Harlequin Desire February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: The King Next DoorMarriage With BenefitsA Real Cowboy (Kings of California)

by Maureen Child

  Cia sleeping in his bed, hair tousled and flung across two pillows as she nestled right at the mattress’s halfway mark, ripe for him to join her, to fold her against his body and sink in.

  He groaned and slammed his head into his hands, ignoring the document filling the laptop screen before him.

  That was the worst, trying to sleep alone after having Cia there, night after night. A blink in time, compared to how long he’d slept without her. But no matter how many times the maid washed the sheets, lime and coconut lingered in the creases, lying in wait to spring from hiding and invade his nose with the memory of what he’d lost.

  No, not lost—what he’d never had in the first place.

  He’d been wrong. Cia didn’t need him. What could he say, what could he do, to counter that? If she didn’t need him, he had no place in her life, as hard as that was to accept. She’d probably already whisked away whatever feelings she’d had for him, warm or otherwise.

  At least he could bury himself in eighteen-hour days with no distractions and no one waiting at home.

  All those closed-door sessions with Matthew had taken root. New clients vied for his attention. Contracts spilled from his workbag. Wheeler Family Partners for-sale signs dotted properties all across the city. The National Commercial Development Association had nominated WFP for an award—the highest percentage increase in listings for the year. Manzanares was icing on the cake.

  Success and acknowledgment of his efforts. That’s what he should be focusing on. Not on how every contract reminded him he should be closing the deal on his divorce and moving on. Every contract mocked him, silently asking why he couldn’t just pick up a pen, for crying out loud.

  He had to get out of here. Take a walk or a drive to clear his head. When he got back, he’d sign the papers and send them to his lawyer to be filed with the court. In no time, he’d be rid of this ache behind his ribs and free to pursue...something. Anything. The world was his for the taking.

  But nothing interested him. At all.

  He fingered the box in his pocket, which held Cia’s rings. It was time—past time—to stop carrying them around, but whenever he dug out the box and held it on his palm, his lungs cramped. The same cramp happened when he tried to remove his ring.

  Maybe he should see a doctor. His throat hurt all the time. Some bug had probably wormed its way into his system.

  When he rounded the corner to the reception area, Helena gave him her you-have-company-and-it’s-not-a-client smile and said, “I was about to buzz you. You have a visitor.”

  Cia. His stomach flipped and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead. Maybe she’d thought it through and had recognized the excellent logic he’d so clearly laid out for why they belonged together.

  Maybe she was pregnant. The image of her belly rounded with his child materialized in his head and pricked the backs of his eyes.

  Or—he dragged his imagination back to the real world—she intended to flay him alive for not filing the papers yet. He pasted a smile on his face and pivoted to face the wrath of Hurricane Cia in full category-five mode.

  He could never have prepared enough to greet the woman seated on the leather couch.

  “Lana.” Not Cia. Of course not. She’d never concede. He swallowed his disappointment. “This is a surprise.”

  “As it was meant to be. Hello, Lucas.” Lana stood, balancing on delicate stilettos and clad in an expensive designer suit Cia would have sniffed at righteously.

  Funny. He’d never noticed what Lana wore, other than to figure out the best way to get it off without ruining it, as she was ridiculously fussy about her clothes. Again, hindsight. Couldn’t go home to her husband with buttons missing. “Is something wrong?”

  With a glance at Helena, she said, “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  Yeah. Go out in public with Lana while still married to Cia. Exactly what he needed. Actually, even a private conversation with Lana sounded less than fun, but as he took in the classy blonde who’d thanked him for his time and effort with lies, he realized he was over it.

  And he was curious what she wanted. “Helena’s coffee is better than any coffeehouse’s. I have a few minutes. Let’s sit in the conference room.”

  Lana followed him to the conference room across from the receptionist’s desk, which he’d chosen due to the glass walls in case she thought there was a chance in hell he’d pick up where they’d left off.

