She turned one corner and then another, then spotted a severe-looking door at the end of this last hallway. With a push she was through the door, out, free.
The sky above was still bright blue with warm fingers of sunlight despite the late afternoon hour. In another hour the sun would be slipping toward the ocean, but for now everything was clear and warm and sunny, a picture-perfect California day.
Alex’s fingers squeezed the wallet as her white satin heels crunched the pea gravel. An antique Rolls Royce waited, decorated with a lavish amount of white ribbon and a white floral display. The getaway car, she thought with a shudder, passing it so quickly her full starched skirts pressed against one shiny hub.
“Can I help you find something?” a dark, laconic voice drawled from behind her, and Alex stiffened, disbelief sweeping through her, turning her blood to ice.
Slowly, painfully she turned and faced Wolf where he leaned against the side of the brick building. Her throat worked. No words would come out. He was the last person she’d expected to see out here.
“Looking for a pay phone?” he asked, indicating her wallet.
She shook her head, the lace veil creeping forward to caress her cheek.
“Missing family? Your stylist? Makeup artist?” One black eyebrow arched as he supplied excuse after excuse.
She tensed, her insides already a fury of knots and misery. “I was looking for a cab.”
He said nothing for a moment, intently studying her frozen expression. “Running away, are you?”
“I never agreed to marry you. I never—”
“You didn’t deny it when I told your brothers we were engaged, that we were getting married. You told them—”
“I was scared!”
“As you should have been. In fact, you should have been scared weeks before when you agreed to sign a contract to play my lover. If you’re such a nice, inexperienced girl, what in God’s name are you doing with me?”
Her eyes grew rounder. She swallowed convulsively. Her hair, curled in long spirals, danced across her back.
He was bearing down on her, huge, powerful in the jet-black tuxedo with the starched white shirt and white tie. “But when your family arrives like some vengeful Celtic warlord, I am not going to forget my responsibility to you. I am not going to walk away from you.”
He stood tall over her, so tall she had to tip her head back to see his dark, angry eyes. “And you, Alexandra, are not going to walk away from me.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE RECEPTION, LIKE the wedding, was a blur of lavender and rose and gold, of helicopters droning overheard and the sea crashing on rocks below. The wind kept catching at Alexandra’s veil, blowing it up and down.
Now that the ceremony was over, she was glad she hadn’t been able to hear the minister. It helped lessen the impact of his words, helped her focus instead on the future, the far distant future when she’d be someone—not because she’d married someone powerful, influential, but because she herself was powerful. Influential.
The guests kept flocking to meet her during the dinner reception. Being Wolf Kerrick’s new blushing bride suddenly catapulted her to a position of importance. Whereas at Spago and the Silverman birthday party she’d been no one worth noting, now everyone wanted to greet her, and she air-kissed celebs, hugged actresses she’d never met and took dozens of smiling photographs with the industry’s top execs.
It’s a shame she hadn’t won everyone over on her own merit, but at least the crowd’s warmth and enthusiasm reassured the Shanahan men that their only girl had done okay for herself.
In fact, by the time Alexandra danced with her father, the men in her family had become Wolf Kerrick’s newest, biggest fans.
Something Alexandra found painful as well as annoying.
The reception, like the ceremony, was held in the Denzinger garden, and the colors of the wedding were the same colors of the blue horizon, where the setting sun painted the ocean shades of lavender, rose and gold. A perfect Hollywood set for a perfect Hollywood film. But this was real.
The reception swept past her in a kaleidoscope of toasts and kisses, hugs and best wishes. There was dinner and then that nerve-racking first dance, the cake and the tossing of the garter. All the traditional things one did at an American wedding.
Wolf was now drawing her back onto the dance floor. He’d just been in conversation with her father—again.
“You and Dad seem to have found a lot in common,” she said through gritted teeth as Wolf spun her around the floor in a grand Strauss waltz.
“He’s fascinating,” Wolf said.
“Maybe you’re just trying to make points.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, twirling her around. “And you should smile, because he’s watching right now and he really wants his little girl to be happy.”
Alexandra stepped intentionally on his toe. “Oops!”
His hand settled lower on her back. “I didn’t realize my love was quite so clumsy.”
She offered him another dazzling but vacant smile. “I guess you don’t really know me either.”
The orchestra was playing with great gusto as they only had one more number before they ended their set, giving way to the R & B band.
“You understand this is for the cameras only, right?” Alexandra made sure everyone could see her teeth in her wide smile. “I’m playing a part, a role, and getting paid for it. Don’t think for a moment that I’m actually attracted to you.”
His smile revealed amusement. “But you are.”
“No.”
“You were.”
“No.”
“Love, I’m an actor, not stupid.”
Alexandra tried to hold herself apart and aloof from him, but the strength in his grip made it increasingly difficult.
“We’ve met before,” he added, spinning her around the floor, thoroughly enjoying the waltz. “Remember?”
She stared at his chin, afraid to look higher.
“It was about four years ago,” he continued. “We met at the Beverly Hills Hotel in the Polo Lounge. You were with friends and—”
“I don’t remember,” she interrupted tersely, glancing wildly up, meeting his mocking dark gaze before glancing even more swiftly away.
“We passed each other in the hallway. I was just coming from the men’s room and you were on your way to the ladies’ room—”
“I don’t remember,” she interrupted breathlessly.
His lips curved ever so slightly. “We left the hotel together.”
“No—”
“Went to the Ivy for dinner.”
Her body felt cold all over and she’d stopped protesting now.
“After dinner we parked high up in the Hollywood Hills with a view of the entire valley.”
Alexandra stared. He’d known. He’d known who she was all along. He’d known this entire time.
His dark gaze found hers, held. “How could you think I wouldn’t remember you?”
Wordlessly she searched his face, trying to understand what he’d been thinking. “But I was heavier by nearly twenty pounds.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Again she searched his eyes. “What do you remember?”
“Your sweetness, your intelligence, your humor—” he broke off, assessed the impact his words were having on her “—and your incredible inexperience.”
When she couldn’t manage to even squeak a protest, he dropped his head, kissed the curve of her ear and whispered, “A girl who didn’t even know how to unzip a man’s pants, give a hand job or perform oral sex. Now that’s a girl to take home to meet Mom.”
Alexandra shoved hard on his chest, abruptly ending the waltz. “You remember.”
Grooves bracketed his firm lips. His lips curved, but it wasn’t a tender smile. He reached for her, pulling her back into his arms and dipping his head. He kissed below her ear, in the small, delicate hollow where a pulse beat wildly, erratically. “Of course I remember.”
His voice dropped even lower, so husky, so sensual it hummed all the way through her. “You couldn’t possibly think that I’d marry just any woman. Could you, Alexandra?”
It was well after midnight before they were finally able to break away from the reception, which had turned into the party of the year. The wedding planners had arranged surprise appearances by several of the guests who happened to be top Billboard recording artists performing their hit songs, and everyone was dancing, including Alexandra, who suddenly felt as if she were the most popular girl in America.