“What engagement ball?” Victoria demanded and her voice went so high she was amazed the crystal wine-glasses on the table didn’t shatter.
“Why, the one I promised everyone yesterday.” DeeDee whipped a folder up off the floor next to her chair and pushed aside her china and cutlery to make room. Flipping the folder open, she sorted through what looked like a ream of notes before looking at Victoria. “Since the wedding date I gave Henry is only six weeks away, I felt we really had no choice but to have the party right away. So how does next Sunday grab you?”
“By the throat,” John murmured and Victoria snapped, “Are you out of your mind?”
“I know, I know.” DeeDee nodded in understanding. “Sunday is hardly the most chi-chi night for a ball, and all the best places are booked months in advance. Not to mention that not everyone will be able to attend on such short notice. Sometimes, though, things are just meant to be, you know? The club was booked solid, of course, but the Broadmoor actually had a cancellation for one of their ballrooms. So I reserved it. I also personally called the very crème de la crème of society and guess what?” She leaned forward in a flashy display of cleavage. “Every single one of them said they’d be delighted to come! Isn’t that the greatest?”
Forgetting every rule of behavior ever drummed into her head, Victoria lunged. But John thwarted her desire to climb over the table and wrap her hands around DeeDee’s throat by quickly wrapping his arm around Victoria’s shoulders and clamping her to his side.
“Yeah, that’s damn swell,” he agreed easily, but his eyes were cool and watchful. “Excuse us now, though, wont’ cha? You sort of sprung this out of the blue and I think Tori and I need a little privacy to discuss it.”
DeeDee blinked. “But there’s a hundred details to discuss. And what about lunch?”
“Ask Cook to slap warming lids on our plates. We’ll get to them later.”
“Speak for yourself,” Victoria muttered. “I may have lost my appetite for life.” But a feeling of fatalism was settling over her as she weighed John’s chances of getting answers from her father’s crowd now that personal calls and announcements in the newspaper had been thrown into the mix. What were the odds of seeing any cooperation if she turned around and admitted not only that the engagement was a farce, but that Rocket was a private detective she’d hired?
Not good. She tilted her head back and stared up at John as he rose to his feet. “Is this still what you want to do?”
He froze with his hand on the back of her chair. Then he nodded. “Absolutely.”
“For the same reasons you gave me before?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated five seconds, ten. Finally she blew out a long sigh. “All right then,” she said. She leveled a look on DeeDee. “But I’m certainly not happy with you. This is nothing short of presumptuous. It’s not up to you to—”
“Plan a party when I don’t actually have the money to pay for it,” DeeDee finished, and nodded. “I know. It’s ‘not done,’ as Ford liked to say, to plan an event when you know damn well the one you’re planning it for will end up footing the bill.”
Victoria stared at her. She hadn’t even considered that aspect of it. Until a short while ago DeeDee had been free to give as many lavish parties as she desired. That was no longer an option for her.
“Still,” the other woman continued, “you gotta admit it’s been like a morgue around here—you’ll pardon the choice of words—since Ford died.”
“It hasn’t even been three weeks!”
“True, but this is the perfect excuse for a bash. Besides, engagements really shouldn’t go uncelebrated.”
“Perhaps not, but I’d just as soon have celebrated privately.”
DeeDee blew out a disgusted breath. “Jeez, you’re boring.”
“Yes, I am. I’m also busy. I don’t have time—” or the inclination “—to handle a hundred party details.”
“Of course you don’t.” Crossing her arms on the table in front on her, DeeDee leaned so far forward it pushed her abundant cleavage up to her collarbones. “I, on the other hand, have nothing but time. So, let me do it. You won’t have to worry about a thing except showing up next Sunday night suitably attired. I’ll take care of all the rest.”
Victoria wasn’t disposed to be gracious. DeeDee had painted her and John into a corner and she wasn’t a hundred percent convinced it was strictly for the opportunity to throw a party. And even if it was, the last thing she was inclined to do was reward the woman for her machinations.
