by JoAnn Ross
She was, quite honestly, weary of trying to live a lie, of pretending to be someone she was not. She was tired of her dark and proper clothing, her subdued behavior. It was as if by donning this bright Gypsy outfit last night, she'd let the genie of her own daring, slightly reckless personality out of the bottle, and Alex didn't know if she'd want to put it back even if she could. And she suspected she couldn't.
Knowing that she was already too attracted to this very married man and telling herself she should refuse, Alex took a deep breath, threw caution to the winds and said, "I'd love to attend your mother's wedding with you, Zachary."
Chapter Thirteen
Alex felt the change in Zach as they drove away from the city. Soon after they'd crossed the iron bridge spanning the Mississippi River, he tuned the car radio to a station playing an infectious, toe-tapping medley he told her was called zydeco. As "The Lake Arthur Stomp" gave way to "Jolie Blonde," Zach visibly relaxed.
They sped along a highway that spread like a long gray ribbon over swampland, past stretches of sugarcane fields and rice paddies. Blue herons glided soundlessly among magnificent cypress trees, bearded in Spanish moss, which the sun backlit in ghostly gold; nutria and muskrats paddled along, furry shadows in the dark waters.
A silence descended that could be described as companionable, if only the participants hadn't been so studiously avoiding feelings too risky to acknowledge out loud.
"This is so beautiful," Alex said quietly after a while.
"We call it the trembling prairie. Roots sink deep here."
She knew he was not talking about the knobby cypress roots, which rose out of the water. "You must miss it a great deal."
"It's good to get back home," he agreed. "Once the bayou gets into your blood, I don't think you can ever get it out. Even if you want to."
"Which you don't."
"No."
His familiarity with the seemingly unfathomable maze of dirt roads and waterways reminded Alex of what she'd once read about a nomad's ability to find his way home over miles of shifting desert sands. From the fact that he'd risen so quickly in the Lord's organization, it was obvious he possessed an enormous talent for business. But she suspected that it was here, in this misty, mystical land, that Zachary felt truly comfortable.
The wedding, held in Zach's former waterfront home, was a vibrant celebration of family and community. Eve Deveraux, who was marrying a nearby rancher, gave Alex a warm greeting.
"Thank you for celebrating our happiness with us today," she said. Although her smile was sincere, Alex thought she detected a fleeting concern in the dark eyes that so resembled her son's.
A beautiful woman in her fifties, Eve had chosen a royal blue dress, cut on the bias and falling to just below the knee. Alex decided it definitely suited her.
Zach's paternal grandmother was more outspoken than her daughter-in-law. After giving Zach a huge hug, she stepped back, gave his companion a long, probing once-over with eyes that reminded Alex of a curious bird and said without preamble, "You have known heartache."
Although startled, Alex kept her smile from slipping. "What woman hasn't?"
The elderly woman didn't respond to Alex's flippant remark. "There will be more to come," she pronounced. "But in the long run, you will find the love you deserve."
"Maman," Eve murmured. "Please…" She slanted Alex an apologetic look.
Zach's grandmother ignored the quiet warning. "As for you, boy," she said, tilting her white head back to look a long, long way up into Zach's face, "Lâchez pas la patate."
Zach's answering grin was meant to charm his grandmother, but Alex found herself mesmerized by its warmth. "Why don't you tell me what you really think?" he suggested blandly.
The maternal concern Alex had witnessed earlier in Zach's mother's gaze was back as Eve skillfully led them away to introduce Alex to the rest of the huge Deveraux clan.
The wedding feast was a culinary extravaganza—spicy gumbo, jambalaya, crayfish and filet of alligator topped with Tabasco sauce hot enough to clear Alex's sinuses. The mood was as joyful as the food was lavish; dust from the dancers' feet and smoke from the barbecue grills rose into the cooling air.
More than once Alex was pulled, laughing, into a conga line led by guests dressed in Mardi Gras costumes, and by the time the sun had set over the water, she decided that she must have danced with at least twenty of Zach's cousins.
