anticipation.
“Don’t have a tendency to strip women naked with my eyes.” His smile tilted, and his gaze swept over Stephanie again, sending a flood of color to her cheeks. “Not indiscriminately, that is. I only focus that sort of attention on beautiful women who look to be in desperate need of—”
Music blared from the bandstand.
Forks clattered to the table.
The Crowders and the Blums pushed back their chairs and rushed to the dance floor.
Stephanie sat very still, though she could damn near feel the blood churning in her veins. She thought about slugging the man beside her, but that wouldn’t be fair to Annie, or Dawn, or Nicholas. Besides, ladies didn’t do such things. The woman—the girl—she’d once been might have. Would have. Steffie Horton would have balled up her fist and shot a right cross straight to David Chambers’s square jaw.
A tremor went through her. Steffie Horton would have done exactly what Stephanie Willingham had been doing all afternoon. She’d have been rude, and impolite; she’d have spoken her mind without thinking. She might even have reacted to the heat in a stranger’s eyes. It was in her genes, after all. Avery had been wrong about a lot of things, but not about that.
What was wrong with her today? She was behaving badly. And even when David Chambers had held out an olive branch—a ragged one, it was true, but an olive branch nevertheless—she’d slapped it out of his hand.
Stephanie took a deep breath and turned toward him.
“Mr. Chambers...”
Her words caught in her throat. He was smiling... no, he wasn’t. Not really. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a way that reminded her of a mastiff Avery had owned when she’d first married him and gone to live in the house on Oak Hill—when she’d still been young enough, stupid enough, to have thought their arrangement could work.
“Oh,” she’d said, “just look at your dog, Avery. He’s smiling at me.”
And Avery had guffawed and slapped his knees and said that he’d truly picked himself a backwoods ninny if she thought that was a smile, and maybe she’d like to offer the mastiff her hand and see if it came back with all the fingers still attached.
“Yes?” David said politely. “Did you have something you wanted to say?”
“No,” Stephanie said just as politely. “Not a thing.”
He nodded. “That’s fine. I think I’ve just about run out of conversation, myself—except to point out that, with any luck at all, we’ll never have the misfortune to meet again.” His wolfish smile flickered. “Have I left anything out?”
“Not a thing. In fact, I doubt I could have put it better.”
David unfolded his napkin and placed it in his lap. Stephanie did the same.
“Bon appétit, Mrs. Willingham,” David said softly.
“Bon appétit, Mr. Chambers,” Stephanie replied, and she picked up her fork, speared a shrimp, and began to eat.
More toasts were drunk, the wedding cake sliced. The Blums and the Crowders continued to make themselves scarce, appearing only from time to time and then just long enough to gobble down a few mouthfuls of each course as it was served.
“We just adore dancing,” Bobbi Blum gushed between the Boeuf aux Champignons and the salad.
“Same with us,” Hayden Crowder said as his wife sat smiling uneasily beside him. “Why, we never sit very long at these shindigs, no matter who’s seated at our table, do we, honey?”
“Never,” Honoria said, and jumped to her feet. “We never stay seated, no matter what.”
David watched with a thin smile as both couples hurried off. Then he pushed his plate aside, tilted back his chair and folded his arms over his chest.
“Well,” he said after a minute, “this is one wedding they’re never going to forget.”
Stephanie glanced up. “No. I suppose not.”
Across the dance floor, the Blums and the Crowders were standing in a little huddle, looking back at table seven as if they expected either the police or the men with straitjackets to show up at any minute.
David couldn’t help it. He laughed.
Stephanie’s lips twitched. “It isn’t funny,” she said stiffly—and then she laughed, too.
He looked at her. Her cheeks had taken on a delicate flush and there was a glint in her dark eyes that hadn’t been there before. She looked young, and beautiful, and suddenly he knew that he’d been kidding himself when he’d told himself she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in this room, because she was. She was more than beautiful, she was indescribably gorgeous.
And he’d been sniping at her for the past hour. Damn, he had to be crazy! Everything he’d done had been crazy, since he’d laid eyes on her. He should have sat down beside her, introduced himself, asked her if he could see her again. He should have told her she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met....
He could still do all of that. It wasn’t too late and, heaven knew, it was the best idea he’d had in the past couple of hours.
“Mrs. Willingham. Stephanie. About what happened earlier...” Her face lifted toward his. David smiled. “In the church, I mean.”
“Nothing happened,” she said quickly.
“Come on, let’s not play games. Something happened, all right. I looked at you, you looked at me...”
“Mr. Chambers—”
“David.”
“Mr. Chambers.” Stephanie folded her hands in her lap. “Look, I know this isn’t your fault. I mean, I know Annie probably set this up.”
“Probably?” He laughed. “Of course, she set this up. You’re unattached. You are unattached, aren’t you?”
Stephanie nodded. “I’m a widow.”
“Yeah, well, I’m divorced. So Annie took a look at her guest list, saw my name, saw yours, and that was it. It’s in her blood, though I can’t imagine why, considering her own record.”
Color flooded Stephanie’s face. “I assure you, Mr. Chambers, I have absolutely no wish to marry, ever again.”
“Whoa!” David held up his hands. “One step at a time, Mrs. Willingham—and before anybody takes that step, let me assure you that I’d sooner waltz Mrs. Blum around the dance floor for the next three weeks than ever do something as stupid as tying another knot. Not in this lifetime. Or any other, for that matter.”
Stephanie tried not to smile. “There’s nothing wrong with Mrs. Blum.”
“She dances on her husband’s feet,” David said, “and she outweighs the both of us.” Stephanie laughed. His smile tilted, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. “You have a nice laugh, Stephanie.”
“Mr. Chambers...”
“David. Surely we’ve insulted each other enough to be on a first-name basis.”
“David, maybe we did get off on the wrong foot, but—”
“So did Mrs. Blum.”
She smiled again, and his heart lifted. She really did have a nice smile.
“Let’s just forget it, shall we?”
“I’d like that, very much—especially since it was all my fault.”
“That’s kind of you, David, but, well, I was to blame, too. I—I saw the way you were looking at me in the church, you know, when you went to shut the doors, and—and I thought...” She took a deep breath.