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“Stop calling me that!”
“Stop calling you what?”
“You know what,” Annie said furiously. “And stop lying. I’ve never been drunk in my life.”
Chase’s lips curved up in a slow, wicked smile. “Sweetheart, come on. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the night we met.”
“I’m warning you, Chase!”
“There I was, a college freshman, minding my own business and dancing with my girlfriend at her high school’s Valentine Day dance—”
“You were never innocent,” Annie snapped.
Chase grinned. “You should know, babe. Anyway, there I was, doing the Mashed Potato, when I spied our Annie, tottering out the door, clutching her middle and looking as if she’d just eaten a bushel of green apples.”
Annie swung toward Milton Hoffman. “It wasn’t like that at all. My date had spiked my punch. How was I to know—”
A drumroll and a clash of cymbals drowned out her voice.
“...and now,” an oily, amplified voice boomed, “Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Babbitt will take their very first dance as husband and wife.”
People began to applaud as Nick took Dawn in his arms. They moved onto the dance floor, gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes.
Annie gave Milton a beseeching look.
“Milton,” she said, “listen—”
“It’s all right,” he said quickly. “Today’s a family day, Anne. I understand.” He started to reach for her hand, caught himself, and drew back. “I’ll call you tomorrow. It was...interesting to have met you, Mr. Cooper.”
Chase smiled politely. “Call me Chase, please. There’s no need to be so formal, considering all we have in common.”
Annie didn’t know which she wanted to do more, punch Chase for his insufferable behavior or punch Milton Hoffman for being so easily scared off. It took only a second to decide that Chase was the more deserving target She glared at him as Hoffman scuttled back to his seat.
“You are lower than a snake’s belly,” she said.
Chase sighed. “Annie, listen—”
“No. No, you listen.” She pointed a trembling finger at him. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
Did she? Chase shook his head. Then, she knew more than he did. There wasn’t a reason in the world he’d acted like such a jerk just now. So what if Annie was having a thing with some guy? So what if the guy looked as if he might faint at the sight of a mouse? So what if he’d had a sudden, blazing vision of Annie in bed with the son of a bitch?
She could do what she wanted, with whom she wanted. It sure as hell didn’t matter to him.
“Are you listening to me?” she said.
Chase looked at Annie. Her face was still shot with color. It arced across her cheekbones and over the bridge of her nose, where a scattering of tiny freckles lay like sprinkles of gold. He remembered how he used to kiss those warm, golden spots after they’d made love.
“I know what you’re up to, Chase. You’re trying to ruin Dawn’s wedding because I didn’t do it the way you wanted.”
Chase’s eyebrows leaped into his hairline. “Are you nuts?”
“Oh, come off it!” Annie’s voice quavered with anger. “You wanted a big wedding in a big church, so you could invite all your fancy friends.”
“You are nuts! I never—”
“Keep your voice down!”
“I am keeping it down. You’re the one who’s—”
“Let me tell you something, Chase Cooper. This wedding is exactly the kind Dawn wanted.”
“And a damn good thing, too. If it had been up to you, our daughter might have ended up getting married on a hillside in her bare feet—”
“Oh, and what that would have done to Mr. Chase Cooper’s image!”
“—while some idiot played a satyr in the background.”
“Sitar,” Annie hissed. “It’s called a sitar, Cooper, although you probably know a lot more about satyrs than you do about musical instruments.”
“Are we back to that again?” Chase snarled, and Annie’s color heightened
“No. We are not ‘back’ to anything. As far as I’m concerned—”
“...the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Chase Cooper.”
Annie’s and Chase’s gazes swung toward the bandstand. The bandleader was smiling benevolently in their direction, and the crowd—even those who looked a bit surprised by the announcement—began to applaud.
“Come on, Annie and Chase.” The bandleader’s painted-on smile widened. “Let’s get up on the dance floor and join the bride and groom.”
“Let’s not,” Chase growled, under his breath.
“The man’s out of his mind,” Annie snapped.
But the applause had grown, and even the wild glance for help Annie shot toward Dawn, still swaying in the arms of her groom, brought only an apologetic shrug of her daughter’s shoulders.
Chase shoved back his chair and held out his hand.
“All right,” he said grimly, “let’s do it and get it over with.”
