The Jewels of Tessa Kent (15 page)

“I’m most dreadfully sorry, Miss Kent, it won’t happen again. I’ll put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ on your line.”

“Do that.”

She was so angry she found herself pacing the floor, unable to sit still. They say that murderers can’t keep away from the scene of the crime. Come to gloat, had he, she thought bitterly? Not if she knew it!

There was a knock on the door.

“Yes?” Tessa said neutrally. It was probably the maid.

“Let me in, Tessa,” Luke Blake demanded.

“
I will not
.”

“What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you get my note?”

“It came.”

“Then why won’t you let me in?”

“I don’t want to see you.”

“That’s impossible, of course you do.”

“God damn! Get away from my door or I’ll have you thrown out of the hotel.”

“I own this hotel.”

“Is that supposed to be some sort of threat? It’s as unimportant as everything else about you. I don’t care if you own this whole miserable city!”

“Tessa!” he shouted, his voice severe in its demand.

She didn’t answer, waiting for him to leave. Several minutes passed before she heard his footsteps retreating. In less time than seemed possible, Tessa heard the tramp of heavy footsteps and a shout of warning to stand back, then saw the door to her suite splinter under an assault from two burly firemen armed with axes.

“It’s in the bedroom,” Luke directed them. As they
rushed to the bedroom he looked at Tessa, open-mouthed and immobile in shock, standing in her old, quilted pink bathrobe. “I should have guessed it,” he said finally. “You detest daffodils.”

“Are you insane?”

“Probably. But what does that have to do with it?”

“I have nothing to say to you. Get out of here, you and those firemen.”

“Chaps?”

“Yes, Mr. Blake.”

“It’s okay, Miss Kent managed to put it out herself. I’ll have the door put right tomorrow.” He tipped them and sent them off.

“Tessa, I’m utterly hopeless at writing to people, I should have called …”

“There was nothing to say.” She tightened the sash of the bathrobe around her waist and grew taller in freezing dignity as she looked at him with biting scorn, her eyes dismissing him as the smallest and least worthy of any pitifully abject creature that has ever crawled on the face of the earth.

“But, at dinner—”

“Forget that dinner, wipe it out of your mind. I was feeling exceptionally vulnerable, I said things I didn’t mean … I was being actressy … over the top, I didn’t realize how far over I’d gone or how ridiculous I’d been until it was too late. Obviously you’re accustomed to saying things you don’t mean, you’ve been doing it for a long time, haven’t you? I didn’t understand that since I haven’t met your kind of man before, fortunately for me. Once is more than enough.”

“
Tessa, I meant every word.
”

“Oh, please, Luke, that’s not necessary,” she said, producing a marvelously indifferent ghost of a smile. “I don’t need your empty reassurance, although why you feel the need to repeat your performance is beyond me. Does this amuse you in some twisted manner? I’m tired, and I’d like you to leave at once.”

“God, I’m a fool! You couldn’t have known, no wonder you’re acting like an avenging angel.”

“Known what?”

“I went to London to get something for you, something important I’d known existed for years, but the man I thought had it said he’d just sold it, so I had to go to New York and it turned out I had the wrong information so I had to go to Geneva. I got there in the nick of time, Sotheby’s was selling it at auction the next day, so I had to stay overnight.… Anyway … here it is.”

He took a small blue leather box from his pocket and tried to give it to her.

“I don’t want anything from you,” Tessa said, recoiling.

“I keep getting it wrong.” Luke hit himself on the forehead in frustration. “I’ve never done this before; I don’t have any practice. Could I start over?”

“I asked you to leave,” Tessa repeated, with no hint of thaw in the glacial hardness of her voice.

