- -
- 100%
- +
“That sounds nice.”
“And my cousin and her husband. Nice guys, both of them. He’s an engineer, she’s a teacher.”
“Well,” Stephanie said, still smiling, “they all sound—”
“And with my uncle David. Well, he’s not really my uncle. I mean, he’s Mr. Chambers, but I’ve known him forever. He’s a friend of my parents’. He’s this really cool guy. Really cool. And handsome.” Dawn giggled. “He’s a bachelor, and very sexy for an older man, you know?”
“Yes. Well, he sounds—”
The door swung open and two of Dawn’s bridesmaids sailed into the room on a strain of music and a gust of laughter. Stephanie saw her opportunity and took it. She blew a kiss at Dawn, smoothed down the skirt of her suit, and stepped into the corridor.
Her smile faded.
Terrific. Annie had put her at a table with an eligible bachelor. Stephanie sighed. She should have expected as much. Even though her own marriage had failed. Annie had all the signs of being an inveterate matchmaker.
“Oh,” she’d said softly when she’d learned Stephanie was widowed, “that’s so sad.”
Stephanie hadn’t tried to correct her. They didn’t know each other well enough for that. The truth was, she didn’t know anyone well enough for that. Not that anyone back home thought of her as a grieving widow. The good people of Willingham Corners had long-ago decided what she was and Avery’s death hadn’t changed that. At least, nobody tried to introduce her to eligible men...but that seemed to be Annie’s plan today.
Stephanie gave a mental sigh as she made her way to the table where the seating cards were laid out. She could survive an afternoon with Dawn’s Uncle David. He’d surely be harmless enough. Annie was clever. She’d never met Avery but she knew he’d been in his late fifties, so she’d matched Stephanie with an older man. A sexy older man, Stephanie thought with a little smile, meaning he was fiftyor sixty-something but he still had his own teeth.
She peered at the little white vellum cards, found hers and picked it up. Table seven. Well, that was something, she thought as she stepped into the ballroom. The table would be far enough from the bandstand so the music wouldn’t fry her eardrums.
Stephanie wove her way between the tables, checking numbers as she went. Four, five... Yes, table seven would definitely be away from the bandstand out of deference to Uncle David, who’d probably think that the dance of the minute was the merengue. Not that it mattered. She hadn’t danced in years, and she didn’t miss it. She just hoped Uncle David wouldn’t take it personally when she turned out to be a dud as a table partner.
Table seven. There it was, tucked almost into a corner. Most of its occupants were already seated. The trendylooking twosome had to be the New Yorkers; the plump, sweet-faced woman with the tall, bespectacled man were sure to be the teacher and the engineer. Only Uncle David was missing, but he was certain to turn up at any second.
The little group at table seven looked up as she dropped her place card beside her plate.
“Hi,” the plump woman said—and then her gaze skittered past Stephanie’s shoulder, her eyes rounded and she smiled the way a woman does when she’s just seen something wonderful. “And hi to you, too,” she purred.
“What a small world.”
Stephanie froze. The voice came from just behind her. It was male, low, and touched with satirical amusement.
She turned slowly. He was standing inches from her, the man who’d sent her pulse racing. He was every bit as tall as he’d seemed at a distance, six-one, six-two, easily. His face was a series of hard angles; his eyes were so blue they seemed to be pieces of sky. Clint Eastwood, indeed, she thought wildly, and she almost laughed.
But laughing wouldn’t help. Not now. Not after her gaze fell on the white vellum card he dropped on the table beside her.
Stephanie looked up.
“Uncle David?” she said in a choked whisper.
She remembered the way he’d looked at her the first time they’d seen each other. The smoldering glance, the lazy insolence of his smile... There was nothing of that about his expression now. His eyes were steely; the set of his mouth gave his face a harsh cast.
“And the widow Willingham.” A thin smile curved across his mouth as he drew Stephanie’s chair out from the table. “It’s going to be one hell of a charming afternoon.”
CHAPTER TWO
STEPHANIE sat down.
What else could she do? Everyone at the table was watching them, eyes bright with curiosity.
David Chambers sat down beside her. His leg brushed hers as he tucked his feet under the table. Surreptitiously, she moved her chair as far from his as she could.
He leaned toward her. “I carry no communicable diseases, Mrs. Willingham,” he said dryly. “And I don’t bite unless provoked.”
