The painful part...the thing that had clearly left Byron speechless, was the unnatural pallor to her skin and the distinguishable ribs poking through Odette’s torso. The arms, though graceful, were bony and the legs, toothpicks.
When he still asked her nothing, Roxie went to the sideboard. There were bottles of wine hidden in the cupboard. Her mother had once been a secret night drinker before sedatives had charged in on a great, white script. Roxie poured herself a glass of pinot grigio. “I was born last. To say my mother was determined to carve a professional ballerina out of me was a dire understatement. She failed with the others. Cassandra was too ungainly and had too much trouble balancing at her height. Carolina had no inclination. She was the rebel. Georgiana gave it her best, but she didn’t have the feet and Julianna certainly didn’t have the heart.”
She stopped and drank, her back to the fire. “Competition was bred into each of us. My sisters didn’t make it as ballerinas but they all excelled in other areas. The fact that I could do something they couldn’t that pleased our mother so... It fed the ambition. I didn’t do it for me. I did it so that I could be the best and so that my mother’s praise could make up for all the affection that never came unconditionally. Not to mention my father who never bothered with me, either. It was an ugly ambition, but it got me far. All the way to New York, the grand stage. All the way to nosebleeds and heart palpitations and throwing up everything I ate, by choice. The first time I had my stomach pumped of diet pills, I was sixteen. The second, at nineteen, nearly killed me.”
She replaced the wine bottle, cleaning the area so it looked as if she had never been there. After taking the glass around the sofa, she set it on the table. She patted the back of her dress to make sure it at least was dry before taking a seat with a whimper of gratitude on behalf of her joints. Leaning back, she waited for him to sit next to her, thigh to thigh. “I got a principal role in Romeo and Juliet. My mother was thrilled. She was there to see to every detail personally, from practice to rehearsal to fittings...
“Oh, God, the fittings.” Combing her hair back, Roxie scowled. “She made me write down everything I ate. She’d give the list back to me the following morning with things crossed out. I was to eat less and less every day until opening night. The thing she didn’t know was that I couldn’t stop eating. It really is a sickness. You eat and eat and then the guilt and the shame and the self-disgust hits and you gag yourself to be rid of it. She told me I looked bloated just before my debut, before giving me a new brand of diet pills. ‘These will take care of the problem,’ she said. I missed the opening and was in the hospital for three weeks.”
Byron shook his head. He wasn’t able to look at the portrait anymore either.
“I realized if I didn’t change I was going to destroy myself to the point of nonexistence,” Roxie explained. “My first goal was to cut ties with my family. I didn’t speak to them for over a year. The next goal was to get healthy again, which I did, little by little. And the last goal was to change my perception of myself, to change how I evaluated life and focus on what was within instead of on the outside. I realized I wanted to go back to school, to own my own business, to make other people happy. Not to compensate for my lack of happiness up to that point but because it made me happy, too, to give them the happiest day of their lives and design dresses so they could look and feel spectacular in their own skin.” Rewarding herself for the retelling, she downed the rest of her pinot and settled back into the crook of his offered arm.
Byron followed suit, drinking what remained in his tumbler. “Cassandra and Julianna were here tonight. They were bridesmaids. I never saw her.” He indicated his statement with a nod to Carolina’s portrait.
“You probably never will,” Roxie told him. “Carolina’s struggle with body issues continued into her twenties. We’ve all had them. But Caro became more dependent on the pills than any of the rest of us. She’s been in and out of rehab ever since. After her last relapse two years ago, her husband, Percy, God love him, did what I did all those years ago—he ensured that none of the rest of us contacts her again. She’s okay now, I think, raising Thoroughbreds with him in Kentucky.”
“Why did you come back to them?” he asked. “They don’t deserve you.”
Snuggling into his lapel, she allowed her eyes to close. “Because I wanted to live here and start a business on the Eastern Shore. I wanted it so badly I did it in spite of the fact that they were here. And I prided myself on being strong enough to do it with aplomb.”
