Dearly Beloved (17 page)

“Don’t you wear makeup?” Liza asks.

“Not really.”

“Mmm.”

Jennie knows what she’s thinking. It’s what Laura always says to her, too—
you’d be so much prettier, Jen, if you’d just take some time to fix yourself up. Wear makeup. Change your hairstyle . . .

There was a time when Jennie used to take the time to make herself attractive. Back when she and Harry were together . . .

But once Harry was gone, she hadn’t bothered. It seemed so unimportant, so frivolous, somehow, after what had happened.

Laura had told her, after she lost Harry, that she should get right back out there and make an effort to find someone new. As if they were in eighth grade again and a boyfriend of the week had dumped her.

At least put on some mascara and use some gel in your hair. You’ll never find a man if you don’t at least try and look sexy, Jen.

But she’d proved Laura wrong without intending to.

It was almost a year ago that Keegan had materialized in her antique shop one Saturday afternoon in early May, wanting to look through the Haviland china she had on hand. It was for a Mother’s Day gift, he’d told Jennie, looking a little sheepish—his mom collected the stuff.

It wasn’t until their third date that he’d told Jennie the truth—
he
was the one who collected antiques, including china. Most women, Keegan had added, thought that was a strange hobby for a man to have.
But you seem different, Jennie. . . . You’re special. I don’t know you that well, but I want to. And I want you to know me, too.

Jennie fell in love with him on the spot.

But, she reminds herself now, Keegan—like Harry—is history.

Jennie puts down the Chapstick, looks in the mirror again, and sees a reflection of Liza, behind her, zeroing in on the sketch-pad she’d carelessly left open on the bed. She’s standing over it before Jennie can divert her.

“Is this what you drew today?” she asks, picking the pad up and looking at the sketch.

“Yeah.” Feeling invaded, Jennie turns away from the bureau and is about to tell Liza she’s changed her mind about dinner.

But Liza’s expression has softened. She smiles at Jennie and says, “This is good Laura.
Really
good. I mean, I’m not usually crazy about drawings of scenery—I usually like modern art, abstract stuff, better—but I think this is wonderful.”

“It’s the beach behind the inn.”

“Yeah, I recognize it. It’s got such a lonely aura. Sad. Not the place itself, but . . . your drawing. Is it your interpretation of what you see out there?”

“I guess it is.” Jennie thinks that she obviously revealed too much in her sketch. She doesn’t want Liza prying into her private world, asking questions about her past, so she changes the subject. “Why don’t we go down to eat? I’m ready.”

“Good.” Liza takes another look at the sketch, then puts it carefully back on the bed exactly the way she found it.

Jennie picks up her room key from the dresser and tucks it into the pocket of her jeans. It’s probably not necessary to lock the door, but she can’t help feeling that she should.

Just in case . . .

In case what?
she asks herself, and realizes she doesn’t know the answer.

Somehow, she just can’t shake the feeling that this inn might not be as idyllic and charming as it seems. That her belongings aren’t safe unless the door is locked securely . . .

And that maybe
she
isn’t, either.

H
e hums to himself as he buttons his pristine-white pleated shirt, standing in front of a full-length mirror in the large master bedroom that overlooks the dark, storm-churned sea.

So far, it’s been so easy . . . so wonderfully easy that he can’t help but worry that something might go wrong.

Relax. . . . What can go wrong now? Everything is in order. Sandy Cavelli is downstairs waiting for you.

He wonders what she’s doing right this moment, what she’s thinking, whether she’s frightened. Probably not. Not yet.

But it won’t be long before she’s terrified.

Before she’s suffering, just as she made him suffer all those years ago.

Just as Lorraine suffered.

He smiles at the thought of her . . .

Lorraine LaCroix.

He will never forget the first moment he laid eyes on her, in the lobby of the American Embassy in France. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, with that milky skin and deep red hair and eyes the color of emeralds. Her clothes were so impeccable, so stylish that he’d thought she had to be French. No, considering her last name, she’d apparently had French ancestors, she’d told him, but she was an American, working at the embassy as a translator.

