Kitabı oku: «The Wrong Wife»

One

There was a head on the pillow next to hers.

Cassandra O’Grady blinked sleepily at the back of a man’s head so close to her own. She wasn’t alarmed by the sight. Cassie never felt much of anything except reluctance when a new day first forced itself on her. If she’d been capable of thinking yet, though, she might have been amazed at how little she grudged opening her eyes this morning.

She knew that head. But whose leg was cuddled so cozily between hers?

That question had an important ring to it. Cassie’s three functioning brain cells—the ones left on, like a night-light, to lead her back to wakefulness—stirred with feeble interest. She blinked and managed to frown.

It was a nice head. Not too round or square or oblong. Just right. The hair covering it in back, her present viewing angle, was nice, too—soft and thick. In the early-morning light, with the rest of the world’s colors just starting to wake, that hair held on to the darkness of midnight. Cassie’s frown softened into a smile.

Morning, afternoon or night, Gideon’s hair was beautiful.

Gideon?

Cassie actually felt her heart start. It made a sudden jump and then began to thump so obviously against the wall of her chest, that she understood that the ignition had just been turned on and the accelerator pressed.

Gideon. Gideon Wilde. That was Gideon’s head lying on a pillow eight inches from her own.

Oh, yes, she knew the shape of his head, the darkness of his hair and the way his short, no-nonsense haircut left the nape of his neck bare. And those were his wide shoulders flowing into the strong lines of his back, lines she’d sketched only from memory because she couldn’t let him know his body fascinated her. That was Gideon’s back, because Gideon was lying on his stomach beside her in this large, strange bed, stretched out like the big cat she’d often thought he resembled. And though her line of sight didn’t go any farther, like beneath the sheet, logic suggested that the leg pressed so intimately between hers belonged to Gideon, too. Gideon’s strong, hairy, muscular thigh pressed right up against—

Embarrassment was one type of heat that flooded Cassie as she realized what she wasn’t wearing. The same thing he wasn’t wearing. Memory rushed in, along with another sort of heat—memories of yesterday...and last night.

She remembered taking Gideon’s phone call yesterday at her brother’s office. She’d gone with Ryan to meet Gideon at the Blue Parrot Lounge. She remembered the hours at the Blue Parrot and the trip to the airport, followed by the garish lights of the Las Vegas strip...and last night. Oh, yes, she did remember last night.

Beyond the masculine shoulders that partially blocked her view, Cassie could see the pale, gilded colors of the luxury suite, colors that made her think of Cinderella’s coach. At the foot of the bed was a Disney version of a pirate’s foot locker, painted a soft, dreamy color. Titanium white, she thought, with just enough Hansa yellow to turn milk to cream. Her bouquet rested there. The orchids were a richer cream than the chest they lay upon, and the roses were a paler blush than the color that swept over her as she remembered.

Oh, yes, this was a morning like none before in her life. Cassie smiled, aching with happiness, and started to cuddle closer to the big man in bed with her.

Her movement made him stir. A deep, low, dying sort of groan rumbled up from his chest. He rolled away from her, onto his back, throwing out a heavy arm that glanced off Cassie’s chin.

“Ow!”

His eyes jerked open. They immediately squeezed closed again. He made a soft, piteous sound.

She knew Gideon had put away a lot of alcohol yesterday, both before he called her brother and later. She knew Gideon seldom drank more than a single highball and that he probably felt lousy. But he still ought to be more careful what he did with his arms. Cassie frowned, rubbed her chin and scooted back another couple inches.

His eyes opened again. Slowly his head turned on the pillow. From a distance of a foot and a half she looked at Gideon’s craggy face, stared right into his unfocused eyes. He looked awful. Well, Gideon never looked really awful, but he did make her think of the Marlboro Man coming off a binge, with his eyes dark as sin and the most beautiful mouth she’d ever seen on a man. Gideon usually managed to present himself to the world as cool, civilized and in charge. The polished veneer helped him deal with the money people who invested in the oil and gas deals he put together.

Not this morning, though. This morning his sophisticated image was ruined by his poor, reddened eyes and the dark stubble of his beard.

She smiled at him tremulously. “Good morning,” she whispered.

His eyes widened, then froze in an expression of absolute horror. “Oh. my God.”

She almost got away.

Gideon’s reactions were slowed by guilt and the worst hangover of his life. Cassie and the sheet made it to the edge of the bed before his sluggish brain caught on to the fact that she was leaving him and taking the covers. And he was naked. Naked and in bed with his best friend’s little sister.

