The Wrong Wife

She looked up at Ben as he tucked her hand under his arm. “Watch your step, Princess Turandot, the paving’s uneven.”

“Wasn’t she that opera bitch who beheaded all her suitors?”

“Ah, but in the end she was vanquished by love.”

As I hope you will be, Ben thought. He heaved a sigh of relief. At least he hadn’t been totally daffy when he’d fallen for Annabelle. With her hair up and those little curls around her face, and that incredible Chinese dress, she was the most luscious woman he’d ever seen. Wildly sexy. Next to her all the blond beauties looked as though they’d come out of the oven too soon and been stored in the refrigerator too long. Annabelle radiated heat.

He had heard all the stories about her mother, the hot-blooded Cajun from Lafayette, who’d refused to wear stockings and white cotton gloves in the summertime and went barefoot in the Langley garden.

And had inspired such desperate passion in her husband that he had killed her. At least he’d gone to prison for it. He knew the gossip as well, of course. That he’d lied to protect his child, the real killer.

Looking down at Annabelle, he refused to believe this beautiful girl could do anything that heinous even by accident.

He couldn’t change his life’s direction. He still wanted to be district attorney, and then maybe governor…senator.

So, if he intended to do all the things he planned with Annabelle by his side, there was only one solution.

He’d have to change Annabelle. At least in public. In private he hoped he read the signs right—that she was every bit as sensual as she looked.

“I can’t do this,” Annabelle said when they were three steps from the back door.

“Sure you can.” His hand on her back grew a little more urgent.

“Who’s going to be there?”

“No idea. Probably some politicos, a college professor or two. Nobody special.”

She stopped dead. “Who would you consider special? Prince Charles and the Dalai Lama?”

“Come on, Annabelle. I’m right here. I made Mother promise to seat us together…”

“She knows you’re bringing me?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I tell her?”

“She didn’t mention it.”

Ben shrugged. He removed his hand. “It’s just not a big deal to her.”

“More likely she hoped one of us would come to our senses. That would be me.” Annabelle started back toward her apartment.

“Oh no you don’t,” Ben said, and reached for her arm. “Just remember the old saw about visualizing everybody naked.”

“Are you crazy? Besides, what if they’re thinking about me the same way?”

I certainly will be, Ben thought, but he suspected to say so would have been really, really counterproductive. He gulped instead.

“Do you intend to stand out there all night?”

Both of them jumped.

Elizabeth said from the darkness just inside the back door, “You’re the last to arrive. You’ve missed cocktails. We’re almost ready to sit down to dinner.”

“Elizabeth,” Annabelle began.

“And don’t even dream of chickening out at this point, Annabelle.” Her voice softened. “Come on. It’s going to be fun once you plunge in.” She opened the screen door and held it back. “It’s a tiny group.”

Annabelle sighed. So did Ben, but his sigh was of relief.

Annabelle moved toward the door as though it were the route to the gallows. As she reached the lights over the steps, Elizabeth said, “My dear, where did you get that dress? It’s marvelous. Perfect for you.”

“My roommate. She’s a designer for a small house. She made it for me as a Christmas present.”

“Well, if she ever needs a job, tell her to look me up.”

“I don’t think Vickie would leave New York even to become head designer for Chanel.”

Elizabeth followed Annabelle down the short hall to the green baize door into the front of the house. “With computers, she could work on the third moon of Jupiter, assuming there is one.” Elizabeth pushed open the door and stepped through. “Everyone. Here is my errant son, finally, and for those of you who don’t know or don’t remember her, this is Annabelle Langley, who’s running Elizabeth Lace for me.”

Annabelle stood blinking in the light. She was the youngest person in the room. For a moment the faces swam in front of her eyes and she wished she’d brought her glasses. Then a tall, gray-haired and very distinguished man stepped into her field of vision with a broad smile on his face and his hand extended.

“Welcome, Annabelle. I, for one, am delighted that you came back to rescue Elizabeth. She’s been working entirely too many hours to suit me.”

She took the proffered hand and shook it.

“I’m Ben’s boss, Phil Mainwaring.”

She gulped. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

“God help me, when beautiful women start to call you sir, life is over!” Mainwaring laughed.

Annabelle glanced at Ben. Didn’t he know who Mainwaring was? Well, obviously he knew since he worked for the man. Didn’t he know who Mainwaring had been? Did it really matter so little to everyone after all these years?

She felt her shoulders begin to relax. Maybe she’d been kidding herself. The murder was over twenty-five years old and had passed into Memphis legend by this time. Maybe people regarded her as just another one of Ben’s girlfriends.

