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Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahill 04] (29 page)

BOOK: Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahill 04]
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Instantly he looked away. Her eyes hadn’t changed, either; they were the color of emeralds, the color unusual, dark and intense. Heavy black lashes fringed them, and they were wide and almond-shaped. When she stared, she had a look of absolute innocence, of extreme naivete. He was not going to fall into the trap he once had. There was not an innocent bone in her body.
Once, there had been. On their wedding night.
Hot slick memories and images of pale porcelain skin and dusky nipples, heavy black hair, swinging like a cape, hit him hard then. Soft, breathy cries of sheer pleasure echoed in his mind.
She laid her tiny hand on his arm. He jumped away. “My room is on the sixth floor,” she said.
He nodded, his heart pounding as if he’d just made love. And following her to the elevator, he refused to think about her body, which had once been as perfect as her face. Small and fragile, but only in appearance; in fact, strong and impossibly flexible, impossibly eager. Why was he recalling the only thing they had ever had in their marriage? Because he was intelligent enough now to know he had married her for sex and not for any other reason.
In the elevator, they were the sole occupants. He stared at the floor indicator as it inched from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 and then 5. And finally, it stopped on 6, and the light above the arrow’s tip lit up. He loosened his tie. He was perspiring.
She had stared at the tips of her shoes the entire time; now, she smiled uncertainly at him and stepped from the elevator after he opened the cage. He ignored her smile and her glance; it was all an act, a perfect act, for she was a perfect actress. For even now, he marveled at her aura of dignity and calm.
What did she want?
His heart lurched and then sped. The note she had sent to Francesca he dismissed. It was irrelevant now; he intended to handle his little wife, and he was not going to allow her
to come close to Francesca and do what damage she might there. He would protect Francesca from his wife’s scheming and manipulations.
“You have changed, Rick,” she said softly, leading him up the hallway.
“I am the same man you married.”
She did smile, and it appeared guileless. “I think I married a boy. I am definitely walking up this hallway with a man.”
He steeled himself—did she intend to flatter him or disparage him? And he did not reply.
But he had not been completely honest with Francesca. This woman had done more than break his heart. She had ripped it from his chest, only to tear off pieces and feed them to the waiting lions.
Callously. Cruelly. Selfishly.
Which was why he so hated her. It was why he could not stand being near her. It was why he intended to put her on the next train to Boston.
He had been completely, helplessly, head over heels in love with his wife. Even when he had spent long nights at the office, poring over cases, she had always been there with him, on his mind. Coming home each evening, even when she was already asleep, had been the best part of his day. Leaving every morning, usually just after dawn, had been the hardest.
He realized he was sweating.
The carpeted hallway was empty. As he waited for her to unlock her door, he took off his coat, detecting her perfume. It had changed. It was sweeter and spicier. It seemed to envelop him; he also could detect her natural scent, the scent of a sexual woman.
He shifted his weight, hardened his jaw, wondering how many lovers she had taken in the past four years. For him, there had been three—a brief fling to assuage his broken heart and restore his manhood, a mistress he had kept in Boston, and his last mistress, whom he had kept in Washington. In his own way he had loved both of his mistresses; he had been genuinely fond of them, for each had been a
strong, intellectual, and beautiful woman. They remained friends. And just a month ago he had found the woman of his dreams—Francesca—and last night he had been desperate to make love to her, but today, standing there in the endless hallway of the elegant hotel, he was acutely, hatefully aware of his wife, who had come to the city to destroy him.
There could be no other reason.
She glanced at him over her shoulder, smiled again, her lips rosebud pink without the aid of any rouge, and stepped inside a pleasant room with a four-poster bed, a small dining table and two chairs, a sofa, an ottoman, and a fireplace. “A suite was too expensive,” she murmured, removing her chinchilla coat.
His reflex was automatic, he jumped to take her coat, and as he did so, their hands brushed. He leaped away; she arched an eyebrow at him. “I hardly have leprosy, Rick,” she said.
“Forgive me for not welcoming you home with open arms,” he muttered, opening the closet and hanging up her coat. He threw his own coat over the back of one of the chairs and folded his arms across his chest.
She glanced at his chest, or was it his arms? Then she glanced lower, at his hips. His resolve hardened. “When are you returning to Boston?”
“In a few days, I suppose,” she said, turning away to fiddle with a vase full of flowers. She began to rearrange them and he sensed she was nervous, even though her manner indicated otherwise, and he was viciously pleased.
“Should I send for some refreshments? Have you eaten breakfast?” she asked, not turning.
He caught her wrist and turned her around. “My time is limited,” he said harshly. “So let’s not beat around the bush.”
“You act as if you hate me,” she said, her gaze wide and on his. Her glance slipped to his mouth.
He released her and said nothing. He was a gentleman, and he simply would not respond in the manner that he wished to.
She nodded, hurt changing her expression, and for a moment she appeared as vulnerable as a small child, which she
was not. “Should I order breakfast?” she asked.
“We ate on the train.”
She looked at him and this time he did not look away. Her eyes continued to mirror hurt, but that was simply impossible. “She is very beautiful,” Leigh Anne finally said, removing a very elegant hat and placing it carefully on a bureau. She sat down as carefully in a chair—her toes just reached the floor; her heels did not. She clasped her small hands in her lap.
“Yes, she is very beautiful.” He did not want to discuss Francesca with her. Sultry images from the night before flashed through his mind. To his amazement, he felt guilt intruding.
“I have heard she is also clever, that she solves crimes,” Leigh Anne said quietly.
