The Bride Means Business

by Anne Marie Winston

  Surprised out of her pique, she turned around. She’d never seen Dax at a loss for words before, and his hangdog expression was so out of character that she found it hard to hang on to her anger. Softly, she asked, “Were you jealous?”

  Dax set the plates on the table and came around to where she still stood. He stopped before her and reached out, sighing when she didn’t pull away. Slipping his arms around her waist and pulling her against him, he said, “Let’s just say I don’t like to think of the other men who have been in your life.”

  “There haven’t been many.” It was important to her that he understand, and believe. “I’ve dated, but none of them were important.”

  “Good.” He kissed her, and she responded to the desperation in his touch, knowing the same feeling. It killed something inside of her to think of him with other women. She had grown to adore Christine, but she still couldn’t bring herself to think about how the child had come into Dax’s life.

  She had a feeling Dax’s grand plan to ignore the past was fatally flawed.

  Dinner had been nicer than he’d expected, Dax thought as they headed for their seats at Camden Yards the next night. He’d half expected hostility from Jillian’s friends, but Ronan and Deirdre Sullivan were both friendly and relaxed with him.

  He’d learned that they had two sons and a daughter, that the boys were Deirdre’s sons from her previous marriage. Ronan’s dark face lit up with warm emotion when he talked about his stepsons, and suddenly, Dax saw in his mind Jillian’s smiling eyes showing him the perfect score Christine had received on her spelling test last week.

  The realization that Jillian had opened her heart so completely to his daughter was humbling. He could only imagine how she must feel, being confronted with living, breathing proof of his infidelity every day, and when he put himself in her place...well, he just wasn’t sure his heart was as big as hers. He took her hand more firmly in his as they walked along, reassuring himself with the warm clasp of her fingers and the quiet smile she slanted his way.

  They walked through the throngs of people buying hats, T-shirts, pens, pins...every manner of memorabilia that could possibly be marketed to the public. Food stands flourished, offering hot dogs, pizza and popcorn. Clouds of cotton candy bounced above the heads of the crowd as a vendor carried his goods out to the rows of seats.

  This was the first time he’d been to an Orioles game in the new ballpark, and the thing that impressed him the most was how clean it was. The old one had had an overall aura of grimy grimness. Your feet had stuck to the sticky floor with every step and you hated to enter the rest rooms because you never knew what you might find. But The Yard, as it was affectionately known...it was no wonder the team played to sellout crowds of enthusiastic fans every home game now.

  Ronan led the way up the wide ramp and off at the first level.

  And okay, he was impressed. The seats were just a few rows back along the first base line, affording them a great view of the pitching as well as the action in the field. He whistled softly. “You have to let me pay you for these,” he said to Ronan over Jillian’s head.

  But Ronan shook his head. “Tax write-off. I use ’em to entertain people in the business.” He grinned. “Didn’t know you were an editor, did you?”

  Dax laughed, too. He knew all about the way the IRS went after the self-employed.

  The game was tense. The Mariners were breathing down their necks, trailing by a single run after the first few innings. He was surprised at how much Jillian knew about the team, but he shouldn’t have been. She’d been the scorekeeper for Charles’s high school team, he recalled.

  The memory made him chuckle wryly to himself. No cheerleading for Jillian. She’d managed to be right on the bench near the boys.

  Deirdre and Jillian excused themselves during the fifth inning to find a Ladies’ room, and Ronan grinned across the empty seats at Dax. “Is this the life or what?”

  “I’d be having more fun if they had a bigger lead.”

  Ronan laughed. “I know what you mean.” He got up, juggling his popcorn and a giant soda, and plunked himself down in Jillian’s seat next to Dax. “I see Jillian hasn’t taken off any skin. You must be being a good boy.”

  Dax raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it’s the other way around.”

  “That would be poetic justice.” Ronan spoke absently, eyeing the field as the team manager walked to the mound to address his starting pitcher.

  “Why?” This conversation was getting intensely interesting.

  Ronan shrugged, his lips turning up in a half smile. “Let’s just say Jill doesn’t hesitate to wade in with her fists flying when she thinks one of her friends has been hurt.”

  Dax assessed Ronan instead of the ballfield. “I take it you’ve been the punching bag?”

  “On one memorable occasion.” The author grimaced. “Deirdre and I weren’t...playing the game right for a while after we met. Jillian would have explained the rules to me but good if Frannie Ferris hadn’t been there to referee.”

  Dax laughed. “That sounds like Jillian.”

  “But, on the other hand,” Ronan said, “Once she’s in your corner, she’s there forever. I’m on the A-list now,” he added complacently. Then he glanced at Dax, and his gold-flecked eyes sobered. “It was a hell of a shock to find out she got married right out of the blue.”

  Dax grimaced, honesty forcing him to admit, “It wasn’t exactly out of the blue. We were engaged a long time ago. We had a pretty big misunderstanding and I left town. When I came back...” He shrugged. “There’s never been anyone like her.”

  Ronan whistled. “That I can believe. Now I understand why she kept all those men at a distance.” He grinned. “Though how she managed to keep them all as friends when she gave them their marching orders is something I wish I could figure out. It would be great in a book.”

