She laughed softly as he cuddled her and demanded that she confess her true feelings. “You think I’m cute and you want me, Angel, you know you do. Say it! Say you’re crazy about me!” he said comically.
By now she was giggling at his foolishness and almost forgotten the fix they were in. She sat up straighter and looked him in the eye. Putting one hand on his shoulder and the other on his face, she smiled. “I like you a little bit, I think. You’ve been very sweet to me and I really appreciate it,” she said nicely.
Donnie didn’t pay her words any attention; he just kissed her, lightly and sweetly. Then the passion that was always just under the surface began its inexorable rise to the top. He increased the pressure on her lips and they parted to his seeking mouth, the warm sweetness of her tongue driving him into a minor frenzy of desire. The warmth of her body lit a flame in his and he forgot everything except the feel of her lithe body in his arms. Unconfined by clothing other than the terry robe, he could feel her lissome frame and it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough. His big hand started sliding up her bare leg, pushing the fabric aside. A soft sound from her increased the desire; he was burning for her, a hot thirst that only she could quench.
A sudden knock on the door caused Angelique to come back to herself and she leaped off his lap with a look of horror on her face. She backed away from him and dashed into the bathroom without a word leaving him to deal with the knocking. She leaned against the closed door of the bathroom, her heart pounding like a piston. What had she almost done? She’d almost succumbed to the unexpected that’s what. Finally, she had enough strength to leave the solidity of the door and sit on the vanity bench by the marble counter. She took deep breaths to slow her heartbeat and eventually it worked. Adonis Cochran had been holding her, kissing her, seducing her wearing only a robe with nothing else on, and she’d loved every second of it. If she were to be honest, she knew that if the knock hadn’t sounded at the door, she’d be in that big bed wrapped up in Adonis and not another thing. Her heartbeat had returned to normal and the heat that had consumed her had finally ebbed but she wasn’t ready to face Donnie. Maybe I’ll just stay in here the rest of my life; he ’11 never notice, she thought glumly.
Donnie tapped on the bathroom door, calling her name as he did so. “Angel, baby, come on out of there. Our clothes are here and we can get dressed and leave. I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he said sincerely. “I wasn’t trying to put the moves on you, but you’re so beautiful, I...” He stopped speaking and smiled because Angelique opened the bathroom door a crack and was looking at him with a carefully neutral expression. “Come on out. I won’t bite you and we do need to talk, Angel.”
As regal as a queen, she opened the door and walked past him without saying a word. She headed for the bed and veered away sharply, going into the living room where she took a seat on the sofa. Donnie followed her into the room, trying not to smile. He sat down in a large armchair adjacent to the sofa and began to speak. “I apologize for what happened, Angel, I really do. I was supposed to be making you feel better and I ended up groping you like a crazy man. That was inappropriate and it won’t happen again,” he said solemnly. “But in my defense I have to say that you’re so sexy and sweet, it would’ve been impossible for me to not kiss you.”
Angelique tried hard to keep her expression aloof and failed. She was so surprised and touched by Donnie’s words that a glimmer of a smile crept across her face. She immediately tried to look stern again. “The thing is, Adonis, we can’t let things like that happen. We’ve got to get this thing annulled as soon as possible before anyone finds out.” A little of her former dismay was apparent in the look of sadness that flickered over her face.
Donnie leaned forward and took her hand again. “It’ll be okay, Angel, I promise you it will. This is going to be quick, discreet and painless,” he vowed.
Worry still nagged at Angelique. “Suppose it isn’t? Suppose ...”
Donnie took her other hand and held them both firmly. “Suppose we get dressed and get out of here? I’ll take care of everything. You’re my wife now, don’t forget that. Nobody’s going to mess with you, not if they want to live,” he said with a comic ferocity that was only half in jest. It did the trick, though, as Angelique smiled and agreed to get dressed so they could go home.
In a short time they were ready to leave. Angelique made one puzzling discovery when she found her cell phone in two pieces in her purse. “What do you suppose happened to this?” she wondered. Staring at the cell phone, she had another thought. “Adonis, Paris was out of town this weekend at a conference. She’s going to be back on Monday. What am I going to tell her?”
