Moonlight Man (13 page)

Candice had been delighted to welcome him too. “A stag is always great to have around,” she said. “He can spell tired old husbands when they don’t want to dance anymore.”

He’d willingly promised to do just that, and now he saw his friends on the dance floor. He waited until they went back to their table, then casually made his way through the crowd, wondering what Sharon’s face would reveal when she finally realized he was there.

Sharon froze in mid-step as she walked back to their table with Lorne. Was she seeing things? Or was it just her imagination? But no, it was not her imagination. That was Marc, all right, dressed in the same dark gray suit he’d worn to the wedding and again on Christmas Day. As before, she couldn’t help but think how marvelous he looked, how smooth, how suave, how … sophisticated. Like the well-off member of a prestigious law firm …

Lorne took her arm, glancing at her as her steps faltered. “Are you all right?”

“Uh, yes. Fine. I … almost lost my shoe.” She forced herself to walk on, and then experienced an indescribable stab of agony when she saw Marc take a tall, willowy blonde into his arms and dance her across the floor as the band began a slow, sensuous tune. She sat, staring straight ahead, struggling with the unfamiliar emotion eating at her. Who was that woman? Where had Marc found her at the last minute? And how had he got tickets, also at the last minute? To her knowledge, this New Year’s Eve dance had been fully booked months ago!

“… don’t you agree, Sharon? Sharon?” She blinked and focused her attention on Lorne. They were alone at the table, the other two couples were on the dance floor.

“I’m sorry. I was off in a dream. What did you say, Lorne?”

He took her hand and put it on his lap under the table, leaning close to her. “What were you dreaming about? Do I dare think it was the future?”

“Lorne…” She could feel her color ebbing, and knew the time had come to make things clear to him.

“No, no,” he said, patting her parted lips with two hushing fingers. “Don’t worry. I won’t embarrass you by demanding your answer now.” He smiled with confidence that sent her heart plunging. “I can wait until I take you home after the dance.” His smile faded, replaced by a look she had never seen in his eyes and feared now that she saw it. “On the other hand, I have to say I can scarcely wait to take you home after the dance. Your children are away … mine are at home with their mother where they belong, and it will be just the two of us. A wonderful way to start the New Year.” Lifting her hand from his lap, he kissed her knuckles while she stared at him in total disgust. The touch of his lips made her skin crawl. What had she ever seen in this man, anyhow? Snatching her hand back, she half turned from him and saw Marc dancing by with that blonde in the flaring red dress.

Suddenly, she didn’t want to be there. She wanted to go home and hide. She wanted to go home and cry. She wanted to pretend she had never met Marc Duval and wasn’t sitting in an agony of pure jealousy knowing he was holding another woman in his arms. This was worse, far, far worse than the first time she had found out for sure that Ellis was cheating on her, and she had no right to feel the way she did. Marc had made no more commitment to her than she had made to him. And she was the one who had insisted on accompanying Lorne to the dance, insisted on honoring what she saw as a firm obligation. But now, she wanted it to be over.

She looked up again, and Marc was dancing by. He caught her eye, met her glance, gave her a grin that set her insides on fire, then he was gone again, turning the blonde expertly into an opening in the crowd, swinging her around so Sharon could look at her very beautiful face laughing up into his.

“LORNE, I’D LIKE TO GO HOME NOW
,” she said when the pain in her throat permitted her to speak. She met her date’s eyes squarely, partly so she wouldn’t keep following Marc’s progress through the room, partly in an attempt to convey her apology, her sincere regret that she was forced to refuse him and ruin an evening he’d been looking forward to. If only he had listened to her earlier in the week and not insisted on her keeping this date. “You already know what my answer is going to be, Lorne. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but—”

“Stop.” His hand rose to silence her. His jaw jutted stubbornly. “I will not take you home now. Do you want everyone to think we’ve had a fight? We haven’t even had dinner yet, and I paid good money for the tickets, remember!”

She sighed. She did know. That had been his original argument for getting her there, after all. Did he think her memory so poor? “I don’t see why I should miss a meal I’ve already paid for just because you’re playing hard to get,” he added, his face sulky, his eyes glittering with self-righteous indignation.

