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It had been different with Reed. She’d always felt that she had Reed’s full attention. That he enjoyed just being with her, regardless of whether they were doing anything exciting or impressive or physically challenging.
He never boasted of his own accomplishments—in fact, he rarely talked about himself at all, but he’d always seemed to enjoy listening when she spoke. Damien sometimes—just sometimes, she amended a bit guiltily—seemed anxious for her to hush so he could talk about himself some more.
She supposed it was understandable. So many people hung on Damien’s every word—were paid to do so, in fact—that he’d probably gotten a bit spoiled by it. Most people were almost comically impressed by his wealth and his charm and his fame and his power.
Maybe Celia had been a bit impressed, in the beginning. If so, the novelty was wearing off. Now she wanted to know what Damien was like beneath the flash. Whether she liked him as a person—and whether he valued her in the same way.
It was Damien she’d considered starting a relationship with—not his money. Lately it was getting more difficult to separate the two in her mind. Because he defined himself so strongly in terms of wealth—or because there wasn’t that much behind the dashing facade?
She sighed and ran a weary hand through her salt-stiffened hair. She had only a little over an hour in which to shower, change and somehow find the energy—and the enthusiasm—to go dancing.
It was going to take a miracle.
Celia and Damien didn’t dine alone. Four other couples joined them—an influential business magnate and his trophy bride, a minor television star who was spending a few days at the resort with a model who was not his equally well-known wife, Enrique Torres and his quiet wife, Helen, and Mark Chenault, Damien’s personal assistant, who was accompanied by a striking young blonde introduced only as “Kimmi.”
Damien, of course, sat at the head of the large, rectangular table. Celia sat on his left, next to Mark Chenault. Torres, as resort manager, had been seated at the other end of the table.
Still a bit winded from the active day, Celia was rather quiet during dinner, content to observe the others. It seemed to her that they all genuinely liked Damien, though they treated him with an obsequiousness that she found vaguely annoying at times. Honestly, she thought at one point, did no one ever dispute him? Not even in friendly argument? She had certainly done so a few times, and he’d handled it well enough.
Damien ordered obscenely expensive champagne, and the party grew progressively noisier. Mike Smith, the waiter Celia particularly liked, smiled when he poured champagne into her glass and she whispered that she wouldn’t be needing it refilled. Not much of a drinker, Celia sipped that one glass slowly, making it last while the others quickly finished the first magnum and called for another.
The conversation swirled around her, and she held up her end well enough, but the topics changed so rapidly that there was little chance to discuss anything in detail. She found herself thinking of the long, quiet talks she and Reed had shared over meals. Hardly exciting…but nice. Very nice.
A funny little tickle at her nape accompanied her thoughts of Reed. Taking a sip from her champagne flute, Celia glanced over her shoulder. Only to find Reed watching her from a solitary table across the room.
Reed’s silence and stillness—his aloneness—seemed more noticeable in contrast to the chattering, laughing crowd around Celia. Their gazes held for a moment across the dimly lighted room. The bubbly champagne seemed to go flat on her tongue, leaving the bitter taste of regret in its place.
“Celia.” Damien spoke as though he’d been trying to gain her attention.
She looked quickly around at him, breaking the visual bond with Reed. “Yes?”
“We’re heading over to the disco now. Have you finished your dessert?”
Celia looked down at the empty dessert plate in front of her and wondered what had once been on it. “Yes, I’m finished.”
Damien grinned. “Ready to get down with some disco?”
She lifted a brow. “Get down?” she repeated.
“You know,” the now rather tipsy actor said, leaning toward Celia from his place across the table. “Boogie-oogie-oogie.”
Kimmi giggled, her manner decidedly star-struck. “That sounds so funny. Are you quoting something?”
“The song’s before your time,” Damien said with a wry roll of his eyes. “Before yours, too, I guess,” he added to Celia. “What were you—five, six when disco was popular the first time?”
“True, but my late brother-in-law liked disco,” she explained. “He played his old Bee Gees albums all the time during the year I lived with him and Rachel. Some of it’s not bad.”
Mark Chenault gave an exaggerated shudder. “I don’t know how any of you can listen to that stuff—even for a laugh. I’m a classic rock man myself. The Doobies, Creedence, Black Oak, the Allmans—now that’s music.”
“I like contemporary country, mostly,” Celia admitted. “Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Wynonna, Collin Raye.”
A brief silence followed. If there were any other country music fans at the table, no one said so. The conversation quickly returned to the dance club they’d be going to after dinner.
To Kimmi’s obvious distress, Mark begged off. Damien smoothly invited Kimmi along, anyway.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of chances to dance,” he said, looking pointedly at Mark, who only shrugged and told Kimmi to go if she felt like it.
Everyone else planned to go, except Enrique and Helen, who laughingly declared themselves much too old for such nonsense—though neither of them could have been more than five or six years older than Damien. Celia rose with the others, laughed perfunctorily when the inebriated actor stumbled into his giggling date, and wondered what in the hell was wrong with her. This should be fun, darn it. Wasn’t that why she was here?
