In the Best Man's Bed

by Catherine Spencer

  “I swear, if I weren’t marrying Solange, I’d propose to you, Anne-Marie!” he said. “How come no other man’s got my good sense?”

  Hearing him, Josephine said tartly, “Perhaps Anne-Marie’s the one with sense. Put her down, you fool, and let your brother lead her into dinner before I faint from weakness! What took you so long to get here, Ethan?”

  “We were talking and time got away from us.”

  “Talking about what?” Never one to be fobbed off with half-truths, Josephine stared at him, beady-eyed.

  “Children, and how best to deal with them,” he replied, trying to ignore the uneasiness which assailed him at the expression on Solange’s face as she watched his brother. Did Philippe have any inkling of the depth of her adoration? Did he deserve it?

  Ushering them all into the dining room, Ethan indicated that Anne-Marie should take her place to the right of where he sat, at the head of the table. She slid onto the chair in one easy, graceful movement, with her dress rippling down her body to swirl in waves around her ankles, thereby drawing his unwilling attention to the physical attributes of the woman wearing it.

  The candelabra suspended from the ceiling awoke glimmers of palest wheat in her blond hair and painted fetching shadows on her face. Over the course of the day, she’d picked up a touch of sun—just enough to gild her creamy skin with honey.

  She sat close enough that, without it appearing deliberate, he could have nudged her knee with his. Touched her sandaled foot in private intimacy. Had he wished, he could have reached over and covered her hand. Fingered the thin gold chain at her narrow wrist, or the diamond studs winking fire and ice at her ears.

  And, shockingly, he did wish—for all those things. Which made him, for once, very glad of his aunt’s insatiable interest in other people’s lives. It spared him having to make polite conversation with a woman he found altogether more distracting than she had any right to be.

  “How old are you, child?” Josephine inquired, over hot papaya-orange soup.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “And never married?”

  “No.” She smiled, seeming not at all put out by such a personal line of questions. “I haven’t had the time. Or perhaps it’s just that I haven’t yet met the right man.”

  “But you have no objection to marriage as such?”

  She thought about that for a moment, tipping her head to one side and lowering her lashes so that they lay like miniature fans against her cheeks. Finally, she said, “No. Eventually, I would like a husband and children, and the trappings that go with them.”

  “By ‘trappings,’ do you mean money?”

  “Good grief, no! I’ve already got plenty of that.”

  “Social status, then?” his aunt persisted.

  “I consider I have that, too.” She cast an amused glance at Ethan. “Although not everyone around this table might agree with me.”

  “Oh, never mind Ethan,” Josephine chortled. “He’s the kind of man who, once he makes up his mind about something, there’s no moving him. But that’s not to say he’s always right.”

  “If I might be allowed to say something in my own defense, I haven’t reached any hard and fast conclusions about you, Mademoiselle,” he said mildly.

  “Certainly you have,” she retorted. “You’ve pegged me as brash, flashy and uncouth when, in fact, I’m guilty only of being brash.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth. And don’t presume to read my mind.”

  Josephine flapped her hand imperiously. “Ignore him, Anne-Marie. Instead, tell me more about these trappings you’re so anxious to acquire.”

  “They’re not material, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she said. “I want things money can’t buy—traditions, I suppose you’d call them, like taking my child to choose his own pumpkin for Halloween, or helping him trim the tree at Christmas, then drinking hot chocolate and singing carols with him, afterward. If I had a daughter, I’d want to sew pretty party dresses for her, and bake special cakes for her birthdays.”

  “Because they’re the things which were taken away from you at much too early an age. Yes, I can see why they’d be important to you now.” Josephine nodded sympathetically. “Would you like to have more than one child?”

  “Oh, definitely! Heaven forbid they’d suffer the same loss I did, but at least if it should happen, they’d have each other. In my experience, an only child is too often a lonely child.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Ethan said defensively.

  “No, of course not.” She shrugged. “It all depends on the circumstances.”

  “And yours were particularly tragic.” His aunt paused long enough to sample her soup, then started in on another barrage of questions. “You’ve worked very hard to make a name for yourself in the world of fashion, my dear. Do you see yourself being able to give up your career in order to raise a family?”

  “Not permanently, perhaps, but certainly over the short haul. I consider motherhood to be a very worthwhile career in itself and deserving of the best a woman can bring to it.”

  “Eh bien, isn’t it fortunate that you’re going to be here for several weeks!” Josephine glanced at Ethan meaningfully. “And what a pity we didn’t meet you seven years ago.”

  “For someone who claimed she was starving, you’re doing a lot more talking than you are eating,” he said, knowing full well where his aunt’s remarks were leading. She’d never liked Lisa, and had made it her mission in life to fix him up with someone more suitable.

  You’re my firstborn nephew and my favorite, she’d often told him. I need to know you’re with someone who truly deserves you, before I die.

  “I’m merely being sociable,” she said now. “Tell me, Anne-Marie, how do you like this room?”

  “Very much. The detailed flower painting on the walls is exquisite. Trompe l’oeil, isn’t it?”

