Prelude to a Wedding

by Patricia McLinn

  "Oh, that."

  "Yes, that!"

  "It's just that I've been feeling sort of crazy this week—"

  "The feeling's mutual."

  She knew he heard her, but he ignored it.

  "But my feeling crazy's easy enough to fix."

  "Oh, really. How do you suggest we fix it?"

  No, no, no, Bette! Her brain listened, aghast, at the opening her mouth had given him, and she braced to be run over by the Mack truck he would surely drive through it. She could have sworn the phone line hummed with his glee.

  "Go out with me."

  As Mack trucks went, that wasn't so bad. A mere four-ton—or four-word—model. But he didn't fool her. This truck was just the lead vehicle in a caravan. Because after going out, there would be talking and laughing, then holding hands, kissing in the moonlight, embracing in the dark and who knew what else . . . Only she did know what else. Just the thought of it changed the pattern of her breathing and heartbeat. And that was the problem. If she went out with Paul Monroe. the man most likely to be named least likely to be her type of man, she could fall for him hard. More than she already had. She had to be firm. "No!"

  "You don't have to shout."

  She might have overdone the firmness, but she hadn't actually shouted. "I didn't shout."

  "Could have fooled me," he grumbled, and to her dismay she felt her lips quirk up in a smile.

  "No," she repeated, definitely not a shout this time, perhaps because the word was mostly aimed at herself.

  "I heard you the first time." Something in his voice made Bette put a hand to her throat, made her want to take all the words back and erase that—was it pain?—from his voice. "All right, so you don't want to go out with me." Yes, I do want to go out with you, she thought, but I won't. I can't. "Then I guess you'll just have to send an-other temporary secretary Monday morning."

  Whatever she'd heard in his voice had disappeared. His last words were almost cheerful. She swallowed, hard. "Yes, we'll send you another new secretary Monday morning."

  "Fine."

  "Fine."

  "Have a nice weekend, Bette."

  "You, too, Paul. Goodbye."

  She hung up, but left her hand on the receiver. She knew she'd have an absolutely miserable weekend—for the same reason she'd had a miserable week.

  * * * *

  She wasn't even surprised when Karen Van Ryland came in Tuesday at 11:30 and announced she wouldn't work for Paul Monroe.

  "That's it. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take any more of this, Darla." Bette pressed her hands on the desktop and rose slowly from her chair.

  "What are you going to do?"

  Do? Yes, she had to do something. The weekend had turned out worse than miserable—it had been unproductive. She hadn't caught up with the paperwork from Top-Line the way she'd wanted to. She hadn't investigated the two prospective neighborhoods she'd had on her agenda and she hadn't attended the real estate open houses she'd targeted.

  In fact, all she had accomplished was carving jack-o'-lantern faces into the three pumpkins that had taken up residence on her front steps. Oddly, they all bore a striking resemblance to the mask of Tragedy. Her neighbor had remarked that she had the most depressing doorstep in town. She had added that only seemed fitting since Bette's expression matched that of the jack-o'-lanterns.

  Yes, she had to do something. She had to at least try to stop this.

  "I'm going to face that maniac on his own turf and tell him he can't get away with this!"

  "Do you think that's wise?"

  She hadn't told Darla what Paul's condition for behaving normally was, but she had an uncomfortable feeling the older woman had her suspicions.

  "No, I don't think it's wise, but I think it's inevitable."

  As inevitable as it had been that those three pumpkins would get faces.

  The phone rang and they looked at the instrument, then at each other. Bette swung her coat on as it rang a second time, grabbed her purse and was to the door by ring three.

  "Tell him I will be in his office in fifteen minutes, and then we'll just see about this nonsense."

  * * * *

  "This is ridiculous, Paul."

  Paul's gaze followed Bette as she prowled across his inner office for the third time. Her dark green dress was made of some heavy material with just enough swing to caress her curves with each move. Loose sleeves were gathered into tight cuffs that made her wrists look impossibly small. He could hold both her wrists in one hand with no problem. He would hold them behind her, encouraging her to arch, while he explored the white slender throat that rose from the circle of a scarf tied at the neckline of that green dress.

