Truly Madly Yours

by Rachel Gibson

  Delaney sat on her couch and tried to tell herself she wasn’t listening for sounds from below. She wasn’t listening for the rattle of keys or the crunch of gravel beneath heavy boots. She wasn’t listening, but she heard his office door open and close, his keys and the scuff of boots. She heard nothing but silence when he discovered his txapel and she imagined him pausing to look up the stairs at her apartment. The silence drew as she listened for his footsteps. Finally, the Jeep’s engine rumbled to life and he rolled out of the parking lot below.

  Delaney slowly let out a breath and closed her eyes. Now all she had to do was get through Lisa’s wedding. With seventy-five guests, she could easily ignore Nick. How hard could it be?

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was a nightmare. Only this time, Delaney was definitely awake. The evening had started out wonderful enough. The wedding ceremony had gone smoothly. Lisa looked beautiful, and the pictures afterward hadn’t lasted too long. She’d left Henry’s Cadillac at the church and ridden to the Lake Shore with Lisa’s cousin Ali, who owned a salon in Boise. For the first time in a long while, Delaney had been able to chat hair trends with another professional, but most important, she’d been able to avoid Nick.

  Until now. She’d known about the wedding dinner of course, but she hadn’t known the tables would be organized in a large open rectangle with all the guests seated on the outside so everyone could see everyone else. And she hadn’t known about the arranged seating or she would have switched her engraved placecard to avoid the nightmare she was living.

  Beneath the table, something brushed the side of Delaney’s foot, and she would bet it wasn’t an amorous mouse. She pulled both feet beneath her chair and stared down at the remains of her filet mignon, wild rice, and asparagus spears. Somehow, she’d been seated on the groom’s side, sandwiched between Narcisa Hormaechea, who clearly didn’t care for her, and the man who refused to cooperate and let her ignore him any longer. The harder she tried to pretend Nick didn’t exist, the more pleasure he took in provoking her. Like accidentally bumping her arm and making her rice shoot off her fork.

  “Did you bring your handcuffs?” he asked next to her left ear as he reached across her for a bottle of Basque Red. His tuxedo lapel brushed her bare arm.

  Like an erotic movie wrapped for continuous play, visions of his hot mouth on her naked breast played in her head. She couldn’t even look at him without blushing like an embarrassed virgin, but she didn’t need to actually see him to know when he raised his wine to his lips, or when his thumb stroked the clear stem, or when he shoved his black bow tie into a pocket and removed the black stud at his throat. She didn’t have to look at him to know he wore his pleated cotton shirt and tuxedo jacket with the same casual ease he wore flannel and denim.

  “Excuse me.” Narcisa touched Delaney’s shoulder, and she turned her attention to the older woman, who had two white streaks on the sides in her perfect dome of black hair. Her brows were lowered and her brown eyes were magnified behind a pair of thick octagon-shaped glasses, making her appear a little like a myopic Bride of Frankenstein. “Could you pass the butter, please?” she asked and pointed to a small bowl sitting by Nick’s knife.

  Delaney reached for the butter, careful to keep any part of her from touching Nick. She held her breath, waiting for him to say something rude, crude, or socially unacceptable. He didn’t utter a word, and she immediately grew suspicious, wondering what he planned next.

  “It was a beautiful wedding, don’t you think?” Narcisa asked someone further down the table. She took the bowl from Delaney, then ignored her completely.

  Delaney didn’t really expect warm fuzzies from Benita’s sister and turned her gaze to the bride and groom, who were surrounded by parents and grandparents on both sides. Earlier, she’d braided Lisa’s brown hair in an inside-out coronet. She’d stuck in a few sprigs of baby’s breath, and wove in a piece of tulle. Lisa looked great in a white off-the-shoulder gown, and Louie was quite dapper in his black tails. Everyone seated near the bride and groom appeared happy, and even Benita Allegrezza smiled. Delaney didn’t think she’d ever seen the woman smile, and she was surprised at how much younger Benita looked when she wasn’t glaring. Sophie sat next to her father with her hair pulled up in a simple ponytail. Delaney would have loved to have gotten her hands and scissors on all that thick dark hair, but Sophie had insisted her grandmother fix it for her.

