Night Music (3 page)

Worse, Hilary had her hopes up. He frowned, wondering why she was so eager. He’d have to keep an eye on her—to keep her from being hurt.

There was no other reason he was interested, Marsh told himself firmly. Absolutely none.

Dev tugged at his tie, silently cursing the restricting noose around his neck. And noose was the right word, he thought. He felt hung at this dinner of his grandmother’s. Who wouldn’t, with eight elderly blue-rinsed ladies sitting around the formally set dining table cackling like scrawny hens in a chicken coop? The food was so rich, it made him ill. The talk was of people he barely remembered and didn’t care to know better, and the atmosphere was laden with social-registry etiquette. He hated it. Why the hell had he told his grandmother he’d come to dinner? He should have stayed home on his boat. It was amazing to think that all the shallowness he saw now had once meant everything to him.

And then there was Hilary.

She sat across from him looking poised and serene. Nothing broke through that brittle shell of hers. She could be the all-time queen of the debutantes. She was chatting easily with his grandmother and her friends. In forty years, he guessed, she’d be one of them and just as ludicrous.

Gazing at her, he wondered if the hint of shadow under her pale-yellow silk dress was the aureole of her nipples. He’d been wondering that all evening, ever since she’d walked in the door. Just once he’d like to see her flesh tighten and betray her through
the sheer fabric. It would give him satisfaction to know something got through her icy exterior—and he wanted that something to be him. Why? he asked himself. Why her?

He nearly jumped when the lady sitting next to him touched his arm. She was smiling. “I said, I understand from your grandmother that you’re a sport fisherman.”

“Hell, no, lady,” he said, grinning. “I just take those guys out on the
Madeline Jo
and watch ’em puke over the side.”

Everyone gasped. He didn’t care. This damn dinner was as ridiculous as everything else in the haughty social milieu the Kitteridges were a part of.

“Thank you, Devlin,” his grandmother said. “That was most descriptive.”

The conversation began again, though he noticed Hilary was gazing at him instead with a faint smile. She was the only one, he realized, who hadn’t been shocked by his answer. Finally she lowered her gaze. He watched in fascination as she scooped up some of her parfait dessert. Slowly she licked the creamy froth from the spoon, the action completely unconscious and incredibly sexy. His blood slowed and pounded its way through every inch of his veins. It buzzed loudly in his ears, drowning out the chicken cackle of the older women. Hilary’s lips pursed slightly, almost like an invitation, then her tongue touched the corner of her mouth to catch an errant dollop of ice cream. She looked up and caught him staring.

Her eyes widened as she stared back. He couldn’t look away. A tenuous thread, invisible but there just the same, seemed to sew itself between them,
pulling them together like two pieces of matched fabric.

With a mighty effort he tore his gaze from hers. He was almost panting for breath, and realized his own spoon was poised halfway to his parfait glass. Dammit, he thought, and shoved the spoon into the stiffened cream. He was behaving like a moonstruck ass. No woman should be allowed to exert that much control over a man.

He watched Hilary glance at his spoon, then back to his face. She calmly scooped out another spoonful of her own parfait and ate it. She wasn’t even fazed, he realized with growing annoyance.

He caught his grandmother smiling gleefully at him. Obviously she thought things were moving right along at her little matchmaking dinner party. Fury rose up in him at the idea that he was actually responding to this game he and Hilary were playing, and Hilary wasn’t.

He decided to teach Ms. Prim Hilary Rayburn a lesson in sexual manners. He smiled charmingly at her and finally took a bite of his dessert. Everything appeared nice and normal.

Under the table was another matter. He slipped off his shoes, then stretched his leg across the space to rub her calf with his foot.

The woman next to Hilary jumped suddenly.

Dev snatched his foot back.

The elderly woman looked at him, then smiled knowingly.

Wonderful
, he thought. Now he’d turned on someone old enough to be his grandmother. He kept his head down to hide the heat on his face as he finished his dessert. So much for lessons.

Still, he couldn’t resist the temptation. He stretched his leg out again, and this time his aim was true. Hilary’s eyes widened the moment his
foot slid against her ankle. She glanced up, and he grinned at her.

She never flinched; she just moved her leg away. Other than that one look, she did not reveal any reaction to what he was doing. It made him all the angrier, and he rubbed his foot against her leg again, riding it high on the inside of her calf.

He knew she couldn’t move her leg any farther away without everyone discovering what he was doing. It would be interesting to see how she’d handle him this time.

Hilary stared across the table at Devlin Kitteridge, willing herself not to betray the fury inside her. With the dining chairs nearly butted up alongside each other, she had no room to get her legs out of the way, and he knew it. The man was despicable. And if he were a few inches shorter, he’d never be able to do this to her.

His foot slowly caressed her calf, like a leisurely kiss. A sensual heat radiated outward from the source, pulsing along her thighs. She pressed her knees more tightly together to try to rid herself of the unwanted sensation. And to keep him from going any higher.

His foot pushed against her closed knees, attempting to force them open. She kept her gaze straight on his smirking face and let her hand drop below the tabletop. She smiled intimately at him. He smiled back. Then she ever so intimately jabbed him in the foot with her spoon.

Devlin jumped, knocking over his parfait glass. It shattered his empty coffee cup. Too bad, Hilary thought. He needed some cooling off, and scalding-hot coffee would have done the trick.

“Dear, dear,” she said.

“Sorry,” he apologized, shrugging ungraciously
to his grandmother. He then glared at Hilary. She smiled sweetly.

Lettice reached over and righted his glass. “Dev, why don’t you take Hilary out into the garden while I have this cleaned up? Besides, the two of you must be bored to tears with our old-lady conversations.”

