“Still, I should’ve remembered about today.” Obviously distressed, Gaby struck her forehead with the heel of her palm. “Blame it on the late night I spent with Margaret, trying on ball costumes. Otherwise, the meeting wouldn’t have slipped my mind. André, I’m so sorry.” She looked truly stricken. “What happened?”
“Jason tossed out some nasty barbs about your absence. He tried to create doubt in everyone’s mind about our right to lead this outfit.” André paused as she got slowly to her feet and placed both hands on her desk, leaning forward. “If you recall, I said someone wants us tearing at each other’s throats,” he finished hoarsely.
Gaby couldn’t make sense of André’s words. He stood so close she felt as if she’d been set adrift on some strange sea. Her senses seemed heightened and she was physically aware of him in a way she’d never been before. She breathed in the scent of his aftershave, his soap, his sweat—a combination that was potent and masculine. It had been a very long time since she’d let herself slip under the power of a man’s scent.
In seconds he was beside her. Almost without volition she moved into his arms, sliding her palms up his chest.
André stifled a groan. For weeks he’d lain hot and naked in his bed at night, torturing himself with waking dreams of how Gabrielle Villieux would taste. He bent his head and touched his lips to hers.
Hearing her breath escape a tiny bleat of pleasure—André brought his hands to her shoulder blades and drew her against him. His teeth nipped a trail down her throat to her sweat-damp collarbone. Then his tongue backtracked, soothing her with cool moisture.
Gabrielle went as limp in his arms as one of Leslie’s plush bears. She tried to grasp his lapels. Because her fingers refused to close and because she felt as if her knees had turned to water, she looped her wrists around his neck and leaned into him. She took a moment to breathe deeply, recover her strength. Then, never passive in lovemaking, Gaby tunneled her fingers under the leather thong that held his thick hair. She steadied his head until she managed to capture his lips. It was a tempestuous exploration that went on and on:
Had a car not backfired outside the window, a roll on the floor would have been their next stop. Both recognized that the minute they moved apart. André’s tie was askew, his shirt half-open, his belt buckle undone. Gaby’s gray suit jacket lay in a heap on the carpet. Her blouse hung loose, and her bra had been unclipped.
She spun away, but not before André read the horror that reshaped her well-kissed mouth.
He ran an unsteady hand through his hair and discovered the thong was missing. He found it curled in her in-basket like a snake. Clearly she considered him the snake.
“Gabrielle.” He tried to touch her and she shrugged off his hand.
Her voice, not quite steady yet firm with conviction, floated back over one shoulder. “I’ll accept half the blame, André,” she said, busily righting her clothing.
“That’s big of you,” he murmured, not wanting to hear the but that was sure to follow.
“But,” she continued, “we can’t let this happen again.”
“Why not?” He buttoned his shirt and straightened his tie.
She started stacking papers. “Because a relationship that involves sex takes more energy than I have to give. More than I’m willing to give. In my life Leslie comes first. This job second. In a tie for third are eating and sleeping. Don’t take it personally, André. Just call it a failed experiment. We were both curious. We satisfied that curiosity and now we can put sex behind us.”
André listened. He heard every precisely spoken word. He thought it commendable that her daughter came first in her life. Leslie was special. Granted, in his view, Gabrielle sometimes had trouble keeping those priorities in order. Not necessarily her fault. He knew how this job, this place, could consume you. His own childhood had shown him that.
He liked Leslie. A lot. And she liked him. Needed him. So did Gaby. It stunned André to realize he needed them even more. As far as the rest of her statement was concerned... Nonsense. His curiosity wasn’t satisfied. This interlude had only whetted his interest. Gaby could pretend if she wished, but he knew that his interest was reciprocated. He wouldn’t tell her that sex most definitely wasn’t behind them.
But he’d let her figure that out for herself.
CHAPTER NINE
IT SUITED ANDRÉ to let Gabrielle think he agreed that their relationship should be business only. She had a valid reason to be wary of anything else. While he’d never shied away from women, no alliance he’d made had ever been long term. He’d never wanted it—until now. Of all the women he’d dated, only Gabrielle made his head spin. No other woman had him thinking about forever after.
