Prelude to a Wedding (21 page)

"As far as rebellions go," he cut off her
protest, "it wasn't much, but the episode Judi told you about was
my formal declaration of independence."

She seemed to forget her earlier objection in
concern for him. That shouldn't have warmed him so.

"What happened, Paul?" she asked.

"Not much, really. He had it all mapped out.
Where I'd go to school. What I'd study. Where I'd get my law
degree. How I'd fit into the firm. When and where I'd buy a house
in the right neighborhood and memberships to the proper clubs. Who
I'd marry—at least that she'd be 'our kind.' Hell, he probably had
a schedule for our sex lives so he'd have a great-grandchild
produced on order."

Without looking at her, he could feel her
eyes on him.

Strange, he could also feel understanding in
them.

"I refused to go along. My senior year in
high school, I turned down admission to his Ivy League choice and
signed up to enroll at Northwestern instead. Not exactly a felony.
But you would have thought so to hear Walter Mulholland. The old
fool actually threatened to disinherit me, as if I gave a damn
about his money." His laugh died abruptly. "I found Judi huddled on
the stairs, crying her eyes out. She was just a baby, all skinny
arms and skinned knees, and she thought he was kicking me out of
the family or something."

It sounded foolish spoken out loud after all
these years. But the feelings were still raw and powerful. The
anger. The determination. The triumph. Walking out as the old man
ranted futilely. Then finding Judi, and knowing he was fighting for
more than himself. He had to break free, so he could prevent her
from being caught in Walter Mulholland's straitjacket.

A staccato horn reminded him he'd been
sitting at a stop sign too long for the patience of the driver
behind them.

He drove. And waited, wary of what Bette
would say next. He didn't want questions. He wouldn't be able to
take sympathy. He couldn't abide platitudes.

The touch on his arm was light, fleeting.
Perfect. He glanced at her and saw the smile she tried to produce.
He felt a closeness to her that went beyond the physical.

"You know, she still has skinny arms," Bette
said.

"What?"

"Judi. She still has skinny arms. We should
be thinking about what to feed her tonight."

He slid the car into a parking spot amid
Evanston shops and restaurants. Turning off the ignition, he
twisted to face her, his knee touching hers. He wanted to kiss her.
To take her face between his palms and let his tongue sink into the
warmth and sweetness of her mouth. But he knew that would be only
the start of what he wanted—and couldn't have, here on this
downtown street.

He contented himself with brushing the side
of his thumb along the slant of her cheekbone, the tilt of her
upper lip, the rounded point of her chin.

"Okay, what shall we feed my ravenous
sister?"

They decided on pizza, after a survey of the
neighborhood where he'd parked. Just before they got out of the car
in front of his apartment, he pulled her close for a quick, hungry
kiss.

"One thing, let's agree now that we'll go
back to your place tonight," he told her. "That way we don't have
to worry about getting Judi out of the way."

She gave him a quizzical look, as if he'd
said something surprising, and he wondered if he'd presumed too
much.

He sure as hell knew he wanted to be with
her, but maybe she didn't feel the same. Maybe she wanted time away
from him. Maybe—

"Okay."

The word had never sounded so good. It
carried him through a dinner surrounded by laughter, easy
conversation and the certainty that Judi and Bette had hit it off.
He was oddly touched by that. Especially when Judi admitted to
feeling she'd never gotten over the tomboy stage. He'd known his
sister wasn't sure yet of her attractiveness as a woman, but he'd
never heard her refer as openly to it as she did to Bette. She
clearly felt her vulnerability would be safe with this woman.

Bette tentatively suggested she and Judi
could go shopping together sometime.

Judi pounced on the offer. "Really?
When?"

"Uh, I don't know. Any time, I guess."

"Really? Like maybe this week? Maybe
Thursday? I have early classes, so I could take the El downtown and
look around first, then get your opinion. Do you think?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess so."

"Are you sure? That wouldn't be an
imposition?"

