Sandra Hill (19 page)

At first she didn’t answer, seemingly en
thralled by his fascination with her hair. Finally, she said, “My mother abandoned me when I was a baby. She was really young…only sixteen…and unmarried. Grandma had raised eight other children back in the old country…that’s what she called Ireland…but Siobhan…my mother…was what she always termed ‘the child of my old age, the child of my heart.’ Grandpa died in the peat works before Siobhan was born.”

P.T. put a closed fist to his mouth, studying Cynthia, whose eyes had gone misty blue with remembrance. His heart, which had been swelling with emotion a short time before, now constricted in empathy with her pain. He understood all too well how it felt to lose a parent at a young age. Hell, his father had blown the family nest before he’d even hatched. “Your father?” he inquired.

She shook her head. “I never knew my father. He was an American exchange student at the University of Dublin. Presumably he promised to marry my mother. That’s why she went off with him to Chicago, but”—she shrugged—“he never did.”

“Go on,” he encouraged, skimming the palm of his hand up and down the smooth skin of her arm, from the edge of the short sleeve to the wrist, over and over, in comfort.

“Grandma followed Siobhan nine months later when she got a telegram telling of my birth.
My mother was living in a shelter for the homeless at the time.”

“Oh, Cynthia.” What an ugly way to enter the world! And he’d thought his life in Puerto Rico had been bad.

Her chin jutted out with pride. “We survived, that’s the most important thing. Anyhow, as soon as Grandma arrived and got us an apartment in one of the projects, Siobhan dumped all her responsibilities on Grandma. She had no job. Just welfare. That little bit she spent on clothes and parties. If it weren’t for the food stamps, we probably would have starved. Finally, Siobhan just skipped off with a new boyfriend, this time a motorcycle guy who was riding around the country, trying to find his soul.” She gave him a rueful look. “He found it in Albuquerque, where he and my mother overdosed and died. I was two years old at the time.”

Her voice was so devoid of emotion when she spoke of her mother’s death that he wondered if she hadn’t walled off all her anger and resentment and hurt. Like him? Hadn’t he realized just a short time ago that he hadn’t succumbed to tears for seventeen years? How long had it been since Cynthia had wept?

“Did your grandmother take you back to Ireland?”

“No. At first she stayed in Chicago, hoping my mother would get her act together. Later, she waited, expecting my mother to come home for me. By the time my mother died, Grandma was
already working in a sewing factory, and she’d started a new life here. All her children…my aunts and uncles…were grown, with their own families back in Ireland. It was easier just to stay.”

“Your grandmother must have been a strong woman.”

Her somber face broke into a wide smile. “That would be an understatement. Picture Attila the Irish Hun.”

He smiled back at her. “So, you grew up in the projects. What made you decide to go into finance?”

“Money.”

He arched a questioning brow.

“You grew up with wealth; you wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be poor…to always yearn for better things…to feel like you don’t belong.”

Me? Not understand poverty? Hey, sweetheart, you’re talking to the shoeshine kid here. This is P.T., world-class yearner
. “Did you work when you were young?”

“No. It was too dangerous in our neighborhood. Grandma wouldn’t even allow me to go out of our apartment. I used to read all the time…fairy tales. Oh, wipe that smirk off your face, Ferrama. I was a little girl then. Cut me some slack.”

“So you were living in this ivory tower high-rise, dreaming of Prince Charming,” he teased. A strangely alarming thought occurred to him.
“Were there lots of princes in your life?”

She slanted him a disbelieving scowl. “No, but there were lots of toads.” The unspoken implication was that he was one of the warty group. “Actually, I never dated much. Reading all those books paid off. When I was thirteen, Grandma talked a local priest into getting me a scholarship to a ritzy private girls’ school in the suburbs…St. Bridget’s Academy.”

“You don’t seem too happy about that.”

“It was hell.” Her face turned stormy. “If I felt like Little Orphan Annie pressing my face against the candy store window when I was a kid, I felt like I was pressing my nose to the country club gate at St. B’s. You have no idea how cruel adolescent girls can be. There was never any question that I was the token poor person in the academy. And from day one it was hammered into me that I was inferior in breeding, gauche in manners, brassy in appearance”—she rolled her shoulders as if it didn’t matter, although it clearly did—“a misfit.”

