He soon recovered, though. “In that case,” he said, “I’d be honored to act as your escort.”
“I can’t allow it. For a start, you’re on vacation and might have other plans for next Saturday.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t, at least not in the evening. So unless you’re afraid I’ll step all over your feet—”
“It’s not that!”
He regarded her quizzically. “Then what is it?”
“Everything!” She shook her head, bewildered by her agitation. “Even discounting the fact that we’ve barely met, I haven’t been part of the singles scene in over ten years.”
“Perhaps,” he suggested gravely, “it’s time you got used to the idea again.”
Just seconds before, she’d have sworn nothing would persuade her to go along with such a notion. But the warmth in his tone of voice, the sympathy she saw in his eyes, had her suddenly thinking, Why not?
It had been months since she’d known any real excitement; longer still since she’d met a man as attractive as he was. And it wasn’t as if they’d be alone. Fran and Adam would be there, and so would her parents, along with just about everyone else in town. If it turned out that she and Michael D’Alessandro had nothing to say to each other after the first half hour, there’d be plenty of other people willing to carry the conversational ball for the rest of the evening.
“Perhaps it is,” she agreed. “All right. If you’re still here and of the same mind next week at this time, I’ll be glad of your company.”
He subjected her to another of those long, intense looks. “You can count on it, Camille,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere, any time soon.”
She hadn’t expected to see him again before the night of the gala, but avoiding anyone in a town as small as Calder was near to impossible, especially when that person was as eye-catching as Michael D’Alessandro. Over the next three days, she ran into him on three different occasions.
The first time they met was at Dolly’s Coffee House. Camille and Jeremy were sitting at one of the outside tables, he with an ice cream cone and she with an iced cappuccino, when her Saturday night escort suddenly showed up. He stopped just long enough to say hello, let his glance linger a moment on Jeremy, and observe, “He’s a fine-looking boy, Camille. You must be very proud.”
“I am,” she said. “And very lucky, too.” Then, fearing her reply sounded unnecessarily clipped, felt obliged to add, “Would you care to join us?”
“Wish I could,” he said with what seemed to be sincere regret, “but I’m meeting Adam Knowlton and a couple of his associates in a few minutes.”
Later that morning, they ran into him again in the delicatessen. “Thought I’d put together a picnic lunch and eat down by the river,” he said. “I’m told there’s a swimming hole just outside town that’s well worth a visit on a day like this.” Then, seeing the way Jeremy’s face lit up, added, “Don’t suppose I can talk you into joining me this time?”
“Afraid not,” she said. “We’re due at the dentist in an hour for our six-month checkups.”
Then, early on Tuesday afternoon, he drove into the service station on the highway right after she did, and pulled up to the gas pump behind hers.
“I’m on my way into San Francisco,” he told her, coming to her car and bending almost double to look in the window while the attendant checked under the hood. “Thought I’d better fuel up here, rather than risk running short in the tunnel or on the Bay Bridge.”
If it hadn’t been preposterous, she’d have thought he was deliberately seeking her out, but after this opening comment, he seemed more interested in Jeremy than her, joking about his being the back-seat navigator for mom and a lot of other nonsense.
Again, Jeremy flowered under the attention. Apropos of nothing, he announced, “I’ve got teeth!” and bared them in all their pearly infant glory.
Michael D’Alessandro had teeth, too, and promptly showed them off in a smile that, annoyingly, set Camille’s heart to fluttering. “You sure have, pal,” he said. “Bet your dentist gave you a gold star for looking after them so well.” He swung his glance back to her with obvious reluctance. “I guess I should get going.”
“Yes. Do you have friends in the city?”
As it had the day they’d met, a brief cloud of sorrow dimmed his smile. “I…wouldn’t say that, exactly. Just getting to know the area better, that’s all.”
She’d asked purely to be polite, and wondered why such a straightforward question made him uncomfortable. From the little she’d seen, he didn’t strike her as a man easily put offstride.
Seeming to recognize that his hesitancy was out of character, he said, “I found Golden Gate Park the other day and thought I’d explore it further. It’s huge.”
She nodded. “Over a thousand acres, I believe. Just don’t get caught in the rush hour traffic on the way back to Calder. It’s a dreadful commute.”
“So I’ve discovered. I plan to stay downtown well into the evening.”
The attendant slammed down her car hood, wiped his hands on a rag, and gave her the thumbs-up sign. “Everything looks good, Ms. Whitfield.”
“Well…!” She offered Michael D’Alessandro a cool smile. “See you on Saturday, if not before.”
“It’ll be before,” he told her. “The Knowltons invited me to dinner the day after tomorrow, and I understand you’ll be there, as well.”
“Really?” It was her turn to be caught offguard. “We usually do get together on Thursdays but I hadn’t realized Fran had asked you to join us.”
“I think she feels sorry for me wandering around on my own, so she’s taken me under her wing.”
Camille thought Fran’s motives were more devious than that, but she wasn’t about to put ideas in his head by saying so.
Fran poured the last of the Chardonnay into their glasses, dropped into the chair next to Camille’s, and kicked off her shoes. “Well, was the evening as bad as you thought it’d be?”
