Trust Me

  Stark ignored the comment. “Her father and I got along well. Stark Security Systems did a job for his company last fall. That was how I met Pamela.”

  “I see.” Desdemona knew that Stark's extremely successful computer security consulting firm was rapidly becoming the premier company of its type in the region.

  Stark Security Systems advised many of the largest Northwest businesses on matters ranging from computer security issues to corporate espionage. Word had it that Stark, who had started with nothing three years ago, was now, at the age of thirty-four, as wealthy as many of his clients.

  “I had every reason to assume that Pamela wasn't a silly, starry-eyed romantic. She was well educated. She came across as calm and rational.” Stark drained the last of the brandy in a single swallow. His green eyes narrowed dangerously. “I'm beginning to believe that I was deliberately misled.”

  “I'm sure it was all a terrible misunderstanding.”

  “No, she misled me, all right. Made me think she was a reasonable, levelheaded female. She never said a word when we discussed the prenuptial agreement in my lawyer's office.”

  “Maybe it took her a while to get over the shock.”

  “What shock?” Stark glowered. “She knew all along that I planned to have a contract. Only reasonable thing to do under the circumstances.”

  “Sure. Right. Only reasonable thing.” Desdemona eyed the empty glass that was positioned near Stark's big hand. Perhaps a little more brandy would get him past the surly stage.

  “You're a businesswoman, Miss Wainwright. You understand why I wanted a prenuptial agreement, don't you?”

  “To be perfectly honest, I haven't given the subject of prenuptial agreements a lot of thought.”

  “Never been married?”

  “No. Now, I'll be able to donate some of the food to a homeless shelter, and my staff will eat some of the rest, but—”

  “Neither have I. I didn't think I was asking for too much.”

  Desdemona got to her feet, seized the brandy bottle sitting on the corner of the desk, and leaned over to refill Stark's glass.

  “Thanks,” he muttered.

  “You're welcome.” Desdemona moved a pen a smidgen closer to his hand before she sat down. “I suppose prenuptial agreements do make sense. Sort of like having a catering contract for a wedding reception.”

  “Exactly.” He looked morosely pleased by her perceptive response. “A business contract.”

  “Speaking of business contracts, Mr. Stark—”

  “Logical, reasonable things, contracts. Lord knows, wedding vows don't amount to much these days. But a business agreement, now, that's something you can hold in your hand.” Stark made a broad fist. “Something you can see. A business agreement has substance. It has teeth. A business agreement is binding.”

  “It certainly is. You'll notice that the business agreement in front of you was signed and dated by Miss Bedford, who made it very clear that you were going to cover the expenses for the reception.”

  Stark looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The expenses for the reception, Mr. Stark. The total is there at the bottom of the invoice. If you would just take a moment to make out the check, I'll be on my way. I'm sure you'd rather be alone at this unhappy time.”

  Stark scowled at the invoice. “What is this? Six thousand dollars? For a wedding reception that got canceled?”

  “You only owe six thousand because I've already deducted the deposit that was paid at the time the contract was signed and the second payment which was made last month when the supplies were ordered.”

  “I don't remember giving you two previous payments.”

  “Miss Bedford said you gave instructions for her to collect whatever she needed from your accounting department. Someone at Stark Security Systems cut the first two checks. I've already cashed them.”

  “Damn. Things are out of control here. Give me one good reason why I should pay you another six grand.”

  It was clear to Desdemona that she finally had his full attention. The light of battle glinted in his eyes. It did not bode well.

  “Because I've got a business contract that says you owe me another six thousand dollars,” she said bluntly. “Look, Mr. Stark, I'm sincerely sorry about what happened this afternoon. I know what a traumatic event this must have been for you.”

  “Do you?”

  “I can certainly imagine how upsetting it would be to be left at the altar.”

  “You get used to it.”

  She stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said you get used to it.” Stark pulled the invoice closer and studied it with a gimlet gaze. “Second time it's happened to me. I'm a pro at being left at the altar.”

