Suddenly...Marriage!

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Last night it was the easiest thing to prepare, given the limited resources.” She shook her head. It didn’t matter to her what he ate: O’Hara was well past the age where he needed a keeper. And if he did need one, she wasn’t interested in the opening. Cheyenne brought her mind back to the interview. “Why an endless string of boarding schools? Why not just one?”

  He laughed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t catch that. I was expelled from a couple of schools.” Grant paused, knowing that if she dug around a little, she could find out the truth if she chose. “Five, actually,” he amended. “Boarding school directors frown on individuality in their students, and I never much fancied being a sheep.”

  Cheyenne recalled what Stan had told her about him: Grant O’Hara chose his own path and it hadn’t been the one his brothers had picked. “Even a black one?”

  He liked the implication, but it just wasn’t true. “I’m not a black sheep, Cheyenne. I’m the only white one in the family. Perhaps with a few shades of gray thrown in,” he allowed. He reached for his coffee.

  She absently took a sip of hers, then pressed on. “Why your own company? Why not your father’s?” In her estimation that would have been easier. But Grant wasn’t the kind of man, she was beginning to realize, who particularly liked things easy. She had no idea why she found that as exciting, as sexy as she did.

  “Well, for one thing,” he reminded her, “my father’s still alive and running his. That’s when he’s not busy getting married.”

  She heard the disparaging note in his voice, and it echoed the way she felt about her mother’s relationships. Maybe Grant was right: they did have that in common.

  “Why not serve as heir apparent and wait your turn?” she asked, wanting to know. To most, that would have seemed the logical route. “You’re obviously the only one in the family with business sense.”

  Grant laughed shortly at her assessment. “I’m probably the only one in the family with sense, period. My brothers had theirs surgically removed a long time ago, or at least anesthetized.”

  It wasn’t so much a bitter statement as a sad one. All right, if he wanted to go that far, she’d follow. “With too much alcohol, drugs and sex?”

  She surprised him. He would have thought, given her personality, that she would have shied away from the darker topics. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

  Why would he think that she would? Just because her personal life was rated PG didn’t mean that she was afraid to pursue grittier stories. She was a journalist, not a cloistered nun.

  “No, I don’t,” she said with feeling. She was proud of her work, proud of her instincts when it came to getting a story, and she wouldn’t allow anyone to undermine that. “All right, I’ll frame another question for you. Why didn’t you just go the route your brothers did? It’s easier.”

  The smile was slow, thoughtful, sexy. His answer confirmed her feelings about his preferences. “Maybe I don’t like easy. Maybe what I like is a challenge.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I find challenges stimulating. Besides, it’s been done before—the poor, misunderstood rich kid, looking for his identity inside every party invitation.”

  His tone had changed again. “You sound angry.”

  He hadn’t meant for that much to come out. He shrugged, looking away. “Maybe.”

  But she wouldn’t let this go. She had something, she thought, she just didn’t know what. “At who?”

  All right, she wanted to know, he’d tell her. “Them, my brothers. My half brothers,” he clarified. Each one born to a different mother. It almost seemed like a game to him at times, his father trying to preserve his name by planting his seed in newer and—the old man hoped—more fertile ground each time. “They’re wasting their lives.”

  Abruptly, Grant realized that he’d strayed off the track, taking Cheyenne to an area where he had never intended to take anyone. “But the interview isn’t about them, is it?”

  She wasn’t willing to let it go just yet. “They’re part of you.”

  Once, he’d thought that they might be close, but that had died early. Now, he had far less in common with his brothers than he did with his staff, blood notwithstanding. Grant lifted a careless shoulder in reply. “We share the same father.”

  “But not the same memories?” she prodded gently, hoping for just a little more insight into his world. His personal world. It was what she knew the readers wanted. And it was, she had to admit, what she wanted, too. “Schools, holidays, something?”

  He thought for a moment. “Maybe some of the earlier holidays,” he allowed tentatively. “There was this one Christmas I can remember.” He smiled, just a little, without realizing it. “My father was actually home to see us open presents on Christmas morning.” He tried to bring the scene up in his mind. “That was when he was married to George’s mother, Belinda.”

  Cheyenne did a quick mental inventory. “George is your youngest brother?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “You did do your homework.”

  With a half-playful imitation of a star pupil called on to perform at a recital, she rattled off the other names. “Your other brothers are Gary, Gregory and Garth. Why all g’s?”

  He laughed. “First letter of the words good and God. Maybe my father saw himself as the latter, creating something he hoped was the former.” He wondered if that had come across as bitterly as he thought it had. “Anyway, that’s the impression I got. I really don’t know for certain, we never talked much. The old man always preferred letting his money do the talking for him.”

  She could see that the moment was awkward for him, and let him off the hook as painlessly as she could. “I’m sorry, I interrupted your story. You were telling me about spending Christmas with your brothers.”

  He shrugged. “Not very much to tell, just that we were together then, and for once we actually seemed like a real family.” He’d had his hopes, but then, his grandmother had always called him the sensitive one, though he’d prevailed upon her not to say that to people when he was grown. “But,” he concluded matter-of-factly, “the old man and Belinda had to leave for the Bahamas that afternoon so the holidays were relegated to just a few hours.”

