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“I can’t believe I’ve never met that fiancé of yours,” she’d said to Iris once, with a little laugh, and Iris, as ignorant of the truth as Carin, had explained that he traveled a lot.
Carin finished her wine just as she spotted another waiter with a tray of drinks.
“Waiter,” she said briskly.
There were no glasses of wine on the tray, only cocktail glasses filled with a colorless liquid and onions or olives impaled on tiny plastic swords.
“Cute,” she said, and smiled as she swapped her empty glass for a full one that held an onion and then, because the drink looked small, she shifted her evening bag under her arm and took a second glass that contained an olive.
The waiter lifted an eyebrow.
“Thank you,” Carin said, as if she drank two-fisted every day of her life. She took a sip of the glass that held the onion. “Wow,” she whispered, and took a second sip.
It was true. Frank had, in fact, traveled a lot. What neither she nor Iris knew was that the traveling he did was mostly between their two apartments. Thinking back, remembering how naive—no, how stupid—she’d been she almost laughed.
A month ago, it had all come apart. Frank must have realized he couldn’t keep up the act much longer, not with things like the rehearsal dinner and his marriage vows staring him in the face. So he’d phoned one evening, sounding nervous, and said he had to see her right away; he had to tell her something important.
Carin had hurried down to the corner wine shop, bought a bottle of champagne and popped it into the fridge. He was going to propose, she’d thought giddily…
Instead, he’d told her that he’d trapped himself in a nightmare. He had, he said, become engaged to another woman. And while she was staring at him in horror, trying to digest that news, he’d told her who the woman was.
“You’re joking,” Carin had said, when she could finally choke out a coherent sentence.
Frank had shrugged, grinned sheepishly—grinned, of all things—and that was when she’d lost it, when she’d gone from gasping to shrieking and screaming. She’d thrown things at him—a vase, the waiting wine bucket—and he’d run for the door.
Carin took a deep breath, raised her glass to her lips and drank down half of the martini.
She’d survived, even managed to put it all in perspective. Frank was no great loss; a man like that, one who couldn’t remain faithful, was not a man she’d want for a husband. All she had to do was get through the wedding that loomed ahead—the wedding between the woman who’d been her friend and the man who’d been her lover—and she’d be fine. She wouldn’t attend the wedding, of course, but that didn’t mean she’d mope.
No, she’d told herself firmly, no moping. No sitting around feeling sorry for herself. She’d order in pizza, drink the bottle of champagne she’d put in the fridge that horrid evening. To hell with Frank. Iris could have him.
Everything was fine, or almost fine, until an invitation to the wedding arrived along with a note from Iris asking, very politely, if she’d mind passing along her bridesmaid’s gown to the girl who’d be taking her place.
Carin had ripped the note and the invitation into tiny pieces, stuffed them back into their envelope and mailed it to the happy couple. Then, because it was time to admit she’d never get through the wedding weekend alone without either crying or screaming or maybe even going to the wedding and standing up to make a public announcement when the minister got to the part where he’d ask if anyone present knew a reason the marriage shouldn’t take place, she’d phoned Marta and said, as gaily as she could, that there’d been a change in plans and she’d be flying in for the party, after all.
“With Frank?” her mother had asked and when Carin said no, no, he wouldn’t be coming, Marta had said “oh” in a tone that spoke volumes. If she knew more now, if Amanda had told her anything, she hadn’t let on, except to hug Carin tightly when she arrived and whisper, “I never liked him, anyway.”
Carin sighed.
Nobody had liked Frank, it was turning out. Not her secretary, who’d wanted to kill him almost as much as Carin. Not Amanda, not Nicholas, not anybody with half a brain—except her. She’d been so dumb…
“Canapés, miss?”
Carin looked up, smiled at the white-gloved waiter, put the empty martini glass on a table and plucked a tiny puff pastry from the tray.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Lobster, I believe, miss.”
Lobster, indeed, and decadently delicious, Carin thought as she popped the little hors d’oeuvre into her mouth and crunched down. All that it needed was another swallow of whatever was in the glass with the onion to make it perfect…except, the glass was empty.
How had that happened? Well, it was a problem easily solved. She put the empty glass beside the other and set off through the crowded room in search of a drink.
“Mizz?”
The voice was masculine, heavily accented, and right behind her. She took a deep breath, pasted a smile to her lips and turned around. As she’d expected, it was the Brazilian Bombshell.
Up close, he wasn’t quite so good-looking. His jaw was a little weak, his nose a little long. Actually, he looked a lot like Frank.
