by JoAnn Ross
“I suppose you had to be there,” she murmured.
“I would have been, if anyone had thought to invite me,” Molly said pointedly.
“As I said, it was a spur of the moment thing.”
“I guess so. Considering you were only in Las Vegas three days.” Molly took another drink of wine; K.J. could practically see the wheels turning in her head. “And after you got back to Manhattan, you spent the next three days in bed. You said you must have caught something on your trip.”
She’d spent those days with the blanket over her head, hiding out, trying to shut herself off from the world—or at least Alec Mackenzie’s part of it—unable to decide if she wanted him to track her down or not.
When she didn’t answer, Molly shot a significant look down at the unadorned finger on K.J.’s left hand. “I also would have remembered if you’d come back to Manhattan wearing a wedding ring.”
K.J. fiddled nervously with the chopsticks. The memory was one of the most unpleasant of her life. Even worse than the fight they’d had. “I left it behind.”
Bought in the Sir Galahad’s Golden Gifts jewelry store conveniently situated just a few feet from the chapel, it had been a simple gold band, woven in an ancient Celtic pattern celebrating both their families’ heritage. Although it certainly hadn’t been as flashy as some of the rings displayed, K.J. had fallen in love with it at first glance. And when Alec had slipped it onto her finger she couldn’t have been more thrilled if he’d gifted her with the Hope diamond.
“Sounds as if the ring wasn’t the only thing you left behind. What happened, did the guy get cold feet the morning after?”
“No. In fact, he was amazingly cheerful.” At least in the beginning.
“I may never have walked down the aisle, but I believe it’s natural for the groom to be in a good mood the morning after his wedding night.”
“It wasn’t exactly your normal wedding night.”
“Oh, lord.” Molly frowned. “Please don’t tell me Alec Mackenzie is into some sort of kinky sex.”
“Of course he wasn′t.” The sex hadn’t been kinky, although it had been amazingly inventive. He’d done things to her that no man had ever done before; encouraged her to do things to him she’d never done. And as the long, love-filled night passed, K.J. had discovered exactly how passionate she could be.
She sighed as the memories of his strong dark fingers playing on her hot moist skin set her body to humming. “I’d never met anyone like Alec,” she said, trying to explain what she still couldn’t fully understand herself. “I′d never felt that way about another man.”
It had been as if Fourth of July firecrackers had been set off inside her, while the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir began belting out the “Hallelujah Chorus.” “Which is why, I suppose, when he suggested we get married, I agreed.”
And had regretted it in the bright light of a new desert day. The strange thing was that whenever she thought about those whirlwind twelve hours, K.J. found herself regretting her impulsive actions the morning after more than the rash marriage.
“The next morning I was the one who got cold feet.” She went on to explain the battle royal over Alec’s mistaken belief that she’d just abandon her career and go traipsing off to some jungle in South America with him.
“Did you tell him you’d go when he proposed?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t remember it coming up.”
“It would seem that a suggestion to go off into the jungle just might get a girl’s attention,” Molly said dryly.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But while we were sitting in Lancelot’s Lounge and he was telling me all about the Spanish barge and the lost Inca gold, I have to admit my mind started to wander. All I could think about was going upstairs and having sex with him.”
“Wow.” Molly let out a long breath, then leaned back in her black lacquered chair and stared across the table at her long-time friend. “So, I take it you two got a quickie divorce after you got back to New York?”
“Not exactly.” K.J. pretended sudden interest in the mural of the Forbidden City painted on the far wall.
“Not exactly?” Molly repeated, openly flabbergasted. “What does that mean? You either got a divorce or not. You can’t be a little bit married, K.J. That’s like being a little bit pregnant.”
Pregnant. It had been the one thing she’d escaped that night. Strangely, lately, whenever she saw young mothers at the mall, pushing their babies in strollers, or playing with their toddlers in the park across the street from her apartment, K.J. found herself almost wishing she had gotten pregnant with Alec’s child that night. Then, at least, she’d have more than these achingly bittersweet memories.
