Sweeter Than Revenge (18 page)

She wasn’t fine. Hadn’t been fine since he got back to town, and had no prospects of being fine again anytime soon. How could she be fine when the man who’d broken her heart said he wanted her back? Was she supposed to be okay with that information? Crossing her arms over her chest, she turned slightly away from him, hoping he’d take the hint, but he didn’t seem to be the slightest bit deterred.

“Have you thought about what I said?” he asked.

Yes.It was all she’d thought about, all she wanted to think about. He obsessed her, just like he always had, and she knew that if she could somehow empty out her skull and scour her brain with bleach and a brush, she’d still never get David Hunt out of her thoughts.

Crinkling her brow, she tried to look politely perplexed. “What you said? Why would I think about that?There’s nothing to think about.”

“I’vethought about it.”

There was a long, agonizing pause while the words hung in the air like a kite on the breeze. Against her will, against all her better judgment, her head turned and her gaze locked, for the first time, with his. Everything she saw on his face was profoundly disturbing to her equilibrium: the vulnerability; the longing; the heat; and, worst of all, the continued determination. Longing drew her irresistibly to him, as though someone had taken a giant steel S-curve and hooked it around both their waists, binding them together. She couldn’t get away and, worse, she was losing her desire to get away.

They’d already been touching at the shoulders, but now, somehow, he was closer, leaning over her, his eyes monopolizing her entire field of vision until there was nothing else. No crowd, no noise, no distractions…only this man and this moment.

“I think about how good it felt to put my hands on you again and—”

Maria made an involuntary, embarrassing little protesting noise.

“—how much I’ve missed you and—”

“Please don’t,” Maria begged.

“—how I’ve prayed for God to send me another woman who’d help me forget about you, just for a little while, or at least to take the edge off the wanting, but God hasn’t listened.”

Unshed tears swam in Maria’s eyes, mercifully blocking her image of his earnest, intense face. She hastily looked away and wiped at the corners of her eyes, sniffling. She would not engage in this conversation with him. He could confess like a penitent with a priest if he wanted to; she couldn’t stop him. Nor could she help it if she heard what he said. But she would not tell him her own feelings, and she would not open the door—not the tiniest crack—to any sort of a discussion that could lead to a reconciliation. Too much had already been lost, and too much was at stake. She would not give him an opening. Keeping her gaze fixed over her shoulder away from him, she stubbornly clamped her lips together and said nothing.

“Maria?”he whispered.

The plaintive note in his husky voice undid her. Much as she wanted to, she could not leave him hanging, nor could she ignore him. With all the reluctance in the world, she turned her head back and met his tormented gaze again, and the connection felt like a swift kick to her gut.

“You broke my heart,” she told him. “Why would I ever give you the chance to break it again?”

“Because,” he said without the slightest hesitation, “you have to remember how good it was between us. Don’t you?”

She couldn’t answer because she didremember. All too well. It had all been good: the sex, the laughter, the emotional connection. Better than anything else in her life had ever been.

“I know I was a fool for leaving you before, Maria. I’m not ever going to do something that stupid again.” There was no waver in his voice, no flicker in his eye. Just an absolute conviction that told her he believed what he said even if she didn’t. “Give me another chance” he murmured, leaning so close now she wondered dazedly if he meant to kiss her. “Love me again.”

A dreamlike, hypnotic state seemed to come over her, until she didn’t quite know where she was or what had happened. She felt as though she were drifting…floating closer…if not to him, then at least to a place where she could acknowledge that she still wanted him. She opened her mouth and his eager gaze sharpened—

“Maria? Maria?Pay attention, love. Trot down to the café and get me a lovely chocolate-chip cookie, will you? No nuts.”

David muttered a vicious curse.

Maria blinked, coming out of her trance and to full attention. She looked wildly around and saw Anastasia, still sitting in her chair but twisted at the waist to look back at her and David. One of her bejeweled hands was high in the air over her head, and she snapped her fingers several times as though summoning her dog back into the house after a romp in the yard.

