Apprehension wedged its way past her headache. She had one pair of glasses until her luggage arrived, and if he’d broken them…Hallie jerked open the dresser drawer and lifted out the pewter frames. The lenses were still intact, which was good, but the frames…well, they weren’t so good. “How am I supposed to wear these?”
One—just one—of Rik’s eyebrows lifted, giving him an are-you-talking-to-me? expression. “On your nose?”
“Don’t get cute. You broke my glasses and now you expect—”
“Hold on there, Quicksilver.” He set the remainder of the biscuit on his plate and rested his hands, palm down, on the table. “I had nothing to do with breaking your spectacles. You did that yourself during a particularly rowdy segment of your dance routine. I, being the nice guy I am, retrieved the broken pieces and meticulously taped them back together. Now, I understand that hangovers don’t make good bedfellows, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to ruin my breakfast with unfounded indictments.”
Hallie stared at him, her belligerence fading, her apprehension growing as rapidly as the magic bean stalk. “Dance?” she whispered, “I’m the dancer? The one Babs accused you of slinging over your shoulder last night?”
“’It wasn’t an accusation.” His nod was reluctant, his shrug apologetic. “More like a statement of fact”
She sagged onto the edge of the mattress, processing the information, the implications and…When she looked up, he met her eyes, and for no good reason she felt there might still be hope, after all. “But Babs didn’t recognize me?”
‘To be honest, you weren’t facing her. You might want to avoid bending over when she’s around, though. She got a really good look at your, uh, derriere.”
Hallie closed her eyes. “I mooned Babs Brewster,” she said dismally, and then her eyelids flew up with another horrifying thought. “Please tell me I was still wearing clothes at the time.”
“Your butt was covered. The clothes didn’t come off until later.”
“How much later?”
“Not until we were alone in our room.”
That sounded terribly intimate and Hallie decided she did not want to go there, did not want to know the details, did not want to ask if he’d shared any part of the bed with her during any part of the night. Of course, nothing had happened. She knew that.
Well, something obviously had happened. It was the what she didn’t want to know. She met Rik’s gaze again, uncomfortably aware this time that she was in his debt. “Thank you,” she said.
“For…?”
“Rescuing me from a potentially disastrous evening.”
“I only saved you from getting fired and catching a cold, both of which probably would have happened if I hadn’t, one, gotten you out of the lobby when I did, and, two, gotten you out of your soaked clothes before you took a chill.”
“Well, I’m grateful, although I can’t believe it was necessary to remove every stitch of clothing I had on.”
He popped the last bite of the biscuit into his mouth and chewed with a very male kind of smile. “You know, you could be right. For some reason, that possibility just never crossed my mind.”
Hallie jumped up. So he’d enjoyed seeing her naked, had he? Enjoyed taking advantage of her defenseless state. Enjoyed taking off her clothes and staring at her body and maybe touching her breasts and maybe putting his lips…The images flipping through her overly sensitive brain bathed her in a tingling heat. From her toes to her sticky chin, she felt hot and restless and embarrassed. Well, she’d teach him a lesson. She’d get dressed. He wasn’t going to have the opportunity to enjoy himself at her expense any longer.
Setting her’ crimped and patched glasses on the dresser, she tossed the crumpled, cheesy bagel into the trash, dusted her hands on her terry-cloth-covered hips and scooped as much as she could hold from the bed into her arms. The hairbrush fell and clonked her on the toe, but she didn’t wince or slow down. “I’ll just change in the bathroom,” she said, not caring if he cared one way or the other.
Just then someone knocked at the door and Rik looked up. “Would you mind?” he asked “It’s probably the waiter returning to pick up the tray.”
Since she was practically in front of the door anyway, it seemed petty to refuse, so she juggled the shifting lump of toiletries, box, bags and muumuus in her arms, grasped the doorknob and pulled open the door. “We’re not quite finished,” she said as she opened the door. “We’ll just set the tray outside when we’re—”
Except it wasn’t the room service waiter, she realized too late. It was Danforth Brewster.
