“I don't know how you can wait until dinner. It's been hours since lunch, aren't you hungry?” Elaine popped a miniature puff pastry in her mouth. “I'm starving.”
Lance smiled winningly at Elaine. “With a figure like yours, you can indulge, but Amanda can't afford to partake of every course of dinner.”
Fury rolled through Simon like a tidal wave and his vision of Lance was surrounded by a red haze.
“Keep your opinions of Amanda's figure to yourself,” Jillian added with a voice that could have shred steel.
Lance put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Hey, I didn't mean to offend. I was just trying to explain why Amanda hadn't taken any of the appetizers.”
“I'm capable of explaining my own actions when necessary.” The words were said firmly, but the look in her beautiful brown eyes was too damn vulnerable for Simon's liking.
Lance shrugged. “Sure.”
Simon picked up a canapé and walked over to Amanda. He stopped in front of her and she looked up, her eyes asking a question.
“I think your body is perfect, sweetheart. Now try this, it's one of Jacob's personal concoctions.”
Her mouth opened slightly, but not enough for him to slide the small goody between her luscious lips. She stared at him and suddenly he felt like he was waging a battle between the present and the past that still tormented her. He would win because losing was not an option. Lance had had his time with Amanda and he'd screwed it up. Simon wasn't making the same mistakes. He wasn't even tempted to.
“Open up, baby. Trust me.”
Her lips parted further and he slid the morsel into her mouth. He brushed her lips with his fingertip before he withdrew his hand and signaled for Jacob to bring the tray of appetizers to him. This time he chose a mini-quiche. He put it to her lips and felt like a conquering king when she accepted it without protest.
Jacob turned away and put the tray of
hors d'oeuvres
on one of the small tables. “Dinner will be on the table in fifteen minutes.” He left with all the dignity of a Victorian butler.
Simon winked at Amanda; her eyes warmed, though she didn't smile. “He's playing a role again,” she whispered.
Simon nodded. “He's a frustrated thespian. He never got to go undercover on his Secret Service detail and he has latent frustrated desires.”
“You'd better watch out or he's going to follow Jillian back to Hollywood. Then where would you be?”
“No chance. He hates smog.”
“There is that.”
Good. Amanda was sounding more normal.
“So tell me about this
shinga'ar
thing,” Eric said from his position beside Elaine on one of the small sofas.
Elaine and Jill launched into an animated description of how they had spent the day. Simon half-listened while getting a glass of wine for Amanda.
He handed it to her. “Do you want anything else?”
She shook her head. “I'll wait for dinner.”
“You're not fat.”
“Sometimes I see myself through other people's eyes. I don't mean to.”
Looking at her incredibly sexy and downright feminine persona, he smiled. “Then see yourself through my eyes. You're perfect.”
She got drawn into the conversation by Jill before she could answer.
Jacob called them into dinner a few minutes later. Lance had not said anything else offensive to Amanda, but he'd let his gaze zone in way too often on the curves he'd disparaged earlier. Amanda seemed oblivious as with each passing minute she slipped more firmly back into the cool, buttoned-down façade she had put on when she first came to Washington State.
She looked sexier than any woman Simon had ever known, but was acting as asexual as an amoeba.
He was tempted to kiss her senseless just to break through the defensive wall growing around her, but the fragility under her surface kept him from doing it. He wished he knew what was causing that fragility. Was she still susceptible to her ex-husband or was it because her company had sent him to Port Mulqueen without telling her?
She wasn't giving anything away.
Why the hell had Eric invited Lance to join them for dinner in the first place? Making up numbers. Like Jillian would have cared if she were the odd one out. That woman had enough confidence to accompany a friend on her honeymoon and still have a good time. To give his cousin the benefit of the doubt, the first Eric had heard of Lance being Amanda's ex was when Simon had brought it up just before the women got back.
Lance sure as hell hadn't said anything. The man was obviously economical with the truth and if he was an example of Extant Corporation's management style, Simon was doubly determined to prevent any merger from taking place.
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Amanda stood with Simon to see his other guests off the boat. Barely leashed tension communicated itself to her and her nerves wound another notch tighter. Was he thinking she had been aware of Daniel's plan to send Lance to meet with Eric? Was he angry with her?
He hadn't acted angry when he had been cajoling her to eat the canapé. Stress had a bad effect on her appetite, especially stress related to Lance, but Simon had been determined not to give her that coping mechanism. She was glad, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking now.
There had been times over dinner when the look in Simon's eyes had been positively violent.
He didn't like Lance. Simon was too self-contained to be obvious about something like that, but certain gestures and the measured tone he used when talking to Lance had made it clear to her.
“I didn't know he was in Washington.”
Simon didn't look at her. “He said you did.”
“He lied. He's good at that.”
Simon's shrug said it didn't matter and cold seeped into her, making her shiver.
“It was nice of Jacob to drive Jill back to her bed-and-breakfast.” No one had suggested Jillian ride with the Brants and Lance. Probably because they all wanted to avoid bloodshed.
“He's starstruck.”
“I thought so too.” She smiled fully for the first time since seeing Lance that night. “I told you. You're going to have to watch him with Jill. She may not get him to Southern California, but she's got connections up here as well.”