“Come along, all, let’s sit down or the salmon mousse will ooze,” Elizabeth said, taking Phil Mainwaring’s arm and leading him toward the big dining room across the hall from the room that served as a showroom during the day and a living room at night.

An hour later Annabelle realized that she was actually enjoying herself. The conversation was intelligent and funny. Not, thank God, about fashion.

Ben didn’t seem to be watching her as though she were a time bomb. The group was small—only eight. Annabelle worked very hard to remember names.

Elizabeth Jackson and Phil Mainwaring were apparently an item. Across from Annabelle sat a grizzled and shabby professor of religious studies from the university with his equally grizzled wife who looked as though her skin covered knotted ropes. They were both Ph.Ds, apparently. May and Gene Dressler or Ressler, or something like that.

The other couple, if indeed they were a couple, were charming, suave amateur actors who worked at the local community theater every chance they got and made pots of money doing something financial together during the day. She had no idea whether they lived together or not, but they certainly seemed to act very much like an old married couple. For the moment, she couldn’t for the life of her remember their names, and it was a bit late in the evening for her to ask again. She’d have to find out from Ben.

The meal was excellent and served by a caterer, so Elizabeth didn’t have to leave the table. The mousse was followed by a lemon sorbet, a salad and then by duck a` l’orange and vegetables.

After the salad plates were cleared, the doors to the kitchen opened and the caterer and his assistant rolled in a flaming chocolate bombe covered in meringue and whipped cream. The flames came not from brandy that had been set on fire, but from a little garden of birthday candles on top.

Ben started singing “Happy Birthday” and everyone else joined in except Elizabeth, who sat at the head of the table laughing and clapping her hands.

A birthday party? Ben had landed her at a birthday party without bothering to tell her that’s what it was? Annabelle felt her face turn purple with chagrin. What would she do if the dessert was followed by the opening of presents? She hadn’t brought a single thing. She gave Ben a look that would curdle milk, but he only grinned back as though he hadn’t a clue why she was upset.

“Oh, what fun! It won’t explode, will it?” Elizabeth stood, sucked in a deep breath and blew out all the candles while everyone laughed and applauded. “Whew! Thank the Lord you didn’t put the whole number of my age on top. We’d have set the house on fire.”

Annabelle noticed that when Elizabeth sat down Phil Mainwaring covered her hand with his, and they smiled at each other.

“Speech!” shouted Gene what’s-his-name, who had drunk, and was still drinking, quantities of the excellent red wine. Annabelle thought he was more than a little tight. From the dark look his wife threw him, she wasn’t the only person who thought so.

“No speeches. I am merely glad to be a year older and surrounded by friends and family.” She grinned at Ben. “The only thing that would make things perfect is for Ben to make me a grandmother before I am in my dotage.”

“Hear, hear!” Mainwaring raised his glass.

At that moment a clock somewhere chimed a single note for the quarter hour, and Professor Gene knocked over his full wineglass on the white lace tablecloth.

“Gene, you idiot!” his wife snapped.

Annabelle watched the dark red river flow across the table straight toward her.

The room seemed to go dark. The wine became thick, bright blood reaching out to stain her hands.

If it reached her she’d drown.

Vaguely she registered activity—the caterer rushing in from the kitchen, noise, people trying to apologize and act calm and smooth out the awkward social situation. She couldn’t take her eyes off the blood that rolled toward her like a sea.

“No!” She stood so fast her chair toppled onto the floor. She backed away with her hands in front of her to stop that terrible tide. She had to get away from it, had to run, had to hide where it couldn’t reach her, couldn’t drown her.

She had no memory of reaching the backyard or flying across it. Her sandaled feet clattering on the stairway to her apartment brought her to her senses.

Annabelle opened the door and nearly fell into the living room.

She pulled off her sandals with hands that were still shaking, then kicked the shoes all the way into the corner. Suddenly she felt terribly cold.

That’s when she heard the thud of footsteps up the stairs and Ben’s voice calling her. “Annabelle!” Then louder, “Damnation, Annabelle, answer me!” He shoved the door open so hard it bounced off the wall with a thwack that made her jump.

She stood, hunched, her back to him.

He took her by her arms and turned her to face him. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

“What was that all about? Are you all right?”

“I warned you, Ben, I really did.” Her belly began to flutter as she fought to keep from crying. “I’m so sorry.” She gazed up into his face. “Don’t look at me like that. I really am sorry.”

In an instant he looked merely stunned and confused. “It’s okay. Come on back.”

“No!” She wrenched away from him and hugged her body as though she was shivering.

She glanced up to see Ben’s face over her shoulder as he squared his shoulders and set his jaw. She had a terrible desire to giggle. She’d seen him with that kind of look in high school, when the football team was down twenty points and it was up to Ben Jackson to save the day.

