"And then the mother of the groom with the other groomsman," Leslie continued, marshaling everyone into order. "That's right. And then, Mr. Everett, if you'll just stand right behind your wife here. That's fine. Now, listen up, everyone. After the soloist has finished singing, there'll be a few moments of quiet and then the organist will start to play. We let a few bars go by, to build up the anticipation, and then we start. Mother of the bride with her escort first, at just a slightly slower than normal walking pace. You'll seat Ms. Cameron on the bride's side of the aisle and take your place next to the best man," she said to the groomsman. "Is that clear?"
The young man nodded.
"When they're about halfway down the aisle, the mother of the groom will start down with her escort, and the groom's father right behind, with the same procedure down at the other end, except that you seat them on the other side of the aisle, with the groom's relatives. The bridesmaids will be next, each of you waiting for my signal to start. And then, when everyone is in place at the front of the church, the first bars of the 'Wedding March' will begin, signaling the guests to stand up and turn to watch the bride. I'll be here to arrange your veil and train, dear, and cue you when to start," she said to Cameron, "and your father will be right by your side to set the pace and keep you going in a straight line, so all you have to do is smile and look radiant. Has everyone got that? Good, then let's give it a try."
* * *
They made their eight-thirty reservation at La Chaumiere with ten minutes to spare, and were immediately seated at a large round table that had been specially set up for them amid the alderwood paneling and eighteenth century French paintings. The dinner was lavish and beautifully served, with silver buckets of vintage champagne and a superlative seafood in lobster saffron sauce that was one of the specialties of the house.
Even at a restaurant like La Chaumiere, which wasn't particularly known for celebrity table-hopping, their party managed to attract attention. Three times during dinner people stopped by to say hello and, finding out what the celebration was about, lingered a moment to offer their congratulations to the bride-and groom-to-be. One of the three well-wishers was Tom Selleck, who paused by their table as he entered the restaurant for a quiet dinner with his family. The other two were women.
One was a flashy young starlet in a skintight black Gianni Versace minidress and leopard print stiletto heels. She had achieved a small measure of fame from the part she'd had in Zeke's last movie, and wanted to thank him "one more time" for his part in her success. The other female table-hopper was an elegant soigné French actress who, it was rumored, had once cherished not unfounded hopes of becoming the third Mrs. Blackstone.
"Laure," Zeke murmured, getting to his feet to greet her as she approached the table. They kissed cheeks, three times, in the French way. "What a surprise to see you here," he said, after he had introduced her around the table. "What are you doing in Los Angeles?"
"Business," she said in charmingly accented English. "I may finally be convinced to make an American movie."
"Oh?" Zeke's gaze sharpened with interest. "With whom? And why not with me?"
The actress gave a soft laugh and shook her head. "Not even for you will I be so indiscreet as to name names before it is settled." She gave him an arch look from under her lashes. "When it is all arranged, then I will tell you all about it. Maybe."
"Lunch?" he suggested. "Tomorrow?"
"C'est selon." She lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. "I may not know by tomorrow, but you may call me, oui?" The look she gave Zeke seemed, to Ariel—who was sitting across the table watching the exchange—to be rife with suggestion. "I am staying here in the Tower."
"I'll call and we'll set something up," Zeke said.
"Not too early, hmm, cher ami?" She reached up and patted his cheek lightly, like a woman who'd made the same gesture many times before. "You know how I like to sleep late." Then, dropping her hand, she turned to smile at the soon-to-be-married couple. "Congratulations on your manage. I wish you much happiness." Her lovely smile widened to include the rest of the people seated around the table. "It was a great pleasure to meet all of you," she said, and lifted her hand in farewell. "Bon soir."
The celebration was uninterrupted after that, except for discreet waiters clearing away plates and bringing the croquembouche, a classic French wedding cake in the shape of a pyramid, made of cream puffs drizzled with caramelized sugar and decorated with glazed almonds that had been specially ordered for dessert.
