Enchanted Heart

by Felicia Mason

  Viv smiled. Then pushed her vanilla ice cream sundae away.

  Dakota’s laugh rang out in the air. “Eat that ice cream, girl.” Several people, including a man, paused to stare. He made a move as if to approach them.

  Dakota held up a hand, halting his progress. “We’re gay. Go away.”

  The man looked appalled, and then intrigued. “Say, we could . . .”

  Dakota reached for the vial of Mace on her key ring. “Good-bye, brother man.”

  He held up both hands and backed away.

  Viv shook her head. “You’re a trip, Dakota. ‘We’re gay’?”

  Her friend shrugged. “It got rid of him. Well, the threat of Mace got rid of him. Why is it men always want to see two women making love?”

  Viv stuck her spoon in the ice cream and scooped off a bit of whipped cream. “It’s a fantasy thing. Probably has something to do with controlling a situation and being master of the Universe. I read a study once when I was doing this shoot in a gay club. It was about the dominant/submissive tendency that everyone has. The researchers said most people think about it at one time or another, just like most people are really bi. Only a few follow through on the natural urge to mate with both sexes.”

  “Uh, I’m gonna get some water.”

  Viv looked at Dakota, but her friend’s gaze was on something behind Viv. She turned and there was Lance—the last person she wanted to see.

  “That’s an intriguing notion. I mentioned something like that to your sister today.”

  Vivienne blanched. That he’d heard her discourse on bisexuality was lost and forgotten in the face of a more serious issue. “To my sister. You saw Vicki?”

  Lance took the seat vacated by Dakota. With a finger he scooped a bit of the whipped cream from the bowl in the middle of the table. He licked the cream from his finger and watched Vivienne.

  “I talked to her. I was calling you and she answered the phone. You left your cell at home today.”

  Viv glanced to her left, then her right. She looked at her hands, at the grain of the table—at any and everything except Lance. She wasn’t yet ready to deal with him.

  “Vicki is very . . . fragile,” she said.

  “She sounds as sexy as you. I’ve missed seeing you,” he said.

  “Lance.”

  He reached for her hand. “We need to talk.”

  Boy, did they ever, Viv thought. “About what?”

  “Us.”

  She swallowed. “Us? There is no us.”

  “That’s what I want to talk about. Have dinner with me tonight.”

  “I can’t.”

  She couldn’t do this now. She couldn’t face him. Not when her emotions were so raw. Not when his child was nestled in her womb, growing by the hour. Viv imagined herself getting heavy, fat and bloated with his baby. And then it being born, the baby looking like Vicki, and herself looking like a washed-out cow with bad skin. Her stomach recoiled at the thought.

  She swung her legs around the bench. “I need to get back to work.”

  “I’ll walk you back.”

  What little patience she had snapped. “I can get back to my store by myself.”

  Lance took a step back, holding his hands up. “Okay. Okay. I’ll pick you up about seven.”

  “I’m not going out with you tonight, Lance.”

  Irritation flashed in his eyes. “Look, Viv. What we have . . .”

  “We don’t have anything! I’m the one with the problem. I have a baby growing inside me. Your baby. And I want it out of me!”

  She burst into tears and ran down the street.

  Lance stood there, jaw slack. It took a full minute for her words to register. It was as if time had stopped and everything was moving in slow motion.

  Baby?

  Pregnant.

  Viv was pregnant with his baby?

  When the true realization of her last words hit him, Lance stumbled backward, stunned by the revulsion he’d seen on her face and heard in her voice. Then with a rush like a tornado bearing on him, everything around him focused in sharp clarity. The sounds of a car horn, people laughing, the tread of tires on the street. And he saw Vivienne running down the street, awkward but steady in high heels, the yellow of the sheer duster she wore trailing behind her.

  In a full-out run, he took off after her. “Vivienne!”