Bette hesitated and Paul wondered if she
would plead the demands of her schedule. She might have wondered,
too, because her smile held some surprise. "I'm sure. It would not
be an imposition."

"Great! There's this holiday formal coming
up, and I want the absolutely perfect dress. I just know you've got
great taste and you won't try to make me buy something that makes
me look fourteen, like Mom always does." Judi smiled glowingly at
both Bette and Paul. "You might be good for something after all,
Paul," she added.

He grinned, but grumbled, "Yeah? I was good
enough to teach you how to sail, and to play basketball and
tennis."

"Yes, but there are other things in the
world, you know. I've always wanted a sister, and maybe you're
finally going to get around to providing me with one."

Paul felt as if a cell door were being
slammed in his face. The only way he could give Judi a sister was
by marriage. Even the word conjured up prison bar images. And the
man closing the door on him was his mother's father.

The "right" marriage was one of those links
Walter Mulholland had planned to chain his grandson to the "right"
life. He would have approved of Bette Wharton as a hostess, as a
helpmate, as a mother to his great-grandchildren. The old man would
have seen Bette's business sense, her ambition, her dedication and
her dignity as business assets.

Paul didn't give a damn about that. But the
idea that he might be moving in a direction Walter Mulholland would
have ordered, even for different reasons, left an uneasy
feeling.

The odd thing was that neither the uneasiness
nor the reflexive 180-degree change of subject could dilute the
warm feeling that had settled somewhere deep in his chest. Very
odd.

* * * *

He'd looked as if he'd just been informed he
owed ten years' back taxes and the IRS was at the door. Or, worse,
that baseball historians had discovered a grave error and they were
taking away the Cubs' last World Series championship, even if it
was back in 1908.

She'd read too much into the smallest things,
things like his planning ahead how they would spend the night
together at her place. Then his sister had skirted too close to the
"m-word" and Bette had seen that look on his face.

Horrified. Numbed. Panicked.

Over the next two weeks, as Paul Monroe wove
himself deeper and deeper into her life, Bette reminded herself of
that look.

It was as much a part of him as the way he
loved to tease her, as the way he liked her home, as the way he
appreciated her warmth to his sister, as the way he held her and
made her crazy. She had to remember that.

When he took her to dinner most nights, when
he drove her home every night and sometimes to work the next
morning, she reminded herself of that look.

When his voice turned mellow as he confided
in her, when his hands turned sultry even as he made her laugh,
when his eyes turned soft as he smiled at her, she reminded herself
of that look.

But it kept getting harder.

Chapter Ten

Bette stood in front of a filing cabinet
Wednesday evening, returning a folder—the Centurion file. In their
cautious way, they'd asked for a proposal on the services her firm
could offer, and she'd sent it off that morning.

But when her office door swung open, the
Centurian account was forgotten. Almost before the door clicked
shut, Paul had his arms around her from behind and his mouth on her
neck.

"Mmm. Lord, you taste good." He nipped at her
skin. "You should have quit work hours ago."

"There's a lot to do—"

"You've always got a lot to do. Too much. But
this time I forgive you, because it means you're still here. I've
missed you."

"I saw you last night," she pointed out,
trying valiantly to maintain a reasonable tone when her hormones
were doing the samba.

"Mmm-hmm. But not this morning. Or yesterday
morning."

He had a point. After they'd spent all their
time together from Friday evening until Monday morning, he'd
started the week with an appraisal of the stock of a north suburban
collectibles shop being liquidated. She'd been the one to point out
it made more sense for him to commute there from his Evanston
apartment than from her house. She'd felt a momentary stab when a
look flashed across his eyes that might have been relief. Maybe
he'd been trying to figure out how to ease away already. But he'd
made sure to see her each day. Besides, she'd thought with
something between a mental grimace and a grin, he probably wouldn't
have thought far enough ahead to see they were setting a
pattern.

It had been left to her to be the practical
one, and practical she'd been.

But practicality had its price. After three
days of waking up in his arms, the past two mornings had felt
surprisingly empty.

