Can't Buy Me Love

by Heather MacAllister

  She knew that look. She’d seen that look before and not just from Dylan. “Because of you? You think I’m dooming myself to a loveless marriage because I couldn’t have you?”

  Dylan spread his hands.

  “Oh, please.” What a colossal ego. Spying the waiter headed their way, Alexis straightened. “You did hear what I said about feeling relief just then? That was relief and not regret.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” he began.

  “That’s always a bad idea.”

  “What if? Do you ever think about that?”

  “Not for oh, say, six-and-a-half years.”

  He looked surprised. “It took you six months to get over me?”

  “And I am over you.” Alexis rolled her eyes and drank more champagne.

  “I’m not sure I’m over you,” he said softly. Seductively. Dangerously.

  Alexis narrowed her eyes and growled.

  Their server and an assistant arrived with two plates of food which they showed to Alexis and Dylan. “Your guests will be offered a choice of chicken breast with wild-rice pilaf and a vegetable medley or beef with mushroom sauce and roast potatoes, also accompanied by a vegetable medley.”

  “Will the veggies be singing a different tune with the beef?”

  “Dylan.”

  “I’ll take the chicken. She looks as though she’s in the mood for red meat and gnawing on bones.”

  “Sir, our beef cuts are boneless.”

  “Pity.”

  “He’s not the groom,” Alexis told the server. “So you don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

  “Trust me,” Dylan said. “You’d feel sorry for her if you saw the groom.”

  “But we thought…” The server trailed off with an expression of acute distress. “Madam should have said something.”

  “It’s fine.” Alexis sawed at her meat. “The groom couldn’t make it and I was hungry.”

  She stabbed the meat chunk with more force than she intended.

  “See that?” Dylan gestured to her. “Never get caught between a hungry bride and her meat.”

  Alexis, chewing with great deliberation, glared at Dylan.

  The server fled.

  Dylan could barely suppress a smile. “So, Alexis, how long are you prepared to delay the wedding if Vincent is on the phone?”

  Alexis stared at her plate as she finished chewing and swallowed. She’d like to say her appetite fled, but it didn’t. Pesky altitude. “Dylan,” she began very carefully, “what is it you hope to accomplish by making these snotty remarks? It’s hard enough to over look your professional lapses, but what I choose to do with my life isn’t any of your business. We have had no direct contact since law school and if Vincent hadn’t hired you, you wouldn’t have given our marriage—assuming you even heard of it—any thought at all.”

  Dylan picked little bits of things out of his pilaf. “Well, he did hire me and I am thinking about it. I’m thinking you turned out to be just as brilliant as I thought you would be. You’re even more beautiful now than you were, and you have the potential to be a powerhouse female attorney.”

  “Always the qualifier,” she murmured.

  “A powerhouse any kind of an attorney,” he corrected. “If you plan to give that up, then you ought to do it because you’re crazy in love and can’t figure out any other way to be together. But you’re not crazy in love. You’re just crazy.” He abandoned the pilaf and ate a bit of chicken.

  “It’s still not your concern. How’s the chicken? I’m thinking a big red would really beef up—so to speak—this meal.”

  “You want the truth?” he said so seriously she was afraid to nod.

  But she did.

  “I expected the food to be better.”

  So had she, but that wasn’t what they’d been talking about. “We don’t always get what we expect.”

  “Remember that.” After holding her gaze for a moment, Dylan abruptly turned into the ideal dinner companion.

  Alexis would have enjoyed the meal if she hadn’t been examining everything he said for double meanings and verbal traps.

  They’d always been able to talk about anything and the years hadn’t taken that away. Alexis laughed and was immediately aware that it had been a long, long time since she’d done so.

  Did Vincent ever laugh? She couldn’t remember. Laughter was important, wasn’t it? Well…well…she and Vincent didn’t have a laughter kind of relationship. Not yet. She thought of Vincent’s reaction to her hands on his arms. She’d meant to offer comfort and support, the comfort and support a life partner would offer as a matter of course. It had felt awkward to her and clearly even more awkward to him.