  “When is it your turn to get married, Nick?” The booming question came from down the table.

  Nick’s quiet laughter mixed with the other noise in the room. “I’m too young, Josu.”

  “Too wild, you mean.”

  Delaney glanced a few feet down the table. She hadn’t seen Nick’s uncle in a long time. Josu was stocky like a bull and had florid cheeks, due in part to the amount of vino he’d poured back.

  “You just haven’t found the right woman, but I’m sure you’ll find a nice Basque girl,” Narcisa predicted.

  “No Basque girls, Tia. You’re all too stubborn.”

  “You need someone stubborn. You’re too handsome for you own good, and you need a girl who will tell you no. Someone who won’t say yes to you all the time about everything. You need a good girl.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Delaney watched Nick’s long blunt fingers brush the linen tablecloth. When he responded, his voice was smooth and sensual, “Even good girls say yes eventually.”

  “You’re bad, Nick Allegrezza. My sister was too easy on you, and you’ve grown into a libertine. Your cousin Skip is always chasing skirts, too, so maybe it’s genetic.” She paused and let out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, how about you?”

  It was probably to much to hope that Narcisa was talking to someone else. Delaney lifted her gaze to Nick’s aunt and stared into her magnified eyes. “Me?”

  “Are you married?”

  Delaney shook her head.

  “Why not?” she asked, then looked Delaney over as if the answer was written somewhere. “You’re attractive enough.”

  Not only was Delaney sick of that particular question, she was getting really tired of being treated as if there had to be something wrong with her because she was single. She leaned toward Narcisa and said just above a whisper, “One man could never satisfy me. I need lots.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  Delaney choked back her laughter. “Don’t tell anyone because I do have my standards.”

  Narcisa blinked twice. “What?”

  She put her mouth even closer to Narcisa’s ear. “Well, he has to have teeth, for one.”

  The older woman leaned back to get a good look at Delaney, and her mouth fell open. “My lord.”

  Delaney smiled and raised her glass to her lips. She hoped she’d scared Narcisa off the subject of marriage for a while.

  Nick nudged her arm with his elbow and her wine sloshed. “Have you found any more notes since Halloween?”

  She lowered her glass and wiped a bead of wine from the corner of her mouth. She shook her head, doing her best to ignore him as much as possible.

  “Did you part your hair with a lightening bolt?” Nick asked loud enough for those around them to hear.

  Before the wedding, she’d done a zig-zag part, pulled the flat bangs behind her ears, and teased the crown into a nice little bouffant. With her hair back to blonde, she thought she looked like a 60’s go-go dancer. Delaney lifted her gaze up the pleats of his cotton shirt, to the exposed hollow of his tan throat. No way was she going to get sucked in by his eyes. “I like it.”

  “You dyed it again.”

  “I dyed it back.” Unable to resist, she raised her gaze past his chin to his lips. “I’m a natural blond.”

  The corners of his sensuous mouth curved upward. “I remember that about you, wild thing,” he said, then picked up his spoon and tapped it on the edge of his glass. When the room fell silent, he rose to his feet, looking like a model out of one of those bride magazines. “As my brother’s best man, it is my duty and hon
or to toast him and his new bride,” he began. “When my big brother sees something he wants, he always goes after it with unyielding determination. The first time he met Lisa Collins, he knew he wanted her in his life. She didn’t know it then, but she didn’t stand a chance against his tenacity. I watched him proceed with an absolute certainty that left me bewildered and, I admit, envious.

  “As always, I am in awe of my brother. He has found real joy with a wonderful woman, and I am happy for him.” He reached for his glass. “To Louie and Lisa Allegrezza. Ongi-etorri, Lisa. Welcome.”

  “To Louie and Lisa,” Delaney toasted with the other guests. She cast a glance upward and watched Nick tip back his head and drain his wine. Then he sat once again, relaxed and easy with his hands in the pockets of his wool pants. He pressed his leg against the length of hers, as if it were as unintentional as breathing. She knew better.

