by LETO, JULIE
“You were at my restaurant last night for dinner and, afterward, you and Charlie came into the bar for drinks. Do you remember any of that?”
Max closed his eyes. Images warred with the pounding pressure squeezing his skull. He remembered a crowd cheering. A flaming swirl of colors captured in a tall glass. Ariana touching her finger to her luscious, moist mouth.
“Vaguely,” he said. He downed another big swallow of coffee. He’d known Ariana for two years, since he moved into his Russian Hill home and started jogging to the office, stopping at her restaurant in the mornings for coffee and in the afternoons for a beer. Never in that time had she ever, ever been cold, but her natural friendliness and warmth had never extended into flirting or come-ons.
Yet here she was, wearing his shirt and sitting on his mattress after gathering her underwear from the balcony outside his bedroom.
“I didn’t make it to the restaurant until just before closing,” she explained. “But sometime during the evening, someone added something to your drink.”
“A drug?”
She shrugged. “I suspect. Something that made it hard for you to focus, it loosened your inhibitions and, obviously, affected your memory.”
There was a great deal of information to process in what she’d said, but the phrase “loosened your inhibitions” begged to be dealt with first.
Max arched an eyebrow in amusement. “I didn’t know I had any inhibitions that needed loosening.”
Ariana pressed her lips together, fighting a smile and losing horribly. “Maybe inhibitions isn’t the right word,” she amended, pretending to scratch her nose when she was really trying to hide her grin.
He sat up straighter and finished the coffee. His memory was still a fuzzy blur, but the jackhammer in his head seemed to have moved a few yards down the block. Her battle with laughter fueled his ire enough to jolt him with energy.
“Then what is the right word?”
She stood up and stepped toward the door. “I think goodbye would work. Someone was probably just playing a joke on you. A harmless one, really, since you’re obviously fine and your memory will come back. Little by little, I’ll bet.”
“You brought me home?”
She inched toward the door, hooking her hand on the knob. “Seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I wanted to make sure you were okay. Whatever happened, happened in my restaurant, but I didn’t have anything to do with it and I’m certain none of my employees did, either.”
Max rubbed his chin, wincing at the thick growth itching his skin. He leaned across the bed and tugged his alarm clock, which was dangling over the bedstand by the cord.
Eleven forty-five.
Eleven forty-five! He never slept that late, even on a Saturday.
That thought gave him pause.
“Today is Saturday, right?” he asked. She nodded.
Panic clutched his heart as his gaze drifted back to the glowing blue numbers on his alarm clock.
“Saturday the twenty-sixth?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Holy…” He followed the oath with an expletive that made Ariana jump even before he vaulted out of the bed and scrambled down the stairs to the kitchen. He paused long enough to get his bearings, then shot toward the two-by-two bulletin board tucked into a corner of his custom-made cabinets. There, beside the note from his housekeeper with the dates of her vacation and a neatly penned grocery list that he was supposed to fax to his delivery service, was an embossed square of thick ivory parchment with elegant gold lettering. He snatched the invitation off the board.
Saturday, the twenty-sixth day of May, the year of our Lord…
He read back until he found the time.
Twelve noon.
And to make sure he punished himself, he jumped to the third line from the top.
…the marriage of their daughter, Madelyn Josephine Burrows, to Mr. Maxwell Forrester.
He swore again, suddenly realizing that he was standing near the window wearing nothing but a stricken expression. Ariana stared from the doorway, undoubtedly wondering if he’d lost his mind.
“Are you okay?” she asked for the second time this morning. Or was it the third?
“I’m late for the wedding.”
She echoed his curse. “Charlie’s going to kill me. You’re his best man!” She rushed to him and grabbed the invitation. “What time is it at?”
But she obviously didn’t find the noon notation first. Her eyes enlarged into big black saucers. Her jaw dropped with an audible gasp. Slowly, those ebony saucers hovered upward to focus on him.