After dinner, in the pleasant confusion of goodbyes and leave-takings, while everyone stood waiting for the various cars to be brought around by the valets, Zeke began to wonder how he was going to maneuver it so that he and Ariel would have some time alone for that discussion he was determined to have with her. The thought of inviting her out for a private drink and being rejected had him as nervous as a schoolboy. And he'd never been nervous around a woman before—not even as a schoolboy. Maybe, instead of asking her out for a drink, it would be better to just follow her home and confront her there. His daughter simplified things by making his move for him.
"Would you mind letting Dad drive you home?" she said to her mother as one of the valets pulled up in the three-year-old red BMW coupe that had been her college graduation present from her father. "Michael and I and the rest of us—" she made a gesture that took in the young bridesmaids and groomsmen "—are going over to this new club in Venice that Gordon says has a great blues band and, well..." She shrugged prettily, the wayward child asking a favor of an indulgent parent. "You're in the opposite direction."
"No problem," Zeke said, before Ariel could answer for herself. "I'll be happy to drive your mother home."
"Oh, great! Thanks, Dad," Cameron said, with perhaps a touch more gratitude and enthusiasm than the situation called for. She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, then offered the same caress to her mother. "I'll see you at the dressmaker's on Monday for the final fitting," she said gaily, and then ducked into her car before her mother could say a word in reply.
Ariel stood there for a moment, dumbstruck, and stared after the rapidly disappearing taillights of Cameron's car. Zeke stuck his hands in the front pockets of his Armani slacks and tried not to grin.
"Is it just my imagination," Ariel said, turning to her ex-husband, "or have we just been set up by our own daughter?"
"Oh, surely not," Zeke said, knowing that they had, indeed, been set up. "Cameron's not that devious."
"I don't know." Ariel shook her head slightly. "She made a big deal about how there wasn't any need to drive my car to the church, since she and Michael could pick me up on the way there. And she didn't say a word about going out with her friends after dinner."
"Maybe it was a last-minute thing," Zeke suggested, subtly shouldering the valet out of the way to open the passenger door of the Jaguar for Ariel himself.
"Maybe," Ariel said doubtfully as she slipped into the car.
Zeke took a minute to watch her smooth the skirt of her elegant coral pink suit over her thighs as she settled into the bucket seat, then shut the door and circled around to where another valet already had the driver's door open for him. Ariel turned her head to look at him as he slid behind the wheel, the expression on her face shifting from motherly suspicion to one of maternal concern.
"You don't think Cameron's weaving some sort of ridiculous fantasy about the two of us getting back together after all this time, do you?"
Zeke put the car into gear. "I think the only fantasy Cameron's weaving has to do with us finally being friends," he said as he nosed the Jag out of the parking lot and into the flow of traffic on the Avenue of the Stars.
"Friends?"
"Yeah." Zeke glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, his expression both wry and rueful. "It surprised the hell out of me, too, when she mentioned it."
"She mentioned it?" Ariel demanded. "When?"
"At the church when we were lining up for the procession down the aisle. I guess the fact tha
t you weren't looking through me anymore made her think we might be able to bury the hatchet." The quick look he gave her was speculative and faintly challenging. "Was she right?"
Was she? Ariel wondered as she sat there beside him, wrapped in the dark, artificial intimacy of the car's plush leather interior. Could she be friends with her ex-husband? Did she even want to be? The word friend didn't begin to cover all the myriad ways she'd felt about him over the years. Or the way she felt about him now.
"There's been a lot of unhappiness between us," she said, finally.
"There's been a lot of happiness, too," he countered.
Ariel sighed. It was true. Despite everything that had come after, she still remembered that all too brief summer they'd had together as one of the happiest times in her life. She'd been so alive then, as she'd never been before.
Or since.
And it had given her Cameron.
As he said, there'd been a lot of happiness.
But was it enough to make up for the betrayal that had come later?