A lifetime with her. To love and be loved. That was what he wanted. He could wait for her to reach the same conclusion, he decided.
Or maybe not. By the end of the day, André ached to hold her, to touch her, ached so badly that even a lifetime together didn’t sound long enough.
Several times he caught Gabrielle watching him with hunger in her eyes. If they didn’t come up with a way to alleviate the sexual tension clawing at them, André doubted he’d learn anything more about the business. Nor would the plans for the twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration get off the ground.
Yet he muddled through, day by day.
By the end of the next week, André decided that if he left it up to Gaby they’d reside in a permanent state of lust. And not only lust but something he recognized as even more basic. Emotional need.
It was time for a more aggressive approach.
At dinner Friday night, facing a weekend rattling around under the same roof with her, André hit on a solution. “The weather’s great. What do you say to playing hooky from work tomorrow, Gabrielle? Let’s take Rachel and Leslie to the Audubon Zoo.”
Gaby froze. It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse—until she saw the kids’ faces. Hope mingled with resignation, as though they’d been disappointed far too often. She shrugged. “If I can work until noon. Perhaps LuAnn will pack us a lunch. I’ve heard there are picnic tables near a waterfall in the park.” She realized she’d just admitted she’d never been there herself—no doubt confirming her workaholic reputation with everyone at the table.
Still, any reservations Gaby had about taking time off died when she saw how unbelievably excited Leslie had become. She and Rachel could talk of nothing else.
André savored his small victory. He entertained the girls throughout the meal with stories of various zoos and wildlife parks he’d visited in his travels.
“Mama, can Scott go with us?” Leslie pleaded.
Gaby deferred to André.
“Sure. If Uncle Charles and Aunt Catherine will let him,” André said. “My uncle’s been bent out of shape since I told him off for not telling Jason we’d hired Crawley,” he said in an aside.
“That shouldn’t involve Scottie. I’ll phone Charles myself,” Paul offered.
NEXT DAY AT TWELVE-FIFTEEN. André circled by Charles’s home to collect Scott. He parked in the shade of a giant live oak outside the faded Benoît mansion. The boy ran down the steps and squeezed into the backseat with Leslie and Rachel. They chattered like good friends all the way to the park. Gaby smiled a lot, but said little.
They ate near a beautiful lagoon, then spent hours trekking around the subtropical park. The sun had nearly set by the time they came out of the white-alligator exhibit. Rachel said sleepily, “I’m pooped, but I had a great day.”
“Me, too.” Leslie sighed.
“We missed one whole section.” Scott pointed at the map.
Gaby rumpled his hair. “We’ll save that for our next visit.” She aimed him toward the car. André fell into step with her and helped himself to her hand. Oddly she didn’t shake him loose and even let him take her hand again when they’d dropped Scott off.
“Scott’s a good kid,” André murmured to Gaby later as he carried a sleeping Leslie from the car and deposited her on her bed.
Rachel yawned her good-night in passing the room. She blew them a kiss.
André waited until Rachel shut her door before he whispered to Gabrielle, “Rach is losing her haunted look. She really loves Leslie...and you.”
Gabrielle smiled as she washed Leslie’s face and hands. André stripped off the girl’s sweaty sandals. “Like I told you before, you’re a natural with kids,” she murmured. “Sure you weren’t a nanny in your old life, instead of a dockhand?”
“Dockhands are versatile.” In hushed tones he told her about once saving a crateful of monkeys in Morocco. The crate had broken open on the docks. “They were a rare breed, headed for the San Diego Zoo. You should have seen me chasing those little buggers through the streets. I had to pay a fruit vendor for the bananas they stole. But I corralled them all.”
Her laughing eyes reflected the moonlight streaming through the window. Laughter made her look almost as young as Leslie. André couldn’t help himself. He stole a kiss. Gaby ducked away when he would have deepened it.