But still…
It looked as though this phony engagement was on whether she liked the idea or not, and as long as it was, she might as well go the whole course and provide John the opportunity to talk to as many people as possible. She could put up with the stifling society milieu for a short while.
She certainly didn’t want to spend her time arranging the details of an engagement she knew to be false, though, so she took a restorative breath, silently blew it out and looked at DeeDee across the table. “Fine,” she said through stiff lips. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
And may God not strike me dead for a liar.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS A DÉJÀ VU MOMENT when some sixth sense made John look up from his desk later that evening to see Victoria standing in the doorway. Or close enough to one, anyhow, he decided wryly when she didn’t duplicate her slamming-the-door-without-actually-doing-so routine. In fact, this time she didn’t even close the door. She simply leaned into the room and said autocratically, “Come with me.”
“Where?” he asked but climbed obligingly to his feet without awaiting an answer. Good thing, too, since she promptly turned on her heel and stalked with long-legged strides down the hallway. Tucking his hands into his slack’s pockets, he ambled along in her wake and tried not to stare at the beguiling twitch of her hips and the roundness of her ass.
Without a whole lot of success.
“So where did you say we’re going?” he asked a few moments later as they reached the top of the stairs and started down the second-floor hallway. His willingness to chase after her had been a problem for him since the first night they’d met, he thought a touch irritably. He rolled his shoulders. “I suppose it’s too much to hope we’re headed to your room for a bout of tear-the-sheets-up, hot, sweaty sex.”
“Actually, this may be your lucky day.” She shot him a cool look over her shoulder. “You get the first part of your wish, anyhow.”
“Yeah?” Intrigued, he caught up. “We’re headed for your room?”
“Rooms. And yes.”
“Not for sex, though, huh?”
“How do you military types say it—that’s an affirmative? No sex.”
He knew he should leave well enough alone, but a little devil was riding him and he snaked his arm around her waist, tugged her to his side and bent his head to hers. “No need to be old-fashioned, darlin’,” he murmured into her hair. “After all, we’re engaged.” He inhaled a deep breath. Man, she smelled good.
“Yes, so everyone seems to assume. Which brings us to the reason we’re here.” Slipping free, she stopped in front of a closed door and turned to look at him.
Something in her expression knocked the desire to tease right out of John’s head. “Tori…?”
“This is where we get the fun job of explaining our so-called betrothal to Esme.”
He couldn’t believe how close to panicking that statement managed to shove him. He who had never panicked in his life, who not only relished an adrenaline rush but once upon a time had actually sought them out on a regular basis, didn’t have the first idea what to do with the one roaring through his system now. He broke out in a cold sweat. “Why the hell did you let me waste time when we could have used the walk up here to figure out what we’re going to tell her?”
Victoria made a disparaging noise. “This isn’t nuclear fusion, John. We’ll tell her the truth.” She reached for the doorknob.
He whipped
out a hand to stop her. “Are you crazy?”
“Depends on how you define the word, I imagine. I’m a parent—some would say that’s pretty much one and the same.” Then the flare of ironic humor disappeared from her eyes. “You’ve paid lip service to wanting to get to know your daughter,” she said in a low, intense voice. “Well, here’s your opportunity to actually do something about it. But we are not going to lie to her, Miglionni.”
“She’s five years old! She’ll blow the whole deal.”
“You think?” She thrust a stubborn chin up at him. “And what’s the alternative? You believe letting her fall in love with you and thinking she’s finally going to score herself a daddy is a big improvement? That might be swell for your purposes, but what happens to Es when you pack up your bags and go back to Denver?”
He didn’t have the vaguest idea what state his relationship with Esme would be in when this was all over. And even if he’d put prodigious amounts of thought into the long term potential for a father/daughter connection, it probably wouldn’t have mattered.
