Annie let out a sigh of relief. “It’s Laurel,” she whispered, for the benefit of the minister. “My sister. I’m so relieved she finally got here.”
“Typical Bennett histrionics,” Chase muttered, out of the side of his mouth.
Annie’s cheeks colored. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“I most certainly did, and—”
“Mother,” Dawn snapped.
Annie blushed. “Sorry.”
The minister cleared his throat. “And now,” he said in tones so rounded Annie could almost see them forming circles in the air, “if there is no one among us who can offer a reason why Nicholas Skouras Babbitt and Dawn Elizabeth Cooper should not be wed...”
A moment later, the ceremony was over.
* * *
It was interesting, being the father of the bride at a wedding at which the mother of the bride was no longer your wife.
Dawn had insisted she wanted both her parents seated at the main table with her.
“You can keep your cool, Daddy, can’t you?” she’d said. “I mean, you won’t mind, sitting beside Mom for a couple of hours, right?”
“Of course not,” Chase had said.
And he’d meant it. He was a civilized man and Annie, for all her faults—and there were many—was a civilized woman. They’d been divorced for five years. The wounds had healed. Surely they could manage polite smiles and chitchat for a couple of hours.
That was what he’d thought, but reality was another thing entirely.
He hadn’t counted on what it would be like to stand at the altar, with Annie standing beside him looking impossibly young and—what was the point in denying it—impossibly beautiful in a dress of palest green. Her hair had been the wild cluster of silky strawberry curls she’d always hated and he’d always loved, and her nose had been suspiciously pink. She’d sniffled and wept her way through the ceremony. Well, hell, his throat had been pretty tight there, once or twice. In fact, when the minister had gone through all that nonsense about speaking up or forever holding your peace, he’d been tempted to put an arm around her and tell her it was okay, they weren’t losing a daughter, they were gaining a son.
Except that it would have been a lie. They were losing a daughter, and it was all Annie’s fault.
By the time they’d been stuck together at the head of the receiving line as if they were a pair of Siamese twins, he’d felt about as surly as a lion with a thorn in its paw.
“Smile, you two,” Dawn had hissed, and they’d obeyed, though Annie’s smile had been as phony-looking as his felt.
At least they’d traveled to the Stratham Inn in separate cars—except that once they’d gotten there, they’d had to take seats beside each other at the table on the dais.
Chase felt as if his smile was frozen on his face. It must have looked that way, too, from the way Dawn lifted her eyebrows when she looked at him.
Okay, Cooper, he told himself. Pull it together. You know how to make small talk with strangers. Surely you can manage a conversation with your ex-wife.
He looked at Annie and cleared his throat. “So,” he said briskly, “how’ve you been?”
Annie turned her head and looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she said politely, “I didn’t quite get that. Were you talking to me?”
Chase’s eyes narrowed. Who else would he have been talking to? The waiter, leaning over to pour his champagne?
Keep your cool, he told himself, and bared his teeth in a smile.
“I asked how you’ve been.”
“Very well, thank you. And you?”
Very well, thank you... What was with this prissy tone?
“Oh, I can’t complain.” He forced another smile, and waited for Annie to pick up the ball. She didn’t, so he plunged into the conversational waters again. “Matter of fact, I don’t know if Dawn mentioned it, but we just landed a big contract.”
“We?” she said, in a tone that could have given chilblains to an Eskimo.
“Well, Cooper Construction. We bid on this job in—”
“How nice,” she said, and turned away.
Chase felt his blood pressure shoot off the scale. So much for his attempt at being polite. Annie was not just cutting him dead, she was icing the corpse, craning her neck, looking everywhere but at him.
Suddenly a smile, a real one, curved across her mouth.
“Yoo hoo,” she called softly.
Yoo hoo? Yoo hoo?
“Hi, there,” she mouthed, and waved, and damned if some Bozo the Clown at a nearby table didn’t wave back.
“Who is that jerk?” Chase said before he could stop himself.