“Mizz,” he said again, and took her hand. He bent over it, brought it to his lips, planted a damp kiss on her skin. Carin snatched her hand back and fought against the almost overwhelming desire to wipe it on her gown.
“Hello,” she said as pleasantly as she could.
“Hello,” he said, and smiled so broadly she could see a filling in his molar. “I ask who is the beautiful lady with the black hair and the green eyes and I am tell she is Carin Brewster, yes?”
“Yes,” Carin said. Was this what a Portuguese accent sounded like? “I mean, thank you for the compliment, senhor.”
“Senhor,” he repeated, and laughed. “Is amusing you should call me that, Carin Brewster.”
“Well, I know my pronunciation isn’t very good, but—”
She babbled her way through a conversation that made little sense. The Latin Lover spoke poor English and she spoke no Portuguese. Besides, she really didn’t want to talk with him. She didn’t want to talk to anybody, especially not a man who reminded her, even slightly, of Frank.
Frank, that no-good rat. That scum-sucking bottom crawler. That liar—but then, all men were liars. She’d learned that, early. Her father had lied to her mother. To her, too, each time she’d climbed into his lap and begged him not to go away again.
“This is the last time, angel,” he’d say, but that was never the truth.
What was wrong with the Brewster women? Hadn’t they learned anything? Their father had lied. From the stories she’d heard, Jonas Baron had turned lying into an art form. Yes, there might be exceptions. She was hopeful about her stepbrothers, and about Amanda’s new husband but still, as a rule—
“…a funny joke, yes?”
Carin nodded her head and laughed mechanically. Whatever joke the senhor had told, it couldn’t be half as funny as the one she’d thought of.
Question: How do you know a man is lying? Answer: His lips are moving.
Frank had fed her lies, said he loved her, and now he was in New York, standing at an altar and saying “I do” to another woman.
Enough, Carin thought, and in the middle of the senhor’s next joke, she took his hand, pumped it up and down and said it had been a pleasure, an absolute pleasure. Then she let go of his hand, tried not to let the wounded look in his puppy-dog eyes get to her, and made her way out of the living room, through the massive hall and into the library where a string quartet sawed away in direct opposition to the country fiddler holding court in the dining room.
A white-jacketed waiter was threading his way through the crowd, a tray of glasses balanced on his gloved hand.
“Hey,” she said to the waiter’s back.
It was an inelegant way to draw his attention; she knew her mother would have lifted her eyebrows and told her so, but it worked. The waiter turned towards her and Carin plucked a glass from the tray. This glass was short and squat, filled halfway with an amber liquid and chunks of fruit. She lifted it to her nose, took a sniff, then a sip. “Yuck,” she said, but she swallowed another mouthful, anyway.
Amanda came floating by in her husband’s arms. “Careful,” she sang softly, “or you’ll get blot-to.”
“Thank you for the sisterly advice,” Carin said as her sister sailed off.
Amanda was right. She would get blotto, if she weren’t careful. The only one of the three Brewster sisters who could hold liquor was Sam, and Sam wasn’t here. She was in Ireland, or France, or England. Wherever, whatever, Sam was probably having fun.
Well, she’d be careful. She didn’t want to get drunk. This was, after all, a social event. Not for her, maybe, but for everybody else. For Caitlin, certainly, and for her husband, Tyler Kincaid. She didn’t want to spoil their party. Her sister’s party. Well, not exactly her sister. Catie was her stepsister…Wasn’t she?
Carin drained the last of the amber stuff from the glass and plunked the empty on a table.
The falimial—familial—structure of the Barons, the Brewsters, the Kincaids and now the al Rashids, was complicated. She hiccuped, grinned, and made her way through the library on feet that felt encased in foam rubber.
“Better watch yourself, kid,” she whispered.
If she couldn’t think “familial,” much less say it, it might just be time to slow down the drinking…but not yet.
The hell with it. She was thirsty, and she was an adult. She could drink as much as she wanted.
She hiccuped. Loudly. She giggled, clapped a hand to her mouth and said, “’Scuse me,” to nobody in particular.
Somebody laughed. Not at her, surely. People laughed at parties, that was all. Most people came to parties to laugh. To have a good time. Not everyone came to try and forget what a complete ass they’d been made to look, and to feel.
What she needed right now was some fresh air. A cool breeze on her flushed cheeks. Carin made for the doors that led outside.
The thing of it was, Frank had claimed he didn’t want to get married. Not ever. She’d told him that was fine and it had been, at first, because what was marriage except two people making vows they never intended to keep? Not the man, anyway.
She slid the doors open, stepped out onto the middle level of Espada’s waterfall deck, and drew the soft night air deep into her lungs.
