BEAUTIFUL STRANGER

by Ruth Wind

  "Oh, that's great!"

  The party was in a large room near the back of the building, and they heard the voices of many people laughing and talking before they went in. Marissa took a breath, bracing herself.

  Victoria took her arm. "Chins up."

  But even Victoria had to suck in her breath at the magnificence of one devastatingly sexy male when they walked in. He stood by a cloth-covered table, drinking red punch from a crystal cup, making polite conversation with a woman in a low-cut black dress who was doing everything but falling down in a dead swoon.

  Marissa made an annoyed sound, but Victoria said, "Well, I can't say that I blame her."

  Nor could Marissa. As always in public, the long hair was smoothed into a tight, glossy braid that fell down his back. As always, his lean, strong body carried his clothes as neatly, perfectly as if he were a model. But she'd never seen him in a tuxedo before, and she could see it was custom tailored. He looked exotic, flirtatious and absolutely devastating in the hushed and elegant room.

  "What a rat," she said, and, in a sudden, irrational impulse, ignored him. "Let's find Louise and her suitable suitors, shall we?"

  But before they'd even moved, Louise was on them, smelling of Chanel No. 5, her hair coiffed and upswept. "Come on, girls. I've got people for you to meet."

  The people were, of course, young men. Several of them Marissa already knew and did not find impressive. One in particular had been a thorn in her side for years; the son of a business associate of her father's, he had everything: money, breeding, good looks. He was a vigorous sportsman and had always nagged Marissa to "work her body" more so she could get some of her weight off. It was very irritating to discover he'd been right.

  She had not seen him in some time, and his eyes widened. "Marissa?" he said with a flattering look of amazement. "You look great!"

  She smiled. It wasn't his fault he was nauseatingly normal. "Thanks."

  He grinned. "And you're as gorgeous as I always suspected. What did you do? Wait—" He looked at her body frankly, but without offense. It was just the way he did things. "Walk. You walk, right?"

  "Louise told you."

  "No. Those calves are a dead giveaway."

  "Really?" She looked down to see what he saw, and realized she did have very buff calves. She smiled at him, genuinely this time. "Good guess."

  * * *

  Crystal fretted when Marissa came in. "Look, there she is," she hissed to Mario. "We have to do something."

  He lifted his eyebrows. "It's not our business. They're adults. They can figure it out."

  "No, Mario." She scowled when Louise dragged Marissa and her sister over to a bunch of young rich guys standing by the windows, and they all started talking. Crystal wondered if Robert noticed. She glanced at him, and saw him raising his glass to drink some punch like he didn't have a care in the world.

  What was wrong with these two?

  And what was Louise doing, anyway? Mr. Chacon was sitting across the table from her, smiling beneath his bushy mustache, his eyes twinkling as he watched his wife. "What is she doing, Mr. Chacon?" Crystal said urgently.

  He made a gesture with his hand that meant more or less to settle down. "She's matchmaking, hija. Watch and see what she does by the end of this night." He chuckled.

  "But I—"

  "Watch," he said again, and winked.

  Crystal decided to give it through supper, due to be served by buffet in a half hour. If things weren't looking better by then, she'd take matters into her own hands.

  * * *

  She didn't even look his way when she came in, Robert noticed, despite the fact that he'd been unable to keep himself from paying attention to every detail as he dressed tonight. The tux he'd had for more than five years, purchased for a song just before he got out of the army. The cuff links were from a trip to Italy. The earring in his pierced ear was a ruby he'd purchased in the Middle East, the heavy ring a memento from Brussels.

  And she didn't even notice. Louise hustled her over to the corner with those three guys, and they were hovering like a bunch of bees, laughing too loudly at her jokes, trying to curry favor by bringing her champagne or pulling out a chair.

  One in particular grated on Robert's nerves, and it was a little thing. Marissa reached for a morsel of cheese on the tray that graced the middle of each table, and he grinned and took it away from her. Marissa's face bled of expression for a single instant, but then she was smiling again.

  "Idiot," he murmured under his breath.

