by Sandra Field
“A honeymoon? No way!”
“I’ve said that’s what we’re doing, Devon.”
Her fingers were trembling very lightly as she spread pâté on her bread. But when she spoke she sounded entirely self-possessed. “Controlling someone else’s life can go two ways. Now it’s my turn. I have a condition, Jared. A very simple one. But if you don’t agree to it, the wedding’s off.”
He had no idea what it could be. Was that one of the reasons that Devon fascinated him? That she was so totally unpredictable? “Go ahead,” he said.
“I’ll expect you to be faithful to me. I won’t tolerate Lise as your mistress.”
“I accept that condition,” he said curtly.
“You do?”
“In fact, I’d require the same thing of you. Dammit, Devon, the marriage vows have to mean something.”
She looked straight at him; he noticed how the pulse at the base of her throat was throbbing beneath her creamy skin. In open challenge, she said, “To love and to cherish…what about that particular phrase? Or are you just picking out the ones that suit you?”
His fist clenched on the tablecloth. She deserved the truth from him, he thought, and said hoarsely, “I don’t think I know how to fall in love with a woman. I never have. But I’ll be faithful to you, I swear.”
With an ache in his gut, he watched tears gather in her sea-blue eyes. If I touch her, I’m lost, he thought, and heard her say, “Then I’ll marry you, Jared.”
He said the first thing that came into his head. “I—I didn’t get you a ring.”
“I hate diamonds,” she said forcefully.
“Then I won’t get you diamonds,” said Jared.
She scrubbed at her eyes with her napkin, smearing her eyeshadow. “You don’t have to get me anything,” she said. “There’s fruit for dessert and I have three more trips I’m committed to before I can quit my job. Morocco next week, two conferences in London, and a quick flight to Baffin Island.”
She looked as rebellious as any teenager, he thought, with a rush of emotion he labeled amusement but that felt far more complicated and confusing. He’d be worried sick each time until she landed safely back in Toronto. Worried? Jared Holt? He never worried about anyone; it was a policy of his.
He pushed back his cuff and glanced at his watch. “I’d better skip the fruit…the limo’s picking me up in five minutes. I’ll be in touch once you’re back from Morocco.” With a straight face he added, “Wonderful soup…I’m glad you can cook.”
Swift laughter shimmered in her irises; her mood changes were another of the things that drew him to her. She stood up and accompanied him to the door, taking his coat out of the closet. “Thank you again for the orchids,” she said.
Had he ever wanted to kiss a woman as badly as he now wanted to kiss Devon? “Take care,” he said brusquely.
“You, too.”
The light had gone from her eyes. Run for your life, Jared, he thought, opened the door and shut it decisively behind him.
He’d gotten out of there without taking her to bed. Without even touching her. And it had half killed him.
CHAPTER NINE
HER wedding day.
Devon lay in bed at “The Oaks,” in the same room she’d been given when her mother had married Benson last summer. It was now November, never her favorite month. It was, by the sound of it, raining.
At one o’clock she and Jared were getting married. Benson and Alicia were to be the witnesses, and Benson had insisted on inviting Aunt Bessie and Uncle Leonard. After a celebratory lunch—Alicia’s phrase—Jared and Devon were driving to Toronto and flying to the Bahamas, to a new resort that Jared owned in the Exumas, for a four-day honeymoon. From there they were jetting to Vancouver, where they were to live in a house Jared already owned—the house he’d been meaning to settle down in for a couple of years. He would use the house as a base, commuting to New York, the Far East, and wherever else the demands of business required his presence.
To all this Devon had acquiesced. Her agreement to marry Jared, she thought, had been like a small rock sitting at the top of a hillside about to start a landslide. She herself was now tumbling down the slope, end over end. Out of control.
Her year’s leave of absence had been approved at company headquarters. She’d let out her condo because the real estate market was in a slump and she didn’t want to take a loss; besides, at some level, she wasn’t ready to sell it. Her furniture, her paintings, and her red Mazda were on their way to Vancouver. After she’d come back from Morocco, the Toronto office had thrown a very nice party for her, which Jared had been unable to attend; he’d been in Hawaii, on his way home from Hong Kong.