Donnie glanced at her and tried to hide his admiration for her beauty. Her cream-colored, silk jersey wrap dress was restored to its normal pristine condition and the taupe heels she wore with it accentuated her long, shapely legs. She was wearing new hose that had been procured by the desk downstairs and she looked nothing like the disheveled, disoriented woman who’d awakened that morning. Her hair had air-dried into a thick mass of waves, and even without makeup she was stunning. He realized he was about to be caught staring and cleared his throat. “Umm, what did you say?”
Angelique stopped rummaging in her purse and looked at her “husband,” trying not to let his good looks send her into another tailspin. The cleaners had done a wonderful job on his deep brown suit and the ivory shirt he wore with it. He was tying his tie, a brown and gold patterned silk one, and he looked good enough to eat with a small spoon. It was her turn to act disinterested while she answered his question.
“Paris is going to be home on Monday and I want to know what to tell her. You don’t know her as well as I do, she’s like a bloodhound. She’ll figure out something is up as soon as he walks in the room,” Angelique fretted.
“Don’t worry about Paris, we can handle her. Can you give me a hand with this?” he asked, indicating the tie.
She gave him one of the few genuine smiles she’d been able to muster all day. “Yes, I can, my brothers taught me how. Sit down, you’re too tall,” she instructed. In seconds she’d tied the long length of rich silk into a neat and perfect Windsor knot, smoothing his collar as she finished. “Okay, you’re all done.” Inside, she was on fire from the desire to kiss him again, but outwardly she was cool and collected.
After taking a last look around the suite, Mr. and Mrs. Cochran went downstairs to check out of the luxurious suite and head back to Detroit to straighten everything out. They waited for the elevator in silence, a silence tinged with the anxiety emanating from Angelique. Donnie looked down and gave her a smile that was meant to reassure her.
“It’s okay, Angel. I’ll take care of everything,” he said as he pushed the lobby button in the elevator.
They rode down in the empty car without saying a word; when the doors opened, they emerged into the lobby. Donnie put his hand to the small of Angelique’s back and started to guide her to the desk to check out. A sudden flash of light made them both turn to face a group of reporters who had been lying in wait in the lobby. “Turn this way, Mrs. Cochran!”
“Mr. Cochran, what made you two decide to elope?”
“What was your family’s reaction to the sudden wedding?”
The questions were coming from all directions and microphones were stuck in their faces so rapidly that Angelique didn’t have a moment to react. Donnie however was much quicker. Locking his arm around Angelique’s slender waist, he held up his hand and spoke to the crowd like they were old friends.
“Hold it, folks! We’ll be issuing a statement later, but for right now I want to take my bride home so we can plan our honeymoon. If that’s all right with you, of course,” he said with an easy smile.
After a few more jocular comments, the reporters did indeed part their ranks to allow them through. In minutes Donnie had checked them out of the suite and they were in a cab headed to the airport. Angelique had been too stunned to speak; now she started to rage. �
��I can’t believe you! Why were you acting like—”
Her words were cut off as Donnie silenced her the only way he could think of—by kissing her hard and fast.
When he felt her body relax, he pulled away to whisper in her ear, “Wait until we’re alone, Angel, unless you want our first fight to make it to the wire services, too.”
She gave him a look of pure fury but did as he asked. She didn’t say another word.
Chapter Thirteen
The next few weeks were what Angelique imagined hell to be like. Some intrepid paparazzi had seen her and Donnie emerging from the wedding chapel and taken a few shots that were released to the tabloids and wire services, and their fifteen minutes of fame was recorded for all and sundry to view. The thought of the resultant news reports was enough to turn her stomach. Media Conglomerates Make Marital Merger was written under one picture. Beautiful Music for CEO and Bride read another. There were dozens of them in every publication from People to Jet and in every single one was a picture of her and Donnie with their mouths plastered together like sweaty prom dates. Not only did the wire services pick up the news, but several nosey people had made crappy videos that were all over the internet along with even more pictures. Every blog on the net was full of their tawdry wedding with all kinds of gossipy speculation. Their plan to keep the nuptials a secret seemed naive to the point of insanity by now.