“So,” Molly said, her voice breaking into K.J.’s thoughts, “you were explaining why you and the hunk aren’t divorced.”
“I never quite got around to it,” K.J. mumbled, growing increasingly uncomfortable.
“What?” When Molly’s voice rang out over the murmur of dinner conversation, K.J. flinched. “How on earth can you not get around to getting a divorce?” she hissed, lowering her voice and leaning over the table.
That’s exactly what I′d like to know. You’ve demonstrated a distressingly fanciful bent before, Katherine Jeanne. But this takes the cake.
It was not the first time the voice had chided her about her still-married state. As she’d done in the past, K.J. tried her best to ignore it.
“In the beginning, I didn’t know where Alec was.” She resumed fiddling with her chopsticks, switching them from hand to hand.
“I thought he told you he was leaving that day for South America to search for some Spanish treasure barge.”
“South America is a big continent. Obviously, I hadn’t been paying enough attention as it was. I certainly didn’t catch the specifics.”
“I read about that upcoming trip in the back of his latest book, The Secrets of the Maria Isabella,” Molly said with a nod. “It sounded really exciting. Although it would have to be something special to outdo the sunken shipwreck. That was his best story so far. All that fact-based stuff about diving beneath the sea, and swimming through the captain and crew’s quarters, reminded me a little of the movie Titanic. In fact, I stayed up all last Saturday night to finish it and . . .”
Her voice drifted off as her eyes widened. “Oh my God. You’re the woman he dedicated it to. The lady in red. The one who changed his life.”
“I’m not sure. Although I remember him saying he’d just turned that manuscript in, so he probably would have had time to add a dedication.”
Although K.J. assured him it wasn’t necessary, Alec had insisted on buying her a wedding dress in Guinevere’s Closet, a ridiculously pricy hotel boutique. When she would have chosen a lovely cream silk, calflength dress with a lace yoke and cuffs that seemed appropriate for a wedding, he’d immediately dismissed it as boring, plucked a scarlet-as-sin halter gown from the rack and insisted she try it on.
“Then again,” she murmured now, “a man like Alec would undoubtedly know a great many women in red dresses.”
“If that sexy publicity shot on the back of his books is anything to go by, that’s more than likely,” Molly agreed. “The thing I’m having difficulty with is seeing you in a red dress.”
K.J.’s lips curved into a reluctant, reminiscent smile. “Believe it or not, I was magnificent.”
She could still recall in heartbreaking detail exactly how the gown had skimmed her body like a silk caress, how she’d felt as she’d stared at her reflection in that gilt-framed dressing room mirror. The woman looking back at her had been part twin, part stranger.
Her cheeks had been flushed nearly as bright as the scarlet dress, her blue eyes had glittered with sensual feminine intent, and although she’d always thought herself too lanky to be sexy, the bias cut of the dress had revealed curves she’d never known she had. And rather than clash with her hair, as she would have suspected, the bright color had made her look lik
e a flame from head to toe.
She’d looked, K.J. recalled, exactly like the kind of sexy, throw-caution-to-the-winds type of woman who’d elope with a man she’d only just met.
Unfortunately, when she’d awakened in Alec’s arms the next morning, the sexy daredevil stranger had disappeared, leaving behind that familiar woman with generations of Scots Calvinist blood flowing in her veins. And, unfortunately, her father’s fiery temper, which she’d thought she’d learned to control under her grandmother’s strict tutelage.
“Wow,” Molly said again. She took another bite of her Kung Pao shrimp and considered this remarkable development. “Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“If you’ve never gotten a divorce, and Alec hasn’t either... He hasn’t, has he?”
“Not that I know of.” During those first few weeks after she’d run away from Las Vegas, her hasty marriage and her husband, K.J. had held her breath, waiting for him to come storming back into her life to claim her. When that hadn’t happened, she’d begun expecting the official papers to be delivered to her door by some anonymous process server.