And you’re still trying to meet those impossible standards
, he realized with sudden insight.
Brazen and aggressive on the outside, insecure and needy inside
.

“It wasn’t any better at Harvard, where I got a scholarship. Believe me, money speaks everywhere. So, taking a cue from the little girl who buried her face in fairy tales, I immersed myself in other books and became the best damn student in the world.”

P.T. couldn’t blame her for her hardened attitude. Though his motives were different, he was equally obsessed with amassing enough wealth to chuck the whole rat race. The difference was that she wanted to stay in the rat race…to be the mother of all rats herself.

“The girls at St. B’s made me cry, but no one’s been able to since then,” Cynthia continued, summing up her rambling answer to his question about why she never cried. “Nope, I learned my lesson well. Make enough money so that no one will ever be able to look down on me again. Stop dreaming about fairy-tale happy endings and make my own dreams come true.”

“Ah,
querida
, it won’t work, you know.”

“Why not?” she snapped, raising her chin defensively.

He chucked her playfully on the jaw in remonstrance. “Using financial success to measure your worth doesn’t work. Believe me. I’ve been spinning that wheel for years. Don’t get me wrong, I intend to make a ton of money with this stock offering. But I plan to use it as a means to another end.”

“Charity?” Her eyes went wide with surprise. “You’re going to give it away?”

He laughed. “Not quite. No, I’m going to use the profits to de-prince myself. I’ve learned that if you have enough wealth, you’re free to be whoever you want.”

“Why are you criticizing me, then? We both agree that money is the key to acceptance.”

“Yes, but you want enough cash to fit into a certain strata of society. I want enough cash to escape its stranglehold.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I just want to be a regular guy. Joe Schmoe, living in a small town, with a wife and two or three kids. Little League baseball. Pot roast. A minivan.”

“Prince Beaver Cleaver,” she scoffed.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Get real, Ferrama. You’re caviar, not pot roast.”

“I could be.”

“God, what a pair we make! The would-be Wall Street princess and the prince who would rather abdicate.”

With a smile, he leaned down and, without thinking, brushed his lips against hers. It was barely a kiss, so fleeting was the pressure, but his blood rushed like a river undammed.

She whimpered. “Don’t.”

“I must,” he murmured against her mouth, compelled beyond all reason to connect with her. This time he settled his mouth more firmly over hers, moving his head from side to side, shaping her warm lips into pliancy.

She groaned into his open mouth.

He groaned back.

He kissed her for a long time, and she kissed him back. It was a gentle, unbroken movement of flesh against flesh, but so much more than that. With a wild roaring in his ears, he recog
nized that something wonderfully monumental was happening to him.

For the first time in seventeen years, he wanted to cry…with joy.

Finally, he pulled back and gazed at her. Tears brimmed in her eyes and she repeated in a soft whisper, “Don’t.”

“What?” He wanted to kiss her again, and hug her, and make love to her. But more than that. He wanted her in his bed and his life. He wanted…so many things. He settled for cupping her cheek with a gentle caress.

“Don’t make me believe in dreams again.”

His heart stopped, then jump-started again. “I want to make your dreams come true.”

“Is that a line?”

“Is my eyebrow twitching?”

She examined his right eye for the telltale sign. “No.”

“Well, then.”

“But I think your nose is growing.”

He smiled down at her and gave her smart mouth a quick nip of his teeth.

She inhaled sharply. She must be equally affected by this strange chemistry between them.

“It’s not a line, Cynthia. It’s the honest truth. And I don’t understand it any more than you do.”

“I’m scared.”

“A scared shark?” he joked.
I’m scared, too, sweetheart. Real scared
.

“Do you think this is another phase of Elmer’s spells?”

He frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. Maybe. Actually, I don’t care.”

“What’s happening to us?”

He was blindsided then with sudden understanding.
Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no!
“I think
…Dios mio!…
I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Instead of sneering, or laughing, or making one of her crude remarks, Cynthia sighed. “I think I love you, too.”

They both stared at each other in wonder. And alarm.

“This is horrible,” she cried.

“Yes,” he agreed, though it didn’t feel horrible. He inhaled deeply with resignation and asked the only thing he could. “Will you marry me?”

