A Kiss in the Dark Read online

  “We’re here,” she announced, paying the taxi. She took his arm, coaxing him inside the expensive department store—and realizing she was enjoying holding on to him just a little too much. They got their share of curious stares from the shoppers they passed. A few women’s expressions had been frankly envious.

  Brittany had dreamed of being this close to Ethan for so long, and now that she was, she found it addictive. She wanted to savor the scent of his after-shave on his lean jaw, hold on to the warmth of his nearness. Selfishly, she thought how wonderful it would be to have Ethan dependent upon her: not only to have him want her taking his arm, but to need it.

  Wants went away, needs did not.

  And then she banished the thought, ashamed. She should want Ethan on her terms, not by default. She should want the best for him. And she did, which was why they were heading to the lingerie department. Well, it was one reason.

  “Why is it good I didn’t buy a bikini?” she blurted out as the salesgirl approaching them was diverted by another customer needing assistance. It wasn’t a question she’d meant to ask, but sometimes her curiosity got the better of her, and a question just popped out.

  “Because you’re a nice girl. Nice girls don’t wear bikinis.”

  “You mean like nice guys don’t wear sunglasses at night?”

  “Can I help you?” the salesgirl asked.

  “No, we’re just looking,” Brittany answered.

  “You may be looking,” Ethan muttered under his breath.

  Brittany didn’t give in to the pang of pity she felt. She brought an ivory camisole to Ethan’s hand. “Okay, identify this, if you can.”

  “Are you sure I can’t get arrested for fondling the merchandise?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “There isn’t anyone watching me, is there? You wouldn’t be having fun at a blind man’s expense, now, would you?”

  “Get a life, Ethan. No one is paying the least bit of attention, hard as that may be for you to believe.”

  “Why don’t I trust you?”

  “Okay, so the sunglasses do draw the occasional curious stare. But otherwise … nada.”

  Ethan drew the filmy garment through his hands. “It feels like a camisole to me.”

  “Two points, but what is it made of? What kind of material? Can you tell me that?” she asked, feeling sexy and daring.

  He rubbed the fabric between his long fingers, seemingly lost for a moment. “That’s easy. It’s silk,” he said, refocusing.

  “Lucky guess. Okay, five points total.”

  “Try me again.”

  “That isn’t necessary, you’ve proved you know your lingerie.” Brittany began to think that coaxing Ethan into the lingerie department had not been one of her better ideas. Coaxing Ethan out of it was going to be the more difficult feat.

  Ignoring her, Ethan bore out her suspicion and started his mischief. Fumbling around, he plucked a lacy bra from the acrylic display near him. While his choice of lingerie had been random, his words were decidedly not.

  “I’d identify this as a 36B…. Am I right?” Ethan asked, dangling it from his finger.

  “Give me that,” Brittany demanded, snatching it from him, and turning to put it back in place.

  “And this feels like lace….”

  Brittany wheeled to see him wearing a pair of black lace bikini panties—on his head.

  “Ethan!”

  “What? They’re not lace?” he mocked, humor covering his pain.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she swore, tugging the panties off his head, tossing them back on the display shelf he’d plucked them from, and determinedly steering him out of the lingerie department.

  “How many points do I get?” he asked innocently.

  “Ten.”

  “That makes twenty, what do I win?”

  “Wrong. That makes zero. I deducted ten points for that stunt.”

  “You’re not any fun, you know that?”

  “Oh, so it’s fun you want all of a sudden, is it?” Brittany said, hustling him out of Saks before he could get into any more mischief. “Tell me, what would make you happy this evening—that is, besides wearing lace panties on your head?”

  Ethan was quiet for a moment. “There is one thing I’ve been thinking I would like to do.”

  “Okay, I’m game—I think.”

  “I’d really like to see a play.”

  His request caught her by surprise. Did his commitment to the arts run deeper than the financial investment she’d presumed? Was there more to Ethan than his playboy image would imply?

