Kitabı oku: «The Millionaire She Married»

“You can’t marry that guy.”

Jenna couldn’t sit still for this. She shot to her feet. “This is just like you, Mack,” she said. “You appear out of nowhere after all these years and you immediately tell me how to live my life. Well, I want those papers you promised me, Mack. And I want them now.”

Mack answered quietly. “You’ll get those papers. But not right this minute.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean I want a little time with you first.”

Oh, sweet Lord, she did not like the sound of this. She strove mightily for calm. “Time for what?”

Mack studied her before he spoke. “We had something good once. And I admit it was mostly my fault that we lost it. I want some time to try to understand what went wrong.” He paused and looked her in the eyes. “You’ll have your papers. After you spend two weeks alone with me.”

The Millionaire She Married
Christine Rimmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my dear friend Georgia Bockoven.

Thank you for the times you listened, the useful advice and the beautiful books you write.

CHRISTINE RIMMER

came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been an actress, a sales clerk, a janitor, a model, a phone sales representative, a teacher, a waitress, a playwright and an office manager. Now that she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly, she insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Those who know her best withhold comment when she makes such claims; they are grateful that she’s at last found steady work. Christine is grateful, too—not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves who loves her right back and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day to day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

The shop, like the steep, rather narrow street it stood on, had a feel of times past about it. The oyster-white sign over the door read Linen and Lace in flowing script. Vines and morning glories twined and trailed in and out of the lettering.

Mack McGarrity stood beneath a striped awning, his hands fisted in his pockets, staring in the window to the left of the shop’s entrance. Beyond the glass was a brass canopy bed. The bed was draped with lacy white curtains, covered in filmy white linens and piled with embroidered white pillows.

Next to the bed, on the left, stood a white dresser bearing a white pitcher and bowl. On the right, a white nightstand, with a vase of white roses and a white-shaded lamp. White lacy nightgowns, each one a little different from the next, had been tossed in an artful tangle across the pillows and the filmy bedcovers, as if the lady who owned them all couldn’t make up her mind which to wear.

Mack smiled to himself. The fists stuck in his pockets relaxed a little.

On their wedding night Jenna had worn a nightgown like one of those thrown across that white bed—an almost transparent gown, with lace at the collar and down the front. And roses, little pink ones, embroidered around the tiny pearly buttons.

Those buttons had given him trouble. They were so damn small. And he had been nervous, though he’d tried not to show it.

But Jenna had known.

And she’d laughed, that soft, teasing laugh of hers. “It’s not as if it’s our first time,” she’d whispered.

“It is the first time. My first time…with my wife.” His voice had been gruff, he remembered, gruff with emotions he’d never allowed anyone but Jenna to see….

Mack turned from the window. He stared across the street, at a store that sold hand-painted furniture. A man and a woman stood at the display window there, admiring a tall bureau decorated with a woodland scene. Mack watched them, not really seeing them, until they disappeared inside.

Then, rather abruptly, he turned back to the shop called Linen and Lace. Two determined steps later, he reached the glass-fronted door. He took the handle and pulled it open.

The scent of the place hit him first—floral, sweet but not too sweet. An undertone of tartness. And something spicy, too. Like cinnamon. It didn’t smell like Jenna, exactly. But it reminded him of her. Sweet and just a little spicy.

He’d barely started to smile at the thought when he realized he’d tripped the buzzer that would warn her she had another customer. She turned and saw him just as he spotted her.

When the buzzer rang, Jenna glanced toward the door out of habit, ready to send her new customer a swift, be-right-with-you smile.

The smile died unborn on her lips.

It was Mack.

Mack.

Her ex-husband. Here. In her shop.

After all these years.

It couldn’t be.

But it was. Definitely.

Mack.

Her throat closed up on itself. She gulped to keep from gasping.

He looked…terrific. Older, yes. And somehow more relaxed. But in a deep and fundamental way, the same.

He was staring straight at her through those eyes she remembered much too well. Not quite blue and not quite gray, like a sky caught between sunshine and cloudiness.

He smiled at her—that beautiful, half ironic, half shy smile, the one that had dropped her in her tracks nine years before.

