“Kiss me and I’ll go.”
“Not a chance. With my luck, Marcel would walk in to see what’s taking me so long. It was awkward enough when he found you in the bathroom with me.”
“All right, I’ll go. But it’s under protest.”
“Under, over, I don’t care. Just go.”
The minute the door closed behind him, Kitty rushed over and locked it. The sense of relief didn’t last though. She had the uneasy feeling that Sebastian had given up a little too easily. She wouldn’t feel safe until she and Marcel were out of the house.
As much as she would have liked to tarry, Kitty put on her makeup and fixed her hair in nearly record time for her. Taking Sebastian’s advice, she wore the coral pendant and matching earrings, slipped on the strappy heels, and draped the silver crocheted shawl around her shoulders. After a satisfactory check of her reflection in the tall cheval mirror, she unlocked the door to the hall and walked swiftly to the living room.
But Marcel wasn’t there.
The feeling of alarm was instant. It only intensified when Kitty heard Sebastian’s voice coming from the kitchen. The high heels were the only thing that stopped her from sprinting there.
As she entered the kitchen, she saw Marcel comfortably seated at the table. Her glance ricocheted off him straight to Sebastian, leaning negligently against the tiled countertop, his hands wrapped around a toweled wine bottle, his thumbs gently easing out the cork. Marcel rose when she entered.
Her patience exhausted, Kitty snapped, “Haven’t you left yet?”
“Really, Kitty,” Sebastian said with a mocking
tsk-tsk.
“I credited you with having better powers of observation. Here I am, freshly shaved, wearing dry clothes, and you didn’t even notice.”
As he took one hand away from the wine bottle to gesture to his change in attire, the cork shot into the air with an explosive pop, caromed off a ceiling vega, sailed past Kitty’s head, and bounced onto the floor. Foam bubbled out of the bottle and spilled down its side. Hurriedly Sebastian swung around to pour the effervescent wine into the tulip-shaped champagne glasses on the counter.
“Don’t you know you are supposed to ease the cork out of the bottle?” Bending, Kitty retrieved the wayward cork, certain she would step on it if she didn’t pick it up.
“That’s what I was in the process of doing when I was so rudely interrupted,” Sebastian countered smoothly.
“What are you doing back here anyway?” Kitty demanded, unable to rein in her irritation with him.
“I was just telling”—he paused, his eyes twinkling devilishly when she shot him a warning look—“your fiancé that I thought the occasion of your engagement deserved a celebratory toast. So I brought over a bottle of champagne.”
Kitty’s suspicion warred with her curiosity, but curiosity won. “Why do you have champagne on hand? I thought you didn’t like it.”
“Ever since your last divorce, I’ve always kept a bottle in the fridge. That way, the next time you show up at my door in the wee hours of the morning, wanting to drown your troubles in some bubbly, I won’t have to go all over God’s creation trying to beg, borrow, or steal one.” After filling the last glass, Sebastian set down the bottle, then turned with a sudden look of regret. “Sorry. That was bad taste to mention your last divorce, wasn’t it?”
Marcel turned to her in confusion. “Your last divorce? What does he mean by this?”
“Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s just being Sebastian.” She directed a careless smile at Marcel and glared at Sebastian when she walked over to pick up two of the champagne glasses. “A name that sounds distinctly like another one,” she murmured for Sebastian’s ears only.
He merely smiled and picked up the remaining glass. “A toast,” he began, and waited until Marcel had a drink in his hand, “to the woman who can still take my breath away, and to her future husband. Happiness always.” His gaze was warm on her as he raised his glass to his lips.
Kitty did the same, a little of her own breath stolen by the unexpectedly sincere compliment. But she was careful to direct her tremulous smile at Marcel.
“I must agree with you, Mr. Cole.” Marcel flicked him a glance, then smiled lovingly at her. “She is quite beautiful. And never more so than tonight.”
