Sonny’s jaw set. “Look, I don’t want to cause a scene, but unless you leave as quietly and quickly as you came in, I’m going to punch your lights out.”
Jake looked at Heather. “You were right, charm is definitely on the ebb.”
“I’m asking you to leave, Daniels, as politely as I know how.”
“And being darn civil about it, too. This may come as a surprise, but it wasn’t my idea to crash this party.”
“Don’t tell me you have yet another package to deliver.”
“Nothing like that. Cleo insisted I bring her. She is part of the family, you know, and she’s been feeling pretty left out all evening. You really should have invited her along.”
“Take your jokes and your dog and leave before I lose my patience. There are security guards on the grounds and they’ll be happy to escort you off the property, if you think you’re going to have any trouble finding your way out.”
“I can find my way,” Jake said easily. “I was at a party here once before.”
Sonny clenched his fist and pushed up his sleeves. “That’s it, Daniels. We’re going to settle this once and for all.”
“Not a good idea,” Heather counseled. “Your mother looks pretty upset already.”
Sonny glanced behind him and cautioned his more aggressive guests to stay back with an upheld hand. “Let’s behave like gentlemen, Daniels, and take our disagreement outside where it belongs. Not everyone enjoys the sight of blood.”
“Me, especially.” Jake nodded agreeably. “You know, if I could only have a few minutes alone with—”
“Not a chance,” Sonny interjected. “Gentry doesn’t want to see you, alone or otherwise. You have no business being in the same country with her, much less in the same room.”
“Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions, Harris. I was about to say, if I could talk to Charlie, I’ll finish my business here and leave as quickly and quietly as I came. No blood. No upset mothers. No crying women. No trouble. You have my word of honor.”
“Your honor isn’t worth a fried potato to me. I’d much rather see your rear end going out the door.”
“Eloquently put.” Jake didn’t blame the other guy. In his position, any man would be on the defensive. Two years ago, Jake had been feeling a bit desperate himself. “As I was saying, if you’d be so kind as to let me have a few minutes with my ex-father-in-law, I’ll be out of here quicker than you can spit in my eye. Uh, that was just a figure of speech,” he added quickly. “Where is Charlie, anyway?”
“I saw him a little while ago.” Heather supported Jake’s change of topic with a step forward and a concerted effort to look for Pop. “He may be outside. Or he could be in the kitchen. Or I suppose he might be on the dance floor. Do you see him, Sonny?” She craned her neck for a better view past Sonny, who never let his gaze stray from Jake.
“I’ll find him.” Sonny narrowed his eyes, issuing a silent warning. “You wait by the door.”
“Jake!” Sydney rushed up and slipped her hand through the crook of his arm. “You scoundrel! Don’t you know it’s completely immoral to crash a party? Hillary nearly fainted from the impropriety when she caught sight of you. She may not be able to speak for hours, she’s so horrified.”
Something was afoot, Jake thought, noting the mischief sparkling in Syd’s eyes and the breathy excitement in her voice. “There are social outlaws everywhere you go these days. She’ll have to get used to it.”
“Not tonight, she won’t.” Sonny glanced at Heather. “Would you escort Mr. Daniels to the door and stay with him until I can find my father-in-law?”
Sydney patted Jake’s arm companionably as she tossed the other man a casual smile. “You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you, Sonny? The wedding isn’t until Saturday, you know. Pop won’t be your in-law until then.”
“A mere technicality, which will be remedied in a matter of days.” The confidence in his voice was unmistakable and Jake wished he would sound slightly unsure of himself. “Now, Heather,” Sonny continued, “if you please…”
“Why are we going to the door?” Sydney asked. “Why can’t we sit at one of the tables over—”
“He’s not staying long enough to sit anywhere,” Sonny interrupted. “You’re welcome to go with him, but either way, he’s on his way out…even if I have to bodily toss him through the door.”
