She looked at Trace, startled at the way he’d read her mind. The problem was, she wasn’t sure what she wanted. She felt entirely too vulnerable. She hadn’t been held in a man’s arms for a very long time. And Trace was not just any man. They had once been lovers. They had once been in love.
In the end, her practicality won out. It was foolish to spend the money for a room when she had the offer of a place to stay for free. “All right,” she said. “I’ll stay at your parents’ penthouse. But only because it’ll be more convenient for both of us. And I’ll take that separate bedroom.”
“Fine. Now that we’ve worked everything out—”
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you buying any clothes for me.”
“No dress?” Trace said with a boyish grin.
“No dress.”
He crossed to her and slid an arm around her shoulders in the way he often had when they were in college, as though they were just good pals. “We’d better get back to the house,” he said. “I can smell our hamburgers burning.”
It wasn’t until they were in the air headed toward Houston that Callie realized she was a captive, with nowhere to go if Trace started asking questions she didn’t want to answer. She decided the safe move was to direct the conversation herself and keep it aimed at neutral topics.
“Nice airplane,” she said. “I was expecting a twin-engine Cessna, not a corporate jet.”
“Actually, we don’t own this yet. I’m trying to talk Dad into buying it.”
“It’s beautiful, sleek, and fast. Why wouldn’t he want to buy it?” Callie asked, smoothing her hand across the leather seat.
“Because I suggested it.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s change the subject,” Trace said. “What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”
Callie’s jaw dropped. Then she laughed. “How am I supposed to answer a question like that?”
“Honestly.”
She shrugged. “Live it, I guess.”
He shook his head. “That’s no answer. Do you plan to keep on working for your father?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s work I love. And I’m good at it.”
“Fair enough,” Trace said. “What if someone offered you more money to do the same work somewhere else?”
“My family needs me.”
The words were out before Callie could stop them. She watched Trace’s mouth thin and harden. She waited for him to chide her for putting her family first, but he changed the subject entirely.
“What are you wearing tonight?”
“A dress.”
“I figured that,” he said, his lips curving wryly. “What color?”
“Why does it matter?” she asked.
“I thought I might get you a corsage.”
“I love gardenias,” Callie said wistfully.
“I know. Fortunately, they go with anything. All right, gardenias it is.”
Callie laughed. “You don’t have to buy me flowers, Trace. This isn’t the prom.”
“I never got to take you to the prom. You went with Henry Featherstone. And you wore a peach-colored dress.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Callie asked.
“Because I saw you walk in with him.”
“You didn’t know I was alive in high school,” Callie scoffed.
“You had algebra first period, across the hall from my trig class. You ate a sack lunch with the same three girls every day, Lou Ann, Becky, and Robbie Sue. You spent your free period in the library reading Hemingway and Steinbeck. And you went straight home after school without doing any extracurricular activities, except on Thursdays. For some reason, on Thursdays you showed up at football practice. Why was that, Callie?”
Callie was confused. How could Trace possibly know so much about her activities in high school? They hadn’t even met until she showed up at the University of Texas campus. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“You haven’t answered my question. Why did you come to football practice on Thursdays?”
“Because that was the day I did the grocery shopping, and I didn’t have to be home until later.”
“Why were you there, Callie?”
Callie stared into his eyes, afraid to admit the truth. But what difference could it possibly make now? She swallowed hard and said, “I was there to see you.”
He gave a sigh of satisfaction. “I hoped that was it. But I never knew for sure.”
Callie’s brow furrowed. “You wanted me to notice you?”
“I noticed you. Couldn’t you feel my eyes on you? Didn’t you ever sense the force of my boyish lust? I had it bad for you my senior year. I couldn’t walk past you in the hall without needing to hold my books in my lap when I sat down in the next class.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Trace chuckled. “I wish I were.”
“Then it wasn’t an accident, our meeting like that at UT?”
“That’s the miracle of it,” Trace said. “It was entirely by accident. Fate. Kismet. Karma. Whatever you want to call it. I would never have sought you out, Callie.”
“Why not? Why didn’t you just ask me out, if you wanted me so much?”
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t give my father the satisfaction and leave it at that.”
Callie could imagine what he wasn’t telling her. “A whole year,” she murmured. “A whole extra year we could have had together.”
“There’s nothing keeping us apart now,” Trace said. “You’re single, and so am I.”
“But you hate me!” she blurted.
“I’ve never hated you, Callie. I hated the choice you made.”
“I wasn’t the only one who made a choice, Trace.”
He nodded his head. “True.”
She waited for him to accept more of the blame for their separation. But he said nothing. “So what are you suggesting?” she asked. “What happens now?”
“I don’t know,” Trace said. “Maybe we can figure that out this weekend.”
She stared out the window at the wide open Texas sky, wishing Trace hadn’t revealed his high school infatuation. Wishing he hadn’t suggested a world of limitless opportunities just waiting to be seized. Wishing he hadn’t given her hope.
