A Match for Celia

by Gina Wilkins

  Funny, she’d never noticed until she’d shared an entire day with him that he spent a great deal of time talking about his own wealth. Someone less charitable than she might have even called it bragging.

  Not that she hadn’t had a good time. It was just that occasionally with Damien she felt like little more than another part of his entourage of bodyguard and boat crew, secretaries and yes-people.

  It had been different with Reed. She’d always felt that she had Reed’s full attention. That he enjoyed just being with her, regardless of whether they were doing anything exciting or impressive or physically challenging.

  He never boasted of his own accomplishments—in fact, he rarely talked about himself at all, but he’d always seemed to enjoy listening when she spoke. Damien sometimes—just sometimes, she amended a bit guiltily—seemed anxious for her to hush so he could talk about himself some more.

  She supposed it was understandable. So many people hung on Damien’s every word—were paid to do so, in fact—that he’d probably gotten a bit spoiled by it. Most people were almost comically impressed by his wealth and his charm and his fame and his power.

  Maybe Celia had been a bit impressed, in the beginning. If so, the novelty was wearing off. Now she wanted to know what Damien was like beneath the flash. Whether she liked him as a person—and whether he valued her in the same way.

  It was Damien she’d considered starting a relationship with—not his money. Lately it was getting more difficult to separate the two in her mind. Because he defined himself so strongly in terms of wealth—or because there wasn’t that much behind the dashing facade?

  She sighed and ran a weary hand through her salt-stiffened hair. She had only a little over an hour in which to shower, change and somehow find the energy—and the enthusiasm—to go dancing.

  It was going to take a miracle.

  Celia and Damien didn’t dine alone. Four other couples joined them—an influential business magnate and his trophy bride, a minor television star who was spending a few days at the resort with a model who was not his equally well-known wife, Enrique Torres and his quiet wife, Helen, and Mark Chenault, Damien’s personal assistant, who was accompanied by a striking young blonde introduced only as “Kimmi.”

  Damien, of course, sat at the head of the large, rectangular table. Celia sat on his left, next to Mark Chenault. Torres, as resort manager, had been seated at the other end of the table.

  Still a bit winded from the active day, Celia was rather quiet during dinner, content to observe the others. It seemed to her that they all genuinely liked Damien, though they treated him with an obsequiousness that she found vaguely annoying at times. Honestly, she thought at one point, did no one ever dispute him? Not even in friendly argument? She had certainly done so a few times, and he’d handled it well enough.

  Damien ordered obscenely expensive champagne, and the party grew progressively noisier. Mike Smith, the waiter Celia particularly liked, smiled when he poured champagne into her glass and she whispered that she wouldn’t be needing it refilled. Not much of a drinker, Celia sipped that one glass slowly, making it last while the others quickly finished the first magnum and called for another.

  The conversation swirled around her, and she held up her end well enough, but the topics changed so rapidly that there was little chance to discuss anything in detail. She found herself thinking of the long, quiet talks she and Reed had shared over meals. Hardly exciting…but nice. Very nice.

  A funny little tickle at her nape accompanied her thoughts of Reed. Taking a sip from her champagne flute, Celia glanced over her shoulder. Only to find Reed watching her from a solitary table across the room.

  Reed’s silence and stillness—his aloneness—seemed more noticeable in contrast to the chattering, laughing crowd around Celia. Their gazes held for a moment across the dimly lighted room. The bubbly champagne seemed to go flat on her tongue, leaving the bitter taste of regret in its place.

  “Celia.” Damien spoke as though he’d been trying to gain her attention.

  She looked quickly around at him, breaking the visual bond with Reed. “Yes?”

  “We’re heading over to the disco now. Have you finished your dessert?”

  Celia looked down at the empty dessert plate in front of her and wondered what had once been on it. “Yes, I’m finished.”

  Damien grinned. “Ready to get down with some disco?”

  She lifted a brow. “Get down?” she repeated.

  “You know,” the now rather tipsy actor said, leaning toward Celia from his place across the table. “Boogie-oogie-oogie.”

  Kimmi giggled, her manner decidedly star-struck. “That sounds so funny. Are you quoting something?”

  “The song’s before your time,” Damien said with a wry roll of his eyes. “Before yours, too, I guess,” he added to Celia. “What were you—five, six when disco was popular the first time?”

  “True, but my late brother-in-law liked disco,” she explained. “He played his old Bee Gees albums all the time during the year I lived with him and Rachel. Some of it’s not bad.”

  Mark Chenault gave an exaggerated shudder. “I don’t know how any of you can listen to that stuff—even for a laugh. I’m a classic rock man myself. The Doobies, Creedence, Black Oak, the Allmans—now that’s music.”

  “I like contemporary country, mostly,” Celia admitted. “Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Wynonna, Collin Raye.”

  A brief silence followed. If there were any other country music fans at the table, no one said so. The conversation quickly returned to the dance club they’d be going to after dinner.

  To Kimmi’s obvious distress, Mark begged off. Damien smoothly invited Kimmi along, anyway.

  “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of chances to dance,” he said, looking pointedly at Mark, who only shrugged and told Kimmi to go if she felt like it.

