Something to Talk About (14 page)

In a little while the room was restored to order and Marielle had accomplished her goal of bedtime for her children. She returned to Alicia’s room with a garment bag, and while she was unzipping it, Roxy commented on the sweetness and beauty of
Marielle’s
little ones. Marielle smiled modestly although she admitted that Gabrielle was a miniature tyrant who ruled the house with a will of iron. “I may never forgive
Papi
for starting that Princess Butterfly thing. She really does think she’s royalty, the way the men spoil her. Okay, now this is what
I think you should wear, Alicia. This is the most fabulous dress I’ve ever owned and I have yet to wear it in public.”

She whipped the garment out with a flourish and Roxy and Alicia both sighed with pleasure. The dress was amazing; it was made of a supple matte silk jersey with wide-set straps that joined behind the neck and led down to a plunging back. The open sweetheart neckline was sexy but
decorous, as it didn’t offer a lot of cleavage. The dress was formfitting and daringly short, stopping at
midthigh
. There was an overskirt of sheer silk georgette that lay in flat panels until the dress moved. Then the panels parted
to give tantalizing glimpses of leg. It was a dress designed to tempt, to provoke, to star
tl
e a man into submission. Alicia was stunned. Roxy prodded her to put the dress on at once, and she did, going into the walk-in closet for privacy and emerging like a siren.
 
The dress was a perfect fit and when she moved the skirt rippled around her so the flashes of leg revealed were sensual and not blatantly sexual. She whirled around in the dress and for a moment she could see the look in Adam’s eyes when he saw her dress, the
moment when he took her in his arms
She
looked at
her sister and her best friend, who were applauding with gusto and pointed something out to them.

“Um, I have to ask if anyone has noticed that this dress isn’t exac
tl
y black or white.”

The dress was, in fact,
red,
a
true
deep blue red with a crimson saturation so deep it tricked the eyes. The color was so profound when one looked away from it everything had a pink cast for a few seconds. It was the reddest red Alicia had ever seen and it looked incredible against her skin. She’d never find anything this fabulous and she knew it
.
But still, she had doubts.

“Come on, are you actually suggesting that I wear a red dress to a black-and-whi
te affair? That’s such a cliché;
the maverick strolling into the ball wearing something that gets all the attention,
yadda
,
yadda
,
yadda
. For heaven’s sake, they did that in
Jezebel,
that ancient Bette Davis movie,” she pointed out.

Marielle laughed in her sister’s face. “I’m not suggesting you wear the dress, I’m
insisting
on it. When did you get to be such a goody-goody? Who cares if it’s a black-and-white ball, a pink-and-purple ball, or a green-and-gold ball? You’re not a member of the sorority, you’re paying good money to attend this shindig, and you can wear any dratted thing you want. Besides, you look fabulous. I say wear it and to heck with them.”

Roxy agreed wholeheartedly. “Who cares if it’s a
cliche
?
Cliches
become
cliches
because they’re tried and true. If they didn’t work, people would stop doing them and they’d be random oddities. That’s not the case here, sister. You need to make an entrance no one will ever forget, and that’s the dress to do it in,” she said dramatically.

“I’m not mad at a
cliche
,
they have their place in life. That’s why writers use them in chick flicks and romance novels, they get the job done. Just like when you put lemons, water, sugar, and ice together you get lemonade. It always works if you work it right, and you, Alicia, are working that dress. You have to wear it, it’s amazing. Marielle, how come you never wore it in public?”

Marielle smiled as she looked at her younger sister modeling in the full-length mirror. “Roxy, I bought that dress to take on my honeymoon. I put it on and my husband went insane.
Dios,
he was so excited with me in that outfit we never made it out of the suite. I tried again when we got home. I tried so many times to wear that dress and the result was always the same. Once he saw me in it, we didn’t make it out of the house. We
tried,
we really did, but that dress just did
something to him.” She sighed. “So if you intend to rope in Adam Cochran, that’s the
dr
ess
you need to be wearing, littl
e sister.”

Before Alicia could react to the fact that her pathetic cover had been blown,
Paco
gave a low wolf whistle from the doorway.

“Tia
esta
muy
caliente
,"
he said with a comic wiggle of his eyebrows.

Marielle jumped up from the bed laughing and went to take him back to his room. “
Paco
, we need to have a
serious
talk about men and women,” she told him.

“Oh no,
Mami
,
my
tios
told me everything,” he was heard to say earnestly.

Alicia and Roxy burst out laughing. “If that’s the case we’re going to have to deprogram the poor child. Who knows what my brothers put in his head?” Alicia said.

“Yes, but he knows his auntie is hot in that dress, child, and you’re going to wear it to that auction if I have to drug you to make you do it. In fact, I’m going with you to make sure you don’t chicken out,” she said firmly. “Of course, now we have to go shopping for real because
I
don’t have a thing to wear.”

***

Adam was backstage, wishing with all his heart that he were somewhere else. The other bachelors who were waiting for their turn at the block were equally fitful, pacing around, talking stuff, and expressing the idea that this was without a doubt the dumbest thing they’d ever done in their lives. One poor man was talking frantically into his cell phone, begging his girlfriend to please make a high bid on him.

“Look, Sheila, I can’t go out looking like a chump. Just make it a real high bid, baby, and I’ll pay you back tonight. We’ll go straight to the ATM and I’ll give you cash. C’mon, Sheila, don’t do this to me,” he moaned. All that could be heard was her high-pitched laughter as he held the phone away from his ear. “Okay, Sheila, if that’s how you want to treat me,” he mumbled as he snapped the phone shut.