“I’m not playing hard to get,” she said. “I’m trying to make you see the truth. I’m not the right person for you.”
And you’re not the right one for me
, she added silently, catching a glimpse of two laughing faces, two people having a wonderful time. Quickly, she looked away.

“How can you know that?” Lorne asked with deadly quiet, his hand imprisoning hers tightly as she tried to pull it free. “As you pointed out yourself the other night, we haven’t even been to bed together. Listen to me, Sharon. I know I can make you happy. You just have to give me a chance.”

“No, Lorne.” Did he really believe she was simply playing hard to get? And if he did, did that mean that he believed forcing the issue would make a difference?

His pale blue eyes were angry, his mouth twisted in an ugly grimace. She knew then that he would not be taking her home. There was no way she would get into a car with a man in his mood. What she should do was get up and walk out, but the thought of the scene he might create held her pinned to her chair, and then the music ended and the others seated with them were heading back to the table.

“I’ll call a taxi,” she said quietly, trying to rise, but he pulled her back down. “You can explain that I have a migraine, or something. If you don’t make a fuss, no one will think anything of my absences. There are plenty of other people here to keep you entertained.” They were with a party of six.

“You owe me the full evening,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of money on you over the past six months, and I mean to collect.”

What, exactly, did he mean to “collect”? She shuddered, but stayed where she was, trying to pay attention to Evelyn, the accountant at Lorne’s bank, as she talked animatedly about her active two-year-old twins.

Coward, coward, coward
… . The words repeated hollowly in Sharon’s mind, but she knew she couldn’t deal with Lorne if he got really angry. She’d simply fold. It was easier to sit still and endure the rest of the evening. Was this a case of old patterns dying hard? Was she destined for a life of simply enduring?

Dinner was sumptuous, but Sharon hardly tasted it. The wine was dry and crisp and plentiful, but she only sipped and set her glass down. Around her, laughter, talk, jokes, and happy people swirled, while inside her, fear coiled each time she glanced at Lorne’s set face, at the determined way he chewed his food, gulped his drinks. He had paid for them. He was getting his money’s worth.

And he thought she owed him something he was planning to collect!

Lord, why had she come? Why had she felt it necessary to try to appease him this way, to make her refusal as pleasant as possible? That was her biggest failing, she knew, always trying to avoid hurting people, steering a course away from unpleasantness. Not that she had expected conservative, quiet Lorne to start pouring the drinks back this way, nor had she expected that he’d take her refusal in anything but a gentlemanly manner. How little she knew him, even after all the times they’d dated. He had never given the impression of being a belligerent man, which had been one reason she’d continued to see him. He was supposed to be calm, quiet, safe. Of course, no issue had ever come up between them on which she’d had to cross him.

She had to escape. Somehow, she had to get out of there. If she called a cab, it could take ages to arrive. The taxi companies were always snowed under with business on New Year’s Eve. She supposed she could hide out in the women’s rest room after she’d made the call, but again, she was faced with the thought of an ugly scene; the possibility of a drunken Lorne pounding on the door made her feel ill.

No. There was only one thing to do. Sit through this interminable dinner, and then dance a few more times. Midnight wasn’t that far off. Maybe by then Lorne’s mood would have improved, though with the amount he was drinking, she doubted it. Maybe she’d get really lucky, and he’d pass out.

Dinner was cleared and the band started up again. Suddenly, before Lorne could ask her to dance, Marc was there, his hand on her shoulder. “May I?” he asked, and she nodded, relief flooding her.

“Yes,” she said, and stood, moving into his arms. He pulled her close, and she knew that she never wanted to be close to anyone else, ever again.

“Velvet angel,” he said, his mouth brushing the shell of her ear, his hand sliding slowly down her back. “Were you surprised to see me?”

She flicked a deep, dark glance up at his laughing eyes. “‘Surprised’ isn’t quite the word I’d have chosen.”

He bent and brushed a kiss lightly over her lips. Suddenly, a hand descended on his shoulder. “Excuse me, but that happens to be my date you’re trying to kiss, mister. I’m cutting in.”

Marc saw the flare of fear in Sharon’s eyes, saw the color fade from her face. “Sharon?” he asked. She glanced from one man to the other. If she refused to return to Lorne, he was just stupid enough, drunk enough, pugnacious enough to fight. And Marc’s golden eyes had a hard, brassy cast to them. He was willing to take anybody on if she asked it of him.

