She drove Sam to Saint Mary’s every afternoon for the physical therapy that had made it necessary for him to stay near the hospital in the first place. Without it, Dr. Peters had warned, he might never recover complete use of his leg. Sam told her that he would be quite happy to have Jay drive him in, or even Henry Dobson; there was no need for her to make the trip each day, then hang about for two hours while he did the repetitious exercises that had been set for him. To this, Lisa replied that she was happy to do it, and that was the absolute truth. She valued every minute with Sam as a chance to reinforce the love he felt for her; she wanted him to need her as she knew she needed him. Only then would she feel secure in his love. As it was, she had the horrible suspicion that she stood to lose more in their relationship than he did, and the idea scared hell out of her.
Every New Year’s Eve since Lisa could remember—excepting only the one sixteen years ago, which had fallen a mere three days after her parents had been killed in a car crash—Amos had held a huge party in the ballroom that took up the entire second floor of the main wing of the house. Lisa had always handled most of the planning and acted as her grandfather’s hostess. Her marriage to Jeff had not interfered with this arrangement since they had lived less than five miles away, but she had missed the previous year because she had still been sunk in despair over Jennifer’s death. But Amos had taken it for granted that this year Lisa would take up the reins of the party again, and Lisa saw no reason to decline. In fact, she had always enjoyed doing it. Amos used the occasion to observe the people who managed his companies in a less formal setting than that provided by most of his offices, and more than once he had launched the career of a young politician in whom he believed by introducing him to moneyed influentials. There was always an interesting mix of guests and usually several unexpected happenings. Most people, Lisa included, enjoyed themselves tremendously.
Sam was not overenthusiastic about the party, especially when Lisa told him that he would be expected to wear a tuxedo, but he agreed to come and be introduced to her friends, relatives, and acquaintances. Jay opted for a pizza and a football game instead. Lisa had the feeling that Sam’s inclination was to join his son, but out of deference to her feelings he didn’t say so. For which she was glad. She was dying to show him off. She had a feeling that dressed in a tuxedo he would be spectacular.
On the night of the party, Lisa made one last check on the arrangements, then turned everything over to Mary Dobson’s capable hands. She would supervise the food and drinks, while Lisa, as hostess, concentrated on putting everyone at ease and making sure that no one was left without someone to talk to. The band that had been hired for the evening was already warming up by the time she hurried to her room to dress, and, looking out a front window, she saw the caterer’s van arrive. She was late, she realized, and would have to make haste getting dressed.
She opted for a shower instead of a bath, lingering under the lukewarm spray just long enough to soap and rinse her body. After toweling herself dry, she applied afterbath powder and then perfume in her favorite scent before shrugging into a light robe. Doing her makeup took less than ten minutes; she kept it light, using a variation of the look she used for day, the only difference being the silvery-green powder she dusted over her eyelids and the faint gold shimmer she applied to her cheeks and lips on top of the warm dusky rose color she ordinarily used. A flick of black mascara, a whisk of transparent powder, and she was finished.
Although Lisa knew that most of the women who would be coming to the party had spent the afternoon at the hairdressers’, having elaborate coiffures created for them by experts, she had chosen to arrange her hair herself, in the interests of saving time. The style she had selected to wear was deceptively simple: a chignon secured at the nape by a diamond clasp that allowed enticing tendrils of silvery-blond hair to escape and curl around her face.
Her dress was an unrelieved black silk-jersey sheath with an overlay of smoky chiffon pleats shot through with glimmering touches of silver. It descended from one shoulder, where it was secured with a diamond brooch, in a dark cloud to the floor, whispering around her feet and shimmering with every movement. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Lisa knew that the garment suited her perfectly, enhancing her slenderness to the point of fragility and providing a startling contrast with the creamy paleness of her skin. Pear-shaped diamond eardrops and Sam’s ring were her only jewelry. Her eyes, wide with excitement and slightly tip-tilted above exquisitely molded cheekbones, and the matching emerald on her hand provided her only touches of color.
