Chapter 14
After the party, they went back to her place. It was after 2AM, Piper and Paige are probably asleep now, she thought. Cole lifted her satin cape off her shoulders and draped it over the armoire. It was after 2AM, Piper and Paige are probably asleep now. His hands went to the buttons on his tuxedo jacket, and as he started to take it off, Phoebe experienced a trill of excitement. Turning, she walked over to the windows, trying to steady herself. She heard Cole come up behind her. "Would you like a drink?," she asked in a trembling voice.
"No," His arm slid around her waist, drawing her back against him as he bent his head and pressed a tantalizing kiss against her temple. Phoebe's breathing became shallow and rapid as his warm lips touch her ear, then her nape, and his hands began moving lazily over her midriff.
By the time his hands went to her shoulders, turning her into his arms, quick, piercing stabs of desire were shooting through Phoebe's entire body. His parted lips touched hers as his arms drew her gently to his hardened length. He kissed her with a slow, melting hunger, which deepened moment by moment to a burning insistence and then burst into a ravenous urgency. Phoebe pulled back and started to unfasten the studs from his shirtfront.
Somewhere in the recesses of his passion-drugged mind Cole was aware that Phoebe was kissing him as she had never kissed him before. He looked down at her graceful hands, and his traitorous mind instantly replayed the moment when they were married-except that he had to put her hand on his shirt and urge her to unbutton it. She had obviously gained a great deal of experience since then.
Icy regret and disappointment poured through him, and he covered her fingers with his hands, stopping her. "Fix me a drink, will you?," he said, hating himself for what he was thinking and the way he was feeling about her.
Taken back by the tired, defeated bitterness in his voice, Phoebe dropped her hands. She went over to the bar, fixed him a bourbon and water and gave it it to him. She saw his lips twist in a humorless smile when he noted that she remembered exactly what he preferred to drink, but without commenting on it, he lifted it to his lips and drank.
Phoebe was bewildered by his attitude, but she was utterly stunned by his next words. Lowering the glass, he said, "Let's get it over with, so I can stop wondering. How many have there have been?"
Phoebe stared at him. "How many what?"
"Lovers," he clarified bitterly.
She could hardly believe her ears. After treating her as if her standards of morality were childish, after acting as if promiscuity was a virtue, after telling her how men preferred experience women, he was jealous.
Phoebe didn't know whether to hit him, burst out laughing or hug him. Instead she decided to exact just a tiny bit of revenge for all the misery and uncertainty he had put her through. Turning, she walked over to the bar and reached for a bottle of white wine. "Why should the number make any difference?," she asked innocently. "You've told me once that men don't prize virginity anymore, and they don't expect or want a woman to be inexperienced. Right?" (*He told her this before they were married*)
"Right," he said grimly, glowering at the ice cubes in his glass.
"You also said," she continued, biting back a smile, "that women have the same physical desires men have, and that we have the right to satisfy them with whomever we wish. You were very emphatic about that-"
"Phoebe," he warned in a low voice, "I asked you a simple question. I don't care what the answer is, I just want an answer so I can stop wondering. Tell me how many there were. Tell me if you liked them, if you didn't give a damn about them, or if you did it to get even with me. Just tell me. I won't hold it against you."
Like hell you wouldn't! Phoebe thought happily as she struggled to uncork the bottle of wine. "Of course you won't hold it against me," she said lightly. "You specifically said-"
"I know what I said," he snapped tersely. "Now, how many?"
She flicked a glance in his direction, implying that she was bewildered by his tone. "Only one."
Angry regret flared in his eyes, and his body tensed as if he had just felt a physical blow. "Did you...care about him?"
"I thought I loved him at that time," Phoebe said brightly, twisting the corkscrew deeper into the cork.
"All right. Let's forget him," Cole said curtly. He finally noticed her efforts with the wine bottle and walked over to help her.
"Are you going to be able to forget him?" Phoebe asked, admiring the ease with which he managed the stubborn cork.
"I will...after a while."
"What do you mean, after a while? You said there was nothing promiscuous about a woman satisfying her biological-"
"I know what I said, dammit!"
"Then why do you look so angry? You didn't lie to me, did you?"
"I didn't lie," he said, slamming the bottle onto the bar and reaching for a glass from the cabinet. "I believed it at the time."
"Why?," she goaded.
"Because it was convenient to believe it," he bit out. "I was not in love with you then."
Phoebe loved him more at that moment than ever. "Would you like me to tell you about him?"
"No," he said coldly.
Her eyes twinkled, but she backed a cautious step out of his reach. "You would have approved of him. He was tall, dark and handsome, like you. Very elegant, sophisticated and experienced. He wore down my resistance in two days, and-"
"Dammit, stop it!," Cole grated in genuine fury.
"His name is-"
Cole braced both hands on the liquor cabinet, his back to her. "I do not want to hear this!"
"Cole Turner," Phoebe clarified.
The relief Cole experienced was so intense that he hardly knew how to cope with it. He straightened and turned toward her. Phoebe was standing in the center of the room, an angel in seductive black velvet, an exquisitely sensual young beauty with unconscious poise in every graceful line of her body. There was a fineness about her, a quiet pride in herself that had prevented her from becoming a convenient receptacle for the passions of boys and men.
