Simon was having a party.
It figured he'd plan something like this, that there'd be some reason she wouldn't be able to take his retainer check and tear it into a hundred tiny pieces and throw it into his face the way she wanted. Because as much as she wanted to do that, she wouldn't do it with an audience looking on.
She got out of her car, aware that she was buzzing with anticipation. She was going to see Simon. She was going to gaze into his ocean-blue eyes, see his familiar warm smile.
She'd hand him back his check and tell him nice try.
He'd pull her into his arms, insist on dancing with her.
She'd allow herself that much. One dance. She'd let herself relax into his embrace. She'd let herself pretend things were very different between them. It was no more or less than what she used to do when she danced with him at parties.
Frankie didn't bother ringing the doorbell. She just walked inside and headed directly for the kitchen. If Simon wasn't in his kitchen, cooking up some odd hors d'oeuvre, he'd come breezing in soon enough. She pushed open the door—and caught Leila and Marsh in the middle of an outrageously steamy clinch.
“Oops.” Frankie switched swiftly into reverse, trying desperately not to notice whose hands and mouths were where.
But Leila just smiled as she pulled away from her fiancé, not at all flustered. “Oh, good,” she said to Frankie, adjusting her clothes and attempting to smooth her blond curls back into place. “You remembered.”
Marsh looked embarrassed enough for the both of them. He stood leaning against the kitchen counter, legs and arms crossed, a slightly pained, slightly amused gleam in his normally cool brown eyes. Leila had told her that the seemingly aloof Englishman kept his passionate side neatly hidden from the rest of the world, but Frankie had doubted its very existence—until then.
“Oh, good, I remembered what?”
“My party for Marsh's brother, Jesse. He's decided to stay on the key until the end of the summer. I thought this would be a good way for him to get to know our friends.” Leila picked up a knife and began cutting cauliflower into bite-sized chunks. “I told you about it the day you got back from Boston, but you were acting really weird and I wasn't sure you heard a single word I said. I wasn't sure you were going to come.”
“Actually,” Frankie said, trying to sound sorry, “I can't stay. I just stopped by to drop something off for Simon.”
“He's not here.” Marsh spoke for the first time. “He called me this afternoon and told me something had come up—he wasn't going to make it to the party.”
Frankie narrowed her eyes, trying to curb her sudden sharp disappointment. If Simon wasn't here, where had he gone? Find me. “Since when does Simon pass on a party? Especially one at his own house?”
Leila exchanged a look with Marsh. “We were wondering the same thing—and thinking maybe you could tell us what was going on.”
Frankie looked steadily at Marsh. Marsh Devlin was Simon's best friend. There were no secrets between the two men. Or were there? As if he could read her mind, Marsh shook his head very slightly.
“He hasn't told me anything about Boston,” Marsh said. “He hasn't said a word.” He glanced at Leila and smiled. “We, of course, have done a great deal of speculating. A great, great deal. In fact, it's quite become the mystery of the month. You go to Boston, Simon follows in hot pursuit, and when you return, you both go into deep hiding—together? Separately? Who could know? It's all very clandestine and romantic.”
“It's driving me crazy,” Leila admitted. She scooped the cauliflower into a pretty pink glass bowl and turned to gaze steadily at Frankie. “Are you and Simon …. ?”
Frankie shook her head. “No. Nothing happened in Boston,” she lied.
Leila looked at Marsh. “She's definitely lying. She gets that I'm-so-innocent look in her eyes whenever she lies.”
Marsh laughed. “Whether she's lying or not, I'd hazard a guess that she was giving you a hint to mind your own business.”
Leila gazed at Frankie, her eyes probing, penetrating. Frankie had been avoiding Leila these past few days, as well as Simon. She couldn't hide the truth from her best friend—at least not for long.
And the truth was, despite Frankie's attempt to gain perspective through time and distance, she was still horribly, wretchedly, in love with Leila's brother. The truth was, she had come here tonight, hoping to see Simon, to talk to him, to be near him, to dance with him, and yes, even to let him seduce her again.
Leila's gaze softened. “Are you all right?” she asked quietly.
“I've got to go,” Frankie told her. “I'll call you, okay?”
She escaped from the kitchen and out the front door, into the heat of the early evening, wishing there were a breeze to cool her suddenly too hot cheeks.
Find me.
If she were Simon, where would she be?
Back in her car, Frankie cruised past the Pelican Street house, past the ice cream parlor, past the Rustler's Hideout, past Millie's Market, but there was no sign of Simon's sports car. She wasn't sure if she felt disappointment or relief.
She pulled into her own driveway at a little past eight-thirty and went into her office to think. She sat down at her desk and put her head in her hands.
Find me.
Simon had made this slightly more challenging than she at first had thought. But there was no way he would make it too difficult for her to find him. He wanted her to find him, that much she had to believe.
He wanted her to find him as much as she did. And she did.
It was clear that the only person she'd fooled over the past week was herself.
Frankie took both Simon's check and the note from her pocket and spread them out in front of her on her desk. Find me. He'd written the words in black ink, probably with one of those silver pens that he kept in his appointment book. She could picture him holding the slender, elegant pen with his long, equally elegant fingers. She could picture those same fingers lightly trailing their way down her body followed by the softness of his mouth ….
