Because a Husband Is Forever (13 page)

She was wearing a suede jacket, but it was open and he could see the cameo. Last night it was all she'd had on. He felt his body quickening at the memory and forced it away. “This the place where you got the cameo?”

Her hand covered the delicate piece, as if she was protecting it from something. “What makes you say that?”

“Looks like the kind of place that would carry something like that. Besides, you were fingering your neck
lace and frowning when you walked out of the shop. I thought your impulsive trip up here might have had something to do with it.” When she said nothing to substantiate his deduction, he made a further guess. “Looking for matching earrings?”

It was the easy way out. If she said yes, they'd be done with it.

She didn't take it.

Maybe talking out loud with someone might put things in perspective for her, make her see something she was missing. Besides, the man had been a detective. Maybe he had an explanation for what she thought she'd seen.

“No, I came back because I wanted to talk to the woman who sold this to me. I had some…questions.” Dakota refrained from elaborating. Her questions indirectly had to do with him, because he had walked into her life the very day she'd bought the cameo and put it on. And although she didn't actually believe in magic or legends, she had to admit that something had stirred within her from the first moment she'd laid eyes on Ian.

In a way it had been as if she was under some kind of spell. She supposed part of her just wanted the old woman to admit that the so-called legend was just a fabrication, a ploy to sell the cameo, nothing more. Barring that, she'd wanted to ask the woman about the original owner, to find out if Amanda's fiancé ever did return to her.

She decided it would be for the best if she didn't go on to say that the owners of the antique shop had told
her she'd had a conversation with a dead woman. He'd think she was crazy and why shouldn't he? Part of her thought she was, too.

“She never finished telling me the rest of the legend,” she concluded. She felt Ian studying her face. Why? Did she look like someone who'd bought jewelry from a ghost?

“And did she this time?” he asked.

“She's not there,” Dakota responded evasively.

He didn't see why that would stop her. In the few days he'd spent with her, he'd come to know that the woman had the persistence of an oncoming train. “You can come back when it's not her day off.”

Dakota shoved her hands into her pockets, staring off into the horizon. “I can't.”

“Why?”

Dakota swung around. Her voice had a frustrated edge as she declared, “Because she's dead.”

“She died right after selling you the cameo?”

Her shoulders sagged a little, like someone who saw defeat as inevitable. “No, apparently she hasn't been working in the store for a long time.”

After deciding not to share this part, she had no idea why she was telling him this. He was only going to laugh at her. Or think she was a loon. But somehow the words just kept coming.

“The owner said the store was closed last Monday, which was when I bought the cameo. Closed for a funeral.” She paused a moment, then said, “Hers.” She
searched his face for a clue as to what he was thinking. She half expected him to laugh at her, but he didn't. His restraint was admirable. “You think I'm crazy, don't you?”

To her surprise he shook his head and looked dead serious as he said, “No.”

“Okay, then what?”

Because she looked so lost, he slipped his arm around her shoulders and smiled down at her face. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

She blinked. “
Hamlet
? I've got a bodyguard who quotes Shakespeare?”

He debated for a moment. Ian didn't often share things, certainly not an experience that he had kept to himself for more than twenty years. But something prodded him on.

He made his decision.

“Walk with me for a minute.”

Not waiting for her to respond verbally, he led the way. He took her hand in his and guided her away from the shop, away from their cars and toward the winding road that fed into the highway. The scenery was almost heart-stoppingly picturesque. Trees heavy with the multicolored leaves of autumn nodded their heads, allowing their crowns to slip and fall. Dried leaves crunched beneath their feet as they walked.

“When I was a kid,” Ian began, “I had this blue bike I loved more than anything. Spent hours on it, hanging out until way after dark. My mother was always after me to come home before I got lost. One night I did get
lost. I was riding around in the wooded area that ran behind the development where I lived and a fog had set in. So thick you couldn't see more than a foot in front of you. I was nine and pretty damn scared. And then, out of nowhere, I saw my uncle Danny, my dad's younger brother walking toward me. I was never so happy to see anyone in my whole life. He took my hand and told me never to do something this dumb again, then pointed me in the right direction. He walked with me a little ways. But just as I saw my house, I turned around and realized he was gone. Jumping on my bike, I pedaled like mad for home. When I got there, some of my father's friends from the precinct were there. I thought it was because they were looking for me. I told them I was okay, but that my uncle was still out there. My father—never one for interpersonal relationships—told me to shut up and go to my room. That was when my mother took me aside and told me that my uncle had just been killed in the line of duty less than an hour ago.”

