Guarded Moments

by JoAnn Ross

  Her smile reminded Caine of the cat who'd just dined on a particularly succulent canary. All that was missing were the bright yellow feathers sticking out of her mouth. "It was such a steal we made a deal for everything they had. David rented a truck and we came home with enough castoffs to finish the library and the dining room."

  "You and David have made a wonderful home," Chantal murmured as she ran her fingers over the design of a delftware bowl filled with fresh flowers.

  She couldn't help wondering what it would be like to spend weekends with the man you loved searching for those unique little things that somehow managed to make a house a home. Greg hadn't wanted a home of their own; whenever she'd broached the subject, he'd insisted that his Grand Prix racing schedule made buying a house a ridiculous waste of time. She found it difficult to believe, looking at her schoolgirl friend, that Blair was now the mother of three children—a pair of six-year-old twin daughters and a three-month-old baby boy.

  Chantal had been surprised by the stab of envy she'd felt upon seeing Blair's children. Greg hadn't wanted children. A fact he'd made painfully clear after she'd excitedly announced her pregnancy two months after their wedding. When she'd miscarried four months later, her husband had not bothered to hide his relief.

  "Lord knows it's been a chore," Blair said on a long-suffering sigh that Chantal knew was feigned. "And the upstairs still needs a lot of work. In fact, the reason I didn't ask you to stay sooner was that I wasn't certain we'd be able to get at least one guest room finished in time."

  She glanced over at Caine. "I'm sorry that I can't invite you to stay here as well, Mr. O'Bannion, but I'd never relegate a guest to sleeping in a room filled with cans of paint and turpentine, not to mention all the sawdust and rolls of wallpaper."

  "I wouldn't mind," Caine immediately assured her.

  "Nonsense. You'll be much more comfortable at the hotel," she insisted. "But I do insist that you come back for dinner tonight."

  "It must be exciting," Chantal said. "Working on such a long-term project."

  "'Long-term' is the definitive description," Blair said. "But now that it's finally beginning to come together, I think it's been worthwhile. Arid of course Karen and Kathy adore living in such a rambling old place. With all the hidden rooms and secret passages, it's tailor-made for playing hide-and-seek."

  Karen and Kathy were the twins. They were attractive, polite and, Blair had assured Chantal, exceedingly bright. Nearly perfect, if you could overlook their penchant for pets. The house currently boasted six cats, five being newly born kittens for whom Blair, displaying her usual brisk efficiency, had already located homes.

  "Secret passages?" Caine asked, instantly alert.

  "This house was built by Quakers," Blair explained. "It was one of the stops on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. Consequently, there are several hidden hallways behind the walls. They are so cleverly secreted that we were in the house six months before we discovered them all. Later we learned that the blueprints of the house were on file at the historical society."

  As she proceeded to relate an amusing story about discovering the twins hiding in the whispering closet adjoining the parlor, eavesdropping on their parents' late-night conversations, Caine considered the added risks involved in Chantal spending the night in a house riddled with secret passages.

  "In fact," Blair finished on a lilt of laughter, "Stormy had her kittens in the wall behind our bedroom. We hadn't even known she was pregnant until we heard mewings behind our headboard."

  Chantal shared in the laughter, noticing that Caine was frowning as he looked around the room. His hands were shoved into his pockets, but she could tell that he was clenching and unclenching his fists. "Caine?"

  He realized that both women were looking at him with interest. "Sorry," he said, "I was thinking of something."

  "You must forgive me, Mr. O'Bannion," Blair said, "for chattering away when you must have better things to do than listen to my silly domestic dramas."

  She linked her hand through his arm, leading him out of the book-paneled library toward the foyer. "Chantal and I have so much to talk about, and all of it would undoubtedly bore you to tears. So, I'll let you get back to your hotel. You will come to dinner, won't you? I promise that it will be an interesting crowd. And something you might especially enjoy for a change—there won't be a single politician in the bunch."

