stepped out of the Vette, handed the kid his keys along with a ten dollar bill to make up for the way he’d snarled, and climbed the steps of the Holcomb mansion to what he knew would be a couple of hours of brutally civilized torture.
Torture was too polite a word.
Who was it who’d invented cocktail parties, anyway? Charity ones, especially? Not a man, he was certain of that. Only a woman would expect human beings to pay for the privilege of standing in a crowded room clutching a glass of undrinkable wine in one hand and a lump of inedible something in the other, while a string quartet on the patio sawed its way through something that had probably been just as dull and lifeless when it was written a couple of hundred years ago as it was now.
The smile he’d practiced seemed to be working well enough. It made him feel like an escapee from a funny farm but nobody seemed put off by it. Hank Holcomb had pumped his hand, muttered something about how pleased he was to be hosting the party even as he rolled his eyes in denial. Liz Holcomb had swooped down in a cloud of perfume dense enough to gas anybody around her, air-kissed both his cheeks and urged him to try the battered shrimp.
“Where’s our Natalie?” Liz had said, but she’d squealed at the sight of someone else before he’d had to come up with an answer. “I’ll see you later, darling,” she’d cried, kissed the air in his general direction, and flown off.
So he’d wandered through the football-field-size living room, out to the patio, back through the dining room, accepted the glass of wine and the limp canapé from passing waiters once he grew weary of saying, “No, thanks,” every two minutes, and now he’d found himself a fairly quiet spot in a corner nobody coveted because the potted palm that filled it did an effective job of shielding from view whoever might stand beneath its overhanging fronds and, after all, he supposed, half the purpose of attending this thing was the dubious pleasure of seeing and being seen.
And the longer he stood there, observing the scene, the better he felt. There was something about the silliness of it all. The bad food. The worse wine. The awful music. The guests, the women, glittering like brightly plumaged birds; the men, decked out like penguins. He chuckled. It was like being inside some enormous aviary. Even the sounds in the room seemed appropriate. Cluck, cluck. Cheep, cheep…
“Hi.”
He turned. The voice was soft and sultry; it went magnificently with the face and body, which were, without question, the best good genes and plastic surgery had to offer.
“Hi,” he said, and smiled.
“Awful, isn’t it?” the woman said.
Gage laughed. “Absolutely.”
“The wine. The hors d’oeuvres.” She shuddered in a way he figured she’d spent lots of time perfecting. It made her long, straight mane of golden hair slip over her bare shoulders like water running over alabaster and her rounded breasts quiver like Jell-O beneath the couple of inches of fabric that was supposed to be a dress. She tilted her head, looked up at him through her lashes and, very slowly, trailed the tip of her tongue across her moist bottom lip. “Why,” she said, with a lazy smile, “I just don’t know what to do with myself.”
A muscle danced in Gage’s jaw. He’d been out of circulation for a while but a man would have to be dead from the neck up and the waist down not to know what the answer to that remark was supposed to be.
I do, he was supposed to say, and the gorgeous blonde with the impossible boobs would smile again, link her arm through his, and not too long after, they’d be in bed.
His body tightened reflexively at the sudden image. It was a long time since he’d thought about having a woman other than Natalie. Too long, maybe. Maybe that was just what he needed, a hot broad, a mindless tussle between cool sheets, a mutual wham-bam-thank-you-ma’ am, with no morning-after regrets, no recriminations, no commitments that would only screw up his head.
“Yes or no?” the blonde said softly, her baby blues filled with a directness Gage could admire if not accept.
He smiled, a little regretfully.
“Sorry. I’m just not…”
“That’s all right.” Her smile was regretful, too. “Another time, perhaps.”
“Sure,” he said, although he knew he didn’t mean it. Even if things ended with Natalie, even after he was free to move on, he’d be done with women. For a while, anyway, he thought, as the blonde sauntered away. A man would have to be either a fool or a liar to swear off the female of the species completely but right now, for the foreseeable future, he had no wish whatsoever to—to—
That was when he saw her, in the doorway.
His breath caught, his stomach tightened, and he knew his thoughts of a moment ago had been all lies.
He wasn’t done with women, not for tonight, not for the foreseeable future, not any way, any shape, any time.
The woman in the doorway was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
It was wrong to compare her to the blonde who’d just moved off but the contrasts were so incredible that he couldn’t keep from doing it.
She wasn’t blonde. Maybe that didn’t seem like much but in Miami Beach, in this kind of crowd, most of the heads were golden. Not that they’d started life that way. It was just that the sun seemed to inspire a sun-kissed look.
Not for her.
The lady coming slowly down the steps into the living room had hair as black as night. She wore it drawn back from her perfect oval face, knotted high on her head; just looking at it, Gage could tell that when she let it down—when he let it down, it would flow over his hands like ebony silk.
His gaze wandered over her, taking in the wide, dark eyes, the straight nose, the determined mouth, dropped lower to skim over her simple black dress, over what he knew had to be breasts that had not been fashioned by the surgeon’s knife. She was slender, this woman, but she was all woman nonetheless, with sweetly curved hips and long, gorgeous legs encased in sheer black hose that ended in black sandals with impossibly high heels.
She was beautiful, more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen, and she was alone. Alone, but searching the room for someone.
Gage ditched the silly canapé and sorry excuse for a drink in the potted palm. If she was looking for a man, that man was damned well going to be him.
He stepped out from the corner, his eyes fastened to her, and waited. She would look towards him; every instinct, every thump of his heart told him so.
And, at last, she did.
Their eyes met and held. Time seemed to stop; the moment stretched out between them, filled with heat. Gage could feel his blood thickening as it pumped through his veins. His body had reacted to the blonde, but not like this.
This was different. It was everything he’d ever hoped for, or dreamed.
Something flickered across her lovely face. Eagerness? Anticipation? He took a step forward…and saw something else on her face. Panic. Even fear. Hell, why would she fear him? She knew what he wanted; it was what she wanted, too, he was sure of it.
He took another step and she whirled away from him, vanishing
