Wedding Fever

“Which begs the question of why you were there, doesn’t it?” She sighed. “Sometimes I just need to be where no one knows or cares who I am.”

He heard the loneliness in her voice. He, too, lived a lonely life, although for very different reasons. His was a loneliness that meant safety for those he cared about.

“Where’d you go, lover?” Misty asked J.D. as they reached the door of the club.

He smiled at her. “Not far.”

“Are you sure I can’t repay you with a little more than thanks?”

“I make it a rule to avoid personal business with guests.”

She fingered his lapel. “You don’t break rules, I suppose.”

“Not personal ones.”

“An interesting answer.”

“If I had accepted you, you’d be backpedaling your way out of it right now. You and I both know there’s someone more than willing to end your loneliness, Misty.”

“We’ve sung this tune before.” Her blond Adonis opened the door behind her. “Good night, then. Oh, J.D.? I did remember red’s your favorite color.”

He puzzled over her words as the door closed on her rich laugh. Returning to the dining room, he observed Hastings slipping something into Maggie’s skirt pocket.

“Thank you for joining us tonight,” J.D. said as he came up beside them.

Hastings’s irritation at the interruption was hardly noticeable, only a slight twitch of his left eye.

J.D. didn’t question what intrigued the man. Magnolia possessed a lethal combination of beauty, energy and sensuality that she didn’t seem aware of, making her even more attractive. If asked, she’d probably call herself a pretty good flirt. And certainly she possessed a kind of wholesomeness that kept most men at flirtation distance, the place she’d established for guests and members of the Carola, no matter how famous, how powerful or how insistent they were.

She moved in and out of roles as situations warranted, a skill he admired, even though it often meant she played a role with him, as well.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” Hastings said.

“Good night, sir,” she said.

“I’ll clear the table while you change,” J.D. said after Hastings left.

She looked at him, surprised. “A lofty malître d’ would sink so low as to clear a table?”

“I thought perhaps you’d be tired. After all, you’re thirty now. Old. Your stamina must be fading.”

Maggie responded to his teasing by crossing her arms and cocking a hip. She looked around, making sure they were alone. “I can finish my work here, jog home and still have enough energy to make love, honey. I’m in my prime.”

She shivered as he ran a finger along her jaw Fog crept into her brain, masking logical thought.

“What did Hastings put in your pocket?” he asked so softly she had to lean toward him to hear the whole sentence.

“Huh?”

“Hastings. Did he give you money?”

The synapses in her brain started transmitting information again.

“Of course he gave me money,” she said as she turned and picked up the dirty dishes. “A tip. You know, this hot-and-cold business of yours is really gettin’ on my nerves.”

“How much of a tip?”

“None of your business.”

He slid a hand into her skirt pocket, shocking her. The cup rattled against the saucer in her right hand; in her left, the fork slid off the dessert plate. The feel of his hand against her hip, however briefly, brought forth all sorts of images that danced before her eyes, then faded into confusion over whether he was establishing a closer relationship with her or preventing her from having one with someone else.

“What are you doing?” She tried to jerk away. He held her in place as he drew the folded currency from her pocket and turned it to look at its value.

“Dios. A hundred dollar bill, Magnolia?”

She stared in amazement. Brendan always left her a generous tip, but this was staggering. She swallowed. “I give good service.”

He unfolded the bill, revealing a white business card with a phone number handwritten on the back. He held it close to her face for her to read, front and back.

She looked from the card to him. “At least he didn’t write, ‘There’s more where this came from.”’

“It is implied.”

“I’m not stupid, honey. I know what it means.”

“Do not call me ‘honey.’ You use your Southernness like a shield, when it is convenient. I am serious here.”

“You think you don’t fall back on your background, as well? Listen to yourself. Do not. lt is. I am. And your machismo gets pretty tiresome, too. You don’t have the right to tell me what to do. But that’s been your choice all this time, not mine, as you well know.” She angled her right hip his way. “Return my property, please.”

Holding her captive with his dark, unblinking gaze, he deliberately tucked the card and money into the breast pocket of her shirt. She held her breath as he stuffed them to the bottom, the backs of his fingers more than lightly grazing her nipple, which pebbled at the first touch of his fingers and ached as he pulled his hand away.

