Magdalene (40 page)

“Miss Rivington,” Knox rumbled and I saw
that the first three couples were already paced down the stairs and
up the aisle. He held out his arm. “It’s our turn.”

They disappeared down the stairs and I took
my place, awaiting my music; then it began and I gulped when I saw
all those people stand for me as I started down the stairs.

I saw Mitch across the library, standing in
a tux, waiting for me with the look on his face that I knew meant
he was very, very pleased.

My heart hurt in a way I had not known
before.

Expectation. Longing.

I knew my face was an open book at this
moment, but I could not discipline my expression to hide all the
things I wasn’t sure I wanted known. Perhaps even things I didn’t
know I might be exposing.

I reached the floor and stepped onto the
white runner strewn with orange rose petals and stayed there,
suddenly unable to move. But I wanted to; I wanted to walk the path
that would take me to Mitch. Why I couldn’t, I didn’t know. My left
hand fell to my side, my orange-roses-with-orange-blossoms bouquet
in it, and I held the other out for Mitch, palm up. I didn’t know
why I did such a thing; it was completely contrary to wedding
protocol and not what we had rehearsed, but he didn’t hesitate. He
strode down the aisle toward me, his eyes alight, one corner of his
mouth turned up.

Then my hand was in his big, warm, callused
one. “Hi,” he murmured.

I looked up at him. “Hi.”

He placed my hand in the crook of his arm
and said, “Whereya headed?”

“I’m on my way to get married.”

“Is that something you want to do right
now?”

“Oh, yes, very much.”

“Then can I give you a lift?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

I saw no one but Mitch, his strong profile,
his understated but unflappable humor, his soft smirk teasing me
without a word.

I think I blushed.

I don’t remember one word of that ceremony,
but it didn’t matter. All I needed to know was my cue to say “I
do.”

I did.

And with one long, deep kiss shortly after
he said, “I do,” I became a Mormon bishop’s wife.

* * * * *

More Room in a Broken
Heart

I lost myself as Mitch swept me into the
first dance of the evening to an odd choice of a song, a Carly
Simon one I’d never paid attention to. It caught my ear one day as
I stood in Bergdorf, absently fondling a metal vase not nearly so
beautiful as the ones Mitch had made for me.

Here we were, coming around again, two
people in our mid-forties with a marriage each behind us, seven
adult children and a grandchild between us, each of us having made
our own names and fortunes, meeting as equals on a dance floor on
the occasion of our wedding.

The song faded and we kissed again—

—just before the Latin beats pounded through
the speakers.

“Mother!” Clarissa hissed at me and dragged
me away to the bedroom I’d be sharing with Mitch for the next year.
She had my long skirt stripped off me before I could breathe.
“Here,” she said. The little white salsa skirt she’d ordered
smacked me in the butt and slid to the floor. “Shit, where are
those shoes? Oh, here!”

“Clarissa, calm down,” I murmured as I bent
to step into the skirt, then sat down on the bed to put on white
ballroom dance shoes covered in sequins. “You’re more nervous than
I am. It’s over. Go dance and have a good time.”

She stopped and stared at me as if she had
never seen me before. Bit her lip. “I love you, Mom,” she
whispered, then fled as if I’d just carved her out of my will.

When I descended the stairs, I found a house
full of people applying themselves most diligently to the purpose
of dancing. Mitch’s family—save Sebastian, who stood in a corner
nursing a glass of punch—were, while not terribly conversant with
the actual steps, mixing up elements of swing, two-step, and jive
for a decent imitation.

It would do.

Mitch caught me as soon as I put my foot on
the floor, and he jerked me to him tight, then spun me out.

The floor cleared immediately, and not
because we were the bride and groom.

We danced more intimately than we ever had,
with his thigh between my legs as I shimmied and ground. It was
downright dirty. Catcalls, whistles, hoots, and shouts, but halfway
through our guests couldn’t stay on the sidelines anymore.

This party would last all night long.

I danced with every male present except
Morgan, whose knowing grin I was studiously ignoring, and
Sebastian, who, I was curtly informed, did not dance.

