by Susan Crosby
Except, of course, he’d known about the fund she’d been adding to for years, saving for the wedding gown of her dreams. Everyone at the Carola knew about it. But no one knew why the gown or the age-thirty goal was so important, except probably her sister, Jasmine.
“Would you like some wine, Diego? And I’ve got cheese and crackers, as well.” She didn’t wait for his reply but headed toward the kitchen. “Take off your jacket. Get comfortable.”
“Magnolia.”
She turned around, her brows lifted in inquiry.
“Come here, please.”
“Why?”
He chuckled. “You are so suspicious.”
“Well, honey, you’re behavin’ awfully different tonight.”
“Am I?” He ignored her Southern belle routine, and took the necessary steps to bridge the gap. “I’m trying to find a way to communicate with you without arguing.”
From his pocket he pulled out the gold-foil-wrapped box and pressed it into her right hand. She hefted it lightly.
“Hmm. Smaller than last year’s oh-so-personal engraved pen and pencil set.”
“Haven’t you forgiven me for that yet?”
She tossed it once, caught it cleanly. “Heavy for its size, though. Professionally wrapped.”
“You’re worth it.”
“Probably offered free gift wrapping with purchase,” she said, casting him a quick glance before holding the package at eye level and examining it further. “Could be a key chain.”
“Monogrammed,” he offered.
“I’d accept nothing less.” She shook it, holding it close to her ear. “A box within a box.”
“You’re good at this.”
“When I was growing up I guessed all of my Christmas presents before I opened them.”
“You were never surprised?”
She made a sound of disgust. “My mother was predictable.”
He leaned close. “Why don’t you just open it?”
“But then the anticipation ends.” Maggie held her breath as she savored his nearness and warmth, and the scent she’d recognize anywhere.
He dipped his head a little farther. His breath stirred her bangs. “Open it.”
He’d taken off his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt before he’d arrived. Maggie’s nose was an inch from the open vee of his pleated shirt. Her teenaged niece had once pronounced him a—
“Stud,” she sighed.
“What?”
She stepped back. “Uh, stud. Your stud’s loose.” She tucked the present under her chin and slid a hand behind his shirt to fiddle with the black onyx and gold stud. The backs of her fingers brushed chest hair. The moment froze in time until she felt his hands encircle her wrists and move her back. He pulled the gift from under her chin, placed it wordlessly in her hand.
Maggie swallowed. She peeled off the pretty wrappings and tipped a burgundy velvet container out of a box bearing the discreet emblem of Rappaport Jewelers. The hinge didn’t make even the tiniest creak as she pushed up the velvety lid. Her hand hovered over the contents. “Why, it’s beautiful!”
She sought Diego, confusion swamping her. The gift was personal and expensive—a sparkling chain bearing a heavy gold pendant shaped like a teardrop, perhaps an inch long and half an inch wide at the base.
“May I?” he asked, extending his hand. “Turn around. Tip your head forward.”
She waited what seemed like an hour before he lifted the cham over her head. As he fastened the clasp, his fingertips grazed her neck, enough to make her skin prickle, but not enough to call it seduction. The pendant itself rested at heart level. She turned around to thank him.
“I wish I’d changed into something nicer. Something silk to show it off,” she said, looking down, lifting a hand toward it.
He touched three fingers to the pendant as it nestled at a level just above the front clasp of her bra. His thumb and little finger grazed the inner curve of her breasts. Their gazes connected ; her hand fell away.
Where did he come from, this James Diego Duran, who admitted he desired her, yet resisted her so easily; who avoided touching her for a year and a half, then the first time he did, touched her intimately? Oh, she knew of his background, of his difficult childhood, but that didn’t explain the man, only some of the reasons why he behaved as he did sometimes.
“The necklace is all right?” he asked as he pulled his hand back.
“It’s incredible.”
“You won’t ever take it off?”
“Ever?”
“You won’t shove it in a drawer if you get angry at me?”
“It’d spend more time in my drawer than around my neck.” She smiled at him until he smiled back. “How about some wine now?”
He hesitated. “I should leave.”
They continued to stare at each other.
She inched closer. “Would you like to see what Misty designed for my birthday?”
“Probably not.”
She smiled. “It’s just a little something—”
“I’m sure it is. I’ve seen catalogs of her products.”
“Well, I love it, of course,” she drawled. “But I’d like a man’s opimon.”
Frozen, J.D. watched her stroll across the room and lift up a box lid. She withdrew a teddy fashioned of red satin and lace, and dangled it by the straps as she moseyed back to him.
Dios. He recognized the design of the garment, if not the garment itself. After he’d rescued Misty from those dirtbags the other night, he’d driven her home. She’d asked him what his ideal woman wore to entice him. “Just her skin,” he’d replied. When she hadn’t accepted that as an answer, he’d described the frothy bit of nothing Magnolia was holding in front of her as though she didn’t think he could imagine her clothes stripped away and the red see-through concoction molding her enticing curves.
“Misty’s quite a talented designer, isn’t she?” Maggie asked, stretching the bra cups at the sides until they settled provocatively over her.