  “Quite right, child, and how delightful that you’re cultured enough to recognize it,” Josephine replied, too transparently pleased at discovering her newfound protégée’s latest virtue to recognize her remark came across as insultingly condescending.

  “I saw many fine examples of the same in the chateaux I visited when I lived in France,” Anne-Marie said, further enhancing her image with his aunt. “In fact, I followed a similar technique with some of my textile designs during my studies.”

  “And won a gold medal for them, too,” Solange said, managing to tear her attention away from Philippe long enough to contribute something to the conversation.

  “Did you indeed?” Josephine smiled, as satisfied as a cat who’d just devoured a bowl of cream, and Ethan privately admitted he was rather impressed himself. Perhaps there was more depth to Anne-Marie Barclay than he’d originally thought.

  Still, he was relieved when the butler, Morton, appeared to direct the serving of the second course and Josephine, recognizing her favorite heart of palm salad, turned her attention to her plate.

  Leaning toward Anne-Marie, Ethan said in an undertone, “I hope you didn’t find my aunt’s comments offensive. She means well, but her interest sometimes takes on the tone of an inquisition, and I apologize if it made you uncomfortable.”

  “It didn’t,” she replied. “I appreciate her being so direct and I envy you her devotion.”

  “If you’re sincerely interested in the decor of this room, I’ll be glad to give you a tour of the house someday when you have an hour to spare.”

  “That would be very nice.”

  Would it, or was she merely being polite? he wondered. Was she really as serenely composed as she appeared, or was it more a case of her having perfected the act of appearing so?

  As the meal progressed, he found himself observing her. Watching for a hint of what really lay behind her lovely smile. Listening to the musical lilt of her laughter, the slightly husky timbre of her voice. And when, after coffee and cognac, the other four excused themselves and left him alone with her, he heard himself offering to escort her back to her vil
la with an eagerness which made him wonder if she’d somehow bewitched him.

  He’d probably live to regret it, but the prospect of delving below her surface and discovering the real person underneath struck him suddenly as too appealing an undertaking to ignore.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “THIS really isn’t necessary,” Anne-Marie said, as he ushered her past the pillared entrance to the room and out through a side door to the paved terrace. Just when the other four members of the party had drifted off until only the two of them remained lingering over coffee, escaped her, but she did know the prospect of being alone in the deserted gardens with Ethan filled her with peculiar trepidation. “I assure you I can make my own way back.”

  His laugh flowed over her, low and oddly intoxicating in the warm night. “I somehow doubt that, since you couldn’t even find your way here in broad daylight. And the path is steep in places. It wouldn’t do to have you fall and hurt yourself. Solange would never forgive me. In any case, I could use a breath of fresh air, and it’ll give us a chance to get to know one another better.”

  “Better? How about ‘differently’?” she said.

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “Then let me speak bluntly. Your opinion of me underwent a subtle change over dinner and I’m curious to know why. Was it my informed appreciation of the decor in your dining room and the fact that I didn’t try to steal the family silver that persuaded you to temper your animosity toward me, or did it take your aunt’s stamp of approval to soften your attitude?”

  “Have I been such an ogre?” he said lightly. “If so, I apologize.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Then perhaps this will. Not for a moment did I think you’d steal the family silver, Anne-Marie, nor was your intelligence ever in question. As for my aunt….” Again, his laughter caused an inexplicable sensation of pleasure to ripple over her skin. “I’m so used to Josephine putting her two bits’ worth into the conversation every other minute that I barely notice it anymore.”

  Putting her two bits’ worth into the conversation… The American idiom struck an incongruous note, coming as it did from a man who appeared to have little respect for anything remotely American. “You speak with a slight accent,” she said, “yet your English is very colloquial.”

  “French was my mother tongue, but I spent several years studying at Harvard.”

  “So not everything from my neck of the woods is necessarily bad?”

  “Not necessarily, no.” She heard the smile in his voice. “I have a number of friends and many business acquaintances in the U.S. But before you accuse me of misleading you, you should know I’m also fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, and have contacts throughout South America, too.”

  “Then you’re one up on me. I speak only French and Italian.”

  “That would matter only if we were in competition with each other, but since we’re not, let’s try to put aside our differences and get along, for Solange’s sake.” He took her hand, tucked it in the crook of his arm, and led her down a gravel path on the far side of the pool, different from the one by which he’d brought her to the mansion earlier. “It’s pleasant out here, don’t you think?”

  “Pleasant” hardly began to describe it. The night was full of stars, some winking down from the heavens, and some gazing up from the ground—exotic lilies, and other flowers she didn’t recognize, which looked ghostly pale and almost insubstantial by moonlight, yet were heavy with a scent redolent of earthy passions. It was an enchanted scene, so magical she thought she heard music drifting on the quiet air, and stopped to listen. Yes, there it was: something old-fashioned and rather haunting, in three-quarter time.

  “Deep In My Heart,” Ethan said, pausing too, and she reared back, for a moment startled into thinking he was speaking to her. But then he continued, “It’s the refrain from The Student Prince, my aunt’s favorite operetta. She and my uncle dance to it almost every night. It has great sentimental value for them. He proposed to her the night he took her to see the musical revival on Broadway, over fifty years ago.”

