Eye of the Tiger

“Mmmmm,” Eleanor said with a smile, looking at her face in the fluorescent mirror. “Is that me?”

“It sure is, honey.” Darcy laughed. “I’ve been wanting to do that for months. You used to be so particular about your appearance, but lately you’ve just let yourself go.”

“I guess I have,” she agreed. She touched her hair. “What a difference. Wade is going to love this.”

Darcy pursed her lips. “That party’s really got you perking, hasn’t it?”

“Yes, it has,” she admitted as they went through the women’s department browsing through the latest styles. “Not that I’m trying to break into high society. That would be ridiculous. I just want to do something different, you know? My life is deadly dull. I feel like I’m growing old second by second.”

“That’s a laugh. You’re the youngest person I know at heart. Just like your dad. How is he, by the way?”

“Getting back in shape slowly but surely, and trying to get me married off.”

“Same old Dad.” Darcy laughed.

“Amen.”

“Wouldn’t he settle for letting you have a wild, passionate affair?”

Eleanor sighed. “He couldn’t get grandkids that way,” she reminded her friend. “Anyway, I’m not sure I want to have an affair with anyone. Wade’s wonderfully nice, and I like him a lot. But he doesn’t start any fires just yet. I think that has to accompany emotional involvement, for me, at least.”

“Well, personally speaking, if I were looking for a blazing affair, I know which direction I’d be staring. My gosh, I’ll bet Keegan Taber is just plain dynamite in bed!”

“Oh, goodness!” Eleanor cried as her hand tore down half a dozen gowns from the rack. She colored furiously as she bent to pick them up.

“Sorry,” Darcy murmured as her friend fumbled gowns back onto hangers. “I guess I shouldn’t have said that, considering… But he is gorgeous, honey.” She eyed her friend thoughtfully. “I bet he’ll be at that party. His family and the Blakes are real friendly, aren’t they?”

“Isn’t this pretty?” Eleanor enthused over a pale green silk gown.

Darcy got the hint and said nothing more about Keegan. But the look in her eyes was more eloquent than words.

For the rest of the day, after she and Darcy parted company, Eleanor worried about the party. Keegan wouldn’t be there…would he? She didn’t want him to spoil her fun, to intrude into her life anymore. She found things to do, to keep busy. She couldn’t bear thinking about it. Anyway, Wade would be with her. He’d protect her.

She got dressed early and went into her father’s study, where he’d been holed up all day, to show him her borrowed outfit and her new look.

He stared and nodded solemnly. “You look just like your mother, darling,” he said, smiling wistfully. “So beautiful.”

“Not me. Wrong girl.” She laughed. “But if you think I’ll do, that’s fine.”

“You’ll do all right. You may need a stick to beat off the boys.” He lit his pipe. “Watch yourself.”

“Everybody tells me that.” She sighed.

“Then I’d listen if I were you.” He studied her with shrewd eyes. “Remember that it’s a long way from the presidential suite to the economy-class rooms, will you?”

“We’re not servants,” she said haughtily.

“Yes, I know that. But we’re not high society, either. See that you remember it.”

“Yes, Your Worship,” she said, and curtsied.

“Away with you! And don’t drink. You know what it does to you.”

She did, indeed, remembering that one date with Keegan. Her face colored, and she bent, pretending to fix her shoe strap.

“I’ll remember.”

“And have a good time,” her father added.

“Oh, I expect to.”

“And say hello to Keegan for me,” he added with a twinkle in his eyes. “Didn’t you know he was invited, too?”

She glared at the knowing look in his eyes, then turned as she heard a car pull into the driveway. “Well, I’m off. I’ll see you when I get back. Don’t be up too late, now.”

He made a face at her and she closed the door on it.

The Blakes lived in a house just a little less palatial than Flintlock. It was redbrick, very old, and stood on the banks of a private lake overlooking one of the most beautiful plains near Lexington. There was rolling farmland around it, and Thoroughbreds pranced jauntily in the confines of white fences.

“Nice little place, isn’t it?” Wade asked as they stopped in the driveway where a liveried chauffeur waited to drive them from the parking spaces up to the house.

“Little,” she scoffed, getting into the back of the Rolls-Royce limousine. She tried to memorize every inch of the leather luxury so that she could tell her father and Darcy. It was a little like being Cinderella.

“Little compared to some,” Wade replied with a laugh. Riding around in Rolls-Royces was probably nothing unusual for him. He leaned back, scanning Eleanor’s ensemble. “I like your dress, darling. Silk wears well, doesn’t it?”

“Uh, yes, it does,” she returned. Odd that he could recognize silk; he probably wore silk shirts. Most rich men did. She remembered that Keegan had worn a white silk shirt that night….

“I like the new haircut, too,” he said. “You pay for dressing, Eleanor. I like the way you look.”

“I’m glad.”

“Nervous?” he asked as the driver pulled up in front of the house, which was blazing with light. Exquisitely gowned women and men in black evening wear strode elegantly along the cobblestone walkway, and Eleanor did feel uneasy.

“Just a bit,” she confessed.

“Just stick with me, kid, I’ll take care of you,” he said with a wink.

She glanced at him. Was he afraid she might slurp her soup and try to butter her bread with her spoon? She frowned. Was it a dinner party?

She asked him. “No, darling,” he replied, guiding her to the front door. “It’s a champagne buffet.”

“With different kinds of champagne?”