He didn’t think she put a lot of effort into avoiding him, though. And because he didn’t want the day to end, he talked her into raiding the refrigerator with him—despite LuAnn’s likely objections. Over cold turkey sandwiches and iced blackberry tea, André thought he detected a softening in Gaby’s feelings toward him. Yet the night ended before he could work up the courage to point out that Rachel wasn’t the only one who loved her....
In the ensuing days André couldn’t seem to find a moment alone with her. Work the next week was chaotic. Mardi Gras made for exciting television news. Everyone on staff was in a perpetual party mood. Maybe the biggest shock—Jason brought in his first advertising account. He more or less admitted to André that he liked working for Dave Crowley.
That was all Gaby wanted to talk about as she and André drove to the Bacchus ball. “André, I know the tide has turned. Profits almost doubled last month’s. You and I are functioning as a team. Even Jason’s come around some. Plus, no one’s messed with our calendars lately or pulled any nasty tricks. Life is good.” She sighed contentedly.
“Better than good. It’d be near perfect,” he teased, “if you didn’t have that white goo on your face tonight.” His fingers itched to take the pins out of her hair, too. She’d coiled her hair on either side of her head and pinned it with flowers and beads.
“It was your mother’s idea that I go as a geisha.” Gaby moved slowly amid all her satin trappings. “You make a dashing D’Artagnan.” She eyed him over top of her fan. He looked...incredible. Since the moment he’d appeared at the top of the stairs dressed like one of Alexandre Dumas’s three musketeers, her stomach had been one mass of flutters. Dammit!
The ballroom was crowded. Dress ranged from ridiculous outfits to costumes that looked as if they were practically museum pieces. The king and queen of the ball, as well as the invited dignitaries, were dressed in formal wear. White tie and tails for men, and one-of-a-kind floor-length gowns for women.
“Elegant. Exciting.” Gaby kissed her fingertips. “This is what I have in mind for Lyons’ twenty-fifth,” she whispered. “But without the costumes. Black invitations, engraved in gold. I want it so exclusive potential advertisers will beg for an invitation. They’ll beat a path to our door.”
André studied the tips of his polished boots. “All you ever talk about is work. There’s more to life, you know, Gabrielle.”
“We’re finally climbing out of a slump. The staff’s happier and Paul’s looking better—”
“You think so?” André interrupted her monologue. “You know...a while back, I gave some fleeting thought to the idea that he might be behind those stunts.” André wasn’t sure why he’d confessed this. He supposed it was because he had an impulse—constant and irresistible—to share everything with her. All his feelings.
“Honestly, André, you wouldn’t even consider your uncle and cousins! Why on earth would you suspect your own papa?” Gaby fanned herself furiously.
“You didn’t let me finish.” He folded her fan and swung her out onto the crowded dance floor. He moved his sword so that he could hold her tightly and shortened his stride to accommodate her abbreviated steps in the long, narrow skirt. “I overhead him tell Mama after the board meeting that maybe some staff resented her bringing me in at the top. But I know now that he wasn’t involved. He called me into his study last week and praised our performance. Hey, we’ve talked about work and family long enough. This is your first ball. I want it to be special.”
“It is special. I feel like Cinderella, even if I’m not dressed like her.” Gabrielle sighed into his open-necked shirtfront. She loved feeling the play of his muscles beneath the fabric. His hair was loose tonight, curled into his collar in the manner of a musketeer. Thick and clean and soft. The butterflies in her stomach spread.
Gaby couldn’t dance in her zoris. It didn’t take long for her to wear holes in her tabisocks. Near midnight, seeing her toes peeking out, André suggested they leave. The ball would likely go on till dawn, but he had other things in mind to make Gabrielle’s first Mardi Gras experience memorable.
She read the promise in his eyes. A little drunk on the passion of the night and warmed by the fires of need stoked by his hands as they roamed over her hips and back, Gaby wanted everything Andre’s eyes were offering.
