A Merry Little Christmas (11 page)

They were all seated at a nicely secluded table; Warren was the most comfortable of the group. He was being charming and attentive without being grabby and Angelique was really enjoying herself, or she could have if that lanky, overgrown Adonis would find himself something
else
to do. Surely he had a woman of his own to torture. Despite her efforts to be a perfect lady, there was something about the way he was staring down her throat that made her want to scream. He looked handsome as always, in a midnight-navy suit that had a nice casual look to it with the gray band-collared shirt he wore as well. Every so often he’d be close enough for her to catch the expensive fragrance she always associated with him, which for some reason increased her irritation. After his terse greeting back at the gallery, he hadn’t said another word to her, but he stared all night. She had reached the limit of her endurance and was about to get vocal with him when the mysterious woman from the gallery stopped at their table.

In a low, sexy voice with the slightest hint of an accent, she greeted them.
“Hello, everyone.
Pardon the interruption, but I wanted to say hello to Warren. I haven’t seen him in such a long time,” she said sweetly.

Warren gave a deep, genuine smile and stood up to give the woman a brief social hug. “Hello, Lisette, it really has been a long time. Everyone, this is Lisette Francois. Lisette, this is Angelique Deveraux and Donnie Cochran,” he said graciously.

Lisette nodded and smiled at everyone at the table.
“So nice to meet you all.
I don’t want to keep you from your friends, Warren. It was nice to see you again.” She was about to leave when Angelique spoke up.

“Are you here alone? Would you like to join us?” she asked warmly.

Lisette stared at her for a moment and seemed to sense her sincerity. “Well, thank you, I’d love to if no one minds,” she replied.

In no time most of the people at the table were chatting away like old friends. The one exception was Donnie, who was uncharacteristically quiet. He would speak when spoken to, but for the most part, he was watching Angelique as though he expected her to levitate out of her seat or something. It had been a most trying evening altogether for Donnie, starting with the gallery.
 
He’d managed to get there before Warren and Angelique and from his position could see Warren helping her take her long black topcoat off. She also removed a brilliant paisley stole and handed it to Warren, a move that caused Donnie pain. He’d never seen her with her hair up, nor was he expecting what seemed to him to be a plunging neckline. There was no denying it:
she looked wonderful.
Beautiful, sexy, and happy.
How one evil little woman could look so delicious and be so mean was beyond him.

He loitered around and watched with great interest as the couple encountered A.J., who was there with a date. To his astonishment, Angelique not only didn’t seem upset, but she and A.J. had exchanged pecks on the cheek like siblings and introduced their dates to each other.
Okay, so maybe she’s not really dating the guy.
That didn’t change the fact that she had played him on New Year’s Eve, however.
 
The auction turned out to be a complete waste of his time, although it gave him an additional opportunity to check the couple out. Warren was being the perfect gentleman, it seemed; whatever he was doing had Angelique smiling for all she was worth and looking even more radiant

Just to be on the safe side, he decided to trail along to the afterglow, not caring a bit that he was probably making a jackass out of himself. He managed to maintain a modicum of dignity by being at least sociable enough to speak to people he knew, to look like his normal affable and charming self to everyone except Warren and Angelique. But when he wasn’t exchanging greetings and smiling at old friends and business acquaintances, his eyes were glued to them. In his entire life he’d never lost control like this and he had no idea why he’d done it tonight. Other than the fact that his little Evilene was the most captivating woman in the room, he had no reason to behave like this, none whatsoever.

Get a grip, get a grip! What’s wrong with you, man, you act like you’ve never seen her before in your life!
Donnie berated himself and tried to regain some ground in the maturity department, but it seemed to be impossible. Being seated across from her and Warren was driving him crazy. The whole idea behind him coming was to make sure she didn’t make a fool out of Warren, but every time her amazing lips turned up in a smile, he was the one who made a fool out of himself.
 
He was about to cut his losses and leave when a pretty woman who looked vaguely familiar stopped at their table. After he and Warren both stood up to acknowledge the lady and Warren had made the introductions, Donnie was about to bid everyone good evening when Angelique invited the woman to sit with them, something he wou
ld never have expected from her,
never in a million years. Yet the two of them were chattering away like old friends. This evening was getting stranger and stranger.... He was jolted from his deep thoughts when the women decided to visit the ladies’ room, causing the two men to rise from their seats.

As the ladies left on their pilgrimage of sisterhood, Warren signaled the server for another round of drinks. Then he turned to Donnie with his thick brows knit together in total puzzlement. “Do you care to tell me why in the world you’re acting like her bodyguard? Why are you hanging around here with your cheeks full of wind? If you want her so bad, why don’t you ask her out, man, instead of trying to block my play?”

Donnie took a deep breath and looked Warren full in the face. “You’re the doctor, Warren, isn’t it obvious that I’ve lost my freakin’ mind? I told you that woman was dangerous. Now do you believe me?”

Warren looked at the despair on his friend’s face and burst out laughing. “Oh, man, Cochran, you have to know that I’m gonna be dogging you about this for years to come. You know this,
right? I’m coming over this weekend, so knock the dust off the pool table and get some Coronas in the house. I’m going to enjoy this, man, I really am,” he said with an evil grin.

Donnie tried to change the subject because he knew Warren could keep up this kind of trash t
alk all night if necessary.
“So
Warren, who’s the lady who just had to say hello to you?
She’s kinda fine, where’ve you been keeping her?”

Warren got quiet for a moment “Lisette’s family owns Le Coeur de la Maison, the place that was decorating the house when Tracy and I were getting married. As a matter of fact Lisette was there when the engagement was called off, sort of.”