She stopped walking and looked at him. “But you just said—”

“Yes,” he told her quietly, “I did.”

Dakota caught her lower lip between her teeth. “You believe in ghosts?”

He'd never told anyone this story, not after that night. Not even his wife. There'd been no need. But it had stayed with him and whenever he felt completely alone, he remembered that night. And what may or may not have happened.

“I believe that something got me out of that area. Had I gone in the opposite direction, I would have fallen down a ravine into the river that ran along there.” He sighed, then looked at her. His voice remained solemn, but his mouth curved slightly. “I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can't explain everything.”

No, she thought, you can't. “Strange philosophy for a cop.”

He shrugged. “I once saw someone get shot in the head with a nail from a nailgun. It was one of those freak accidents that wasn't supposed to happen. The guy lived. I saw someone else trip in the street, hit their head on the sidewalk and die.” He gave her his conclusion. It was simple and complex at the same time. “Got to be something there more than we can understand.” The wind was picking up. Without thinking, he lifted her collar up for her. “You ready to go back?”

She nodded. “Yes, I'm ready.” She looked toward the antique shop. She knew she'd feel better if she had some confirming details. “I'd still like you to investigate this for me, though.”

He followed her line of vision and smiled. “Never pegged you for a skeptic.”

She returned his smile. “Never pegged you for a believer.”

Ian laughed softly. “Guess we both learned something this morning.”

“Guess we did.”

And then he pulled on her arm, stopping her just be
fore they reached their vehicles. When she looked at him quizzically, he framed her face and kissed her.

Honey and delight swirled through her, despite all the resolve she'd spent the morning fashioning. “What's that for?”

His eyes held hers for just a moment. “For last night.”

He left the words hanging between them as he went to his car. He stood by it expectantly until she got into hers. Watching, Ian let her pull away first.

When she looked in the rearview mirror to see if he was following her, she saw that he was. And that she was smiling.

F
or two days they waltzed around each other, almost painfully polite—ever since they'd returned from the antique shop upstate. It was as if they had each decided that the only way to survive their final week together was to act as if the night of lovemaking had never happened.

Except that it had.

Ian had twice as much reason to remain as distant as he could. He'd gotten too close to her, not just on a physical level but on another plane, as well. He'd shared a story with her he'd never told anyone else. Granted, it seemed as if she needed to hear the story at the time, but still, his experience was immensely personal to him and he just didn't do personal.

Except that he had.

Maintaining mental space was twice as necessary now. But it wasn't easy. Especially since he was living in her apartment and spending every waking moment with her. He was looking forward to the end of this experiment come Monday. And strangely dreading it at the same time.

His life couldn't be called complacent, but there had been a routine—a routine that was being badly altered by this live wire he had sworn to protect. He was beginning to have grave doubts that his life would ever get back to normal once this was over.

So when Dakota waved an invitation in front of him less than ten minutes after they'd arrived home from the studio, he found his patience in short supply. Catching her hand, he held it still long enough to read the words embossed on the ivory rectangle.

Reading didn't bring pleasure.

He raised an eyebrow and looked at her over the elaborate script. “A fund-raiser, huh?”

Taking back the invitation, which was a mere formality in her case, she smiled. “Yes.”

“And you have to go.” He didn't bother suppressing his sigh.

Dakota dropped the invitation on the VCR within her entertainment unit. “I already RSVP'd that I was coming.” And had been quickly commandeered to step in as acting cochairperson since one cochairperson had come down with a raging case of the flu. At the time she'd received the invitation, the “and guest” embossed on it had
meant John. Now, however, it was going to mean her bodyguard. She looked at him, humor playing along the curve of her lips. “But you don't have to.”

Didn't she ever get tired of playing that same old tune? She knew damn well what the terms of their agreement were. “Yes, I do,” he responded reluctantly.

She cocked her head, studying him. Trying not to get sidetracked by the hard, chiseled planes and angles of his face and the way they made her pulse accelerate. “Not that you ever sounded eager about anything, but I sense a really huge display of foot-dragging here. Why?”

He didn't see the point in denying how he felt. Formal affairs were a huge pain in the seat, literally and otherwise. “I hate monkey suits.”

“Then we won't mug a monkey and make you wear one,” she quipped. Still studying him, she took measure of his frame. He hadn't been away from her to go to a gym, but she knew for a fact that one didn't get a body like that by having UPS deliver it. “What are you, a size forty-four long?”