He will never forget how sophisticated she was, how she treated him with cool detachment until she found out who he was—rather, who his family was.

Then, those emerald eyes had twinkled at him and her voice had warmed to him. She’d allowed him to take her out to dinner at the finest restaurant in Paris and to make love to her that night in his suite in the finest hotel in all of France.

As dawn filtered through the plate-glass windows on that morning, he’d whispered that he loved her. She hadn’t looked horrified or shrunk away from his touch. She had simply smiled the mysterious, close-lipped smile that he would grow to know so well, and she had slipped down beneath the sheets to do incredible things to him. Things no one had ever done to him, not Sandy . . . not Liza . . . not Laura . . .

No one but his mother.

And he wouldn’t allow himself to think about that—not then, and he won’t now.

He reaches for the bow tie that waits on the dresser and slips it around his neck, tucking it beneath the pointed collar on his shirt. With fluid, expert movements, he ties it, still humming to himself, watching his reflection in the mirror and remembering the last time he wore this tuxedo.

That morning, his hands had been trembling, and he certainly hadn’t been humming.

But then, as now, he was fantasizing about the woman who waited for him, and hoping that nothing would go wrong.

Now, the woman is Sandy Cavelli.

Then, it was Lorraine LaCroix—his bride.

It had been her idea to plan a large wedding and to have it in his Manhattan brownstone. She said she wanted everyone they knew to bear witness when she became his wife. She said she wanted the most perfect wedding anyone could imagine, the kind of wedding she had only dreamed of when she was growing up in a bona-fide orphanage where she had been forced to live an austere, loveless existence.

He remembered the intricate details that had gone into planning the affair, the details Lorraine had embraced with her usual fervor.

Nothing but the finest for his fiancée. Waterford crystal toasting glasses for all of the guests and imported champagne and caviar. A silk wedding gown created especially for her by the most famous designer in Paris. A guest list that included not only their friends and her family, but New York’s social elite, as well as European royalty. Two tickets for a honeymoon trip that would take them around the globe, with reservations for the most exclusive hotels and resorts on every continent.

And, of course, red roses. Hundreds of dozens of them. Roses for the brownstone, for her hair, for her bouquet, for his lapel. They were her favorite flower, and their fragrant aroma would forever remind him of her.

He had sent one-hundred-and-two red roses—one for every day they’d been together—to her suite at the Waldorf-Astoria on the morning of the wedding, along with a carefully composed note that told her how happy he was that she was going to marry him . . .

And how sorry he was for what had happened the night before.

After the rehearsal dinner, he had gone up to her suite with her, assuming he would spend a few hours there, if not the entire night.

Lorraine had told him she didn’t want him to come in, that she didn’t want to make love to him that night. She had gone on to tell him something about how she wanted their next time to be after they were married.

He hadn’t been able to focus on what she was saying.

Stung, he had only stared at her, seeing only rejection on her face, hearing it in her voice . . .

Once again, seeing and hearing Sandy Cavelli . . .

Liza Danning . . .

Laura Towne . . .

And now Lorraine, too.

Suddenly, he had gone into a frenzy, grabbing his startled fiancée and throwing her down on the bed. As she protested, then screamed, and finally cried hysterically, he had forced himself on her, violently invading her body with his mouth and fingers and ultimately with his penis, mercilessly thrusting into her over and over again until he at last was able to release several years’ worth of pent-up fury.

Only when he had rolled off of her and seen her tear-stained, scratched and bleeding face, her torn dress, her terror-filled eyes, had he realized what he’d done.

Too stunned to react, he had simply gotten dressed and left the suite, leaving Lorraine still whimpering and huddled on the bed.

He hadn’t slept that night.

He had lain in his own king-sized bed in the brownstone, listening to the traffic going down Fifth Avenue and wondering how he could have lost control that way.