He grabbed the end of the sheet and pulled. She fell back onto the bed, her breath whooshing out. The mattress bounced from her weight. He managed not to throw up. He closed his aching eyes, tucked the corner of the sheet around his hips, and lay very still, praying that she’d be still, too.

After a moment the room and his stomach stopped pitching, though the construction crew restructuring his skull from the inside out didn’t take a break. He realized Cassie hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word since he’d recaptured the sheet she’d been trying to escape with.

The attempted escape had been typical Cassie—all emotion and impulse. This stillness and silence was not. “Cassie,” he muttered without opening his eyes. The sound of his voice bounced around painfully inside his head. “I’m sorry.” Sorry? At the moment he hated himself more than he’d ever hated anyone in his life. Even his father. “I don’t—Whatever happened, I’m sorry.”

“Whatever happened?” Her voice was thin, high. “You don’t remember?”

The construction crew in his head had his mental landscape all torn up. He tried to sort through the fragments, tried to grasp how he could be here. How could he be in bed with Cassie? It was supposed to be Melissa....

But Melissa had dumped him. Four days before the wedding Melissa had called him and rather hysterically backed out.

Gideon had not taken it well. He felt it still, the anger, the bewilderment. Gideon was used to wresting what he wanted from life. He’d wanted to marry Melissa. After getting to know him, she hadn’t wanted to marry him. He still didn’t know why.

“I called Ryan,” he said, remembering. He’d been at the Blue Parrot yesterday, and after a few drinks he’d decided to hold a wake for the dreams Melissa had tossed out the window when she’d rejected him.

The wedding that didn’t take place was the first important failure of Gideon’s life. He’d planned that wedding for years, since long before he met Melissa, and he was a man who accomplished what he set out to do. Hadn’t he reached every other important goal he’d set, from his college degree to his current financial success? But he’d failed at the most important goal, the one that all the others were supposed to lead up to—finding a woman, the right woman, who would marry him and give him what he had no way of getting for himself. A home.

When he’d thought of a wake, naturally he’d called Ryan O’Grady.

But Ryan’s little sister had come with him, little Cassie with the short, fiery hair and fey eyes. “He shouldn’t have brought you,” Gideon said now, harsh with the onslaught of fear because he couldn’t remember—which meant he’d gotten much. more drunk than he’d intended. He’d lost control. And Gideon never lost control. “What the hell was Ryan thinking of?”

“Drinking,” she said tartly. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? Someone to get drunk with. So I came along to do the driving and keep the two of you out of trouble.”

That’s what she always used to say, back when she was a skinny little nuisance trying to tag along with the two collegeage boys—that they needed her to keep them out of trouble. Of course, neither of them wanted to avoid trouble at that age. He used to call her... “Mermaid,” he said with rough affection. Those memories, at least, were untouched.

“Don’t call me that! Not after—not when you don’t remember!”

He flinched. Not after last night. Not after he, apparently, got so damned drunk he took his best friend’s sister to some damned hotel room and then took her to bed.

There had been a time, shortly after Cassie turned sixteen, when he’d been terrified that something like this would happen—when he’d been unable to keep his body from reacting to the sweet, new curves of a girl much too young for the lechery his mind kept picturing. But Gideon always did what had to be done. He’d learned to control his mind; eventually he’d even subdued the worst of his body’s responses, so that he’d been able to be around little Cassie without fearing he’d do something to frighten her or destroy his friendship with her or her brother.

Yet now... “How could Ryan let me do this?” he groaned. “Where the hell was your brother?”

“Don’t you remember anything?” Now her voice sounded thick with tears. “It was his idea.”

It was what? Gideon’s eyes popped open as he jerked to a sitting position. The construction crew promptly drove two burning stakes through his eyeballs. He flopped back down and breathed. Slowly. Carefully. And more pieces of the day before fell into place.

Ryan’s idea. It had been Ryan’s idea to charter the plane when there weren’t any commercial flights available. Or had that part been Gideon’s contribution? He wasn’t sure. He had drunk so damned much he’d lost pieces of his life. Gideon had to wrestle with self-loathing before he could turn his attention to the memories he did have.

Absurdly, the first memory that floated to the surface was of a pirate ship, complete with cannons blazing and men wielding cutlasses. And another ship, a frigate, and a battle between the two that took place... in front of a hotel?

Fireworks, not cannon fire. That’s what he’d seen, a carefully staged extravaganza. He remembered going inside the hotel, where the huge lobby gleamed with gold fixtures and a floor shiny enough to see yourself in. And he remembered Cassie’s body, slim and warm, tucked up against his as they walked into that hotel lobby. He hadn’t wanted to let her go even for a minute, because she might change her mind.