“Tessa, hear me out,” Luke demanded, standing foursquare in the middle of the room. “Before we even had dinner I knew that you and I were going to get married. I’d given up hoping that I’d ever find a woman I could love, and then, you—
you, Tessa, you happened to me
. One word from you and from that second on there was never the slightest doubt about it in my mind. I knew, spot on. My God, that sounds as if I think this is all about me and what I want, but it isn’t. It’s about you, too. So I decided it had to be something special, your engagement ring I mean. That’s what’s in the box.”

“You’ve spent three days chasing after an engagement ring for somebody you’ve never even asked to marry you? Is this some kind of playboy’s bad joke?” Tessa asked, so armored against him that she was unable to recognize the sound of truth in his words.

“Don’t you want to marry me?” Luke asked, surprise in his voice for the first time.

“Marry you? How would I know something as important as that after one dinner?” Tessa responded, with the first possibility of belief. She had fought against hope from the moment she’d received his letter; refusing to let hope enter her mind was the only way she knew to deal with her deception.

“It was much more than dinner,” Luke said relentlessly. “You said you loved me and I said I loved you.”

“Never!” she shouted, outraged again. “The word ‘love’ never passed my lips, or yours.”

“Tessa, it was the subtext of our entire conversation, of every word we said to each other,” he insisted.

“No, it was not!”

“Then listen to the simple text, Tessa. I love you, you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, and I insist that you marry me,” Luke informed her, more commanding than ever, his eyes dominating her eyes, refusing to let her get away from him, continuing to defy her attempts to build a safe emotional barrier between them.

“So, you ‘insist’ do you? That’s irresistibly romantic,” she said as scornfully as she could. She must not hope.

“Answer me,” he demanded.

“I don’t have to,” Tessa answered, holding on to her grievance as if it were a bastion that would keep her safe from the future.

“Ah, I knew, damn it, I
knew
I should have called, but I was running from one airport to another and I’m sorry you don’t like daffodils—”

“I
adore
daffodils!”

“Don’t you love me?” Luke asked. “Can you look at me honestly and say that you don’t?”

“I don’t know how I feel,” Tessa answered, maintaining her dignity. She could refuse to hope, but she couldn’t look at him and say she didn’t love him.

“Will you marry me, Tessa?” he asked, unsmiling.

She looked thoughtful, considering the situation. Did a proposal of marriage constitute a basis for hope, or would she make a fool of herself again?

“Tessa, Tessa, please say you will.” He was finally reduced to pleading, something he didn’t know how to do. “You’re driving me mad and I know you’re enjoying yourself, damn it. Don’t say you’re not, because I won’t believe you. All I want is a yes. I don’t deserve it, but love has nothing to do with merit.”

Tessa turned away, to hide the fact that her eyes had filled with tears of joy. Pushed to the wall, she acknowledged that she’d never been able to truly get over the hope that he’d return, not even for a second, not in her lowest minutes. She finally admitted to herself that all her life had been spent wandering around the wrong galaxy, looking, although she hadn’t known it, for this one particular man, this one particular destiny, and no other. It took her seconds of intense concentration to be able to speak clearly, but she wanted her words to be uncompromising.

“I love you totally, and I wanted to marry you the minute you took my hand.”

“Thank God,” he said with inutterable relief, stepping forward, gathering her in his arms and kissing her lips over and over until she couldn’t bear the burden of such confusing, unfamiliar rapture for another second. She pushed him away long enough to whisper, “Where’s that ring that’s so special that you made me suicidal over it for three days?”

“It must be here someplace.” He groped around on the floor until he found the box he’d dropped. Luke turned on a lamp against the twilight that was creeping into the room and opened the lid.

Tessa looked at it mutely, as if a piece of a star had materialized in the room. It was a perfect heart-shaped stone, cut in facets, as big, she thought, as a huge chunk of hard candy—and it was green, a marvelously soft green, the most mysterious, elusive color she’d ever seen.

“It’s the color of your eyes in a certain light,” Luke told her as she stared at it, still speechless. “It’s a green diamond, the rarest of natural colors after red, and red
was wrong. Except for the ‘Dresden Green,’ this is the biggest green diamond in the world. What’s more, it’s a chameleon.”

