Masquerade (12 page)

Suddenly his hands weren't steady—nothing about him was steady. He pulled back, shaken by how completely she had broken through his will. When she swayed toward him, he slid his hands onto her silk-clad shoulders, keeping her at a safe distance.

There was a radiance to her face that he didn't remember seeing before as she lifted her hand and traced the shape of his mouth with her fingertips. "Do you always kiss like that?"

"Not always." His voice sounded too husky, too thick, revealing too much of the way she disturbed him.

She released a breath of soundless laughter. "I don't think there can be any doubt: you do liven me up—in every way."

 

Watching him, listening to him tell of that night, Remy felt the strong pull of attraction. She could easily visualize her persistence and his resistance. "What did you say to that?" she asked when he paused in his telling.

"I didn't say anything. As I recall, we didn't need words."

The air seemed to hum between them, vibrating with a sexual tension, as it must have that night. "Did we make love?" Remy wondered.

"No. It was too soon—too sudden for both of us."

"I suppose it was." She noticed the guarded way he was studying her, the hint of wariness in his gray eyes, a wariness that suggested that he'd been hurt before. She thought back over his description of their first meeting and the remarks he'd made about the so-called Uptown crowd. "Cole, what happened to make you so distrust someone with my background—my family?"

A grim, almost bitter smile twisted his mouth. "Which time, Remy?" He turned back to the galley counter. "More coffee?"

"I—" Suddenly the plane started to shudder and buck violently, throwing Remy sideways against the counter and knocking the cup from her hand.

In the next second she was grabbed roughly by the waist and hauled against the opposite bulkhead wall, pinned there by the heavy crush of Cole's body. She found herself engulfed in the feel of him, the smell of him. The wild buffeting of the plane continued for several more interminable minutes before it settled into a mild shaking.

As Cole drew back, his hands continued to grip the hold he'd found. "Are you all right?"

"Yes." She had room enough to nod, though, like him, she wasn't sure it was over. Unsteady, shaken, she was conscious of a throbbing pain in her hip. No doubt she'd bruised it when she was thrown against the counter. But she was growing more conscious of the pressure of his hips as they held her against the wall, the hard, unmistakably male outline of him making itself felt.

"It looks like we encountered some turbulence."

Looking at him, Remy knew that the outside turbulence had moved within. "We certainly did," she said. And it increased further as the gray of his eyes darkened on her.

"Remy, are you all right back there?" Gabe called, his voice followed by the sound of his footsteps coming up the aisle to the galley.

His approach chased away the moment of awareness between them, and Cole pushed away from her, his hands moving to lightly grip her shoulders before falling away entirely.

"I'm fine," she repeated the assurance she'd earlier given Cole. But by then Gabe was already in the galley opening, his gaze immediately fastening on her in concern. Feeling the need to say more, she added, smiling, "A little shaken, but unharmed. I came to get a cup of coffee. Which now happens to be all over the floor," she noticed. "Hand me some towels or something, Cole. We'd better get it wiped up before one of us slips on it." The plane shuddered again, and Remy immediately grabbed hold of the edge of the partition to steady herself.

"I'll clean it up," Cole said. "Go back to your seat and buckle up. Get some sleep if you can. It's going to be a long flight."

She went back to her seat, not to sleep but to mull over some of the things Cole had told her. It was obvious that she'd been the pursuer. And it was equally obvious that he hadn't found it easy to trust her because of previous encounters with "her kind." He seemed so strong, so hard, that
vulnerable
certainly wasn't a word she would have used to describe him—until now. What
had
happened to make him so leery of her? Had he told her? And did it matter? Without trust, no relationship could survive. Was that what had ultimately caused her to break it off with him? Had she become tired of constantly being forced to prove to him that she cared—tired of defending her family's actions?

And that brought up another thing: according to Cole, the company was in serious financial shape. In fact, he'd blatantly accused her family of draining it of funds. Earlier Gabe had admitted that the company had been losing money, yet he'd been very definite that it was nothing serious. Which was the truth? And what could either of them gain by lying?