  Everyone else planned to go, except Enrique and Helen, who laughingly declared themselves much too old for such nonsense—though neither of them could have been more than five or six years older than Damien. Celia rose with the others, laughed perfunctorily when the inebriated actor stumbled into his giggling date, and wondered what in the hell was wrong with her. This should be fun, darn it. Wasn’t that why she was here?

  She glanced back over her shoulder as they left the restaurant. Reed’s table was empty.

  There was a corresponding emptiness somewhere deep inside her that she was finding increasingly difficult to ignore.

  Though the others may have been prepared to party until dawn, Celia asked Damien to return her to the resort at eleven. “I’m exhausted,” she admitted, earning an indulgent smile and a smooth apology from him for attempting to do too much in one day.

  She was rather startled when he kissed her at her door with more passion than he usually exhibited. His arms closed around her in a hold that made her more claustrophobic than responsive. They’d kissed before, of course, and she’d always enjoyed it. But tonight…

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, drawing away with an effort. “I’m really tired, Damien.”

  Something flashed through his eyes that might have been annoyance. He replaced it quickly with compassion. “Get some rest,” he urged her. “We’ll meet for breakfast in the restaurant—say, nine o’clock?

  “I have several meetings tomorrow, so I can promise you a slower pace,” he added with a smile. “Maybe tomorrow evening we’ll drive into Matamoros for a quiet dinner and to listen to some good mariachi music.”

  “That sounds like fun. Good night, Damien.”

  She closed herself into her suite before his response was fully out of his mouth. She stood there for a moment, listening. Damien’s footsteps faded down the hallway. He hadn’t gone into his own suite.

  She let out a breath, feeling as though something had changed between them that evening. Perhaps Damien’s patience was running out.

  She sensed that the time was rapidly approaching when she was going to have to make a decision once and
for all whether she wanted to become intimately involved with Damien Alexander.

  She suspected that she’d already made that decision, even though she hadn’t yet found the courage to admit it. To Damien, or herself.

  She took her time changing out of the emerald dress she’d worn for dinner, donning her nightgown, brushing her hair. Face and teeth scrubbed clean, she padded out of the bathroom to her bed.

  The telephone caught her eye, and for a moment she longed to pick it up and call someone just to talk. Granny Fran. Rachel.

  Reed.

  She shook her head impatiently. This was ridiculous. How could she make up her mind about Damien when she couldn’t stop thinking about another man? One who was little more than a stranger to her, at that.

  She crawled beneath the covers, sighed wearily and willed her heavy-limbed body to sleep.

  She wasn’t successful. Half an hour later, her eyes were still wide open, focused unblinkingly on the darkened ceiling. Her mind swirled with doubts, questions, self-recriminations. She would never get to sleep this way, she thought impatiently, punching the pillow to vent some of her frustration.

  Another fifteen minutes passed with excruciating slowness.

  Finally, Celia muttered a curse that would have earned her a stern rebuke from her mother, threw back the covers and shoved herself out of the unwelcoming bed.

  “This is stupid,” she muttered, but she dragged the nightgown over her head and threw on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.

  Maybe a walk alone on the beach would clear her head, let her mind relax so her aching body could do the same. Walking alone at midnight was perhaps not the safest thing to do—but wasn’t she here in the first place because she was tired of living cautiously and sensibly?

  The beach was deserted, as she’d expected—and hoped. The wet sand looked black at night, especially when the moon played hide-and-seek with fast-moving clouds that hinted at rain. Sandals held loosely in her left hand, she walked along the surf’s edge for a time, letting the water lap over the tops of her feet. Unbound, her hair blew free in the stiff breeze. She used her right hand to hold it out of her face. The taste of salt was strong on her lips, the smell of brine and fish heavy in the air.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and enjoyed.

  The muted sound of men’s voices brought her eyelids up quickly. She looked warily around, tensing in automatic self-protection.

  Two men were walking toward her, some distance away, apparently deeply involved in conversation. From what she could see in the moonlight, neither man was dressed for beachcombing; they both seemed to be wearing jackets and dress slacks and shoes that weren’t made for scuffing in sand.

  She had seen them first, but they spotted her just as she recognized them. One was Mark Chenault. The other was a dark-haired, olive-skinned man Celia vaguely remembered seeing around the resort for the past few days—another guest, she’d assumed.

  Mark spoke first, after a moment that seemed to hold taut surprise. “Celia? Is that you?”

  “Yes.” She walked toward them. “Hi, Mark.”

  “What are you doing out alone so late?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I thought a stroll in the fresh air would clear my head.” She glanced curiously at the other man, but Mark made no attempt at introductions.

  Instead, Mark frowned and motioned around them at the empty beach. “You really shouldn’t be out alone in the middle of the night, Celia. Our security is good, but it still isn’t particularly safe for a pretty young woman to wander around on a deserted beach.”

  “But it isn’t quite deserted, is it?” she asked sweetly, resenting his unwanted lecture. “You’re here.”

  His frown deepened, exaggerated by shadows into an ominous glare. He seemed to struggle to speak pleasantly and solicitously. “If you’d like to continue your walk, why don’t I call someone to accompany you? One of the staff, perhaps, if Damien is unavailable.”

