by Alison Kent
The ballroom beckoned, the orchestra playing a song from the big band era that had Heidi's fingers running keys on an imaginary sax. God, it had been so long since she'd played.
She missed it in a melancholy, regretful sort of way. The way one might miss childhood innocence. Because when she'd sold herself to Ben those fifteen years ago, she'd lost more than her self-respect.
She'd lost everything good in her life, all she'd held dear since her father had died. She'd lost the pride that had kept her from falling into her mother's gutter, and the decency she'd used to keep herself separate from the river kid life she'd survived.
But most of all she'd lost the belief that respect and pride and decency mattered to those who'd once judged her on where she came from. Her values had meant nothing when she didn't have a portfolio or a pedigree.
She'd lived with what her classmates, their parents, her teachers thought of her during those years. But she couldn't live with what she'd thought of herself. Because, in the end, she'd taken a man's money. She'd been desperate, and allowed a man to buy her dignity—a sin worse than the added indignity of promising her body.
Ben hadn't known what he'd done, and he couldn't be faulted. He'd behaved the way everyone who lived in his world did. And she'd behaved the same. She wondered if the contact he'd made in college had been an attempt to collect, wondered if that was all he wanted now.
Well, she'd find out soon enough, wouldn't she, she thought, and stepped into the middle of the music.
The first couple she spotted was Randy and Julie. They stood inside the ballroom's wide double doors talking to Ronnie and Starr. It occurred to Heidi that Randy was the one member of The Deck she hadn't spent much time alone with this weekend.
He was also the one who'd been telling tales to Julie. Which made him a good candidate for Heidi's first mission of the night—to get to the bottom of all this talk about the feelings she'd stirred, the whispers that had gone on behind her back both this weekend and in high school.
She walked up to the foursome, wiggled her fingers in a friendly hello to the pregnant couple,
winked at Julie with a shared female understanding and pulled Randy away with the crook of one finger. He didn't even hesitate, but followed like she was the Pied Piper and he was a rat.
"This song made me think of you," the lovable rat himself said, once they'd reached the dance floor.
He took her hand, placed his other at her waist and guided her easily through the crowd. "You remember that first day you showed up in the practice room? That song you played? This reminds me of that."
"It does, doesn't it?" Heidi said then fell silent, hoping the less she said the more Randy would say, increasing her chances for solving this mystery about what everyone thought about her.
"I had no idea what it was you were playing," Randy said. "I don't think the other guys did, either, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that you got it right. Every note was dead-on."
She nodded her acknowledgment of the compliment. "I learned from my dad, who learned from his dad—"
"And so on and so on and so on?"
She laughed. "Something like that. I'd played since I was able to hold his sax. Before that even, really. My dad had this chair." She hadn't thought about that chair in years. "Big and cushy and brown. He'd sit on the edge of the cushion. And I'd stand between his knees while he held the horn and showed me how to key. I couldn't have been more than five or six."
"I always wondered who taught you to play. You played like you'd been taking private lessons for years. But I assumed that, well, that—"
“That coming from the river I could hardly afford private lessons?" she asked and raised a brow.
His face reddened and he took a misstep. "Sorry. I need to be more careful where I put my feet."
"It's okay. You missed all but one toe."
He chuckled, deftly guided her out of the mainstream of the dance floor. "No. I meant I need to stop sticking them into my mouth."
"Oh. That." She slid the hand holding her evening bag higher on his shoulder, looked him in the eye and smiled. "Well, your assumption wasn't too far off the mark. I couldn't have afforded to pay for private lessons."
"But you didn't have to. You had your dad."
"Until I was eight. After that, I only had myself and a lot of practice."
"Well, yourself did a damn good job with all that practice." He spun her away, twirled her back. "You amazed more than a few people, you know."
Ah-ha. The exact direction she'd hoped to take this conversation. "No. I didn't know."
"I didn't think you did," he said and then he didn't say any more, dang it. He just led her into another dance as the orchestra played on.
