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He wasn’t a ladies’ man, but he hadn’t been a hermit, either. His mystery woman hadn’t been the only woman in his life, but she was the one he couldn’t forget.
There had been something so special about her that he had searched for her among the guests. On the chance she was a member of the bridal party, he looked for her during the wedding rehearsal and at the dinner that followed. To add to his frustration, the pomp and circumstance of the wedding had prevented him from actively searching for her. He couldn’t have exactly asked if anyone knew a woman of her description; young with long, auburn hair and a body that had been made to fit in his arms, could he?
“Commander?” A knock on the open door broke into Dan’s reverie.
It was Howard again. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but we were trying to decide what kind of gift would be appropriate for the commander’s housewarming. We figure it has to be something special for someone like the duchess.”
“Suit yourself. I’m planning on giving them a toaster.” He motioned for Howard to close the office door so he could get back to work.
Instead of opening the file on his desk, Dan decided it was time to get his mind off the past. He needed to map out his New Year’s resolutions and stick to them. And they didn’t include daydreaming about a woman who might not have been real. Who, if she had been real, hadn’t been interested in seeing him again.
With a last look through the glass door of his office at the celebration going on outside, Dan turned on his computer and drew up his first New Year’s resolution. After all, he told himself with a glance at the waiting file, it had to be smarter to plan for the future than to wait for his future to come to him. A methodical man by nature, he spent the next half hour drawing up a five-year plan.
Bottom line, he mused when he finally checked the printout of his plan and closed down his computer, he was in his thirtieth year and it was time to settle down. Ergo, he would marry when he turned thirty-five and have two children by the time he was forty—that is, if his wife were willing. At that age he would be old enough to choose a wife wisely. As for children, he assured himself as he mentally flexed his arm muscles, he would still be vigorous enough to play baseball without looking like a complete fool.
In retrospect, he should have known fate had a way of laughing at the plans of a mere mortal man.
TWO WEEKS LATER, Dan stood on the doorstep and admired the Stevenses’ new address. The redbrick house on the outskirts of D.C. had green-and-white shutters and showed its distinguished lineage.
Bushes flanking the green doorway were lit with ropes of tiny bright lights. A welcome sign hung over a large wreath of apples, pears and pinecones woven with red and green ribbons and giving off a tart, sharp scent. As he started up the steps, music and laughter drifted through the open windows.
Dan grinned and crossed his fingers. With both the duchess and Mike Wheeler’s wife, Charlie, present tonight, he hoped the evening would go without a mishap. Or if it didn’t, that he wouldn’t be asked to help clear it up. He’d already been chewed out by Admiral Crowley, the JAG, for getting involved with the duchess’s and Charlie Wheeler’s life-threatening problems. The memory of Crowley’s flashing eyes and hard language on both occasions still stung.
His friend Wade Stevens had eventually married his duchess, and Mike his free-spirited concierge, but Dan intended to stay clear of anyone even associated with Baronovia.
Relieved to find the door guarded against unwelcome visitors, he handed over his invitation and sauntered inside.
To the left of the entry hall was a room filled with guests. Waiters were circulating with trays of hors d’oeuvres and champagne. To his right, a large room with a polished wooden floor had been cleared of furniture to make room for dancing couples. A string trio was playing in a corner.
“O’Hara! Over here.” Wade Stevens motioned Dan to join him. Dan nodded and made his way through the crowd.
Pretty as a picture in her short black cocktail dress with a single diamond hung on a slender gold chain at her throat, Wade’s petite royal wife held out her hand. “We are so happy to have you and all of our friends here to help us celebrate our good fortune. The night is wonderful, no?”
“Wonderful, yes,” Dan agreed, amused at the way her syntax still remained old-country. It was a habit that endeared the duchess to everyone who met her.
“I have someone I would like you to meet.” May smiled and looked over his shoulder. “My cousin Victoria. Have you met her?”