His arm tightened around her. “You’ve been through hell.” He rubbed the gooseflesh still present on her arms. “And you’re cold again.”
“Walked through the sprinklers,” she mumbled into his jacket. She was so cozy here with him. In the house she’d never felt she belonged in. With the Roxie she no longer recognized and the others staring, unsmiling, down on them. Amid the shrine to her mother’s saccharine brand of perfectionism. Byron shifted away. She made a protesting noise. It was silenced when he knelt in front of her on the Persian rug. Her heart gave a lengthy tug as the light burned bright against his silhouette. He lifted her foot and began to knead. “Ha! Careful!” she hissed as the pressure points along the arch sensitized.
He answered by focusing just there, using his thumbs to deepen the massage.
“Oh, no,” she sighed. The back of her head sank into the cushion. Her eyes rolled as a jet of pure ecstasy shot through her. “Stop it. You’ll spoil me.”
He didn’t stop. He rubbed the foot until it had warmed, until she felt sparkly and loose. Then he treated the other foot, taking his time. The logs in the fireplace split. Sparks flew. The clock chimed a quarter of an hour. His ministrations should’ve relaxed her. Instead, her nerve endings buzzed and her brain went into reboot, libido riding at the front of the charge. As his attentions spread up to her calves, beneath the hem of the dress, she whispered to him in the dark. “Byron. This is my parents’ house.”
“Is your mother planning on joining us?” he asked, kneading until the muscle beneath his hands was the consistency of tupelo honey.
“She took enough meds to knock out a small horse.”
He bent over her leg to graze his lips along the inside of her knee. “What about Leverett?”
She shook her head. The bodhran drum was alive again in her chest. The buoyancy was back, too. “He never comes here.”
Eyes on her, Byron addressed the buttons of his tuxedo jacket. He took it off, tossed it onto the cushion next to her. He undid his cuffs, loosening the sleeves of his dress shirt. The suspender straps went next. He shrugged them over his arms so that they fell to his waist. He undid his bowtie, popping buttons quickly down the line of his shirt before untucking the tails and pulling the shirt over his head.
Roxie stopped her jaw from dropping. She wasn’t able to stop her mouth from watering. He put Perseus to shame with his well-carved shoulders, chiseled chest and washboard abs. When he gripped her under the knees and pulled her to the edge of the couch, she let him. Just as she let him lean over to kiss her navel through the satin dress. “Are we really doing this?” she asked.
He cupped her hips. Dipping his head to her breastbone, he kissed the valley between her breasts. “This museum could use a shake-up.”
“Mm.” He’d moved up to her neck now and was wrapping her legs around his waist.
“Make as much noise as you want,” he said. “Make enough to wake up the sisters and the parentals and the creepy butler living in the basement.”
“The butler lives in the tower,” she jested as his hips rolled against hers and she felt his erection. Melting. She was melting into something lesser than honey and more luminous than that phytoplankton stuff that glowed so brightly satellites could see it from space. “The basement is where they lock the naughty maids.”
He chuckled, tugging at her dress. It inched down her arms and torso, revea
ling the bustier beneath. “Fort Knox.” He skimmed the top edge. “Why is it always Fort Knox with you, Roxanna?”
“Not that again,” she groaned at the sound of her full name.
He’d found the hooks along her spine and pulled her up to sitting so he could undo them one by one. “You designed this, too, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“If Lev knew what this makes me want to do to you, he’d lock me up with the naughty ones down below.” He peeled the garment off, matching her stare for stare. The need there in him was naked, razor-sharp. She answered, shuddering at her own primal response.
He laid her back and stripped the dress that had fallen to her waist. They lay skin to skin when he ranged over her. She gathered him to her, beyond the point of caring whose house it was.
“Are you warm enough now, Roxanna?” he murmured.