A tear slid from the welling eyes of the woman who claimed she never wept. “Yes.”

Less than twenty-four hours later, Cynthia Kathleen Sullivan and Prince Perico Tomas de la Ferrama stood before the Reverend Elmer Presley, about to be married. They were waiting for Naomi and Ruth to arrive.

She glanced over at Ferrama, decked out in a double-breasted gold lamé wedding suit, with no shirt. The bell-bottom slacks sported a clasp the size of a brass hubcap and had Velcro sides, like the red ones. Sometimes she really wondered about Elmer. Or were these leftovers from Ruth’s Chippendale’s ex-husband?

Cynthia complemented Ferrama perfectly in a gold lamé wedding sheath—a form-fitting, ankle-length, bimbo confection with a neckline cut down to her navel and a slit up the side from
ankle to mid-thigh. On Raquel Welch it would have looked great. She was not Raquel Welch.

Her bridegroom was still arguing with Elmer over the whole spell business. Under normal circumstances, she would have been offended at his anger, but she understood the conflicting emotions that assailed her soon-to-be-husband. She shared them.

“I’m tellin’ ya, laddie, the big godfather works in mysterious ways.”

“
Mierda!
Enough with the godfather garbage. It was a spell, dammit.”

Elmer winced at his sacrilegious language. Then he raised a hand to rub the black eye swelling one side of his face. It had been a gift from Ferrama the night before when Elmer had returned from his remarkably successful gig in Poughkeepsie.

“I’m tellin’ ya, there was no spell. No drugs in your lemonade. No magic dust. Fairies don’t work that way,” Elmer said indignantly. Then he softened, addressing them both. “Miracles are a gift from God, my children. Never question a miracle.”

“The only miracle is that I didn’t kill you when I had the chance.”

“You made us fall in love,” Cynthia added. “That was a really underhanded trick.”

Elmer gazed at her fondly, his good eye misting over with emotion. “Ah, Cindy, love is the greatest miracle of them all, not a trick. Your grandma is so pleased.”

“Hmpfh!” He was probably right. Her Grandma must be dancing a heavenly jig over her finally biting the marriage bullet. Not that this would be a real marriage. “Tell me again, Elmer, in what church were you ordained?”

“Church of The King,” he answered without hesitation.

She and Ferrama exchanged a look that said clearly, “Bogus.” Which was what they wanted, of course. As long as Elmer and Ruth and Naomi believed the marriage was legitimate, that was the most important thing. By tomorrow, Cynthia fully expected to be on her way back to Manhattan. The spell would be broken. No more love complications. She would be free to sue the hell out of the bunch of them.

But first she was going to have a wedding night. She deserved that much for all her pain and suffering. And being in love with Prince Ferrama was a real pain.

“Are you sure it’s not the Presleyterian Church?” Ferrama snickered. “I recall hearing about that denomination during the hoopla last year commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Elvis’s death. Or how about the Church of the Latter Day Elvis?”

Elmer drew his short body up with affront. He was wearing a black-sequinned cassock with a mini cape. A white rhinestone-studded clerical collar stood up in exaggerated Elvis fashion. “Elvis was the King,” Elmer asserted fiercely, “but there is only one King of Kings. Best you re
member not to profane Him or his holy sacrament, lest the wrath of the Almighty come down on you in just punishment.”

“I think he’s already punished me. I’m about to get married, aren’t I?” Ferrama quipped.

Cynthia recoiled inside at the bitter words of the man about to become her husband. It was okay for her to be using him in this marriage farce, but she didn’t like the idea of his lack of enthusiasm. Not one bit. After all, he’d been the one who asked her.

Well, okay, the proposal had come under duress. A spell counted as duress, didn’t it? And no way was she buying Elmer’s contention that he hadn’t zapped them with something. She couldn’t have imagined that skin-tingling virtual foreplay, or their transformation into Elvis and Ann-Margret clones, or seeing Ferrama naked
—Lordy, Lordy!
Could she?

“Furthermore, you insolent pup,” Elmer went on, “it’s only the Lord who can make a racehorse out of a jackass. Don’t tempt him to reverse the process.”

“Are you saying I’ve got no pedigree?”

“No, I’m saying you’re behaving like a jackass,” Elmer snapped. “I didn’t put a spell on you, boy, but I wouldn’t be above slapping a curse or two on your ungrateful hide.”