At home it took little coaxing to entice her into his room. Her own was between Leslie’s and Rachel’s. His allowed the privacy they both wanted. Solemnly they removed each other’s costumes. André gently scrubbed her face clean of paint. “I want you so much, Gabrielle,” he whispered. “But it’s your choice.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Rising on tiptoe, she wrapped her arms around him and backed him to the bed.
THE STARS WERE WINKING OUT when Gabrielle roused herself enough to untangle her limbs from André’s. She trailed her fingers over his long, muscular back, stopping short of the line that separated his tan from the lighter flesh hidden from all but a lover’s eyes. “Are you awake?” she asked softly.
“I may be dead,” he groaned, “but I died a happy man.” He flopped onto his back, lifted himself onto one elbow and nibbled at her lips.
She moved into his kiss. Heat rose instantly between them and would have led to another romp across the wide bed, but Gaby pulled back reluctantly. “I have to go, André. Leslie often wakes up toward morning. She’s always had nightmares. She wanders in to crawl into bed with me. I’ve never not been there for her.”
He wanted to protest. Instead, he kissed her hard one last time, then sat up and turned on a lamp. Unself-consciously, he helped gather her underwear, which lay strewn across the floor. “I had nightmares when I was little. Mama slept soundly. She and Grandmère both locked their doors. I sometimes went downstairs and woke up Uncle Charles. We’d go into the library and he’d play the piano until I fell asleep.”
“You truly know a different Charles.” Gaby paused, her hand on the doorknob.
André, who’d followed her, gathered her in his arms and kissed her again. Drawing back, he let his chin rest on top of her head. “I do. There’ve been some family conflicts, though. Life around here and at the station would be a lot nicer if they’d forget the uneven split in Grandpère Alexandre’s will. I won’t hold my breath, though. Did you see the woman plastered to Alain at the ball tonight?” When Gaby shook her head, he muttered, “It wasn’t his wife. They left together, too.”
“I didn’t see them. Why didn’t you say something? Who was she?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Alain has to deal with his own conscience. Obviously he didn’t expect to see us tonight.” André framed Gabrielle’s heart-shaped face with his hands. “All we can do is live our lives differently. Live them right. I’d like to share my life with you and Leslie, Gabrielle. Between us, we’d provide a better example for the next generation. If...you’ll marry me.” He stroked his thumbs over her cheeks.
“M-marry you?” Gaby stumbled backward. Clutc
hing her costume, she again fumbled with the door. “Do you have any idea how many Mardi Gras marriages there are—and how many fail? I, uh, your head will be clearer in the morning, André.” She managed at last to open the door. Slipping through his hands, she fled across the landing to the safe haven of her room without looking back.
For the remainder of the night, until the sun rose, Gabrielle tried to imagine herself married to André Lyon. Her first marriage had been such a disaster she’d sworn never to be so foolish again. Yet André was nothing like Marc Villieux. André’s lovemaking, while thorough, made her feel cherished, not dirty or frightened. But Marc hadn’t shown his dark side at first, either.
She bunched her pillow and hid her face. If only there was someone she could talk to about these roller-coaster feelings. Margaret was the most obvious. Except she had her hands full caring for Paul. And how could Gaby talk honestly to Margaret about her son, the son she adored.
Nor did Gabrielle trust her own judgment. She’d gone awfully quickly from wishing André Lyon in hell to accepting him into her bed. Well, his bed. It was all too confusing. Too risky. Tomorrow she’d tell him she’d made a mistake.
AND SHE DID. At work, with people milling around so he couldn’t argue with her. André didn’t like her decision. Outwardly, he accepted it like a gentleman.
For the moment.
By midday, he’d concluded that the best way to court this woman who insisted she didn’t want to be courted was to make himself indispensable. Not just to her, but to Leslie. And there was no time like the present.
AFTER MARDI GRAS wound down, throughout March and April and into the hot, steamy days of early May, André planned weekend jaunts with the precision of a military tactician. To the Children’s Museum and the Children’s Theater. He included Rachel and Scott, and went out of his way to see that everyone had fun, often stretching the excursions into dinners out.
The Lyon Legacy Page 19