The Bridal Suite. Sandra Marton

see.”

      Griffin sighed. No. She didn’t see. She was a nice girl, but she was wasting her time. Sooner or later, he was going to have to find a way to tell her that.

      It was true, she would undoubtedly make some man a fine wife. She was pretty. Actually, she was beautiful. She was well-educated, too, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who was bothered by the fact that she was a woman; she understood that there was a difference between the sexes. Griffin had had enough of male-bashing broads to last a lifetime. Any man would, who’d come of age within the past couple of decades.

      Cynthia was like a breath of fresh air. She had no agenda and no career goals. She didn’t look upon men as the enemy. She liked being a woman. She understood the difference between the sexes, and the difference pleased her.

      There was no question as to what would make Cynthia happy. She would be content to be a man’s helpmate. To bear his children. To stay at home, cook his meals and clean his house...metaphorically, anyway, because, of course, there’d be a staff of servants to do all of that. The point was, Cynthia would not want the rules bent to accommodate her. She wouldn’t leave you wondering if she’d say “thank you” if you opened her car door for her or accuse you of trying to treat her as if she were the weaker sex.

      Griffin knew that if he’d been looking for a wife, he’d have looked no further.

      But he wasn’t looking for a wife. Not yet. Maybe not ever. His life was full and exciting, just the way it was. He loved his work, and his freedom, the right to come and go as he pleased, when he pleased. Not that he didn’t enjoy curtailing that freedom from time to time. The world was full of gorgeous women who were eager to share his life for a few weeks or months, no commitments asked. They were not wife material, his mother had said more than once, and each time she did, Griffin nodded thoughtfully and breathed a silent prayer of thanks that they were not.

      But—and it was one hell of a big “but”—if he ever did decide it was time to settle down, and if Cynthia was still available, he might just look her up. He liked her well enough; he supposed he could even learn to love her...and if he couldn’t imagine taking her in his arms, the way he’d thought about taking Dana Anderson in his arms, and making love on the warm sands of a tropical beach, so what? Wild passion wasn’t what married life was all about.

      Griffin frowned. Dammit, it wasn’t what the Anderson woman was all about, either. Why did he keep thinking about her and that silly beach?

      Ms. Anderson, making love on a beach. The very idea was laughable. She’d probably never had a date in her life. She’d probably never...

      Griffin jerked back in his seat.

      No. It couldn’t be!

      But it was. There, directly across the restaurant, tucked away in a cozy little nook, sat Dana Anderson...and a man.

      What was she doing here? Griffin would have bet anything that she had her lunch in a health food store, or quaffed yogurt at her desk. Instead, here she was amidst the palm fronds and velvet drapes in the pseudo-romantic, sickeningly phony confines of Portofino. And she was with a guy.

      An attentive one.

      Griffin’s frown deepened.

      The man could have been chosen for her by central casting. He was perfect, from his tortoise-shells to the bow tie that bobbed on his Adam’s apple.

      “Monsieur?”

      Griffin looked up. The waiter hovered beside the table.

      “Do monsieur and madame wish dessert? A tarte, perhaps, or a Madeline Supreme?”

      What Griffin wanted was to keep watching the Anderson babe and her boyfriend, but Cynthia had that I’m-hurt-but-I’m-being-brave look on her face again. The waiter, who seemed to see nothing strange in a French menu and a French accent in a restaurant named for a town in Portugal and warned, perhaps, by the look on Griffin’s face, drew back as if expecting to be attacked.

      Griffin did his best to smile politely.

      “Nothing for me, thank you,” he said. “Cyn? What will you have?”

      Cynthia listened attentively while the waiter made his way through a seemingly endless list. Anderson—Ms. Anderson—wasn’t doing much of anything. She certainly wasn’t eating. Griffin couldn’t fault her for that. He couldn’t see her plate very clearly, thanks to the near-darkness that hung over the room like a pall, but from what he could observe, she was eating what looked like a taxidermist’s special.

      And the Bow Tie was worried. You could see it on his face. He was looking at Anderson the way a puppy looks at an out-of-reach bone.

      Well, who could blame him? Despite the plastered-back hair, the tweed jacket and the loose-fitting twill trousers, Dana Anderson was something to look at.

      Griffin frowned. Yeah, well, piranhas were interesting to look at, too.

      The guy said something. Anderson started to answer, stopped, then began to speak. She was really getting into it now, gesturing with her hands, leaning forward and risking immolation from the candles flickering in the floral centerpiece. She took the guy’s hand in hers, and the idiot positively beamed. There was no other way to describe it.

      He was smiling so hard it looked as if his ears might start glowing, and why wouldn’t he? Anderson was looking at him as if he were St. George standing over the dead body of the dragon when, in reality, the guy looked as if a strong breeze might blow him over.

      One corner of Griffin’s mouth turned down. This was the Anderson babe’s sort of man, all right. A guy she could lead around by the nose. Somebody who’d never want her to dance for him on a deserted stretch of sand, while the moon looked down and the drums pulsed out a beat that matched the fire in his blood...

      “Griffin? Griffin, are you all right?”

      Griffin pulled back from the edge of the precipice and looked across at Cynthia. “Yes,” he said calmly. “Yes, I’m perfectly fine.”

      And he was.

      It was just curiosity that had him wondering what could be keeping Dana Anderson’s attention so tightly focused on the man she was with.

      “You aren’t eating, Dana. Is something wrong with your fish?”

      Dana sighed. Arthur was looking at her with concern. Well, no wonder. She’d called and asked him to meet her for lunch, and now she was sitting here like a piece of wood, saying nothing, doing nothing, just watching her own grim reflection in the lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses.

      “No,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips. “No, the fish is fine, Arthur. Just fine.”

      It was fine. She assumed so, anyway, because the truth was that she hadn’t eaten enough of it to know. It was just that Portofino served fish complete with head and tail. The tail didn’t bother her but the head was another story. The finny creature lay draped across her plate on a bed of something that looked suspiciously like kelp, its thin mouth turned down, its glassy eye turned up and fixed on the cherubim painted on the gilded ceiling.

      Dana repressed a shudder. She’d never been good with food that looked as if it might get up and walk off her plate—or swim off, as the case might be. Besides, if this morning’s runin with McKenna had dimmed her appetite, the atmosphere in Portofino had finished it off completely.

      She’d had no idea the place dealt in such overblown decor. If she had, she’d never have suggested it.

      No wonder poor Arthur kept looking at her that way, with a little smile on his lips and his gaze expectant and misty behind his horn-rims. Her phone call, her choice of words, even her choice of restaurants, must have convinced him that romance was in the air.

      Dana cleared her throat, lay her knife and fork across her plate, and folded her hands in her lap.

      “Arthur,” she said gently, “I’m afraid I may have misled you.”

      “I