So much for ah-ha. It was time to pull out Mighty Heidi's arsenal for dealing with a reluctant witness. "Julie mentioned that you said that to her. That you didn't think I knew a lot of what was said about me." Pause and step and pause and, "She also told me that there wasn't a single member of The Deck who thought of me as one of the guys."
This time Randy's misstep caused Heidi to misstep and knocked them both into Ben...who was dancing with Maryann Stafford.
"Hey, Ben. Maryann." Randy nodded toward the other couple. "Thanks for the save."
"What're friends for?" Ben asked, his eyes fast devouring Heidi's face, her eyes, her neckline, her mouth.
She could hardly remember where to put her feet, poor Randy, what with the fire in Ben's eyes. She was drifting, she was dreaming, she was dancing. She was in Ben's arms, on his bed, beneath his body...
Until Maryann broke the spell. "Randy, sweetie. I am so glad I was able to get away tonight. I haven't had a chance this weekend to see much of you at all."
Randy's mouth twisted wryly. "Well, now, Maryann. There's not really a lot I want you to see."
Heidi turned her head to hide her giggle, then glanced back and caught the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here roll of Ben's eyes. His jacket and tie were a severe black, his shirt a stark starched white.
The roguish pirate again, she thought. Getting stuck with Maryann tonight served him right for throwing all those pool parties in high school.
Maryann's low-throated chuckle was perfectly timed, and perfectly nauseating. "You haven't changed a bit, Randy. You're still the cut-up king." She reached in front of Heidi to lay a possessive hand along Randy's cheek. "I always said you should've been The Joker."
"But, then, what would we have done with Heidi?" Randy asked, looking exaggeratedly confused by the woman's suggestion. Between Ben-about-to-walk-the-plank and Randy-to-the-rescue, Heidi was having a hard time keeping a straight face. These four men of hers were just too much.
Maryann frowned, as if searching the unused banks of her memory. "Oh, yes. Heidi. Whatever happened to the poor little thing?"
"The poor little thing?" Ben and Randy chimed in unison, then Randy added, "You mean the girl who held The Deck together? Who was responsible for more than half the damn ensemble trophies in Johnson High's case?"
"Was she really? I had no idea." Maryann pressed tighter to Ben.
Probably making sure he noticed what she'd bought to hang the top of this season's two-piece on, Heidi thought, wincing at the new low she'd reached.
She smiled, at Ben first, then at Maryann's profile, so it didn't matter that her expression wasn't convincingly kind. "Yes. I was. Really."
Maryann whipped her head Heidi's direction. "You?"
"Yep. Poor little me." Heidi wiggled her fingers at the other woman just as Randy spun away, leaving the dread pirate Tannen to deal with Maryann and her cleavage, which gaped almost as widely as her mouth.
Randy whirled Heidi completely off the dance floor then, to a cozy table near the front wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Sherwood Grove golf course.
"You want a drink?" he asked, signaling a passing server and grabbing two flutes of champagne from the tray. He handed one to Heidi, then smoothed out the white linen tablecloth. "Some shindig, hu
h?"
"The rich get richer." Hadn't she once said that to Ben? Heidi searched out the dancing couple, found them weaving through the crowd near the center of the room, found Maryann trying hard to crack Ben's stone face. As if you're woman enough, sister.
"He's not going far."
At Randy's declaration, Heidi returned her attention to the table and away from the ballroom floor. "I was just making sure Maryann's top hadn't fallen off."
Randy cast a glance over Heidi's shoulder, shook his head. "It's not going to fall anywhere. Not with those...hangers."
"I'm not sure. Ben's laser vision might dissolve the silicone. He looks to be on the verge of a meltdown." Actually, he looked like an advertisement for heartburn."
"Trust me." Randy pulled her attention away from the dance floor. "He's not the least bit interested in Maryann, though I'm sure the opposite is true. She's available again, and on the prowl."
"Available. Is that anything like open for business?"
"Me-ow." Randy added a hiss. "What it means is that she's aggravating. Like junk mail. No. If Ben does a meltdown, it'll be over your red dress."