She fought for every ounce of control she could muster. “If you’re done manhandling me...?”

J.D. jammed his hands in his pockets. “I cannot—can ’t help the way I speak. I didn’t learn English until I was an adult.” ‘

“Don’t be idiotic. I love the way you talk.”

The words were tossed over her shoulder as she stormed off, leaving behind a breeze scented with perfume and Magnolia.

He cursed himself with each stride she took. He needed her to appear unattainable in Hastings’s eyes. To do that, J.D. had to have her attention focused on him. He was just looking out for her—

So what was that adolescent move to grab a quick feel? he asked himself. Machismo, as she called it? Wish fulfillment? Long-demed need? All three?

He didn’t change his clothes, instead leaned against the wall and waited her out She finally emerged from the women’s locker room dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt proclaiming English Majors Are Novel Lovers. She carried her carton of presents, the still-wrapped box from Misty balanced on top.

“I parked a couple of blocks behind you,” he said. “I’ll meet you at your apartment.”

“You know where I live?” She tipped her head to one side. “How come I’ve known you all this time and I hardly know anything about you?”

“Maybe it’s time to find out.”

“Maybe it is ”

They walked silently to their cars. As she drove off, he started his engine and put the car in gear, then he noticed a dark sedan pull away from the curb a hundred feet ahead. He’d teamed to trust his instincts, so he tailed the sedan that slowed to almost a complete stop when Maggie pulled into the garage below the duplex she rented.

He followed the car until it disappeared into the valet parking area of the expensive hotel where Hastings rented the penthouse.

J.D. stopped at a pay phone and punched in a familiar number. “I’m sorry to wake you, boss,” he said in greeting.

“No problem. What’s up?”

He glanced around as he heard Callahan yawn. “He wants to deal tomorrow night.”

“We’ll cover you.”

“Okay. See you.”

“Wait a second, J.D. Did you give it to her?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to bring her in on it? If she’d go out with him—”

Creative Spanish epithets peppered the air within the phone booth.

“Lighten up, pal. I was kidding.”

“Don’t kid with me about Magnolia.”

“You’ll relax after you give it to her.”

“I don’t trust it,” J.D. said.

“Hey, it’s state of the art.”

“Yeah. Experimental state of the art.”

“So, figure out a backup.”

He glanced at his watch. Too much time had passed. “Already got it covered.”

“I figured as much. Relax already.”

“When this is over. Maybe.”

Two

Maggie eyed her mantel clock when it chimed once, a delicate ping that pierced her anticipation. Twelve-thirty. He should have been at her apartment twenty minutes ago.

She leaned forward on the sofa, resting her elbows on her thighs as she stared at the crystal bowl mounded with shimmering Christmas ornaments that sat on her coffee table. She had to face facts. He wasn’t coming.

She wasn’t surprised. Not really. He’d changed his mind. Probably decided it wasn’t worth spending time with someone who goaded him into an argument whenever he got close. They were so different, she knew they’d never have a serious relationship. What they really needed was to sleep together, to satisfy their curiosity, then the source of antagonism that hovered constantly would be wiped out forever.

Not here, though. They should go to his place. Better yet, to a hotel. Some neutral location where memories wouldn’t linger and taunt.

Spoken like a woman of experience, Magnolia Jean. She pushed her hair away from her face, then let it fall again. The sum total of her experience with the opposite sex wouldn’t constitute three pages in her autobiography, if she included her fourth-grade crush on Bobby Don Morgan. But she’d imagined making love with Diego so many times, she had choreographed the experience detail by detail. At least, what she would do to him.

Before he’d come into her life. she’d dated at least, hoping to meet her lifetime partner. But in the past year, she’d hardly gone out at all, finding flaws in every man who invited her, even though the word thirty seemed lit in neon across her forehead each time she looked in her bathroom mirror.

Thirty. Where had the time gone? She couldn’t wait much longer, didn’t have the luxury to deal with the attraction to Diego and still get started on a family before she was any older—as old as her mother had been.