  “She’s always been able to wrap men around her little finger.” He didn’t want to think about the legions of men Jillian apparently had charmed while he was gone.

  “Except for you.” There was a clear question in R. A. Sullivan’s voice.

  “Except for me,” he said flatly. He didn’t particularly want to dissect his relationship with his wife in public.

  “Deirdre’s been worried,” the other man said, his own voice cooling. “We’ve hardly heard from Jillian since she moved in with you.”

  “She’s fine. Ask her.”

  “I will.” Ronan got up from the seat and moved back to his own chair. “She’s been alone for a long time. I’d really like to see her find someone who will treasure her the way I treasure my wife.”

  The women came back as he took his seat, and the prickly conversation ended. But it left Dax smarting from the tiny thorns in Ronan’s words.

  He treasured Jillian. More than Ronan would ever know.

  Maybe it had taken him a while to realize it, but he didn’t care about the past anymore. Charles was dead, and that chapter of their lives was gone forever.

  He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, find the happiness they should have begun to share seven years ago. He wanted things to be the way they were before he’d gone away, and Jillian seemed to want the same thing.

  Nine

  That night, they lay together in his bed after they’d made love:

  Dax was stretched out on his back. His arm cuddled her close to his side and his fingers idly smoothed up and down over her upper arm.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  She felt him shrug, and he turned his head to press his lips against her hair. “Just that I don’t remember ever feeling this content with my life.” He shifted slightly. “Do you feel it, too?”

  She hesitated. “Yes,” she said cautiously.

  Beneath her hand, his ridged belly rose and fell in a silent laugh. “That was hardly a ringing endorsement.”

  She didn’t laugh in return. She couldn’t. And when she didn’t speak, he rose on an elbow, looking down into her face in th
e dim light of the small lamp they’d left on.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She drew in a breath. “I thought this would be enough, that I could make it be enough. But it’s not.”

  “What, exactly, is it that isn’t enough?”

  “I can’t just ignore the past.” Raising a hand, she laid it against his cheek. “It really bothers me that you’ve never let me explain about the night you left.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” He threw himself down on his back again. “I told you I don’t care about that anymore. Isn’t it enough that we’re together again now?”

  “No. It isn’t. Not for me.” Her voice was quiet and she swallowed. Maybe he didn’t care anymore, but it was important to her that he listen to the truth. Somehow, though she couldn’t quite fathom why, it insulted her that he was willing to take her even though he thought she had been unfaithful. It cheapened what they had, in her eyes.

  There was silence in the bedroom, a heavy, hope-dulling silence.

  “If it’s that important to you, then I’ll listen.” There was no inflection of any kind in his voice.

  She took a deep breath. “What you saw—what you thought that night—wasn’t what you thought. You heard Charles tell me he loved me, but what you didn’t hear was what led up to it. Charles was having an affair, but not with me.”

  “With who, then?”

  “With the governor’s wife.”

  “The governor’s wife!” He sat up and looked down at her. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “I expect you to listen,” she said levelly. “The governor caught them together. Your mother was furious, because she was working to get some legislation through that would provide state tax relief for big corporations like Piersall, and she was afraid Charles might have killed her chances of gaining the governor’s backing.”

  “I can see why, if it’s true.”

  If it’s true. He still was doubting every word that came out of her mouth.

  She sat up, pulling the sheet around her and hugging her knees. Somehow, it didn’t feel right to be naked in front of Dax right now. “Your mother went into full damagecontrol mode—she insisted Charles marry Alma Bender, a girl from Butler County whose family she knew. Charles had taken Alma out a few times, and apparently she was wild about him. Unfortunately, your idiot brother couldn’t see what a gem she was.”

  “Until you pointed it out, of course.” There was definite sarcasm in his voice, but she ignored it.

  “Not exactly. Charles came whining to me the night he got caught, telling me the whole stupid story. Remember how we used to compare our dates?”

  “I remember,” he said. “You two told each other damn near everything.”

  “Not everything.” She made her voice teasing, trying to lighten the mood. “I never told him about us.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Anyway, Charles came over that night after your mother issued her edict. I knew you were coming, and I didn’t think he’d mind talking about it with you, either. He was lying on my bed like he always did—”

  “With you in it.”

  “I was underneath the covers, he was on top of them. We were only hugging each other. And that’s beside the point. You know we’d had late-night heart-to-heart talks for years. He expected me to sympathize with him, but instead I told him to grow up, to take responsibility for his own mess.”

  “And that’s when I heard you tell him how much you loved him.”

  “Yes, you did.” She refused to let him get under her skin. “I did love your brother. Not the way I loved you, but he was my dearest friend.”

  Dax didn’t say anything. She glanced at him; he wasn’t looking at her, but at the far wall. His jaw was set although his face was perfectly composed.

  “He told me he loved Alma like a friend, but that he could never marry her. He said he loved her the way he loved me. Dax, I swear to you that I never felt anything more than friendship for Charles. But in the end he did marry Alma, and then later, he began to think of her romantically. I know he loved her deeply until the moment they died.”

  She stopped. What else was there to say?