Step by step, she’d cut herself off from her former life, organizing everything to fit in with Jared’s demands, Jared’s job, Jared’s house in Vancouver. Jared’s baby, she thought unhappily. The result of Jared’s ill-judged affair with her. If she’d been in any doubt before, she now knew why he was the head of a multimillion dollar business empire. It was because, once he’d made up his mind to a course of action, he was ruthlessly efficient and brooked no argument in carrying it out.
Her pregnancy seemed to have reached the stage where all she wanted to do was sleep. She was too tired to fight him any more. It was easier just to go along with him. Leave her job. Get married. Live in Outer Mongolia. Have triplets if that was what he wanted. What was the difference?
She felt paralyzed, immobilized, shut down. Like a dummy in a store window. Or a doll in a toy shop, the kind that produced a rote message every time you pressed a button in its back. Yes, Jared. No, Jared. Whatever you say, Jared.
What was the matter with her? She’d never been one to lie down to the blows of fate. She wouldn’t have gotten her job, or done it so well, if she’d gone around being passive and agreeable to everyone. She’d always been a fighter.
But there was no point in fighting Jared. She’d tried. And she’d lost.
I’m living in a dream, Devon thought. But I’m not writing the plot. Jared is.
And what would she do if she were to wake up? If she had any sense, she’d run down to the stables, get on Rajah and gallop full speed into the sunset. Except that it was pouring with rain and there wouldn’t be any sunset, and by this evening she’d be married anyway.
It was too late to run away.
Devon curled up in a ball, pulling the covers over her head. Too many people were involved for her to run away. The day after Jared had left for Hong Kong, she’d invited Benson and Alicia for supper. She’d served them the remains of the carrot soup for the first course, she remembered with a wry smile; Alicia had complimented her on its flavour. To which Devon had blurted, “Jared and I are getting married.”
“What?” Alicia had cried.
“Why?” Benson had demanded.
Devon had stirred her soup, watching the sour cream sink below the surface. “In two weeks. At ‘The Oaks,’ if that’s okay with both of you.”
“Darling,” Alicia cried, getting up and kissing her daughter on the cheek, “of course it is. I’m very happy for you. Love at first sight—and I hadn’t even noticed.”
Benson said sharply, “I didn’t think the two of you were even remotely compatible.”
“Oh, yes,” Devon lied valiantly. “It just took us a while to figure it out.” All her carefully rehearsed speeches abandoned her. As her spoon trailed parsley flakes, she added in a rush, “I’m pregnant. With your grandchild.”
For once, Alicia was speechless. Benson said with a careful lack of emphasis, “Are you in love with Jared, Devon?”
“I will be. Given time,” she said, ducking her chin still further to her chest.
“And he with you?”
“You’ll have to ask him that,” she replied with a flicker of defiance.
Benson said abruptly, “I failed Jared once. When he was very young. Failed him badly, which I’m convinced is part of the reason he’s so withdrawn, so cynical about women. You don’t know
how often I’ve wished I could undo the past, remedy my own blindness and stupidity…but I can’t do that. None of us can.”
Devon said, “He told me about Beatrice.”
“He did?” Benson paused, eying her shrewdly. “How interesting—he refuses pointblank to talk to me about her. If he’s opened up to you like that, Devon, then maybe you are the right woman for him.”
I don’t think so.
Fortunately, Devon hadn’t spoken those words out loud. But as she turned over in bed on this rainy morning in November, burying her face in the pillow, she didn’t think she was the right woman for Jared at all.
He’d scarcely laid a finger on her since she’d told him about the pregnancy. As though she disgusted him. As though by trapping him into marriage, a marriage he’d never wanted, she was no longer the object of his desire. He didn’t want to marry her. He didn’t want her in his bed.
Four days alone with him? She was dreading it.
A tap came at the door. “Darling, are you awake?”
Devon forced her lips into the semblance of a smile. “Come in, Mother.”
“I brought you breakfast,” Alicia said perkily.