  “Ongi-etorri,” Josu echoed, then unleashed a Basque yell that started out like mocking laughter but quickly changed into a cross between the ooh of a wolf’s howl and the expiring ahh of a braying donkey. Other male relatives joined Josu and the dining room reverberated with the sounds. While each family member tried to outdo the other, Nick leaned in front of Delaney and grabbed her glass. He filled it and then his own, in typical Nick style: he didn’t ask first. For one brief moment, he enveloped her in the smell of his skin and cologne. Her heart beat a little faster and her head got a little lighter as she breathed him in. Then he was gone and she could almost relax again.

  Lisa’s father hit his spoon against his glass and the room fell silent. “Today my little girl…” he began, and Delaney shoved her plate away and folded her arms on the table. If she concentrated on Mr. Collins, she could almost ignore Nick. If she concentrated on Mr. Collins’s hair, which was a lot whiter than she remembered, and his-

  Nick lightly brushed his fingers over the top of her thigh, and she froze. Through the sheer barrier of nylon, his fingertips swept her from knee to the hem of her dress. Unfortunately, it was a short dress.

  Delaney grabbed his wrist beneath the table and stopped his hand from sliding up the inside of her thigh. She looked into his face, but he wasn’t looking back at her. His attention was focused on Lisa’s father.

  “… to my daughter and my new son, Louie,” Mr. Collins finished.

  With his free hand, Nick raised his wine glass and toasted the couple. As he took two big swallows, his thumb stroked the top of Delaney’s leg. Back and forth his fingers caressed over the smooth nylon. Sensation she couldn’t ignore settled low in her abdomen and she squeezed her legs together. “Aren’t you going to toast the happy couple?” he asked.

  As carefully as possible, she shoved his hand, but his grasp tightened. She pushed a little harder and accidentally bumped Nick’s aunt.

  “What’s that matter?” Narcisa asked. “Why are you wiggling around?”

  Because your libertine nephew is inching his hand up my thigh. “No reason.”

  Nick leaned toward her and whispered, “Be still or people will think I’m copping a feel under the table.”

  “You are!”

  “I know.” He smiled and turned his attention to his uncle. “Josu, how many sheep are you running this year?”

  “Twenty thousand. Are you interested in working for me like when you were a boy?”

  “Hell no.” He slanted her a look from the corner of his eye and chuckled deep in his chest. “I have my hands full right here.” His hot palm warmed her flesh through her pantyhose, and Delaney sat perfectly still, trying to appear as if the heat from Nick’s hand wasn’t pouring through her body like a warm flood. It swept up her chest and down her thighs, tingling her breasts and pooling desire between her legs. Her grasp on his wrist tightened, but she was no longer sure if she was holding his hand to keep it from moving further up her leg, or to keep it from moving away.

  “Nick.”

  He tilted his head toward hers. “Yes?”

  “Let go.” She pasted a smile on her face like she and Nick were chatting up a good time, and let her gaze skim the crowd. “Someone could see you.”

  “Tablecloth is too long. I checked.”

  “How did I end up sitting next to you anyway?”

  He reached for his wine and said behind the glass, “I switched your little name card with my Aunt Angeles’s. She’s the mean looking lady sitting over there clutching her purse like someone’s going to mug her. She’s a Rottweiler.” He took a drink. “You’re more fun.”

  Angeles stuck out like a storm cloud on an otherwise sunny day. Her hair was scraped up into a black bun, and her scowl lowered her dark brows. She obviously didn’t like being stuck among Lisa’s family. Delaney moved her gaze down the table, past the bride and groom to Nick’s mother. Benita’s dark eyes stared back at her, and Delaney recognized the look that used to unnerve her as a child. “I know you’re up to no good,” it said.

  Delaney turned to Nick and whispered, “You have to stop. Your mother is watching us. I think she knows.”

  He looked into her face, then gazed past her to his mother. “What does she know?”