Because Tori was on a roll, fierce as a mother bear standing between her cub and anything that threatened it. The look she gave him was pure protective indignation. “You don’t get to break my baby’s heart for the sake of some role you’ve got a wild hair to play.”
It was just another in a long line of the hits his pride had taken since landing on Victoria’s doorstep and he retaliated by eyeing her up and down. “You think I’m dying to do this for the pleasure of your company? Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. This role, as you put it, just might save your brother’s ass!”
“So far, hotshot, you haven’t even found my brother’s ass!”
He watched fire spark from her eyes like lightning from a witch’s fingertips and for a millisecond caught a glimpse of the pure outrage and anger she’d been suppressing ever since she’d agreed to go along with their phony engagement. It was immature of him to be pleased as punch that she was pissed, but she’d sure as hell pulled no punches making sure he understood he was the dead last man her social circle would ever buy her marrying. Hell, they both knew she’d never had any intention of getting sucked into this arrangement. It would have come to nothing if DeeDee’s machinations and the social niceties that formed the basis of Victoria’s upbringing hadn’t neatly caged her in.
But just as quickly as the crack in her facade had appeared, she paved it over. Her expression shuttered again and the brief peep he’d gotten into her turbulent emotions disappeared. Once again she faced him squarely and said with the studied courtesy that drove him up the wall, “Much as it pains me to admit this, if I’m forced to decide between protecting Jared or Esme, I’m gonna choose Es.” Then she drew herself to her full height and stared him down. “So let’s get moving. You and I are going in there to tell Esme what’s going on, before she hears it from someone else and starts building expectations we have no intention of filling.”
For all that he grasped what she was saying—and even agreed with it on a strictly logical plane—his gut-level resistance must have shown on his face, for she grew somehow taller yet and her voice developed a snap many of his old drill instructors would have envied when she rapped out, “Now, Miglionni! We will do what’s right. Understand?”
He understood all right, but he discovered he’d rather face a secret cell of holed-up terrorists with unlimited doomsday weaponry than one little girl packing nothing scarier than his genes. Still he gave a curt nod, but this time when he followed Victoria through the door, he was too preoccupied and jumpy to check out her butt. He got a quick impression of a sitting room decorated in the same icy elegance as the rest of the mansion. But here the barely-lived-in perfection was broken up by books and magazines scattered across the scaled-down coffee table and sofa, a pair of bright, multicolored sandals jumbled in one corner with a more somberly hued pair of pointy-toed stilettos and a miniature pair of sunglasses studded with plastic jewels hanging from the shade of the end-table lamp.
The warm, homey clutter had scarcely registered, when Victoria’s soft voice calling their daughter’s name jerked his attention back to the matter at hand. He heard the sound of a toilet flushing and Esme’s voice calling back that she was coming.
He couldn’t believe the way his heart began to thump in his chest as he listened to the water turn on and as quickly off in the bathroom. He was a former Marine, for crissake, and she was just a kid. Yet he was still working to convince himself that made a lick of difference to his shredded nerves when the door that separated the bedroom from the sitting room was flung open. Esme burst out, still yanking up one side of her little navy patterned pajamas.
“Hullo, Mummy—hi, Mr. John!” She verged off course from the beeline she’d been making toward her mother to head straight for him.
Damn. It was like every other time he’d entered her sphere. She was a magnetic force drawing his fascinated attention despite his reservations and the firmness of his intentions to keep his distance.
“Hey, there, Esme.” He watched her jerk to such an abrupt stop in front of him that she rocked up onto her toes and his hand reached out as if it possessed a life of its own to touch her hair. Pleasure splintered through him because for all the wavy mass looked almost electrified, it felt incredibly soft beneath his fingertips. “How you doin’?”
“Good! How you doing? Did you come to read me a bedtime story?”
“Uh…” He shot a helpless look at Tori.
“No, sweetie,” she said soberly. “Take a seat. John and I have something to tell you.”