  “Are you sure?” Brittany worried that he might be heading for emotional pain; that he might not be prepared to hear rather than see a play.

  “No, I’m not sure, but… Let’s try it, okay?”

  “Okay, what did you have in mind? Something off-Broadway, perhaps?”

  “I think I’d like to see The Will Rogers Follies at the Palace. We should be able to catch some of it, anyway, if we hurry.”

  “We’ll never get in to see that,” Brittany said, relieved. Going to a play was something Ethan ought to give more thought to; it wasn’t something he should do on impulse.

  “Sure we will, Brittany. I back Broadway plays. They always have room for a backer. Come on, it’s your turn to get the taxi.”

  Ethan proved to be right. They got seats.

  Brittany hadn’t seen the play before. It was Ethan’s second time.

  She imagined it must hurt him terribly not to see the sight of the Tony Award-winning spectacle; the rope twirler, the dog act, and the glitzy costumes of the Ziegfield girls.

  They held hands and Brittany whispered in his ear, telling him what was happening onstage.

  When the musical was over, and they ebbed out of the theater on Broadway and Forty-seventh Street, Ethan was as revved up as the rest of the audience. Maybe more so.

  He put his hand on Brittany’s as she clung to his arm, guiding him. It felt very much like a date. It was so easy to fall into believing they were a couple.

  Ethan held on to her as they waited for the crowd to thin in front of the theater. “This has been—” he sighed “—an evening. Thanks, Brittany.”

  “But I didn’t do anything,” she insisted, thrilling to the praise nonetheless.

  “Oh, yes, you did. You’ve been putting up with my awful, dark moods—and I’m not saying there won’t be more of them. But tonight—tonight you gave me hope, Brittany. You’ve been a great pal.”

  ETHAN LAY ON THE SOFA with an ice pack on his ankle. His high spirits from earlier in the evening were dashed. He had been kidding himself that he could function as well blind as sighted. People responded differently to you when you were handicapped.

  Encouraged, he’d gone out after Brittany had brought him home—just out for coffee to celebrate the idea that he could shift his role from athlete to patron of the arts.

  In the coffee shop he’d run into friends who hadn’t bothered to hide their shock that he was out alone without someone to help him, or their pity that he wasn’t the man he’d once been.

  And then, on his way from the taxi to the brownstone, he’d slipped on the steps and badly twisted his ankle.

  His dreams of functioning as a whole man were dashed. They were as foolish as his dreams that his parents would want him home to celebrate the holidays when he’d been away at boarding school. Each time he’d remained one of the handful of boys who stayed behind for the holidays, his heart had hardened.

  He swore at Brittany Astor for chipping away at his defenses enough to give him false hope. He wouldn’t be so foolish again. How could he have let that woman wile her way into his life? Couldn’t she see he was happy as he was?

  UNABLE TO SLEEP, Brittany had taken one of the slush pile manuscripts to bed with her to read. A few minutes into it, she tossed it aside. It was unfair to the writer to read her work when she herself was in such a major funk.
r />   She was angry at herself, blaming herself.

  Ethan would never love her because she wasn’t perfect.

  And he wouldn’t even speak to her again, if he knew what she’d done to him on his wedding day.

  The phone rang, jolting her out of her ruminations over her night on the town with Ethan.

  “Francesca, you’re going to give me insomnia,” she complained when she heard her sister’s animated voice on the line. “Not to mention that if you don’t stop making these transatlantic calls, you’re going to wind up in telephone prison.”

  “Gosh, Britt, you sound like Daddy. Remember when we were teenagers, and he used to make the same dire predictions?”

  “Speaking of Daddy, he said to tell you to tell the designers that everyone in Florida hates the grunge look. They caught you on VH-1. I thought you looked great.”

  “I’ll be in South Beach doing some print work this week. Any messages?”

  “Yeah, tell Daddy to send money. I went on a shopping spree.”

  “What did you buy, one of the crocheted hats?”

  “No, a suit,” she answered, going on to describe it, getting Francesca’s approval.

