Tangled Destinies

by Diana Palmer

  Marc. She closed her eyes as she donned a pair of white slacks and a multicolored silk blouse. She’d deliberately kept busy so that she wouldn’t have to think about him, to remember. And now Joe was here and bringing it all back. But despite her pain and the years of wounded pride, she couldn’t resist the hunger for bits of information about him. Was he well, how did he look, was he happy, was there a special woman...so many questions that she shouldn’t have wanted to ask. But her heart would feast on just such tidbits. And she was like a puppet on a string. She had to know. She had to hear that he was satisfied with what he had, that giving her up had been worth the profit it had gained him.

  Joe took her to an elegant little restaurant less than a block away and persuaded her to have lunch as well as something to drink.

  “You must be hungry,” he coaxed, smiling. “Come on, have a salad at least. That won’t put weight on you.”

  “All right.” She gave in gracefully, smiling across the white linen tablecloth at him. “But if I gain one pound, my agent gets to park his car on your spine for an hour. Deal?”

  He laughed, then folded his arms on the table and shook his head. “You’re a funny lady. I remembered your sense of humor best of all. You used to make me feel really comfortable.” He looked down at his hands, slender and tanned, sensitive hands. “I don’t mix with people very well.”

  “Most of us don’t, if you want the truth,” she confided. “We learn to bluff. Put on a big smile and leap in with both feet. By the time people realize you’re not a live-wire personality, you’re talking to them and you forget how shy you are.”

  “Come on,” he chided. “You’re not shy.”

  “I certainly am!” she replied. She tucked a long strand of shimmering auburn hair behind one dainty ear. “I’ve been shy all my life. But I learned to act like an extrovert. Now everyone thinks I am one.”

  “Yeah, well that doesn’t work for me,” he said. He studied her face. “Are you always as happy as you look in those product ads you do?”

  She looked down at the silverware, touching her knife gently with a long, red-polished fingernail. “Is anybody happy all the time? I have my problems and I get lonely. But I suppose I’ve learned to like my own company. At least, I’ve had to until this past year. My mother died of a heart attack, and I’ve moved back in with my father, to keep him company.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I guess it’s hard to lose a mother.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I suppose it was. We never got along very well, but I cared about her. So did my father. God bless him, he went crazy when she died. Just went all to pieces. She was the guiding force, you see. Mother made the rules and he followed them. This is the first time in his life that he’s had the freedom to do what he likes, and now he doesn’t quite know what to do with it,” she said, smiling tolerantly. “He’s a character, my dad. A dreamer. If he hadn’t inherited money, and had Mother show him how to make more, I suppose he’d been running an antique store and giving away his profits.”

  “Do you look like him?”

  “Not really. I have his awful auburn hair and green eyes,” she admitted. “But I have my mother’s facial features.” She studied him. “You look a lot like...like your brother.”

  “Yeah, most of the men in the Stephano family kind of look alike. Why, we have an uncle who looks like he could be Marc’s and my father.”

  “Uncle Michael,” she said suddenly, remembering Marc’s deep, gravelly voice telling her about his uncle, a slightly shady character if she remembered correctly.

  “That’s right. Hey, girl, you’ve got a good memory.”

  “Too good, sometimes,” she said with a wistful look in her eyes.

  He started to speak, but the waiter came, and they paused to order. He took out a cigarette and glanced at her.

  “It’s okay,” she said, “I’m used to people who smoke.”

  “I’m not quite as bad as Marc,” he said, laughing. “He smokes like a furnace these days.”

  “Has he changed a lot?” she asked, and her eyes were wide and softer than she realized.

  He leaned back in his chair and studied her carefully. “Oh, he’s changed, all right. So much that I finally had to move out on my own. Well, not quite. I don’t like my own company that much, I have a roommate. Nice guy. He sells real estate.”

  “Have you been out on your own long?”