  Jack Spencer leaned against the doorjamb, smiling at Sonja. “I thought you could use some company about now.” From behind his back he pulled a flower, a single dahlia. “You know, a variation of these grow along the banks of an unnamed river in Belize.”

  “I wish you’d leave.”

  “No, you don’t.” He pushed past her and into the house. “You look like hell.”

  “Aren’t you the gentleman.”

  Sonja shut the door behind him. “Cole isn’t here.”

  “I know.” Jack glanced at his watch. “He should be on the way to New York right now.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “I told you. I thought you could use some company.”

  “I’m not sleeping with you.”

  His gaze raked over her, lingering at her breasts then her hips. “Though I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about just that, I’m not here to have sex with you.” He stroked his temple. “Tempting though that may be.”

  Sonja folded her arms across her chest. She hadn’t moved from the door. “Then why are you here?”

  He held out his hand to her. “You have no reason to fear me, Sonja. I need to tell you a story.”

  Something in his tone convinced her he didn’t mean to do her any harm or ravish her. That part, she had to admit, at one time had been a pleasant enough thought. But not now.

  “Jack, I’m in no mood to play games.”

  His eyes softened. He took the steps that put him right in front of her. “I know, Sonja.”

  She looked at him and tried to stop the telltale tremble at her mouth. He said the words so quietly, so earnestly, that she knew Jack, too, was sorry that his friend’s marriage had come undone.

  All the mourning that she’d held bottled inside for fear that it might overwhelm her in its intensity, all the pain of failing at this most sacred of contracts that mattered more than any she’d ever done in her professional life, all of her hopes and dreams and goals for the two of them, all of it merged into a maelstrom of despair and emptiness. When the floodgates opened, Jack was there to soothe her. His arms wrapped around her as she wept. Her tears, long bottled up, seemed a never-ending rain of misery and desolation.

  Enveloping her in his arms, he let her cry.

  After a while, Sonja pushed away from him, embarrassed at her display, but grateful he hadn’t murmured hollow words of placation in an awkward attempt to ease her or stem the flow of her tears. He’d simply let her cry.

  She dashed at her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “It’s a catharsis.”

  Sonja looked up at him, struck by the fact that unlike many men, Jack Spencer didn’t get freaked out by a woman’s tears.

  “It’ll take a strong woman to bring you down, Jack.”

  His gaze assessed her. Frankly. “You’re a strong woman.”

  “But I’m married to your best friend.”

  “There is that.”

  “And you’re not my type.”

  He shrugged in a win-some, lose-some motion.

  “Come on in,” she said, then realized the pointless invitation. “I was in the study packing.”

  “Already.”

  Sonja led the way toward the great room. “Cole is gone for three weeks. There’s no need for me to linger here.” She settled in the corner of a sofa and pulled a throw pillow into her lap.

  Jack looked around the room as if he’d never been there before. “You’ll miss this house.”

  She nodded. “I will. But you didn’t come here to talk about that.”

  He smiled, but the gesture didn’t reach his eyes. Sonja wondered if he
ever truly smiled. She also wondered if this hard man had ever been in love. Jack didn’t seem the type. No woman could tie him down, at least no woman that Sonja could envision. She’d have to be a warrior, just like him.

  “No,” Jack conceded. “I didn’t come to talk about your real estate. As a matter of fact, I have a flight leaving in a couple of hours.”

  The mention of flight sent Sonja’s thoughts winging back to Cole. She blinked several times, fighting back the tears. “I have a lot of work to do tonight. So if you don’t mind . . .”

  “You guys have been married for a year. But I’ve known Cole for more than twenty years,” Jack said. “He puts on a good show. He’s a real kick-ass-and-take-names kind of guy. But you know what?”

  Sonja sniffled. “What?”

  “Inside”—he thumped his heart with a closed fist—“inside, he’s just as scared and confused as the rest of us.”

  Snorting, Sonja settled back in the sofa, a leg propped under her. “Cole’s not afraid of anything.”