“Is that what you wish to talk about? Francesca?”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.” He did not hesitate.
She looked down. She did not speak.
He was not going to feel guilty, as if he were the one with the parade of lovers, as if he were the one betraying her and their marriage. “Is that why you have come to the city? To discuss my relationship with Francesca?”
She looked up. Her mouth, which was extremely full, was trembling. “My husband is in love with another woman. Should I merrily go about my business and pretend that naught is amiss?”
“We ended our marriage four years ago!” he cried, and it was an explosion. His fist hit the table. The vase jumped but did not overturn. Leigh Anne paled. “Yes, you should have continued your affairs and pretended nothing was amiss!”
She stared up at him. Her bosom heaved. “We have ended our marriage? Since when? I receive your checks every month. I send you my bills. I have never received divorce papers, Rick.”
Divorce. How easily they had segued into the topic he wished to broach. He leaned forward, aware of shaking now. “That can be easily rectified.”
She gasped. Then, “Is that what you are thinking? Now you think to divorce me? After all that you have done?
Now
you think to divorce me?” She was on her feet, her mouth quivering, her eyes filling with tears. Her small body was trembling. “My father is at death’s door. My mother is incompetent and you know it. And then there is Charlie, my uncle’s bastard. She is a hoodlum, Rick, uncontrollable, wild, without any social graces! And I am supposed to find her a husband! She has been left in my household, for me to raise! Now you would divorce me?” The tears finally fell, drop after drop. And to make matters worse, Leigh Anne was as beautiful when she was crying as when she was not.
He grabbed her in sudden fury.
She stiffened.
“Don’t even think of starting with me, now,” he ground out, almost shaking her. Her shoulders were small and fragile beneath his hands—he felt as if he could crush them into dust if he tried. “I want a divorce. I have made up my mind. I shall marry Francesca, whom I love. And you, you can then do as you please, freely. Fuck the whole world, Leigh Anne, and I shall not care!”
“You’re hurting me,” she whispered, her eyes filled with fear.
“Stop.”
“I’m hurting you? You walked out on me, my dear, not the other way around.” But he eased his grip. He was seeing red now, red and white, for she was impossibly porcelain, impossibly beautiful, and her fear only heightened her beauty.
“You broke every single promise you ever made to me!” she cried with a gasp. “Let me go!”
“I broke promises?” He pulled her off her feet. Her small body could so easily be crushed by his larger one. He felt every inch of her now, against his own anger-wracked frame. “You swore to love and cherish me until death, Leigh Anne. Through better and for worse.”
“You also swore to love and cherish me until death, Rick, and you promised me a wonderful life! A wonderful life! You promised me that Georgian mansion with the cast-iron
fence, the one we both fell in love with, the one just two blocks from your parents’! There were gong to be family dinners on Sunday nights! And what about the two children we were going to have? There was going to be supper parties, once a week, I do believe. Our first guest list would be your partners at Holt, Holt and Smith! You promised me a home, a family, an entire life—and then you reneged on every single one of your promises,” she gasped, the tears falling in a ceaseless stream now. “And you are hurting me. Damn it. Let me go.”
He held onto her for one more minute, through the haze of anger and pain, acutely aware of her fragility and femininity, and even her breasts, crushed against his chest. And then he released her, as she had asked, but he made a mistake in doing so, and she slid down his body before her feet hit the floor.
Unfortunately, he was a virile man, one denied the pleasure of the bedroom for the past two months, and his reaction was reflexive and instantaneous.
She felt it, backed away, and became utterly still, freezing in the process of beginning to rub her arms where he had gripped them.
He hated himself.
“You still think I’m beautiful,” she whispered.
“I am a man, Leigh Anne, not a eunuch,” he said roughly.
“You still want me,” she said.
He laughed without mirth and shook his head. “There is only one woman I want, and she is not you.”
Leigh Anne stiffened. Her eyes blazed. “That’s not what your body says.”
“I get hard in my dreams,” he ground out. “And what does that mean? It means I have been in public office for well over a month and I have been living like a monk for even longer than that.”
“Deny it if it makes you feel better,” she whispered. “But you could never take your hands off of me. I don’t think anything has changed.”
“I don’t care what you think,” he said, turning away.
When she did not speak, he glanced at her.
“I am not giving you a divorce,” she said.
He faced her. “Then we will have a bitter battle on our hands.” He did not want to think about the fact that Francesca was against his divorcing as well, but for all the right reasons.
He stared, struck then by the utter and most basic difference between the woman he had once loved and the woman he now loved. Leigh Anne remained selfish to the core; Francesca was selfless. She did not have a single selfish bone in her entire body.
His heart turned over, hard and painfully.
“I understand that you have an excellent reputation,” Leigh Anne said softly, staring directly at him. She smiled a little, her gaze intent. “I understand that you are highly thought of and that, in some circles, the talk is that you will be groomed to run for the Senate.”
He knew exactly where she intended to go, and he became even more tense, if possible.
“I can help you, Rick,” she said.
He stared. What game was this? “I don’t want your help.”
“No? I can help you win the Senate. While a divorce will end your career—forever. No one in this country would ever forget it—you would be a political pariah. But to run for the Senate, why, you need a gracious and elegant wife at your side. Someone to shake hands with the wealthy who will support your run with their funds, someone to host those fund-raising dinners and even mere political affairs. You need a wife to smile at the gentlemen who will back you and to campaign at your side. You need me, Rick.”
BOOK: Brenda Joyce - [Francesca Cahill 04]
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