Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (179 page)

The memory made Andrea smile.

She thought then of her first husband,
Bernard, and the way he compelled the younger partners in his law
firm to waltz with her at least once at every Christmas party.
Those were
parties
! Glittering fêtes at the Park Plaza or
the Royal York, either hotel more than competent at elegant little
canapés and conjuring the perfect festive mood.

Like the one tonight.

Andrea took her seat and thought of Nate.
Now, there was a man who had stolen the key to her heart and never
surrendered it again. He had been the only one who wouldn’t
encourage others to dance with her, a regular old bear when it came
to keeping Andrea by his side. She had loved him so much, she just
didn’t mind. On a night like this, he would have ordered champagne,
commandeered a table in the corner, and bent his attention on
making her laugh.

Yes, Nate had been a wonderful man.

Andrea blinked back her tears and smiled at
her dinner companions as they exchanged introductions. Directly
opposite her was a very handsome man of about her age, one who
Andrea had not seen about the ship as yet. His green eyes twinkled,
seeming to hint at a joke only he could discern. An equally
handsome wife sat at his side, turning her wedding band around and
around her finger as she leaned against her husband and whispered
anxiously in his ear.

A pair of elderly sisters from Paducah sat
beside them, a besotted young couple beside the sisters stirred
themselves long enough to confess that they had just been married
on the last island. A retired librarian named Ethel, whom Andrea
had already met and whose wry jokes she quite enjoyed, slid into
the seat beside Andrea with a smile.

“
Lovely, isn’t it?” Ethel
asked.

“
Wonderful,” Andrea agreed,
consciously masking her disappointment.

Because the Captain himself greeted them all
from behind his chair, his presence finishing the seating. Ethel
had already confided that the Captain was happily married, that his
wife would be joining him for the next circuit of the cruise.

Andrea stared at her salad plate and
recalled Lilith’s assertion that she would not immediately
recognize her soul mate, that he would seem unavailable. Well,
barring the possibility that Ethel was hiding her true sexual
identity, or that the Captain had a liking for women twice his age
and was prepared to risk his wife’s opinions on the matter, or that
the handsome wife would suddenly drown in her lobster bisque, it
didn’t appear that Andrea’s destined lover had troubled to
show.

Well, Ethel was good company.

Andrea turned to the friend she had already
made on this trip and - quite deliberately, very defiantly -
sparkled.

Andrea was in the act of declining another
waltz with a man who seemed to have a rare gift for stepping hard
on her toes, when a smooth British accent interjected.

“
Perhaps I might have the
honor of this dance?”

Andrea turned to find the man from her table
with the sparkling green eyes. “Nigel Farnsworth,” he reminded her,
with a slow smile. “I’ve made it my personal duty to dance with
every lovely lady from our table this evening. Would you indulge
me?”

Andrea’s gaze flicked back to the table.
“Your wife won’t mind?”

Nigel’s lips quirked. “She might if I had
one, but I don’t.”

Andrea frowned. “But you were sitting -
“

“
With my sister. Widowed a
year ago and moping ever since.” He glanced back to the table
himself and the twinkle faltered. “I was hoping this cruise might
cheer her a bit, but so far, no luck. She’s spent most of the
cruise sulking in the cabin and insisting I remain with her.” He
looked back to Andrea, his expression rueful. “I had no idea the
cabins would be quite so small.”

Andrea giggled despite herself. “You’ve
managed to escape.”

“
And only just.” Nigel
smiled, his eyes twinkled and Andrea’s heart skipped a beat. “One
must make the most of one’s opportunities. Shall we?”

“
Of course,” Andrea said
and took his hand. The band struck up a waltz and Nigel swung
Andrea out onto the floor with the grace of a man who had been
dancing from the cradle.

Andrea sighed with delight. “You can dance,”
she murmured.

Nigel chuckled. “Let me guess - your toes
thank me.”

Andrea smiled at him. “Every single one of
them is charmed.”

