Reaching her office, she closed the door and leaned against it, shutting her eyes. She was tired, wired, happy, nervous.
Would Tom come?
God, she wanted him to come.
Though the windows were closed, she could hear the band playing. The drapes were open, and the glitter of the party below drew her to a window. She had not turned on a light, so she could look out without being seen. The Japanese lanterns strung throughout the grounds turned the back lawn into a fairyland. Citronella torches planted in strategic places added their own flickering glow. Women in evening dresses and men in tuxes made their way along the crisscrossing
pathways, or danced on the patios, or milled around the tents. Closer at hand, two waiters bearing large covered trays went down the last few steps leading to the lawn from the veranda. Seconds later Selma followed, her gait militant.
Ronnie smiled. With Selma to oversee the caterers, and Lewis and his mother and children to see to the guests, she wouldn’t be missed. She could do as she pleased all night.
The faint sound of footsteps coming along the hall caused her to turn away from the window. Clutching the curtain with one hand, she waited, her heartbeat speeding up in anticipation.
The footsteps grew louder, then stopped outside the door, which she had left unlocked. The knob turned. The door opened. A pie wedge of light spilled across her office floor. A man’s tall form was silhouetted against the hall light.
Ronnie smiled, let go of the curtain, and started to move into his arms.
The time for talking was past.
Chapter
28
W
ALKING UP TO THE HOUSE
, Tom listened to the band striking up a new song and smiled wryly. He and the bandleader must have some sort of cosmic connection tonight, he thought.
It was a romantic ballad, lush and sensual. The lead singer crooned yearningly of love, and Tom felt his body responding to the urgent beat of the music.
He had succumbed, utterly, completely, thoroughly succumbed, to the hot need pulsing through his veins—and the magic of a warm wind, a star-studded night, and a woman.
Morals, scruples, good common sense be damned: Tonight he couldn’t help himself.
He was going to take what he wanted, and to hell with the consequences.
Just thinking of Ronnie brought a smile to his lips and an ache to his groin. He quickened his steps.
“Hey, Tom!” It was Thea, hailing him from the pathway leading down from the veranda. As he was on the walk leading to the front door, a distance of some
thirty feet away, he was able to wave in reply without stopping.
Thea was wearing a tight black sequined dress with what looked like feathers around the hem, and was looking very hot.
Tom knew he could have her in bed in about twenty minutes flat with not much more than one snap of his fingers. No real moral implications, no potential life-wrecking consequences, no strings.
Just plain, old-fashioned, have-a-good-time sex.
The only problem was he wasn’t interested. She didn’t move him. She never had. There was no enchantment there for him with Thea.
Or with Diane.
Or with anyone else but Ronnie.
Maybe he had a thing for red hair.
Or maybe it was big brown eyes, or luscious lips, or porcelain pale skin; maybe it was a body with curves in all the right places; hell, maybe it was too much eye makeup and three-inch heels.
Or maybe it was just Ronnie.
Whatever it was, he had it bad.
Worse than the chicken pox.
At least, Tom thought as he ran up the steps to the house, Thea was with somebody. She’d been hanging on to some guy’s arm even as she waved at him. That was a good thing. He wouldn’t want Ann to get wind of what had been going on between Thea and Kenny.
The irony of condemning his best friend for breaking his marriage vows while he was setting out to do some pretty thorough marriage-vow breaking of his own was not lost on Tom.
And he didn’t even try to tell himself that in his and Ronnie’s case it was different.
What it was, was a hunger as elemental as a force of nature, and as unstoppable.
He wanted her. She wanted him. When they were together, the air between them burned.
Call him morally bankrupt, but he wasn’t even going to try to fight that. Not any longer.
There wasn’t any point. He had already lost—or won—depending on how you looked at it. In either case he had discovered that he didn’t have what it took to walk away.
Entering the house through the front door, he looked around quickly and judged himself alone. He knew where her office was, and he climbed the main staircase swiftly.