She forced her mind to switch gears and picked up the note. The paper was thick. It was an expensive, linen-content heavyweight bond suitable for a formal letter from someone with lots of numbers and esquires after their name. She'd seen this kind of paper recently. But where?
Frankie turned on her desk lamp, holding the paper up to the bulb. It was an elegant off-white color, the same as ….
She dug in her purse for her wallet and pulled out the slip of paper she'd stuck in with her dollar bills, the piece of paper upon which Clay Quinn had written his brother's phone number.
Yes. It was a direct match. And she knew for a fact that Clay had gotten that fancy paper from the Seaholm Resort.
Frankie reached for the phone book and quickly looked up the main number for the resort. She picked up her phone and dialed the number.
“Seaholm Resort.”
“Hi,” Frankie said. “Can you tell me if Simon Hunt is registered there?”
“One moment, please.”
Frankie tapped her fingers on her desk. He had to be there. He had to be.
“Yes, he is. Shall I connect you to his room?”
“No! I mean, thank you, no.” Frankie hung up the phone. Okay. She found him.
Now what?
She had two options. Go there and inevitably end up in his bed. Or not go there, stay home, and cry herself to sleep because the man that she'd been unlucky enough to fall in love with wasn't perfect.
Frankie knew she would be miserable with Simon, but she was miserable without him.
At least if she was with him, she'd be guaranteed a few weeks or even months of happiness. True, it would be pseudo-happiness, but that was better than what she was doing to herself right now, wasn't it?
Find me.
She wanted to. She wanted to find him.
Frankie rested her forehead in the palms of her hands, knowing what she had known even on the airplane home from Boston.
She was going to give in. She was going to surrender—she was going to play this game by Simon's rules. But before she did that, she was going to give Simon a chance to quit while he was ahead. She was going to give him a chance to walk away.
It didn't seem too unreasonable. She'd sit down with Simon, her lifelong friend, and simply tell him the truth. She'd tell him that somehow, at some point during the past nearly twenty years, she'd gone and foolishly fallen in love with him.
She wouldn't wait for him to see her feelings in her eyes, in the way she held him, touched him, loved him. It would be out in the open, on the table, there for him to deal with—or to walk away from.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Lord, she couldn't imagine actually saying those words. I'm in love with you ….
But wait a minute. Frankie opened her eyes. Maybe she didn't have to actually use words. Maybe she could get the message across in another, far less painful way.
She stood up and went upstairs to search the far reaches of her bedroom closet.
FOURTEEN
SIMON CHECKED HIS watch for the four thousandth time since sundown.
It was four minutes after nine o'clock.
He'd told himself several hours before that if Frankie didn't show up by nine, she wasn't going to show up at all.
Yet here it was, after nine. He'd give her another ten minutes ….
But then what?
He sat in the dark, out on the screened-in balcony of his room at the Seaholm Resort, listening to the sound of the ocean murmuring below, feeling his frustration build.
He kept coming back to the same damned question: How could Frankie just ignore what they'd had together? How could she just walk away from the magic they'd found? How could she deny the fact that what they'd shared had been soul-shattering, heart-wrenching, mind-blowing true love? How could she stand there and say “I need some distance,” instead of “I love you”? How could she ….
Simon gazed up at the stars, his eyes out of focus.
How could he? Because, when it came right down to it, he was doing some heavy-duty denial of his own. He was saying the wrong words too. He was saying “I want you” and “I need you” when he should have been saying “I love you.” And he did. He loved Frankie with a strength that rocked him to his very soul. He loved her absolutely, purely, completely. Endlessly.
And it was about time he admitted that to himself.
She wasn't going to come here tonight. So now what was he going to do?
Give her that forever she was looking for. Ask her to marry him.
The thought was no longer as frightening as it had been a week earlier. It still made him feel rather short of breath, but it no longer stopped his heart.
The thought of losing Frankie, of never holding her in his arms again, of seeing her beautiful smile only from a safe, sterile distance …. that made Simon's heart stop.
He stood up, slightly light-headed, determined to find Frankie and fall down on his knees in front of her if he had to.
He'd start with “I love you,” and pray that that worked. If it didn't, he was going to have to do it. He was going to have to ask her to marry him. Because he could not and would not spend another day like this past one.
He checked the pockets of his pants for his car keys as he headed out into the living room of his hotel suite and—
Frankie.
Simon stopped short, his heart in his throat.
She was standing just inside the door, wearing … Oh, my God, she was wearing it. She'd sworn she never, ever would, but she was wearing it. The black dress. The one Simon had found in her closet, the one that had appeared in his dreams so many times since then.
It looked even better on her than he'd imagined. It had narrow straps that accentuated her smooth bare shoulders. It clung snugly to her breasts, flaring out into a very short skirt. She was actually wearing stockings on her gorgeous legs. They were sheer and black and ended in a pair of black high heels.
Frankie moistened her lips nervously. “In case you were wondering, I got the shoes for the occasion.”
Simon's mouth was dry too, but somehow he managed to ask, “And what exactly is the occasion?”