She stepped back from him. “It’s all right. I did come with him. I’ll dance with him.”

Marc, with a hard look at Lorne, shrugged and walked off the floor.

“Who is that guy?”

“My next-door neighbor.”

“Why was he kissing you?”

“You really have no right to interrogate me,” she reminded him quietly.

His hand tightened on hers. “Why was he kissing you?”

“It’s New Year’s Eve,” she said more sharply than she’d ever spoken to Lorne. “People do that at this time of year.”

“After midnight,” he said sullenly. “Not before.”

She was dancing with Lorne again when the countdown began, and they stopped along with everyone else. He counted loudly, waving his tall, silver hat in time to the chant. Holding a roll of serpentine streamer aloft ready to fling them at the stroke of midnight, he didn’t seem to mind that he was one of the town’s “leading citizens” making a complete ass of himself; but then, Sharon reflected, a good many others who saw themselves in that light were doing the same.

“Three, two, one, zero! Happy New Year!” The cry went up, and Lorne flung his streamers, tossed his hat into the air, then turned to swing Sharon into his arms for the first kiss of the year, only to find her wrapped securely in the arms of that big, blond, bearded fellow, and not even trying to get away.

Marc lifted his head for a fraction of a second. “Happy New Year,” he said, and then he took up kissing Sharon again, oblivious of the hand shaking his shoulder, the voice shouting in his ear.

She pulled away from him a small bit, smiled dreamily and said, “Happy New Year to you too,” and then returned to what was fast becoming one of her favorite pastimes, kissing Marc Duval.

Moments later, while most of the crowd around them sang “Auld Lang Syne,” they were still swaying together, looking into each other’s, eyes, making silent and probably impossible promises, but this was New Year’s Eve, and anything went. Finally, Sharon became aware that Lorne was there, teetering drunkenly, a different hat crookedly atop his head, several multicolored streamers around his neck, his proper banker’s tie askew. Various shades of lipstick decorated his face.

“Excuse me,” he said. “But you’re kissing my date again, Mac.”

“I’m kissing a woman who wants me to kiss her,” said Marc, and did it once more—with feeling.

“Sharon!” This time Lorne’s hand clamped on her shoulder, and he peeled her out of Marc’s arms. “You owe me an explanation!”

“Yes,” she said, shrugging his hands off her. “I do. And an answer. The answer, Lorne, is no. And this,” she said, turning back into Marc’s arms as the band struck up another slow, sweet tune, “is the explanation.” Over her shoulder, she added a quiet “Good-bye.”

They had danced for several minutes when Sharon suddenly remembered. “Oh, my gosh! I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Will she mind?”

“Who?” He looked completely mystified.

“The blonde.” Her voice was low and trembling. “Your date.”

His smile was another one she knew she would treasure forever. “Ahhh, yes! The blonde. So now you know what I felt like when I knew you meant to keep your date, and again, tonight, watching you get into that geek’s car all dressed up for him, not me.”

“If murderous is how you felt, then, yes I know,” she admitted.

“Her name is Candice Taylor. I’m here with her and her husband. Feel better?”

“Much.” Beyond Marc’s shoulder, she saw Lorne approaching again, trying to battle a path through the thick crowd. “Marc, I’d like very much to go home,” she said. “But not with the man who brought me.”

He laughed. “As if you really thought for one minute after you saw me here that you’d be going home with anyone else. We’ll leave anytime you say, sweetheart. It can’t be too soon for me. The way I want to celebrate New Year’s Eve can’t be done legally on a dance floor.”

Then, before Lorne could fight his way through the crowd, Marc seemed to open a path as if by magic in the opposite direction, and the two of them had her cape and her purse and were gone long before the other man could get to her.

“You’re very good at cutting swaths through crowds,” she said as she leaned back in the seat of his truck, glad to be out of the noise and away from any possible repercussions that might have arisen. “In fact, you seem to be good at a lot of things, Mr. Duval.”

He grinned at her, then winked. “I’m also very handy in the kitchen, if you recall.” He wasn’t talking about cooking.