Chapter Ten
After the ceremony was concluded, Penny and Jason were ushered to a private dining room with a single table set with pristine white linens and sparkling crystal and gleaming silver. There was soft music piped into the room from unseen speakers, audible enough to add to the romanticism of the scene, but not so loud as to interfere with conversation.
The candle inside the hurricane lantern at the center of the table had been lit and there was a tuxedo-clad waiter at the ready with a bottle of nonalcoholic Champagne. He introduced himself as Gabriel, then presented the label for their approval, before popping the cork and pouring the golden liquid into two tall flutes.
In the background, the photographer who had taken pictures during the ceremony continued to snap away, making Penny feel self-conscious about everything she did and said.
Gabriel recited the dinner specials, took their orders, then excused himself to check on the meal preparations in the kitchen.
“Have I mentioned how spectacular you look tonight?” Jason asked, when the waiter had gone.
“Yes, you did,” she said, and tried not to remember how her body had heated in response to the obvious appreciation in his eyes when she’d stepped out of the sumptuous dressing room in their suite.
It had been something of a last-minute decision to buy a new dress for the occasion, but in the end she’d decided that a woman’s wedding—regardless of the circumstances behind it—warranted a shopping trip. The simple, ivory-colored sheath she’d found was elegant without being fussy, and seemed well-suited to the occasion.
And part of the wedding package Jason had booked was a bouquet for the bride. Hers was a bunch of creamy roses tied with a wide satin ribbon that happened to match the wide ribbon trim on the square neckline and knee-length hem of her dress.
But it was the jewelry she wore that had seemed to catch Jason’s eye, for probably the same reason she had hesitated to put it on. Both the earrings that dangled from her lobes and the pendant that sat at the base of her throat held canary diamonds.
For the past six months, Blake had been buying up all of the canary diamonds he could find, trusting that their popularity, and thus their value, would soar when the Santa Magdalena Diamond was found. It had been a gamble, but one that had already started to pay off.
And while Blake brought home the diamonds, Penny was entrusted with the task of designing a series of pieces to spotlight the gems. The resulting collection, traditional Spanish designs reflecting the history of the Santa Magdalena, had recently been spotted on the cover of Vogue and on the red carpet in Hollywood.
The earrings she wore—elongated gold filigrees with tiny canary diamonds sprinkled along the bottom like fairy dust—had been a thank-you gift from her brother for the extra hours she’d put in on the project. The necklace—a solid rope-style chain, on which sat a similarly styled pendant—she’d bought for herself, simply because she’d been unable to resist.
Of course, she couldn’t have known when she’d chosen her jewelry for this occasion that Jason had also chosen a canary diamond for her, and she couldn’t help but wonder if that was just a coincidence…or fate.
“Well, I’ll say it again.” Jason’s words drew her attention back to the moment, as he lifted his glass. “And offer a toast to my beautiful bride.”
He, of course looked fabulous in a charcoal-colored suit, pewter shirt and burgundy tie. She’d always thought he looked as if he’d walked off of the cover of GQ magazine, but she didn’t think she needed to tell him as much. Instead, she said, “And to the quintessential groom,” and tapped her glass to his.
The photographer moved a little closer, recording the clinking of crystal and the sipping of wine.
“Is he going to hover around all night?”
Jason shook his head. “Pictures of the wedding night were an additional fee, and while I didn’t object to the cost, I wasn’t sure you wanted that kind of photographic record.”
“I appreciate your discretion,” she said, knowing he was only teasing.
But his words also made her think about something she’d been trying not to think about since she agreed to this marriage—the wedding night and every night thereafter. They hadn’t really talked about what they each wanted or expected from this marriage, whether it was to be a union in name only or a real husband-and-wife-sleeping-together-in-one-bed relationship. And how the heck was she supposed to ask that kind of question now?
“I think, once he has pictures of us dancing and cutting the cake, he’ll leave us alone,” Jason said now.
“Dancing and cutting the cake?”
“It’s all part of the Ultimate Wedding Package.”
“It’s been pretty impressive,” she admitted. But while she’d been pleased with the details, her attention had mostly been focused on the groom.
“I wanted you to be able to look back on our wedding day and have memories of something better than a ceremony performed by a second-rate Elvis impersonator.”
“I’d say you definitely succeeded.”
“Then you’re not sorry you agreed to this?”
She circled the base of her wineglass with a fingernail as she considered her response. “I think it’s too early to tell.”
“Not quite the answer I was hoping for,” Jason admitted.
She sighed. “We both know that you never would have proposed—and I would never have considered accepting—if I wasn’t pregnant.”
“Are you forgetting how you got pregnant?”
“I do remember my sex ed classes,” she said, keeping her tone light and trying not to focus on any specific memories of making love with Jason.
“I wasn’t actually talking about the logistics, but the attraction that was there from the beginning, the desire that was undeniable, the intensity of the connection between us.” His voice was low and seductive. “We were good together, Penny. You know we were.”
She lifted a shoulder. “How would I know? I had nothing to compare it to.”