 

 

 

 

9

 

 

Somewhere over the Atlantic, Remy managed to doze off. When the plane began its descent to the New Orleans airport, Cole touched her shoulder. "We'll be landing in about ten minutes," he said. "Check your seat belt. There's rain and fog in the area, so it might get a little bumpy."

Groggily she acknowledged his advice and tried to wipe the sleep from her face as Cole passed the same message on to Gabe, then sat down in his own seat and buckled up.

With the dimness of the cabin lights, there was little glare on the plane's windows. Turning, Remy gazed out the window at the stars glittering before the rising moon. Below, a blanket of dark clouds hid the city. She felt oddly uneasy, unable to summon any excitement at the prospect of being reunited with her family—of returning home.

After a fairly smooth descent, the plane broke through the clouds roughly four hundred feet up. All looked black beneath them. Belatedly she remembered that the airport was located on the edge of the swamp and Lake Pontchartrain. From out of the black, the runway approach lights gleamed, twin trails of light pointing the way through the darkness and the wispy fog.

A cool, light rain fell as Remy stepped off the plane at New Orleans' Moisant International Airport. One of the ground crew ushered her to the building, sheltering her from the pattering drops with an umbrella.

After a minor delay as they went through immigration and customs, Remy walked into the terminal building itself, flanked by Gabe and Cole and trailed by a porter with their luggage. Cole tipped his head toward her, his gaze fixed on some point ahead of them as he murmured, sotto voce, "It seems the whole family turned out to welcome you home."

Following the direction of his gaze, Remy located a group of people waiting to greet them. She faltered for a moment. Strangers. They looked like total strangers, all of them. Until that moment she hadn't realized how much she'd hoped that seeing them would spark a memory, if only a long-ago one—as seeing Gabe had done. But there was nothing.

Refusing to give up, Remy focused on them individually instead of viewing them as a whole, starting first with the woman with the anxious look on her face. A soft-brimmed hat, the same teal-blue color as her raincoat, covered short blond hair that had been artfully faded to a flattering shade of platinum. Her gloved hands held a clutch purse that she gripped tightly.

When the woman saw Remy approaching, her anxious look disappeared, replaced by a glowing smile that gave a soft, Renoirish radiance to her delicate features. "Remy, my darling." Her voice caught on a happy sob as she glided forward and embraced Remy, hugging her close for a moment, then drawing back to look at her. "It's so good to have you home. You gave us such a scare, vanishing like that. What are we ever going to do with you?" She ran a gloved hand tenderly over her cheek and smoothed the side of her hair in a soothing, motherly gesture. "How are you? Are you all right? They told us you have amnesia. Gracious!" She blinked in sudden surprise. "Do you remember me? I'm your mother."

"You grow roses." She had a fleeting image of this same woman in a wide straw sun hat, with a basket of freshly cut roses on her arm and a pair of garden shears in her white-gloved hand. That was it. That was all. But it was something, a tiny piece of memory that allowed Remy to truthfully say, "I can remember that."

"Gracious, yes, I grow roses. Prize roses."

"How about me? Do you remember your kindly old father?" asked a low, jesting voice.

Less certainly, Remy turned to the man who was obviously her father, her searching glance taking in the bright twinkle in his brown eyes, the almost total absence of gray in his dark hair, and the tanned, healthy vigor of his face. "I wish I could say I do remember you, but ... I can't." She saw the flash of stark hurt in his eyes and regretted her candor. Smiling, she reached for his hand. "Right now, it's enough to know I have a father who loves me."

She could tell that her words had pleased him as he gave her hand a squeeze. "What father could not love a daughter like you?" Then his gaze centered on the faint discoloration near her lips, his expression taking on a look of shared pain. "Remy, do you remember anything at all about what happened that night?"

"No. Nothing. And the specialist at the hospital told me the odds were I would never remember the events directly leading up to my injury. That part of my memory will probably be lost forever."

"I ... I see," he murmured, his glance dropping to her hand.

"Now, Frazier." Her mother slipped a gloved hand under the crook of his arm. "That awful incident isn't something we should be dwelling on.

"Of course not," he agreed, somewhat hesitantly.

