by Lynn Young
“Oh, my God! Dallas,” she gasped. She stumbled back as a busboy hurriedly mopped up
the spilt champagne and swept up the broken glass. “Wha…wha…wha…How…Oh, my God. I
had no idea…”
Dallas gave a sharp smile that was a little unpleasant. His voice, though, was bland. “Of course you didn’t. Why would you? I hope you don’t mind that I invited myself to dinner tonight.”
“No, of course not,” she said, swallowing hard what felt like a huge lump in her throat.
“I…I…that is, we…I didn’t know if I should…I mean, I didn’t know where you were…”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anna.” Pepper plucked the fresh glass of champagne that
Cameron had placed in Anna Marie’s hand. “You’ve had enough to drink if you can’t finish your sentences. We don’t want you squinty eyed at the alter and not remembering the name of the man you’re supposed to say I do to.”
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Dallas smile turned congenial, and Anna Marie wondered if she were the only one who
could see the icy hardness behind his pleasant façade. He said conversationally, “I wanted to tell you, Anna Marie, before I forget, that I did get your last letter. I think that was five, six months ago?”
Her face turned white again, her eyes staring at him, stunned, while her sister and
brother-in-law looked at her.
“You never told us you two were corresponding,” Cameron said.
“Why in the world would Anna write a letter to you, Dallas?” Pepper asked, as if she found the idea preposterous.
“Because I asked her to,” Dallas said coolly. “She’s been writing to me for nearly a year, haven’t you, Anna?”
All Anna could do was open and close her mouth like a fish, too overwhelmed with one shock after another to begin putting together a coherent sentence.
“Anna, why didn’t you tell me that you were writing to Dallas? How can you keep
something like that from me?” Pepper demanded. “Anyway, I can’t imagine you really having anything interesting to say to him.” She said to her brother-in-law, “She must have bored you to tears in those letters.”
“I enjoyed your sister’s letters very much.” His eyes bored into Anna Marie’s face.
“Except maybe the last one. It wasn’t your usual chatty detail of home life. But, now, I see why.” He looked around the dining room. “Who’s the lucky man?”
“It’s really no one you know,” Anna Marie managed to whisper in a strangled voice.
Pepper pointed a finger towards Richard who was talking to her parents. “He’s right over there.”
Dallas gave the groom a slow once over. Richard turned, smiled broadly and gave thumbs up sign. Blushing furiously, and not really knowing why she should be, Anna Marie gave a faint smile in return and gave a wave.
“And your parents approve of this marriage?” Dallas asked.
Pepper laughed in the superior way of hers. “Now why should Anna need to get approval from our parents? What are we, in the Victorian age?”
Dallas gave her a mild look, and then said to Anna Marie, “This is all pretty sudden, isn’t it?”
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Before Anna Marie could answer, her sister laughed again. “Sudden? I wouldn’t call a spinster almost thirty years old getting engaged for the first time as sudden. My parents and I feared for her future for so long, we thought she would never find a man.” She gave a great wink at Dallas. “We even suspected that Anna might be a virgin, because we hardly ever saw her with a man, or maybe even a lesbian. And, now, we can all allay our fears with a big sigh of relief.
Her future is set with Richard and it’s all taken care of.”
Dallas looked down at Anna Marie. “Is that why you’re marrying this man? Because he’s rich and can give you a comfortable life?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No, no, no.”
“And what’s wrong with that, if she is?” Pepper asked. “Every girl has a right to look out for her future. I’m not ashamed that I was when I hooked Cameron.”
Dallas ignored her and kept his eyes on Anna Marie’s ashen face, waiting for her answer.
However, she was saved when Richard appeared and put his arm around her waist. “I’m
told by the waiters that it’s time to sit down so they can start serving the dinner.” Anna Marie gave a hesitant smile up at Dallas and allowed Richard to lead her to their table.
But, then, to her horror, Dallas somehow, and ruthlessly so, managed to maneuver
himself to seat right across from where Anna Marie and Richard were sitting at the long dinner table. She felt her stomach drop when her eyes met his calm, very green ones across the table, and she lost whatever little appetite she had. And, apparently, her coordination, as well, because she was concentrating so hard on avoiding those unwavering male eyes. She nearly knocked everything she reached for. Whenever someone said something to her, all she could manage was to mumble short answers.
Completely oblivious to the tension that was wringing his fiancée’s nerves, Richard, always mindful of networking, struck up a conversation with Dallas. “So, Dallas, your brother tells me that you’ve been a Navy SEAL for many years, now.”
Dallas’s eyes flicked at him. “Yes.”
“That’s admirable. I hear it’s a very tough job. Not a lot of men, I understand, pass the training.”
“Training isn’t a walk in the park, that’s true.”
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“I myself have never been in the military, although I would have liked to have joined the Green Berets.”
Dallas’s eyes glanced over at the other man, noting his slender unmarred hands that
looked as if they had never handled anything more lethal than an expensive pen. Anna Marie’s fiancé wore on his placidly handsome face an expression of well-being and general satisfaction of life, making his expression border on smugness that rising affluence often lent. He had baby-fine short brown hair that was just beginning to recede at his temples, and the beginning paunch of a young man who was on the verge of settling into a comfortable middle age.
