Prelude to a Wedding (7 page)

The door swung wide and there he was,
grinning and sending her pulse off again in double time.

"Hi, Bette."

Darla looked over her shoulder, then back at
Bette. "Do you want me to . . .?" She let the words trail off, and
Bette could tell that she didn't want to do anything, that she
approved of Paul's presence in her boss's office. Bette felt
ganged-up on—Paul Monroe, Darla Clarence and her own heartbeat.

"It's all right, Darla. Thank you."

She waited until Paul moved into the room and
Darla closed the door. That gave her a chance to prepare a
cordially businesslike scold. "Paul—"

"Don't apologize, Bette."

Her prepared words vanished. "Apologize!"

"Yeah, I understand about lunch. I know some
people get uptight about keeping to a schedule. They just can't
help it."

"Uptight." She forced the word through
clenched teeth.

He went blithely on.

"I realized I shouldn't have pushed about
lunch. But now that you've had all afternoon to catch up—" he
hesitated just long enough for her to remember how abysmally she'd
failed to use the afternoon to catch up, and that it was all his
fault "—let's go to dinner."

"I have plans."

Most men would have instantly withdrawn at
the deliberate chill in those three words. She should have
remembered that when it came to what nine out of ten men would do,
she faced Mr. Ten.

"Plans?" He repeated the word as if he'd
never heard it, and certainly had no familiarity with the concept.
"Don't you want to have dinner with me?"

She opened her mouth and shut it immediately,
uncertain it would deliver the sentiment she needed to express.

Damn the man.

"It's not that . . ." A fine start, but then
she didn't know what to say next. "I have a lot of work to do." Why
did the truth sound so lame?

"Didn't you have a good time last night?"

"Yes, I had a good time, but—"

"I did, too. Good. I want to hear about your
business, and you should probably know more about mine before we
make a final choice on this permanent temporary, don't you think?"
Not giving her a chance to answer, he continued. "I thought tonight
we'd try this pizza place I know where they serve deep-dish by the
pound. It's across the street from where the St. Valentine's Day
Massacre took place back in the twenties, and legend has it one
victim crawled to the front step and breathed his last right
there."

* * * *

Nearly four hours later Bette found herself
trying to figure out exactly where she'd lost control with Paul
Monroe. Somewhere, she figured, between the time he played on her
sense of responsibility by mentioning the need to discuss business
and the time he cast out the lure of deep-dish pizza. She dismissed
as overly pessimistic the voice that insisted on whispering that
control had walked out the minute Paul had walked in the day
before.

The dinner had been wonderful. And so, she
had to admit, had the company.

He'd regaled her with tales of the oddities
he'd seen in his business and of the escapades he'd pulled in his
life. He'd also drawn stories from her of her childhood and her
travails in setting up her business, but she didn't enjoy that half
as much as when he talked—and made her laugh.

As the cab carried them south from the
restaurant toward the center of the city, she studied him. A man
whose business was children's toys. A man who refused to live by
schedules or plans. A man who seemed wary of committing to
something as simple as choosing a temporary secretary. Logic said,
a man wary of committing to anything. Or anyone?

She frowned, disturbed for reasons she
couldn't explain.

"Wait a minute. Stop here," Paul ordered the
cabbie as they neared the northern limit of Michigan Avenue's
Magnificent Mile.

Bundling Bette out of the taxi, he paid the
fare and started her off across the wind-whipped boulevard.

"What are you doing? Where are we going?"

"The beach."

"What?"

"Oak Street Beach. I haven't been there all
summer." He took her hand and wrapped it securely in the warmth of
his, then led her across the lanes of traffic. They'd reached the
sidewalk bordering the beach before she thought to protest further.
"Don't you think it's a little late in the season to be going to
the beach?"

"Don't want to rush into anything," he said
with a grin, still pulling her along.

"Hey. Wait a minute. I'm getting sand in my
shoes." Hauling back on his hand, she managed to stop him.

"Take 'em off."