“He plays more roles as my employee than he could ever land in a real production.”
“No doubt.” She sighed and turned away from the disappearing taillights.
Simon wasn't looking at them, his eyes were on her.
“Lance is smooth.”
She grimaced. “He works at it.”
“He could be a model.”
Too true. “He was on a Calvin Klein billboard when he was an undergraduate.”
“Do you still love him?”
The question blindsided her. Hadn't Simon heard her when she told him how Lance had treated her? “No!”
“You sound adamant.”
“I am.” She couldn't believe he was thinking along those lines. “Simon, Lance is not a lovable person. I was more enamored with the idea of getting my family's approval than I was with him before we got married and by the time we got divorced, I despised him.”
“You said he didn't want you.”
“He didn't.” Why was he bringing this up now? Didn't he realize that even though she was over her ex-husband, the memories of her marriage still had the power to wound. Failure hurt. Failing at the most basic definition of who you wereâlike being a womanâwas devastatingly painful.
“His eyes were glued to your chest all night. Like hell he doesn't want you.”
“What?” She felt disoriented. Simon sounded jealous, yet she couldn't believe he thought there was a need to be so.
“He wanted to get you alone in a stateroom.”
“To talk business,” she said with some exasperation.
“With the way he was looking at you, I don't think business would have been the first thing on the agenda.”
She'd been worried that Simon might think she had been working behind his back on the merger, and here he was, suffering from a bout of male possessiveness. Lance had not been possessive. It felt . . . She had to think about it. Different, and sort of nice.
“You think Lance would make a pass at me?” It was so laughable that she smiled. “No way.” Less amusing was her next thought.
“You think I would succumb?”
“I didn't say that.”
“But you're jealous.” Her mind boggled. Simon, the most gorgeous and masculine man she'd ever known, not to mention a lover most women would die for, was jealous.
“Yes,” he bit out.
She laid her hand on his arm. “There's no need. The only man I want is you.” How could he not see that? She vibrated like a tuning fork when he came into the room and wilted like a dead flower when they had to be separated.
Was he blind?
“You were married to him.” It was almost an accusation.
“It was a lousy marriage.”
“Jillian said you didn't divorce him after the first affair.”
Jillian had a big mouth and she had a tendency to draw her own conclusions. They weren't always right.
“I didn't know about the affairs, not for sure anyway.” She willed him to believe her. She'd stayed married for too long to a complete jerk, but she had not been a total doormat. “Until I walked in on him.”
“That's when you realized he was having an affair?”
“Yes. I suppose I should have suspected before, the way he found it so easy to reject me physically. Maybe I was willfully blind, but I didn't know.”
“What happened?”
“I went to his office on a Saturday to see if he was there. It was an off chance. He usually golfed on Saturdays, but he wasn't answering his cell phone. I needed something. I can't even remember now what it was, but I remember what I saw.” It still made her sick. It had been so sordid.
“He was with another woman.”
She remembered Jill had said almost the same thing. “Yes, but they weren't alone.”
“He had two women with him?” Simon asked with disgust.
Would that have hurt less? Maybe. If she hadn't known either of the women. “Worse.”
“How?”
“I discovered my husband was bisexual.”
“He was with a woman
and
a man?”
“Yes. He hadn't touched me sexually in a year and there he was with two of them. They were panting, grunting, sweaty . . . there was this smell, like they'd been going at it a long time. They didn't even notice me, they were so lost to reality in their lust. I left. When I told Lance I wanted a divorce, I didn't tell him what I'd seen, just that I knew he was having an affair.”
She shuddered with remembered distress. “He didn't even bother to deny it. He told me it was my fault that he had to seek sexual release elsewhere. That I wasn't enough woman for him. He was furious with me for insisting on the divorce. Do you know he had the gall to suggest I get counseling?”
Simon's expression went from savage to so tender, her heart cried. “Aw, baby.” He pulled her into his chest. “I'm sorry. What a bastard. If I'd known all of this before, I wouldn't have let him on my yacht.”
She knew he was telling the truth. Simon wasn't Eric. He didn't allow himself to be bound by socially correct behavior.
He squeezed her tighter and incredibly, her body reacted to the pressure of his. “You're lucky you didn't end up with some disease.”
“I know.” She rubbed her cheek against his black silk shirt. “The Monday after I found him in his office, I went to the doctor and demanded they run every test imaginable. It was humiliating, but I couldn't live with the uncertainty.” The memory wasn't as wounding in Simon's arms as it had always been before. “Who knows what level of protection he exercised in his perverse sexual games?”
“Considering his selfish arrogance, that's a damn good question.” Simon's body heat surrounded her like a security blanket. “I want to hurt him.” The level of fury in Simon's voice shook her.
“Don't. Please don't let it matter. It's over, and now I'm really thankful he found me such a sexual turnoff.”
Simon stood there rubbing her back for several minutes in silence. Thoughts of her marriage with Lance were relegated to her brain's garbage incinerator as the heat that Simon's gentle touching evoked burned them up.
The cold breeze coming off the water could not diminish the lava-like desire flowing through her.