Oh, God, was she fooling herself about him? Or was Wendy right? Had Blake beaten a hasty retreat in the middle of the night because what had happened between them had scared him?
If that was true, God knew he wasn’t the only one. The intensity of what had gone on between them that night had scared her, too.
But what scared her even more was the thought of living the rest of her life without him.
With all her heart, she prayed that it was really the same way for him.
Chapter Fifteen
This was a mistake.
He’d made a huge mistake, Blake thought, not for the first time in the past two days.
The uneasy thought that he was running from something rather than to something had hit him a couple of minutes before he’d presented his boarding pass to the attendant at the airport. Because it was around that time that it had finally hit him that the scenarios he was replaying in his head were all about the night he’d spent with Katie, and not the possible future he was going toward by flying back to Atlanta.
By flying back to Brittany.
It was Katie’s face he saw when he closed his eyes, Katie’s skin he felt beneath his fingertips when he had allowed his mind to drift off for a moment as he’d stared out the window at the cloud formations on the horizon.
Yes, his pulse raced when he thought of Brittany, raced like the pulse of an adolescent involved with his first crush.
But the emotions that filled him when his thoughts turned to Katie belonged not to a boy, or to a hormonal teenager, but to a man, with a man’s desires. And a man’s needs.
Was it just a case of not knowing what he wanted? he’d challenged himself. Was he doomed just to want what he didn’t have, or couldn’t have at the moment?
Here he was, sitting at a table with Brittany at the fundraiser, just as he had been fantasizing about for the past three weeks, and the only thing he could think about was Katie.
Would he be sitting and pining after Brittany if he were sitting here with Katie?
No, he realized, he wouldn’t.
Because he hadn’t.
When he had been with Katie that night, made love with Katie that night, there wasn’t so much as a single molecule in his body that longed for Brittany. He’d wanted to be just where he was—with Katie. Making love with Katie.
And he’d known it, he told himself. Known it because, even as he landed in Atlanta, he’d called his father to let him know that he’d decided not to attend the fundraiser.
His father had not been happy.
“You will attend.” No request, just a command. The way it had always been. “You’re representing the family at the fundraiser. If you don’t attend with Brittany, there’ll be all sorts of talk about it by morning. I won’t have it.”
He’d wanted to say he didn’t care. That people would always gossip because they had no lives of their own to occupy themselves with, but Blake knew how much his father despised gossips and rumors, wanting to always be above both. The man worked hard and he was exceedingly image-conscious.
“It’s not like I’m asking you to marry her,” his father went on to say. “Although—” he paused to speculate “—a merger between the two families might not be such a bad idea.”
This was where Blake had drawn a line. He’d had to. “My marriage isn’t going to be a merger, Dad,” he’d said in no uncertain terms.
“Suit yourself,” his father had responded, controlling his annoyance. “But you are attending the fundraiser.”
To refuse would have been to fuel a huge argument he’d wanted no part of, so Blake had agreed.
Which was how he came to be sitting here, at the fundraiser, with a woman who was garnering all sorts of appreciative looks from men who obviously envied him his close proximity to her. He knew that a good many of those men would have given their eyeteeth to be in his position. As ever, Brittany was enchantingly beautiful—and he had absolutely nothing to say to her. Not a single word.
He had outgrown the Brittany he remembered. And, quite honestly, she was coming up lacking in every way when he compared her to Katie. She didn’t have the deep commitments that Katie had—to her this fundraiser wasn’t so much about collecting money for the proposed new pediatric wing that the hospital wanted to build as it was about being seen—and admired—by the right people. She certainly didn’t have the broad spectrum of interests that Katie had. Her interests all seemed to center around fashions—specifically, which ones were the most becoming on her.
She’d been expounding on the subject for what felt like an eternity now.
What could he have been thinking, wanting to win this woman? he upbraided himself. It would be like winning a gag gift, he thought, shaking his head.
Feeling trapped and counting the minutes until he could leave, Blake nodded his head periodically as Brittany droned on. Absently, he looked around the ballroom, searching for a familiar face that could afford him at least a temporary excuse to leave the table for a few minutes of respite. He really needed to clear his head of Brittany’s endless chatter.
As he scanned the area, his eyes washed over a sea of faces, some very vaguely familiar, but most not.
Blake froze as his eyes widened.
Oh, God, now his mind was playing tricks on him. He actually thought that he saw Katie in the room. But that was impossible. This was a black tie, invitation only affair. She wouldn’t have been able to get in.
Damn it, that was Katie, he realized. He’d know that determined expression on her face anywhere. It was hers exclusively. He stopped wondering how she’d gotten in and began wondering why she’d gotten in.
Was something wrong?
He sat up at attention as he watched her cut across the floor. She was heading for his table like a bullet—and right behind her, huffing and puffing as he attempted to catch up, was the heavyset man who had been standing at the entrance to the reserved ballroom, checking everyone’s invitation.