But when months went by without a single word from either Alec or his attorneys, she’d reluctantly decided that he simply wasn’t going to let a little detail like marriage interfere with his swashbuckling lifestyle.
“So, the guy’s still technically married,” Molly said.
“As far as I know.” As Molly’s words sank in, K.J. groaned, put her elbows onto the table and lowered her throbbing head into her hands. “Oh no. He’s not a bachelor.”
“It seems not. Since he’s currently married to the fast-talking editor who, just a few hours ago, assured the powers-that-be she could get him to be sold to the highest bidder at the bachelor auction.”
K.J. lifted her head and stared glumly across the table. “What am I going to do?”
“Well, I suppose the honest thing to do would be to go straight upstairs to the executive suites tomorrow morning, come clean and admit all.”
“I suppose you’re right.” It was exactly what her grandmother would have instructed her to do, as unrelentingly moralistic as she was.
Of course she is, the voice piped up, right on cue.
“However, after all the enthusiasm you’ve managed to generate, such forthright behavior would undoubtedly tick all the powers-that-be off, big time, so that would definitely not be all that wise a career move,” Molly considered. “I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to tell them that they’ve voted to give you the next month off work, with pay, and to spring for all your travel expenses to track down a married man.”
“I wonder if they need editors in the French Foreign Legion,” K.J. moaned.
“They might never have to find out. Face it, K.J., you don’t even know if you can find your errant husband, let alone get him to agree to come to New York to take part in the auction. Why don’t you just jump off that marriage bridge when and if you get to it?”
“Or burn it behind me,” K.J. muttered. A thought flickered at the far reaches of her mind. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?
“You’re right, it’s ridiculous that I’m still technically married—”
“I don’t believe ridiculous was the word I used,” Molly interrupted.
“Well, if you had used it, you would have been right. I suppose, on some level, I’ve been waiting for Alec to come charging back into my life on his white stallion and sweep me off my feet again.” Amazingly, K.J. hadn’t even realized her motives for not ending her marriage until she’d heard herself say the words out loud.
“Editing too many romance novels can do that to you,” Molly agreed sagely.
“I’m going to find Alec,” K.J. vowed. She lifted her chin. A determined glint that her ancestor Ian Campbell—who′d made the decision to bring his family to the New World back in the nineteenth century—would have recognized, scorched away the concern in her eyes.
“And when I do, I’m going to get him to agree to a divorce. And then, once he’s a bachelor again, I’m going to talk him into participating in the auction.”
“That’s quite an agenda. Especially since you only have a month—less today—to pull it off. How long does it take to get a divorce in New York, anyway?”
“I don’t know.” Since she’d been unconsciously waiting for Alec to insist they resume their marriage, K.J. had never bothered looking into the matter. “But it’s undoubtedly longer than I have.” She frowned as she considered her options.
“But that doesn’t need to prove a problem,” she decided on another burst of resolve. “We had a quickie marriage. Surely we can get a quickie divorce in Mexico, or some Caribbean island that caters to such a thing. In fact, I think I saw a segment on 60 Minutes not too long ago about the Dominican Republic becoming the newest divorce destination.”
“Good idea,” Molly agreed dryly. “You and Alec Mackenzie can fly off to some tropical island, undo the deed, then while you’ve got the guy under the romantic influence of flower-scented trade winds, moonlit seas and piña coladas, you can seduce him into taking part in the auction.”
K.J. knew her friend was kidding. But as she pulled out her credit card to pay for her dinner, she reminded herself that the auction was for a good cause.
And besides, after the way Alec had stormed out of their hotel suite, then proceeded to ignore her all these months, the least he could do was cooperate. Especially when such cooperation would legally give him what he obviously valued most—his freedom.
3
BY THE TIME SHE'S ARRIVED at the group of palmthatched buildings in what only an extremely charitable person could call a village, K.J. had decided that if she did ever find Alec, she wasn’t going to divorce him. She was going to kill him.