Annie didn’t even look at him. She was too busy looking at the jerk, and smiling.
“That ‘jerk,’” she said, “is Milton Hoffman. He’s an English professor at the university.”
Chase watched as the professor rose to his feet and threaded through the tables toward the dais. The guy was tall, and thin; he was wearing a shiny blue serge suit and he had on a bow tie. He looked more like a cadaver than a professor.
He had a smile on his face, too, as he approached Annie, and it was the smile, more than anything, that suddenly put a red film over Chase’s eyes.
“Anne,” Hoffman said. “Anne, my dear.” Annie held out her hand. Hoffman clasped it in a pasty, marshmallow paw and raised it to his lips. “It was a beautiful ceremony.”
“Thank you, Milton.”
“The flowers were perfect.”
“Thank you, Milton.”
“The music, the decorations...all wonderful.”
“Thank you, Milton.”
“And you look exquisite.”
“Thank you, Milton,” Chase said.
Annie and the Prof both swung their heads toward him. Chase smiled, showing all his teeth.
“She does, doesn’t she?” he said. “Look great, I mean.”
Annie looked at him, her eyes flaming a warning, but Chase ignored it. He leaned toward her and hooked an arm around her shoulders.
“Love that low-cut neckline, especially, babe, but then, you know how it is.” He shot Hoffman a leering grin. “Some guys are leg men, right, Milty? But me, I was always a—”
“Chase!” Color flew into Annie’s face. Hoffman’s eyes, dark and liquid behind horn-rimmed glasses, blinked once.
“You must be Anne’s husband.”
“You’re quick, Milty, I’ve got to give you that.”
“He is not my husband,” Annie said firmly, twisting out of Chase’s embrace. “He’s my ex-husband. My former husband. My once-upon-a-time-but-not-anymore husband, and frankly, if I never see him again, it’ll be too soon.” She gave Hoffman a melting smile. “I hope you’ve got your dancing shoes on, Milton, because I intend to dance the afternoon away.”
Chase smiled. He could almost feel his canine teeth turning into fangs.
“You hear that, Milty?” he said pleasantly. He felt a rush of primal pleasure when he saw Hoffman’s face turn even paler than it already was.
“Chase,” Annie said, through her teeth; “stop it.”
Chase leaned forward over the table. “She’s a wonderful dancer, our Annie. But if she’s had too much bubbly, you got to watch out. Right, babe?”
Annie opened and shut her mouth as if she were a fish. “Chase,” she said, in a strangled whisper.
“What’s the matter? Milt’s an old pal of yours, right? We wouldn’t want to keep any secrets from him, would we, babe?”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Stop calling you what?”
“You know what,” Annie said furiously. “And stop lying. I’ve never been drunk in my life.”
Chase’s lips curved up in a slow, wicked smile. “Sweetheart, come on. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the night we met.”
“I’m warning you, Chase!”
“There I was, a college freshman, minding my own business and dancing with my girlfriend at her high school’s Valentine D
ay dance—”
“You were never innocent,” Annie snapped.
Chase grinned. “You should know, babe. Anyway, there I was, doing the Mashed Potato, when I spied our Annie, tottering out the door, clutching her middle and looking as if she’d just eaten a bushel of green apples.”
Annie swung toward Milton Hoffman. “It wasn’t like that at all. My date had spiked my punch. How was I to know—”
A drumroll and a clash of cymbals drowned out her voice.
“...and now,” an oily, amplified voice boomed, “Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Babbitt will take their very first dance as husband and wife.”
People began to applaud as Nick took Dawn in his arms. They moved onto the dance floor, gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes.
Annie gave Milton a beseeching look.
“Milton,” she said, “listen—”
“It’s all right,” he said quickly. “Today’s a family day, Anne. I understand.” He started to reach for her hand, caught himself, and drew back. “I’ll call you tomorrow. It was...interesting to have met you, Mr. Cooper.”
