Gorgeous Grooms: Her Stand-In Groom / Her Wish-List Bridegroom / Ordinary Girl, Society Groom

They were in the rear of a sparsely crowded theater, but they could have been front and center at a sold-out performance of a Broadway play and he doubted it would have kept him from trailing a hand down the slim column of her neck and then following it with his lips. He stopped at her collarbone and the cloth that covered it, and prayed for some sanity to return. He’d never wanted a woman the way he wanted Catherine.

“Sorry. I got carried away.”

“I’ll say,” she whispered back.

But when he started to straighten she wound her arms around his neck. “Do you think you could get carried away again?”

His smile came slowly, despite his charging heart. “I’ll see what I can do.”

This time he was determined not to be deterred by clothing. He took Catherine’s sexy little sigh as consent. His fingers were just starting to dip beneath the fabric of the gown’s bodice when a beam of light all but blinded him. He kicked over the tub of popcorn in his haste to sit upright.

“Sir.” It came out as squawk, so the teenager wielding the flashlight cleared his throat and tried again. “Sir, um, ma’am, we don’t, um, you know, allow that kind of stuff in here. If you, like, keep it up, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

When he was gone Catherine succumbed to a fit of laughter, and Stephen couldn’t help but think that many of their acquaintances would have found it hard to reconcile this irrepressible and incredibly responsive woman with the overly regimented and cool image she often projected.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“But the movie’s not over. Don’t you want to find out how it ends?”

He kissed her hard and let her go. “Oh, yeah. I want to find out how it ends.”

They ran on the way back to his car, too.

On the way home they held hands, and it struck Stephen as absurd that he was essentially dating his own wife and wondering with all the hopeful anticipation of a teenager if the evening would end as well as he was imagining. He parked the Jag in the garage, but they didn’t get out immediately. Both seemed to know that once they went inside everything would change.

“We’re home,” Catherine said needlessly after the silence had dragged and the light on the automatic garage door opener had gone dim.

“Yes.” He opened the car door and the interior light popped on, haloing them in soft gold. “Shall we go inside?”

Catherine laid a hand on his arm. “Before we do, I need to know what’s going on between us.”

“I think it’s this.”

He leaned over and kissed her, and felt the jolt of that surprising attraction. His world had been careening and threatening to crash around him, but Catherine had saved him. And in the midst of chaos he’d found something special, something precious. He’d found…He rejected the thought before it was fully formed.

But it was she who ended the kiss.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “We have more right than most. We are married.”

“We’re not really married.” She straightened her clothing.

“Oh?” He arched an eyebrow. “I have a piece of paper that says otherwise.”

“You know what I mean, Stephen. This isn’t a love match.”

“No, but I like you. I respect you. I think it’s fairly obvious I’m incredibly attracted to you.”

“I settled for attraction once,” she whispered. “It’s not enough. I like and respect you as well. And that’s why I don’t want to complicate things between us. My God, aren’t they complicated enough?”

Much as he hated to admit it, she was right, but he wondered how long what was growing between them could be denied.

Once again he walked her to her bedroom door, leaving her there with Degas. The walk to his own room seemed as long and lonely as a walk to the gallows.

The next couple of weeks went by in a blur. Catherine didn’t need to pretend to keep herself busy. Fall was always a hectic time for charities as they geared up for the holiday season, and long before she’d exchanged vows with Stephen she had committed to attend various events and fund-raisers.

She’d figured her full schedule would allow her and Stephen to give one another a wide berth, perhaps put some of their awkwardness behind them. But, to her utter amazement, Stephen always insisted on coming with her. He was a perfect gentleman, a perfect escort, with his impeccable manners and gorgeous dark looks. And, even though things remained strained between them, he never let it show when they were out in public. He would pull her close to dance, touch her shoulders a bit longer than necessary when he removed her wrap, tuck her hand into the crook of his elbow as they entered a room, and all evening he would watch her with those sizzling, sexy eyes that held too many secrets for her comfort.

Was it all just for show? Catherine didn’t want to believe it was, but at home the byplay between them was limited to polite, if not awkward conversation. He’d told her that he liked and respected her. Was it possible that he could someday feel something more where she was concerned? For she feared that she was beginning to feel something much deeper for him.

She arrived home on Saturday, two grocery bags in tow, determined to try her hand at an Italian dish she’d seen in the gourmet cooking magazine to which she subscribed. When she opened the door from the garage, however, her eardrums were assaulted by Bob Seger’s gritty voice. Stephen was apparently already home, even though it was barely four o’clock and he usually worked until six, even at weekends.

She followed the music until she found him. He was in a back room that he’d had converted to a weight room. Assorted sizes of dumbbells and free weights lined the walls. Stephen reclined on the slim bench, stripped to the waist in a pair of nylon shorts and pumping some serious iron. He didn’t see her, so Catherine allowed herself a moment of pure ogling, and the hunger she felt had nothing to do with the fact she had skipped lunch.

So this was where he got the biceps she’d admired, not to mention the delts and pecs that did his tailored shirts proud. Oh, she would suffer some incredibly detailed fantasies in the future—and she did mean suffer—but it was worth it to be able to openly watch her handsome husband.

He stopped his reps and sat up, blotting the perspiration from his face with a towel he’d draped over the end of the bench. And then he saw her. He stood, switched off the blaring rock and faced her.

“Something I can help you with?”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” She motioned toward the bench. “Are you finished?”

“For now.”

“They say that working out is a good way to relieve tension,” she said, when he just continued to stare at her.

He stalked forward until he stood just in front of her, more than six feet of sweaty and seemingly angry male.

“I can think of better ways to relieve this kind of tension, Catherine.”

He stepped around her and then he was gone.

Catherine burned dinner, but it didn’t matter. Stephen had gone out shortly after their confrontation in the weight room. It was nearly midnight when Degas whined and she heard Stephen’s muffled footsteps on the stairs. Again, she wondered where he’d been and whom he’d been with.

Catherine stumbled into the kitchen early the next morning, her system in need of some serious caffeine before she tackled the job of cleaning up the mess she’d made the night before. She’d been in no mood to scrub pots and pans after her disastrous dinner.

To her surprise, Stephen was already seated in the nook, dressed in casual tan pants and a cotton navy crewneck, munching on a slice of toast.

“You’re up early today.”

“I’ve decided to take La Libertad out for one last sail before dry-docking her for the winter.”

“Hmm.” She glanced toward the window and the patch of blue visible through it. “Should be a good day for it,”

Sipping his coffee, he nodded. “If the weather forecast is to be believed it’s going to be sunny and unseasonably warm.”

She’d hoped for an invitation, but wasn’t terribly surprised when one didn’t come. If the man found it difficult to spend time with her in a six-thousand-square-foot house, surely a thirty-eight-foot sailboat would be sheer torture.