A painful little hiccup of amazement stopped his breath. If anyone had asked when he’d fallen in love with Bianca, he wasn’t sure he could have strung the right words together, but it was almost from the moment she’d walked through the door at Dugan’s.
He thought about the day he found her downstairs; they were supposed to meet and she was early. When he found her, she was watching the children in the museum. A little boy came up to her, and the look on her face twisted Harry’s heart. She took the little boy to the only other adult in the room—apparently getting permission before taking the child to a wall of tiny fishing poles—and he saw another side of her.
There was nothing sensual or sexual in her movements when she showed the child how to cast the little rod into a narrow stream and reel in a plastic numbered fish. There was nothing selfish in her attention to the boy, nothing false in the obvious pleasure she took in his happiness. When she left the child and looped her arm with his, Harry knew he loved her for more than her pretty face.
Then Karen had to blow into town. His smile was small and hard, almost a crack in his handsome veneer. I was the one who said we should leave the past behind us.
Just, damn it, why did her past have to be with AJ?
* * *
Why did AJ have to be his friend? Bianca twisted the watch on her wrist and looked out of Vive la Reine’s front window. It was raining cats and dogs, and some of the storm came through the door when Jenni rushed in with her broken umbrella. Shaking off the water, she pushed the door closed.
“Made it,” she puffed, snapping the collar of her raincoat. “My car broke down, and I thought I was going to have to swim.” She shuddered.
“How did you get here? Did you take the bus or the train?”
Jenni propped a hand on her hip and gave Bianca a look that clearly showed her opinion of buses and trains in Atlanta. “Are you kidding? I got a ride. My new sweetie was happy to get me here, and he’ll pick me up when my shift is over.” She gave her hair a pat, before flouncing her dripping raincoat and wet squeaking pumps out of the showroom.
Turning back to the window, Bianca wondered if maybe Jenni’s life plan was smarter than it sounded. Go to the right school, declare the right major, pick up a husband and a degree while you were at it, and live happily ever after. Simple.
Nothing like my life.
Nothing in her life felt simple since discovering Harry and AJ Yarborough were friends. Bianca shoved her hands deep into her pockets and her fingers brushed her cellphone, and she regretted calling Harry. How could I tell him what I once had with AJ?
She thought of Marlea Kellogg, AJ’s wife. I was such a bitch with her, much worse than Karen Dodge was with me. I was so determined to make her do what I wanted, to make her give AJ back to me…There is no way in this life that I can walk into that woman’s home…
What was that old saying about chickens coming home to roost? Well, this chicken was wearing army boots, had fangs, and was about to bite her in the butt. And AJ invited Harry and his ‘friend’ to dinner. He doesn’t know that the ‘friend’ is me—he can’t. Her face grew hot and her stomach quivered. She rested her hand on the Rolex watch—a special gift from a good man in better times. There is no way in the world he would let me in his home.
And I sure as hell don’t want to go. It would be bad enough to sit down with a man you’d dumped, even though the dumping had happened years ago. But to sit down and share a meal with a man you’d taken money from and cheated on was worse.
Then she thought about AJ’s wife again and her heart jerked when it slammed against her ribs. Nausea threatened, and Bianca’s hand found one of the tapestry-backed chairs and pulled it close enough to drop into. Wrapping her foot around the chair’s claw-footed leg, she gnawed at her thumbnail.
She thought about the phone call, and wondered if Harry had sounded different when he told her about AJ’s invitation. She pulled in a noisy breath and held it until little spots danced before her eyes. Blowing out hard, she huffed and felt tired, almost too tired to keep her eyes open. Being scared had a way of wearing you out. And I ought to know. She was scared when Kelvin walked out of her life and it was exhausting.
She thought of all she’d wanted when things went wrong with KPayne and how many tears her wants had cost her. With him, she put all of her eggs in one basket, and when the bottom fell out of that basket, she had nothing left. Then, along came Harry.
