Her Perfect Match (8 page)

Hope huffed out a breath. “It took this same kind of makeover to get Jeff to stop seeing me as a little girl.”

“And ask Hope what I looked like before my mother decided to find out if there was a way to improve on Mother Nature’s unexplainable mistake,” Elizabeth suggested, wishing her voice hadn’t sounded so wistful. Wishing she’d been born even half as beautiful as her gorgeous mother and thinking about the unlikelihood that Jack would ever love the person inside Elizabeth.

Hope frowned at Elizabeth for a long moment. “You know, everyone is always talking about you before the metamorphosis, but I don’t remember you as anything but a gorgeous butterfly.”

Elizabeth felt her heart squeeze. If only that could be true. She forced a smile. “My old caterpillar self thanks you, my dear.”

Hope continued to try convincing CJ that it was fine to fix herself up to attract a man.

“I can’t say I don’t like looking like this,” CJ confided after a few minutes, “but it was so much trouble. Do you two actually go through all this? All the time?”

Elizabeth laughed along with Hope, but this time Elizabeth forced her laughter. She
did
work at her appearance this hard. She had to, or someone might see the ugliness beneath the surface.

A
t eight sharp on Saturday night, Jackson turned into the drive Elizabeth’s directions indicated. He slowed his truck to a stop in the long twisting drive. The main house loomed ahead. House? he thought with a mix of derision and consternation. Calling the three-story brick and stone edifice a house was an understatement if there ever was one.

He tried not to feel intimidated but it was hard. He’d felt the same way when he’d first seen Laurel House, though since then the comfortable friendliness of his family’s home had made it seem smaller and downright cozy. Looking through the trees at Elizabeth’s parents’ place, he felt as if he’d fallen down a rabbit hole and onto an old Hollywood set for a program like
Dynasty.
It was twice the size of Laurel House and not half as welcoming. He shook his head. Why would folks want to live in a museum of a home so big they couldn’t find each other without a map?

Jackson blew out the breath he hadn’t even realized had dammed up in his lungs. He refused to be cowed by the opulence. She might be a princess, and he was far from a prince, but he was also just as far from being a pauper. His family didn’t display their assets as pretentiously as Elizabeth’s did. That was all there was to it.

Knowing she waited got him moving again. Almost immediately the drive twisted left, and he realized the glint he’d seen when he entered the gate must have come from the diamond-patterned, leaded-glass windows he could see peeking over the hedge. He turned into the side drive as she’d told him to do and followed it around to a carriage house that was well hidden behind a row of tall boxwood and was partially covered in ivy. This was more like it. Homier. It was just as Elizabeth had described it.

He passed two arched carriage doors and turned again, finally coming to the side of the dwelling with a little arched window complete with flower-filled window box and a door of the same shape. Jackson couldn’t shake the thought that any minute a troop of seven very short men would emerge and whistle their way off to work. Elizabeth’s home looked as unreal as her parents’ but it was like something out of a fairy tale rather than a Hollywood movie set.

“Jack,” Elizabeth said a little breathlessly when she answered her door.

Dressed in a silvery white dress that fell to the floor, and wearing a diamond necklace, earrings and a bracelet that were probably worth what he’d paid
for his truck, she was beautiful. She had a classic beauty that would only be more evident as the years marched on. Her hair, pulled from her face in twisting spirals and anchored high on either side of her head with silver combs, shone with sun-touched highlights even in dusk’s low light. From the top of her head to the tip of her toes she was every inch a princess.

But he’d expected that.

What had him standing—staring—was the transcendent innocence that shone past all the careful artifice. It shocked him mute, like a revelation from above. Jackson finally understood what he’d been missing. Vulnerable, kind, loyal, she epitomized everything he’d ever been attracted to in a woman. But she was more.

Elizabeth was the end of his search for love.

And he realized something else, as well. This could be the most important night of his life. The beginning of a lifetime.

He swallowed with difficulty. “Maybe we should take your car,” he said around the lump in his throat. “It just wouldn’t be right to arrive with the most beautiful woman in Pennsylvania and hand her out of a pickup truck.”

Elizabeth’s smile was oddly shy, as if she didn’t hear compliments such as that every day. She looked down and opened her little jeweled purse, taking out a set of keys.

“If you want to drive my car, Jack, just ask. You don’t need to use flattery.”

Rather than jump to the conclusion that she was
fishing for compliments, as he would have a few weeks ago, Jackson understood that for some reason Elizabeth didn’t see what everyone else saw when she looked in a mirror. And most assuredly she didn’t see what he saw.