And then, she vowed, as she climbed out of the dangerously small dugout canoe, once she’d finished with Alec, she was going to move on to whoever it was who’d lied about natural fibers being able to breathe.
Her lovely tobacco-hued linen pantsuit, which had seemed so practical when she’d been planning this South American expedition back in Manhattan, was hopelessly wrinkled. And not stylishly rumpled, either, but sopping-wet-stick-to-your-body wrinkled.
She’d bought a wide straw hat to shade her face from the unrelenting sun at a market in the last village she’d stopped at—a trading post where she’d been stranded for two excruciatingly long days—but she could still feel the unmistakable heat of a sunburn blazing on her face. And although she’d pulled her hair into a practical ponytail, several unruly strands had escaped the elasticized band and were clinging damply to her neck.
And if all this wasn’t frustrating enough, precious time was running out. It had taken her a week to track down Alec’s agent, who’d been away at a European book fair.
Then it had taken nearly another five days to get all her paperwork in order—which was what she got for letting her passport expire, she’d thought glumly as she’d waited in line for the photo that made her look like an escapee from a maximum-security prison.
Even then, she’d run up against another roadblock when it had taken nearly another week to find Alec. If she couldn’t get his cooperation in the next six days and return to New York with him in tow, she could not only kiss her promotion goodbye, but perhaps even her job. Which was what she got, she thought, for rashly agreeing to the plan in the first place.
Two days ago, when the rickety old bus had come to a halt and the driver, a wizened, toothless man who looked older than Methuselah, had informed her in a barely comprehensible mix of Spanish, English and some Indian language she couldn’t recognize that they’d reached the end of the line, she’d feared she was destined to be permanently stuck in the middle of the jungle.
Then, blessedly, this man had shown up, informed her that he just happened to be on the way to the very village she sought, and offered her a ride down the river. K.J. had admittedly suffered trepidations when she’d gotten her first look at the dugout canoe, but re
minding herself that beggars couldn’t exactly be choosers, she’d gratefully accepted.
“Do you know where I could find Mr. Mackenzie?” she asked the boatman.
Her savior was short and stocky, built rather along the lines of a tree trunk, with a swarthy complexion and a droopy black mustache that added to his fierce appearance. He paused from unloading her suitcases from the canoe and glanced up at the sky, which was darkening quickly. And dangerously.
K.J. had already learned the hard way that this was the rainy season; every afternoon, black anvil-shaped thunderclouds would build up, then dump an amazing amount of rain on the already soaked and flooded river basin.
“This time of day, Señor Mackenzie will be in the cantina.”
She glanced around the village of Santa Clara, studying it more carefully than she had when the man had first paddled the boat up to the bank. Sober-faced men, clad in little more than bark-cloth skirts and fetish necklaces made of bright feathers and animal teeth, honed the blades of steel machetes, while women bent over cooking fires and naked children painted each other with bright dyes.
The scene was crying out to be saved on film. Momentarily putting aside her exhaustion, and her ongoing frustration at the trials of tracking down her husband, K.J. lifted her compact 35 mm camera and snapped off a roll of rapid-fire shots, including what she knew would be the highlight of the group—one of a mahogany-hued little girl who’d tethered a magnificent butterfly nearly the size of one of her hands to a thread and was flying it over her head like a bright blue kite.
The boatman, who apparently had grown accustomed to the crazy lady and her ever-present camera, watched disinterestedly, waiting for her to finish.
The buildings, as seen through her viewfinder, appeared to be a hodgepodge of scraps of tree limbs, thatching and mud. Unfortunately, despite their admittedly photogenic appeal, none of them looked all that inviting.
“Which of the buildings is the cantina?”
“It is at the far edge of the village.” The way this trip had gone thus far, K.J. wasn’t at all surprised when he pointed toward the most dilapidated shanty of the bunch. Terrific.
