Jared's Love-Child. Sandra Field
into commitment. Never had been, never would be. Then, last of all, the break-up.
The last few years he’d played the game less and less. Lise was an example of his breaking of the pattern. He was honest enough with himself to know he was using Lise as protective coloration: if his social circle assumed he was having an affair with her, it kept the majority of the other women at bay, as well as the gossip columnists. Very few of his compatriots would have believed he wasn’t sleeping with Lise. She sure wasn’t going to tell them; he knew that much. She was using him just as blatantly as he was using her. To be seen as the mistress of Jared Holt was a boost for Lise’s ego—and for her career.
As for his sexual needs, he’d been subduing those for months in a ferocious focus on his far-flung business empire, and by engaging in strenuous athletic pursuits in various untamed parts of the world.
In the last few minutes Devon Fraser had put paid to all that. Since his first glimpse of her in that dress his sexuality had been running rampant. He knew what he wanted. And he wanted it soon.
Her dress, he thought caustically, had cost money. Big bucks. That stunning combination of elegance and provocation didn’t come cheap. So was she also after him, one more woman chasing after the security of a big bankroll? Like mother, like daughter?
Except the daughter was twenty years younger and ten times more beautiful.
Alicia had snagged Benson with very little effort. So now was it Devon’s turn to get the head of the company, the one with the real bucks? She was just being a little more subtle about it than all the other females of his acquaintance.
Subtle? Or downright devious? Keep on track, Jared, he told himself. After all, Devon could scarcely be said to have encouraged him on the front steps of his father’s house. Neither in her dress or her conversation.
Could he be mistaken? Was she genuinely as antagonistic toward him as she’d seemed?
“Who gives this woman to be married to this man?”
Devon said clearly, “I do,” gave her mother a smile that made Jared’s heart lurch in his chest, and stepped a little to one side. He fought to pay attention to the service: he’d really look an idiot if he flubbed his own cue.
He’d already made an idiot of himself once in front of Devon Fraser. He was damned if he was going to do it twice in one day.
Devon had been to lots of weddings, for by now most of her contemporaries were married. She’d thought she was immune to the whole ritual. Yet today for some reason the words, so simple yet so powerful, had gone straight through her. “To love and to cherish…” Who, except for her almost forgotten father, had ever cherished her? Not Alicia, she’d been too busy chasing romance from one continent to the next. Not any of her stepfathers. Certainly not Steve, who’d been her lover for over three years. Or, more recently, Peter. Who, luckily, hadn’t become her lover.
So what? She didn’t need cherishing; she was an independent, intelligent, thirty-two-year-old woman who excelled at a difficult job and who’d constructed her whole life so as to avoid intimacy and long-term relationships.
Then why was she feeling as weepy as any bride?
“…till death do us part.”
Alicia had been parted from Devon’s father by death. Devon’s father, according to Alicia, had been the love of her life—a story clung to more obsessively with every ensuing divorce. Devon had been seven when he died. She could remember as clearly as if it were yesterday that she’d been out in the garden when her mother had told her. The blackberries had been ripe and a thrush had been singing in the walnut tree…
Oh God, she felt far weepier than any bride. She wouldn’t cry; she wouldn’t! Apart from anything else it would only confirm Jared Holt’s low estimation of women. Emotional basket cases, that was how he saw the female sex. Irrational, completely at the mercy of their feelings. Not like him.
Jared had passed his father the ring and the clergyman was intoning the age-old symbolic words. Nervously Devon eased Benson’s ring from her thumb. Suddenly it slipped through her fingers and fell into the midst of the orchids. She scrabbled for it, bruising the sleek, expensive petals; when it didn’t emerge, she gave the bouquet a shake, and with an inward moan of dismay watched the ring plummet to the ground and roll along the green carpet. Toward Jared.
He moved very swiftly for so big a man. Stooping, he grabbed the ring and passed it to her. His eyes were looking straight into hers. They weren’t black, as she’d thought when she’d been standing on the front step. They were a dark midnight blue, impenetrable and cold as a winter sky. Her lashes flickered. Gingerly, trying not to touch him, she plucked the ring from his open palm, hearing the low murmur of amusement from the congregation. Blushing scarlet, she passed the ring to her mother.
Let this be over soon, please, she prayed. Let me get out of here without disgracing myself. Without revealing to anyone—especially Jared—how fragile I feel.
He probably already knows. He doesn’t miss a trick, that man.
Benson kissed his new wife with decorum. Her mother, Devon noticed distantly, looked flushed and very happy. Then Aunt Bessie swung into action again, pulling out all the stops. Benson took Alicia’s hand in his with a big grin, and started down the aisle between the ranked chairs. Now it’s our turn, Devon thought. Mine and Jared’s.
She turned to him with a brilliant smile, resting her fingers on the arm he was proffering, not at all surprised to feel the muscles taut as stretched cable.
With a deliberation that was somehow terrifying, he put his own hand on top of hers. The heat of his skin burned into her flesh like a brand; the raw hunger in his eyes filled her with panic. Then, suddenly, the hunger was gone, vanished as if it had never been.
Turned off, as though by a switch.
Every nerve in her body screamed at her to beware. She dragged her gaze away from his and smiled into the sea of faces, dimly rather proud of her composure. With a super-human effort she retrieved her voice, saying lightly, “Your aunt is excelling herself.”
“You got a real kick out of shoving that dress in my face, didn’t you?”
He towered over her, even when she was wearing high heels. Devon looked up at him limpidly and said in a voice as smooth as cream, “At this precise moment we’re being observed by a couple of hundred socialites, some of whom I assume are friends of yours…do try and control your temper. As for your aunt, any musician worth her salt should be able to improvise.”
“She never does anything but improvise, and I really hate being made a fool of.”
The photographer planted himself in front of them and angled the camera at their faces. “Just a little closer to her, Mr. Holt. Big smile—that’s great.”
Blinded by the flash, horribly aware of the jut of Jared’s hip and the hard line of his shoulder, Devon stumbled on a fold of the carpet. Quickly Jared’s arm went round her waist, and for a moment all her weight was resting on him. Instinctively she knew that with very little effort he could have picked her up and carried her the rest of the way. One arm around her hips, the other pressing her to his chest…
Was she losing her mind?
She pushed free of him, struggling for composure, and with huge relief saw that Benson and Alicia were waiting for them. “Mother, congratulations,” Devon said warmly, kissing Alicia on the cheek. Then she held out her hand to Benson. “I’m so happy to meet you,” she said. “I’m only sorry I had to wait until you were all the way to the altar.”
Benson planted a kiss on her cheek. “Devon…a pleasure. You’re almost as beautiful as your mother.”
Alicia gave a delighted giggle, and Devon heard Jared’s breath hiss between his teeth. “You’re much better-looking than your son,” she responded cordially. “I wish you both every happiness.”
As Alicia hugged her again, spilling out how nervous she’d