by Diana Palmer
The organ played, they walked briskly back down the aisle behind Randy and Lisa, and Maggie waved to her father, who was sitting with Sandra, as they left the small church.
“Run for it,” Randy told his stepbrother as the well-wishers crowded around and a group of young people moved forward with streamers and tin cans, and the inevitable rice storm began.
Saxon, laughing, prodded Maggie toward his new Ferrari and put her in the passenger side, getting in quickly himself. They barely had time to wave goodbye to Lisa and Randy before they were heading out toward Charleston and their honeymoon.
He clasped her hand warmly in his after he’d turned onto the interstate and they were well out of the thick traffic of the city.
“Happy?” he asked softly.
“Deliriously,” she breathed, looking up at him with all her happiness in her face, her eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you, my darling. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.” She leaned back in the seat, smiling.
His thumb caressed her palm. “Maggie, it’s been six weeks,” he reminded her with a laughing sideways glance.
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, you little witch?” he prodded. His fingers contracted. “Tell me!”
She turned in the seat and curled one leg under her white satin dress, “I’m sorry, darling,” she said gently. “I honestly don’t know yet.”
“I thought women were supposed to be able to tell.”
“Yes, but you’re counting your six weeks from the hot tub,” she murmured, “I’m counting mine from the rug in front of the fireplace,” she added with a blush, remembering that one furious lapse, after which they’d both struggled to keep apart until the rings were in place.
“Ah,” he breathed, glancing at her with a wicked light in his eyes. “Talk about stamina. I think I proved mine that night.”
“You may very well have proved your virility as well,” she said, laughing. “Something that should have happened, hasn’t, and it did just after your fall down the staircase.”
“You didn’t tell me,” he accused.
She smiled. “Darling, a woman has to use all her weapons,” she reminded him. “I loved you, but I was afraid if I told you, you’d back out of the wedding. At least until that night in the study...”
“You little witch,” he accused again. “You seduced me!”
“Pot calling the kettle black,” she said smugly. “I needed some insurance of my own.”
His hand brought hers to his mouth. “Just wait until we get to Charleston,” he threatened lovingly.
“I’ll do my best, darling,” she promised demurely, and her smile held all the promise in the world. “Oh, Saxon Tremayne, I love you shockingly!”
“I love you just as shockingly, Mrs. Tremayne,” he replied gently. “What a great many blessings we have to count this Christmas.”
“A duke’s ransom,” she said. She smiled contentedly as she watched the long highway run into the horizon and felt her husband’s large warm hand strongly about her own. She wouldn’t need presents under the tree this year, she thought joyfully. She already had the best one of all—love.
* * *
Color Love Blue
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
THE WIND WAS STRONGER, but Jolana didn’t mind. She liked the feel of it in her long, thick blond hair as she walked. She was a tall girl, and she liked her height, and the strides her long, slender legs made as she walked down Fifth Avenue. Country girl she might be, but she’d lived in New York long enough to match the pace of the city. She blended into the crowds of restaurant-seekers as yellow cabs filled the streets with lunch traffic.
Her face lifted, and she smiled. It was good to be alive and twenty-seven and at the beginning of a promising career. She was having a one-woman show at an elite art gallery in the city very soon and was making more money selling her paintings than she’d ever had in her life. She smiled, and her black eyes sparkled at the thought of her friends back home in Georgia who’d laughed at her ambition to become an artist. If only they could see her now, walking around in an Anne Klein dress wearing a knee-length suede coat with leather boots... Wouldn’t they just grind their teeth?
She bumped into someone, because she’d been gloating over her success instead of watching where she was going, and two large hands caught and held her. She looked up into a face that arrested her apology even as she opened her mouth.
He had a face that she’d love to paint. Very Italian, Roman, in fact, with curly black hair and a broad face, a straight nose and chiseled mouth, high cheekbones running down into an arrogant, square jaw. He towered over her, but he had an air of authority that didn’t need great height or size to work. He was wearing a blue pin-striped suit with a leather overcoat, and he looked very well-to-do as well as arrogant.
“I’m not sure I like having myself critiqued,” he said, and his voice matched his face. It was dark and deep and smooth.
“I’m...sorry,” Jolana said. “I didn’t mean to stare. It’s your face.”
His heavy eyebrows arched up. “I don’t imagine anyone else has a prior claim to it,” he returned. “Do you always walk around in a daze, or are you making an exception today?”
“I was gorging myself on vengeful thoughts,” she admitted with a twinkling smile. “Heady with success and not looking where I was going. I’m sorry I collided with you, and even sorrier if I embarrassed you.”
“I don’t think anyone’s managed that since I was six,” he replied. He didn’t smile. In fact, he didn’t look like a man who did much smiling.
She cleared her throat. He intimidated her with his clipped speech and the impatient glance at his watch.
“Excuse me, I have an appointment to get to,” he said. “Pay attention to where you’re going, country girl, or you’ll wind up under the wheels of a cab.”