He didn’t even feel like talking anymore. He was going to pull her into his arms and kiss her breathless and …
Tom had reached the upstairs hall when a muffled cry stopped him in his tracks for the space of about a heartbeat.
He quickened his pace. Then, hearing another muffled cry and a thud, as though something had fallen, he flat-out ran toward the sound.
The door to Ronnie’s office was open. Light from the hall spilled into the room, but other than that it was dark. A flash of glittering red was the first thing he saw; then feet with high-heeled satin sandals kicking furiously.
It became clear to him what was happening even as he dove to her rescue. Some overeager asshole—for his money, Beau Hilley—had Ronnie bent back over her
desk, kissing her even as he groped the front of her dress. She was twisting every which way and beating him back with one fist and pulling his hair with the other as she tried to get away.
Tom had felt like committing murder so few occasions in his life that he could count them on one hand.
Chalk up one more.
He didn’t say a word, just caught the would-be rapist with one hand twisted in the seat of his pants and one hand curled under the neck of his jacket and yanked him away from Ronnie. Then, even as the fellow turned, he let go with a right that would have done Mike Tyson proud.
His victim gurgled, and dropped like a stone.
“Tom!” In an instant Ronnie was up off that desk and in his arms, which was just where he wanted her to be. She clung to him, her arms around his neck, and he could feel her shuddering breaths. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight, and kissed her ear and her neck while he murmured sweet words of reassurance—and inhaled the illusive, erotic scent of her with every breath.
Then he took a good look at the man who lay stretched out at their feet, and froze to the spot.
“Jesus Christ!” Tom said, all ministrations to the woman in his arms temporarily suspended. A dozen thoughts swirled simultaneously through his mind. First and foremost that he had just decked Senator Lewis Honneker IV in his own home for attempting to make love to his own wife.
“What?” Arms still wrapped around his neck, Ronnie lifted her head to stare up at him.
“That’s your husband,” he said, as if it were possible
she didn’t know. His arms were still around her, but his hold on her had definitely slackened.
“Yes.”
She knew.
“So what in hell is going on here?” Guilt combined with confusion, and a growing anger sharpened his voice.
“What do you mean, ‘what in hell is going on here’?” There was an ominous undertone to her voice that Tom had heard before. Ronnie was on the verge of losing her temper. Well, she was in good company if she did, because so was he. He didn’t like feeling like a fool—or a louse. Given the situation, he was almost certainly one or the other.
It had occurred to Tom some time back that Ronnie may have been coming on to him merely to get back at her errant spouse, but he had never really given the idea more than passing consideration: The electricity between them felt so sizzlingly real, he didn’t think it could be faked.
But he’d been wrong before.
“Was
he
supposed to find you with
me
, or was I supposed to find you with
him?
” His voice was little more than a growl. “Or did you just conveniently forget that you invited me up here?”
“
What?
” Words seemed to fail her for a moment, and she sputtered. Then, “Don’t you see, he was
attacking
me!”
“He’s your husband,” Tom said, cold as ice.
She wrenched herself out of his arms. On the floor the Senator stirred and moaned. In reflexive reaction Tom flexed his hand. The knuckles hurt.
Ronnie glanced down, then up at him again.
“Good-bye, Tom,” she said witheringly. Turning on her heel, she walked out of the room.
The Senator rolled to his side, then sat up, shaking his head groggily.
Torn between going after Ronnie and aiding the man on the floor, Tom decided that the Senator’s needs had to take precedence, and dropped to one knee beside him.
Ronnie in a snit would come to no harm. The Senator, on the other hand, might really be hurt; he was not a young man, and that had been a jackhammer right.
Tom felt like the biggest dastard unhung.
“I’m sorry, Senator. Are you okay?”
“Is that you, Tom?” His Honor blinked at him. He was drunk; the smell of alcohol on his breath was strong enough to make Tom’s eyes water.
“It’s me, Senator. Can you move your jaw?” Tom squinted as he searched the other man’s face for signs of serious damage.
“She won’t give me any, you know.” The Senator cupped his chin in one hand and waggled his jaw dolefully. “Not for more’n a year. Even has a separate bedroom. Hell, what does she think I married her for?”
