Seduced and Betrayed (24 page)

"No, thanks." Ariel waved away his offer. "Why did he think his wife had a part in drawing him back? Was she involved in Eric's suicide somehow?"

"Hardly. Remember, she wasn't even born when Eric committed suicide. Jack met her right here in the Wilshire Arms, less than two months ago." He slanted a glance at her. "And that's where it gets really strange."

"Strange how?"

Zeke grinned and hummed a few bars of the theme from the
Twilight Zone.

"Stop that," Ariel demanded, nudging his hip with her bare foot. "And tell me what you mean."

"Fate," Zeke said, grasping her foot in his hand to still it. "Destiny. Kismet." He stopped his teasing litany, suddenly remembering...
Maybe it's your turn now,
Jack had said to him. And then Irina Markova...
You were meant to come back.
Carl Mueller's ramblings about the woman in the mirror and her power to see into the future. Faith Shannon's assertions that the ghost was very real, indeed. Was it possible?

"Zeke?" Ariel sat up, unconsciously scooting closer to him on the sofa. She felt uneasy, suddenly. Edgy and restive without knowing why. "Don't go spooky on me."

"Oh, it's nothing, sweetheart." Deliberately, he shook his strange mood off and reached out, putting an arm around her shoulders to hug her close. "I was just teasing you," he said, and pressed a kiss on top of her head.

"Tell me," she demanded.

"It's just a sad, silly story about some poor girl who drowned in the swimming pool that used to be down in the courtyard. Somehow, it's achieved legend status over the years."

"So tell me," she said again. "I like a good ghost story as well as the next person."

So Zeke told her about the young woman who had died under mysterious circumstances, about the legend that had grown up around the same time about the appearances of a ghostly woman in the old mirror in 1-G and her alleged ability to herald boon or bane to those who were lucky—or unlucky—enough to see her.

"I think old Mueller's the one who keeps the legend alive," Zeke said, giving her shoulders a little squeeze before he let them go. "He's never seen her himself, of course, but apparently, he tells the story to everyone who moves in here. He's a strange old bird. Do you want any more of this?" he asked, gesturing at the tray.

Ariel shook her head, watching as he picked it up and carried it into the kitchen. And then, when he was no longer in sight, her gaze wandered, inevitably, over to the mirror.

Had she seen something there when he carried her to bed? Someone? And if she had, was that someone trying to tell her that believing in Zeke's love would make all her dreams come true? Or warn her that her ex-husband was about to break her heart again?

Chapter 13

"Last chance to change your mind," Zeke whispered, bending his head so that only his daughter could hear him. "If we leave now no one would even notice until it was too late to stop us. I could have you halfway to Mexico before—"

Cameron jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. "Oh, Dad," she said, trying not to giggle and spoil the solemnity of the moment. "Behave."

"What?" he demanded in a deliberately injured tone, rubbing his side as if she had really hurt him. "What did I say? I was only trying to help you out of this mess you've gotten yourself into."

Cameron turned her head, giving him a knowing look through the misty tulle of her veil. "I know what you're trying to do." She tilted her head, touching her temple to his shoulder for just a moment in one of her typical gestures of affection. "And I love you for it, Daddy."

Zeke felt a lump the size of a baseball form in his throat. His daughter was getting married. His baby girl. He'd been talking nonstop nonsense to her all the way over to the church, giving her something to think about besides the butterflies he knew were fluttering around beneath the Chantilly lace of her tight-waisted wedding gown.

Now, suddenly, he couldn't have uttered another word to save his life. His
baby
was getting married!

"It's almost time," Leslie Fine said. She moved around behind them, making small adjustments to Cameron's already perfectly arranged train, tweaking the side of her veil into even more perfect folds around her shining blond head. "Wait just another moment and..." The five-note trumpet herald faded into silence and the first strains of the "Wedding March" swelled through the church. "Now," she said and touched Zeke's shoulder to get him started.

He couldn't seem to make his feet move.

"It's okay, Dad," Cameron whispered, patting his arm with the hand she had linked through his elbow. "There's nothing to be nervous about."

Zeke looked down to find his daughter smiling up at him through the gossamer sheerness of her veil, her face as calm and serene as the Madonna's, her dark eyes glowing with happiness, her nervousness miraculously gone now that they were finally ready to start.

"I love you, baby," Zeke murmured, forcing the words through the lump in his throat. And then, covering the cool, slender fingers that lay on his sleeve with the warmth of his hand, he started his daughter down the aisle toward her future.

His mind was all on Cameron as they paced slowly down the center aisle of the church. Pictures of her as she had been at different stages of her life kaleidoscoped through his mind in rapid succession. He remembered the sunshine brilliance of her wide, toothless baby grin and the way she used to raise her arms, demanding to be picked up whenever she saw him. He remembered the determined way she would toddle after him whenever he brought her on the set, ignoring the blandishments of the cast and crew in favor of being her father's faithful shadow. He remembered the way she'd always come flying into his arms whenever he picked her up from school, eager to show him her latest drawing or the A she'd got on her spelling test. He remembered, too, the way she had always come running to her daddy to make it better, whether it was a skinned knee or a project gone wrong or a thoughtless boy who'd broken her heart.