Dallas said blandly, “I’m sure you would have been a good Beret.” Then he said, “How did you meet, you and Anna Marie?” and did not glance over at Anna Marie when her eyes flew to his.
“How did we meet?” Richard put his arms across the back of her chair and smiled down at her, his smile full of pleased approval. “Why, that’s simple. Her sister, Pepper, brought us together. If it weren’t for her, I’d still probably be at home checking out the porn sites of under-aged girls.” He threw his head back and laughed heartedly, thinking he had made a great joke, not at all noticing that Dallas’s face had stiffened and his fiancée was staring at him with some horror.
“So my sister-in-law brought you two together,” Dallas commented. “She must be
pleased with herself that she hit it out of the park on her first try at matching up Anna Marie.”
“Oh, believe me, I wasn’t the first man Pepper tried to put her way. From what I
understand from Pepper, she’s been matching men up for Anna for years.” Richard leaned towards Dallas conspiratorially. “She actually confided in me that she had feared that she was running out of men who were willing to go on blind dates with her sister and that Anna would forever remain unmarried like an unwanted changeling.” Then he laughed and looked very pleased with himself as he placed his arm around Anna Marie’s shoulder. “Pepper said I was her last hope. It was fortunate for Anna, here, that I was at that time in the market for a wife. I mean, look at me, I make a pretty good living now, my retirement is set and growing every year, and it’s time I thought about having kids. By the time Pepper had introduced us, we were both more than ready to take the big leap.”
Dallas looked from the groom to the bride, watching the acute discomfort on her face.
“So, you’re basically doing Anna Marie a favor by m
arrying her?”
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Richard shook his head. “No, that wasn’t what I meant. I consider myself very grateful that I get to marry her. I know she’ll make a wonderful wife for me as well as a good mother for our children. And I’ll do my part to be a loving and supportive husband. In fact, I take the role of a husband so seriously that I even mapped out our retirement long before I considered taking the matrimonial step. That’s one of the main reasons why Pepper thought I’d make her sister an excellent husband. Because with me, she’s already set in her old age.”
A slight smile flashed briefly on Dallas’s face. “It never occurred to me that you were so preoccupied with old age, Anna Marie.
Before she could answer, Richard said quickly, his face earnest and eager, “You see, that’s what’s wrong with a lot of men today, especially the younger ones. They don’t think enough about their retirement. In fact, the younger you are, the better. When you’re twenty, it takes a minimum of depositing one hundred dollars per month in an IRA to have a nest egg worth over a million dollars once he’s ready to retire. Now, with me, once I graduated from high school, since I had a talent for finances, I took investments more seriously than most young men.
I got a degree in finance and then hired on with Goldman Sachs, then two years later, I opened my own brokerage firm. Now, I consider my firm as a firm where people don’t need to think about their money, because I do it for them.” He leaned towards Dallas as he warmed up to his favorite topic. “I’ve saved many people hundreds and thousands of dollars, even millions in some cases in steering them away from wrong investments. Even though I’ve never worked at Wall Street, I have very good contacts in New York as well as San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles. I’m also beginning to establish some investment partnerships overseas, especially in Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, and Paris. With such connections, I’ll be able to handle clients with portfolios that firms like Goldman Sachs and Schwab do.”
Dallas stared at him, his expression still, as he let it sink in that Anna Marie’s fiancée was actually soliciting him for his family’s business.
Anna Marie avoided his glance, her face suffused with heat from shame and
embarrassment, looking anywhere else, as if she were searching for a place where the earth could swallow her up. She had tried a few times to gently hint to Richard that peddling his business to her in-laws was perhaps not the wisest idea, especially when his first attempt had already fallen on deaf ears. But Richard either was unable to comprehend the socially bad taste of peddling to rich relatives or he chose not to.
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Dallas picked up the glass of water that the waiter had set in front of him and took a sip.
He said to Anna Marie, “At least you’ll be able to quit your job to go back to school full time to get your graduate degree in Library Science. Then you’ll be able to work at the Library of Congress like you’ve always dreamed of.”
Richard gave a laugh and rolled his eyes. “Please, don’t get her started on that. Do you know what it took to finally have Anna give up such a silly notion as getting a useless degree as Library Science and working for the Library of Congress? When she first told me that, I thought she was joking at first. I mean, the Library of Congress. Do you know how far of a commute that would be? Of course, being savvy with women, I didn’t let her know that. But, eventually, we had to address it when we decided to get married.”
“It wouldn’t be a commute if you moved there,” Dallas pointed out reasonably.
Richard blinked. “But my job’s here. My salary is the bigger of the two. And it’s usually the man’s job that determines where a couple should live.”
“In this day and age, it’s not unheard of a family moving locations when the woman gets a decent promotion. If Anna Marie lands a position at the Library of Congress, her beginning salary wouldn’t be comparable to yours, but her job at the Library would be much more important than yours. Many people would think it madness to turn down such a position because of the honor and prestige that goes with the job.”