  Their relationship still felt the same as it always had, and Alexis instinctively knew it had to change. She expected a physical relationship with him—how else was she supposed to have children? But aside from that, she, well, she liked sex. Good sex. Something that, lately, had been in very short supply.

  Dylan could always be counted on for good sex.

  Ack. Wrong.

  He smiled across the table at her just then and the candlelight caught his eyes in such a way that they glowed. He found her attractive and wasn’t bothering to hide it. Was the man trying to commit career suicide? One word from her—but he knew she wouldn’t say that word.

  She placed her napkin beside her plate. “I think it’s time for me to leave.”

  “You can’t leave now.” His voice was husky.

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “But Madam must taste the cake!”

  While Alexis had been making eyes with Dylan, their server appeared. She hadn’t even noticed. “I forgot about the cake.”

  The server tried unsuccessfully to hide his surprise. “There are several fillings that the chef has selected. You may have any combination or have the cake as it is here. He will bake it tomorrow, so before you leave, please let him know your preferences. We have lemon, Grand Marnier, hazelnut, raspberry and cappuccino.” With a flourish, he set down a miniature wedding-cake top, complete with plastic bride and groom.

  Alexis plucked them out immediately. “These must go, never to be seen again.”

  The waiter didn’t blink. “Is there some symbol that would have meaning for you that we could create? Some people have a pet or a representation of the place where they met.”

  “How about a cell phone?” Dylan suggested.

  Alexis ignored him. “Flowers, either real or icing, would be fine. A plain top would be fine. Anything else would be fine.”

  The waiter handed her a cake server wrapped in a large tulle bow with lilacs stuck in the knot. The ends trailed across the icing. Alexis jerked the thing off the knife and tossed it on top of the plastic bride and groom. “Silver has such a lovely clean look all on its own.”

  “Understood, madam.”

  Alexis wished he’d quit calling her “madam.” It made her think of the attic dream and the woman with the blond pin curls. She’d never put up with tulle. Alexis cut into the cake.

  “Hey, don’t be stingy with the cake,” Dylan said. “And you have to remember to give Vinnie a big enough hunk so it won’t fall apart before he smashes it in your face.”

  “There will be no cake smashing.” She handed him the plate.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Before she knew what he planned, he broke off a piece and held it out to her.

  “You don’t expect me to fall for that.” Alexis leaned back out of cake-smashing reach.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you.” He still held out the cake.

  “Right. You expect me to believe that when you just told me smashing cake into someone’s face is fun?”

  He leaned forward. “Trust me.”

  “Why—” She’d been going to say, “Why on earth should I trust you?” but found her mouth full of cake.

  Glorious cake. Sugary cake. Raspberry and Grand Marnier melted together to become something greater than they were apart. Yes. That was the combination.
>
  “Mmm.” She closed her eyes as the sugar melted sweetly with the raspberries, adding enough tartness for interest, and the Grand Marnier cloaked the whole thing with a subtle richness. She swallowed and licked her lips. More. She must have more.

  “You really do like your cake.” Dylan’s voice was strangled.

  Alexis sighed. “It’s wonderful. Have some.”

  “I’m not really much of a cake—”

  Alexis broke off a piece and popped it into his mouth, returning the favor.

  Only Dylan’s lips closed around her fingers. When she pulled, he sucked on them, so she stopped because it felt good though she shouldn’t be feeling good with Dylan. Not this kind of good.

  But of course that still left two of her fingers in his mouth.

  His hand clamped around her wrist and he let one finger escape. He drew his tongue along the other.

  Alexis felt a tingle zinging down her arm straight to her belly. Tingles had also been in short supply lately.

  Watching her face, Dylan gently sucked all the icing and cake off her finger. And Alexis let him.