Chase smiled politely. “Call me Chase, please. There’s no need to be so formal, considering all we have in common.”
Annie didn’t know which she wanted to do more, punch Chase for his insufferable behavior or punch Milton Hoffman for being so easily scared off. It took only a second to decide that Chase was the more deserving target She glared at him as Hoffman scuttled back to his seat.
“You are lower than a snake’s belly,” she said.
Chase sighed. “Annie, listen—”
“No. No, you listen.” She pointed a trembling finger at him. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
Did she? Chase shook his head. Then, she knew more than he did. There wasn’t a reason in the world he’d acted like such a jerk just now. So what if Annie was having a thing with some guy? So what if the guy looked as if he might faint at the sight of a mouse? So what if he’d had a sudden, blazing vision of Annie in bed with the son of a bitch?
She could do what she wanted, with whom she wanted. It sure as hell didn’t matter to him.
“Are you listening to me?” she said.
Chase looked at Annie. Her face was still shot with color. It arced across her cheekbones and over the bridge of her nose, where a scattering of tiny freckles lay like sprinkles of gold. He remembered how he used to kiss those warm, golden spots after they’d made love.
“I know what you’re up to, Chase. You’re trying to ruin Dawn’s wedding because I didn’t do it the way you wanted.”
Chase’s eyebrows leaped into his hairline. “Are you nuts?”
“Oh, come off it!” Annie’s voice quavered with anger. “You wanted a big wedding in a big church, so you could invite all your fancy friends.”
“You are nuts! I never—”
“Keep your voice down!”
“I am keeping it down. You’re the one who’s—”
“Let me tell you something, Chase Cooper. This wedding is exactly the kind Dawn wanted.”
“And a damn good thing, too. If it had been up to you, our daughter might have ended up getting married on a hillside in her bare feet—”
“Oh, and what that would have done to Mr. Chase Cooper’s image!”
“—while some idiot played a satyr in the background.”
“Sitar,” Annie hissed. “It’s called a sitar, Cooper, although you probably know a lot more about satyrs than you do about musical instruments.”
“Are we back to that again?” Chase snarled, and Annie’s color heightened
“No. We are not ‘back’ to anything. As far as I’m concerned—”
“...the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Chase Cooper.”
Annie’s and Chase’s gazes swung toward the bandstand. The bandleader was smiling benevolently in their direction, and the crowd—even those who looked a bit surprised by the announcement—began to applaud.
“Come on, Annie and Chase.” The bandleader’s painted-on smile widened. “Let’s get up on the dance floor and join the bride and groom.”
“Let’s not,” Chase growled, under his breath.
“The man’s out of his mind,” Annie snapped.
But the applause had grown, and even the wild glance for help Annie shot toward Dawn, still swaying in the arms of her groom, brought only an apologetic shrug of her daughter’s shoulders.
Chase shoved back his chair and held out his hand.
“All right,” he said grimly, “let’s do it and get it over with.”
Annie’s chin jerked up. She rose stiffly and put her hand in his.
“I really hate you, Chase.”
“The feeling, madam, is entirely mutual.”
Eyes hot with anger, Annie and Chase took a couple of deep breaths, pasted civilized smiles on their lips and swung out onto the dance floor.
CHAPTER TWO
IMPOSSIBLE, miserable woman!
That was what she was, his ex-wife, what she’d turned into during the years of their marriage. Chase held Annie stiffly in his arms, enough space between them to have satisfied even starchy Miss Elgar, the chaperone at Annie’s Senior Prom.
“Propriety, please,” Miss Elgar had barked at any couple daring to get too close during the slow numbers.
Not that she’d approved of the Frug or the Mashed Potato, either. It was just that she’d figured those insane gyrations were safe.
Even all these years later. Chase smiled at the memory. Safe? A bunch of horny kids shaking their hips at each other? And no matter what the old witch thought, the sweetly erotic, locked-in-each-other’s-arms slow dancing went on behind her back just the same, in the hallway, in the cafeteria downstairs, even in the parking lot, where the music sighed on the warm spring breeze.
