Masquerade (9 page)

When she stepped out of the lavatory, Remy immediately noticed Cole standing in the plane's small galley, his tall frame slightly stooped to avoid bumping his head on the curved ceiling. He had a coffeepot in one hand and a cup in the other. At the latching click of the lavatory door, he angled his upper body toward the sound, his gaze centering on her, as impassive as his expression.

"Coffee?" He lifted the pot in an offering gesture. Remy started to accept, then recalled that caffeine frequently contributed to the effects of jet lag. As if reading her mind, Cole said, "It's decaffeinated."

"Then I'll take a cup." She moved into the galley opening and watched his hand tip the pot to pour coffee into a cup. When he passed the filled cup to her, their fingers inadvertently brushed. Her glance locked with his a second time, the memory of the way she'd felt when his hands had loved her suddenly vivid. She remembered clearly the violent harmony of their love-making, and the deep emotions she'd felt for him—emotions that she now hesitated to call love.

Something hard flickered over his lean features, thinning the line of his mouth before he abruptly turned away and reached into a cabinet for another cup. Had she revealed her doubt? Remy wondered. Probably. Because she did doubt—both her feelings and him.

"Why didn't you tell me we'd broken up instead of letting me think we'd only been arguing?" She wrapped both hands around the sides of the cup, as if needing the warmth from the hot coffee.

He looked at her, the line of his mouth finishing its cold-smiling curve. "I was sure Gabe wouldn't waste any time telling you that."

"Why didn't you tell me?" she challenged. "Don't you think it was slightly deceitful not to?"

"I suppose now you're regretting what happened." He raised the coffee cup to his mouth.

"Yes, I am." She watched him take a slow sip of the coffee. Instantly she recognized her mistake and lifted her glance from his mouth to his eyes, willing the uneven beat of her pulse to stop. Doubts or not, the attraction was there, strong and swift. "I wish I'd waited until I could remember our love relationship before I resumed a sexual one with you." Remy looked down at the cup and her hands, so tightly wrapped around it. "I wish—" She broke off, stopped by the futility of the phrase.

"Don't we all," Cole murmured dryly.

She looked up, suddenly and intently curious. "What do you wish?"

His gaze made a slow search of her face, a glimmer of longing in his eyes and a trace of anger in his expression that the longing was there. "I wish I'd told Mrs. Franks I was too busy to see you and never allowed you to walk through that door."

It took a second for Remy to realize what he meant by that. "That's when you got within ten feet of me six months ago, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell me about it?" She was curious —more than curious—to learn the circumstances that had brought them together. "I need to remember. Who's Mrs. Franks?"

"My secretary." He looked at her, hearing the sharp buzz of the intercom that day and remembering his absently curt response. . . .

 

"Yes, what is it?" he demanded, without looking up from the operations cost report for the month of July.

"Miss Jardin is here to see you," came the reply over the speaker.

"Who?" He frowned at the intercom, which now had his undivided attention.

A short silence followed, then his secretary's voice spoke again, faintly prompting, faintly embarrassed. "Remy Jardin."

"Frazier's daughter." His frown deepened. "What—never mind." Cole flipped the report shut and leaned back in his chair, his curiosity aroused in spite of his better judgment. "Send her in.

Almost immediately the doorknob turned. Cole automatically stood up when she entered his office, the manners insisted upon by his mother too deeply ingrained to be ignored. As impossible as it seemed, Remy Jardin looked more attractive than he remembered from their one brief meeting several months before. Her hair was a fresh tawny gold in the room's artificial light, its rich color deepening the pale tan of her skin. Good breeding defined all the regular features of her face, a face made graphic by some warm, frank curiosity lying within.

As she crossed the room, the whisper of coral silk shantung drew his eye to the soft summer dress she wore, the cut of the diaphanously thin material designed to flow over her natural curves in a deliberate but subtly body-conscious style. He saw her glance make an inspection of the corner office—the standard old-world executive kind that had required the sacrifice of a small mahogany forest to panel the walls. A smile touched her lips when she noticed her grandfather's portrait hanging in its customary place, and it lingered as she stopped in front of the massive desk, the gold flecks in her hazel eyes glinting with a warmth and a touch of amusement that was oddly appealing.