Annie’s chin jerked up. She rose stiffly and put her hand in his.
“I really hate you, Chase.”
“The feeling, madam, is entirely mutual.”
Eyes hot with anger, Annie and Chase took a couple of deep breaths, pasted civilized smiles on their lips and swung out onto the dance floor.
CHAPTER TWO
IMPOSSIBLE, miserable woman!
That was what she was, his ex-wife, what she’d turned into during the years of their marriage. Chase held Annie stiffly in his arms, enough space between them to have satisfied even starchy Miss Elgar, the chaperone at Annie’s Senior Prom.
“Propriety, please,” Miss Elgar had barked at any couple daring to get too close during the slow numbers.
Not that she’d approved of the Frug or the Mashed Potato, either. It was just that she’d figured those insane gyrations were safe.
Even all these years later. Chase smiled at the memory. Safe? A bunch of horny kids shaking their hips at each other? And no matter what the old witch thought, the sweetly erotic, locked-in-each-other’s-arms slow dancing went on behind her back just the same, in the hallway, in the cafeteria downstairs, even in the parking lot, where the music sighed on the warm spring breeze.
That was where he’d taken Annie, finally, out to the parking lot, where they’d danced, locked in each other’s arms, alone in the darkness and so crazy about each other after four months of dating that nothing else had mattered.
That was the night they’d first made love, on an old patchwork blanket he’d taken from the back of his beat-up Chevy and spread on the soft, sweet-smelling grass that grew up on Captree Point.
“We should stop,” he’d kept saying, in a voice so thick it had seemed to come from somebody else, though even as he’d said it, he’d been undoing Annie’s zipper, removing her gown and baring her beautiful body to his eyes and mouth and touch.
“Yes,” Annie had whispered, “oh, yes,” but her hands had been moving on him, even as she’d spoken, trembling as she’d undone his silly bow tie, sliding his white dinner jacket from his shoulders, opening his shirt buttons and smoothing her fingers over his hot skin.
The memories surrounded him, as if it were a gentle fog coming in over the sea. Chase made a soft sound in the back of his throat. His arm tightened around his wife; the hand that had been holding hers in stiff formality curled around her wrist, bringing her hand to his chest.
“Chase?” she said.
“Shh,” he whispered, his lips against her hair. Annie held herself rigid a second longer, and then she sighed, laid her head against his shoulder and gave herself up to the music and to the memories that had overcome her.
It felt so good to be here, in Chase’s arms.
When was the last time they’d danced together this way, not because dancing was what you did at the endless charity functions they’d attended so Chase could “network” with the movers and doers of the business community but simply because there were few things as pleasurable as swaying slowly in each other’s arms?
Annie closed her eyes. They’d always danced well together, even back in her high school days at Taft. All those senior parties, the last-minute Friday night get-togethers in somebody’s basement rec room the weekends Chase came home from college, and the dance at Chase’s fraternity house, when her parents had let her go up for Spring Weekend. The school formals, with Elgar the Dragon Lady marching around, trying to keep everybody at arm’s length.
And the night of her senior prom, when they’d finally gone all the way after so many months of fevered kisses and touches that had left them trembling in each other’s arms.
Annie’s heartbeat quickened. She remembered Chase taking her out to the parking lot, where they’d moved oh, so slowly to the music drifting from the school gym, and the way Chase had kissed her, filling her with a need so powerful she couldn’t think. Wordlessly they’d climbed into his ancient Chevy and made the long drive to the Point, with her sitting so close beside him that they might have been one.
She remembered the softness of the blanket beneath her, after they’d spread it over the grass, and then the wonderful hardness of Chase’s body against hers.
“I love you so much,” he’d kept saying.
“Yes.” She’d sighed. “Yes.”
They shouldn’t have done it. She’d known that, even as she was opening his shirt and touching him, but to stop would have been to die.
Oh, the feel of him as he’d come down against her naked flesh. The smell of him, the taste of his skin. And oh, that mind-shattering moment when he’d entered her. Filled her. Become a part of her, forever.
Except it hadn’t been forever.
Annie stiffened in the circle of her husband’s arms.
It had been sex, and eventually, it hadn’t been anything at all. He was her ex. That’s who Chase was. He wasn’t her husband anymore. He wasn’t the boy she’d fallen head over heels in love with, nor the man who’d fathered Dawn. He was a stranger, who’d been more interested in his business than in coming home to his wife and child.