Even worse were the reactions of their respective families. The memory of the immediate repercussions gave Angelique shooting pains in the stomach. On the long and silent ride to the airport in Las Vegas, Donnie had taken the time to check his own cell phone and found it packed with messages from all his brothers, his father, her brothers, his sister and Warren. All the messages were variations on the same theme: “what in the world were you thinking”. Thanks to his quick, if ill-advised, thinking in the lobby of the Bellagio, it now seemed like this was a love match. An impetuous adventure by two people who were madly in love was how the press perceived it. A boneheaded damn-fool caper was how his brothers saw it. And what her brothers had to say didn’t even bear repeating. In addition, there was the reaction of her mother and A.J.
Angelique was sitting on the broad windowsill of her new bedroom, the formerly unfurnished bedroom of Donnie’s house. Her bedroom furniture had been moved from the house she’d shared with Paris and was now arranged in the room across from her husband’s room. She didn’t even have any boxes to unpack; in typical Angelique fashion, she’d gotten everything put away within forty-eight hours of being in the house. She wasn’t alone in the room because Jordan and Pippen were lounging at her feet. The two dogs had attached themselves to her from the moment she moved in and never strayed far from her. If Donnie wanted to see his pets, he had to find Angelique because that’s where they normally were, wherever she was in the house. And since she spent most of her time in the studio, at her old house or hiding in her bedroom, she didn’t see much of Donnie, which was how she liked it.
She took a look around the room, and when she couldn’t find one thing to rearrange or dust or hang up or put away, she walked over to the bed and sat down on the side of it. Her cream and gold damask bedclothes were out of place in the room with its burgundy, navy and dark green striped wallpaper. The walls needed to be stripped and the walls needed to be painted, maybe a soft cream with a rag patina added by hand or a French vanilla with a luminous gold overlay. She thought about the other things that could be done to spruce up the room before she caught herself and realized that this room, like everything else in her life, was temporary. She wasn’t a permanent part of Donnie’s life any more than he was a permanent part of hers and in a little while they would go their separate ways. Jordan and Pippen sensed her sadness and came over to offer some cheer in the form of big wet kisses to her hands. She had to laugh and bent down to give them each a big hug.
“Do you want to go out? You want a walk? Okay, let’s go,” she said, rising from the bed. They went downstairs where Donnie was watching television. She tried to slip out the back door without saying anything, but Pippen was so excited about the prospect of going out that he grabbed his lead and trotted into the living room with it. Angelique watched him leave in dismay, hoping Donnie wouldn’t take the cue. Unfortunately, he entered the kitchen with the lead in one hand and a heavy jacket in the other.
“Come on, boy, we’ll get Jordan and go for a nice long walk, how about that?” he said as they entered the room. His eyes took in Angelique, wearing a jacket, hat and gloves and holding Jordan’s lead in one hand and the ubiquitous pooper-scoop in the other. “Well. I guess we had the same idea. Do you mind if I come along?”
Angelique shrugged her shoulders to indicate assent. “Of course you can. They’re your dogs, after all. Maybe you’d like to take both of them,” she said, holding out the scooper.
Donnie’s jaw tightened very slightly, but he just smiled. “No, I want to come with you. And I see you handing me that scooper. You think you’re slick, don’t you?” he said as he took it from her hand. “Let’s go, guys.” The four of them left the house and walked out into the damp cold.
They walked in silence for a couple of blocks until Donnie put his hand on Angelique’s shoulder. “We’ve got to start talking to each other, Angel. I can only imagine how tough this is for you, but trying to ignore me isn’t helping.”
“I don’t know what else to do,” she said honestly. “When I wake up in the morning the first thing I wish for is that none of this ever happened but when I open my eyes, there’s that ugly wallpaper and I know it’s all true.”
“Hey, the wallpaper was there when I moved in,” Donnie said defensively. “And I wish I could make it all go away, but I can’t. I know that’s what I told you would happen, but I was wrong and I apologize.”
“Adonis, you don’t have to keep apologizing. It wasn’t your fault that we were seen; it wasn’t your fault that the story got out. I’m not even mad at you about making it seem like we got married on purpose. Well, I’m not mad anymore,” she amended.