A sudden clatter and a spate of swearing in the back of the store grabbed her attention. Three of the Harajuku dolls Harry had brought her for luck rolled across the floor, and Bianca jumped to her feet. “Jenni?”
“I’m okay,” Jenni yelled back. “I just bumped into a rack.” She stuck her head through the door and waved an arm to prove she’d survived. “When are we getting the rest of the stuff? What we have will do for the reception, but we’re opening next week.”
“I’m not worried.” Bianca picked up the dolls and set them safely on a small table. Setting her mind on the business at hand, she went to help Jenni open boxes and hang jeans and jackets for steaming. Obviously glad for the company, Jenni chattered about her new boyfriend. Bianca pasted a smile on her face and, taking it for interest, Jenni blissfully babbled on. Bianca moved to the steamer and turned it on. Jenni kept talking. Two hours later, the girl was still talking.
Bianca tuned her out and opened the first box of dresses. She expected the embellished garments would go as fast as she could get them on the sales floor. They had a nice sheen and the fabric was soft, but would survive the hot Atlanta weather without wilting. She fingered the beading on one of the dresses and smiled. I would love to wear this somewhere with Harry…
“I’m going to finish this up and call my honey,” Jenni gushed from the doorway. “I’ll come in early tomorrow and help set up before the others get here and the doors open, but…” she giggled, “You know what they say about rainy nights in Georgia.”
“What the heck do they say about rainy nights in Georgia?” Bianca wondered, knowing Jenni had planned her escape in advance, and then made good on it. She sighed and reached for a padded hanger, then stopped when her cellphone buzzed. “Good thing I was back here, or I would never have heard it.”
Crossing the room, she pulled it from her coat pocket, hit the button and jammed it to her ear. “Hello?”
“Are you still interested in lunch?”
Harry.
Bianca realized she must have answered because he said, “Open the back door.”
She headed for the door with the phone still pressed to her ear. She unlocked the door and pulled it open, and her mouth dropped when she saw him standing there, wetter than any man in a suit ought to ever be. He was holding his cellphone and carrying a brown paper shopping bag.
He looked as if he’d pulled his tie loose and just walked away from his desk and Bianca found her eyes couldn’t stray from his. “Harry,” she whispered into her phone, “I have to go. There’s someone here I have to see.”
Harry’s smile went crooked and bit a solid chunk out of her heart.
“I understand,” he said softly into his phone, stepping across the threshold into the stockroom. “Business has to be handled.” He dropped his phone into his pocket. Bianca left hers on one of the boxes and stepped into his sodden embrace.
Not caring that he was wet enough to leave her dripping, her arms circled his waist and pulled him close. Burrowing her face into the warm cave of his chin and shoulder, she didn’t care that her hair was wet, would frizz and curl. Her chin tipped, leading her face to him. Brushing his lips with hers, she felt her body swell and clench with invitation. The heat they generated spread warmth between them and she felt him inhale her sigh.
“You’re soaked. We need to get you into something dry.”
“You just want to see me naked.”
“Yeah, that, too.” Rummaging through a small closet, she pretended not to watch when he pulled off his wet jacket and shirt.
She pulled sw
eatpants and a shirt from a sample box in the closet and something wicked made her eyes linger on him when he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his trousers. When he stepped out of his shoes and slid the pants down his long legs, she fought the urge to swing the sweatpants over her head and sing out, “Take it off, baby! Take it all off!”
She found a box of flip-flop samples, pulled out the largest pair and held them out to him. Harry took the dry clothes and pulled them on. Something about this man, even in oddly matched clothes, made her mouth water. Trying to busy herself, not wanting to obviously display what she felt, Bianca took Harry’s wet shirt and suit and placed them in the drying cabinet at the rear of her stockroom. “They’ll be as good as new,” she promised.
“Then we can eat.” Harry lifted the shopping bag he’d brought with him. Looking around, he wasn’t sure of which way to go.
“Would you mind if we ate in here?”