When she was satisfied with her appearance, she walked downstairs to find Sam, careful not to trip in the high-heeled silver sandals that added three inches to her height. She was afraid that Sam might have found the attractions of the football game too much to resist and she might have to prod him into getting dressed. But she need not have worried. When she walked into the sitting room adjoining his bedroom, he was, it was true, watching the football game with Jay. But while Jay, dressed casually in jeans and a sweater, sprawled on the couch, Sam stood beside it, fully dressed except for his tie, which hung loose around his neck. They were both so caught up in what was happening on the screen that they didn’t hear her come in, and Lisa had a few minutes’ leisure to study Sam. He looked, as she had suspected he would, spectacular. In the severe black coat and pants and pleated white shirt of his formal clothes, he exuded raw male attraction. Against the starkness of his clothes, his skin looked very bronzed, and his harshly carved features had an appeal that made the word
handsome
seem inadequate. His hair had been neatly brushed, for once, but the curl had apparently been impossible to subdue entirely; it framed his head like rippling black sable to curl over the collar of his shirt in back. His height and powerful physique gave him an aura of power that was in no way lessened by the white cast revealed by a slit in the satin stripe of the pants, or the crutches he needed to stay on his feet. He looked superb, every hard male inch of him. Just the sight of him sent a surge of heat through Lisa so intense that she thought her bones might be melting.
“Did you see that block?” Jay demanded excitedly of Sam, half-turning on the couch as he did so. Immediately he caught sight of Lisa. “Oh, hi, Lisa,” he added. Then his eyes widened as they swept over her. “Boy, you look great!”
“Thank you.” Lisa was laughing as Sam turned to look at her, a sheepish smile on his face.
“I just thought I’d watch for a minute,” he explained guiltily. “Am I late?”
Lisa shook her head. “I came down early to see if I could help you with anything. Like tying your tie.”
Sam grinned. “You must be a mind reader. I decided a few minutes ago that it is impossible for a man on crutches to tie his own tie. I thought I was going to have to ask Jay, but I don’t know how good he is at things like that. He’s just barely past the stage of learning to tie his shoelaces.”
“Ha ha,” came the response from the couch. Sam and Lisa both grinned at Jay, who was once again absorbed in the football game.
Sam turned his back on the television and hobbled toward Lisa. As he approached, his eyes swept her from head to toe. As Jay’s had earlier, they widened appreciatively.
“Wow!” He grinned, stopping in front of her, his wide shoulders blocking her view of the rest of the room. “The kid’s right, for once: you do look great.” Jay, caught up in the action on the screen, merely grunted scornfully in reaction to that dig. Lisa giggled as Sam added for her ears alone, “Good enough to eat.”
“Thank you.” She smiled up at him, her rosy nails tracing a teasing path up the pleats at the front of his shirt. “So do you.”
Sam gave her an exaggerated leer. “Remind me to remind you of that later,” he murmured wickedly.
Lisa twinkled up at him. “You won’t have to remind me,” she promised, her voice a tantalizing whisper.
Sam grinned and bent to kiss her, his mouth hard against her own. Lisa, breathing in the faint, tangy scent of aftershave, felt her stomach muscles tighten. Her hand slid around behind his strong neck, her nails digging into the sinews there.
“I hope you guys aren’t going to be mushy like this all the time.” Jay’s disgusted voice broke apart what had promised to become a fairly heated exchange. Sam grinned ruefully down at her as Lisa reluctantly pulled her mouth away from his.
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Sam threw with mock irritation over his shoulder at Jay. The boy didn’t even bother to honor this piece of heresy with a reply.
“Let me tie your tie.” Lisa’s lips were twitching at this banter between father and son. Their relationship warmed her to her toes. They loved each other with a slightly embarrassed, seldom expressed love that was totally masculine and outside anything she had ever experienced.
Sam smiled warmly down at her while she dealt efficiently with his tie, arranging it into a neat bow at his neck. This was a service she had performed many times for Amos, whose fingers were stiffened from a mild form of arthritis, and occasionally, in the early days of their marriage, for Jeff. Which last piece of information she had no intention of divulging to Sam. She suspected that he could, if provoked, be a very jealous lover indeed.