  They called for dinner and they all filled plates with the robust offerings. Robert told himself to get over it, and immersed himself in the very solid attention of the young woman in a black dress who'd attached herself to him. It was amusing more than arousing. She had to be fifteen years his junior, with a kind of fresh-faced earnestness that spoke of travels to beleaguered places. She was so pleased to have a real Native American to talk to that he was even tempted to make up some reservation stories.

  The second little incident happened during dinner. Marissa had piled her plate with melons and veggies, and when she was finished, she stood up to return to the buffet. The man beside her, laughing, gestured at her chair and took her plate out of her hands.

  Marissa blinked, stood up and walked back to the buffet, where she chose meat and a sliver of pie. Robert found himself waiting for the familiar gesture—and grinned when she cut the pie in half lengthwise and put it on another plate, which she carried back to her sister.

  At the end of dinner, Crystal leaned over with a hard look on her face. "Uncle, if you let that woman walk away, you're really a lot stupider than I thought."

  He narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

  She rolled her eyes. "Oh, I guess you don't know that she's wearing a green dress."

  "Blue."

  She gave him a hard look. "Exactly."

  But he couldn't seem to do anything about it, even then. There were toasts to Crystal and Mario. Sweet toasts, really, with Jake and Ramona in the lead. And then, finally, there was dancing.

  Robert thought maybe then he'd have a chance to talk, at least a little, to Marissa. But she was a popular partner, and something about the whole aspect of the evening made him remember her from years before. When she and Lance, Louise's middle son, would tear up the floor at the Wild Moose Inn while Jake and Red Dog drank their shots and watched.

  He was an imposter, and he knew it. He wondered why she didn't know.

  Because she really didn't. Every so often, he caught her glancing his way, then glancing quickly away when he looked up. He wondered if that blue dress had been fixed and if that was why the dude with the teeth was hovering, and the idea gave him a shock of intense jealousy.

  Enough to propel him across the room finally, and bend over close to her ear. "Want to dance, beautiful?"

  She raised her eyes. "Yes. Very much."

  The man next to her said, "Sorry, man, she's with me."

  Marissa made a noise. "Wrongo, buddy."

  The man leaned over and said, loudly enough for only Marissa and Robert to hear, "You don't have to go slumming like that anymore, babe. Have a little self-respect."

  Marissa stood up without a word and headed out toward the dance floor. She looked over her shoulder at Robert. "Coming?"

  He gave her a rueful smile as he put his arms around her. "Senator's son?"

  "Close enough," she said. "I really think I need to marry him immediately."

  Oh, God, she felt good. Their bodies were just somehow perfectly aligned, shoulder to chest to hip to knee, so there was a simple alignment. "Absolutely."

  He moved his hands on her sides, feeling the slippery heat of her flesh beneath the dress. Her breasts brushed his chest. Her hips moved a little closer as she met his eyes. "Maybe this was a bad idea," he said.

  "Only if you're still chicken."

  "Chicken!"

  "Yeah. Like yellow. Like a big fat coward." The deep blue eyes narrowed. "I dare you. Double dare
you. Double triple dare you to kiss me like you mean it, right now."

  He went still, feeling terror and desire in equal measures. This world was not his world. And his world, or at least the world he'd once known, was not hers. "And then what?"

  "Whatever you want." Her lips quirked. "I bet you can think of something."

  He thought of her Tiffany screen, the shards of individual glass burning with light, thought of her standing with him in a pueblo in New Mexico admiring a work of art with tears in her eyes. He thought of her laughing, her joy, and the agony of loss he'd felt these past few days.

  "I love you," he said suddenly.

  "I know you do," she said.

  And there really wasn't anything left to do. He stopped dancing and pulled her close and kissed her, that same electric, blistering kind of kiss they shared the first time. A deep kiss. Then a tender one. "I'm scared to death," he whispered against her neck.

  "Me, too," she said. "But I'm a lot more terrified of what happens if I don't grab you now."

  "What are you afraid of?" he said, surprised.

