her head. The vague tingle he felt made him forget that he hated to dance. “Thank you,” he told her. “I can honestly say I return the compliment.”
Margo raised her head. A smile curved her mouth. “I don’t look old enough to have a son like Lance?” she asked, teasing him. “I’m not.”
That had gotten twisted somehow. “No, I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” she told him, taking him off the hook he seemed destined to impale himself on, although she had to admit, he made being flustered seem almost adorable. “That I don’t look old enough to be Melanie’s mother. And it’s a very nice compliment.”
It took Bruce a moment to focus on the conversation. The way she had looked up at him had temporarily blown all thoughts out of his mind, filling the space with her image. He’d never seen eyes quite so blue before, or quite so compelling. Hypnotic was the word for it, he amended. And for the lady, as well. It was like holding solidified quicksilver in his arms. There for the moment, but not for long.
Lance’s new mother-in-law, he caught himself thinking, was one hell of a remarkable woman.
“It’s not a compliment,” Bruce corrected her. She was probably on the receiving end of a dozen a day. He had no intention of getting involved in some sort of unofficial competition. “It’s an observation. You really do look more like Melanie’s sister than her mother.”
She’d heard it before, but it wasn’t something she was about to become tired of anytime soon. As time went by, she cherished the compliment more and more.
With a stately nod, she replied, “I had her when I was eleven.”
Her face was so straight, her voice so solemn, Bruce didn’t know whether she was pulling his leg, or, fueled by champagne, revealing a deep, dark confidence to him. There were women in his acquaintance, his sister, Bess, being one of them, who couldn’t take more than a few sips of anything remotely alcoholic without feeling compelled to make a clean breast of any and all past sins and transgressions, whether minor or major. He had no idea which category Margo fell into, although he had his suspicions.
The best way to handle this, he decided, was gracefully. He just hoped he remembered how. “You’re that much older than she is?”
The guileless remark caught her off guard. And then she laughed, completely charmed by a man she could tell wasn’t trying to be charming. Despite the very handsome figure he cut in his tailor-made tuxedo, Bruce Reed was very obviously just struggling not to commit any unforgivable social error on this very important day in his son’s life.
Here was a man, she decided, she’d really love to spend some time with.
“Oh, Bruce, you are good for me.” When her eyes swept over him, Bruce felt a good deal warmer than he had just a moment earlier. “The truth is, I’m seventeen years older than Melanie.” Margo paused, quickly subtracting the months that separated her birthday from her daughter’s. “Seventeen and a half, to be precise.”
The figure struck very close to home. It occurred to Bruce that they had an unofficial bond, Margo and he, both becoming parents before they reached their twentieth birthday.
“My wife was almost nineteen when Lance was born. She was five months older than I was.” He was unaware of the fond smile that took possession of his lips as he allowed himself, for the space of a heartbeat, to be transported to another time and place.
But Margo wasn’t. What she didn’t understand was why his smile sent such a ripple of bittersweet longing through her.
“I always told her I had a fondness for older women,” Bruce said. A ream of memories tumbled through his mind and he laughed. “She never cared for that remark.” And then he sobered slightly as the sadness, even after all this time, came to embrace him. “But she never got to be old enough for that to become an issue.” And then he realized he probably sounded as if he were rambling. Margo deserved an explanation. “My wife died while she was still very young.”
And he was still in love with her. Margo was touched by the sentiment she saw in his eyes.
She supposed that the appropriate response to his revelation was something along the lines of offering her condolences, but somehow she had a feeling he didn’t want to hear empty words from a stranger. They wouldn’t change what was.
Instead she told him what she felt. “Your wife was a very lucky woman.”
Surprised, Bruce raised a brow. How could a woman who died too young to see the autumn of her years, too young to see her child reach his destiny, be considered lucky? “What makes you say that?”
“The way your face lit up when you mentioned her.” She couldn’t help but envy Lance’s mother. Though gone, the woman still retained her husband’s love. It said a lot about the woman. And a lot about the man who loved her. “The most important ingredient in a person’s life is love, and it appears to me that she had it in abundance.”
Yes, he thought. Ellen had. He couldn’t remember a day when he hadn’t loved her. It seemed to him that they had always been together, right from the very beginning. Whatever had come before that time was a blur. Just like life without her had become.
As they turned on the floor, he caught a whiff of Margo’s fragrance again. It sharpened his senses and he smiled at the woman in his arms. “You’re very perceptive.”
Margo took her due without vanity. Perception was closely interwoven with her other survival skills. “So I’ve been told.”
She was open rather than coy. It was an honest trait. He valued honesty a great deal. “Well, you’re certainly not shy and retiring.”