More interested in bedding a twenty-two-year-old secretary than the wife whose body had begun to sag and bag.
A coldness seized Annie’s heart. Her feet stopped moving. She jerked back and flattened her palms against her former husband’s chest.
“That’s enough,” she said.
Chase blinked his eyes open. His face was flushed; he looked like a man rudely awakened from a dream.
“Annie,” he said softly, “Annie, listen—”
“The by-request dancing’s over, Chase. The dance floor’s filled with people.”
He looked around him. She was right. They were on the perimeter of the floor, which was packed with other couples.
“We’ve played out the necessary charade. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve reserved the rest of my dance card for Milton Hoffman.”
Chase’s expression hardened. “Of course,” he said politely. “I want to touch bases with some people, too. I see you broke down and invited some of my old friends and not just your own.”
“Certainly.” Annie’s smile would have turned water to ice. “Some of them are my friends, too. Besides, I knew you’d need something to keep you busy, considering that you made the great paternal sacrifice of not asking to bring along your latest little playmate. Or are you between bimbos, at the moment?”
Chase had never struck a woman in his life. Hell, he’d never even had the urge. Men who hit women were despicable. Still, just for an instant, he found himself wishing Annie were a man, so he could wipe that holier-than-thou smirk from her face.
He did the next best thing, instead.
“If you’re asking if there’s a special woman in my life,” he said, his gaze locked on hers, “the answer is yes.” He paused for effect, then went for broke. “And I’ll thank you to watch the way you talk about my fiancée.”
It was like watching a building collapse after the demolition guys had placed the dynamite and set it off. Annie’s smirk disintegrated and her jaw dropped.
“Your—your...?”
“Fiancée.” he said. It wasn’t a complete lie. He’d been dating Janet for two months now, and she hadn’t been at all subtle about what she wanted from the relationship. “Janet Pendleton. Ross Pendleton’s daughter. Do you know her?”
Know her? Janet Pendleton, heiress to the Pendleton fortune? The blond, blue-eyed creature who turned up on the New York Times Sunday Society pages almost every week? The girl known as much for the brilliance she showed as vice president at Pendleton as for having turned down a million-dollar offer to lend her classic beauty to a series of perfume ads for a top French company?
For the barest fraction of a second, Annie felt as if the floor was tilting under her feet. Then she drew herself up and pasted a smile on her lips.
“We don’t move in the same circles, I’m afraid. But I know who she is, of course. It’s nice to see your tastes have gone from twenty-two-year-olds to females tottering on the brink of thirty. Have you told Dawn yet?”
“No! I mean, no, there hasn’t been time. I, ah, I thought I’d wait until she and Nick get back from their honey—”
“Milton. There you are.” Annie reached out and grabbed Milton Hoffman’s arm. She was pretty sure he’d been trying to sneak past her and Chase undetected, en route to the line at the buffet table, but if ever there’d been a time she’d needed someone to cling to, it was now. “Milton,” she said, looping her arm through his and giving him a dazzling smile, “my ex has just given me some exciting news.”
Hoffman looked at Chase, his eyes wary behind his tortoiseshells. “Really,” he said. “How nice.”
“Chase is getting married again. To Janet Pendleton.” Could your lips be permanently stretched by a smile? “Isn’t that lovely?”
“Well,” Chase said, “actually—”
“I suppose it’s the season for romance,” Annie said, with a silvery laugh. “Dawn and Nick, Chase and Janet Pendleton...” She tilted her head and gazed up into Milton Hoffman’s long, bony face. “And us.”
Hoffman’s Adam’s apple bobbed so hard it almost dislodged his bow tie. It was only a week ago that he’d asked Anne Cooper to marry him. She’d told him how much she liked and admired him, how she enjoyed his company and his attention. She’d told him everything but yes.
His gaze leaped to her former husband. Chase Cooper had taken his father’s construction firm and used his engineering degree and his muscles to turn it into a company with a national reputation. He’d ridden jackhammers as they bit deep into concrete foundations and hoisted pickaxes to reduce the remainder to piles of rubble. Hoffman swallowed hard again. Cooper still had the muscles to prove it. Right now, the man looked as if he wanted to use those muscles to pulverize him.