He remembered a taxi ride, and Cassie’s face, pale with nerves. The fare had been twelve dollars. He’d given the cabbie a twenty and asked him to wait.

“Vegas,” he said quietly. “We’re in Las Vegas.”

Her silence was confirmation enough. Or almost enough. After a long pause, he made himself move, propping up on one elbow. The jackhammers went crazy inside his head. He ignored them.

He looked down at Cassie’s triangular face. Even first thing in the morning her hair was too short and fine to hold a curl or a tangle. It framed her unhappy face in a fringe the color of sunrise. Her chameleon eyes were as gray as rain at the moment, and shiny with tears. Before this morning he would have sworn those eyes were as true and guileless as Cassie herself.

The twist of disillusionment went deep.

His gaze drifted down her slender neck to smooth, white shoulders speckled with a few pale freckles. Impossibly, his body stirred at the sight, which drew his brows together in a tighter scowl. Deliberately he looked from her shoulders to her small breasts, covered by the sheet she clutched tightly in place, and let his eyes linger on the slim gold band on the third finger of her left hand.

Finally he looked back at her face. “Congratulations, Mrs. Wilde,” he said bitterly. “A few others have tried to trick their way into sharing the name that goes on my bank statements, but I wasn’t expecting it from you. How much will it cost me to buy my way out of this mess?”

She reared up and punched him in the nose.

When Cassie stood under the hot spray of the shower six minutes later she was still shocked at herself. She’d never hit anyone before. Well, not since the fifth grade, anyway, when Sara Sue Leggett had told everyone Cassie got her clothes from the Dumpster behind the Salvation Army.

She ought to feel guilty. She really should. The man obviously had a wretched hangover, and she’d hit him.

Oh, she hoped his nose bled and bled. She just wished she could use up all the hot water so that he’d have to take a cold shower, but that was hard to do in a Las Vegas luxury hotel.

Las Vegas. Cassie bit her lip and poured shampoo into her palm from the little bottle the hotel furnished.

She’d known he might have regrets this morning, but she hadn’t known he could look at her the way he had. In the sixteen years since Ryan brought Gideon Wilde home with him from college for the first time, Cassie had seen Gideon’s face ice over like that before. He didn’t suffer fools gently, and he despised dishonesty. His scorn could be as withering as winter’s first frost. But he’d never turned that expression on her before. Not on her. She hadn’t expected that.

The shampoo smelled of almonds and lathered beautifully. It was, she noticed, a more expensive brand than she normally bought. Cassie sighed and ran her thumb over the unfamiliar ring on the third finger of her left hand. Gideon thought she’d married him so she could afford a better brand of shampoo.

How could she have been so stupid? How could she have let those two talk her into this?

They’d been at the Blue Parrot, a dinky little bar where Ryan and Gideon used to hang out during their impoverished college days. Maybe the location, with its nostalgic associations, had been partly responsible for the turn the conversation took. Ryan had grown increasingly Irish and sentimental as the afternoon waned into evening, and both men had put away a great deal more liquor than they normally would have.

But Cassie suspected that Ryan had drunk less than Gideon, while encouraging him to drink more. He’d gotten that crafty look in his eyes after the first couple of drinks, the expression that said he thought he was being sly...an expression that usually meant disaster was on its way. Her brother was about as successfully sneaky as a grizzly bear, a big, red-haired grizzly, who created the most havoc when he tried to tiptoe up on a problem instead of charging it with gleeful, bearlike rage. No, subtlety was not a virtue that ran in their family. But Ryan had never seemed to grasp how poor he was at it.

Gideon, unfortunately, had been a bit too intoxicated by then to recognize that gleam in Ryan’s eye.

“I have to kill him,” Cassie muttered, scrubbing her scalp vigorously. Her brother loved her. She knew he did. He also drove her crazy. Their father had died when Cassie was little, leaving their mother to raise them as best she could on split shifts and a waitress’s income. Ryan, six years older than Cassie, had appointed himself in charge of his sister’s life from that day on.

Until yesterday. Yesterday, he’d decided to put someone else in charge of taking care of Cassie—his best friend, Gideon, who needed a woman with more staying power than the blond icicle he’d been engaged to. A loyal woman. A woman, Ryan had emphasized, who could cook.

Cassie had tried hitting him at that point, but even drunk, Ryan’s reflexes were better than hers.

