Three Grooms and a Wedding

by JoAnn Ross

  She was dying to ask him if, during these dreams, he was a distant observer. Or, if like in her case, he felt as if the action was actually happening to him. Although it made absolutely no more sense than anything else that had been happening lately, Blythe felt strangely guilty about fantasizing about Patrick. Especially when Gage had gone to so much trouble to set the scene for a romantic evening.

  “This is our night,” she decided. “Why don’t we agree to a moratorium on Patrick and Alexandra?”

  “You’re on.” Even as he agreed, Gage had the nagging feeling that keeping thoughts of the star-crossed pair at bay was going to be a helluva lot easier said than done.

  6

  THE SEA, turquoise in the dazzling Greek sunshine, turned to jet at night. Overhead, stars glittered like diamonds strewn over a black velvet sky; a full white moon cast a liquid silver path on the water.

  “I almost expect to see Poseidon,” Blythe said as she and Gage walked along the waterfront after dinner.

  “Riding his chariot across the waves, trident raised toward the moon,” he agreed. His arm tightened around her waist as he looked down at her, enjoying the way the shimmering moonlight played across her exquisite face. “And the instant he saw you, standing here beside the sea, his marriage to Amphitrite would be history. Because, being a very clever, not to mention incredibly virile god, he’d recognize what I already know...that not even a goddess could hold a candle to a siren like you.”

  Once again, the clever words, designed for seduction, could have been coined by a Hollywood scriptwriter. But Blythe knew they came from the heart. Which was why they had such a devastating effect on her.

  As she allowed him to draw her into the circle of his arms, Blythe tried to convince herself that it was the moonlight that had her feeling so bewitched, that it was the wine that she’d drunk with dinner that had her feeling so bewildered.

  But she knew, with ever fiber of her being, that it was neither the moonlight nor the wine. It was Gage.

  She lifted her hands to his shoulders. Her eyes were wide and solemn as they met his steady, watchful gaze. “I don’t need the words.” Not with him. Never with him.

  “Too bad.” Smiling a little, he drew her against him. “Because I suddenly have the need to say them.”

  Their bodies were close. She could feel his heartbeat—steady, but strong—against her own escalating one. “I’ve never met a man like you,” she mused, half to herself, half to Gage. “Most men, especially in Hollywood, are always playing games. But you don’t.”

  Her scent surrounded him, as sultry and exotic as the image she portrayed on the screen. The first time he’d seen her, striding toward him on those long gorgeous legs, he’d mistakenly dismissed her as just another egocentric, air-headed actress. For a man who’d always prided himself on his ability to make snap judgments about people—there’d been more than one instance when his life had depended on it—Gage had never been so far off base.

  “I’ve never enjoyed playing games.” In the distance, music was playing, drifting on the warm sea breeze. Loosing track of their surroundings, as so often happened when he was with Blythe, he began absently swaying to the rhythm. “Probably because I’ve never been very good at them.” The night breeze, perfumed with the scent of sun-drenched flowers, ruffled her hair. When he smoothed a few errant strands away from her face, then kissed a heretofore undiscovered sensual place behind her ear, Blythe felt her blood begin to hum again.

  “I think,” she murmured as she tilted her head back, giving him access to her neck, “that there are some games you’re very, very good at.”

  Her skin glowed in the moonlight like pearls. He ran his lips down her throat. “I’m not playing any games, Blythe.” Across her bare shoulders. “Not tonight.”

  She was trembling. But not because she was chilled. Her silken flesh beneath his mouth was warm from the fever flowing in her blood.

  “I want you.” His voice was harsh, aroused. In the moonlight, his eyes glittered with a fierce, primal hunger that brought to mind the ancient, savage gods that had once ruled these lands. He fisted his hand in her hair, tilting her head back. “So much I ache with it.”

  Desire, and something much stronger, much deeper, had etched harsh lines into his rugged face. Knowing that they were standing on the brink of something far more important than a mere night of shared sexual pleasure, Blythe paused, wanting to choose her words carefully.

