Wife for Hire

by Christine Bell

  demonstrate a basic dip.”

  Although he was grateful for the reprieve, it was short-lived. After ten minutes of dipping practice, Lindy was back in his arms, warm and flushed, her eyes bright with joy.

  “Think you got this, Irish?” she asked, eyebrows raised in playful challenge.

  “I believe I do, yes.”

  Marcel cued up the music, and they began to dance. Lindy really was a natural. Her motions were so fluid and sensual, he could sit back and watch her dance all day. Instead, he had to be right up close while she gyrated and shimmied against him. He fought the good fight, he truly did, but it was a losing battle, and his erection bucked beneath the cotton of him his gym pants. Lindy’s expressive blue eyes widened when the evidence of his desire grew too powerful to ignore, jutting forward to nestle in the cradle of her thighs. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, and he fought the need to lean forward and capture it with his own.

  The music came to a close, and he tilted her back in a low dip, cupping one cheek of her firm, round bottom in his palm. He stared at the pulse in her neck, leaping wildly beneath her golden skin. Time moved like molasses until slowly, purposefully she arched her pelvis upward, grinding into him.

  A rumble reverberated through his chest and he pulled her up. He let his hands trail lower, closing them over the swell of her hips, anchoring her against him.

  “O-Owen?” she whispered, her breath hitching.

  “Looks like somebody finally got a handle on this, yes?” Talia said with a brilliant smile. “Fabulous job, O’Neils. I love the passion. Same time Wednesday, if anyone is interested.”

  People scooped up their towels and water bottles then filed out of the room. Lindy shifted in his arms and he bent to her ear and muttered, “I’d appreciate it if you can stay close for a minute until I get a handle on this…situation.”

  Her already flushed face turned a darker shade of pink, and she nodded.

  “We’re going to hang back for a sec and practice our dips if that’s okay,” she called to the instructors who had begun packing up.

  Marcel gave Owen a knowing smile and chuckled. “Great idea. We’ll come back in a bit to lock up.” He ushered Talia out of the room, and the next moment, he and Lindy were alone.

  “That fooled no one,” he said with a sheepish grin and released her.

  Lindy laughed nervously and stepped back. “That? We’re at a couple’s retreat. Surely that is exactly the result they’re hoping for, am I right? It’s basic biology. Rub two people all over each other, and stuff comes up.”

  He tipped his head and watched her gather her stuff. Her movements were jerky, and her hands trembled. He couldn’t deny the darker part of him swelled with satisfaction at the sight. He reveled in making her nervous.

  “Is that what you think?” he asked, moving closer to where she stood, toweling off her face. He reached out a finger and toyed with the damp tendril of hair clinging to her forehead. Her gaze flew to his, and she held the towel in front of her like a shield.

  He continued. “You think if it had been Bitsy and I, things would have…come up? Or even Talia and I?” He shook his head firmly. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. I’m not nineteen, Lindy. I can control myself around a beautiful woman. It’s you I’m having a tough time with. For the life of me, I can’t seem to behave, no matter how much my brain tells me I should. Now the question is what to do about it?”

  She dropped the towel and met his gaze head on. “The more I’m around you, the less I want the answer to be ‘Get it out of your head’,” she said warily.

  They faced off for an electric moment, until he tipped his head toward her. The scent of pears assailed him. “If you don’t want me to, say the word.” He drew close…closer, until their lips—

  “Sorry,” a voice squeaked from the doorway. “I left my water bottle behind.” Bitsy scurried over, giving them a “don’t mind me” wave of her hands. “I’ll be out of your way in one second.” She scooped up her bottle in a flash and rushed back by them, hands shielding her eyes. “Please, don’t let me stop you guys from whatever it is you’re doing.”

  Owen leaned his forehead against Lindy’s. “Saved by the bell, hey?”

  She drew away and called after Bitsy. “Wait up! I was just coming to find you. Want to go for a quick swim before lunch?”