He’d lived in an apartment down the hall from her. And she had knocked on his door to tell him that she knew very well he’d been feeding her cat.

When he answered, he actually held Byron in his arms. That sleek midnight-black traitor had the nerve to purr as if he belonged there.

“I’ll have you know, that’s my cat,” she’d informed him, doing her best to sound bold.

He had smiled, just the way he was smiling at her now—like the sun coming out on a gray, chilly day. She’d felt the warmth, a warmth that reached down inside her and then started to spread.

“Come on in,” he had suggested as he stroked her cat. “We’ll talk about it.”

It had never even occurred to her to say no.

And now, all these years later, just the sight of him made her feel as if something inside her was melting. Her knees wanted to wobble; her pulse knocked in her ears.

Along with the weakness, the unconscionable excitement, she also knew dread.

Why had he come here?

When she had called him three days before, she’d asked one thing of him—made one simple, very clear request. He had said that he would take care of it.

Did his sudden appearance in her shop mean that he had changed his mind?

“Er…miss? Are you all right?”

Jenna snapped her head around and forced a brilliant smile for her customer. “I am fine. Where were we?” She glanced down at the stack of brightly colored linens she clutched in her arms. “Ah, of course. I remember. And I do understand. Not everyone loves white. That’s why I wanted you to see these. They’re by an English designer I especially like. Summer Garden is the name of this pattern. Beautiful, isn’t it? The colors are so vivid, different intensities of green and blue, with the flowers like splashes of pink and yellow and red.” She held out the neatly folded pile of sheets. “Feel.”

Her customer ran a hand over the fabric. “Soft.”

“And durable, too. Three hundred thread count. The finest quality combed cotton, cool in summer, cozy in winter.” Jenna slid a glance at Mack. He was watching her. Waiting.

And he’ll just have to wait a little longer, she thought. “Come this way.” She indicated a display near the far wall. “I have more from this designer. Tell me what you think….”

A few minutes later, Jenna closed a sale of sheets, pillowcases, shams and a comforter. As soon as she rang that one up, there was someone new to wait on. And someone else after that. Since one of her clerks had the day off and the other had taken a two-hour lunch in order to handle a few personal errands, all the customers were Jenna’s. And Jenna never liked to make a customer wait.

Still, she could have stolen a moment for the civilities, a moment for hello-how-are-you. An opportunity to find out why Mack had come. She didn’t do that. Because she was stalling, foolishly hoping he might just give up and leave.

But no. He wandered the room, examining her merchandise as if he actually intended to buy something. He seemed…very patient, quite willing to wait until she had time to deal with him.

His patience bothered her almost as much as his sudden appearance in her shop. The Mack she had known had been far from a patient man.

But things had changed since then. Back then, Mack McGarrity had been a man on a mission. He’d been determined to carve out his niche in the world and he’d driven himself relentlessly toward that goal. Now he had millions.

Maybe having lots of money meant you could afford even more than a mansion in the Florida Keys and a forty-six-foot fishing boat. Maybe having lots of money meant you could afford to wait.

Or at least, maybe it had done that for Mack McGarrity.

The thought probably should have pleased her. For a man like Mack to learn patience—that was a good thing.

But it didn’t please her. It made her nervous. Mack had always been relentless. To think that he might now be patient as well could cause her considerable difficulty if, for some reason, he decided to use those characteristics against her.

But why would he do that?

She didn’t want to know—which was why she kept stalling, kept letting him wait.

Nearly an hour after Mack entered the shop, Jenna found herself alone with him—save for an elderly woman who came in often to browse. The nice old lady took her time, as usual. Finally she settled on a three-piece set of needlepoint antimacassars. Jenna rang up the sale and counted out change.

“Thank you so much. Come back again,” Jenna said as she walked her customer to the door.

“Oh, you know I will, dear. I love your little shop.” A cagey grin appeared on the woman’s puckered rosebud of a mouth. “And you always do pay such lovely attention to me when I visit.”

Jenna pulled open the door. To the accompaniment of the shop’s buzzer, her customer toddled outside, turning to wave as she made her way up the street. Jenna stepped onto the sidewalk to wave back. Stalling.

And then the time had come. Jenna went inside again and shut the door.