At least, she thought as the hot water rinsed the suds from her hair, my brother stopped short of pointing out just why he thought I’d go along with his stupid idea. He knew, though. He’d known for years and years.

She considered letting him live.

Of course, Ryan had probably only kept quiet because he knew that her feelings would register on the minus side of Gideon’s ledger, not the plus. Gideon did not trust strong feelings. He was emotionally frozen, in fact, which made him exactly the wrong sort of man for Cassie. She needed someone warm and loving, someone who could return all the feelings she longed to pour out. She’d forced herself to face that fact years ago...in her head, at least.

Surely, she thought, scowling at the fogged glass door of the tub enclosure, if she’d had any illusions left, Gideon had shattered them with that sorry excuse for a proposal yesterday. Unlike her brother, Gideon got quiet and serious when he drank. He’d listened gravely to Ryan’s heavy-handed suggestions for a substitute bride, then turned to Cassie and announced—not asked, but announced—“We can fly to Vegas tonight. That way I can still get married on my wedding day.”

Of course she’d said no. Lord, saying no had been easy. Not painless, but easy. Only somehow she’d wound up here, anyway, naked in Las Vegas with Gideon’s ring on her finger. And, she noticed with a wince as she soaped her body, with an unaccustomed tenderness in a very private place.

She was not going to cry. She’d given up crying for Gideon Wilde eight years ago, when she’d humiliated herself as thoroughly as a woman could. Well, she’d almost given it up. She’d had a minor relapse when she’d heard about the Icicle six months ago, but that didn’t really count. She couldn’t hold that night against herself.

Oh, but she could hold last night against herself. Last night, when he’d been drunk, hot and hasty... and this morning, when he hated her. She could blame herself for this morning.

No more, she told herself, shutting off the shower that would never run out of hot water no matter how long she stayed in. She’d made a mistake, a huge mistake, letting her brother convince her to listen to the man she’d been in and out of love with since she was twelve.

Not love, she corrected herself. Lust. She could not possibly love a man who didn’t remember their wedding night. Her problem, she decided, as she dried off with a towel twice the size any she owned, was that her hormones had gotten themselves fixed on Gideon from an early age, almost as soon as she started having hormones. Somehow, in spite of trying, she’d never gotten them straightened out

It was time to grow up. Gideon was always so damned cool and rational. He’d selected his fiancée that way, according to Ryan. Logically. Miss Melissa Southwark was everything Gideon wanted. She had the chilly, blond perfection that Cassie knew, with the painful certainty of experience, Gideon preferred in a woman.

Well, Cassie could be logical, too. She’d get her hormones straightened out, along with the rest of her. From this moment on, Cassie would be a different woman. Calm. Rational. In control.

First she had to undo last night’s mistake. But to undo a marriage...divorce was such an ugly word, and they’d only been married one night. Really, when you thought about it coolly and logically, one night didn’t count.

An annulment, she thought, zipping herself back into the jeans she’d been married in, would be best. Although it might not be easy to convince Gideon of that truth. If there was one area where he wasn’t always rational, it was what, in another age, would have been called his honor. Gideon didn’t lie, and he didn’t go back on his word. Ever.

What she had to do, she realized, as she pulled on yesterday’s wrinkled silk blouse, was persuade him the contract they’d entered into was not binding. How could she...

When inspiration struck, Cassie smiled, delighted with herself. Unfortunately she wasn’t looking in the mirror at that moment. If she had been, she might have recognized the gleam in her eyes, since it strongly resembled her brother’s expiression when he was at his craftiest. Just before he really messed things up.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gideon said. He stood by the closed drapes in their room, wearing a scowl along with yesterday’s clothes.

Gideon hated to be rumpled and dirty. He hated the sour taste in his mouth, too, the faint stink of liquor clinging to his shirt and the pounding of his head. Cassie had hidden in the shower a long time, yet room service still hadn’t managed to appear with the coffee, aspirin, breakfast and clean clothes Gideon craved. And he hadn’t managed to come up with more than fragments of the night before. One of those fragments included a bed, darkness, Cassie... and a vivid, tactile memory of overwhelming lust. That fragment stood alone, banked on either side by foggy nothing. He couldn’t remember.

His memory, or lack of it, didn’t excuse him. But as far as he could see, his new bride lacked even the feeble excuse of drunkenness for what she had done to him. Cassie had known he was drunk. She’d known what kind of woman he needed—hadn’t he told her and Ryan both, while drinking toasts to the wedding that didn’t happen? Yet she’d married him anyway.