Wise to the ways of her kind, he waited for the dip of her chin and the provocative glance issued through the sweep of long lashes. It didn't come. Instead she faced him with a somewhat surprising directness.

"I thought you would have had this office redecorated by now," she said. "Everything's exactly the same as when my father sat behind that desk."

"Considering the company's financial situation, I thought the money would be better spent elsewhere," he replied easily, aware that the width of the desk precluded the need for a handshake. "Please have a seat, Miss Jardin." He motioned to the two captain-style chairs with leather seats in front of his desk.

"Thank you."

He waited until she was seated, then sat down in his own chair. "I'm sure you'll understand when I say that this visit of yours, Miss Jardin, is more than a little unexpected. Just what is it you wanted to see me about?"

"I came to take you to lunch, Mr. Buchanan," she announced with all the smoothness and self-assurance of a wealthy young woman too accustomed to having her own way.

He reacted swiftly, instinctively, disguising it all behind a polite smile. "Sorry, I—"

"I've already checked your schedule, Mr. Buchanan," she interrupted. "You don't have any appointments until three o'clock. And this is business."

"What kind of business?" He breathed in the scent of her perfume, a blend of sweet gardenia and sandalwood, as bold and feminine as the rest of her.

"Company business."

"Really? You'll forgive me if I seem surprised, but I understood you took no interest in the business—except to attend board of directors' meetings when they're called and to collect compensation of your attendance at those meetings."

She didn't bat an eye at his implied criticism, but her tone was a degree or two cooler. "You're quite right, Mr. Buchanan. I've never been involved in the actual operations of the company, but I do take an interest in who's running it. Now that you're in charge, I think it's time I found out more about you."

"Wouldn't it have been wiser to do that
before
I came on board, Miss Jardin?"

She smiled, not in the least nonplussed by his question, and he couldn't help noticing the attractive dimples that appeared in her cheeks. "You know the old saying, Mr. Buchanan—'better late than never.' Besides, you piqued my curiosity when you informed my father last week that you weren't interested in being nominated for membership in his krewe. I believe your exact words were 'I don't give a damn if the club is one of the most elite and politically powerful Carnival organizations in the state.'" Her smile widened. "Poor Daddy is still suffering from the aftershock of your refusal." She paused, considering him with undisguised interest. "According to your resume, you grew up in New Orleans, so you must know there are people who would pay anything merely for the chance to have their names mentioned in the same breath with a nomination."

"I'm not Uptown, Miss Jardin, and I have no desire to mingle with your Uptown crowd." When he said "Uptown," Cole was referring not so much to a place as to an attitude.

"You could make some very important contacts."

"Perhaps. But these 'important contacts' didn't do your father much good, did they? They certainly haven't kept the Crescent Line out of the financial trouble it's in. That's why you brought me on board."

"So it is." She started to say something else, but the strident buzz of the intercom interrupted her.

"Yes?" He heard the tension in his voice. Dammit, why was he letting her get to him?

"I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Buchanan," his secretary replied, a faintly worried edge to her voice. "There's a delivery man here with a package for you. He said he had instructions to bring it here—"

"Yes, I've been expecting it. Go ahead and accept delivery on it."

"But one side of it has been . . . crushed in a little. Before I accept it, maybe you should open it and see if there's been any damage—"

Cole didn't wait for her to finish as he moved out from behind the desk and started for the door, murmuring a slightly distracted "You'll have to excuse me" to Remy. As he walked into the outer office, his glance skipped over the pencil-thin Mrs. Franks and the brown-uniformed delivery man standing in front of her desk, then zeroed in on the rectangular package propped against the side of the desk. With clenched jaw, Cole surveyed the caved-in front of the cardboard container, then walked over to it and removed his pocket knife from the pocket of his trousers.

He took his time opening the package. If there was any damage, he didn't want to make it worse through careless haste. When he finally lifted the ornate, gilded frame out of the wood-reinforced box, he drew his first easy breath at the sight of the seemingly unscarred print, matted in pale blue.

