She smiled over her shoulder at him. “Later, Kris.”
Tightening his hold on the hand in the bend of his arm, Derrick led Alana over to a table on a raised platform in a secluded corner. He seated her, then sat down opposite her. The flickering light from a votive cast long and short shadows over his face.
A waiter appeared out of nowhere. “Is there anything I can get for you, Mr. Warren?”
Derrick smiled at the woman sharing his table. “Would you like some champagne?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Cristal, Moët or Dom Perignon?”
“Dom Perignon.” She was flattered that she’d been given a choice. Usually men offered her whatever they drank.
“A bottle of Dom Perignon for the lady, and I’ll have my usual. Also, tell Hilda to put together a little something for me and my guest.”
Waiting until the waiter left to place his order, Derrick directed his full attention to Alana Gardner. “So, what do you do, Alana?”
Tilting her chin, she smiled at the record producer. What Derrick Warren didn’t know was that he would be perfect for her column. “I’m a magazine editor.”
“What magazine?”
“British Vogue. I’m the American Lifestyles editor.”
“You interview people?” She nodded. “Who have you interviewed lately?”
“I just completed one with a ninety-four-year-old French-Jewish woman who’d been Coco Chanel’s assistant. Madame Chartres escaped Paris within days of the Nazi occupation and lived in London for forty years before coming to the States to live with a distant cousin.”
Alana told Derrick about some of the other celebrities and personalities she’d interviewed, stopping when a waiter arrived with bottles of chilled Perignon and Cristal, and another with a platter of assorted hors d’oeuvres.
A minute later, place settings and flutes filled with the bubbling wine were set out on the table. Derrick picked up his flute, extending it to Alana. “Here’s to the most intelligent and beautiful blind date I’ve ever had.”
Smiling, she picked up her flute. “Thank you, Derrick.” She touched his glass to hers. “Here’s to friendship.”
He paused, his flute inches from his mouth, as his soulful gaze moved with agonizing slowness over her face. Marcus had set him up with Alana Gardner not because he couldn’t get a woman but because Alana was different from those who came on to him wanting either money, fame or bragging rights that they’d slept with one of today’s fastest-rising music producers. It didn’t matter that he’d paid P.S., Inc. thousands for Alana’s company. He’d been willing to pay six figures because she provided the perfect cover for his sexual proclivity. No one knew, and that included his family, other than Marcus Hampton, that he was gay. He couldn’t afford to come out of the closet as some actors were doing, because homosexuality was looked upon as a scourge in the hip-hop community. Whom he slept with would remain his secret.
Derrick didn’t know if Alana had a boyfriend and really didn’t give a damn. The fact that she was working as an escort meant she was available.
“To friendship,” he repeated.
Derrick had offered his car and driver to see her home, and Alana waited for the doorman to open the rear door of the dark blue Bentley.
She’d spent four hours at Hoops, drinking champagne and spreading tiny spoonfuls of beluga caviar onto wafer-thin triangles of toast. Derrick ate most of the smoked oysters, clams on the half shell and mussels. When she asked him to dance with her, he’d politely declined, saying he didn’t dance. But that didn’t stop Alana from dancing with the ballplayers who stopped by the table to exchange pleasantries with the club owner.
She realized she was more than slightly tipsy from the champagne and exhausted from dancing, but she’d do it all again in a heartbeat because it brought her one step closer to her goal of saving enough money to have a mega-wedding and her dream house in the suburbs.
CHAPTER 40
Faye woke up to incessant knocking. She sat up, disoriented; then she realized that she wasn’t in her own bed and that brilliant sunlight came through shuttered windows. Smiling, she remembered where she was.
She’d felt like Alice in Wonderland the moment she boarded the Boeing Business Jet. The aircraft, large enough to accommodate eighteen passengers, had two full bedrooms, two and a half baths and nearly a thousand square feet of living space. Within minutes of takeoff they were served a sumptuous dinner of veal scallopini with lemon-parsley sauce, penne a la vodka, celeriac salad and white wine.