"I envy you," she murmured when she found herself in Zach's arms for the first time since their arrival hours earlier. As the marsh gas flickered a phosphorous green, the band started interspersing a few ballads in with the livelier dance tunes.
"Why?" Zach asked, his attention distracted by her eyes, which were shining like antique gold in the light of the campfires that had been set.
"You have so many people who care about you. And love you."
"I suppose, where life is hard, family becomes even more important," he said thoughtfully. "I have a photo of Dad and Mom and my sisters and me all picking Grand-mère's sugarcane. Last year, when I became president of Lord's, I had an artist copy it.
"Whenever I start getting cocky, I look at that painting on my office wall and remember where I came from. And what's important."
She was not surprised by the story. Watching Zach with his family and friends had revealed a side of the man she suspected few people were permitted to see. Did his wife know the real Zachary Deveraux? Or had Lady Miranda set her sights only on the high-powered executive?
The fact that Zach had brought her to his mother's wedding, rather than Miranda, provided the answer to that question, she decided.
"Your grandmother's an interesting woman," she murmured.
Zach laughed. A deep rumbling sound Alex found herself liking too much for safety. "That's one way to describe her. She's stubborn, like all us Deveraux. And she claims to have second sight. Like her own grand-mère."
"Do you believe her?"
Zach shrugged. "When I was a kid, I didn't. But one fall when I was thirteen, I couldn't find a deer all season. We really needed the venison to get us through the winter. That's when she told me exactly where to go.
"Deciding I didn't have anything to lose, I took her advice and found an enormous buck standing beside a cypress as if he'd been waiting for me to come and shoot him. After that, I started listening to her more often."
"What about tonight? What did she tell you?"
"Oh, that." Zach knew his grandmother didn't approve of his wife. He also knew she approved of divorce even less. "It's an old Cajun expression—'Don't drop the potato.' Loosely translated, it means 'Hang in there.'"
"Oh." When she felt his body tense, Alex opted against questioning him further.
He danced her away from the others to a hidden place of shadows beneath a grove of trees. They swayed to the sultry romantic ballad, his chin atop her hair, her fingers linked around his neck.
And even when the music stopped, they stood there for a long, immeasurable time, still clasped together, looking into each other's eyes, silently exchanging seductive messages too dangerous to put into words.
"Alexandra." There was a husky poignancy in his voice.
Looking up at him, Alex saw a man who'd just come to the stark realization that his life has, in the space of a single day, been changed forever. She could recognize the tumultuous emotions because she was feeling the same way.
Alex knew she was playing with fire. She also knew one of them was likely to get burned, and more than likely it would be her. But at this absolutely perfect moment in time, she didn't care.
Zach had spent the entire day valiantly trying to keep his hands off her, but it had been like fighting an undertow. Dammit, he'd never claimed to be bucking for sainthood.
He brushed his fingers down her cheek, following the slow, seductive movement with his eyes. "You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman here today."
The soft touch of his fingers made Alex's blood hum. "The bride's the most beautiful wo
man at her wedding," she argued on a shaky little whisper.
"Maman's always been beautiful." His hand trailed down her throat as he took in the sight of her, clad in a moss green dress and forest green suede boots that reminded him of a wood nymph.
Last night, in theatrical makeup, Alexandra had appeared lush and sultry and vampish. Earlier today, with her face flushed from a heady mixture of sun and exertion and pleasure, she'd possessed a bright, breezy type of nonconformist beauty that had reminded him of Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly.
Tonight in the moonlight, with a dusting of freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose, Alexandra Lyons seemed delicate and vulnerable.
"But you," he alleged gravely, "are absolutely exquisite."
Slowly, giving her time to read his intention and back away, he framed her face between his large, reassuring hands and with the utmost deliberation and gravity, lowered his mouth to hers.