“Annabelle,” he said in a tone he must use to redress recalcitrant witnesses. “You’ve seen plenty of drunks before, and everybody spills the occasional glass of wine. It’s no big deal. Gene is devastated. He keeps staring around and asking what he said to upset you.”

“Oh, poor Gene. It’s not his fault.”

He held out his hand. “Please come back with me and tell him that. You’d relieve his mind.”

“No! I couldn’t.”

“Listen,” he said reasonably, as though he were trying to persuade a frightened puppy out from under a chair, “these people are my friends. They want to be your friends. Come back, and I promise you nobody will make an issue of it. Say you got a cramp in your leg, or the salmon mousse disagreed with you. They’ll be all over you with sympathy.”

“But it wasn’t that, Ben.”

“Then what was it?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said in a very small voice. “Nobody would.”

“Try me.”

She shook her head.

“For Pete’s sake, Annabelle.”

That was too much. “I have just embarrassed the heck out of myself in front of a bunch of people I barely know, plus my employer, and I’m not going to go back and make another fool of myself.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off and stepped close to him. “And another thing. Didn’t it occur to you to mention to me in passing that this was a birthday party for your mother?”

“Huh?”

“Well, didn’t it?”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal. Not like we were giving presents. It’s just another Thursday.”

“It is not. It is a birthday party, and there I am singing ‘Happy Birthday’ with a stupid grin on my face and trying to act as though I knew all along, and then that drunken buffoon spilled all that red wine, and…” At the memory of the wine on the lace tablecloth, her eyes closed, and she swayed.

“Annabelle?” She felt Ben’s hands pulling her against his chest, his strong arms encircling her, holding her close against him. “Belle?”

She could feel the dry heaves as she gulped convulsively. No tears. There were never any tears, just this gulping and hiccuping while her throat and eyes burned. Other people cried. What was so wrong with her that she couldn’t? Was that another symptom that she was a monster?

He put his fingers under her chin and tilted her face up. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to quell the shivers in her stomach.

“God, you are so beautiful,” he whispered.

She felt his lips against hers, gentle, warm, moving back and forth across her lips, his tongue barely touching, teasing, tasting. She wanted to resist, to tell him this wasn’t the time or place, but the cascade of warmth within her wouldn’t allow her to do that. Instead, her own lips parted and her tongue darted out to meet his, to intermingle, to taste the remains of sorbet, the hint of sweetness on his lips.

His hands slid down her back and below her waist, holding her against him. His whole body felt rock-solid, so wonderfully, comfortingly male. Yet his erection wasn’t comforting at all, but disturbing, because she felt the heat in her own loins answering as she moved against him in a slow rhythm that she couldn’t seem to control.

No. It was up to her to control it, not to fall over backward at his touch, or to let herself feel all the conflicting emotions he evoked. She sucked in her breath and pulled back from him, her eyes wide. “Go away, Ben, please, right now.”

He pulled her into his arms again. “I don’t want to,” he whispered into her hair.

“You’ve got to go back to your party.” She slapped his hand away. “Stop that. You go tell them I succumbed to the vapors or something.”

“Come with me.”

“Ben!” This time she used enough force to overbalance him so that he had to step back a couple of paces. “Read my lips. I cannot, I will not go back over to that house tonight. I’ll write everybody notes tomorrow, including the caterers if that’s what you want…”

He sat on the sofa and took her hands. “It’s not what I want. It’s what you need. If you don’t come back now, the next time it’ll be harder to crawl out of that shell. How can you ever hope to feel at ease in social situations…”

“Who said I have to?”

“I do, dammit.”

She started to smart off back at him, then stopped, tilted her head and looked at him quizzically. “What do you have to do with it?”

Amazingly, he blushed and stammered, “Because I—I want what’s best for you.”

“And the reason for that would be…?”

“That wasn’t exactly a friendly kiss we just exchanged. My ears are ringing.”

“Even in the South you no longer have to marry me because you kissed me, Ben.”

“What if I want to?”

This time she laughed. “Right. Like I’d be the perfect district attorney’s wife.” She walked to the corner and picked up her shoes. “Look, Ben, I’m tired, and I’m feeling like a nitwit. I’m not up to facing those people tonight. Please just make my apologies to your mother and her guests.”

“You won’t change your mind? Or even tell me what went on?”

“Nope.”

His shoulders sagged. “Fine. I can’t pick you up and carry you over there. Well, I could, but you’d probably kick and scream or something equally unattractive.”

“You got that right.”

He straightened. “However, Miss Annabelle, this is far from over. I intend to find out what’s causing this. And when I do, you and I are going to fix it.”

He turned on his heel and made what he probably considered a dignified exit.