  As he allowed himself to be directed toward the front door, Caine decided that the woman was a velvet bulldozer. Less direct than Chantal, perhaps, but every bit as tenacious when it came to getting her own way. If she wanted Chantal to spend the night in her home and Chantal wanted to stay there as well, Caine didn't know how he was going to change either woman's mind. Not and keep his promise to the president.

  "Of course I'll come," he said. "Thank you for inviting me."

  "Well, goodness, it's not that often that we have both a princess and an under secretary of state as dinner guests."

  "Deputy under secretary."

  She patted his arm reassuringly. "Don't worry. If you're half as efficient as Chantal claims, you'll undoubtedly be earning a promotion any day."

  Mumbling something that could have been a vague agreement or a farewell, Caine left the house, feeling uncomfortably impotent when the bulbous Georgian door closed behind him.

  "All right," Blair said, turning to Chantal once they were alone, "let's go upstairs. You can tell me all about the hunk while you're unpacking."

  " 'The hunk'?" Chantal asked, surprised to discover yet another Americanism she was not familiar with.

  "That sexy diplomat who just left. The one who can't take his eyes off you."

  "Oh, Caine." Chantal smiled. Hunk. It suited him, she decided. "He's been assigned to make the tour run more smoothly and, I suspect, to keep the outrageous, jet-setting princess from embarrassing either her own country or the United States."

  "You are much more than an assignment, darling. The way those magnificent gray eyes were eating you up, if you'd been a chocolate bar, you'd have been a goner."

  As her friend's words hit a little too close to home, Chantal felt color flood into her cheeks. "Which reminds me, I'd like to visit Hershey before leaving Pennsylvania." Chantal found the idea of a whole town fixated on chocolate absolutely irresistible.

  "Don't try to change the subject," Blair said as they climbed the curving stairway to the second floor. "Here we are," she said brightly, circumventing a trio of five-gallon paint cans stacked up in the narrow hallway as she opened the door to the most ornately decorated of the bedrooms. "The Princess Suite, as David has dubbed it."

  As she entered the decorus but inviting room, Chantal felt a pang of something indiscernible. Not envy, not jealousy, but something else. Regret for her own lost opportunities? Perhaps.

  "It's lovely," she murmured, going over to the Palladian windows and looking out at the backyard gardens, where daffodils and tulips vied for the most colorful, while lush green ivy climbed the stone walls of the house. A lilac bush was in bloom beside a gazebo, its flowers a riotous display of brilliant purple. A slate roof slanted down over a flagstone terrace. "And your view is wonderful."

  "David brought those garden seats home from an auction last month," Blair said, pointing out the Oriental seats that resembled brightly painted ceramic drums. "To tell the truth, they're a little gaudy for my taste, but it was obvious that he was in love with them, so I decided, what the hell." She smiled. "I think they're beginning to grow on me. The past couple of weeks I've found I can actually look at them without cringing."

  "You must love David a great deal," Chantal murmured. Although she'd only met him twice, the first time at Blair's wedding, then once again at her own, she remembered a tall, lanky man with a receding hairline and gentle eyes reminiscent of an Amish farmer.

  "I adore him. Some more days than others, but there's not a day that goes by that I don't thank my lucky stars that I broke my leg on that miserable Swiss ski run just as David was
schussing by."

  "That's nice," Chantal murmured. "Not that you broke your leg, of course, but that you're still in love. After all these years."

  "That's what love is all about."

  "Is it?" Chantal sank down onto the four-poster. "I thought I was in love with Greg."

  "That was infatuation."

  Of course it was, Chantal agreed silently. With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, she could see that now. But how did one know when it was happening? "How did you know that your feelings for David were the real thing, and not infatuation?" she asked softly, tracing the pattern on the star-of-Bethlehem quilt with her fingernail.

  "I suppose it helped that he saw me at my worst," Blair said thoughtfully. "Whining and crying and acting like a real ninny. And even that didn't turn him off."

  Chantal compared that with Greg, who, after his initial relief, had found her miscarriage so distasteful that he'd taken off for a gambling holiday in Monaco with his friends. "So, the trick is to break a leg?"

