In the Best Man's Bed Page 14

  “Three more days,” she mumbled, feeling her way into the bedroom, and slumping against the wall, too weary to undress and climb into bed. “Three more days, and then I’ll be out of here. It can’t happen soon enough.”

  “I quite agree.” Ethan’s voice swam out of the dark, startling her so thoroughly that she let out a shriek. And then, before she could begin to regain her composure, he turned on a lamp and, dazzled, she dropped her sandals and flung up her arm to shield her eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Anne-Marie?” he inquired coldly. “Too ashamed to look me in the face?”

  “Me ashamed?” she spluttered, squinting to where he slouched in one of the wicker chairs on the verandah. “You’ve got some nerve, Ethan Beaumont, accusing me of that! And what the hell do you think you’re doing, sneaking into my room like this?”

  “You’ve never objected before, my dear. What’s the problem, this time? Afraid there won’t be room for three of us in the bed?” He hitched himself straighter in the chair and made a big production of craning his neck to scan the open doorway beside her. “Where is Santos, by the way? Lying in the weeds, waiting to be sure the coast is clear before he makes his next move?”

  “I won’t even dignify that remark with a reply,” she informed him, “although I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you’d try to shift responsibility for this night’s fiasco to my shoulders. It’s typical behavior for the abuser to heap blame on his victim.”

  “You’re my victim?” He rose smoothly from his seat to loom, tall and dangerous, over her. “Then I must have missed something in your little performance at the Tourneaus, because I’m of a distinctly different impression. Enlighten me, please.”

  She turned away because, even in his present ugly mood, she was still so drawn to him that all she wanted to do was fling herself into his arms and forget every horrible thing she’d learned in the past few hours. “Just before your business associates showed up tonight, you were about to bare your soul to me, Ethan. What was it you were so anxious to tell me—that you’d taken Desirée LaSalle with you to Miami, perhaps?”

  He didn’t flinch. “No,” he said calmly. “On that subject, there’s nothing to tell.”

  “Oh, please! I overheard her bragging about how you had adjoining rooms.”

  “Yes? And your point is?”

  “That you’ve been lying to me!” she cried. “You told me you weren’t interested in her.”

  “I’m not.”

  “So why did you take her with you?”

  “She wanted to go shopping. Miami has some very good shops. There are very few commercial flights from here to the mainland. I had space on my private jet. Does that answer your question?”

  “She said….” What had Desirée LaSalle said, exactly? Pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers, Anne-Marie shook her head. “She said—”

  “I really don’t care what she said,” Ethan said softly. “What concerns me is that you set such store by it. We talked about establishing a bond of trust earlier. If finding out exactly what did or did not take place between me and Desirée was so upsetting to you, why didn’t you come to me, instead of turning for comfort to a man like Roberto Santos?”

  “If you had nothing to hide, why didn’t you tell me of your own free will that she was with you? You’ve had opportunity enough.”

  “I am your host, not your husband, Anne-Marie. I neither needed your permission nor owed you an explanation. Furthermore, in case you’ve forgotten, Adrian also went with me to Miami. I’d hardly expose him to the kind of behavior you’re accusing me of, and I thought you knew me better than to suppose I would.”

  At some level, she recognized both the truth and the logic of what he told her. But that he could remain so unmoved in the face of her obvious distress goaded her to recklessness. “Clearly, I don’t know you well at all.”

  “Nor I, you. What a good thing we’ve shown ourselves in our true colors, before matters between us progressed further.”

  “They were never going to progress further, Ethan! Do you think I couldn’t see what you were leading up to, tonight? Oh, you were being very gentlemanly, very charming, but it doesn’t change the fact that you were looking for a way to get rid of me tactfully.”

  “Was I?” He flicked a minute speck of something from the cuff of his jacket. “Well, you certainly gave me one, didn’t you?”

  “And how do you figure that?”

  “You made a spectacle of yourself with the one man in the world whom you know I detest above all others and with very good reason. You let him ply you with champagne, then got into a car with him, aware not only of his driving record but of his sordid morals.”

  “For what it’s worth, he behaved like a perfect gentleman.”

  “Then I can only say that your concept of the term differs vastly from mine, which shouldn’t come as any great surprise to me, given your own atrocious behavior.”

  “Mine?” She stared at him, outraged.

  “Yes, yours.” Impassively, he stared back. “You arrived at the party with me, and in full view of people I’ve known all my life and who’ve treated you with exemplary courtesy and respect, you left with him. That might be acceptable in your circles, but it doesn’t wash in mine. So add all that up, my dear Anne-Marie, and you’ll understand, I’m sure, when I tell you that you can save your I love you’s for someone who wants to hear them, because I’m certainly not interested.”

  “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “And to think I deluded myself for a second into thinking you might actually care about me!”

  “I did care. I’m not in the habit of sleeping with a woman who isn’t important to me.”

  “But she’d better be perfect, just like you, or else she’s history! No wonder your wife turned to another man. She probably couldn’t stand living with a saint.”

  White with anger, he lunged out of the chair. “And you tempt me to forget I am a civilized man!”