Marcel lifted her hand and kissed the back of her fingers, a gesture that came very naturally to him. She didn’t have to glance at Sebastian to know that he was observing it all with a droll little smirk.
There was no sign of it, however, when he asked, “Have you already made dinner reservations for this evening?”
“Of course.” Truthfully it was an assumption on Kitty’s part.
“Somewhere special, I hope.” Sebastian took another sip of his champagne.
“Very special,” Marcel assured him. “I have arranged for us to dine at Antoine’s.”
Sebastian cocked a blond eyebrow at Kitty. “Is that wise? First me, then Roger, then Mark. With a track record like that, are you sure you want to go there with him?”
If looks could kill, Kitty would have been staring at Sebastian’s gravestone instead of him. “Of course I’m sure,” she stated, and fervently hoped that Marcel hadn’t followed any of that.
“Antoine’s, it is your favorite place, is it not?” Marcel darted confused glances to first one, then the other.
“It’s very definitely her favorite,” Sebastian replied before she could answer.
“And why shouldn’t it be?” She slipped an arm around the crook of Marcel’s and snuggled a little closer to him. “The food there is superb.”
“You have dined there before with these other men he has mentioned?” Marcel was clearly troubled by that. “They were special to you?”
“I think it’s safe to say that,” Sebastian inserted. “She married all of us. Not at the same time of course,” he added for clarification, then feigned surprise. “Didn’t Kitty mention that she’s been married three times before?”
“She tells me she is divorced, but I did not know it was from three different men,” Marcel replied stiffly, a coolness in the look he gave her.
Kitty struggled to defend the omission. “I thought you knew. It’s common knowledge to nearly everyone in Santa Fe.”
“That’s hardly surprising,” Sebastian said, coming to her rescue. “From the sounds of it, you two have had such a whirlwind courtship you haven’t had a lot of time to exchange stories about any skeletons in the closet, or—in Kitty’s case—ex-husbands. I guess that’s the purpose of engagements. Kitty and I never had one. Two days after I proposed, we were married. With the logistics of each of you having careers in different countries, I imagine you’re planning a long engagement. Have you decided where the wedding will be? Here or in Brussels?”
“In Brussels, of course,” Marcel stated with a certainty that irked Kitty, considering it was something they hadn’t gotten around to discussing. And it was, after all, a decision the bride was supposed to make, not the groom.
“Brussels, you say,” Sebastian said and sighed. “That’s a shame.”
“Why do you say this?” Marcel wondered, a puzzled knit to his brow.
“I do all my traveling on the ground. I don’t fly, certainly not across an ocean—not even for Kitty,” Sebastian added with a smiling glance in her direction. “As much as I would like to be there to see her walk down the aisle, I won’t be coming to the wedding.”
“You’re assuming you would even receive an invitation.” Her own smile was on the saccharine side.
“You know you’d invite me, kitten,” Sebastian chided. “For business reasons, if nothing else,” he added, then chuckled. “I can see the wheels turning already, trying to figure out a way to arrange an exhibit of my works on the Continent. Go ahead, but don’t expect me to attend.”
“But you wouldn’t have to fly. You could go by sea, rent a first-class cabin on some luxury liner and travel that way.” Recognizing the value of having the artist in attendance, Kitty chose to work on that hurdle first.
“What if I get seasick?” he countered out of sheer perversity.
“They have a patch you can wear now to take care of that. It won’t be a problem.”
“And go around feeling all doped up, no thank you.”
“Don’t be difficult, Sebastian.”
He just smiled. “You know you love a challenge. Think how dull your life will be when I’m not around.”
“Where are you going?” Marcel struggled to follow their conversation.
“Me? I’m not going anywhere. It’s Kitty who will be moving to the other side of the world when you two get married.”
She was quick to correct him. “I’ll only be there part of the time.”
“Why do you say this?” Marcel drew back, again eyeing her with faint criticism. “We will be living in Brussels. It is the place of my business. It is where our home will be.”