The tray was charmingly laid with a starched cloth and a white rose in a silver vase. Touched, Devon said, “That’s sweet of you.”
“Devon, I do so hope you’ll be happy. I want you to be as happy with Benson’s son as I am with Benson.”
Alicia had clearly rehearsed this little speech. Knowing she mustn’t start to cry, because if she did she might not be able to stop, Devon said, “Thanks, Mother. I’m sure I will be.”
“He apologized, you know. Jared, I mean. For trying to bribe me not to marry his father. He said he shouldn’t have done it, he was very sorry, and he could see how well suited we were. It was after you’d left at Thanksgiving.”
“He did?” Devon said blankly.
“He wasn’t what you’d call effusive—I don’t suppose Jared is used to apologizing for anything,” Alicia said, her head on one side. “But he meant it, I’m sure…I don’t think he does anything he doesn’t want to do.”
Except marry me, thought Devon.
“Benson told me about Beatrice,” Alicia went on. “A witch, darling, a positive witch, and pathologically jealous. She hated Jared on two counts—he was another woman’s son, and Benson loved him. I’m convinced that’s why Benson wants a grandchild. So he can do a better job the next time round.”
“I’m glad Jared apologized,” Devon said, and felt her heart lighten by the smallest of degrees.
“You’re just what he needs, darling.”
If only he thought so. But Devon couldn’t say that.
After breakfast, she finished packing for her honeymoon, had a leisurely bath and got dressed. She was wearing silk, always her favorite fabric, fashioned this time into a simple skirt and tunic that flowed subtly over her curves. It was white. She might not be a virgin, she thought ruefully, but she sure felt like one.
At twelve-thirty Martin, the butler, delivered a small box to her door. “Flown in for you this morning, madam,” he said. The box contained a single exquisite orchid; the card said simply, “Jared.”
Why would he say “love”? This marriage wasn’t about love.
Ignoring the ache in her heart, Devon pinned the flower to her hair and applied blusher to her cheeks to give herself some color. Then, her face a perfectly controlled mask, she walked downstairs.
Alicia, cheated of a society wedding, had filled the living room with flowers, so many flowers it was almost impossible to see the sodden, leaf-bare garden through the windows. A fire danced in the hearth. Six people were clustered round it, waiting for her. Uncle Leonard and Aunt Bessie, the latter in an acid-green dress that was too tight for her, Benson, Alicia, the clergyman who had married them, and Jared. Jared was wearing a formal business suit; he looked forbiddingly severe, not at all like a prospective groom happily waiting for his bride.
Devon’s fears, if anything, intensified. Nevertheless, as she watched Jared’s taut profile, she suddenly wished she’d ordered a flower for his lapel. Any kind of flower. In swift compunction, she realized it hadn’t even occurred to her.
He’d had an orchid ordered specially for her, and delivered to her door.
None of them had noticed her. Swiftly she retreated, and from the bouquet that stood just outside the door she extracted a single rosebud. She tiptoed down the corridor to the kitchen, asked Martin for a knife, and cut most of the stem off. It was a peach-pink rose, a color very sure of itself. Very much alive.
Darn it, she wasn’t going to her own wedding like a lamb to the slaughter, Devon thought, gazing into the tightly furled petals as if somehow they could speak to her. Jared had apologized to Alicia, admitted he’d done a wrong. And all his passion toward herself, which had changed her into a woman fully alive and wondrously responsive, couldn’t simply have disappeared. It had gone underground, maybe. But it was still there. After all, hadn’t he given her the orchid now nestled in her hair? She’d always considered orchids very sexy flowers.
She went back to the living room, her head held high. As her heels tapped on the oak floor, Jared turned around. Clutching the rosebud as if it were a talisman, she smiled at him. Then she walked right up to him, took his lapel and inserted the stem through the small buttonhole. The rose lopped sideways. Her tongue between her teeth, Devon tugged on it. “It’s not cooperating,” she muttered, “I should have brought a pin.”
Alicia said, “Wait a moment, darling, I’ll get one.”