  “She’s giving me the evil eye. She knows where you’ve got your hand.” Delaney glanced over her shoulder at Narcisa, but the older woman had turned and was talking to someone else. No one but Benita seemed to be paying any attention to them.

  “Relax.” His palm slid up another half an inch, and the tips of his fingers drifted along the elastic leg of her underwear.

  Relax. Delaney wanted to shut her eyes and moan.

  “She doesn’t know anything.” He paused a moment, then said, “Except maybe that your nipples are hard and it isn’t cold in here.”

  Delaney looked down at her breasts and the two very distinct points in the red velvet. “Jerk.” She shoved his hand at the same time she shoved her chair backward. Grabbing her velvet handbag, she walked from the dining room and hurried down two different narrow hallways before she found the women’s restroom. Once inside, she took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror. Beneath the fluorescent lighting, her cheeks looked flushed, her eyes overly bright.

  There was definitely something wrong with her. Something that made her brain-dead where Nick was concerned. Something that allowed him to caress her in a room filled with people.

  She tossed her red velvet handbag on the counter and ran a paper towel under cold water. She pressed it against her warm face and sucked in a breath. Maybe she’d been on the wagon so long, she was suffering from sexual deprivation. Starving for attention and affection like an abandoned cat.

  A toilet flushed behind her and a hotel employee appeared from a stall. As the woman washed her hands, Delaney opened her bag and pulled out a tube of Rebel Red lipstick.

  “If you’re with the wedding party, they’re cutting the cake now.”

  Delaney looked at the woman through the mirror and smeared red across her bottom lip. “Thanks. I guess I better get back then.” She watched the hotel employee leave and dropped her lipstick back into her little purse. Using her wet fingers, she smoothed the front of her hair and fluffed the back.

  If Lisa and Louie were cutting their wedding cake, then dinner was officially over and she wouldn’t have to sit by Nick any longer.

  She grabbed her bag and swung open the door. Nick leaned back against the opposite wall in the narrow hallway. The sides of his tuxedo jacket were brushed aside, and his hands were buried in his front pockets. When he saw her, he pushed away from the wall.

  “Stay away from me, Nick.” She held out a hand to hold him off.

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her against his chest. “I can’t,” he said softly. He crushed her to him, and his mouth slashed across hers in a fiery kiss that left her numb. He tasted like unchecked passion and warm wine. His tongue caressed and plundered, and when he pulled back, his breathing was uneven, like he’d just run the mile.

  Delaney placed a hand over her racing heart and licked the taste of him from her lips. “We
can’t do this here.”

  “You’re right.” He grabbed her arm and propelled her down the hall until he found an unlocked linen closet. Once inside, he pressed her backward against the closed door, and Delaney had an impression of white towels and mop buckets before he was on her. Kissing her. Touching her anywhere his hands landed. Her palms slid up the pleats of his shirt to the warm sides of his neck, and she combed her fingers through the side of his hair. The kiss became an avaricious feeding frenzy of mouths and lips and tongues. They tore at each other. Her handbag fell to the floor, and she pushed at the shoulders of his jacket. She kicked the little velvet pumps from her feet and raised onto the balls of her feet. Like a complete wanton, she hooked a leg over his hip and strained against the swollen ridge of his erection.

  He groaned his pleasure deep, deep within his chest, and pulled back to look at her through eyes heavy with lust. “Delaney,” he said, his voice rough, then he repeated her name as if he couldn’t quite believe she was with him. He kissed her face. Her throat. Her ear. “Tell me you want me.”

  “I do,” she whispered, pushing his jacket from his shoulders.

  “Say it.” He shrugged out of the jacket and tossed it to the side. Then his hands were on her breasts, and he brushed her hard nipples through the velvet dress and lace bra. “Say my name.”

  “Nick.” She trailed kisses down his neck to the hollow of his throat. “I want you, Nick.”

  “Here?” His hands moved to her hips, her behind, holding her against him, grinding against her soft inner thigh.

  “Yes.”

  “Now? Where anyone could walk in and find us?”