“You can make cow eyes at David later,” Anastasia barked. “Let’s go, love.”

Beside her, Uri stared back at them and gave his hands a sharp double clap that very clearly put the right nowat the end of Anastasia’s sentence. He looked down at Anastasia, and then they both turned back to the fans.

Embarrassed, her cheeks flaming, Maria took a couple large, hasty steps in the café’s direction, but David’s hand on her arm stopped her.

“This isn’t over,” he whispered, the urgency in his voice matching that in his eyes.

Grateful for the well-timed interruption that’d stopped her when she was right on the verge of doing something stupid, and for the subsequent reprieve, Maria snatched her arm away. “Yes, it is.”

Two days later they were in New York for Anastasia’s interview on the “Live with Sturgis & Molly” show.

“You look beautiful,” Maria told Anastasia. “This is going to be a greatinterview. I can feelit.”

Anastasia, who’d been admiring herself from every angle in the green room’s lighted mirror, paused in the act of smoothing today’s wig, a short, spiky, black number that made David think of Liza Minelli, and sniffed.

He watched her and wondered how that much haughtiness could be contained in one person.

He, Maria, Anastasia and Uri had flown to New York yesterday, and he’d been surprised that the plane was able to stay airborne under the weight of the tension in the first-class cabin. Anastasia had complained bitterly about the service, the food, the bathroom, the movie selection and the drinks. Anastasia reported that Uri was also upset about the drinks, although David couldn’t tell for sure because he never heard Uri actually speak, and also couldn’t read Uri’s usual expressionless face.

Despite all David’s maneuverings and machinations, he’d been unable to finagle a seat by Maria on the plane. In fact, he saw so little of her, sandwiched as she was between Tweedledee and Tweedledum, that he wondered if Maria hadn’t been hustled into WITSEC and diverted to another plane without his knowledge.

By the time the plane had touched down at LaGuardia, everyone was a little snippy, to say the least.

Thereafter followed a tense limo ride to the hotel, where the Queen Bee didn’t care for her floor, suite or gift basket from Sturgis and Molly, a tense dinner at Le Cirque, where the table’s location wasn’t quite up to snuff, and a tense return ride to the hotel. By the time David had fallen, exhausted, into his bed, he’d had a headache so bad that decapitation seemed like a viable option to stop the pain. All in all, the day had been one of the most unpleasant he could recall in recent memory.

Today promised to be worse. Much worse.

Crossing his arms and ankles, David leaned against the wall and watched Maria try to work her magic with Authorzilla. For the day of the big interview, Maria wore a wispy little purple summer dress that did more for his feverish imagination that a thousand issues of Playboyever could. Filmy ruffles dipped low between her breasts, drawing his attention in that thrilling direction every time he looked at her. Purple was shaping up to be his new favorite color.

Except when he saw Anastasia wear it. Today she wore a purple suit that was actually tasteful, praise be—much better than her usual selections. They’d had a fashion summit, which had been so painful, frustrating and boring for him that it defied description. Anastasia had insisted on modeling most of her thousand other purple outfits, and they’d had to sit, watch and diplomatically tell the most thin-skinned woman on the planet that most of them made her look like a purple beached whale. The task was made exponentially worse by Anastasia’s stylist, an annoying sycophant who, in addition to having awful taste in clothes, set David’s teeth on edge. As far as he was concerned, the stylist should be fired, and then, for good measure, taken out back and fed to wild dogs. At least she hadn’t come to New York with them.

Anastasia made an irritated noise and scowled at her reflection in the mirror.

“Is, ah, something wrong, Anastasia?” Poor Maria, who’d been hovering at Anastasia’s shoulder all morning, shot David a quick look that was part annoyed and part frazzled. “Something else,I mean?”

“My arse,” Anastasia drawled as she dabbed her face with powder from her compact, “is still itching from those lousy scratchy sheets at that mangy hotel.”