She trembled. He made her name sound so seductive. So tender she didn’t hate it anymore. “You’re not going to stop calling me that, are you?”
His nose grazed against hers. He licked the seam between her lips, making her hips rise against his. “Give me one good reason why I should.”
“Because it makes me ache,” she whispered, realizing too late that she said it out loud.
“Here?” He bowed into her, a practiced motion that brought his rod up against her core.
Dear Lord. If he didn’t get inside her already, she would wake the entire house. And it was her heart that ached for the sound of her name. For him, period. “Byron.”
Tugging her up again, he strung her arms around his neck. “Grab hold. Like before.”
She wove her fingers through his hair, her nails dragging against his scalp. They hardened as he spread his hands beneath her, boosting her so that they joined, their gazes level. She had to bear down to keep the exultant cry from tearing out of her.
Until their interlude at the boutique, she hadn’t realized how empty she was. The weight of him, the intimacy, had rocked her to the brink of climax. She’d skittered over the brink without a thought for hitting the brakes and regaining control.
She came close again. He held her, tighter, as if he knew. Something greater than need took hold of her. Something hotter than passion. She felt it fill her as profoundly as he had. She felt it lighting her up, every little bit of her. Her pulse jackrabbited at the insistency that rose like lava from the depths of her soul.
She wanted him to love her leisurely. She wanted him in slow, steady gulps. And yet she wanted to loosen his control like a well-knotted tie.
Here in this room, she wanted to make him unsteady, off balance, off the rails. She wanted to rock him like he’d rocked her.
He looked into her; he read her. It must’ve all been there because his expression changed. Awareness dawned. She thought she saw a sliver of alarm. He searched for several seconds before he accepted her challenge. He lifted his chin.
The table was behind him, beautiful and sturdy—rosewood with glass inlays. Roxie pushed him back until he found the edge. With a sweep of his arm, the neat stacks of picture books and magazines flipped, heaped onto the floor. She flattened her hands across his chest. The last embers of the fire burnished his profile so that the strong line of his brow, his prominent nose and his generous mouth looked bronzed, princely.
The glass creaked slightly when she spanned over him. His brow quirked, his lips tilting into a slight lopsided smile. It tapered off at her roving touch. Determined to make him shiver again and burn, she took her time, weaving circles over him with her palms, tracing the ridges of his abdominals, teasing the dark hair over it all, dragging the ends of her hair across his skin until goose bumps pebbled across him like orange peel and his nipples hardened to diamonds. By that point, his breath was uneven and he was having a difficult time keeping his hands to himself.
Oblique cuts. She’d researched the term for the deep V, the “sex lines,” as Olivia had called them. There she indulged another fantasy she’d had of doing a thorough appraisal, as a cartographer would survey a fascinating cliff face. He tapped out as she strayed down below his pant line, her touch featherlight. “You keep going like that,” he grated, hooking her under the shoulders and rearranging her over him, “and this glass isn’t going to be the only thing that explodes.” He didn’t switch her advantage for his own, but he did pull her in, brushing the hair back from her face to kiss her. He brought her knees up, seating her over his waist.
She gripped his shoulders. Her arms straightened and she arched, receiving him. “Oh.” She didn’t so much utter as breathe the word. Every time? she thought. A random chorus of a song she’d heard in Olivia’s tavern floated through her mind. Foreigner. It disappeared as his grip on her hips guided her over the first stroke and she said it again. “Oh.” She rode, he steered and they climbed the intangible wall that had never felt so palpable.
He did shiver, twice, in the aftermath. She hardly noticed, however, because of the coursing tremors and electric aftershocks that had yet to subside from her. Their bodies were slick with shared perspiration. She tasted it as she kissed him openmouthed on his throat, where she’d come to lie. His arms lifted. His fingertips progressed up her backbone, down. She listened to his heartbeat. It was taking some time for both hers and his to settle into easy cadence. When he said something to her, she couldn’t make sense of it. Her brain was vapor. Her limbs were gel.