That was where he’d taken Annie, finally, out to the parking lot, where they’d danced, locked in each other’s arms, alone in the darkness and so crazy about each other after four months of dating that nothing else had mattered.
That was the night they’d first made love, on an old patchwork blanket he’d taken from the back of his beat-up Chevy and spread on the soft, sweet-smelling grass that grew up on Captree Point.
“We should stop,” he’d kept saying, in a voice so thick it had seemed to come from somebody else, though even as he’d said it, he’d been undoing Annie’s zipper, removing her gown and baring her beautiful body to his eyes and mouth and touch.
“Yes,” Annie had whispered, “oh, yes,” but her hands had been moving on him, even as she’d spoken, trembling as she’d undone his silly bow tie, sliding his white dinner jacket from his shoulders, opening his shirt buttons and smoothing her fingers over his hot skin.
The memories surrounded him, as if it were a gentle fog coming in over the sea. Chase made a soft sound in the back of his throat. His arm tightened around his wife; the hand that had been holding hers in stiff formality curled around her wrist, bringing her hand to his chest.
“Chase?” she said.
“Shh,” he whispered, his lips against her hair. Annie held herself rigid a second longer, and then she sighed, laid her head against his shoulder and gave herself up to the music and to the memories that had overcome her.
It felt so good to be here, in Chase’s arms.
When was the last time they’d danced together this way, not because dancing was what you did at the endless charity functions they’d attended so Chase could “network” with the movers and doers of the business community but simply because there were few things as pleasurable as swaying slowly in each other’s arms?
Annie closed her eyes. They’d always danced well together, even back in her high school days at Taft. All those senior parties, the last-minute Friday night get-togethers in somebody’s basement rec room the weekends Chase came home from college, and the dance at Chase’s fraternity house, when her parents had let her go up for Spring Weekend. The school formals, with Elgar the Dragon Lady marching around, trying to keep everybody at arm�
�s length.
And the night of her senior prom, when they’d finally gone all the way after so many months of fevered kisses and touches that had left them trembling in each other’s arms.
Annie’s heartbeat quickened. She remembered Chase taking her out to the parking lot, where they’d moved oh, so slowly to the music drifting from the school gym, and the way Chase had kissed her, filling her with a need so powerful she couldn’t think. Wordlessly they’d climbed into his ancient Chevy and made the long drive to the Point, with her sitting so close beside him that they might have been one.
She remembered the softness of the blanket beneath her, after they’d spread it over the grass, and then the wonderful hardness of Chase’s body against hers.
“I love you so much,” he’d kept saying.
“Yes.” She’d sighed. “Yes.”
They shouldn’t have done it. She’d known that, even as she was opening his shirt and touching him, but to stop would have been to die.
Oh, the feel of him as he’d come down against her naked flesh. The smell of him, the taste of his skin. And oh, that mind-shattering moment when he’d entered her. Filled her. Become a part of her, forever.
Except it hadn’t been forever.
Annie stiffened in the circle of her husband’s arms.
It had been sex, and eventually, it hadn’t been anything at all. He was her ex. That’s who Chase was. He wasn’t her husband anymore. He wasn’t the boy she’d fallen head over heels in love with, nor the man who’d fathered Dawn. He was a stranger, who’d been more interested in his business than in coming home to his wife and child.
More interested in bedding a twenty-two-year-old secretary than the wife whose body had begun to sag and bag.
A coldness seized Annie’s heart. Her feet stopped moving. She jerked back and flattened her palms against her former husband’s chest.
“That’s enough,” she said.
Chase blinked his eyes open. His face was flushed; he looked like a man rudely awakened from a dream.
“Annie,” he said softly, “Annie, listen—”
“The by-request dancing’s over, Chase. The dance floor’s filled with people.”
The Millionaire Claims His Wife Page 2