He was sorry, truly sorry.

And Lorraine, he knew, would forgive him.

Because Lorraine loved him. She wanted to marry him. She wanted to spend every moment, the rest of her life, with him.

Lorraine was his, would always be his.

At exactly noon, dressed in his tuxedo with a white rosebud carefully pinned on his lapel, he had taken his place in the drawing room on the first floor of his brownstone. There—in front of the twenty rows of rented white folding chairs, in front of the two hundred people who at first smiled and chattered quietly, then began to shift uncomfortably on their seats and check their watches—he waited.

And waited . . .

And waited . . .

S
andy sits on the edge of an uncomfortable antique sofa, her clammy hands clasped tightly in her lap so that they won’t tremble so much. Beneath her long navy skirt, the one she chose so carefully for her date tonight, her right leg is bouncing rapidly up and down from nerves.

But not the kind of nerves she’d expected to have now as she is about to meet the man who summoned her here.

She’s not breathless with romantic anticipation.

No, she’s breathless with fright.

For the last twenty minutes, as she’s sat here in the parlor waiting for Ethan Thoreau to appear, she’s repeatedly told herself that she needs to calm down. That there’s absolutely no reason to feel panicky. That she’s certainly not in any kind of danger.

Even though this house looks like something out of a gothic horror movie.

Even though the chauffeur locked her inside, then vanished up the stairs.

If she were a different kind of person, Sandy thinks for the umpteenth time, she would get off this sofa and leave this room and look around the house, making sure there’s another way out.

Just in case.

But, being spineless Sandy Cavelli, she just sits here in the parlor, looking helplessly back at the archway leading out into the hall and at the French doors on an interior wall at the other end of the room, their glass windows made opaque by heavy draperies on the other side.

And she grows more and more agitated, wondering. And listening . . .

For something. Anything.

Outside, the wind grows more and more ferocious, sweeping in from the sea to batter the house.

Inside, the minutes tick by on the old grandfather clock in the corner of the parlor.

The parlor is lit only by the fire on the hearth and the white votive candles that glow from tables and shelves around the room. The effect might be cozy or even romantic somewhere else, Sandy thinks; but here, the flickering light only seems eerie.

Finally, she hears a creaking from the hall; someone is descending the stairs.

One step at a time.

No longer caring about her lipstick, Sandy bites down, hard, on her bottom lip and clenches her hands even more tightly, holding her breath and listening.

Finally, the footsteps reach the bottom.

Sandy braces herself for whatever is going to happen. She turns and looks expectantly toward the archway leading to the hall.

But instead of coming into the parlor, whoever is out there—can it really be Ethan?—passes by, still moving in that same methodic manner, fleetingly casting a tall shadow on the wall opposite the sofa where Sandy waits.

This is too strange. . . .

There’s something wrong. . . .

I have to get out of here. . . .

Sandy’s eyes dart wildly around the room. She looks at the two sets of narrow double windows which stretch almost from floor to ceiling. Can she open one and climb out?

No. Instinctively, she knows that they, too, will be locked. And they’re paned, so she can’t break one and escape that way, either.

Escape.

Are you crazy? You’ve been waiting for weeks to meet Ethan Thoreau. And now you want to break a window and escape from him? What are you thinking? What will this man think if he hears shattering glass and sees you fleeing into the night? You’ve definitely lost it. You have to—

Suddenly, she hears a faint sound coming from behind the French doors.

Music.

Wide-eyed she turns in that direction and strains to listen. She knows this melody. . . .

It’s from
West Side Story,
she realizes abruptly. She’s seen the movie countless times. This is the song Maria and Tony sing when they pretend to get married.

“One Hand, One Heart.”

The lyrics become audible as the song grows louder in the next room, as though someone has turned up the volume. The familiar tune is reassuring, and Sandy feels her body relax slightly.

He’s setting the mood for seduction,
she tells herself.
This is classic. Soft music, candlelight . . .

Everything is going to be all right.