“Bad?” Camille sipped her wine thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t say ‘bad’ so much as ‘pointless.’ Why go to all this trouble to cultivate an acquaintance with a man who’s only passing through town? It might be different if he were moving here permanently.”
“Because he’s a nice man, and it looks as if he and Adam are going to be doing business together, and it’s my wifely duty to entertain a client.”
“But why include me?”
Fran, who tended to favor forthrightness over tact, took an unusually long time to answer. Finally she said, “When was the last time you felt any kind of excitement about life?”
“I don’t need excitement. I had enough of that trying to keep my marriage intact. These days, I’m happy to settle for peaceful and uneventful.”
“You’re too young and beautiful to settle for anything, least of all that.”
“I’m thirty years old, Fran.”
“Exactly! And most of the time, you talk and act as if you’re pushing ninety!” Fran leaned forward emphatically. “But you came alive tonight, Camille. The old sparkle was back in your eye. And we both know why.”
“If you’re suggesting Michael D’Alessandro’s the reason—”
“He’s the reason, all right! He flirted with you—in an entirely gentlemanly way, I might add—and you flirted right back. He made you laugh, and he made you blush almost as much as you’re blushing now.”
“For heaven’s sake, I did not flirt!”
“You didn’t hoist up your skirt and fling yourself in his lap, perhaps, but I saw you giving him the old eyeball treatment.”
“He was my bridge partner. I was trying to warn him not to overbid.”
Openly snickering, Fran said, “I see. And I suppose when you were ogling him during dinner, you were trying to warn him there might be caterpillars in his salad?”
Camille slammed down her wineglass with rather more force than was good for it. “I’m not up for this discussion tonight. I’m going home.”
&nb
sp; “Just because I’m pointing out truths you’d prefer not to hear is no reason to take it out on my good Steuben crystal,” Fran said equably. “Nor do I understand why you’re getting so hot about this. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your finding a man attractive. Nowhere is it written that a divorced woman has to shut herself off from the opposite sex and act as if she’s taken holy orders.”
“But I don’t know this particular man! How often do I have to repeat that before it sinks in with you, Fran?”
“Most adult relationships start out that way, my dear. It’s what comes of getting to know someone that counts.”
“Michael D’Alessandro isn’t going to be around long enough for me to get to know him—at least, not in any meaningful fashion.”
“So forget ‘meaningful’ and just have a fling. Heaven knows, you’re ripe for one, and the opportunity’s staring you in the face. Lighten up and have some fun for a change. You might find you like it.”
Was it possible Fran was right, and she was ripe for a fling? Did that explain the heady feeling that had begun during dinner and lasted throughout the short drive from the Knowltons’ house to her own—as if she were a little giddy from too much champagne, even though she’d had only two and half glasses of wine all night? And if so, might she not be better off experimenting with a man who just happened to be passing through, rather than someone she’d known all her life? At least that way, if the whole thing turned out to be a disaster, he wouldn’t always be around to remind her of it.
The idea percolated at the back of Camille’s mind all the time she was arming her home security system for the night, sending Nori, her Japanese nanny, off to bed, and making a last check on Jeremy. By the time she, too, was ready to turn in, she’d half convinced herself Fran was right, and the prospect of being escorted to the gala by Michael D’Alessandro didn’t seem such a bad idea, after all. In fact, it had assumed intriguing new possibilities.
Kay’s condition seemed to have deteriorated by the Friday. After leaving her, Michael drove along the western rim of Golden Gate Park, found his usual bench overlooking the water, and sat there, elbows on his knees, fingers steepled in front of his mouth.
A light mist had drifted in earlier, turning the June evening cool and leaving that particular stretch of park almost deserted. Just as well. If he was going to start bawling, he didn’t need an audience.
“How much longer?” he’d asked the nurse, before he left the hospital.
She’d shaken her head. “Maybe weeks, maybe days. It’s hard to tell.”
He’d asked his next question before and already knew the answer. Chemotherapy had failed, radiation had failed. Still, he’d had to ask again, “Is there nothing that can be done for her?”
“We’re keeping her comfortable, Mr. D’Alessandro. I’m afraid that’s the most we can offer. If she’d seen a doctor and been diagnosed sooner….”
His sense of helplessness had spilled over into anger. “Why the devil didn’t she? She had medical insurance.”
The nurse shrugged sympathetically. “Perhaps she was afraid of what she’d find out. A lot of people are. By the time she did come for help, it was too late.”
Too late in more ways than one!
Just before he left her, Kay had pinned him in a haunted, pleading gaze. “I’d like to see my baby, Mike…just once…just for a minute. Couldn’t you find a way…please…?”
But she didn’t know how she looked now; had no idea how terrifying a three-and-a-half-year old would find her. Once again, she’d left it too late. And even if she hadn’t, there was no way he could have arranged a visit without telling Camille the whole story—which opened up another can of worms he wished didn’t exist.
As a woman, Camille Whitfield was off limits to him. He knew that with utter certainty and to behave as he had last night would bring nothing but disaster. Yet she pulled him like a magnet.