  And in that slight hesitation, the sensual moment was lost as their strip of beach was suddenly filled with a vast promenade of dancers and musicians.

  “What the hell?” Gage’s blistering gaze was a very long way from amusement.

  “Oh, it’s a wedding party,” Blythe said, recognizing the couple surrounded by the laughing, singing throng. When she’d been on location on Crete, the director had incorporated a similar scene in the lighthearted teenage romance film. But this one was all the more pleasurable, because it was real.

  “They’ve got lousy timing,” he muttered.

  “Don’t be a spoilsport. You’re the one who wanted a romantic night,” she reminded him teasingly. “What could be more romantic than a wedding?”

  Before Gage could respond, Blythe was dragged away, caught up in the procession of merrymakers. Reaching out, she caught hold of Gage’s hand and brought him along with her.

  Knowing when he was licked, Gage gave in.

  The procession, dancing to the music of the mandolins and zithers, wound through the narrow streets, back up the rocky hillside, to the same taverna where Gage and Blythe had finished eating dinner. As Stavros greeted the bride and groom with effusive kisses, a relative who spoke English explained to Blythe and Gage that their waiter was a third cousin on the groom’s mother’s side.

  It appeared the entire town had turned out for the reception. Wine flowed, toasts were made. One by one the guests wished blessings on the newly married couple. Then, when everyone fell suddenly silent, Blythe noticed that they were looking at Gage and her.

  “It’s our turn,” she said.

  “The only toasts I know are from my old fraternity days,” he muttered. “And believe me, they’re not suitable for mixed company. Let alone a wedding.”

  “Don’t worry. I think I can remember what to say.” Lacing their fingers together, she approached the happy pair.

  “Kala Stefana,” she said to the beautiful, dark-haired bride. Gage, having no idea what she’d said, smiled at the bride and shook the groom’s hand.

  The obviously pleased bride answered in a rush of rapid-fire Greek. Several nearby volunteer translators told Blythe that she’d been recognized and that both families considered it an honor that the famous movie actress would deign to be a guest at their celebration.

  Smiling broadly, the bride’s mother, dressed in a flowing rainbow hued dress, stepped forward. “Ghia sas! Welcome!” she said as she gave both Blythe and Gage handful of kouferta—the sugar almonds traditionally used as favors at Greek weddings.

  Now that she’d been recognized, Blythe knew that to leave early might insult the family and bring a pall on the celebration. So, though she longed to be alone with Gage, she agreed to stay for the dancing. Which, it appeared, seemed destined to last all night.

  Finally, nearly two hours later, they were able to slip away unnoticed.

  “Well, that was certainly a night to remember,” Gage said, as they strolled back to the hotel through the dark and quiet streets, the music fading in the distance.

  “I hope you didn’t mind,” she answered. “But, once they recognized me—”

  “I know.” He gave her a reassuring smile that flashed a brilliant white in the moonlight. “Don’t worry, Blythe. I don’t have any trouble playing second fiddle to a world famous star.”

  “Alan did.” The words were out of her mouth before Blythe could censor them.

  She was relieved when Gage didn’t appear disturbed by the intrusion of her former fiancé’s name. “Sturgess is a damn fool,”
he said with a shrug. “Along with being a jerk and a lying cheat with the morals of an alley cat.

  “But, to get back to the original topic, I’m not going to deny that I hadn’t had other plans for tonight. I mean, when I mentioned dancing beneath the stars, I sure as hell didn’t expect my partner to have a mustache.”

  “I thought you did very well,” Blythe said, grinning at the memory of Gage being coaxed into the circle of traditional male dancers.

  “Ah, but you’re prejudiced.”

  “Probably. But you were still the best-looking man there. And nearly the best dancer.”

  It was a blatant exaggeration. But one Gage was secretly enjoying too much to contradict. “Lord, you are good for a man’s ego. And to tell you the truth, I ended up having a pretty good time.”

  “It was fun, wasn’t it?” Blythe smiled as she thought about how different the celebration had seemed from her own disrupted marriage to Alan.