“Chase?” Annie said, beaming. “Aren’t you going to wish us well?”
“Yes,” Chase said, jamming his hands into his pockets, balling them so hard they began to shake. “I wish you the best, Annie. You and your cadaver, both.”
Annie’s smile flattened. “You always did know the right thing to say, didn’t you, Chase?” Turning on her heel, she propelled herself and Milton off the edge of the dance floor and toward the buffet.
“Anne,” Milton whispered, “Anne, my dearest, I had no idea...”
“Neither did I,” Annie whispered back, and smiled up into his stunned face hard enough so he’d have to think the tears in her eyes were for happiness and not because a hole seemed suddenly to have opened in her heart.
Married, Chase thought. His Annie, getting married to that jerk.
Surely she had better taste.
He slid his empty glass across the bar to the bartender.
“Women,” he said. “Can’t live with ‘em and can’t live without ’em.”
The bartender smiled politely. “Yes, sir.”
“Give me a refill. Bourbon and—”
“And water, one ice cube. I remember.”
Chase looked at the guy. “You trying to tell me I’ve been here too many times this afternoon?”
The bartender’s smile was even more polite. “I might have to, soon, sir. State law, you know.”
Chase’s mouth thinned. “When I’ve had too much to drink, I’ll be sure and let you know. Meanwhile, make this one a double.”
“Chase?”
He swung around. Behind him, people were doing whatever insane line dance was this year’s vogue. Others were still eating the classy assortment of foods Annie had ordered and he hadn’t been permitted to pay for.
“I’ve no intention of asking you to foot the bill for anything,” she’d told him coldly, when he’d called to tell her to spare no expense on the wedding. “Dawn is my daughter, my floral design business is thriving and I need no help from you.”
“Dawn is my daughter, too,” Chase had snarled, but before he’d gotten the words out, Annie had hung up. She’d always been good at getting the last word, dammit. Not today, though. He’d gotten it. And the look on her face when he’d handed her all that crap about his engagement to Janet made it even sweeter.
“Chase? You okay?”
Who was he kidding? He hadn’t had the last word this time, either. Annie had. How could she? How could she marry that pantywaist, bow-tie wearing, gender-confused—
“Chase, what the hell’s the matter with you?”
Chase blinked. David Chambers, tall, blue-eyed, still wearing his dark hair in a long ponytail clasped at his nape the same way he had since he’d first become Chase’s personal attorney a dozen years ago, was standing alongside him.
Chase let out an uneasy laugh.
“David.” He stuck out his hand, changed his mind and clasped the other man’s shoulders. “Hey, man, how’re you doing?”
Chambers smiled and drew Chase into a quick bear hug. Then he drew back and eyed him carefully.
“I’m fine. How about you? You all right?”
Chase reached for his drink and knocked back half of it in one swallow.
“Never been better. What’ll you have?”
Chambers looked at the bartender. “Scotch,” he said, “a single malt, if you have it, on the rocks. And a glass of Chardonnay, please.”
“Don’t tell me,” Chase said with a stilted smile. “You’re here with a lady. I guess the love bug’s bitten you, too.”
“Me?” David laughed. “The wine’s for a lady at my table. As for the love bug... It already bit me, remember? One marriage, one divorce...no, Chase, not me. Never again, not in this lifetime.”
“Yeah.” Chase wrapped his hand around his glass. “What’s the point? You marry a woman, she turns into somebody else after a couple of years.”
“I agree. Marriage is a female fantasy. Promise a guy anything to nab him, then look blank when he expects you to deliver.” The bartender set the Scotch in front of David, who lifted the glass to his lips and took a swallow. “The way I see it, a man’s got a housekeeper, a cook and a good secretary, what more does he need?”
“Nothing,” Chase said glumly, “not one thing.”
The bartender put a glass of Chardonnay before David, who picked it up. He turned and looked across the room. Chase followed his gaze to a table where a cool-looking, beautiful brunette sat in regal solitude.
A muscle knotted in David’s jaw. He took another swallow of Scotch.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “there is one other thing. And it’s what most often gets poor bastards like you and me in trouble.”
Chase thought of the feel of Annie in his arms on the dance floor, just a couple of hours ago.