Mack had moved into the central aisle, only a few feet away from her. She felt cornered, so near the door that she kept triggering the buzzer, but distressingly reluctant to move closer to him.

He had the courtesy to back up a few paces. She moved warily toward him and the buzzing ceased.

There was silence.

She had to force herself to say his name. “Hello, Mack.”

“Hello, Jenna.”

She stared into his face, a tanned face now, with the creases around the eyes a little deeper than before. His light brown hair was still cut no-nonsense short, but more time in the sun had given it gold highlights. His eyebrows, too, had gone gold at the tips.

He looked good. He really did.

And she had been staring too long. She cut her eyes away, not sure what to say next.

She wanted to demand, What are you doing here? To order, Go away, and don’t come back. To insist, I have my own life now. I run my own life. It’s a good life, and it doesn’t include you.

But she knew that if she said those things, she would only sound defensive, would only put herself at a disadvantage right from the start. So the uncomfortable silence continued for several more agonizing seconds.

At last he spoke. “Struck speechless at the sight of me, huh?”

She met his eyes directly, sucked in a breath and forced out a brisk reply. “Well, I have to admit, I don’t understand why you’re here. Key West is a long way from Meadow Valley, California.”

Key West. She never would have believed it. Mack, the ultimate workaholic lawyer, living in the tropics, drifting around the Gulf of Mexico in that boat of his. The idea of her driven, success-obsessed husband—correction, ex-husband—drifting anywhere seemed a complete contradiction in terms.

And she wished he’d quit looking at her with that amused and embarrassingly knowing expression, quit making her feel so…young and awkward. As if she were twenty-one again, a lonely college girl far from home, instead of the mature, settled, self-possessed thirty she was now.

What was it about him? How did he do it? It had been seven years since she’d seen him face-to-face, and five since their divorce should have been final. Still, right now, staring at him, with him staring back at her, she felt exposed. Raw. As if the mere sight of him had ripped open old and still-festering wounds—wounds she’d been certain had healed long ago.

It had been hard enough to pick up the phone and call him, after tracking him down through one of his colleagues at his old law firm. Hard enough to talk to him again, to hear his voice, to ask him to send her the papers she needed.

When she’d hung up, she’d told herself, Well, at least that’s done.

But now here she was. Face-to-face with him, feeling raw and wounded. Breathless and confused.

It shouldn’t be like this, and she knew it. All the hurt and recriminations were long past, not to mention the yearning, the tenderness, the love.

By now she should be able to smile at him, to feel reasonably at ease, to ask calmly if he’d brought her the papers.

The papers. Yes. That was the question.

She cleared her throat. “Did you…decide to bring the papers in person, is that it? It really wasn’t necessary, Mack. Not necessary at all.”

He didn’t reply immediately, only kept looking at her. Looking at her so intently, causing that weakness in her knees and a certain disturbing fluttering in her solar plexus.

Now she wanted to shout at him, Answer me! Where are those papers?

But then the buzzer sounded again. Jenna glanced over her shoulder, pasted on a smile. “I’ll be right with you.”

“No hurry.” The new customer, a well-dressed, fortyish woman, detoured toward a display of afghans and furniture scarves hung from quilt stands along the side wall.

Jenna looked back at Mack. He glanced toward the woman over by the afghans, then spoke in a low voice. “I want to talk to you. Alone.”

“No!” The word came out all wrong. It sounded frantic and desperate.

“Yes.” Lower still and very soft. Gentle. Yet utterly unyielding.

“Miss?” The customer was fingering the fringe of a piano shawl. “There’s no price tag on this one.”

Jenna realized she was scowling. As she glanced toward her customer, she rearranged her face into a bright smile. “I’ll be right there. Just one moment.” She turned to Mack again, the cheerful smile mutating instantly back to a scowl. “We have nothing to say to each other.”

“I think we do.”

“You can’t just—” Her voice had risen. She cut herself off, got herself back under control, then went on in an intense whisper. “You can’t just wander in here after all these years and expect me to—”

“Jenna.” He reached out and snared her right hand.