  Desdemona was horrified. “You've been through this before?”

  “Two years ago. Her name was Lindsay Mills. Married a doctor instead.”

  “Good grief,” Desdemona said faintly. “I hadn't realized.”

  “It's not something I bring up a lot in the course of casual conversation.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “She left a note, too. It said that I was emotionally frozen and obsessively fixated on the subject of trust and loyalty.” Stark's teeth appeared briefly in a humorless smile. “She had a degree in psychology.”

  Desdemona shivered. Stark's eyes were colder than the walk-in freezer in the Right Touch kitchen. “You asked her to sign a prenuptial agreement, too?”

  “Of course. She agreed to sign it on our wedding day. But she failed to show up at the altar. Sent a damned note instead. Said she had to marry for love.”

  “I see.”

  “A mutual acquaintance told me that she filed for divorce from the doctor six months ago.”

  “I see.”

  “Apparently she fell for a tennis pro.”

  “It happens.”

  “So much for a marriage based on love,” Stark said with grim satisfaction.

  “I don't think one should generalize,” Desdemona said cautiously.

  “The way I figure it, I got lucky,” Stark said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “At least I didn't get stuck with the tab for the reception that time.” Stark picked up a pen and started going item by item down the invoice.

  Desdemona breathed a small sigh of relief. He was at last examining the bill. That was at least one step closer to getting a check out of him.

  Privately she thought she understood exactly why Pamela Bedford and Lindsay Mills had lost their nerve on the eve of marriage. It would take courage to marry Sam Stark.

  His name suited him all too well. There was a hard, elemental quality about him that would give any intelligent woman pause.

  The medieval knight image applied to his features as well as his build. His hair was nearly black, overlong, and brushed straight back from his high forehead. The broad, flat planes of his face and jaw looked as though they had been fashioned to wear a steel helm. His brilliant green eyes glowed with the power of very old gemstones. A prowling, predatory intelligence burned in those eyes.

  All in all, there was a stern, unyielding, utterly relentless quality about Sam Stark. It was the sort of quality one might have valued in a knight a few hundred years earlier but that was unexpected and deeply disturbing in a modern-day male.

  Desdemona told herself that she was profoundly grateful to know that as soon as she got her check from him, Stark would cease to be her problem.

  On the other hand, she had never met anyone who had been abandoned at the altar, let alone abandoned twice.

  “Two pounds of tapenade?” Stark glared at Desdemona. “What the hell is tapenade?”

  “Basically it's an olive paste. You spread it on crackers.”

  “It costs a fortune. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to just serve a couple of bowls of olives?”

  “Probably, but Miss Bedford wanted tapenade.”

  “And what abou
t these cheese breadsticks? Who needs four hundred breadsticks?”

  “Two hundred people were invited to the reception, Mr. Stark. Miss Bedford wanted to be able to serve two breadsticks apiece.”

  Stark continued down the list. “Stuffed mushroom caps? I don't even like stuffed mushroom caps.”

  “Apparently Miss Bedford was fond of them.”

  “More fond of them than she was of me, obviously. What are these swans at fifty bucks each? Nobody eats swans these days.”

  “They aren't real swans. They're ice sculptures. Rafael, one of my employees, did a beautiful job on them.”

  Stark glanced toward the window. “I'm paying fifty bucks apiece for those blocks of ice that are melting away in my garden?”

  “Think of them as works of art, Mr. Stark. Rafael definitely considers himself an artist.”

  “They're made out of ice. I'm paying a total of one hundred and fifty dollars to water my garden with fancy ice sculptures?”

  “I realize this is very difficult for you, Mr. Stark. I'll be glad to go over each item on the bill, but I can assure you that all the charges are quite reasonable.”

  “Your idea of reasonable and mine are two different things, Miss Wainwright.” Stark went back to the invoice. “About this herbed goat cheese.”

  “Very popular these days.”