The quiet tapping on her front door sent an avalanche of reaction tumbling over her. Boulders of relief, followed by pebbles of annoyance. She counted to ten, then opened the door. Desire rebuilt the mountain instantly. She resented it as much as she welcomed it.

“I figured you changed your mind.” Maggie feigned a yawn as she turned away, letting him close the door himself.

“I’m sorry. I was detained by a...by a—Did you decorate this, Magnolia?”

She turned around. Diego stood, his hands in his pockets, surveying her living room.

“Every bit of lit.” Was that a look of shock or wonder? She knew her voice held an edge of defensiveness, as if daring him to comment unfavorably. She glanced around the room with its framed counted cross-stitch samplers and groupings of baskets and candles and photographs. Pristine eyelet fabric draped small round tables on which Tiffany lamps glowed, the yellow and blue glass reflecting the dominant colors of the room, even competing with the Christmas free lights as they were.

“It’s a little crowded with all the holiday decorations,” she said as he moved around the room, inspecting without commenting. He picked up a heart-shaped pillow and it struck her how utterly feminine it—everything—was. Frilly, romantic, old-fashioned. Or maybe it was just that he was so very masculine.

“What color do you call this?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“Robin’s egg blue.” She watched him replace the pillow slightly askew, resisted the temptation to march over and straighten it.

“It matches your eyes.”

J.D. tried to align the overall impression of her home with his deep-seated image of her. He’d always thought of her as a contemporary woman, a feminist. Certainly, her sassy mouth was pure nineties. If he’d even once tried to picture the environment she lived in, he would have imagined white and chrome and glass, something modern and sleek, certainly nothing close to this... this Suzy Homemaker vision.

Except, of course, he’d known about the fund she’d been adding to for years, saving for the wedding gown of her dreams. Everyone at the Carola knew about it. But no one knew why the gown or the age-thirty goal was so important, except probably her sister, Jasmine.

“Would you like some wine, Diego? And I’ve got cheese and crackers, as well.” She didn’t wait for his reply but headed toward the kitchen. “Take off your jacket. Get comfortable.”

“Magnolia.”

She turned around, her brows lifted in inquiry.

“Come here, please.”

“Why?”

He chuckled. “You are so suspicious.”

“Well, honey, you’re behavin’ awfully different tonight.”

“Am I?” He ignored her Southern belle routine, and took the necessary steps to bridge the gap. “I’m trying to find a way to communicate with you without arguing.”

From his pocket he pulled out the gold-foil-wrapped box and pressed it into her right hand. She hefted it lightly.

“Hmm. Smaller than last year’s oh-so-personal engraved pen and pencil set.”

“Haven’t you forgiven me for that yet?”

She tossed it once, caught it cleanly. “Heavy for its size, though. Professionally wrapped.”

“You’re worth it.”

“Probably offered free gift wrapping with purchase,” she said, casting him a quick glance before holding the package at eye level and examining it further. “Could be a key chain.”

“Monogrammed,” he offered.

“I’d accept nothing less.” She shook it, holding it close to her ear. “A box within a box.”

“You’re good at this.”

“When I was growing up I guessed all of my Christmas presents before I opened them.”

“You were never surprised?”

She made a sound of disgust. “My mother was predictable.”

He leaned close. “Why don’t you just open it?”

“But then the anticipation ends.” Maggie held her breath as she savored his nearness and warmth, and the scent she’d recognize anywhere.

He dipped his head a little farther. His breath stirred her bangs. “Open it.”

He’d taken off his tie and unfastened the top button of his shirt before he’d arrived. Maggie’s nose was an inch from the open vee of his pleated shirt. Her teenaged niece had once pronounced him a—

“Stud,” she sighed.

“What?”

She stepped back. “Uh, stud. Your stud’s loose.” She tucked the present under her chin and slid a hand behind his shirt to fiddle with the black onyx and gold stud. The backs of her fingers brushed chest hair. The moment froze in time until she felt his hands encircle her wrists and move her back. He pulled the gift from under her chin, placed it wordlessly in her hand.