  He had a strong sense of propriety, not a shallow love for appearances as Cia liked to accuse him of.

  Helena entered with two cups of coffee and left them on the table, along with an array of creamers and sugars. Lucas waited for Lana to take a seat and then chose a perpendicular chair.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked politely.

  Two artificial sweeteners and four creamers. Lana hadn’t changed the way she drank coffee and likely nothing else, either. She took her time stirring, then looked up. “I came to apologize.”

  Lucas raised an eyebrow. “For which part?”

  “All of it. I was lonely. Bored. Feeling adventurous. Take your pick. My shrink would agree with all of them. I’m not asking you to understand why I did it. Just to believe I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me.” He laughed and hated that it sounded forced. “You lied to me. You used me. Then you unleashed your husband on me to finish the evisceration job you started. That was the most unforgivable part.”

  He took a deep breath. Maybe he wasn’t as over it as he’d imagined.

  She sipped her coffee, as if for fortification, and blinked her baby blues. “I’m here to apologize for that, too,” she said. “And to tell you the truth. I didn’t unleash my husband on you. All the rumors and hits to your business, I did that. Not Henry.”

  “What?” Shock froze his tongue, preventing him from voicing anything else. No. Not over it at all.

  “Henry will be fifty-eight in December. I had no illusions about being in love when I married him and neither did he. When I told him about you, he patted my hand and said it was cheaper than a divorce, then went back to work. I played him up as the jealous husband because, well, I wanted you to believe I had worth to him.”

  “Why?” he prompted when she paused.

  “Because you’re so hard to faze, Lucas. Emotionally. Do you feel anything at all? I wanted you to love me and you didn’t. I thought...maybe if you believed he loved me, you’d see something desirable in me, too. Only it didn’t work. I was heartbroken. Devastated that it was just all fun and games to you.”

  “It was fun,” he reminded her harshly. She had a lot of nerve, talking about love when they’d been nowhere near serious. “It could have been more, maybe. Eventually. At least, I thought it could.”

  Genuine sadness laced her small smile. “Could have been. Maybe. Eventually. That’s how it is with you. No commitment. So I lashed out. Tried to ruin you. Instead, you fell in love with someone else, blew past all my efforts to destroy you and went on to be happy without me.”

  A catch in her throat cut off the sentence and a catch in his gut kept his resounding “No” from being voiced.

  He wasn’t happy.

  The rest of it was true. He was in love with Cia, and he needed her, like a tree needed water. She brought out all the best parts of him and kept him on his toes. She challenged him and made him feel alive.

  He’d given her up, so sure that if she didn’t need him, they had no reason to be together.

  Ironic how Lana hadn’t accused him of marrying Cia on the rebound after all. Instead, she’d put a microscope on his marriage, and the view shook his spine something fierce.

  She coughed and touched a finger to the corner of her eye. “I’m sorry, and I’m not going to bother you anymore. I’m in a place now where I can be happy for you.”

  And he w
as in a place where he could accept Lana had cut him deeper than he’d been willing to admit, spilling over into his relationship with Cia and causing missteps visible only in hindsight. Hindsight. The word of the day.

  “Okay.” He stood so fast the rolling chair shot away from the backs of his legs. “Thanks for coming by. You didn’t have to, and I appreciate it.”

  Surprised, she glanced up. “Rushing me out? I guess I don’t blame you. Good luck, Lucas. You deserve a much better life than what I could have given you.”

  In his head, the word life became wife. He agreed. He deserved a better wife than one who betrayed him the way Lana had. But his wife deserved a better husband than one who had betrayed her. Like he’d done to Cia. He’d done all she’d accused him of, and more, and probably not as subconsciously as he’d insisted.

  He’d refused to see the truth. He’d been so busy trying to have what Matthew had had that he’d missed the most critical element. It was clear now why his brother hadn’t been able to live in the house he’d built with Amber, why he’d taken off despite being a Wheeler.