  “Three years,” he confessed. “Marc lives in an apartment on the East Side, overlooking the river. He’s got a great view. Mine’s a little closer in, and it faces another building. Not much to look at unless you look up, but it’s a place to sleep.”

  “I guess Marc travels a lot,” she persisted.

  “Not too much.”

  The waiter brought their orders, and she gave up asking about the man from her past long enough to eat. Coffee was served when they finished, and they lingered over it.

  “What about the men in your life?” he asked. “I don’t believe you’re that much of a man-hater.”

  “Oh, I go out on the town once in a while,” she said, “but I work hard, and the weekends are the only time I have free.”

  He looked at his coffee cup. “I’d like to take you out to dinner tonight,” he told the coffee. “It’s Friday, and I know you probably already have a date....”

  “No,” she said, watching him color. “Actually I don’t.”

  “Oh. That’s nice.” He crossed his arms on the table again and glanced at her hesitantly. “Well, would you come? I know it’s short notice, but I had to get introduced to you first, before I could ask, you know.”

  She smiled secretly at his shy manner. She liked his style. In a way he seemed a lot like her. She tossed back her hair. “Well...”

  “Be a sport,” he coaxed, brightening as he added, “I’ll take you to a restaurant that has a fountain. I’ll even let you swim in the fountain.”

  She laughed delightedly. “Is there a fountain, honestly?”

  “No. But for you I’ll build one,” he promised. He cocked his head to one side, studying her. “Be a sport!”

  Her green eyes began to shine with amusement, and her face became exquisite. He caught his breath looking at her. Why not? she asked herself. She didn’t like the usual type of man who expected much more than a handshake at the end of the evening. She thought that Joe wouldn’t be like that. He didn’t seem to be looking for a serious relationship any more than she was. What would it hurt? It might even be a dig at Marc. Yes, perhaps it would anger him, after all these years, to know that she was seeing his brother. She’d never expected that she might feel vengeful; it was out of character. But the affair with Marc killed something in her, knowing how little he’d valued the love she’d offered him. It had damaged her in ways she didn’t even like admitting to. And the love-hate she felt for him, even after nine years, demanded some sort of reckoning. Wouldn’t this be a little recompense? It wasn’t as if she were using Joe. Joe knew the score; he just wanted a friend. Why not? Only the two of them need ever know it was just friendship. But Marc wouldn’t know it. He’d think she was leading Joe on, to get even. She could get to him without ever laying a hand on him.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll come out with you. But, Joe, I’m no good-time girl,” she added, putting it plainly, her face solemn. “Friendship is all I’m offering. Okay?”

  He shifted in his chair, and something touched his eyes for an instant. But he grinned. “Okay,” he said on a laugh. “Friends forever.”

  “Uh, I hate to mention it,” she said hesitantly, “but isn’t this kind of fraternizing with the brass, so to speak?”

  “Let me worry about that.” His dark eyes narrowed. “You aren’t carrying a torch for big brother after all these years, are you?” he asked abruptly.

  She shook her head and felt her b
ody going rigid with remembered pain. “Not on your life.”

  “Good.” He stretched lazily. “Suppose I pick you up about six?” he asked.

  “You don’t know where I live,” she faltered.

  He chuckled. “No? I asked your agency. Since I’m the boss, sort of, they gave it to me.”

  “You sure are resourceful!” She laughed, wondering if she should be pleased that her agency had sold her out to a perfect stranger. She also couldn’t help but wonder what would happen when she saw Marc again. But she gave in with a sigh. Maybe it was fate. She’d cope. Besides, she rather liked this young man. She didn’t date a lot because she hated having to fight off men with ideas about quick relationships. Joe didn’t seem like a rusher, and she looked forward to being able to go out without being harassed.

  Her father was out when she got home. Her parents had fought her tooth and nail to keep her out of modeling. Her father had even gone behind her back and tried to persuade one agency head not to hire Gaby. But eventually she’d found an agency that was interested in her, and she’d started making a name for herself. Thanks to those years she’d spent at a prestigious New England boarding school, she had enough poise and grace of movement to make her a natural. Not that she’d been so enthused at the time, she reminded herself pointedly. Oh, no.