“Of course, but I do have my gallery here—”
“We will make arrangements for that.” He dismissed that as a concern. “Art is better pursued in Europe. Although, after we are married, you will discover that you are much too busy to run some little shop of your own.”
For an instant, his attitude made Kitty see red. But she was much too aware of Sebastian and the delighted interest he was showing in their conversation to unleash her temper. She was also aware that the blame for all of this belonged directly at his feet. Sebastian had deliberately brought up this subject to cause trouble between her and Marcel. Therefore she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of succeeding.
Instead of objecting, Kitty smiled serenely. “It’s quite possible you are right, Marcel.”
“Spoken like a dutifully submissive wife,” Sebastian murmured tauntingly.
Angered that he knew her much too well, Kitty resisted the urge to empty her champagne glass in his face. With an effort, she replied, “You should know.”
“Believe me, I do know.”
“What is this you know?” Marcel frowned. “I hear the words, but it is as if you are speaking in another language.”
“I can guarantee Kitty will explain it all to you later.” A smile deepened the grooves on either side of Sebastian’s mouth. “I imagine there are a lot of details you two need to thrash out—without a third party listening in. So I’ll be going and let you have some privacy.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said today,” Kitty declared. “The only thing better would be if you actually left.”
“Oh, I’m going.” He slid his champagne glass onto the tiled countertop, then squared back around. “But before I do—”
She sighed in annoyance. “Somehow I knew you’d come up with something.”
“Since I won’t be coming to the wedding, with your permission”—he inclined his head toward Marcel—“I’d like to kiss the bride-to-be. I don’t know when I’ll get another chance. And it’s only kosher that I do it in your presence so you don’t get the idea there’s any hanky-panky between Kitty and me.”
“I know not this hanky-panky of which you speak,” Marcel admitted, then gestured to Kitty with a flourish of his hand. “
Mais oui
, you may kiss the bride.”
Left without an objection to make, Kitty fumed inwardly as Sebastian stepped toward her, eyes twinkling. When his hands settled on the rounded points of her shoulders, she obligingly tilted her head up. His head bent slowly toward her as if he was deliberately prolonging the moment of contact.
At last his mouth moved onto hers with persuasive warmth. Her pulse raced, but she reasoned that it was strictly out of anger and the awkwardness of having Marcel standing so close, observing it all. She held herself rigid, refusing to kiss him back. And that was harder than she had expected it to be. Sebastian was in that familiar, slow lovemaking mode. It had been her undoing countless times in the past.
His lips clung to hers for a moistly sweet second longer, then they were gone. She immediately missed their seductive warmth. It was a vague ache inside, one that prevented her from being glad that he had kept the kiss so brief.
“I honestly want you to be happy, kitten,” he murmured.
Determined to break the spell of his kiss, Kitty reached for Marcel’s hand. “We will be very happy together.”
There was something mocking in the smile Sebastian directed her way before he turned to shake hands with Marcel. “Congratulations.”
“Merci.”
Marcel made a slight bow in response.
“I’ll be going now. Enjoy your dinner.” With a farewell wave, Sebastian moved toward the back door.
“I’ll show you out.” Kitty moved after him. “I need to lock the door anyway after you leave.” When he opened the door, she was right behind him. The instant he stepped outside, she muttered a warning, “So help me, Sebastian, if you show up at Antoine’s tonight, I swear I will take a knife to every one of your paintings.”
He grinned. “Actually I plan on spending the entire evening at home. Alone, I might add. Does that make you feel better?”
“Good night,” she said in answer, and closed the door, turning the lock with great satisfaction. Turning back to Marcel, she smiled with genuine pleasure. “I’m ready if you are.”
Chapter Three
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains were a black silhouette that jutted into the night sky’s star-crusted backdrop. But Kitty took little notice of it as the taxicab moved in and out of the glow from the streetlights that lined the road. She sat silently in the rear seat, her face devoid of all expression.