  Love made a person do crazy, irrational things. Things he’d never do under normal circumstances, like offer a short-term wife millions of dollars to make it long-term. Instead of blowing off Cia’s broken heart like a complete moron, he should have just opened his mouth and admitted he wanted to alter the deal because he loved her and couldn’t live without her.

  It might not have changed the outcome. But it might have.

  Love. That was the reason he couldn’t move on this time. He’d been too afraid of it, too much a coward to examine what he was feeling, and it would serve him right to have lost Cia forever. But he wasn’t going down without a fight.

  He hurried to his office to start on the Lucas Wheeler Philosophy of Cia Wheeler. He had to get it right this time.

  * * *

  Something was wrong with Fergie. Cia had tried everything, but the bird wouldn’t eat. The blob of gray feathers sat in the bottom of the cage and refused to acknowledge the presence of her owner. It had been like this since the day she’d moved back into her condo.

  Every morning, she rushed to Fergie’s cage, convinced she’d find the bird claws up and stiff with rigor mortis, which would be about right for a companion she’d anticipated having for fifty years.

  One more thing ripped from her fingers.

  “You have to eat sometime,” she told Fergie. Not that she blamed her. Cia had no appetite, either, and after cooking in Amber’s gourmet kitchen, the one in her condo, which she’d been using for years, wasn’t the same. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

  At quarter till nine, she went to bed, where she would likely not sleep because she refused to turn on the TV and refused to acknowledge she’d grown used to it.

  She didn’t need the TV, and she didn’t need Lucas Wheeler. For anything, least of all to “help” her find another shelter site. She had an internet connection and lots of patience. Okay, maybe not so much patience. Tomorrow she’d investigate using another real estate professional. A female.

  Cia stared at the dark ceiling and shifted for the hundredth time into yet another uncomfortable spot on the hard mattress. It was just so quiet without the TV. Without the rustle of sheets and the deep breathing of a warm, male body scant inches away.

  Not a night went by without a stern internal reminder of how much better it was to be alone, instead of constantly looking over her shoulder for the guillotine that would sever her happiness.

  A knock at the front door interrupted her misery. Grumbling, she threw on a robe and flipped on a light as she crossed the small condo. A peek through the peephole shot her pulse into the stratosphere.

  Lucas.

  With a sheaf of papers in his hand. The divorce papers. He was dropping them off—personally—this late?

  Hands shaking, she unlatched the door and swung it open. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hello to you, too.” He captured her gaze, flooding her with a blue tidal wave of things unsaid. Unresolved.

  The porch light shone down, highlighting his casual dress. Cargoes and a T-shirt, which meant he hadn’t come straight from work. Was he not working all hours of the night anymore? Dark splotches under his eyes and lines of fatigue in his forehead told a different tale.

  She set her back teeth together. She had to get out of the habit of caring.

  “Come in, before I let in all the mosquitoes in Uptown.” She stepped back and allowed him to brush past her, to prove his raw Lucas-ness didn’t have any power here. His heat warmed her suddenly chilled skin, and the quick tug in her abdomen made a liar out of her.

  A squawk stopped his progress midstride. Fergie flapped her wings and ran back and forth along one of the wooden dowels anchored across the top of her cage. “Lucas, Lucas, Lucas,” she singsonged.

  Cia glared at her miraculously revived bird. “I didn’t know she could say that.”

  “Took her long enough.” He grinned, and his eyes lit up. All the butterflies in her stomach took flight. “We’ve been working on it.”

  So. Fergie and Lucas had been buddy-buddy behind her back. She sighed. Maybe Fergie would eat, now that her precious Lucas was here. Traitor.

  She waved at the couch. “Sit down.”

  He sank into the giant white sectional, and it shrank as his frame dominated the space. Then he spilled his masculinity into the rest of the room, overwhelming her.

  Why had he come here, invading her refuge?