  Marc. She could close her eyes, and there he’d be, big and strong and softly laughing as she responded wildly to his very adult passion. It had always been Marc who pulled away, not Gaby. From the first time she’d sneaked away from home to meet him, it had been Marc who kept things cool between them. Even now she could vividly remember his words.

  “You’re a baby,” he’d teased, nibbling at her mouth. “You’re not ready for love yet, little one. It would haunt me all my life.”

  “But, Marc, I love you so,” she’d whispered back, openly pleading.

  “But you’re barely an adult.” And he’d kissed her and held her. His hands had touched her young breasts for the first time. “Soft little buds,” he’d breathed at her lips as he felt the rapid hardening of the tips under his gently caressing fingers.

  He was an emotional man, all sensuous blatancy, Gaby remembered, never dressing up his language or his remarks. It was what had appealed most to her, with her too sheltered background.

  She had clung to him that day as he’d eased her down into his arms in the deserted park under the big oak by the lake. He’d smiled reassuringly as he laid her back on the grass and slowly opened the top few buttons of her blouse.

  Gaby shuddered, remembering her own words to Marc that day. “I want to be yours, Marc,” she’d whispered. She’d lain quietly, feeling the soft coolness of the grass at her back as he dealt with buttons and then lace and hooks. She arched her back as he peeled away the bra.

  “So delicate,” he’d whispered deeply, his voice shaded with tenderness and growing passion, his black eyes devouring her as he loomed over her prone body, his big hands on either side of her. “So virginal.”

  “I’d die before I’d let anyone else look at me this way,” she’d told him feverishly, and her body had ached for sensations it had never before experienced.

  “And suppose I want to touch you?” he’d asked, lifting his eyes to her soft, flushed face. “What then?”

  Her lips had parted on hungry thoughts. She’d reached down and slowly peeled the blouse and bra from her body, feeling her nipples go hard as he looked at them, as she arched them toward him.

  “Have you ever done this with anyone?” he whispered.

  “Not until now,” she’d replied, swallowing hard. Her breath had come quickly, like gasps. “Marc... I want to feel your hands.”

  “Yes. I want to feel you too,” he whispered back. He lifted one big, warm hand and put it slowly over a soft breast, watching her body jerk as it swallowed her up, and he felt the hard tip rubbing in the dampness of his palm. “You’re so little, darling.”

  “Too little?” she managed, afraid that she’d failed him somehow.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered, smiling. “No.” His big hands had caressed her stiff young body, and she’d moaned in a way that had excited him beyond bearing.

  Outside the house, car horns blew, bringing Gaby coldly back to the present. But her body trembled as she remembered how it had felt that first time he’d touched her, remembered the soft suction of his open mouth on her breast. She looked wildly into the mirror as she stood there nude, fresh from her bath, and watched her body respond even now, years later, to the memory of how it had been. Never since, not even once, had she reacted that way to a man. Marc had owned her body and possessed her soul. Every time she’d tried to give herself to any other man, the memory had chilled her to the bone, so that she was cold, icy cold, with men. They called her frigid, but it was the heat of Marc’s lovemaking that had taken all her warmth away. She’d never been cold with him.

  She dressed in a fever, tugging on a pale green cocktail dress with shaking hands. The dress had a bodice with only a whisper of lace over the strapless shoulders. She wouldn’t need a shawl or a jacket, because it was summer and already hot at night.

  She left her hair long, letting it drift in auburn waves down over her shoulders. She’d developed since those sensual days with Marc. She’d gained weight, and her body had ripened. She had a perfect hourglass figure now, long slender legs and an all-over tan, a body that men wanted. Marc had wanted it long before it flowered. But Marc had wanted money more. And Gaby knew, even if nobody else did, how he’d attained his huge empire. Knew, and hated him for it. She tried to put thoughts of Marc far from her mind as she got ready to meet Joe. There was no reason to have the ghosts of the past harm her tonight. She was going to have a good time.