The driver slowed the vehicle as they approached the tall adobe wall that enclosed her property. Recognizing it, Kitty opened her slender evening bag and took out the fare. When he pulled up to the gated entry, she passed him the money and climbed out.
Using the key from her purse, she unlocked the wrought-iron pass-through door, stepped through, and locked it behind her. Soft landscape lighting lit the flagstone walk that led to the low adobe house. But Kitty didn’t take it. Instead, she struck out on the side path that swept around the house to the studio located in the rear courtyard.
Light flooded from its windows in wide pools. She wasn’t surprised. Sebastian had always been late to bed and late to rise. She paused outside his door long enough to slip off a silver shoe. With great relish, Kitty proceeded to pound the shoe against the door as hard as she could. The heel snapped off, but she kept pounding until the door was jerked open by Sebastian.
“Kitty,” he began.
But she didn’t give him a chance to say more. “Don’t pretend to be surprised to see me. It won’t work.”
He glanced at the broken shoe in her hand, then reached down and picked up its missing heel. “Why didn’t you simply ring the doorbell?”
“You don’t get the same satisfaction out of pushing a button.”
“But I liked those shoes.” He examined the heel as if checking to see if it could be repaired.
“Here. Have the rest of it.” She threw the rest of the shoe at him.
He ducked quickly, and it sailed over his shoulder and clattered across the floor. When he went after it, Kitty stalked into the studio a bit unelegantly wearing only one shoe. She stopped on the Saltillo tile and slipped off the other shoe.
“You like them so much, take both of them.” She tossed the second shoe at him, but without the force of the first.
“I didn’t expect you home so early. It’s barely eleven o’clock.” He retrieved the second shoe as well and set them on a side table. “Where did you leave Mr. Chocolate?”
“We had an argument, as if you didn’t know.” She hurled the accusation.
“Don’t tell me the engagement’s off? Nope, it must not be,” Sebastian said, answering the question himself and gesturing to her left hand. “I see you’re still wearing the headlight.”
“No, it isn’t off. Yet.”
“I hope you don’t want a glass of champagne. I opened the only bottle I had, to toast your engagement.”
“I wouldn’t drink any of your champagne if you had it. This is all your fault.”
“My fault?” He feigned innocence. “What did I do now?”
“Don’t pull that act with me,” she warned. “You know exactly what you did. You set out to deliberately undermine my relationship with Marcel.”
“How could I do that? I met him for the first time tonight,” he reminded her in an infuriatingly reasonable voice.
“Maybe you did,” Kitty conceded, then gathered back up her anger. “But you’re smart and quick. You can think faster on your feet than anyone I know. And you’re an absolute master of sabotage.”
“You give me much more credit than I deserve. I want you to be happy. If Mr. Chocolate can do that, then great.”
“But you don’t think he can. That’s the point,” she retorted.
“It isn’t important what I think. Do you think he can?”
The instant he turned the question back on her, all her high anger crumbled, making room for the doubts and questions to resurface. “I don’t know, Sebastian. I honestly don’t know,” she replied in a hopeless murmur.
“I’ll tell you what—why don’t we sit on the sofa and you can tell me all about it.” His hand curved itself along her arm and steered her toward the sofa with light pressure.
Without objection, Kitty allowed him to guide her to the sofa, upholstered in a geometric fabric that echoed Zuni design. Flames curled over the logs in the corner fireplace, called a kiva. Before she sat down on the plush cushions, Sebastian slipped off her shawl and draped it over a corner of the sofa back. She sank onto the cushion and curled her stockinged legs under her.
Sebastian crossed to the kiva and added another chunk of wood to the fire, then reached for the iron poker to lever the split log atop the fire.
“Where do you want to start?” he asked, his back turned to her. “The beginning would probably be a good place.”
“It began in the bathroom,” she retorted with a ghost of her former anger, “when Marcel walked in and found you there. That was difficult enough to explain. Then you had to go and bring up my trio of failed marriages.”