"Ariel?" he said, when she had been quiet too long.
She sighed again. "We both know we have to come to some kind of understanding, make some kind of peace with the past. For Cameron's sake, if not our own. I'm just not sure how we do that."
"We could go somewhere and talk about it."
"Where somewhere?"
"Jimmy's?" he suggested, naming a popular celebrity haunt that was located between La Chaumiere and Ariel's Beverly Hills mansion.
"Good God, no. Ten minutes after we sat down the papers would be printing reconciliation stories and predicting a double wedding."
"Well, then, how about the bar at the Regent Beverly Wilshire? It's discreet and out of the way." Zeke downshifted to take a corner. "Or we could go my place," he added quietly.
"Your place?" Alarm skittered through her at the thought. "You mean the beach house in Malibu?"
Zeke shook his head. "It's still being remodeled. I'm living at the Wilshire Arms right now," he said, and shot her a look to see how she was taking it. Or if she even remembered the name.
Ariel felt her heart jump into her throat. "The Wilshire Arms?" she said faintly. "The same Wilshire Arms where we...?"
"In the very same apartment."
Ariel was silent for a long moment. "I'm surprised that old relic is still standing," she said finally, her voice low and tight with suppressed anger.
Zeke shot her another quick look out of the corner of his eye; he could hear the anger under her calm facade but he didn't have a clue as to what had caused it. "Actually, the building is probably in better shape now than it was twenty-five years ago," he said carefully, feeling his way through what had suddenly become a mine field. "A lot of repair work has been done on it since then."
"Really?" she murmured, her voice dripping ice.
Zeke sighed and ran one hand through his hair. "Look, Ariel, if you don't want to stop by my place for a drink, fine. We won't stop there. But that's no reason to-"
"Dammit, Zeke, just what kind of sick joke are you playing?" she demanded, unable to hold her emotions back any longer.
Zeke looked at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted another head. In all the years he'd known her, he'd never heard Ariel raise her voice. "Sick joke?"
"Did you think if you could maneuver me into going there, I'd be so overcome by the memories that I'd let you seduce me all over again? Is that it?"
"Seduce you?" God, how do women know these things? It had only been a half-baked, hopeful idea in his own mind and yet she'd sniffed it out in a second. "Ariel, I-"
"Well, let me tell you something, Zeke Blackstone." She turned in the leather seat to face him more fully, causing the front of her sleekly tailored silk jacket to gape open slightly. "The only memories I have of that third-rate, run-down old apartment building are bad ones," she lied. "Memories of pain and betrayal and heartache. I don't know how you could talk about understanding and friendship one minute, and then suggest that we stop by that awful place the next."
"Look, I'm sorry, all right?" he said, backpedaling for all he was worth and trying not to stare at the exposed edge of her bra. Or, at least, trying not to get caught at it. She still wore white lace underwear, just like she had when she was eighteen. "It was obviously insensitive of me to even suggest it. I just thought—" He ran his hand through his hair again. "Hell, I don't know what I thought!"
But he did know. Sort of. The Wilshire Arms had its bad memories, sure. But most of them were good. And very, very sweet. And he'd thought, if he took her there, that she'd remember some of the good ones with him, and a new understanding would just naturally flow from that. And, oh, all right, he'd been thinking of sex, too, he admitted to himself. Sex was never very far from his mind when he looked at Ariel. It never had been. He'd sort of been hoping that the good memories and the new understanding would lead to renewed intimacy between them. Hell, he was a man, wasn't he?
"So sue me," he muttered under his breath and took another look at Ariel's exposed cleavage, not caring whether she caught him at it or not.
Ariel shot him a fuming look and shifted back around in her seat, facing forward as she yanked the front of her jacket into place. "I think you'd better just take me home," she said, her voice as bland and frosty as a plain vanilla frappe.
She had herself back under control again, Zeke thought with disgust. The brief flash of anger was gone as quickly as it had come. The unflappable, unreachable, remote goddess facade was firmly in place. Zeke vowed he wasn't going to let her get away with it. Not this time, dammit!
