A Merry Little Christmas (21 page)

“That’s not true, Angel,” Donnie said softly. “Now that you’re not biting my head off every two minutes, I like you just fine. And you like me, too. Admit it.”

She laughed softly as he cuddled her and demanded that she confess her true feelings. “You think I’m cute and you want me, Angel, you know you do. Say it! Say you’re crazy about me!” he said comically.

By now she was giggling at his foolishness and almost forgotten the fix they were in. She sat up straighter and looked him in the eye. Putting one hand on his shoulder and the other on his face, she smiled. “I like you a little bit, I think. You’ve been very sweet to me and I really appreciate it,” she said nicely.

Donnie did
n’t pay her words any attention;
he just kissed her, lightly and sweetly. Then the passion that was always just under the surface began its inexorable rise to the top. He increased the pressure on her lips and they parted to his seeking mouth, the warm sweetness of her tongue driving him into a minor frenzy of desire. The warmth of her body lit a flame in his and he forgot everything except the feel of her lithe body in his arms. Unconfined by clothing other than the terry robe, he could feel her lissome frame and it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t nearly enough. His big hand started sliding up her bare leg, pushing the fabric aside. A soft sound from her increased the desire; he was burning for her, a hot thirst that only she could quench.

A sudden knock on the door caused Angelique to come back to herself and she leaped off his lap with a look of horror on her face. She backed away from him and dashed into the bathroom without a word leaving him to deal with the knocking. She leaned against the closed door of the bathroom, her heart pounding like a piston. What had she almost done? She’d almost succumbed to the unexpected that’s what.
 
Finally, she had enough strength to leave the solidity of the door and sit on the vanity bench by the marble counter. She took deep breaths to slow her heartbeat and eventually it worked. Adonis Cochran had been holding her, kissing her, seducing her wearing only a robe with nothing else on, and she’d loved every second of it. If she were to be honest, she knew that if the knock hadn’t sounded at the door, she’d be in that big bed wrapped up in Adonis and not another thing. Her heartbeat had returned to normal and the heat that had consumed her had finally ebbed but she wasn’t ready to face Donnie.
Maybe I’ll just s
tay in here the rest of my life;
he ’11 never
notice
,
she thought glumly.

Donnie tapped on the bathroom door, calling her name as he did so.
“Angel, baby, come on out
of there
.
Our clothes are here and we can get dressed and leave. I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he said sincerely. “I wasn’t trying to put the moves on you, but you’re so beautiful, I...” He stopped speaking and smiled because Angelique opened the bathroom door a crack and was looking at him with a carefully neutral expression. “Come on out. I won’t bite you and we do need to talk, Angel.”

As regal as a queen, she opened the door and walked past him without saying a word. She headed for the bed and veered away sharply, going into the living room where she took a seat on the sofa. Donnie followed her into the room, trying not to smile. He sat down in a large armchair adjacent to the sofa and began to speak. “I apologize for what happened, Angel, I really do. I was supposed to be making you feel better and I ended up groping you like a crazy man. That was inappropriate and it won’t happen again,” he said solemnly. “But in my defense I have to say that you’re so sexy and sweet, it would’ve been impossible for me to not kiss you.”

Angelique tried hard to keep her expression aloof and failed.
She was so surprised and touched
by Donnie’s words that a glimmer of a smile crept across her face. Sh
e immediately tried to look stern
again. “The thing is, Adonis, we can’t let things like that happen. We’ve got to get this thing annulled as soon as possible before anyone finds out.” A little of her former dismay was apparent in the look of sadness that flickered over her face.

Donnie leaned forward and took her hand again. “It’ll be okay, Angel, I promise you it will. This is going to be quick, discreet and painless,” he vowed.

Worry still nagged at Angelique. “Suppose it isn’t? Suppose ...”

Donnie took her other hand and held them both firmly. “Suppose we get dressed and get out of here? I’ll take care of everything. You’re my wife now, don’t forget that. Nobody’s going to mess with you, not if they want to live,” he said with a comic ferocity that was only half in jest. It did the trick, though, as Angelique smiled and agreed to get dressed so they could go home.

In a short time they were ready to leave. Angelique made one puzzling discovery when she found her cell phone in two pieces in her purse. “What do you suppose happened to this?” she wondered. Staring at the cell phone, she had another thought. “Adonis, Paris was out of town this weekend at a conference. She’s going to be back on Monday. What am I going to tell her?”

Donnie glanced at her and tried to hide his admiration for her beauty. Her cream-colored, silk jersey wrap dress was restored to its normal pristine condition and the taupe heels she wore with it accentuated her long, shapely legs. She was wearing new hose that had been procured by the desk downstairs and she looked nothing like the disheveled, disoriented woman who’d awakened that morning. Her hair had air-dried into a thick mass of waves, and even without makeup she was stunning. He realized he was about to be caught staring and cleared his throat. “Umm, what did you say?”

Angelique stopped rummaging in her purse and looked at her “husband,” trying not to let his good looks send her into another tailspin. The cleaners had done a wonderful job on his deep brown suit and the ivory shirt he wore with it. He was tying his tie, a brown and gold patterned silk one, and he looked good enough to eat with a small spoon. It was her turn to act disinterested while she answered his question.

“Paris is going to be home on Monday and I want to know what to tell her. You don’t know her as well as I do, she’s like a bloodhound. She’ll figure out something is up as soon as he walks in the room,” Angelique fretted.

“Don’t worry about Paris, we can handle her. Can you give me a hand with this?” he asked, indicating the tie.

She gave him one of the few genuine smiles she’d been able to muster all day. “Yes, I can, my brothers taught me how. Sit down, you’re too tall,” she instructed. In seconds she’d tied the long length of rich silk into a neat and perfect Windsor knot, smoothing his collar as she finished.
“Okay, you’re all
done
.” Inside, she was on fire from the desire to kiss him again, but outwardly she was cool and collected.