  “As much fun as it could be, without throwing in an earthquake,” he agreed, revealing that they were on the same wavelength again. They’d reached their small, intimate hilltop hotel. “By the way, I kept meaning to ask, what did you say to the bride?”

  “Oh. Good crowning.” Although she exercised regularly, Blythe was a little out of breath. It had not been easy, climbing the steep hills in high heels. “It’s a traditional Greek wedding wish.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  Suddenly, unreasonably, self-conscious, Blythe pretended an intense interest in the angel that had been painted in the carved niche over the arched turquoise door. “I’m not sure.”

  “You know,” Gage said mildly, “for such a famous, hotshot actress, you’re a rotten liar, sweetheart.”

  “You have to understand, in this country, marriage traditions are as full of ritual response as a Greek Orthodox mass.”

  “What did she say, Blythe?”

  He’d pulled out his calm, patient interrogation tactics again. It was all Blythe could do not to squirm beneath the steady stare. She wished she hadn’t hedged in the first place. Because by doing so, she’d given the traditional phrase much more meaning that if she’d just told Gage outright.

  Buying time, she dug around in her satin bag for the hotel key.

  “Blythe?”

  “All right!” No wonder he was so good at what he did. She couldn’t imagine him letting anyone off the hook. Not even her. Especially her. “Loosely translated, she wished the same to me. At my own wedding.”

  He considered that for a minute. The idea, Gage decided with some surprise, definitely had merit. “Nice tradition. I think we ought to give it some thought.”

  Before his words could sink in, he put his arm around her shoulder and looked up at the bright sky. “Would you just look at all those stars.”

  Blythe’s mind was whirling as she tried to decide whether or not he’d actually just suggested marriage. “What did you just say?”

  “I was pointing out the stars. There’s the North Star. And the Big Dipper.”

  “Before that.”

  He ignored her. “And Orion.... Do you remember the story of Dionysus and Ariadne?”

  Frustrated by his seeming change of subject, but not wanting to embarrass herself by pressing Gage further, when she’d undoubtedly misunderstood what he’d meant only as a casual comment, Blythe thought back to the long-ago mythology class she’d taken her freshman year of college.

  “Wasn’t Ariadne the daughter of Minos, king of Crete?”

  “That’s her.” Gage rewarded her with a smile that reminded her of the gold stars her tutors on movie sets used to stick on her spelling papers. “She fell in love with Theseus when he went to Crete to slay the Minotaur.”

  “She gave him a ball of jeweled thread, so he could find his way out of the labyrinth,” Blythe remembered. “Then, after he killed the Minotaur, Theseus left Crete and took Ariadne with him. But didn’t he desert her on some other island?”

  “Naxos,” Gage confirmed. “Which is where Dionysus found her.”

  “Was that before or after drinking with his satyr buddies and fooling around with all those naked nymphs?”

  “Hey, the guy may have admittedly been a bit of a playboy, but he knew a good woman when he spotted one. Anyway, he married Ariadne, which, needless to say, relieved her father immensely, seeing how, having been so publicly dumped by Theseus, her marriage marketability had dropped slightly.”

  Blythe scowled. “She was lucky to have found out about Theseus before she’d made the mistake and married the wrong man.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Gage decided there was no need to point out the parallels in their situation. “And then, to prove how much he loved her, after Ariadne died, Dionysus made the constellation Corona Borealis out of her bridal wreath.”

  “Making her immortal,” Blythe murmured.

  “Part blessing, part curse. Talk about your good news, bad news scenarios.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to live forever?”

  Gage considered that for a moment. “I suppose,” he said, in that slow, thoughtful way she’d come to respect and admire, “that it would depend a lot on who I was living with.”

  His eyes glittering in the streaming silver moonlight, he drew her back against him. The fluttering he was always able to instill in her heart increased.

  He took both her hands and lifted them to his lips. “What I said earlier, about wanting you...I meant it, Blythe.”

  She felt a surge of excitement mixed with a tingling of fear. He looked so serious. “I want you, too,” she whispered on lips that had gone suddenly, painfully dry.