Not to mention a good part of the rest of
Andrea. He was a devastatingly good dancer, guiding her
effortlessly through the throng of inexperienced dancers, leaving
the perfect distance between them, moving so gracefully and so in
tune with Andrea that she felt as though they’d been dancing
together forever.

And he wore a very sexy cologne.

“
I must confess,” Nigel
murmured moments later ‘that I’ve been shamelessly eavesdropping on
your conversation with your friend.” His voice dropped low, his
accent making Andrea’s bones melt. “You must tell me where the most
intriguing woman on this ship has managed to hide for an entire
week.”

Andrea laughed at his compliment. “Not in my
cabin.”

“
Nor in mine, clearly.” The
corner of Nigel’s lips tweaked. “It seems I missed more than the
shuffleboard tournament.”

Andrea looked into the twinkle of his very
green eyes and couldn’t quit catch her breath.

Everything froze around her as she studied
Nigel’s smile and realized belatedly that everything was just as
Lilith had said. Andrea hadn’t guessed that Nigel was available,
although she had noticed him immediately. And he could dance, there
was no doubt about that. She liked the glint of humor in his eyes.
She liked how trim he was. She liked the stylish cut of his tux and
the tang of his cologne. She liked that he was worried about his
sister.

And she liked that he had finally put his
foot down.

Andrea stared up at Nigel and her heart
seemed to have stopped beating. It suddenly felt as if someone had
tied a great big ribbon around her heart and knotted it tight.

It felt as though, one more time, a man had
stolen the key to her heart while she wasn’t watching. There was a
glint of determination in those green eyes and Andrea knew with
complete certainty that Nigel wouldn’t surrender that key without a
fight.

She liked that just fine.

The music changed and Andrea arched a brow
at her partner. “Dare I hope that you can tango?” she asked, fully
certain of what the answer would be.

Nigel feigned an aristocratic scoff. “What
man of substance cannot?” Then he winked, flicked Andrea into a
perfect spin, and they were off.

They merengued and they waltzed and they
polkaed until Andrea was sure there were holes in the soles of her
shoes. They laughed and they talked and they didn’t even notice
that nearly everyone was wandering off to bed.

Because they danced some more.

When the band finally called it quits in the
wee hours of the morning, Andrea peeled off her shoes and Nigel
cast off his jacket. He snagged a bottle of champagne from the
maître d’ along with a pair of flutes and they laughed as they
escaped into the moonlight like naughty children. The bubbles were
delectable, the conversation was lively and his puns were
horrible.

When the sun painted the horizon pink, Nigel
and Andrea were still slow-dancing barefoot on the upper deck. The
tingle of champagne bubbles lingered on their tongues, and Nigel
hummed “The Blue Danube” into her ear. As she watched the last star
fade into the morning sky, Andrea knew there was nowhere else she
wanted to be.

And that was before Nigel kissed her.

*

Lilith leaned against the hall door to
listen.

Nothing.

She turned the key carefully and eased open
the door to the foyer, half expecting Sebastian to pounce on
her.

Still nothing.

She strained her ears and couldn’t hear a
thing.

“
Sebastian?” Lilith waited
and called again. She could feel the house breathing all around
her, hear distant sounds of children playing outside.

But no hint of her unwelcome guest. She
couldn’t even sense his presence, and she had before, as soon as
she stepped into the house.

Could Sebastian have left,
without
imbibing of her special brew?

That would be almost too good to be true.
Lilith picked up The Fool card from the floor and peered into the
living room. Relief surged through her at that room’s emptiness.
She ran upstairs, checking every corner, but already certain what
she would find.

He was gone.

For now. Lilith wasn’t about to believe that
he had abandoned her for good, not as easily as this.

And there was no telling when he would come
back. Lilith stepped into the living room and made to put the card
back in its place, chiding herself for being so unwelcoming to her
destined lover. Sebastian must have
some
good qualities.

It looked as though she was going to have
lots of time to find them. Lilith grimaced, then froze when she
noticed how many of the cards had turned over during her stay at
Mitch’s house.