Harry shrugged. “This is as good a place as any, I guess.”
“I know. Not very romantic, right?”
Harry shrugged again.
Bianca found a plastic tablecloth and a yard of creamy white lace in the closet. “Maybe this will help.” She pushed a pair of boxes across from each other and waited for Harry to move a larger one between them. She stretched her makeshift coverings over the large box and found a pair of silk-covered pillows for the other two.
Another trip to the closet yielded a small battery-operated brass lamp and a pink silk scarf. She set the lamp in the center of the lace-topped box and draped the scarf over it, then turned out the stockroom lights, leaving their impromptu dining area adrift in a pool of mellow light.
“I like it,” Harry said, taking the hand wipes she offered.
Determined to make the best of a rainy afternoon, Bianca found some old Chaka Khan and Brothers Johnson music before she sat across him. Sounds of the seventies, beat-driven love songs floated around them, but neither of them sang as they removed still-hot containers from Harry’s rain-soaked bag. He’d made a stop at Eno’s on his way to Vive la Reine, and the second the containers were opened, she realized how hungry she was.
Harry scooted his box close enough for his shoulder to brush hers and they ate in companionable silence. Finishing first, he reached into the bag and took out a small dessert box. Opening it with a secret smile, he displayed the chocolate-hazelnut bread pudding he knew she loved. Her lips parted when he offered a spoonful. “Anything this good has to be a mortal sin,” she murmured, letting the dessert melt in her mouth.
Trying not to be selfish, she used her spoon to share the indulgence with Harry, and all too soon, the meal was finished, leaving them with wine and music. Harry’s hand, large, strong, capable, rested on Bianca’s and, not wanting the rain or their afternoon to end, she rested her head against his shoulder. When his arm went around her shoulders, she closed her eyes.
Feeling her against him, Harry wanted to protect her, wanted to be the rock in her life. Sitting in their cozy island in the darkened stockroom, he wanted to fix things.
“You’ve got a lot of work left to do,” he said softly.
“I know. Jenni cut out on me, and the other girls won’t be in until tomorrow. But when I talked to Julia, she said she would come by tonight, so that will help.”
“You should let me help.”
“You?” Bianca snorted soft laughter. “Help how?”
Harry stroked the back of her hand. “I don’t know what to do. What can I do to help? Maybe a loan…”
“No!” Her body stiffened and she jerked away from him. “This place is mine and if I want it to work, I have to do it on my own.”
Confused, bordering on helpless, Harry examined her face. “I don’t understand.” His open hand indicated the stacked boxes and piles of nested tissue, foil, and plastic around them. “This can’t be easy—even with help. And you want to do it on your own? With no money? Why, when you don’t have to?”
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do. Harry, I already tried the easy way, and it’s not for me.” Bianca looked down at the watch AJ had given her. “You asked me if I knew AJ Yarborough. Well, I did. He was the last man to really care about me, until you.” Her eyes avoided Harry’s. “I’m ashamed of the callous way I treated that relationship. I don’t want to do that with you, Harry. AJ is a special kind of guy and I messed up—badly. You would have to know what we shared to know how badly I messed up.”
“I know you were engaged to AJ.”
Bianca’s mouth dropped and Harry saw her shock in the millisecond before she covered it with her hands. “Did you know when he invited you, us, to dinner?”
“I figured it out after you said no.” He swallowed hard. “AJ and Dench mentioned that a woman named Bianca had once broken his heart, and I told myself the name was just a coincidence, but the coincidence bothered me. So I spent some time checking and I found the engagement. I found your name linked with others as well, including KPayne.”
“You checked up on me? All this time, I thought you trusted me and I was worried about not being good enough for you, and you were just waiting to hold this over my head? So are you going to call me names next? Whore? Slut? Thief? What?”
“I wouldn’t have bothered to share this afternoon with a whore, a slut, or a thief, Bianca. I shared it with you, and I did the search because I was curious. It’s what I am, and I don’t fight it.” Harry shrugged. “I know what I said about leaving the past behind us, but I wanted to know why a woman like you would be alone at a point in her life when most women are married with families. I wanted to know what came before me.”