“There.” She patted the side of his cheek when she had finished, loving the feel of the slightly rough texture of his jaw against the soft skin of her fingers. He caught her hand, holding it against his face while he pressed an intimate little kiss into her palm.
“Thank you,” he said huskily. Lisa felt her breath stop momentarily at something in those blue eyes. If ever a man’s heart could be said to have shown in his eyes, Sam’s did then. Lisa smiled up at him mistily.
“Are you two going to stand there staring at each other all night?” Jay demanded, sounding disgusted again. Sam lowered Lisa’s hand from his mouth while still retaining his grip on it.
“Watch yourself, pal, or I’ll sell you to the next Arab who offers,” Sam warned over his shoulder. Jay hooted. Lisa, laughing, pulled Sam from the room.
The party was a great success, as Lisa had known it would be. She circulated from group to group, keeping Sam at her side as much as possible so that he wouldn’t feel too lost in a gathering where he knew only her and Amos. She was pleased with the impression he made on the male and female guests alike. The men seemed to respond instinctively to his natural air of authority, bred, she supposed, from his years in the military, while the women positively drooled over the long hard body in the elegant evening clothes. She was conscious of being on the receiving end of more than one distinctly envious look from other females who would have given their all if Sam had so much as crooked his little finger. And, being human, she enjoyed it immensely. To his credit, Sam appeared oblivious to the very obvious attempts of some of the women guests to attract his interest. The most they ever got from him in response was a polite smile.
To those who asked after Jeff’s whereabouts, Lisa briefly said that he was out of town on business. She did not feel that so large a gathering was the place to announce that she and Jeff were getting a divorce, or that she was planning to marry the man at her side. She introduced Sam by his name only, feeling that no explanation of the exact nature of their relationship was called for. Speculation was rife among the female guests particularly, she knew, but she had no intention of satisfying their curiosity, and so far none of them had quite gotten up the nerve to ask her outright who Sam was.
At exactly one hour before midnight, the dancing started. Lisa, with an apologetic little murmur to Sam, left him sitting in a chair talking to another gentleman who could not or would not dance and went to do her duty as hostess. As she whirled about the room in the arms of one man after another (Amos refused to have disco played or danced at his parties, so the dances were mainly waltzes and foxtrots), Lisa could feel Sam’s eyes on her. When she glanced over at him after freeing herself from one man who had imbibed too much champagne and had, in consequence, held her far too closely and with too much obvious enjoyment, she was amused to see his eyes narrowed and a faintly grim set to his hard mouth. She flashed a twinkling, naughty smile at him, to which, after a moment, he reluctantly responded. But all the same, it gave her a little thrill to realize that he felt so possessive about her. The notion was strangely appealing, chauvinistic or not.
After the next dance, she resolved to go sit with Sam for a while and perhaps explore the fascinating possibility of his feeling jealous. After he admitted it, which she imagined might take some doing, she would assure him that he was by far the most attractive man in the room, and possibly set about proving it. Which could get extremely enjoyable, she thought, with another of those naughty smiles.
“Lisa, darling, you look like the cat who’s been in the cream,” a slightly nasal female voice purred from behind her.
Lisa turned, smiling, to see Elise Sutton, a slender bottle blonde of about thirty who wore a red dress slit to her navel, too much makeup, and was in the process of divorcing her fourth husband. Lisa had known Elise for years, since they had both competed for Jeff. Lisa recognized the feline expression on the other woman’s face from experience. It said that Lisa once again had her claws into a man Elise fancied.
“Maybe I have,” she parried with a mocking tilt of her head.
“I’d say, definitely.” Elise was smiling that charming, social smile she always assumed when talking with other women and which was as false as the color of her hair. “That’s some toy you got for Christmas. Mind telling me where you found him? He looks to be just my type.”
Lisa smiled as falsely as Elise. “On the very highest shelf in the toy store,” she answered solemnly. “And, sorry, Elise, but he was the only one of that kind there.”
Elise shrugged, the movement elegant. “Oh, well, then you’ll just have to let me know when you get tired of playing with him. I’d like to play with him awhile myself.”