“Sorry. I’m afraid I wouldn’t recognize her if I did.”
“Are you sure you didn’t meet her at my wedding?”
Puzzled by May’s question when he’d already disclaimed recognizing her cousin, Dan turned back. “Not that I remember. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention when we were introduced.”
May smiled at him over the rim of her glass. “I’ll introduce you.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Dan said politely. Whatever the reason for May’s questions, he wasn’t particularly interested. “If you don’t mind, I could use a drink,” he said with a smile. “See you later.”
Dan made his way around the room to the bar and refreshment tables, stopping now and again to say hello to someone he knew. If he were lucky, he mused as he reached for a cold beer, May’s cousin Victoria wouldn’t show up. The last person he cared to meet was a member of the duchess’s family. May, at least, behaved like a normal woman, but most royals were a pain in the rear. Meeting this one would be a waste of time.
He was in the midst of choosing from an eye-catching tray of appetizers when May Stevens came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder.
“I’ve found her. Dan, I would like you to meet my cousin Victoria. Vicky, this is Dan O’Hara.”
Dan thanked the waiter and motioned the tray away. “Pleased to meet you,” he said as he turned around—then froze. One look into her blue-green eyes and a moment of déjà vu broadsided him. “I’m sorry…I know you, don’t I?”
To his surprise, she tensed and took back her extended hand. “I don’t think so.”
Dan looked to May for help. May shrugged and looked just as puzzled as he felt. He was on his own. “Perhaps we met at your cousin’s wedding last year?”
“Perhaps,” she answered, still tense.
Dan shook his head to clear the cobwebs that muddled his thoughts. He returned Victoria’s apprehensive gaze and felt his heart thud in his chest. The atmosphere surrounding them turned heavy. The sound of music and voices faded into the background.
This was a different time and a different place, he told himself. In her white silk dress and short, cropped blond hair, the woman gazing back at him looked familiar, but he wasn’t sure where and when they’d met.
He’d only met one woman before tonight who had had such an immediate effect on him. An exquisite woman with expressive eyes and a spirit that had caught at his heart the moment he’d glimpsed her from the palace window.
Was this the woman he’d met in the deep of night and made love to in Baronovia? And why was she so frightened?
He sure couldn’t ask her such intimate questions with her cousin watching them and surrounded by dozens of people.
He cleared his throat and tried to recall the image of his mystery woman on that magical night. She’d had flowing waist-length auburn hair, so soft it had slipped through his fingers like silk. May’s cousin had blond hair and it was cropped short in the irregular lengths so popular today.
As for her figure, his mystery woman had been so slender he’d been able to span her waist with two hands. Tonight’s woman not only had fuller breasts, there were subtle differences in the rest of her body. If it were possible, she looked more womanly and more attractive than the woman he remembered.
“No, sorry. I guess not,” he finally answered when the silence grew too long to be comfortable. “If we’d met before this, I’m sure we both would have remembered it.
As he spoke, he noticed an expression of relief cross her features. But not before he also caught a passing flash of regret.
Whatever was going on inside her, this Victoria’s stiff body language didn’t compute.
He recalled an announcement he’d heard last year at May’s wedding. If this was the same cousin, she’d been engaged to a future Baronovian ambassador. If the memory was true, and even if this was the same woman, she was untouchable.
He didn’t know whether to be relieved or sorry. It was damn hard to let go of the memory of his mystery woman.
“Something to drink?” he said when May smiled and drifted away, leaving her cousin behind. Even though he and Victoria were alone now, there was no way was he going down the prickly path of asking her if she had been the woman he’d held in his arms and made passionate love to one night long ago.
“No, thank you,” she answered softly. “I don’t drink anymore.”