She felt her face turn hot. His voice had been lowpitched; no one else could have heard what he’d said, but they’d wanted to—she could see it in the way they leaned forward over the table.
Say something, Stephanie told herself. Anything.
She couldn’t. Her tongue felt as if it were stuck to the roof of her mouth. She cleared her throat, moistened her lips...and, mercifully, an electronic squeal from the bandstand microphone overrode all conversation in the ballroom.
The guests at table seven laughed a bit nervously.
“Those guys could use a good sound engineer,” the man with the glasses said. He grinned, rose and extended his hand toward David. “Too bad that’s not my speciality. Hi, nice to meet you guys. I’m Jeff Blum. And this is my wife, Roberta.”
“Call me Bobbi,” the plump brunette chirped, batting her lashes at David.
The other couple introduced themselves next. They looked as if they’d both been hewn out of New England granite, and had the sort of names David always irreverently thought of as Puritan holdovers.
“Hayden Crowder,” the man said, extending a dry, cool hand.
“And I’m Honoria,” his wife said, smiling. “And you folks are?”
“David Chambers,” David said when Stephanie remained silent. He looked at her, and the grim set of his mouth softened. Okay. Maybe he was overreacting to what had happened when he’d first seen her, and to her reaction to it.
Actually, when you came down to it, nothing had happened—nothing that was her fault, or his. A man looked at a woman, sometimes the moment or the chemistry was just right, and that was that—although now that he was seated next to the widow Willingham, he thought wryly, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine why his hormones had gone crazy back in that church. She was a looker, but so were half a dozen other women in the room. It was time to stop being an ass, remember his manners and get through the next few hours with something approaching civility.
“And the lady with me,” he said pleasantly, “is—”
“Stephanie Willingham. Mrs. Avery Willingham,” Stephanie blurted. “And I can assure all of you that I am not here with Mr. Chambers, nor would I ever choose to be.”
Bobbi Blum looked at her husband. Hayden Crowder looked at his wife. All four of them looked at Stephanie, who was trying not to look at any of them.
Ohmygod!
What on earth had possessed her? It was such an incredibly stupid thing to have said, especially after the man seated beside her had made an attempt, however late and unwanted, at showing he had, at least, some semblance of good manners.
“Do tell,” Bobbi Blum said with a bright smile. She sat back as the waiter set glasses of champagne before them. “Well, that’s certainly very, ah, interesting.”
Honoria Crowder shot a brilliant smile across the table. “Champagne,” she said briskly. “Isn’t that nice? I always say champagne’s the only thing to serve at weddings, isn’t that right, Hayden?”
Hayden Crowder swallowed hard. Stephanie could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down in his long, skinny neck.
“Indeed you do, my dear.”
“Oh, I agree.” Jeff Blum, eager to do his part, nodded vigorously. “Don’t I always say that, too, Bobbi?”
Bobbi Blum turned a perplexed smile on her husband. “Don’t you always say what, dear?”
“That champagne is—that it’s whatever Mrs. Crowder just said it was.”
“Do call me Honoria,” Honoria said.
Silence settled over the table again.
Stephanie’s hands were knotted together in her lap. Everyone had said something in an attempt to ease the tension—everyone but David Chambers.
He was looking at her. She could feel the weight of his gaze. Why didn’t he say something? Why didn’t she say something? A witty remark, to take the edge off. A clever one, to turn her awful words into a joke.
When was the band going to start playing?
As if on cue, the trumpet player rose to his feet and sent a shattering tattoo of sound out into the room.
“And now,” the bandleader said, “let’s give a warm welcome to Dawn and Nicholas!”
The Crowders, then the Blums, looked toward the dance floor as the introductions rolled on. Stephanie breathed a small sigh of relief. Perhaps David Chambers’s attention was on the newlyweds, too. Her hand closed around her small, apricot-silk purse. Carefully, she moved back her chair. Now might be the perfect time to make another strategic retreat to the ladies’ room...
“Leaving so soon, Mrs. Willingham?”
Stephanie froze. Then, with as much hauteur as she could manage, she turned her head toward David Chambers. His expression was polite and courteous; she was sure he looked the picture of civility—unless you were sitting as close to him as she was, and you could see the ridicule in his eyes.
