The Bride Means Business

by Anne Marie Winston

  He could manage her.

  Seven

  Dax’s business dinner was scheduled for the following weekend. Jillian and Mrs. Bowley had spent every spare minute during the week cleaning every square inch of the house. Or at least, the main floor, which was a challenge in itself.

  Jillian checked the liquor stock and bought a few more bottles, polished crystal and silver, and spot-cleaned the rug in the foyer where Christine had tracked in mud. She called the caterer, planned a menu and hired the bartender. She folded napkins into an attractive flower that could be set in the middle of each plate, and she ordered a box of delectable petit-fours from the bakery near Kids’ Place. She had her nails done and her highlights touched up.

  And on Saturday morning, she went shopping.

  “Are you planning to eat with us this evening?” she asked Christine at breakfast.

  The girl hesitated. “Is that okay with you and Daddy?”

  “Of course it is. In fact, it would be good for you to see how these things work in case you ever have to host one someday.” Christine was a little young to be worrying about hosting dinner parties but the child clearly wanted to be there, though she was too unsure of herself to say so.

  “Okay,” Christine said. “If you think I should, I guess I’ll eat with you.”

  “Great. I’m going shopping for something to wear. Want to come along?”

  Christine’s eyes grew wide. “You don’t have anything to wear?”

  Jillian knew she was envisioning the walk-in closet upstairs stuffed with a far-too-extensive wardrobe. She laughed. “Yes, I have things I could wear, but it’s a great excuse to get a new dress. You probably ought to get one, too.”

  To her dismay, Christine’s eyes filled with tears. “My mother used to make my dresses before she sent me away. I still have some but they’re all too small.”

  “Oh, honey.” The child’s grief touched her own sore heart and she got up from her chair and went around the table, taking Christine onto her lap and hugging her. Dax’s daughter grabbed her around the neck in a stranglehold as her thin frame shook and Jillian rocked her, patting her back, reminded of the way Frannie had comforted her a few days ago.

  Finally, Christine’s sobs began to abate.

  “I’d make you a dress,” Jillian said, trying to lighten the moment, “But I can’t sew worth beans. You’d look like a reject from a rummage sale.”

  Christine gave a hiccuping giggle. “A bag lady.”

  “Raggedy Ann.”

  Christine giggled again. She loosened her arms and lifted her head from Jillian’s shoulder, slipping off her lap selfconsciously. “Sorry I soaked your shirt.”

  “It’s okay. Everybody needs a good cry now and then.” Amen to that, she thought silently. She’d suppressed so many tears in recent weeks that her chest muscles felt permanently strained. She got up and went around the table, picking up her dishes.

  “Tell you what,” she said to the girl. “I can help you pack your dresses away in special wrapping so they’ll be preserved for your own little girl to wear someday.”

  Christine’s whole face lit up. “You can?”

  “That way, you’ll have some wonderful memories of your mother to share with your children.”

  Christine giggled, distracted from her moment of sadness. “Talking about my children sounds really weird.”

  Jillian shrugged. “That’s me. Old Weird Jillian.”

  The child giggled again. Then there was a pause.

  “Jill?” Christine had heard Marina call her that and had begun to use the short form of her name as well.

  She turned and looked back across the table at the girl. “What?”

  “I thought I was going to hate having a stepmother. But I don’t.”

  “Good.” She had to swallow the lump in her throat. “I thought I was going to hate being a stepmother. But it’s been pretty awesome so far.”

  She turned around again and backed through the swinging door into the kitchen—and saw Dax standing just on the other side of the doorway. He had a smug look on his face and she could almost see him telling himself how well this arrangement was working out, what a great decision it had been to force her into this marriage.

  Smacking his face was an almost irresistible impulse, but somehow she managed to brush by him. Still, she had to puncture that airbag of satisfaction somehow. “We’re going shopping this morning,” she said, setting her dishes in the sink. “Can we pick up anything for you? I noticed your belts and pants seemed to be getting a bit tight around the waist.”

