Mollie Molay - Commander's Little Surprise

“Care to dance?” he asked after she’d silently sipped the drink he brought her. “Unless you’ve given up dancing, too?”

She hesitated. “No. I love to dance. I’m just not in the mood.”

“Come on,” he coaxed. “Just one dance?”

“Just one,” she answered. “Then I have to leave.”

Dan put their drinks on a tray held by a passing waiter, put his hand under her elbow and led her across the hall to the dance floor.

The answers to his question were going to add up without him even asking.

He knew she’d been at the palace the night before Wade Stevens had married his duchess.

She’d admitted to loving to dance.

The first time he’d laid eyes on his mystery woman, she’d been dancing her heart out.

Those clues had to mean something, Dan thought as he took her in his arms. At the same time, he couldn’t help wondering why she looked as if she wanted to run.

Their encounter that night in the palace gardens had been a natural encounter between a man and a woman. She’d been a woman so beautiful, he’d gone down to her to see if she were real. When he’d taken her in his arms, felt her vibrant body and tasted lips as sweet as honey, he’d been lost.

He’d been attracted to that woman, and he was attracted to this one. As he held her in his arms, all his senses told him the woman he remembered was the same woman he was holding in his arms tonight.

If this Victoria did turn out to be her, he silently vowed, he’d take it from there. If not, one dance to be polite, an apology, and he’d find a way to be out of here.

He gazed in wonder at Victoria’s blond hair and tried to envision her as a brunette. Outside of the difference in hair coloring and her more womanly figure, she had to be the same woman.

Maybe his mystery woman had a double.

Maybe…then again, he wondered, how could he account for the same, familiar faint scent of gardenias that clung to the woman in his arms?

When Dan O’Hara took her into his arms, Victoria’s heart skipped. The very meeting she’d feared had happened and her worst fears had come true. Not only had she found her phantom lover tonight here at her cousin’s housewarming, she now found herself in the last place she should be if she had any sense—in his arms! There was no doubt in her mind that Dan was the man who had made love to her on that magical night eighteen months ago. Even then, with the afterglow of his embraces lingering long after she’d left him and gone back to the palace, she had thought he could be her destiny. Instead, he was dangerous.

“Enjoying yourself?” Dan asked.

“Thank you, yes. But I do have to leave.” Even as she spoke, she prayed for the music to stop long enough for her to excuse herself to her cousin and leave.

“Too bad,” he said, and signaled the band leader to go on. “It would be a shame to waste such beautiful music.”

As she automatically followed Dan’s footsteps across the dance floor, thoughts ran through her mind as swiftly as a cold wind blows on a March day. No matter how sweetly her cousin May had begged her to come here tonight when she’d called to decline the invitation, she should have listened to her heart.

Tonight, from the moment he’d started to speak, she’d recognized Dan as her phantom lover. She’d tried but she’d never forgotten the sound of his deep, melodious voice with a hint of teasing laughter in it. No other man’s eyes had warmed her so—a lifetime ago—and now again. And now that she was in his arms again, to her dismay she remembered his gentle strength and the taste of his lips.

It would never do. As the widow of a diplomat and Baronovia’s new ambassador to the United States, she had to keep up appearances. Any hint of scandal could bring shame on her family.

Maybe it had been different for Dan. Maybe she’d been one of the many woman in every port that seamen were known to boast about. Had she only been a diversion, a pleasant way to spend a sleepless night?

Held in Dan’s arms, Victoria remembered his earlier embrace, the taste of his lips, the sound of his voice murmuring words of assurance as he made love to her. And the way she had never been able to put him out of her mind.

She fervently prayed he wouldn’t start to ask questions for which she couldn’t give answers. At the same time, she had to bite her lip to keep from asking questions of her own.

If their encounter had meant something to him, why hadn’t he tried to find her after their magical encounter, she wondered as she averted her face and forced a smile at a passing couple.

The music changed to a two-step, to the same romantic melody she’d hummed to herself when she’d danced alone in the palace garden that long-ago night. The night she had known true love for the first and only time in her life.

She closed her eyes and instinctively leaned into the arms that had once held her so possessively, so lovingly. Leaned into the arms that reminded her of stolen tender moments under a crescent moon, embraces that had awakened her pent-up desires long dreamed about and never experienced again.

Arms that reminded her of a night of rapture that had ended too soon.

To her growing dismay, Dan began to gently caress the small of her back. She shivered as electricity followed the path where his warm hand had passed. When he swept her across the dance floor, his hand on her bare skin sent mental images of tangled limbs, heated kisses. Bursts of unwanted raw sensation ran through her.

In spite of her misgivings, Victoria found herself softly humming the song’s haunting lyrics under her breath, reliving the moments when she’d danced on a grass carpet under a moonlit sky. For a moment she was happy again, until he spoke.

“You may think I’m a little crazy, but you remind me of someone who…” Dan began softly. He needed time. Time, with Victoria in his arms. He’d been puzzled when they were first introduced, but he was pretty sure now she was his mystery woman.

His voice trailed off before he started again. “The truth is that when I saw you I happened to remember a night when I saw a woman dancing alone in the moonlight.”

Wordlessly, Victoria gazed up at Dan. To her dismay, she remembered that same night too well. She couldn’t admit being that woman even if she had wanted to. The time for the two of them to reveal themselves had passed long ago.

“Are you usually so quiet?” he finally asked with a smile and a quirked eyebrow. “Or am I boring you?”

Boring her? Not when the friction of his hand brushing across her bare back and the warmth of his hard body against hers were sending jolts of desire running through her.

Her mind in turmoil, Victoria couldn’t speak. The woman he spoke of was gone. Victoria was a widow and a mother now. Besides, if she were free to admit who she had been on that night, what would he think of her?

“Victoria?”

No matter what she remembered, or how she felt about Dan, she knew the past had to be forgotten. She knew she had to get away from Dan, now, tonight and forever.

“Victoria?” he repeated, obviously puzzled at her silence. “Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry,” she finally answered. “I’m afraid my mind was a million miles away.”

“Ahh.” To her dismay, he smiled down at her. “To a palace garden in Baronovia? Maybe even to a crescent moon and a vine-trimmed white gazebo?”

Victoria drew back. But not before Dan saw the vein at the side of her throat began to throb visibly.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she answered. To his chagrin, she looked as if she was about to pull out of his arms and leave him alone on the crowded dance floor.

“I was hoping you might remember,” he went on before she could make up her mind to leave. “After holding you in my arms here tonight, I was silly enough to think you were the woman I met in Baronovia over a year ago.”