Seduced and Betrayed (18 page)

"There's been a lot of happiness, too," he countered.

Ariel sighed. It was true. Despite everything that had come after, she still remembered that all too brief summer they'd had together as one of the happiest times in her life. She'd been so alive then, as she'd never been before.

Or since.

And it had given her Cameron.

As he said, there'd been a lot of happiness.

But was it enough to make up for the betrayal that had come later?

"Ariel?" he said, when she had been quiet too long.

She sighed again. "We both know we have to come to some kind of understanding, make some kind of peace with the past. For Cameron's sake, if not our own. I'm just not sure how we do that."

"We could go somewhere and talk about it."

"Where somewhere?"

"Jimmy's?" he suggested, naming a popular celebrity haunt that was located between La Chaumiere and Ariel's Beverly Hills mansion.

"Good God, no. Ten minutes after we sat down the papers would be printing reconciliation stories and predicting a double wedding."

"Well, then, how about the bar at the Regent Beverly Wilshire? It's discreet and out of the way." Zeke downshifted to take a corner. "Or we could go my place," he added quietly.

"Your place?" Alarm skittered through her at the thought. "You mean the beach house in Malibu?"

Zeke shook his head. "It's still being remodeled. I'm living at the Wilshire Arms right now," he said, and shot her a look to see how she was taking it. Or if she even remembered the name.

Ariel felt her heart jump into her throat. "The Wilshire Arms?" she said faintly. "The same Wilshire Arms where we...?"

"In the very same apartment."

Ariel was silent for a long moment. "I'm surprised that old relic is still standing," she said finally, her voice low and tight with suppressed anger.

Zeke shot her another quick look out of the corner of his eye; he could hear the anger under her calm facade but he didn't have a clue as to what had caused it. "Actually, the building is probably in better shape now than it was twenty-five years ago," he said carefully, feeling his way through what had suddenly become a mine field. "A lot of repair work has been done on it since then."

"Really?" she murmured, her voice dripping ice.

Zeke sighed and ran one hand through his hair. "Look, Ariel, if you don't want to stop by my place for a drink, fine. We won't stop there. But that's no reason to-"

"Dammit, Zeke, just what kind of sick joke are you playing?" she demanded, unable to hold her emotions back any longer.

Zeke looked at her as if she'd suddenly sprouted another head. In all the years he'd known her, he'd never heard Ariel raise her voice. "Sick joke?"

"Did you think if you could maneuver me into going there, I'd be so overcome by the memories that I'd let you seduce me all over again? Is that it?"

"Seduce you?"
God, how do women know these things?
It had only been a half-baked, hopeful idea in his own mind and yet she'd sniffed it out in a second. "Ariel, I-"

"Well, let me tell you something, Zeke Blackstone." She turned in the leather seat to face him more fully, causing the front of her sleekly tailored silk jacket to gape open slightly. "The only memories I have of that third-rate, run-down old apartment building are bad ones," she lied. "Memories of pain and betrayal and heartache. I don't know how you could talk about understanding and friendship one minute, and then suggest that we stop by that awful place the next."

"Look, I'm sorry, all right?" he said, backpedaling for all he was worth and trying not to stare at the exposed edge of her bra. Or, at least, trying not to get caught at it. She still wore white lace underwear, just like she had when she was eighteen. "It was obviously insensitive of me to even suggest it. I just thought—" He ran his hand through his hair again. "Hell, I don't know what I thought!"

But he did know. Sort of. The Wilshire Arms had its bad memories, sure. But most of them were good. And very, very sweet. And he'd thought, if he took her there, that she'd remember some of the good ones with him, and a new understanding would just naturally flow from that. And, oh, all right, he'd been thinking of sex, too, he admitted to himself. Sex was never very far from his mind when he looked at Ariel. It never had been. He'd sort of been hoping that the good memories and the new understanding would lead to renewed intimacy between them. Hell, he was a man, wasn't he?

"So sue me," he muttered under his breath and took another look at Ariel's exposed cleavage, not caring whether she caught him at it or not.

Ariel shot him a fuming look and shifted back around in her seat, facing forward as she yanked the front of her jacket into place. "I think you'd better just take me home," she said, her voice as bland and frosty as a plain vanilla frappe.

She had herself back under control again, Zeke thought with disgust. The brief flash of anger was gone as quickly as it had come. The unflappable, unreachable, remote goddess facade was firmly in place. Zeke vowed he wasn't going to let her get away with it. Not this time, dammit!

He took a deep breath. "I didn't mean to upset you," he said softly, carefully, staring out the windshield of the Jag as he maneuvered through the heavy, late-night traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard. "It's just that the Wilshire Arms holds a lot of good memories for me and I thought—" He shrugged, trying to appear charmingly inept and innocent. "I thought you might feel the same way."

"Well, I don't," she said in a voice calculated to end all conversation then and there. She leaned forward and snapped on the radio to emphasize her lack of desire to talk.

Zeke shrugged and let it go. For the moment. She wasn't going anywhere and, when they got to her place, he wasn't going anywhere, either.

Ariel obviously had a very different idea about how the evening was going to end.

"Thank you for the ride," she said politely, reaching for the handle of the car door as he pulled to a stop on the circular drive in front of the quietly opulent brick mansion. "It was very kind of you to go out of your way."

Zeke's hand shot out and closed over her arm, stopping her from exiting the car. "I didn't do it to be kind, Ariel."