  Which he remembered even now, she thought. That meant his family was important to him. Moved, understanding the need to bond, to feel secure, she reached across the table and placed her hand on his.

  He raised his eyes, looked surprised, then smiled.

  As if afraid that she might be communicating too much, leaving herself opened, Cheyenne withdrew her hand.

  She was good, Grant thought. Very good. Coaxing things from him he wasn’t even aware of releasing. “Stan knew what he was doing when he sent you.”

  “He likes my photographs.”

  Grant shook his head. As eloquent as she was with a camera, that wasn’t what he had in mind. “I’m not talking about that. You know how to wheedle things out of people.”

  “I wasn’t wheedling,” she countered. “I was listening.”

  “Yeah,” he acknowledged quietly, “you were.” And not many people listened and heard these days. Only a handful that he knew, and he hadn’t wanted any one of those in his bed.

  The way he wanted her.

  It was best for both of them if she got back to business, Cheyenne thought. “Okay,” she began again, “so childhood, other than remembering being tossed out for being an individual, was a blur. Moving right along to your adult years—why your own company?”

  “Because I don’t like sitting back and having things handed to me.” He thought about the whirl of parties in his earlier years, the ones that would probably have put even Mardi Gras to shame. It was a mad merry-goround, going nowhere, and he’d gotten off quickly enough once he realized that. “Because I wanted to do something other than watching my tan deepen or feeling my liver rot—and multimedia was an incredibly fastgrowing area.”

  But she had done more homework on the “public” O’Hara than he had realized.

  “Not
when you got into it,” she said.

  No, when he had gotten into it, it had been on the ground floor with only a vague, hopeful whisper of the giant it might become. But then, there had been some who’d said the same about the Edsel. Getting into the business when he had, had been a risk, pure and simple, but one he was bound to take.

  “Let’s say I inherited my father’s business instincts.” His half brothers might have too, but they had never made the attempt to find out, preferring to spend most of their time in one artificially achieved haze or another. “Besides, the idea of being first at something appealed to me.”

  “So you mentioned before.” Was it a catchword, she wondered, or an obsession with him? He didn’t look like the obsessive type, but then, she knew well enough that appearances were deceiving. “Is being first that attractive to you?”

  His hand on hers, he brushed his thumb lightly over the inside of her palm, watching in fascination as her pupils darkened.

  “Lady, you have no idea.” He wanted to be her first, despite what he’d said the other night about the responsibility that went with the honor. His eyes caressed her, slowly, with feeling. He saw that hint of a blush in her cheeks again and it charmed him. “I have to attend a charity function tonight. Why don’t you join me?”

  He switched topics fast enough to leave a draft in his wake, she thought. Very deliberately, though with a small pang of regret, she disengaged her hand from his. “Don’t tell me that Grant O’Hara doesn’t have a date for the ball.”

  “Not for this one. What do you say?”

  There was nothing in her suitcase, nothing in her whole wardrobe, she suspected, that was even remotely acceptable at the kind of functions he would attend. “I don’t have anything suitable to wear.”

  “Sorry, that’s not a good enough excuse.” He pulled out his wallet and extricated a credit card. “There’re several boutiques on the ground floor of the hotel. Find something you like and charge it to my account.” He held out the card to her.

  Cheyenne made no move to take it from him. “I don’t accept clothes from men.”

  He shook his head. “Boy, you do come with a lot of rules, don’t you? All right, how about accepting them from assignments?” He dangled the card in front of her, but she declined. With a sigh, he returned it to his wallet, slipping the latter inside his jacket. “Or, if you like, you can use your own charge card.” And then a thought struck him. “Or better yet, charge it to Stan as part of your expense account—that’ll teach him to beat me at poker.”

  Cheyenne rolled his invitation over in her mind. She supposed she could go; after all, she’d missed the opportunity to take photographs of him at Mardi Gras. A gala charity event might do in its stead. “Just where is this event?”

  “Don’t worry, we’re not flying anywhere, although you did take the return flight better than the one yesterday.”

  He’d been right: distraction was part of it and she’d had her mind on other things. On him.

  “We didn’t have a storm as copilot this time,” she pointed out.

  Grant accepted her excuse like the gentleman he was, thinking it prudent not to point out that she’d seemed preoccupied during the short flight home. “The function’s at the Belvedere Hotel.”

  She felt herself capitulating. Why not? He was, after all, a charming escort. And if a small part of her was entertaining thoughts of a more personal nature in regard to Grant, seeing him in his element, with women fawning all over him, would surely squelch them quickly enough.

  “I can bring my camera?”

  “You can bring an entire film crew if you want. So, will you come?”

  What the heck, it was for the magazine, right? “All right, what time?”

  One victory down, half a dozen to go, he thought. If his smile was a tad triumphant, he figured he could be forgiven. “Eight. I’ll send the limousine.”

  Cheyenne stood before the beveled, full-length oval mirror, a little in awe of the woman she saw looking back at her. Very carefully, she ran her hands along her hips, smoothing fabric that needed no smoothing.