He held her, caressed her, until the tremors ran their course. Subsiding, she rolled into the lovely haze of satisfaction and fatigue.
It wasn’t until the clock chimed the hour that they both stirred. Byron’s sigh blew against her hair. “Sun’s coming up soon.”
“Hmmph,” she moaned, unable to move.
“Need to get you home,” Byron murmured. “C’mon, duchess. We can sleep there.”
We? The idea of him in her bed was all the motivation she needed. They helped each other to stand and stumbled around looking for clothing. He zipped the back of her dress and draped his jacket over her before throwing her bustier over his shoulder and taking her hand. It was in this way that they walked away from the Honeycutt mansion, attended only by the solemn blue light that brought an end to a very well-spent night indeed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MARCH SIGNALED THE height of tax season. It also meant the launch of wedding season. Byron and Roxie kept busy during the day. He pulled double duty at the firm while Grim flew to Arkansas to collect his aging mother and bring her to the coast in preparation for Priscilla’s due date, which was three weeks out.
Two weeks had passed from the time of Georgiana’s wedding when Byron realized he’d yet to give Roxie a decent night out that didn’t involve a member of his family or hers.
They planned for the coming Friday.
Byron went straight from the office to the boutique. It was close to six. She’d insisted he pick her up from the boutique when something had come up and she’d been forced to stay past closing.
Their cautiously noncasual relationship had continued without a hitch despite their work agendas. He helped her finish painting downstairs in the Victorian. She flexed her cooking muscles on nights they were both home and he acted as a willing guinea pig. After a lifetime at his father’s table, scorched as it was, how bad could it be?
She fed him the spaghetti. Then Adrian’s rosemary chicken. He tried various pies, spending extra time in the gym the next day. Pie was quickly becoming her specialty, and the added dose of grind at the end of every workout was more than worth his role as taster.
When she wasn’t out late planning weddings, they spent nights in her bed, burning up her Egyptian-cotton sheets.
It had occurred to him that they were growing increasingly domestic. He shrugged aside whatever wariness he felt from the insight. For the first time in years, the idea of connection and intimacy with a woman wasn’t making him he
ad for open water.
It was a surprise how Roxie had a way of putting his uneasiness to bed. Well, she put him to bed and the rest seemed to take care of itself.
He pulled the Camaro into the shared parking lot of Flora and Belle Brides. A March wind blew, tossing treetops to and fro and sending magnolia leaves skidding across the gravel. He put on his sports coat and finger-combed his hair as he climbed the stairs to the boutique. He knocked on the glass when he found the door locked.
Roxie appeared from behind the curtain, a phone to her ear. She smiled at him and hurried to unlock the door. It swung open and she ushered him in, going up on her toes to greet his lips with hers wordlessly. Holding his arm, she lowered to her heels and said into the phone, “Yes. I’ll take care of it. I’m sure it’ll be splendid.” At his questioned glance, she rolled her eyes. “I’ve got it, Mother. No, I don’t need to write it down.” She clasped a hand to her brow. “All right! I’m writing.”
Byron grinned when she simply stood there, letting her mother prattle on. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, pulling the receiver away from her mouth.
“This is what came up, I assume,” he muttered.
“Yes. Pray for me.” She put the phone against her chin again. “No, no. I wasn’t talking to you. Yes, Mother, I was listening. It’s all written down, in detail. I’m going to have to let you go.” Eyeing Byron’s torso, she ran her hand down the red silk of his tie. “Because I have a very important client to attend to now.” She sighed, bouncing from heel to toe in an exercise he now recognized as her way of dealing with momentary stress. “Yes, you’re just as important. Of course. I’m hanging up now. Mmm-hmm. Love you, too. Bye-bye.” She ended the call and sagged at the knees. “Are my ears bleeding?”
Wooing the Wedding Planner Page 20