Before she could think to jerk away, he tugged her behind a wrought-iron shelving unit stacked with Egyptian-cotton towels and accessories for the bath. Vaguely stunned that he had actually touched her, she looked down at their joined hands.

“Let go,” she instructed in a furious whisper.

He did, which stunned her all over again, somehow. One moment his big warm hand surrounded hers—and the next, it was gone.

He said, “I’m not expecting anything. I only want to talk to you. In private.”

She could see it in his eyes, in the set of his jaw. He was not going to just go away. She would have to deal with him, to listen to whatever he’d decided he had to say to her.

Right then, guiltily, she thought of Logan, her high school sweetheart, her dear friend—and now, her fiancé. Logan had waited a long time to make her his bride. And when this little problem with her divorce from Mack had cropped up, Logan, as usual, had been the soul of understanding. He hadn’t reproached her, hadn’t asked her how she’d managed, over five whole years, to let it slip her mind that she’d never received her copy of the final divorce decree.

He’d just gently suggested that she get the situation cleared up.

So she’d called Mack.

And Mack had said that he did have the papers and he would sign them, have them notarized and send them to her right away. So she’d reported to Logan that everything had been worked out. When the papers came, in the next few days, she would file them. Within six months she and Logan would be free to marry.

Logan hadn’t been thrilled about the waiting period required by California law. But he had accepted it gracefully.

She wasn’t so certain how he’d accept the news that Mack had appeared in person and demanded to speak with her in private.

But then again, maybe he wouldn’t even have to know about this little problem until after it had been resolved.

Logan, who was an M.D. in family practice, had left two days ago for a medical convention in Seattle. He wouldn’t return until Sunday night—two more days from now.

By then, Jenna told herself, she’d have everything under control. By then, she would have listened to whatever Mack had to say, taken the papers from him and sent him on his way. The whole situation would be much easier to explain to her fiancé once she had the papers in her hands.

“Miss?” It was the woman over by the afghans, beginning to sound a bit put out.

“Go ahead,” Mack said. “Take care of her.”

The woman bought the piano scarf. Mack waited, standing a little to the side of the register counter, as Jenna rang up the sale.

Once her customer had left, Jenna sighed and conceded, “All right. I close up at seven. After that, we can talk.”

“Good,” Mack said. “There are a couple of promising-looking restaurants down the street. I’ll drop back by when you close and we’ll get something to eat.”

Not on your life, she thought. She would not spend the evening sitting across a table from him, fighting the feeling that they were out on a date.

“No,” she said. “Come to the house at seven-thirty. We can talk there. Lacey’s visiting for a while, but she won’t bother us.”

“Lacey.” He said her younger sister’s name with more interest than he’d ever shown in the past. “Visiting? From where?”

“She lives in Los Angeles now.”

“What does she do there, rob banks?”

Jenna gave him a too-sweet smile. “She’s an artist. And a very talented one, too.”

“Still the rebel, you mean.”

“Lacey makes her own rules.”

“I believe it—and how’s your mom?”

Jenna didn’t answer immediately. Sometimes she still found it hard to believe that Margaret Bravo was gone. “She died two years ago.”

He looked at her for a long moment before muttering, “I’m sorry, Jenna.”

He’d hardly given a thought to Jenna’s mother while she was alive. Mack McGarrity didn’t put much store in family ties. But right now he did sound sincere. Jenna murmured a reluctant “Thank you,” then spoke more briskly. “Seven-thirty, then. My house.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Bring the divorce papers. You do have those papers?”

“I’ve got them.”

He had the papers. Relief washed through her. Maybe this wouldn’t be as bad as she’d feared.

Chapter Two

Jenna walked home from the shop. It was only three blocks to the big Queen Anne Victorian at the top of West Broad Street where she’d grown up. She enjoyed the walk. She waved to her neighbors and breathed the faint scent of pine in the air and thought about how much she loved her hometown. Tucked into a pocket of the Sierra foothills, Meadow Valley was a charming place of steep, tree-lined streets and tidy old wood frame houses.

At home, Jenna found the note Lacey had left on the refrigerator.

“Last-minute hot date. Don’t wait up.”

