Once Tempted (2 page)

It was David who’d appeared smitten, struck by the proverbial lightning bolt. After Tess had offered him a lobster puff, he’d ignored the other assembled guests,
stationing himself at strategic points throughout the vast apartment to intercept her as she passed. Later he’d teased that it was her bow tie that had made him fall in love with her on the spot. Looking at it, he’d imagined himself in ten years’ time regaling their children with the tale of how he’d fallen in love with their mother because of her pink and purple polka-dotted bow tie.

That was David through and through: outrageous and totally unpredictable. Heartbreakingly so.

Tess had done her best to politely brush him off and concentrate on serving the other guests, but David had persisted in his attempt to talk to her with such a strangely endearing combination of humor and determination that she’d been charmed in spite of herself. By the end of the evening he’d convinced Tess to have dinner with him.

They’d eaten at a candlelit bistro that served a perfectly seasoned bouillabaisse and talked until the restaurant closed. She learned that he was a journalist and had been invited to the party because he was writing a profile of the political wannabe. David told her it was lucky he’d already gathered more than enough material for the article. Once he’d spotted Tess and her bow tie, he would have ignored Gandhi himself.

David had regaled her with amusing stories about his far-flung travels and the articles he’d written, but he’d also seemed interested in her, asking questions when she spoke about her background and where she’d grown up. He even got her to open up about a topic she rarely shared: the challenge her parents faced in trying to care for her severely autistic older brother, Christopher, and how devastating it had been for them when they could no longer keep him safe and were forced to place him in a private facility.

By now, of course, she wondered how much of David’s interest had been feigned or simply well-honed professional skill. But at the time she’d believed he truly
cared. So when he asked her about La Dolce Vita, she’d revealed another aspect of herself, that she loved working at events planning because it gave her the opportunity to create a special, happy moment for people to remember. She needed to know she could make people smile and take away their cares—if only for a short while.

David had reached across the linen-covered table and laid his hand over hers and said that she’d given him a wonderful evening. He hoped it was the beginning of many such moments with her.

Maybe it was the lighting, the timbre of his voice, or the slow sweep of his thumb across the inside of her wrist, or maybe it was the earnestness of his expression when he’d spoken those words. She didn’t know. But she fell. And fell hard.

Because of David’s flexible schedule, they’d seen each other every day. Within a month he’d asked her to move into his SoHo loft. Six weeks after that he’d surprised her by coming to La Dolce Vita one afternoon when Anna and Tess and nine other employees were madly dashing about preparing for yet another high-octane party, this one a book launch for a celebrity’s tell-all memoir. In the middle of the kitchen, where Tess had been helping Anna top tiny Asian crab cakes with paper-thin slices of ginger, David had dropped onto bended knee and presented her with an emerald-cut diamond engagement ring. The rock had impressed even Anna. And Giorgio, who in the hours before big events made Mussolini look like a lackadaisical cream puff, decided the moment called for his best prosecco.

In hindsight, Tess recognized she should have resisted David’s entreaties or at least tried to slow down the supersonic speed of their relationship, but there’d been a magic to the courtship and she’d been enchanted. Clever and dashing, he’d been her very own Prince Charming,
and Tess had believed herself the luckiest woman in the world.

But now he was gone and Tess remained bewildered, unable to sort truth from fiction, unable to comprehend why he’d bothered to pursue her in the first place. Why he’d bothered to tell her he loved her. Why the need for so much deceit …

She drew a breath. Next to her, Anna was looking at her sadly, helplessly, as if she, too, was remembering the string of events that brought David into Tess’s life. Okay, it was time to block out the endless loop of questions.

“The most important thing is that the doctors assured us that David didn’t suffer,” she said quietly.

“I know you told me that he’d had an aneurysm when they were trying to remove the tumor and then he slipped into a coma. So did he just … die?” Her friend’s voice was tentative. She didn’t know how to talk about what David and Tess had gone through. Anna wasn’t alone. There was so much Tess couldn’t talk about, not even with Anna.

“No. He contracted pneumonia.”