Maggie swallowed. She peeled off the pretty wrappings and tipped a burgundy velvet container out of a box bearing the discreet emblem of Rappaport Jewelers. The hinge didn’t make even the tiniest creak as she pushed up the velvety lid. Her hand hovered over the contents. “Why, it’s beautiful!”

She sought Diego, confusion swamping her. The gift was personal and expensive—a sparkling chain bearing a heavy gold pendant shaped like a teardrop, perhaps an inch long and half an inch wide at the base.

“May I?” he asked, extending his hand. “Turn around. Tip your head forward.”

She waited what seemed like an hour before he lifted the cham over her head. As he fastened the clasp, his fingertips grazed her neck, enough to make her skin prickle, but not enough to call it seduction. The pendant itself rested at heart level. She turned around to thank him.

“I wish I’d changed into something nicer. Something silk to show it off,” she said, looking down, lifting a hand toward it.

He touched three fingers to the pendant as it nestled at a level just above the front clasp of her bra. His thumb and little finger grazed the inner curve of her breasts. Their gazes connected ; her hand fell away.

Where did he come from, this James Diego Duran, who admitted he desired her, yet resisted her so easily; who avoided touching her for a year and a half, then the first time he did, touched her intimately? Oh, she knew of his background, of his difficult childhood, but that didn’t explain the man, only some of the reasons why he behaved as he did sometimes.

“The necklace is all right?” he asked as he pulled his hand back.

“It’s incredible.”

“You won’t ever take it off?”

“Ever?”

“You won’t shove it in a drawer if you get angry at me?”

“It’d spend more time in my drawer than around my neck.” She smiled at him until he smiled back. “How about some wine now?”

He hesitated. “I should leave.”

They continued to stare at each other.

She inched closer. “Would you like to see what Misty designed for my birthday?”

“Probably not.”

She smiled. “It’s just a little something—”

“I’m sure it is. I’ve seen catalogs of her products.”

“Well, I love it, of course,” she drawled. “But I’d like a man’s opimon.”

Frozen, J.D. watched her stroll across the room and lift up a box lid. She withdrew a teddy fashioned of red satin and lace, and dangled it by the straps as she moseyed back to him.

Dios. He recognized the design of the garment, if not the garment itself. After he’d rescued Misty from those dirtbags the other night, he’d driven her home. She’d asked him what his ideal woman wore to entice him. “Just her skin,” he’d replied. When she hadn’t accepted that as an answer, he’d described the frothy bit of nothing Magnolia was holding in front of her as though she didn’t think he could imagine her clothes stripped away and the red see-through concoction molding her enticing curves.

“Misty’s quite a talented designer, isn’t she?” Maggie asked, stretching the bra cups at the sides until they settled provocatively over her.

“It suits you.”

“Does it? I tend to favor pastel colors in my lingerie. You think red is suitable with my coloring?”

“You think men think about things like that?”

She was quiet a moment, then said, “If you were going to buy this for...a woman, what would make you decide to purchase it?” Her voice had dropped an octave; her eyes took on a sleepy, sexy look.

He fingered the lace at the bodice. “I would wonder if it’s low enough to expose her breasts almost all the way, so there’s a danger of them spilling out if she breathes deep. I’d want her nipples visible through the lace. I’d wonder how easily it comes off. I’d want it not to be fragile, so that I don’t have to be too careful or too controlled when I take it off her.” He slid his hand down the fabric, down her, to toy with the snaps at the crotch. “I would want the fabric thin enough to feel how wet she gets when I touch her.”

“You want a lot,” she said, her voice catching breathlessly on her imagination.

“Oh, yes.”

“I could go slip this on...”

He held her gaze a few seconds, then he bent slowly toward her and brushed a fleeting kiss against her cheek.

Waves of sensation rolled through her. She forgot to breathe. When she did take in air again, he was gone, along with the unexpected pleasure he’d brought that suddenly burst like a birthday balloon when the door clicked shut, leaving her alone and bewildered.

Needing to analyze what had just happened, she paced her living room, walking off excess energy. She wasn’t completely sure of his intentions after tonight, but he seemed to be wanting a deeper relationship. When the phone rang a few minutes later, she snatched up the receiver and said hello.