RIK HAD NEVER LEFTa table so fast. He was on his feet, across the room and slamming the door on Dan’s astonished face before the coffee cup he’d hastily set on its saucer stopped rattling. “Be with you in a minute,” he called through the door to Dan as he tried to figure out what to do with Hallie. And how he was ever going to convince his future in-laws that he was actually a man of very high morals. He looked down into her startled eyes and knew she didn’t want to be found with him any more than he wanted to get caught with her. “Quick,” he whispered. “The bathroom.”
She nodded and dashed inside, scattering toiletries in her wake. Rik quickly retrieved what she dropped and tossed them into the bathroom after her. The moment she closed the door, he brushed back his hair, inhaled sharply and opened the door.
“Mr. Brewster,” he said, edging his body into the opening between the door of the hotel room and the hallway, where Dan Brewster shifted from one long foot to the other. Stephanie’s father was tall, lean and perpetually in motion, and Rik had a pretty good idea that this visit was not his idea. “How nice to see you. All set for Saturday’s wedding?”
“I am. I am.” Dan’s gaze slid past Rik’s face in an effort to see past him and into the room. “Who answered the door?”
Rik grinned. “I didn’t hear the door ask a question.”
“Now, there’s an oldie but a goodie,” Dan said as he craned his neck a little farther to the left. “What are you doing in there, Rik? Auditioning some local bathing beauties for the bachelor party?”
“You know better than to ask the best man a question like that, sir. You’re the father of the bride.’
“Which means I ought to be in on the selection process.”
“I can’t believe Mrs. Brewster would be happy about that.”
“Well, of course she wouldn’t.” Dan stepped forward, and Rik had to either slam the door in his face a second time or step back. He stepped back…against his better judgment. “But she’s not going to know about it, is she?”
“Wives have a way of finding out these things. It might be best if you just admitted you didn’t see anything at all.”
“I saw someone in a towel…Oh, I see.” Dan nodded, apparently coming to a belated understanding. “I didn’t see anyone. I only imagined I did.” With a broad, conspiratorial wink, he continued to look for the someone who was merely a figment of his imagination. “I do that all the time…think I see someone or something when I don’t I’m outnumbered by women, you know. What with Babs and my two daughters. But you know Stephanie, of course. Like mother, like daughter, I say. Daughters, I suppose I should say. Like mother, like daughters. The other one’s already married, though. You probably know about that Mrs. DeHaven. That’s our Bentley.”
Danforth Brewster wasn’t the world’s greatest conversationalist but under the circumstances, Rik was having a little trouble keeping his mind on the subject too. “Well, it was thoughtful of you to drop by.” He began to close the door. “I’ll see you at the rehearsal dinner Friday night.”
“Yes, yes, of course you will.” He smiled, nodded and turned away. But Rik’s sigh of relief was shortlived as Dan turned immediately back. “Now, Rik, you can’t expect to get rid of me that easily. As it happens, Babs sent me here to discuss a highly-confidential matter with you. And since I didn’t really see a beautiful exotic dancer wearing only a towel, I think it’s perfectly all right f
or you to invite me in.”
“But this isn’t a good—”
“It’s important,” Dan interrupted. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come so soon after breakfast.” His long face creased with a smile as he glanced into the room, his gaze settling on the room service tray. “You’re still eating. Well, I’ll be damned There’s enough for two. Now, that’s what I call planning. I mean timing, good timing. To tell the truth, I wouldn’t mind having a little bite of that ham to tide me over until lunch.”
“There’s not much left,” Rik began, but his objection was overridden by Dan’s good-humored laugh as the older man strong-armed the door open and barrelled across the room to take Hallie’s vacated seat at the table.
“Now, there’s plenty here for the two of us. I’ll just have a couple of bites of that ham. Sit down, Rik. Finish your breakfast. I don’t want to interrupt your meal.” Dan picked up a muffin. “Or whatever else you were doing.”
A tall order, considering the proximity of bathing suits and female folderol still strung out on the bed, the intimate apparel still waving from the balcony and the fact that he was harboring a hungover Hallie while entertaining his future father-in-law. All of which supported, rather than contradicted, Dan’s notion of what was going on in this hotel room this morning.