  Bitsy hesitated, weighing the mood in the room. When it became clear that whatever she’d interrupted had died an abrupt death, she nodded apologetically. “Okay, then. If you’re not too busy.”

  As Owen watched them go, eyes locked on Lindy’s swaying hips encased in spandex, he couldn’t resist calling after her.

  “Chicken.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Chicken my ass,” Lindy muttered to herself as Owen pulled the car out of the lot a couple hours later.

  After her swim with Bitsy, they’d gone to the great room for lunch only to find there wasn’t a shrimp in sight. It had clearly been the last straw for poor Bitsy. Her face had crumpled, and she looked near tears.

  “I sat through that whole dang yoga class, swam thirty laps, and danced my patootie off and now there’s not even any shrimp?”

  Lindy had felt so sorry for her, she suggested they go to The Rusty Scupper in town. Bitsy would get her shrimp, and she would get some much-needed space. Only Calvin and Owen had caught them on their way out, and now the cozy twosome was an annoying foursome.

  “What’d you say?” Bitsy asked with a questioning glance in Lindy’s direction. “You don’t want to order the chicken?”

  Lindy winced. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. Luckily, Calvin had commandeered the front passenger seat and was waxing poetic on his business acumen in his thundering voice, so it was unlikely that either of the men had heard her. “Yeah, uh, chicken sucks. I’m so…sick of it.”

  “At least wait until you see the menu to decide.” Bitsy gave her a friendly pat on the hand.

  Lindy nodded and agreed to do just that. For the remainder of the short ride, she allowed herself to stew. Owen had a fat lot of nerve calling her a chicken when he wouldn’t even allow himself to consider an emotional connection with a woman. At least she was willing to take the risk. But then again, she’d had a beautiful example. Her parents had twenty incredible years together before their accident, and Lindy and her brothers knew one thing for sure. Life was too short not to spend every precious minute of it surrounded by people you loved. She’d be damned if she was going to ignore that lesson because of Owen. She’d do the job she’d been contracted to do, and then she’d go back to her life with her brothers, and her puppies and her Melba. Then, someday, when the time was right, she’d find a guy who would love her the way she deserved to be loved…the way she would love in return.

  By the time they got to the Scupper and settled into their table, she’d managed to talk herself down. She’d spent more of her day annoyed at Owen for his little jab than she had doing her job, and her job was to gather information. With a renewed sense of purpose, she focused on the Cedarhursts. Owen had given her a look when he and Calvin had asked to join her and Bitsy, so she was pretty sure he intended to use the time to get some information from the man. While they discussed bull markets and brokers, she turned her attention to Bitsy.

  “So have you been to a couple’s retreat before?”

  Bitsy shook her head and leaned forward to whisper. “No. I was lucky I even got Cal to agree to this one. He’s only doing it to please me, but at this point, I’ll take what I can get, you know what I mean?”

  It took all her strength not to shake the woman and shout, “No! I have no earthly idea what you mean. Why would you ever take what you can get from this man?” The woman was so sweet but so infuriating. Bitsy Cedarhurst deserved a lot more than Calvin gave her, but until the woman figured that out for herself, nothing would change between those two, fake retreat or no.

  She posed more questions, but at a point they felt more like grilling than curiosit
y, and Bitsy seemed to clam up a little. When their lunches came a short while later, Lindy was grateful for the reprieve, especially when Owen took the reins.

  “So what do you think of our host so far?”

  “Stephanopoulos?” Calvin asked. “He’s all right for a pretty boy, I guess. A little much with the hippy dippy nonsense, but seems like a nice enough guy.”

  “He’s very charismatic,” Bitsy added with a shy smile.

  “He certainly is,” Owen said. He seemed as if he was going to say more, but then froze, gaze glued to a point over Lindy’s head.

  “Honey?” she said, in hopes of snapping him out of his strange behavior.

