Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One (37 page)

“How could you possibly know all that?” she asked, allowing herself to go along with the game she was sure he was playing, wondering how far he intended to take it. “You were hardly around.”

“Oh, Lady Pat,” he teased, “one doesn’t have to live in someone’s pocket to know all about them. There’s such a thing as feelings and instincts. Mine are very keen when it comes to the ladies.”

“I know,” Pat said with an indulgent smile.

“Oh, and how do you know?” he laughed, echoing her previous tone. He seemed to take delight in this little game.

Pat found his company refreshing and charming, and she could easily see why he was such a favorite with women. While his looks were almost overwhelming, it was his charm that managed to disarm people.

“I’ve read about you. All the big magazines at one time or another have mentioned your terribly important, hush-hush transactions . . . the beautiful women you’ve been involved with,” she added with a smile, waiting to hear his reply to that.

“Ah, a fan,” he said easily. “So, you’ve been following my humble life. I’m flattered.”

“Humble, huh! Anyone who can get an audience with those sheiks in the oil cartel just by appearing at their hotel while they’re squabbling over the price of oil and be invited back to all their countries as, I believe the term was, an ‘honored guest’ has left that ‘humble’ bit far behind,” she said. “Tell me, is it true that one of them offered you a harem girl of your very own?” She innocently looked up at his face.

“No, not one of them,” Blaise said, then paused before he added, “three of them.”

“Did you bring them along?” Pat teased.

He shook his head solemnly. “They were dressed too draftily for this part of the country. I left them with the customs agent at the airport. I believe he’s still searching them for hidden contraband— and having the time of his life,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

Pat laughed, feeling blissfully younger than she had in years. “You’ve never grown up, have you?” she asked.

“What was there to grow up to?” he countered. “Wearing long faces like the others? No, I believe in grabbing everything life has to offer and enjoying it—or else, why grab?”

The band had stopped playing and Pat suddenly realized that they were the only ones on the floor. She had gotten so caught up in Blaise that she had created her own music in her head. With a slight, embarrassed laugh, she nodded toward the table.

“I think we’d better sit down before everyone starts staring.”

“If they do, it’ll be at you,” he said simply, his voice silky. “Have I told you that you look beautiful tonight?” he asked, holding the brocade chair for her.

“No,” she answered, feeling the nervous flutter return. She was all right while they were bantering, but he kept turning the conversation and his wonderful eyes back to her and making her feel so unsure of herself. It was all such nonsense.

“Well, then I must be slipping. Either that, or you’ve managed to dazzle me so much that you’ve made me forget my manners.”

“I sincerely doubt that anyone could dazzle you to the extent that you’d forget anything,” Pat said, then put up her hand. “And I’m not fishing for another compliment, so you can relax. I’m an old family friend, remember?”

“I’m not the one who’s tense,” he pointed out, and she shifted in her seat. “And you’re hardly old,” he said softly, his eyes seeming to take in every part of her.

Pat had always taken care of herself, watched her weight, kept up with the latest styles. And she had done it for herself, not in order to parade before chattering women at a garden club or to play the femme fatale at the parties she and Roger had thrown. She had thought of herself as just a person, a capable, mature person, not as a feminine entity. Yet she saw the latter reflected in Blaise’s eyes, and the image almost . . . pleased her.

“I’m nearly forty-one,” she said.

Blaise clutched at his heart and looked at her wide-eyed. “And you made it here without your wheelchair?”

Pat felt a giggle break loose and immediately fought to control it as a deep smile took possession of her lips. She hadn’t giggled in years.

“You ninny, don’t you know that the best is yet to be?” he asked fondly, and he would have looked serious had it not been for the mischievous gleam in his eye.

“You sound like a commercial,” she said. “I’ve been married, I’m widowed, my children are grown and, at the moment, against me, more engrossed in money, it seems, than in the ideals Roger and I tried to instill in them—“ She was about to say that the best part of her life was over, but Blaise didn’t let her.