With a patience he'd never known he possessed, Zach took his time to kiss her tingling lips from one corner to the other, loving her for a long, delicious time with only his mouth. As his lips tempted, cajoled, caressed, Alex's world was reinvented.
Beguiled, she closed her eyes, twined her arms around his neck and allowed her mind to empty. She melted into his exquisite kiss because at this suspended moment in time, to do otherwise would have been to deny her own feelings. And to deny her emotions would have been contrary to her honest nature.
Caught up in the wonder of Alex, Zach savored her every sigh, each soft moan. As her warm breath shuddered out of her, he forgot all the reasons why this was wrong; as he heard his name murmured against his mouth he could only think how perfectly Alexandra Lyons fit in his arms.
His lips skimmed over her face, drinking in the tantalizing taste of her skin before returning to her mouth.
The kiss could have lasted a minute. An hour. An eternity. When it finally ended, Zach was as disoriented as if someone had just informed him that the laws of physics had been suspended, and down was now up, up down, and gravity no longer existed.
Not quite knowing how to tell her what he was feeling, he said her name again—"Alexandra"—savoring the pure sweetness of it. The pleasure. The absolute joy. He wound a strand of gleaming hair around his finger into a ringlet; he released it and it immediately sprang back into the mass of riotous waves. Although he knew it was masochistic, Zach imagined what that silky hair would feel like against his naked chest. His thighs.
"This is…" His voice trailed off, and all he could do was shake his head in wonder and frustration.
"Unexpected," Alex filled in for him. "Exciting. Frightening."
"Terrifying," Zach concurred.
The one description neither of them was prepared to resort to was mistake.
"I want to be honest with you, Alexandra. I need to be honest with you. The problem is, I have the feeling that whatever I say is going to come out wrong."
"This can't go anywhere." Alex's voice was soft and resigned.
He wished she'd argue. Shout. Anything but this quiet acceptance. "Not now. Although you'll probably never believe this, I'm not the type of man who plays around on his wife."
"I believe it. Because I'm not the kind of woman who has affairs with married men."
"I don't want to hurt you."
But he would hurt her, Alex knew. Oh, he wouldn't mean to. But she could see the heartbreak coming, like the headlight of a runaway freight train approaching in a tunnel.
"I was going to ask if you'd let me show you the real Louisiana tomorrow."
Alex could hear the regret in his tone. "But?" she asked softly.
"I received a phone call a while ago," he said, telling her nothing she didn't know. She'd watched him go into his mother's house, wondered if it was his wife calling and noticed his grim expression when he'd emerged several minutes later.
"There was a fire at a Lord's store under construction in Santa Monica. They think it was started by a welder's torch."
"I hope no one was hurt."
"Fortunately, no. But the city fire inspector's going to be on the site first thing in the morning. Since I should be there, I had to change my flight. There's a plane leaving at 4:30 in the morning, which will get me back to L.A. in time."
"Four-thirty." So soon.
He heard the soft shimmer of regret in her tone. "I'm sorry."
Alex managed a wobbly smile. "We still have the rest of tonight." The smile moved to her eyes. "I'm going to change my flight so we can return to California together, Zachary. And then I want to dance with you at your mother's wedding."
"And then?" Zach had a feeling he wasn't going to like her answer.
He didn't. "And then," she continued quietly, firmly, "once we land at LAX, you'll return to your life. And I'll go back to mine."
Part of him knew she was right. But then his gaze moved to her mouth—Jesus, her sweet, soft, delectable mouth!—and he found himself wishing she'd suggest they run away together. To some faraway, romantic South Sea island where no one would ever find them and they could spend the rest of their days making love and feeding each other tropical fruit. Passion fruit.
"You can really walk away from whatever's happening between us here? Just like that?" His voice, his eyes, testified to his disbelief.
Unable to speak past the sudden lump in her throat, Alex merely nodded.