She glared. "I also have hosiery on, and
besides, it's October."

"It's also probably seventy degrees, and the
sand's been soaking up sun all day."

He had a point; she ignored it. "I'm not
taking my shoes off and walking in the sand in my hose. And before
you say it," she rushed on, "I'm not taking off my hose on a public
beach, either."

He looked at her a long moment, and she had
the impression that a measuring and accounting was taking place.
She stood very still for the outcome.

"You want to go back?" It was an offer more
than a question.

Now she felt as if she were the one doing the
measuring and accounting, only she didn't know of what or by what
standards. Had he experienced this uncertainty a moment ago? She
considered the toes of her shoes, already awash in a wave of sand.
The black leather pumps needed polishing anyhow, and their wedge
heels were nearly flat. She glanced at the tall, lighted buildings
standing sentinel behind them, then out to the glistening roll of
the lake and finally back to Paul. He watched her without judgment,
not goading, not pressuring. Just waiting.

"Could we walk a little slower?"

His eyes lit first, then he smiled. "Yeah, I
think we could manage that."

She smiled back, feeling oddly happy, as they
started more sedately for the edge of the water.

"Thanks, Bette." The quick words sounded
almost ill at ease, as if he expected her to jump on them. "I
wouldn't have wanted to miss walking on Oak Street Beach. I've done
it every summer since I was fourteen."

"Summer, huh?" She made as if to pull her
suit jacket closer around her, though the lake breeze felt good
against her heated skin. "I suppose you do everything at the last
minute?"

"Everything." He drew her close, then let
loose her hand to loop an arm around her shoulders in a
chill-chasing gesture.

Disconcerted by the immediate response she
felt, she dredged up extra disapproval to lace with her teasing. "I
suspect you're one of the people they show on the TV news, lining
up to beat the midnight postmark for your tax return."

"I've met some very interesting people in
that line."

She couldn't repress a grin at his blatant
self-satisfaction, but it faltered as he turned his head and
contemplated her. His face was too close, his eyes too observant,
his mouth too . . . tempting. "Bet you'd never be in that line,
would you?" His eyes dropped to her lips, and she felt as if her
heart and lungs were operating at double time. He blinked. "And I
suppose you have your Christmas shopping done by Labor Day?"

"Of course." She'd never been prouder of
producing two steady words.

He gave a histrionic shudder, and she
laughed. Everything had returned to normal. Almost.

"Some years," she confided, "I get really
crazy and wail until Halloween. But I'm always done, totally done,
by my parents' anniversary the first week of December. That way I
can enjoy the holiday. And you, 1 suppose, are probably out there
on Christmas Eve madly buying."

"Of course. The insane rush is half the fun
of Christmas, as long as you go about it with the right attitude.
You can't be buying to meet some quota, you have to be looking for
the exactly right gift."

They'd reached the water and turned to follow
the narrow path of sand that had been hard-packed by restless waves
and gentle tides.

"Why can't you look for the exactly right
gift before December 24th?"

He leaned toward her intently. "But that's
just it. What if you get what you
think's
the right gift on
December 14th and then find the perfect present on the 24th? Do you
return the gift you bought on the 14th or do you pass up the
perfect present?"

She shrugged, and his arm rose and fell with
the gesture. It made them seem connected somehow, that her movement
affected his. "It depends."

"On what?"

"On if you have the receipt. On how hard it
is to get back to the store where you got the l4th's present or if
that present might be something someone else would like or maybe
even something you need yourself."

He groaned. "All those 'ifs.' I save myself
all that. I take no chances. By the 24th, it
is
the perfect
present, like it or not."

They'd stopped in unspoken accord. They
stared out across the water. Bette was aware of how the
concentrated glow of lights from downtown illuminated the right
side of Paul's face, and lights strung along the city's Gold Coast
were nearly as strong on her left side. Between existed a shadowed
world that seemed to leave the city and its everyday life far
behind. This world between had only the light of the moon to reveal
it, a strange light that could make the ordinary extraordinary and
mask the dangerous.