Okay. It was time to take a bite, however small, of humble pie.
“Mr. Chambers.” She cleared her throat. “Mr. Chambers, I suppose—what I said before—I didn’t mean...”
He smiled coolly and bent toward her, his eyes on hers.
“An apology?”
“An explanation.” Stephanie sat up straight. “I was rude, and I didn’t intend to be.”
“Ah. What did you intend to be, then?” His smile tilted and he moved closer, near enough to make her heartbeat quicken. For one foolish instant, she’d thought he was going to kiss her.
“I simply meant to make it clear that you and I were not together.”
“You certainly did that.”
“I’m sure Annie meant well, when she seated us this way, but—”
“Annie?”
“Annie Cooper. Surely, you know—”
“You were seated on the groom’s side.”
“I know both the bride and the groom, Mr. Chambers.”
“But you’re Annie’s guest.”
“I can’t see of what possible interest it could be to you, sir.”
Neither could David—except that it had occurred to him. as he’d gone down the receiving line, that word had it that the groom’s uncle, Damian Skouras, had a mistress in attendance at the wedding. Perhaps Stephanie Willingham was she. Or perhaps she was a former mistress. Or a future one. It was a crazy world out there; there was no telling what complications you got into when you drew up guest lists. He’d avoided the problem, his one time in the matrimonial sweepstakes. You didn’t draw up a guest list when you said “I do” at city hall.
“Humor me, Mrs. Willingham,” David said with a chilly smile. “Why did you choose to sit on the groom’s side?”
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Chambers?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with my question.”
“Suppose you humor me, and answer it.”
David’s frown deepened. “I’m an attorney.”
“Ah. Well, I suppose that explains it.”
“Explains what?” David said, his eyes narrowing.
“Your tendency to interrogate.”
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Willingham. I did not—”
“I must admit, I find it preferable to your tendency to strip a woman naked with your eyes.”
The band segued from a bouncy rendition of “My Girl” to a soft, sighing “Stardust.” Stephanie’s words rose clearly over the plaintive opening notes.
A strangled gasp burst from Honoria Crowder’s lips. Her champagne glass tipped over and a puddle of pale golden wine spread across the white tablecloth.
“Oh, my,” Honoria twittered, “how clumsy of me!”
Bobbi Blum snatched at a napkin. “Here,” she said, “let me get that.”
Saved by the spill, Stephanie thought hysterically. She smiled blindly at the waiter as he served their first course. The Crowders and the Blums grabbed their oyster forks and attacked their shrimp cocktails with a fervor she suspected was born of the desire to leap to their feet and run from what was turning into the kind of encounter that ends with one of the parties bleeding.
If you had any brains, Stephanie told herself, you’d do the same...
Instead, she picked up her fork and began to stuff food into her mouth because if she was chewing and swallowing, maybe—just maybe—she’d stop saying things that only made this impossible mess messier.
“I don’t.”
Stephanie’s head snapped up. She looked at David, and the smug little smile on his face sent a chill straight into the marrow of her bones.
“Don’t what?” Bobbi Blum said, and everyone leaned forward in eager anticipation.
“Don’t have a tendency to strip women naked with my eyes.” His smile tilted, and his gaze swept over Stephanie again, sending a flood of color to her cheeks. “Not indiscriminately, that is. I only focus that sort of attention on beautiful women who look to be in desperate need of—”
Music blared from the bandstand.
Forks clattered to the table.
The Crowders and the Blums pushed back their chairs and rushed to the dance floor.
Stephanie sat very still, though she could damn near feel the blood churning in her veins. She thought about slugging the man beside her, but that wouldn’t be fair to Annie, or Dawn, or Nicholas. Besides, ladies didn’t do such things. The woman—the girl—she’d once been might have. Would have. Steffie Horton would have balled up her fist and shot a right cross straight to David Chambers’s square jaw.
A tremor went through her. Steffie Horton would have done exactly what Stephanie Willingham had been doing all afternoon. She’d have been rude, and impolite; she’d have spoken her mind without thinking. She might even have reacted to the heat in a stranger’s eyes. It was in her genes, after all. Avery had been wrong about a lot of things, but not about that.
What was wrong with her today? She was behaving badly. And even when David Chambers had held out an olive branch—a ragged one, it was true, but an olive branch nevertheless—she’d slapped it out of his hand.