“You
are
a three-time loser.” He strolled over to the sofa and sat down on the opposite end.
“I’m well aware of that. The trouble is”—she paused and sighed in discouragement—“Marcel wasn’t.”
“I thought you handled it rather well. It really is common knowledge here in Santa Fe. It wasn’t as though you were deliberately keeping it a secret from him.”
“I honestly wasn’t. But . . . I think it seemed that way to him.”
“Grilled you about them, did he?” Sebastian guessed.
“Naturally he asked,” Kitty began, then threw up her hands in annoyance. “Why am I trying to make him sound good? Yes, he grilled me about them. And I really got the third degree over you. Quite honestly, I could understand why he did ask. I didn’t like it, but I understood. If the situation was reversed, I’d probably do the same thing.”
“I hear a ‘but.’ ” Sebastian cocked his head at an inquiring angle.
She flashed him an irritated glance. “Something tells me you already know what it is. You certainly made a point of raising the issue after you so gallantly toasted us.”
“What point is that?”
“About the gallery.”
His head moved in a sagely nod. “I thought so.”
“Marcel didn’t say it in so many words, but he wants me to sell it.”
“And you don’t want to.”
“Of course I don’t. Why should I? I don’t expect him to give up his work when we’re married. Why should I give up mine?”
“You could always open up a gallery in Brussels,” Sebastian suggested.
“According to Marcel, I’ll be much too busy entertaining his friends and family, being a wife, and accompanying him on his business trips. And he believes it’s definitely wrong for the mother of his children to work at anything, period. We aren’t even married yet and he’s already talking about children.”
“I always thought you wanted a passel of little ones.”
“I do, but I don’t plan on becoming a baby factory right away. I’d like to be married awhile first.”
“What about that biological clock ticking away?”
“That sound you hear is a time bomb about to explode.” Reacting to her own inner confusion and agitation over it, Kitty rose to her feet and walked to the corner fireplace. “I was so happy until tonight. Suddenly everything is a mess, thanks to you.”
“I didn’t make the mess. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s of opening your eyes to it.”
“As I recall, you were never to blame for anything. It was always my fault,” she said with a hint of bitterness in her voice.
“I believe the official term was ‘irreconcilable differences. ’ It covers a host of sins on both sides.” His mouth twisted in a wry smile of remembrance.
Turning from the flames, Kitty frowned curiously. “Why did we break up? What went wrong?”
“We did.”
“Which tells me absolutely nothing.” She shook her head in disgust. “I probably got fed up with your enigmatic answers that sound so profound and say nothing.”
“No, I’m serious.” With unhurried ease, Sebastian stood up and wandered over to the fireplace. “I think you and I stopped trying. It’s hard enough for two individuals to live together in harmony, but we also worked together. Maybe we expected too much.”
“Maybe we did.” She felt a sadness at the thought, and a kind of emptiness, too.
“So, how did you leave things with Mr. Chocolate?”
“Up in the air, I guess.” She lifted her shoulders in a vague shrug, then admitted, “I walked out on him.”
“That was a bit on the childish side, don’t you think?” His smile was lightly teasing, but his eyes were warm with gentleness.
“Probably. But it was either walk out and cool off, or throw his ring in his face.”
“That bad, huh?”
“That bad.” Kitty nodded in confirmation. “He never seemed to hear anything I said. If he just would have listened,” Kitty murmured, her shoulders sagging in defeat. “Maybe it is inevitable that I have to sell the gallery. I realize that it will be extremely difficult to run it from a distance, and I can’t count on finding someone to manage it who will care about it as much as I do. Maybe I will find married life to be as busy and fulfilling as my work. I don’t know. But Marcel talks as though this all needs to be set in motion now, before we’re married. Why can’t it be something I ease into gradually?”
“Have you told him that?” Sebastian dipped his head to get a better look at her downturned face.