“I’m shivering in my boots,” Ferrama retorted. “Or I would be if someone had given me a pair of shoes to wear.” He glanced down pointedly at his bare feet.

“You should be fearful. I have some powerful curses at my disposal.”

“Such as?” Ferrama scoffed.

“May the devil swallow you sideways. May there be no cream on your porridge nor on your cat a tail. May the flame be bigger and wider which will go through your soul than the Connemara mountains if they were afire. May you be afflicted with the itch and have no nails to scratch with. May a mountainslide land upon you. May you have a pig’s snout on you and the mouth of a sheep.”

“Enough already!” Ferrama said, holding up both hands in laughing surrender.

Irritated, Elmer stomped over to the doorway to see what was holding up Naomi and Ruth.

“We need to talk in private,” Ferrama said suddenly, drawing her over to the side. She hobbled along beside him, using one crutch as a cane. With all the standing today, her toes were beginning to ache. Her feet were bare, too.

Easing down to a settee with his help—it was hard enough to stand in the tight sheath, let alone sit—Cynthia tried to adjust the slit that revealed all of one leg. Eventually, she gave up with disgust. To her even greater disgust, she turned to notice Ferrama’s eyes glued to said leg with what could only be described as hunger.

Intense hunger.

She should have been angry. She should have let loose a crude, cut-to-the-bone insult. She should have done something…anything…to
halt the hot ache of yearning his nearness engendered.

But, gol-ly, it was a heady, heady sensation being wanted by a man like him…a prince, for heaven’s sake!

If it was only this childish prince fixation that attracted her to him, Cynthia could accept that. If it was only his sinfully enticing good looks, Cynthia could accept that, too. But there was a dangerous bond growing between them, its silken threads connecting and wrapping around them like a tender cocoon. If this was love, Cynthia feared she might never escape…even when the spell was long broken.

Deep in concentration, as if he was searching for the right words, Ferrama took her one hand in both of his.

And her pulse skittered.

At sight of the fresh coat of neon pink nail polish Ruth had given her this afternoon, a flicker of a wicked smile tilted up one corner of his mouth, Elvis-style, revealing a tiny dimple.

And she remembered what he’d said one day—teasing, no doubt—about how he’d like to make love in the dark with those glowing nails traveling all over his body. Her temperature rose about ten degrees.

But then his expression became serious as he tipped up her chin with one finger so she was staring directly into his eyes. The fingers of his other hand laced with hers.

For a long moment, their gazes held, and
awareness swirled around them like fairy dust.

He made a rough sound deep in his throat.

She whimpered.

“We don’t have to do this,” he said, giving her a last-minute chance for escape. From the marriage, anyhow.

“Yes, we do.” Cynthia tried to pull her hand from his clasp, but he held tight. “Naomi will never let us go. This is our only shot. If you want an out, don’t look to me for an excuse.”

“I don’t want out, Cynthia,” he said in a husky voice. “More than anything in the world right now, I want in.”

Her face heated under that suggestive double entendre. “That’s lust speaking, and Elmer’s spell.”

“Undoubtedly.” He didn’t seem at all concerned.

“Don’t you care?” she cried.

“I care too much, that’s the problem.”

Oh, he is such a snake-oil charmer! It’s a line he’s probably used a thousand times before. But I wish…oh, God, how I wish…
“This is no way to get married.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “If things could be different, though, I think I would still want…well, this isn’t the time for that.” He seemed to have trouble swallowing.

What had he been about to say? Cynthia’s heart hammered at all the possibilities. Impossibilities, really. But her foolish heart was beyond reason.

“I always imagined that when I got married, it would be in a church filled with family and friends,” he confessed sheepishly. “There would be organ music and tons of flowers and my bride coming down the aisle in a white wedding gown.”

Her jaw dropped at the idea of a man harboring the typical female dream. Not her, of course, because she refused to be typical. And she’d lost her dreams long ago. “I never imagined getting married at all.”
Except back when I was a little girl and still believed in dreams-come-true
.

“Oh, Cynthia,” he murmured, patting her shoulder in sympathy.

She slapped his hand away. A pity bride? That she couldn’t countenance. “And as to the bride-in-white business, honey, well, if you’re expecting a pure-as-undriven-snow virgin, forget it. I’ve been through the slush a time or two.”

