Speed Dating (4 page)

“Huh. Must have slipped my mind.”

They walked into a blaze of light and noise, a string quartet almost drowned out by the chatter and laughter of a great number of well-dressed people. The mansion reminded Kendall of the Biltmore Estate she’d visited near Asheville. This mansion had the same feeling of Gilded Age glamour, and although not quite so over-the-top, was still pretty amazing with its art deco architecture and old-world interior decorating style. She’d only gotten into the Biltmore as a paying tourist. To be in a Gilded Age mansion as a guest—however bogus—was quite a thrill. She was again reminded of Gatsby as she glanced around, drinking in the atmosphere. Of course, Fitzgerald had lived in the area. Perhaps he’d visited this very house.

A woman spotted them immediately and came forward. She was an older, faded version of Ashlee, wearing a soft pink suit and a corsage of orchids. “Why, Dylan,” she cried, holding out arms that didn’t just drip diamonds; it was more like a waterfall. “We’d almost given up on you, and you know Ashlee planned her wedding around the NASCAR schedule so you could be here.”

Good move, Ashlee.

Kendall didn’t think she was ready to face the mother of the bride. She hadn’t yet recovered from meeting the bride. She mumbled something about the washroom in the general direction of Dylan’s ear, and stepped away as his ex-mother-in-law enveloped him in a hug that looked mildly incestuous.

The washroom was a grand affair, of course, with black-and-white tile, marble walls, crystal chandeliers and acres of mirror. The sight of her reflection made her
cry out in distress. Her first ride in a convertible and she’d learned a valuable lesson. Never travel without a hair net. Her hair was big, windblown and hopelessly tangled. Any of her makeup that hadn’t been whipped off by her hair flying around her face at far too many miles an hour had smudged, run and spread so she looked like a rocker chick who’d gone a few rounds with a tornado.

Never mind she was prancing around at a society wedding in her underwear, her carefully styled hair and makeup were a mess and she had not so much as a clutch purse with her. No comb. No makeup. Nothing.

Fortunately, the washroom was equipped with wonderful Deco jars of stuff, so she sat on the blue velvet bench in front of a marble vanity and reached for a silver-backed brush, refusing to even think about how unsanitary it was to use a hairbrush of unknown provenance, age or cleanliness. This was an emergency.

Redoing her softly curled style was out of the question, but once she’d brushed it out, her hair had a certain wavy wildness that could be considered deliberate. Pinching off a single tiny orchid from the gorgeously blooming plant in a black-and-white pot, she tucked the creamy bloom behind her ear.

With a dampened tissue she managed to reduce her convertible-induced raccoon eyes to a kind of smudged shadow she hoped appeared intentional. Then, with a deep breath and a sense of fatality, she left the washroom.

Her few moments alone had given her the opportunity to realize that she’d gone temporarily insane. There was no other possibility. Marvin’s announcement—that
triple whammy of 1) I’m dumping you; 2) for a colleague and 3) she’s pregnant—had pretty much tossed Kendall into unexplored mental territory.

However, she wasn’t quite ready to head back to her usual rational state. For one night, she was going to enjoy a small vacation from her usual self. Appearing for one night only was Kendall Clarke, actress and girlfriend of one of NASCAR’s sexiest drivers.

She was determined to enjoy every minute.

Dylan was, by this time, in deep conversation with an older man. He must have kept an eye out for her, for when she reached his side he didn’t even turn, merely put an arm around her and pulled her close.

Mmm. His chest was broad and warm. She sensed the power and strength of his athlete’s build. Really, not much acting was required for her to lean into his embrace and gaze up at him as though he was the most exciting man she’d ever met.

“Clyde,” he said, sending her a shadow of a wink that only she could see. “I’d like to introduce my girlfriend, Kendall. Clyde is Ashlee’s father.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet any friend of Dylan’s,” Clyde said. He was a dapper man who looked to be in his sixties. He was balding, with salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. Ashlee may have thought Kendall looked slutty, but her father saw nothing amiss. His eyes twinkled when he looked at her. “A pleasure indeed.” She felt Dylan’s arm tighten around her.

She smiled at Ashlee’s father and shook his hand, which he held on to a little longer than necessary.

Ashlee’s mother came over and said to her husband,
“Now, don’t monopolize Dylan. Our other guests want to say hello.” Then she stood there and engaged her daughter’s ex in conversation herself, leaving Kendall stuck with the husband, who moved a step closer.

“What a lovely dress,” he said, doing his best to look down the front of it.

“Thank you.”

“I do like these skimpy fashions you young women choose.”

“A recent study of media photos revealed that female stars bare approximately fifty-nine percent of their bodies today in public appearances as compared to a mere seven percent in the 1970s.” She sighed. “No wonder the fitness craze keeps getting crazier.”