For the first time that evening, Richard was beginning to look uncertain. “But, what about my job?”
“In this day and age of computers and telecommunication, it seems a broker can set up shop anywhere. Surely, when your wife lands a job with the Library of Congress, you wouldn’t deny her an opportunity of a lifetime, would you, just because you were unwilling to move across the country?”
Richard opened his mouth then shut it in confusion. He said defensively, “I am the
husband, you know. I should have some say in the matter.”
Dallas said silkily, “Of course you are, but if you’re not prepared to be supportive of your wife’s goals and what is important to her, then is it really fair that you should be marrying her?” Richard, losing all of his earlier bonhomie, was starting to look desperate. “Now, just wait one minute…”
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Anna Marie quickly rose from her chair and put her hand on her fiancé’s arm. “Richard, why don’t we go over to my parents? I think my mother said she had a question she wanted to ask about one of the funds you had suggested.”
Only too eager to expound on any willing ears about his precious funds, Richard allowed her to lead him to another table.
Anna Marie did her best to avoid Dallas for rest of the evening. They really had nothing to discuss, and whatever reason he had for suddenly showing up tonight could have nothing to do with her, she decided. She had a wedding to think of, keeping track in her head all the things that needed to be done by the time she had to walk down the aisle tomorrow afternoon. And then she had a future to plan, a new life in a new home to deal with. The last thing she needed tonight was to be distracted.
However, Dallas had no such inclination to play stranger to her, and he came upon her unawares while she was in conversation with one of Richard’s ushers. When the usher walked away, Anna Marie turned and bumped into Dallas’s chest that was impeccably dressed in the white Navy jacket.
“Uh, hi,” she mumbled, stepping back, not quite meeting his eyes.
“Hi, yourself,” he said coldly. “I want to talk to you.”
Anna Marie jerked, guilt pitting deep in her stomach. “Alright, but I’m afraid it can’t be right now. Can it wait? I have to go over and talk to Richard’s mother. I’m afraid I’ve not been able to talk to her all night.”
She was about to go around him when he took her arm. “No, this can’t wait.”
He pulled her through a back door and outside to the back of the building. The night air was cool with a lazy end of the summer breeze, the ski a clear inky black studded with stars.
“Dallas, I…” She had no idea what it was she was going to say.
“Shut up!” he shot out, his words coming out so violently that its impact made her flinch.
“Shut up! Just shut the hell up for a second.” Whatever he had been holding throughout the evening suddenly burst at the seams of his control, and it was apparent that he was having difficulty reining it in again.
They remained like that for a long moment, just the two of them in the dark abandoned courtyard of the building, Anna Marie pressing her back against the wall, and Dallas pacing in Secret Affair 198
front of her, seething with fury and confusion, like a jungle cat trying to decide what to do with a prey that he had caught, and was in a raging quandary because he realized the prey was inedible.
Then he stopped and faced her, turning all his fury full front at Anna Marie, making her cringe against the wall. “What the fucking hell happened, Anna Marie?”
“Wha…with what happened?”
“With you. With us. The last time I saw you, I go off to do my mission, and when I come back a few months later to an army base in Kuwait, I get a letter from you. A Dear John letter, telling me that you’re dumping me, and not telling me why.”
“I wasn’t really dumping you…”
“Then what do
the words, I must put an end to our affair, mean? They certainly don’t sound like let’s have drinks together when next you come back to the states.”
Anna Marie took a deep breath in order to control her need to make a bolt for her escape.
She had never experienced any such violent emotions from Dallas. In actuality, because he had always been so coolly and ruthlessly controlled, except when he was inside her, she didn’t think he was capable of strong emotions.
She licked her lips nervously. “I had my reasons for writing that letter. I can’t get into it right now. This isn’t really the time and place.”
He stepped in front of her and pushed his face until it was inches from hers. “Then get this, Anna Marie, I’ll make sure that very soon, you’ll make the time to explain to me what the hell was going on in your head when you wrote that letter. But you’re going to answer this one question that’s burning in my head right now. You’re not really serious about marrying this guy, are you?”
She blinked up at him, startled at the question. “Why wouldn’t I be? Everything’s all arranged for the wedding tomorrow, including my wedding dress.”
“You can’t marry him, Anna Marie.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s a damned asinine idiot. He’s the last person to make you happy. In fact, I can bet pretty well sure that he’ll make you miserable.”
“How can you be so sure? You don’t even know Richard.”
“Guys like him aren’t too hard to figure out. There’re only two things he cares about in this world, and that’s himself and money.”
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“Richard’s not like that.”
“Then how come he’s making you give up getting your Ph.D. and working for the
Library of Congress?”
“In a marriage it’s called a compromise.”
“Giving up on your lifelong dream is not a compromise. It’s giving up. And that’s what you’re doing by settling for a guy like him.”
“Well, what’s wrong with settling?” she shot back at him. “It’s not so bad, once you get used it. It’s just a matter of adjusting to life as it comes. It was time I started to think about getting married and raising a family.”