“I don’t know, really. I’ve asked myself that a hundred times.” She gazed toward the door, where she had last seen Clarke. “I guess it’s because, though you’d never know it from tonight’s performance, he can charm the petals off a rose when he wants to. And because I was lonely—”
She stopped, something in his expression suddenly warning her that she was answering the wrong question. She flushed. “Oh...you mean why was I out of the country for a year?”
He nodded. “You have to admit it’s...different. Your average, hot-blooded American woman, upon becoming engaged, doesn’t just grab her passport and emigrate.”
“Well, I was already committed to going overseas before Clarke asked me to marry him,” she explained rather heatedly, as if he had accused her of possessing a tepid nature. Of being passionless. “People were counting on me. I’m a nurse, and I was part of a volunteer medical team our hospital sponsored. The country we were sent to was being torn apart by civil war.”
She leaned forward, squeezing her hands together, trying to make him feel the urgency of her obligation. It wasn’t fair for him to judge her. She wasn’t a cold woman, though Clarke had used that argument against her frequently. She wasn’t. “People were dying.”
“Well, then, of course you had to go,” he said, running his fingers lightly over her whitened knuckles, his smile reassuring. “And if Clarke Westover had been half a man, he would have packed up his fax machine and gone with you.”
She tried to smile back, but foolish tears were pooling along her bottom lids, and she had to look away, afraid that he would see them. She wasn’t sure why she suddenly felt like crying. Perhaps the memories of that desperate, blood-soaked year were too close. Or perhaps it was because no one had looked at her like that in a long time, with sympathy and understanding and... amazingly, there was admiration, too.... No, not in a very long time.
Or maybe it was just the champagne. Get a grip, she told herself. If you turn into one of those dismal, weepy drunks, this white knight of yours will disappear faster than you can say spifflicated.
“What’s wrong?” Taylor’s hand settled over hers, cupping her tense fingers in his cool, soothing palm. “Is it about Clarke?”
“No. No, I’m glad he’s gone.” Without looking at him, she shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to try to explain. She had forgotten how drinking lowered her defenses—or perhaps she had just forgotten how completely she had begun to rely on those defenses to get her through.
“Then what is it?” His voice was low and warm. She could just barely hear it over the sound of violins as the conductor waved the orchestra into a plaintive version of “For All We Know”. “Tell me.”
Again she shook her head, appalled at how tempting it was to think about giving in, breaking down, handing her too-heavy heart to this man who seemed so strong, so thoroughly capable of taking care of it. She felt him stroking the back of her hand, his fingers sensitive and sure, and she had to bite her lips together, for fear the words would come tumbling out—private, mortifying little words that could only shame her. Words like lonely. Empty. Frightened.
“Nothing,” she said tightly. “It’s nothing.”
For a moment he was silent. And then she sensed him rising.
“Come with me,” he said, holding out his hand.
She finally looked up slowly, from the lean, ridged pads of his palm up to where the golden-tanned skin of his wrist disappeared into the snowy cuff of his dress shirt. “Where?”
“We’re going to dance,” he said, curving his fingers to beckon her toward him. “I think they’re playing our song.”
At first, she didn’t move. She looked up the long creases of the black tuxedo sleeve, up to where he towered over her. And she realized, with a sudden shivering heat at the base of her spine, that she found Taylor so attractive it terrified her. She hadn’t thought about men that way in a long, long time. Not even Clarke—although she had certainly tried to. When Clarke had kissed her, she’d found it difficult to keep her mind off other things, like the laundry or how she was going to pay the electricity bill next month. Ironic, wasn’t it? Her fiancé’s kisses had left her completely unmoved, yet the thought of dancing with this stranger made her knees go hopelessly warm and mushy.
She couldn’t stop studying him, though she wondered if she was taking too long to answer. She suspected that, in her muzzy mental state, time had begun to lose its firm contours like an overused rubber band.
What was it about him that melted her from the inside out? Oh, he was gorgeous. No question about that, even though she supposed that, strictly speaking, his nose was too strong, rinsing too arrogantly from high between his brows. But the strong lines of those dark brows were so perfectly aligned with his dramatic cheekbones and sculpted jaw that the effect was both beautiful and noble, as if he were an illustration in some elegant magazine.
But she had known plenty of handsome men. Perhaps, she thought, her gaze drifting down, it was that strange sense of familiarity in his green-flecked eyes. That haunting sense of déjà vu...
“You know,” Taylor said mildly, glancing pointedly at his still-outstretched hand, “I’m beginning to look like a fool.”
Blushing, Brooke rose quickly. Too quickly. Her blood swooped to her feet, leaving her head empty and dizzy. She swayed toward him, and he caught her in one strong arm.
“That’s better,” he said, his lips close to her ear. Putting his arm around her shoulder, he tucked her up against him and led her to the stage, where dozens of couples were already jammed together. There didn’t seem to be a free inch, but somehow Taylor found a niche near the edge of the proscenium arch, where a statue of Neptune, backlit with an eerie violet glow, stared at them through blind white eyes.
Taylor slid his arm around her waist, pulling her in to face him, and for several minutes they shifted slowly to the music, each holding away from the other a bit stiffly, as if neither wanted to be the first to make a move toward a deeper intimacy. But the poignant song was wrapping itself around them, and before she knew it her hand was nestled between his fingers and his heart, and her head had dropped against the cool black lapel of his tuxedo.
The song ended, but they didn’t move, waiting until the violinists’ bows began the dip and thrust of another love song. As the wistful strains of “Lara’s Theme” from Dr. Zhivago filled the air, Taylor’s hand tightened on the small of her back, massaging softly, nudging her into motion.
After that, Brooke didn’t even try to fight the slow fusion that brought their bodies ever closer together—her cheek rubbing against his shoulder, her breast brushing his chest, and their thighs braiding rhythmically, together, then apart. Shutting her eyes, she breathed deeply, learning the crisp, lime-fresh scent of him that rose subtly under her nostrils, stirred by her touch—a scent that was both reassuringly wholesome and surprisingly sexual.
He was far more intoxicating than champagne, Brooke thought dreamily, and she felt something flickering to life inside her, like a small, buried flame suddenly brought into the air. She turned her focus inward, visualizing the Name—once a pale and helplessly guttering flutter—as it grew into a steady, red-hot tongue of fire. It was almost painful to feel so alive, so awake to her emotions, and yet she wanted more. She inhaled jaggedly as the fire crept along her veins, into her lungs, stealing her breath, as well.
She