“It suits you.”
“Does it? I tend to favor pastel colors in my lingerie. You think red is suitable with my coloring?”
“You think men think about things like that?”
She was quiet a moment, then said, “If you were going to buy this for...a woman, what would make you decide to purchase it?” Her voice had dropped an octave; her eyes took on a sleepy, sexy look.
He fingered the lace at the bodice. “I would wonder if it’s low enough to expose her breasts almost all the way, so there’s a danger of them spilling out if she breathes deep. I’d want her nipples visible through the lace. I’d wonder how easily it comes off. I’d want it not to be fragile, so that I don’t have to be too careful or too controlled when I take it off her.” He slid his hand down the fabric, down her, to toy with the snaps at the crotch. “I would want the fabric thin enough to feel how wet she gets when I touch her.”
“You want a lot,” she said, her voice catching breathlessly on her imagination.
“Oh, yes.”
“I could go slip this on...”
He held her gaze a few seconds, then he bent slowly toward her and brushed a fleeting kiss against her cheek.
Waves of sensation rolled through her. She forgot to breathe. When she did take in air again, he was gone, along with the unexpected pleasure he’d brought that suddenly burst like a birthday balloon when the door clicked shut, leaving her alone and bewildered.
Needing to analyze what had just happened, she paced her living room, walking off excess energy. She wasn’t completely sure of his intentions after tonight, but he seemed to be wanting a deeper relationship. When the phone rang a few minutes later, she snatched up the receiver and said hello.
“I forgot to say good-night.”
Diego. She dropped onto the sofa and tucked her legs under her. “Are you home already?”
“I’m in my car. I’ll be home in about ten minutes.”
“I’m already in bed,” she said l
anguidly, as if stretching out on satin sheets. “Naked, except for your necklace.”
She smiled at the long pause on the other end.
“Are you?” he asked finally.
“No. But I thought you might like to imagine it.”
He didn’t answer.
“Why the sudden interest, Diego?”
“I have always been interested in you, Magnolia.”
She closed her eyes, enjoying the way his slight accent turned her name into an endearment that sent ripples of pleasure down her spine. She loved the remnants of his half-Mexican heritage. He, on the other hand, tried very hard to leave it behind.
“I apologize for what happened,” he said into the silence. “I shouldn’t have...teased like that.”
“There’s something between us, Diego. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore.”
“I know.”
“We need to deal with it sometime.”
“We work together. We have to be careful of how we deal with it.”
“I’m not asking for marriage,” she said, not wanting to examine her words further. “I’m looking to end the tension.”
When he didn’t respond, she said good-night and hung up, letting him off the hook.
J.D. pushed the button to disconnect the call. He closed his eyes a moment as he waited for the traffic light to turn green. Naked, except for his necklace. Dios. After he locked in the image, he smiled. She was paying him back for the way he’d teased her. That’s why he hadn’t ever given her the slightest encouragement. She was too smart, too quick. Too addictive. Too much woman.
They had their differences. She planned everything; he liked just to react. She organized her life to the minute; he’d rather be spontaneous. She was an open book; he was locked tight as a diary.
He wished for both their sakes that he could have kept the distance that he’d established and held all this time, but he couldn’t. No matter how much she would hate him afterward.
He glanced at the dashboard clock. Making sure he wasn’t followed, he drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, then maneuvered the twists and turns of Highway 101 and Sausalito until he pulled into the driveway of a small house guarded by an abundance of winter-hardy foliage. A light burned from his father’s office. Relieved, he let out a breath. His father was the only person in the world he could talk to about Magnolia and his job. He pictured him, relaxed in his high-backed leather chair, listening, advising, encouraging, so different from his mother, the mother he had seen only once in the past fourteen years. “Jimmy,” he’d say, followed by words of wisdom. He wished for the thousandth time he’d known his father during his childhood.
But that was history.
Her Christmas presents were wrapped. Her new winter coat needed only to have the buttons sewn on. She had time to spend on the magazine article for which she had a January 13 deadline. She booted her computer and opened the file for her final article in a series of fifteen she’d been contracted to write for A Woman’s Life on organizing busy lives. “Creating storage space where there is none,” she read at the top of the screen. “An organized home reduces stress—”
Maggie stopped typing as she cocked an ear toward her front door. Someone had knocked. She hurried into the living room. “Who is it?”
“Delivery for Miss Walters.”
She opened the door an inch. A young woman stood there, holding an elegant arrangement of long-stemmed white roses in a crystal vase.
“Oh, how beautiful,” she exclaimed, pushing the door open and reaching for them. Diego’s intentions really were serious.
She shut the door and set the vase in the center of her dining room table, inhaling the sweet rose fragrance as she reached for the tiny white envelope.
Smiling, she pulled out the card. I will make thee beds of roses. BH.
BH? Brendan, not Diego? And he was quoting Christopher Marlowe, Maggie realized, horrified—“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” until now, one of her favorite poems. She couldn’t remember telling him she was an English major, but maybe she had. Or was he just trying to impress her with his knowledge?