Stephanie took a deep breath and turned toward him.
“Mr. Chambers...”
Her words caught in her throat. He was smiling... no, he wasn’t. Not really. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a way that reminded her of a mastiff Avery had owned when she’d first married him and gone to live in the house on Oak Hill—when she’d still been young enough, stupid enough, to have thought their arrangement could work.
“Oh,” she’d said, “just look at your dog, Avery. He’s smiling at me.”
And Avery had guffawed and slapped his knees and said that he’d truly picked himself a backwoods ninny if she thought that was a smile, and maybe she’d like to offer the mastiff her hand and see if it came back with all the fingers still attached.
“Yes?” David said politely. “Did you have something you wanted to say?”
“No,” Stephanie said just as politely. “Not a thing.”
He nodded. “That’s fine. I think I’ve just about run out of conversation, myself—except to point out that, with any luck at all, we’ll never have the misfortune to meet again.” His wolfish smile flickered. “Have I left anything out?”
“Not a thing. In fact, I doubt I could have put it better.”
David unfolded his napkin and placed it in his lap. Stephanie did the same.
“Bon appétit, Mrs. Willingham,” David said softly.
“Bon appétit, Mr. Chambers,” Stephanie replied, and she picked up her fork, speared a shrimp, and began to eat.
More toasts were drunk, the wedding cake sliced. The Blums and the Crowders continued to make themselves scarce, appearing only from time to time and then just long enough to gobble down a few mouthfuls of each course as it was served.
“We just adore dancing,” Bobbi Blum gushed between the Boeuf aux Champignons and the salad.
“Same with us,” Hayden Crowder said as his wife sat smiling uneasily beside him. “Why, we never sit very long at these shindigs, no matter who’s seated at our table, do we, honey?”
“Never,” Honoria said, and jumped to her feet. “We never stay seated, no matter what.”
David watched with a thin smile as both couples hurried off. Then he pushed his plate aside, tilted back his chair and folded his arms over his chest.
“Well,” he said after a minute, “this is one wedding they’re never going to forget.”
Stephanie glanced up. “No. I suppose not.”
Across the dance floor, the Blums and the Crowders were standing in a little huddle, looking back at table seven as if they expected either the police or the men with straitjackets to show up at any minute.
David couldn’t help it. He laughed.
Stephanie’s lips twitched. “It isn’t funny,” she said stiffly—and then she laughed, too.
He looked at her. Her cheeks had taken on a delicate flush and there was a glint in her dark eyes that hadn’t been there before. She looked young, and beautiful, and suddenly he knew that he’d been kidding himself when he’d told himself she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in this room, because she was. She was more than beautiful, she was indescribably gorgeous.
And he’d been sniping at her for the past hour. Damn, he had to be crazy! Everything he’d done had been crazy, since he’d laid eyes on her. He should have sat down beside her, introduced himself, asked her if he could see her again. He should have told her she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met....
He could still do all of that. It wasn’t too late and, heaven knew, it was the best idea he’d had in the past couple of hours.
“Mrs. Willingham. Stephanie. About what happened earlier...” Her face lifted toward his. David smiled. “In the church, I mean.”
“Nothing happened,” she said quickly.
“Come on, let’s not play games. Something happened, all right. I looked at you, you looked at me...”
“Mr. Chambers—”
“David.”
“Mr. Chambers.” Stephanie folded her hands in her lap. “Look, I know this isn’t your fault. I mean, I know Annie probably set this up.”
“Probably?” He laughed. “Of course, she set this up. You’re unattached. You are unattached, aren’t you?”
Stephanie nodded. “I’m a widow.”
“Yeah, well, I’m divorced. So Annie took a look at her guest list, saw my name, saw yours, and that was it. It’s in her blood, though I can’t imagine why, considering her own record.”
Color flooded Stephanie’s face. “I assure you, Mr. Chambers, I have absolutely no wish to marry, ever again.”
“Whoa!” David held up his hands. “One step at a time, Mrs. Willingham—and before anybody takes that step, let me assure you that I’d sooner waltz Mrs. Blum around the dance floor for the next three weeks than ever do something as stupid as tying another knot. Not in this lifetime. Or any other, for that matter.”