Her grandson grinned evilly. “Of course.”

Hilary repressed a jolt of fear. “It’s really cool out tonight, Lettice—”

“Nonsense,” Lettice said, waving her hand in dismissal. “It’s August.”

“Shall we go?” Dev asked with great aplomb as he slipped his shoe back on and stood. Cary Grant couldn’t have looked more debonair, he assured himself.

Hilary knew she couldn’t make any fuss—not if she wanted any future catering business from these women. And these women could mean
a lot
of business for her. She never should have jabbed Devlin in the first place. It had been too risky.
He
could have made a humiliating fuss, and she could have kissed business good-bye. But she had been too angry with him to do anything but react to him.

She pushed back her chair and stood. “Dinner was lovely, Lettice.”

“You probably could have done it better,” Lettice said.

Hilary smiled. “Of course.”

The other women laughed.

Devlin opened the French doors that led from the dining room to the back terrace. She preceded him out of the room and waited until they were across the terrace and down the steps to the garden before rounding on him.

“Don’t ever do that again!”

“But I had to make it look good for my grandmother,” he protested innocently, “so she would think I’m interested.”

“You paw a woman on her first date?” she asked, astonished.

The moon was full, and it was easy to see his frown. “You’ve got a lot to learn if you think that was ‘pawing,’ lady.”

“And you’ve got a lot to learn if you think that wasn’t.” The man was so crude, it was unbelievable. “Look,” she added, “those women in there mean business to me—”

“No kidding. But if you think they’ll let a social climber like you into the inner circle—”

“Social climber!” she exclaimed. She nearly added that he had her confused with her parents, but bit back the retort. She refused to give him any more ammunition. “I mean the catering business, you dolt!” She spun on her heel and strode away from him, furious at his accusation.

He caught up with her. “Catering? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I have a catering business,” she said. “I do dinner parties, private luncheons. That kind of thing.”

“A froufrou,” he said.

She stopped. “What?”

“You’ve got a froufrou business. Something to keep you busy so you don’t live off Daddy’s money.”

Hilary refrained from punching him. It wasn’t polite to punch your hostess’s grandson. All the etiquette books said so. “You are a crude, egotistical, Neanderthal snob.”

“And you are a prissy, cold, social-climbing clinging vine,” he retorted.

She smiled grimly. “Now that we’ve cleared the
air.… If you pull another stunt like that again, I will quit this whole ridiculous scheme.”

“Not if you want your grandfather happy, you won’t.”

She paused, then came back with her own ammunition. “And do you want your grandmother off your back?”

It was his turn to pause. “Yes.”

“Then you will play by the rules. Are we understood?”

He grinned. “Perfectly.”

Hilary relaxed slightly. “Good. Now, let’s just go back inside and get the rest of the evening over with. Okay?”

“Okay.”

They walked back to the house in silence. Hilary forced away the anger that had arisen in her from his comments. She shouldn’t care what Devlin Kitteridge thought of her. He was a reverse snob, the worst kind.

They reached the French doors. Through the sheer curtain, she could see the women still at the table, talking. She groaned silently. They had already talked so much, her head ached from listening. But that was part of her business unfortunately. If she didn’t project the social graces all the time, no one would trust her to put together a proper social occasion. Ergo, no business. She was beginning to wonder if she’d lost track of the real Hilary behind the socially polite and correct facade.

“Still yakking,” Dev said.

She nodded.

“Well, we’d better get going on scene two,” he added—and pulled her into his arms.

Two

Dev swiftly lowered his head and captured her lips. They were softer than he’d expected, more full and more sweet. She grabbed his arms and tried to push him away, but he kept her tight against him.

The resistance she was putting up couldn’t mask the unique feel of her. Her breasts and thighs branded his body, giving him a breathtaking taste of what she could do to a man if she weren’t so damn prissy.

She twisted her head away, breaking the kiss. Her body wiggled against his as she struggled, wreaking havoc with his equilibrium. He gritted his teeth against the sensual onslaught heating his blood.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

He tightened his hold on her, stopping her arousing wriggling. “Playing for the camera. There are eight pairs of eyes watching us. Don’t you want to look like we’re getting along?”

“No. Let me go!”

“Hilary, you’ve got to do better than this if you want my grandmother to get together with your grandfather.”

“I’ll lock them in a closet,” she snapped. “Damn you, you promised you’d be a gentleman.”

He chuckled. Her nails were digging into his skin, despite the protection of his jacket and shirt sleeves. They felt almost good. And he couldn’t blame her for being angry with him—again. He was acting like an obnoxious oaf, but he wanted to break through that social mask of hers. “My hands are on your back,” he said, “not where they’d really like to be. This is as gentlemanly as I get. We’ve got to do a little playacting for our audience, to show my grandmother her matchmaking is working.”

Abruptly Hilary stopped struggling.

If her body squirming against his drove him to the brink, what it did relaxing against his was unprintable. This matchmaking could be more fun that he’d thought, Dev mused. “Anybody ever tell you you’ve got a body that won’t quit?”

“Billy Idol. You’ve proven your point to the ‘audience.’ Now, let me go.”

She was quick. He liked that. And she had jabbed him with her spoon, revealing an unexpected side to her that he’d like to explore further.

“In a minute,” he said.

He continued to hold her close as he gazed down at her, hoping to make her blink first. She stared right back, waiting for him to let her go. He felt something within him responding to her, dragging him forward. The control he’d felt throughout their kiss dissipated. He felt … ashamed that he’d kissed her the way he had … ashamed that he hadn’t cared about her feelings. The notion was disturbing, and he released her abruptly, all
but pushing her away in an effort to shake the sensation of vulnerability running through him.