Sawyer, Meryl (4 page)

"See?" he whispered, his lips against hers. "You're
still crazy about me. Five years hasn't changed a goddamn thing."

She didn't answer, craving his kiss even though she knew better.
When would her body get the message? She hated him.

"Don't bother lying to me, Royce—or yourself."

He pressed himself against her just in case she'd missed the fact
that he was fully aroused. He rotated his hips slowly, deliberately forcing her
to wonder what it would be like to make love to him. Oh, Lordy, she hadn't
moaned, had she? He'd think she liked this. She hated him.

She managed to wrench her lips away, but their bodies were still
locked together. "I could kill you."

"You keep telling me that." He nudged her, the heat of
his lower body penetrating the gossamer silk of her dress. "Be careful,
Royce. I'm armed and dangerous."

She would never be certain how long they stood in the dark.
Kissing. It was a raw act of possession. There had always been something
untamed, slightly wild, about Mitch. Something she had to admit she found
exciting.

A disturbing thought struck her, a deep unsettling premonition.
She'd remember this moment, this kiss. Forever.

Her heart was pounding lawlessly when she noticed a strange sound.
Oh, please, she hadn't moaned again, had she? Royce jerked her lips away from
his.

The look on his face told her that he'd heard something too. The
only sound in the room was their breathing, sharp and deep, an echo of desire
frustrated too long. The odd sound had to have come from the hall. She turned
toward the door but no one was there. Someone must have just walked past.

What if they'd seen her and told Brent? Royce thought, coming to
her senses with a jolt of self-loathing. Kissing Mitch Durant. How could she?
She didn't have an answer. She couldn't even look at him now for hating him.
And herself.

"Ambition," he said, his voice a shade shy of a whisper,
"—it's a double-edged sword. It brings out the best in us— and the worst.
Think about it."

She looked at him, truly speechless now, but the darkness masked
his angular features. He reached into his pocket and yanked out something
white. A business card, she realized, wondering what she could possibly say or
do to salvage the situation and praying no one had seen her kissing Mitch.

"Call me." Mitch tucked his card into the hollow between
her breasts. "Anytime."

Monday swept in on a horizon marbled with carbon-colored strafers
driven by a rain-scented breeze that promised showers any minute. Royce joined her
close friends Talia and Valerie for lunch at Reflections, overlooking the bay
and the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Eleanor Farenholt can go to hell," Royce announced.
"The wedding coordinator she recommended wants more money to organize our
wedding than I make in an entire year writing a column. I'm going to convince
Brent to elope."

Talia put down her menu, shaking her dark-brown head. "I
doubt Brent will disappoint his mother. She's determined to have a grand
wedding, the kind she'd throw if she had a daughter."

Valerie and Royce had grown up in the same neighborhood. They'd
met Talia in high school. Rich and rebellious, Talia had been kicked out of
several exclusive private schools before entering Sacred Heart Girls' School,
where the strict nuns kept the girls in line. Royce and Talia had become close
friends, sweeping the shy Valerie along in their wake.

Although Royce trusted both friends to give her their honest
opinions, she relied more on Talia when it came to the Farenholts and their
circle of friends. She traveled in the same circles—despite the detour to
decidedly middle-class Sacred Heart. And Talia had known the Farenholts for
years.

"Eleanor Farenholt wants the kind of wedding Caroline Rambeau
would have if she'd married Brent," Valerie seconded Talia's opinion, her
auburn hair gleaming in the light, her hazel eyes as serious as her tone.
"Look on the positive side. At least Brent cares about his mother. They
say you can judge a man by the way he treats his mother."

"What about your former mother-in-law?" Talia asked.

The question made Royce cringe, because Valerie was still
suffering from her husband's betrayal. Val had always been less sure of herself
than Royce or Talia, but since Val's divorce, she'd become withdrawn and
bitter. Why upset her?

"The jerk never called his mother. I told her he'd left
me."

"See?" Talia said. "He was a schmuck and it showed
in his relationship with his mother."

"Have you heard from your parents lately?" Val asked
Talia.

"Last I heard they were at a villa in Marbella."

Royce watched Talia closely. It was a shame, but since she'd
entered an alcohol rehabilitation program almost a year ago, Talia's parents
hadn't been around to give her support. Suddenly the usual lunchtime noises—the
buzz of conversation, the soft music coming from the overhead speakers, and the
clink of cutlery—seemed deafening. Silence hung between the threesome like a
shroud.

What had happened? Royce asked herself. Once they'd all been so
happy, so full of hope. Now she was the only one who was happy. Why was she
complaining about the Farenholts? Compared to her friends' problems, hers were
nonexistent.

"Do you realize none of us have parents, not really,"
Val broke the silence. "Royce's are dead and ours might as well be."

How true, Royce thought. Talia had been raised by a succession of
nannies. Val, though, was a different case. Her family had been close until
Val's divorce. Since her husband walked out, Val hadn't spoken to her family.

Royce toyed with her water glass, not wanting to recall her mother's
slow, agonizing death from cancer. Or her father's funeral.

The waiter interrupted to take their orders. Then Royce switched
the conversation back to a less serious topic with a joke. "I'm going to
have to rob a bank to pay for this wedding. What else? My house already has a
huge second mortgage that Daddy took when Mama was dying."

"Have you discussed this with Brent?" Talia hooked a
strand of sleek brown hair behind one ear. "What does he say?"

"He wants to give me the money, but that's not right. It's
the bride's responsibility—"

"If you ask me," Val cut in as she snapped a breadstick
in two, "expensive weddings are a waste of time. Half the marriages in
this country end in divorce."