  Yeah, she did, even though she knew he was making trouble for reasons he’d not explained to her satisfaction. He was stirring things up. Things that had gotten a little sludgy from lack of use. This was like starting a car that had been sitting in the garage for a while and letting the oil run through the system to lubricate all the parts.

  And the way Dylan was looking at her and doing interesting things with his tongue was sure enough making something run through her system. Her motor was purring. Not revving, but definitely purring. Just what she needed.

  She’d consider this a test to see if she could separate desire from…from desire. No, that wasn’t right. She was separating desire from Dylan. That was it. Desire was just fine. Dylan was not.

  In fact she hoped he would get caught up in his little game. Then when she married Vincent, Dylan would feel some of the same hurt and rejection she’d felt.

  The trick was not getting caught up in the game herself. The way Dylan looked at her made it difficult to remember that she was an engaged woman. When he let her pull her remaining finger from his mouth and pressed a gentle kiss on the palm of her hand, she figured they’d both had enough. Probably scandalized the server, too.

  “I—I’m leaving. Now.” Alexis stood, took two steps away, then turned back and picked up the rest of the cake.

  She was going to need it.

  AFTER SHE LEFT, Dylan forced himself to eat a few bites of cake. Alexis had asked him what he was doing and he honestly didn’t know. Committing career suicide most likely if he kept poking around in old embers to see whether any sparks flew.

  The sparks were flying on his part, that’s for sure. He couldn’t help himself. For some reason, he felt an unreasonable attraction to her—more than when he was dating her all those years ago. He supposed he was trying to see if she felt anything for him. He suspected she did.

  Okay, so what? What now? What about tomorrow? What about the day after tomorrow? And what if Alexis ditched Vincent for him?

  Sure that was a stretch, but was that what he wanted? Dylan sure didn’t want her marrying Vincent, but what else did he want?

  Until he knew the answer, he’d better cool it. Otherwise, he was nothing more than an old-fashioned cad.

  ALEXIS SAT IN HER ROOM and scarfed half the cake. “Cake” implied that it was bigger than it was—at the most it was the size of two jumbo muffins. Okay, maybe three, but it wasn’t a real, full-size cake. Anyway, it was either binge on cake or call her mother again.

  And…and there was the matter of her motor still running. Shouldn’t she go for a test-drive?

  Dylan had forced Alexis to confront the physical aspect of her relationship with Vincent—namely that there wasn’t one. Frankly, she hadn’t thought it would be a problem. She and Vincent had both been working like mad people this week in order to steal away for the wedding. In her mind, she’d downplayed the importance of the honeymoon, assuming…assuming too much, probably.

  Maybe she should visit Vincent tonight.

  If she could find him.

  5

  VINCENT WAS IN HIS ROOM. Alexis could hear his voice through the door. She hesitated, then knocked.

  “I don’t need turn-down service,” he called.

  There was turn-down service and then there was turn-down service. “It’s Alexis.”

  The silence went on longer than she would have liked. After a few murmured words, Vincent opened the door.

  “Hi. I—”

  He held up a finger and responded to the person on the telephone. “Hang on.”

  This was not the reaction she’d hoped for.

  Hurrying back to the table next to the window—it clearly wasn’t meant to be used as a desk—Vincent rooted through piles of papers.

  He hadn’t invited her in, but he had opened the door. That was good enough for Alexis. She entered and closed the door behind her.

  His room was smaller than hers and there was only one chair. He’d dragged the burgundy wing chair over and was obviously using it.

  “You still there?” He wasn’t talking to Alexis, thank goodness. Stooping, he went through the piles he’d stacked beneath the table.

  Alexis had a lovely lady’s escritoire in her room and she wasn’t using it for anything more than a catchall. She considered offering to switch rooms with Vincent, but didn’t, and she wasn’t particularly interested in examining her motives just then, either.

  She had other motives to worry about.

  “Here it is.” Vincent stood. Not easily, Alexis noticed.

