Not Even for Love(15)

My God! She had slept with this man. For the span of a brief few hours her life had been in his hands. All control, subconsciously, had been relinquished to him. If that wasn’t courting danger, she didn’t know what was. So, as she stood there watching him take a note pad out of his pocket, scribble a hasty message, and slip it into her mail slot, she determined that she would never see him again.

After he left, she had raced down the stairs, retrieved the note, and held it with shaky fingers as she read:

Sweet (sweeter, sweetest) Jordan,

Forgive me for ducking out without saying good-bye, but you were sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to wake you. (Confession: I peeked under the blanket. Beautiful.) I wanted to check into a room (at the Europa, incidentally) and clean up before presenting myself at your door again. Unfortunately, you have ill-chosen this time to run an errand. I’ll be busy the early part of the evening (business), but if you will keep a light burning, I’ll be by later. (Memories of last night will keep me burning.) Until then…

Reeves

Her recent resolve not to see him again evaporated like smoke and vanished into the atmosphere. Somehow she would live through one of Helmut’s “small, intimate cocktail parties” for a “few close friends.” After a reasonable period of time, she would plead a headache and rush home to wait for Reeves. He would ask her if she’d been out. She would tell him about Helmut, but make it clear there was no commitment on her part. He would say that he was glad of that and that he understood. He would take her in his arms. Kiss her.

The best-laid plans of mice and men…

“Make it good, Jordan.” His snarling words snapped her out of the past and into the present. Her dazed eyes focused on him. The wind was whipping his hair into a wild disarray that, combined with the feral gleam in his eyes, made him appear diabolical.

Obviously he thought she was contriving some story about her absence from the shop that afternoon. She answered truthfully. “Yes, I was there, Reeves.” He seemed surprised by her answer and the harsh lines around his mouth softened, but slightly. “At the time, I didn’t think we should see each other again.”

“Oh, I agree,” he said. “It can get sticky when one is marrying one of the world’s richest men and takes a lover at the same time. People talk, you know.”

“No!” She stamped her foot in frustration. “I didn’t know that Helmut was going to announce our engagement tonight.”

“But you were unofficially engaged?”

“No. Well, not exactly…he…”

“Yes?” he cooed, and folded his arms across his chest in an arrogant stance that was most irritating.

She licked her lips and tried to brush back the strands of hair that were whirling around her face. “Be reasonable, Reeves. Can’t you see that I’m not part of that?” she demanded, vaguely gesturing toward the château they had just left.

“But you will be soon. Quite an accomplishment for a shopkeeper from Iowa.”

She ignored the sarcastic barb and went on. “Helmut came into my shop one day to buy a newspaper. We chatted. He was charming, flirtatious. I thought nothing of it. But that evening, just as I was closing, he came back in and invited me out for coffee.”

“Did you know who he was?” he asked incisively.

“I thought I had seen…” she hedged. Then she looked up into the piercing eyes and knew it would be useless to lie, though he would take the truth in the wrong way. “Yes,” she said. “I knew who he was.”

“Uh-huh.”

Some force stronger than her anger kept her from slapping that knowing smirk off his mouth. She swallowed her rage and continued levelly. “For several consecutive days he came into the shop and we talked. Then he invited me to dinner. I went. We began to see each other more often until…”

When she wavered, he pressed her, “Go on, Jordan, I’m fascinated.”

“He began to court me—presents, flowers, expensive trinkets that I neither wanted nor required.”

He leered at her wickedly. “And what did Helmut get in return for these ‘expensive trinkets’?”

“Nothing!” she exclaimed. Just then the boat bumped against the pilings of the quay and she was hurled at him.

His strong arms caught her and pulled her against his chest. The hold wasn’t tender as it had been the night before. His hands were like steel talons on her upper arms and the face that lowered to hers was ugly with disgust. “Do you really think that I’m dense enough to believe that a man as rich and urbane as Helmut Eckherdt hasn’t taken advantage of this?” He thrust himself at her in a manner that left no doubt of his meaning. The implication was insulting and humiliating.