  “Then why do you think he ran away to Brazil?”

  She was quiet for a while. “I told him the same thing. And he blew up in my face.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jack slapped his thighs and got up. “Something to drink?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “You sit still. I know where it is.”

  He went to the bar and poured two fingers of Jim Beam in tumblers. “Ice?”

  From the sofa she shook her head.

  “You know why he blew up on you?”

  “It went along the general idea that I didn’t respect his work.”

  Jack nodded as he handed her her drink. “Yeah. That sounds like Cole in full denial.”

  “Denial about what? He’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted—with the exception of the stores. I admit, that was a blow to him, but hardly a fatal one. You may have known him for twenty years, but we went through hell together from the moment we met.”

  Sonja filled him in on how the Heart family had unjustly accused her mother, and later Sonja of theft and malfeasance, and how all her life, Sonja’s single and all-encompassing goal had been to get revenge on the Hearts and bring them down. Every last one of them. She did it all right, in the sweetest way—a way even she hadn’t anticipated: She’d fallen in love with Cole. She’d let her foolish heart rule her wise head, and look what it got her.

  The Hearts would get the last jab in, because here she was just as she’d begun. Alone.

  “You made him complete, Sonja.”

  “You didn’t even know he’d gotten married.”

  “But I know how marriage—how you—changed him. Cole and I started out on a pretty even keel. But Cole always played by the rules. He’d push things to the limit, but he never colored outside the lines.”

  “And you were the maverick?”

  He smiled, and this time Sonja knew it was a genuine one. He seemed faintly amused and Sonja could only wonder what thoughts went through his mind. Jack Spencer was an enigma. A tall, sexy one, but a puzzle nonetheless.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Something like that. I tried it for a while. Thought I would lose my mind, or kill somebody.”

  Sonja sipped from her drink, letting the alcohol and his voice warm her. “So instead of a corporate raider or CEO, you became an international man of mystery.” He gave her a blank look, and Sonja shook her head. “You know, from the Austin Powers movie.”

  “Austin Powers?”

  “Never mind,” she said. “You were saying?”

  “I left. I walked out and never looked back. And so far, I haven’t regretted the life I’ve lived.”

  “But Cole regrets his life? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Cole never got to choose, Sonja. He always did what was expected of him. Yeah, he enjoyed it. And yeah, he’s good at it. But there’s a whole big world out there and now, maybe, he sees this as his last chance to live a little.”

  She put her glass down, the clink of the tumbler on the table loud in the otherwise quiet room. “Are you saying I’ve been a burden, that he shouldn’t have married me?”

  Jack knocked off the rest of his Jim Beam. “Not at all. I’m just saying that when Heart Federated was sold, for Cole, it was like a part of him was hacked out of his body. If you woke up tomorrow and didn’t have your legs or your eyes or your fingers, how would you feel?”

  Sonja folded her arms. “At the moment, I feel like I’m under attack.”

  Jack sat on the sofa cushion next to hers. Sonja didn’t move. “That’s not my intent at all. What I’m trying to tell you is that what Cole is doing is living the life he would have had all those years ago if he hadn’t picked up the Heart mantle and become Heart Federated.”

  Sonja ran her hands through her hair, then propped her elbows on her knees. “He’s having a freaking midlife crisis a few years too early.”

  Jack nodded. “Something like that.”

  “So this isn’t about me?”

  Jack shrugged. “It could be. You’re in his life, so you’re a part of it.”

  Sonja closed her eyes, the tears she’d thought she’d had under control slipping out again. “I thought we’d be forever.”

  Jack slid over and folded her in his arms. “Come on, Sonja. Don’t cry again.”

  She sniffled. He was doing it. Playing the role of the pla-cater. She wanted to hate it, but she wanted even more to know that someone found her attractive, intelligent, beguiling enough that he didn’t need to run off to Brazil to get away from her. Her emotions were too on edge, too close to the surface.