Anymore? Dan glanced at his companion. If there was ever a word that called for a question and an answer, anymore was it. He started to speak, but there was something about the way her clear eyes regarded him that kept him from asking. His turn to find out more about her would surely come before the night was over. “How about a Perrier and maybe something to nibble on?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Dan thought of his companion as he made his way to the bar. There was something odd about the way she kept avoiding looking at him. He’d be damned if he could pass up the opportunity to find out if she was his mystery woman without at least trying. He couldn’t come right out and ask her, but there was one way he could discover the truth.
“Care to dance?” he asked after she’d silently sipped the drink he brought her. “Unless you’ve given up dancing, too?”
She hesitated. “No. I love to dance. I’m just not in the mood.”
“Come on,” he coaxed. “Just one dance?”
“Just one,” she answered. “Then I have to leave.”
Dan put their drinks on a tray held by a passing waiter, put his hand under her elbow and led her across the hall to the dance floor.
The answers to his question were going to add up without him even asking.
He knew she’d been at the palace the night before Wade Stevens had married his duchess.
She’d admitted to loving to dance.
The first time he’d laid eyes on his mystery woman, she’d been dancing her heart out.
Those clues had to mean something, Dan thought as he took her in his arms. At the same time, he couldn’t help wondering why she looked as if she wanted to run.
Their encounter that night in the palace gardens had been a natural encounter between a man and a woman. She’d been a woman so beautiful, he’d gone down to her to see if she were real. When he’d taken her in his arms, felt her vibrant body and tasted lips as sweet as honey, he’d been lost.
He’d been attracted to that woman, and he was attracted to this one. As he held her in his arms, all his senses told him the woman he remembered was the same woman he was holding in his arms tonight.
If this Victoria did turn out to be her, he silently vowed, he’d take it from there. If not, one dance to be polite, an apology, and he’d find a way to be out of here.
He gazed in wonder at Victoria’s blond hair and tried to envision her as a brunette. Outside of the difference in hair coloring and her more womanly figure, she had to be the same woman.
Maybe his mystery woman had a double.
Maybe…then again, he wondered, how could he account for the same, familiar faint scent of gardenias that clung to the woman in his arms?
Chapter Three
When Dan O’Hara took her into his arms, Victoria’s heart skipped. The very meeting she’d feared had happened and her worst fears had come true. Not only had she found her phantom lover tonight here at her cousin’s housewarming, she now found herself in the last place she should be if she had any sense—in his arms! There was no doubt in her mind that Dan was the man who had made love to her on that magical night eighteen months ago. Even then, with the afterglow of his embraces lingering long after she’d left him and gone back to the palace, she had thought he could be her destiny. Instead, he was dangerous.
“Enjoying yourself?” Dan asked.
“Thank you, yes. But I do have to leave.” Even as she spoke, she prayed for the music to stop long enough for her to excuse herself to her cousin and leave.
“Too bad,” he said, and signaled the band leader to go on. “It would be a shame to waste such beautiful music.”
As she automatically followed Dan’s footsteps across the dance floor, thoughts ran through her mind as swiftly as a cold wind blows on a March day. No matter how sweetly her cousin May had begged her to come here tonight when she’d called to decline the invitation, she should have listened to her heart.
Tonight, from the moment he’d started to speak, she’d recognized Dan as her phantom lover. She’d tried but she’d never forgotten the sound of his deep, melodious voice with a hint of teasing laughter in it. No other man’s eyes had warmed her so—a lifetime ago—and now again. And now that she was in his arms again, to her dismay she remembered his gentle strength and the taste of his lips.
It would never do. As the widow of a diplomat and Baronovia’s new ambassador to the United States, she had to keep up appearances. Any hint of scandal could bring shame on her family.
Maybe it had been different for Dan. Maybe she’d been one of the many woman in every port that seamen were known to boast about. Had she only been a diversion, a pleasant way to spend a sleepless night?
Held in Dan’s arms, Victoria remembered his earlier embrace, the taste of his lips, the sound of his voice murmuring words of assurance as he made love to her. And the way she had never been able to put him out of her mind.
