The Perfect Temptation (65 page)

''Maybe you're a year older and a year
wiser," he offered.

Aiden snorted.

Barrett considered him for a long moment,
his lips pursed

and his brows knitted. Finally, he quietly
asked, "How honest

do you want me to be?"

If
Barrett had an
answer, he was entirely willing to hear

it. "Hell, I can't hurt any deeper than
I already do."

''All right." he said crisply, leaning
back against the buffet

and crossing his anus over his chest.
"I never met your
Mary

Alice Randolph. Tell me about her."

Mary
Alice? He knew
what she had to do with wanting to

drink himself blind. But what did she have
to do with Alex?

Leaving Alex behind was why he was sitting
here asking
him
self

pointless questions instead of being at the
Blue Elephant.

rolling around on black satin sheets in the
throes of mind-staggering

passion. Even as he considered asking for an
explanation,

he decided that he didn't care. He was too
tired
to

try
to
make sense of anything. ''What do you want to know?"

Barrett cast
him
a quick look and then shrugged. "I don't

know. What did she look like?"

He could see her so clearly. They'd met at a
party and

she'd been hiding in a corner behind the
potted palms. "She

was blond and blue-eyed and petite. A tiny
little slip of a

thing. She always wore pink."

After pondering that information for a
moment, Barrett

nodded and asked, ''What made her
special?"

Aiden frowned. He'd found himself in the
same corner

in trying to evade an encounter with his
former-as of that

afternoon-lover, Rose. He couldn't pretend
that he wasn't

sharing it with someone else. They'd struck
up a conversation.

and ... Damn
if
he could remember about what,

though.

It was odd and more than a little troubling
to be able

to look back and see
Mary
Alice but to have no recollection

of anything she'd ever said, of her thoughts
on anything, or

of her hopes. and dreams beyond those of
getting back to

Charleston.

"Don't you remember, Aiden?"

"No, I don't." he admitted,
frustrated with himself and
ir
ritated

that Barrett was pressing the point.
"Consuming a

massive amount of alcohol tends to pickle
your
brain,
Bar
rett.

Some
things
get lost.
Most
of
the
time it's a
mercy.

That's
the
attraction of being a
drunk."

The clock struck
the
hour of
three.
Only when
the
notes

of the third chime faded away did Barrett
quietly ask, "Did

she make you laugh?”

"Not intentionally;' Aiden supplied
wearily, willing to

answer: for no other reason than to get the
inquisition over

and done. "She was shy
and
rather serious."

"You know, we always wondered, Carden
and I ... Why

didn't you ever bring
Mary
Alice around
and
introduce her

to us? To Seraphina?"

"Because ... " Oh, hell, there
wasn't any point in lying

about it.
And
he was too exhausted to even make the attempt.

"I didn't think she could hold her
own
against you and Carden.

That she'd be flustered and uncomfortable
and that

you'd
think
she was nothing more than a brainless bit of

fluff. And I knew that Seraphina would
intimidate her. Not

intentionally, of course. Sera wouldn't do
something like

that It's just that
Mary
Alice didn't have
the
self-confidence

that Sera does."

"Was she good in bed?"

Aiden groaned and leaned back in his chair
to stare up at

the
ceiling. Were
the questions endless? Was there any pur
pose

to them at all?

"She's gone, John Aiden. There's no
reputation to protect."

Christ, he knew that. He didn't need Barrett
to point out

the obvious. "I have no idea," he
admitted on a sigh, still

staring at the ceiling. "I never made
love to her."

"Really," Barrett said dryly, the
single word a voluminous

statement, an admission of a long-known
fact. "Why not?"

"I wanted to marry her." It was a
superficial answer and

he knew it. But he was suddenly
tired
of looking back, tired

of thinking, and especially
tired
of being uncomfortable with

what he saw when he did.

"So?" his friend pressed, his tone
edged with just a hint

of sarcasm. "What does the one have to
do with the other?

Most men want to make love to their wives,
Aiden. And, in

the event that you haven't noticed, most of
them don't wait

for the legal blessing. Why were you willing
to?"

"She asked me to. I respected her
wishes. I respected her."

"Why?"

"Jesus, Barrett," he groaned in
exasperation. "I couldn't

take advantage of her. She was young and
homesick and innocent

and fragile and-"

"She needed you," he supplied.

"Yes."

"So you took care of her," Barrett
summarized. "She was

a damsel in distress and you happily stepped
up to play her

knight in shining armor."

A tiny spark of indignation pulsed deep
within him. He

brought his gaze down from the ceiling to
meet Barrett's.

"That makes it sound shallow. It
wasn't."

Barrett slowly came off the buffet to place
his hands flat

on the table and lean down. "I beg to
differ, John Aiden," he

said firmly, his brow cocked and his jaw
hard. "I'm sorry to

be so blunt, but it's long past time you
squared up to it. You

didn't love Mary Alice Randolph. Yes, you
certainly liked

her. She was undoubtedly a good person.

"No," he said, holding up his hand
to forestall the objection.

"You didn't love her. What you
loved
was being her

hero. That's why you looked down into those
tearful blue

eyes of hers and promised you'd get her past
the blockade

and home to Charleston.
If
you'd loved
her,
you never would

have considered it. You would have made her
stay in England

where she was safe."

His heart felt like it was in his stomach
and his stomach

was somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.
It was hard to tell

anything for sure; his brain was numb and
there were little silver

gnats swirling at the outside edges of his
vision. Nothing

was wrong with his memory, though. He could
see his parents

standing in the parlor, the look of anguish
on his

mother's face, the rage on his father's. And
he could hear

every word, feel each one of them tearing
through him.

"And I'm guessing," Barrett went
on, his voice sounding

considerably kinder than the one coming from
his memory,

''that your father said as much to you when
he finally managed

to get you back to St. Kitts."

''That and a great deal more," he
admitted, raking his fingers

through his hair.

"I'm also going to guess that somewhere
in that conversation

the fog in your brain lifted and you had a
flash of understanding

of exactly what you'd done and why. And
rather than

face the guilt of having put being a hero
before your responsibility

as a ship's captain, you threw yourself into
the nearest

bottle and obliterated the world. God forbid
that you gracefully

accept that you're human and did something
stupid."

Aiden stared down at the table. Barrett had
it spot-on. It

was as though he'd been standing there in
the parlor, listening,

watching. As though he'd been able to open
the top of his

head and look inside to see that hideous
realization explode

through his awareness. He
had
climbed
into a bottle to escape

it And, until this moment, he had managed to
forget it all.

"John Aiden, trust me on this,"
Barrett said with a sigh.

"All
twenty-four-year-old men do stupid things. It's the nature

of the beast."

It was a nice sentiment and clearly intended
to make him

feel, if not better, then at least part of a
very large club. "Did

you?" Aiden asked, leaning back in his
chair and scrubbing

his hands over his face.

"Hell, yes," Barrett replied with
a snort. "You're an absolute

amateur."

He couldn't say why in any specific way, but
Barrett's

membership in that club-and apparently
elevated status lifted

a horrendous weight off his shoulders. It
felt so damn

good
to
have it gone that be
couldn't
keep from chuckling.

''Did
you
spend
a year
drinking
your
brain
to mush?”

"No:'
Barrett
drawled,
straightening
with a chagrined