  He chuckled, and then he was behind her so fast she never saw him move. His hands settled at her waist and he dragged her back against him, nuzzling his face into her neck and biting gently. “There’s not a thing wrong with the waist of my pants,” he said. “But you’re right. They are tight.” His fingers splayed across her abdomen as she felt the burgeoning erection he wasn’t bothering to hide pushing at her from behind. Electric currents of arousal streaked from her neck to the hidden junction between her legs; her breasts tightened so instantly that the sensation was almost as painful as it was pleasurable.

  “Dax,” she hissed, putting her hands over his and pulling. Getting nowhere. “Stop it. Chrissy could come through here any time.”

  “So?” His teeth dragged aside the neck of her shirt and he set his lips on the tender skin exposed.

  She shuddered as his mouth moved back up, seizing her earlobe and sucking, intensifying the ache in her breasts and the restless sensation that urged her to move her hips. And she realized her hands no longer were trying to push him away. Instead, they had slid back to clutch him behind the thighs and pull him even closer. Without her permission.

  She wrenched herself away from him. “I am not your sexual toy.” But it wasn’t the most convincing thing she’d ever said, given the way she was panting.

  He smiled at her, and leaned back against the sink, crossing his arms over his broad chest, and she couldn’t ignore the shape of his aroused flesh filling the front of his jeans. “I never said you were.”

  “And I am not sleeping with you.”

  The smile grew wider. “Okay. No sleeping.” His eyes blazed with the black fire of desire. “We never slept much, anyway.”

  The images his words provoked brought exciting, enticing memories with them, bombarding her resolve. If she didn’t do something drastic, she was going to wind up exactly where he wanted her, and she refused to sleep with him again, knowing what he thought of her. Knowing what he thought of her.

  Suddenly, it was no problem at all to resist him. “You think I slept with your brother.”

  The words burst out like bullets, and Dax’s smile shattered into a razor-sharp baring of teeth. “You told me I was wrong.” His arched brows dared her to prove it.

  “It doesn’t matter what I told you. What matters to me is that you believed I could do something like that.” She backed toward the swinging door, wary of the sudden glitter of rage that leaped from his eyes. “I’ll assist you with business dealings until the day six months is up, and then I’m out of here. I can’t live in the same town with you.” She shook her head blindly. “I won’t.”

  She pushed through the door and ran through the dining room. Christine looked up, startled, but she kept on going. As she sped up the stairs, she heard Chrissy’s voice saying, “What did you say to her, Daddy?”

  It took a determined effort, but she calmed herself, running cold water in her bathroom and splashing her face, then washing it and reapplying her makeup.

  Twenty minutes later, she knocked on Christine’s door, emotions firmly shut away, feelings numbed and dull. “The shopping train is leaving. All aboard.”

  Dax put on his tux before he went down to check things over one last time. He hated to admit it, but he was nervous as hell. The men who would be his guests this evening could very well mean the success or the sinking of Piersall Industries.

  He’d cut every cost he could, hounded negli
gent clients for past-due amounts and negotiated extended repayment terms with the company’s creditors. But unless he brought in this big contract and convinced these bankers to back him, it wasn’t going to be enough.

  Oh, he could sell his own company for a cool six million tomorrow. He knew because he’d already been making some inquiries. There was an offer on the table right now. But fixing Piersall’s problems with additional cash of his own didn’t sit well at all. Not because he cared about sinking money into the family industry, but because if he couldn’t pull this off, he’d have failed.

  Failure wasn’t a word he’d often needed to contemplate. In fact, he thought sourly, his broken engagement and his subsequent marriage to the wrong woman was probably the one and only big failure in his life.

  The morning’s confrontation had stuck in his craw all day. How, he asked himself as he descended the stairs, could she be so mad at him? He’d been the one wronged, but somehow, she’d managed to twist everything around and make him feel like the villain. And he wasn’t.