  Dax hadn’t moved. He still stared at the wall, but she knew he wasn’t really seeing it. Seconds stretched into minutes, and her heart began to rupture again along the fault lines that so recently had been on the verge of repair.

  He still didn’t believe her. She’d been so sure that once she told him the truth, he’d believe. She must have been crazy.

  She sighed in defeat, and the sound hitched at the end. Furious with herself, she lay back down. She’d wait until he turned out the light and then she’d leave the room. In the meantime, she would not cry.

  Behind her, she felt Dax also lie back down. Then the hard length of him pressed against her back and curled around her, spoon-fashion, and his arm came over her. The pain that accompanied his embrace was so exquisite she wondered if a person had ever actually died from a broken heart.

  “Honey-bunch.”

  “What?” She held herself rigid.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  “Do I—?” She rolled over to face him. “What?”

  “You’ve wanted to tell me this for a long time. Do you feel better now?” He smoothed a hand down her hip. “Now we can consider the slate clean, and we can start again.”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. But I don’t care, either. It happened a long time ago. All I want is for us to forget the past and enjoy what we have now.” He pulled her onto her back. “I care about you, more than I’ve ever cared for any other woman. Can’t that be enough?”

  It might be as close to a declaration of love as she would ever get from him again. Pride and integrity warred with emotion. She wanted him to believe her, to believe in her, more than she’d ever wanted anything in her whole life. He couldn‘t—wouldn’t—give her that.

  If she wanted him, she’d have to set aside her dream of settling their misunderstanding. Could she live with less than all of him her entire life?

  Then he put a hand to her cheek, and his thumb rubbed along her lower lip. “Please don’t leave me,” he said in a husky voice. “I need you.”

  And she was lost. If she refused him, she’d spend the rest of her life as lonely as she’d been until he came home again. Her heart might never be whole, her self-worth might have a hole the size of Butler County in it, but Dax needed her. He’d admitted it, he’d asked her to stay.

  She loved him too much to do otherwise.

  Fall finally was beginning to make its presence known, and there was a nip in the air as Jillian walked into the bar where she’d agreed to meet Roger on Wednesday afternoon, hanging her lightweight autumn coat near the door before surveying the crowd. Roger was waiting for her in a booth against the wall, and as she slid into the seat opposite him, he rose and gave her a very correct kiss on the cheek.

  “Hello,” she said. “How have you been, Roger?”

  “Not so great, if you want to know the truth.”

  Her euphoric mood began to dissipate. She hated to see her friends unhappy. “Uh-oh. What’s the matter?”

  “Your husband is what’s the matter,” Roger said quietly.

  “Dax?” She was bewildered. She’d been so pleased that Roger hadn’t lost his job that she’d never imagined he might be unhappy with Dax. “What do you mean?”

  “Have you looked at the financial records for the company?” he asked her. “Oh, I know you wouldn’t understand what you were looking at, but it’s very clear to anyone who can decipher it.”

  “What’s very clear?” She realized Roger had no idea of. the extent of her involvement in Dax’s decision-making. For the moment, it seemed best to keep it that way.

  Roger sighed heavily. “Oh, Jillian, I hate to burden you with this. If I weren’t so concerned for Piersall, I’d just forget it.”

  She was
going to strangle him if he didn’t start talking. But she waved an airy hand. “Oh, Roger, you know nothing bothers me for long. Why don’t you tell me all about this problem you think you have?”

  “Well...” Roger appeared to weigh his words. Finally he nodded. “As a stockholder, you have a right to know.” He took a deep breath. “I think your husband is trying to ruin the company.”

  “Ruin the company!” It wasn’t hard to make her face appear suitably shocked. “How could he do that?”

  “When someone has voting control of the board, as Dax does at the moment, it’s very easy for that someone to make unilateral decisions that aren’t necessarily in everyone’s best interests, if you see what I mean.”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “Your husband has been systematically undermining all the good business practices we’ve instituted at Piersall over the years. The company soon won’t be able to sustain such a drain on its resources, and as that begins to show in our financial reports, stock prices are going to go down. I think he’s making a deliberate effort to make the company look weak so that he can acquire more of the stock at rockbottom prices.”

  She didn’t have to fake looking aghast. So he was the one! Roger was accusing Dax of the very thing he’d been maneuvering for even before Charles died. A red mist of rage rose as she realized this man had fully intended to betray dear, gentle Charles, who had trusted him implicitly, and now was doing his best to ruin her family, Dax’s unceasing efforts, Christine’s birthright. Aloud, she said, “But I don’t understand. If the company’s going bad, then the stock is worthless, right?”

  Roger gave her an indulgent smile. “Yes, but you see, it works like this. If the stock isn’t worth much, someone—Dax—could buy a lot at a low price. Then he steps in and hires new people, puts the firm back on good footing, and sells the stock at a much higher price. Owning so much of it would mean he could sell off enough to make a significant sum and still retain enough to control the board.”

  “You don’t mean...he’d line his pockets at our expense?”

  Roger nodded. Very glumly. “I’m afraid that’s exactly what I mean. But you don’t have to worry. This shouldn’t affect you at all, if you just go along with him.”