Feeling rather foolish, Devon stayed where she was; she could smell Jared’s aftershave, painfully familiar to her. He was standing very still. When she glanced up, his dark blue eyes were looking down at her, their expression unreadable. “I like the color,” he said.
“Of the rose? Or my dress?” she said impishly, and was impressed with how at ease she sounded.
“Both, of course.” His voice deepened. “You look very beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Devon whispered, and heard Alicia come back into the room. Devon took the pin from her, anchored the rosebud to Jared’s lapel and stood back. “That’s better,” she said with great satisfaction.
A smile was lurking on Jared’s face. “Shall we start?”
She took her place by his side, Benson on her other side. Sparks shot from the fireplace, and she could still see the rose from the corner of her eye. But as she promised to love and cherish Jared her voice trembled, and her fingers trembled as she eased the ring she had chosen for him over his finger. It was a plain gold band; inside, she’d had inscribed, “My third gift for you.”
Now, she was wishing she hadn’t. That she’d left the ring plain and unadorned.
“I pronounce you man and wife,” the clergyman said, and smiled at the two of them. “You may kiss the bride,” he said to Jared.
Devon’s breath caught in her throat as Jared bent his head. His lips were firm and warm; the contact shivered through her. Then, almost immediately, he drew back.
Alicia and Benson kissed her, Alicia kissed Jared, and Benson gave his son a rough hug. Aunt Bessie said as smugly as if she herself was personally responsible for the marriage, “I knew at Benson’s wedding that you’d met your match, Jared. You need a woman who’ll keep you in line. I keep Leonard in line, don’t I, honey?”
“All the time,” Leonard said, and winked at Devon.
Leonard, Devon was quite sure, had never tried to step out of line. “Too bad there wasn’t an organ,” Leonard added piously.
Somewhat cheered, Devon glanced over at Jared. It’s done, she thought. I’m Jared’s wife. For the rest of my life.
She couldn’t begin to fathom what those words meant.
She tried to enjoy herself—she talked too much and too fast, she laughed and ate. And all the while her brain and her heart were struggling to comprehend what she’d done in marrying Jared. Fashioned for herself an elaborate and expensively furnished trap? Or—by some remote ch
ance—given herself a doorway through which she might pass into a true and loving relationship?
If only she and Jared could fall in love… For a split second a vision of such serendipity flooded Devon’s mind that she totally lost track of the conversation eddying around her. “Devon?” Jared was saying quizzically, “what do you think?”
I think it would make me happy beyond anything I’ve ever known… She flushed scarlet and stammered, “S-sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
Jared in love with her? Or she with him? She was losing it.
She struggled to pay attention. Then, all too soon, it was time to leave. Benson and Alicia drove them to the airport. At the security gate, Alicia produced a few decorative but very sincere tears, and Benson said gruffly, “I’m glad you’ve married my son, Devon…be happy.”
Then Jared and Devon passed through the barrier. The two of them, thought Devon. No one else.
She could think of nothing to say, and Jared was similarly immersed in silence as they walked what felt like miles to get to the area of the terminal where his company jet was parked. They boarded with a minimum of fuss, Devon responding appropriately to the congratulations of the crew members. The jet taxied down the runway, waited for clearance and took off. Jared said, “If you don’t mind, Devon, there’s some paperwork I should deal with before we get there.”
“No problem,” she said, leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. With them shut, she could pretend she was alone. And almost believe it…
She woke about half an hour before the landing, going to the luxuriously appointed bathroom to repair her make-up. When she got back to her seat, Jared was still absorbed in a sheaf of papers, typing the occasional note into a laptop, and didn’t even acknowledge her presence. Perhaps he planned to work the whole four days, she thought wildly, and gazed out the window at the sun setting in gaudy splendor over a sea like stained glass. The colors reminded her of the rose Jared was still wearing in his lapel.
She’d certainly suffered from prenuptial nerves. But her nervous system was now on red alert, she thought unhappily, as she caught the first glimpse of the white-circled, mountainous islands that were their destination. In Nassau they changed to a company helicopter, which whirled them forty miles south to the Exumas, landing on a small island east of Great Exuma, an island that Jared owned outright.