He took a deep breath. "I didn't mean to upset you," he said softly, carefully, staring out the windshield of the Jag as he maneuvered through the heavy, late-night traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard. "It's just that the Wilshire Arms holds a lot of good memories for me and I thought—" He shrugged, trying to appear charmingly inept and innocent. "I thought you might feel the same way."
"Well, I don't," she said in a voice calculated to end all conversation then and there. She leaned forward and snapped on the radio to emphasize her lack of desire to talk.
Zeke shrugged and let it go. For the moment. She wasn't going anywhere and, when they got to her place, he wasn't going anywhere, either.
Ariel obviously had a very different idea about how the evening was going to end.
"Thank you for the ride," she said politely, reaching for the handle of the car door as he pulled to a stop on the circular drive in front of the quietly opulent brick mansion. "It was very kind of you to go out of your way."
Zeke's hand shot out and closed over her arm, stopping her from exiting the car. "I didn't do it to be kind, Ariel."
"I'm sure you didn't," she said, pointedly looking down at the large, hair-dusted hand on the sleeve of her chic silk dinner suit. "You're wrinkling my jacket, Zeke."
Very deliberately, he opened his hand and let her go, then reached for the key in the ignition and turned the engine off.
"There's no need to do that," she said as she pushed the car door open. "I'll see myself in."
But Zeke was right behind her as she mounted the wide brick steps to the front door.
Hiding her nervousness behind a well-rehearsed facade of cool indifference, Ariel opened a tiny jeweled evening bag shaped like a flower and took out her house key. She slid it into the brass lock with fingers that shook only slightly, then keyed in a four-digit code to disarm the security system.
"Good night, Zeke," she said dismissively, not even bothering to glance over her shoulder at him as she said it.
"I'm coming in."
Panic fluttered in her stomach but she fought it down. Panic and a strange, tantalizing spurt of what she could only describe as sexual excitement. She fought that down too. "No."
He put his hand on the heavy oak door just above her head and pushed it open, crowding her in ahead of him. "Yes."
"I'll call the police and have you thrown out."
"And risk all the publicity?" He sh
ook his head. "I don't think so, Ariel."
She turned to face him then, cool, slim and imperious as an affronted queen in her chic Yves Saint Laurent dinner suit, matching high-heeled lizard pumps and discreet gold-and-diamond earrings. Her pale gold hair was done up in a sophisticated twist, with a long tendril left to trail down her cheek as if by accident. The expression on her face was icy and impassive, feigning irritation and bored impatience. But her eyes blazed blue fire. Zeke thought she had never looked so impossibly, outrageously sexy. His mouth watered with anticipation.
"All right, then, dammit, come in," she spat out, as if the words left a bad taste on her tongue. "Just don't expect these strong-arm, caveman tactics of yours to change anything."
Chapter 10
"You wanted to talk." Ariel threw her evening bag into the corner of the plush cream brocade sofa with no thought for its delicacy or cost, and turned to face her ex-husband. "So talk," she demanded imperiously, making no effort to hide her irritation. "I have an early appointment in the morning," she lied, "and I'd like to get to bed at a reasonable hour."
"Aren't you going to offer me a drink first?"
"No." She said the word baldly, almost gleefully, as if daring him to take offense.
Zeke shrugged and walked over to the crystal decanters arranged on a silver tray atop an elegant eighteenth-century cherrywood sideboard. There was a selection of Waterford crystal bar glasses on the narrow shelf above the decanters and a small refrigerator with an automatic ice maker tucked behind the cupboard doors below. "Can I pour something for you?" he asked politely, as he helped himself to a weak bourbon and soda with lots of ice.
"Scotch. Straight," she said, surprising him. The Ariel of old hadn't been much of a drinker. She'd only had one glass of champagne at dinner tonight—and then only finished half of it.
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