“You’re getting married today? Charlie told me he was the groom!”
Max glanced down at his bare stomach, somewhat surprised that the punched-in-the-gut sensation came from his own guilt rather than her fist to his midsection. He sure deserved it. He was getting married today and, loveless marriage or not, he’d just cheated on his fiancée. The fact that Maddie would understand wasn’t the point. Max prefaced his answer with a string of self-deprecating curses. Some for Maddie, whom he’d betrayed. And some for Ariana, who didn’t deserve to be used and deceived.
“Charlie lied. But I shouldn’t have…we shouldn’t…” It was his turn to leave a phrase unfinished. He shouldn’t have what? Allowed someone to slip something in his drink? Agreed to a marriage of convenience? Denied the desire he’d had for Ariana over the past two years simply because a woman like her would undeniably complicate his life?
Ariana looked at the invitation again, then back at Max, then back at the invitation. “I knew Charlie was lying about something, but never about this!” She swallowed hard, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Get dressed. You have fifteen minutes. I’ll find your car keys.”
ARIANA FOUND THE KEYS in the ignition of a current-model Porsche convertible parked in a pristine garage. With no idea how to disengage the security alarm blinking red and ominous on the garage door, she plopped into the driver’s seat. It had been a while since she’d been behind the wheel of a car. Studying the instrumentation, she forced herself to focus on reacquainting herself with the process, when all she really wanted to do was scream bloody murder.
She’d spent the night with the groom! Not the best man. The groom! Why had Charlie lied to her? She couldn’t really be mad at Max. She had been convinced last night and still was today that his condition had not been faked—though she had believed that he was clear and fully aware of his actions once he’d joined her on the balcony. But she should have been thinking clearly all night. She had made the choice to go through with the seduction in the fog…then in the bedroom—oh, and the shower. She couldn’t forget the shower.
Oh, God! Only her second lover in her entire lifetime and she’d descended from virtual virgin to certified slut in one night? She’d made love with a man on the eve of his wedding to someone else. The fact that she didn’t know he was getting married was no excuse, right? That was Charlie’s fault. When she got her hands on that liar, she was going to make him pay.
Max slammed into the garage, denying her time to pile on more thoughts of revenge. Right now, all she could do was help him set things right. Unshaven and uncombed, but at least now dressed in pants and a shirt, a bow tie and tuxedo jacket clutched in his left hand, Max punched in the security code and activated the garage opener. Ariana turned the key on the ignition as he yanked open the passenger door and folded himself inside. Whoever had ridden with him last had not been tall.
Probably the bride, “Madelyn Josephine Burrows.” Damn her.
“Do you know where St. Armand’s Church is?” he asked.
“Unless it’s Greek Orthodox, nope.”
Max took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Take a right out the driveway. And step on it.” He flipped the tie around his neck and dropped the sun visor to use the vanity mirror.
“Max, about last night…” she said, revving the engine. Now, if she only knew what to say next.
Max stopped fiddling with his tie
and laid his hand over hers. “Ari, do what I did. For now, just forget last night.”
She pursed her lips as she tested the give-and-take of the clutch. “Easy for you to say. You had pharmaceutical help.”
He squeezed her knuckles, then covered her hand completely, enveloping her fingers in his warmth. Ariana focused on the shape and size of his hand, instantaneously remembering the gentle skill that hand had practiced on every inch of her body. Her palms grew slick and her stomach turned.
She’d made love, freely and wildly, with a man who would, as soon as she shoved the car into drive and found the church, marry someone else.
She shook his hand away and manipulated the stick shift into first gear. “I’ll be fine. You finish dressing and do the navigating thing. We have a wedding to get to.”
THE PARKING LOT was virtually empty. Ari leaned over and checked the clock on the dashboard. It was only quarter past noon. Surely they’d wait fifteen minutes.
Ariana pulled into a space beside the single occupant of the lot, a shiny Honda Accord with several religious stickers on the bumper. “You sure this is the right place?”