“More or less.”
“Which means it was less rather than more.”
“It was hard to get a word in,” she said in her own defense. “He was too busy planning my life.”
“Something tells me he doesn’t know you very well,” Sebastian murmured wryly. “So, what’s the next move?”
She moved her head from side to side in a gesture of uncertainty. “I don’t know. I probably should call him—to apologize for walking out like that, if nothing else. But he’s staying at the Ridgedales’. You know how nosy Mavis is. I hate the thought of her listening in on even one side of our conversation.”
“There’s always tomorrow morning.”
“Marcel’s flying back to Brussels in the morning. His mother is ill.”
“Oops.”
“I know. My timing is lousy,” Kitty admitted. “Even worse, he wanted me to go with him. That’s why he came early to pick me up.”
“And you refused to go, of course.”
“How could I? In the first place, I can’t take off at the drop of a hat. Who would open the gallery in the morning? And there’s the exhibit coming up. There are a thousand things that have to be done in the next two weeks. Besides, even though he said his mother isn’t seriously ill, I think it’s a poor time to meet my future in-laws.”
“It sort of makes you wonder if his mother took sick before or after she found out he was engaged.”
Her gaze narrowed on him. “What are you saying?”
Sebastian asked instead, “How old is Mr. Chocolate?”
“Thirty-eight. Why?”
“Is this his first marriage?”
“As a matter of fact, it is. But that’s not so unusual. European males tend to marry later in life. That doesn’t mean he’s a mama’s boy.”
Stepping back, Sebastian raised his hands. “I never said he was.”
“No, you just hinted at it. Broadly.”
“It is a possibility, though.”
“You’re doing it again.” Kitty pressed her lips together in a grim and angry line.
“Doing what?”
“Putting doubts in my mind, making me suspicious of my mother-in-law before I’ve even met her. Why don’t you come right out and admit you don’t want me to marry Marcel?”
“All right, I don’t.”
Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t actually expected him to admit it, and certainly not with such aplomb. “I thought you wanted me to be happy.”
“I do. Just not with Mr. Chocolate.”
“Will you stop calling him that?”
“Maybe you can become a taster for the family business. Sample all the new products, or work on the quality control end.”
“It is impossible to talk to you,” Kitty declared angrily.
“But you love chocolate.”
“As a treat, yes. But I certainly have no desire to make it my life’s work.” In disgust, she turned back toward the fire. “Why am I even talking to you?”
“Because you know I’ll listen.”
Kitty was forced to concede that was true. Sebastian didn’t necessarily agree with her all the time, but he always listened. Which made it easy for her to return to the heart of the problem.
“I really do love Marcel.” Yet saying the words only made her situation seem more confusing.
“As Tina would say, ‘What’s love got to do with it?’ ” Sebastian countered.
“It should have everything to do with it,” Kitty stated forcefully.
“Maybe.” But he was clearly unconvinced.
In some disconnected way, his reply raised another question. “Tell me something,” she began, eyeing him intently. “A minute ago, you admitted you didn’t want me to marry Marcel, but you never said why.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”
“Okay.” He nodded in acceptance. “It’s very simple, really. I don’t want to go through the trouble of finding another dealer to represent my paintings.”
“That is the most selfish thing I have ever heard,” Kitty huffed. “And you claim you want me to be happy.”
“I do,” Sebastian replied easily, giving no indication that he considered it to be contradictory.
“You want me to be happy so long as it isn’t at your expense,” she retorted in annoyance. “You certainly wouldn’t have any trouble finding someone reputable to represent you. As successful as you’ve become, they’ll be standing in line to take my place.”
“But I don’t want the hassle of all the meetings that go along with deciding which one to pick, not to mention the strangeness of working with someone new. We’ve been together too long, and I don’t have any desire to change horses. Besides, you know me—I’d be just as happy selling my paintings on a street corner. That’s how we met, in case you’ve forgotten.”