Seduced and Betrayed (11 page)

"How did you two first meet?" Dan asked, looking back and forth between Zeke and Ariel.

Zeke looked up from his contemplation of his brandy glass in time to see the other man bend down and reach under the table. Probably to rub the ankle his wife had just kicked, Zeke thought. But the question had been asked and it was hanging in the air, waiting to be answered. Zeke looked down the length of the beautifully set table, to where his ex-wife sat at the other end, silently ceding the privilege of answering it to her. Would she remember their first meeting the same way he did?

"We met at work," Ariel said, making it sound as normal and uneventful as a day at the office. "On a soundstage at Universal."

"They were filming
Wild Hearts,"
Cameron added, when it appeared that neither Zeke nor Ariel was going to elaborate further. "It was the first movie either of them ever did. Dad got his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor."

"Wild Hearts?"
Sondra Everett said, apparently forgetting discretion at the prospect of hearing more about the seemingly magical business of making movies. "My goodness, I saw that just last week on American Movie Classics on TV. It's always been one of my favorites. So romantic. And such a romantic way to meet."

"I hate to disillusion you but the romance was all on the screen," Ariel said with an elegant little shrug. "Making it look that way wasn't the least bit romantic at all."

"Oh, come on now, Ariel," Zeke disagreed, irked at her deliberately casual dismissal of what had been between them. "It was a little bit romantic." He flashed his million dollar bad-boy grin at their guests. "Remember the scene in the movie where Laura and Judd first kiss? The one where she comes out of the convenience store and he's sitting outside on his Harley, waiting for her?" The questions were addressed to Sondra Everett but the words were aimed, point blank, at his ex-wife. "It was the very first scene we filmed for the movie. We barely knew each other but Hans—our director, Hans Ostfield, he won an Oscar a couple of years ago for
The Promise?"

Sondra nodded. "With Tara Channing and Pierce Kingston. I have the video."

"Hans thought shooting that scene first, before we really got to know each other, would give it more authenticity. Capture the nervousness of a first kiss and all. Well, we were nervous, all right. Remember, Ariel?" He shifted his hot, dark-eyed gaze down the length of the table, locking it with that of his ex-wife, staring into her eyes as if they were all alone at the candlelit table. "Things got so... romantic—" he said softly, hesitating just long enough for his audience to know that "romantic" wasn't the half of it "—that Ariel muffed her lines. And I... well..." He shrugged and transferred his gaze back to that of his fascinated listeners. "What happened to me probably isn't fit to talk about in mixed company," he confided with a roguish grin.

Ariel's chair legs squeaked against the tiled marble floor as she pushed back from the table. "It looks like a beautiful night," she said as she rose to her feet. "Shall we finish our drinks out by the pool?"

Her voice was perfectly pleasant, her smile was graciousness itself but the look she shot down the table at her ex-husband could have frozen molten lava.

"Actually, it's time we were going," Sondra Everett said into the small silence that followed her hostess's words. "We have quite a long drive ahead of us, don't we, Dan?"

"Two and a half, three hours, depending on traffic." Dan Everett made a show of looking at his watch. "I had no idea it was so late already."

"I'm afraid I have to be on my way, too." Michael pushed his chair away from the table and stood. "I need to stop by my apartment and change before I head on over to the hospital," he explained with a charming smile. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to drag Cami away, too. We drove over in her car."

There was a general flurry of napkins being laid down and chairs being pushed back and, minutes later, they found themselves at the wide front door of Ariel's Beverly Hills mansion, exchanging the usual round of thank-yous and good-nights.

"It was a great dinner, Mom," Cameron said as she kissed her mother on the cheek. "Tell Eleanor she outdid herself, as usual."

"It's been a lovely evening," Sondra Everett said. "It'll be our turn next time."

"Thank you for coming," Ariel said as she stood in the open doorway, bidding her guests good-night, a gracious hostess to the end. "Drive safely, everyone."

She shut the front door, softly, quietly, one hand on the knob and the other pressed flat against the smooth wood, and then rested her forehead against it for a moment, gathering strength.

She'd thought the evening would never end! And there was still the rehearsal dinner to get through, and the wedding itself, and then the reception, with all its attendant traditions of familial togetherness and cooperation. Thank God, it would all be over soon. In a little less than a month, Cameron and Michael would be married and on their honeymoon, and she could go back to pretending her ex-husband didn't exist. Until then, she'd just have to find a way to deal with his overwhelming, unsettling,
unnerving
presence the best way she could.

Pushing away from the door, she turned and walked back through the house, automatically turning off lights as she went, through the foyer and the front parlor, down the hallway to the small informal dining room overlooking the pool area.

She'd intended to clear the table and put the dishes to soak, maybe have herself another helping of the delicious crème caramel Eleanor had made for dessert, and then do a few dozen laps in the pool before she went to bed. She had taken, lately, to doing her laps at night instead of in the morning. It helped her sleep.

Sometimes.

Other times—most times—she ended up reading until she finally dropped off. Scripts, mostly, in hopes of finding a screenplay where the woman wasn't cast as the victim or used as mere set decoration. She'd discovered the scripts made a good soporific, far superior to either liquor or pills and without the unpleasant side effects.