  “I think I just saw—” He hadn’t finished his sentence when she twisted around to see the restaurant door open and a young blond woman in a smart Burberry coat and black boots stalk toward their table.

  “Owen?”

  Her lilting soprano was at odds with her expression of shocked fury. She stood a few feet from their table, annoyance adding harshness to her otherwise soft features.

  “Can I speak to you, please?” she hissed through her straight white teeth.

  Three heads swung toward Owen, awaiting his response, which, at the moment, appeared to be stunned silence. Lindy was pretty floored, too. What were the odds they’d run into someone he knew the one time they’d left the retreat? Pretty high apparently, because here stood a woman—a scorned lover maybe?—who clearly knew him well enough to be angry with him.

  “Cara, this is a nice…surprise.”

  Cara. Owen’s sister. The whole reason for their charade, and here she stood in front of them, exactly where she shouldn’t be. Lindy scrambled for an explanation, for something to say, but Calvin Cedarhurst beat her to it.

  “Hello there, pretty lady. Calvin Cedarhurst, pleasure to meet you.” His gaze traveled the length Cara’s body in a way that could only be described as creepy, and he struggled to his feet. “Would you care to join us?”

  Bitsy’s misery was so absolute that, even through Lindy’s haze of panic, she still managed to feel a twinge of empathy for the woman.

  To Cara’s credit, she ignored Calvin and honed in on her brother. “You said you were in Houston.”

  “Lindy and I were going through a tough time, and we decided to check in to a couple’s retreat. We felt that it was better to keep the details of our whereabouts between us. You understand how it is with married couples. Forgive me?”

  The question weighed a ton and hung in the air like a Mac truck suspended by a fraying cable. Owen’s eyes pleaded with his sister, but she clearly didn’t know what he was asking for.

  “And Lindy is…”

  The defeat on Owen’s face spurred her to action. “Right here, silly! Like the new ’do, sis? I went dark and short because you know how your brother has that thing for Dorothy Hamel. Didn’t even recognize me, did you?”

  Cara finally seemed to get it, or at least some of it, and nodded slowly. “Yeah. Looks good. Um, Owen, will you join me for a sec at the bar?” She didn’t wait for his answer, instead turning to give the rest of the table a finger wave. “It was nice to meet you, Calvin and…you as well.” She gave Bitsy a kind smile. “Sis, I’ll give you a call later, all right?”

  This last was aimed at Lindy, who was too busy choking on her relief to do anything more than give Cara a thumbs up and bright smile.

  Owen stood and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  He followed his sister from the room, leaving Lindy to contend with two curious sets of eyes.

  She set her voice to stage whisper and improvised. “Owen’s sister is a drug addict, poor dear.”

  …

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  His sister’s arms were crossed, and her eyes were spitting green fire. Rule number one when dealing with an angry woman? Deflect. “How did you find me?”

  “Don’t pull that shit with me. I shouldn’t have had to ‘find you’.” She capped that last phrase off with what looked more like air claws than air quotes. “You should’ve been in Texas where you said you were. Imagine my surprise when I went to The Chelsea to drop off the suit I bought you and saw this on your dresser.” She held a crumpled pamphlet in her hand, and Owen sighed.

  His sister had free reign of all his homes, including his Midtown penthouse. She popped by when he was away on business…almost never. He briefly considered questioning her about her sudden interest, but dismissed it. She was the only family he had. He never wanted her to feel like she wasn’t welcome. They’d spent the past handful of years building this bond, and he wasn’t about to set them back to save face. He’d been careless. She often bought him clothes on her travels if she found something she loved that would suit him. Many times she’d stopped by to drop them off on her way home from her shopping excursion. Since Nico had crushed her spirit, she had barely left her apartment, never mind gone on a shopping spree. Murphy’s Law dictated that the trend would start again right when he needed it not to.