"You know, Randy...sweetie—" she added the latter with Maryann's sugared inflection "—I've heard so many innuendoes and insinuations this weekend that I'm immune. There is not a thing you can say that will get a rise out of me."
"Ben loves you."
Heidi's heart stopped, started again. Breathe, Heidi.
Breathe. Dizzy, she sucked in a sharp breath, and looked through the purple haze of unconsciousness at the calculated winner's smile on Randy's face.
The rat! He'd said Ben loved her. Not that Ben was in love with her. She was going to kill him. Strangle him. Bury him in that very expression. But, before she could work out the goriest of details, Randy spoke.
"The thing is," he said, his voice low. "We all love you."
Heidi blinked. "What?"
"You know what I said about remembering that first day you walked into the practice room?" She nodded and he went on. "Well, there's a reason I remember it so well. The same reason Jack and Quentin and Ben won't forget it, either.
"This is going to sound as corny as hell, but we all lost our hearts that day." He rubbed a hand over his forehead. "You walked in looking like you'd dressed at a garage sale on the way to school, acting like you were in charge of the whole damn band no matter how bad your haircut was.
"But then you played that sax. You got off on that song like you were Duke Ellington or someone."
Heidi smiled through misty eyes. "He played trumpet. Not sax."
"I know. I'm the trumpet guy, remember?" He cocked his chair back, lifted an imaginary horn. "But you get my drift. You were magic. And you cast some kind of spell that day that we all took four years' worth of ribbing over."
"You got ribbed?" Her heart pounded wildly, her eyes watered. "Because of me?"
"Yeah. Because of you." He leaned forward and, taking her hand in his, he squeezed. "You were talented and gutsy. A survivor. You didn't care what everyone thought about you, about what you wore, about how you got to school every day, about the house you went home to at night. The rest of us didn't care about anything else."
He was so wrong about that. So very, very wrong. She'd cared. She'd just never thought anyone else had.
"You intimidated the hell out of the other kids because you didn't put up with the bullshit. From anyone." He shifted nervously, released her hand to rake his fingers through his hair. "Hell, you know what kind of grades I made. And you know I hated being smart. But you wouldn't let me blow it all off."
How could he do this to her? Here? Now? After all these years? Lifting her drink with unsteady fingers, she turned her gaze toward the window where the golf course rolled away into the dark. She couldn't even see the first green because of the tears in her eyes.
Why had he waited so long to tell her what she'd needed to know? That she'd mattered. That she'd made a difference. Why did it feel like her heart was being ripped from her chest to know that she had had an impact? That she hadn't been an outcast. That she hadn't been alone.
Oh, God. She hadn't been alone. She sniffed, looked back and smiled. Her voice shook when she said, "For being smart, you were really stupid."
"Yeah. I was." Finally he relaxed and reached out a finger to lift an unshed tear from her lashes. "I'm not saying you made me see it then. In fact, I didn't see it until a long time later."
"Then why did you listen?"
"Because it was a lot easier to do what you said than to have to listen to you if I didn't."
"Oh, well. Thanks. It's nice to know I could be depended on to make your life miserable."
"Miserable?" He shook his head. "No. Interesting? Yes. I never knew anyone so focused. Nothing distracted you. It was like you didn't have room in your life for concerts or parties or anything that didn't have to do with band. Or with your future."
"You're right. I didn't."
He shook his head, laughed. "I still don't know how you managed. But you did. And that had a big impact on me. It had a big impact on a lot of people."
She wasn't going to tell him how she managed. That was one secret that would stay with her and Ben. And now with Quentin. "Yeah. I can see how much impact it had on Maryann Stafford. 'Heidi, who?"'
"She knew who you were. Everyone here knows who you are. They just don't know what to say."
She didn't care. It didn't matter. How could it when she had the love of her four men? "They don't have to say anything, Randy. You just said it all."
His face pulled into a smug male grin as he looked up and over her shoulder. "No. Not all. There's more."