  “Well, that won’t do, will it, Ethan? It might show you to be as full of human weakness as the next man.”

  She’d gone too far. Much, much too far!

  He advanced on her with such swift, lethal grace that she found herself inching toward the door. But his arm snaked out to trap her, and jerked her up against him. His mouth sealed itself against hers in a kiss so hard and explosive that she moaned in protest. Gradually, though, his lips softened in lingering seduction, and she turned fluid with weakness, and moaned for a different reason.

  When the kiss ended, he caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger so that her face remained tilted up to his. “You think I don’t have my share of weaknesses? That I don’t make mistakes and despise myself for them afterward?” he asked in a low, savage voice. “Then take a look at the self-loathing in my eyes right now, Anne-Marie, and think again!”

  Then he tossed her aside as if she were no more than a piece of flotsam he’d found washed up on one of his precious, perfect beaches, and stalked out.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE wedding rehearsal took place the following evening. At nine in the morning, a servant delivered a note from Ethan, summoning Anne-Marie to the main house.

  “What have you done to my nephew?” Josephine whispered, catching her in the inner courtyard, the second she arrived. “The temperature here drops to near-freezing every time he puts in an appearance! Should I take it the two of you have had a falling out?”

  Before she could reply, Ethan showed up. “In here,” he said, brusquely, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to a room at the east end of the lower hall.

  Josephine gave Anne-Marie’s arm a sympathetic squeeze. “I pray you emerge alive, child!”

  The room was set up as an office. Leaving her to trail after him like the obedient subordinate he considered her to be, Ethan strode across the floor and sat down in a black leather chair behind a massive desk made of some exotic wood. “Have a seat,” he said, in the same take-no-prisoners tone.

  The only ot
her chairs faced the window. With the sun still so low in the sky, the verandahs did little to diminish its glare.

  Anne-Marie had not slept well. In fact, she hadn’t slept at all. But she’d done a lot of useless crying, as her puffy eyes and blotchy complexion showed. She hardly needed to have it bathed in bright morning light, while the man responsible for all her misery looked as fresh and crisp as a newly-ironed shirt. She hadn’t weathered years of coping on her own without learning a thing or two, though. Betraying hurt feelings was a weakness which invited nothing but pity from the one who’d inflicted pain in the first place, so she remained just inside the door and said, “No thanks. And I don’t know why you’ve sent for me, but it had better be important, because I’ve got a hundred other things waiting to be taken care of today.”

  “Then I’ll get straight to the point,” he said and, despite herself, she shivered, the lingering hope that perhaps he’d undergone a change of heart since she’d seen him last withering under the frost of his tone. Reaching into a drawer, he pulled out the outfit she’d made for Adrian and tossed it on the desk. It landed askew, like a rag doll flung aside by a petulant child. “We’ll start with this.”

  “Am I to assume that you have a problem with it?”

  “That you even need to ask tells me how little our tastes or expectations ever coincided.”

  She stepped forward and smoothed her hand over the finely-textured fabric. “And I suppose it doesn’t matter to you one iota that Adrian chose this over a more conventional outfit, and is thrilled at the idea of wearing it?”

  “Oh, he may wear it,” Ethan said scornfully. “The next time he takes part in his school’s annual play, that is, or at a friend’s fancy-dress Christmas party. Under no circumstances, though, will he appear at a family wedding in it. But perhaps you forgot that’s the reason you’re here—or else you don’t know the difference between the solemn rites of matrimony and a gaudy Hollywood extravaganza?”

  “He’s just a little boy, Ethan, and as ring bearer, he wanted to wear something distinctive and different.”

  “He will wear the morning suit created for him by my personal tailor.”

  “He’ll be stuffed into something designed for a grown man, you mean? Good grief, you’ll be expecting him to shave, next!”

  “It’s what I expect from you that you should be concerned about.”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes. “And now we get down to the real reason you hauled me up before your lordliness!”

  Ignoring the barb, he said, “Our respective roles as maid of honor and best man mean we can’t avoid one another until this wedding is over. But however much we might wish it were already done with, this time belongs to Solange and Philippe, and I will allow nothing to spoil it for them. Nor will I permit any behavior which might draw unfavorable attention to my family’s name and reputation. Do we understand one another, Anne-Marie?”

  “Perfectly,” she snapped. “But just for the record, I’m agreeing to your terms solely out of respect for the other members of your family and for my best friend because, quite frankly, what you might want or not want no longer matters to me.”

  “Appearances are all that count,” he said, swiveling the chair so that his back was toward her. “As long as we’re in agreement on that, there’s nothing more to be said. You may leave.”

  She’d have preferred to make a dignified exit, but his contempt sparked an anger in her which wouldn’t go unsatisfied. “Who do you think you’re talking to, you pompous jerk?” she spat, glaring at the back of his handsome, aristocratic head. “I’m not one of the underlings in your little puppet empire in which you, and only you, pull all the strings, and I will not take orders from you! Nor will I submit to becoming the chattel in your ridiculous turf war with Roberto Santos. I have done nothing—nothing to deserve being treated like this.”