Bart had suggested they rest during the flight, and both retreated to their bedrooms, where she’d fallen asleep. The jet touched down at the Owen Roberts International Airport, where they were whisked through Customs and escorted to an area where a driver awaited their arrival. The scent of saltwater and blooming flowers flowed through the automobile’s open windows during the drive to a private villa overlooking the ocean where the wedding and reception were to be held on the beach at sunset.
She slipped out of bed. “I’m coming.” Reaching for a peach-colored silk wrap at the foot of the bed, she pushed her arms into the generous sleeves. Walking on bare feet, she crossed the room and opened the door. Bart stood there in a pair of walking shorts, T-shirt and a pair of sandals, smiling at her behind the lenses of a pair of sunglasses.
“I thought you would have been up by now.” There was a teasing quality in his voice.
“What time is it?”
Bart glanced at his watch. “It is exactly five-fifteen.”
“Five…fifteen,” Faye repeated, sputtering. “We’re on vacation and you wake me up at five freakin’ fifteen in the morning!”
Crossing his arms over his chest, he angled his head. “Has anyone ever told you that you look very sexy early in the morning?”
Faye glanced down at her chest. She hadn’t bothered to close her wrap and there was no doubt he was talking about the lacy décolletage that was anything but modest. She closed the robe, tying the sash around her waist.
A slight frown creased Bart’s forehead when his gaze traveled downward. “What size shoe do you wear?”
She wiggled her bare toes. “Five. Why?”
“Will you be able to find women’s shoes in your size?”
Faye’s expression registered disbelief. “Yes, Bartholomew.”
He flushed under his light tan. Her calling him by his full name was no doubt a reprimand. “How would I know, Faye? I’m not in the habit of buying shoes for a woman.”
Faye felt properly chastised. She had no right to assume that he shopped for women. “I’m sorry—”
“There’s no need to apologize,” he said, cutting her off. “I’ve arranged for us to eat breakfast at six. At seven we’ll be given a full body massage, facial, manicure and pedicure. We’ll leave around eleven to go shopping. After that you’re on your own until the wedding. Let me know now if this meets with your approval…or whether there is something else you want or need?”
Heat found its way up Faye’s chest to her cheeks. Bartholomew Houghton had just verbally spanked her. “Your plans sound wonderful.”
Lowering his arms, Bart glared at Faye behind the dark lenses. There were times when he wanted to raise his voice to her, this being one, and there were many more times when he wanted to kiss her. Not a mere brushing of the lips, but a kiss that would make her swoon.
“I will see you on the veranda at six.” Turning on his heel, he walked away.
“Aye, aye, boss,” Faye called out to his retreating back, then pulled in a quick breath when he turned around, closed the distance between them and stood over her like an avenging angel.
“Is that how you see me, Faye? You think of me as your boss?”
She’d argued enough with Norman not to be intimidated by any man—and that included Bartholomew Houghton. “Why shouldn’t I? After all, you’re paying me to entertain you.”
“Wrong! I’m paying you to keep me company. Women I pay to entertain me I sleep with.
So let’s not confuse one with the other.”
Folding her hands on her hips, Faye lifted her chin in a defiant gesture. “I’ll be ready at six.” Stepping back, she closed the door, shutting out his thunderous expression.
She took off the wrap and flung it on a rattan chair. “The arrogant son of a bitch,” she mumbled as she headed for the bathroom. Bart sought to ease his conscience by making what he did morally correct when in fact he was no different from any man who paid a woman to spend time with him. They weren’t sleeping together, but the fact remained, she never would’ve dated Bart if Enid Richards hadn’t brought them together.
After a breakfast of sliced fruit, poached eggs, a fluffy croissant and rich Jamaica coffee, Faye lay on a table enjoying the expert ministrations of a full body massage and hydrating European facial. She opened her eyes to meet Bart’s amused gaze as he lay nude on a matching table; a towel covered his hips.