Max dug into his pocket for the invitation.
“St. Armand’s,” he read, then gestured to the marble sign below the statue in the courtyard. “This is where we were last night for the rehearsal.”
Ariana hadn’t intended to get out of the car. She’d wanted to stop at the restaurant two blocks away and let Max drive the rest of the way alone while she called her uncle to pick her up. She didn’t want anyone getting the wrong impression—which, technically, was the right impression if they thought Max had arrived at his wedding with the woman he’d picked up at a bar and slept with the night before his marriage.
But Max, still struggling with his damn tie while she ruined his clutch, begged her to stay with him until they’d reached the church, though he hadn’t said why, not even when she’d asked.
“Is there another parking lot?” she ventured, trying to work a reasonable explanation out of a puzzling situation.
“Not that I know of. This is the pastor’s car,” he said, clicking open his door. “Come on.”
Turning off the ignition, she exited the car and tossed him the keys. “Come on? I’m not going anywhere near that church! I have a particularly strong aversion to lightning smiting me dead.”
His frown was incorrigible, and so damn cute. “You’re a friend getting me to my wedding when I was too hungover to drive. No one is going to assume anything else. Not from Maxwell Forrester. Trust me on that.”
His self-deprecating tone intrigued her. “What are you, some kind of Goody Two-shoes?”
He shrugged into his jacket, engaged the car alarm and pocketed the keys. “Something like that,” he answered, motioning her to follow when he started up the stone walkway.
Ariana dug her hands into her pockets beneath the hem of her untucked turtleneck. Her curiosity was on overdrive. She simply didn’t know what she wanted to learn more—where all the guests were or what this Madelyn Josephine Burrows looked like.
She stepped around the car and skipped up onto the sidewalk, drawing the brim of her lucky cap slightly downward while she matched her steps to Max’s. “What the hell? Maybe I can find a confessional while I’m here.”
Max didn’t answer and judging by the way he scanned the church for anyone, much less someone familiar, she realized he had much more on his mind than the eternal damnation of her soul. The one time, the one time, she decided to throw caution to the wind and have a glorious adventure, she’d wrecked a man’s future.
They entered the church through a side door and found the pastor, dressed casually in black pants and a shortsleeved white shirt, fiddling with the position of a glorious bouquet of satiny white tulips in front of the altar.
“Reverend?” Max asked quietly, stopping at the bottom step of the dais.
“Mr. Forrester? What on earth are you doing here?”
Max stared at the man for a long minute, then glanced over his shoulder for Ariana’s help. She had paused halfway down the aisle behind him, her expression purposefully blank. She had no more idea than he did about what the heck was going on.
“What am I doing here? Well, I thought I was getting married.”
The reverend, barely pushing forty, with streaks of gray at his temples and a spry, slender physique, placed his hands on his hips and gave Max a half scolding, half amused smile. “Well, so did I until Mrs. Burrows called this morning to tell me that you and Miss Madelyn had eloped in the dead of night.”
The cleric squinted at Ari, who smiled and gave him a little wave. “You’re not Miss Madelyn.”
Ariana smiled. No, she wasn’t. But she wasn’t saying a word.
“She’s a friend. She drove me here.” The explanation rushed out before he stopped and nearly shouted, “Eloped?”
“I take it Mrs. Burrows wasn’t telling the whole truth?”
“Eloped?” he repeated.
Max backed up until his legs hit a chair festooned with tulle and bows and he plopped into it. Ari took a step forward, then stopped. This was none of her business. She shouldn’t be here. But, good Lord, did Max just get left at the altar?
Why would any woman leave this man at the altar? Ariana slapped her hand over her mouth to contain a gasp. She and Max had made love outside! What if someone saw? What if Madelyn saw? Oh, God. What if Max’s poor innocent bride had stumbled onto them sometime during the night or morning and, heartbroken, had her mother lie to the priest and all the guests? Ari slid into a pew and buried her face in her hands. She was going to hell for sure.
