Seduced and Betrayed (21 page)

Ariel shook her head, refusing to let herself be swept up in his emotions. "I don't want to be in love with you, Zeke." She pulled back, shrugging out from under the hands that gripped her upper arms. "Don't you understand? I won't
let
myself be in love with you. Not again."

"You already are in love with me."

"Then I'll get over it."

"Will you?"

"Yes. Yes, dammit, I will!" She reached around behind her as she spoke, searching through the haphazardly strewn clothing for something to cover herself with. His forest green silk shirt came to hand first and she dragged it onto her lap. "I can't go through it again, Zeke," she said, her head down as she struggled to turn it right-side out. "I can't take another betrayal. I won't. It hurts too much."

"You weren't the only one who was hurt," he said quietly. "Or betrayed."

She looked up, her eyes widening at the injustice of that. The shirt was forgotten, the struggle with the tangled sleeves abandoned. "I didn't betray you. Not once. Not ever."

"You chose your mother and your career over me."

Her fists clenched in the pile of silk on her lap and she dragged it up, holding it to her bare breasts like a shield. "Only after I found you in bed with another woman," she said fiercely.

He remembered the sequence of events a bit differently but decided to let it pass in favor of more important issues. "I thought we'd already established my innocence on that point. I didn't have sex with that woman. I didn't even know her."

"With how many others, then?" she burst out, unable to hold the words back. They'd been roiling around in the back of her mind for twenty-five long years.

He stared at her for a long moment. "There were no others," he said, finally. "Not from the first day I met you on the set. There was only you."

"And the script girl, and the hairdressers, and the makeup artist's assistant, and the waitresses in the studio cafeteria and—"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You! I'm talking about you and your harem."

"My harem?"

"Your legions of adoring women. The ones who hang on your every word, who swoon at your slightest glance. The waitresses, the secretaries, the production assistants, your leading ladies. That professional femme fatale who stopped by the table at dinner this evening. The lovely Laure Montigny, whose sleeping habits you're all too familiar with. Holly Neals. Kathy Billings," she said, naming his second ex-wife and the actress who'd sued him—unsuccessfully—for palimony. "That Italian countess who was living in your New York apartment last year. The councilwoman who almost lost the election because of rumors that the two of you were using her office for more than meetings about censorship. The lingerie model who told the tabloids all about your taste in women's underwear. The stunt woman who—"

"Well, I'll be damned," Zeke interrupted, flabbergasted by her heated recital of his past relationships. Or his past relationships according to the tabloids, anyway. He'd have been dead of exhaustion if he'd actually been with that many women. He didn't know whether to be flattered or annoyed that she'd kept such close track of his alleged affairs. "You're jealous."

"No," Ariel said despondently, knowing all along that he would misunderstand. "No, I'm not jealous. I'm afraid."

"Afraid? Afraid of what?"

"Of you and your insatiable need for women."

"I don't need
women,"
he said in exasperation. "I need one woman. You."

"And I need security. I need to know that the man I love will be faithful, that I can trust him. I can't trust you." She looked him straight in the eyes as she spoke the next words. "I never could."

It took him a minute to tamp down the roiling surge of anger her words engendered. "I never cheated on you, Ariel," he said, when he could speak calmly. "Not once. Not that summer while we were making
Wild Hearts.
Not during the entire time we were married."

Her eyes widened, disbelief and hope warring in their fathomless blue depths.

"You were my wife, pregnant with my child, and I'd made a vow to be faithful." He smiled ruefully and reached out, gently tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the way he had years ago, when it used to hang down to her waist. "I kept hoping you'd change your mind and decide to make it a real marriage, and I didn't want anything to stand in the way of that possibility, especially not another woman who couldn't even begin to mean to me what you did. What you still do."

"But you were forced to marry me."

"No one forced me to do anything, except leave you right after the wedding pictures were taken. I'd already asked you to marry me, remember? There was no force involved."

"But the lawyers..." She frowned, trying to remember the exact sequence of events in that chaotic, painful time of her life. "My mother said she had to threaten you with lawyers. That you wouldn't have gone through with it otherwise."

"And you believed her?"

"Yes, I believed her."

"Even though you knew she despised me and the fact that we'd had a relationship?"

"She was my mother. My only living relative. And I was eighteen years old, scared and pregnant, and I thought you'd betrayed me."

He was silent a moment, absorbing that, accepting the truth of it. "I didn't," he said simply, honesty shining out of his dark eyes like a beacon. "You've got to believe that, Ariel. I never betrayed you."

"I do believe it. Here," she said, lifting one hand to lightly touch her temple. "But in here—" she dropped her hand to her chest, pressing it over the silk shirt she held clutched in front of her heart "—I'm still afraid."

"Because you still don't trust me to be faithful?"

"Because I don't trust... us," she said, avoiding the exact, bald-faced truth in favor of a lesser, more tactful reality. "I don't trust all the roller coaster emotions. I don't like the feeling of being out of control, of not knowing what's going to happen next. It's all happened too fast for me. Way too fast."

Zeke smiled at that, the curve of his lips rueful. "It's been twenty-five years in the making, sweetheart."

Ariel shook her head. "Those were two other people, in a whole other time. You and I just met a few short weeks ago. In that time we've barely exchanged two dozen civil words to each other and, yet, here we are..." She lifted one hand, palm up, indicating the strewn clothes, and the two of them. "...naked on the living room floor."

"And that scares you?"

"Yes,"
she said fervently. "Doesn't it scare you?"

He thought about it for a moment. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Come to think of it, it does. A little. What do you think we could do to make it a little less frightening?"

"We could slow down," Ariel said. "We could take the time to get to know each other... I won't say 'again' because we really didn't know each other before. We could-"

"Go steady?" Zeke suggested, feeling suddenly lighthearted. She wasn't proposing an end, as he'd been half-afraid she would, but a beginning.