“Don’t you see, you’re a much more fascinating woman now than you were at your junior prom,” he insisted, taking her hand. The atmosphere had suddenly become very intimate. “And like the commercial, you’re not getting older, you’re getting better.”

“At what?” she asked with a touch of bitterness, thinking of all the obstacles she faced. “At losing?”

His finger gently traced the outline of her lips. “At a lot of things, I’d wager.”

The candles on their table winked and blinked a bit brighter for a moment as Pat tried to free herself of the spell that was being cast. “I think it’s getting late,” she said with effort. “I do have to be up early tomorrow.”

Blaise nodded and reached for his wallet. “Of course, Cinderella,” he said, glancing at his watch, “although we still have a few hours before the coach becomes a pumpkin.”

“They don’t make pumpkins like they used to,” Pat said, rising. “This one’s got a shorter time limit on it.” He helped her on with her fur stole. “I suppose this isn’t what you’re used to,” she apologized, thinking of the glamorous women he squired about, sharing their company until the wee hours of the morning—the time she usually got up to start her day.

“No,” he confessed with a warm smile, “it’s not. You’re unique.” He placed his hand against the small of her back as he guided her out to the car.

She wasn’t sure how he meant that, and she suddenly realized that he would be coming home with her. The thought created a prickling sensation in her hands, which she tried to ignore.

Blaise merely smiled at her as he ushered her into the back seat of his chauffeured limousine.

Chapter Three

Blaise must have sensed her uneasiness. All the way home he asked questions about her work and the problems she was encountering. Safely nestled in the subject that dominated her life, Pat became animated and clearly defined the predicament as it stood at the moment, tossing off technical terms that once would have boggled her mind. But she had thrown herself into the task that Roger had left, armed with tenacity and a huge willingness to learn.

At Blaise’s insistence, she gave him a capsulized version of her life in the past twenty years, bringing him up to date just as they reached her front door.

“You make it sound as if the plant and its products became Roger’s whole life,” Blaise commented, taking the key from her and opening the front door of her sprawling hacienda, which stood isolated on five acres.
 

“They did,” Pat said honestly, going in and finding to her relief that Angelica had left the lights on in the spacious living room. Without thinking, Pat kicked off her shoes at the door, as was her custom, letting the thick pile of the freshly shampooed, cream-colored rug caress her tired feet. She looked up to find Blaise staring at her. She suddenly felt tiny next to him—and very, very vulnerable. It was just her imagination running away with her, she told herself. She was just tired, that was all.

Blaise shook his head as he closed the door softly behind him. “Poor old Roger. What a fool,” he said almost under his breath.

“What?” Pat stopped in her tracks and turned to face Blaise.

“I said he was a fool,” Blaise repeated more audibly. “To be so wrapped up in his work that he didn’t see what he was allowing to go to waste right in his own home.”

“Blaise, you’ve been wonderful for my ego,” Pat began, walking over to the huge glass doors that led out to the terrace. She pulled the ceiling-to-floor drapes with a decisive, swift motion. “But you needn’t waste your words on me. I don’t feel cheated—“

“Don’t you?” Blaise asked, coming toward her.

She realized as she turned to face him that he had taken off his tie and had undone the three top buttons of his shirt. A light layer of downy, dark hair was exposed. She caught herself wondering, just for a moment, what he would look like in swimming trunks. Most men looked passably good in three-piece suits but were a terrible disappointment in swimsuits.
 
Roger had been athletic-looking when they were first married, but as the years had passed and his involvement with work grew, he had neglected himself. Her husband had eventually joined the ranks of flabby-bodied men whose trousers hung loosely behind them while almost straining against a little round belly in front, gained from eating the wrong foods on the run. Somehow, Pat instinctively knew that Blaise offered no such disappointment.

He whispered again, “Don’t you feel cheated?”

She shrugged indifferently and responded to his question. “Just by the fact that he’s gone, of course. Even though he wasn’t here that often, I do miss him. And at the office, I still expect him to come marching through that door, dirty shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, talking excitedly, trying to tell me how he improved on his line of planes.” She sat down on the long blue and white sofa, looking up absently at the original impressionist painting that hung above it.