She smiled slyly at him. "Of course you
realize, don't you, that by the time you go shopping on the 24th,
you're just looking at my leftovers. I've already snatched up all
the perfect presents out there."

His wounded expression drew a triumphant
chuckle from her that he joined with easy, warm laughter.

It was crazy. The whole thing. Walking on a
beach in her work clothes in the middle of October—even if the
weather seemed a flashback to August—with a man she'd known exactly
thirty hours, and whose drawbacks easily reached double digits. And
enjoying it. A lot.

Crazy.

The laughter and the warmth lingered. Paul
turned to her, and slight pressure from his arm shifted her
shoulders so she faced him. The grin still lifted his lips and
fizzed in his eyes. She watched that, so fascinated by the
amusement that always seemed near the surface with him that she was
hardly aware when he lowered his head and brought his mouth to
hers.

Her last thought, a flash, really, was how
like Paul Monroe it was to kiss her with a grin still molding his
lips. She felt the teasing joy in the gliding pressure of his skin
against hers.

How different this was from the night before.
Then he'd drawn out the moment before their mouths met like an
extended question; now he swept into the first kiss, and a second,
without hesitation. Then he'd whispered a caress; now he stated it
boldly. She felt a sensation of warmth that came from one arm still
around her shoulder, and the other across her lower back, drawing
her to him and out of the lake's cooling night breeze. A sensation
of heat that came from the insistent sweep of his tongue against
her lips, edging her nearer to some elemental furnace.

"Bette." She heard the faint request in his
voice, even as he muffled it against the skin of her cheek, jaw and
throat, and when his mouth came back to hers, she parted her lips.
Her hand rested high on his shoulder, so the tips of two fingers
grazed the skin at the side of his neck. The fingers of her other
hand wound in his hair where it topped his jacket collar. She
clenched them tighter, waiting.

He took her top lip between his teeth, not
quite nipping, but seeming more to test. She sighed, and his tongue
lingered on her lips, finally slipping through slowly, exploring
thoroughly. She felt the glide of his tongue against the sharply
smooth ridge of her teeth and gave a small, smothered gasp of
impatience. Then he was done with teasing, meeting her tongue and
drawing it back into his mouth.

She had the notion that her nerve endings had
retreated from her limbs and brain, leaving them weightless and
empty. But there seemed nerve endings to spare in other parts of
her body, the parts in contact with his, where the impression of
his flesh seemed to pass through layers of his clothes and hers,
and into her skin.

He shifted, bringing her into closer
alignment with his body, so her breasts absorbed the firmness of
his chest. Pressing his arm against her hips, he settled her into
the narrow cradle created by his wider stance, and she recognized
the sensation of another male firmness.

For an instant, an instant without
consequences, without responsibilities, she felt only a responsive
softening and warming.

But she had spent too much of her life
following step after careful step toward a specific end not to know
that with such incendiary steps as these, one thing would most
definitely lead to another.

She pulled away from his mouth with a gasp
that was partly driven by a need for oxygen and partly by
disappointment at the separation. A step backward got her nowhere
because his arms held her fast, and pushing her hands against his
chest got no results. For a breath, her mind acknowledged her
situation, alone on the beach with a man strong enough to hold her
against her will. But she didn't truly fear him. Perhaps she would
have if she hadn't realized that the deep, uneven breaths he pulled
in as he rested his cheek against her temple were his method of
regaining equilibrium.

He's shaken, too, she thought. His reaction
steadied her, making her own responses seem less extreme. She was
also, at some level, grateful he hadn't let her go. She wasn't sure
she could have stood alone in those first seconds.

When, with a last long breath, he loosened
his arms, she stepped clear of the heat. With quick, unconscious
movements, she straightened her jacket, twisted her blouse into
line, smoothed her skirt and ran her fingers through her hair. Only
when her hands moved to her lips, a reflexive reaction to the
burning sensation there, did she feel Paul watching her. His gaze
slanted at her from the side. She stopped her gesture
half-made.