  His lips curved. Just a little. “I know.” He drew in a deep breath, then let it out. Gage couldn’t remember ever feeling so tense. Not even the time he and Cait had run into that dark alley after a trio of gangbangers who’d just pulled off a drive-by shooting.

  “I really do want you,” she repeated. “But it’s important that you understand that I’ve never been into casual sex.” Blythe wanted him to know that what was to happen was special. Unique.

  “Believe me, sweetheart, there’s nothing casual about how I feel. In fact, the truth is, I’ve never needed a woman like I need you.” His deceptively mild tone was a riveting contrast to the passion blazing in his eyes. “And I’m not sure how to handle that.”

  His unrelenting honesty was only one of the many reasons she’d fallen in love with him. Love. The word reeled in her head. It was a word they’d both been avoiding, even as it had continued to grow between them, larger and more undeniable.

  There would be plenty of time for talking, Blythe decided. For now, she was willing to bask in the warm glow of her realization. At this moment, all she wanted was to satisfy this curiosity, this desire, that had been ripping away at her self-control since the moment she’d met him.

  “I’d say that you’re doing pretty good.” Her smile was one of sensual invitation. “So far.”

  She watched the tension literally slide off his shoulders. His grin could have kept her warm in an Antarctic blizzard. “And the night’s still young.”

  He took the antique brass key from her hand and unlocked the door.

  The room was small, but cozy. The walls were whitewashed, the window shutters, like the door, had been painted turquoise. The focal point of the room was the bed, which had been built into an alcove.

  The room carried her scent. It surrounded him, enveloped him, drew him into the mists. As he stood beside the bed, looking down at Blythe, drinking in her incredible beauty a hundred—a thousand—different feelings were fighting for control inside him.

  “You are so beautiful.” He shook his head in awe that of all the men in the world, Blythe had, for some reason he knew better than to analyze, chosen him. He combed his fingers through her breeze-tousled hair. The dark waves felt like silk and smelled like temptation. “Sometimes—like now—when you look at me that way, with your heart shining in those magnificent gypsy eyes, I don’t know what to say
.”

  “I told you.” She lifted her hands to frame his unsmiling face between her palms. “You don’t have to say anything, Gage. I don’t need the words. Not from you.” Her gaze was warm and earnest. Her lips, like her hands, trembled ever so slightly. “Never from you.”

  Breathing out a deep, relieved sigh, he lowered his forehead to hers. “I’ve wanted to be like this with you from almost the moment I first saw you.”

  “I know.” If she lived a thousand lifetimes, she’d never forget the instant when, at his rough command, she’d yanked off her sunglasses and felt a jolt of something that impossibly felt like recognition. “Because I’ve felt the same way.”

  “It was like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer.” Feeling unreasonably clumsy, Gage skimmed his hands down her sides, where they settled at her hips.

  His strong, possessive touch felt like a brand, threatening to burn its way through the filmy white silk. “For me it was as if a bolt of lightning had suddenly struck out of the clear blue sky.” She drew in a quick, shuddering breath as he bent closer. “It was too much. Too fast.”

  “No.” His mouth touched hers. Once, twice, a third time. Her lips were soft as snowflakes, as potent as whiskey. “It wasn’t nearly enough.”

  Gage knew that he’d never get enough of her. Fighting back his own pounding needs, he caught her bottom lip between his teeth, then, when he felt her long, drawn out sigh, soothed the fullness with his tongue.

  “I was afraid,” she admitted.

  “Of me?” The revelation was not a pleasant one.

  “No.” Her lips plucked reassuringly at his. “Never of you.” She pressed her body against his. “I was afraid I’d go crazy.” He felt so strong. So solid. So right. “Crazy for wanting this.” When his lips skimmed along her jawline, she thrust her hands through his thick dark hair and dragged his mouth back to his. “Crazy for wanting you.”

  His blood was pounding thickly in his head, in his loins. God help him, he’d tried. Gage had wanted to take things slow, vowed to be gentle. But he’d waited too long and his need was too strong. And he hadn’t planned on her hot, avid mouth driving him beyond tenderness into madness. She could have been an ancient siren, luring him with her temptress song into dark, dangerous waters.