  “I don't see how it could be, at this price.”

  “It's very special goat cheese. Made by a local firm.”

  “What do they do? Raise the goats in their own private, waterfront condominiums?”

  Desdemona opened her mouth to respond with a crack about the goats being worth it, but at the last instant she changed her mind. It dawned on her that Stark was using the line-by-line argument over the invoice as a means of venting some of the rage and pain he must surely be feeling.

  She glanced at his very large fist, which was fiercely clamped around a slender gold pen. The muscles in his forearm were bunched and taut.

  “I know the goat cheese is a little steep,” she said gently. “But it's excellent, and it keeps well. Shall I leave it behind for you to eat?”

  “Do that. I'll have it for dinner tonight. Leave some crackers and a couple of bottles of the champagne, too.”

  Desdemona frowned. “Look, I know this is none of my business, but are you going to be all right here on your own this evening?”

  He glanced up swiftly, his gaze shuttered. “Don't worry, I'm not going to do something stupid like overdose on goat cheese and champagne.”

  “You've been through an emotionally exhausting experience. It's not always a good idea to be alone after that kind of thing. Do you have someone who can stay with you? A family member, perhaps?”

  “I don't have any family here in Seattle.”

  Desdemona was startled. “None of them came out for the wedding?”

  “I'm not close to my family, Miss Wainwright.”

  “Oh.” She was unsure how to respond to that. The concept of being bereft of family sent a chill through her. Since she had become a member of the extended Wainwright clan at the age of five, family had been everything to Desdemona. The time before her mother had married Benedick Wainwright was a shadowed realm that Desdemona preferred not to revisit. “Well, is there a friend you could call?”

  “I suppose I could send out for one of those inflatable, life-sized, anatomically correct dolls that are sold in adult entertainment stores,” Stark said. “But with my luck, she'd probably deflate before I figured out the operating instructions.”

  Desdemona smiled faintly. “I'm glad your sense of humor is still intact. It's a good sign.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Definitely.” Desdemona leaned forward and folded her arms on the desk. “Look, I'm serious here. I really don't think you ought to be alone tonight.”

  He gazed at her with unreadable eyes. “What would you suggest I do? I'm not exactly in the mood to throw a party.”

  Desdemona gave into impulse. “Tell you what. Let's finish going over this invoice. Then you can come back to the Right Touch kitchen with me and have dinner with my staff. Afterward you can go to the theater with us.”

  “Theater?”

  “The Limelight down in Pioneer Square. It's a little fringe playhouse located underneath the viaduct. Know it?”

  “No. I rarely go to the theater.”

  Desdemona had learned early in life that the world was divided into two groups, those who loved the theater and barbarians. She seldom socialized with the latter, but today for some reason she was inspired to make an exception.

  “The Limelight is very small,” Desdemona said. “It does a lot of experimental contemporary stuff. My cousin Juliet has a part in the current production.”

  Stark looked dubious. “Is it going to be one of those weird plays where there's no plot or scenery and the actors come on stage naked and throw things at the audience?”

  Desdemona smiled blandly. “I see you're familiar with experimental theater.”

  “I've heard about stuff like that. I don't think it's the kind of thing I'd enjoy.”

  “Look at the positive side. To a man who is going to spend his wedding night alone, I would think that a live actress running around in the buff on stage would be a lot more interesting than an inflatable, anatomically correct doll.”

  Stark gave her a thoughtful look. “Point taken.”

  2

  It stunk. The audience hated it.” Juliet Wainwright, clad in a skintight black leotard and a pair of jeans, collapsed into the booth next to Stark. “We're doomed.”

  Stark wrapped one hand around his small espresso cup and moved it out of range of Juliet's flying hair. Warily, he surveyed the newest Wainwright arrival. She looked a lot like the other members of Desdemona's seemingly endless family whom Stark had met this evening.