Even as she tried to tell herself that these few golden hours together would be enough, as they danced and kissed and whispered and sighed, she felt horribly like Cinderella facing the countdown of that treacherous palace clock. Later, as they drove in heavy silence back along the darkened highway toward New Orleans, Alex half expected Zach's rental car to turn into a pumpkin.
The stolen hours passed all too quickly. Hidden beneath the blue blanket in the first-class section they had all to themselves at this unpalatable hour of the morning, they kissed like lovesick teenagers, their bodies aching with feverish yearning.
Finally the long day caught up with Alex and she fell asleep, her head on Zach's shoulder, her legs curled up beneath her on the seat.
While the plane sped closer and closer to Los Angeles, Zach remained awake. Indulging himself in the pure pleasure of watching Alex undetected, he wished for the impossible. As the plane made its inevitable approach into LAX, the change in engine speed roused Alex from her light slumber. She escaped to the lavatory, dragged a brush through her tangled hair, splashed cold water on her face, took several deep breaths and reminded herself that as wonderful as her romantic interlude with Zach had been, it was time to return to the real world.
Reality was Los Angeles, with its smog and soaring property prices, traffic jams and escalating crime. Reality was Zach returning to his Century City offices. Reality was her continuing her work for Sophie.
Reality was Zach's marriage.
And his wife.
They stood face-to-face, close enough to touch, but not daring to as the bustling early-morning crowd in the terminal surged around them.
Although Zach didn't want to let Alex get away, he couldn't escape the unpalatable fact that he was married. And while he suspected Alex might be willing to meet him for the occasional rendezvous, he could not play with her emotions that way.
Divorce was, of course, an option. But the last time he'd suggested it to Miranda, she'd lost her temper, become hysterical and taken an overdose of Valium. She hadn't taken enough to kill herself, the doctor had assured Zach.
But she had achieved her objective. She'd scared the hell out of her husband.
Looking back on that fateful day when he'd first met Miranda Lord Baptista Smythe, Zach knew he'd been foolishly led with his hormones and not his heart. Or his brain.
And now, the price for the unbridled lust he'd once felt for the woman who was now his wife, for better or for worse, would be to live with the bad bargain he'd made.
"You know, this is a small town, really," he said. "Perhaps we'll run into one another."
"Perhaps." T
he sheen of moisture in Alex's eyes belied her falsely bright tone.
They both knew it would not happen. They could not allow it to happen. Because the chemistry between them was too potent to allow them to remain merely friends.
Alex was putting on such a goddamn good show of being cheerful and brave. Zach thought this would all be a helluva lot easier if she'd break down and cry. Or shout.
Forsaking all others. The vow he'd willingly taken felt as heavy and burdensome as Jacob Marley's chains.
Unable to resist, he touched her cheek. "Goodbye, Alexandra."
The tender touch threatened to be her undoing. "Goodbye, Zach."
As her eyes filled with hot, frustrated tears, Alex turned and walked away, the heels of her suede boots clicking a rapid staccato on the tile floor.
Zach stood there, his fists shoved deep into the pockets of his slacks, his heart aching. He desperately wanted to call her back, but knew it would only hurt her more if he did.
Chapter Fourteen
Deciding she was a disaster just waiting to happen when it came to romance, Alex threw herself back into the one thing she could control in her life—safe, soothing work.
When she wasn't hard at work, she ran along the packed sand, mile after mile, until her physical pain equaled her emotional pain. And then she ran farther still, until the ocean breeze dried her salty tears and she was too exhausted to dwell on what might have been if she'd only met Zach during that brief window of time when they'd both been in Paris. Before he'd married Miranda.
The first episode of "Blue Bayou" proved a blockbuster hit, outscoring even "The Cosby Show" in the overnight ratings.
The media, unsurprisingly, panned the glitzy soap opera. One particularly harsh critic declared that Americans possessed a limitless desire to identify with the upper classes. That being the case, he'd gone on sarcastically, it was no wonder they'd all tuned in to watch a show where the characters, who changed clothes between the appetizer and soup course, appeared to be the classiest people on television.