He scowled at her.

Cassie marched to the window where he stood and seized the drapery pull. “I hope breakfast gets here soon, Gideon. Your blood sugar must be low. It’s interfering with your reason. Of course we’ll get the marriage annulled.” She yanked on the cord, flooding the room with hideously bright light that the white sheers did nothing to tame. “There, that’s better. Mornings in the desert are beautiful, aren’t they?”

Gideon winced at the assault on his abused eyeballs. The sunshine lit a fire in Cassie’s hair, a fire that should have clashed with the tomato-red silk of the blouse she wore tucked into her jeans but didn’t. Vivid colors suited Cassie as pastels never would.

Melissa, Gideon thought, his scowl deepening, would never wear a shirt that bright. Melissa preferred soft blues and peaches that didn’t overwhelm her delicate blond coloring. She wouldn’t have opened those drapes without asking, either. He was sure of it. “There’s nothing wrong with my reason. Yours, however—” Patience, he reminded himself, was necessary to maintaining control. “Cassie, you must know an annulment isn’t possible after the marriage has been consummated.”

“So?” She propped her hands on her hips in a familiar, challenging pose.

“Obviously, after last night—”

“I thought you didn’t remember last night.”

The shock of fear over his loss—of memory, of control—was less than it had been. Less, but still powerful. “I don’t,” he said, his voice flat with the effort of detachment. “But when I wake up naked, in bed with a woman who is also naked, I don’t need an instant replay to tell me what happened the night before.”

“Well,” she said, “I hate to tell you this, but you had an awful lot to drink yesterday, Gideon. You’re not used to that. You mustn’t be upset that your, ah, manly functions were impaired.”

“My what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Are you saying that I didn’t—that I passed out?”

“Not exactly. You tried. It isn’t as if you didn’t try. You just couldn’t.” She stepped closer and patted his arm. The gold band on her finger winked at him mockingly in the sunshine. “It’s okay, though. Really.”

He stepped back and glared.

She smiled sweetly at him. “Don’t worry. I’m sure there’s no permanent problem. And an annulment is much tidier than a divorce, don’t you think?”

The knock at the door pleased Gideon. Thinking of coffee and a clean shirt, tabling consideration of Cassie’s bombshell, he strode to the door and opened it without hesitating.

The man on the other side of the door was very like Gideon, and very different. The expressions the two men faced each other with were identically grim, but the newcomer’s scowling mouth was framed by a thick mustache. He was every bit as tall as Gideon, and even heavier through the chest and shoulders. Where Gideon’s hair was the limitless black of midnight, this man’s hair flamed with sunrise.

Just like Cassie’s.

“I want to talk to my sister,” the other man growled. “Now.”

Gideon sighed. Of course Ryan showed up before Gideon’s coffee and clean shirt did, and of course he was breathing fire. On a morning like this, what else could he expect? Gideon stepped back, silently holding the door open for the one man he considered a friend—or had. Until this morning.

Ryan charged into the room. “Cassie,” he said as he reached for her. “Cassie—”

She held an arm out stiffly, as if that slender limb could really hold off her oversize brother, and announced, “I am going to kill you this time.”

Ignoring her arm and her statement equally, he grabbed her shoulders, peering into her face. “Are you all right?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I’ve been ravished too many times to count. Quit playing—”

The growl rumbling up from Ryan’s chest didn’t sound playful. Gideon went from standby to full alert.

Cassie grabbed her brother’s arm and hung on as he turned to face Gideon. “I am not going to have this, do you hear me? You are not going to pound on Gideon. Yesterday you did everything but offer him some cows and ponies if he’d take me off your hands, and now you come barging in here as if he’d abducted me! What in the world is wrong with you—other than the usual, I mean?”

Ryan didn’t bother to look sheepish. “Yesterday I’d had too much to drink. That doesn’t—”

“Doesn’t excuse you in any way, form or fashion! What I want to know is—” Cassie broke off to stare at Gideon. “Would you mind?” she asked irritably. “I’d like to talk to Ryan privately for a minute.”

He could, he thought, take offense at having his bride of nine hours ask him to go away and let her talk with her brother privately. He could have been amused. He’d often been amused in the past by the way the pair of O’Gradys interacted with each other—alternately quarrelsome and affectionate, full of dire threats and a fierce, unshakable loyalty.

Today he simply felt the chill and the distance. He’d never known how to belong like that. “You know,” he said, surprising himself, “I think I do mind.”

The knock that landed on the still-open door was a welcome interruption. Room service had arrived at last.