Stephanie tried not to smile. “There’s nothing wrong with Mrs. Blum.”
“She dances on her husband’s feet,” David said, “and she outweighs the both of us.” Stephanie laughed. His smile tilted, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. “You have a nice laugh, Stephanie.”
“Mr. Chambers...”
“David. Surely we’ve insulted each other enough to be on a first-name basis.”
“David, maybe we did get off on the wrong foot, but—”
“So did Mrs. Blum.”
She smiled again, and his heart lifted. She really did have a nice smile.
“Let’s just forget it, shall we?”
“I’d like that, very much—especially since it was all my fault.”
“That’s kind of you, David, but, well, I was to blame, too. I—I saw the way you were looking at me in the church, you know, when you went to shut the doors, and—and I thought...” She took a deep breath. “All I’m trying to say is that I didn’t mean to be so—so—”
“Impolite?” he asked innocently. “Judgmental? Is that the word you’re looking for?”
Laughter glinted in her eyes.
“You’re pushing your luck,” she said. “Putting words in my mouth that way.”
He thought of what he’d like to do with that mouth, how badly he wanted to taste it, and cleared his throat.
“Ah,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “and here I thought the widow Willingham was about to offer a full apology for her behavior. So much for the mystique of Southern good manners.”
“My manners are usually impeccable. And how can you be so certain I’m from the South?”
He chuckled. “‘An’ how can you be so suhtain Ah’m from th’South?’” he said.
Stephanie tried not to smile, but it was impossible. “I’m glad my accent amuses you, Mr. Chambers.”
“I promise you, Mrs. Willingham, I’m not laughing at you. Matter of fact, I like your drawl. It’s very feminine.”
“If you’re waiting for me to say I like the sound of your Montana twang, Mr. Chambers—”
“Montana?” David slapped his hand over his heart. “Good God, woman, you do know how to wound a man. I’m from Wyoming.”
“Oh.”
“Oh? Is that all you can say, after you accuse me of being from a state where the cows outnumber the people three to one?” He grinned. “At least, in Wyoming, we only have one critter that walks upright for every two point something that moos.”
Stephanie laughed politely. “My apologies.”
“Apologies accepted. And, just for the record, I have no accent.”
Her smile was warm and open this time. He had an accent; she was sure he knew it as well as she did. His voice was low and husky; it reminded her of high mountains and wide open spaces, of a place where the night sky would be bright with stars and the grassy meadows would roll endlessly toward the horizon....
“Gotcha,” he said softly.
Stephanie blinked. “What?”
“You smiled,” David said with a little smile of his own. “Really smiled. And I agree.”
“Agree about what?” she said in total confusion.
“That we got off to the wrong start.”
She considered the possibility. Perhaps they had. He seemed a nice enough man, this friend of Annie’s. There was no denying his good looks, and he had a sense of humor, too. Not that she was interested in him. Not that she’d ever be interested in any man. Still, that was no reason not to be polite. Pleasant, even. This was just one day out of her life. One afternoon. And what had he done, when you came down to it? Looked at her, that was all. Just looked at her, and even though she hated it, she was accustomed to it.
Men had always looked at her, even before Avery had come along.
Besides, she wasn’t guiltless. For one heart-stopping instant, for one quick spin of the planet, she’d looked at David and felt—she’d felt...
“Stephanie?”
She raised her head. David was watching her, eyes dark and intense.
“How about we begin over?”
He held out his hand. Stephanie hesitated. Then, very slowly and carefully, she lifted her hand from her lap and placed it in his.
“That’s it,” he said softly. His fingers closed around hers. They were warm, and hard, and calloused. That surprised her. Despite what he’d said about being from the west, despite the cowboy boots and the ponytail and the incredible width of his shoulders, everything about him whispered of wealth and power. Men like that didn’t have hands that bore the imprint of hard work, not in her world.
He bent his head toward hers. She knew she ought to pull back but she couldn’t. His eyes were still locked on hers. They seemed to draw her in.
“You’re a very beautiful woman, Stephanie.”
“Mr. Chambers...”
“I thought we’d progressed to David.”
“David.” Stephanie ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. She saw him follow the motion with his eyes and the tiny flame that had come to life hours before sprang up again deep within her. A warning tingled along her skin. “David,” she said again, “I think—I think it’s nice that we made peace with each other, but—”