“Are you serious?” I said.

“My artistic and/or higher math talents do
not extend to the basics of being able to count in time. Or carry a
tune.” He pointed to the outskirts of the dance floor, where his
wife was getting a crash course by Bryce. “See? She’s doing better
than I could ever do, and my brother-in-law has to teach her.” Then
he huffed a reluctant chuckle. “I need a drink. I would’ve spiked
the punch, but with my luck, they’d all die of alcohol poisoning
with the first cup.” I laughed. “I bet you’re dying for a good
martini. Want me to go get the fixings and smuggle you a
flask?”

I opened my mouth to take him up on it and
gratefully, then snapped it shut again. “No,” I murmured, feeling
much better that
some
one in this house half full of
teetotalers understood.

His expression took on a certain chill and
his body tensed. “You going the conversion route?”

I shrugged, even in the face of his blatant
disapproval. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

He studied me for a half second, his eyes
narrowed. “Has Mitch asked you to?” he asked slowly.

“God, no. As far as I can tell, he’s
completely ambivalent about whether I join the Church or not.”

He grinned suddenly. “Really,” he drawled
with great satisfaction, as if he’d found some deeper meaning in
it. When the music changed to a slow dance and Mitch came looking
for me, Sebastian handed me off to my new husband with a clap on
his back.

“Well, hel
lo
,” I whispered just
before he kissed me.

It wasn’t a dance so much as we stood in the
middle of the dancers and I lost myself in his kiss. Unlike all the
evenings before, all the days after he had kissed me for the first
time, this time I knew that what I wanted would happen, but—

“Let’s go to bed,” he growled against my
lips.

—he needed a dose of his own medicine.

“Now, Mitch,” I murmured, coy, pushing
myself away from him just a bit, “we have guests and
obligations.”

He groaned good-naturedly. “Aw, Cassandra,
that’s torture.”

“This is your own fault, making me wait
three months and get married, when you
knew
I wanted to fuck
you on our first date.”

“But you did, in fact, wait three months and
get married.”

“Yes. So now
you
can sacrifice a few
more hours.”

It was unfortunate that the first real
chance I had to get to know the women of Mitch’s adopted family was
during a celebration, instead of an all-nighter around a dinner
table with good food and wine flowing.

I met Vanessa Whittaker, who hid her sorrow
well enough if one didn’t know what to look for. I complimented her
on the food, asked about her time as a chef in New York, and
deliberately didn’t mention her publicity woes or the man she so
clearly pined for. “Mitch spent a lot of time at my inn after his
wife died,” she replied when I asked her how she knew him.
“Sebastian sent him, asked me to look after him. He’s such a sweet
man.”

I took that as the most gracious of warnings
and acknowledged it with a nod, because apparently, these people
who loved Mitch like a brother viewed me with some suspicion.

Hell, I’d look at me suspiciously, too.

Justice Hilliard was just as sharp-tongued
in private conversation as she was on the internet and talk radio,
but her propensity for off-color humor took the edge off her
cutting wit. The girl could’ve made a living as a stand-up
comedian. “So how did you catch Knox Hilliard?” I asked, and
immediately realized I’d stuck my sequined foot in my mouth. She
slid me an amused glance. “What you mean to ask is why I deign to
stay with him. Right?” I laughed, not wondering a moment
longer.

Eilis Logan, bored with her dance lesson,
could barely pull her eyes away from some point over my shoulder
and thus, was not a good conversationalist. I finally turned around
to find King Midas staring at her hotly. “Excuse me,” she muttered,
put her cup on the table, and brushed past me to join him. They
promptly disappeared.

Then there was Giselle Kenard, fanning
herself with a handful of napkins, her face flushed from dancing
nonstop. (With her complexion, she’d flush from jogging up a short
flight of stairs.) She had apparently noticed Eilis’s abrupt
departure and said, rather apologetically, “Three kids. Who have
completely wrecked the Taights’ sex life. But you watch. Nine
months from now? Taight number four. That woman’s more fertile than
the Nile and for her, pregnancy is a permanent state of
euphoria.”