  "Or come down with the flu. If a man can survive the galloping crud, he'll stick around for anything. Even morning sickness." The laughter faded from Blair's eyes as she saw that Chantal was deadly serious. "Caine O'Bannion looks like a sticker," she offered. "Probably make a good husband… for a woman looking to get married."

  "Well, that's definitely not me."

  "Pooh, don't be ridiculous. All women, whether they admit it or not, want to get married."

  "Now who's being ridiculous?" Shaking her head with good-natured frustration, Chantal stood up and began unpacking her suitcase. "I happen to know several women who are single and quite content. They lead active, varied social lives, have interesting careers and manage to succeed very well without a live-in man."

  "All right, point taken," Blair reluctantly agreed. "But we weren't talking about those women. We were talking about you."

  "I've been married," Chantal reminded her friend as she put her lingerie away in a scented, lined drawer of the mahogany serpentine chest.

  "You were married to the wrong man, so it doesn't count."

  "Of course it counts."

  "Not really. You weren't even married in the church."

  "Mama and Papa wouldn't allow it. They were certain it wouldn't work." Chantal opened the closet. All the hangers were covered with plump, scented quilting. How she wished she had even the teeniest bit of Blair's extraordinary flair for detail. "Unfortunately, they were right."

  "So, since the church doesn't consider that you were married, you must not have been," Blair continued to argue. "Or have you become so stubborn you're willing to argue with the Pope?"

  "I certainly wouldn't be the first woman to try," Chantal murmured. "Besides, church wedding or not, the divorce still hurt, Blair. A lot,"

  Although Chantal's back was turned as she hung up her clothing, it would have been impossible to miss the pain in her voice. "Of course it did, honey," Blair answered quickly. "Hey," she said, seeming to change the subject, "did I mention that I saw you on television in the last Olympics? I thought for sure that you were going to sweep the course."

  "So did I, until that damn water hazard. Unfortunately, landing unceremoniously on your derriere in the middle of a pond doesn't win you a medal."

  Blair was busily lining up Chantal's crystal perfume bottles atop a Queen Anne dresser. "I thought you landed with a certain elan. But as unhappy as I was for you, do you know what I was thinking?"

  "What?"

  "About that time in Lucerne, when we were both taking those damn dressage lessons and you flew over the top of your horse when he came to that sudden stop in front of the brick wall. Remember?"

  "How could I forget? I was in bed for a week with a concussion." Chantal turned, brushing her hair off her forehead. "I still have the scar."

  Blair lifted the frosted-glass lid of one amethyst-hued bottle and took an appreciative sniff. The scent was expensive and obviously uniquely blended for its wearer. "Then you also undoubtedly recall that the first day the doctor let you out of bed, you went right back out and rode the course again. Perfectly."

  Chantal got Blair's point. Loud and clear. "Getting back on a horse is a great deal different from getting remarried."

  "Is it?" Glancing at her watch, Blair put down the perfume bottle and turned to leave the room. "I've got to go before Jason begins screaming for his dinner," she said. "But do me a favor and think about what I've said. You're too young to be so jaded, darling."

  "I'm not at all jaded," Chantal said with astonishment.

  "Aren't you? What do you call a twenty-nine-year-old woman who's sworn off marriage?"

  "I didn't exactly say I've sworn off it. I only said I'm not ready to think about remarrying anyone."

  Blair looked unconvinced. "Relationships are difficult enough without setting up artificial barriers."

  How strange to hear her own words to Caine tossed back in her face. "You don't have to tell me that they're difficult. That's one of the reasons I'm not ready for any kind of relationship right now."

  "How about an affair? Do you think you could handle that?"

  Chantal thought about Caine. About the way she felt when he looked at her. About the way his gaze could melt the ice she hadn't even been aware had grown inside her. "I don't know," she murmured. "I'll think about it."

  "You do that," Blair said, nodding her satisfaction. From the other side of the house both women heard the strident demands of the Sherwood family's youngest. "I've got to go play mommy," Blair said. "Why don't you take a long bubble bath before dinner?"

  "That sounds heavenly."

