A Deceptive Attraction: The Wilsons, Book 3 (9 page)

“Merci,” Violet said, lowering her lashes down over those enormous blue eyes that already were haunting his dreams at night. “And where are you taking me this evening, Monsieur Girard?”

“To the stars, my dear, to the stars.” When Violet looked quizzically at him, he said, “Actually, to the Edison Ballroom here in Midtown.”

“That will do,” Violet said, “if the stars aren’t within reach.”

“Ah, but they are,” Leon said. He banished the thought of Hugh and his job from his mind, put his arm around Violet, and pulled her close to him for the rest of the ride, as if he was afraid she would get away from him.

They arrived at the ballroom and the driver let them out. Inside the hall, the big lighted ball spun, casting tiny lights around the dance floor, and the band was already warming up. Leon found them a table in the back where it was quieter. When the waitress arrived, he ordered a gin and tonic for Violet, along with a club soda for himself.

“No party for Leon tonight?” Violet inquired.

“I’m afraid not,” Leon replied. “I had to take some medication.”

It wasn’t a lie, he thought to himself. He had taken a sedative yesterday as soon as he learned that the bus would be going to the Rockefeller Center. It just hadn’t taken effect quickly enough to keep him from having a panic attack.

No, his reason for not drinking was merely dishonest as hell. The medication was absolutely not the reason he was abstaining from alcohol this evening.

He wasn’t supposed to drink while he was on the job.

The catering staff served dinner, which was execrable, but he was hungry, and he wanted to make sure Violet didn’t go hungry either. Damn! He should have taken her out for dinner before the reception.

As if on cue, the band started its first number, a hot salsa tune. Across the room, Leon spotted Hugh working the crowd, earnestly doing his job. Probably looking for me already, Leon thought.

“Do you dance?” he asked Violet.

“I thought you would never ask,” she replied.

He led her to the dance floor, took her left hand in his right, and placed his other hand on her slender waist.

She was a skilled dancer and followed his every move through the merengue. Leon stepped it up, spinning her forward and backward, bending her like a willow and straightening her up. She looked at him through languid, half-closed eyes, as if she was taking a nap in the sun instead of spinning like a fireball on her high heels.

They were both breathing hard by the time the number had finished. Leon saw that Hugh had scoped out their table while they were dancing and had helped himself to Leon’s seat.

The bastard, Leon thought.

“Another dance, mademoiselle?” he asked her, catching his breath.

“Of course,” Violet said.

This song was even faster than the first. The band’s horn section was ramping up to full throttle and riffing off one another as Leon spun Violet through another merengue, admiring how she executed the steps in her high heels as if she had been born with them on her feet.

The end of the song left a trickle of sweat making its way down Leon’s temple, and he discreetly wiped it away with his handkerchief. Violet looked as cool as she always did, but he knew she was tired.

Over at their table, he saw that Hugh was still seated, looking for all the world like a vulture waiting for something to die. It was time to leave the dance floor and face a different kind of music.

As Leon approached the table with Violet, he shot Hugh a warning glance to vacate his seat. True to form, Hugh ignored him and made a point of waiting to stand up until Leon had started his introductions.

“Violet, please meet Hugh Steffans,” Leon said. Reluctantly, he added, “My partner.” It pained him to lend his credibility to a loser like Hugh. “Hugh, this is Violet Wilson.”

Violet nodded cordially and extended her hand. Hugh shook hands with her. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Wilson,” he said, emphasizing her last name.

If Hugh had kissed her hand, Leon would have decked him.

Leon seated Violet, made his way to the opposite side of the table, and took the seat that his partner had vacated. He left it up to Hugh to pull up his own chair.

Chapter 12

Violet was enjoying the reception. Leon had been correct when he told her that there was no one there she had any interest in talking to, and the dinner had been unremarkable. But the salsa music had made her toes tingle as soon as the band started up. When Leon asked her to dance, she thought for a moment that she had died and gone to heaven.

Growing up, Violet had been expected to learn to dance. She had taken ballet and tap starting at the age of five. By thirteen she had been taught the full gamut of ballroom dances, from the waltz to the jitterbug to the tango, but her favorite was the merengue. At the exclusive prep school for girls she had attended during her high school years, she had learned important subjects like math, science, figure drawing, and how to twirl on the dance floor at dizzying speed while wearing high heels.

As Leon spun her expertly around the floor and executed impossibly intricate moves with their interlocked arms, she smiled inwardly. She should have guessed that Leon would be a good dancer. The French had their priorities straight.

She was pleased when Leon asked her for a second dance, but by the end she noticed she had missed a few steps. She was getting tired. One more merengue would run the risk of twisting an ankle in her three and a half inch heels. She was relieved when Leon led her off the dance floor, dabbing at his temple with his handkerchief.

A bald, florid man of about forty-five was sitting in Leon’s seat at their table. She noticed that Leon’s manner was stiff and cold as he introduced the man as Hugh Steffans, his partner.

Hugh shook her hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Wilson.” His hand was unpleasantly damp and sweaty, and he said her last name with an annoyingly familiar air, as if he already knew her family intimately.

Violet was surprised that Leon would choose to associate with someone like Hugh, who was as rumpled and nervous as Leon was cool and smooth. She intended to ask Leon some questions about their business relationship as soon as she could, but she doubted he would give her a straight answer. He hadn’t bothered to so far, and tonight he had looked nervous ever since Hugh showed up. Nervousness was out of character for Leon.

She shrugged it off. She was dressed up in after-five wear, and her date was the best looking man in the ballroom. She had been having fun and she intended to keep having fun.