“Then you’ll have to defer to my knowledge and experience,” he said, as he drew her out of her seat and into his arms.
In the low-heeled pumps she wore, she was almost at eye level with Jason. While they’d been dating, she’d appreciated that one of the advantages of going out with a man who was more than six feet tall was that she could wear heels and not tower over him. But not only did she not tower over him, he had a way of making her feel distinctly feminine and completely cherished when she was in his arms.
“In fact,” Jason continued, “we were very good together.”
“What are you doing?”
“We’re dancing,” he said. “It’s a tradition at a lot of weddings.”
Yes, at traditional weddings. But this one was anything but traditional. It was certainly nothing like the wedding she’d dreamed of when she was a little girl. And though it was definitely more than she’d expected, she wasn’t going to forget and forgive everything else just because he’d gone out of his way to make the day special.
“I remember dancing with you at Missy Harcourt’s wedding,” she said now, to remind herself as much as him of his reasons for pursuing her and how all of this had begun.
But Jason wasn’t the least deterred by her observation. “That was the first night I held you in my arms. The night I realized I wanted a lot more from you than I was supposed to.”
As she swayed in his embrace and listened to his voice skim over her, as sensual as a caress, she knew—despite all of her efforts to the contrary—she was falling under his spell all over again.
“So, if you think this—you and me, here and now—isn’t what I wanted, you’re wrong,” he told her. “It might not be how I planned for things to happen, but I’m not disappointed, and I believe we can make our marriage work.”
“This is Vegas, Jason. Where fortunes are won and lost on the flip of a card or the role of the dice. Our marriage vows are as much a gamble as what’s happening at all those tables downstairs, an
d the odds are stacked against us.”
His hand skimmed up her back, and even through the fabric of her dress, she felt the heat of his touch—and then the answering fire in her blood.
“I used to think you were a dreamer, not a defeatist.” The words were little more than a whisper, as his lips cruised close to her ear.
“I’m a realist,” she told him, desperately trying to remember what was real and what was nothing more than a temptingly seductive illusion.
“If you were a realist, you wouldn’t be so intent on denying the attraction between us.”
“You want to hear that I still want you? Okay—I still want you,” she admitted. “I don’t want to want you. But apparently my body and my mind are in disagreement on the matter.
“But I also know that having sex with you isn’t going to change anything between us. Sure, it might make me feel good for a while, but it won’t actually change anything. It certainly won’t make me forget that you lied to me or that you dated and slept with me only because you wanted information about Paige’s search for the Santa Magdalena Diamond.”
“Are you ever going to get over that?”
“Probably not.”
“Then you should know that I’m not a martyr.”
“Meaning?”
“If all I wanted was information, I would have taken you out a few times and been done with it. I took you to my bed because you were fun and smart and sexy.” He drew her closer, forcing her to tip her head back to maintain eye contact. “And because you turned me on like no other woman has in a very long time.”
He dipped his head toward her, and Penny knew he was going to kiss her again.
As his mouth inched ever closer to hers, her throat went as dry as the Nevada desert.
Then his cell phone rang.
Jason froze…then swore under his breath when the ring sounded again.
Penny moistened her lips with her tongue, not certain whether she was grateful or annoyed by the interruption. “Don’t you think you should answer that?”
“I don’t want to answer that,” he admitted. “But I left some loose ends hanging at the office, and—”
Another phone began to ring.
She frowned, realizing it was her own.
Jason dropped his arms from around her to reach for his cell, while Penny moved back to the table to get her purse and the phone that was inside.
CALL FROM PAIGE was showing on the display, and the uneasiness that had stirred in her belly when her phone started ringing only moments after his solidified into a nasty ball of fear.
She connected the call. “Paige—what’s wrong?”
“Where are you?” her sister demanded, almost frantically. “And how did you know something was wrong?”
“I’m with Jason,” Penny admitted, skipping over the details of their secret wedding for the moment.
“Well, I guess that’s good then,” Paige said. “You can come with him.”
“Come with him where?”
“Memorial Hospital.”
Penny swallowed. “What happened?”
“It’s Mom. I’m not sure what happened. Rex was a little sketchy on the details—and frantic—when he called me. Travis and I are on our way now.”
Penny had no idea how long it would take them to get a flight back to Dallas, and then to the hospital from the airport, but she responded, “We’ll see you there.”
Jason knew how to make things happen, but even with his guidance and connections, it took more than three hours to get from the hotel in Vegas to the hospital in Dallas. By that time, Eleanor had been in and out of surgery and moved from recovery to a private room.
“Appendicitis,” Blake explained to Penny and Jason when they finally arrived. “It was a close call, but the doctors managed to remove the organ before it ruptured.”
Penny’s eyes filled with tears of relief. “Thank God.”
Her brother smiled. “Yeah, we’ve been doing a lot of that.”
Jason squeezed her hand, then asked, “Where’s my dad?”
“He’s with my mom. Charlie’s in there, too. They’re only letting her have two visitors at a time right now, so we’ve been taking turns.”