As for sex—how could marriage improve something that wasn’t so terrific to start with? Sex was sex, that was all, not the light-up-the-sky stuff people made it out to be.
Still, after a few months she’d started to think it might not be so bad, getting married. Companionship, at the end of the long day spent in her Wall Street office. Someone with whom to share the Sunday paper.
As it turned out, she wasn’t the only one who’d changed her mind. Frank had, too. Actually, it was pretty funny. He’d decided he wanted to get married, all right. Just not to her.
Carin swallowed hard.
She had to stop thinking about that. About him. About whatever it was she lacked that he’d found in Iris.
What she needed was something to eat. She hadn’t touched food in hours, except for that lobster thingy. And there was a marvelous buffet laid out in the house. Clams, oysters, lobster salad; prime ribs, poached salmon and quail.
What was on the menu at Frank’s wedding? She made a face. Snake’s belly, most likely, to suit the groom.
What was that? A prickle, on the back of her neck again. Uh-oh. He’d followed her, the Brazilian Bozo. She didn’t have to look; who else would it be? She wouldn’t even give him the satisfaction of turning around. Let Senhor Wonderful try his charms on some female who was interested in playing those games.
Frank had been above game-playing. That was what she’d thought, anyway. It was what she’d initially liked about him.
They’d met at a fund-raiser, and what a revelation he’d been! At least half a dozen men had come on to her that night, all of them using the oldest pickup lines in the world, everything from “Excuse me, but haven’t we met before?” to “I just had to tell you, you’re the most beautiful woman in the room.”
Frank had walked straight up to her, offered his hand and his business card and said he’d heard about her from one of his clients.
“He described you as one of the best investment advisors in New York.”
Carin had smiled. “Not one,” she’d said. “I am the best.”
That had been the beginning of their relationship. They saw each other often but she had her life and he had his. That was how they’d both wanted it. Separate existences, no dependency—they’d discussed things honestly and pragmatically. No keys exchanged, no toothbrushes left in either apartment, his or hers.
Had he left a toothbrush in Iris’s bathroom?
“Hell,” Carin said, and planted her fists on the teak railing.
She was thirsty again. Surely, there was a bar out here. Hadn’t Jonas said something about a barbecue on the deck? Was that hickory smoke she smelled, wafting up from the first level? If there was a barbecue, there’d surely be a bar.
Carin headed for the steps. They were wide and straight; she’d never had trouble with them before but tonight, for some reason, she had to hang on to the railing to keep from tripping over her own feet.
“A glass of sauvignon blanc, please,” she told the bartender when she found him.
Actually, her tongue tripped the way her feet had. What she said sounded more like “A grass of so-vee-on brahnk, pease,” and she almost giggled but the bartender gave her a funny look so she looked straight back at him, her brows lifted, her gaze steady. “Well?” she said, and waited.
At last, he poured the wine and gave the glass to her but her hand was, for some reason, unsteady. The pale gold liquid slopped over the side. She frowned, licked the wine from her hand, drained what remained and held out her glass.
“Again,” she said.
The bartender shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Red, then, if you’re out of the white.” She smiled, to make it clear she really wasn’t particular. He didn’t smile back.
“I really am sorry, ma’am, but I believe you’ve had enough.”
Carin’s eyes narrowed. She leaned forward; the simple action made her woozy but why wouldn’t it? This was summer in Texas, even if this was hill country, and the night was warm.
“What do you mean, you think I’ve had enough? This is a bar, isn’t it? You’re a bartender. You’re here to pour drinks for people, not to be the sobrie—sobree—not be the ‘too much to drink’ police.”
“I’ll be happy to get you some coffee.”
He spoke softly but everyone around them had fallen silent and his words seemed to echo on the night air. Carin flushed.
“Are you saying you think I’m drunk?”
“No, ma’am. But—”
“Then, pour me a drink.”
“Ma’am.” The bartender leaned towards her. “How about that coffee?”
“Do you know who I am?” Carin heard herself say. She winced mentally, but her mouth seemed to have taken on a life of its own. “Do you know—”
“He knows. And if you do not shut that lovely mouth, so will everyone else.”
The voice came from just over her shoulder. It was masculine, low-pitched, and lightly accented. The Latin Lover, Carin thought, and turned around.
“I suppose you think this is your big chance,” she said, or started to say, but she didn’t finish the sentence.
In spite of the accent, this wasn’t the man. This was someone she hadn’t seen before. Tipsy or not—and hell, yes, okay, she was, maybe, a little bit potted—she’d have remembered him.