The accuracy of her guess caught him off guard. “How did you know?”

Dakota grinned. “I've got an eye for that kind of thing.” Crossing to the coffee table, she reached for the cordless phone. “I can have Olaf send over a tux for you. Or you could go down and try one on first if you like.”

He stopped her from pressing the buttons on the keypad and, his hand over hers, he pushed the receiver back onto the cradle. “Olaf?”

She could always call the man later. Forty-four long wasn't that unusual, and Olaf had various friends in the business. They'd come up with a tux for Ian.

She nodded in response to Ian's query. “He used to be my father's personal tailor until he decided to come back to his roots and open up a shop in New York. My grandfather lent him seed money. I send him business whenever I can. He's really very good.”

Her endorsement didn't change how he felt about wearing something so confining. “I don't care how good this Olaf guy is, it's still a monkey suit.”

“No,” she corrected patiently, already envisioning Ian in one, “it's a tux, and I have a feeling that you'll look very good in it.”

Ian could see his fate—and doom—in her eyes.

 

Very good
was an understatement, Dakota thought the following evening as she gave Ian the once-over in the living room. The man looked downright gorgeous in the tuxedo that Olaf had sent. Always thinking one step ahead, Olaf had sent along his personal assistant for any last-minute alterations. None were necessary. Ian was a perfect forty-four long.

The back of his black hair brushed ever so lightly against his collar as she walked around him, carefully surveying him from every angle. He didn't have a bad side. But then, she already knew as much.

Dakota felt her palms itch and pressed them against her thighs. “You clean up very well, Ian Russell.”

Turning his head, he glanced at her. “Ditto.” He felt like some kind of mannequin on display at Saks Fifth Avenue.

Finished with her tour, Dakota came to a stop where she had begun. Directly in front of him. She grinned at his response. “Ditto. Now there's a line to turn any woman's head.”

Oddly self-conscious, Ian shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

She cocked her head, regarding him for a moment longer before she said, “Yes, I suppose I do. Would be nice to hear the words, though.”

“I'm not any good with words.”

She blew out a disparaging breath. “Even that monkey you were identifying with can be trained to learn if it wants to.”

“I wasn't identifying with any monkey. I called this a monkey suit,” he corrected.

She appeared unfazed by his need for accuracy. “Whatever.” Her eyes slid along his form one last time. “Ready to go?”

He was ready to stay right where he was. For more reasons than one. Dakota looked mouthwateringly beautiful in her red floor-length gown. The slit on the left ran almost all the way up her thigh, making him want to take the same path with his hand and explore it all over again. The fabric clung to her every breath and even now he could feel his body tightening with desire as he struggled to blank out his mind. With the way he felt, he knew
his safest bet was to be out in the open with her, preferably in a crowd scene. Like the fund-raiser.

He nodded in answer to her question. “Yeah, I'm ready.”

She began to walk to the door, but glanced at him over her shoulder. “Smile. You look like a man whose shoes are pinching him too tightly.”

“It's not my shoes,” he said. After draping the black velvet cape she'd handed him around her shoulders, he opened the front door for her.

Dakota smiled to herself as she walked out of the apartment.

 

Ian cooled his heels at the bar, nursing the same drink he'd held in his hand for the last hour. And all the time he'd watched her work the room like a pro. It seemed as if no one could say no to the woman. He took another perfunctory sip of his scotch and soda.

Dakota had failed to tell him that she was cochair-woman of the fund-raiser and, as such, she took it upon herself to loosen every person's grip on their wallet or purse strings. As she wove her way from table to table, smiling, pausing to chat, he found himself thinking that the process appeared to be almost a painless one for the donors. Not everyone looked as if they'd been preserved in ice for the last fifty years.

Jealousy pricked at him as he observed the way some of the men looked at her. As if she was the last club sandwich on a tray, and they were going off an eight-day fast.
A host of unprofessional reactions assaulted him. Annoyed with himself, Ian knew he had to get a grip. But it wasn't easy, not when he was watching her move so seductively from group to group, her hips swaying ever so invitingly.

He took another sip, finally finishing his drink. And wanting more.

 

Dakota smiled to herself as she jotted down the latest name and pledge amount on the small ledger she carried with her. Relying on mutual connections, firsthand encounters and previous relationships, she had managed to charm her way into getting almost a hundred thousand dollars in pledges.

Not bad for an evening's work, she thought. And the evening was still young.