“Where are Tate and Tanya?” Penny asked.
“They were here earlier,” Blake told her. “They waited until she was out of surgery, but then they had to take off because Tanya has some kind of big project deadline coming up.”
“Gabby and Rafe were here, too,” Katie said.
“And Zane and Melanie and Olivia,” Paige added. “In fact, you were probably coming up in one elevator while they were going down in another.”
Which she knew was her sister’s somewhat subtle way of prompting Penny to explain why she was so late in arriving.
“I got here as soon as I could. I mean, we got here as soon as we could,” she said, including Jason in her explanation. “We were out of town. In Las Vegas, actually.”
“Las Vegas?” Blake frowned.
“What were you…” Katie’s question trailed off, the answer obviously coming to her as her gaze dropped to Penny’s left hand and her eyes widened. “Oh.”
It wasn’t quite how she’d planned to share the news, but she felt guilty for showing up after all the waiting and worrying had been done by her siblings, and she wanted to explain the reason for her delay.
“Penny and I got married,” Jason confirmed, for anyone who hadn’t jumped to that conclusion as quickly as Katie.
“You always had to be the first at everything,” Travis teased his brother. “I got engaged, so you jumped ahead and got married.”
“Expediency seemed prudent under the circumstances,” Jason replied easily.
“Well, congratulations.” Travis hugged his brother, then his new sister-in-law. “And welcome to the family. Again.”
“Thanks.” Penny hugged him back, then hugged her sister.
“I can’t believe you really did it,” Paige said. “And without telling me.”
Penny wasn’t sure how to respond to that, and was grateful that Charlie’s arrival shifted the topic of conversation to Eleanor.
“Rex just wanted a few minutes alone with Mom,” he said. “But she’s awake and lucid and everything’s fine.”
When Jason excused himself to step outside of the waiting room to keep an eye out for his father, Blake took the opportunity to shift closer to his youngest sister.
“Are you okay?” Blake asked her. “Is this marriage really what you want?”
Penny nodded. “It surprised me to realize it,” she admitted. “But, yes, this is what I want.”
“Then I’ll say congratulations,” Blake said, and kissed both of her cheeks. “And good luck.”
She smiled. “You could try to sound a little less cynical when you say that.”
“I’m sorry. I really do wish you the best. I’m still just a little wary when it comes to the Foleys, I guess.”
“I can understand that,” she said. “But I really think Jason and I can make this work.”
“If he makes you unhappy, you let me know.”
She smiled again. “I love you, Blake.”
He hugged her tight. “Right back atcha, sis.”
When Rex finally made his way down the hall from Eleanor’s room, Jason couldn’t help but notice that his father—always the epitome of calm—was a wreck. His eyes were shadowed, his face was pale and drawn, and his hair was in disarray, as if he’d been repeatedly running his hands through it.
Jason could understand why his father had been so worried. He had known a guy in college who had an emergency appendectomy to remove the inflamed organ before it could rupture, so he knew how dangerous a ruptured appendix could be. Thankfully, Eleanor’s surgery had been successful, but that didn’t help Jason know what to say to his father.
In fact, he felt as helpless now as he did when his mother had died. Of course, Jason had been ten when Olivia Marie passed away, and Eleanor wasn’t going to die; but clearly Rex
had worried that she might, that he might lose her as he’d lost his first wife.
He saw the lingering fear in his father’s eyes, and it was, in his opinion, just one more reason not to fall in love, one more reason not to give away his heart completely, as he’d given it to his college girlfriend, Kara, so many years before. Because he knew that if he did, he would be left with nothing when the woman he gave it to was gone. He’d learned that lesson when Kara died while there was still so much unresolved between them. The tragic end of her young life had left him feeling guilty and confused and unhappy. And that was something Jason wasn’t ever going to risk again.
Penny and Paige slipped out of the waiting room to steal a quick moment with their mother, so Jason asked his dad if he wanted to go down to the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. But Rex declined the invitation, not wanting to be too far away from his wife.
It was only about ten minutes later that Penny and Paige came back.
“Mom kicked us out,” Penny said.
“Apparently, she didn’t need all of her kids to come running over something as insignificant as appendicitis,” Paige added.
“Insignificant?” Rex was on his feet again, too agitated and worried to sit. “Her appendix nearly ruptured inside of her. She could have died.”
The raw anguish in his voice left no one in any doubt about the depth of his feelings for the woman he’d married.
Jason wondered what it would be like to love so deeply, to risk so much, and thanked his lucky stars that his union with Penny was based on practical considerations, and that neither of them wanted or expected a relationship characterized by that kind of all-consuming emotion.
Instinctively Penny reached out, touching Rex’s arm, reassuring him. “But she didn’t. Because you got her here in time.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, though he didn’t sound mollified. “But it was too damned close for comfort.”
Paige kissed his cheek. “Well, thanks. For being there for her. For everything.”
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” he assured them.
The Texas Tycoon’s Christmas Baby Page 12