She glared at him. “I’m not a country hick, mister,” she said shortly. “But where I come from, manners count. You seem to have misplaced yours.”
And before he could reply, she moved away from him and stomped off.
Arrogant, rude, impatient man, she thought angrily as she made her way through the crowd and into her apartment building. A Roman gladiator might have looked like that, or a centurion off to war. She tossed back her hair with an impatient hand. Most New Yorkers were kind, thank God, and not the cold people she’d once thought. They were warm and friendly once you got to know them.
The doorman grinned at her as she went through the revolving door.
“Nice day, Miss Shannon,” he said pleasantly. “Like autumn.”
“Yes, isn’t it lovely?” she replied with a smile. “And they said it was going to snow. How silly!”
She waved to the desk clerk, a young man with whom she’d become friendly over the months of her residence, and walked straight into the empty elevator. The doors closed, and she sighed as the elevator hummed to the third floor.
Her apartment was big, with a sunken living room and a decor done almost entirely in white and yellow. They were sunny colors, and she liked the cheery atmosphere of the white-carpeted room. It was stupid, of course, to have a white carpet. But she always took off her shoes at the door and made her visitors do the same. Even now, she was in her stocking feet and feeling warm and at home. The house where she’d grown up in rural south Georgia was nothing like this, she thought, grinning as she looked around at her elegant,
very expensive surroundings. It was nice to have money.
She caught her breath. Money! Where was her purse? She checked her pockets—it was only a small clutch bag, and surely she’d brought it from the gallery when she came! She remembered having it in her hand. But where was it?
Frantically, she searched the room, the hall, even the elevator, backtracking to the revolving door. But it was nowhere in sight. The doorman hadn’t seen her carrying a purse, he mentioned. And then she remembered two things. That she’d collided with that horrible man and probably it had fallen to the pavement. And that she was standing out on the street in her stocking feet and the pavement was cold.
The doorman was trying not to grin. He put a gloved hand to his mouth.
“I like going barefoot,” she told him, grinning momentarily. She sighed. “Oh, what am I going to do? I know it dropped on the sidewalk, and probably it’s long gone by now. All my credit cards were in it, my driver’s license...”
“Maybe somebody will find it, Miss Shannon, and bring it to you,” the doorman suggested helpfully.
Maybe Superman will fly down and ask me out to lunch, she thought miserably. But she only smiled and walked back toward the elevator.
A matronly lady in a gray wool suit and hat glanced at her disapprovingly.
“The latest fashion,” Jolana said with a sophisticated smile. “Early primitive. It’s all the rage in Paris.”
And she walked into the elevator, pushed the button and smiled again as the doors closed.
She grimaced when she got back to her apartment as she glanced down at her ruined hose. They weren’t made for walking on pavement, of course, but they’d cost quite a lot. She sighed as she stripped them off and tossed them in the garbage. Next time she’d know better, she supposed. But what was she going to do about her purse?
She phoned the police station around the corner and reported it to the officer on duty, but he told her what she already knew, that it was highly unlikely that anyone would give it back. He advised her to call her credit-card companies and report the loss of her cards and to apply for a replacement driver’s license. She thanked him and put the receiver down slowly. Well, it was her own fault. Whom could she blame? That was easy, she thought darkly as she picked up the phone again. That tall, arrogant Italian. He was probably a member of the mob, she thought angrily. Probably a hit man. With all that arrogance, he was definitely no ordinary businessman, that was for sure.
She finished reporting the loss of her cards and went into her studio to stare distractedly at her unfinished canvas. It was one she was doing as a favor for the gallery owner, a present for a friend of his. A Greek landscape with fallen columns in the foreground and Mount Olympus in the background. It was a faintly trite scene, she’d thought when the owner asked her to do it, but he wouldn’t hear of changing the subject. So she’d worked on it in her spare time, and now it was almost finished. Well, today was as good a time as any, she told herself. She might as well work instead of sitting around brooding.
She put on her worn, baggy jeans and a paint-covered smock with nothing under it. She lived alone and there was no one to see her, so she often dressed the way she felt most comfortable.
She was well into the painting, lost in dreams of ancient Rome, when the intercom buzzer interrupted her.
Her eyes sparkled as she went to answer it. She’d had some problems lately with a man who had bought a few of her paintings and saw himself as a lady-killer. She’d already refused three invitations to come over and see his collection. A lot of the men she met assumed that an artist must have a Bohemian streak and tried to take advantage. Little did they know that she had been raised in a Puritanical atmosphere and considered sex more than a party favor. In fact, she had made love to only one man in her life. Oddly enough, it had sent him running in the other direction. He’d assumed that she’d want commitment in return for her body, and he was dead right. She’d ached over his absence, but in time she’d realized that it was all for the best anyway. She wasn’t geared to brief affairs. She wanted love.