“Good thing Hil didn’t hear that,” Heather observed aloud. “She’d be prostrate at the impropriety.”
“Sonny?” Sydney’s voice softened with persuasion. “Wouldn’t it be better if Jake waited for Pop in a room somewhere? Then you won’t have to worry about him bothering any of the guests. Heather and I will find a convenient place for him and make sure he doesn’t come out.”
Sonny considered that with a frown. “I don’t care where you put him as long as I don’t have to see him again. Be sure the dog stays with him.”
“Oh, we will.” Sydney performed a smart salute. “Your wish is our command.” She turned her mischievous eyes on Jake. “You heard him, Heather. Sonny doesn’t care where we put this party crasher so long as he isn’t in here.”
Heather shrugged and patted her leg. “Come on, Cleo. You’re banished, too.”
Turning Jake like a revolving door, the women marched him away from the party as if they were escorting him to the guillotine.
THERE WAS NO SUCH THING as a magic dress.
Gentry glared at the luminous ivory satin with its lace sleeves and lace-covered bodice. Out of curiosity, she checked the buttons, not really surprised to find none missing. Her bridesmaids wouldn’t have overlooked that little detail and given her a valid reason for not falling in with their scheme and putting on the dress.
She stepped back and eyed it thoughtfully. Hanging there in the darkened meeting room of the country club, it looked ordinary enough, if a trifle fussy for her taste. She preferred more modest gowns, like the pearl gray sheath and the sequined…
What was she thinking? There was nothing modest, or even attractive, about the sequined wedding dress. This antique gown was far more deserving of the term. It wasn’t actually that bad. Maybe if Pop and Ben—and her ex-friends—hadn’t been so determined to have her wear it, she might have tried it on. Just to see how it fit and how it would feel to wear something designed for a bride old enough to be her great-grandmother.
Her lips tightened with a frown. She was probably lucky the dress hadn’t belonged to any of her descendants. Throughout her early adolescence, she’d believed she was actually the daughter of Libby Kirk. She’d found a scrapbook of the early days in Charlie North’s career and secreted it away, poring over the publicity pictures and private mementos of that time in his life. Libby’s name was underlined in every article, her face plastered throughout the scrapbook.
In her preteen years, Gentry had reached the romantic conclusion that she was a love child, born to her father’s actress lover and subsequently adopted by his long-suffering wife. It was a wonderful story to tell her friends when they were sharing the deepest, darkest, most tragic secrets of their respective families. No one could top Gentry’s tale of forbidden love, desperate passion, sacrifice and forgiveness. She had the charming, charismatic and extravagant father to lend the story an air of real possibility, too.
Then she’d turned fourteen and, in the scientific world of biology class, faced the inevitable realization that her Irish red hair and emerald green eyes had not come from Libby Kirk’s brown-eyed, brunette gene pool, but from Frannie O’Kelley Northcross and a long line of ivory-skinned, green-eyed redheads. In some bizarre twist of psychology, which she had never understood, the knowledge ended her love affair with romance and shattered the image she’d created of her father.
Now, out of the blue, he wanted her to believe there was magic in an old wedding gown. He’d probably made up the whole story about the history of the dress, anyway. But Ben…She hadn’t thought her brother would fall prey to any nonsensical notion regarding love and marriage. Obvious
ly, though, meeting Sara had made him just as susceptible to romantic ideas as Pop. With a sigh, Gentry moved to the window and looked out at the shadowy greens of the golf course. Where was Sydney? How long were they going to keep her locked in this room before they realized she wasn’t giving in to their blackmail and had every intention of remaining in her underwear the rest of her life if she had to?
Like a child drawn to a forbidden object, she turned slowly, bracing her hands on the credenza behind her, to look again at the wedding gown. Was there really any good reason to avoid putting it on, she wondered. What was the good of standing on principle, when it meant standing in your underwear? She could slip on the gown and leave the room. She could leave the building, for that matter. Go home. Change into something else and be back almost before she could be missed. If no one saw her in the dress, no one would ever know she’d had it on. She would know, of course, but she wouldn’t have to tell anyone.