He turned to his fellow bachelors for support and spread his arms wide. “She’s sitting out there in the
front row and she’s gonna look
mean nobody else will dare bid on me and I’ma end up going out for a buck two ninety-eight, just watch and see.” The fact that he was a big overgrown Detroit Lions linebacker made his plight
a
ll the more pitiful.

Adam just wanted it to be over. He’d planned on picking Alicia up the way he always did, but she informed him that she was riding to the Athenaeum Hotel with Roxy and she’d meet him there. It would serve him right if she didn’t show up at all, the way he’d been acting. He fully intended to apologize and throw himself at her feet to beg for mercy. He knew he’d been behaving badly, but he couldn’t reconcile himself to the idea that his Alicia was making herself gorgeous for some other man, Bryant Porter to be exact. True, Bryant was back in Chicago for
the moment, but he’d be back in Detroit any day now and with the warm summer months approaching there was no telling what they’d get up to. He clenched his jaw and his fists, realized he was being ridiculous, and relaxed. He looked over at Hannibal and Paul and decided they had the right idea; they seemed pretty cool about the whole thing.
 
He walked over to the two younger men and commented on their demeanor.

“You two seem calm and collected. No nerves at all?”

Hannibal assured him he was perfec
tl
y calm. “I have a secret weapon,” was all he would say.

Paul sighed deeply and shrugged. “This could be the single most stupid thing I’ve ever done in
me
life, mate. Of course, I took a page from your book and gave Rhonda a wad of money to bid on me so I wouldn’t look like the most pathetic man on the stage. I also have to provide her with a ride to and from work for the next month as well as lunch, but it’s a small price to pay, right?”

Adam stopped listening the moment Paul mentioned giving Rhonda money, because it was at that moment he realized that he hadn’t given Alicia his checkbook. As snarky as he’d been behaving it would serve him right if she just left him dangling or worse, let some serious
manhunter
drag his carcass out of there as her new possession. He was about to lose his much-vaunted composure when it was Hannibal’s turn onstage. He and Paul went to the wings so they could give their colleague silent support. The support wasn’t needed after all, since Hannibal wasn’t kidding about having a secret weapon.

After Michaela, acting as the mistress of ceremonies, introduced Hannibal, giving his vital statistics and a brief background, she asked if there was anything he wanted to share with the ladies before the bidding began. He nodded and took the microphone from her, dropping a brief kiss on her hand. He then said he had a dedication for all the beautiful women in attendance and began to sing the immortal R&B classic, “A Song
For
You.” It was enough that he was over six feet tall, slender, and nicely muscled under his tuxedo, that he had deep brown skin and perfectly cut hair to go with his neat moustache and goatee, but the voice that was coming out of him was so beautiful it would make angels weep to hear it. The bidding started immediately and by the time the song was finished, it was up to twenty-five hundred dollars. Rhonda even got caught up, much to Paul’s chagrin.

“Hey, that’s my money
she’s bidding with, that twit!
” he said in outrage. With a resigned look he turned to Adam. “I’m dead meat, you know.”

“Don’t worry about it, man. Just
be
yourself and smile and it’ll be over before you know it,” he advised.

Soon, it was Adam’s turn onstage and he had to take his own advice. He’d opted for a classic look: his father’s custom-tailored white silk dinner jacket with tuxedo trousers and the traditional pleated shirt with onyx studs. He couldn’t stand wearing ties, however, and the shirt was open with the tie undone as if it were waiting for the soft hands of his woman to tie it for him. Although Adam was far from a hermit, there were a lot of people, particularly women, who hadn’t seen him since the haircut, so when he walked out onstage there was quite a hubbub. He
looked so incredibly handsome and debonair no one could tell that he was wishing he was somewhere in a remote Himalayan village where no one had ever heard of bachelor auctions, sororities, or formal balls.
 
He took center stage with his normal aplomb and hoped against hope that Alicia was out there and would have his back. The mistress of ceremonies went into her spiel and Adam braced himself for what would come next.

“Ladies, this is Adam Cochran, a partner
in
Cochran and Fuentes, a leading architectural firm based right here in Detroit. Adam enjoys all kinds of music, especially jazz and Latin; he likes to ski, loves to ride horseback and swim, and has a passion for excellent food. So if there are any cooks out there, this might be your chance to impress him with a really good meal,” she said with a sultry wink.

Before she could ask if Adam had any comments the bidding began. “Five hundred dollars,” a voice rang out
.

“Six hundred!”

“Seven hundred and fifty!
And I can
cook,
too, honey,” a loud woman informed the audience.

The bidding was getting more and more frantic and Adam was starting to feel distinctly uneasy because he still couldn’t see Alicia in the crowd. All at once a flash of color in the tedious sea of black and white caught his eye. A sudden hush fell over the audience as everyone else could see what he was seeing; it was Alicia, walking toward the stage as though she had nothing else to do for the rest of her life. She was wearing the most incredible smile he’d ever seen and a dress that defied all description. Her shining hair was artfully arranged off her face and her sensual beauty radiated through the entire ballroom. In a clear voice she placed the bid that people would be talking about for years to come.

“Five thousand dollars.
Cash,” she said confidently, fanning the crisp new bills out with one sure move of her right hand.

A collective “Ooh” rippled across the room as her words resonated.

Adam didn’t hesitate; he went to the edge of the stage and descended the stairs, walking out to meet her. He took the red rose from his buttonhole and kissed it before putting it in the V of her neckline. Then he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her slowly and gently.