  Was he?

  For the first time since he was twenty-seven, a shaft of uncertainty pierced the solid block of memory he’d erected in his mind. Had he misread something on that night so long ago? It was getting harder and harder to reconcile the warm, brutally honest woman he found beneath her veneer with the woman he believed had cheated on him with his own brother.

  He checked his watch. Seven-oh-one. He paced. He looked in on the hired bartender and the caterers, who had everything ready to present at a moment’s notice. Thanks to Jillian.

  He checked his watch again. A minute, thirty seconds had elapsed. Their guests were due any minute, damn it. Where was she? He walked to the foot of the stairs and looked up.

  Nothing.

  He drummed his fingers on the newel post.

  And then Christine came into view. “Hi, Daddy.” She was wearing a drop-waisted dress with sheer, puffy sleeves and a skirt so full it bounced when she walked. Her straight blond hair had been curled in soft ringlets and caught up in a velvet bow. She looked so...so grown up.

  Surely this couldn’t be his baby. Hadn’t he been carrying a rosy-cheeked toddler just yesterday? Where had the chubby little legs gone? As her dark lashes swept down over her big eyes, he had a sudden flash of what his daughter was going to become in just a few short years. And it made him nervous as hell.

  “Do you like my dress?” Christine pranced the stairs and pirouetted before him, and suddenly his little girl was back.

  “You look beautiful, baby.” he told her sincerely, kissing her brow. “Too beautiful. I can see I’m going to have to lock you in your room to keep the boys away.”

  “Dad-dy!” She giggled, but she was pleased. Then she turned and pointed up the stairs. “Just wait ’til you see what Jillian bought.”

  A flash of blue teased the corner of his vision and he lifted his head. Jillian hadn’t waited to pose for him at the head of the stairs. She already was descending, looking at the steps below her rather than waiting for his reaction, her slender figure moving with sinuous grace and surety despite the mile-high sandals she wore.

  His blood pressure shot up again, but this time it wasn’t anxiety causing the increase in his pulse. It struck him that she knew exactly how she looked and what it was doing to him, and though his hands itched to readjust himself within his close-fitting trousers to a less restrictive position, he forced himself not to move. Hardly appropriate in front of his daughter.

  Jillian’s dress was a soft sapphire blue, as were her strappy little shoes. It wrapped every slender curve in a touchable, mouth-watering package. A high collar of lace surrounded her neck. The same lace formed the long, close-fitting sleeves and the bottom four inches or so of the short dress, offering tantalizing glimpses of well-toned thighs in sheer, gold-sheened hosiery. Some sheer gauzy stuff pretended a modesty that didn’t exist over her upper chest, caressing the upper swells of her breasts between her collar and the main part of the dress, which looked like nothing so much as blue cling-wrap molding her from the upper curves of her breasts to mid-thigh, where the lace began. Peeping through the sheer fabric, her skin appeared to drape gracefully over her collarbones, inviting a man to run his fingers along the gentle ridges and follow the shadowed valley that disappeared between her breasts.

  As she completed her glide down the stairs, he stepped forward to offer his hand. She placed hers atop his and her eyes flew to his at the contact. Slowly, he drew her fingers to his lips, holding her gaze as he pressed a lingering caress to her flesh.

  “The hostess isn’t supposed to outshine her guests,” he murmured as he straightened. He noticed she was wearing more makeup than usual, and though he liked her normal look, whatever she’d done tonight gave her a perfect glowing finish and made her eyes even wider and her lips more pouty than ever. This close, her scent invited him to come nearer, to step in for a deeper breath.

  Her darkened eyebrows rose. “Everything you requested is ready,” she said coolly, and his dazed brain remembered she’d been furious with him when they parted. And why.

  She started to withdraw her hand, but he held on. “I apologize for this morning,” he muttered. He wasn’t sure why he was the one apologizing, but it felt necessary. Christine had drifted into the living room and found the candy dish.

