"It"s a small dinner party. Four is plenty for that, don"t you think?"
She thought he was going to an awful lot of trouble for friends he"d apparently known for years, but she didn"t say so. Instead she murmured, "I suppose. I don"t throw many dinner parties myself."
"Really?"
He opened the pa.s.senger door of his silver Lexus and helped her inside, only then releasing her hand. After circling the front of the car, he slid behind the wheel and turned the key.
"I would have thought you spent plenty of time entertaining. You seem like a girl who enjoys having fun."
His comment robbed her of breath and sent an icy-cold wash of reality through her system.
He was right; she seemed like a girl who liked to have a good time because that was who she was supposed to be, at least around him. How could she have been so careless as to admit she didn"t go out much-or have people in, either?
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She would have to be more careful from now on or he would figure out that she wasn"t at all the type of person she was pretending to be.
Mind racing, she grasped for a plausible response, something he would easily accept.
"I do," she said as steadily as she could manage. "I just tend to go out for my fun rather than inviting it in."
"I"ve noticed that," he responded without missing a beat.
Did that mean he believed her?
He shot her a meaningful glance. "I"ve been to your apartment twice now and you have yet to invite me in."
She swallowed nervously. "Did you want to come in?" she asked, hoping the question would come across as daring.
"Sure. You"ve seen my apartment, it"s only fair that I get to see yours."
Oh, Lord. She"d seen his apartment, all right, including the bedroom. Did he expect her to reciprocate?
Not that she would mind making love with him again. The very thought warmed her from the inside out and made her tingle in places only he had ever touched.
But that didn"t change the fact that she couldn"t invite him inside. If she did, then he would see that she lived like a mild-mannered librarian or, more aptly, a thirty-one-year-old spinster instead of a party girl.
"I"ll think about it," she said coyly.
Ten minutes later they parked behind The Hot Spot, and Ethan led her inside through a rear entrance.
Without strobe lights and a crush of colorfully dressed bodies, the interior of the club looked nothing like Gwen remembered. The dark, gleaming floors glowed in spots from muted track lighting.
An oblong table covered with a pristine white cloth and set with crystal stemware sat in the middle of the dance floor. Two chairs were situated on each of the longest sides, and two tall ivory tapers burned in shining silver candle holders surrounded by large, full-bloomed red and white roses.
The entire arrangement was very romantic, and for a moment Gwen was surprised by this side of Ethan. She wouldn"t have expected it, considering his playboy lifestyle after a painful divorce, but it was a nice discovery.
"This is lovely," she said, stopping a few feet away from the table.
Ethan came to a halt beside her, his wide palm resting on her left hip while his arm spanned the back of her waist.
"As much as I might like to, I"m afraid I can"t take the credit. I told the caterers what I wanted and they took care of the rest."
"In that case, you hired very competent caterers," she teased.
"Thank you."
Stepping forward, he lifted an uncorked bottle of wine from the table.
"Here," he said, filling a gla.s.s with the rich red liquid and handing it to her. "Have a seat and sip some wine while I make sure everything"s running on schedule. I"ll be right back."
He disappeared before she could protest, and she was left staring at the wide-open club s.p.a.ce and the candles flickering on the tabletop. Lifting the gla.s.s to her lips, she took a small swallow, welcoming the soothing smoothness of the alcohol as it ran down her throat and warmed her belly.
Mmm. If she kept a full gla.s.s of this delicious wine in her hand all night, she might just make it through dinner without succ.u.mbing to a ma.s.sive panic attack.
The front door of the club opened as Gwen took a second sip from her gla.s.s, allowing the noises from outdoors inside the otherwise quiet building for a few brief seconds. Then the door closed and only footsteps and muted voices could be heard.
Taking a deep breath, Gwen set her wine on the table and ran her hands down the front of her dress to make sure everything was in place before Ethan"s friends appeared.
And she knew it must be them. For everyone else, The Hot Spot was closed. Even if it hadn"t been, the party crowd wouldn"t start showing up until much closer to midnight.
An attractive couple rounded the tall part.i.tion that separated the dance area from the bar and stopped, friendly smiles on their faces.
The woman was tall, with long, straight black hair. Her red lipstick suited her light complexion perfectly. She wore a calf-length dress in black, with large lavender tulips and greenery decorating the otherwise plain material. The spaghetti straps and half-moon neckline left her chest and shoulders bare, except for a thin gold chain bearing a small heart-shaped charm that sparkled with diamonds. Her shoes were sensible black pumps, the heels no higher than an inch. For safety reasons, Gwen suspected, given the noticeable bulge at her middle.
The man was equally tall, with sandy-blond hair, looking decidedly uncomfortable in his gray suit coat and diagonally striped tie.