  Luckily, he’d had the wisdom to move them into Matthew’s house—his house now—instead of moving in here for the duration. The separation would have been a hundred times more difficult if she’d had to wash his presence from the condo. No way she could have. She would’ve had to move.

  Might still have to, just from this visit.

  “Will you sit with me?” He nodded to the couch.

  “I prefer to stand, thanks. Besides, you’re not staying long. Are you dropping off the papers?”

  “In a way,” he said. “But first, I’d like to tell you something. You know my great-great-grandfather founded Wheeler Family Partners back in the eighteen hundreds, right?”

  When she nodded, he went on, “Back then, there weren’t many buildings. Mostly land. That’s true real estate, and it’s in my blood. I used to think real estate was about deals. A piece of paper, signed and filed. Then I was done, ready to move on to the next deal. But that’s not who I am anymore. I’m in the business of partnering with people to build something real. Something permanent. That’s why I grew WFP without Matthew. Not because I got lucky or worked hard. I fell in love with someone who challenges me to be more. Who taught me the value of wholehearted commitment.”

  ¡Dios mío!

  “Is that where you were going?” She laughed, and it came out more like a sob. So now he was in love with her. Conveniently. “You came to deliver divorce papers and tell me you decided you’re in love with me. Anything else?”

  He came off the couch in a rush, feet planted and eyes blazing. Involuntarily, she backed up from the heat of his anger. This was Lucas mad. Before, by the pool, was nothing in comparison.

  “I’m not here to deliver divorce papers.” He held them up and flicked his other hand. A lighter appeared between his fingers, flame extended.

  Before she could blink, he set the papers on fire.

  Smoke curled away from the burning pages, and her divorce deal turned to ash. He blew out the fire before it reached his fingers and threw the charred corners on her pristine coffee table, metal glinting from his third finger with the motion. He was still wearing his wedding ring.

  “What did you do that for?” she demanded, pulse pounding. “I have a copy in the other room, and you’re not leaving here until you sign it.”

  His taut frame still bristled as he dismisse
d the demand with a curt slice of his hand. “I am not divorcing you. Period.” He took a deep, steadying breath. “Cia, listen for a minute. I handled it all wrong. I’m sorry. I cut down what mattered most to you and undermined your goals with the shelter, trying to force you to need me. I was too much of a dingbat to realize I’d done everything except the one thing you really wanted.”

  “Oh, what’s that?” she asked. Tears stabbed at her eyes, burned down her throat.

  “You stuck your heart out and then yanked it right back so quickly, I almost didn’t see it. You don’t give a guy a chance to think about what to do with such a gift, and I’m sorry it took me so long to figure out what would be enough.” He inched toward her slowly, giving her time to move. Or to stay. “You want someone to love you. You want me to love you.”

  Her lungs contracted as his heart splashed onto his face. This was definitely not some conveniently discovered feeling calculated to get his way. He’d never looked at her with such fierce longing coupled with aching tenderness.

  And yet, he’d always looked at her like that. She’d never dared examine it. Never dared hope it meant more than warm feelings for the woman he was sleeping with.

  When he’d taken all the steps he could, she hadn’t moved. He swept her up in his arms.

  “Darlin’,” he whispered into her hair. “Let me love you.”

  She shut her eyes and breathed in Lucas. Breathed in the acrid, charred scent of burned paper as his body cleaved to hers and he held her. It would be so easy to plunge into this new Lucas, the one who opened up and poured out poetry and promises like sap from a felled tree.

  With her stomach and heart twisting, she broke his embrace. “That’s not what I want.”

  “Stop pretending.” Ferocity leaped back into his expression. “You’re so afraid, you either fake everything or you fight it, as if that will insulate you from hurt. Nothing will. But being alone hurts in a different way.”

  His blue laser beams punched right through her, past the flesh and bone. She’d struggled so hard to be whole, to heal from losing pieces of her soul. First, when her parents died and after, when she tried to replace the loss with disastrous relationships.