“Feeling better?”
She smiled at him. “Yes, thank you.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “You have to let me know when it’s your time of the month so I’ll know to keep my distance.”
She stared wordlessly at him. Her mouth opened and closed several times before she said, “You’re basing what I say to you on hormones?”
Bart winced when the masseuse kneaded a knot in his shoulder. The slender man had fingers like steel. “What other reason can you give for snapping at me? When are you due to get your period?”
“That’s none of your business,” she hissed between clenched teeth. Faye couldn’t believe he was asking her something so personal, and in front of two strangers.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Faye. Whenever we’re together everything about you is my business.”
There he was again, subtly reminding her that she was a bought woman. “Next week,” she said reluctantly.
“I thought so,” he said, closing his eyes.
Faye didn’t want to tell Bart that whenever she experienced PMS she sometimes went into bitch mode. She closed her eyes as her masseuse’s hands worked their magic.
She lost track of time and when she finally opened her eyes it was to stare at the man asleep on a table less than a foot away, a man who’d become the answer to all her prayers and dreams.
CHAPTER 41
Faye knocked on the door to the adjoining suite. The door opened. Bart stood there in a pale gray linen suit, matching shirt open at the throat and a pair of black slip-ons. He’d elected not to tuck the hem of his shirt into his waistband. His look was casually chic.
Shifting, she presented him with her back. “I need your help.” She’d managed to zip her dress halfway.
Bart couldn’t move. Faye was a vision of ethereal femininity. She’d spent two hours in a boutique trying on countless garments before she finally selected an A-line slip dress in lime-green chiffon with a lavender underskirt. The garment was perfect for her petite figure.
It took only twenty minutes for her to choose a Louis Vuitton wedge sandal in a soft pearl hue. He’d surprised himself when he’d sat patiently watching her model dresses and shoes for his approval because accompanying his late wife had not been an option. Deidre had claimed she always wanted to surprise him, and most times she did.
Deidre Dunn-Houghton had been a pretty, young woman who’d inherited her frumpy taste from her maternal grandmother. The older woman had assumed responsibility of raising the child after Deidre’s mother’s downward spiral into a world of alcohol and pills that eventually took her life when she was injured in a horrific automobile accident. Unfortunately Deidre suffered the same fate as her mother when she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills after her fourth miscarriage in eleven years of marriage.
Bart blinked once. Everything about Faye had snared him into a sensual maze from which he did not want to escape. The play of light in her gold-flecked eyes was mesmerizing, the glistening sheen of her satiny-brown skin hypnotic, and the curves of her body sent his libido into overdrive whenever she fixed him with her sensual stare. Everything about her seduced his senses because she had a way of staring at him that made him feel as if he were the only man in the world.
Faye peered at him over her shoulder. “Will you please zip me up?”
Bart prayed she hadn’t felt his trembling fingers when he completed the task. “You’re…” His words trailed off when a bell echoed throughout the villa. Lowering his head, he kissed the nape of her neck. “Don’t move.”
Faye smiled. He sounded so mysterious. “What is it?”
“Give me a minute, and I’ll be right back.”
Bart walked out of the bedroom and through a narrow hallway to the space doubling as a living room. He opened the door; a young dark-skinned man stood on the veranda.
“Bartholomew Houghton?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
The man handed him a cloth-covered flat case. “This is for you.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he removed a pen and receipt. “I need your signature.”
Bart scrawled his name on the receipt. He reached into the pocket of his slacks and handed the messenger a tip. “Thank you.”
The messenger nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
Bart closed the door and returned to the bedroom. Faye sat on a chair, legs crossed, one sandal-shod foot tapping rhythmically on the floor.
He winked at her. “I thought I told you not to move.”
Faye gave him a saucy grin. “Your minute was up.”
He beckoned to her. “Come here.”