She walked to the door and pressed the intercom button. “Yes,” she said warily.
“Miss Shannon, there’s a gentleman here who’s found your purse,” the doorman said.
“Fantastic!” she called into the intercom. “Please send him right up.”
A few minutes later the doorbell rang and she ran to answer it.
“Miss Shannon?” the Italian-looking man asked, staring down his Roman nose at her. He held out her purse. “Not a bad trick, but I don’t like being manipulated.”
He looked angry and faintly menacing, and she blinked as she took the purse, feeling relief mingle with apprehension.
“Thank you, I was afraid...”
He cut her off brutally. “Taking your phone off the hook was a professional touch,” he said maliciously. “But you might have saved yourself the trouble. I don’t have a weakness for call girls. Amazing how you got into the business,” he added bluntly, letting his eyes run over her. “You’re not that much to look at, frankly. That body—” he indicated it with a distasteful gesture “—wouldn’t set any fires in my blood.”
By now she was slowly reaching explosion stage. She tossed her purse over her shoulder onto the couch and glared up at him with pure hatred in her eyes.
“Mister, if I were your size, I’d throw you out the window,” she said coldly. “Get out.”
“I’m not in,” he reminded her. “And not likely to be lured in. You’re not my type, lady. Next time you need a man, put an ad in a magazine. But not mine, if you please. I don’t cater to that kind of trade.” He turned on his heel and walked slowly back toward the elevator, bending his dark, curly head to light a cigarette on the way.
“Oh, sir,” she called after him in her sweetest tone.
He turned. “Yes?”
She made an unmistakable gesture, still smiling sweetly, walked back into her apartment and slammed the door.
“I told you,” his voice came through the door, “no, thanks!”
And his footsteps died away. She picked up a vase and threw it at the wall, watching it break into a thousand pieces. If only that had been his arrogant head!
Later, she was horrified not only at his accusations, but that uncharacteristic lapse of hers and the terrible gesture she’d made. It shocked her that she could be that uninhibited. Why, she hardly ever even cursed! That man had a nasty effect on her, she decided finally as she went back to work on the painting. Thank God she was done with him! And she did, after all, have her purse back. That was a mixed blessing. She’d have to call around all over again to undo what she’d done when she thought it was lost. And it was all his fault.
The next day, she took the painting, wrapped up in brown paper, to the gallery on her way to buy a dress for the cocktail party the owner was giving that night.
“Here it is,” she said, handing it to him. “All done.”
“Jolana, you’re a marvel.” Tony Henning grinned. He looked faintly Italian himself, she decided, with his dark hair and eyes. “Nick’s going to love it. I think,” he added, laughing. “Putting Mount Olympus in the background is going to needle him good.”
She cocked her head. “The painting is to needle him?”
“Well, he does occasionally come on like a Greek or Roman deity,” he sighed. “You don’t know him. If you did, you’d understand. We kind of had a disagreement over—” he cleared his throat “—your show.”
She felt herself going weak. “What does he have to do with it?”
“He’s my partner,” he confessed. “He has a half interest in the gallery.”
“You never said...!”
“It only just happened a few weeks ago,” he told her. “As you’re well aware, the art world is not exactly noted for its financial security. I’ve made a few bad decisions about shows that ended up costing me plen
ty. Besides that, I’ve had some losses in the stock market, and to tell you the truth I was in one hell of an economic mess until Nick pulled me out of the fire. He’s my cousin, and I don’t know what I’d have done without him.”
“But my show... What about my show, Tony?” she asked nervously.
“It’s still on,” he assured her. “I told Nick that we had a contract, and we will have,” he added, “as soon as you sign this.”
The contract was dated two weeks before, and she lifted her eyebrows at him.
“Is this legal?” she asked.
“Sure, sure, just sign it and everything will be fine,” he said, handing her a pen.
She hesitantly scribbled her name on the signature line and Tony quickly picked up the paper and nodded.
“Fine, fine. Now just relax. Everything will be okay, honest it will.”
Her eyes searched his guilty face. “Why doesn’t your cousin want me to exhibit my paintings here?”
“He thinks I arranged the show for you because we’re lovers,” he admitted, avoiding her gaze. “He hasn’t seen any of your work... Well, I didn’t have even one painting to show him. They all sell out the minute I put them on display. You’ve got a lot of fans in the city, at least three of whom still fight over your stuff.”
She stared straight into his eyes. “Did you tell him we were lovers?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I do live in hope,” he added, leering theatrically at her. “There’s a bed in back, you gorgeous woman, and I strip down nicely even at my age.”
“Your age!” she scoffed, laughing now. “You’re not old.”
“Almost as old as Nick,” he told her. “He’s forty. Ancient. Of course, he looks it these days,” he sighed. “Poor old Nick, he’s been pretty damned unlucky in his love life. Pretty damned unlucky.”
“Is he ugly?” she asked, curious.