The Death card was the last one she had seen
turned up, and much to Lilith’s relief, they had clearly moved
beyond that point. She pulled up a chair and stared at the cards,
hoping for a guiding light of some kind.

Temperance was the card after Death, the
woman on the card in the act of mixing water and wine, of combining
two vastly different elements to create something new. Temperance
didn’t always herald the creation of something good, Lilith knew.
There were many different issues to be balanced when this card
appeared, volatile elements to be combined, and the result could
tip either to wine or vinegar.

That made her think of the argument she and
Mitch had had this morning. There was more to that story, Lilith
guessed, but things certainly hadn’t fallen from their lips in any
sort of coherent manner. Hurt was like that - it tipped the scales
in favor of misunderstanding.

Lilith pursed her lips and eyed the next
card, not even interested in touching it. The Devil. She could make
a pretty good guess whose arrival that card heralded. And it was a
card that indicated physical temptation, an all too evident
reminder of how all of this had started so many years ago.

The Falling Tower was the following card and
Lilith wrinkled her nose at the sight of it. All of her
preconceptions certainly had come tumbling down this morning - a
bolt from the blue, just like the lightning bolt on the card, had
struck right at the foundations of everything Lilith believed. The
house of cards that was her conviction that she and Mitch belonged
together had tumbled, not to mention that their entire relationship
lay in ruins.

A more apt card to describe this day could
not have been found in the deck.

The Star was next, a card of destiny
fulfilled, of finding a guiding light, of hanging your hat on a
moonbeam and sliding into happiness. Lilith couldn’t figure out
what the heck that had to do with anything.

Was
that
what she was supposed to do
with Sebastian? Was his return that ray of moonlight? Although
Lilith might once have expected as much, Sebastian’s return to her
life - and Mitch’s departure from it - had left her feeling less
than enthused about the match. Eternal happiness seemed rather an
unlikely prospect, given what she had already learned about
Sebastian.

A thief and a womanizer. Maybe this was the
lesson of her life - to learn how to love anyone, or how to
discriminate between suitable loves.

Lilith half-wished she’d died and gone the
cockroach route to atone for her sins instead.

Finally, the Moon was faced up. It was a
portent of a crisis of faith, which was something Lilith could
really relate to right now. The Moon was a card that hinted at the
need to feel your way forward through the darkness, to find the
true path with insufficient light.

Well, it was true that Lilith didn’t know
what to do. She knew that you couldn’t fight destiny; she knew that
the right choice was to cleave her path to Sebastian’s.

But she didn’t like him. Not at all. And she
liked what he had done even less. She folded her arms across her
chest, sat back and stared at the cards. Lilith’s intuition -
solidly within the realm of the Moon, she realized suddenly - urged
her to reconcile with Mitch.

But the very thought of defying destiny made
Lilith dread the consequences. This wasn’t paltry stuff. She knew
the Fates couldn’t be challenged, for if they were, they took a
toll of their own invention.

The truth was that Lilith wouldn’t be afraid
of paying any price herself. She was pretty sure the Fates would
know that.

Which meant that Dame Fortune would take her
toll for Lilith’s crime in the one place that would hurt Lilith the
most. And Lilith knew where her vulnerability lay in all of this -
it lay where she had entrusted her heart.

Lilith feared for Mitch.

The simple fact was that she loved him,
regardless of what the cards or his eyes or even destiny had to say
about it all. She didn’t want to see him hurt, or his fortune turn
to the worst, or anything at all to happen to those darling
children.

No doubt about it - as much as Lilith would
have liked otherwise, indulging her own desire to be with Mitch
couldn’t lead anywhere good.

Lilith was just going to have to get over
it.

She couldn’t help it if that prospect was
less than inviting.

*

It was very early the following morning when
a faint sound awakened Lilith. She had fallen asleep on the sofa,
both waiting for and dreading the return of Sebastian. Lilith was
momentarily disoriented to find herself still in the living room.
She just had enough time to wonder what had awakened her, before
the answer landed square on top of her.