Gwen knew she should say something, do something, but all she seemed capable of at the moment was wringing her hands together.
Thankfully, the other woman wasn"t nearly as beset by nerves as Gwen was. She stepped forward, kindness glowing in her bright-blue eyes as she offered Gwen her hand.
"Hi, there. You must be Gwen. I"m Lucy, and this is my husband, Peter." Turning slightly, she pulled the man forward by his sleeve.
"Nice to meet you," he murmured, shaking her hand briefly.
"It"s nice to meet you, too. Both of you."
Gwen glanced in the direction Ethan had gone, wondering how much longer he would be. "Ethan just went to check on dinner. He should be back any minute."
"Oh, don"t worry about him," Lucy said, waving off her comment. "He"ll show up eventually. In the meantime, let"s sit down and get to know each other better."
Peter held out a chair for his wife, and probably would have done the same for Gwen if she hadn"t already picked a seat on the other side of the table near her wine gla.s.s.
Instead of joining them, Peter took a step back, casually caressing Lucy"s bare arm. "I think I"ll go find Ethan. Will you two be all right out here while I"m gone?"
One corner of Lucy"s mouth quirked upward in amus.e.m.e.nt. "I think we"ll survive. But tell Ethan not to take long. I"m eating for two now, and the baby"s famished."
As soon as Peter was out of earshot, Lucy leaned closer and said, "He"s a little overprotective. Once in a while it gets annoying, but for the most part, I let him go. It makes him feel more involved to hover and bring me warm milk and cookies at 3:00 a.m."
"He obviously cares about you a great deal." Gwen didn"t know what else to say, and covered her insecurities by sipping at her wine.
"He does," Lucy replied, her cheeks rosy with happiness. She poured herself a gla.s.s of ice water from the pitcher on the table and took a drink before continuing.
"But enough about Peter and me. What I really want to know is how hot and heavy things are between you and Ethan."
Seven.
G wen"s lungs seized in her chest and she fought to swallow her last mouthful of wine before it shot out of her nose.
"I"ve been champing at the bit for details ever since Peter told me Ethan had invited us to dinner to meet his newest lady friend." Lucy tucked a strand of ebony hair behind her ear, oblivious to Gwen"s ongoing panic attack.
When Gwen could breathe again-at least enough to keep from pa.s.sing out-she coughed delicately into her linen napkin and said, "There"s nothing to tell. I"m not Ethan"s lady friend," she insisted, "and we are not hot and heavy."
Before the night she"d spent in Ethan"s bed, she wasn"t sure she"d even known the definition of "hot and heavy." She certainly knew what it meant now, but that night had been an isolated incident. The fact remained that they were not currently hot and heavy.
Lucy rolled her eyes and absently rubbed her hands in circles over the mound of her belly. "Oh, come on. To my knowledge, he"s never done anything like this before. In fact, I don"t think he"s ever bothered to introduce us to any other woman he"s dated-at the very least to Peter, who"s his best friend. And I use the term woman loosely, by the way, given what I"ve gleaned about some of them."
Gwen cringed, realizing that she could be one of those women Lucy was talking about. After all, Ethan had taken her home with him and made love to her the first night they"d met...which was exactly what she"d been looking for at the time. So, in a way his playboy lifestyle had worked to her benefit.
And even if it hadn"t, it didn"t matter. Ethan"s habits-s.e.xual or otherwise-were none of her business.
Maybe if she and Ethan were involved, she would be concerned about how many women he slept with, and whether or not he was being faithful. But sadly, she was well aware that a man like Ethan could never be seriously interested in a woman like her.
She wasn"t sure what his tracking her down at home or inviting her to dinner at the club this evening were all about, but she hadn"t deluded herself into thinking of either as signs that Ethan was trying to build a relationship with her.
He was probably trying to impress his friends with his ability to throw an intimate dinner party. Or perhaps her presence here tonight was simply his way of getting them off his case about not having someone steady in his life.
The more she thought about it, the more she suspected her latter conclusion was the most likely reason for Ethan continuing his acquaintance with her. If his friends and family were starting to badger him about settling down, then she could certainly understand why he would want them to think he was significantly involved with one woman.
Oh, no. Had she ruined it for him already by telling Lucy she wasn"t his lady friend, that they weren"t "hot and heavy"?
Her mind raced, as she tried to recall exactly what had been said and how the situation could be salvaged. She didn"t mind playing a part for Ethan. Heck, she was already pretending to be someone she wasn"t. Why not expand her boundaries a bit by pretending to be both more worldly than she really was and more involved with Ethan?
"What...um." She cleared her throat and toyed with the stem of her wine gla.s.s instead of making eye contact with the woman across the table from her. "What did Ethan tell you and your husband about us?"