"We had dinner together both nights." Was she
reminding him or herself?

"Not the same thing. Not the same thing at
all." His mouth traveled lower on her neck. The openmouthed kisses
carried the veiled hint of his teeth, reminding her of the power
behind his tenderness. "Some things you just can't do at a
restaurant."

His hands slid up her ribs, opening to
capture the weight of her breasts, then curving to press warm palms
against quickly tightening nipples. His movement had drawn her
tighter against his chest. She felt the melting warmth inside her,
the warmth that needed the heat of his body. She arched more firmly
into his hands and dropped her head back to his shoulder.

Shifting, he brought her even closer as he
circled and molded and teased her breasts.

He knew how to pleasure her. In such a short
time, he knew her body, her responses, so well. She wanted nothing
more than to sink to the floor right here, right now, and to have
him display that knowledge in the most intimate way imaginable.

What would she do when he left her? She
squeezed her eyes shut against the fear.

This moment. Take this moment, but build
no expectations that there will be others
. She'd made her
choice, to take her moments with Paul and deal with life without
him when that came. But she hadn't known the moments would be so
wonderful or the prospect of living without them so terrifying.

"Paul." She planned to lift her head, to gain
that much control over herself, but the muscles wouldn't obey and
she felt hot stinging tears at the corners of her eyes. After a
lifetime of using the present to build toward a clearly foreseen
future, she didn't even know how her muscles would react in the
next second.

And yet it felt so right to be in his
arms.

By her ear, his breath rasped harsh and
irregular. It was a sound of pleasurable torment, and it flashed
across her mind to wonder if she was not alone in this drowning
pool of jumbled emotions.

She covered his hands with hers, and slowly
lowered them to her waist. He didn't fight it, but circled her
tightly, squeezing the breath and some of the tension out of
her.

"Paul."

Her murmur was distracted, at best, as he
bent and touched his tongue to the point of her collarbone just
inside her blouse's neckline. Her moan was involuntary. If he kept
that up, in another second they'd be right back where they'd
been.

Abruptly, he raised his head without letting
her go.

"Bette, how about spending Thanksgiving at my
folks' house?"

She was surprised. Maybe stunned. She twisted
around to get a better view of his face.

"Are you serious? Thanksgiving's more than
two weeks away."

"So?"

So? So, the man she'd come to know quite well
over the past month would rather not plan an hour ahead, much less
two weeks. A tremor vibrated at the base of her stomach.

"Your mother might not appreciate your
inviting people to a holiday dinner without letting her know," she
said.

"She knows."

"She does?" Bette feared her voice squeaked
unbecomingly. The tremor in her stomach intensified and spread.

"Sure. So will you come?"

"I'm sorry, Paul," she said. "I usually spend
Thanksgiving with Darla's family, and I've already accepted her
invitation this year."

She wouldn't be able to avoid wondering what
it might have been like to be with him. She had no lingering
concerns about being with his family, so what caused this odd
sensation? If this had been any other man than Paul Monroe, she
might have thought it was nerves over an invitation some could view
as significant, perhaps even a statement of serious intentions.

But this was Paul, and she knew better.

"That's all right, Bette. You go right ahead
and go to the Monroes for Thanksgiving."

The disembodied voice of Darla Clarence
floated into the office. Bette spun around in Paul's arms and they
stared at each other. His look of astonishment quickly gave way to
amusement.

"Darla?" Bette called out.

"Go on, girl, you say yes to that invitation
right this second."

"Darla, where are you? How did you hear
that?"

"I'm in my office, and I can always hear what
you're doing in there."

Bette's mouth worked, but her vocal cords
didn't, so she only mouthed the words: "Oh, my God."

"And I say you should go right ahead and take
the boy up on his invitation," Darla continued. "You've spent the
past three Thanksgivings with us, you probably want something
different for a change. Maybe their turkey won't dry out like mine.
I've been hoping he'd get around to asking."