  The warmth gathering in his groin made him grateful he'd assumed his habitual pose when Bette first came in— feet propped against the edge of his desk, knees bent, slouched a bit so the back of his neck rested on the high back of the old-fashioned wooden swivel chair. He'd done it deliberately, emphasizing his calm casualness as a contrast to her high-wired agitation. Sitting like this was also comfortable, and luckily in this case, it masked certain realities of male human anatomy.

  For a week and half, he'd found such fantasies involving a certain dark-haired, blue-eyed woman had become increasingly frequent. They'd also become disturbingly realistic. And the trouble was, the fantasies also seemed to be producing increasingly realistic reactions.

  It was as bad as being a teenager again. No, worse. As a teenager he'd had no thought of fulfilling the fantasies. Now he had a fairly good idea how incredible it would be if he did.

  Just one stumbling block—Bette Wharton.

  He watched her slim fingers pick up a framed photograph from the bookshelves to the right of his desk. He'd wager she wasn't aware it was the second time she'd picked up that particular photograph, a shot taken his senior year in college, with Grady, Michael and Tris on the front steps of the university library. And he'd up the bet to any amount anyone cared to name that she'd deny ever letting the tip of her finger stroke the image of his youthful face the way she'd just done.

  If it wouldn't have raised her hackles, he would have grinned at her. She was weakening.

  He wondered if a tiger on the hunt felt this way as it watched a particularly graceful gazelle graze closer and closer to being within the predator's grasp—a little sorry for the creature about to become lunch, but at the same time hungry, so very hungry. Maybe he'd missed something by never pursuing a woman before. Or did it only work this way with Bette?

  She put down the photo with a bit of a thunk and swung back to face him, and he thought maybe the gazelle wasn't as defenseless as it looked. It certainly had the speed to escape, no matter how delicate its limbs.

  "Did you hear me?" Her exasperated tone informed him he'd missed something.

  "No."

  She let out a short, irritated spurt of breath that made it harder for him to restrain a grin. It also had the effect of drawing his attention to her mouth, and rekindling memories of the way it had felt against his lips, his teeth, his tongue.

  "This has got to stop, Paul."

  "My not listening?" Or my fantasizing?

  "Your scaring off my secretaries!"

  "I told you that was easy enough to remedy. Go out with me."

  "Paul—"

  The warning sounded clearly, but he didn't heed it. He'd dismissed the possibility that she was involved with someone ten days ago as he'd sat in his car contemplating her dark house, but the thought came again now. Maybe that was why . . .

  His feet hit the floor with a thud and the old chair creaked upright. "Is there a special reason you won't go out with me?"

  "What do you mean, a special reason?" He could almost see her caution.

  "Another man," he rapped out. "Are you involved with somebody else?"

  "No." The word came too fast, and she was too flustered, for the answer to be anything but automatically honest. But then she faced him, hands on hips, and glared full force. "There's no 'somebody e
lse' about it. I'm not involved with you, either."

  "Yet." He let himself smile a little as he said the word, more because the tension had eased than anything else.

  "Not at all."

  "Why not, Bette?"

  "Why not?" she repeated. She sounded more uncertain than outraged. He took that as a good sign.

  "Yeah. Why not? It's not like you could be suspecting I have some horrible secret in my past. You know pretty much all there is to know about my past. You've even met my parents. You seemed to like them."

  He let the last sentence linger, forcing her to say something or be rude.

  "Yes, I liked them."

  Who would have thought that getting her to agree with him would be such a kick? He had a feeling his fantasies might start including the word yes. "You must have been able to tell that most of the time they think I'm a pretty good guy. I could give you affidavits from a couple friends, maybe even Judi. Surely you'd take a younger sister's word for it that I'm not a monster."