  "Oh, about a million things. That you only want me now because I'm thin." A ruefulness in the words, but genuine sorrow, too.

  "I don't care about your body, Marissa," he said gruffly. "I mean I like it, but I've known zillions of bodies. It's not about that."

  She swallowed hard and he could see she didn't believe him. "What about you? What are you so afraid of?"

  "That you'll wake up one day and see that you've married an ex-runaway nobody with nothing to offer."

  "Marry?"

  "You're the one who said it. With Crystal and Mario." He lifted a shoulder. "If you don't want the whole gig, I can't play."

  She was utterly still, and he was suddenly sick with apprehension, thinking of a moment when they'd made perfect love and Marissa had panicked. His pride couldn't take that now, not in front of all these people.

  "I'm amazed, that's all. I didn't expect it," she said.

  "Stop torturing me, Marissa. I'll bring you a prenuptial agreement, all that. I know I come with a lot of baggage—the kids and their family, but you knew that, too."

  "Yes," she said.

  "Yes," he echoed, frowning.

  "I knew it was you on the phone," she said, and leaned close, putting her head on his shoulder with a sigh of relief.

  "I don't understand."

  "I'll explain later." She raised her hands around his neck. "Just kiss me again, in front of everybody. I love them being jealous."

  He laughed. "So do I," he said, and kissed her. She put her arms around his neck and held him tight, so tight. "I see you, Robert," she said quietly. "Just you."

  "I see you, Marissa," he whispered. "You and me."

  * * *

  Across the table from Crystal, Mr. Chacon let go of a low, deep laugh when Robert and Marissa kissed on the dance floor. "See?" he said. "My wife, she's real good at this."

  Crystal put her hand in Mario's and grinned. "I guess she is."

  * * *

  Epilogue

  « ^

  Louise loved weddings more than any other single thing on the planet. Loved every teeny little thing about them—churches or open places, flowers, the music, the dresses, the various litanies of commitment.

  And there had never been a finer day for a wedding than this early-June afternoon. Sunlight streamed in the windows to the pews filled with people in their Sunday best. The organist was one of the best in the world, and she played a hymn of joy and celebration as the two grooms edged into the room. Robert wore his tuxedo, but he'd left his hair down today, a glory of gleaming hair that made him look devilish and mysterious. He folded his hands in front of him, and looked toward the back of the church calmly.

  Next to him, Mario was slighter, but no less straight and proud. He looked to Robert and folded his hands in front of him, too.

  The wedding march began—bum bum be bum. Louise reached for Alonzo's hand and sang softly, "Here comes the bride…" He lifted her fingers and kissed them. It hadn't been all that long since their own wedding, after all.

  Louise loved weddings. And this was a part she loved a lot: when the bride, or in this case, the brides, came through the doors in their finery. What a fine pair of brides they were, too—Crystal, tiny and delicate, wearing a replica of a 1912 wedding dress Marissa had helped her to find. It draped sweetly over the mound of her belly. Marissa's gown was white and low-cut, displaying her creamy shoulders and a dazzling abundance of cleavage. Alonzo whistled softly and murmured something in Spanish. Louise chuckled. "Amen."

  But this, now, this was her favorite part of any wedding. She turned to look at the men on the altar, waiting for those brides, watched their angular faces go radiant with light and anticipation. Everyone talked about the radiance of brides, but it was the grooms Louise liked to see. Nothing like the right woman to make a good man better.

  As the grooms and brides joined hands and bowed their heads, Louise smiled in satisfaction. Oh, she was so good at this. Her three sons and their wives and various children sat scattered around the room, their own faces alight with the pleasure of anticipation that happily married people brought to a wedding.

  Happy marriages could do a lot to heal the world of a whole lot of evil, she thought, idly rubbing the thumb of the man who'd made her a happy wife after so many years of being an unhappy one.

  A teeny little sniffle caught her attention. Victoria, glorious in orange, caught her cry in a linen handkerchief. She sat alone, her long legs crossed, her arms anchored around her middle.

  Louise smiled. There was work to do yet. And she was good. Very, very good.

  * * * * *