The pastor’s voice carried across the empty church. “I take it Mrs. Burrows’ explanation for the cancellation of the wedding wasn’t true.”
Ariana looked up in time to see Max shake his head. “If Madelyn eloped, it wasn’t with me.”
The pastor stepped down and sat beside Max, laying his hand across his shoulder. “Did the two of you have a fight?”
“I haven’t spoken with Maddie since the rehearsal dinner. She left before I settled the bill.”
The pastor glanced over his shoulder, his eyes sweeping over Ariana quickly, but with clear suspicion in his gaze. “And you haven’t done anything that might have prompted Miss Madelyn’s change of heart?”
What? Did she have the word homewrecker tattooed on her forehead? Ariana stood, pursing her lips. Dammit, she didn’t know Max was getting married! She’d been deliberately deceived by Charlie Burrows. If anyone was going to pay, it was going to be him, and Ariana wasn’t going to depend on divine intervention for that retribution.
Charlie had lied to her about who was the groom. Then the bride’s mother lied to the priest about Max eloping. Why was this family acting so despicably? Was Charlie really Max’s friend? For all she knew, he could have been the one to doctor Max’s drink. But why?
Max stood, holding up his hand to stall Ariana from bolting, which she fully planned to do. “I need to find Madelyn.”
The pastor nodded, his expression grave. “A wise course of action. Let me know if you need my assistance.”
The men shook hands and before Ariana knew it, she and Max were marching back to his car, their footsteps tapping loudly on the stones—in time, in sync, as if the rhythm of their bodies were composed by the same master musician.
Just like last night.
“Max,” Ariana spoke when they reached the car, pausing as he clicked off the alarm and opened the passenger door for her.
“I’m okay to drive,” he assured her. “I need to drive.”
She shook her head. That wasn’t what she was going to say. “You can drop me off at the corner,” she answered. “I’ll get a ride home.”
“No way. Didn’t you say that Charlie told you he was the one getting married?”
Nodding, she watched with wonder as the rage built in his eyes, turning them from warm sea green to cold pinpoints of emerald fire. “We planned the rehearsal dinner for weeks,”
she told him. “He kept encouraging me to flirt with you, talking you up and saying how perfect…”
Her voice trailed off. She sounded like an idiot, trying to justify her own stupidity and blind lust. She hated being duped, the pawn in some grand design of someone else’s making.
“Get in, Ariana. We’ve both been screwed, and—”
She didn’t mean to laugh, but couldn’t help herself.
He touched her arm then, jolting the humor out of her with a shock of awareness that had no right to exist between them but did.
“Bad word choice. I’m sorry.”
“I’m the one who should apologize. I just want you to know I don’t ever, ever sleep with men I hardly know. Last night was…never mind. You don’t remember and maybe it’s better that you don’t. I should leave well enough alone.”
His grin was halfhearted, and she thought—hoped—she saw regret in his eyes. “This is ‘well enough’? I just got jilted.”
“Maybe someone saw us together.”
That erased the half smile from his mouth.
“Maybe. But we won’t know until we ask some questions. Charlie owes both of us an explanation.” He stepped back and opened the car door farther. “I’ll try to get one out of him before I wring his neck.”
Ariana couldn’t disagree. She wanted to find Charlie as soon as possible and she had no way of knowing how to do that without Max. She also wanted to wring Charlie’s neck first, but she’d argue for that right after they found him.
“Aren’t you going to call Madelyn?” she asked, sliding into the car.
Max didn’t answer. He slammed her door shut and walked around to the driver’s side, got in, turned the key and backed up with perfect grace. He’d undoubtedly left all vestiges of his hangover in the church vestibule.
“Max, why don’t you let me deal with Charlie and you go see Madelyn?”
He shook his head as he maneuvered out of the parking lot. “Maddie can wait until I find out the details.”