Not exactly the situation a prospective son-in-law wanted to get caught in. But there was nothing he could do to prevent Dan’s “little bite of ham” from turning into a feast. And there was even less he could do to keep from shuffling crumbs nervously from one side of his own plate to the other. What in the hell was he doing? Sitting at a table with Stephanie’s father while a woman he barely knew lounged in a bath towel in the bathroom behind him. Why was he protecting Hallie to his own detriment? And how was he going to get Dan Brewster to leave?
“What did you want to discuss?” he asked finally, in growing desperation.
Dan put down his fork and picked up the last biscuit “You didn’t want this, did you?” He was spooning marmalade before Rik could concede that he wouldn’t dream of taking the last biscuit. “Yes,” Dan said with a crisp, clean Boston accent despite the mouthful of Southern-style biscuit he was chewing. “Babs sent me to ask you about Jack.”
“Ask me what?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute. Babs is the most insistent woman, you know, and to my shame, I can never find the heart to say no to her.”
Rik didn’t think the heart was the organ that couldn’t contemplate facing Babs’s displeasure. “Maybe you should try it sometime,” he suggested. “See what happens.”
“Hmm.” Dan settled back in his chair and rubbed a belly that looked too flat to hold the amount of food he’d just consumed. “I don’t see much point in it Babs and I have been married a long time. No need to throw my weight around and risk rocking the boat at this stage of the game…if you know what I mean.”
Rik didn’t know exactly what one thing had to do with the other, but he was more concerned about the gusts of wind whipping the palm fronds into a rhythmic wave. He watched as the wind loosed Hallie’s parity hose from their knotted hold on the railing and plastered them against the patio door—crotch first.
“Babs is a hell of a woman, you know,” Dan continued, oblivious for the moment to the scenic view on his right. “Oh, she’s a bit stubborn at times, I’ll admit, but all in all, a hell of a woman.”
“I’ll take your word for it, sir.”
“No need, no need. You’ll discover it soon enough for yourself. Like mother, like daughter, I always say.” Dan frowned slightly, seemingly confused. “Well, no, I suppose you won’t be making that discovery, will you? I was daydreaming again, thinking I was talking to Jack. But, of course, Jack knows Babs already. He and Stephanie are getting married, you know.”
“Yes,” Rik agreed. “So I understand.”
“Well, that’s the reason I’m here. To discuss Friday night’s bachelor party. Babs wants your personal guarantee that nothing will go on at the party that shouldn’t go on, if you know what I mean.” Dan leaned back in the chair. “Basically, Babs wants your assurance that no big-busted broad jumps out of a cake during the party.”
“That idea never even crossed my mind.” Rik stood, hoping to encourage his uninvited guest to do the same. “I understand perfectly, and you can assure Mrs. Brewster that nothing is going to happen at Jack’s bachelor party that she wouldn’t approve of wholeheartedly.”
“Sit down, sit down.” Dan waved him back into the chair. “For a man who’s lived his whole life in the jungle, you’re a jumpy kind of fellow.”
“Thirteen years,” Rik corrected. “And it pays to be on edge…in or out of the jungle.”
“I guess you never know when something might drop from a tree branch and…” Dan’s words drifted away as his gaze drifted to the window. Hallie’s clothes had been rearranged on the palm tree and the balcony door. Dan took a considerable amount of time to visually examine the evidence before he looked back at Rik with a pleased smile. “Looks like Sheena of the Jungle is somewhere in the neighborhood,” he said. “Auditioning, is she?”
“I wouldn’t think she’d do that, no.” Rik wished he’d had the foresight to close the drapes. “I don’t even know her.”
“Sure, sure, I understand.” Dan winked, smiled and stood, his pencil-thin legs unfolding like a carpenter’s ruler. “Your memory’s as bad as my eyesight.”
Rik didn’t know how he was ever going to explain away this conversation once he and Stephanie were married. Providing, of course, that he could prevent Stephanie from marrying Jack in the first place and convince her that he was, in fact, the best man. “Thanks for dropping by,” he said. “You and Mrs. Brewster have nothing to worry about. I’ll make sure Jack’s bachelor party is in the best of taste.”