  "I don't think you're a monster." She sounded almost sullen. The signs were better and better.

  Abruptly, he didn't want to play the game of reading signs anymore. He wanted to know. He wanted her to tell him. "Then why won't you go out with me?"

  For a long, tenuous moment he thought she wouldn't respond. Willing her to answer, he kept his eyes on her.

  "It's too . . . You're too—" she darted a look at him, then off to the side "—dangerous."

  "What do you mean, dangerous?" An extraordinary relief surged through him, and he couldn't stop the grin this time—dangerous was a whole lot better than her just not wanting to spend time with him. But when she stiffened, he knew he'd done exactly the wrong thing.

  She took a deep, backbone-steadying breath, walked over to the black leather couch under the windows and sat down with dignified composure. If he'd rattled her, she'd recouped. The gazelle had not only escaped, it was prepared to face down its pursuer. He felt absurdly deflated, shut out.

  "Paul, I have a business to run. Running it well is important to me. I've worked very long, and very hard to build it up."

  'And you'd hate to lose this 'in' with Centurian." He'd accepted that from the beginning, known how she must view the opportunity. It made sense for someone with a master plan. Still, part of him hoped she'd deny it, to say he was more important to her.

  She met his eyes. "An account with Centurian would mean a great deal to Top-Line."

  "I already told them I highly recommend Top-Line. So that's not an issue."

  "Thank you."

  He was the one who broke the look. He was being an ass. Of course her business was important to her. He understood that. He thought about telling her how long and hard he'd worked building his business. But then he remembered the things he'd told her that first night at Mama Artemis's; she wouldn't take his protests too seriously. He didn't generally care to have people know that satisfying his clients, and more important, his own standards, was an issue of self-respect. But he wondered if, this time, he'd made a mistake in passing off the demands of his profession so blithely.

  "But you are making it very difficult for me to run my business well. This sort of turnover in staffing with one client makes it nearly impossible to schedule so we can meet all our clients' needs fully—"

  She'd exaggerated his impact on her business. Not only was the sight of her hands twisting in her lap a telltale signal that she was fibbing, but Darla—who was clearly encouraging his pursuit of Bette—had told him that to this point he'd been merely a nuisance, not a roadblock.

  His instincts, honed by twelve days of focusing all too intently on this woman, told him it was her own hide more than her business that felt threatened. Perhaps in more ways than one.

  "—and since that is what Top-Line has built its reputation on, your performance this past week has been dangerous to my business."

  "That doesn't explain why you won't go out with me."

  She ignored that. "So if you will tell me exactly what your needs are—" She paused, but when he opened his mouth to tell her exactly what his needs were and what he was just arrogant enough to believe her needs were, her eyes widened in recognition of the opening she'd left and she rushed on without any additional oxygen. Her voice came as a whispery spurt that did something strange to the nerves down his backbone. "In a secretary. If you will just tell me, I will make every effort to see that Top-Line fills those requirements."

  His nerves settled, and he sighed deeply, the disappointment unfeigned. She wouldn't be budged. At least not today. He considered her, sitting there on the couch. The dark green dress covered her from below her knees to her neck. Yet he only had to see the way the fabric draped across the slope of her breast to remember the feel of her amazingly soft skin under his fingertips, and then to relive the clenching, cramping pleasure in his gut at the sensation of her beaded nipple in his mouth.

  Swallowing a curse, he stifled the urge to put his feet back up on the edge of the desk.

  "All right, if you won't change your mind today, there's always tomorrow. And the day after that."

  "My, my, Paul Monroe thinking as far ahead as tomorrow?"

  "If I have to to get through to you," he shot back.

  Twisting to face him squarely, she leaned forward and met his look, apparently reading the determination in it.

  "Why don't you just give up this silliness, Paul?"

  "Because I want to go out with you."

  "Why?" The question swirled with exasperation and doubt and perhaps a bit of wonder.