The older man blinked. “What is it that you do, my dear?”

Oops. Shut up with the statistics, she reminded herself. “I’m an actress.” More seemed to be required, so she added, “Shooting a body lotion commercial.”

“You know, I’ve always been interested in how they make commercials. I’d love to come by and watch you work.”

“Oh, I don’t think that would be allowed,” she said as brightly as she could.

He chuckled softly. “I’ve got a lot of connections. Which company’s shooting? I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll come watch you work and then I’ll take you for lunch at my club. I’m sure you’d enjoy it. The chef’s famous. He has a way with steak that no one can duplicate.”

As an actuary, she dealt with a lot of older men and she had her own method of dealing with the overfriendly.

“That’s very kind of you,” she said with a smile,
“but I shouldn’t encourage you to eat red meat. You know that a man of your age who eats large amounts of red meat has a sixty-four percent greater chance of developing heart disease than a similarly aged vegetarian. Of course, you’re increasing your risk of type two diabetes by fifty percent.” He gaped at her and she went in for the kill. “And don’t even get me started on the stats for prostate cancer and colon blockages.”

He paled and the smirk left his face.

She patted his arm. “I wouldn’t want to put you at risk.”

“Right. Um, yes, of course. Well.” He stared at his drink, then put it down on a nearby table. “I’d better see how…everything’s progressing. Mabel?” he said sharply to his wife. “Come along.”

She glanced up to find Dylan looking at her in a quizzical way. “That was one of the most colorful brush-offs I’ve ever been privileged to witness,” he drawled. “How’d you know all that stuff?”

Darn, she’d hoped he hadn’t heard.

She shrugged. “
Scientific American
was all they had in the green room.”

He glanced at her curiously. A waiter passed by with a tray of champagne and she took one, sipping deeply. Dutch courage, her mother would call it. She’d take courage of any nationality right now.

“Your beer, Mr. Hargreave,” the waiter said. Dylan studied the bottle of beer, nodded and waved away the empty glass provided.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t like champagne?” How could anyone not like champagne?

“It’s okay, but my contract states that the only alcohol I can drink is my sponsor’s beer.”

“Isn’t that a little restrictive?”

He shrugged. “They don’t put their money behind any other drivers and I don’t drink anybody else’s booze. Works for me.”

Dylan might have said more, but he was soon surrounded by people. He didn’t seem too surprised; she guessed he was the most famous person in the room and probably used to being approached. People checked her out the way she imagined they eyeballed his race cars, wondering if she was up to his speed, pretty enough, sleek enough.

She was a Dinky Toy compared to his usual cars.

What was she even doing here? It was unlike her not to act sensible.

Then Dylan looked at her with a slight grin, and the scar crinkled so much she wanted to reach out and run her fingertip over the puckered curve. He was the kind of man a woman like her could only worship from afar. Now, for tonight, she belonged by his side.

Forget sensible.

K
ENDALL DISCOVERED
that when you acted as though you were interesting and fun and sexy, a lot of people went along with the charade.

Of course, being with Dylan pretty much guaranteed that people were going to form a different impression of her than they would if they saw her in her office in one of her Talbots suits.

And, strangely enough, the same phenomenon worked backward. The more that people treated her as though she were interesting, fun and born to party, the more of a fun party girl she became.

Wedding guests came up and talked to her, they told her jokes that made her laugh and she said things to make them laugh in return. Okay, they were all men talking to her, but that was all right. Her flirting skills were rusty—if she’d ever had any. It was nice to give them a workout.

Whether her newfound popularity with the opposite sex was because she was here with a NASCAR driver, barely dressed or had suddenly sprouted a sparkling personality, she didn’t know or care. She was Cinderella at the ball with Prince Charming. Naturally, midnight would come and she’d soon be back to her regular un
exciting life, with no glass slipper left behind to change her destiny. So what? For once she was following a mad impulse and to heck with the consequences. Not exciting enough, huh? How she wished Marvin could see her now.

Dylan came and took her arm, and since he was by far the most interesting man at the wedding, she beamed at him. “Isn’t this a wonderful party?” she said. It was amazing. She could say the stupidest things and people thought she was a witty conversationalist.

“It’s a nightmare,” he said, not appearing to find her conversation all that witty. Immediately, the truth slapped her, and she in turn slapped a hand over her big mouth.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot. This must be torture watching your ex-wife get married.” And Daisy/Ashlee was exactly the sort of woman for whom a man would carry an eternal flame.

He glared at her in annoyance. “She won’t get married if she doesn’t believe you and I are crazy in love. So would you stop drooling on everything in pants and start drooling on me?”