Tom sank back on his heels. “She won’t give you any?” he repeated carefully.
“She looks hot, don’t she, boy? I saw she had you pantin’ after her. She gets all of ’em pantin’ after her! Hell, me too. But she’s really cold—cold as ice. Won’t put out. I even tried—even tried begging her! But she won’t. Don’t tell Marsden I told you, will you?” His expression grew suddenly worried.
“I won’t,” Tom promised, running a questing hand
along the Senator’s jaw. There was the beginning of some swelling, but the bone seemed to be intact.
“I got rights where she’s concerned. I tried to tell her. But she says she’ll leave me if I force her, and she knows she’s got me over a barrel, because I can’t take another divorce. This last one just about killed me in the polls. You know that yourself.”
“I don’t think you’ve got the right to force her, Senator,” Tom said carefully. “I think that’s called rape.”
“Hell, a man can’t rape his own wife!”
“Times have changed, Senator, and laws have too. My understanding of the way it works is that if a woman says no, it’s a surefire gospel
no
, even if she is your wife.”
“D’you ever hear such bullshit in your life?” The Senator appealed to him as one man to another. “I guess it’s a good thing you came in when you did, then, ’cause I was aimin’ to take what I married her for. Hot-tempered as she is, she probably would have shot me after, or called the police and had me arrested. I don’t know which would have been worse. God above, think of the scandal! Orde would eat it up.”
“Can you stand up, Senator?” Tom got up, and helped the Senator up too. He was a little unsteady on his feet, but that was due more to the effects of alcohol than to the punch he’d taken, Tom judged as he held on to the older man’s arm just for insurance.
“I guess I’ve kinda lost my taste for any more partyin’ tonight. I think I’ll go on to bed.” The Senator waggled his jaw and winced.
“I wouldn’t try to force your wife again if I were you,” Tom said, releasing the Senator’s arm and following
close behind as he walked with great dignity, if an occasional sideways step, toward the hall.
“I guess I won’t,” he said gloomily. “But you tell me what a man’s supposed to do? Wife won’t put out, and damned papers pillory you if you get caught with another woman. Anybody who says this is a man’s world don’t know diddly-squat!”
“You’ve got a point there, Senator.” Tom followed him into his bedroom, where the older man immediately collapsed facedown on top of the counterpane, which had not yet been drawn back from the bed. In less than a minute he was snoring. Tom stood looking down at him for a while, his hands in his trouser pockets. Then he reached over, untied the Senator’s bow tie, and pulled the shoes from his feet. Having done what he could to make the man comfortable, he left the room, closing the door behind him.
Deep in thought, he headed toward the staircase. He had been on the brink of cuckolding a man who had never been anything but kind to him, a man who had offered him work when he’d needed it, a man he’d looked up to all his life.
A man who was, on the other hand, chronically unfaithful, and who had just tried to rape his own wife.
A woman whom Tom still burned to possess.
How had he ever gotten caught up in such a godawful mess?
Tom walked down the stairs, still pondering.
However he had gotten into it, he was in it now, stuck fast as a pig in quicksand.
What was between him and Ronnie was not going to go away.
He
could go away—but he knew he couldn’t stay away.
Not with the best will in the world. Not forever. If he left tonight, he’d be back in a week.
He knew that much about himself.
He’d already tried cutting and running, and see where it had landed him: out of the frying pan and smack-dab in the middle of the fire. The only thing left to do was to face the situation squarely.
First off, he and Ronnie needed to talk.
As he came to that conclusion, he walked out through the front door into the balmy night. Over to his right, past the hundred-year-old magnolia bursting with waxy white blooms that marked the corner of the house and the graceful Doric columns that held up the front-porch roof, the party was still going strong. Laughter and the indistinct sounds of voices intermingling rose above the music. The Japanese lanterns floated over the proceedings like a thousand fireflies.
Overhead, stars twinkled in a midnight-blue sky. A ghostly-pale moon rode high among feathery dark wisps of clouds.