She watched as the successful insurance executive whisked his future bride away to meet his boss. Steve proudly introduced Fran and her two young daughters. Sunny was delighted over Fran’s newfound happiness. After being married to Ernie, she certainly did deserve it.
Steve placed a protective and proprietary arm around Fran’s slender shoulders. Sunny saw the instinctive, unconscious gesture. It wordlessly conveyed the way Steve felt about his future wife. Sunny attributed the empty feeling that suddenly seized her to hunger and decided to give the buffet another try.
As if returning to Latham Green hadn’t been bad enough in itself, it was adding insult to injury that she had had to return for a wedding. Don, the man she had almost married, was a subject she knew she would be faced with. At least she had survived the first mention of him and didn’t have to dread that milestone any longer.
Talking about him had brought back all the negative emotions she had left behind her three years ago. She had thought she was rid of them for good, but it seemed that they had been perching like gremlins on the city limit signs, just waiting for her to return. The moment she had, they had reclaimed her.
She should have known better than to come back. But how could she refuse Fran’s request to attend her second wedding? She couldn’t. Nor would Fran settle for her appearing only at the ceremony and making a hasty getaway afterward. Before she realized what had happened, Sunny had committed herself to attending this party and staying until after the wedding. While she was here she planned to take care of some business, but she still had to live through the week. One week. One week in a town she had sworn never to see again. Would she survive it?
Perhaps. But not without compensations. Compensations like indulging a craving or two, she thought as she eyed the array of desserts at the end of the buffet table. Little transgressions like that would help to keep her sane. She deserved a reward, didn’t she? How could she lend Fran moral support if she didn’t fortify herself with little treats?
Before she could talk herself out of it, she took two triple-chocolate-dipped strawberries from a silver tray and found a secluded corner in which to eat them. Forbidden fruit they were, if a woman wanted to maintain a svelte figure. But forbidden fruit was just the kind Sunny needed at the moment.
Holding the tiny green stem between her thumb and finger, she bit into the first strawberry. The dark chocolate outer layer was bittersweet against her tongue. Then t
he milk chocolate coated the roof of her mouth with its rich, velvet texture. Next, almost like a benediction, the mellow white chocolate soothed her palate and prepared it for the succulent ruby fruit her teeth sank into.
She chewed it with slow, sinful relish, letting each layer of chocolate melt and fill her mouth with its particular degree of sweetness.
It was a sensuous experience, not only for Sunny, but for the man watching her from across the room. Casually propped against the wall, ankles crossed, long legs at a slant, he watched Sunny Chandler’s carnal destruction of two chocolate-covered strawberries. She made eating them such an erotic exercise that his own mouth watered, more for a taste of the lips and tongue that did them such delectable justice than for the strawberries themselves.
“Still got your eye on her, I see.”
He shifted his weight but didn’t remove his gaze from the woman. “Sunny Chandler’s an eyeful,” he admitted to the man who had rejoined him.
“Always was. One of the prettiest girls in school. Classy, you know?”
“What she did before she left wasn’t very classy. Why’d she do it?”
“Well now, if I knew that, I’d be the only one.”
The taller man looked down at his friend. “Oh, yeah? She just pulled a stunt like that and left?”
“Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Left her bridegroom—Don Jenkins, you know him—high and dry.” He jabbed the other man in the ribs. “No pun intended.”
They laughed together, but not loud enough to detract attention from the future bride and groom, who were busy opening wedding gifts amid appreciative oohs and aahs.
“She was supposed to marry Don Jenkins, huh?”
“Yeah. I never go into the Baptist church that I don’t think about it.”
“And nobody knew why she walked out?”
“Uh-uh. ’Course, there was plenty of speculation.”
All it took was an inquiring, arching eyebrow and the second man was only too glad to fill the first in on a few of the possibilities that had been discussed over card tables and clotheslines.
He pondered the woman a moment longer and watched as she stopped a passing waiter to hand him her plate. “I think I’ll ask the lady to dance.”
He pushed his upper body away from the wall, but the other man’s laughter halted him. “Good luck, buddy.”
“You sound as though you think I’ll need it.”
“You couldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.”
“I don’t want to touch her with a ten-foot pole. I want to take her to bed.”
The other man started with surprise. He’d never heard his friend say anything so bold. Oh, he would talk man talk, all right, swap bawdy stories. But his tales were always about somebody else. He kept his private life to himself. He didn’t have to toot his own horn. His success rate was well known around town.