She love him.
He could make her his mistress, or he could make her his wife again. In his heart he knew that she has always belonged at his side as his bride; anything less would destroy her pride and shame her. That beautiful body of hers had been offered only to him. He could not accept her gift and her love and in return offer her some obscure, tenuous thing called a "meaningful relationship." Although she was very young he loved her, and she was wise enough not to play games with his life.
He looked at her in silence, and then he drew a long deep breath. "Phoebe," he began gravely, "I would like four daughters with wobbly blue eyes and studious horn-rimmed glasses on their little noses. Also, I've become very partial to your hair, so if you could manage..." He saw the tears of joyous disbelief filling her eyes, and he jerked her into his arms, crushing her against his heart, jarred by the same emotions that were shaking her. "Darling, please don't cry. Please don't," he whispered thickly, kissing her forehead, her cheek and finally her lips...
***
Dozens of watchful, speculative faces turned to watch Phoebe's progress through the office Monday morning. Bewildered, she hung up her coat and continued to her desk, where she found Vicki and a half dozen other women gathered around it.
"What's up?," she asked. She felt radiantly happy; and felt like everyone should too.
"You tell us," Vicki said gaily. "Isn't that you?". She plunked the Sunday newspaper down on Phoebe's desk and smoothed it out.
Phoebe's eyes widened. An entire page had been devoted to the Children's Hospital Benefit Ball. In the center was a color picture of her-with Cole. They were dancing, and he was grinning down at her. Phoebe's face was in profile, tilted up to his.
"It does look like me, doesn't it?," she hedged, glancing at the excited, avidly curious faces surrounding her desk. "Isn't that an amazing coincidence?" She didn't want her relationship with Cole to be public knowledge until the time was right, and she certainly didn't want her co-workers to treat her any differently.
"You mean it isn't you?," one on the women said disappointedly. Curtis step in front of her and snatch the paper out of Phoebe's hands and sneered at the picture.
"This is Phoebe?," she sneers, then pointedly look Phoebe up and down, "you're kidding right?", and threw the paper on the desk and smugly walk away. None of them noticed the sudden lull, the silence sweeping over the office as people stopped talking and typewriters went perfectly still...
"Good morning, ladies," Cole's deep voice said behind Phoebe. Six stunned women snapped to attention, staring in fascinated awe as Cole leaned over Phoebe from behind and braced his hands on her desk. "Hi," he said, his lips so near her ear that Phoebe was afraid to turn her head for fear he would kiss her in front of everyone. He glanced at the newspaper spread out on her desk. "You look beautiful, but who's that ugly guy you're dancing with?" Without waiting for an answer, he straightened, affectionately rumpled the hair on top of her head and strolled into Keith's office closing the door behind him.
Phoebe felt like sinking through the floor in embarrassment. Vicki raised her brows. "What an amazing coincidence," she teased.
Cole came out of Keith's office a few minutes later and asked Phoebe to come upstairs with him. Once they were in his office, he pulled her into his arms for a long, satisfying kiss. "I missed you," he whispered, then he sighed and reluctantly released her, linking his hands behind her desk. "I'm going to miss you even more-I have to leave for Casano in an hour"
With a final hug he let her go, then he went over to his desk and began shoving papers into his briefcase. "We have four labs testing samples of Danner's formula right now. Within three weeks we should know whether he's a genius or a fake"
Phoebe listened to his rapid-fire monologue with an inward smile of admiration. Being married to Cole was going to be like living on the fringe of a tornado, and she was going to be caught up in the whirl.
"By the way," he said, so casually that Phoebe was instantly on guard, "a magazine reporter called this morning. They know we're getting married. When the story breaks, I'm afraid the press will start hounding you."
"How did they find out?" Phoebe gasped.
He shot her a glinting smile. "I told them."
Everything was happening so quickly that Phoebe felt dazed. "Did you happen to tell them when and where we're getting married?," she chided.
"I told them soon." He closed his briefcase and drew her out of the chair in which she had just sat down. "Do you want a big church wedding with a cast of hundreds-or could you settle for me in a little chapel somewhere, with just your family and a few friends? When we come back from our honeymoon we could throw a huge party, and that would satisfy our social obligations to everyone we know."
"You and a chapel," she said.
"Good." He grinned. "Because I would go quietly insane waiting to make you mine. I'm not a patient man."
When he left, Phoebe leaned back against his desk and started straightening his papers on the desk. When she heard footsteps coming into the office she smiled. "Have you forgotten something?"
"You think you're smart bitch"
Phoebe spun around and saw Patricia standing in front of her, hands on her hips. "Do you think you can humiliate me and walk away without a scratch?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I know about you, about to become his fiancé. Well, the wedding is not going to happen," Patricia said confidently, "When he realize what he's doing is wrong, he'll come back to me. Men always do"
"You're talking as if Cole is your pet, dog" Phoebe said in disbelief.
"He will be, soon. Time is running out for you Phoebe Haliwell, in this company, and in Cole's life," Patricia said, toss her blonde hair and went out leaving her perfume lingering in the air. Phoebe puzzled a little. What did Patricia meant? Thinking Patricia was talking in the heat of the moment, she shook her head and went back to work.