He tried to justify his response by telling himself he had to cozy up to her if he wanted to get closer to his son. The woman was no longer married, after all, nor, as far as he could determine, involved with another man, so what was wrong with cultivating a bit of a relationship? He’d even gone the route of thinking that the reason he found her so attractive lay in the fact that, physically, she was the antithesis of Kay: clear-eyed, sweetly fleshed, golden.
There was no doubt that seeing his ex-wife in her present condition affected him more deeply than he’d ever expected. Each time he left her in that narrow, sterile hospital room, every instinct cried out for him to hold on to a warm, healthy body and let it drive away the specter of the woman he used to know.
Maybe that was natural enough. But if so, it shouldn’t be Camille Whitfield’s body he reached for! Bad enough he was already using her. To compound the sin by encouraging anything that might fan the flames of sexual attraction between them was out of the question and he simply couldn’t allow it to happen.
It couldn’t be Jeremy he held on to either, even though he’d have given ten years of his life to be able to wrap his arms around that little boy and hug him close to his heart. The same blood might run in their veins, but circumstance had relegated him to the role of friendly stranger in his son’s life. He couldn’t do anything which might jeopardize strengthening so fragile a link.
Hell, what a mess!
Lifting his head, he stared out at the blurred lights pricking the darkness—and knew it wasn’t mist obscuring his vision, it was tears. How many times had he come to this spot to get himself back together after visiting Kay? How often had he wound up sniveling like a kid? And how many more times, before it was over for her?
Damn! He hadn’t been a tenth as broken up when their marriage went bad. Been glad to see the back of her, in fact. So why all this emotion now when it was too late to do either of them any good?
Swiping an impatient hand over his eyes, he hauled himself off the bench and started back to where he’d left the car. Enough of the brooding and self-pity. He’d promised Kay he’d find a way to photograph the child and bring her a copy.
Sitting there asking questions no one could answer wasn’t going to get the job done. He’d be better off thinking up ways to wheedle his way further into Camille Whitfield’s good graces without compromising his integrity any more than he already had—and hope to high heaven he wouldn’t give in to temptation along the way.
CHAPTER TWO
THANKFULLY, the madness passed and she was able to withstand Fran’s suggestion that being seen on the arm of a “hunk” warranted buying a new dress for the gala. When Saturday came, Camille didn’t even haul out the family diamonds, even though she knew her mother would comment on their non-appearance.
Instead she picked out a black chiffon creation she’d worn several times before, and teamed it with black silk pumps and the black pearl choker and earrings her father had brought back for her from one of his overseas business trips.
“Good grief, who died?” Fran exclaimed, when she and Camille met for pre-dinner drinks on the terrace of the country club that night. “Don’t tell me you offed your date?”
“No,” Camille said sweetly. “If I were bent on murder, old friend, you’d be my choice of victim. Michael’s in the lobby, buying raffle tickets.”
“Well, at least he’s graduated to being called ‘Michael’ instead of ‘that man’ or worse! Is he in funereal garb as well?”
“He’s wearing a very nice dinner suit.”
“And looks delicious in it, I’m sure.”
Camille pressed her lips together, but the smile crept through anyway. “As a matter of fact, he does. And unlike you, he sees nothing wrong with my outfit, either.”
Actually, what he’d said when he came to pick her up at the house was, “Holy cow!” but the way his eyes had swept her from head to toe told her he very much liked what he saw.
“Well, that’s what matters.” Fran tipped her head to one side and inspected Camille again. “And on second thought, maybe there is something
to be said for the contradictory way you’ve done yourself up—all that demure black giving out a touch-me-not message, while the neckline begs ‘Take a peek!’ It’s enough to drive any red-blooded man off the rails.”
“What?”
“You heard!” Fran glanced over her shoulder to the doors leading into the clubhouse. “Please close your mouth and stop hyperventilating, Camille. Your escort and my husband are about to descend on us bearing gifts, and you’re wasting all the trouble you’ve gone to to look alluring by gaping like a landed fish.” Then, without missing a beat, she sang out blithely, “Hello, Michael! So nice to see you again. I was just admiring Camille’s dress. Lovely, isn’t it?”
“Very nice indeed.”
An acceptable enough response, Camille supposed, but definitely lacking his earlier moment of spontaneous approval. In fact, when she came to think about it, apart from that initial burst of enthusiasm, his manner toward her had tended to be as formal as his attire.
He handed her a glass of champagne without quite touching her fingers, then stood a respectable distance away and showed no inclination at all to look down the front of her dress, or at any other part of her, come to that! For all the interest he showed, she might as well have been just another potted plant. What confounded her the most, though, was that she felt so let down about it!
He showed no such reticence with the Knowltons, laughing and chatting with them as comfortably as if they’d all grown up playing in the same sandbox, so she was glad when her mother and father eventually showed up. At least she could count on them not to ignore her.
“Come and meet Michael D’Alessandro, Camille’s date for the evening,” Fran caroled, after the obligatory round of air kisses and greetings. “Michael, this is Glenda and David Younge, Camille’s parents.”
“D’Alessandro? I’m not familiar with the name,” her mother said, offering the tips of her fingers in a handshake. “You’re not from around here, are you, Mr. D’Alessandro?”
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