“Pneumonia? Gosh. That sounds so …” Anna trailed off awkwardly.

“Boring,” Tess supplied. “I know.” She nodded wearily. Boring was the antithesis of David’s character. “The doctors did everything they could, but the pneumonia took hold quickly. While he was in the coma, I sat beside him day after day, watching as the doctors and nurses came in and checked his vitals and performed their tests to measure any sign of responsiveness. During all that time I didn’t truly understand that the coma hadn’t simply robbed him of consciousness. It stole his strength, his ability to fight.”

“Well, he was better at fighting with words, wasn’t he?”

The comment was uncharitable, but Anna had seen
how brutal David could be, how he used words the way some men used their fists. Once the marriage had started to deteriorate with the same dizzying speed with which it had been born, Tess would come over to Anna’s—she couldn’t burden her parents with the news that her very short marriage was already on the rocks, not when they’d suffered so much—to fall onto this very sofa, sobbing from the pain of David’s viciousness. Incensed, Anna would pace the room, cursing him with an eloquence that would have made a marine sergeant blush.

Doubtless regretting her previous remark, Anna said, “Still, I’m sorry. What a terrible way to go.”

“Yes.” Raising her glass, Tess drank deeply to banish the vision of the tubes inserted into David’s body and the wires attached elsewhere that had served to keep him in that terrible state for far too long. Although now painfully aware of how little she’d understood her husband, she was certain of one thing: David would have hated being dependent on those machines to keep his heart beating and his organs functioning … no matter what his parents wished to believe.

She had no sooner managed to push aside the image of David unmoving and unresponsive in his hospital bed when it was replaced by another one almost as distressing: of Edward Bradford turning to her minutes after the doctor had confirmed David’s death.

Grief had leached the color from Mr. Bradford’s patrician face but his blue eyes blazed, lit with pain and with rage. Removing an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit, he’d shoved it at her.

“Here.”

Uncomprehending, she’d stared at it and then up at the unforgiving lines of his face. “What’s this?”

She’d been on the receiving end of Edward Bradford’s disdain from the first day she met him and his wife, Hope, at the hospital, minutes after David had been
transferred to pre-op. He never looked at her without making his contempt clear. Now his thin lips tightened as he sneered. “Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten. It’s the money I promised you. You’ve fulfilled the bargain. You stayed by my son’s side. Take it and go.”

The money. The absurd offer David’s father had made to pay her a million dollars if she stayed at the hospital until David was able to be discharged—an offer so preposterous she hadn’t taken it seriously.

Anna’s voice rescued her from the memory that filled her with biting shame. “It’s terrible to speak ill of the dead, but I’m not sure I can forgive David. How could he have married you without saying a word about the fact that he’d
already
suffered a brain tumor?”

If that had been the only secret David had kept from her. It now seemed as if everything about their marriage had been based on a lie. The biggest one being David’s saying he loved her.

That was what she got for believing in fairy tales, for believing for even a minute that a dashing, cosmopolitan journalist would fall in love at first sight with a working girl from Queens, sweep her off her feet, and propose marriage within the space of weeks. How could she have thought that she and David would make it, that they would enjoy a happy ever after?

Most likely it was because the David Bradford she’d known during those first weeks had been the most charming man she’d ever encountered. The most determinedly persuasive, too. It was only later, after she’d agreed to elope with him and they’d made their trip down to city hall, that, with the suddenness of a light being switched off, his charm had been replaced by a poison-tipped cruelty. Both extremes, his charm and his hostility, had been equally devastating.

She took another sip of wine to wash away the bitterness but then reminded herself not to drink too much.
She would need a clear head tomorrow when she talked to her parents and told them of her plans.

“I’ve decided it’s better to stop asking why David did the things he did and said—or, in his case, left unsaid. I might go crazy otherwise. But at the hospital, I learned from the doctors that David’s first brain tumor had been benign and that the treatment had been successful. He was only eighteen at the time, Anna. A kid.”

“Oh God. That must have sucked.”