  "Because . . ." Did he know? He'd never indulged in much self-analysis and he wasn't comfortable doing it now. So what if he acted a little out of character. So what if his family and friends had taken to allowing oddly knowing silences to creep into recent telephone conversations. So what if he didn't know why it was so all-fired important that this particular woman be convinced to change "no" to "yes."

  He looked at her. Her dress glowed like green jade against her ivory skin. Her hair shone glossier than the smooth black leather of the couch. He could answer her question by doing what he wanted most to do at the moment. He wanted to go to her, to let his lips reacquaint her with what they could do to each other, to touch her in ways that earned those small, secret sounds of hers, to stretch her out on that couch, to press her body into the soft leather with the weight of his own and to feel her desire.

  He said the words that came easiest. "Because I want you."

  For a moment, both too long and too short to measure by a clock, she remained still. Then she slowly straightened and stood, her composure complete.

  "Goodbye, Paul. I'll send you a new secretary tomorrow morning."

  "Bette—"

  She gave him a palm-out gesture with one hand that stopped him. Just as well. He didn't have a clue what he would have said, what he could have said.

  "Paul, I enjoyed our dinners. I enjoyed meeting your parents. I've enjoyed our conversation and—" She flashed him a look, and he wondered if she was thinking of the kisses and caresses. If so, the thought didn't crack her calm. "But we're very different. We have different attitudes, approaches . . ." She let the words wind down, then turned and put on her coat, meticulously adjusting the collar before looking at him again.

  A smile tried to turn up the corners of her mouth.

  "There's no future in this, Paul. So let's just leave it at that, okay? For both our sakes. We're best being business associates. That's all. Cordial business associates."

  She closed the door behind her, then he heard the click of the outer door. She was gone.

  Anger filled the emptiness.

  Who the hell had said anything about a future, anyway? All he wanted was the present. To have fun while there was fun to be had, to explore this strangely powerful attraction. That was all. No big deal.

  He jammed his feet back against the edge of the desk, but there was no relief for this new ache he felt. The ache of an opportunity lost.

  * * *
*

  Six days. One hundred forty-four hours. Eight thousand six-hundred and forty minutes.

  Bette punched numbers into the calculator on her desk as if jabbing the keys would cure what ailed her, then wiped out the total before it could come up on the screen. She didn't want to know how many seconds. That would only make it seem longer—if that were possible. It was bad enough expressed as six days. And six nights.

  The days she could fill with all the busyness of running Top-Line Temporaries. Even the weekend had been crammed with duties and responsibilities, plans and projections. After the havoc Paul Monroe had wreaked on her life, she'd needed time to catch up.

  They had sent Heather Carlini off to Paul's office Wednesday morning, and held their breath—though Bette was honest enough with herself to admit her feelings and Darla's were not identical in this situation.

  Heather Carlini was a knockout. Dark hair, huge brown eyes, petite but blessed with an abundance of the right curves, and an apparently innate sense of how best to use them to her advantage. Bette had assigned her the job with deliberate intentions, and almost immediate regrets. What if Paul fell for her? Well, wasn't that the best solution? Yes. No!

  Bette felt as if the rumbling in her head might let loose any second with an explosion to rival Mount St. Helens.

  But there had been no eruptions of any kind. Not from inside her, not from Paul Monroe. Not Wednesday, not Thursday, not Friday. Nothing.

  "All quiet on the Monroe front," Darla had said as they closed up Friday night, leaving the words to echo in Bette's head all weekend. And now it was nearing five o'clock Monday and all was still peace and quiet.

  At least until nighttime came.

  Even with all the effort she'd put into work over the past six days, Bette discovered she still had energy for tossing and turning each and every one of six nights.

  She'd rerun the scene in Paul's office so many times that the mental tape should have worn out. Instead, in some ways, it seemed to have become clearer and clearer.

  Crystal clear that she'd assessed him correctly that first night. Intelligent, warm, charming, wry, sexy, endearingly funny and open. And truly a kid at heart.