  "Good." Impulsively, Blair reached out and threw her arms around Chantal. "I'm so happy to see you."

  As she returned the hug, Chantal caught the faint scent of milk emanating from Blair's skin and decided that the warm, sweet fragrance moved her more than any of the expensive perfumes currently laying claim to the top of the dresser.

  "Not nearly as happy as I am to see you," she answered truthfully. The years between them fell away, and for a brief, shining moment, Chantal felt like the laughing, carefree, oh-so-naive girl she'd once been.

  8

  The Philadelphians selected for the honor of meeting Princess Chantal Giraudeau de Montacroix were unmistakably Main Line. As he diligently worked his way through the ambitiously French dinner, Caine had difficulty deciding which backs were straighter—those belonging to the chairs or the guests. They were not the type of people normally considered potential murderers, but experience had taught Caine that he could take nothing for granted.

  Over a superb terrine of duck with Armagnac and green peppercorns, he exchanged a few words with a stiff-necked dermatologist whose unique solution to the city's homeless problem was to simply give the people bus tickets to Florida.

  "It's warmer there," the physician explained earnestly. "They'll be able to camp out on the beaches for free."

  Several replies raced through Caine's mind, each more caustic than the last. Deciding that nothing would be gained by embarrassing either Chantal, Blair, who he'd determined was a nice woman, or David Sherwood, whose devotion to his wife was obvious, Caine mumbled something into his glass as he took a long swallow of wine. All the while he kept a surreptitious eye on Chantal, every muscle in his body tensed, prepared for immediate action.

  At the head of the table, seated in the place of honor, the princess was engaged in what appeared to be a stimulating conversation with the man on her right—an elderly, balding professor emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania. Knowing that she'd undoubtedly appear just as fascinated listening to the drivel the dermatologist was spouting, Caine found himself once again impressed by her chameleonlike ability to adapt instantly to her surroundings.

  She'd chosen a plum silk evening suit, the deep neckline of the beaded jacket allowing an enticing glimpse of the top of her breasts. At first Caine considered that her perfumed flesh gleaming in the candlelight reminded him of marble, but he quickly corrected himse
lf. Marble was too cold. Too hard. Amethysts glowed warmly at her ear-lobes; hammered gold gleamed at her wrists. Her hands fluttered as she talked, like small birds; her slender fingers were unadorned, save for that ever-present silver ring.

  He was enjoying watching her when he suddenly felt a hand on his thigh. Caine immediately turned his attention to the sleek blond woman seated beside him. "You're certainly quiet," she said.

  "I was enjoying the meal. Mrs. Sherwood certainly has a knack for planning a menu, doesn't she?" he asked politely, seeking an impersonal opening gambit.

  "Blair attended the Ecole de Cuisine la Varenne in Paris," replied the woman, who'd been introduced earlier as Elizabeth Bancroft. Cutting into a small bacon-and-onion tart with her right hand, she scored an enticing trail up his leg beneath the snowy damask tablecloth with her left.

  "But that's our Blair," Elizabeth continued, "always working at self-improvement. At least this is better than the Japanese cooking course she took last year. As much as I absolutely adore Blair, I simply had to draw the line at raw fish. And let me tell you, I wasn't alone."

  "You sound as if you know her well," Caine managed as the server took away his plate and replaced it with the next course. As the treacherous hand inched upward, he vowed to stop it before it reached its destination. The only problem was, he wasn't certain that Chantal would approve of him dumping the thin slices of salmon wrapped around a sybaritic filling of onions, cream and salmon roe into the woman's Dior-clad lap.

  When the bearded blond waiter—clad in the requisite black tie—appeared beside. Elizabeth, the hand abandoned its quest, causing Caine to breathe a deep sigh of relief. "We're close friends. In fact, she's been a guest at my last three weddings."

  "Really?" If Caine had needed additional proof that this lady was perhaps not as stiffly Main Line as the other guests, the reference to her multiple marriages was it.

  "I didn't know her the first two times," Elizabeth explained casually. "So tell me, Mr. O'Bannion, what do you think of our fair city?"