“I…see.” Maria didn’t seem to know what to make of this pronouncement about the amenities at the five-star hotel where they’d spent the night. To her credit, though, she kept her game face on and acted like she cared. “Well, like I said, they swore at the front desk that those sheets had an eight-hundred thread count—”

“Nonsense.” Anastasia shut her compact with a decisive snap and worked herself into a righteous, snarling rant. “Sandpaperis softer than those sheets were. If the cheap bastards here at ‘Sturgis & Molly’ ever want to see me here again, they bloody well better cough up the money to put me in a better hotel—”

A middle-aged blonde strode into the room, whereupon Anastasia snapped her jaw shut and watched her expectantly.

“Anastasia?” the woman said, holding out her hand. “How are you? I’m Karen Robbins, one of the producers.”

“Karen,”Anastasia cried, gripping the woman’s hand in both of hers and shape-shifting right before their eyes. Like magic, she came out of her Anastasia the Diva Demon from Hellpersona and dove into Anastasia the Sweet, Gracious and Charming.“How are you, darling? Thank you so much for having me in. What a thrill for me.”

“How was the flight? Was the hotel okay?” Karen asked.

“Marvelous,”Anastasia crowed, practically levitating now with joy and excitement. “First class in everyway. Everyone’s treated me like a queen.”

David and Maria exchanged disgusted looks. Uri hovered, smiling, in his usual position at Anastasia’s elbow.

The women chattered for a couple more minutes, and then Karen left. In scurried another woman, this one with a headset and clipboard. “Two minutes,” she told Anastasia. “Right after this commercial.”

They all looked to the blaring flat-screen TV mounted in the corner. Sure enough, the show’s theme music played and led into a deodorant commercial. The room as a whole surged with adrenaline. Anastasia sucked in a deep breath and exhaled through her mouth. Uri grabbed both her hands in his and squeezed them.

Maria put a hand on Anastasia’s arm, catching her attention, and David watched her work, silently pulling for her.

“Anastasia,” she said around a sweet, nonthreatening smile, “remember what we talked about in our prep session, okay?”

Anastasia peered down at her, one eyebrow raised, her hands still gripping Uri’s.

“I know you’re such a professional, and you’ve done this millions of times before,” Maria continued, “but I have to say this to all our clients.” She nodded discreetly at David and lowered her voice. “He’s, ah, watching to see if I do a good job prepping you, so…”

Anastasia broke into a beatific smile. “Don’t fret, love. I’m going to be fine, aren’t I? I’ll have young Millie—”

“Molly.”

“—eating out of the palm of my hand in no time.” Pulling free of Uri, she swept Maria close for an air kiss. “Never fear.”

The assistant herded them like cattle out of the green room and down the hall toward the set, where blazing overhead lights created a blinding glare through which David could barely see. Squinting, he saw pixieish Molly perched on one of those tall, stool-type chairs, sifting through a stack of blue note cards while a hair person fluttered back and forth, fluffing Molly’s glossy, honey-colored hair.

“So, you know,” Maria whispered, trotting alongside Anastasia to keep up with her long-legged strides, “stay on message, don’t bad-mouth anyone, remember to be upbeat—”

“Never fear,” Anastasia repeated, smoothing her wig, straightening her shoulders and adjusting her enormous bosom by putting her hands underneath her girls and pushing them up. Turning to Uri, she opened her mouth, stuck out her tongue and waited. Uri, who’d apparently been through this drill before, reached up and double-spritzed her with a tiny tube of spearminty breath spray.

David stifled a snort.

Suddenly the show’s theme music blared again and the audience clapped and whooped as if they expected Tiger Woods to appear. Molly ditched the note cards, sat up straight and flashed her million-dollar smile as the hair person took her brush and dove for the shadows in the wings.

“Break a leg, beautiful.”

Sturgis, a wiry, toothy, unrelentingly cheerful man of about seventy, paused to peck Anastasia on the cheek as he left the set, having evidently been excused from this segment. David sighed with longing. He stared after the lucky man as he wove his way back through the various cameras, cameramen and monitors, and wished he could also leave the vicinity before the inevitable—and it wasinevitable—disaster occurred.