"I'm sure you didn't," she said, pointedly looking down at the large, hair-dusted hand on the sleeve of her chic silk dinner suit. "You're wrinkling my jacket, Zeke."

Very deliberately, he opened his hand and let her go, then reached for the key in the ignition and turned the engine off.

"There's no need to do that," she said as she pushed the car door open. "I'll see myself in."

But Zeke was right behind her as she mounted the wide brick steps to the front door.

Hiding her nervousness behind a well-rehearsed facade of cool indifference, Ariel opened a tiny jeweled evening bag shaped like a flower and took out her house key. She slid it into the brass lock with fingers that shook only slightly, then keyed in a four-digit code to disarm the security system.

"Good night, Zeke," she said dismissively, not even bothering to glance over her shoulder at him as she said it.

"I'm coming in."

Panic fluttered in her stomach but she fought it down. Panic and a strange, tantalizing spurt of what she could only describe as sexual excitement. She fought that down too. "No."

He put his hand on the heavy oak door just above her head and pushed it open, crowding her in ahead of him. "Yes."

"I'll call the police and have you thrown out."

"And risk all the publicity?" He shook his head. "I don't think so, Ariel."

She turned to face him then, cool, slim and imperious as an affronted queen in her chic Yves Saint Laurent dinner suit, matching high-heeled lizard pumps and discreet gold-and-diamond earrings. Her pale gold hair was done up in a sophisticated twist, with a long tendril left to trail down her cheek as if by accident. The expression on her face was icy and impassive, feigning irritation and bored impatience. But her eyes blazed blue fire. Zeke thought she had never looked so impossibly, outrageously sexy. His mouth watered with anticipation.

"All right, then, dammit, come in," she spat out, as if the words left a bad taste on her tongue. "Just don't expect these strong-arm, caveman tactics of yours to change anything."

Chapter 10

"You wanted to talk." Ariel threw her evening bag into the corner of the plush cream brocade sofa with no thought for its delicacy or cost, and turned to face her ex-husband. "So talk," she demanded imperiously, making no effort to hide her irritation. "I have an early appointment in the morning," she lied, "and I'd like to get to bed at a reasonable hour."

"Aren't you going to offer me a drink first?"

"No." She said the word baldly, almost gleefully, as if daring him to take offense.

Zeke shrugged and walked over to the crystal decanters arranged on a silver tray atop an elegant eighteenth-century cherrywood sideboard. There was a selection of Waterford crystal bar glasses on the narrow shelf above the decanters and a small refrigerator with an automatic ice maker tucked behind the cupboard doors below. "Can I pour something for you?" he asked politely, as he helped himself to a weak bourbon and soda with lots of ice.

"Scotch. Straight," she said, surprising him. The Ariel of old hadn't been much of a drinker. She'd only had one glass of champagne at dinner tonight—and then only finished half of it.

Grinning to himself, he poured two fingers of Scotch into the bottom of a heavy cut crystal tumbler, then turned and held it out to her. The look in his dark eyes dared her, telling her without words that he didn't think she would really drink it.

She surprised him again.

Grabbing the glass out of his hand, she tossed back half of the contents in one gulp, then set it down—sharply—on the delicate cabriole-legged table at the end of the sofa and glared at him, her eyes watering from the fierce sting of the alcohol. "There. We've had a drink. Satisfied? Now say what you have to say and then please leave."

Zeke took a casual sip of his own drink. "Do you want to tell me what you're so damned mad about?"

"You forced your way into my house, isn't that reason enough?"

"You were mad at me before I did that. In fact," he said, just realizing it himself, "you've been quietly furious at me since that day at the wedding consultant's office. Why is that, I wonder?" he said musingly, watching her closely for a reaction.

She just stood there, staring daggers at him, her slender body as tense and straight as an arrow quivering against the string of a drawn bow, looking more beautiful and desirable than he'd ever seen her look before.

"Before that day we hadn't seen each other in—what?—three, almost four years? At Cameron's college graduation ceremony, remember? And we didn't speak to each other, even then. So, I have to wonder..." His dark gaze locked on hers, penetrating, demanding. "Why are you so angry?"

"I'm not angry, I'm—" Ariel turned her back on him and walked toward the multipaned, leaded glass doors that opened out onto the patio and pool. Her shoulders lifted in a deep, shaky sigh he heard halfway across the room. And then she put her hands on the glass, palms flat against the surface.

"Talk to me, Ariel," he said from behind her.

She sighed again and turned around to face him. "I'm not angry," she said, but her voice wasn't as crystal cool and calm as it normally was, even to her own ears. And the fire in her eyes hadn't quite been banked. And her smooth, alabaster cheeks were delicately flushed with emotion.

"Oh, you're angry, all right," he taunted her, trying to get at the source of her pent-up emotion. "You're so angry, you're seething with it. You're boiling inside, aren't you, Ariel? You'd like to tear me apart with your bare hands, wouldn't you?"

He put his drink down on the sideboard and stepped closer, as if inviting her, daring her, to reach out and do some violence to his person. She clenched her hands at her sides and refused to give him—or herself—the satisfaction of losing control.

He extended one hand and she stepped back, automatically trying to avoid his touch, but he only picked something up off the table behind her. Then he reached out and grabbed her wrist with his other hand, quickly, before she could jerk away from him. Turning it palm up, he forced her to unclench her fingers and pressed something cold and round and hard into her hand.