Hugh pulled up a chair and zeroed in on her. “So, Violet, has Leon told you that we’re stock traders?”

“Yes,” Violet said. Sort of, she thought to herself.

“I don’t suppose you have any interest in the market?”

“Not really.”

“That’s too bad,” Hugh said. “Everyone should play the market. It’s so easy now with discount brokerages and online trading. You really should try it, Violet.”

He said her name with an annoying familiarity that reminded her of the time one of Tim’s friends had hit on her at a party while Tim was off talking to God knows who.

Leon still hadn’t said a single word directly to Hugh. Violet glanced at his face. She couldn’t tell if Leon was angry, nervous, or both, but she took his facial expression as a cue and decided not to engage Hugh. Sooner or later he would get bored and leave them alone.

Hugh noted Violet’s empty glass. “Leon, my man,” he said. “Your lady friend’s drink is in need of a refresher.” He nodded in the direction of the bar.

Violet caught on immediately to what Hugh had in mind and shook her head at Leon. “I’m fine, really,” she said.

Leon stayed in his seat and didn’t look at his partner.

Beads of sweat had formed on Hugh’s shiny forehead. After several minutes of awkward silence at the table, Hugh rose and left without so much as saying, “excuse me.”

Violet watched as the rotund little man stalked off into the crowd. Turning to Leon, she was about to ask him what that was all about.

Leon interrupted before she could say anything.
“Another dance, Violet?”

“Sure,” Violet said without much enthusiasm. This was going to be another example of Leon’s inscrutability regarding information she had a right to know. It was getting old.

The dance number was a tango. Violet put the unpleasant encounter with Hugh out of her mind and lost herself in the dramatic mock courtship of the dance steps. It was impossible to have a bad time as long as there was a dance floor and a good band.

The band took a break. Back at their table, Leon excused himself. “I will only be gone a moment,” he said. Violet watched as he strode swiftly toward the men’s room, almost breaking into a trot at the end.

Within seconds, Hugh had appeared out of nowhere and was standing next to the table.

“Leon’s being bull-headed tonight,” the little man said. “Like I was saying, you really should get into the market. I just got a tip that Amixa Corp is about to take a huge crap. Call your family and share the happy news.”

Violet’s eyes narrowed. She knew what insider trading was. “The only call I’m going to make about you is to the SEC.”

Hugh smirked at her. “You’re a cute little package. I’d like to give you a jingle sometime after Leon goes back to France. What’s your phone number?”

Violet looked directly at him. “Go back to your pig parlor and get yourself cleaned up,” she said coldly. She got up from the table and headed for the ladies room.

Back at the table she found Leon
standing near their table and scanning the ballroom. “Where have you been?” he asked.

Violet was annoyed with him for reasons too numerous to count at the moment. “The little girls’ room.” She took a deep breath. “You’d better keep a closer eye on your wing man before he gets both of you in hot water.”

“I’m sorry about Hugh,” Leon said, but didn’t elaborate.

Violet’s mind was spinning with the implications of what Hugh had just told her, but she was in no shape to sort them out right away.

“Leon, anytime you want to leave is fine with me,” she said.

Leon took out his phone. “I’ll have the car brought up immediately.”

He put his arm around her shoulder on the ride back to the hotel. Violet’s first instinct was to move closer to him and enjoy the warmth of his embrace, but she ordered herself not to.

Hugh had ruined the evening, no two ways about that. If only that were all he had ruined. In one devastating sentence, he had torn Violet’s trust in Leon into a million little pieces. Things between them could never be the same.

“Mon cherie,” she heard Leon whisper in her ear, tightening his arm around her. His deep, rich voice with its French accent still set her body on fire, but her mind was now detached. Violet felt paralyzed.

She had a decision to make. If she did nothing, the town car would drop them off at the hotel. Leon would escort her up to the suite, take her hand, and lead her into the master bedroom. He would kiss her. Her black velvet dress would come off over her head, leaving her wearing only the lacy black bra and panties she wore beneath it. Leon would strip them from her, and she
would step out of her high heels as he removed his tux. His erection would be hard even before he undressed. Violet felt a flash of desire stream through her own sex at the thought of his.

Or she could part from him at the curb in front of the hotel, hail a cab, go home to her empty apartment, and never see him again.

Neither choice would change the facts one bit. It was what it was.

Violet put her head on Leon’s shoulder and let him kiss her. Just for tonight, she thought, I’ll pretend nothing bad has happened.

Chapter 12

“I don’t understand, Violet,” Leon said. “I am so sorry that Hugh was rude to you last night. I should have stayed closer to you and kept him away.”

He paced back and forth, bare-chested in Violet’s private room in the suite, wearing only the low-slung blue jeans he had quickly put on when he opened his eyes and saw her already dressed and quietly exiting through the door of the master bedroom.

Again he had the sudden urge for a cigarette.

“That isn’t the problem, Leon,” Violet said, throwing her things into her two big wheeled suitcases. “I know how to deal with men like Hugh. I’ve been dealing with them my entire life.”

She packed the black velvet dress she had worn yesterday evening into a garment bag and zipped it up. Leon shuddered as he remembered last night, when he had slipped that same dress up over her head so he could drink in the sight of her creamy skin. Underneath the dress she had worn a lacy black bra and panties. When he recalled the sight of her, standing nearly nude before him in her high heels, he felt a shock of pain and pleasure in his groin.

“The problem,” Violet continued,” is that I don’t know how to deal with a man like you.” She zipped both suitcases and fastened their straps.

“And what kind of man is that?” Leon inquired, stepping closer to her.

“A man who lies to make himself seem like a saint
.”