  She felt like Cinderella, although no squadron of little mice and birds could have come up with this particular little number, she mused. Only a fairy godmother’s wand could even have begun to manage this creation.

  A fairy godmother—or a designer whose asking price could have gone a long way to seeing her mother and her through almost a year, back in the old days, Cheyenne thought as she turned to get a glimpse of the back.

  Wow.

  She’d decided to splurge and have her hair done as well, thinking that just this once she would see how the other half lived.

  The other half lived very extravagantly.

  Slowly, she turned around in a full circle, enjoying the way the light played off the silver threads woven into the hot pink gown. What there was of it.

  Plunging down in the front to form a tempting V, the gown was completely backless. Thin strapped, it was floor length and adhered to her body like a second, enticing skin. Along the right side, it sported a long, sexy slit that ended at the upper part of her thigh and allowed the viewer a glimpse of long, slender leg with each movement she made.

  As she turned, her gown winked seductively, flashing bursts of light that were reflected in the mirror, forming tiny stars. Just like the wedding gown in her dream, she realized.

  Maybe that was what had attracted her to it in the first place. Although its vivid, hot pink color placed it light years away from a wedding gown.

  A wicked smile crossed her lips as she faced front again. Not half bad, she mused.

  “Oh, Mamma, if you could only see your little plain Annie now,” she murmured.

  She had always been plain Annie to her mother. The few times Anita Tarantino had really looked at her daughter, she’d only seen what the outside world might glimpse in passing, and she had despaired.

  “How are we ever going to find a man for an ugly duckling like you, Annie?”

  Look what I found without even trying, Cheyenne thought. Although, like the stole she’d rented, Grant O’Hara would be returned to his place of origin at the end of the evening.

  Cheyenne reached for the white stole, smiling to herself. It’d looked so real, she’d made the owner of the shop show her a certificate of purchase that declared it to be made of imitation ermine. Satisfied that no animals had died to give her this evening, she’d signed the bottom of the charge slip. Though she’d been tempted to revert the charges to the magazine, she knew she was getting too much enjoyment from the evening to allow the magazine to foot the bill. It wouldn’t have been fair.

  She paid for everything herself. It put quite a dent in her savings account.

  “Sometimes,” she murmured at her reflection, “you’re too damn honest for your own good.” But she couldn’t have been anything else and still have felt at ease with herself. Certain things were a given.

  Just like her promise to herself.

  The light rap on the door sent her pulse scrambling. Maybe, she thought with a sudden burst of panic, this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe she didn’t look as good as she thought she did, and wouldn’t fit in at the charity function. Maybe...

  Maybe she should stop thinking like plain Annie and open the door, Cheyenne upbraided herself. Crossing the room, she took a deep breath before placing her hand on the doorknob.

  Chapter Ten

  “You’re not saying anything.”

  It was only by exercising extreme control that Cheyenne didn’t shift self-consciously beneath his scrutiny. Grant stood in the doorway, silently staring at her. She wanted to turn and run, slamming the door in his face. This had been a huge mistake; she had no business wearing something like this. She was just plain Annie Tarantino from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and always would be.

  Grant cleared his throat. It didn’t help. There was more moisture in the Arizona desert in the middle of July than there was in his mouth right now.

  God, but she was beautiful. Bone-
meltingly beautiful. “That’s because it’s difficult to talk after you’ve swallowed your tongue.”

  She looked at his eyes to see if he was laughing at her. There was something there, but it wasn’t laughter. It began to warm her. “Then you like it?”

  Weren’t there any mirrors in her suite? He thought incredulously. “If I didn’t have this obligation hanging over me and you didn’t have that damn promise holding you back, I’d show you just how much I like it.”

  The look in his eyes said he might just do it anyway, despite the obstacles. Cheyenne felt a little shiver of satisfaction waltz down her bare spine. She smiled, relieved, as she picked up her purse and her standard camera.

  “Then I guess I won’t stand out like a sore thumb.” She threaded the camera strap over her shoulder before slipping the stole around it.

  Grant closed the door behind them as they stepped out into the hall. With his arm around her, he escorted her to the elevator. “Oh, you’ll stand out, all right, but it won’t be thumbs that’ll be sore. It’ll be egos. Because you’re with me.”

  Why did that sound so good, so inviting, to her when she knew it was only temporary, only for the night and only because of the assignment?

  “I don’t want to cramp your style,” she told him, knowing she was babbling. She always babbled when she felt nervous—a horrible habit, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “I want you to feel free to mingle and socialize with whomever it is you normally socialize with. I’ll just fade into the background and take my pictures.” Stop me any time before I stick my foot completely in my mouth and swallow it, she pleaded silently.

  The elevator arrived, empty, and they got on. He pressed for the ground floor. “There’s little chance of you fading into any background I’m aware of.” His eyes skimmed over her. “Whatever that dress cost, it wasn’t enough. I’m not sure if I want to go out with you looking like that.” He laughed softly to himself. “Not without a set of dueling pistols on me.”

  She knew that Dueling Oaks in City Park was famous for the duels that had been waged there, but all that was in the past. “There haven’t been any duels fought here for over a hundred years.”