“My surrender,” she said.
Yes. Thank God. Simon couldn't keep his sudden rush of relief and triumph from showing in his eyes, in his smile, in his quickly drawn-in breath.
“Before you get too excited,” she warned him, “you might want to hear my terms.”
He didn't care. Whatever her terms were, he'd take ‘em. My God, she was wearing the dress. Two weeks ago she'd implied she'd wear that dress only for someone who was extraordinary, someone special, someone whom perhaps she loved … The thought made him giddy and he laughed. “Terms,” he repeated. “You mean, like the release of prisoners of war?”
She smiled at his joke, but her eyes still looked sad.
“You look like someone died,” he said softly, moving toward her. “This isn't really that awful, is it, Francine?”
“First things first.” She obviously wasn't going to answer his question. She held out his retainer check as if it would help ward him off. “I can't take this.”
Simon crossed his arms. “No, you earned it. I hired you to find me, and you did.”
“I wanted to find you.”
“I'm glad.” Simon's heart was singing. In his mind he was doing a victory dance around the room, whooping and jumping and hollering.
“It suddenly seemed so silly,” she explained. “I was pretending something very real didn't exist and—” She held out the check again. “Here. Take this back, will you?”
Simon took the check and held on to Frankie's hand, tugging her closer to him. “Have you had dinner?” he asked. “Do you want to go downstairs—to the restaurant? Or we could order room service …. ?”
She turned away from him slightly, and he realized that her dress left nearly her entire back bare. The dress was held together by a series of strips of fabric, crossing and crisscrossing and tying near her waist. He wanted to dance with her, to hold her close, to feel all that smooth skin beneath his fingers.
“I'm not particularly hungry,” she said. “Al though if you are, you could order something …. “
“What I want has nothing to do with food,” Simon told her with a smile. “But it seems a shame to take off your dress after waiting so long for you to put it on.” He pulled her toward the balcony. “Come on. I have a bottle of wine on ice. Why don't we have a glass while we negotiate these terms of yours?”
Frankie was aware of the warmth of Simon's hand, aware of the heat in his eyes. He didn't seem a bit fazed by the silent message her dress sent forth. “They're nonnegotiable,” she told him.
Out on the balcony, Simon had several candles burning, and their flames twitched and jumped, casting a flickering, romantic light filled with shadows and mystery.
He turned to look at her as he skillfully opened the bottle of wine. He was at home in the softness of the candlelight, with a wine bottle in his hand and a small smile playing about the corners of his lips. She was in his territory now, Frankie realized. This was the scene of a well-thought-out seduction, and he was a master at the game.
She sat down, aware that his eyes followed the movement of her legs as she crossed them.
She murmured her thanks as he handed her a glass of wine and sat down across from her, sideways on the long seat of a chaise longue.
He took a sip of his wine as he gazed at her, his elbows resting on his knees, his eyes intense, his attention completely hers.
Frankie cleared her throat. “You remember asking me how long I wanted?”
He nodded.
“Well, I've thought about it, and maybe it's not as stupid as it first seemed. It occurred to me that maybe you'd actually be able to handle a longer-term relationship if you knew for certain that you had an out—if there was a predetermined date that it would end. Do you remember the winter I worked pumping septic tanks, replacing Andy Kraft while he w
as in Alabama, taking care of his daughter's kids while she was in the hospital? It was an awful job, despite the fact that it paid well. But I got through it, because I knew I wasn't going to be pumping septic tanks for the rest of my life. I knew that Andy would be back on April twenty-ninth, and I'd be free.”
Simon took another sip of wine, unable to hide his smile. “Are you actually comparing yourself to a septic tank that needs pumping?”
“I'd be willing to bet that I smell better, but yes, I am.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “You are so not a septic tank—symbolically or otherwise.”
“Four months,” Frankie said. “I've thought hard about it, and four months seems fair, don't you think?”
“Francine, this is—”
“This is the way I want to do it, Simon. Four months puts us at the end of August. At that time I'll take a two-week off-island vacation. When I get back, you'll be gone for another two weeks. You can plan whatever you want—a vacation, a buying trip, whatever. You just have to promise to disappear for at least two weeks, okay?”
Simon gazed at Frankie's face in the candlelight. She was dead serious. And she fully expected him to agree. It was weird, setting an end date to a relationship.
He'd been ready to ask her to marry him.
Well, perhaps not exactly ready. More like prepared as best as possible, ready in case he had to.
Four months. It seemed so arbitrary. How could he possibly know now what he'd feel in four months?
Frankie was looking away from him, down at her shoes, her confidence fading at his extended silence. When she glanced up at him, her eyes were apologetic. “I know this is crazy,” she said. “Even if you agree to this, there's no way I can hold you to it. But I just thought—”
“It's fine,” Simon interrupted. He would have said anything to remove that anxious look from her face.
Strains of music drifted up, probably from someone else's room. Simon stood up, holding his hand out to Frankie. “Dance with me.”
Heart in her throat, Frankie went into his waiting arms. This was no fantasy. Simon was hers— at least for the next four months.
The Kissing Game Page 14