Donnie regretted bringing it up
because
he knew how devastated Warren had been over the breakup of his engagement. Surprisingly, though, Warren’s overcast expression cleared rapidly. “It was nice running into Lisette, though. She’s a sweet lady and very, very talented. You should see some of her work; she’s an amazing designer. I wish I’d had her finish the house, maybe it wouldn’t look like such a ba
rn
,” he said reflectively.

“That’s something you should think about. Look, I’ve exceeded my limit for idiotic behavior for one night. I’m going to leave now. Thanks for not punching my lights out,” he said ruefully.

“Hey, you may as well wait until the ladies come back. You know how they are when they make that trip. What in the world do you suppose they do in the so-called powder room anyway?”

Donnie gave a short, harsh laugh. “They talk about
us,
what do you think they do?”

Angelique and Lisette both washed their hands slowly, looking at each other’s reflections in the ornate mirrors over the sinks. That they liked what they saw was obvious, as they both smiled at the same time. Angelique was drying her hands on a paper towel when she asked the question that would make her and Lisette friends for life.

“You really care about Warren, don’t you?” she asked quietly.

Not even the faintest hint of blush touched Lisette’s almond-toned cheeks. She nodded her head slowly and admitted it was true. “I’m in love with him. I’ve been in love with him since the first time I laid eyes on him and he has no idea.
Just none.”

It was Angelique’s turn to nod. “I saw you watching him at the gallery. I just met him a few days ago. He’s a friend of that gloomy man who’s sitting at the table with us.”

Lisette smiled gently.
“The one that
you
have feelings for?”
Seeing Angelique’s face turn red she grabbed her hand. “Ahh, don’t tell me you don’t care for him! As he does you, I wasn’t the only one staring tonight,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, no, you’re wrong about this. We can’t stand each other, really we can’t!” Angelique protested.

Lisette raised an eyebrow and tilted her head slightly. Angelique took a deep breath and blew it out in a sigh. “Oh, it’s complicated. Really complicated,” she said glumly. “Listen,
I’ve only lived here about six months and I don’t know that many pe
ople other than my cousin Paris.  W
ould you like to go out for lunch or brunch t
his weekend? You’ll like Paris
too,
she’s a lot of fun.”

Lisette’s eyes grew warm with appreciation. “I would love to! And maybe between the two of us we can make some things less complicated with these men, hmmm?”

Chapter Seven

The next couple of weeks brought a lot of changes into several lives, especially Angelique’s. She and Paris and Lisette all hit it off beautifully, and spent time together eating out, going to movies and just talking. Angelique was convinced that Lisette and Warren belonged together and was taking a page from Paris’s book of matchmaking hints to make it happen. Lisette wasn’t as easily convinced.

One frigid Saturday afternoon found the three women at Angelique and Paris’s house doing one of their favorite things. A huge bowl of popcorn was in the middle of the table, flanked by a box of tissues and a pitcher of Crystal Light peach tea, all the needed accompaniments for a chick-flick marathon. After watching a classic black and white in which the heroine sacrificed her love to save the hero pain, Angelique turned to Lisette and told her she had to do something about Warren.

“Okay, Lisette, enough is enough. You’ve got to let Warren know how you feel. You’ve just
got
to. Look at that woman, how miserable she was! And he was miserable, too. All she had to do was speak up and let him know she loved him and she could have saved them both a lot of grief,” she said sternly.

Lisette laughed bitterly. “If only it were that easy.” She sighed. “I can’t ever tell Warren how I feel about him because ...” Her voice trailed off and she lowered her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. When she looked up, Angelique was alarmed to see tears gathering in her long eyelashes. Lisette wiped them away with her forefinger and rallied on. “Because I was the one who caused his engagement to be called off,” she said quietly.

Paris almost dropped her glass of tea. With huge, rounded eyes, she stared at Lisette, who nodded unhappily. “It’s true, I did it.” She sighed again. As always when she was emotional, a slight French intonation crept into her speech. She was bilingual and it showed in moments of stress or turmoil; she was Afro-French, her mother from Senegal and her father from France.

Angelique immediately turned off the DVD and faced Lisette. She and Lisette were on opposite ends of the couch and Paris was on the floor by the coffee table. Paris poured her another glass of tea and Angelique handed her the box of tissues. “Okay, Lisette, this is obviously a story you need to get off your chest. Tell us what happened. And you have to know
that we don’t think you could have done anything evil, it’s just not possible,” Angelique said comfortingly.

“Well, as you know, my family owns Le Coeur de la Maison and we do interior design for any and everybody. I don’t like to use the word ‘celebrity’ but we have a lot of prominent people who use our services. That’s how I met Warren,” she said, a soft look coming into her eyes. “He came into Maison one day and said he was meeting his
fiancée
there.  He said
that he had bought a new house and it needed everything done to it. He was so captivating, I didn’t tell him he had to have an appointment. We’re so busy, you know, we have to schedule our clientele. But he was so...
mmm,”
Lisette sighed and looked lost in thought for a moment until Paris reached over and jiggled her foot.

“Okay, we got
that,
he was fine as wine and you were smitten. What about the
fiancée
?” she demanded.

At once, Lisette’s pretty face became tight and drawn.
“Zut alors,
what a cow! She was a dreadful, dreadful woman! Just awful! She was beautiful, yes, but a horrible personality. She was a
beauty queen
.
”
Lisette spat in the same tone she would have used to say the woman did animal testing or something equally cruel.

Angelique nodded knowingly. “One of those women who thought she was all that because she was cute? I know the type.”