The perfect woman for him.

Jackson stepped forward and kissed her cheek while palming the keys. “I hate your car, Elizabeth,” he whispered near her ear. “It’s an expensive tin can on wheels. I just think it fits a formal occasion more than my truck.”

She stepped back and, wide-eyed, she stared at him. “I like your truck.” Then she nodded toward the keys to her car. “I hope you don’t mind a standard transmission too much,” she said finally in a perplexed tone.

“Is there any other kind?” Jack asked and smiled when she finally did.

During the half hour drive Elizabeth filled him in on the punishing race that was to take place the next day. She also explained why it had caused the rift to widen between Cole and Ross Taggert. It was a tragic story. Ross’s first wife had been killed riding a horse to show Cole that Ross was right and fifteen-year-old Cole had nothing to fear. But it had been Cole who was right, and he’d watched his mother be trampled before Ross could put the horse down. Cole, Elizabeth said, had not been the same since, nor had his relationship with Ross.

They arrived at Graystone Manor and, following her instructions, Jackson showed his invitation to a
tuxedo-clad guard at an imposing iron gate set into an equally daunting fifteen-foot stone wall. The guard nodded and handed back the invitation.

“Am I done with this?” he asked Elizabeth as he eased off the clutch and put the car in first gear.

She shook her head. “We’ll need it at the door. Charles Graystone likes his security tight. He doesn’t need it but it makes him feel important.”

Jackson drove onto the estate, past lush gardens, and pulled to a stop before stone steps. They’d clearly had been designed to be intimidating rather than inviting. Compared to Graystone Manor, Elizabeth’s parents’ mansion and Laurel House looked like starter houses.

The house was built of stone, like the surrounding high walls and imposing stairs. It had massive towers, parapets and, as if to add a truly macabre air, there were gargoyles aplenty. It defied comment. At least until Elizabeth let out an unladylike snort.

Her tone thick with sarcasm she said, “Welcome to Graystone. Home of Chester County’s Gothic Nightmare. Halloween would be so much more appropriate a night for their annual show-off-the-homestead affair, don’t you think?”

Jackson chuckled. “I met one of their daughters when I taught the kids at Jeff’s camp how to barrel race. She seems like a nice girl.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe they actually have children living in that…that—”

“Monstrosity?” Elizabeth asked. “Those poor girls. Several years ago they had to rent out a local
restaurant because little Natalie’s friends were afraid to come here for her birthday party.”

Jackson shook his head in disgust and climbed out of Elizabeth’s high-priced tin can. When a valet appeared, he tossed the youth the keys. “Don’t bury it too deep, buddy. It may be a short night.”

“Why did you say that?” Elizabeth asked as they climbed the steps to the front door.

He took her hand and entwined her arm with his against his side. “Because if you keep making comments like that, we’ll get tossed out of here within the hour.”

She patted his forearm. “Relax. I’m nothing if not diplomatic.”

But he noticed minutes later that it was Elizabeth who’d grown tense. In retrospect, Jackson realized she’d been a little edgy since she’d opened her door. He’d been hoping it wasn’t him that made her tense, but it had gotten much worse since they’d strolled into the main area where most people had gathered. “Is something wrong?” he asked, feeling the tautness in the muscles of her arm.

“Remember the piranha I told you about? The ones always looking for ways to make Cole’s life difficult?”

“I thought you knew they’d be here.”

She nodded. “I did, but I didn’t tell you they aren’t very nice to me, either.”

“That makes sense, in a way, since you’re Cole’s friend. Well, don’t worry. I have thick skin if they try picking on me.”

Elizabeth didn’t correct Jack or tell him it wasn’t his skin but his opinion of her she was afraid would suffer. As much as she wanted to spend time with Jack, she knew she’d never have agreed to this date if she hadn’t had the added incentive of feeling duty bound to try to protect CJ. After all, CJ and Cole were targets because of Elizabeth.

Minutes later, Elizabeth realized she was holding her breath as she and Jack passed in front of Alexandra and Mitzy Lexington.

She had begun to think she’d gotten away scot-free when she heard Mitzy say, “Apparently Elizabeth is at it again—yet another conquest. I wonder how long he’ll last.” Her sigh was theatrical. “They never stay once they find out what she’s really like.”

Jack stiffened.

“We should warn him, don’t you think, Alex dear?” Mitzy went on in a voice Elizabeth knew was loud enough for Jack to hear. “I understand he calls himself a Christian. He should know about how she entices men and just how young she started practicing on the unsuspecting—corrupting them with her wiles.”

