“Absolutely, Mr. Skouras.” Laurel turned to the dentist, who was sitting openmouthed, a copy of virtually everyone else at the table. “Would you like to dance, Evan?”
A flush rose on his face. He looked up at Damian.
“But—I mean, I thought...”
“You thought wrong, sir.” Damian’s tone was polite but Laurel wasn’t fooled. Anger glinted in his eyes. “While we’ve all been listening to Miss Bennett’s interesting views, I’ve had the chance to reconsider.” He turned to Dawn and smiled pleasantly. “My dear, I would be honored if you would desert Nicholas long enough to grant me the honor of this dance.”
Dawn smiled with relief. “I’d be thrilled.”
She went into his arms at the same time Laurel went into Evan’s. Nick pulled out Evan’s chair, spun it around and sat down. He draped his arms over the back and made some light remark about families and family members that diverted the attention of the others and set them laughing.
So much for Damian Skouras, Laurel thought with satisfaction as she looked over Evan’s shoulder. Perhaps next time, he’d think twice before trying to play what were certainly his usual games with a woman.
Gabriella Boldini crossed and recrossed her long legs under the dashboard of Damian’s rented Saab.
“Honestly, Damian,” she said crossly, “I don’t know why you didn’t arrange for a limousine.”
Damian sighed, kept his attention focused on the winding mountain road and decided there was no point in responding to the remark she’d already made half a dozen times since they’d left Stratham.
“We’ll be at the inn soon,” he said. “Why don’t you put your head back and try and get some sleep?”
“I am not tired, Damian, I’m simply saying—”
“I know what you’re saying. You’d have preferred a different car.”
Gabriella folded her arms. “That’s right.”
“A Cadillac, or a Lincoln, with a chauffeur.”
“Yes. Or you could have had Stevens drive us up here. There’s no reason we couldn’t have been comfortable, even though we’re trapped all the way out in the sticks.”
Damian laughed. “We’re hardly in the ‘sticks’, Gaby. The inn’s just forty miles from Boston.”
“For goodness’ sakes, must you take me so literally? I know where it is. We spent last night there, didn’t we?” Gabriella crossed her legs again. If the skirt of her black silk dress rode any higher on her thighs, Damian thought idly, it would disappear. “Which reminds me. Since that place doesn’t have room service—”
“It has room service.”
“There you go again, taking me literally. It doesn’t have room service, not after ten o’clock at night. Don’t you remember what happened when I tried to order a pot of tea last night?”
Damian’s hands flexed on the steering wheel. “I remember, Gaby. The manager offered to brew you some tea and bring it up to our suite himself.”
“Nonsense. I wanted herbal tea, not that stuff in a bag. And I’ve told you over and over, I don’t like it when you call me Gaby.”
What the hell is this? Damian thought wearily. He was not married to this woman but anyone listening to them now would think they’d been at each other’s throats for at least a decade of blissful wedlock.
Not that a little sharp-tongued give-and-take wasn’t sometimes amusing. The woman at Nicholas’s wedding, for instance. Laurel Bennett had infuriated him, at the end, doing her damnedest to make him look foolish in front of Nicholas and all the others, but he had to admit, she was clever and quick.
“‘Gaby’ always makes me think of some stupid character in a bad Western.”
She was stunning, too. The more he’d seen of her, the more he’d become convinced he’d never seen a more exquisite face. She was a model, Dawn had told him, and he’d always thought models were androgynous things, all bones and no flesh, but Laurel Bennett had been rounded and very definitely feminine. Had that been the real reason he’d asked her to dance, so he could hold that sweetly curved body in his arms and see for himself if she felt as soft as she looked?
“Must you drive so fast? I can barely see where we’re going, it’s so miserably dark outside.”
Damian’s jaw tightened. He pressed down just a little harder on the gas.
“I like to drive fast,” he said. “And since I’m the one at the wheel, you don’t have to see outside, now do you?”
He waited for her to respond, but not even Gabriella was that foolish. She sat back instead, arms still folded under her breasts, her head lifted in a way he’d come to know meant she was angry.
The car filled with silence. Damian was just beginning to relax and enjoy it when she spoke again.
“Honestly,” she said, “you’d think people would use some common sense.”
Damian shot her a quick look. “Yes,” he said, grimly, “you would.”
“Imagine the nerve of that woman.”
“What woman?”
“The one who made that grand entrance. You know, the woman with that mass of dyed red hair.”
Damian almost laughed. Now, at least, he knew what this was all about.
“Was it dyed?” he asked casually. “I didn’t think so.”
“You wouldn’t,” Gabriella snapped. “Men never do. You’re all so easily taken in.”
We are, indeed, he thought. What had happened to Gabriella’s sweet nature and charming Italian accent? The first had begun disappearing over the past few weeks; the second had slipped away gradually during the past hour.
“And that dress. Honestly, if that skirt had been any shorter...”
Damian glanced at Gabriella’s legs. Her own skirt, which had never done more than flirt with the tops of her thighs, had vanished along with what was left of her pleasant disposition and sexy accent.
“She’s Dawn’s aunt, I understand.”
“Who?” Damian said pleasantly.
“Don’t be dense.” Gabriella took a deep breath. “That woman,” she said, more calmly, “the one with the cheap-looking outfit and the peroxide hair.”
“Ah,” he said. The turnoff for the inn was just ahead. He slowed the car, signaled and started up the long gravel driveway. “The model.”
“Model, indeed. Everyone knows what those women are like. That one, especially.” Gabriella was stiff with indignation. “They say she’s had dozens of lovers.”
The car hit a rut in the road. Damian, eyes narrowed, gave the wheel a vicious twist.
“Really,” he said calmly.
“Honestly, Damian, I wish you’d slow—”
“What else do they say about her?”
“About...?” Gabriella shot him a quick glance. Then she reached forward, yanked down the sun visor and peered into the mirror on its reverse side. “I don’t pay attention to gossip,” she said coolly, as she fluffed her fingers through her artfully arranged hair. “But what is there to say about someone who poses nude?”
A flash fire image of Laurel Bennett, naked and flushed