Jenna grinned to herself at the words scrawled in her sister’s bold hand. When Lacey said, “Don’t wait up,” she meant it. Since about the age of eleven, Jenna’s “baby” sister had never willingly gone to bed before 2:00 a.m. Lacey loved staying up so late that she could watch the sun rise before calling it a night.

Jenna’s grin became a frown.

Without Lacey, she and Mack would be alone in the house.

She crumpled the note and turned for the trash bin beneath the sink. She saw Byron then. He was sitting on the floor to the right of the sink cabinet door, his long, black tail wrapped neatly around his front paws.

“I don’t want to be alone with him,” Jenna said to the cat. “And do not ask me why.”

The cat didn’t, only regarded her through those wise yellow-green eyes of his. “Don’t look at me like that,” she scolded as she tossed the note into the trash bin and shoved the cabinet door shut.

The cat went on looking, beginning to purr now, the sound quite loud in the quiet kitchen. Byron never had talked much. But he could purr with the best of them.

Jenna scooped him up and put him on her shoulder. “If you fall all over yourself rubbing on him, I’ll never forgive you.” She stroked the sleek raven fur and the cat purred all the louder. “I mean it,” she grumbled, but the cat remained unconcerned.

“All right, all right. Dinner for you.” She scooped food into his bowl, then left him to his meal.

In the downstairs master bedroom she changed from her linen jacket and bias-cut rayon skirt into Dockers and a camp shirt. She purposely did not freshen up her makeup one bit or even run a comb through her straight, shoulder-length blond hair.

And when she returned to the kitchen for a tall glass of iced tea, she pointedly did not rush around whipping up a little something to tempt a man’s palate. She was not dressing up for Mack and he was getting no dinner. She had one order of business to transact with him. She wanted the final divorce papers he was supposed to have signed five and a half years ago. And then she wanted him back in Florida where he belonged.

Ten minutes later she answered the doorbell. It was Mack, grinning that knee-weakening grin of his. A pair of waiters stood behind him.

She blinked. Waiters? Yes. Definitely. Waiters. In crisp white shirts, black slacks and neat black bow ties. One carried a round table with a pedestal base, the other had a chair under each arm.

“What in the—?”

“You didn’t cook, did you? Well, if you did, save it. I’ve brought dinner with me.”

“But I—you—I don’t—”

“You’re stammering,” he said with nerve-flaying fondness. Then he gestured at the waiters. “This way—Jenna, sweetheart, you’ll have to move aside.”

“I am not your—”

“Sorry. Old habits. Now, get out of the way.”

He stepped forward, took her by the shoulders and guided her back from the door. Then he gestured at the waiters again. They followed him into the front parlor, where they proceeded to set up the table on her mother’s hand-hooked Roosevelt Star rug.

In the ensuing seven or eight minutes, Jenna tried to tell Mack a number of times that she wasn’t having dinner with him. He pretended not to hear her as the waiters trekked back and forth from a van out in the front, bringing linens and dishes and flatware and a centerpiece of flower-shaped candles floating in a cut-crystal bowl. They also brought in a side table and set it up under the front window. They put the food there. It looked and smelled sinfully delicious.

When all was in readiness, one waiter lighted the candles as the other pulled out Jenna’s chair for her.

Jenna sent a glare at Mack. “I don’t like this.”

He put on an innocent expression, which she did not buy for a nanosecond. “Come on, Jenna. It’s only dinner.”

The waiter waited, holding the chair.

Jenna gave in and sat down, thinking that Mack McGarrity might have managed to develop a little patience, he even might have learned how to relax. But in this, he hadn’t changed at all. He still insisted on doing things one hundred percent his way.

Mack slid into the chair opposite her. He gestured to the waiters and one of them set a bread basket on the table, along with two plates of tempting appetizers: stuffed miniature Portobello mushrooms and oysters on the half shell, nestled in chipped ice. The other waiter busied himself opening a bottle of Pinot Grigio, which Mack sampled, approved and then poured for Jenna and for himself.

That done, Mack signed the check.

The moment the front door closed behind the waiters, Jenna placed one mushroom and one oyster on her plate. She also buttered a warm slice of sourdough bread. Then she rose from her chair. She dished up more food from the offerings on the side table—a good-sized helping of salade nioise and a modest serving of sautéed veal scallops with marsala sauce.