“Poor bastards, is right,” he said, and lifted his glass to David. “Well, you and I both know better. Bed ‘em and forget ’em, I say.”
David laughed and clinked his glass against Chase’s. “I’ll drink to that.”
“To what? What are you guys up to, hidden away over here?”
Both men turned around. Dawn, radiant in white lace and with Nick at her side, beamed at them.
“Daddy,” she said, kissing her father’s cheek. “And Mr. Chambers. I’m so glad you could make it.”
“I am, too.” David held his hand out to her groom. “You’re a lucky man, son. Take good care of her.”
Nick nodded as the men shook hands. “I intend to, sir.”
Dawn kissed Chase again. “Get out and circulate, Daddy. That’s an order.”
Chase tossed her a mock salute. The bridal pair moved off, and he sighed. “That’s the only good thing comes of a marriage. A kid, to call your own.”
David nodded. “I agree. I’d always hoped...” He shrugged, then picked up his drink and the glass of white wine. “Hey, Cooper,” he said, with a quick grin, “you stand around a bar long enough, you get maudlin. Anybody ever tell you that?”
“Yes,” Chase said. “My attorney, five years ago when we got wasted after my divorce was finalized.”
The men smiled at each other, and then David Chambers slapped Chase lightly on the back.
“Take Dawn’s advice. Circulate. There’s a surprising assortment of good-looking single women here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“For a lawyer,” Chase said with a chuckle, “sometimes you manage to come up with some pretty decent suggestions. What’s with the brunette at your table? She spoken for?”
David’s eyes narrowed just the slightest bit. “She is, for the present.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” the attorney said. He was smiling, but there was a look in his eye that Chase recognized. He grinned.
“You dirty dog, you. Well, never mind. I’ll—what did my daughter call it? Circulate. That’s it. I’ll circulate, and see what’s available.”
The men made their goodbyes. Chase finished his drink, refused to give the bartender the satisfaction of telling him he wouldn’t pour him another, and circulated himself right out the door.
Annie kicked off her shoes, put her feet up on the old chintz-covered ottoman she kept promising herself she’d throw out and puffed out a long, deep sigh.
“Well,” she said, “that’s over.”
Deb, seated opposite her on the sofa, nodded in agreement.
“Over and done with.” She flung her arms along the top of the sofa and kicked off her shoes, too. “And I’ll bet you’re glad it is.”
“Glad?” Annie pursed her lips and blew a very unladylike raspberry. “That doesn’t even come close. I’ll bet Custer had an easier time planning the battle at Little Bighorn than I had, planning this wedding.”
Deb arched a dark, perfect eyebrow. “Bad analogy, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Yeah.” Annie heaved another sigh. “But you know what I mean. The logistics of the whole thing were beyond belief. Imagine your daughter walking in one night and calmly announcing she’s going to get married in two months and wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could have the perfect wedding she’d always dreamed about?”
Deb stood, reached up under her chiffon skirt and wriggled her panty hose down her legs.
“My daughter’s in love with the seventies,” she said, draping the hose around her throat like a boa. “If I’m lucky, she’ll opt for getting married on a hilltop somewhere, with the guests all invited to bring... What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” Annie shot to her feet and padded to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a bottle of champagne and a pair of juice glasses. “He accused me of wanting that, you know.”
“Know what? Wanting what? Who accused you?”
“You mind drinking this stuff out of juice glasses? I know you’re supposed to use flutes, but I never got around to buying any.”
“We can drink it out of jelly jars, for all I care. What are you talking about, Annie? Who accused you of what?”
“Chase. Mr. Ex.” Annie undid the wire around the foil, then chewed on her lip as she carefully worked the cork between her fingers. It popped with a loud bang and champagne frothed out. Some of it dripped onto the tile floor. Annie shrugged and mopped it up by moving her stockinged foot over the small puddle. “A few weeks ago, he called to talk to Dawn. I had the misfortune to answer the phone. He said he’d gotten his invitation and he was delighted to see I hadn’t let my instincts run amok.” She held out a glass of wine, and Deb took it. “Amok,” she said, licking her fingertips, “can you imagine? And all because when we were first married, I threw a couple of parties in the backyard behind the house we lived in.”
“I thought you lived in a condo.”
“We did, eventually, but not then. Chase knew somebody who got us this really cheap rental in Queens.”