  There was a distinctly feline quality to most of the Wain-wrights. Tall, sleek, and graceful, they had sharp, striking faces, amber eyes, and tawny brown hair. As a group they were a handsome lot. Every move was poised, dramatic, or over-the-top.

  Desdemona appeared to be the sole exception, so far as Stark could discern. Technically speaking, he had to admit that she was not as physically arresting as the rest of the family. She was a good deal shorter than the others, for starters. And she moved with energy and enthusiasm rather than languid, world-weary grace.

  There was also something softer about her, he thought. Softer and infinitely more appealing. She had a full, gentle mouth, huge turquoise eyes, and a wild, frothy halo of unabashedly red curls. Surrounded by her more dramatic relatives, she stood out like a marmalade-colored tabby cat that had mistakenly been reared in a family of leopards.

  It was late, and the cozy coffee house, aptly named Emote Espresso, was filled with Wainwrights and other theater people. Most of them were refugees from the shabby little Limelight, which was a block away. Members of the cast and crew mingled with the handful of stalwart theatergoers who had bravely endured the evening's performance all the way through the final act.

  “They didn't hate it, Juliet,” Desdemona said soothingly. “They just didn't get it.”

  “They despised it.” Juliet closed her eyes in evident anguish. “You'd have thought the audience was sitting in a morgue watching an autopsy. The reviews will be lousy, and the show is going to close in a week. I can feel it.”

  Stark privately agreed with her, so he sipped his espresso and offered no comment. None was needed in any event. The Wainwrights were perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation without any help from him. In fact, it would have been hard to get a word in edgewise.

  “Who cares about reviews?” Kirsten Wainwright demanded from the other side of the table. “This is fringe theater. Experimental stuff. Mainstream reviewers never get it. If they did get it, it wouldn't be fringe theater.”

  At least he wasn't the only one who hadn't understood Fly on a Wall, Stark thought. He looked at Kirsten. She was not a Wainwright by blood, but with her strikin
g features, golden brown hair, and brown eyes, she fit right in with the rest of the pack. She had been introduced as the wife of Desdemona's cousin, Henry, who was also at the table.

  The booth was crowded, but no one seemed to mind. With the exception of Desdemona, the Wainwrights lolled about in various arty poses, vying for space and attention. Desdemona sat in the center opposite Stark, squashed between Henry and Kirsten, who towered over her.

  “Bad reviews mean people don't buy tickets and the show closes,” Juliet wailed. “I'll be out of work again.” She cradled her head in her arms. Her mane of hair flowed over her shoulders and cascaded down onto the table.

  “So the show had a few problems. It was opening night, what do you expect?” Desdemona reached across the table to pat her cousin's heaving shoulders. “It wasn't your fault that the audience didn't get the significance of the flyswatter in the background.”

  “Hey, Juliet, cheer up.” Henry Wainwright, handsome and tawny-haired like the others, gave the despairing actress a sympathetic look. “You couldn't help it if the theater was filled with a bunch of plebeians from the Eastside tonight.”

  “Henry's right,” Kirsten said. “Everyone knows those folks from the 'burbs only want dinner theater stuff. It was the wrong audience.”

  Henry scowled. “It sure as hell was. What were they doing there, anyway? They should have been down at the Fifth Avenue Theater tapping their toes to the new road show production of South Pacific.”

  “The Limelight's in trouble financially,” Juliet confided sadly.

  “So what else is new?” Henry asked. “The Limelight has been in trouble since the day it opened. Most small theaters are.”

  “So Ian came up with what he thought was an incredibly clever way to fill the seats tonight,” Juliet said. “He put together a package deal for Eastsiders. You know, dinner and a show in downtown Seattle. Transportation included.”

  Desdemona raised her brows. “Transportation?”

  Juliet made a face. “He chartered a van to bring 'em across the lake.”

  Henry whistled softly. “Ian strikes again. A whole bus full of Eastsiders brought downtown to see fringe theater. It boggles the mind. He must have been desperate.”