Oh, but I am. The thought came to her from nowhere, standing like a lost soul in the dark. It’s just something that I can’t allow to take over anymore. Or even be noticed. Very carefully, Margo kept her thoughts from registering on her face. She’d become very good at that over the years.
“You know my daughter,” she reminded him lightly. “Would you really have expected me to be?”
She had a point. They were very alike, mother and daughter. And yet he detected that there were minor differences. For one, Margo was far more worldly than her daughter. And perhaps, he mused, less apt to be hurt. “No, but I have to admit that I didn’t expect anyone quite so effervescent, either.”
“Effervescent?” Delighted, she laughed lightly. “Oh, my dear Mr. Reed, I’m in fairly low gear now.” She looked toward Melanie and felt that same tightening of her throat she’d felt when she’d walked into the change room to see her daughter in her wedding gown for the first time. “I think that realizing things just refuse to remain the same, no matter how much you’d really like them to, is responsible for subduing me.”
Because the same bittersweetness resided within him, Bruce recognized the signs. The feeling of kinship grew as the music around them faded. Bruce hardly noticed. He was hearing another melody, one within his head.
Continuing to move to this silent music, he tried to tease her mood away. “If this is low gear, then heaven help the man who gets you in high gear.”
He really was very sweet, Margo thought. And whether he realized it or not, he was doing tremendous things for her ego. She needed that right now, as the loneliness insisted on closing in no matter how hard she tried to block it.
“Heaven has very little to do with it. Or me.” Her wink was positively bawdy, Bruce thought, feeling its effect as it simmered over his long frame. “Or so my father said the last time I saw him.”
Looking into her eyes, he almost thought he saw sadness there. But everything in her manner belied the discovery. He had to be mistaken.
“Which was?” he prodded.
If she closed her eyes, Margo could still see the cold dark look of disapproval, of condemnation in Egan McCloud’s green eyes as he ordered her to leave. No instrument known to man could have begun to measure the depth of that cold.
She took a breath before answering, her smile never faltering. She’d begun to show at four months. By five, her father no longer believed that it was a weight problem. “Four months before that beautiful young woman in the bridal dress was born.”
As she spoke, Bruce could feel her body stiffening. It was infinitesimal, but he was positive he detected it. Having gone through his own schism with Lance, he would have thought his sympathies would have been with her father. They weren’t “You haven’t seen him since then?”
She shook her head, wishing the memory didn’t hurt so much. She was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake, with a grown child of her own. When did she finally cease regretting that she’d never been allowed to be Daddy’s little girl, not even for the space of five minutes?
“Not alive.” She strove to say the words without emotion. She’d returned for the funeral. And never shed a tear. She’d refused to. “He wanted nothing to do with me.” The shrug was careless, as a creamy white shoulder rose and fell beneath his glance. “He was a very God-fearing man, and I think he saw me as a terrible failing on his part.”
She believed that, Bruce realized. His sympathies stacked themselves completely on her side. He knew what it was like, aching for someone’s acceptance. In his case, it had been his son’s that he had sought. Lance’s acceptance and his forgiveness. Both had been a long time in coming.
Not that he blamed Lance. Feeling as if he’d been cast adrift after his wife died, he’d left Lance to be raised by Bess. He hadn’t realized how his leaving had affected his son.
Unconsciously, Bruce gathered her a little closer to him as they danced. “I might be out of place saying this, but seems to me that your father would have done a lot better by you as well as himself if he were a God-loving man instead.”
The smile she offered him reminded Bruce of fireflies lighting up a June sky. And, if he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn there was a tinge of gratitude in her eyes.
For a tongue-tied man, he certainly did know how to turn a phrase, Margo thought. “For Melanie’s sake, I do hope Lance takes after you.”
The remark struck a chord that had, until recently, been very painful. “Lance went out of his way for a long time to be the exact opposite of me.” Bruce placed the blame where it belonged. With him. “I wasn’t a very good father.”
Margo swept past his remorse, a spring breeze traveling through a ripening orchard. There was nothing so useless as regret over things that couldn’t be changed. “I’m sure that if there’s any basis for your feelings, there were extenuating circumstances.”
There were very far-reaching, painful circumstances. But this was Lance’s wedding. It wasn’t a time to talk about death and the way it had burned out his heart, leaving only ashes in its place.
“Tell me, are you always this broad-minded?”
She inclined her head. “Some people say it’s my best feature.”
Holding her close to him, Bruce wasn’t so sure about that. If asked, it would have been difficult for him to say just exactly what Margo’s best feature was. She was beautiful in a warm, welcoming sort of way rather than in the precise features of an ice princess.