Almost without knowing her objective, she walked over and took down the wedding gown. The satin was heavy and cool to the touch and the lace as delicate and fine as silk. She could imagine how rich the material would feel against her skin, how the ivory lace would look with her coloring. On closer inspection, the dress was really lovely, old-fashioned and sparkling with the promises of generations past. Holding it against her, Gentry could almost visualize herself in another time and another place. Maybe the magic of the dress was like all other illusions…a reflection of something unexpected and unexplained. She could try it on and see for herself. There wasn’t a mirror in this room, but the ladies’ lockers were just across the hall and there was a full-length mirror there. Who would know?
If there was even a grain of truth to the magic dress myth, she’d see Sonny’s image reflected with her own. Chances were, she’d see nothing more than a redhead in an old dress. With a twist of her hand, she fluffed the skirt to smooth out the wrinkles and still managed to hold the bodice in place while she swayed like a child playing dressup, humming the bridal march under her breath, imagining herself walking down a long church aisle, wearing a gown like this one.
When the lights came on, she blinked and, with a guilty start, let go of the dress. It pooled at her feet in a sigh of satin as she met Jake’s blue eyes across the room. “Jake!” She ducked down, scrambling for a hold on the suddenly slippery satin. “For heaven’s sake, turn out the light!”
The lights went out as quickly as they’d come on. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ve found Fantasy Island.”
“You’re going to find nirvana if you turn on those lights again. Sonny will tear you limb from limb.”
“I don’t think it will matter to him whether the lights are on or not.”
She shoved Cleo’s inquisitive and cold nose away from her bare leg. “If the lights are off, no one can see in from outside. If they’re on and someone in the clubhouse looks in this direction, everything is visible.”
“Everything?” Jake asked. “Meaning you in your underwear?”
She covered her lack of clothing with an embarrassed and frustrated jerk on the dress. Holding the material across her breasts, she straightened and lifted her chin with all the dignity she could muster. “They might see that, yes. What are you doing here, anyway? I distinctly recall not inviting you.”
“Like two pennies from the same mint, we just keep winding up together,” he said. “Must be fate.”
“Or at least one very bad penny,” she suggested, conscious that the room had become uncomfortably warm and her cheeks uncomfortably flushed. “Now, just turn around and leave the way you came in.”
“Can’t. Hillary won’t let me out.”
“She can’t keep you here against your will. You’re bigger than she is.”
“Also stronger,” he stated modestly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m a match for your friends.”
“Are you saying all three of them coerced you into crashing this party and getting yourself locked into this room with me?”
“There was no coercion involved.”
“I thought so.”
“They were just trying to prevent bloodshed.”
“Whose?”
“Let’s just say your fiancé didn’t exactly greet me with a kiss.”
She adjusted the drooping bodice higher..on her chest. “And that surprised you? Honestly, Jake, when are you going to figure out that around here you are the kiss of death.”
“You didn’t used to think so.”
“I was young and foolish,” she said in self-defense.
“Two years younger, but no less foolish than you are at this moment.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He shrugged. “Begging isn’t going to get you out of this mess, Gentry. You’re going to have to take some action.”
“And just what would you suggest?”
“Put some clothes on and let’s get out of here.”
“That’s exactly what they want me to do.”
He looked at her, new amusement edging his smile. “You are the strangest mix of contradictions I’ve ever encountered. Are you ever going to figure out what you want, Liz?”
“I cannot believe you have the nerve to say that to me.” The dress slipped down as she sucked in an exasperated breath. “You, of all people.”
“Who better?” he countered. “I happen to believe there’s a wonderful human being trapped behind that facade of perfection. A woman who makes mistakes and, if I may say so, is about to make the biggest one of her-”
“You may not say so! In fact, you may not speak to me at all. I’m not interested in your opinions, and for your information, the only mistake I ever made was letting you into my life.”