Donnie grinned at her. “Are you sure? You were pretty hot for a while. You said you’d never forgive me for making you live a lie,” he reminded her as he draped a long arm over her shoulders.
Angelique pushed against him playfully and gave him a small smile. “Don’t remind me of that, please. I know I was being a drama queen, but I think I had good reason.” Both of them fell silent as they each recalled the aftermath of the impromptu wedding.
As soon as she’d walked into the house on her return to Detroit, the phone started ringing and didn’t stop. The first call was from her oldest brother, Clay. “Angel, we’re sending the jet to pick you and Cochran up. We need to talk to both of you,” he’d said in a dangerously calm voice. He seemed to be the spokesman for the brothers because she didn’t hear from the rest of them. Her mother, however, had called right after she hung up with Clay and the memory of that conversation still made her stomach hurt.
“Angelique, I can’t imagine why you would do something like this. To just run off into the night and get married without a word to anyone! What in the world have I done to make you behave like this? I know we haven’t been as close as we should have been, but how could you let me find out from some television gossip that my only daughter is married? Why, Angel?”
Angelique shuddered at the memory and unconsciously pushed closer to Donnie, who still had his arm around her shoulder. They had indeed gotten on the TDG jet the next morning and flown to Atlanta to face her family. The scene with her mother was every bit as bad as she’d anticipated; she simply couldn’t find the words to explain what had happened and just bore her mother’s anger and pain in near silence. Lillian was the one person Angelique didn’t want to disappoint and yet that was all she ever seemed to do. To her, Lillian was the personification of elegance and loveliness, a true gracious lady, and she deserved a better daughter than Angelique could ever be. Without realizing it, she leaned her head against Donnie, who stopped walking and put
both hands on her shoulders.
“You’re thinking about your mom again, aren’t you?” She nodded without speaking. “Let’s go home. It’s pretty cold out, how about if I make you some soup?” She nodded again.
In a short time they were in the warm, bright kitchen while Donnie prepared what he referred to as his Soon-to-be-World-Famous-Hamburger-Soup, which Angelique confessed sounded quite gross.
“It sounds weird but it’s really good. If it makes you feel any better, it’s not my recipe; Tina, my sister-in-law, gave it to me.”
While he started the preparations for the soup, he tried to imagine how Angelique was feeling. The trip to Atlanta hadn’t been the epitome of a warm welcome home. As she had predicted the consensus seemed to be that somehow she was responsible for the debacle. Benita didn’t say it; she was completely neutral, albeit surprised. Angelique’s other sisters-in-law, Selena, Vera, and Ceylon, were also careful not to place blame and like Benita, were supportive of Angelique. The Deveraux men, however, were less supportive and more critical of the situation but in a manner that rubbed Donnie the wrong way. He recalled his conversation with her brothers Malcolm and Martin and could feel his jaw tighten up again.
“Donnie, of course I have no idea what happened between the two of you, but I assure you that getting it annulled shouldn’t be a problem. I have to tell you that I’m really disappointed in my sister; I thought she’d outgrown these kinds of pranks,” Malcolm had said in a weary tone of voice.
Before Donnie could say anything, Martin had spoken up with something about how irresponsibility had always been Angelique’s middle name and he was sorry her foolishness had led to this. “She didn’t even consider the fact that we’re in business together and what it could have meant from a corporate standpoint,” Martin observed. “I really thought she’d stopped this kind of acting out.”
Back in the moment, Donnie gave a particularly vicious chop to the onion he was preparing for the stockpot. Something about the way her family seemed to just assume she was somehow to blame irritated him in a way he’d not expected. He’d been terse to the point of being curt with her brothers and he wasted no time in letting them know that the decision to marry had been a mutual one and he wouldn’t tolerate any criticism of his bride. He’d been equally cool with her mother and stepfather. He liked and respected all of these people, having known them from the time his sister first started dating Clay, but the very notion that someone could make Angelique uncomfortable by even a wrong look was something he wasn’t having. Family relationships were on shaky ground in Atlanta, but they weren’t much better in Detroit.
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