A familiar tune drifted through the air. It took her a second to realize that the band had begun playing, now that dinner was over. She closed her eyes for a moment and let the melody seep into her. Her hips swayed a little in time to the music.

“Would you like to dance?”

She could have sworn that the voice belonged to Ian, but she had to be imagining things. Ian wasn't the type of man to ask a woman to dance. He was the type to beg off, mumbling something about having two left feet or a phobia of being on a crowded dance floor. Or maybe an old injury, sustained in the line of duty, that only flared up if his feet had to move in time to the music.

Turning around, she saw that he was standing right there behind her.

She tucked her ledger back into the small purse she'd brought and shook her head, as if to clear it. “I'm sorry, did you say something?”

“I asked you if you'd like to dance,” Ian repeated. Was it the scotch? She looked even more beautiful now than when they'd first walked in.

“I'd love to dance.” Humor curved her mouth as she pretended to look around. “You have anyone in mind?”

His brows narrowed, and he moved in a step closer. “Well, since the question came from me, I figured—me.”

“You dance.” The words were half a statement, half a question uttered in disbelief.

“I wouldn't be asking you to dance if I didn't.” He took her hand in his and led her to the dance floor. “What's so funny?”

“Nothing.” More easily than she thought possible, she slipped her hand into his and began to dance. “I just can't picture you wanting to learn how to dance.”

He was good, she thought. Very good. But then, pride probably kept him from being anything less than good, no matter what he undertook.

“Wanting had nothing to do with it.” He placed his hand at the small of her back, coming in contact with bare skin. It seemed as if her dress was being held up by magic and possibly crazy glue. “My mother told me she figured I needed social graces.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “Wise woman, your mother.”

He shrugged carelessly. “Not so wise, she married my father.”

A world of questions popped into her head. For now, she banked them down. If she started asking, she knew he'd clam up and this moment would be gone.

“If she hadn't, there wouldn't have been you.” She turned her face up to his. “I'm a firm believer in destiny. How about you?”

When she leaned her head back like that, he could feel her hair brushing up along the back of his hand. The sensation sent tiny shock waves through him. “I believe in the moment.”

She regarded him with amusement. “As in living in it?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “That's good, too.” The music pulsed through both of them and they moved with it as if they were two halves of a whole. Excitement snaked through her like an electric eel, sending off sparks in its wake. “Did your mother teach you how to dance?”

“Yes.”

Dakota caught her lower lip between her teeth as she regarded him. “Did she teach you any other social graces?”

He thought a moment, or pretended to. “To keep my mouth shut when I couldn't say something nice.”

She thought of his close-mouthed persona. If she didn't prod him, she had no doubt that he would have perhaps let only a dozen sentences fall, all centering around her lax approach to personal security. “And you took that to the nth degree, right?”

His eyes held hers for a long moment, and she would have sold her soul to know what he was thinking. “Like I said—”

“You're not good with words,” she concluded for him. “Yes, I know, we've already had this conversation.” Her eyes searched his, looking for clues, for something she couldn't put a name to. Or was afraid to. “I was hoping for a different outcome this time.”

“Why?” he asked. “Don't you have enough people telling you that you're beautiful? That looking at you makes a man weak in the gut and that all he can think of is making love with you?”

“Never enough,” she breathed, her heart having lodged in her throat. Excitement raced through her.

“Well,” he began, turning her so they pivoted sharply. She felt his hand press against her back. Thrilling her. “You won't hear it from me no matter how true it is.”

“Okay.” Leaning her cheek against his shoulder, she breathed in the light scent of his cologne and let herself be taken away.

Ian felt the warmth of her breath even through his tuxedo jacket. Felt, too, the call of desire. His hand pressed her closer to him, almost as if it had a mind of its own.

Just like the rest of his body.

 

Humming, Dakota sailed into the foyer through the door that he had unlocked for her. “God, it was a wonderful night,” she declared.

The hour was late. The party had lasted until two o'clock in the morning, and she had stayed to the very end, coaxing, cajoling and adding to the pot by another thirty thousand dollars. It was only a drop in the bucket as far as research for Parkinson's was concerned. But it helped. Every little bit helped, she told herself.

She was flying, she realized, and she didn't want to come in for a landing.

He watched Dakota weave ever so slightly as she dropped the shoes she was carrying on the floor. She looked particularly small to him. Small and delicate. And delectable. He felt large and clumsy in contrast. Like a bear standing beside a porcelain angel.

To his surprise, instead of heading for her bedroom, Dakota pivoted on her heel and began to push his jacket from his shoulders.