She moved gracefully off the chair, the hem of her dress flowing fluidly around her shoes. She appeared taller, more willowy with the four-inch lacquered wedge heels. He handed her the case.
“What’s this?”
“Open it, Faye.”
She complied, her hands shaking noticeably when she saw what lay on a bed of white satin. An amethyst briolette suspended from a necklace of beaded peridot was the perfect complement for her dress. The case also held a pair of peridot briolette earrings.
“They’re beautiful.” She stared up at Bart. “When did you get these?” She slipped the wires into her pieced lobes.
He took the necklace and fastened it around her neck. The amethyst briolette lay between her breasts. “I called a jeweler and told him what you were wearing.”
“You have impeccable taste.”
“I know,” he whispered without a hint of modesty. He extended his hand. “It’s time we head over to the festivities.”
The weather and the setting were perfect for a beachfront wedding. Hundreds of yards of gauze secured to bamboo poles billowed in a gentle ocean breeze. Lighted candles under chimneys formed a path upon which the bridal party would proceed to the beach. Eight tables, with seating for four, were set up under the makeshift tent.
“Are you a friend of the bride or groom?” Faye asked Bart as they neared the wedding site.
“The bride’s father and I were college roommates.”
“Which college did you attend?”
“I did my undergraduate work at Yale, and I got a graduate degree from Columbia.”
“What were your majors?”
“Architecture at Yale, and business management at Columbia. Where did you go?”
“I went to Pace College for marketing and finance, then on to NYU for an MBA.”
Squeezing her fingers gently, Bart smiled and nodded. “Nice.”
Real nice, Faye thought sourly. So nice that the company she’d given her blood, sweat and now tears to for five years had given her account to two knuckleheaded interns—one who was sleeping with Faye’s boss, and the other who was the son of a vice president. Talk about nepotism and preferential treatment.
Bart let go of her hand and looped an arm around her waist. “Is there anything else you want to know about me?”
Tilting her head, Faye smiled up at him. “Is there anything lurid in your past that I could use to sell to a tabloid?”
Throwing back his head, Bart laughed. “I’m sorry to disa
ppoint you, beautiful, but I’m no A-list movie or rock star. In fact, on a scale of one to ten, ten being shocking and scandalous, I’d come in about a two.”
“You like being that inconspicuous?”
“I prefer it. Once your face is that recognizable your life changes so dramatically that you can never go back to do what is considered ordinary. When actors or performers really hit it big, they preen on the red carpet while their adorning fans scream for their attention. Then when they decide they want anonymity and a photographer puts a camera in their face, they’re threatening lawsuit because of an invasion of privacy. Once you whore for the public there’s no turning back.”
Bartholomew Houghton managed to keep a low profile, but Faye wondered how much her life would change now that she’d become his companion. And there was no doubt a mixed-race couple was certain to drawn some attention.
Leaning into Bart’s length, she made herself a promise. She was going to enjoy her role as social companion to one of the world’s richest men until he decided it was over, or she did. And she was realistic and mature enough to know that it would eventually come to an end.
A tall woman in a becoming pale pink suit approached them. “Bart, I’m so glad you could make it.” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him flush on the mouth. “Gary told me you sent back your response indicating you were coming, but he also expected you to call.”
Releasing Faye, Bart reached up and extracted his ex-roommate’s sister’s arms from his neck. “It’s nice seeing you again, Abbey. We’ll talk later, but first let me introduce you to my guest.” The woman stared at Faye as if she’d just materialized. “Faye, this is Abigail Grogan, the bride’s aunt. Abbey, Faye Ogden.”
Abbey’s bright blue eyes narrowed as she shot Faye a suspicious look. “I thought you were bringing your cousin.”
Bart frowned. “She couldn’t make it. Abbey, you’re forgetting your manners,” he chastised softly.
A flush spread over Abbey’s face. “I’m sorry, Bart.” She nodded to Faye. “Nice meeting you, Faye. Is it all right if I call you Faye?” she asked facetiously.
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