She heard the soft clatter of cutlery against china as she approached the door to the dining room and quickened her steps, the silk faille of her wide-legged evening pajamas swishing against her legs with the quick movement, the heels of her shoes clicking sharply against the hardwood floor.

There was one more hurdle to be faced before she could be alone with her thoughts and the night, one more obstacle to be overcome and conquered. Squaring her shoulders for the battle ahead, she lifted her chin and stepped into the dining room. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she demanded of her ex-husband.

Chapter 6

Zeke looked up at his ex-wife and then down at the precariously balanced stack of cups and saucers he was holding as if the answer should be obvious. "Clearing the table."

"I can see that," Ariel said, her voice tight with exhaustion and controlled fury. "Why?"

"Well..." He shrugged innocently, as if he had no idea why she was upset. "I heard you tell Eleanor you wouldn't need her anymore tonight after she served dessert, so I thought I'd give you a hand with the cleaning up. It seemed the least I could do since you hosted the dinner."

"I don't need help with the cleaning up," Ariel informed him, "because I'm not going to clean up. Eleanor will take care of it in the morning. So you can go," she added, with the frosty hauteur of a queen.

"You never used to be so unfeeling," Zeke chided, reaching out to pinch three brandy snifters between his fingers before he headed for the kitchen.

Ariel followed him as far as the door. "Unfeeling?" she said to his back, watching as he set the glasses and china on the ceramic tile counter next to the stainless steel sink. "What do you mean by that?"

"Eleanor is—what?—nearly sixty years old? I'd think you'd be a little more considerate of her, is all."

Ariel closed her eyes and counted to ten. Slowly.

"Excuse me," Zeke murmured, an edge of humor in his deep voice.

Ariel opened her eyes and found herself staring at the soft hollow at the base of his throat, revealed by the open collar of his soft tobacco brown silk shirt. She stepped back hastily, as if touching him would contaminate her, and let him pass back into the dining room.

"I don't know why you decided to stay behind when everyone else has had the good manners to go home," she said as he moved around the table gathering up the dessert plates and cutlery. "And I don't particularly care. I—Will you please put that down and listen to me?" she snapped, grabbing the cut crystal brandy decanter out of his hand. She slammed it down onto the table without regard for its cost or fragility, and then reached for the gold-rimmed dessert plates in his other hand and slammed them down, too. The sterling silver dessert spoons he'd placed on top of the stack of delicate china plates clattered to the table. "I want you out of here, Zeke," she said with quiet desperation. "Now."

Zeke shook his head. "We need to talk."

"You and I have nothing to say to each other."

"We have a daughter," he said calmly, "who's planning a wedding. I'd say that gives us plenty to talk about."

"That's what the meetings with the wedding consultants are for," Ariel countered. "To talk about the wedding. And since that's already been planned and discussed to the nth degree, I don't see that there's anything at all left to talk about."

"Ariel." He reached out as if to touch her.

She stepped back, out of reach.

He sighed and ran his hand through his hair instead. "Isn't it time we called a truce?"

"I thought we had."

Zeke shook his head. "This is just a temporary ceasefire until the wedding is over. I'm talking about a real truce. Because the wedding isn't going to be the end of it, you know. In three or four years there'll be grandchildren. Christenings. Birthdays. Christmas. Cameron isn't going to want to divide their lives between us the way we did hers. And we have no right to ask it of her."

Ariel stared at him for a long moment, knowing he was right but not wanting him to be. "I know," she said, finally. "I've thought about that, too."

"Then do we have a truce?"

Ariel sighed, and then nodded. "I guess it's time we tried to make some sort of real peace," she agreed. "For Cameron's sake."

"You might start by looking at me," Zeke suggested, "instead of staring off over my left shoulder somewhere."

"I look at you."

"No," Zeke said. "You don't." He reached out and grasped her chin, turning her face up to his. "This is looking at me," he said, when she finally lifted her gaze to his.

They stared at each other for a long five seconds, glaring at each other, really, each trying to overpower the other and prevail through sheer force of personality.

She's still got the deepest, bluest, most fathomless eyes in the world,
he was thinking.
And the sweetest, most kissable mouth known to man. And the softest skin imaginable.

He'd always loved the way her skin felt under his fingertips, like warm living silk that responded to his slightest touch. As if, he thought, she was fashioned to respond to him, and only him.

He hasn't changed,
Ariel thought.
He still has a gaze that would melt the polar ice cap. And a mouth made to drive a woman crazy. And hard, gentle hands.

She'd always loved the way his hands felt on her skin, his fingers as delicate and gentle as if he were stroking a baby, as knowing as if he'd programmed her every erotic response. Which in a way, she thought, he had.

She swayed toward him, slightly. And he bent his head, slightly. And then they both gasped and jerked away as if they'd gotten too close to a flame.

"All right. We'll call a truce," Ariel said, hastily backing away from him. She smoothed her hands down the front of her peach silk tunic, touching the satin frogs as if to make sure they were still securely fastened. "Grab that bottle—" she nodded at the crystal decanter "—and a couple of clean snifters off the sideboard in the living room. I'll take the rest of these things into the kitchen and put them to soak. We'll meet out by the pool in five minutes and hammer out the conditions of the truce."

And then she turned, grabbing up the plates and the cutlery she had slammed down a moment ago, and fled to the safety of the kitchen without pausing to see if he was following her instructions.