“Yeah. I don’t know whether he didn’t recognize the symptoms or if he simply dismissed the possibility that after ten years in remission the growth had returned. As I was completely in the dark about his medical history, it didn’t occur to me that his headaches signaled something deadly serious.”

“Especially since he blamed them on you.”

“Yes.” Whenever she raised the topic of seeing a doctor, he flat out refused, turning what had begun as a conversation into a full-scale blowup. Living with her was enough to give anyone a migraine, he would rage, since all she did was nag and interrupt him when he was trying to write. He would never meet his deadlines because his wife was too much of a stupid bitch to leave him bloody well alone.

This would be his cue to storm out of the apartment, sometimes not returning until the next day, reeking of alcohol, other women’s perfume, and sex.

And when tears filled her eyes, he’d smirk and tell her the hookers he’d bought were better lays than she’d ever be. Once they’d used their mouths, they knew to shut them.

Anna glanced at her pityingly, as though she could read her thoughts, and moved the tray of appetizers closer to her. “Are you hungry? The salami’s from Balducci’s.”

She shook her head. “I can’t, Anna. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t know what I was thinking, making all this. The good news is that Lucas will have a nice midnight snack when he comes home from the office.”

Tess seized the chance to talk about something else. “Is Lucas taking any vacation time?”

“Mmm-hmm. Starting tomorrow. We’re driving to New Haven on Christmas Eve to spend it with his parents. We’ll celebrate Christmas Day with mine. Mama’s over the moon. She’s been baking for weeks. What were David’s parents like?”

Tess shrugged uncomfortably. “Okay, I guess, considering that I was the interloper. I thought his mother was beginning to soften toward me near the end.” But not enough to persuade her husband that Tess should be allowed to attend David’s funeral, she added silently. The hurt was still raw. It made her want to curl protectively into herself. How she wished she could forget every last one of the Bradfords’ insults.

“So he really never told them he’d married you?” Anna asked. “Incredible.”

“He hadn’t talked to them in years,” she said wearily. “It was the principal reason he used to convince me to elope. That, and how we would be sparing my own parents a whole lot of expense if we skipped a church ceremony and reception.” She’d been so touched by his sensitivity.

Love had made her blind as well as foolish. It would have made her mother happy to see her walk down the aisle. But since the marriage had ended nearly as soon as it began, Tess couldn’t help but be glad that her parents hadn’t wasted a penny on it. Cold comfort, but she’d take it.

“Bastard. He knew that the cost of Christopher’s care hangs over your parents’ heads so he used it to get his own way. I’m not a good friend, Tess. I should have stopped you from marrying that
stronzo
.”

“No, you’ve been great. The best. I’m not sure anything or anyone could have persuaded me that David wasn’t exactly what he seemed at first.”

“Yeah, I know.” Anna nodded glumly. “He played us all so well. Even I was fooled.”

Tess gave a little smile. “And that’s saying something.”

“It sure is. So when did you finally meet Mr. and Mrs. Bradford?”

“At the hospital. They were there when I arrived. David’s doctors must have convinced him to let them inform his parents of his condition.”

“Great place to meet the in-laws. How did they act when they met you?”

That was an easy one. “Like I was a walking, talking slap in the face. After meeting them I understood why David didn’t want them at a wedding ceremony or even standing with us before the justice of the peace. If they’d had even an inkling that David planned to marry me, they’d have done everything in their power to stop us.”

“Simply because you weren’t what they’d envisioned as wife material for their son?”

Tess laughed bitterly. What could she say to her big-hearted friend? “I doubt I’d have even made the cut as one of David’s hookers.”

Anna shifted on the sofa to hug her again. “Stop. You were too good for him—were too good for the entire snooty family. And I’m just talking about your character. Surely the Bradfords weren’t blind?”

“I’m afraid my looks hardly appealed to them,” she answered drily.

“Oh, right.” Anna made a face. “You’re gorgeous. Mama’s right when she says you look like a young Gina Lollobrigida—though maybe not when you’ve spent the last two months watching your good-for-nothing husband slowly die—but the Bradfords were probably hoping
David would get hitched to some emaciated blonde in a tennis skirt. Prissy puritans.”