He looked at her long and hard, and then he pulled out one of the chairs and sat in it, putting his feet on the table and infuriating her with his silence.
“Well, haven’t you got anything to say for yourself?” she challenged finally.
“Cleo,” he addressed the dog. “Kindly tell Ms. Northcross I’ve been instructed not to speak to her.”
“Don’t bother, Cleo. I don’t care to hear anything Mr. Daniels has to say to you, either.” She let the dress sag and had to jerk it up again. She turned toward the windows and then, realizing she was only covered in front, turned hastily around and kept her eye on him as she cautiously edged back until her hips brushed the credenza. “Sydney stole my clothes,” she said.
Courtesy of the moonlight that poured through the windows, she watched his gaze slide downward from her shoulders, tantalizing her with admiration, arousing every nerve ending to a shivering and all-toofamiliar awareness.
“Don’t look at me,” she said.
“There’s no reason to be mad at me. You’re the one who’s losing her valuables right and left.”
Her heart skipped a beat. The ring. Had he found the ring? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His eyebrows rose with easy humor. “You’ve lost your clothes. Which is a pretty valuable thing to lose…especially when you refuse to wear anything else.”
“What else?” She all but dared him to confess. Then she’d nail him with her utter indifference. “What else have I lost?”
“Now, how could I know that?”
He knew, damn it. She could tell by the lazy way he looked at her. “You couldn’t,” she said. “You couldn’t know anything of importance about me.”
“Of course not.” Extending his arms over his head, he stretched, linked his fingers and brought down his hands to flex them like a wrestler before a match. “And I certainly don’t know how this—” he pointed to the band of gold on the little finger of his left hand “—came to be on the bottom of the pool today.”
There seemed little point in denying she knew it was missing. “Give that to me, please.”
“Finders keepers, losers weepers.”
“Fine.” She gave a complacent little shrug. “I was only going to have it melted down and made into cheap costume jewelry, anyway.”
“Really?” He held out his hand and admired the ring. “In that case, you won’t mind if I keep it.”
Once, he’d made her so mad she’d thrown a fish at him. A live fish. The biggest fish she could get her hands around. She’d hit him right between the eyes, too. It had been one of the highlights of her life.
“Where’s a trout when you need one,” he said, his grin slow and annoying.
“Can’t I even have a thought of my own without you crashing it?”
“I always was able to read you like a book.”
“Unfortunately, you’re still reading at a seventhgrade level.” Her lips tightened, and to her horror, she felt the sting of angry tears. This was not the way she was supposed to spend the week before her wedding. “Would you just leave?”
“I told you I’m not allowed to leave yet. I have to wait here for Sonny and Pop.”
“Well, if you…what? Sonny’s on his way? Here? To this room?”
Jake nodded. “That’s my understanding. He’s bringing Pop to talk to me.”
“Why does Pop want to talk to you?”
“He doesn’t. I said I wanted to talk to him.”
“What about?”
“I didn’t say.”
She pursed her lips. “I’ve got to get out of here. If Sonny finds me here…with you…”
“He could conceivably jump to the wrong conclusion,” Jake observed. “Since you’re not exactly dressed for casual conversation.”
Suspicion returned like a homing pigeon. “This is another trick, isn’t it? Sydney and Hillary cooked up this whole idea just so I’d put on this stupid dress. And they sent you in here with some cock-and-bull story about Sonny bringing Pop to this room to add a little extra incentive. Oh, boy, when I get my hands on them…”
“If I were you, I’d put on the dress…on the outside chance it isn’t a cock-and-bull story and Sonny is actually on his way.”
“And give in? I think not. I wouldn’t wear this wedding gown now if it were the only piece of clothing in existence. I wouldn’t wear it if I thought Sonny’s entire family was going to walk through that door.”
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