After taking a last look around the suite, Mr. and Mrs. Cochran went downstairs to check out of the luxurious suite and head back to Detroit to straighten everything out. They waited for the elevator in silence, a silence tinged with the anxiety emanating from Angelique. Donnie looked down and gave her a smile that was meant to reassure her.

“
It’s
okay, Angel. I’ll take care of everything,” he said as he pushed the lobby
button in the elevator.

They rode down in the empty car without saying a word; when the doors opened, they emerged into the lobby. Donnie put his hand to the small of Angelique’s back and started to guide her to the desk to check out.
 
A sudden flash of light made them both turn to face a group of reporters who had been lying in wait in the lobby. “Turn this way, Mrs. Cochran!”

“Mr. Cochran, what made you two
decide
to elope?”

“What was your family’s reaction to the sudden wedding?”

The questions were coming from all directions and microphones were stuck in their faces so rapidly that Angelique didn’t have a moment to react. Donnie however was much quicker. Locking his arm around Angelique’s slender waist, he held up his hand and spoke to the crowd like they were old friends.

“Hold it, folks! We’ll be issuing a statement later, but for right now I want to take my bride home so we can plan our honeymoon. If that’s all right with you, of course,” he said with an easy smile.

After a few more jocular comments, the reporters did indeed part their ranks to allow them through. In minutes Donnie had checked them out of the suite and they were in a cab headed to the airport. Angelique had been too stunned to speak; now she started to rage. “I can’t believe you! Why were you acting like—
”

Her words were cut off as Donnie silenced her the only way he could think of—by kissing her hard and fast.

When he felt her body relax, he pulled away to whisper in her ear, “Wait until we’re alone, Angel, unless you want our first fight to make it to the wire services, too.”

She gave him a look of pure fury but did as he asked. She didn’t say another word.

Chapter Thirteen

The next few weeks were what Angelique imagined hell to be like. Some intrepid paparazzi had seen her and Donnie emerging from the wedding chapel and taken a few shots that were released to the tabloids and wire services, and their fifteen minutes of fame was recorded for all and sundry to view. The thought of the resultant news reports was enough to turn her stomach.
Media Conglomerates Make Marital Merger
was written under one picture.
Beautiful Music for CEO and Bride
read another. There were dozens of them in every publication from
People
to
Jet
and in every single one was a picture of her and Donnie with their mouths plastered together like sweaty prom dates.
  Not only did the wire services pick up the news, but several nosey people had made crappy videos that were all over the internet along with even more pictures.  Every blog on the net was full of their tawdry wedding with all kinds of gossipy speculation.
Their plan to keep the nuptials a secret seemed naive to the point of insanity by now.

Even worse were the reactions of their respective families. The memory of the immediate repercussions gave Angelique shooting pains in the stomach. On the long and silent ride to the airport in Las Vegas, Donnie had taken the time to check his own cell phone and found it packed with messages from all his brothers, his father, her brothers, his sister and Warren. All the messages were variations on the same theme:
“
what in the world were you thinking
”
. Thanks to his quick, if ill-advised, thinking in the lobby of the Bellagio, it now seemed like this was a love match. An impetuous adventure by two people who were madly in love was how the press perceived it. A boneheaded damn-fool caper was how his brothers saw it. And what her brothers had to say didn’t even bear repeating. In addition, there was the reaction of her mother and A
.
J.

Angelique was sitting on the broad windowsill of her new bedroom, the formerly unfurnished bedroom of Donnie’s house. Her bedroom furniture had been moved from the house she’d shared with Paris and was now arranged in the room across from her husband’s room. She didn’t even have any boxes to unpack; in typical Angelique fashion, she’d gotten everything put away within forty-eight hours of being in the hous
e. She wasn’t alone in the room because
Jordan and Pippen were lounging at her feet. The two dogs had attached themselves to her from the moment she moved in and never strayed far from her. If Donnie wanted to see his pets, he had to find Angelique because that’s where they normally were, wherever she was in the house. And since she spent most of her time in the studio, at her old house or hiding in her bedroom, she didn’t see much of Donnie, which was how she liked it.

She took a look around the room, and when she couldn’t find one thing to rearrange or dust or hang up or put away, she walked over to the bed and sat down on the side of it. Her cream and gold damask bedclothes were out of place in the room with its burgundy, navy and dark green striped wallpaper. The walls needed to be stripped and the walls needed to be painted
,
maybe a
soft cream with a rag patina added by hand or a French vanilla with a luminous gold overlay. She thought about the other things that could be done to spruce up the room before she caught herself and realized that this room, like everything else in her life, was temporary. She wasn’t a permanent part of Donnie’s life any more than he was a permanent part of hers and in a little while they would go their separate ways. Jordan and Pippen sensed her sadness and came over to offer some cheer in the form of big wet kisses to her hands. She had to laugh and bent down to give them each a big hug.

“Do you want to go out? You want a walk? Okay, let’s go,” she said, rising from the bed. They went downstairs where Donnie was watching television. She tried to slip out the back door without saying anything, but Pippen was so excited about the prospect of going out that he grabbed his lead and trotted into the living room with it. Angelique watched him leave in dismay, hoping Donnie wouldn’t take the cue. Unfortunately, he entered the kitchen with the lead in one hand and a heavy jacket in the other.

“Come on, boy, we’ll get Jordan and go for a nice long walk, how about that?” he said as they entered the room. His eyes took in Angelique, wearing a jacket, hat and gloves and holding Jordan’s lead in one hand and the ubiquitous pooper-scoop in the other. “Well. I guess we had the same idea. Do you mind if I come along?”