Her mind was feeling a little hazy. It was thirsty work, all this flirting, and she was wondering if she might be one flute short of an orchestra. Or maybe that should be one flute too many. She’d stick with water at dinner, she decided. In the meantime she tried to work out what Dylan meant. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Are you still in love with her?”

“No!” He pulled her aside and in a low voice said, “This guy’s her fourth groom. She went to some astrologer who I would personally love to strangle. This quack told her that she’s already met the love of her life but
she threw him away. She got it into her head that that man was me.”

She’d seen Dylan and Ashlee together. Both were gorgeous, larger than life. They were Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. “Maybe the astrologer was right.”

He shook his head. “Our marriage was a disaster.”

“Still, you’ve never married again.”

“I’m smarter now.” He glanced behind Kendall and his eyes narrowed. “Uh-oh, here she comes. If I know that look, and I do, she’s planning something crazy. Like not getting married so she can run off with me. Remember, this is your fault.”

As she opened her mouth to ask what exactly was her fault, he kissed her.

Oh, my.…

Better than champagne was the first thought that skittered through her head. His arms came around her and pulled her in so tight she was pressed against the full length of him. Oh. Yum. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.

He was sexy and strong, and in that second she could imagine a woman loving this man and never wanting to let him go. Then Ashlee/Daisy fled her mind as he kept on kissing her. He tasted good, felt good. Her arms went around his neck and she molded her body to his. With nothing between them but her slip, a demi bra and a pair of panties, she felt the roughness of his jacket, the buttons on his shirt, the warmth of his skin.

A soft moan startled Kendall back to reality. For a humiliating moment she thought she’d done the moaning, but when Dylan raised his head and looked behind her, she turned and followed his gaze. It wasn’t Kendall who’d moaned, but Ashlee.

The bride was staring at Dylan with a baffled mixture of longing and sadness. “I remember when you used to kiss me like that,” she said.

“That was a while ago,” he said, but in a gentle way. He kept his arm around Kendall and rubbed her arm, up and down, while he said it.

“I just want to be happy,” Ashlee said, her big blue eyes looking misty. Kendall wondered if she’d ever heard anything so wretched. If the woman was wondering about her happiness on her wedding day, then it didn’t bode well that she’d found it.

Since this didn’t seem to be one of those weddings where it was deemed bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the ceremony, Kendall soon had a chance to judge the upcoming union for herself.

A self-important young man strolled up and Kendall was reminded again of Gatsby. This guy was a modern-day version. She couldn’t have said why she thought he was from new money until she looked more closely. His tux was too obviously expensive. His shoes too shiny. When he took Ashlee’s hand, he held it in such a way that an extraordinarily large diamond engagement ring winked at them, catching the light and flashing like a camera bulb going off.

Ashlee smiled at her fiancé, but then turned her attention back to Dylan. Kendall could understand why. He was much the more dynamic of the two.

“Hargreave,” the nouveau Gatsby said with a curt nod.

“Bryant.” He nodded back.

Animosity crackled between these two. No one bothered to introduce her.

“The minister’s here,” the groom said. “Your mother wants you to take your place.”

“Okay.” Ashlee’s voice wobbled and she looked at Dylan with such naked appeal that Kendall hoped someone would protest the marriage. Preferably the groom.

“Be happy, Ashlee,” Dylan said and, stepping in front of the man she was about to marry, kissed his ex-wife on the lips.

The groom took Ashlee’s hand and dragged her away, and she left with the same enthusiasm a child leaves Santa’s knee.

“Well, you kissing her silly should cure Ashlee of her infatuation,” Kendall said.

“Bryant irritates me,” he said, as though she might not have noticed.

“Why?”

“Harrison Bryant went to a big, fancy university and learned all about higher profits through downsizing. He’d done some hatchet jobs on other companies and was seen as a young hotshot who’d take the old factory in our hometown and make the shareholders happy. A real wunderkind. Our town was already suffering a downturn. The factory is still the main employer in town, but he’s cutting jobs so fast nobody can keep up. It’s wrong, that’s all.”

“Did you know each other before…?”

“Before Ashlee? Oh, sure. We all grew up together. That’s what made it so bad that he’d come back and destroy his own home.”

It was an old love triangle, then. She wondered how far back it went. “I’ve heard of him, of course. No one
could believe the way he turned around that steel company in Pennsylvania or—”

He stared at her.

Right. Not the sort of thing most actresses would need to know. She was going to have to tell him who she really was. But not quite yet. Not while that kiss was still fizzing through her system and he was displaying her to these people the way Harrison Bryant had displayed Ashlee’s diamond ring. So she shrugged.

“They stock
Barron’s
along with
Scientific American
in the green room?” he asked.

“The wedding’s about to start,” she said, nodding to where a stream of guests headed into the conservatory.