Did she want to get together with Trace? Was it possible to marry him and live happily ever after? Oh, it hurt too much to hope. What if he only wanted a sexual fling? What if he made her love him again and then left her behind? The temptation to reach out to him was so great, she threaded her hands together in her lap, to keep them to herself.
She’d wanted a chance to settle things between them on this trip. She’d hoped for a truce, a cessation of the war of wills, that would last until Trace could return to wherever he’d come from. She hadn’t realized how dangerous it could be to talk as they used to do, and to discover that she still wanted him as much as he wanted her.
A limousine was waiting for them when they arrived at Houston’s Hobby International Airport. Callie asked Trace to drop her off at the stockyards where the auction was being held, rather than take her by the penthouse first. “I’d like a chance to look over the horses before the bidding starts,” she said. “I’ll call you when I’m ready to be picked up.”
She’d expected Trace to argue, but he said, “Fine.”
To Callie’s delight, she was able to purchase two more fillies during the afternoon at a price she could afford. And she’d have the horses to convince her family that she’d merely attended the auction while she was in Houston.
Trace wasn’t in the limo when it arrived to pick her up. Callie was grateful for the opportunity to gather her wits before she had to do battle with him again. She had no doubt that a confrontation was coming sometime during the evening. Trace would make his move, and she would either have to accept his advances or rebuff them. Callie still hadn’t made up her mind what she wanted to do.
She got the key from the c
oncierge at the front desk and took the elevator to the penthouse. She expected Trace to be there, but when she entered and called his name, there was no answer.
She stepped inside and gasped at what she found. The place reeked of gardenias. Callie laughed in delight as she ran from vase to vase sniffing the pungent flowers. “Trace, you idiot!” she said, grinning from ear to ear. She was more pleased by his gesture than she wanted to admit.
It took a moment longer to focus her attention on the penthouse itself. She had expected it to be furnished elegantly and expensively, and it was. What surprised her were the homey touches that gave the place personality. A photograph on the credenza of the four Blackthorne kids wearing T-shirts and cut-off jeans, with one of the twins grinning broadly as he held a catfish aloft. A collection of rodeo belt buckles, apparently won by Blackjack, displayed under a glass tabletop. An antique tricycle shaped like a horse, with a worn leather seat.
She found a note from Trace on the dining room table that told her to make herself at home, that her bedroom was the second one down the hall, and that he would be there to pick her up at eight sharp for the reception. Callie wondered where he was and what he could possibly be doing so late in the day. Then she realized she had only two hours to get herself ready. She would need every minute of it to make herself beautiful. And she wanted very much to be beautiful for Trace.
There were more framed photos hanging in the hall, and Callie took a few minutes to peruse them. Trace at nine or ten, standing between Clay and Owen, with an arm around each brother’s shoulders. Trace in his football uniform. Clay and Owen in football uniforms. Summer on horseback. Summer sitting on Trace’s lap. Summer between Clay and Owen, her arms around their waists. They all looked happy. As though they hadn’t a care in the world.
Which was what had created the chasm between her and Trace in the first place. Could Trace really have changed so much in eleven years? Could they really make a life together when they’d come from such different backgrounds?
Callie glanced at her watch and realized she had to hurry. She opened the door to the bedroom Trace had given her and stopped dead. On the antique four-poster bed lay the most beautiful cocktail dress she’d ever seen.
“Oh, Trace, I asked you not to do this,” Callie whispered in a voice filled with awe.
She walked toward the dress, unable to resist touching it, then holding it up to admire it. It was red. Bright red. Made of heavy silk, strapless, with a fitted bodice, and a skirt cut on the bias which, unless she was very much mistaken, would hit her somewhere about mid-thigh. A fringed silk shawl lay on the bed beside a black merry widow, a lacy black garter belt, and black nylons.
“I can’t wear any of this,” she said aloud.
But she wanted desperately to wear it. She forced herself to set the dress back down on the bed. She opened her suitcase and took out the simple black wool sheath she’d brought with her. The style was ageless. The dress was old. It had been in her closet for years. She’d last worn it to Nolan’s funeral.
Callie hung the black dress up and headed for the shower. “First things first,” she said aloud. She could make the decision which dress to wear after she’d taken a shower and put on her makeup.
Callie was just stepping out of the shower when the doorbell rang. She couldn’t imagine who it could be, unless there was only one key, and Trace was locked out. Hair dripping, she wrapped herself in a towel and trotted to the front door. She leaned her ear against the wooden panel and called, “Who’s there?”
“Mrs. Monroe?”
“Yes,” Callie answered.
“I’m here to give you a manicure.”
“I didn’t arrange for a manicure,” Callie said.
“Mr. Blackthorne made the appointment.”
Callie looked down at her rough hands, at the ragged nails and torn cuticles. How dare he notice! Some people had to work for a living! She was about to send the woman away when she heard a second female voice talking to the first.
“Mrs. Monroe?” the second voice said.
“Yes. Who is it?”
“I’m here to do your hair and makeup.”
Callie pulled the door open. “I don’t need—”
The two women marched in without invitation.