Looks weren’t supposed to matter. He’d learned a long time ago that transient outer beauty was hardly important, but he had to admit Melanie’s mother was a feast for the eyes. And her manner, open, warm, sensually charming, enhanced that feast tenfold.
“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” he told her.
She liked the way he smiled. “Oh?” Her eyes delved straight into his soul. “And what would you say. Exactly?”
Compliments really weren’t his forte. Neither was conversation, but he had the heartening feeling that he was at least holding his own. “That I have the comfort of knowing that I wouldn’t be the only tongue-tied man around you.”
But she shook her head at his assessment of himself. “For a ‘tongue-tied’ man, you’re doing very well, Bruce. And for what it’s worth, I really do hope Lance is exactly like you.”
The compliment, sincerely rendered, touched him. It had been a long time since he’d thought of himself and Lance as a unit.
“Thanks to Melanie, I’ll get to find out if he is or not firsthand.” He saw the question enter Margo’s eyes. “It’s because of Melanie that Lance and I reconciled. From what I hear, she kept after him about it, making it easier for me when we finally did talk.” He could see a great deal of Margo in her daughter. “You did a wonderful job raising her:”
She hadn’t raised her so much as just been there to oversee the process. Melanie had never really needed guidance. She was inherently savvy, inherently good. Other than a bout with the croup, Margo had never given her even a moment’s concern. She’d always been the kind of daughter every mother dreamed about.
But Margo had no intentions of playing the gushing mother and boring Bruce to tears. She gave him the short, unannotated version. “I had help.”
Bruce made the most logical assumption. “Your husband?”
Husband, now there was a joke. Margo shook her head. “My aunt.”
“We have that in common, I guess. Lance was raised by his aunt Bess, my sister. That’s her over there,” he said, pointing her out, “dancing. I’ll introduce you to her later. She took over with Lance when my wife died.”
If he was going to be family, Margo decided, there would be no secrets. Any shame attached to the situation had long since been burned away in the glow of Melanie’s smile. “Melanie’s father did a very impressive vanishing act as soon as he knew that fifteen minutes of pleasure resulted in something that was going to require an eighteen-year commitment.”
The revelation surprised him. Bruce couldn’t picture any man in his right mind walking away from Margo. “I take it he was blind?”
She laughed softly. “No, just heartless and stupid.” Whenever she thought of Jack, there was nothing there anymore. No pain, no anger, nothing. It had taken her a long time to arrive at that juncture. “To be blind he wouldn’t have been able to see his way out of my life, which he did. Quickly.” At the time it had taken her breath away just how quickly. Taken her breath and her heart.
“But Jack was very stupid because he missed out on a hell of an experience. I wouldn’t have traded being Melanie’s mother, not even a minute of it, for anything in the world, including a fantastic marriage.”
She’d talked enough about herself, she thought, steering the conversation onto a new road. “Which, by the way, I’m sure Melanie and Lance are going to have. She’s crazy about him.”
That was very evident and it made Bruce’s heart glad. “And he about her. We both are. Lance is convinced she’s brought out the best in him, and, even though I’ve only known her a few short months, I certainly can’t argue with that.”
Melanie was surprised that neither her mother nor Bruce seemed to notice her as she came up to them. But the fact that they were still dancing told her that they were well on their way to slipping into a world of their own.
One look at Bruce and she knew that her mother was weaving her magic again. Maybe this time, Melanie hoped, she’d get tangled in the threads herself.
But that wasn’t her mother’s style.
Melanie placed a hand on each of their shoulders, securing their attention. Bruce looked surprised to see her, her mother only looked amused. “Hey, did anyone tell you two that the music stopped two minutes ago?”
Margo merely smiled at her daughter. There was music and then there was music. Melanie would learn, she. thought. Someday. “Just the music you can hear, dear.” Very slowly, she disengaged her hand from Bruce’s. “But we don’t want to give them anything to talk about, do we?”
Bruce found himself reluctant to break contact. He slipped his arm around her shoulders, escorting Margo from the floor. “That depends on what they’re saying.”
Melanie looked from Bruce to her mother. Just the slightest flutter of uncertainty traveled through her before disappearing. She’d never interfered in her mother’s life before. She owed everything to her mother, and there was no one she loved more dearly, except for Lance. But Bruce was her father-in-law now. More like a father, really, than just someone the law claimed was related to her. Though she’d known him only four months, she felt protective of him. At bottom, Bruce was a sweet man who might misunderstand her mother’s ways. She didn’t want to see either of them hurt.