As he reached the top step, she applauded slowly.

He paused, then rocketed down and slammed the door at the foot of the stairs behind him.

Annabelle held her pose until she heard him running across the backyard, then she sank into the club chair.

Two hallucinations in one day. Some kind of record. She probably ought to get a CAT scan or an EEG or something. She might have an aneurysm about to pop or a brain tumor.

Maybe Ben was at the bottom of it. She’d been in Memphis for almost a month now without anything worse than bad dreams. Then suddenly Ben Jackson drops out of a tree, and the craziness starts. Was it her hormones?

Was her body finally betraying her for all the years of militant asexuality?

She didn’t know what was going on, but something was definitely out of whack.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE GUESTS WERE STANDING at the front door air kissing and saying their goodbyes when Ben walked back into his mother’s dining room.

She turned a concerned face to him. “Is Annabelle all right?”

He smiled cheerfully. “A touch of migraine. She says she doesn’t get them often, but they come on suddenly. She was afraid she was going to throw up.”

“Poor kid,” the professor said. “I’m sorry about the wine on the tablecloth, Elizabeth. That chime startled me.”

“My birthday clock from Phil,” Elizabeth said. “It’s antique ormolu.”

“Too damn noisy,” Phil said comfortably. “I can disconnect the chime mechanism if you like.”

“Please. It’s beautiful, but a bell ringing every fifteen minutes is a bit much. Do you mind?”

“Not a bit. I’ll do it tonight if you like.”

Elizabeth smiled at Phil. Ben caught the relief in her eyes. His mother would never say anything unpleasant about a gift. But he knew she’d go nuts listening to that thing, and would probably end up hiding it in the broom closet and only bringing it out when Phil was around.

“I’m just glad I didn’t cause her migraine,” said Gene.

“Lucky, you mean,” his wife said.

He seemed to have sobered up quickly.

“Please tell her we’re sorry and look forward to seeing her again,” May added, and squeezed Ben’s arm. “She really is a lovely girl, Ben. So different from the girls you usually squire to these things.”

He kept the smile pasted on his face as he stood at his mother’s shoulder and waved everyone away except Phil Mainwaring, who stood in the doorway with his arm around Elizabeth’s waist.

“Well,” Phil said, giving Ben a lift of the eyebrow. “Time for another cup of coffee?”

Ben shook his head. “I’ll get out of the way and leave you two kids alone. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Elizabeth laughed. “We wouldn’t dream of doing half the things you do, would we, Phil?”

“We would if you’d let me.”

“And besides,” she said, ignoring Phil’s comment, “I want to know what really went on tonight with Annabelle.” She slipped out of Phil’s grasp. “Sit down for a minute. I feel responsible for Annabelle. If she’s in any trouble I want to know about it.”

“No trouble that I’m aware of,” Ben said as he followed his mother and Phil into the living room, where they sat down. He stretched his legs in front of him and slouched on the back of his neck.

“You look awfully grumpy,” said his mother. “Surely she didn’t dump you quite that soon.”

“She didn’t dump me because she hadn’t taken me,” Ben said. “Frankly, I don’t know what went on tonight either, except that she warned me she’s not at ease with people. At school she was an outsider—far outside. In high school there’s always somebody who’s considered weird, who bears the brunt of the jokes and the snickers and the innuendo. She was that somebody.”

“I certainly hope you didn’t join in,” Elizabeth said.

Ben shook his head. “No, but I didn’t do much to interfere either. Hell, Mom, she was four years younger. In high school that’s practically a generation. I mean, we grew up as neighbors, but we weren’t ever close. She’s much nearer Steve’s age.”

“And your brother was off at military school,” Elizabeth said with a touch of sadness. “He’s never really been home since the eighth grade.”

“You did what you had to do. Don’t blame yourself.”

“Maybe if I’d been a better mother…”

“Since your younger son has turned from a blossoming juvenile delinquent into a model citizen, you apparently did the right thing,” Phil added. “Actually, Ben, it’s not surprising that Annabelle is a bit dysfunctional, growing up as she did in that mausoleum with Mrs. Langley trying to convince her she was a bad seed. Maybe she should have stayed in New York.”

“No, she shouldn’t have!” Ben said with such vehemence that both the others stared at him. He stammered, “I—I mean, she’s got to face this town if she’s going to move from dysfunctional to functional.”

“She functions perfectly well when she’s working,” Elizabeth said.

“She needs to be at ease with people, learn to handle sticky social situations, entertain graciously…”

“Oh my God,” Elizabeth said, and sank back against the cushion of the peach sofa as though she’d been slugged. “Not Annabelle? Ben, I know what I said, but I never dreamed it would be Annabelle’s name on that arrow.”

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