“He said you might resist at first,” the manicurist said. “But that we shouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“You can sit here,” the hairdresser said, pulling out a chair at the dining room table and pressing Callie into it. She set a tray containing combs, brushes, a hair dryer, and curling iron on the lacquered surface and dropped another, equally heavy bag of makeup, on the floor.
“Will this give you enough room to work?” she asked the manicurist.
“I’ve got a table I can set up in front of her,” the other woman replied, “if you turn her chair around.”
“I’m Wanda,” the hairdresser said as she angled the chair Callie was sitting in so the manicurist could set up a table in front of her. “Is there any particular way you’d like me to fix your hair?”
“I’d like you both to leave,” Callie said, crossing her arms over her chest and tucking her ragged nails into her armpits where they couldn’t be seen.
“Mr. Blackthorne said I should tell you that we work for a living, too,” Wanda said. “And that if we leave, we won’t get paid.”
Callie stared at the hairdresser for a moment in astonishment, then laughed and held her hands up in surrender. “I’d like my hair in a French twist.”
Wanda tipped Callie’s chin up and surveyed her features. “Good choice. That’ll show off those nice cheekbones of yours.”
Callie flushed with pleasure at the compliment.
“I’m Harriet,” the manicurist said. “If you’ll just put your hands in this warm water, we can get started.”
Callie had never felt so pampered. She couldn’t help wondering whether Trace had ever done this before—for some other woman. “Has Mr. Blackthorne ever employed you before?” she asked Wanda.
“Oh, no, but his sister has. Summer Blackthorne calls first thing when she arrives in town.”
Callie expelled a sigh of relief. Of course. Trace had asked, and Summer had told him who to call. She wanted to resent his high-handed behavior, but she was enjoying herself too much.
Harriet’s manicure was followed by a foot massage and pedicure, a hedonistic pleasure Callie had never experienced.
“Mr. Blackthorne specified Ravishing Red polish for your toenails,” Harriet said. “Said it would match your dress.”
Callie looked down at her polished toenails, which would, indeed, match the cocktail dress Trace had bought. Callie realized that sometime during the past hour, she’d decided to wear the dress. Why not? If she was going to play Cinderella and go to the ball, she might as well be dressed for the part.
She and Wanda and Harriet were fast friends by the time Callie showed them out the door. When she returned to the bedroom, she discovered a pair of strappy, open-toed high heels in a box on the floor beside the bed. No wonder Trace had wanted her toenail polish to match! He’d even provided his Cinderella with glass slippers.
Callie wondered how Trace had known what sizes to buy, then realized her figure hadn’t changed in eleven years. He’d often helped her dress—and undress—in college. In any case, everything fit perfectly. Even the lacy—and extraordinarily tiny—French underwear she’d found beneath the merry widow.
When she heard the doorbell ring again, she hurried to answer it, expecting Trace to be there. While Callie stared in astonishment, a waiter wheeled in a magnum of iced Dom Perignon champagne, two crystal flutes, and a bowl of strawberries.
She was still staring at the strawberries when Trace arrived, tipped the waiter, and closed the door behind him.
Their eyes locked.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied.
“You look beautiful.”
“Thank you. So do you.”
He gave her a rog
uish smile, looked down at the tailored black Armani tuxedo he had on, and said, “In this old thing?”
Callie laughed. He was charming. She was charmed.
“Would you like some champagne?” he asked.
She nodded, no longer able to speak over the lump of emotion in her throat.
He uncorked the champagne in a way that made it plain he’d done it many times. She held the flutes while he filled them, then handed him his glass.
“Want a strawberry?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Guess I’ll have one,” he said.
She took the strawberry out of his hand and held it up to his lips by the stem. Gazing steadily into her eyes, he leaned down and bit it off close to her fingertips. Callie’s insides did a somersault when his tongue flicked out to catch a bit of juice that remained on his lips. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed the fruit, then met his gaze again.
“Callie.”
Nothing more. Nothing more needed to be said. She turned into his body and angled her head up for his kiss. His mouth was soft on hers, hesitant, searching. Callie slid her tongue along the seam of his lips, and he opened to her. She went up on tiptoe, leaning into him.
He tasted of strawberries and champagne.
“You taste sweet,” he murmured.
Callie laughed. “You’re the one who’s been eating strawberries.”
His lips caressed the left side of her mouth and then the right, before his tongue teased the seam of her mouth. When she would have opened to him, he lifted his head and said teasingly, “I’d like another strawberry.”
Callie set down her champagne flute. She realized her hand was trembling as she reached for the ripe red berry and held it up to his lips. His hand covered hers as he ate the fruit down to the stem, then took the stem away and kissed her fingertips.
“We can’t have you going out tonight with sticky fingers,” he said as he sucked each one clean.
Callie’s knees felt ready to buckle, and she laid her free hand on Trace’s shoulder to hold herself upright. The sexual teasing was something new, something they’d never done when they were younger, because they’d always been in too much of a hurry. His gaze was tender, and she felt the heat of it warm a cold place deep inside her.
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