“And you couldn’t just ask me? You never told me you knew things about me…not last night or even this morning when I was in your bed.” Bianca moved farther away from him. Standing, hands held out in front of her, she backed away, putting more distance between them.
Harry stood and looked at her. “You’re wrong, Bianca.”
“You knew all about me and AJ when you told me he invited us to dinner, didn’t you? No wonder it didn’t surprise you when I said I couldn’t make it—you knew what it would have taken for me to walk through his door, didn’t you? And still you said nothing.” Tears threaded her lashes, but refused to fall when her hands fisted. “There is no best of me, is there, Harry? I’m just some kind of con-artist joke to you, right? You checked my past and you saw it. You checked and you expected exactly what you found, didn’t you?”
“Bianca…” He moved close enough to touch her and the heat of his hand burned like a branding iron, searing her flesh.
She snatched her arm from his fingers. “I don’t want to hear it, Harry.”
“Did I say something that made you think you have a choice?” His skin tightened, showing the lean intensity of his jaw line, and Bianca saw more than resolution in the tightness of his lips. She saw a man determined to have his say.
Eyes narrowed to mysterious long-lashed slits, Harry’s hand lifted, then dropped. “How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t care about your past? I’m over it. I love you, and I’m laying everything on the line for that.”
“Including trust,” she spat.
“Faith isn’t faith until it’s all you have.”
“AJ is a good guy and he’s your friend. I don’t want to come between that.”
“My faith is in you, Bianca. And if AJ and Dench can’t understand that, then the hell with them, and anybody else who tries to cross that line.”
She looked away. “I don’t want you to lose your friends over me. You’ll hate me for that someday, and I couldn’t bear having you hate me.”
“I’ll never hate you, Bianca.” His hand slid along her arm, entreating. “If AJ and Dench are the men I think they are, we’ll all get over this. If they’re not, well, our life will still go on.”
Pushing at the hair falling into her eyes, Bianca stood in the near dark and looked into Harry’s face. Etched in sepia and shadow, painted in the light of the little silk-shaded bra
ss lamp, she saw more power in him than any man had ever trusted her with. When his arms opened, she moved into him, drawn like iron to a magnet. Her hands flattened against his back, and she felt his breath echo through her. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Harry.”
“It was bound to happen sooner or later. I don’t know why it didn’t happen before this.”
“You know before it’s all over, we’re going to run into other people who…”
“Only have a place in the past. Everyone has a past.”
“Do you have any more of a past? A spare wife and kids? Someone other than Karen Dodge?” With her head on his shoulder, Bianca suddenly felt so content she was almost ready to purr. “What’s in your past?”
His fingers slipped through her hair, played along her shoulder. “I’m thinking that nothing and no one in my past could be as interesting as who is in my future.”
“Who is in your future?”
His lips on hers answered the question, and Bianca slid deeper into love with him.
CHAPTER 18
Monday mornings in Atlanta were always interesting for Harry, especially because his Tokyo staff and contractors were always a day ahead of him. If he didn’t stay on top of it, the time difference could run him into the ground, strain or break his credibility and competitive edge. He had no intention of letting that happen. But this morning, Harry couldn’t keep his mind on the Roppongi project or any of the other pending business.
Sitting in the glass enclosed Neo-Tech conference room, the teleconference drifted around him. When he realized he was doodling on a scratch pad, he hoped his assistants were on their game, because he knew his thoughts were at Kin Kura International, following a beautiful woman who was probably as much out of it as he was.
They hadn’t gotten to bed until late last night, and neither of them had gotten much sleep. Vive la Reine’s reopening had been every bit as successful as Bianca had hoped it would be. Good for both of us, Harry thought. Or, at least it had been good until that florist’s box arrived just before the last customer pulled out her platinum card.
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