"Not much," Lucy said with a little huff. "Peter came home from the gym one day saying Ethan wanted us to come to the club for dinner, and that he was bringing a woman he wanted us to meet. Well, there was no way I could pa.s.s up an opportunity like that. The only female acquaintance of Ethan"s I"ve ever met was a rather large-breasted peroxide blonde who answered the door in a see-through bra and pair of thong panties." She rolled her eyes in feigned horror. "Believe me, I never again made the mistake of dropping by his apartment without calling first."
Lucy lifted the water goblet to her lips, but offered a conspiratorial grin before drinking. "I suffered a nasty case of hysterical blindness for a week afterward. We decent, upstanding women shouldn"t be a.s.saulted with bimbos like that too often. It seriously skews our delicate sensibilities."
Gwen chuckled at Lucy"s colorful storytelling before she could stop herself.
"You don"t even know me," she felt the need to point out. "What makes you think I"m not one of Ethan"s bubble-brained bimbos, too?"
"For one thing, you"re a brunette, which means you haven"t been frying brain cells with multiple bottles of bleach on a regular basis for years.
"For another, although your dress is s.e.xy and a little daring-I love it, by the way, so you"ll have to give me the name of the shop where you found it-it"s not low enough for me to measure your cleavage or short enough for me to see your b.u.t.t cheeks. But aside from your appearance, the mere fact that Ethan set up all of this-" she waved an arm to encompa.s.s the beautiful table setting, candles flickering at the motion "-and asked us to come meet you is enough to convince me you"re special. He"s never done that before because he usually doesn"t want us to meet the kind of women he finds attractive.
"And last but not least, if you were one of Ethan"s typical bimbo types, you wouldn"t be sitting here holding an intelligent conversation with me. You"d be wherever Ethan is, hanging on his arm, snapping your gum and rubbing against him like a cat in heat. That"s what they do, either in an effort to get him into bed more quickly or to wheedle expensive gifts out of him because they know he has money."
Gwen didn"t know what to say, so she bit the inside of her lip and remained silent.
"Has he given you anything? A bracelet, necklace, some other pretty trinket?"
She wanted to shake her head and a.s.sure Lucy she wasn"t using Ethan for his money or anything else, but if she was supposed to be his latest romantic interest, then it was plausible that Ethan might have given her a gift of some kind.
Still, she couldn"t bring herself to lie.
"I don"t think we"ve gotten to that point yet," she responded honestly. "We went out to lunch once, and he insisted on paying the bill, but we haven"t been seeing each other long enough to exchange presents."
Lucy seemed to consider her answer for a moment. "I"m not sure what that means, to tell you the truth."
She sipped at her water and then worried the manicured nail of her index finger with her front teeth. "Let me ask you this. Has he mentioned Susan at all?"
"His ex-wife?" Gwen nodded. "Oh, yes, he told me about her."
"Interesting," Lucy said, drawing out the word. "What did he tell you?"
"Just that they"d been married for almost five years, and that she left him when he decided to open The Hot Spot without benefit of his parents" financial backing."
Gwen really didn"t see the importance of that information, but Lucy apparently did. Her eyes widened and a small smile crept over her face.
"And what did you tell him?"
Gwen thought back to their discussion in Martin"s Tavern. "I told him he was lucky to be rid of his ex, if all she cared about was his money."
"Do you care about his money?" Lucy asked.
Gwen"s hackles went up. Why did everyone suddenly think she was out to find a man with a hefty bank account? Did she look needy, for some reason? Did she look as if she couldn"t support herself? Granted, a librarian"s salary wasn"t exactly awe-inducing, but she was getting by just fine.
Taking a deep breath, she counted to ten before answering Lucy"s question, for fear she might say something Ethan wouldn"t appreciate her telling his best friend"s wife.
"No, I don"t. I don"t need a man-or anyone else-to support me. Money, it seems, causes more problems than it solves. I think Ethan can attest to that."
Lucy studied her for several minutes. So long that Gwen actually began to squirm.
And then her expression lightened and she offered Gwen a friendly smile. "I don"t want to get your hopes up, in case Ethan pulls a patently male move and gets cold feet," she murmured conspiratorially, "but you might just be the one, Gwen."
The one? What did Lucy mean by that?
But before she could press for more information, a door opened somewhere at the back of the club and footsteps sounded as Ethan and Peter approached. They laughed together easily and were both smiling when they came into the women"s line of sight.
"There you are," Lucy teased, craning her neck backward to look at her husband. "We thought you"d run off to some fast-food joint and left us here to starve."
"Would I do that?" Peter asked, leaning forward to press an upside-down kiss on her lips.