  “Thank you, but if I had wanted company, I would have found it,” Celia answered, speaking with the same forced courtesy. “And, anyway, I was just about to go back in.”

  “Looks like rain,” the other man said, squinting up at the rapidly disappearing moon.

  The darkness grew heavier. Celia backed a step away from the two men. It wasn’t that they made her nervous, she assured herself. Just…uneasy.

  Probably because she’d never really liked Mark and the other man was a stranger, she assured herself. She certainly didn’t consider herself at any risk from either of them.

  “Well,” she said, holding her sandals in front of her, “enjoy your walk.”

  “Good night, Celia.”

  She murmured a response to Mark, nodded pleasantly at the other man, then walked away without looking back. She was aware that they watched her for a few minutes before they turned and continued their walk and their conversation.

  “Rather late for a friendly little visit on the beach, isn’t it?” The low growl came out of the shadows of her building. Having been engrossed in watching Mark and the other man disappearing down the beach, Celia jumped several inches at the unexpected voice coming from so close to her.

  “Reed!” she gasped, when he separated himself from the dark concrete-block wall. She pressed a hand to her pounding heart. “What the hell—? You scared me half to death!”

  “What can you expect when you go wandering around in the middle of the night by yourself?” he returned unrepentantly. “And what the hell were you doing out there with Chenault and Perrelli?”

  “Contradicting yourself, aren’t you?” she taunted, her irritation rapidly growing. “First you criticize me for being alone, then you demand to know why I was with someone else.”

  She suddenly realized that he’d named the men with whom she’d been speaking. “How do you know Mark Chenault?” she asked. “And who’s Perrelli?”

  In the harsh glow of an overhead security light, Reed’s face was a harshly carved mask. She thought she saw a muscle jump in his jaw—something she’d grown to recognize as a sign of self-annoyance. “Never mind,” he said. “You’d better get inside. It’s late.”

  She planted her fists on her hips, ignoring the sandals that still dangled from her left fist. “I will not be talked to like a child who is out past her bedtime,” she informed him coldly. “I’ll go in when I damned well feel like it.”

  He loomed over her, dressed in dark, snug-fitting clothing that emphasized his size and strength and made him look like anything but an innocuous tax accountant.

  She realized that he wasn’t wearing his glasses. His face looked harder, more angular without them. At that moment, he was someone she didn’t even know.

  She’d thought he was going to snap at her again. Instead, he remained silent for a long, tense moment, then let out a gust of breath and took a step backward. “You’re right, of course,” he said stiffly. “You have every right to be out here if you want.”

  Her satisfaction at his concession mingled with the new awareness of him. An electrically charged awareness that made her skin tingle, her pulse race, her breath quicken. It wasn’t fear making her react this way now, she decided.

  Not entirely, anyway.

  She reached hesitantly out to him. “Reed?”

  He glanced from her hand to her face, his own revealing nothing of his thoughts. “Yes?”

  “I’ve missed you,” she said with a candor that wasn’t particularly prudent.

  A ripple of some emotion—or was it only a shadow?—passed over his face. And then he took her hand. His voice was much gentler this time. “Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  He touched her cheek. She wondered if her skin felt as hot to him as it did to her.

  “Did you enjoy your parasailing?” he asked inconsequentially.

  “I chickened out,” she said wryly. “They were strapping me into the harness when I suddenly knew I couldn’t go through with it. I kept picturing myself falling into the open mouth of a shark. Stupid, I know
. The others laughed at me.”

  Damien, thankfully, had been very patient with her. A bit condescending, but she supposed she couldn’t blame him for that when she’d been so silly.

  Reed searched her face as though looking for another meaning to her words. And then he smiled faintly. “What happened to that adventurous streak of yours?”

  “It decided it liked having both feet attached to something steady. Like a boat. Or, even better, solid ground.”

  Reed chuckled. And then he bent his head and kissed her.

  It wasn’t like the last time. There was heat—but it was firmly reined. Reed permitted himself no more than a leisurely taste of her lips, and granted her only an unsatisfying sample of his own, before he stepped away.

  “Go home, Celia.” The gentleness was gone from his voice again. Might never have been there.

  She blinked, trying to clear her mind. The change of mood was too abrupt for immediate comprehension. “To my room, you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Home. To Percy, where you’re safe.”

  Her chin lifted. Was he calling her a coward? Telling her she didn’t belong here? Reminding her that she wasn’t the adventurous type—and never would be? “I’m not ready to go home,” she answered flatly.

  He stepped back into the shadows, and she had the oddest sensation that he dissolved into them. As though he had never been real, but only an illusion. She shook off the strange fantasy impatiently. He was real, all right. And he was proving to be as irritating as he was disturbing.

  “Think about it,” he suggested. Before she could answer—whatever she might have said—he was gone, vanished into the darkness as smoothly and silently as a passing breeze.

  “What the—?”

  Go home, Celia.

  Why did he keep telling her to go home? One could almost get the impression that he didn’t want her here, she thought with a weary attempt at humor.