"Has it been damaged?" Mrs. Franks asked anxiously.

"Except for a couple of nicks in the frame, it doesn't appear to be." But he carried it over to the couch and set it on the seat cushions, crouching down to examine it more closely. He ran his hand lightly over the surface, tactilely searching for any break in the smoothness of it and finding none. Satisfied at last, he withdrew his hand and allowed himself to gaze at the old print for the pure pleasure it gave him.

At almost the same instant he became aware of a stir of movement beside him, the soft rustle of silk whispering against silk as Remy Jardin sank down beside him. She reached out and traced her hand over the picture.

"This is an old sporting print. They were very popular between the mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before photography became widespread." She threw him a slightly surprised look. "Prints like this—especially in such excellent condition—are fairly uncommon."

"I know." His glance skimmed her blond hair, the color of dark honey, its loose windblown style the kind that invited a man to run his fingers through it.

She turned back to the picture, admiring it with keen, appreciative eyes. "It's a marvelous work —so much detail, so much genteel refinement. . . surrounding two boxers."

"Pugilists," Cole corrected. "The English regarded boxing as a noble art and a gentleman's pursuit, while Americans have tended to think of it as the sport of underclass ruffians. This particular print depicts the international match between the American John C. Heenan and the English champion Tom Sayers. The portraits of the important personages at ringside include, among two hundred others, Prince Albert, Thackeray, and the cartoonist Thomas Nast."

He straightened from his crouched position, catching her elbow and drawing her up with him, ignoring the speculating light in her eyes. But he found it impossible to ignore her. She was attractive, too damned attractive, and his reaction to her was that of any normal, healthy male. Unfortunately he'd thought he'd acquired an immunity against her type.

"Do you want me to put in a claim for damages to the frame, Mr. Buchanan?" his secretary asked.

"No, it's not worth the paperwork. Just sign for the delivery." He picked up the framed print and carried it into his office, aware that Remy Jardin was following him. He leaned the painting against the walnut credenza behind his desk, then turned to glance at her. "Was there something else you wanted, Miss Jardin?"

She smiled faintly. "I invited you to lunch, remember?"

"I remember." But he'd hoped she'd forgotten —or changed her mind.

"Surely you aren't going to refuse to have lunch with one of the directors of the Crescent Line, are you?"

He wanted to. Every instinct warned him to steer well clear of Remy Jardin. He reminded himself that he wasn't twenty years old anymore. He knew who she was and what she was—and her subtle look of class and breeding didn't impress him. He wasn't about to be taken in by her kind again.

"Where are we having this lunch?" he asked, deciding to get it over with and be rid of her.

"Galatoire's." Her smile became more pronounced. "But don't worry, Mr. Buchanan. Directors don't have expense accounts, so you don't have to be concerned about the company ultimately paying for it."

But he had a strange feeling that
he
would pay for it, somehow.

They walked to the restaurant in the French Quarter—although
walked
wasn't really an appropriate word for it. Nobody ever
walked
in New Orleans in the summer. The heat, the humidity, the languor in the air always reduced the pace to a leisurely stroll, a pace that let the sights, the sounds, the atmosphere of the city known as the Big Easy seep in.

When they crossed Canal Street, the dividing line that separated the Central Business District from the narrow streets and tightly packed houses of the Vieux Carré, Cole felt it sweep over him— the iron grillwork on the balconies, the doors leading to hidden courtyards, the clip-clop of a carriage horse, the muffled notes of a trumpet wailing to a Dixieland beat, and the heaviness in the air. He tried not to listen to the low, smoky pitch of her voice and to concentrate instead on her words. He tried, but he couldn't.

In the years when he was away from New Orleans, he'd forgotten the sexual energy that sizzled beneath the city's surface—a sexual energy that was erotic, not the sleazy packaged kind that could be found all up and down Bourbon Street, but rather the subtle, sultry kind found in the diaphanous dress she wore and in the steamy air, thick with the scent of magnolias. Why hadn't he remembered it during the six months he'd been back? Why now—with her? Had he avoided the memory deliberately, or had he really been that busy? He wanted to believe the latter.