Uh-oh. "More?"
"More. And he's headed straight this way."
Chapter Eight
IF HE DIDN'T GET off the dance floor, get across the room to Randy's table, get Heidi to himself and soon, Ben was going to blow a gasket. His anticipation had started weeks ago, a pot set to a slow simmer on the flame of her RSVP.
He'd wondered for years if he'd ever see her again, if his curiosity would find satisfaction, if their unfinished business would come to a close. If he was the only one who felt they had a circle to complete.
She'd answered that question in the club, with the language of her body and the poetry of her kiss, starting a twenty-four-hour slow bum in his gut. He'd thought about antacid, then thought, why bother. He wouldn't take a watering can to a bam fire. Same thing.
On the ball field the heat had intensified. She'd been a fiery little thing this afternoon, both barrels of frustration blazing beautifully with an untamed heat. He knew what she was feeling, the male version anyway, and the added fuel of her passion had his flame turned on high.
Now, finally, here they were tonight. And his blood had reached full boil.
He'd been watching her since she'd arrived, in the foyer as she took in her surroundings, the guileless child impressed by the opulence, the worldly woman who'd seen it all before. She'd lived both sides of wealth's coin.
He'd watched her on the dance floor in Randy's arms, watched the tilt of her chin as she laughed, the life in her eyes, a sparkle he'd never seen until last night when she'd met his gaze in the club—when she'd refused to flinch at his reaction to seeing her again. Seeing all that she'd wanted him to see.
She was beautiful. He'd never doubted she would be once she grew beyond the need for the scarecrow hair, the flea-market fashion, the armor of the anger and the attitude. But the truth beat the pants off his fantasy.
That hair he'd so hated yet had fit her so well had grown into a cascade of curls he wanted draped on his skin. His fingers knew the texture, but his fingers didn't count. He wanted to feel the slide of that silk across his chest, across his abdomen, and lower.
He wanted to feel her mouth there as well. That mouth that had always been so sassy. That mouth that he'd now kissed twice and would be kissing thoroughly again before the hour was out.
She'd never worn makeup. She wore it artfully now
. And, yeah, so sue him, it added to his fantasy.
He liked looking at the color on her skin, at the hair she managed to hold up with one tiny clip. He liked the fit of her clothes, tight in places, concealing in others, because both alluded to what lay beneath.
But more than all of that, he couldn't wait to see her with her skin scrubbed clean after kisses and sleep, her hair tumbled and tangled from his hands, her clothing tossed alongside his on the bedroom floor and her skin bare.
That's how he wanted Heidi. That's how he planned to have her, and soon. That is, if he made it through the crowd milling around the edge of the dance floor and over to the damn table she shared with Randy.
He knew she saw him coming. She was looking back over her shoulder, her knuckles white against a glass of pink champagne. Her eyes widened with each step he took closer, the set of her mouth grew less certain.
He'd been trying to get to her all night. It was taking way too long. She was wearing red. And revealing a lot of skin he'd never seen before and wanted to see closer, wanted to touch, wanted to taste.
Then, finally, he was there and she was sitting only two feet away, but his throat was tight and his tongue was tied and the present had tangled up in the tails of the past.
All he could think to do was hold out his hand. "Let's go."
Unsure, she looked up. "Let's go?"
"Let's go," he repeated.
Glancing at Randy, she reached for her bag, drew it slowly across the table. Randy shrugged, nodded with enthusiasm, shooed her away with a resounding, "Let's go!"
She got to her feet, placed her fingers in Ben's, met his gaze with a no-guts-no-glory expression. "Let's go."
It was about damn time.
Enclosing her slender fingers in his, Ben headed for the closest exit. The set of glass doors opened onto a flagstone terrace landscaped in the same pink roses lining the club's front walkway.
The music spilled into the balmy June night, bringing with it couples who'd escaped the press of ballroom bodies to dance quietly, privately, to sit on scattered terrace benches and talk, kiss, share a drink, touch.