“Uh-oh.” Her wattage dimming a little, the child grabbed his hand and tugged him with her toward the silk upholstered sofa.
He allowed himself to be towed across the room, but studied his daughter curiously. “Why uh-oh?”
“Mummy always says sumpin-to-tell-you and take-a-seat when it’s serus.”
“Serious, Es,” Tori said.
“See?” Esme let go of his hand to bounce up onto the couch, then trained her big-eyed gaze on him again as soon as she’d settled herself. “Toldja.”
“And you’re right, sweetie,” Victoria agreed, perching on the edge of the spindle-legged chair facing the sofa. “It is serious. But not anything to make you feel bad. Do you remember why John came here?”
“Uh-huh.” But the little girl looked less than sure.
“Remember the first day when you came down to meet him because Nanny told you he was…?”
Esme drummed her bare heels against the couch for a moment. Then her face lit up. “A ’tective! He’s gonna bring Uncle Jared home.” And wiggling with pleasure, she turned to him, nudged her little shoulder into his side and tilted her head back to flash him a blinding, don’t you-just-think-I’m-brilliant? smile.
Catching him off guard, John’s heart clenched so hard and fast it literally hurt.
“That’s right,” Victoria said. “And in order for John to talk to people who might be able to help him, he and I are going to play a little game of pretend.”
Esme quit knocking her heels together and all but went on point like a hunting hound after a fallen bird. “You are?” She straightened from her relaxed slouch against him and focused in on her mother. “I like pretend.”
“I know you do, sweetie. Unfortunately it’s not my favorite thing, so I’m not as good at playing it as you are. But we’re hoping it will help Jared, so I’m going to give it my very best shot.” She spared Rocket a brief glance in which he read her reservations, but they were erased from her expression when she turned her attention back to her daughter. Inhaling a deep breath, she quietly blew it out. “Starting tonight, John and I are going to make-believe we’re engaged.”
“Lovely.” Esme nodded in happy agreement. Then she asked, “What’s engaged?”
John laughed and Victoria explained, “It’s when a man and a woman agree to get married.”
Esme stilled, gave John a glance, then stared at her mother once again, her delicate eyebrows
furrowed. “Like Rebecca’s mummy and daddy?”
“Yes, like that. Except they truly are married and this is only pretend. But you can’t tell anyone it’s not real.”
“’Cept Rebecca.”
“No, sweetie, not even her.”
“Uh-huh! She’s my best friend.”
“I know. But if she should forget and tell someone, and then they tell someone else, pretty soon everyone will know it’s only make-believe and John won’t be able to talk to the people he needs to.” Tori scooted to the very edge of her seat. Reaching out, she grasped Esme’s big toe between her finger and thumb and gently wiggled it before wrapping her entire hand around the child’s instep. “I know secrets can be hard to keep, honey, but it probably won’t be for very long. If you really need to talk to someone about it, though, and I’m not around, Nanny Helen knows the truth. And I doubt very much that Cook and Mary will be fooled by our story.” She hesitated, then said, “Just don’t mention anything about this to DeeDee, okay?”
Esme blew out an As if breath. “DeeDee’s dumb,” she muttered.
To John’s surprise, Victoria said, “No she’s not, sweetheart. She simply doesn’t know how to talk to little girls.”
Esme looked at her mother for a moment, rocking her bare foot back and forth beneath Victoria’s grasp. After a glance at Rocket from the corner of her eye, she once again stared at Victoria. It seemed to John that the silence stretched on forever before she finally said, “Can I still get in bed with you sometimes?”
“Darling, of course you can! Why would you think otherwise?”
“Won’t Mr. John be sleeping in your bed?”
Letting loose of the little girl’s foot, Victoria snapped back upright on the edge of her seat. “No,” she said in a neutral voice, “he won’t. What made you ask that?”
Esme shrugged. “Rebecca’s daddy sleeps in her mummy’s bed.”
“Yes, but this is just pretend, sweetheart, remember?”
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