“I forgot to say good-night.”

Diego. She dropped onto the sofa and tucked her legs under her. “Are you home already?”

“I’m in my car. I’ll be home in about ten minutes.”

“I’m already in bed,” she said languidly, as if stretching out on satin sheets. “Naked, except for your necklace.”

She smiled at the long pause on the other end.

“Are you?” he asked finally.

“No. But I thought you might like to imagine it.”

He didn’t answer.

“Why the sudden interest, Diego?”

“I have always been interested in you, Magnolia.”

She closed her eyes, enjoying the way his slight accent turned her name into an endearment that sent ripples of pleasure down her spine. She loved the remnants of his half-Mexican heritage. He, on the other hand, tried very hard to leave it behind.

“I apologize for what happened,” he said into the silence. “I shouldn’t have...teased like that.”

“There’s something between us, Diego. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore.”

“I know.”

“We need to deal with it sometime.”

“We work together. We have to be careful of how we deal with it.”

“I’m not asking for marriage,” she said, not wanting to examine her words further. “I’m looking to end the tension.”

When he didn’t respond, she said good-night and hung up, letting him off the hook.

J.D. pushed the button to disconnect the call. He closed his eyes a moment as he waited for the traffic light to turn green. Naked, except for his necklace. Dios. After he locked in the image, he smiled. She was paying him back for the way he’d teased her. That’s why he hadn’t ever given her the slightest encouragement. She was too smart, too quick. Too addictive. Too much woman.

They had their differences. She planned everything; he liked just to react. She organized her life to the minute; he’d rather be spontaneous. She was an open book; he was locked tight as a diary.

He wished for both their sakes that he could have kept the distance that he’d established and held all this time, but he couldn’t. No matter how much she would hate him afterward.

He glanced at the dashboard clock. Making sure he wasn’t followed, he drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, then maneuvered the twists and turns of Highway 101 and Sausalito until he pulled into the driveway of a small house guarded by an abundance of winter-hardy foliage. A light burned from his father’s office. Relieved, he let out a breath. His father was the only person in the world he could talk to about Magnolia and his job. He pictured him, relaxed in his high-backed leather chair, listening, advising, encouraging, so different from his mother, the mother he had seen only once in the past fourteen years. “Jimmy,” he’d say, followed by words of wisdom. He wished for the thousandth time he’d known his father during his childhood.

But that was history.

Her Christmas presents were wrapped. Her new winter coat needed only to have the buttons sewn on. She had time to spend on the magazine article for which she had a January 13 deadline. She booted her computer and opened the file for her final article in a series of fifteen she’d been contracted to write for A Woman’s Life on organizing busy lives. “Creating storage space where there is none,” she read at the top of the screen. “An organized home reduces stress—”

Maggie stopped typing as she cocked an ear toward her front door. Someone had knocked. She hurried into the living room. “Who is it?”

“Delivery for Miss Walters.”

She opened the door an inch. A young woman stood there, holding an elegant arrangement of long-stemmed white roses in a crystal vase.

“Oh, how beautiful,” she exclaimed, pushing the door open and reaching for them. Diego’s intentions really were serious.

She shut the door and set the vase in the center of her dining room table, inhaling the sweet rose fragrance as she reached for the tiny white envelope.

Smiling, she pulled out the card. I will make thee beds of roses. BH.

BH? Brendan, not Diego? And he was quoting Christopher Marlowe, Maggie realized, horrified—“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” until now, one of her favorite poems. She couldn’t remember telling him she was an English major, but maybe she had. Or was he just trying to impress her with his knowledge?

How had he found out where she lived? Certainly no one at the Carola would have divulged it. Had he followed her home? Repulsed by the thought, she rubbed the chill from her arms as she walked to her front window and looked out No limousine, no stranger leaning against the lamppost across the street, nothing out of the ordinary.

The phone rang, startling her.

“Good morning., Maggie.”

Brendan. “Who is this?”

A soft chuckle preceded his words. “I was disappointed that you didn’t call me. Did you get my flowers?”