  The significance of her choosing to go out again wasn’t lost on him. Nor was the fact that she had done her makeup and had traded in her Häagen-Dazs marathon gear for some stylish clothing. She looked better than she had in months. “You went shopping for me?”

  Some of the anger seemed to drain out of her, and she shrugged. “Yeah.” She bit her lip and shifted her gaze away before continuing. “Well, it was partly that, and partly because you were avoiding me and acting so weird. You wouldn’t call me back, then one time you told me you were going to Houston and then next you said Austin. I knew something was up. So maybe I’m not totally innocent here. I wanted to take a look around the apartment and make sure everything was all right.”

  Understanding dawned, and he could practically hear the light bulb click on. “Wait a second, I didn’t leave that pamphlet on my dresser. You snooped through my stuff! Cara—”

  She cut him off. “You think you have dibs on worrying? I worry about you, too. And I thought something was seriously wrong. You can’t imagine the scenarios I had painted in my mind. You were sick, your business was having problems, you joined a cult. Whatever it was, I knew you’d try to shield me from it, so I thought I’d poke around a little. I hate that it had to come to this, but I’m not sorry.”

  He opened his mouth to rail at her, but then took a moment to really look at her. At the angrily tapping toe, the flushed cheeks. She wouldn’t be here ready to tackle him if she wasn’t on the mend. A warm sensation filled his chest. “I forgive you.”

  “But that doesn’t absolve you of this sideshow you’ve got going on.” She jerked her chin toward the dining room. “What are you trying to pull? Talk to me about Nico and this Healing Place. Please. I need to know what’s happening.”

  Tears filled her eyes, and he leaned forward to tug her rigid body in for a hug. “I’ll tell you everything, I swear. But we can’t do this here. I’ll call you tonight and we’ll meet somewhere safe to talk.”

  “Is it even legal? Damn it, I won’t have you going to prison for me, Owen. It’s not important anymore. All I want is for you to come home.” She stepped back, her gaze pleading.

  He steeled himself and shook his head. “I can’t do that. Not until this is done.”

  Over Cara’s shoulder, he saw Calvin Cedarhurst barreling his way toward them. Owen tipped his head toward the door. “I can’t get into it any further. We’re about to have company. Please. Trust me on this. I promise I’m in no danger. If, after we talk tonight, you still want me to come home, I will. Deal?”

  She nodded warily. “Okay. I’m staying at the hotel right next door so meet me at seven in room two-twelve.”

  She’d slung her purse back over her shoulder when Calvin reached them.

  “Where you headed, little lady? Care to join us for lunch?”

  “Sorry, I’m on my way out.” She turned on her heel and headed for the door, Calvin’s gaze locked on her backside the whole way. Bastard.

&n
bsp; “She’s a real looker there, O’Neil. Too bad about her being a junkie and all.”

  Nothing had been easy to this point and with the arrival of his sister, no matter how it all turned out, things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. The tension pooling in the back of his neck ramped up, and he nodded.

  “Yeah, too bad about that.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “So you think he’s running some sort of major scam using the retreat as a front?” Cara asked.

  Lindy sat across the dining room table from Owen and his sister in her hotel room later that night, marveling at their similarities. In spite of the difference in coloring and Owen’s insistence that they didn’t look alike, she was floored. They had the same mannerisms, the same cocky tilt to their heads, and even pursed their lips the same way when they were deep in thought.

  “I don’t think it, I know it,” Owen said.

  “What have you found so far?”

  “Not much,” he said. “But we haven’t been here long, and there have definitely been some strange things happening. We just haven’t been able to piece it all together yet.”

  “What do you think, sis?”

  Cara turned her laser green gaze onto Lindy, but despite the little dig, she seemed genuinely interested in her answer.