He let out a hoot of laughter and shook his head at her. “You never let me down, sweetheart. Always have to get in the last word, don’t you? And better yet, a coarse one, guaranteed to shock.”

“Whatever.” She glared at him for a moment, barely restraining herself from blurting out that, despite her crude boast, she wasn’t all that experienced. Instead, she pointed out, “It won’t be a valid marriage.” It was more a question than a statement.

He nodded. “When we get back to the city,
you’ll be able to unsaddle me faster than an Irish Thoroughbred.”

She had to smile at that analogy, especially since Elmer had implied he was more a jackass. “Which of us would be the horse and which the saddle?”

He smiled back, and her heart skipped a beat. He was so damn gorgeous. “We could take turns,” he offered, wagging his eyebrows at her.

“I give a rough ride,” she countered, to her horror. It was especially horrifying because she never engaged in this kind of provocative flirtation. He must be repulsed by her vulgarity. She was.

Instead, Ferrama tugged her closer and breathed in her ear. “Ah,
querida
, I never expected any less from you.”

Tears smarted her eyes, and she attempted to avert her gaze.

Cupping her chin, he forced her to look at him again. “Don’t you dare go self-conscious on me now. I have big plans. And expectations.”

Big plans? What kind of plans? Oh, my! And expectations? Of me? Oh, my!
Behind them, Cynthia heard Ruth and Naomi talking as they entered the room. Elmer put a record on the machine, Elvis’s rendition of “It’s Now or Never,” presumably the wedding march. Panic rose up in her.

“Are we going to do the deed, Cynthia?”

Despite her misgivings, despite all reason, despite her fears, she didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”

Suddenly, she knew. It didn’t matter if this marriage lasted for an hour or a decade. She wanted it…more than escape, even.

He drew her to her feet and handed her the crutch. Standing close, he whispered, “I love you, Cynthia.”

“For now,” she emphasized, seeking to dampen the wild emotion his precious words ignited.

He shrugged, and she didn’t know if that meant he concurred or he didn’t care.

“I love you, too,” she declared. It was only fair that she return his sentiment.

“For now?” Oddly, he wasn’t smiling as he asked the question.

“For now,” she said. But inside, an unsettling voice insisted,
For always
.

The wedding was over in a remarkably short period of time.

Naomi, who’d stood out of chain’s reach in the doorway, had brought two bottles of aged wine from the cellar.

Ruth had prepared a nuptial feast of Spanish paella and Irish soda bread. And, of course, fried peanut butter and banana finger sandwiches.

No longer angry at Ferrama, Elmer had slipped him a special gift—protection against a particular “curse.” Cynthia didn’t have the heart to tell the little Elvis, although she did confide it to her new husband later, that she was already
protected and had no need for what appeared to be a gross of condoms.

Elmer had outdone himself in performing what certainly had all the rituals of a traditional marriage ceremony, except for his closing remarks. To Cynthia, he’d said, “An Irishwoman carries her heart in her hand. Praise the Lord!” To her new husband, he’d advised, placing her hand in Ferrama’s, “Cherish the gift divine destiny has given you.”

Then he’d raised his eyes heavenward and prayed, “May the Lord keep you in his hand and never close his fist too tight.”

As a final clincher, he’d concluded, “In the eyes of God and all the heavenly hosts, including Elvis, I now pronounce you, Perico, and you, Cindy, to be man and wife…prince and princess for all time.”

They were finally alone.

P.T. took one last sip of wine and set the crystal glass aside. He didn’t require any more booze to fuel the buzz in his head…a buzz caused more by his rising arousal than alcohol.

On the other side of the room, nervously twirling the stem of her own empty wineglass, was his blushing bride. And she
was
blushing, all the way down her exposed cleavage and all the way up her side slit.

He crooked his finger at her.

She set her glass on the card table and crooked her finger back at him.

Well, you outrageous thing, you! I guess you showed me
. Only belatedly did he realize that she had interpreted the gesture as an overbearing, presumptuous order…an imperial summons…not the seductive lure he’d intended it to be.

But what the hell…go for it
. He smiled. His lazy, I-can-do-things-you-can’t-imagine smile.