She sat down and ate. The appetizers were as good as they looked, as were the salad and the veal. She did not touch her wine.

As she methodically chewed and swallowed, Mack kept trying to get her talking. He asked about her shop and complimented her on the changes she’d made in the decor of her mother’s front parlor. He wondered aloud where Lacey was and tried to get her to tell him more about her sister’s life as a struggling artist in Southern California.

Jenna answered in single syllables whenever possible. When the question absolutely required a longer answer, she gave him a whole sentence—and then went back to her meal.

She was finished ten minutes after she’d started. She pushed her plate away. “Thank you, Mack. That was excellent.”

“I’m so glad you enjoyed it,” he muttered, finishing off his glass of wine and reaching for the bottle again.

She granted him a sour smile. “You’ve hardly eaten.” He’d taken one mushroom and a single breadstick.

“For some reason, I feel rushed. It’s ruined my appetite.” He poured more wine, set the bottle down.

Jenna smoothed her napkin in at the side of her plate. “Well, then. If you don’t feel like eating, then maybe we can proceed to the main order of business here.”

He was staring at her engagement diamond. “Nice ring,” he muttered.

“Thank you. I like it, too—and can we talk about what you supposedly came here to talk about?”

He gestured with his wineglass. “By all means.”

She straightened her shoulders and inched her chin up a notch. “As I told you on the phone, I want to get married again.”

“Congratulations.” Mack took a minute to sip from his glass. Then he lowered the glass and looked at her straight on. “But don’t you think you ought to get rid of your first husband before you start talking about taking on another one?”

“I am rid of my first husband,” she replied in a carefully controlled tone. “Or I was supposed to be. Everything was settled.”

“For you, maybe.”

She glared at him. “It was settled, Mack.”

He grunted. “Whatever you say.”

“Well, all right. I say that everything was over—except that, for some reason, you never got around to signing the papers that my lawyer sent your lawyer.”

Mack studied the depths of his wineglass for a moment, then looked at her once more. “It was a busy time for me. I had a lot on my mind.”

She decided to let his lame excuses pass. “The point is, it’s over, Mack. Long over. And you know it. I don’t know why you’re here, after all these years. I don’t care why you’re here.”

He sat up a little straighter. “I don’t believe that.”

“Believe what you want. Just—” Give me those papers and get out of my life! she wanted to shout. But she didn’t. She paused. She gathered her composure, then asked quite civilly, “Do you have the papers?”

He brought his wineglass to his lips again and regarded her broodingly over the rim. “Not with me.”

Jenna could quite easily have picked up the crystal bowl of floating candles from the center of the table and heaved it at his head. To keep herself from doing that, she folded her hands in her lap and spoke with measured care. “You said you had the papers.”

“And I do. I just didn’t bring them with me tonight.”

“You lied.”

“I didn’t lie. You heard what you wanted to hear.”

Another lie, she thought, but held her tongue this time. She’d lived with Mack McGarrity long enough to recognize a verbal trap when he laid one. If she kept insisting that he’d lied, they’d only end up going around and around, her accusing and him denying, getting nowhere.

Let it go, she thought. Move on. She said, “You told me you wanted to talk to me. In private. Well, here we are. Just the way you wanted it. You’d better start talking, Mack. You’d better tell me what is going on.”

He set his glass on the table. “Jenna, I—” He cut himself off. Something across the room had caught his eye. She followed his glance to the black cat peeking around the edge of the arch that led to the formal dining room. “My God. Is that…?”

“Byron,” she provided reluctantly, at the same time as he whispered, “Bub?”

The cat’s lean body slid around the arch. Then, his long tail high, Byron strutted over, jumped lightly onto Mack’s lap, lay down and began to purr in obvious contentment. Mack petted the black fur in long, slow strokes. Jenna looked away, furious with him for this game he was playing—and moved in spite of her fury at the sight of him with Byron again after all these years.

She stared out the front window at the Boston fern hanging from the eaves of the porch as the sound of Byron’s happy purring rumbled in her ears. When she looked back, Mack was watching her. His eyes were soft now, full of memories, of dangerous tenderness. “He has some gray, around his neck.”