  “And they still honor the tradition today?” It was such an unexpected story, and one so touchingly reminiscent of the way her own parents had behaved toward one another, that Anne-Marie turned away, embarrassed by the sudden tears stinging her eyes. “That’s the way marriages ought to be.”

  “But seldom are.” He thrust a handkerchief at her. “Here. I believe you need this.”

  “I don’t know why I should,” she said, feeling like a fool.

  “You were caught by surprise. You didn’t think there’d be much room for passion or tenderness in a relationship where the wife appears to wear the pants.”

  “Well, your uncle does seem a little henpecked,” she said, smiling again at the odd blending of formality and slang in his speech.

  He clasped her hand again, and didn’t let go. “On the surface, perhaps, but he’s the steel in the backbone of their marriage, which just goes to show how wrong first impressions can be, Anne-Marie, and is a lesson to both of us not to leap to unfounded conclusions. Louis is the light of my aunt’s life, and she of his.”

  Anne-Marie, he’d called her, and the way he’d said it rendered it so intimate that a flush ran over her.

  “That’s the way I remember my parents being,” she said, projecting a calm she was far from feeling. “I’ve often thought it was as well they died together because I can’t imagine how one would have survived without the other. They needed each other the way other people need oxygen.”

  The path opened into a clearing just then, with a lily pond in the middle spanned by a small stone bridge. Leading her toward it, he said, “But you had needs, too, and I’m beginning to think they’ve been left neglected too long.”

  The moon shone full and bright, splashing the surrounding jungle with silver and flinging long, deep shadows across the surface of the water. A night creature let out a sleepy squawk which somehow intensified the utter stillness of the setting.

  “Needs?”

  “Yes,” he said—a simple enough answer and, on the surface at least, not without merit, because the feeling of belonging, of being connected to another person in the most vital way possible, had been missing from her life from the day she’d learned about her parents’ death.

  She’d searched for it without success in every relationship which had come her way since, but never in her wildest imaginings had she thought she’d find it with a man she’d met little more than twenty-four hours earlier. Yet, all at once, there it was, so tangible she could almost reach out and touch it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me the reason you’re so afraid of the water?” he said. “If I’d known your parents drowned when you were just a child, I’d have been more understanding.”

  “Would you?” she stammered.

  “Yes,” he said again, standing so close that his answer this time feathered over her lips.

  How had it come about, she wondered, dazed, that in the space of a second, her association with Ethan Beaumont had shifted to assume a totally different dimension? At what precise moment had they suddenly ceased being wary host and defensive guest, and become instead a man and a woman helplessly drawn to one another by forces beyond their control?

  She had no answer. She knew only that it had happened, and a breathless, reckless expectation seized her. Without thought for the consequences, she lifted her face and drank in the essence of the blossom-scented night. Of him and the pure masculine magnetism he radiated. She closed her eyes and waited…waited….

  Seconds ticked by, marked only by the urgent thud of her heart. And then, when she thought she’d been mistaken after all and nothing had changed between them, he said raggedly, “Am I supposed to kiss you now, Anne-Marie?”

  She’d have been humiliated beyond endurance if she hadn’t detected the torment behind his remark and realized the reason for it. But the battle he was fighting—and losing—so closely paralleled her
own emotional turmoil that she found the courage to whisper, “How about a little truth, for a change, Ethan? How about ‘I want to kiss you, Anne-Marie’?”

  “No,” he muttered. But his hands betrayed him and slid through her hair, working at the pins holding it up until it fell loose around her shoulders. “No,” he said again, almost savagely. “It’ll never happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” he said, “it would be a mistake.”

  But either he didn’t really believe what he was saying, or he, too, was at the mercy of impulses beyond his control, because he dipped his head lower…lower…until it blotted out the moon peeping over his shoulder, and his breath taunted her senses with the memory of the pale gold wine he’d drunk at dinner.

  And finally, when she was trembling all over with anticipation, his lips searched out hers. Unable to help herself, she rose to meet him, felt his arms lock around her, and was lost.

  His kiss was so much more than a meeting of mouths. It was an introduction to paradise; a promise of something beyond earthly comprehension. Its imprint scorched her soul and left her melting against him.

  He awoke every female instinct she possessed and set it free. He reduced every other kiss she’d ever known to ashes; every other man to a featureless shadow.

  His mouth lingered, explored, discovered, persuaded. At his instigation, her lips parted to allow her tongue to engage in shameless, erotic intimacy with his. He tasted divine and the more she sampled, the more she craved. The more he demanded, the more she gave.

  At length, inevitably, he broke all contact and stepped back to examine her from hooded, unreadable eyes. “I was right,” he said hoarsely. “That was a big mistake.”

  “But not necessarily fatal, surely?” she said, trying not to whimper with disappointment. “Sometimes, people can learn a great deal from their mistakes.”

  “Yes, but that was a lesson I could do without. It taught me nothing I want to know.”