The Groom's Revenge

“At cost.”

“Well, of course. By then it’ll be a used computer. Hardly worth my paying full price.”

The sound of his own laughter surprised him. For a moment he’d forgotten that justice was within his grasp. He had to stay focused on his goal, not be tempted into forgetting his purpose. After all, justice would be hers, too.

“Where can I hook up the computer?” he asked her.

Mollie looked around her work space.

“While you’re learning,” he said, “your living quarters would probably be best. You can practice without interruptions.”

“That would be upstairs. I’ll show you the way.” She locked the cash register, then moved to the stack of boxes.

“You’re going to let me into your apartment? Just like that? When you hardly know me?”

She grabbed the top two boxes, leaving the heavy one foi him. “What could I have that you could possibly want?”

As she walked away shaking her head, he studied her long, shiny hair and slender back, her softly swaying skirt, envisioning the lithe body beneath it. A drift of something in the air had him breathing deeply. A rainbow would smell like that. Frowning at the thought, he followed her trail through the back of the shop and up the stairs to a small, neat apartment with a distinctly floral motif. Femininity personified.

After Mollie made a quick return to the shop, Gray surveyed the apartment. The first door led to a bedroom. Twin beds. She must have shared the room with her mother, a situation not conducive to romantic liaisons, for either of them.

One wall was dotted with framed photographs of Mollie and her mother through the years. He studied each picture, noting the same wide, smiling mouths and reed-slender bodies, the deep-copper-colored hair. The togetherness.

He wandered out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, with its claw-foot tub and garden-print shower curtain. The room smelled of woman, something flowery and fragrant and... comforting.

Comfort. Something he neither wanted nor needed. Be a man. His stepfather’s words echoed in Gray’s mind, as they had since the day his mother had married James McGuire when Gray was eight. No allowance for weakness. No quarter given. Go after what you want, no matter the cost. Winner takes all. Losers... die.

James McGuire was a winner. Stuart Fortune was a winner Gray’s father...

Go after what you want, Gray reminded himself as he returned to the living room to unbox the computer components. Along a wall, desk space had been created by laying a Formica countertop on two-drawer file cabinets, making room for two people to work simultaneously. He chose the side closest to the phone jack, wondering how much of a fuss Mollie was going to put up at having a second line installed. For now he would set up the modem on her existing line. He hooked up the hard drive, the monitor, the printer. He loaded software, including an Internet server.

All the while he eyed a cigar box bearing Mollie’s name in bright purple paint over a crudely designed birthday cake and candles made of sequins and glitter. It looked like something a very young child might have done as a school project.

Gray glanced toward the open front door. Mollie’s voice drifted up the stairwell from the shop. With just his forefinger he lifted the lid of the decorated cigar box. He leaned closer, seeing birthday-cake candles inside. A piece of paper was taped to each—

“Gray!”

Plunk. The lip dropped into place. He put his fingers on the keyboard at the sound of Mollie hurrying up the stairs.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly as she came up beside him. “Wow. You’ve got it all set up and going.”

“Just testing it out.”

“It looks confusing.”

“Pretty soon it won’t. Did you want something?”

She curved her hand over his shoulder and bent low to look at the screen with him. Her fragrance—heather?—dropped a net over him so that he couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Like some damned teenager, he thought, amazed. Heat flashed through him.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“E-mail from my office.”

“You can get mail on my computer?”

“I set you up with the same server.” He turned his head fractionally toward her. “Did you come up here for something in particular?”

She moved a little closer to him. “You seem a little warm.”

Warm, hell. His blood had begun to simmer.

She straightened. “Do you need the air-conditioning turned up?”

“I’m comfortable, Mollie. Is that all?” Move away.

“Did you want something to eat or drink? Tony’s here. He can get something from the coffeehouse. There’s not much in my refrigerator.”

He’d noticed. A pitcher of iced tea, two peaches, milk, several cartons of yogurt. A couple of unidentifiable items in plastic containers.

And a red-velvet, heart-shaped box of candy, half-full.

He glanced at his watch. “I’m fine for now. Why don’t I just order some takeout to be delivered around the time the shop closes? We can eat together, then get to work showing you how this computer is going to simplify your life.”

“Okay. If it’s pizza, I don’t like mushrooms.”

“Any other likes or dislikes?” He saw her glance settle on the cigar box.

Her cheeks flushed. Casually she swept up the box, tucking it close to her chest. “Not really,” she said.

“Are you adventurous?”

Mollie shrugged, letting him choose his own answer from the vague gesture. Adventurous? Hardly. More like “tiresomely sensible.” Except that less than a minute ago she’d almost pressed her lips to his. She wondered what he would have thought of that, considering his claim that everything was to be strictly business between them.

“Any particular wine you like?” he asked.

She shook her head. She’d had maybe five glasses of wine in her whole life. The box she clutched seemed to weigh a ton. Had he looked inside? Were her secrets no longer secrets? She must have been really nervous not to notice the box sitting out when she’d first brought him upstairs. She’d gotten used to it being there over the past several months, since her last birthday—the day she’d stopped believing in making wishes. She’d been working up the nerve to throw the box into the trash.

“I need to get back to work,” she said, aware of his watchful silence.

She hurried into the bedroom and shoved the box into a drawer, sliding it under her lingerie, a fancy name for her plain, practical bras and panties. But then, she was a practical person.

Mollie mumbled goodbye as she hurried through the living room and down the stairs, fighting images of Gray seeing just now practical she was. She knew there wasn’t a chance in leaven that he would be interested m someone like her, someone so unsophisticated And computer illiterate—a major strike against her, undoubtedly.

Don’t mix business and pleasure. How many tunes had she heard that? And if she took a chance on letting things become personal between them, then he rejected her, would she lose not only the job, but her dreams? For the past month she’d spun fantasies about him without any fuel other than magazine and newspaper stories and photos.

She needed him to fill up the emptiness. She also wanted to know the real man beneath those glossy pages.

There had to be some reason why she’d chosen him as her obsession when she’d never even had the slightest crush on anyone before, not even a movie star or singer. Gray was a businessman. A genius. An international icon—