  She casually wandered farther into the room and skirted the bed. Feeling awkward and hating that she felt awkward, she forced herself to perch on the corner of the bed. She was his fiancée. They would shortly be sharing said bed.

  “Yeah, give me a sec.” Vincent sat in the chair and grabbed for a pencil. Alexis watched him try to hold the tiny cell phone next to his ear with his shoulder and write. Several times, he rolled his shoulders.

  Alexis moved from the corner of the bed to the arm of the chair. “Here. Let me,” she whispered and began rubbing Vincent’s shoulders.

  Vincent exercised and kept himself in shape, but Alexis’s first impression was a bony scrawniness. But she forgot all that at the look of irritated surprise Vincent threw at her.

  “Just a minute, Jerry.” He muted the phone. His expression reminded her of the one he saved for first-year interns he thought had been stupid. “What are you doing?”

  Alexis slowly dropped her hands and let a few beats of silence go by during which she maintained her own expression—one that reminded him she was not a first-year intern.

  Fortunately for their future, he caved first. “Sorry, Alexis.” Vincent rubbed his forehead. “This whole Briarwood thing got very tense all at once. Be patient just a little longer.”

  “Just a little longer.” She smiled and gave his shoulders one more quick rub before standing. As she did so, she noticed a heated glimmer in his eyes before he returned his attention to the phone call.

  All right. She’d been looking for that glimmer. That particular glimmer was very reassuring. She should encourage that glimmer.

  And she knew just the way to do it. “See you in a minute.”

  Back in her room at her closet, Alexis removed the negligee that she’d been saving for her wedding night. It was neither bridal white nor vixen black, but a very naughty dusky peach ivory. The satin slip gown was elegant, glamorous, and it made her look completely naked at first glance. At several glances even. She’d pretend not to be aware of the fact, which should get Vincent’s motor running.

  She changed into it and studied herself in the full-length mirror. She was looking good. Although she hated to spoil the surprise, she really thought she ought to seduce Vincent tonight.

  She’d brought some candles with her for atmosphere and ripped off the plastic wrapping before stowing them in an overnigh
t bag she’d bring to the room with her.

  Vincent’s room was on the floor above her near the end of the hall by the stairs. Surprise was the plan. She wanted to appear at his door in her naked negligee. Vincent, the phone probably still glued to his ear, would be rendered mute. He would stare. She would smile and sashay past him into the room, a cloud of expensive…

  Alexis dug in her luggage until she found her cologne and squirted herself. Now, where was she? Right. Trailing heavenly scent past Vincent.

  He’d stare. He’d babble something into the phone and flip it closed.

  “Alexis!” he’d breathe in pleased surprise.

  She’d give him a coquettish look over her shoulder. Coquettish. She should practice that. She looked over her shoulder and tried a little smile. No, not that one. She tried again. Hmm. Coquettish and the naked negligee didn’t seem to go together. Better go for sultry or blatantly come-hither sexy.

  She found sultry much easier. Okay. Sultry it was. She would give him a sultry look as she placed the candles on either side of the bed. She’d light them and purse her lips as she blew out the match. Matches. She needed matches.

  Unless she had matches in her suitcase left over from a previous trip, Alexis didn’t have any matches with her. Just in case, she checked the drawers in the room.

  No matches. Though he didn’t smoke, Vincent carried a gold lighter given to him after some big-deal case. So, she’d give him the sultry look, turn back around, hold out the candles and in her huskiest voice ask, “Got a light?”

  It always sounded good in the movies. Then, if Vincent wasn’t already attempting to ravish her, she’d position the candles on the nightstand and sit on the bed.

  Surely he would have gotten the idea by then.

  Enough rehearsal. After that, she’d improvise.

  Alexis stuck her head out her door and looked up and down the hallway. Deserted. Excellent.

  The only tricky spot was passing over the balcony that linked the original brothel to a newer addition. She’d briefly be visible to the entire lobby and if anyone looked up, they’d see her in all her faux-naked glory.

  Cautiously, Alexis ventured out into the hallway.