Royce cringed at the bitterness in her friend's tone—so unlike the
old Val, who'd been unfailingly upbeat. Until the divorce.

"You'll make a lot of money if you land that TV job,"
Talia mercifully changed the subject.

"Even if I do get the job, it'll take time to save enough. I
want a baby, but my biological clock is quickly becoming a time bomb. Now that
I've found the right man, why wait?"

"Speaking of men," Talia said to Val, "Royce found
you a date for the auction this Saturday night."

Val wagged her finger at Royce. "Last time you fixed me up
with a periodontist. I had to listen all night to how gingivitis is a bigger
health threat than AIDS. Then after dinner, know what he did?"

"He flossed—hopefully in the men's room, not at the
table." Royce wheedled a smile out of Val, a glimmer of her old self.

"No. He said: 'Your place or mine?' Like sex was a
given."

"You'll get back into the swing of dating," Talia said.

Dating was only part of the problem, Royce decided. During the
years the three of them had attended Sacred Heart Girls' School, Val rarely dated.
She'd met her husband the day they'd arrived at college. Royce doubted Val had
ever kissed another man.

A kiss. Heaven help her. Why had she kissed Mitchell Durant like
that? She despised him for having forced himself on her, but she hated herself
even more for remembering that kiss in such exquisite detail. Even now, in the
sobering light of day, she could feel his lips on hers, his masculine body
aggressively pressing against hers.

There was no escaping the ugly truth: She'd wanted Mitch in spite
of what he'd done to her father. She must need counseling. Clearly, she had
some deep-seated psychological problem.

Val expelled a tortured sigh, then asked Royce, "All right,
who have you dug up for me this time?"

"Remember that column I wrote: Where Does All the Parsley
Go?"

"Uh-huh. Restaurants put parsley on every plate but nobody
eats it. That was one of your funnier pieces."

"Well, I received an irate call from the parsley king, the
man who supplies the entire West Coast with the stuff, which has made him
richer than the Farenholts. I schmoozed him over a cup of coffee, and I really
liked the guy. So I called him last night and told him about you."

"Go with him, Val," Talia urged. "Everyone will be
there."

"Even the Farenholts are coming," Royce added with an
edge to her voice. She waited while the waiter served their salads. "Brent
took a table and invited his parents to come with us. Naturally, his mother
insisted on including Caroline and that Italian count she's been dating."

"What nerve." Val speared a mushroom with her fork.
"I'd come just to give you moral support, but I haven't got a dress
suitable for a black tie affair."

"I have the perfect dress. Borrow it." Royce refused to
let Val spend another night alone, moping over that heartless jerk. "Go by
my place and try on the copper dress in my closet. You know where I keep the
key, don't you?"

"Everyone knows. You might as well keep the door
unlocked."

Talia added, "You're asking to be robbed."

"I haven't got anything worth taking." Royce winked at
her friends and tossed a piece of parsley on Val's plate. "Come on Val.
It'll be fun."

They finished their salads and Royce passed on dessert, thinking
of Eleanor Farenholt's comment about her weight. Royce didn't aspire to having
a stick figure like Brent's former girlfriend, Caroline, but she didn't want
condo thighs either. She was only ten pounds or so overweight, but beside
Eleanor and Caroline it felt like fifty tons.

"I'm tired of waiting," Talia announced after she was
served a chocolate torte that made Royce's mouth water. "When are you
going to tell us why you were dancing with Mitchell Durant?"

"Because Arnold Dillingham insisted," Royce said,
striving to justify her actions, but having difficulty convincing herself as she
informed her friends about the situation with her trial television program.

But she couldn't bring herself to tell them about the kiss in the
dark. She simply couldn't explain her actions, even though she'd spent the
better part of the weekend thinking about her stupidity.

The noise in the hall. Someone had passed by as she was kissing
Mitch. Had that person seen them? Thank heaven it hadn't been Brent. There
would have been no way she could have explained to him what she couldn't even
explain to herself.

"So," she concluded with false bravado, "I'm
spending this week researching the homeless, ready to face Mitchell Durant in
front of a camera."

"Don't attack him," warned Val. "While you were
living in Rome, one of his trials was televised. The man's a shark. He
annihilated every prosecution witness."

"No one
has to remind me what he's like in
court."

Talia touched Royce's hand. "Get it over with and you'll
never have to see that dreadful man again."

"I can't just let it go. If I have the chance, I'm going to
embarrass that jerk or something. Whatever I do won't pay him back, but I can't
live with myself if I don't try."

"You're positive you want to run away?" Mitch asked
Jason as he drove his Viper into the Tenderloin, San Francisco's sinister
netherworld, the side of the city tourists rarely saw. Drug addicts, pushers,
pimps. And worse. Mitch hated being here, especially at night. Too many
memories. All of them bad.

"I can make it on my own, dude. I'll take my drums and hook
up with a rock band. Or somethin'. I can't stand that man Mom married dissin'
me. I don't do nothin' right. Nothin'."

How well Mitch remembered thinking the same thing.

"I'm almost fifteen—old enough to be on my own."

Yeah, right. The expensive sports car slugged through the heavy traffic
past neon-lit tattoo parlors and the latest crop of Thai restaurants. Old
enough? That's what Mitch had thought.

Mitch shot a look at Jason. Short, skinny, with dusty-brown hair
and eyes a shade darker. Tonight he wore his prize possession, the leather
jacket he'd saved for a year to buy, the haute couture of postpunk chic.

"Tell you what. You want to be on your own? I'll give you
fifty bucks"—Mitch shifted to street talk—"that's fifty dead
presidents, to spend a couple of hours here."