She fervently prayed he wouldn’t start to ask questions for which she couldn’t give answers. At the same time, she had to bite her lip to keep from asking questions of her own.
If their encounter had meant something to him, why hadn’t he tried to find her after their magical encounter, she wondered as she averted her face and forced a smile at a passing couple.
The music changed to a two-step, to the same romantic melody she’d hummed to herself when she’d danced alone in the palace garden that long-ago night. The night she had known true love for the first and only time in her life.
She closed her eyes and instinctively leaned into the arms that had once held her so possessively, so lovingly. Leaned into the arms that reminded her of stolen tender moments under a crescent moon, embraces that had awakened her pent-up desires long dreamed about and never experienced again.
Arms that reminded her of a night of rapture that had ended too soon.
To her growing dismay, Dan began to gently caress the small of her back. She shivered as electricity followed the path where his warm hand had passed. When he swept her across the dance floor, his hand on her bare skin sent mental images of tangled limbs, heated kisses. Bursts of unwanted raw sensation ran through her.
In spite of her misgivings, Victoria found herself softly humming the song’s haunting lyrics under her breath, reliving the moments when she’d danced on a grass carpet under a moonlit sky. For a moment she was happy again, until he spoke.
“You may think I’m a little crazy, but you remind me of someone who…” Dan began softly. He needed time. Time, with Victoria in his arms. He’d been puzzled when they were first introduced, but he was pretty sure now she was his mystery woman.
His voice trailed off before he started again. “The truth is that when I saw you I happened to remember a night when I saw a woman dancing alone in the moonlight.”
Wordlessly, Victoria gazed up at Dan. To her dismay, she remembered that same night too well. She couldn’t admit being that woman even if she had wanted to. The time for the two of them to reveal themselves had passed long ago.
“Are you usually so quiet?” he finally asked with a smile and a quirked eyebrow. “Or am I boring you?”
Boring her? Not when the friction of his hand brushing across her bare back and the warmth of his hard body against hers were sending jolts of desire running through her.
Her mind in turmoil, Victoria couldn’t speak. The woman he spoke of was gone. Victoria was a widow and a mother now. Besides, if she were free to admit who she had been on that night, what would he think of her?
“Victoria?”
No matter what she remembered, or how she felt about Dan, she knew the past had to be forgotten. She knew she had to get away from Dan, now, tonight and forever.
“Victoria?” he repeated, obviously puzzled at her silence. “Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry,” she finally answered. “I’m afraid my mind was a million miles away.”
“Ahh.” To her dismay, he smiled down at her. “To a palace garden in Baronovia? Maybe even to a crescent moon and a vine-trimmed white gazebo?”
Victoria drew back. But not before Dan saw the vein at the side of her throat began to throb visibly.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she answered. To his chagrin, she looked as if she was about to pull out of his arms and leave him alone on the crowded dance floor.
“I was hoping you might remember,” he went on before she could make up her mind to leave. “After holding you in my arms here tonight, I was silly enough to think you were the woman I met in Baronovia over a year ago.”
Dan gazed at Victoria when she remained silent. Could he have been mistaken about her, after all?
When she shook her head again, he finally gave up and set his mind to the music. What made tonight so puzzling was that he kept thinking that no other woman could have been made to fit so perfectly into his arms like this woman. No other woman could have made such tender, yet such passionate, love with him that night so long ago. Nor had he ever forgotten her beautiful and expressive eyes that revealed her deepest thoughts, just as they were doing now.
If she wasn’t his mystery woman, why was she so reluctant to look at him? “Did I say something to offend you? If I did, I’m sorry.”
“No!” she said firmly. “It’s just that I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve already told you, you have the wrong woman.”
Dan wasn’t prepared to give up, not yet. And certainly not when every one of his clamoring senses told him Victoria could be the very woman she’d denied being. Why else had he felt her heart beat wildly against his chest a moment ago? And why had she stiffened when she’d realized she’d actually allowed herself to melt into his arms?