  “So, tell me…” Francesca said, waiting.

  “Tell you what?”

  “I called to get an update on you and Ethan, dufus, not to have you give me grief about my phone bill. I can get that from the folks. So how is it going with you and Ethan?”

  “Don’t ask,” Brittany replied, pounding a handy pillow.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “We went out tonight. I wanted to show him he could function and enjoy himself, that he didn’t have to stay locked up in his ‘prison’ as he calls it. I thought we were starting to connect tonight. I thought— Do you know what Ethan called me tonight, Francesca?”

  “Not if you don’t tell me,” Francesca said impatiently.

  “Pal!” Brittany wailed. “He told me I was a great pal. What am I going to do? It’s hopeless, Francesca. It’s never, ever going to work.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Francesca said on a laugh. “I have every faith.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you told me about Latin,” Brittany retorted, and picked up her hand mirror. She still had as many freckles as she’d had before the phone rang.

  “What about you?” Brittany asked, tossing down the hand mirror, where it bounced on her comforter.

  “Me?”

  “The prince, remember?”

  “Oh, right. I haven’t talked to you since then, have I? The prince had lovely manners and he spoke three languages.”

  “But…” Brittany said in the shorthand of sisters.

  “But none of the languages he spoke were mine. I’d hate being a princess, anyway. You have to be so pleasant, and public all the time.”

  “It’s just as well. I’d loathe having to call you ‘your royal highness.’”

  “You’re a brat. Listen, I hear the scenery is pretty good in South Beach. Want to join me for a long weekend? We could sponge off the folks, eat key lime pie till we’re sick, and whistle at the lifeguards.”

  “That’s politically incorrect, and sounds wonderful but I’ll have to pass,” Brittany said. As frustrated as she was by the way things were going with Ethan, she wasn’t a quitter. And even if she were, this—he—was too important to her. One only got this sort of opportunity at happiness once. “I’ve got to be Ethan’s pal to the end of the month,” she said, resigned to turning that revolting situation around.

  Francesca laughed at Brittany’s pique. “In other words, you’re not toast yet.”

  “No, not yet. But what worries me, Francesca, is that I flunked Latin….”

  “Don’t worry, brat, there’s a big difference between Latin and Ethan Moss,” Francesca said encouragingly.

  “What is that?”

  “You didn’t really want to learn Latin….”

  MORNING CAME TOO quickly.

  It was a Tuesday that had Monday written all over it. Brittany looked at her reflection in the mirror while brushing her teeth. She gave herself a foamy grin.

  “Hi, pal.”

  Her reflection stuck its tongue out at her.

  “Now is that any way for a senior editor, soon-to-be-publisher, to act?” she asked her reflection.

  She really did plan to be a publisher one day. It hadn’t been easy making her way up through the ranks, especially since the first company she worked for had folded. But due to diligence, good instincts, a real love of what she did, and luck, she was climbing the ladder to success in the publishing world.

  Even if it was too slowly to suit her.

  What she craved more than anything was the power to say yes—so much more important than the power to say no.

  Brittany finished getting dressed for work, hoping it would be a day without meetings, one when she could shut the door to her office and hide out reading all day.

  In her kitchen, she took the time to fix herself a Belgian waffle, topping it with honey and cinnamon. Pouring freshly squeezed orange juice into a crystal goblet, she took her breakfast out to her balcony to enjoy the morning light.

  The savory aroma of her breakfast mixed with the sweet fragrance of roses to seduce her into a relaxed state, helping to keep her anxiety about her relationship with Ethan at bay.

  Relationship. That was a laugh, she thought, while biting into the airy waffle. The man she was in love with thought of her as a pal. And that was “progress.” Romeo and Juliet had had an easier time of it; getting together at least.

  The animated noises of a pickup game of basketball drifted up to the balcony; the scuffle of feet, the bouncing ball, and the slang of the street as the players jostled each other, while dreaming big dreams of million-dollar contracts.