She wouldn't be turning to him first anymore to soothe her hurts and share her joys, but to the young man waiting for her at the front of the church. And that was as it should be, Zeke knew. It was the way he'd always hoped it would be for her. Still, he found himself blinking back tears as they reached the front of the church and the moment came for him to give his daughter's hand into the keeping of the young man who was now first in her loving heart.

In a gesture that was unconsciously theatrical, instinctively gallant and completely heartfelt, he raised Cameron's hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of her slender fingers. "Be happy, baby," he said, and relinquished her to her future husband.

Sitting in the front pew, watching the tender exchange of feeling between her ex-husband and her only child, Ariel pressed her lips together and tried hard to keep from crying. She'd promised herself she wouldn't cry. A wedding was a joyous occasion, a celebration of two people in love pledging themselves to each other for all time.

Except that her wedding hadn't been that way at all. Ariel clenched her hands together in her lap. No, she wouldn't think of that now. She'd promised herself she wouldn't let the sad memories of her own wedding intrude on the happiness she felt at seeing her daughter exchange vows with the man of her choice.

But the memories were there, painful memories of another young man in a rented tuxedo standing, distant and rigid, by her side as she pledged her eternal love. Of a kiss that was as cold as death. Of a smile that never reached his eyes. She'd carried off her part in the joyless charade with cool professionalism, her acting skills equal to her groom's in every way as she presented the happy, smiling facade expected of America's sweetheart on her wedding day. And then she'd spent her wedding night alone, in a storm of bitter weeping.

She looked up as Zeke slid into the pew next to her, her wide blue eyes made crystalline by the sheen of unshed tears, unsure, just then, of who they were for.

"I know," Zeke murmured, reaching out to cover her hands where they lay clenched together in the lap of her pale aqua blue silk dress. "I know, sweetheart."

Ariel smiled tremulously and unclenched her fingers, twining them with his, holding his big warm hand between both of hers. It didn't matter, suddenly, if his sympathetic murmur had been in response to past pain or present joy. It only mattered that he was there. That he cared. That he was sitting beside her with his hand in hers while their daughter pledged herself in marriage. It made her think that maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out all right.

* * *

The reception was lavish and grand, warm and festive, elegant and fun. They had a champagne brunch for three hundred guests under white silk tents set up on the sweeping lawn. There were silly toasts and serious, heartfelt speeches. The best man got a little drunk and made a pass at the maid of honor and one of the caterer's assistants. The four-year-old flower girl wet her pants and had to be taken upstairs and set to rights. The groom's parents demonstrated the proper way to dance the hully-gully. And the bride's paternal grandmother from New York spent most of her time flirting with one of the guests, a handsome and legendary movie star who flirted right back.

"It was a lovely wedding," said a soft voice at Zeke's elbow. "And a great reception. Ariel always has been the perfect hostess."

"Yes, she has," Zeke said, turning away from the activity on the terrace cum dance floor to smile at his second ex-wife, Holly Neals. She was tall and blade slender, with sleek platinum blond hair worn in a sophisticated wedge, a disarmingly sweet smile and a killer intellect. Which was why, fifteen years after their divorce, she was still his lawyer. "Hello, Holly," he said genially, leaning down to kiss her cheek. "I missed you in the receiving line."

"I sneaked in during brunch. I had to stop by my office on the way over from the church."

"On a Saturday?"

"The wheels of justice just keep on turning," Holly said with a shrug.

"You're obsessed with your work," Zeke countered, and then grinned. "Which is just part of what makes you such a damned good lawyer."

"Mmm," Holly murmured absently. "Speaking of obsessions..." She tucked her flat envelope handbag under her arm and reached up, using both hands to straighten his satin bow tie. "I've seen those scorching looks you've been aiming at the mother of our blushing bride." She patted the tie into place. "Any new developments there or is it just the usual unrequited passion?"

Her voice was just a little sharp, a little pointed, even after fifteen years. Zeke's obsession with his first wife was one of the main reasons Holly had declined to remain his second. In the beginning she hadn't known
whom
she was being compared to, but she knew damn well she was being compared—and falling woefully short. It had made their brief two-year marriage a volatile one, straining the friendship that had led them to take the unwise step into wedded bliss in the first place. In the end, they'd both agreed they made better friends than lovers. The split had been exceedingly amicable but, sometimes, when the opportunity presented itself, Holly couldn't quite resist the urge to needle him for finding her less than perfect.

"Ariel and I are in the process of, ah... reassessing our relationship," Zeke said carefully.

"Reassessing?" Holly tilted her head, sending a sheaf of platinum hair over one eye as she considered him. "That's a new word for it."

"But an accurate one. We're—"

She lost his attention as he caught sight of someone outside her line of vision. The expression in his dark eyes told her who it was without her having to turn her head to look. Ariel Cameron. America's sweetheart. Ms. Perfect. Holly sighed. Just once before she died, she wished some man would look at her the way Zeke was looking at Ariel, with his whole heart in his eyes.

"Don't sign any prenuptial agreement without letting me read it first," she said wryly, effectively bringing his attention back to her.

"Prenuptial...?" he began, but she stopped his denials with a fingertip to his lips.

"I really hope it works out for you this time," she said, meaning it sincerely. "You've always loved her."

Zeke smiled and reached up, pressing her fingertips to his lips for a quick, friendly kiss before drawing them down to hold them in his. "Yes, I have," he admitted. "I wonder why you knew that before I did?"