I was only a little older than Eilis. I
couldn’t imagine starting a new family at my age, but my train of
thought derailed when Giselle finally got to her point.

“I saw the way you looked at my husband in
December.”

The edge in her voice was unmistakable. It
was probably the first time she’d ever been confronted with another
woman who found him and his mangled face sexually attractive—and
she didn’t know quite how to deal with it. I smirked. “Well,
dish.”

“Yes. He
is
that good.”

“He looks like he’d be rough on a girl.”

“He is fabulously nasty.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m no threat to
you.”

“That presumes that you think you ever could
be.” I laughed. “But as it happens, I have also been watching you
watch Mitch this evening.”

“Look at him,” I said, pointing to where he
was teaching Paige how to cha cha. Ballet, jazz, and contemporary
dance had superseded proper ballroom dance lessons when the girls
were growing up. “Do you blame me?”

She snickered. “Ah, okay. If that’s what you
want me to think, I’ll go with it.”

My amusement vanished. “What’s that supposed
to mean?”

“I have never seen a woman so in love with a
man.”

“Please. I only married him to fuck him. I’m
pretty sure you all got the memo.”

“Do you lie to yourself a lot or is this an
aberration?” No, I did
not
like this woman. “Look,” she
said, and turned to the refreshments table to write on a napkin, “I
don’t like you, but I like what you do for Mitch.” She offered the
napkin, her phone number on it. “Call me when you figure out you’re
in over your head. We can go wreak havoc on Manhattan and, while I
am bankrupting my husband at Manolo Blahnik, I can give you the
nitty gritty of your new culture.”

I snatched it out of her hand and crumpled
it up, but she only smirked and turned, waggling her fingers over
her shoulder. “Toodles.”

“Cassandra,” said that low voice in my ear,
tempering my anger and turning it to desire. I could wait no
longer. “New York’s a long way away.” I pressed backward against
him, too much white silk and beaded fringe between me and his cock
for me to tell anything.

But I knew.

“Not with you driving,” I said as I turned
in his arms.

His chest rumbled with a chuckle.

“I want to fuck you, Mitchell
Hollander.”

“Right back at you, Cassandra
Hollander.”

* * * * *

Languid and
Bittersweet

It wasn’t the worst sex I’d ever had, but it
came pretty close.

No surprise, really, given that Mitch’s
entire twenty-three-year sexual history consisted of one woman who
had been as ignorant as he when they set out on their journey
together. They’d probably fallen into some humdrum twice-a-month
routine comprised of missionary position and possibly, on a frisky
night, woman-on-top—before her disease had progressed far enough
that even that had to stop.

He’d been celibate for over fifteen
years.

It was just another example of a lifestyle I
would never have imagined existed and that millions of people led.
I couldn’t fathom why I was so attracted to the concept, to this
man, to his parishioners.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed as he lay alongside
me, his arm across my chest and his hand in my hair.

I couldn’t help being amused by that, enough
to shake me out of some pique. “Well,” I said, “your bite isn’t as
good as your bark, I’ll admit.”

He laughed and nuzzled my ear. “It’s been a
while.”

“Tell me something. Is this the way it was
with Mina?”

His body tensed, though if in anger I
couldn’t tell. It wasn’t like Mitch to get angry over an honest
question, but finally, he relaxed and said, “I don’t remember.”

The rest of my annoyance fled. He was so
different from anyone I’d ever met and the matter-of-fact delivery
tore at me somewhere inside my chest.

“How can I help you?” he whispered as his
hand caressed my breast, light, soft, like a feather. I shivered
because this—this I had never known, this caring and gentleness. “I
hear this rumor women have orgasms all the time,” he said dryly,
“but I don’t know if Mina ever did.”

“She probably didn’t or you’d remember. You
can tell.”

“Teach me.”

I began to smile. He sounded so unsure,
so...adolescent, and I realized that he still was, in terms of
sexuality once the bedroom door closed. I’d instructed young men
(always at their fathers’ request), but I’d never instructed a man
my own age who had a marriage under his belt with three children
and a grandchild to show for it.