  She turned and came face-to-face with him. Jack’s eyes never left hers. His breathing, shallow and steady, reminded Sonja of a heartbeat. His mouth, like the warm hardness of his body, was there for her. Sonja told herself it would be okay. She told herself she simply needed assurance from another living, breathing person. She told herself that she’d been doing nothing but fighting the attraction to Jack Spencer.

  And she told herself that now was the time to do something about that mutual physical awareness. A moment later, her lips closed over his.

  23

  For a moment, an eternity, Jack let himself revel in the sweet ecstasy of Sonja’s hot mouth. But he knew too well the recrimination that would come if he didn’t put a halt to this right now, right now when he could still control his body, right now before things really got out of hand. Before she did something they’d truly regret.

  “Sonja, no.”

  “Yes,” she murmured against his lips.

  “No.” This time, he said it with a measure of uncompromising conviction—though he felt anything but. Jack had never turned down a willing woman, though in truth in the desolate plains he’d traversed and in the rain forests of South America, he’d had scant opportunity to take advantage of any willing women.

  He seized her arms and pulled them away from him, then wrenched himself free. Up and away from his best friend’s wife.

  Jack wanted to be a man of honor. Maybe in this one, small moment, he could be—for a change.

  From safely behind the sofa where she sat, he watched the realization dawn on her, of what she’d done, what she’d tried to do. Jack wanted her and couldn’t allow himself to take what she offered. Not while she was vulnerable, hurting, and not in control. He did the honorable thing and could live with that choice. At least all that would remain long after this moment was the embarrassment she might feel.

  Sonja put her hands over her face and moaned. “God, please tell me I didn’t just . . .”

  “Let it go, Sonja. Nothing happened.”

  “But I . . .”

  “I said, let it go.”

  The words, ground out and biting, shut her up.

  He paced the length of the sofa and tables, his hands locked behind his back. “I told you I needed to tell you a story. It’s one you need to hear. One day I was between jobs a few years ago and back in the States stocking up on supplies. Cole met me in New York and we went caro
using in Times Square. This was long before Rudy Guiliani’s big cleanup. We picked up some—” His words abruptly cut off, as he remembered just who he was talking to. “Well,” he said, picking up a piece of pre-Colombian pottery, probably Anazasi, from the looks of it. “Just say it was a long night of men behaving badly. When we finally got back to the hotel, we were both pretty plastered.”

  “Cole doesn’t get drunk.”

  He looked at her and snorted. “Lady, Cole was beyond drunk. We finished off a bottle of premium Russian vodka I’d picked up in Tallinn, and then we talked.”

  “Where’s Tallinn?”

  Jack smiled, remembering the time and the place. “In Estonia.”

  Sonja nodded. “You do get around. I can see why Cole might envy your freedom.”

  “Hmm,” was all Jack said about that. “Back to New York.”

  “You and Cole were drinking. He does get talkative after he’s had a drink or two. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t do it very often.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, placing the pottery back on the sofa table. “Maybe. But you know what he told me that night?”

  “What?”

  “That he envied me. Me. Who had no permanent home except a tent in the savannah or a tree hut in a mosquito-infested godforsaken jungle. No home. No family. No possessions. Nothing tangible to call my own. But Cole, he had everything I sometimes wished I’d never turned my back on. And he envied me.” Jack shook his head, still not believing the irony of it all.

  “There were incredible demands put on him by his family, by his mother and his Heart legacy. He had to be a better man than his son-of-a-bitch father. He had to outperform and outgun and outrun so many negatives that he never had a fair chance.

  “Cole ran away to Brazil, Sonja. But he wasn’t running away from you or your marriage. He’s a kid running away from home for the very first time.”

  She leaned back, gave a weary sigh. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  He stared at her for a moment, not saying anything at all, yet managing to convey a vague disappointment. “I thought you were sharper than that.”