“Not quite,” he chuckled, pressing her hand closer. Tall, dark, good-looking, he attracted attention, even with his slightly overweight frame. And Eleanor seemed to be doing that as well. And not because she was out of place. “Champagne and hors d’oeuvres,” he whispered. “Conversation and dancing. There’s even a pool, if you fancy swimming.”

“Well, not in my gown,” she murmured demurely.

“They keep bathing suits on hand,” he said, laughing. “Sometimes, they actually fit.”

“I’ll pass, thank you,” she said with a smile.

She was introduced to her host and hostess. Mr. Blake was sixtyish, heavyset and pleasant. His wife— his third wife—was barely forty, vivacious and dripping diamonds. Their daughter was in her early twenties but already married. Her husband, an executive type, was beside her, helping to receive guests.

Fortunately no one asked if Eleanor was related to the Cape Cod Whitmans or the Palm Beach Whitmans, and she didn’t have to confess that her father was a carpenter on the Taber farm. That would have humiliated her beyond bearing. She hated being an outsider. But these people and their elegant furnishings graphically reminded her of what she would be going home to. They pointed up the difference between living and surviving. And she wondered if she hadn’t been better off not knowing that some people could afford trinkets like original oil paintings and velvet sofas and leather chairs and Oriental carpets and crystal chandeliers.

She had only one glass of champagne, standing rigid beside Wade while he discussed money matters with acquaintances. Conversation seemed to center around good stocks, municipal bonds, money markets, income taxes and new investment opportunities. The only investments Eleanor knew about were the ones she made on her car and groceries. She smiled into her champagne and nibbled on a delicate little puff pastry filled with chicken.

“Well, look who’s arrived,” murmured the older man beside Wade, glancing toward the door.

Eleanor followed his amused stare and found Keegan, in a black tuxedo, just entering the house with an elegant little black-clad brunette on his arm.

Eleanor’s heart skipped a beat just looking at him. He was devastating in evening clothes, his red hair neatly combed, his patrician features alarmingly handsome. Lucky, lucky girl who had his whole attention, she thought miserably, then chided herself for the thought. After all, she was long over him.

“Isn’t that the O’Clancy girl, the one who’s visiting them from Ireland?”

“Yes, I think it is. Lovely, isn’t she? She and her parents are hoping to work a deal with Taber, or so we hear, on a Thoroughbred of theirs,” Wade murmured with a smile. “Trust Taber to come up with an escort like that. But what’s he doing here?”

“He’s after that new colt of Blake’s—the Arabian out of Dane’s Grace by Treadway. Probably Blake decided they could discuss business here as well as at the golf course.” He chuckled.

Watching Keegan with the brunette, Eleanor couldn’t help but wonder how many women he’d gone through since the night he’d seduced her. The thought made her go hot all over.

“Why the long face?” Wade teased, whispering in her ear.

“I don’t like him,” she blurted out.

His eyebrows arched. “Why not?” he exclaimed.

“He has freckles,” she muttered, glowering at the redheaded man, who seemed to feel her cold scrutiny and turned abruptly. He caught her eyes across the room, and she stood there dying of old wounds, feeling the floor lurch under her feet. Her body ached; it took her last ounce of willpower to jerk her gaze back to Wade and calm her wildly beating heart. “Don’t you think freckles are just horribly blatant?” she asked matter-of-factly. “I can’t think why anyone would want to have them.”

He laughed helplessly. “I don’t suppose he can get rid of them, darling,” he said.

“A likely story,” she returned.

He laughed even harder and pulled her close against his side. “You bubbly little thing. I’d rather have you around than a magnum of champagne.”

She knew. Oh, how she knew. She smiled up at him just as Keegan looked her way, intercepting her smile. He seemed to grow two feet and his eyes were suddenly darker, possessive. He let his gaze rove over her from head to toe, and even at a distance the look was powerfully narcotic. She avoided it this time, in self-defense.

“Shall we dance?” Wade asked. He put their glasses aside and moved her into the ballroom, where a small orchestra was playing Strauss waltzes. She moved across the floor with him like thistledown, and he grinned.

“You dance gloriously!” he said.

“Not what you expected of a nurse?” she teased. “Actually, I took dancing for three years. Ballroom dancing was part of the course. I do love a waltz.”

“Then let’s show them how a waltz should be performed,” he murmured, and drew her around and around in the center of the floor.

Soon people were standing back to watch, because they moved as one person. He was an excellent dancer, and she followed him without a single missed step. She laughed up into his face, loving the music, feeling young again, full of life. It had been a long, bleak year, and now she was coming to life again. She closed her eyes and drifted, giving herself up to the joyous, seductive rhythm. It would have been perfect, she thought dreamily, if the arms holding her were wiry and strong, if the body against hers were lithe and lean and hard-muscled. And if the face above hers were surrounded by red hair, and if there were horrible freckles all over it….

She bit her lip. If. How long did it take a dream to die? she wondered sadly. Hers had lasted too long already.

Eleanor returned to the reality of applause all around as Wade bowed to her and led her off the dance floor. She held tight to his hand, vaguely aware of Keegan’s blue eyes watching. Always watching. Why did he stare at her so? she wondered. Was it guilt?

“That was nice,” she told Wade.

“I thought so, too. You’re magic.” He bent and brushed a kiss across her forehead. Across the room, a redheaded man clenched his fists and looked as if he could do murder.

When some of the other guests discovered that Eleanor was a nurse, she found herself much in demand to answer medical questions, none of which she felt qualified to address. She learned to excuse herself before things got too complex, and she never lacked for partners. But inevitably Keegan claimed her for a dance, and the evening turned dark.

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