How had he found out where she lived? Certainly no one at the Carola would have divulged it. Had he followed her home? Repulsed by the thought, she rubbed the chill from her arms as she walked to her front window and looked out No limousine, no stranger leaning against the lamppost across the street, nothing out of the ordinary.
The phone rang, startling her.
“Good morning., Maggie.”
Brendan. “Who is this?”
A soft chuckle preceded his words. “I was disappointed that you didn’t call me. Did you get my flowers?”
She continued to play dumb. “Mr. Hastings?” Silence. She sighed inwardly. There was no way she would win any battle of wits with this man. “They’re lovely, but I must ask you not to send me anything ever again. I can’t accept gifts from you.”
“You deserve lovely things.”
“I don’t lack for anything. I like my life just as it is. I have plenty for my needs.”
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’”
The man quotes Shakespeare—accurately, no less. “I’m being honest with you. I don’t want you to call me or send me gifts.”
“I do so like the chase, Miss Walters.”
“I’m not teasing you, sir. And I’m involved with someone ”
He laughed. “Sir? Am I that much older than you? I just wanted you to know I’ll be out of town through the holidays. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Didn’t you reserve a card room for tonight?”
“Cancel it for me, will you? Oh, and Maggie? I happen to know there’s no one special in your life right now.”
She stared at the receiver long after it went dead. Hanging it up quietly, she thought about how much he knew about her. She eyed her front door, double-checking that it was locked.
If Maggie had any doubt that Diego’s interest was tied to Brendan’s, that doubt was erased during the next week. Now that Brendan was gone, Diego once again wore calmness and control like his elegant tuxedo. She was not only irritated, but discouraged. And suspicious again of the reason for his sudden focus on her. She’d thought their relationship had taken a positive turn on her birthday, but he hadn’t even accepted her invitation to share Christmas with her.
Still, she wore the necklace. And she didn’t miss the fact he always checked that she did, even though he never commented on it.
She wondered what he’d do if he knew Brendan was sending her gifts.
The packages that arrived almost daily didn’t tempt her, but she was curious about the cards and always opened them. The first one read, A gown made of the finest wool. BH. Still quoting Marlowe. That was followed a couple of days later by Fair lined slippers for the cold BH. And then, A belt of straw and ivy buds, with coral clasps and amber studs. BH.
Because she knew the poem so well, she knew where he was headed with his gifts. The payoff came on New Year’s Eve late in the afternoon, when a small box was delivered to which a card had been attached—Come live with me, and be my love. BH.
She shook the box, speculating on the contents. The others had been so easy. This one could be anything. Jewelry, maybe. Brendan would definitely go the ostentatious route, advertising how much in material goods he could offer her. Or perhaps it was a house key. Solid gold, of course, and diamond studded. She was smiling at the thought when the phone rang and she said hello.
“Magnolia.”
“Well, well. James Diego Duran.” She dropped onto the sofa. “To what do I owe the honor of a communication from you?”
A slight pause. “Did I interrupt something?”
“Nope.”
“Have you been sampling New Year’s champagne early?”
She grinned. “Nope. High on life.”
“Why?”
“I was just sitting here pondering absurdities.”
“Such as?”
“Ohhh, such
as... roses in winter. Solid gold, diamond-studded house keys. People who can quote Shakespeare accurately.”
“These things are absurd to you?”
“You don’t find solid gold, diamond-studded house keys absurd?”
“I suppose so. Are you in possession of one?”
“Not yet.” She smiled at the’ceiling as she contemplated his silence. He wanted to ask. Oh, how he wanted to ask. But she’d bet her life’s savings he wouldn’t.
“I called for a reason, Magnolia.”
“Of course you called for a reason, honey. You never do anything without a reason.” And I’d really like to know why you teased me the other night and have ignored me ever since.
His pause was short but meaningful. Was he counting to ten?
“I wanted to know if you would celebrate New Year’s with me tonight,” he said.
Out of character. Definitely out of character. What was going on? She swooped up the phone base and carried it with her as she paced her living room. “Well, thank you so much, honey, for believin’ I would be free on New Year’s Eve.”
“Are you busy?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. My date will be here momentarily and I still have to get dressed.” She glanced at the clock. Her nephew, Matthew, was due to stop by on his way home from a friend’s house nearby, and Maggie would drive them both to her sister’s house. She could have canceled with Jasmine and her family for the night, of course, but she wouldn’t give Diego the satisfaction, not after ignoring her all week. “I can’t believe you waited until now to ask.”
“I hadn’t expected to be free,” he said.
“Your date backed out, huh?”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry if I offended you. Who are you going out with?”
“Someone tall, blond and handsome who asked me very early to make sure I’d be free. So, next time, make me more than an afterthought, will you, honey? Bye.”
“Magnolia?”
“What?”
“I can quote Shakespeare, if it means so much to you.”
“This I’ve gotta hear.”
“‘A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”’
A short, surprised laugh burst from her as she heard the line go dead. With any luck, he’d see through her ploy and call her back. And maybe she would go out with him, after all.