"Well, it doesn't matter whether you remember me or not, Remy," another voice broke in, its heartiness a contrast to her father's quietly serious tone. "I insist on having a hug from my favorite niece."

Remy turned to her uncle, a slim version of her more robust father, impeccably groomed in an Italian suit, his handsome features beaming with a smile. "You must be Uncle Marc," she managed to say before she was smoothly drawn into his arms, a dry kiss planted on her left cheek.

Then he stepped back, holding on to both her hands. "Let me have a look at you," he said, giving her the once-over, then winking. "I must say, you look none the worse for your adventure." He paused to sigh in contentment. "Ahh, Remy, you can't know how worried all of us have been about you."

"And you can't know how much I needed to hear that a few days ago, when I felt totally lost and forgotten." She smiled.

"Never forgotten, Remy," he insisted firmly. "Never for one minute."

She laughed. "Do you always know the right thing to say?"

"I try," he said, lifting his shoulders in a shrug of modesty.

"I can't imagine you could have forgotten me, Remy—your dear cousin Lance," a low voice challenged, silken with mockery. "Especially when you consider I'm your least favorite."

Turning, she forced herself to calmly meet the lazy, taunting regard of his dark, nearly black eyes. "In that case, maybe I shouldn't say it's good to see you, Lance."

He stood before her, one hand idly thrust in the side pocket of his pleated trousers, in a pose of negligent ease that smacked of arrogance. His hair was the same near-black shade as his eyes, its thickness skillfully and smoothly combed away from his face. His lips had a woman's fullness to them, yet on him it looked sexy instead of effeminate. And when he smiled—as he was doing now—there was a faintly sarcastic curl to his upper lip. Gabe was right—Lance was "handsome as the devil."

"I don't know why anyone worried about you," he said. "Your memory may be impaired, but your tongue is as sharp as ever."

Before she could show him precisely how sharp it could be, three women converged on her with effusive welcomes, hugging her and kissing the air near her cheek.

"You look marvelous, Remy," declared one of Marc's daughters, a raven-haired Southern beauty with dark, flashing eyes and a beauty queen's empty smile. "When they told me you had amnesia, I thought you'd look, well, haunted, your eyes all shadowed and your face pale and wan. But here you are—the same old Remy."

"We heard they put a dozen stitches in your head," the other chimed in, craning her neck to see where they'd been taken.

"Not a dozen," Remy corrected automatically.

"Well, however many it was, they don't show. Your hair covers it beautifully. Aren't you lucky you don't wear it short? Think how funny you would have looked with a bald spot in the middle of your head."

"She would simply have had to wear a hat to cover it, Diana," the first inserted, which meant she had to be Kathy, the older of the two.

"It's almost a pity you don't," sighed Diana, who was a less striking version of her sister. "According to
W,
 
hats are
in
this season."

"Is it true, Remy, that you don't remember anything?" Her aunt Christina, a plump, matronly woman who had obviously given up the battle of competing with her daughters' looks, finally squeezed in a question.

"Yes, is it true?" Kathy immediately took up the thread. "You don't remember anything? Not even about the—"

"This isn't the time to besiege Remy with questions," Marc smoothly cut across his eldest daughter's words. "She just stepped off the plane from a long and very exhausting flight. She can tell us her story later—after she has had time to rest."

"And we are all dying to hear it," Kathy put in, then added with a hint of resentment and envy, "Amnesia. Leave it to you, Remy, to come up with something so spectacularly unusual."

"Not by choice, I assure you." Remy smiled, their prattle sounding vaguely familiar to her. No doubt she had been irritated by it in the past, but not tonight—not when she was standing here literally surrounded by family, embraced by a sense of belonging.

As she idly swept her glance over them, she noticed that Cole wasn't there. A slight turn of her head and she found him, standing well apart from them—alone. She was suddenly struck by the feeling that he was an outsider, he didn't belong. Unbidden came a wash of voices through her mind: "not one of us" . . . "methods less than orthodox" . . . "native shrewdness" . . . "not suitable at all" . . . "ruthless, cunning."