  “You have shown yourself to be untrustworthy and immature,” he said flatly.

  “While your conduct, of course, has been forever above reproach.” Despite her best effort, her voice broke. “Somehow, no matter how hard I tried, where you were concerned, Ethan, it was never quite enough, was it? Your suspicions never quite faded away. Even when we were intimate together, you held something back. Not passion—that was beyond even your monumental self-control. You made love, but you didn’t give love. You just lent it for a little while.”

  “What’s the point in belaboring matters now, Anne-Marie?” he said stonily. “Nothing you say changes the fact that I thought you were different from the woman I married, but the first time the question of integrity arose, you showed yourself to be cut from the very same cloth.”

  “Did I really? Well, as a matter of interest, Ethan, would you have reacted quite as violently if I’d turned to any man other than Roberto Santos, last night?”

  He swung back to face her, his features carved in stone. “As a matter of interest, would you have bothered to turn to any other man but Santos to advertise your displeasure with me? Wasn’t that the whole point of your little exhibition?”

  “No,” she said, past caring about pride or dignity. “I was devastated by what I’d overheard, and he stepped in to save me from making a complete fool of myself in front of strangers. But if I’d had a choice, I’d rather it had been you who came to my rescue. Instead, you found a way to sneak ahead of me into my room, and ambushed me with recriminations before I had a chance to collect myself.”

  “Only a person with something to hide needs a chance to get her story straight.”

  “Something to hide?” she scoffed. “I’m not the one who smuggled a companion aboard my private jet and didn’t say a word about it! But since we’re having a tell-all session, just how did you manage to get back here before me, last night? And don’t bother suggesting it was because I took my own sweet time, because Roberto drove me straight home.”

  “I took a shortcut through the jungle.”

  “In the dark? A likely tale!”

  “You forget I was born on this island. I know its terrain as well as I know my own face.”

  “Then all I can say is that it’s a pity you didn’t cut through the impromptu conference with your Venezuelan friends with equal dispatch. We might not be having this conversation then.”

  “A man can’t base his life on might-have-been’s, Anne-Marie. He has to deal with what is. You and I come from different worlds. We were fools to believe we might find enough common ground to forge a lasting relationship, and the proof surely lies in the fact that a harmless incident was enough to sabotage our efforts.”

  “If you’re talking about Desirée LaSalle,” she said, drifting to the door so emotionally depleted that she felt hollow inside, “she’s about as harmless as a black widow spider, and I hope for Adrian’s sake that you realize it before she has you in her clutches.”

  “I can survive anything Desirée throws at me,” he shot back. “After all, I survived Lisa. And you.”

  The rehearsal for the ceremony took place at five o’clock in the church in town, and as far as Anne-Marie was concerned, it might have been a foretaste of heaven for Solange and Philippe, but it was a prelude to hell for her.

  Afterward, the bride’s parents hosted a dinner party at the Plantation Club. It, too, was a ghastly experience made that much worse by the memory of the last time Anne-Marie had found herself there with Ethan.

  Things between them had been so much more clear-cut when her chief impressions of him had been of sheer physical beauty overshadowed by stiff formality and overweening arrogance. But they’d been surface impressions only, revealing little of his capability for passion, and to be forced to sit so close to him now that she knew the difference caused her the most poignant agony.

  How could she be expected to close her heart and mind to him when the faint scent of his soap tormented her with memories of the times they’d made love; of the taste and texture of his skin, the brush of his hand, the touch of his mouth? How was she supposed to equate all that with the cool, imp
assive man sitting beside her now, and not find herself awash in misery?

  “I thought we had an agreement that we’d put aside our differences for now,” he said, looking anywhere but at her, as the main course was cleared away.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Then I suggest you try harder,” he said unfeelingly. “You’re not the only one who’s suffered a setback, but you don’t see me visibly wallowing in self-pity.”

  “I’m not you, Ethan. I don’t have your steely ability to cut myself off from my emotions,” she replied, staring into her wineglass and struggling to hang on to her self-control. She’d have succeeded, too, but the pitiful tremble in her voice gave her away.

  “You might find it easier if you stopped swilling back champagne,” he informed her. “At this rate, they’re going to have to scrape you up off the floor before much longer.”

  She turned to glare at him, outraged by the injustice of his accusation. “I’ve hardly drunk anything but water!”

  “I know,” he said, with grim irony. “But at least now you’re annoyed enough to show a little life, instead of looking and acting like a corpse. ‘Pale and interesting’ does not become you.”

  “I’m surprised you noticed!”

  “Let’s hope I’m the only one who does, because I meant what I said this morning. You’ve created enough trouble already, and I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and let you cause more. Nothing is going to cast a cloud over my brother’s wedding.”

  “Stop trying to manage me, Ethan,” she said waspishly. “I won’t be managed by you or anyone else.”

  “You don’t have any choice in the matter, my dear. The most you can do is take comfort in the fact that by tomorrow at this time, it’ll all be over and you won’t have to put up with me giving you orders ever again.”