  She gave him a long, level look. “Apology accepted. Let’s forget it.”

  “You’re big on forgetting.” He kept her hand in his as the doorbell rang to announce the first of their guests.

  And as she moved ahead of him to welcome the others, she shrugged those elegant shoulders. “It gets me through the day.”

  Lingering over coffee and Grand Marnier after the meal, he glanced down the table toward where she was seated at the far end, Christine on her right. He could admit it now—he’d been a little nervous about Jillian tonight, as well. If she’d wanted to, she could have ruined the evening and his chances at keeping Piersall going, he had no doubt. The woman had more tricks up those lacy sleeves than a roomful of magicians.

  But she’d been perfect So perfect, in fact, that his dazzled dinner companions already had agreed to a sweet deal of a loan that should give him room to breathe until Piersall was out of the woods and solvent again. She’d stroked the men’s egos and listened, wide-eyed, to a dozen boring stories with all the fascination she’d have given a diamond merchant offering her a deal.

  But what amazed him even more was that she’d done it without alienating their wives. She’d talked cooking, asked questions about children and grandchildren, pitched her store in a way that guaranteed a visit from every woman at the table, and listened with a straight face to a long, animated discussion about gynecologists. She’d cozied up to their men, but she’d done it in such a way that their wives hadn’t felt the least bit threatened.

  That was part of her charm, he decided. She vamped outrageously, then laughed at herself, and in doing so, sent the message that she wasn’t to be taken seriously. She’d also played the part of the proud, doting mother to perfection. Although to be fair, he didn’t think she’d had to play the role.

  She genuinely liked his daughter. It showed in the way she’d helped her select a dinner dress. In the way she gently squeezed her shoulders, the way she included her in conversations, the winks and warm smiles she occasionally sent Christine’s way.

  He’d had more than one man compliment him on his beautiful wife and daughter and the wife of the senior lender had told him his daughter was going to be as stunning as her mother when she was grown.

  An easy mistake to make, he thought. They did look alike.

  Thinking about the reason for that dampened his good spirits. Christine should be Jillian’s daughter. Instead, her mother had been a stand-in for Jillian during the lowest period in his life.

  Tonight, he decided, was as good a night as any to get some answers about that time.

  Finally! Jillian turned away as Dax closed the door on the last of their all-too-ready-to-
stay-later guests. While he went to tip the bartender, she checked the kitchen to be sure the caterers had put away all the food. They would send a bill over on Monday. She had to remember to tell Dax exactly what he could and couldn’t deduct as business expenses for the evening’s entertainment.

  Wearily, she walked toward the steps and began to climb. She couldn’t wait to get out of these ridiculous shoes. Although they had looked fantastic with the dress. Christine had seen them and practically dragged her into the store on their way out of the mall; Jillian would have bought and worn them even if she’d hated them.

  The child had gone to bed two hours ago, when Jillian had noticed her little eyes were glazed over with either exhaustion or boredom. She wished she could have done the same.

  Entering her bedroom, she pried the high blue heels off one by one. Then she wriggled her way out of the dress and let it lay where it fell. Next came the hose, the panties and that incredibly uncomfortable push-up bra that did such wonders for women’s cleavages.

  Everything stayed right on the floor where she stepped out of it. Letting her clothing languish was satisfying. Her way of thumbing her nose at the things women did in fashion’s name. Tomorrow was time enough to pick up.

  Entering the big tiled bathroom, she turned on the hot water in the tub and poured in a generous dollop of bubble bath. While it filled, she brushed her teeth and took off the evening makeup she’d applied hours earlier. Ready for a wonderful, relaxing soak, she turned off the faucets and was about to step into the tub when a movement in the mirror caught her eye.

  Dax stood in the partially open doorway. He had been twirling her lacy bikini panties on one finger, grinning, but the smile slowly died as their eyes met in the mirror.