Unconsciously, she began to massage her feet. Blaise sat next to her.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, looking at her hands as she rubbed her toes.

“It’s my feet,” Pat said, a little embarrassed. “I don’t think they enjoyed this evening as much as the rest of me. I haven’t been dancing in a long time,” she confessed.

“Here,” Blaise offered, drawing her feet onto his lap, “let me.”

“No,” she protested, trying to pull back, but he held firm.

“I promise I won’t take them away,” he told her as he began to knead.

Despite herself, Pat liked the wonderfully relaxing effect of his fingers as they methodically massaged away the ache in her small feet. It felt marvelous. Too marvelous, she realized, suddenly drawing back and sitting up on her knees.

Blaise merely grinned.

“Roger really did have a very ingenious mind,” she said, nervously retreating to the topic of her husband. “I don’t think his family appreciated that.”

Blaise nodded his dark head slightly. “I don’t think his family is capable of appreciating anything except more money.” His eyes seemed to pull her closer and make her feel totally exposed before him. “So I take it you were happy with him.”

“Yes,” Pat answered softly. Well, she had been, even though at times she had been jealous of his work’s claim on him. Although he forgot her birthdays and anniversaries, Roger could remember all the parts of any plane he manufactured. Still, she had loved him, right up to the end, and her loyalty to him was unswerving.

“How happy?” Blaise pressed.

“Blaise, if you came here expecting to find a frustrated, unhappy widow who would throw herself into the arms of the first man who offered her sympathetic words ...” she began, her annoyance showing.

But his smile erased the rest of her words. “I came expecting to find the same pluck I always saw in you and I’m not disappointed. I think I would have been disappointed if you had knuckled under to Aunt Rose and given up the plant. I’m glad to see you’re still ‘dynamite,’ “ he said fondly.

She looked at him in surprise. How had he known her nickname? Pat’s friends had called her that in high school and the name still aptly described her. She was petite and lithe—compact, she liked to put it—but she always made a difference when she became involved in something.

“How did you know my nickname?” Pat couldn’t help asking.

“I know a lot of things about you. I made it a point to know.”

“In between the harem girls and wading in the fountain with the contessa?” she asked, amused.

“In between everything,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you come to the funeral?” She remembered looking for his face at the time, feeling sure he would come to pay his respects rather than just send a wire of condolences and a flower arrangement. She realized now that unconsciously she had wanted him there to support her. Somehow, she had instinctively known that he would have been on her side.

“I wasn’t sure that you needed me then,” he said honestly.

“Well, I did,” she answered, being more frank with him than she thought she should be.

“I realize that now,” he replied. “Delia’s letter took me to task for that.”

“Delia’s been wonderful,” Pat said, “but she’s somewhere in her late eighties, I think, and I don’t want to tax her with any of my problems.”

“You don’t have to say anything to her. She’s a sharp cookie. Has her fingers on the pulse of everything.” He smiled. “She’s kind of what I imagine you’ll be like in another fifty years.”

Pat realized that he had taken her hand in his. Moreover, his other arm had slipped around her shoulders. She was surrounded. A tightness gripped her throat. She had to get up. She had no business being here alone with him like this, feeling as nervous as a teenager in the presence of the school “hunk.” The thought made her smile. She had not been like this even as a young girl. Except for the time he had asked her to dance at her engagement party.

“You’ve got the smile of an angel,” he said, his eyes mesmerizing her. “Makes you look like a little girl. A delectable, saucy little girl,” he said as he slowly and expertly began to draw the pins out of her hair.

Pat felt her golden-brown mane come loose. “What are you doing?” she asked, startled, as her hand flew up to stop him. But somehow there was no force in her words or her action. Perhaps something within her was even urging him on.

“Pulling the pins out of your hair,” he said softly.

“Don’t,” she began, the word disappearing.

“Shh,” he whispered. “Don’t argue with me, Lady Pat,” he said, placing the pins on the coffee-table. Deftly, he fanned out her shoulder-length hair, running his strong, sure fingers through it. “There. Now you look like the girl I first met.”