“ ‘Chameleon’?”

“It changes color. It’s the only diamond that does so. It turns yellow in the dark. I thought that would be convenient for finding you in the middle of the night. I knew I had to have it for you, instead of some obvious blue-white rock.”

“It’s shockingly beautiful,” Tessa said, daring to lean a little closer to the ring.

“It’s all right for a beginning, but just barely. Will you put it on, Tessa, darling?”

“It will change my life,” Tessa said, with a faint, odd feeling of reluctance. The ring, in spite of the soft fire of its color, was as triumphant, as regal as a queen’s tiara. Was she ready to wear it, to carry it off? It had implications she couldn’t begin to understand, but she knew they were buried in the extraordinary stone.

“Any engagement ring I give you will change your life, even if it’s just a cigar band.”

“True,” she replied, gathering the courage to extend her hand. The ring fit her finger perfectly. It sat there like a tame butterfly from a magic planet far away. Suddenly Tessa exploded in giggles.

“What’s so funny?”

“Fiona! Fiona … she said I was ten thousand times too good for you, and I agreed … now how am I going to explain this?”

“Tell her she’s absolutely spot on, but I bribed you.”

“Luke, tell me,” Tessa asked, hiding her laughter in his strong neck. “Do you really own this hotel?”

“Not likely. It belongs to one of Bad Dennis Brady’s companies. I just said I was him when I called the firemen so they’d come more quickly. People can’t tell one Aussie from another, you’ll find out. Anyway, there might have been a fire, you could have been burning my note.”

“I threw it away. Don’t ever write me again,” she commanded, “unless you learn to express yourself properly.”

“I’m never going to be far enough away from you to need to write.”

H
oly shit, Tessa, you can’t do it!” Aaron Zucker screamed, holding the phone as close to his mouth as possible—as if Tessa would be convinced by the sheer volume of his conviction.

“Give me one good reason.” Tessa laughed. “By the way, you’re invited, too, so get your plane tickets right away, it’s only ten days away.”

“One good reason, holy shit, I’ll give you twenty. This is madness! You have offers for the leads in the three best scripts I’ve seen in years, you’re the hottest new star in decades since
Gemini Summer
was released, you’d be throwing away opportunities right and left that I’d give my left nut for, you’re too young, you’ve never left home before, you don’t know this man, in fact you don’t know diddly about men in general or, even worse, in particular—don’t try to tell me you do because I’ve followed every move you’ve made since Roddy cast you in
Little Women
. You’re making a life decision without my guidance—”

“Aha, I thought that was it,” Tessa chortled, delighted with herself. “I’m getting married without my agent’s approval, that’s your real problem, Aaron. Your
feelings are hurt. When I called Roddy, he said the same thing, almost word for word, if you substitute ‘fucking stupid’ for ‘holy shit.’ ”

“I’ll bet your parents don’t approve either,” Aaron shouted.

“I haven’t told them yet. Isn’t it any satisfaction to you to know that I called you and Roddy with my news first?”

“Why haven’t you called them?” he asked suspiciously. “I bet it’s because you’re sure they won’t approve either.”

“I’m sure they’ll be happy for me, so I wanted to get the two of you fussbudgets over with first.”

“And what’s the big rush? Not only don’t you know the guy—why do you have to get married ten days from now? It’s obviously not a shotgun wedding. I just don’t get it.”

“We won’t have time for a honeymoon if we don’t—Luke has to be back in Australia in three weeks. But most of all we don’t want it to turn into a circus, we want to keep it as private as possible. No publicity, Aaron, that’s the most important thing, and you must help me on that. I’m counting on you.”

“What did you say this guy Luke’s last name was again?” Aaron asked in a more normal volume, hearing in Tessa’s voice her determination to do this insane thing no matter what he thought about it.

“Blake.”

“Like the beer?”

“He is the beer.”