  Lindy thought about it for a long moment, knowing if she were in the other woman’s shoes that she would want an honest answer. “I think Owen’s right. Something feels…off. I know that sounds flaky or whatever, but that’s the best way I can describe it. Something isn’t right.” Lindy went on to describe the vibe she’d gotten from Nico, and the information Owen had dug up about the short lease. Cara listened attentively until Lindy ran out of things to say, which happened far more quickly than she’d hoped. She half expected Cara to hold Owen to his promise and make him pack it in right then, but she didn’t.

  “Okay, so suppose you do find something? Then what?”

  “We call the cops. Get him arrested.”

  “No violence?” She tipped her head and pinned him with her stare, as if she could gauge the truthfulness of his answer with the power of it. It was spectacular, and Lindy could almost believe that was the case. It was hard to reconcile the woman before her with the shell of a person Owen had described only a few weeks before.

  “If you got hurt, I’d never forgive myself,” she added softly.

  “And if someone else got hurt because we didn’t act? Then how would you feel?”

  She flinched. “Terrible.” She covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head. “I’ve been weak and blind. I shouldn’t have let him get off so easily. What if he already—”

  “Don’t do that to yourself.” Owen leaned toward his sister and tipped her chin so she faced him. “None of this is your fault, but it is our responsibility to make it right. Stay here. Stay in Colorado so you can be here when it all comes down. Then we can face him together, and he can see that you are a hell of a lot stronger than he ever gave you credit for.”

  Emotion clogged Lindy’s throat, and she swallowed hard. For someone who didn’t believe in romantic love, Owen sure had a lock on how to love family.

  By the time they left an hour later, they’d made a pact to talk at least twice a day by phone and secured Cara’s promise to stick close to her hotel room and lie low.

  Owen slid into the driver’s seat and let out a long sigh. “Jesus, that was almost a major clusterfuck.”

  Lindy smiled. “You handled it well.”

  “Thanks. I’m thinking in the end, this might work out for the best. Something you said in your interview stuck with me for a long time afterward. A person should have to face the person they hurt. If you could’ve seen my sister even a month ago, you wouldn’t recognize her today. It’s like her figuring out I was in Colorado to deal with Nico and coming to be a part of it gave her a sense of purpose or something. She looks…alive again. She didn’t for a while there, and it scared me shitless.”

  “I can imagine.” She didn’t know how she would handle it if Nate or Mal had been treated the way Nico had treated Cara. That thought combined with meeting the woman herself tonight strengthened her resolve tenfold. She was going to have to start digging a little harder with Nico, even if it meant raising the risk factor. There was no way they were going home empty handed.

  She gazed at the man behind the wheel, lost in his own thoughts, and made a vow. Before they left Colorado, she would make sure that Cara had the chance to face her tormentor.

  One way or another, Nico Stephanopoulos would be stopped.

  …

  By the time Owen lay down in bed that night, the tension that had been gripping his neck from the moment he saw Cara’s face had finally ceased, only to be replaced by pains his conscience was giving him. What would his mother say if she could see him now, letting a lass sleep on the uncomfortable couch while he lay, sprawled on this sumptuous bed like he was king? His Excellency, indeed.

  The day had been a whirlwind with Lindy and he bouncing from activity to activity, making connections and gathering information when there was some to be had. By the time they’d gotten back to the room after their meeting with Cara, he’d begged off going over their notes until the morning. When she hadn’t put up any resistance, he knew she was as beat as he was, which meant she needed sleep, and that couch was not for sleeping. She shouldn’t have to suffer that for the next few weeks. Problem was, already, he knew her well enough to know she would never agree to switching back.

  There was one alternative.

  Despite the close call earlier at the studio and his certainty it would do them both good, he had no plans to seduce her. For once, his intentions were entirely altruistic. As he recalled the image of Lindy panting in his arms during their dance, some might call them masochistic. Either way, the guilt wouldn’t allow him a good night’s sleep when he knew she wouldn’t be getting one.

  He rolled onto his feet and tugged on a T-shirt before padding into the living room. Lindy was curled up on the couch. Her eyes were closed, but he could tell by her breathing she was still awake.