  Finishing off her waffle, Brittany licked the honey from her fork. A bit of orange pulp caught in her teeth when she drank the last of her juice. She rushed to brush her teeth a final time before heading for the subway.

  “YOU’RE LATE!”

  Brittany ground her teeth. Sandy, her assistant, had yet to understand what “assist” meant. Instead she spent her time working to undermine her.

  “The boss wants to see you,” Sandy said gleefully as Brittany set down her things on her desk.

  “What about? What’s going on?” Brittany had worked in publishing long enough to know things could happen abruptly. Things like firings…

  “Beats me,” Sandy answered. “But she’s been looking for you since I got here.”

  That would be about a half hour, Brittany knew. Sandy got in early—not to work, but to snoop.

  Ten minutes later Brittany was back in her office with the door closed, and a manuscript to read. Her boss had handed her the sort of day she’d wished for. The book was up for auction, and they had to decide if they were interested in it, then get back to the agent pronto.

  Banishing Ethan from her mind, Brittany opened the manuscript and began reading, wanting what every editor wanted: to be surprised, to be swept away.

  And she was.

  When she finished reading the manuscript several hours later, she was smiling for more than one reason. The first was that she was going to recommend they make an offer for the book. The second was that she’d found the perfect thing to read to Ethan.

  4

  BRITTANY FELT ALMOST giddy with anticipation.

  It was Friday. On Wednesday, she’d negotiated a good contract for the book. And she’d negotiated drinks with a powerful agent who was hyper to the max.

  She was actually humming as she let herself into Ethan’s brownstone because she was certain that after tonight, he would no longer think of her as a “pal.”

  “Why are you in such a good mood?” Ethan asked, as if it were a sin.

  Entering the library, she looked to where he sat behind his desk. He used the desk like a shield. Well, it was time she got him to move to a vulnerable place.


  “Come lie down on the sofa and relax, and I’ll tell you.”

  “Just tell me. I’m not in the mood to have you play shrink with me.”

  “Ethan…”

  “Oh, all right. But no mumbo-jumbo. I’ve heard all that crap from my doctor. I hired you to read to me, not lecture me.” He pushed himself to his feet and made his way, feeling with his legs, to the sofa.

  “I am going to read to you. From a book I just bought for my publisher. Stretch out on the sofa and relax,” she instructed, taking his chair behind the desk. It was still warm.

  “What if I don’t like the book?” he asked, throwing off his loafers. “What if it bores me?”

  Brittany silenced a sexy giggle, swallowing it. “Be sure and let me know, and I’ll stop reading.”

  “Okay,” he said, tucking his hands behind his head and crossing his ankles. “Let’s hear it.”

  Brittany opened the manuscript and explained it was a book of short stories, before she began reading.

  “The rain peppered the windshield of my sleek black Jaguar as I pulled up in front of my favorite lingerie boutique. I was late for my appointment with the owner, Alicia, and glad to have my choice of parking spots.

  “It appeared no one was out shopping on this nasty fall day. The hothouse warmth of my car was instantly assaulted by damp, chilly air when I opened the door and slid my silk-stockinged legs across the soft leather seat. I made a mad dash through the cold rain for the champagne beige awning covering the shop’s entrance.”

  “Shall I stop? Are you bored?” Brittany asked.

  “You’ve just started,” Ethan said, noncommittal.

  Brittany smiled and continued.

  “Reaching the entrance, I pushed against the door to no avail. Deciding the rain had caused the wood to swell and stick, I lunged against the door, only then noticing the Closed sign. The door swung open to my surprise, catching me off-balance and pitching me into the arms of the young man standing just inside the doorway.

  “Embarrassed, I began making profuse apologies for my clumsiness.

  “‘Please, it’s my fault entirely,’ the young man insisted. ‘I’m Alicia’s cousin, Benjamin. She had to leave early today and asked me to wait for her last customer. I was just locking up when you didn’t show. You are Victoria Adams, aren’t you?’