"How about if we start by dating first?" she suggested.

"All right," he agreed promptly, making her smile. "Have lunch with me tomorrow."

"I thought you were planning on having lunch with Laure Montigny?" she said, before she could stop herself.

"Those plans were tentative. And strictly business." He reached out and lifted her chin with his curled finger, forcing her to look at him. "Despite what the tabloids have said, the only thing between Laure and me is friendship. And the only reason I happen to know she likes to sleep late is because of the movie we did a couple of years ago for Louis Malle. She used to bitch like hell whenever she had to do a scene before noon. So..." He let the back of his finger trail down the front of her throat before dropping his hand. "...lunch tomorrow?"

"All right," she said softly. "Lunch tomorrow. Someplace discreet," she added, hurrying on to explain before he could ask. "I don't want to give the tabloids any grist for the mill, not with Cameron's wedding only a week away."

Zeke was silent for a moment, digesting that. "Are we going to tell Cameron about this?"

Ariel bit her lip, unsure of how he would take what she was going to say. "I'd rather not. Not yet. Not until we know what, or if, anything's going to change between us. It wouldn't be fair to raise her hopes, especially not now, when she's got so much else on her mind. This is
her
time, not ours."

Zeke nodded, accepting the wisdom of that. He was sure things were going to change between them, and change drastically, but Ariel was right. Cameron's wedding came first right now, and nothing would be allowed to overshadow or spoil it. He'd be a gentleman, keeping things low-key and discreet until Cameron was safely wed and away on her honeymoon. But after that, all bets were off. He wanted Ariel back, and he was going to get her.

"I know just the place for our first date," he said. "It's small, out of the way and very discreet."

* * *

"Nice place," Ariel commented as they entered the neighborhood bar the next afternoon. The decor was primarily black-and-white, rather Art Deco in feeling, with polished brass railings and dark wood to soften the color scheme and keep it from appearing too stark. The walls were lined with framed publicity stills from the twenties and thirties, most notably Errol Flynn and other big male stars of the era. "It's just what the doctor ordered," she said as they settled themselves into one of the booths that ran along the wall. "Small, out of the way and—"

"So much for discretion," Zeke muttered, catching sight of the young blond waitress who was hurrying over to greet them. They were about to be recognized.

"Mr. Blackstone," she said, her face lighting up with obvious pleasure at the sight of him. "Welcome to Flynn's."

"Actually, it's Smith." He tugged the bill of his black L.A. Raiders cap down so it shadowed his face and hunched one shoulder, doing a deliberately bad imitation of a movie undercover cop trying not to be recognized. "John Smith. And that's my snitch." He gestured toward Ariel, who sat across from him, hiding behind a pair of large, tinted sunglasses that obscured most of the top half of her face. "Ruby LaSalle."

Sammie-Jo Sheppard didn't miss a beat. "Well, Mr. Smith. Ms. LaSalle," she said, just as if she'd hadn't recognized the famous television actress. "What can I get you to drink?"

"I'll have a beer. Miller Lite. Ruby?"

"A glass of Chablis."

"And could we get some of those pretzels I see at the bar to munch on while we look at the menu?" Zeke said, giving the waitress one of his effortlessly engaging smiles, the one that asked for special service and offered thanks at the same time.

"Sure thing." Sammie-Jo nodded and hurried away to fill their order.

Ariel hooked a finger over the tortoiseshell nose-piece of her sunglasses and pulled them down at bit. "Friend of yours?" she asked, giving him an arch look over the rim.

Zeke shot her a quick glance across the table, trying to gauge her expression. "Barely an acquaintance," he said, hoping they weren't going to have another discussion about his so-called harem. "I met her for the first time a few days ago at the Wilshire Arms. There's nothing more between us than that."

Ariel smiled to let him know she'd only been teasing. "I wasn't suggesting there was," she said easily, and pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head.

Ladies' man he might be but she'd never heard anyone accuse him of robbing the cradle—and the waitress was younger than Cameron. She reached out and picked up the narrow, laminated card that stood in the middle of the table. It was shaped like a cocktail shaker, with a list of exotic cocktails and coffee drinks on one side and a menu on the other.

"Here you go." Sammie-Jo set cocktail napkins, drinks and a small basket of pretzels in front of them. "I don't mean to hurry you," she said, nodding toward the menu Ariel held, "but the kitchen's only open for another twenty minutes." Her smile was bright and apologetic. "You caught us at the tail end of our lunch service."

"Is this the entire menu?" Ariel asked. "Or just the appetizer list?"

"That's it, I'm afraid. I keep telling Eddie—" she motioned toward the bartender with a tilt of her head "—that we should have some crudites or a small salad or something on there. But he said they tried that once and ended up with a kitchen full of wilted lettuce."

"What's the matter with the menu?" Zeke asked, reaching out to pluck it from Ariel's fingers.

"There's nothing on it that isn't deep-fried or covered in sour cream and melted cheese," his ex-wife lamented. "Or both."

"Don't tell me you're worried about a few grams of fat," Zeke teased, giving her an appreciative leer.

"I have to start shooting the new ad campaign for Gavino in two weeks. One of the dresses they want me to wear is short, black and made of Lycra."

"Oh, well, in that case." He put the menu down. "We'll just have the drinks." He looked up at Sammie-Jo. "And the check."

"The drinks are on me," Sammie-Jo said, giving him a wide, blindingly sweet smile that positively radiated gratitude and youthful sex appeal. "A small token of my thanks."

Five seconds of ponderous silence descended in her wake. Zeke reached out and picked up his beer, burying his nose in the glass for a long swallow, wondering why he felt so damned guilty all of the sudden. He had nothing to feel guilty about.