Kendall hated confrontation of every kind and so her stomach was one big knot when they took their places in the conservatory. The scents of gardenia and frangipani were everywhere.

Still, the conservatory was beautiful with tiny white lights in the trees and a single harpist playing by candlelight. They sat in rows of white folding chairs, on the bride’s side. After an interval of shuffling, some quiet whispering and the odd giggle, the parents filed in to the front row. Then Harrison Bryant seemed to appear from behind a burning bush, although she imagined there was a side door behind the blooming gardenia bush that was currently imitating a candelabra. With the groom was an older man, presumably the best man. The thought flashed through her mind that he didn’t have any friends his own age.

The two took their places in front of a flower-decked podium while a man in a dark suit holding an engraved binder came from the other side and took his place
behind the podium. When the justice of the peace had found his place in the binder and adjusted the small reading light, there was the usual anticipatory prebride silence.

Kendall waited, barely breathing, for the groom to be left standing at the altar—a fear the groom apparently shared from the anxious way he kept glancing behind him. But, soon enough, the “Wedding March” played and in came a flower girl with a mass of blond curls and huge blue eyes, enjoying her importance so immensely that there was a snowstorm of flower petals wherever she went.

Behind her came two bridesmaids who looked as though they had better things to do, and finally Ashlee, who gnawed her lip all the way down the aisle.

However, no one, not even the bride, tried to stop the wedding. When the justice of the peace announced, “You may kiss the bride,” she felt Dylan’s arm droop slightly as his muscles relaxed and she realized he’d been as tense as she.

A
FTER THE WEDDING
came a sit-down dinner reception. Usually, when Kendall went to a big do, she and Marvin were close to invisible. Conversation tended to stall when people found out they were both actuaries. But Dylan’s table felt like the table at the center of the universe.

He was hailed, backslapped, joked with, teased and flirted with so often she wondered how he managed to get any food down. He bore it in good part, managing to charm the women, talk racing jargon with the men and still find time to fiddle with Kendall’s hair, place an arm around her shoulders, whisper supposed secrets in her ear.

His behavior kept her on edge and fluttery, so it was
hard to eat anything. Since one of his whispered intimacies was to remind her that she was supposed to be crazy in love, too, she let herself do what she’d wanted to do all evening. She traced the shape of that scar with a fingertip. She felt the tiniest thread of scar tissue and a slight dent. His skin was warm and beneath the pads of her fingers she felt the slight scratch of stubble. When she would have removed her hand, he took her wrist and kissed it.

Her pulse jumped as though it wanted to kiss him back.

Down girl, she reminded herself. It’s pretend.

As she made her way through the high-class version of banquet rubber chicken, she felt a stab of guilt. She should be at her own actuarial dinner eating the plebian version of rubber chicken. Marvin’s behavior didn’t abnegate her responsibility to her employer. If only her
ex
-fiancé had told her earlier, given her time to get used to heartbreak and humiliation, she might have handled this evening with her head instead of her damaged heart.

Maybe her behavior wasn’t entirely appropriate, but so long as she got to the banquet before the speeches, she doubted she’d be missed.

While the ritual wedding toasts were made, she kept an eye on her watch.

The first dance between the bride and groom had Kendall blinking in surprise. Ashlee seemed to have forgotten all about Dylan and for this dance, anyway, she had eyes for no one but her latest husband. And Harrison looked as though he cradled the most precious being in the world. Why, that man was the one crazy in love, Kendall thought. She hoped he didn’t end up heartbroken.

It wasn’t a great feeling.

A glance at her watch told her it was nine. After the actuary dinner, which would be winding up about now, coffee would be poured and there would be the usual speech from the president of the association that had never been clocked in at shorter than sixty minutes.

“I should really get back to the hotel. I need to get my acceptance speech from my room.”

“Fine by me. Let’s get out of here.”

Since they’d been snuggling all evening, she wasn’t at all surprised when he took her hand. A woman could get used to this guy, she thought. And this woman better not.

They made their way unimpeded out the front door, which made her sigh with relief. Probably it was rude to leave without saying goodbye, but in Dylan’s case, goodbye undoubtedly took hours.

“So, you’ll definitely come to my banquet with me?” she asked as they walked out into the still, warm air of a May evening.

He glanced at her, and a tiny frown pulled his brows together. “What exactly is this award?”

“Does it matter?” If she told him the truth about herself, she felt as though all the magic would drain out of the evening.

Dylan glanced up at the night sky twinkling like a sea of glitter. “See, the thing is, I’m a broad-minded guy. But I’ve got sponsors. Fans.” He glanced at her and looked a little embarrassed. “I hate to be acting like a prude here, but if you’re adult movie actress of the year, or something—and believe me, when I say that I think it’s a great honor—then I’m going to have to pass.”