Darting around the corpulent man as he tried once again—unsuccessfully—to grab her, Katie arrived at his and Brittany’s table.
“So you are here,” she declared angrily. A part of her had prayed that she wouldn’t find him here. That at the last moment, he had realized how vapid Brittany was and had bowed out of the fundraiser, sending in a silent pledge in his place.
So much for the power of prayer, Katie thought cynically.
Still huffing, the gatekeeper began apologizing. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Fortune—”
Blake waved away the man’s words. “That’s all right, she’s my assistant.”
The man slanted an annoyed look at Katie. “Well, as long as you know her…” the chagrinned gatekeeper murmured. Bowing, he was grateful to just disappear and put this behind him.
Blake’s attention was already focused on Katie. “What are you do—?”
Blake got no further than that. Katie swung around and gave it to him with both barrels. She was going to say her piece if they were the last words she ever uttered.
“You have one hell of a nerve, you know that?” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that people were looking their way. She didn’t care. He had this coming to him. “Standing there and acting as if you’re happy to see me when the dust is still settling from the way you rushed away from Wendy’s house in the middle of the night. You didn’t even have the decency to wait until I was up and look me in the eye!”
Everything she was saying was true. He knew that if he couldn’t make her understand, he was going to lose her. “Katie, I—”
Brittany rose to her feet, all but knocking over her chair. “This is Katie?” Brittany cried in disbelief. Critical eyes looked Katie up and down as if she were nothing more than a mannequin in a boutique. “This is why you’ve been acting lik
e a damn fool to me all evening?” she demanded incredulously.
“I thought you were ready to get serious, instead, you’ve been preoccupied all night. You haven’t paid attention to a word I’ve said. My brother pays more attention to me than you did tonight. And now I understand why—well, I don’t understand,” Brittany corrected haughtily, a contemptuous look on her face as she regarded Katie, “but I see why.” Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she planted impatient hands on her small hips. “Why didn’t you just come out and tell me you were in love with someone else, instead of making me endure this evening?”
Katie’s mouth dropped open and she stared at Blake as if she’d never seen him before.
Unbelievable!
“You’re in love with someone else besides Brittany?” she cried. How could she have ever been in love with this man? “What are you trying to do, start a harem? You think just because your last name is Fortune you can just go around, collecting whatever woman catches your fancy? Who the hell do you think you are?”
Bombarded from all sides by her rhetoric, Blake didn’t know where to begin, but he knew he had to start somewhere. “No, I—”
Again, she wouldn’t allow him to get further. Jabbing her forefinger in his chest, Katie continued to blast him.
“You know what’s wrong with you? You don’t know what you want. Love isn’t something you can form a stupid campaign around. You don’t execute ‘strategies’ to win someone, you watch them, you find out what they like, what makes them smile, and then you try your damnedest to do the things that make them smile. You protect love, you nurture love, you don’t run a campaign for it.”
She closed her eyes, willing herself not to cry, even though she could feel the angry tears starting to form. “You’re obtuse and blind and it’s my damn bad misfortune—pardon the pun—to be in love with you.”
He focused in on the only thing that was important to him. “You’re in—?”
“Yes!” she snapped. He might as well know. This way, maybe someday he’d realize just what it was that he had allowed to slip away. “Love. L-O-V-E. Love. I’m in love with you. Or was,” she deliberately amended. What she felt for Blake wasn’t in the past tense, but she was determined to get it to be. There was no point in loving a man who spread himself so thin and couldn’t even recognize what had been right in front of him all along. “But I’m over you now. Oh, and by the way, I quit!” she shouted at Blake.
He stared at her, stunned, trying to pull everything together into a large, coherent whole. “But you can’t quit now—”
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, no? Just watch me!”
With that, Katie quickly spun on her heel and ran from the ballroom as fast as Cinderella had when she heard the clock in the tower chiming midnight.
It took him half a second to come to. When he did, Blake rounded the table and took off after her.
Behind him, he heard Brittany call his name, demanding that he come back. He didn’t bother turning around. He had no doubts that Brittany would find someone else to squire her around before the hour was up.
As for him, he had to make Katie listen to reason.
For a woman in high heels, he thought, Katie could really move. Determined to catch her before she got to the parking lot, he poured it on and finally managed to get within reaching distance of her, just outside the main ballroom.
Grabbing her arm, Blake spun her around to face him. Then, before she could begin to upbraid him all over again, he kissed her.
Long and hard.
Both breathless to begin with, they only became more so as the seconds ticked away and the kiss deepened in width and breadth.
When his lips finally left hers, Katie was dazed, lost in the heat and the passion of the moment. Wishing with all her heart that things could be just that simple. But then, as the last few minutes and what she’d heard from Brittany came flooding back to her, her indignation spiked. Her automatic reaction was to haul off and slap him across the face. Her fingers stung, but it was a small price to pay.
