Chapter Two

June. A society wedding on Long Island, the well-heeled, well-coifed and jewel-bedazzled were scattered across the lawn already drinking champagne, while I peered out of the five bedroom guest cottage on the Ryder family compound looking intently at all the fuss. It was all for me. A girl of twenty-one and fresh out of college. The prettiest redhead on Long Island, he called me. He could make me quiver from that sensitive place at the back of my neck all the way down to my toes. Sometimes we would be standing face to face, and he’d bring me close to him so our auras intertwined, and with his face still remote and inscrutable as it often was, he’d place his palm against my face and gently run his thumb across my cheek. My lips would tremble like a schoolgirl’s. That Jon was reserved, sometimes to the point of being cold, but that didn’t alter my desire for him. At least not at first.

I was a starry-eyed nineteen when we first met at a bar; Jon a real man, nearing thirty-five – square face, firm-set jaw and dark, impenetrable eyes. He was drinking Guinness, having probably finished his third by the time he turned and stared me in the eye. Despite his casual clothes, the turtle-neck sweater and jeans, I could tell he was rich, a rich man dressing down for a relaxing night at his favorite bar. The glitter of gold on his pinky finger, and the Patek Phillipe watch on his wrist were clues enough.

Not that I was scouting out a rich man – that was the furthest thing from my mind. Even if I was a poor college student, all I could think about in those days was getting straight A’s and applying to law school. Still, when the man drinking his Guinness took an interest in me, I couldn’t exactly be rude.

There was a smile on his lips, finally, after a lot of scary scrutiny. Most women my age would have turned up their noses and brushed him off, noting his arrogance; that is, if they hadn’t noticed the Patek Phillipe for what it was. I’d worked in a high-end jewelry store one Christmas so I knew.

He introduced himself, suddenly admiring me quite thoroughly. He even ran his hand through my fine red hair, and pulled that thing with his thumb on my cheek. I was blushing like a rose when he asked if I’d like to sit at one of the tables where we could talk.

“Well, really, I-I should go,” I found myself stumbling over my words, a strange feeling coming over me that had me curiously light-headed. “I have a lot to study.”

“Study?”

“Pre-law. Boston U.”

“Really?”

I sometimes wonder if he assumed then that he’d stumbled onto another blue blood American when he stumbled onto me, and wasn’t later disappointed that I was going to Boston University on a full ride scholarship. My father had died when I was six, and I’d been raised by my grandmother – now also dead – and a mother who worked two waitress jobs just to make ends meet. I was a late in life child for her, so by the time I met Jon Ryder at the pub, she was sixty and living on disability in a tiny New England cottage. Maybe I was an American blue blood, but I was a damn poor one, and the beer I’d ordered that night was my one weekly luxury. I gave Jon Ryder a few sketchy tidbits about my life, enough to satisfy his curiosity but not enough to dissuade him.

“How about you?” I asked. “I’m sure you’re not in school.”

His lips formed a snide but pleasant grin. “Afraid school days are over for me. I couldn’t stand the stress. I work for the family company. A boring job, but it’s what is expected.”

“So what do you do for fun?”<