“I like the sound of that” Dan strolled toward the door. “Just have one question. What ‘flavor’ of cake are we going to get a taste of? Blonde, brunette or redhead?” He laughed at his own joke and Rik tried hard to join in, although he sounded more like Foghorn Leghorn, strangling on a grain of humor.
“The cake isn’t my department,” Rik said. “That’s the hotel chef’s department.”
“Right, right. Well, I’ll reassure Babs that you are a man after my own heart in regard to proper etiquette and all. She’ll be happy to hear it.” He nudged Rik with a conspiratorial elbow. “Put my name down on Sheena’s dance card. Don’t forget!”
Oh, hell, Rik thought as he followed Dan to the door. “Thanks for stopping by. I’m sure we’ll see each other again during the next couple of days.”
“No doubt about it, considering we’re practically neighbors. Babs and I are in the suite next door.” Dan glanced at the bed. “Looks like you’ve been shopping.”
“Gifts for my nieces and nephews,” Rik replied without missing a beat.
“You must have dozens of them.”
“Dozens.” One, actually. Sam, who wasn’t even a year old yet and whose daddy would never let him wear a muumuu, no matter what the color.
Dan held up one of the adult-size bathing suits. “Must be darn near grown.”
“They’re big kids,” Rik added hastily.
“Hmm. I guess you know what size they are.”
“Oh, I do. I do.”
Dan grinned. “Watch out now. “I do’ is Jack’s line.”
Not if Rik could do anything about it “You can return to Mrs. Brewster and reassure her that Jack’s future is in capable hands. I’ll take good care of him.”
“Never doubted it for a minute. Thanks for the snack. I’d better get back before the little woman comes looking for me.”
“I thought she sent you.”
Dan smiled, pleased. “So she did.” He stopped at the door and glanced again at the clothes on the bed, then at the panty hose pressed against the glass. “Some days I’d give anything to be thirty again.”
“Take my word for it, sir. Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed, no matter what age you
are.”
Rik locked the door behind Brewster, then knocked on the bathroom door. “Coast is clear. You can come out now.”
Hallie opened the door and stepped out, dressed in the only piece of clothing he hadn’t intended for her. The pareu hugged her body in a slim, exotic line. Its colors were just as brilliant as the swimsuits and muumuus, but he couldn’t imagine that they would look even half so spectacular when worn. He couldn’t imagine Stephanie in the pareu, either. Even though he’d bought it with her in mind. He shouldn’t have bought it at all. It had been an impulse. Nothing more. A gift for Stephanie. But the impulse had now given way to something else, something to do with Hallie. What was the old saw? If you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with?
Now where had that come from? He wasn’t fickle. Hadn’t he known the minute he laid eyes on Stephanie that she was the perfect woman for him? And hadn’t he known just as surely that Hallie was trouble? But staring at her now, her sandy brown hair feathered around her face in flattering disarray, her eyes shimmering with what was probably half a bottle of Red-out, her hands displaying her self-consciousness in an uncertain brushing against the poppy red flowers in the fabric of the pareu, he had a feeling his world was shifting.
“Is it really that bad?” she asked. “I mean, it’s the only thing that looked sort of…well, you know…”
He did know. To his own surprise. “You look—” Beautiful? She did, but he couldn’t say so. They were sharing the room, for Pete’s sake, and he didn’t want her to get the idea he wanted to share anything else. “You look—” Sexy? He certainly wasn’t going to say that aloud. He cleared his throat of an annoying huskiness. “You look—okay. Of course, I’ve seen you naked.”
She slammed the bathroom door, leaving him wondering what had gotten into him, why he’d said something so ungentlemanly and how he was going to manage to apologize without admitting some other most ungentlemanly desires. He glanced at the demolished breakfast he’d ordered with the thought in mind that they’d sit and talk and he’d ask questions about Saturday’s wedding and make mental notes about ways to sabotage the whole project. It would have worked, too, if Danforth Brewster hadn’t popped in with a thinly veiled excuse and an appetite he didn’t bother to hide. Babs wanted to know whose clothes were outside the window. She wanted to know who Rik had slung over his shoulder last night and carried out of the lobby.
Please Say I Do Page 7