And then, in case he didn’t already know why she’d hit him, Katie told him.
“That’s for kissing me when you’re in love with someone else,” she shouted, struggling in vain to get out of his grasp.
Blake continued holding on to her, his grip tightening. He was determined to make her listen to him. She had to know the truth.
“The only person I’m in love with is you,” he shouted back at her.
Because they were attracting attention again and she didn’t want to be the object of anyone’s pity, Katie forced herself to lower her voice.
“What about the other woman you’ve been seeing?” she accused.
“There is no other woman,” Blake insisted. “Think,” he implored when her face remained impassive. “The only woman I’ve been seeing night and day for the past few weeks is you. And you’re wrong about my not knowing what I want. I do know what I want,” he told her, his eyes caressing the soft, inviting contours of her face. “And it’s you,” he concluded in a whisper.
Right, like she really believed that. Just how gullible did he think she was?
“You want me,” she said sarcastically. “And that’s why you ran off yesterday morning and that’s why you’re here now, worshipping at Brittany’s feet.”
Okay, there he had her, Blake thought, beginning his rebuttal here. “Did Brittany sound as if she thought I was worshipping her?” he wanted to know. They both knew that the woman looked as if she’d wanted his head—or perhaps some other viable part of his body—on the chopping block.
“Well, no,” Katie was forced to admit.
He looked at her for a long moment, debating the next thing he had to say. But, if he was going to get her back, he knew there was no debate. He was going to have to sacrifice his pride. There was no other way.
“And as for your first point,” he began after taking a long breath, “much as it pains me to say this, I left you before you woke up because I felt all turned around. Everything I thought I wanted, I didn’t anymore. And what I didn’t think I wanted, I did.”
He was trying to confuse her, she thought. “I don’t understand.”
Blake laughed shortly. That was exactly how he’d felt when he’d found himself unable to fight the strong attraction he’d felt for her the other evening. And even more so that night, after they’d made love and she lay sleeping in his arms.
“Welcome to the club. I needed to sort things out. To decide what I did want and what I didn’t. By the time I got to Atlanta, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to reconnect with Brittany.”
Oh, God, if she could only believe him. But the evidence all pointed otherwise. “And yet,” she pointed out, “here you are.”
“I’m here because you might have noticed that my father is very big on obligations and I’m the one who’s supposed to be representing the family at this particular affair.” Never mind that he’d initially lobbied for it. Once it was agreed upon, there was no getting out of it, short of a funeral. His.
“Since I was supposed to be Brittany’s escort,” he continued, “I went through with the charade, but that was all it was, a charade,” Blake insisted. “I sat there, counting the minutes until I could leave. And then you came and sprang me,” he concluded with a smile.
Her resistance was beginning to break down and she was starting to believe him. Maybe because she wanted to so badly.
“And caused a scene.”
He shrugged indifferently. “It’ll give them something to talk about,” he said, referring to the people attending the fundraiser.
But these were people he knew, people he interacted with socially. Now that she was regaining her composure, she didn’t want him feeling awkward around these people. “Do you care?” she wanted to know.
>
“The only thing I care about is hearing your answer when I show you this—” he took out a black velvet ring box from his pocket “—and ask you a question.” He took a breath. Here goes everything, he thought. “Will you marry me?”
She couldn’t help it, she’d been hurt so much, that naturally her suspicions were aroused again. “If you don’t want to have anything to do with Brittany, what are you doing with an engagement ring in your pocket?” she asked.
“It isn’t for her,” he replied, his eyes on Katie’s. “I was bringing the ring back to give to you.” He held it out to her a second time. “It belonged to my great-great-grandmother. Family legend has it that she was a spitfire, too,” he told her with a grin, then grew serious when she didn’t immediately accept the ring. “We can reset it if you like.”
“Don’t you dare. It’s beautiful just as it is.” She looked at him for a long moment, as if trying to decide whether or not this was ultimately a joke. “You’re serious?”
“Never more serious in my life,” he swore. “I’m sorry I was too thickheaded to see what was right in front of me. I know I didn’t deserve to have you sticking by me the way you did, especially when I came up with that hare-brained scheme.”
He couldn’t even bring himself to say the name. What the hell had he been thinking, expecting her to help him win over Brittany? Another woman would have pushed him off a cliff—and he would have deserved it.
“You mean Project Brittany?” Katie asked innocently.
Blake winced. The mere sound of that was painful to him now. “The only project I want to undertake from here on in is to make you happy for the rest of your life.”
Katie struck a poker face. “I haven’t said yes yet,” she pointed out.
He was all too aware of that. “I know and I don’t blame you if you don’t, but—”
With a sigh, she rolled her eyes and then placed her fingertips to his lips to still them. “Will you please stop talking? That’s what’s wrong with you marketing geniuses, you never stop talking,” she marveled. Removing her fingertips, she immediately replaced them with her lips and kissed him—even longer and harder than he had kissed her.
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