  Joe Stephano called for her promptly at six. He was leaning leisurely against the stone arch past the door when she answered the doorbell. She and her father only had a daily housekeeper now, Mrs. Sims, a charming middle-aged woman who kept things going like clockwork while Gaby and her father pursued their respective careers. Mrs. Sims left at five thirty usually, except when guests were expected for dinner, so there was only Gaby to answer the phone and the door after that time.

  “Very nice,” he said appreciatively, pursing his lips at the deep cleavage and the way the soft fabric clung to every line of her body. “You’ll stop traffic.”

  “I do hope so,” she murmured demurely. He was just about her height, very thin, and he looked oddly out of place in his dark evening clothes, but she took his arm and followed him out onto the busy street.

  He was driving an expensive sports car, a black one with a white interior, and she was impressed with its gadgetry.

  “I usually get cabs where I’m going,” he remarked as they drove down the busy street, “but they’re so hot at night. Besides, I wanted to show this car off. It’s brand-new.”

  “It’s a lot of car,” she said, because she knew the list price. She’d wanted one herself but had been hesitant to spend that much on a car. She could have purchased a house in some parts of the country for less.

  “I like expensive things,” he remarked. Her eyes went to the Rolex watch on his wrist and the silk jacket he was wearing. Obviously he went in style.

  She leaned her head back against the headrest with a weary smile. “It’s been a long day,” she said apologetically. “I hope I won’t be a drag.”

  “Not you, Gaby.” He said her name for the first time and smiled, as if it pleased him to use it. “Never you. I thought we’d go Chinese tonight, what do you say?”

  “I love Chinese food,” she said dreamily.

  “Then Chinese it is!” he replied. He stepped on the gas. “Hold on.”

  She did, wondering at the reckless way he cut in and out of traffic. Very often a shy personality camouflaged a person who thrived on danger. Joe hadn’t looked like a daredevil, but he was shaping up
as one. She was ready to give thanks for survival when they arrived in the parking lot of an exclusive-looking Chinese restaurant.

  “Here we are!” He grinned. He let the top up before he helped her out and locked the car. “Hey, you look shaky. I didn’t scare you, did I?” he asked, as if it mattered.

  “A little,” she admitted, because her legs felt like rubber.

  “Hey, I won’t ever do it again, okay? I’m really sorry.”

  He was so apologetic that she felt guilty for mentioning it. She shook her head and slid her hand through the crook of his arm. “Forget it. Let’s eat. I feel like sweet-and-sour pork tonight.”

  “Me too.”

  It was the first of many dates. They got along well together, and Gaby liked the fact that he left her at her door with a wink and a grin. She didn’t have to fight him off, and she was delighted to have someone to go places with, someone who didn’t ask for more than she was able to give. She relaxed with him.

  The only hard part was wondering about Marc, about his reaction to it. She was sure that Joe had told him. But Joe never mentioned his brother, and she’d long since given up probing. It did no good at all to ask about Marc; Joe gave answers in monosyllables and quickly changed the subject. And perhaps that was just as well. It wouldn’t do for her to get too curious about Marc.

  She hadn’t told her father that she was seeing Joe. There hadn’t been the opportunity, anyway. Her dad spent a lot of time at the office these days, getting his finances straightened out after the time he’d taken off to mourn his wife’s death. He was only now becoming his old, cheery self again.

  Gaby continued with the Motocraft ads, which had just appeared on television and were gaining her a national reputation as the Parts Girl. She took the kidding good-naturedly, because added exposure meant added security in her job. The money was good, too, and she liked being self-sufficient, depending on herself for her livelihood. She and Joe eased into a companionable friendship, and her life was on an even keel for the first time in quite a while. Then Joe took her by the company offices in downtown Manhattan to meet the executive who was in charge of the advertising. And she ran headlong into Marcus Stephano for the first time in nine years.