Elizabeth thought she’d die when Jack stopped and turned to face the two women. “The name’s Jack Alton. And you are?”

Mitzy was even more taken aback than Elizabeth that Jack would directly confront them.

“Uh, I am Alexandra Lexington and this is my mother, Mitzy,” the younger of the two said, gestur
ing to the middle-aged viper who’d spoken in the stage whisper and who stood gaping at Jack.

“Ladies, you’re right. I am a Christian, and the Lord demands of me that I act with kindness at all times. Right now, I’m tempted to disobey Him but—” He stopped, the line of his jaw as hard as granite. “Jesus once said, ‘He who is without sin, cast the first stone.’ Think about it.” He turned to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth let him lead her away. He looked so annoyed and handsome in his tux. His deeply tanned skin was just a little higher in color now, betraying how much he probably wanted to say more. But he needn’t bother. She’d never seen those two so beautifully put in their places. All she could do was stare at him, trying for all the world to abolish the vision of him galloping toward her in gleaming armor on the back of a huge warhorse.

“Close your mouth, darlin’. You look like a fish. A beautiful, elegant fish, but a fish nonetheless.”

“But—but don’t you want to know?”

“Know?” he asked, as if he couldn’t imagine what he’d ask.

“What they meant. Don’t you want to know what they meant?”

“Those two?” He shot her a look that asked after her sanity. “Of course I don’t. If I’ve given you the impression I would, I’m sorry. I was jealous. I wanted you on my arm, and you seemed to be involved with my, ah, with my boss’s son. Tonight you’re with me. I’ve got no complaints.”

“Oh.” She blinked, unsure if she should believe
him. Was this man real? He seemed to mean what he said, if the earnest expression he wore was anything to go by.

“Would you like to dance?” Jack asked.

Dance? She couldn’t dance with him. It had been the heat of his body that had triggered her fear the day he’d kissed her. What if it happened again in the middle of all these people? When she’d accepted his invitation, she hadn’t thought he would ask this of her. She’d heard devout Christians didn’t dance. His church has a rock band for worship, Elizabeth. What were you thinking?

She looked into Jack’s beautiful eyes and wanted more than anything to be normal for just one night. She wanted to make a grab for the brass ring. She wanted to be able to let this man hold her. She wanted to feel safer in his arms than she’d felt since the day she’d learned to fear men.

“Okay,” she replied, forcing herself to smile while she fought inner panic.

He answered with a warm smile of his own and directed her toward the orchestra. At the edge of the marble dance floor, he took her in his arms. She was suddenly Cinderella at the ball.

And all her dreams—good and bad—came true because her prince was a good dancer. She was not. Like the storybook heroine, Elizabeth didn’t dance—out of necessity rather than lack of opportunity.

She had danced a few times with Cole and Jeff. She felt safe with them, seeing them more in the role of dutiful brothers than dates. Her father had also
partnered with her when her role of daughter demanded it. She could usually pull it off quite nicely by concentrating on where she put her feet.

Tonight, though, Jack’s nearness proved a huge distraction, and her lack of dancing experience quickly showed itself. She winced yet again when she stepped on the toes of his gleaming black cowboy boots for the third time. “I’m sorry.”

He sighed. “I wish being with me didn’t make you so tense,” he said, real regret in his voice.

He knew. She wanted to die. “No. I’m clumsy. That’s all.”

They came to the edge of the dance floor, and he dropped his arms. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Elizabeth. I know something’s wrong. What have I done to make you so jumpy?”

She reached out and grasped his forearm. The muscle beneath her fingers was strong and steady, but she knew he’d never use that strength to hurt her. How could she tell him it wasn’t a bad kind of nervousness distracting her?

“No. It’s me,” she said instead. “I wish I could—”

“Elizabeth,” a stern voice said from behind.

Her father. Elizabeth’s heart fell. Not now.

She turned to face Reginald Boyer, and her consternation doubled. Her mother stood at her father’s side looking all pinch-mouthed and annoyed. She’d told them she wouldn’t be going to the Graystone Ball and hadn’t thought to let them know her plans had
changed. Thank goodness they’d never lower themselves to argue in public.

“Mother. Father. I’d like you to meet my escort for the evening, Jack Alton. Jack, my father, Reginald Boyer.”

“Taggert’s new number-two man?” her father asked but didn’t take Jack’s hand. The frown stayed in place.

“Yes, sir. I signed on as Laurel Glen’s foreman just before the West Nile problem,” Jack said and looked at his extended hand, practically forcing her father to shake it. Which, after shooting a furious glance at Elizabeth, her father did, but with little grace.